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Pelosi Office & Hallway Taken Over By Calls For A Green New Deal

  • By Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance

Above: Sign held at a Sunrise Movement protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office on November 13, 2018 “We Have 12 Years What’s Your Plan?”

Climate Justice activists organized by the Sunrise Movement held a sit-in in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office calling for a Green New Deal and filled the hallway outside of her office. More than 200 people protested at Pelosi’s office. Capitol Police said they arrested 51 protesters for unlawfully demonstrating outside Pelosi’s office in the Cannon House Office Building. The arrests began a few hours after the demonstration began, when protesters refused to leave the area

The hallway echoed with chants and speeches by activists calling for action to confront the climate crisis. Protestors lined the hallways wearing shirts that said, “we have a right to good jobs and a livable future” and “12 years,” referring to the recent report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which warned last month that major cuts to carbon emissions are needed by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez joined the protesters saying she was there to support them and urge Pelosi to list to them. She left before the arrests began.

A Green New Deal was made popular by Howie Hawkins when he ran for Governor of New York in 2012 and by Jill Stein when she ran for president in 2016. Both ran as Green Party candidates. A Green New Deal includes actions to address the global climate crisis along with policies to create jobs and a more just economy. In the 2018 election several Democratic Party candidates took up the issue including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Antonio Delgado of New York, Deb Haaland of New Mexico, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Sunrise and other climate justice groups are circulating a petition that tells House Democrats to:

  • Champion a Green New Deal that would create millions of good jobs to transform society over the next decade to stop climate change;
  • Mandate that any Democrat in leadership must take the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, and reject campaign contributions from fossil fuel executives and lobbyists, and prioritize the health of people and planet over industry profits; and
  • A rising generation of young people of all backgrounds just helped flip the House with a record turnout. We will no longer tolerate empty promises and words without action.

They are demanding that House Democrats establish “a select committee to develop legislation for a total economic mobilization to transition our country toward a 100 percent renewable energy economy—as the IPCC has tasked every nation to do.” The time for investigation is over, now it is time for action. “Nancy Pelosi is bringing a squirt gun to a wildfire,” concluded the Sunrise Movement. The protest comes as firefighters are battling massive fires in California, Pelosi’s home state, fires that are due in large part to climate change.

Below are tweets from today’s protest.

The Sunrise Movement held a summit yesterday that was attended by Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib. 

 

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