Wellstone Action!

posted by Mattie Weiss

OCTOBER 08, 2008

At a recent Open Mic night at the Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant in town, I was doing non-partisan voter registration with the League of Young Voters. This young woman, Sabra, was grilling me about how the progressive movement is going to address the issues that matter after the election.

Sabra: "So you all do voter registration and stuff right now. What do you do when the election is over?"

Me: Well, we work on issues that matter to local young people.

"Like what?"

Like Green Jobs -- that's going to be a major focus post-election.

"What's that?"

So you know how all of a sudden everyone and their mom is talking about the environment?

"Uh-huh"

In order to actually protect the environment, and protect ourselves, we've got a whole lot of work to do-we've got to remodel all of our inefficient buildings. We've got to build and install all those solar panels and wind turbines. We've got to design new public transit systems."

"Yeah, that's true."

They say that in order to do this, 500 million new jobs need to be created.

"Damn!"

So who do you think is going to get those jobs?

"Environmentalists?"

Definitely. But maybe not the way you're thinking of it. If they do it right, a whole bunch of those will be jobs for people who don't have jobs right now, or maybe have bad, low-paying jobs with no way to move up. They'll create this incredible way for people to get out of poverty and simultaneously save our earth.

"Damn! That's incredible! I mean, it's like the perfect solution. It takes like our two biggest problems and solves them together! For real?"

For real.

"Girl, I need a green job! You all need volunteers?"

The look in Sabra's eyes was exactly how I had felt when I first heard Van Jones talk about Green Jobs at a conference I attended. His description of "ecological apartheid" and the solution of Green Jobs, made more sense than anything I'd heard in a long time. 

Jones has tapped into the growing acknowledgement by the mainstream environmentalist movement that it has historically served the primary interests of the white middle-to-upper class.  Warning that communities of color will likely be excluded from new, conservation-oriented jobs created as corporate America and the government rush to "green" the American economy, Jones proposes this burgeoning conservation industry as an opportunity to turn this trend around. The new green-collar economy has the opportunity to give communities of color access to anti-poverty jobs and training, especially as more and more of the traditional living-wage blue-collar jobs head overseas.

Suddenly, this idea made a world that had been feeling really dark lately seem wild with possibilities.

Jones' vision has taken root. With yesterday's release of his new book, The Green Collar Economy (HarperOne), it will start growing branches. My deep hope is that this book, and the idea, will spread like crazy, light up a whole bunch of Sabras and Matties and add some new muscle to the Green Jobs movement.

This book has the potential to be our generation's "Little Green Book." Please read it. Please pass it on. To join the movement for Green Jobs, go to www.GreenForAll.org

Van Jones is the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center, a community development organization in Oakland that works to provide job training and placement for low-income Oakland residents, including at-risk youth or recently incarcerated.  The Center has launched a Green Jobs Corps, a training program for skills specific to green-collar jobs in the Bay Area.

Ellie McDonnell contributed research to this post.