Coming Clean, Going Green Students rally following Energy Symposium

Author: Aylie Baker

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960's dealt with issues of black and white. If you ask Van Jones, eco-visionary and human rights attorney, today that movement could be fought for green.

"We all agree that we don't have any throwaway resources, species, energy sources," said Jones in his keynote address of last week's "Energy Symposium." But "we also don't have any throwaway neighborhoods or throwaway children. It's all precious."

"Who are you going to take with you, who are you going to leave behind?" Jones asked of a full Dana Auditorium. "When the fires hit California this coming summer because of global warming, what's going to happen to the poor people living there? These are the questions we should be asking ourselves right now."

Just over a week after his address, Jones' message continues to resonate on campus. Students from groups across campus are rallying in an effort to not only answer Jones' questions but also to see their own solutions put into action.

"I am here because I am jealous, envious, bitter - the opportunity that you have, standing on the front end of this century, is unbelievable," opened Jones in his address, "The New Dream: Updating Martin Luther King's Vision to Meet Today's Ecological and Social Challenges."

In his speech, Jones described how he looks to inject today's growing climate change movement with a necessary social dimension.

If everything is precious, where does one begin a social movement? Jones described the inherent difficulties that arise in tackling social and environmental problems.

"If you look at it as issue, issue, issue, you'll get confused," he insisted. "There's no issues. There's one solution. It's a Green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

So what's a Green economy?

Environmentalism is crossing into a new era. It's moved beyond conservationism and regulation. Today, we're investing in solutions.

"We're investing in the technology of the future," as Jones puts it.

Leading the audience through his slides, Jones paused on a seemingly odd montage of pictures. "This is Cameron Diaz getting into a Prius. This is George Clooney getting into an electric car," he said, inviting laughter in the audience. "Big, big people are jumping on your bandwagon."

"Your values are already winning," Jones insisted. "The green wave is not a marginal fringe, countercultural thing anymore, it is a huge massive intervention for the U.S. economy, growing on a vertical."

Given current trends, he predicts that next year investments in Clean Technology will outstrip those of Internet Technology.

This is where the social element comes into play. Given the exponential nature of investment in today's Clean Technology, thousands of new jobs will soon spring up.

"Somebody's got to put up those solar panels," he explained, "they're on their way to being an electrical engineer - It's a green pathway out of poverty."

Jones pointed to Oakland, California as an area in which the Green economy and its social applications are slowly being realized. In Oakland, he explained, "we're fighting for the Green economy because we're fighting for our lives." The city was the murder capital of the country last year. "We've got kids who've gone to more funerals than fair grounds in junior high school."

Too often Jones said he has seen Oakland youth fall into drug dealing and crime.

"We want you [kids] to be in the middle, not the fringe, not the afterthought, the center of an agenda that says we want you to be apart of saving the world." Oakland is on its way to achieving Jones' dream. It "became the first city in the country that said we are going to be independent of oil dependence by 2020."

Here at Middlebury, a united force is already burgeoning. Members from African American Alliance, Women of Color, Distinguished Men of Color, Incarceration in Question, Roosevelt Institution, Sunday Night Group and Step it up 2007 have discussed group integration on a project as well as a series of initiatives drawing from Jones' ideas.

Such inter-group integration is something that students and administration alike have been long been pushing for. "People talk about it," says Dolginow '09, leading organizer of the Energy Symposium. "But it has not yet been realized."

A meeting to be scheduled this coming Tuesday will focus on how Middlebury, both the College and the larger community, "can incorporate Van's message of green collar jobs," according to Dolginow. Indeed, group collaboration will center around Jones' main premise of "uniting the country to fight global warming while lifting people out of poverty into our system of thinking and acting."

Jones believes there is no doubt that the climate change movement is in full swing. It is whether we can fuse the climate movement with a greater social movement as exemplified through such group collaboration that remains in question. "It's up to us," says Jones.

As the College positions itself at the forefront of environmental initiatives, Jones proposes Middlebury will be well rewarded, saying, "You're going to see presidential candidates mouthing your slogans, you're going to see the biggest, most powerful forces in this country, in the world marching, running to keep up with you."