Green Party Dissidents Announce New Party for the Poor, Homeless and Unemployed; Say Old Green Party Membership is Bourgeois, Insufficiently Impoverished and Disempowered
Insurgents, long unhappy with the predominantly middle class makeup of the US Green Party, have taken control of the party's national committee and changed its name to GRASP: the Green Revolutionary Avantgarde Socialist Party.
In their first action upon assuming power, GRASP leaders swiftly moved to purge the "overprivileged bourgeois party members who insist on holding jobs or owning property", saying: "in the future we will recruit only the unemployed, homeless and impoverished because only those at the bottom of society can bring about the revolution".
"Revolution is impossible to carry out with members who own property, investments, bank accounts, cars, homes, who work for large businesses or corporations, or who own small businesses with employees in an oppressive worker-boss slave labor situation", said lead dissident Seth Farber, an unemployed psychologist whose doctrines underpin the new party.
The party is also considering banning Jews from membership unless they favor abolishing Israel as a sovereign state and support the right of the seven million expatriate Palestinians to return and live within the Israeli borders.
Farber was critical of the makeup of the old US Green Party, which nominated a millionaire businessman and successful investor, Peter Camejo, as its presidential candidate in 2004; his running mate was an attorney formerly with an insurance company. "A genuinely revolutionary party cannot harbor capitalists; this includes those who own homes, investments, property or a job working for others. Such people cannot be trusted. The true proletariat must take control...those without jobs, homes, or assets will form the vanguard of the revolution".
After completion of the purge, the remaining five GRASP members announced a platform of Mandatory Penury underpinned by Sumptuary Laws to prevent the flaunting of clothes with brand names unless they are made in Arab or Muslim countries.
A short grace period has been introduced that will allow party members to temporarily hold a job, possess a house, car, or other assets, at the end of which all assets must be sold and the proceeds donated to the party.
Farber, who has never held a paying job, was unanimously elected president and named his sidekick Anthony Gronowicz as vice president. Gronowicz, who taught history at the NYC university, immediately resigned his position to show his solidarity with the party of the poor, to the chagrin of his wife and daughter.