Organizing for a Green and Equitable Economy

This new green-jobs economy can - and must be - firmly grounded in the values of equity, opportunity, sustainability and democratic capacity – resulting in real improvements in the lives of everyday people.

• Equity - living-wage jobs with benefits and career paths for workers and efforts to mitigate the impact of rising energy prices on low and moderate income people through efforts such as cost-saving energy efficiency home retrofits;
• Opportunity – directly linked career options for disadvantaged constituencies into the jobs being created in the building of a productive and sustainable economic infrastructure, and;
• Sustainability – policies and enterprise initiatives to retool our infrastructure and economy for long-term environmental sustainability (carbon emissions, renewable energy, water conservation, etc.) and real value / locally useful production

• democratic Capacity - surfacing new leaders, engaging new institutions, and building the capacity of  coalitions and organizations to advance these objectives.

The political base needed to move forward can be built if rooted in these values and embracing the dual objectives of building a green and equitable economy. The expanded base will come largely from institutions and people who have experienced or seen concrete evidence of the opportunity to benefit from new or retooled quality jobs in a low-carbon economy, who see that the burden of the economic transition does not need to be borne disproportionally by low- and moderate-income people, and who are effectively organized for sustained and strategic action.

It will start with local and regional initiatives that can demonstrate the potential of an equitable low-carbon economy and then organize broader constituencies to take that potential much further.   The IAF Northwest and its affiliated Alliances – Spokane Alliance, Sound Alliance (greater Seattle-Tacoma), Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good (metro Portland), and Greater Edmonton Alliance (Alberta) – have already demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach and are a strong examples of the potential it presents.

They have won policy victories resulting in reduced carbon emissions, demonstrated the job opportunity benefits to disadvantaged constituencies, and helped moderate income families mitigate the impact of rising energy prices on their households – all while organizing an increasingly diverse base of institutions committed to still larger policy reform to bring about an equitable low carbon economy.

About one year ago, the IAF Northwest spun its in-house SustainableWorks project off into a subsidiary nonprofit economic development enterprise that has since secured a $4 million grant (from the $14.5 million allocated in SB 5649 for Community Energy Efficiency Pilot projects) to retrofit 1,800 homes in seven high-need neighborhoods across Washington state. In the past year, the Alliances have partnered with SustainableWorks:

• Negotiating jurisdictional agreements between 6 trade unions delineating their responsibilities on residential retrofits; and
• Recruiting and training 100’s of volunteer organizers in five targeted low-moderate income neighborhoods who have secured 940 audit / retrofit sign-ups, resulting in 374 audits, 136 comprehensive retrofits averaging 40 percent heating-related energy savings per home and providing over 60 people with full or part-time paychecks as of October 2010.

Unlikely Allies

The most important part of this story is the way in which these accomplishments were achieved -- how the relationships between the diverse constituencies were built and the organizing process and practices that deepened and grew the political base over time.

All of this didn't just happen because the Northwest is uniquely green and collaborative.

When initial recruiting efforts were underway to build the newly forming Spokane Alliance in 2001, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) in Spokane was proudly displaying a large poster on the wall of its union hall with a caption reading "If the Environmentalists Get Their Way...". Beneath it was a picture of a burly construction worker reading a newspaper by candlelight -- the headline story read "Snake River dam removal complete" with a below the fold story "Unemployment benefits due to expire for thousands of area workers".  The poster was an accurate reflection of the attitudes of union leaders and members at the time.

Over the course of the next year, a few key IBEW leaders took time to meet with their counterparts from the wide variety of religious and community organizations who were coming together to form the Spokane Alliance - exploring shared values and interests, breaking down stereotypes, and seeing each other for the multifaceted people they are.

They committed their union to an exploratory one-year membership in the Alliance, sent rank and file members to 12-hour leadership institutes where they learned basic organizing skills and developed meaningful relationships with people from other Alliance organizations, and organized a small listening/Solidarity campaign within the local union to surface the passions and interests of their members.

By the middle of 2002, IBEW members were sitting in a church basement where a discussion about potential mutual interests inspired the creativity that led first to the Green Building / Apprentice Utilization campaign and then to SustainableWorks.

They were with:

• United Methodists concerned about dropout rates and kids falling through the cracks,
• teachers union members  with similar concerns about their students and also worried about new evidence of sick building syndrome in many elementary schools;
• Catholics who -- having recently read a bishop's pastoral letter about the Columbia River -- were concerned about stewardship of the natural environment; and,
• other trade unionists worried about training the next generation of skilled workers as the boomers retire.

Ever since then, that IBEW local has been in the center of efforts to establish green building standards, to pass legislation promoting deep energy efficiency, and to create SustainableWorks as a working model to demonstrate the potential of a green and equitable economy.  This past August, leaders of the IBEW locals across Washington State secured a strong commitment of support from their Western District VP and, together, they are working to commit the international Union to major financial and political investments in supporting that big picture goal.

Lessons

This experience lifts up some key organizing lessons:

1)    Strategically Build Power -- the IAF affiliated Alliances in the Northwest have each benefited from an initial power analysis assessing the overall mix and number of institutions needed to "Stand for the Whole" and leverage enough power to win major initiatives for the common good. That analysis drove strategic decisions aiming the organizing efforts at "who we need" rather than "whoever we can get".

2)   Invest in Relationships and Leadership Development -- intentionally creating time for people to get to know each other (discovering shared values and interests) is critical to inspiring collective creativity, making interdependent commitments and establishing mutual accountability. In the past seven years, well more than a 1,000 people in Washington and Oregon have  graduated from 12 hour local Alliance leadership institutes and hundreds more have attended the IAF Northwest’s six-day regional training - forming the base of talented, connected and focused leaders who have led a wide range of issue campaigns.

3)   Start from Strength/Compromise Artfully -- launching campaigns prematurely typically leaves you negotiating from weakness. Spokane's green building campaign was preceded by an assembly of 750 people and included several overflow presentations before the school board.  Compromises with the District did not undermine the major objectives but added new dimensions that more directly served the district's interests and made them strong long-term allies.

4)   Organize Bottom-Up/Build Multiscale Capacity -- the most important political muscle and creative capacity in any national religious or labor organization is within the local unions or congregations, where the membership actually resides. National support without strong local commitment is hollow – building multiscale capacity is critical.  Leveraging the full power of trade unions behind the green and equitable economy, for example, is most likely to be achieved if a sufficient number of locals become strong internal advocates based on solid local experience, if they then secure the credential and support of the national/international leaders, and if that credential can then be used to leverage additional locals to engage. This process is working superbly within the Union for Reform Judaism where strong experiences within a few key synagogues were used to make the case for a new national program (Just Congregations) that has now succeeded in moving a high percentage of the Reform congregations across the country into community organizing efforts.

Conclusion

The building of a green and equitable economy will not happen overnight.  It will be the work the work of a generation – much like the civil rights movement or the building of the industrial era’s labor movement.  The passage of the Voting Rights Act was preceded by years of organizing – with work in the black churches laying the foundation – and hundreds of local campaigns that steadily built capacity and pressure. Today’s efforts will be more similar than different – building from the bottom up and securing lasting national victories after the local foundation has been laid.