This IS How You Green The Economy
If anyone had doubts about whether the Green Justice Coalition was heading in the right direction, whether the painstaking investment in coalition-building over several years was worth the effort, those concerns should be put to rest with the splash we made this week in the national progressive magazine The Nation.
This publication distills the best ideas from around the country on how to build a fairer and more sustainable society. Getting a brief mention in The Nation is something you display proudly on your organization’s website, but a full spread devoted to extolling your virtues is akin to winning a Pulitzer- you are being recognized as the best of the best in your field.
The article’s title says it all: “Doing Green Jobs Right.” Author Amy Dean, a prominent labor leader who has devoted a lot of time to thinking about the future of the labor movement and how to rebuild a strong progressive movement in the US, waxes poetic about the GJC’s path to greening the economy while protecting a fair deal for workers. She says the GJC “has created a model to connect the struggle for environmental justice with the fight for living-wage jobs, helping to lay the groundwork for a new generation of community-labor coalitions across the country.”
The article describes the cross-issue organizing that the GJC has pioneered in Massachusetts, how the Coalition has “committed to using the state program to score a triple win: delivering a blow to global warming, creating jobs needed to fuel economic recovery and addressing the exclusion of racially and economically marginalized communities from green development.” This model allows for Coalition member groups to develop a shared history of effort with groups which have sometimes been on opposing sides of the battlefield. In turn, such collaboration allows for the development of a broad progressive movement with the potential to reshape the state’s political scene into the future.
Many of the GJC’s member groups and organizers get mentions in the story, including Phyllis Evans of New England United for Justice, Khalida Smalls of Alternatives for Community and Environment, Juan Leyton of Neighbor to Neighbor, Clean Water Action and Chinese Progressive Association. One of the strengths of the Coalition has been to stand firm when potential fault lines come up. This is truly a testament to the importance of building from the grassroots up, and of acting to fundamentally and sustainably reorganize our economy.
