This is how "Winning on Equity" happens!
Last Thursday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey demonstrated the meaning of radical imagination by putting forward a legislative framework to confront climate change and uplift the lives and well-being of Indigenous communities and communities on the front lines of climate threats across the nation. Their proposed Green New Deal (GND) builds on work many of you have led over the last decade: it confronts the threats of climate change by proposing a transition from fossil fuels while investing in the communities and the 100 million economically insecure people in America that have borne the worst of our carbon-based economy.
Let's show Congress that the Green New Deal has our support. Transformative solidarity is the prerequisite to realizing the promise of the Green New Deal vision.
Contact your congressional leaders and tell them to cosponsor the Green New Deal framework and move it forward into bold legislation.
Highlights of the Green New Deal include:
- Universal Access to Clean Water and Transportation: The GND prioritizes investment in green infrastructure including drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure that can ensure universal access to clean water for the 77 million people across the U.S. who lack access to safe and affordable drinking water. It would dismantle fossil fuel infrastructure to protect our natural water systems, while developing renewable energy sources. It would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and would repair and improve our transportation, energy, housing, and other infrastructure.
- A Federal Job Guarantee in the Green Economy: Amid growing economic insecurity and persistent racial economic inequity, a federal job guarantee can be a cornerstone for an inclusive, thriving, and sustainable 21st century American economy. By ensuring that every person who wants to work has access to a quality job, a job guarantee would eliminate involuntary unemployment, decrease poverty, and raise the floor on low-wage work while building stronger, more climate-friendly communities. The GND explicitly addresses historic, social, economic, racial, and gender-based injustices and includes a federal job guarantee as well as additional policies that ensure economic security and build wealth and ownership at the community level.
Climate change and growing inequality are among the greatest threats to our nation. As the nation's population becomes majority people of color, the Green New Deal can enable us to become a just, fair, and sustainable society where all — including working-class communities and communities of color long locked out of opportunity — can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.
Tell your congressional representatives to support the Green New Deal by cosponsoring the bill, moving forward committee hearings, and shaping bold legislation.
In solidarity,
Michael McAfee, PolicyLink
