During the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems as though this virus has truly infected just about every news station. And with an increase in focus on taking care of ourselves, it’s hard to think about taking care of others...and our Earth.
Sunrise Movement Bay Area
But the Sunrise Movement and other climate activists say it’s all the same. Taking care of yourself means we need to take care of our community, and Mother Nature.
The Sunrise Movement is a youth-led organization advocating for political change in response to global climate change. As a grassroots movement, the Sunrise Movement has hubs from all around the United States with young minds working together for a greener future. Moreover, the Sunrise Movement supports the Green New Deal, a ten year plan to move the U.S. to 100% renewable energy by 2030, give a living wage job to people who need one, and ensure a justified transition for workers as well as frontline communities. The Green New Deal aims to address climate change and economic inequality simultaneously.
I spoke to Kalpana Narlikar from Proof School in San Francisco who joined the Sunrise Bay Area hub in October, 2019. She first heard about the Green New Deal when her dad sent an article about New York’s 14th congressional representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She and other climate activists demanded for this initiative right outside Nancy Pelosi’s office, the highest-ranking woman elected official in U.S. history.
These people were on the turning page in history.
“A few months later my family went to India to visit family and friends, and while we were there we went to a town in the mountains,” Narlikar continues, “on the drive there I saw so many adults and children living in conditions of extreme poverty. It was heartbreaking.”
To see people who struggled for clean air, water, food and a safe home. I had felt angry about the climate crisis, and the social injustice that has brought us to the brink of extinction, but I hadn’ t felt sad until that point.
So a few months later, Narlikar was participating in the next climate strike, and she became more involved in the Sunrise Bay Area hub.
What’s the deal with Sunrise and the Green New Deal?
Not only does the Green New Deal demand for climate action, it demands for humane action. The Green New Deal demands economic opportunity for everyone, and it promises a systematic approach in ensuring people are getting employed in meaningful and clean jobs -- with a minimum wage.
And the Sunrise movement shines through in its community, Narlikar says. “Looking into my future and our future as a species, it is very uncertain what the world will look like, and Sunrise Bay Area is a place where we can act together, feel together, and we are able to live in that uncertainty while still having hope.”
Sunrise Bay Area, and Sunrise in general, takes care of the human and emotional elements as well as the policy and activism elements of building a movement.
And if you were to ask what’s the common goal between a climate activist and a surgeon, you will see their answer: helping others. Combating climate change comes with facing the issue of inequality and public health. Narlikar explains the essence of the Green New Deal for Public Health.
“Climate change disproportionately affects poorer communities and communities of color.
A healthy living situation in this country has become increasingly more expensive and many people don’t have the money to meet their basic needs. The people who are exposed to the worst effects of climate change, and are the most susceptible and often don’t have the necessary resources to cope with the damage done to their communities, are low-income communities and communities of color. The people who are forced to breathe the toxic air, drink the poisonous water, and eat the unhealthy food are the people who can’t afford to live in places with cleaner air and water, who can’t afford the money to sanitize their water, and who can’t afford healthy food. So as the effects of the climate crisis get more serious the negative impacts on low-income communities and people living in poverty get more dyre.
People who live with economic insecurity or who live in poverty often can’t afford health care and health insurance, and even the people who may be paying for health insurance may be financially crippled by the out of pocket expenses that may come out of an health emergency in their family. When people are put in these kinds of situations many go without adequate health care when they are sick, and this can lead to public health problems like outbreaks, especially when there are entire communities who can’t afford treatment for a communicable disease or can’t afford to take the necessary precautions to avoid spreading a communicable disease.
Inequality results in greater exposure to climate hazards and an inability to fight it leading to public health issues divided by income and socioeconomic status. Source: Islam and Winkel, 2017
Regional communities get trapped in “a spiral of declining economic and public health.” We are seeing this happen with COVID-19, where the people who are dying at the fastest rate are the elderly and people who can’t afford to stay at home (people who need to work), but when they go to work and get sick their employers ask them to stay at home, which they can’t afford to do. Another similar, but slightly different situation is with diseases like cholera, which results from unsanitary water or food sources and disproportionately affects poor communities. So public health and economic disparities are very closely linked, and we can’t presume to go about addressing one without the other.
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The Green New Deal...address[es] these issues, as well as the issues of economic inequality and public health. The Green New Deal recognizes health care as a human right and aims to provide any one who needs one with a living-wage job. The Green New Deal aims “to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—
(i) clean air and water;
(ii) climate and community resiliency;
(iii) healthy food;
(iv) access to nature; and
(v) a sustainable environment” (H. Res. 109).
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I think that it makes sense, for the reasons above, to address these issues, including the current pandemic, together. The Green New Deal needs to be enacted locally, meaning that each community should have it’s own set of laws to achieve the Green New Deal’s standards in a way that works for that specific community.
People in Sunrise Bay Area have been working on and considering a California Green New Deal. This would address the climate and economic issues that are specific to California...because of the diversity of experience all around this country and the world the Green New Deal, to be effective, needs to be enacted on the local as well as the national level. This means that the laws enacted in the Bay Area should address the issues of our communities in the Bay Area. These are issues like housing justice, for which the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act was introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders.
So the Green New Deal will help our communities, but our local politicians need to write the legislation and listen to the people’s problems if we are going to meet the standards set in the resolution. The legislation needs to be clear, actionable and written in a way where there is accountability, meaning that we should be able to tell when we are meeting the standards and when we are failing to meet them. The people enacting and implementing those laws need to be able to tell when they are meeting the standards they have set, and how exactly to do so.
Moreover their constituents also need to be able to tell both of those things, so that the people can hold legislators accountable and legislators can hold themselves accountable. And we are lucky to be in a state where many of our local politicians are up to the task of writing the legislation and actually do listen to their constituents, though often we do have to push them a bit.”
Listening to what Kalpana had to say, being a part of this movement truly wasn’t moving people to agree but moving people to find out for themselves what the truth was. “I have learned about the power of mobilizing and how to get thousands of people into the streets. I have learned amazing processes for brainstorming in a way where everyone gets a say, and I have also learned how to speak up and lead discussions. I have learned how to call my representatives...Sunrise Bay Area, really puts a lot of effort into teaching new people and getting them comfortable with leadership roles.”
I would highly recommend that everyone read the text of the Green New Deal (HR 109). It is very easy to read, it’s not a legislative-jargon filled document, and it will give even more in-depth answers to these questions.
For more information about Sunrise Movement, visit their website for how you can help.
References:
S. Nazrul Islam & John Winkel, 2017. "Climate Change and Social Inequality," Working Papers 152, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
