Let's Take The Vermont Progressive Party Nationwide!

The Vermont Progressive Party is an American political party. It was founded in 1999 and is active only in the U.S. state of Vermont. In terms of the dominant two parties in the United States, it enjoys support from "traditional liberal" Democrats and working class Republicans.



The Vermont Progressive Party originated with the independent campaign of Bernie Sanders for mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders, who was later elected to the United States House of Representatives, and subsequently to the United States Senate, never officially associated himself with the Progressive Party, although the Progressives were among his biggest supporters. A group of his supporters organized themselves as the Progressive Coalition to contest further elections.
The Coalition succeeded in electing several members, including Terry Bouricius, to the Vermont General Assembly, and, after establishing a stable political base, formally became the Progressive Party. While the party has traditionally focused on state races, in 2000 it nominated Ralph Nader for president and Winona LaDuke for vice-president. In the 2004 elections the party picked up three new seats; it now has five representatives in the Vermont House of Representatives.

The Progressive Party encompasses a social-democratic and populist platform. The party's main focus has historically been advocacy for a single-payer health care system, which has recently come to fruition through the implementation of Green Mountain Care, a single payer health care program being pushed by Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin, due to pressure from the Progressive Party. Other major policy platforms are renewable energy programs such as a high-speed rail system and a phase-out of nuclear energy, prison reforms to reduce the state's prison population and better protect convict's rights, proposes creation of programs to end homelessness in the state, ending the War on Drugs and repealing No Child Left Behind and ending the focus on standardized testing in the school system. The party also has an anti-war stance, advocating for Vermont's national guard to be restricted from engaging in war zones, an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and opposes all preemptive strikes. The party is very supportive of LGBT rights, and members of the party were involved in the legalization of gay marriage in the state.
Economically, the party also calls for converting the minimum wage to a living wage, having the economy focus on small and local businesses, empowerment of worker cooperatives and publicly owned companies as democratic alternatives to multi-national corporations and to decentralize the economy, for the strengthening of state law to protect the right to unionize, for implementing a progressive income tax and repealing the Capital Gains Tax Exemption and residential education property tax and all trade to be subject to international standards on human rights. The party is also critical of privatization.

Link to the party: http://www.progressiveparty.org

How can we take this party national and appeal to the masses? By adding to the platform constitutional freedom, limited governmnet, and supporting small business as long as those freedoms don't destroy the environment we all need to survive. We also need to add the right to self-defense when actually threatened, a right all strong feminist womyn should embrace!

Contact the party at the link above and find out how you can form a charter for the party in your state!

"Vermont republicans should adopt fiscal conservatism, constitutionalism, social liberalism/civil liberties and be against constant war".

If we could only combine combine progressive politics with Barry Goldwater Jr's ideas. Barry Goldwater Jr supported free market yet opposed the religious right having any involvement in politics. He also supported gay rights. Barry's son (also named Barry Jr) takes up where his father left off. Barry Jr. has been a staunch supporter of solar stating:

"Choice means competition. Competition drives prices down and the quality up." "The utilities are monopolies. They're not used to competition. That's what rooftop solar represents to them."

Here is a link to the Goldwater Institute: http://goldwaterinstitute.org