Infrastructure Week became sort of a running joke during the Trump administration, but President Biden has also talked a lot about infrastructure and is unveiling some plans in Pittsburgh today on that front. Meanwhile, progressives have been organizing around the Thrive Act. THRIVE stands for Transform, heel and renew by investing in a vibrant economy, and it was reintroduced by
Senator Ed Markey and Representative Wie Dingle last month. More than a hundred actions supporting the Act are taking place today, and progressive organizers have already succeeded in convincing the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress that they should go big on green infrastructure. The administration's Build Back Better proposal does that, but organizers say the problem is scale. In a nutshell,
this is great, but it needs to be three times bigger. Today, I'm joined by Kanniella Ng, former Representative for the Great State of Hawaii and current Climate Justice campaign director for People's Action, a grassroots organization that's been mobilizing behind the Thrive Act. He's going to walk us through the details and what he's hearing from communities on the ground that conversation coming up right after this quick break. I'm Ami Westervelt, and this is drilled.
Maybe we could start with just what you've kind of what you've been seeing so far in the Biden administration on climate, like what you were sort of expecting, and how the administration has met those expectations or failed to meet them exceeded them.
Yeah, I mean, look, I supported Bernie Sanders in the primary election, and.
You weren't riding with Biden from the jump.
Well, I mean, Biden is like a self proclaimed moderate, right, so I when when Bernie lost, I don't think I mean, I definitely. If you're tell me that you fast forward to March twenty twenty one and we'd be looking at a four trillion dollar climate like infrastructure package, I think you're crazy. Yeah, that's a testament like Biden is a really, really good politician. He's been doing this his whole life. He's been a state he's been a US Senator in
his twenties. Not in the fact that he's like a champion for the things that will actually help our communities, that the things we actually need, but in the fact that he figures out where the middle is right in the base he needs to win and then he moves
his ass there right away. And the fact that look when in twenty eighteen, I think when we first talked like brand new Congress, justicemocrats, they are running candidates right are still on seventeen and the big platform pillar was like this one trillion dollar infrastructure ask demand and that
was considered radical. The fact that we have Biden, who is self proclaimed like a centric, it's like a modern in the middle talking a fortunately is a testament to the power of the movement and how much we've shifted
the common sense of the general public. And that you know that's due to the Sunrise movement, the youth climate strikes a long time environmental justice advocates, people making really bold bets on elections, like when the youth decided to support Senator Marquee over Joe Kennedy and like all these
big bets that really paid off. So yeah, yeah, surprised by how how aggressive Biden has been in on climate is definitely not enough, like the four trillion or I think four hundred billion, or someone that's actually going to go at a green investment like that's not like I have a one in four year old and like the place they grew up in will be underwater by the time you're thirty years old. Yeah, we have a real
project here in Abaddi. That is, it's like forty years now and it's still not done and attached on working people. Like that's gonna keep training money from them and they're never going to really be like come to me in the middle class ever, and like it doesn't have to be.
That way, you know, Like yeah, so yeah, but.
It's like up to Biden and to like step it up right now in this key moment.
Yeah, I don't want to ask you to read the tea leaves too much, but like how much do you think how much further left do you think Biden can actually be pushed?
I mean, just over the last few months we've i mean just the past few weeks. It was supposed to be a two trillion dollar package. Now it's three trillion. Some articles are saying, for I mean, help Joe Manchin, who's supposed to be the one hang up the reason why we need to be more careful and moved to the right. He went ahead and said like months ago
that he's comfortable with the four trillion dollar package. So you know, at this point, there's not a lot of excuses left why you shouldn't go bold, Like not only is it really popular to go big, but you have like a majority of like all your members are on line too now, like inside and outside, and it's only going like we're doing an action, organizing that action on Wednesday on March thirty, first time to arrive where we already have like one hundred and two people signed up
to host events like direct actions outside members of Congress's offices and homes, digital events. Like the momentum is only getting bigger, and like I mean even in Mangin's district, like the Republican governor Jim Justice being like even he's calling for more. He's saying, like we need to err on the side of of spend too much not too little.
You're organizing some actions, Now, what are the asks on the table for for this week?
Yeah, so that the day of action is called time to Thrive, And we just rolled out to thrive back today. We had a press conference. You know, we had folks from all across the Democratic Party, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, DeBie Dingle. Champions include like Ihan Omar, Jamal Bowman, permid A, jayapar Rokana, just a lot of good folks and not just all on the hard left either, you have like Biden allies on this too. So we're showing that you can have big solutions and a big ten like you
don't have to choose. So the demand is one trillion dollars per year over ten years. And the idea is like this is a huge crisis moment and like the
stars just happened to be a line. We have a trifecta in the House, Senate and White House, and we have a governor who's trying to be I mean, a president who's telling everyone he's trying to be the next FDR and like past New Deal esque legislation, so we got to take advantage of it, like we have no choice but to plan ahead, especially when we know the other side's going to continue pushing austerity measures and allowing
our communities to suffer. So we're demanding fifteen million people getting put back to work through this investment, passing the pro Act, so enshraining labor rights into the law, and really advancing like gender, environmental indigenous justice, racial justice, with particular attention to like black Indigenous people, so that's the thrive back then, it's it wasn't easy to find alignment on it. It's taken like over a year and a half now as a coalition, and it didn't start from
elected officials either. It wasn't just like some some lawyers on the hill, just like the room like now, we tried that before. In fact, like we spent millions of dollars during the healthcare fight in two thousand and eight. What's different about this app is it's really from the
grassroots up. We just asked politics to sign up on it after like after I was already written, and and it's like the organized there's an actual campaign behind it, a campaign where there's millions of dollars not spent on ads or TV or consultants, but on actually field organizing.
So that's how we're able to organize all these actions because the outside game is just one thing we've learned from two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine is that you need you need the field up or libration, like you need the outside game if you're going to win anything, especially anything that's going to be durable.
Yeah, yeah, it's so it is interesting to me how quickly people have have shifted their thinking on like, you know, what is quote unquote reasonable and and what kinds of policies we can we can actually implement. I remember when the Greeny Deal was first announced, and so many people in the climate space were like, this is asking for too many things at once, you know, like if we try to get people to think about social justice and you know, energy sources at the same time, we're never
going to get anywhere. And then here we are, you know, two years later, I guess two and a half, and it sort of would be ridiculous to see a climate policy proposed without any kind of provisions for labor and equity and indigenous rates and you know, gender and all of these things. So I don't know, I'm curious, like if you hear, are you hearing the same kind of you know, quote unquote be reasonable pushback that people were hearing even as recently as you know, a year or two ago.
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. The answer is no, not nearly as much as we used to. There's still some of that, but yeah, what's unreasonable is is the fact that, like we still have people who don't have drinkable water or breathable air, and
we might not have a livable planet. We don't have livable jobs for many people that were like heralding as essential frontline workers and like without essential wages, and even now with a vaccine rollout, they don't even have access to it because they're not in that you know, that modicum of power and wealth. So that it's just it's
it's an unreasonable hierarchy that we've created for ourselves. And the other thing is like, if you speak to people's needs, like, people have diverse needs, so the more needs you speak to, the more diverse base you can build. So when you're like, do you expect people to sign on to social justice? Like no, do you expect someone who's worried about getting shot by the cops as soon as they step out
of their house or even when they're asleep. How are you supposed to sell a clean energy sounded to that person, you know, without addressing that first native to be.
Like, we'll take care of you being able to you know, not be killed later, but right now, we need to talk about batteries.
That's right, if you're a native person, like your family owned is getting stripped away by colonial forces or you're an immigrant and like your family's getting deported and your kids are getting stripped from your arms. It's unreasonable to think that they're going to care about two degrees celsius. You know, what they're going to care about is like they're the direct impacts. And unless you're talking about that and making the connections to to like the larger problem,
which is this colonial, extractive economy that we've created. And we'll get nowhere. But look, when you focus on it all, then you build the literally the biggest movement that we've ever seen in the United States history. And that's where we're are.
You know, I feel so I spend a lot of time on on history, and you know how how like the sort of counter movement to the current climate movement was built, and it's so broad, you know, like it's it's like the right wing does not just concentrate on climate denial. It's like, you know, the same people that are doing that are also working on you know, quote unquote school choice and privatizing everything and getting rid of indigenous rights and getting rid of tribal sovereignty and all.
You know, it's like I don't it's it's it's crazy to me every time I I look at that and then compare it to the left, which is like I don't know, I don't know if we can like think about two things at the same.
Time, maybe maybe there's truth in that, right, Like we don't have to we can focus on like one to three things, but they don't have to be policies per se, Like policies can be a means to an end, which is a shift of your value said, And that's what the right has been doing, right, like like the bootstraps, individualism, the free market, like these are all like valisms that the policies they propose and tactics even are just like meant to bolster like that that frame of thinking, and
like we that we can do that, like we can propose all kinds of things and kind of like dissolve these eradicate these false diconomies like planet versus paycheck, right, like you know, jobs are actually good, like climate actually means tons of jobs, like this idea that where we can just move on our own as individuals, like you can't keep the lights on in Texas on your own, like you can't stop wildfires in California on your own.
I can't I can't fucking raise my two todders at home, working full time on my own right, right Like that that's like no matter what policy you're talking about, if if it's like if the crux of it is like we're stronger together and if we invest in each other in our community, then we can actually you get through these crises, then yeah, it's about the policy, but it's also about like building up like what it means to be in community with one another and like enshuraning like
enough as a human right, like why why do we let why is poverty even allowed in a country with billionaires, and just kind of focusing in on that, like having moral clarity and focusing in on that, on the values first and like the policy, Yeah, like we want to win them and they matter because like people are dying.
But if you actually like these are values that like everyone agrees with, right like freedom to thrive, and if you actually knock on doors, which is another thing we're doing, like these this deep canvassing program around a climate that we're launching this year, you can even win win over folks in Trump country as well, I mean in people's actually network. We have groups like New Jersey Organizing Project
who's your action? Like these are groups that purposely go out into areas that are considered no goes for like the Democratic Party, and they organize people and not only did they organize them into their group to take action, but they've swiftly radicalized them as well. Because it's like hating the government and blaming the government and like folks that are weaker than you in like the social hierarchies
that we created. That's not actually not that far from like pointing a finger at billionaires instead, and that's true. Like a couple, like a few, like really open conversations, and I should say, like I you know, when I was twenty two, I won my first election in a district that went Republican like forty six out of fifty years in statehood in Hawaii, And it was by just listening to folks. Like the first rap I knock on a door, I knocked on twelve thousand dollors. Like the
first rap was, hey, I'm kindie letting I know. It feels like the government doesn't all listened to us, and that's why I'm at your door. And then I just full stop and here what they have to say. So issues sometimes I'll just say this is great, and then you do that a couple of times, they're gonna listen to you, because the fact of the matter is, like they might listen to talk radio, but most people just aren't that political, Like they won't see themselves as political beings.
And that's in many ways problematic, and it's not the case in many other countries with like a more strong movement history. But like it's also an opportunity for folks on the left to like or in like the climate sphere, to to really change some minds and move people. I think that youths have been then doing a really good job over the last couple years. But we can't rely on like children to educate parents to go out and
organize like millennials, experis, boomers, everyone. We gotta do it ourselves as well.
How do you expect things to go with the Thrive Act and the pro Act? What's it looking like right now?
I mean things are heading the right direction. It's just you mentioned this on the top of the call, Like the things that are sticking in the Biden administration, it isn't necessarily rooted in like traditional aspects of power, like in the organizing tradition like a lynch Ki or or like Marxism or anything. It's like, you know, someone just does a white paper or a one pager and they put some really nice branding with like some trendy gradient behind their mark and it sticks. Yeah, and it just
picks up. And on one hand, I really welcome this shift from like anti intellectualism that we've seen under Trump and the Tea Party to like some more thoughtfulness, but also like you know, it's like an emperor's it could be like an emperor has no close thing. Like some of these organizations that have Biden's ear don't really have
a base. I'm not saying you're not doing work, but they're more in the advocacy spirit sphere than not necessarily like powerful on the ground, like with real people and you know, in people's action. And I know my philosophy is like we like working people were the experts of our own experiences, Like we know, like if you want solutions, go to the people closest to the pain, right, And I think that's something that we'd like to see a
little bit more of, uh in this administration. And if they did focus on like those people on the ground, you'd see like a lot more not just rooted, but aggressive policy as well, and you'll like you'll be building bases that will help past futuralization but also help with your next election as well.
Yeah. So does it seem like the people who are who do kind of have his ear are aligned with the kinds of things that you're talking about.
Yeah, Actually, I think we're progressives have been really strategic about was right when they saw the writing on the wall, and actually right after the the primary, we didn't mess around, like we knew that Trump was evil and like we have to do everything we can to beat them, so we didn't like play around, like we threw down for Biden, and then we reminded Biden that he needed us to win, and very quickly we pushed to get our champions in
his administration. And you see a lot of folks that, yeah, really good people that were part of the transition team, like you know, Barshonny from Sunrise Movement Protest was part of the transition team, and that in turn shaped some really positive policy. The fact that Deb Halen is like the first Native you know that, I think that's a big deal and that wouldn't have happened without like the
progressives getting in. So you know, there's a lot of good folks in administration, and you know it's part of it is getting good people around him. But again, he's a really good politician that has his finger on the pulse of where the middle is of the needs to win. So more importantly is shifting that middle the political common sense of the general public. And we we've been It's really clear that we've been doing that very well over
the last few years. To see this shift from one trillion being too much to even Joe Matchin talking about four trillion. I think that's like the proof is brilliant.
How much are people connecting their kind of day to day stuff with climate And is that even something that that is that even like a conversation that that you're pushing with people on the ground, or is it like, let's figure out, you know, people's most urgent needs first.
Now, I mean, one thing that Biden has been good at in terms of his messaging that really came from the movement is this focus that climate action means jobs. And right now, in this moment where you have fifteen million people unemployed, a lot of these jobs aren't coming back. It's a prime moment for tech billionaires who are the big winners by the way of this them to automate it, like.
Yes, and so same with the oil industry. They're covering up so much automation shit by saying, oh, we lost jobs from COVID, but they were losing them already from automation.
Sorry, go ahead, No, that's right. And this idea that like a Green New Deal like costs jobs like no, the jobs are disappearing now because of the private sector, and in fact you need the public sector to get the jobs back. It's it's completely opposite of what right
wing pundits and austerity, you know. Yeah, the longers are pushing and like right now, like I look out the window, there's potholes to be filled, there's bridges to be repaired, trees to be planted, Like, there's so much work that we need to do that the free market just won't provide jobs for because our need it's all wrapped in
the profit nexus. But if we actually create jobs based on what we actually need for a liverapoole planet, for you know, clean water, for infrastructure that's up the speed literally with the rest of the world, then it's a win win win and I think that's the message. That's a real take home message because you can find projects like you have abandoned malls because of COVID everywhere and
just reimagining what that could be for your community. That's that's one way to bring home, thrive and the green New Deal for everyone, no matter where you live, left and right, black and white, whatever.
But also I feel like there has been I think a shift for people in understanding that government jobs are also jobs. Like this is something that I think the right wing did really well for a long time, was convinced people that somehow working for the government was like not a real job.
Yeah. I mean when I was twenty one out of college, the only job I could get was selling and copy machines. You want to talk about, not a real job like the private sector that the like the middle managers that make people feel important, like you really really need the people that produce it, and like the capitalists like everybody else in the middle those layers and layers and layers
in these corporations are only there for colonial reasons. They're only there to make one company take up more land, to take up space like you could have, you know, So it's just that's not real work, real work building bridges,
planting trees, carrying for your neighbors. Like and that's the other thing that's really like key in this Thrive agenda, and like the Green New Deal bills that that will be coming out is like we recognize that if you just created a bunch of jobs, traditional like infrastructure jobs, it will be jobs for white men. So we got to be really deliberate that we have like gender justice, racial justice, and everything else in the front of all
the policy that we create. Because even when you're talking about unions, like there are like people of color that've been left out of union's work for generations now, so we need to hear that we addressed that first.
Again, because I'm a history nerd, I just it like blows my mind when I think about how the unions were, like you know, the original enemies of capitalists and in such a short amount of time have become you know, teammates with them in a lot of ways. So, like, are you seeing some shifts some shifts in union leadership and sort of how unions are thinking about things now too?
Yeah, I mean I've like I'm I really believe in in the value of unions like historically, but also now yeah, and yeah, I think there's there's some like not every boss of any organization or any or of any organization, not every leader is perfect, But like, I don't think that's the core of the problem is like you know,
corrupted leadership or anything like that. It's the fact that like they, like you talked about transitional jobs programs and this idea of a just transition and it's always been like this QTT line that climate advocates, usually predominantly white, usually predominantly upper class, highly educated white folks, would be like, oh, we'll have a transition program and if you're working, teach
them to code. Yeah, I might see. If I was a union boss, I'd be like, get the f out of here, like, all, dare you like show me it? Like so, I think that's that's sort of where a lot of this has come from. It's like we weren't able to show them real benefits, and when we did, it was like this these really half like half measures, like liberal half measures, but this idea that we can invest now where you can you can just walk into a public like an employment office, your local employment office,
and there'll be a job waiting for you. Where you're not gonna have like environment You're gonna have your neighbors yelling at you, like environmental advocates or animal rights like you're gonna be cool, and you're gonna be You're gonna be people from rural areas and urban areas doing projects with you, like people across generations, across races. Like. That's how you create real unity. It's it's not just public jobs. Isn't just good for your paycheck, it's not just good
for the planet, but it's good for our politics. It's gonna get get people working together and really building something positive. So it's something real, and that's how I think we're seeing like unions take it a little bit more seriously because frankly, we just haven't given them anything real up until now.
Hm.
That's it for this time. Big thanks to corniella Ing for joining me. You can check out some of the links in the show notes for more information on the Thrive Act and People's Action. Again, we're at work on a new narrative season coming up soon, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. Please rate and review us wherever you're listening. It helps us find new listeners. You can also support us on Patreon. We're at patreon
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