By H. Fields Grenee
For several years now we’ve been hearing the term “green technology” volleyed about. As preached from the political pulpit, “green” means new jobs, improved health, cost savings and a clean environment. Eager to harness these benefits, leaders in government, the private sector and countless everyday citizens, have made the decision to go green.
Van Jones is a very public figure in the Green movement
In February 2009, Congress took one of its most strident steps toward a sustainable future by passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It allocated $90 billion for investments in clean energy technologies and job training.
According to The Climate Gap, a 2009 study conducted by the University of California, communities of color have a lot to gain from such investments. A holistic embrace of green living by these groups, disproportionally affected by climate change, is perceived as the best way to end the cycle of poverty.
If this is so, what steps should communities of color, historically left out of the decision making process, take to be included in and benefit from the green technology revolution? For many advocates the approach must include education and livable wage job training, organizing and building sustainable community-based movements and lobbying and securing funding for reinvestment in urban areas.
Washington Post Consortium
The Washington Park Consortium (WPC), a Chicago-based community action group interested in urban quality-of-life issues, is one of the lead minority organizations working to craft useful solutions. Brandon Johnson, WPC’s CEO, thinks that the jobs needed to build the infrastructure of the green technology revolution, hold significant promise for the African-American community. He sees it as the greatest opportunity in nearly 40 to 50 years for blacks to sculpt their future and define the role they will play in it.
Johnson’s belief stems from the idea that shared stewardship of the land will affect the choices community members make. This is why urban gardening and reinvestment in urban initiatives is vital.
“Many African-Americans are now being forced off of the welfare roles, which bred dependency,” he said. “Going green, as they may call it, is therefore not necessarily a lifestyle choice, but rather survival. Communities of color must adapt and reorganize our ways of living, while better using and sustaining what we already have.”
WPC strives for this by organizing and educating local stakeholders in topics like money management, funding for green spaces, and urban gardening. “Some African-Americans in green like to say it’s not new choices but reconnecting with old ways [like community farming and buying locally]”, Johnson noted. “Urban areas have a higher concentration of vacant lots than suburbia, yet the vast majority of funding for green rehabbing projects and gardening initiatives don’t come to our communities and we are suffering because of it.”
From a health standpoint, many communities of color, based on national statistics, are situated in areas designated as food deserts. These are areas having little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet, yet are often saturated with fast food restaurants and convenience stores.
“It’s hard to stop and think where your food is coming from and if it was grown responsibly, when you are living paycheck to paycheck,” Johnson said.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins heads Green For All
Trying to increase those paychecks is the business of Green For All (GFA). “As a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty, Green For All is focused on advocating for and creating green-collar jobs that move low-income workers into higher-paid and higher-skilled occupations,” said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, GFA’s CEO.
“When I say green-collar jobs, I mean well-paid, career track jobs that contribute directly to preserving or enhancing environmental quality,” she said. “If a job improves the environment but doesn’t provide a family-supporting wage or opportunities for advancement along a career track of increasing skills and wages, it is not a green-collar job.”
The discussion unfolding around this movement has yet to be taken up by many minority communities. Education and job training are essential to changing this. “There’s an important discussion about the digital divide — that is, the extent to which people of color, (1) are more concentrated in occupations with low skill sets, low wages, and lack of career pathways and, (2) have less access to green technology itself,” said Ellis-Lamkins.
“This divide is one of the reasons that Green For All focuses on equity in the green economy. An inclusive green economy — in which all people have access to the benefits of a green economy, including increased health, high-quality jobs, career pathways, and safe working conditions — will lift all boats,” she said.
Under-served communities can secure funding for such sustainability initiatives by forming alliances with social justice, labor, business and environmental movements, affirmed Ellis-Lamkins.
Through such coalitions, GFA secured funding for the Green Jobs Act, which supports green-collar training programs. It also won the inclusion of two key equity provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which will allocate $860 million in continued funding for the Green Jobs Act.
GFA is also part of a joint effort to pass HOME STAR legislation, which would quickly create thousands of quality jobs in construction and manufacturing by putting people to work improving residential energy efficiency.
For any of this to happen, said Ellis-Lamkins, communities of color must demand more products and services that require employing green-collar workers in their areas.
Sustaining and increasing the momentum required to keep minorities’ concerns in front of decision makers requires that community members get and stay in the know. “Until [African-Americans] get involved, until a critical mass in the African-American community understands the relevance of this complex global initiative, a shift in perspective will not occur,” said Johnson.
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Did You Know:
Communities of color can benefit from green technology initiatives by getting involved with social justice, labor, business and environmental groups that:
•provide benefits and protections for the people most vulnerable to climate change
•create jobs by investing in clean-energy industries
•provide access to jobs and careers for unemployed, underemployed, and dislocated workers by investing in workforce development and multiple educational pathways
•reduce pollution
•protect low-income consumers from rising energy prices and costs of living
•bring down the cost of clean energy through research and development.
