Eric Walker (co-founder and former co-director of PUSH Buffalo) and Emmaia Gelman (former policy director of the Center for Working Families, then Laborers Union staff) in conversation about Green Jobs-Green NY. We wrote this in 2015 but didn’t publish it. We hope it can contribute to the exciting proposal for a Green New Deal that’s now before Congress.

April 28, 2019

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Excerpt:

…Between 2007 and 2013, a coalition of hundreds of community, labor, environmental, business, and political groups worked to build Green Jobs/Green NY as a statewide green retrofit program. At the core of the coalition was a small group of dedicated anti-racist radicals and queers (just as the Republicans suspected!) The program as it exists now is full of our ideas, solutions, and sweat, but it is not a radical anti-racist program. The system worked perfectly: it took our best efforts at transformational change, and turned them into a middle-of-the-road, not-very-effective program that serves middle class homeowners and workers, while leaving out the low-income people and people of color for whom we meant it…. To get the more complex picture, we invite you to read our account, browse the linked sources, and search out more GJGNY history to build a more complete understanding of how the organizing worked and didn’t. Finally, just two words for organizers looking for justice on energy, housing, and jobs: community control…