033: Sunrise Sit-ins & a New Social Contract

As The New World burns into Old World ruins, climate chaos warps the safely contoured psychic borders between the dystopian films we watch inside versus the reality of scorched skies and deadly plagues outside. To build a world worth living for, we must find a way to transform our economies, build resilient communities of zero-carbon housing for all and keep fossil fuels in the ground – all while racing against the terrifying ten-year window of opportunity still left to avoid a catastrophic, civilization-ending bio-collapse. But after decades of fumbles and false starts in the environmental movement, a new dawn might be rising. Just one month after the IPCC's alarming 2018 report, The Sunrise Movement and AOC stormed Nancy Pelosi's office, demanding bold action to secure good jobs and a livable future. Just months later, AOC and Ed Markey would go on to introduce resolutions for The Green New Deal in the US Congress. Two years after the viral media success of the Sunrise sit-in, the movement's co-founders have put out a big, thick book called Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. This volume arrives amid a wave of recent books from writers, activists, and scholars raising urgent calls for a Green New Deal. This anthology presents a collection of endorsements from famous thinkers and organizers of the broader Left who make up the voices of its 16 chapters; so, in accord with that project, we offer this episode as an additional chapter of endorsement; one too radical for its publisher, Simon & Schuster, to find "fit for print." So while this book's target audience is presumably those liberals who are merely Green-New-Deal-Curious, we hope it will serve to expand the massive choir needed to sing a collective chorus for eco-socialism and the end of capitalism. In order to progress towards a just, utopian horizon, we must burn down old myths, heal our cities, and build a world where our collective responsibility to provide each other with the material means for a dignified life is the basis of a new social contract. The world we deserve is one that's as happy & wild as a child's mind in playful abandon.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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