The Consortium Report

Michelle Obama: Hillary Made Barack a Better Candidate

DENVER–Today’s meeting of the Democratic Women’s Caucus featured a surprise guest: Michelle Obama.

The potential first lady is making a concerted effort, it seems, to reach out to the different women’s constituency groups in the Democratic party, including those closely allied with Hillary Clinton. (Earlier this week, Michelle Obama spoke to a gathering sponsored by Emily’s List, the organization that bundles donations to fund pro-choice candidates.)

In today’s remarks, Ms. Obama offered Hillary Clinton some major props, saying, “Thanks to her, my husband is a better candidate.” The ballroom full of women echoed with cheers and applause. “Thanks to her,” Michelle Obama continued, “his campaign is a better campaign. And thanks to her, my daughters — and all of our daughters — have the freedom to dream bigger dreams…”

Michelle Obama went on to list the causes dear to the hearts of caucus-goers: healthcare, equal pay, reproductive rights. She spoke rather poignantly of the tensions of being a mother who works outside the home, saying she often feels she short-changing her daughters when she’s at work or on the campaign trail, and feels she’s giving the job and the campaign short shrift when she focuses on her girls. “We all known that guilt,” she said, “and I know I can get an ‘amen’ on that.” The audience shouted back, “Amen.”

Her remarks ended in an appeal to the party’s women activists to redouble their efforts on behalf of the Obama campaign. Predicting the upcoming election to be “a tight contest,” Michelle Obama told a roomful of admirers, “Women are going to make the difference in this campaign…I am going to need you every step of the way.”

See more tagged with: Barack Obama, bigtentdenver, Democratic National Convention, DNC, gender gap, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Womens Caucus and womens issues

Donna Brazile Votes to Place Hillary’s Name in Nomination

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Tue., Aug 26, 2008
Filed under: Democratic National Convention 08

DENVER–At the DNC Women’s Caucus meeting at the Colorado Convention
Center, Donna Brazile whipped the crowd into a frenzy with stirring
remarks that invoked a host of iconic African-American women leaders
in the Democratic party, and expressed respect for Hillary Clinton, as
well as pragmatic politics.

Throughout the primary season, Brazile, the CNN commentator who ran Al
Gore’s popular-vote-winning presidential campaign, remained neutral.
Many assumed a certain sympathy toward Obama, and Brazile was one of
the first to publicly object to Bill Clinton’s remarks in South
Carolina, when the former president compared Obama’s prospects in the
state to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 — remarks Brazile called “depressing.”

At today’s gathering of Democratic women, Brazile made an announcement
that began with a bit of a fake-out. “I am honored that I had the
chance now to circulate a petition some 24 years ago to put Jesse
Jackson’s name in nomination,” she said. “Last night, I signed my name
to place Hillary Clinton’s name in nomination.” The crowed roared in
appreciation. “I did it in honor of the woman who was unbought and
unbossed: Shirley Chisholm,” Brazile continued. “I did that in honor
of the first black woman to ever deliver the keynote speech at a
Democratic National Convention: Barbara Jordan. ” And then, calling
the name of one of Hillary Clinton’s most stalwart supporters, the
late Ohio congresswoman who broke barriers of race and gender, she
added, ” I did that in honor of Stephanie Tubbs Jones.”

But always pragmatic, Brazile made a point that seemed to be directed
at the early Obama supporters in the room, saying she signed the
petition for Clinton’s nomination “because Barack Obama understands
that a united Democratic party is a victorious Democratic party in
2008.”

–Adele M. Stan
The Media Consortium

See more tagged with: 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, bigtentmedia, Democratic National Convention, DNC, Donna Brazile, Hillary Clinton and Womens Caucus

Live From Main Street
What Will the Green Economy Look Like?

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Thu., Aug 21, 2008
Filed under: Green • Live From Main Street • Media Consortium: journalism project

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We all say we want to go green, but do we all see the same kinds of change when we imagine an eco-friendly economy?

By Adele M. Stan
The Media Consortium

In Denver, Colo., Tom Plant, director of the Governor’s Energy Office, is practically giddy. It’s just days before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Colorado’s biggest city, and a long-sought goal in Gov. Bill Ritter’s New Energy Economy program has just been met: Vestas, the Danish wind-turbine manufacturer, has announced its plan to open a new manufacturing plant just outside the city limits — its second in the state.

Plant reels off some numbers: 1,350 new jobs at the new Vestas plant; 650 employees already employed at another the Vesta plant that opened last March, and the prospect of an additional 400 workers at a plant expected to open two years from now. Colorado now generates more than a gigawatt of energy through renewable energy sources — three-quarters of that created in the 18 months since his boss took office.

And how many people does he expect to arrive with the convention?

“About a gazillion, I think,” Plant says, laughing. “Maybe two gazillion.”

A cleaner, greener future has long occupied the dreams of progressives. With an historic “change” election upon us and a crisis in fuel pricing and climate change, the moment appears at hand for the public to accept profound changes in our way of life and the very structure of our economy.

Economists and philosophers, community organizers and labor negotiators, all see in the current crisis an opportunity to create change that reaches beyond the immediate boon of a cleaner environment. Some look through the green crystal ball and see new opportunities for industry or a revitalized labor movement. Others see a new role for government as a change-maker, and still others see a quantum leap in the evolution of the human soul. As goals, they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive. But the paths imagined by green advocates don’t always converge. Already the sound of dissonance is audible between those who envision a completely new economic model, and those who seek to work with and clean up the old one.

Democratic Party officials surely had the “change” theme of this year’s presidential campaign in mind when they chose Colorado to host their convention. The Colorado legislature swung from its traditional red to blue when Ritter, the state’s first Democratic governor in 50 years to enjoy a legislative majority, rode into office in 2006, promising a new and vibrant state economy that capitalized on the crisis of global climate change.

Ritter’s New Energy Economy plan got a jump start before he was even elected, with the passage of a ballot measure in 2004 that called for the state’s utilities to bring the level of renewable energy sources in their portfolios up to 10 percent by the year 2015. Executives at Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, protested loudly, then went on to meet the standard eight years ahead of schedule. This year, Xcel’s lobbyists urged a doubling of the standard.

While Colorado’s mandate for renewable sources from its energy providers may have caught the attention of Vestas and other green technology companies, Plant sees something much bigger in their expansion. “When a company like Vestas locates 2,500 jobs in Colorado, it’s not to feed an entirely Colorado demand; I mean, they’re looking at the entire country,” Plant says.

Plant isn’t alone in seeing an opportunity to improve the economic fortunes of everyday Americans in the climate crisis.

Carla Din, Western field director of the Apollo Alliance, doesn’t think she’s asking for much: all she wants is a raft of green energy projects in California that build partnerships between organized labor, developers, environmentalists, social justice advocates and government. The Apollo Alliance seeks to build coalitions among interests that often conflict — such as labor and business — with a focus on meeting the needs of a green economy.

“We’re talking about retooling existing structures, but also about utilizing the workforce that has been in these areas … forever,” Din says.”For instance, the sheet metal workers, the plumbers and pipe-fitters… A lot of these workers are working in targeted industries that will need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions for compliance with climate change laws.”

Legislatures in 25 states have passed laws like Colorado’s that require utilities to meet new standards for a minimum percentage of renewable energy sources in their portfolios. (California has the most comprehensive law, designed to reduce greenhouse emissions by 30 percent over the next 12 years.) The Apollo Alliance also advocates legislation that sets efficiency standards for the energy used by state government facilities and weds those requirements to fair labor standards for the workers who will do the required construction.

Asked if the labor movement will need to reshape the industrial-era structure of its trades sector, characterized by individual unions for distinct specialties, Din bristles a bit. “I don’t necessarily think things have to be restructured; I think things have to be done strategically and efficiently with a lot of cross-pollination.”

But a revolution on the scale required to reshape the economy and save the planet just won’t happen without a fundamental change in the way people regard their place in the world, says Oakleigh Thorne II of the Thorne Ecological Institute, an education center he founded more than 50 years ago in Boulder, Colo. Applying the old economic principle of unbridled growth to green industries just won’t do, he says. Thorne argues that the same principles that govern ecological systems control economic systems, as well. “If you violate ecological principles you might be able to make a fast buck on the short term,” he says, “but long-term, you’ll have an economic disaster.”

Van Jones, president of Green For All in Oakland, Calif., wants nothing less from a new green economy than the alleviation of poverty — and a few other things. Voicing a more urgent imperative in the threat of global climate change, Jones, who will be featured as a panelist at The Media Consortium’s Live From Main Street program in Denver on Sunday, sees a world of possibilities in an economy gone green.

The revitalization of urban America could reach into the city’s core, says Jones, with green-collar jobs for those who today struggle to find good-paying work — not to mention the health benefits for residents who today choke with asthma on fumes and city soot. While Green For All advocates legislative remedies, that’s just where its efforts begin. If the kind of change he’s talking about is to be made, Jones says, the current economy will need some radical adjustments.

Models used by today’s economists, Jones explains, are based on notions developed in the 19th century. “Whether left or right,” Jones says, “[these models] had one almost unspoken assumption, which is that you’re going to have an awful lot of nature and very few people. So you find these weird terms, like ‘inexhaustible resources’… Now you’re living in a world where you have an awful lot of people and shockingly little nature left.”

You can’t tinker with the equation to fix the flaw in that model, he says. “If you … have to break up with oil and coal, you may as well break up with poverty and a bunch of other stuff, anyway,” insists Jones, whose book, The Green-Collar Economy, is due from HarperCollins in October.

Economist James Galbraith is frustrated by the lack of attention to the climate crisis by his colleagues. “Where is the economic school of thought that addresses the impact of climate change?” he asks. Except for the work of one or two economists, he says, “it doesn’t exist.” Galbraith, a professor at University of Texas (Austin), says solving the crisis will require a complete reordering of universities to foster collaboration across disciplines.

In his recently released book, The Predator State, Galbraith pleads a case for Democrats to abandon the so-called free market system, since Republicans have clearly done so over the last eight years, as demonstrated by a series of bailouts, manipulations and deficit spending. Galbraith suggests, the challenge of heading off the perils of global climate change offers a jumping-off point from which to launch a new, more beneficial economic system. “It’s a sensible application,” he says. That new system will feature of hybrid of government planning, regulated markets and institutions that foster innovation.

Like Jones, Galbraith sees in the current economic and ecological crises the potential to reinvent decaying societal structures and create entirely new ones. But when asked if it is time for a new New Deal, Galbraith offers a caution against “reaching back to a glorious moment and calling for the revival of an old solution.” One thing the next president and Congress should do, Galbraith says, is to create national-level institutions on the order of our great national laboratories, like the National Institutes of Health or NASA, designed to address the climate crisis.

Nothing less than the sort of effort the U.S. mounted when mobilizing for World War II will create the enterprise needed to address climate change and energy independence in ways that will restructure the economy for the better, Galbraith adds. Folded into that enterprise, he says, should be a goal for universal broadband access (”It’s carbon-neutral”) and a national infrastructure project that does not simply repair decaying structures, but completely redesigns roads, bridges and transportation in ways that are energy-efficient and create sustainable communities.

For his part, Jones sees more creative energy for reinventing the economy coming from the human heart and mind — what he calls “the revolution within” — than from existing institutions. “Why be stuck with these little single-issue not-for-profits and broken-up academic departments trying to solve this thing from inside of it?” he asks. Thinking about this crisis needs to be simplified, not made more complex, he explains. “You know, the reason that Green For All has the name it has is ’cause it’s what a child would say… You gotta get back to the complete innocence of childhood.”

Where Jones calls for a return to innocence, Thorne calls for simplification of our lives, a goal Galbraith also seeks through his economist’s lens, noting, for instance, the efficiency of shortening the food chain.

But Thorne’s philosophy, the “deep ecology” first proposed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, hangs on more than simplicity; it urges humility in human interaction with the rest of creation. “This integral consciousness is the next step… Out of the consciousness will come the cultural change. Consciousness is always ahead of culture.”

Yet even within the green economy movement, consciousness has its limits. Where thinkers like Jones and Galbraith see a sort of creative destruction in allowing the structures of yesterday fall away to make room for the new, pragmatists like Din and Plant have high hopes for greening the industrial model. Conflicts inherent in these two visions could be the next big test of the progressive movement.

This article is part of The Media Consortium’s Live From Main Street series, and is published in conjunction with the next Live From Main Street program, “So You Say You Want Change? Exploring the Conflicts and Opportunities Ahead.” Hosted by Laura Flanders of GRITtv, the town hall will feature Van Jones of Green For All, who is interviewed in the article, and a number of other progressive leaders, including Rep. Donna Edwards, Polly Baca, David Sirota, Faye Wattleton, Andre Banks and Lee Camp of Laughing Liberally. This edition of Live From Main Street will tape on Sunday, August 24 at 4:00 p.m. MST in Denver. The town hall will be streamed live and can be viewed at www.livefrommainstreet.org.

The taping is open to the public: click here for more details; Click here to RSVP to this event.

See more tagged with: Apollo Alliance, Carla Din, Colorado, Democratic National Convention, DNC, James K. Galbraith, Live From Main Street, Oakleigh Thorne, renewable energy, The Predator State, Thorne Insititute, Tom Plant, Van Jones, Vestas and wind power

Live From Main Street
What Will the Green Economy Look Like?

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Thu., Aug 21, 2008
Filed under: Economy • Green • Live From Main Street • Media Consortium: journalism project