An Inside look at "WINNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL"
Q&A With Editors Varshini Prakash & Guido Girgenti!
Hi there #GreenNewDealmaker,
Welcome back to #GenGND’s weekly newsletter!
We promised you an exclusive interview with the Editors of Sunrise Movement’s new book…And we keep our promises here at #GenGND…So keep scrolling for that!
BUT FIRST…MARK YOUR CALENDARS…THE FIRST EPISODE OF GENERATION GREEN NEW DEAL: THE PODCAST IS COMING SEPT. 15TH!
If you haven’t subscribed on your preferred podcast platform yet please go do it right now at: podlink.to/generationgnd. (We get paid per download so you might as well subscribe on ALL the platforms! ; )
Next a quick election update… Ed Markey fends off a primary challenge, thanks in large part to Sunrise and the Green New Deal
When Joe Kennedy III announced a primary challenge to Ed Markey (D-MA) for US Senate there was speculation that Markey would just step down to avoid an embarrassing defeat. Kennedy led Markey in early polls, by double digits.
When Markey decided to take the challenge head-on, Sunrise Movement went all in. While Kennedy was on the record supporting the Green New Deal, Ed Markey was the co-author of the Green New Deal resolution…A loss would have been BAD NEWS for the GND. Internal Sunrise documents dubbed the effort to deliver a win for Markey “Operation Save Our Dad.”
Markey defeated Kennedy by more than 10 points.
Here’s a screenshot from the New York Times reporters’ live election night chat:
Part of Markey’s early trouble was name recognition. Despite being a sitting Senator, Markey’s name ID was not great. Meanwhile Kennedy’s family legacy got him instant recognition. The opportunity this presented was that the Markey campaign and their allies at Sunrise could define Markey to the public… and boy did they ever. They leaned in hard on the Green New Deal, including the now-famous Green New Dealmaker ad, whose director Alex O’Keefe we interviewed a few weeks ago.
They also made 74-year-old Markey an unlikely youth hero, emphasizing his vintage basketball shoes and how hot he looked in the 70s. By the end of the campaign it had gotten a little ridiculous, with a whole sub-genre of Marvel-parody “Markeyverse” content.
In the end, political commentators are widely crediting the Green New Deal and Sunrise with Markey’s victory, and drawing a lesson for other Democrats. Crooked Media’s Dan Pfeiffer had this to say in his The Message Box newsletter:
“The lesson for Democrats from Markey’s victory is also clear. Thanks to Markey, every Democrat now knows that the best way to avoid a primary defeat is to adopt bold, progressive climate policies — namely the Green New Deal.”
Here’s a few more reactions from the politisphere:
It is pretty amazing, Michelle—but, it’s not SURPRISING for those of use who have been watching them lay the groundwork!
Sunrise’s new book, Winning The Green New Deal, is—as the publishers themselves say:
“An urgent and definitive collection of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it…In the book, leading youth activists, journalists, and policymakers explain why we need a transformative agenda to avert climate catastrophe, and how our movement can organize to win. Featuring essays by Varshini Prakash, cofounder of Sunrise Movement; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Green New Deal policy architect; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist; Bill McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist; Mary Kay Henry, the President of the Service Employees International Union, and others we’ll learn why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and racism, how movements can redefine what’s politically possible and overcome the opposition of fossil fuel billionaires, and how a Green New Deal will build a just and thriving economy for all of us.
For anyone looking to understand the movement for a Green New Deal, and join the fight for a livable future, there is no resource as clear and practical as Winning the Green New Deal.”
Now, let’s hear more from the Editors...
(Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded via zoom on 8/31, and has been transcribed and condensed from its original length.)
Sam: So first off, why did you write a book?
Varshini: Yeah, well, I don't think any of us would have ever thought writing or editing a book or publishing anything in that vein was remotely in the cards. Especially not during one of the most intense and busy periods of our lives. I'd say the book chose us…
Guido: Yeah, I agree. In the moment after the Green New Deal blew up in early 2019, a lot of people were asking Sunrise, how did you do it? What is your strategy? This has been so effective. You changed the landscape. We were asking ourselves, “should we write more articles? What should we do?” Varshini was constantly saying, I'm going to a meeting with different climate organizations and they all just want to know more about our strategy and more about our thinking. And I can't give them enough stuff. At the same time, there's a book publisher who reaches out to us and says, “you could put together a great book!”
Varshini: Yeah, I think having a book allowed us to present these ideas that had deeply informed the movement over years and years in one place, with the original writings of the people who had inspired us like Naomi Klein, Ian Haney Lopez, Reverend William Barber II -- all of these folks were people we were reading when we were crafting the strategy for Sunrise.
This book will be, in many ways, a snapshot in time of how we were thinking, our theory of change, at this moment in history. And I hope that’s hugely beneficial not only to thousands of Sunrise members across the country, but also thousands of people who were curious about social movements and a Green New Deal.
Sam: So what does this book bring to the Green New Deal thought space? What can people get here that they can't learn anywhere else?
Varshini: I think what's exciting about our book is that it was really written from the perspective of organizers. We’re bringing the experience of organizing on the ground, combined with the theories of social change and analyses of American politics that have guided our work since the beginning.
We've got the perspective of movements, policymakers, politicians. And I think all of these different components, like the politics, the policy, the movements, and organizing have to be working in close collaboration.
And I think that is actually the reason why the Green New Deal took off like it did in 2018. We had the insurgent candidates, we had the policy framework, we had the movement heft -- all working together in this pivotal moment. And I think what's exciting about the book is it actually gets at each of those parts of the ecosystem and how they coexist and synergize but also the inherent tensions within them.
Guido: I think it's unique because I think it's ambitious for a book to try to answer both why a Green New Deal is necessary and also how to win it. And in the process of editing the book, I really regretted that level of ambition. Because it's quite tiring to constantly switch back and forth between, ya know, laying out the foundational arguments for this as a policy vision, and also getting into the nuances of how you actually make change.
I think you can come to this book as a skeptic who's not an activist, and if you read the book cover to cover, you will come out as a very savvy organizer. And if you come to it as a policy person or as an organizer person, I think you'll learn a lot about both policy and organizing and strengthen your arguments and strategies.
Nate: Sounds like you can almost think about it as a leapfrogging tool for climate activists?
Varshini: Ya. I think that's actually really interesting because maybe young activists won’t have to go through many, many rounds of heartbreak to figure out that political power is actually essential to movement success, and we have to figure out how they work in tandem, you know? I look at these 14 year olds who are running phone banks for insurgent congressional candidates and I'm like, “damn, you are way ahead of the curve from where I was when I was 14!” And now they're reading this book and hopefully their analysis around where the movement could be and where it could go is going to be far more profound than what I was able to have when I was in high school or a young adult.
Nate: Yeah. It's such a gift that you are giving people. We’re working on episode two of our podcast right now where you're literally talking, Varsh, about how your opportunity to get involved in the environment as a high schooler was to join the recycling club. And Sunrise just gave the next generation of activists an inspiring roadmap filled with so many other ways to support this movement.
Varshini: Yeah. I'm about to go talk to a group of like 75 middle schoolers and high schoolers tonight who are graduating from a six week course on how to run a direct action and do organizing in their community and start their own hubs, who are all committed to doing some form of civil disobedience this fall. Like, what? It's amazing. Whole new world. And they're all getting free copies of the book.
Sam: So what was your process like? I mean, you got to edit some of the intellectual heroes of the left like Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Ian Haney Lopez etc. I assume that was intimidating.
Guido: Yeah, it definitely is intimidating. And I felt a real responsibility to try to go through their existing body of work. We sent a memo to almost every author, about one to two pages, saying here's where we think your chapter is gonna fit in the book. Not necessarily mandating an outline or even a thesis, but saying here's a really crucial insight that we think that you have been bringing to public discourse that we want you to sharpen in the context of winning a Green New Deal.
Two examples: Ian Haney Lopez I think was really excited about the process of working on this book and I really got to work with him on his chapter’s place within the larger argument. I said, your chapter is going to be in conversation with Naomi's chapter. And she's made this groundbreaking argument about neoliberalism and the climate crisis. And I think you have a groundbreaking argument about why neoliberalism persists because of the right wing's deployment of strategic racism. So I would give Ian a little preview of Naomi so that he could sharpen his chapter, which comes right after Naomi.
Meanwhile, Rhiana Gunn-Wright is creating all this big picture Green New Deal policy in 2019 to respond to the moment and put meat on the bones of the GND. And her chapter I think was really an opportunity to help the reader take a step back, and appreciate the ideas and principles that guide the whole world of GND policymaking.
Sam: So, what did you learn in the process of writing the book? What did you learn about your work, about Sunrise's work, about the Green New Deal?
Varshini: I think it's always good to be reminded of what you have achieved and how far you have to go. And I feel like the book was actually a perfect exercise in being reminded yet again, of the fact that we have achieved so much in the last three years, and becoming extremely intimate with the idea of how far we have to go.
I remember this conversation with Guido where we're trying to figure the people power and political power sections of the book. We're like, okay, first we've got to get the public majority. Then we've got to actually have an active base of organizers and leaders that are actively calling for a Green New Deal. Then you have to ignite a moral crisis. Shit. Then we have to have mass noncooperation where we actually have to shut down perhaps entire industries or entire cities for days or weeks or months or whatever it takes to actually pass a Green New Deal. Oh my God.
And we're looking back at history: it's very obvious that major transformative pieces of legislation, like what we have to pass with the Green New Deal, requires that level of social mobilization and disturbance and sustained mass participation. And I feel like the book is a real dose of reality with how far we have to go while still being grounded in the belief that we can get there.
Sam: Did you learn anything about yourself in the process?
Varshini: What I discovered is every terrible, horrible thing you've ever thought about yourself is just in your face when you sit there with a blank document. And somehow it becomes not about people power and political power at all but about how you've sucked at writing that essay that one time when you were 14. Give me a movement organization to run any day, and I will do that over trying to finish a book because it's intense.
Writing kind of calls into question a lot of the things that you think about yourself, about the movement, about your success, about your failure, about, everything. In many ways I feel like me and Guido and Will Lawrence, a lot of us came into confrontation with... it brings out a lot of your vulnerabilities and I think is a far more intense process than I was expecting from an emotional place.
I really want to give some big accolades to Guido for the puzzle piecing of all of it. I feel like what Guido did is create a real through-line for this book and put the authors in actual conversation with one another.
Nate: Amen. Your turn Guido!
Guido: Did I learn anything?
Sam: Yeah, about yourself or as an activist or both?
Guido: I think that I came into the book knowing that racism is a primary barrier to not just solving the climate crisis, but to winning any progressive demands, enacting any progressive policy in the United States. But coming out of the book, I feel like I have an even deeper and stronger sense of just how intertwined the dismantling and reconstruction of white supremacist America is to building a society that can weather the climate crisis and decarbonize fast enough. And part of that is I think getting to see some of my intellectual heroes grapple with that question in their own words.
And I think something that's interesting is the comparison between decarbonization and the abolition of slavery during the Civil War had been made by other authors. Chris Hayes had a piece about that in The Nation and Bill McKibben has talked about it. But when thinking about the book I realized: if abolition is similar to ending the fossil industry because economically you have to liquidate a bunch of wealth that the ruling class “owns”, if that is similar, isn't Reconstruction also a similar analogy, meaning once you end a part of the economy that has been so central to it, don't you then have to reconstruct society? Or else you will get ill, morbid symptoms -- like a reactionary South that institutes Jim Crow. We were open to this idea of thinking about the Green New Deal through a Reconstruction framework, but we didn’t know how to make that connection ourselves and we asked Rev. Barber to experiment with it. And Reverend Barber just really hit a home run with that idea and sort of took it beyond where I could imagine it going.
I think it's now a relatively common understanding on the left that the New Deal was limited by racism, but I think in doing research for the chapter I co-authored with Waleed Shahid, I really got to see how racism created an unresolvable contradiction in the project of the New Deal that ultimately destroyed the New Deal coalition 30 years later. It's not the only thing that ended the New Deal era, but the fact that black Americans were second class citizens, their place within this racial caste system was reinforced by the New Deal. But then at the same time, some black Americans are enfranchised with greater economic and political power by New Deal policies because they're organizing i multi-racial unions that are bolstered by FDR’s labor policies. The New Deal seeds this conflict that then bursts open in the sixties and seventies between a Civil Rights revolution and a Jim Crow South that's holding on to racial caste. When you don't resolve the contradictions of a project that is making a compromise with white supremacy, the contradictions don’t disappear. They become a fracture and a weakness. In addition to being an injustice and a moral inequity, compromise with white supremacy also leads you to lose. If you don’t want to lose and you want to win a Green New Deal, you need to deal with this.
Nate: So are you going to be the New York Times number one bestseller next week, or what?
Guido: I have no idea. I think that the book is selling well...All I know, you can put this in the article, is that right now, if you go to bookshop.com, it says it's temporarily out of stock.
Nate: Yeah, since we wrote about it (over a week ago) it's been out of stock there!
Sam: But Amazon still has it.
Guido: It’s the Generation GND bump! Put that in the newsletter.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: If you're ready to go to the dark side and buy it from Amazon, you can get it tomorrow.)
Sam: Great. Thank you, both.
Guido: Thank you, let’s go win a Green New Deal now, ehh?
AND IF YOU HAVEN’T YET BOUGHT THE BOOK—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Fear not, Ezra, we’re on it!
We know we’ve sent some long emails the last few weeks—But there’s so much important climate-writing happening, literally every day. It’s why we try to help round-up some of our favorites for you in our Green New(s) Reading List…But, we also wanted to take a second to shoutout two of our favorite climate newsletters—who’ve both been instrumental and inspiring to us in different ways…
&
HOT TAKE by Amy Westervelt & Mary Annaïse-Heglar
We strongly urge you to SUBSCRIBE & SUPPORT THEM BOTH!!
AND NOW, YOUR GREEN NEW(s) READING LIST…
We tried to do our best to capture our immediate thoughts and feelings around the devastation of Hurricane Laura’s impacts in Louisiana, last week. But our hearts and our jaws hit the floor reading Emily Atkin’s Heated piece from 8/27—titled “Laura is Katrina on Fossil-Fuel Steroids”
We suggest you also read Emily’s Monday newsletter, about the devastating heatwave that immediately followed the Hurricane, is going to stick with us for a long time.
If that’s not enough Hurricane-writing for you, here’s the latest piece from Mary Annaïse Heglar in Gizmodo, looking back on Hurricane Katrina…We can’t really do her words justice—so we’re going to give you a sampling of them here:
“As I watched the news, I remember feeling like I was looking through a portal into the past. I watched my mother and grandfather’s faces and wondered how they must have felt to watch the Old South, the one they’d fought so hard to beat down and back so that I would never see it, rise yet again in broad daylight and on national television….Now, in 2020, that all sounds familiar to me not from history books, but from the headlines. It turns out I wasn’t looking at the past. I was looking at the future.”
And finally for today, we couldn’t help but notice that the rest of the internet seems to have caught on to the BRILLIANCE and power of Sunrise Movement’s political strategy, after Ed Markey’s victory, and we thoroughly enjoyed reading Dan Pfeiffer’s on-point analysis in The Message Box this morning: “A Big Green New Deal Ed Markey’s Win Means More Democrats Will Embrace Bold Climate Action”
Nate Birnbaum is the editor-in-chief of the #GenGND newsletter & this edition was written by Nate Birnbaum & Sam Eilertsen with editing by Maggie Lemere.