Sunrise Movement youth travel to the Harris County Democrats' HQ in FIfth Ward to request that the September presidential primary debate be dedicated to climate change.
"So, it's a little complicated. We are bipartisan [sic], so we don't support specifically any party. We feel that both [sic] parties have failed to take action to the extent that they should, but we recognize that it is much more likely that it is much more likely that a climate debate would happen at a Democratic debate rather than a Republican. So that is what we've decided to focus on."
These young people get it. They understand that climate is not the same as weather (unlike two different climate-denier debate coaches they mentioned). They know who Greta Thunberg is and understand the importance of Climate Strike, a version of which they plan to conduct on Friday 20 September. They can give examples of intersectionality as it relates to the climate crisis. They also get that not everyone in their schools will have the depth and breadth of knowledge that they do, but they have the will and the patience to explain this multi-faceted issue.
These high-schoolers at the Sunrise Movement rally for a Dem climate change debate GET intersectionality. pic.twitter.com/pZyyJxuBnC
— David Bruce Collins □☮ (@dbcgreentx) August 14, 2019
The quote above, excerpted from the video above, is part of a response to Houston Chronicle reporter Marina Kormbaki's question about why Sunrise Movement Houston is requesting/demanding that the Democratic Party host a presidential debate specifically about climate change. It was good enough, succinct enough, to satisfy my curiosity about why they would even bother barking up the Democratic tree.
My only criticism would be a minor quibble: that I hope they'll be mindful about using less duopolistic phraseology. Let's get accustomed to saying "nonpartisan" instead of "bipartisan," and "all parties" or "both major parties" instead of just "both parties."
This group of a few dozen high-schoolers traveled to the Harris County Democratic Party's offices on Lyons Avenue to meet with local HCDP officials on the question of an all-climate-chaos presidential debate. Too many Americans seldom take the debate further than "Climate change is real!" "No it isn't!" And that happens mostly because the mass media seldom take it any further. The plethora of issues connected with climate change is apparently too complicated for our tiny minds to comprehend: e.g., environmental justice, the lack of decent fresh produce in certain neighborhood supermarkets, the phenomenon of affordable housing being pushed farther from city centers and the lack of reliable public transit.
Kormbaki mentioned in her question that, in her native Germany, the Green Party would be on the forefront of climate issues—so what's different about the political environment here? She had not yet seen that I was standing off the side, wearing my Green Party of Texas cap. I later had a chance to inform her that the Greens have been active in Texas for 20 years, and that I have been hanging with the Greens for most of that time.
Coincidentally, while I was on the 11-Almeda bus to the site, stuck waiting for a freight train to cross San Jacinto Street, I read and commented on Kormbaki's just-published Gray Matters piece about the ordeal of getting around without a car in Houston. Kormbaki is an exchange journalist from Berlin, a city whose transit system she describes as "not too trustworthy." In three days I spent in Berlin eight years ago, I thought their transit was amazingly reliable, but then almost every city's transit service seems fantastic compared to Houston's.
My hope is to invite some Sunrisers to address the next Green Party Houston meeting, scheduled for 10 September, to promote their Climate Strike action on the 20th. If that doesn't work out, perhaps we can get them in to talk in October about how it went and what, if anything, resulted from it.
My only criticism would be a minor quibble: that I hope they'll be mindful about using less duopolistic phraseology. Let's get accustomed to saying "nonpartisan" instead of "bipartisan," and "all parties" or "both major parties" instead of just "both parties."
This group of a few dozen high-schoolers traveled to the Harris County Democratic Party's offices on Lyons Avenue to meet with local HCDP officials on the question of an all-climate-chaos presidential debate. Too many Americans seldom take the debate further than "Climate change is real!" "No it isn't!" And that happens mostly because the mass media seldom take it any further. The plethora of issues connected with climate change is apparently too complicated for our tiny minds to comprehend: e.g., environmental justice, the lack of decent fresh produce in certain neighborhood supermarkets, the phenomenon of affordable housing being pushed farther from city centers and the lack of reliable public transit.
Kormbaki mentioned in her question that, in her native Germany, the Green Party would be on the forefront of climate issues—so what's different about the political environment here? She had not yet seen that I was standing off the side, wearing my Green Party of Texas cap. I later had a chance to inform her that the Greens have been active in Texas for 20 years, and that I have been hanging with the Greens for most of that time.
Coincidentally, while I was on the 11-Almeda bus to the site, stuck waiting for a freight train to cross San Jacinto Street, I read and commented on Kormbaki's just-published Gray Matters piece about the ordeal of getting around without a car in Houston. Kormbaki is an exchange journalist from Berlin, a city whose transit system she describes as "not too trustworthy." In three days I spent in Berlin eight years ago, I thought their transit was amazingly reliable, but then almost every city's transit service seems fantastic compared to Houston's.
My hope is to invite some Sunrisers to address the next Green Party Houston meeting, scheduled for 10 September, to promote their Climate Strike action on the 20th. If that doesn't work out, perhaps we can get them in to talk in October about how it went and what, if anything, resulted from it.
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