{"id":837,"date":"2007-11-12T00:08:36","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T07:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2007\/11\/12\/van-jones-blending-social-justice-and"},"modified":"2007-11-12T00:11:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-12T07:11:00","slug":"van-jones-blending-social-justice-and-green-initiative-ensuring-tha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2007\/11\/12\/van-jones-blending-social-justice-and-green-initiative-ensuring-tha\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Jones: blending social justice and green initiative, ensuring that “green-collar” economies lift all boats"},"content":{"rendered":"

A big thanks to Anna Fahey at the Sightline Institute<\/a> for posting this entry, A Green Wave Shall Lift All Boats<\/a>, about Van Jones<\/a>. I confess that I hadn’t heard of Jones before, nor have I had enough time to explore his website and agenda with the full attention they deserve. But I think it’s pretty obvious that his is a seriously brilliant example of lateral thinking, and that his proposals have incredible potential.<\/p>\n

From Fahey’s post:<\/p>\n

Van Jones<\/a><\/span> is a civil-rights lawyer and founder and executive director of an innovative nonprofit<\/a><\/span> working to ensure that low-income, working poor, and minority youth have access to the coming wave of \u201cgreen-collar\u201d jobs.<\/a> Jones — brought to Seattle by Climate Solutions<\/a><\/span> , King County<\/a><\/span>, El Centro de la Raza<\/a><\/span>, Puget Sound Sage<\/a><\/span>, and Earth Ministry<\/a><\/span> — made a compelling case that social justice is the moral anchor that\u2019s required to fuse the climate movement into a powerful and cohesive force. <\/strong>He sees that the solutions to global warming are the solutions to the biggest social and economic problems in urban and rural America.<\/p>\n

Basically, his point is this: You can pass all the climate legislation you want but you have to provide the local workforce to make it happen on the ground. \u201cWe have to retrofit a nation,\u201d he says. \u201cNo magical green fairies are going to come down and put up all those solar panels.\u201d This is going to take skilled labor. \u201cWe can make a green pathway out of poverty.\u201d
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it gets better, he says. These jobs can\u2019t be outsourced. \u201cYou can\u2019t put a building on a barge to Asia and weatherize it on the cheap.\u201d This is about kitchen table issues: jobs, industry, manufacturing, health, education.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(…snip…)<\/p>\n

As far as opportunity and partnership goes, Jones points to the galloping green economy, but asks: \u201cAre we going to have eco-apartheid? Are we going to settle for that? Are we going to have a society divided between ecological-haves and ecological-have nots?\u201d The green economy is growing, but it\u2019s the most segregated part of the US economy. Jones asks: \u201cWe\u2019ve worked for 200 years to integrate a poison and pollution based economy; what can we do to ensure the green economy has a place in it for everybody?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click through on Fahey’s post <\/a>for the rest of her article, which includes many useful links, too. And support Van Jones’s efforts to bring about an economy that’s green and just.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A big thanks to Anna Fahey at the Sightline Institute for posting this entry, A Green Wave Shall Lift All Boats, about Van Jones. I confess that I hadn’t heard of Jones before, nor have I had enough time to explore his website and agenda with the full attention they deserve. But I think it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2168,1404,1114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green","category-justice","category-leadership"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}