Climate Memo Mondays #23
SUNRISE
MOVEMENT AND GREEN NEW DEAL
The Origin
of the Green
New Deal from the Sunrise Movement:
VARSHINI PRAKASH’S INTRODUCTION TO WINNING
THE GREEN
NEW DEAL by Dick Bennett
Prakash presents
his thumbnail Intro. via narrative secondarily structured by accretion; that
is, he tells the story of the origins of the GND, by repeating and developing
his main theme four times, all in thirteen pages. It’s an artistic creation; for example, he
launches his narrative from two awakenings from sleep; the Intro. as a whole recounts
the awakening of a movement. He jumps
out of bed 9-20-19 and thinks of the rally ahead of thousands of youth of the
Sunrise Movement (of which he was co-founder) with Greta Thunberg as a keynote
speaker. The Intro. ends with an
affirmation of their significance. I will
temporarily rearrange those pages into the logical steps of his GND advocacy.
1. The roots of GND are found in individuals and
ideas long preceding the 2017 beginning of the Sunrise Movement. Out of this fermentation, the Sunrise Movement
of young people arose in 2017 “on a mission to make climate change matter in
the midterms, as a key step toward our
eventual goal of winning comprehensive policies to stop climate change while
creating millions of good jobs” (my italics). Here is the center of the SM movement: to be
comprehensive in two global ways: to end fossil fuels and to achieve it justly
(climate justice), especially via jobs for all [and elsewhere including ending
racism].
2. That movement erupted fully on September 20,
2019, with the resolve in youth throughout the world to rise up. (“That day, 7
million people went on strike. This is the movement that is going to win
a Green
New Deal.”)
3. The Intro. is titled “The Adults in the
Room” (are the youth, from a speech by Greta). One of the two ruling parties no longer
functions for the public good. The
Republicans are now a Party ruled by fossil fuel billionaire racists, its
leader is the pathologically lying demagogue Donald Trump, and not worth
efforts to change.
4. Many Democrats are clueless; many, like the
Repubs., are tied to the money of the fossil fuel industry. Nancy Pelosi in 2018 as new Speaker of the
House could think only of creating a committee to educate the public about
extreme weather events. But the
Democrats are the only Party the SM has, and it is supporting every Democrat
who supports the SM plan to 1) expose and end the ff economy, and 2)
support equity in the transition. And the SM was successful in helping the Dems
reclaim the House.
5. Planning is crucial. The Democrats are deeply flawed because they
had no PLAN to solve the massive problems beyond holding hearings. That was the motive for a sit-in by 200 SM
members to Speaker Pelosi’s office Nov. 13, 2019 to insist upon a “vision” that
“had been developed for decades by environmental justice and labor
advocates. What is your Plan, they asked
Pelosi, to stop the climate crisis and secure “justice for ALL Americans?” (my
caps). We have known the urgency for decades—the
rising temperature, the fires, the floods--, and now it is an EMERGENCY, they
told Pelosi. The latest UN report
declares “we have twelve years” to transform our economy to protect
civilization. The Dems lack of a plan at
this late date was “a death sentence for my generation,” Prakash declared in
Pelosi’s office.
6. And then Representative-elect Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez entered the office and gave her support, and later that auspicious
Nov. 13,
2019 day, she “released a
proposal for something called the Green New Deal, a comprehensive program of
reform [Part I of GND] to halt climate change while [Part II] creating good
jobs and reducing inequality.” The two
events “sent a shock wave through the worlds of politics and climate
advocacy.” For not only had the need
for a “holistic plan” from the SM been announced in Speaker Pelosi’s office,
but THE PLAN was an actual Proposal to the House (in reality to the Democratic
Party). And the Plan was also a
“vision” for the future not only “to provide a livable climate” but to provide
a just social and economic system (“racial and economic justice”) too. Decades of talk had finally reached the SM’s
goal of ACTION; that is, of making
legislation.
Dick Bennett
TAKE ACTION
OMNI is a part of this
history. About fifteen years ago it birthed the Carbon Caps Task Force, which evolved into the present Arkansas Climate
Change Lobby, affiliated with the national Climate Change Lobby, which advocates the "fee/dividend" way to end fossil
fuels. The CCTF also led to OMNI's
Climate Book Forum.
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