Vision, Measuring Stick, and Organizational Impetus
Blog 126 – Reading the Green New Deal
A Vision, a Measuring Stick, an Organizational Impetus.
A “Green New Deal Resolution” has just been introduced in Congress. It was drafted by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and supported by some of the most socially concerned elements on the mainstream political stage today. It has been, I believe, widely misunderstood, intentionally by conservatives, haltingly defended by many who agree with its emphasis on the urgency of environmental issues but are less sure of its effectiveness as a political statement.
I believe it is a mistake to read the Green New Deal Resolution as if it were the working schedule that a group of legislators had adopted as a detailed formal step by step agenda and time-table for legislative activities for the next session of Congress. It is much too early for that, for some new and some experienced Congress-people and social activists to assemble or present as specific thought-out and carefully formulated set of draft measures ready for immediate vote by a deliberative body, particularly by a Congress with its own ways of working and getting things done, in a somewhat rule-ridden assembly.
That’s not how the proposed Green New Deal should be read. It is somewhere between a vision and a rallying -cry, and is important as both.. It has three aspects, which together make a real contribution to the signers’ objectives: 1) setting forth what goals they have set for themselves and how they are connected to each other[1], 2) how they or others might gauge their progress to those goals, and, implicitly, 3) a possible way to use their effort organizationally and politically. The signers presumably hope to lure many others to join them in developing and implementing their jointly developed goals through realistic programs and legislation that will pass political muster and work. The New Green Deal Resolution is not a set of draft legislative measures or the platform for an organization, though it could well be steps to both.
As a vision, I would read its text as written to be useful towards presenting a unified view of what its authors are about: putting together quite a variety of ideas on a variety of subjects, paying attention to what academics call their intersectionality, what their children might call how the head bones are connected to the arm bones are connected to shoulder bones are connected to leg bones. It is intended to avoid being a grab-bag of sweets it would be nice to have, and rather to present a coherent vision of a goal and a future, a destination for the group’s efforts, a platform on which the edifice of a green New Deal and a coalition for its effectuation could be built. It can help fix priorities across a wide band of topics, with a comprehensive logic tying them together, a reasoned way of establishing the goals for their individual terms of office, an argument for others to join in.
But the statement can have a further very concrete and useful function: as a measuring-stick against which to judge what is underway by what is actually needed, to tell how far progress has been made, what exactly has been accomplished and what remains to be done. It can be used as a tentative report card, a measuring stick by which the doer is willing to be judged, a way of telling, as time goes on, what is likely to be pie in the sky, what in each period is forgettable red fodder, what is digestible blue meat, and what is hoped for as dessert. One might fantasize about a non-partisan panel of experts, political and civic leaders, and activists, meeting annually to follow through in the directions that the Green New Deal’s authors have proposed, but that would really be pie in the sky.
It is, to be a bit partisan, the mirror-perfect opposite of Donald Trump’s way of proceeding, of the way in which he and his organization have approached their responsibilities as the governing body of a great and complex nation} with no stated over-all goals, no assessing accomplishments and failures by any set of standards, no perspective on what the ultimate outcome is hoped to be. Perhaps as an alternative to the Trump, the backers of the Green New Deal, who are after all politically progressive Democrats, with the support of multiple grass-roots and socially activist organizations, a diverse group of some of the most socially concerned elements on the mainstream political stage today, including hose in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, such as Alexandra Casio-Cortez, a principal author of the Green New Deal Resolution – perhaps such a group can become the nucleus of a larger permanently organization that can show in practice what the vision of an environmentally sound, humane, democratic vision, an alternative to Donald Trump’s chaotic non-vision night be, and what steps are needed to move towards that vision systematically and together. [ A full list of Individuals (and Organizations) supporting the Green New Deal resolution is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green NewDeal#Individuals.
Best wishes to its authors
[1] Compare it to how the Pentagon goes about laying out its horrendous Overmatch policy formulation of U.S. global objectives, in which the word “peace” hardly appears and no vision of its ultimate consequences is even attempted. Michael Klare, “Why ‘Overmatch’ Is Overkill,’” The Nation Jan. 14, 2019.[
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