Visions of a Green New Deal
by Eden Arielle Gordon & Sunrise Movement NYC
We’re fighting for a Green New Deal, but what does a Green New Deal future actually look like? What legislation exists in the Green New Deal future? What kinds of love? What kind of world are we working to create?
At Sunrise, we are, indeed, fighting to stop climate change. But part of what makes our movement so powerful is the fact that we’re fighting for things, too. We’re fighting for all we can save and for all that we hold dear. We’re fighting for good jobs and clean air. We’re fighting for a Green New Deal and all it can do for everything we love.
Still, we’ve been caught up in this carousel of disaster capitalism for so long, sometimes it can be hard to look past it all and imagine what this Green New Deal future might actually look (and feel, and taste, and sound) like. This is where storytellers, writers, artists, and dreamers come in.
Together, we’re constantly growing our own vision of the Green New Deal, creating a movement that looks like the world we want to live in and growing it up from seeds. Inspired by this idea and by The Intercept’s gorgeous video, “A Message from the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” we asked members of the Sunrise NYC community to share their own visions of a Green New Deal.
Sometimes these visions were opulent, other times they were small and close, full of intimate details. Yet there were undeniable parallels between many of the answers. Slow mornings. Leisurely walks to the bullet train. Gardens, gardens everywhere.
Rarely were there visions of grandeur or futuristic technologies. Instead, reading these descriptions, the worlds we are imagining and fighting for seem real, common-sense, and close enough to touch. These pragmatic visions include green streets and healthcare for all, and local communities supporting each other. Reading them, imagining them, it’s almost hard to believe that they aren’t yet real, and it’s easy to imagine us getting there.
We are living in a world where the reality of climate change confronts us from all sides, at all times. We stare up and see orange skies. We stumble through the wreckage of another hurricane. We see the ugliness on television and online and on our streets. We feel the rising temperatures and the old wounds that the prevailing colonialist, extractive culture has wrought. We know that with every degree the world warms, these disasters will only become more painful, more impossible.
But everywhere, there are also signs that something is changing, waking up again. We see it in mutual aid networks and community gardens and in age-old stories of resilience, passed down from generation to generation. We see it as progressive politicians take their offices in Washington and across the country. We see it in the ordinary young people like us, making calls, writing letters, and taking to the streets time and time again for justice.
The Green New Deal is, as its co-sponsor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said, not a bill; it’s a proposal. It is, in essence, a vision, one that we can make real through hard work and movement-building and hard-won legislation. We can stop carbon emissions and transition to renewable energy by 2030. We can have a Green New Deal for Public Housing, a world where public housing means clean and safe living, not decay and danger for its residents.
As the Sunrise writing team, we urge all Sunrisers and readers who care about climate change to spend time envisioning — really envisioning — the Green New Deal world we’re fighting for. Imagine how your body would feel in that world. Imagine the world as if it is real.
Now let’s make it real, together.
Gentle rays of sunshine descend through the window as the children slowly blink awake. Groggily, they roll out of bed and into the new day. It’s silent, in a quasi-holy way, and children mutually understand that there will be no speaking to each other before 9:00. But that peace doesn’t last forever.
“Hurry up, you’re going to be late for school!” they hear. “Do you have any idea what time it is? You’ll never catch the bus now! Better take your bikes.” It’s no matter, though. All the kids go to their neighborhood schools, so it’s just under a mile away. They scarf down their breakfast — straight from the garden — and race to school.
Their parents have often regaled the children with tales of their own school days — full of drab hallways and standardized tests and hours of homework. The children cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of these stories, and suspect that their parents are lying. They cannot begin to comprehend that such institutions even existed. For them, their school bears almost no resemblance to the schools their parents knew, except for the word itself.
Due to the good weather, they’re outside today. Their education consists in large part of understanding their community — how to grow the food they eat, how the native plants that dot the city help the ecosystem, how a particular street is a common meeting point for protestors.
They do still learn “traditional” subjects. In history, they learn about the inaction and corruption leading to the climate crisis, and how mass movements swept bold politicians into office and demanded change. In science, they learn about the hurricanes that frequently badger the city, and the efforts being made to curb the ongoing crisis of mass extinction of species. In English, they read and discuss a wide variety of works, and learn how to communicate effectively and respectfully. The children don’t love it — but they don’t hate it either. To them, it seems like a logical, sensible, productive way to spend four days every week.
After school lets out, they bike on home. Even though it’s rush hour, the children aren’t too worried. There aren’t a ton of cars. Most people bike, walk, or take public transit. It’s just easier. After they get home, the children do a few homework problems, and then do what children are meant to do: play. Their public housing complex just got a new jungle gym at the back that they’re both eager to try.
After a few hours, a call comes from the window upstairs, signaling that dinner is ready. After some whining and begging for just a few more minutes, the children eventually race up the stairs. Their parents have bought some ingredients from the farmers’ market on their way back from work — a few things they can’t grow in their own garden.
They engage in the usual talk: “How was school?” “How was work?” “How was everyone’s day?” Then the conversation shifts to current issues: how the construction of the new seawall is going, how plans to build more clinics to accommodate all the new patients who now have Medicare coverage are going, how negotiations to form a global government are going.
The children understand some of it, but most of it flies over their heads. They are okay with that, as they are eager to finish eating so they can watch some TV before bedtime. As the day closes, they slowly drift asleep while the television continues playing reruns of cartoons, blissfully unaware of just how close their world came to not existing. — Anil Singh
Your mind draws out like noodles into a bowl, a wet flop in your head, and you realize you’re awake for a new day. The birds can be heard outside, the familiar chorus that greets you each morning, the gentlest of alarms to ease you back into consciousness. You stretch amply in your wide bed, the cool side of the pillow rippling between your spreading fingers. A tremble from your belly announces the rest of you is waking up too, but you know there’s yesterday’s fresh fruit waiting for you in the kitchen. You sleepwalk inside and turn on your heat pump stove to prepare some grass fed chicken eggs and toast with local jam.
It’s Monday, your first day of your new job.
You step outside in your work clothes, a radiant sun beating on your brow. It’s hot today — it always is — but the shady trees along the sidewalk are enough protection to keep you comfortable. They’re still full of fruit, having not yet been fully harvested by the locals — people just aren’t hungry enough to grab a snack on the way to work. The pavement beneath your feet is soft, pliant, and unlike the stone and concrete pathways of the past, it still retains some water from the dewy overnight cool. With fresh air in your lungs, you proceed down the road to the train.
Before you pass even one automobile, you’ve arrived, in no time at all. The train stops every few blocks, so getting to work is faster and more convenient than ever. Its intelligent network of cars, tracks and computers optimizes the route for every rider, and what used to be a 35 minute commute now takes you less than ten. You step inside your building, a newly built superscraper, and report to work early. — Jon Kirsch
I imagine myself walking down the street in New York City. It’s a pedestrian-only street with streetcars going up and down the block. There are beautiful buildings covered with plants on either side of me filled with public housing and worker co-ops, making the city an urban forest with clean, breathable air.
I have a job doing something for the public good and am part of a union with my coworkers in which we build community with one another. I’m not anxious and nihilistic all the time, feeling like the apocalypse could be coming at any moment. I feel safe, and so do others around me because of our shared prosperity.
I get paid vacation time during which I can travel across the country on high speed rail or go abroad in a new, energy-efficient way that we discovered. I can see all the places I dreamed of during the pandemic, and they’re safe and protected from the climate crisis as well because we fought for a global Green New Deal. — Justine Berfond
Imagine the Bronx, with air that is not dangerous for you; the Island with accessible transportation and a green waterfront; Queens with no power plants; a Brooklyn powered by offshore winds; the City that never sleeps winding down to be more energy efficient.
Imagine money actually being green, created by sustainable jobs that are good for our people, our economy, our climate. Imagine communities that are actually communal, neighborhoods with real neighbors.
The Green New Deal is just a dream away from being a reality. A dream away from reality is as useless as going to a fortune teller to know the future. We create our futures. We must breathe our dreams into realities. We must color in that which is black and white.
It’s the force our city needs to ensure an equitable recovery from this pandemic. It’s the way to make sure ravaged, impoverished communities are able to get back on their feet, create better lives for themselves, and contribute to improving society. It’s how we will make sure that our homes are not flooded and destroyed, our winters are not warmer and our summers are not sweatier.
Our green new future will be that place where the grass is always greener because we, the people, and our Earth are greener. — Ateea Kazi
When I imagine a Green New Deal future, I always see gardens. Big, rambling community gardens the length of whole city blocks.
They aren’t pristine. Instead they’re full of people — and old things, fruit trees growing out of tires, flowers growing out of compost. Everywhere, people, talking and laughing, on the streets and parks and bullet trains and rooftop gardens.
I see a world where healthcare, therapy, and education are free for everyone. A world where all people have food and water and work, and where there are no billionaires flying away while people sleep on the streets, cycled through disaster after disaster.
In this vision of the future, the world hasn’t been saved. But its people have changed; they’ve turned inwards; some rhythm has shifted.
There’s a new beat to the way we walk and interact, a purpose that maybe comes from the ground itself. The grating screams of this world have decomposed into a song that comes from somewhere much deeper.
Perhaps the people begin to see the suffering of the earth and the suffering of each other as the suffering of themselves. Perhaps reparations are paid, prisons are turned into gardens, and waste and wind become power.
It seems so far away, but also it sometimes seems like all we have to do to get there is open a door, or perhaps turn off the blinding lights and really see where we are in the dark. — Eden Arielle Gordon
A future with a Green New Deal is an equitable one. It is one in which no one community bears unfair burdens, one where there is no hunger, poverty, unemployment, or homelessness. Everyone has safe, affordable housing, communities grow their own food, kids learn about ecosystems and how to care for the planet, and every willing person can get a job that pays a living wage. No more pumping the atmosphere full of poison that chokes the Earth and its inhabitants. — Jenna Tipaldo
When it comes to a GND, I literally think about the right to have clean, running water, a home, fresh air to breathe, unpolluted oceans and rivers, massive green lawns, fireflies on those lawns, worms coming up from the soil when it rains, and green union jobs.
I look at places like Vienna, Singapore, and Canada and see what they have done with their housing, and think of how wonderful it would be to have things like solar panels and balconies with plants.
On the economic development side, specifically for NYCHA residents, a Green New Deal would lead to the creation of up to 325,519 jobs in New York City over ten years, or an average of 35,552 jobs per year, with 110,000 being green, union jobs. When envisioning a Green New Deal, I imagine a job training program that teaches workers how to retrofit buildings to be carbon neutral, and that also provides them with housing that is safe and healthy to live in without fear of displacement. — Jasmin Sanchez
Most people live in a city where their day-to-day needs are accessible by foot, bike or free public transportation. We invest in public transportation so that people have access to the best and newest technology.
Many people live in public housing that is sustainable, clean and safe. Public housing no longer represents society’s abandonment of the poor and working class but reflects our decision to de-commodify housing. Residents can work in community gardens in courtyards and rooftops so much of their fresh food is hyper-local.
Most streets are closed to private vehicles so children can walk to nearby schools safely. Rather than keeping money in giant banks that fund fossil-fuel projects, people choose to invest in community banks, credit unions and public banks that fund local businesses, zero carbon, and the green ventures of their communities so that money is invested back into the community. Cities are no longer playgrounds for the rich built on the labor of the poor. — Anna St. Clair
Bike ownership becomes fundamental — along with knowing how to repair and maintain bikes, and the same goes for one’s own piece of their greenified neighborhood. A Green New Deal would change everything from the solar grid to the composting system to the vegetable gardens to computers and devices.
A Green New Deal future would be a world where people can truly live prosperously and where everyone is free to learn because healthcare and vacation time are now built into their happier lives, which has fostered a culture of self-actualization and an understanding of our own impact in our community livelihood.
Gone are pure competition mindsets, where everything gets commodified, including human beings and nature itself. The delicate balance of resources and our usage of them can be consciously considered because just legislation has moved the balance of power to the individual and away from the multinational corporation.
A greater distribution of wealth and health and access to self-improvement has given society the opportunity to live more harmoniously and graciously, for having turned the tides away from true catastrophe and toward a sustained-future for all.
Black lives matter, defund the Pentagon, and abolish Exxon — seriously. — Andrew Wells
I’d love a life that you can enjoy without perpetually having to double-think about everything. I’d love to see clean public transit running on renewable energy to even the tiniest areas, so I could travel and explore different cultures without worrying about the impact of my travel.
I’d like to try different foods from different restaurants without creating rubbish. I’d like to go to a bar and order a drink and not have to remember to say “no straw.”
Most importantly, I’d like to feel like we’re all working together, and instead of criticising each other, we uplift each other, whether that’s by fighting for equality in housing, finding equal opportunities for ways to contribute to society and supporting affinities that are all valued, or education that ultimately caters to each other’s strengths instead of criticising weaknesses. — Ema Barnes
This may sound dry and bitter, but to me the Green New Deal (in its most basic, least ambitious form) just looks like catching the US up to what all developed countries around the world already have. Part of what I love about Sunrise is our ambition, our wet and oozing dreams, and the prayerful tone of our idyllic musings. But as time has passed, and as I’ve tuned in to what half the country thinks of us — let’s not forget that, second only to Biden, Trump received the most votes of any other presidential candidate in US history — I’ve inched closer to a decided pragmatism.
It is not that much to ask for that people have healthcare (and even less so during a global pandemic). It is not that much to ask that people be able to get to work, comfortably, without owning a car. It is not that much to ask for that we not have ¼ of the world’s prison population, and that Black and brown folks not live under constant stress that a police officer might end their lives. This is the social contract in its most basic form.
To me, the Green New Deal has started to seem less like the futuristic green cities of my wet dreams, and more like a cultural revisiting of what our country actually consists of today. Hollywood as an industry was created to serve the interests of American military expansion, and the proof of its efficiency still lives on everywhere. But what America is is the exact opposite of what any foreigner watching The O.C. might believe, which means that we need to revisit the cultural narrative that we have spread — not just to the rest of the globe, but also among ourselves.
We still believe that we are better and more special; we still believe in the American Dream.
Yet in so many ways, our country is actually backwards, and falls way behind the standards of neighboring Canada and Europe in terms of quality of life. People are dying on the streets and in jails by droves. The Green New Deal is about facing that, and getting our act together, immediately.
To think like a movement, you have to think like an ant. Our hive is greater than the sum of its parts, and I myself am infinitely small. My survival means nothing if the collective doesn’t make it. Together our hive is building something unprecedented. We cast our nets like spiders’ webs. We are tracing and weaving and slowly crafting a template of light beams. It cracks open our hearts like crr-a-a-c-k — Emilie Alexandre Slotine
To me, the Green New Deal represents the bold first leap towards the global society we all deserve. A world where we don’t have to worry about a wildfire or hurricane destroying our homes and lives. A world where we don’t have to worry about our city sinking. A world where it isn’t bold or radical to give what you can, and where we care about what we take.
Some other countries are closer to this future than we are, but the entire world is behind. The prospect of a Green New Deal doesn’t end with domestic policy and progress, and it is not US centric. It means that the US begins to become a world leader in the fight against the idea that we as human beings would let anything happen to our planet in the name of greed or by lack of will.
On paper the Green New Deal is just a set of policies and platforms, but it is also the beginning of that radical shift of human values and solidarity. This is not to say that it does not propose lofty goals, and it is not to say that we don’t have a lot of minds to change, and a lot of work to do — but this is when and how we start. — Frankie Albin
Today, the first image that hits my mind when it comes to envisioning A Green New Deal is a vision of teaching those who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and currently undervalued society members the skills to build the world we desperately need. And paying them for it. And transforming our health system to work preventatively.
A Green New Deal would mean gaining a sense of balance — in nature, yes, but also inside ourselves. To have a mental health support system that allows us the richness and skill to discern: What do I need? What do I want? How will this affect others? Where is the balance?
I think of breathing, of clean air that can inspire generations of art, of wealth that is distributed fairly, and of people working in communion and community. Moments of oneness with our home throughout a bustling NYC day. A chance to glance at the sky and think, “We did this. She did this. We helped.” A single second to breathe and not worry about the children, the grandchildren, the creatures of earth being subject to disaster. — Paola Sanchez
In the world the GND will create, we all sleep well.
We wake up, walk outside and we breathe well. We breathe well and free and full.
We eat well. We all eat well and local and whole.
We don’t spend our free time looking at flood hazard maps to check how far underwater our neighborhood may be, could be, will be in 2050, 2080, 2100. We don’t wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare about climate disaster. We don’t think about destructive weather patterns or rising temperatures. I don’t frantically do math to think about how old I will be when the Rockaways are underwater, or how old my future children would be or could be.
We just be. We sleep well and breathe well. — Jacqueline Sharry
