The Sunrise Movement and more than 50 high schools from across the country are working on the Green New Deal for Schools Campaign. The proposal has several demands including safe and clean school infrastructure, pathways to green jobs and climate disaster planning. We learn more about the new deal proposal from Adah Crandall, an organizer with the Sunrise Movement and graduate of Grant High School in Portland.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Tomorrow, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York, is expected to reintroduce a bill known as the Green New Deal for Schools. The proposal would pay for safe and clean school infrastructure, pathways to green jobs, and climate disaster planning. Student activists from around the country, led by the Sunrise Movement, are heading to DC right now to build momentum for this bill. Adah Crandall is an organizer with the Sunrise Movement. She’s also a recent graduate of Portland’s Grant High School. She is in DC and she joins us now. Welcome back to Think Out Loud.
Adah Crandall: Thank you so much for having me, Dave. It’s great to be here.
Miller: Thanks for being with us again. What is included in the Green New Deal for Schools?
Crandall: The Green New Deal for Schools is this visionary framework that would transform our school system to face the climate crisis and invest in Black, Brown, and working class communities. You listed off some of our demands so I won’t get too much more into them. But essentially, it’s preparing our schools for the future of worsening climate disasters and preparing students to really go into the world, and do the work that it takes to transform our society.
Miller: How do you think it would be different, let’s say 10 years from now, for a high schooler if this were to pass? What’s your argument?
Crandall: Right now, I think for so many high schoolers across the country, school is this place where we feel like we have to go, we’re legally required to go. It just feels like a chore a lot of the time. It’s not a place that a lot of people want to be. It’s not a place that a lot of people feel like they’re getting a lot out of. I know I graduated high school early because I felt like what I was learning in school wasn’t really like preparing me for the future.
And so our vision for schools with the Green New Deal is that schools are no longer just a place that people are forced to be. Schools are community hubs, where people know that they can go to for the support and the resources that they need, whether that’s mental health support, providing free lunches to students, making schools like shelters when climate disasters hit, having schools as really a place that’s the center of community.
Miller: It does sound like what you’re talking about is broader than climate activism. You’re imagining a different role, and maybe even a different federal role, for schools in kids’ lives.
Crandall: Yes. It’s about the climate crisis, but it’s also about confronting decades of strategic racism and like government disinvestment in Black and Brown schools across the country.
Miller: As you well know, the Green New Deal, without schools attached, obviously did not pass. But some of its aims were wrapped into the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, in terms of significant new federal money on various kinds of climate resiliency or preparedness. I’m curious what you see as the most achievable pieces of the Green New Deal for Schools that have the best chance of passage?
Crandall: I think it really depends on all of the changing political context in DC. There are a lot of people at the Capitol that feel really doubtful about if the Green New Deal is politically possible, if we can afford it, if it’s realistic. And ultimately, my generation, we’re not going to wait around for our future to become “politically possible.” I don’t think it’s really a matter of which parts are more attainable. We need all of these things. And we’re ready to fight to win all of them. And yes, some of them may pass before others. But when it comes to stopping the climate crisis, we need our leaders to be all in, and we need them to be unwilling to make compromises.
Miller: What are your plans while in DC for the next couple of days?
Crandall: I’m currently in DC sitting on the floor of a church. We have about 150 students arriving in about two hours who we are going to train on how to lobby their representatives and teach them about the Green New Deal for Schools. So tomorrow morning, we’re gonna wake up at 5:30AM, we’re gonna take the train down to the Capitol. We have a ton of different lobby meetings scheduled. We’re gonna be talking to Oregon representatives, and then students from around the country will be talking to their representatives as well. We’re gonna have a rally. And then we’re also gonna join Representative Bowman and his team at a press conference in the afternoon for the reintroduction of the federal bill.
Miller: You’re not just working at the federal level though. You’re having students push at the district level all around the country. What do you want individual schools or districts to do?
Crandall: The Green New Deal for Schools is a piece of federal legislation. But Green New Deal for Schools policy can also be won in local districts around the country. There are about 150 students at 50 districts across the US that right now are running their own campaigns, petitioning their school districts to pass a Green New Deal for schools resolution. Depends on the school district. Some of the versions actually commit districts to meeting the demands by a certain date. Others, for districts that have less available funding, are simply saying to the federal government, “We support this. We’re calling on Congress to fund this.”
The point of running these local campaigns is not only to win tangible things in individual districts, but to show communities across the country what the Green New Deal for Schools could look like, and popularize it. Because we know that when we transform our schools to face the climate crisis, we can pave the way for the rest of society to follow. By organizing in schools, we’re reaching thousands of students who can go on to carry this work forward.
Miller: Where do Portland Public Schools stand right now in terms of these issues? That’s where you started your own organizing.
Crandall: Portland is in kind of a unique situation in that we did pass some somewhat Green New Deal aligned policy last winter, which was the PPS Climate Crisis Response Policy. And that policy is great, it’s a great starting point. It puts the district really ahead of basically every other district in the country when it comes to climate action. It was written up nationally as the strongest school district climate plan. And that’s amazing. But the bar for being the strongest school district climate plan was very, very low. And the district would never have done that if it wasn’t for the constant and persistent organizing of students and community members for several years.
In Portland, we have a group of students that are organizing Green New Deal for Schools campaign in Portland, and are specifically calling on PPS to make stronger commitments, to actually call it a Green New Deal, and show districts around the rest of the country that bigger, more visionary, more bold policy really is possible, and making sure that they actually hold true to the commitments that they made in this CCRP.
Miller: I think it’s fair to call you at this point a kind of veteran activist and organizer, even though you are 17 years old. What do you see as the most important lessons that you’ve learned about how to organize, about how to build a movement?
Crandall: In Sunrise, at the heart of our theory of change, is this idea that we build our power by organizing our communities. In the context of the schools campaign, it means talking to every single person that we go to school with. It means having countless conversations and connecting with people and building relationships and finding out what each person’s stake is in this fight. Because everyone has a stake in stopping the climate crisis even if they don’t know it yet. That’s the reason that we are organizing in local schools, and not just at our federal level.
Historically, the climate movement has been really dominated by white middle class people. And we know that to win a Green New Deal for Schools, and actually win these investments that we need in Black and brown communities, we need to organize every student across race and across class. By organizing in our local schools, we’re doing that. And we’re showing communities that the Green New Deal is something that can make a tangible impact in their lives. It’s not just this big bill in Congress. It’s something that has tangible, local impacts that can make their lives better.
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