A visionary program for national renewal, the Green New Deal aims to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice.

Jeremy Brecher goes beyond the national headlines and introduces readers to the community, municipal, county, state, tribal, and industry efforts advancing the Green New Deal across the United States. Brecher illustrates how such programs from below do the valuable work of building constituencies and providing proofs of concept for new ideas and initiatives. Block by block, these activities have come together to form a Green New Deal built on a strong foundation of small-scale movements and grassroots energy.

A call for hope and a better tomorrow, The Green New Deal from Below offers a blueprint for reconstructing society on new principles to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Shifting the Sense of What Is Possible

1. The Green New Deal in the Cities
2. The Green New Deal in the States
3. Unions Making a Green New Deal
4. Climate Justice from Below
5. Climate-Safe Energy Production
6. Negawatts
7. Fossil Fuel Phaseout
8. Transforming Transportation
9. Protecting Workers and Communities—On the Ground
10. Just Transition in the States: “There Ought to Be a Law!”
11. Green New Deal Jobs for the Future

Conclusion: The Green New Deal from Below and the Politics of the Possible

Notes

Index