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The Green Party Review

 

The Green Party in Ontario

 

 

WELCOME TO "THE ONTARIO GREEN NEWS"

There are thousands of small, grass roots environmental and social justice groups across this province. Some of them are opposed to a highway expansion, water bottling plant, or big box store. Others are helping the homeless, imprisoned, or mentally ill. Yet others are teaching how to garden in harmony with nature, restoring a damaged wetland or propagating the seedstock of endangered plants. Still more are promoting beneficial technologies that range from windmills, through straw bale homes to proportional representation.

Linked together, these different parts of the puzzle make up the green movement. But unfortunately, these groups aren't really linked together. Most of them are small, informal and totally focussed on "the issue at hand". Moreover, the exhausting work involved means that they don't have much time to think about the big picture. But to really make a significant change in Ontario, all people of good will need to have some sort of connection. The people working on wind power need to learn a little about highway expansions. The ones concerned about homelessness need to learn about big box stores. Folks trying to preserve our park system need to know what happens to the poor when welfare gets cut. And all of us need to know more about how our activities fit into the bigger world of politics and economics.

The job of the Green Party is to make sense of the emerging green movement, develop a way of connecting the different elements together and build an infrastructure that will empower us to work together building a sustainable Ontario based on justice and compassion.

This is where "The Ontario Green News" comes in. The Green Party is offering this news magazine to the activists of Ontario. You've learned a great deal in your work and we'd like you to share it with the thousands of other Ontarions involved in similar activities. It will be the place where you can tell the whole story---and not just the bit that fits between the ads, makes a good soundbite and is left over when balanced by "the other side" (which usually owns the newspaper anyway). As Jello Biafra says "Don't hate the media---be the media". Of course, the opinions stated in the Ontario Green News are those of the authors and should not be construed as representing official Green Party of Ontario policy.

Bill Hulet
Editor, "the Ontario Green News"