The climate crisis is already damaging communities like our own and we must act boldly to combat its devastating impacts. While our planet suffers and working-class communities battle pollution-related diagnoses like asthma, corporations and those at the top continue to pollute our water and air, and profit off our suffering. It’s time to cut a new deal for America’s working and middle class — one that ensures everyone shares in the dream of shared American prosperity. 

The Green New Deal is a solution that matches the scale of the problem. We need the war-time level of mobilization a Green New Deal requires to confront the climate crisis, upgrade our infrastructure, and create millions of good-paying union jobs that build a pathway for people of color to enter the middle class. 

The Green New Deal isn’t only about the environment. Working at the Napier Community Center, I realized that families and kids are up against systemic problems that are too big to fix with policies that tinker around the edges. The Green New Deal also includes a Just Transition that prioritizes union workers, communities on the frontline of the climate crisis, and low-income families who have powered our economy for more than a century and who have too often been neglected by corporations and politicians.