Alongside Sanders and McKibben, Ocasio-Cortez says ‘Green New Deal’ good for pushing ‘social and racial justice’

By Michael Bastasch

Democratic Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said the “Green New Deal” plan she supports would be used to achieve liberal “economic, social and racial justice” goals along with fighting global warming.

“[W]e can use the transition to 100 percent energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a Tuesday panel discussion alongside Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and environmental activist Bill McKibben.

The soon-to-be New York representative has spent her time in Washington, D.C. promoting a “Green New Deal” to transition the U.S. to 100 percent green energy. Ocasio-Cortez even joined protesters occupying House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office in support of the plan.

Pelosi wants to bring global warming to the forefront when Democrats take control of the House in 2018, but Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and a handful of other Democrats want to go even further.

While light on details, proponents said the “Green New Deal” could create millions of jobs in renewable energy and address many “social justice” issues typically on Democrats’ radar.

“This is going to be the Great Society, the moonshot, the civil rights movement of our generation,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “This is the mechanism through which we can really deliver justice to communities that have been underserved. The water in Flint is still dirty.”

“We have injustices in this country. Those injustices are concentrated in frontline communities and indigenous, black and brown communities,” she said. “They’re the ones that experience the greatest depths of this injustice.”

What’s unclear is if the “Green New Deal” can move beyond the far-left of the Democratic Party and into the mainstream. Several top House Democrats already rejected a key part of the plan — creating a special House committee to draft climate legislation.

Democratic New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, who is set to chair the Committee on Energy and Commerce next year, plans on holding hearings on global warming after taking the gavel. Pallone doesn’t support creating a special climate committee.

“We want to move very aggressively, we’ve got people in charge of these committees who are very progressive, and I just don’t see the need for the select committee,” Pallone told reporters in November.

“In part, I think it may actually delay what the progressives are trying to achieve,” Pallone said.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Jesse Korman

4 thoughts on “Alongside Sanders and McKibben, Ocasio-Cortez says ‘Green New Deal’ good for pushing ‘social and racial justice’

  1. She’s just following in her mentor Bernie “Soapbox ” Sanders foot steps, spew any unfounded
    line of BS and you can spend your entire life in politics like Sanders and also accomplish nothing
    in forty years like Sanders ….. except fleecing the taxpayers !!

    No Shame ……..

  2. Did she really say: “[W]e can use the transition to 100 percent energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America.”

    Someone should inform Alexandria that we have ways been powering our nation with “100 percent energy” – OMG !

    A fool and a tool, a dangerous combination !

  3. Associating green energy with racial and social justice is absurd. What does one have to do with the other. This proves how lame-brained this elected snowflake is. What does this say about the people who voted for her ? They listened to her rhetorical nonsense during her campaign and still voted for her. Recreational marijuana isn’t legal in New York yet, is it? It seems that those voters are on something that prevents normal thinking.

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