You make me proud Gregor! Thank you for your dedication to the people of the Downtown Eastside. Bless your heart and mind! May the city of Vancouver stand with you and meet the challenge.

View Gregor Robertson’s Inauguration speech

Photo: John Gress/Reuters

U.S. president-elect Barack Obama hugs his daughter, Malia, during a visit to a food bank in Chicago.

this is deep y’all…

Majority-rule decision making may appear to be straightforward, clean, and efficient, but appearances can be deceptive. We persistently ignore the radical inefficiency of creating an alienated minority of losers who sometimes leave the meeting determined to conduct a long-term guerrilla war to undermine the decision we thought we had made. Majority rule may not resolve the tension but merely drive it underground.

The democratic alternative to majority rule is consensus, a process often misunderstood even by people who claim to use it. Consensus does not mean that we can make a decision only when everyone involved is equally enthusiastic about a course of action; if it did, very few decisions would have been made this way! Consensus means that we can make a decision only when no one in the group feels a deep need to oppose it, usually on the grounds of conscience.

– Parker Palmer, from The Politics of the Brokenhearted

by Rob ‘Biko’ Baker originally posted at Wiretap

League of Young Voters’ director Biko Baker witnessed working-class youth and youth of color truly believe in change by participating in the election.

Young Organizers Speak: It’s A New Era

I’m not going to lie to you. When Barack Obama first kicked off his campaign less than two years ago I was more than a little skeptical. Like many of my peers from the Millennial Generation, it was hard for me to believe that a man of African decent had a legitimate shot at becoming the President of the United States. I love my country but, after all, the cannons of the US’s unique history are filled with tales of racial discrimination and ethnic prejudice.

But late last year my cynicism was challenged after I took a trip to Des Moines, Iowa to work with a group of high school students involved in the Brown and Black Presidential Forum. Over the years I have spent quite a bit of time in the small Midwestern city and never expected to see so many people from the Hawkeye state working so hard for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign. At the end of the day, Iowa is one of the whitest states in the union (not to mention Howard Dean’s ill fated effort in 04). But everywhere I went I ran into people, both young and old, who were anxious to tell me how excited they were that the freshman senator was running for President. Their belief in Obama’s campaign truly forced me to reevaluate my perception of the world.

Yet, while mainstream America’s embrace of Barack Obama challenged my worldview, it was undoubtedly the young people living in the League of Young Voter’s target communities that finally convinced me to sip the Obama Kool Aid. All across this country working-class youth and young people of color were standing up and saying that they wanted to be Americans too. Obama’s campaign inspired millions of young people under the age of 35 to became active participants in democracy. No longer feeling shut out of the electoral process, it didn’t matter if they picked up a clip board, performed a rap on YouTube, or forwarded a text message. For the first time the young people I work with on a daily basis were invested in the idea that they could truly change their country by electing a politician.

But don’t get it twisted, these young people aren’t naïve enough to believe that all of their problems are going to disappear because Obama will be the next President of the United States (I still can’t believe it!). In fact, the young people in in the League understand that they will continue to face insurmountable odds in truly achieving social mobility. They know well that their communities are facing tremendous financial difficulties, their friends and family members will continue to die in Iraq, and that their environment will continue to teeter on the brink of disaster because of the rapid effects of climate change. But I, along with my peers in the youth movement, truly believe that we have what it takes to conquer these challenges.

Of course, we’ve got a long way to go, if our generation is going to truly capitalize on yesterday’s many victories. Because if there is anything I’ve learned from this historic election season it’s that change won’t come easy. Especially in a country that has so many problems. After all, one election won’t make us less materialistic, reduce our dependence on foreign oil or make us more willing to embrace the rich diversity that exists in this nation. But our landslide victory does give us enough momentum to go into our country’s next chapter with enough confidence to believe that change is truly possible.

Today, I can truly tell you that I am no longer skeptical. After yesterday’s historic election, I honestly believe that this country can become a better place for all of us. It won’t come easy, but we proved that we are ready for a fight.

Rob ‘Biko’ Baker is the executive director of the League of Young Voters. He is also a nationally recognized hip hop organizer, journalist and scholar. Biko is a frequent contributor to The Source, WireTap and serves on Wiretap’s Editorial Board.

by: Vincent G. Harding, PhD. Reposted from from Boggs Center

Midwifing a New America
I think it was sometime early in 2007 that I began to find myself almost possessed by a profound premonitory sense that the next year, this year, 2008, would be filled with a special power. At first I was unable to articulate or explain my feeling with any more clarity than a deep and growing conviction that we were approaching what my Buddhist friends would call a propitious historical moment. Although I realized that the likelihood of an amazing presidential electoral possibility was a part of the story, I knew there was more at work. I began increasingly to suspect that there was a relentless connection in my mind (and heart) to the fact that the spring of 2008 would mark 40 years since the assassination of my friend and brother, Martin King. Grounded as I am in the biblical accounts of 40 days and nights of rain, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, 40 days of testing and preparation for Jesus’ ministry, I could not resist the possible symbolic associations and what meaning they might have.

Earlier this year I shared my ruminations with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a long-time friend and co-worker. Art said that he had often sought to understand the persistent presence and power of the number 40 in the Hebrew texts. What had begun to be evident to him, he reported, was the fact that while we usually speak in our culture of nine months as the normal time of a woman’s pregnancy before giving birth, the more precise and traditional period is actually given as 40 weeks. As soon as I heard Art’s words it became clearer to me what I had been feeling, sensing so deeply. And I began to try to articulate it for myself and others: Something is trying to be born in America. Again, I’m not quite certain what it is, but the new emerging reality seems firmly related to the visionary calls of King and the earlier urgent hope of Langston Hughes (”O, let America be America again/The land that never has been yet/and yet must be /The land where every [one] is free.”) Suffusing all of it I hear as well the beautiful wisdom and strong challenge of June Jordan: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

So as this year went on, as I sat one August night in Denver among the tens of thousands of on-site witnesses to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, it seemed obvious to me that my young brother was related to all of this, but more as an opening, an opportunity, a new space. He seems to offer the place where all the “we” people can stop our waiting and carry on our work to create the pathway, the birthing channel toward “The land that never has been yet, and yet must be.” Indeed, as I wrestled with Biblical symbols, the birthing imagery and the calls of Langston, Martin and June (herself the marvelous offspring of Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ann Braden and Amzie Moore), I could not escape another revelatory metaphor. Not only is something trying to be born in America, but some of us are called to be the midwives in this magnificent, desperately needed and so painfully creative process.

As so often happens, the midwife metaphor overtook me before I knew what it really meant. So I turned to Selena Green, a gifted, compassionate and socially-conscious midwife, and asked her to tell me something about what she does. Selena said that one of her most crucial roles, especially toward the final days of a pregnancy, was to help assure the mother that “you can do this,” and that she is not alone in the very difficult journey. Then this highly skilled practitioner shared with me another extraordinary element in the description of her loving ministry (of course Selena’s work deeply fulfills the basic definition of ministry as “an act of serving”). Often, especially in the last stages of a pregnancy, this spiritually-grounded companion of hope said she also speaks to the infant in the womb.

Recognizing the deep sense of safety and security experienced by the womb-kept child, imagining the great joy involved in having all his/her needs supplied almost effortlessly, Selena said she shares words of encouragement with the infant as well. Like a womb-whisperer, she says something like, “I know how good you feel, how surrounded you are by a protective nurturing ocean of love. I realize it feels as if this is the only world you need to know. But, my child, when you start to feel the urgent life forces beginning to move you down, to push you out, to press your tender head into that seemingly impossible opening, go. Let yourself move toward the light, painful though it may be. The fullness of your life is waiting for you on the other side. Go, come, my child. You can, you must make it through. You can do this.”

Even as Selena shared her marvelous work and words with me, I began to see their meaning for our nation and its social midwives. We Americans are both mother and infant, giving birth, seeking new life, full of fear, full of pain, turning away from the possibility of even more pain, feeling “the urgency of now,” wondering if we are able, afraid of what the new life demands and costs, fearful of giving up all we know (or think we know) so well, grasping all that keeps us from new beginning, from new life. Afraid of the pain, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the hope, we live urgently in need of midwives. Are we the ones?

Over the past several weeks, as I have shared these searching reflections with other people in what I like to call “democratic conversations,” my own perceptions have been expanded. For instance, in one of Atlanta’s Historic Black Colleges, a group of Morehouse men immediately grasped and celebrated the idea that they could be midwives for the nation (following in the steps of their most renowned alumnus, Martin Luther King, Jr.). In another Atlanta session two women who had given birth years before remembered their own labor. One of them recalled screaming, pleading with her midwife to find some way to stop the labor process and its agonizing pain. Then, she also shared with us the power that entered her being when her midwife urged her, encouraged her, helped her to face the pain; “turn into the pain, don’t run away,” her helper said. Facing the pain, the mother recalled, she endured and overcame. In Boston, a female hospice doctor called my attention to how much my womb-whisperer friend, Selena, was like their hospice service – helping, encouraging that fetus to give up one surely satisfying life for the great possibility of moving toward something magnificently more. So midwives and hospice attendants may work together in this powerful moment, helping us face the pain of dying and being born, letting America become the land that never has been yet, and yet must be.

Perhaps this deepening of my own vision was why I needed to return last week to Denver and share the midwife call in a class I was visiting at the Iliff School of Theology (where I taught for 23 years before retirement – whatever that means). There, a student came up to me at the end of the class, identified herself as a midwife and said “When I go through the pain with my mothers, not only do I say, ‘you can do it,’ I say, ‘you are doing it.’” Is it possible that those are the words, the hope needed for a nation now filled with political, social, economic and spiritual crisis? Perhaps the Chinese pictograph for the word “crisis” is the word that midwives must carry: “Crisis: time of great danger/time of great opportunity.” Perhaps we are the ones who will walk through the great danger into the marvelous opportunity for helping our nation begin in a new way to realize its best possibilities – to be born again. Perhaps we are not only the ones we’ve been waiting for, but we are the ones who have already begun to do the work of creating a more perfect union. And we are not alone.

~*~

Dr. Vincent G. Harding is an historian, author and activist who has participated in movements for compassionate justice and nonviolent social change since the late 1950s. He is professor emeritus of Religion & Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO and the co-founder of the Veterans of Hope Project. His books include: The Other American Revolution, There is a River, Vol. 1, Hope and History, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, and We Changed the World.

by Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.

My thoughts on the meaning of this historic moment.

“The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity—or it will move apart.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The United States has lived through 40 years of retrenchment in our national government’s commitment to social justice. We have suffered ugly culture war politics that have targeted the most vulnerable people in our country as scapegoats. The election results last night, the deteriorating economy, and changes in public mood now create an opening for transformational, progressive change. History teaches us that such openings are rare, and that we will realize the promise only if there is a dynamic relationship between political leadership and independent, organized movements that extend democratic practice beyond election day into governance.

What is the meaning of this incredible election? We’re seeing the convergence of several powerful forces that together create the possibility of transformative change: the rise of community organizing principles in our national political life; the dramatic erosion in the ideological standing of free-market fundamentalism; the seeds of a progressive alternative; and the emergence of a new progressive coalition.

Community Organizing to Center Stage
Who would have thought that a man whose formative experience was in community organizing would become President of the United States? Or that the very profession of community organizing would be seriously debated by the Presidential candidates? One of the most heartening things about this election is the embrace of community organizing in politics, and the embrace of politics by community organizing. The Obama campaign applied community organizing principles to an unprecedented scale—organizing volunteers to reach their neighbors through person to person contact. We’ve also seen the emergence of non-partisan, community-based voter programs as an alternative to the fly-by-night operations that parachute in and disappear after election day. Ten years ago, most community organizations avoided electoral politics. Today, nearly all are engaging their members and leaders, and the work is having an impact. CCC’s own efforts through our Community Voting Project, which registered more than 100,000 new voters and reached 250,000 new and infrequent voters of color, were a small part of an inspiring and broad-based movement. Progressives should keep faith with the principles of relationship, listening, volunteering, and authenticity that mark these efforts. The people engaged in this election will need to stay engaged to realize the promise of this moment.

Free Market Fundamentalism On the Ropes
The inability of free-market fundamentalists, from Alan Greenspan to John McCain, to defend their ideas or the application of them in the crucible of the current economic crisis has created an opening for a new economic paradigm. The election was a referendum on free-market fundamentalism, and it suffered a vote of no confidence. However, if we do not succeed in advancing a different set of ideas—grounded in values and manifested in bold policy proposals—the bankrupt ideology of free markets will be resurrected, to the detriment of all of us. We have a moment to make our case clearly and compellingly, as FDR and Reagan did in their very different ways, win the battle of big ideas, and create a new consensus before the moment and mandate are lost.

A New Progressive Story
At his best, Senator Obama articulates a new framework for progressive politics in America that upholds community values of inclusion, mutual responsibility, and connectedness. At a forum that the Center for Community Change organized in 2007 in Des Moines in conjunction with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, he said that “this idea of community values is not just the cause of a campaign for me. It is the cause of my life.” He has consistently told a story that draws on the ways that we stand on the shoulders of people who came before us—from abolitionists to suffragists to union organizers—who have agitated for greater inclusion. And he talks about how our fates are linked—so that an economy that does not respect work will be bad not only for workers, but ultimately for everyone because it undermines the conditions for prosperity.

This narrative is obviously different from the toxic stew of free-market fundamentalism and culture war politics that have been the staple of conservatism since Goldwater and Nixon. But it is also refreshingly different language from the triangulating centrism of the 1990s that tried to defang the appeal of conservative ideas by accommodating them. And although it has clear affinity with the economic populist and identity politics strains that have played such a strong role in progressive movements historically, it embraces the principles in a new way that stresses our common destiny. This new story could turn out to be a warm and fuzzy rhetorical gloss for conventional, small-bore policy proposals that fail to capture the public imagination and avoid confronting entrenched interests. Or the new narrative could create the ground and rationale for more sweeping, transformative changes. One of the key challenges for the progressive movement in this era will be to develop and tell a coherent story about what’s wrong with the country, how we got here and how we can move forward—not just at the level of specific policies, but raising up larger principles. This fledgling, emergent progressive story has real promise if it is coupled with movement and with big policy proposals that reinforce the story.

A New Progressive Coalition
The election results reflect the emergence of a new majority coalition, based above all in a strategy to expand the electorate. Massive turnout by African Americans, Latinos, new immigrants, young people and women provide a foundation for progressive politics and policy making for a generation. Voter mobilization efforts clearly played an important role in driving up turnout in all these demographics. This coalition is breaking some old orthodoxies—showing great potential for progressives in what was long viewed as the “flyover country” of the south and the southwest, and demonstrating that progressives can win a mandate by expanding the electorate and the playing field. Demographics are not destiny, however, and it is important to underscore that the durability of the coalition will likely depend on whether these constituencies feel they have been heard and heeded in governance.

The Twin Challenges for Progressives in This New Era
Progressives face two major strategic questions as we enter this new era. First, will we articulate a bold new vision for the economy and the country, and push for transformative policy changes? Or will we play small ball? Second, how will we reckon with the realities of race that have always been the shoals on which progressive movements have foundered, notwithstanding this historic victory for an African American candidate for President for the first time in our history?

A growing number of commentators are cautioning against “over-reaching” by a newly empowered President and Congress, despite abundant evidence that the public mood has shifted and that our country’s predicament requires bold, imaginative action. This cautious impulse, which has its strongest appeal inside the Beltway, stretches across partisan lines, with former Bush aide Matthew Dowd cautioning Obama to “govern from the center, where the vast majority of the country is,” while Clinton adviser Mark Penn writes an op-ed for The Financial Times titled “Political Lesson for America: Stick to Centrism.” The problem with these pronouncements is that the conservative consensus it reflects is breaking down and the “center” of American politics is moving: away from a “you’re on your own” conception of the role of individuals, markets and society, toward community values—the idea that we are in it together, and that our fates are linked.

We have a chance to deliver meaningful changes in people’s lives, and in so doing show people that their participation in politics actually translates into change they can see, touch and feel. A more robust role for the government through greater regulation, public investment and universal health care are examples of policies that can restore confidence in government—the essential condition for progressive governance. We can also fight for and win structural changes that fundamentally alter the ways power operates in our society—such as the Employee Free Choice Act and immigration reform that would provide a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented immigrants. These kinds of changes would not only make the lives of workers and immigrants better, but would strengthen the voice of these constituencies, which would in turn strengthen the progressive movement.

Given the nature of the moment we’re in, a transformative agenda would necessarily begin with and center on the economy, and tie these various issues and others into a coherent story. The narrative would start from the principle of interdependence or shared fate, the idea that, as King put it, “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” When President-elect Obama said in his acceptance speech that Wall Street cannot ultimately do well when Main Street is hurting, he was making exactly this point. The second core idea, foundational to a stronger role for government, is that individual gain is not by itself a sound basis for economic policy. The “you’re on your own” ideology has obviously failed to deliver, and the great lesson of this crisis is that we risk economic insecurity for everyone when we allow the individual drive for private wealth to trump our collective quality of life. Solutions from universal health care to mortgage relief, stronger corporate accountability and public job creation all make sense in a framework grounded in these principles.

We should all be moved by the historic significance of this election but be wary about the narrative that Obama’s election is the harbinger of a “colorblind” society, because this conception of race will be used to undercut a progressive, transformative agenda. In its extraordinary endorsement of Barack Obama, The Economist made the remarkable claim that one of the benefits of an Obama victory is that it would “lessen the tendency of American blacks to blame all their problems on racism.” Breathtaking.

Nearly every issue that will come up in 2009 will have a strong racial dimension. Sometimes the question will be explicit, as in the case of how progressives handle demands for immigration reform, or when conservatives try to undermine support for universal health insurance by raising the specter that undocumented immigrants will be principal beneficiaries. The first test for progressives on this score may come early, when Congress must decide whether or not to include legal immigrant children in the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. In other cases, race will be the subtext—as when we debate how a new jobs program is structured and who will be hired, or when we consider how to rebuild a safety net for the unemployed and who is and is not covered. A genuinely progressive movement will insist that race does matter—and therefore that we have to be race conscious in how we construct policies. If we do not take race seriously, we will leave people out and leave people behind, de-energize the emerging progressive coalition, and leave ourselves vulnerable to conservative wedge attacks.

The Need for Movement
One of the great themes of American history is the role of outside agitation in achieving transformative policy changes. FDR campaigned on (of all things!) a balanced budget as the central plank of his first campaign effort, but swiftly abandoned this crazy idea in favor of a radical economic program in response both to the deterioration of the economy and to pressure from below. Lincoln famously switched his position on the abolition of slavery, and the role of abolitionists (in particular, Frederick Douglas) in shaping the debate was critical. Women won the right to vote only after decades of bold activism by suffragists. It was the Selma march that finally pressured LBJ to embrace and push for the Voting Rights Act.

No one should harbor any illusions that a Democratic President and large Democratic majorities in Congress will translate automatically into transformative policy change (see: Jimmy Carter 1977-1978; Bill Clinton 1993-1994).

It will take broad and deep organizing at scale to create public will and political appetite for major policy changes. This principle applies at the micro level—the need to win public support district by district and state by state in order to generate the 218 House votes and (typically) 60 Senate votes required to pass most significant legislation. It also applies at the macro level—a sense of movement must be created to shape the public debate and create demand, using mass mobilizations, rallies, sophisticated media work and door to door and church by church outreach to enlist people in the fight.

At the same time, for those of us who have spent our careers working largely in opposition to bad ideas, the task in these times is different and we are called to change our ways of thinking and acting accordingly. We will need to engage constructively on the “inside” even as we push on the “outside.” We have to push for big progressive solutions, and break the habits of technocratic policy incrementalism. We will need to articulate new ideas, plans and framing that speak to the times and deliver solutions on a scale that reinforces the progressive coalition that is emerging. Perhaps most importantly, we will need to work tirelessly to create the public will to see those policies enacted in the face of significant opposition and establishment caution. The methods and values of community organizing that were brought to bear in the elections to such great effect will now need to be applied on a massive and unprecedented scale in grassroots advocacy. And we’ll need to work together across issue, constituency, organization and function, so that our organizing, ideas and communications work drive towards common goals.

Perhaps the greatest risk in this moment is complacency, a false sense that new elected leadership can, by themselves, take us from here to there. There is no time to rest. Our work has just begun. The moral yardstick we might use in these amazing times? FDR nailed it: “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Deepak Bhargava is executive director of the Center for Community Change.

By Van Jones, The Nation.

To do that we need a broad effort of wise, compassionate forces in society and the enlightened self-interest of the green business community.

My background is in the struggles for racial justice and criminal justice reform. As such, I’ve always felt an affinity for Cinque, the hero of the slave-revolt movie Amistad. In that film, based on a true story, the righteous, enslaved Africans fight back and take over the slave ship.

The people at the bottom rise up — taking their destiny into their own hands. It’s really a metaphor for the last century’s version of racial politics. The slave ship is earth, the white slavers are the world’s oppressors and the African captives are the world’s oppressed. The point is for the oppressed to confront and defeat their oppressors. I took that as my mission and spent years fighting against superjails, rogue cops, the prison lobby — against the forces that, to my mind and the minds of many, are the slavers of today.

Yet at a certain point it occurred to me that what we need is less investment in the fight against and more energy in the fight for: for positive alternatives to violence and incarceration. It was around that time that I got involved in the environmental movement. And I came to understand that the answer to our social, economic and ecological crises can be one and the same: a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Society faces some huge challenges. The individuals, entrepreneurs and community leaders who will step up to make the repairs and changes are going to need help. They require and deserve a world-class partner in our government. The time has come for a public-private community partnership to fix this country and put it back to work. In the framework of a Green New Deal, the government would become a powerful partner to the problem solvers of the world — and not the problem makers.

Now, we cannot achieve the goal of a Green New Deal just by wishing for it. The first step in getting the government to support an inclusive, green economy is to build a durable political coalition.

On the one hand, there are large and powerful constituencies of white, affluent, college-educated progressives active in the United States. They are passionate about the environment, fair trade, economic justice and global peace. Unfortunately, many do not yet work in concert with people of color in their own country to pursue this agenda; they champion “alternative economic development strategies” across the globe, but not across town. These people could be great allies in uplifting our inner cities if they are given encouragement and a clear opportunity to do so.

On the other hand, many groups of people of color do not want to work in coalition with majority white organizations and white leaders. Many fear betrayal; others resent chronic white arrogance. Cultural differences and power imbalances create tensions; some organizations are actually committed to a racially exclusive ideology. Even though such organizations could benefit from additional allies and outside assistance, the very folks who could most benefit from a green opportunity agenda are loath to get involved.

Taken together, this means that the various US social change movements today are still nearly as racially segregated as the rest of society. This is a moral tragedy. And it is a tremendous barrier to building sufficient power to advance a positive social change agenda for anyone and everyone. Breaking through this standoff is a critical first step toward building a New Deal coalition for the new century — which would be the only thing dynamic, diverse and powerful enough to overcome the obstacles to progress.

In the New Deal period, it was a broad electoral coalition that moved the government onto the side of ordinary people, not FDR alone. Farmers, workers, ethnic minorities, students, intellectuals, progressive bankers and forward-thinking business leaders all joined forces at the ballot box to support FDR and his Congressional backers as they worked to revive the economy.

To accomplish our tasks today, we need a similar force: an electoral New Deal coalition for our time. Let’s call it the Green Growth Alliance. Such an alliance would be a broad effort fusing wise, compassionate forces in civil society with the enlightened self-interest of the rising green business community.

On the civil society side, five main partners should make up the Green Growth Alliance:

Labor. Organized labor has been in steep decline over the past few decades, but it remains the best and most stalwart defender of working people’s interests — in the workplace and beyond. Policies that lead to the retrofitting and green rebuilding of the nation will give unions a tremendous opportunity to expand and diversify their ranks. If the unions and green business leaders can identify win-win compromises on wages and other issues, they can work together to pass legislation that will help both sides.

Social justice activists. Legions of people have committed themselves to the ideal of opportunity for all. Advocates for economic justice, civil rights, immigrants’ rights, women’s rights, disability rights, gay rights, veterans’ rights and other causes should seize the opportunity to ensure that the new, green economy has the principles of diversity and inclusion baked in from the beginning.

Environmentalists. With their large organizations, broad networks, Beltway savvy and large budgets, the mainstream environmental organizations have tremendous assets to bring to bear in the effort to green the country. Now they have a chance to turn the page on decades of perceived elitism by working as better collaborators with other sectors of society. An exchange of knowledge, experience and even personnel between the mainstream environmentalists and social justice groups would be healthy and invigorating for everyone.

Students. Students’ energy and enthusiasm have already turned up the heat in the movement to prevent catastrophic climate change. Just a few years ago, it was considered outlandish for anyone to call for an aggressive target like an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2050. But youth-centered efforts like Step It Up, Focus the Nation and the Energy Action Coalition have already made “80 by ‘50″ a mainstream demand — accepted by presidential candidates and even energy-company CEOs. As more racially diverse groups like the League of Young Voters, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative and Young People For (YP4) join the movement, the sky is the limit for the next generation’s leadership role.

Faith organizations. The moral framework suggested by the three principles of social-uplift environmentalism (equal protection, equal opportunity and reverence for all creation) should attract faith leaders and congregants. Many are looking for alternatives to the divisive fundamentalism that has taken up a great deal of airtime lately. The idea of “creation care” is a positive alternative frame that can help faith communities move into action as part of the Green Growth Alliance.

These five forces, in alliance with green business, can change the face of politics in this country. Their goal would be straightforward: to win government policy that promotes the interests of green capital and green technology over the interests of gray capital (extractive industries, fossil-fuel companies) in a way that spreads the benefits as widely as possible. The idea would be to resolve the economic, ecological and social crises on terms that maximally favor green capital and ordinary people.

Fortunately, the Green Growth Alliance is not just a theoretical necessity. It is already becoming a practical reality. National organizations like the Apollo Alliance and the Blue Green Alliance have come on the scene, promoting good jobs in the clean-energy sector. The Apollo Alliance incudes labor unions, environmental organizations, community-based groups and businesses; the Blue Green Alliance is a partnership of the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers, recently joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Communications Workers.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection is also reaching out broadly to engage new sectors in the battle to avert catastrophic climate change. And the new kids on the block — 1Sky and Green for All — are engaging important constituencies like PTA moms and African-American ministers.

Despite these developments, the notion that a politics centered on green solutions could build a muscular governing majority in the United States still seems doubtful. That is because the “green movement” seems to be the cushy home of such a thin and unrepresentative slice of the public.

The fact is, when many ordinary people hear the term “green,” they still automatically think the message is probably for a fancy, elite set — not for themselves. And as long as that remains true, the green movement will remain too anemic politically and too alien culturally to rescue the country.

Enlightened, affluent people who embrace green values do a great deal of good for the country and the earth — and they are making an important difference every day. But nobody should make the mistake of believing that a small circle of highly educated, upper-income enviros can unite America and lead it all by themselves. Eco-elite politics can’t even unite California.

If you doubt me, let’s examine a recent statewide election in California to see how eco-elitism can actually set back environmental initiatives — even very thoughtful and well-financed ones, even in places where the overall support for environmentalism is relatively high. Everyone loves to praise GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing global-warming legislation in 2006. Yet few discuss the fact that just a few months later, the majority of California voters rejected a clean-energy ballot measure called Proposition 87.

This defeat holds many lessons for us going forward. The idea for Prop 87 was brilliant in its simplicity: California would start taxing the oil and gas that oil companies extract from our soil and shores. This state-level oil tax would generate immense revenues that would go into a huge “clean-energy” research and technology fund — totaling $4 billion over ten years.

At first, the measure was polling off the charts. Victory seemed certain. But in the end, Californians rejected the measure, 55 percent to 45 percent. Why? Mainly because Big Oil convinced ordinary Californians that the price tag would be too high for them to bear. The oil and gas industry spent $95 million warning that the tax would be passed along to consumers. It suggested that the tax would push gas and home-energy costs through the roof and hurt the poorest Californians. And in the end, the biggest clean-energy ballot measure in the country went down.

The defeat of Prop 87 should sound a clear warning for all of us as we work to birth a green, postcarbon economy. We must recognize and celebrate the fact that well-off champions of the environment will be indispensable to any coalition effort. In fact, it is their business smarts, monetary resources, social standing and political savvy that have propelled the green wave to this point. But at the same time, the eco-elite cannot win major change alone. After all, if a Prop 87-style collapse is possible in the Golden State, what do you think will happen in the other forty-nine?

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people. The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Eco-populism would always foreground those green solutions that can improve ordinary people’s standard of living — and decrease their cost of living.

But bringing people of different races and classes and backgrounds together under a single banner is tougher than it sounds. I have been trying to bridge this divide for nearly a decade. And I learned a few things along the way.

What I found is that leaders from impoverished areas like Oakland, California, tended to focus on three areas: social justice, political solutions and social change. They cared primarily about “the people.” They focused their efforts on fixing schools, improving healthcare, defending civil rights and reducing the prison population. Their “social change” work involved lobbying, campaigning and protesting. They were wary of businesses; instead, they turned to the political system and government to help solve the problems of the community.

The leaders I met from affluent places like Marin County (just north of San Francisco), San Francisco and Silicon Valley had what seemed to be the opposite approach. Their three focus areas were ecology, business solutions and “inner change.” They were champions of “the planet” — rainforests and important species like whales and polar bears. Many were dedicated to inner-change work, including meditation and yoga. And they put a great deal of stress on making wise, earth-honoring consumer choices. In fact, many were either green entrepreneurs or investors in eco-friendly businesses.

Every effort I made to get the two groups together initially was a disaster — sometimes ending in tears, anger and slammed doors. Trying to make sense of the differences, I wrote out three binaries on a napkin:

1. Ecology vs. Social Justice

2. Business Solutions (Entrepreneurship) vs. Political Solutions (Activism)

3. Spiritual/Inner Change vs. Social/Outer Change

People on both sides of the equation tended to think that their preferences precluded any serious consideration of the options presented on the opposite side.

Increasingly, I saw the value and importance of both approaches. I thought, What would we have if we replaced those “versus” symbols with “plus” signs? What if we built a movement at the intersection of the ecology and social justice movements, of entrepreneurship and activism, of inner change and social change? What if we didn’t just have hybrid cars — what if we had a hybrid movement?

To return to the metaphor of the slave ship Amistad, the question in my mind has become, What if those rebel Africans, while still in chains, had looked out and noticed the name of their ship was not the Amistad but the Titanic? How would that fact have affected their mission? What would change if they knew the entire ship was imperiled, that everyone on it — the slavers and enslaved — could all die if the ship continued on its course, unchanged?

The rebels suddenly would have had a very different set of leadership challenges. They would have had the obligation not just to liberate the captives but also to save the entire ship. In fact, the hero would be the one who found a way to save everyone on board — including the slavers. And the urgency of freeing the captives would have been that much greater — because the smarts and the effort of everyone would have been needed to save everyone.

For the sake of the ship — our planet — and all aboard it, the effort to go green must be all hands on deck.

We can take the unfinished business of America on questions of inclusion and equal opportunity and combine it with the new business of building a green economy, thereby healing the country on two fronts and redeeming the soul of the nation. We must.