This is incredibly exciting news in more ways than one. Personally, I cheer the Platform Committee for taking this risk.
The new language will appear in copies of the Green Party's 2016 platform that will be distributed to delegates and others when they convene in H-Town this August.
The decision to reject was not without controversy: Many established Greens objected to it for various reasons. The risk, from the beginning, was not only that mainstream America would accuse the Greens of pining for the good old days of Joe Stalin, but that GPUS might lose a fair number of its long-standing members over its new stance.
Among Millennials in particular, but by no means exclusively, "socialism" is no longer a dirty word. It is a rational alternative to an economic system that thrives on exploitation and puts millions in debt peonage.
I hope that you read and re-read the quote pictured above with an open mind. The platform also rejects state socialism, while embracing eco-socialism explicitly.
I also hope that you will read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, which illustrates how capitalism is incompatible with protecting the natural environment on which all life—human life included—depends. While the book is thoroughly researched and sourced, it is not such a scholarly work that readers will drown in polysyllables. But even environmentalists who think they've heard it all before may find their heads spinning at the depth and breadth of the climate crisis and the solutions that should have been imposed years ago.
Klein is not especially comfortable with state socialism either, but it may be the only way to rescue our world from climate catastrophe. The state won't budge, however, until the people get off their collective arse and make budging politically imperative.