Climate Memo Mondays #23

 

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.​