Green New Deal pays homage to one of the most exclusionary sets of policies in the history of the U.S. that advanced economic solutions at the expense of Black, Indigenous peoples, and poor white domestic workers. Paired with the forces of white supremacy, these policies have prevented Asian and Pacific Islander, Black and Brown people, Indigenous peoples, workers and communities from taking part in programs that created generational wealth for the majority of white people, while also contributing to the creation of sacrifice zones and frontline communities via redlining. For these reasons and more, we hold that a Green New Deal must be more than a resolution or set of policies. It must be a tool for systemic change that builds and sustains grassroots power in a way that supports and scales out existing initiatives, locally, regionally and nationally through translocal organizing models that address and repair decades of discrimination associated with the New Deal. For this to occur, and for the purposes of the UNFT, any Green New Deal must align with the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice and uphold the principles and tenets of Just Transition, energy democracy, and food sovereignty, as well as address myriad sectoral shifts including, but not limited to, housing, healthcare, mass incarceration and preservation of democracy and for Indigenous peoples – recognition of treaties and the US government to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We believe this to be the only way that a Green New Deal can be the vehicle that delivers us to an equitable Regenerative Economy available to, and accessible by, all.
