Green New Deal Network Applauds introduction of Green New Deal legislation and Civilian Climate Corps Act

For Immediate Release

April 20, 2021

 

Contact: media@greennewdealnetwork.org

 

Green New Deal Network Applauds Introduction of Green New Deal Legislation and Civilian Climate Corps Act

Today, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Ed Markey, and congressional allies re-introduced the Green New Deal Resolution and introduced accompanying legislation including the Civilian Climate Corps Act. The Green New Deal Network strongly supports these visionary and timely bills and calls for their passage. Organizations from the Green New Deal Network are weighing in:

“We are facing a critical moment in time where communities across the country continue to face the colliding crises of climate change, racial and economic injustice, inadequate access to healthcare, housing insecurity and so much more. Communities can no longer wait for half measures, and visionary policy platforms like the Green New Deal highlight the urgency and conviction politicians in Washington, DC, must act on. The Green New Deal and Civilian Climate Corps Act help us imagine a new world where people have good paying jobs, our vastly broken energy and water systems are renewed, communities are thriving, and people have their fundamental needs met. Building a just world means we must continue to be courageous, imaginative, bold and unrelenting in its pursuit. We thank leaders like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey who continuously model the political will necessary to meet the crises we are facing head on.” 

—Dianne Enriquez, director of community dignity campaigns

Center for Popular Democracy

“Our communities face crisis upon crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse, police violence to climate chaos. The pandemic has shown that it is Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian communities most harmed by these crises, while simultaneously holding up the economy as care workers and essential workers. The Green New Deal represents a bold vision of addressing these chronic crises together. Our solutions must reinvest in communities, confront climate chaos with real solutions not false techno-fixes, and expand investments in the care infrastructure and social sectors. The Green New Deal resolution lays out a path for the intersectional solutions and reparative investments we need to shift away from an extractive economy towards a healthy economy that ensures our communities thrive.”

—Cindy Wiesner, director

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

“President Biden and Congress must divest from the systems of exploitation and extraction that keep us locked in cycles of crises: whether it’s climate change, systemic racism, economic inequality, or the fallout from COVID-19. Let’s divest from toxic fossil fuels and hyper-militarized police and invest in a Green New Deal that supports workers, families, and communities. Our government must stop pretending these issues are separate from one another. Right now, we need to go big and pursue an agenda to revive our economy while confronting systemic injustices—we need a Green New Deal. Only then can we navigate out of multiple crises at once.”

—Ashley Thomson, climate campaigner

Greenpeace USA

“The Indigenous Environmental Network applauds the Green New Deal resolution for its vision, intention, and scope. As Indigenous peoples and Tribal nations living on the frontline of climate chaos, our communities already experience the direct impacts of climate change—and the various policies that legislate our sovereignty, our lands, and our bodies. We know we need bold solutions that meet the scale of our intersecting problems. This is why we are supporting the Green New Deal resolution, authored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. While it is true their resolution helps shift the national conversation around addressing the climate crisis, they are also helping to shift the national conversation away from the notion that consultation equals consent and toward the codified practice of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent with Tribal nations and communities. We are encouraged to see congressional leaders take charge to help Indigenous communities and Tribal nations protect their homelands, rights, sacred sites, waters, air, and bodies from further destruction.”

—Indigenous Environmental Network

“As we celebrate Earth Day, we are thrilled to support the bold vision that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey have put forward with the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution and the Civilian Climate Corps Act. Progressives know that addressing the climate crisis requires not one or two bills, but rather a decade of Green New Deal-esq legislating. In light of this we are incredibly supportive of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez championing this agenda, and of Sen. Markey’s bold example of a jobs program grounded in addressing the climate crisis, providing good jobs, and demanding justice.”

—Mary Small, policy director

Indivisible

“Climate catastrophe will not stop at big cities or blue states––that’s why it’s up to all of us to fight back and demand more from our government to protect everyone, and especially those hit first and worst by climate destruction. The Green New Deal and the Civilian Climate Corps will do just that and lead us to a future with good union jobs, decarbonization, and the justice that working people and communities of color need and deserve. This week’s slate of Green New Deal bills make it clear we are building momentum and until Congress finally meets our needs, we will continue to rise up.”

—Sondra Youdelman, campaigns director

People’s Action

“To confront our society’s interconnected crises, we need a bold vision for economic recovery that fosters climate solutions at the scale that science and justice demand, creates millions of family-sustaining jobs, and addresses systemic racial, economic, Indigenous, and gender injustice. This roadmap to a just recovery must dramatically expand clean energy and transportation, ensure clean air and water for all, upgrade our crumbling infrastructure and buildings, ramp up manufacturing of clean technologies, protect and restore our wetlands and forests, and grow our food sustainably on family farms. Doing so will create millions of good jobs with access to unions, giving workers a chance to build a good life for themselves and their families. To build a more just economy, we must focus these investments in communities disproportionately impacted by systemic racism, economic exclusion, toxic pollution, and the climate crisis. We look forward to working with congressional leaders and movement allies to make this vision a reality.”

—Ben Beachy, director of the Living Economy program

Sierra Club

“In 2019 we made it our mission to pass a Green New Deal. Three years later, we are still facing the ticking time bomb of the climate crisis, but now alongside the highest levels of joblessness since the Great Depression. We are in a civilization altering moment in our history and it’s time for America’s political leaders to muster the courage and moral clarity to pass the Green New Deal, launching America’s biggest job creation program in a century while combating climate change. At a crucial moment like this, politicians have a choice to make: they can heed the call demanded by science and justice to build back better through a Green New Deal, or they can cower to the fossil fuel industry and force us down a path of destruction, towards the fires that burned our homes to rubble and the floods that took our family and friends with them. Young people have made our choice clear—and now we demand politicians join us by passing a robust Civilian Climate Corps and ushering in the decade of the Green New Deal.”

—Varshini Prakash, executive director

Sunrise Movement

“Working people are emerging from a year of crisis and historic job loss, and the choices Congress makes now will shape our lives for decades to come. We can enter a future of climate catastrophe and recurring crises that kill local jobs, drive down wages and target Black, brown and Indigenous communities for pollution, or one where our government has done what it takes to avert the climate crisis, put tens of millions of people to work in good, family-sustaining jobs, and invest in racial and economic justice. By uniting behind the Green New Deal Resolution and the Civilian Climate Corps Act, Congress will give working people the power to build an America that finally works for the many, not the few. And we’ll be right there to organize ourselves, educate our communities and have conversations with our elected representatives to ensure they deliver the jobs and care our communities truly need.”

—Maurice Mitchell, national director

Working Families Party