Building a Green New Deal: Community, Coalition, Organizing for Environmental Justice: A Public Forum

In communities, classrooms, and protest sites across the country, people have embraced the call for a Green New Deal as a way of recognizing that climate change presents us with an unprecedented historic challenge—and the need for comprehensive and transformational reform. California’s Central Coast has a powerful tradition of grassroots activism to draw on in rising to the challenge, from the wide-ranging environmental movement sparked by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill to the multi-racial labor, immigrant and indigenous people’s rights organizations leading the struggle for economic justice region-wide. Together, these and allied organizations have formed the Central Coast Climate Justice Network, a regional coalition dedicated to developing a collective vision and coalitional strategy for achieving holistic and intersectional environmental justice in our region. Featuring presentations from Network member organizations, the aim of the forum is to launch a broad, publicly engaged conversation about the need for transformational thought and action in response to the challenges of climate change, and in the interest of a more equitable and resilient environmental future.

Co-sponsored by: The Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, Environmental Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Fund for Santa Barbara, and the Central Coast Climate Justice Network