How can we win the Green New Deal and rapidly transform our economy to avert climate catastrophe while securing economic and racial justice for all?
Co-editors of the new book, WINNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL, Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti are joined by Green New Deal policy expert Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Data for Progress' Julian Noisecat, Dog Whistle Politics author and professor Ian Haney-Lopez, and Justice Democrats' Executive Director Alexandra Rojas for a discussion on why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and racism.
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Speakers:
Ian Haney López is the originator of the race-class approach to beating dog whistle politics. A law professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in Critical Race Theory, his focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. He then co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, along with Dorian Warren and Ana Avendaño, and co-founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, along with Anat Shenker-Osorio and Heather McGhee. In Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog whistling and further develops the race-class response.
Rhiana Gunn-Wright serves as director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. Before joining Roosevelt, Gunn-Wright was the policy director for New Consensus, where she was charged with developing and promoting the Green New Deal, among other projects. Gunn-Wright was previously the policy director for Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, she has also worked as the policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), and on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Julian Brave NoiseCat (@jnoisecat) is Vice President of Policy & Strategy for Data for Progress and Narrative Change Director for the Natural History Museum. A Fellow of the Type Media Center and NDN Collective, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and other publications. Julian grew up in Oakland, California and is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie.
Alexandra Rojas is the Executive Director of Justice Democrats, the progressive political organization most well-known for recruiting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for Congress, launching the Green New Deal sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office alongside Sunrise Movement, and for electing a new generation of Green Deal champions in Congress like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Marie Newman, and so many more. Rojas got her start in politics working on the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. Rojas is also a political commentator on CNN where you can see her representing the progressive movement.
Varshini Prakash is the executive director and cofounder of the Sunrise Movement and a leading voice for young Americans in the fight to stop climate change. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, on the BBC, and more. Varshini was one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People and Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in 2019. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Guido Girgenti is the Media Director for Justice Democrats and a founding Board Member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led movement to stop climate change and win a Green New Deal. He is a lifelong organizer for racial, economic, and climate justice, and lives in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY.