Green For All/green jobs featured in VP Biden's Task Force for Middle Class

On Friday, February 27th, Vice President Joe Biden convened the first meeting of the White House Task Force for Middle Class Working Families.  And the theme of the meeting: Green Jobs!

Green For All was honored to take a prominent role in the convening. President and Founder Van Jones spoke and answered questions, and this video we made kicked off the event.

After you watch the video, read what Van Jones and Chris Chafe (Executive Director of Change to Win) wrote about the event.

A green American dream for working families

Crossposted from Anderson Cooper 360.

Chris Chafe
Executive Director, Change to Win
and
Van Jones
Founder and President, Green For All

Last Friday, Vice President Joe Biden held the first meeting of his new White House Task Force for Middle Class Working Families. The theme? “Green jobs as a pathway to a strong middle class.”

This is a huge step forward for the country, for the green jobs movement, and for working families. The U.S. economy once abounded with opportunities for careers that would support a family, provide health care, put kids through college, even allow people to take a hard-earned vacation with their loved ones. Those opportunities, and the American Dream that propelled generations to new progress, remain too far out of reach for too many Americans. The best place to recreate them is in the growing green jobs sector.

Green jobs are America’s best investment opportunity for the public and private sector. By investing wisely and creating the right policies, we can create new wealth while fighting poverty and pollution at the same time. We are already seeing this happening across the country. Newark, NJ is pioneering a public-private partnership to create union jobs making homes more energy-efficient — and making sure residents who most need the work have access to those jobs. Community colleges and training institutions — like the East Los Angeles Skills Center — are teaching the next generation of green technicians. State subsidies have convinced Gamesa to locate its new factory for constructing wind turbine blades in Pennsylvania; the wind-energy giant expects to create up to 1,000 new, good, green jobs in the Keystone State.

The potential of the emerging green economy is enormous. What we need is smart, supportive federal investment to help that potential become a reality for all Americans. And President Obama’s administration gets it. That’s the biggest signal we should take from the fact that Vice President Biden is focusing the first meeting of his Middle Class Task Force on green jobs.

But there’s another signal we should absolutely NOT take from the meeting. We should not take it as a signal that we have arrived, that our message has gotten through, that the hard part is over. No, this meeting is a sign that we are finally beginning.

The administration sees the promise of green jobs because a vibrant, beautiful movement has been singing about that promise at the top of its voice. That movement includes labor, students, business leaders, social justice activists, environmentalists, intellectuals and more. It wants an inclusive green economy, strong enough to solve the ecological crisis and lift millions of people out of poverty.

Creating a pathway to a green American Dream requires a new practice of partnership between government, entrepreneurs, investors, environmentalists, junior colleges and community organizations, and unions. These emerging green sectors offer our first chance in more than a generation to build a new economic model founded on sustainable development and equity for all. Smart policies can drive public and private investment into sectors like weatherization and take those new markets to scale. Community and neighborhood residents can be recruited by local organizations and welcomed into union and community college training programs, so that when they emerge they have a real job market to enter, creating value in their own homes and communities while being paid a living wage in the private or public sector. That is how we’ll save our planet and rebuild our middle class.

We need that partnership and that movement now more than ever. Working families need it. The planet needs it. And President Obama needs it. A strong, popular, independent movement for quality green jobs is the only thing that will shine a light for the administration and show it the path it is looking for — and the pitfalls it must avoid. We’ve traveled that path to end slavery and segregation, to create voting rights for all, to build a middle class from the industrial sweatshop, and we’re still walking together to build the right to unionize and create equal pay for all.

President Obama and the country need us to show the way to a green future. We must not let them down.