The dire predictions of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change point to the need for sweeping social transformations in order to avoid the mass suffering that global warming promises. Recently popularized by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement, the Green New Deal offers a powerful framework for achieving rapid decarbonization through the creation of green infrastructure and a federal jobs program.

“The Green New Deal and the Future of Work in America” explores questions about the future of work in America through the lens of the Green New Deal, including:

• How would a Green New Deal shape and address transformations in the nature of work in America? How would a federal jobs guarantee change working-class economic and political life? How do we win a federal jobs guarantee that helps alleviate racial and gendered income disparities?
• How do we achieve the rapid decarbonization of the economy needed to stave off the worst of climate catastrophe while still producing the energy needed for a high quality of life? What are the most important technologies, infrastructures, and industries to invest in? What kinds of new jobs do we need? What kinds of jobs will be eliminated? And what does a true “just transition” look like?
• How can the Green New Deal be won in such a way that benefits public rather than only private interests, not just in terms of state ownership but rather in terms of a commitment to public projects and goods? Can public sector work take on a new dynamism, perhaps even becoming “mission-driven”?
• What kind of political mobilizations/strategic alliances will need to be built in order to win a Green New Deal? What sectors of capital will be friendly and hostile to a Green New Deal? What are the obstacles to gaining organized labor’s support of a Green New Deal?
• How should the GND combine national government leadership with grassroots, local, and state action (including cooperatives and other forms of direct action such as were important to the original New Deal)? How does local work matter in the face of global climate catastrophe?

This conference is the inaugural conference of the Center for Work and Democracy, which brings social scientific expertise to bear on the problem of rebuilding popular voice in an increasingly plutocratic polity. The core thesis of the Center is that the biggest problem that confronts efforts to realize democracy and economic justice is not a lack of policy ideas or an absence of support or resources, but the limitations of politics itself. The goal of the Center is to produce work that contributes to the understanding necessary to rebuild a politics of the majority while furthering a broader democratic renewal.

Speakers: Hillary Angelo, UC Santa Cruz – Alyssa Battistoni, Yale/Jacobin – Aaron Benanav, University of Chicago – Harry Boyte, Augsburg – Daniel Aldana Cohen, UPenn – Stephen Cohen, UC Berkeley – Kate Knuth, University of Minnesota – Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, SUNY – Stephanie Luce, CUNY – Clark Miller, ASU – Harvey Molotch, NYU – Frances Fox Piven, CUNY – Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW – Wilson Sherwin, CUNY – Leah Stokes, UC Santa Barbara – Todd Vachon, Rutgers – Richard A Walker, UC Berkeley

Organizers: Craig Calhoun, ASU – Benjamin Y. Fong, ASU