“It’s putting forth this unified vision for a recovery that is deeply intersectional, that is extremely bold, and that meets the scale of these multiple crises that we face,” adds Jayapal.
The massive scale of the THRIVE Act means that it exists for now as more of a marker than something with a chance of passing through a Congress that can’t even stomach far more moderate reform measures.
“I always used to say that if politics is the art of the possible, then it’s our job as activists to figure out how to move the boundaries of what people see as possible,” Jayapal says.
The infrastructure upgrades will be geared around cutting emissions in half by 2030, and involve upgrading and expanding water systems, the electrical grid, wind power, solar power, electric vehicle infrastructure, and public transit.
Communities of color will be given the tools to sustain themselves on their own terms. The THRIVE Act holds that at least half of the $10 trillion in federal investment over the next 10 years will directly benefit those who have been most affected by systemic racism.
It also ensures free, prior, and informed consent, which means they’d need to sign off before something like, say, a massive pipeline is built through their lands.
“There’s been a total abandonment of this nation’s duty to engage with each nation on an issue about these projects,” Ashley Nicole Engle, the Green New Deal organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network , says of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The IEN is one of 15 environmental, labor, and justice groups that make up the Green New Deal Network, the progressive coalition that last year put together what it dubbed the THRIVE Agenda.
The bill’s introduction on Thursday comes a day after Biden’s first address to Congress, but Jayapal doesn’t see the THRIVE Act as at odds with the administration’s plans, placing them both on the “continuum” of progress and casting the bill as a blueprint for what is possible.
Remember in 2016 when Hillary told West Virginias that, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”? The comment was taken out of context , but the gaffe fed into the idea that Democrats were treating fossil-fuel workers like disposable pawns, and that reimagining the economy to take on the climate crisis is at odds with sustaining their livelihoods.
“The deindustrialization of the country has created a lot of cynicism about both the role corporations and government played in really creating a transition for those manufacturing workers,” says Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union , which is also part of the Green New Deal Network.
Roberts told The New York Times that he would be open to a transition so long as there are available jobs in renewable energy and the government provides aid to newly out-of-work miners.
“Biden has anchored his climate action in the creation of good jobs that people can actually feed their families on as opposed to creating a green energy sector that is poverty wage,” Henry explains.
The THRIVE Act isn’t likely to make it through Congress as a single piece of legislation and cure what ails America, but, as Jayapal puts it, it’s providing a vision for what the nation can “see as possible.” A decade ago few in the Democratic establishment would have dreamed of even considering the idea of transitioning to an economy predicated on clean energy.
“I always remind people that sometimes in organizing and progressive movements it feels like you’re not making progress, or it’s too slow and too slow and too slow,” Jayapal says.