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February 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
We’re here at the morning session of the Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference.
At the podium right now, Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth. “The next economy has to be simpler, has to be Green and has to be just.”
“We are addicted to energy, and the problem with being an addict,” she says, “is you do a lot of bad stuff.”
February 6th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Fred Redmond to the podium now. He’s with the United Steel Workers.
“Some of the Steelworkers’ most important work has been the work we’ve been able to do with the Sierra Club and the Blue Green Alliance.”
February 6th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Fred’s concerned about the “worldwide race to the bottom;” that that race to the bottom be ended when we make sure international trade agreements have fundamental principles of labor rights, human rights and environmental rights going forward.
February 6th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Van Jones: “All of us come from tribal people. All of us in this room. Your great-great grandmother was right. She knew how to live.”
“But a renegade minority in Europe got loose. They had a plantation mentality. ‘That’s not a tree; that’s lumber. That’s not an animal; that’s a pelt.’”
“And your great-grandmother said ‘No, no! You can’t put a price tag on this.’”
“And the colonizers said ‘No! We can put a price tag on EVERYTHING, including YOU.’”
And now, three hundred years later, weather gettin’ kinda wacky. Economy collapsing. Scariest channel on TV’s the Weather Channel. Something’s WRONG!”
“Great-grandmother was right. In the world, in America, a new conversation is starting about ‘Is there some way we can find our way back home? Is there some way we can get back to Great-Grandmother?
It’s deeper than solar panels. It’s humanity coming back to ITSELF, because you can feel something knitting itself back together that’s been torn apart too long.
The human family gets to make a decision. Who are we? In the final HOUR, who are we? Are we locusts? Are we a mistake? Are we going to drive mass extinction until we extinguish ourselves? Are we locusts or are we honey bees?
This is a PROFOUND movement, and you can walk in the dignity of that. This is a noble movement, with our Great-grandmothers whispering in our years: be braver, be better.
We’ve just started a clean energy revolution. But if we don’t deal with how we treat water, and food and toxics and waste and how we treat each other, all we’re gonna have is solar-powered bulldozers, solar-powered buzzsaws and bio-fuelled bombers to fight wars for lithium.
This movement provides the best hope for the species, the best hope to take the best of the West and redeem the best of the indigenous wisdom and create a New World.
We just want to pass a bill, we just need a few lobbyists and an ad in the New York Times. If that’s the kind of movement it is, we’ll have lots of awards on a dead planet.
Let’s be brave. Let’s build a green growth alliance that includes EVERYBODY. If we can do that, we can build a green economy that Dr. King would be proud of.
We can’t beat global warming without greening the cities. The only way we can save the Arctic is to save the neighborhoods. You are ground zero in neighborhood America.
If you’re an immigrant, thank you for coming to help us. If you’re a farmer, we want you to grow beautiful crops without poisons. If you’re a coal worker, we’re going to stop treating you like the enemy. You’re a hero. You have sacrificed your lungs and the health of your children to get us to this point.
We say to those people who want you to destroy America’s beauty, THEY are the enemy. You’re not.
We’re tired of the Sacrifice Zones of America from New Orleans to Appalachia, and the sacrifice zones of the gray economy will be the sacred zones of the Green Economy.
It’s going to be up to us to go back home and take a stand get some of those funny colored folks in that union hall, and the labor movement now is gonna be bigger and bolder and greener and more diverse and the centerpiece of this pro-democracy movement. Be brave.
We need black folks to do right, too. If you don’t want the Green Movement to be Whites Only, you can’t let it be English Only. We need some Black/Brown solidarity.
We do our work right and well, we can do more to take America back for the first time in a LONG time, we do our work right and well, we can take America FORWARD!
Wow! Sounds like a night on the H.O.R.N., doesn’t it?
And Van Jones chants “All For Green!” And the room, in its thousands, responds “Green For All!”