It’s A Green New World
The Green New Deal blueprint, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was crafted by three far-left organizations and is being pushed by a coalition of well-funded professional progressive groups and known leftist agitators.
Some of the organizations helping to promote the Green New Deal have ties to financing from billionaire George Soros and trace their roots to such radical groups as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez posted an 11-page Google document in the form of a nonbinding legislative resolution that has become the most authoritative version of the Green New Deal, a broad outline for the current conception of the socialist-style plan.
The Green New Deal seeks, as the New Yorker recently put it, “nothing less than a total overhaul of our national infrastructure.”
The utopian deal demands 100 percent of all buildings in the U.S. convert to clean energy, calls for the removal of all greenhouse gases from the entire atmosphere, and includes such non-“green” clauses as a federal jobs guarantee, while protecting the right of all workers to organize and unionize.
It also pledges “affordable, safe and adequate housing” for “all people of the United States.”
The wealth-spreading deal aims to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”
The Green New Deal was crafted by Ocasio-Cortez along with three groups: the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats and a group calling itself New Consensus.
Besides helping to write the text, the Sunrise Movement has been the central progressive organization lobbying the Democratic Party to implement the Green New Deal.
Sunrise was, in part, inspired by the activism of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and the radical immigration group United We Dream.
Sunrise took the national spotlight last month when Ocasio-Cortez joined some 200 of the movement’s protesters to temporarily occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office to peddle the Green New Deal. Sunrise engaged in that direct action campaign alongside Justice Democrats.
In December, Sunrise said that it raised less than $1 million, mostly from foundations and grassroots donors. It is not known how much Sunrise has since raised. Inside Philanthropy reported on donations to Sunrise from the Rockefeller Family Fund.
To promote the deal, Sunrise sponsored an activist campaign called “Operation Green New Deal Blitz.” Co-sponsors with Sunrise include 350.org, Organic Consumers Association, People’s Action, CPD Action and Justice Democrats.
CPD Action is led by Ana Maria Archila, one of the two women who infamously confronted Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator prior to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Archila was a guest of Ocasio-Cortez for Trump’s State of the Union.
Archila serves as co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and maintains the same position as the group’s activist arm, the Center for Popular Democracy Action.
CPD, which is advocating the Green New Deal, is heavily financed by Soros. In October 2014, literature that was part of a CPD event listed Soros’s Open Society Foundations as one of CPD’s “three biggest funders.” The Foundations provided the CPD with $130,000 in 2014 and $1,164,500 in 2015, tax documents show. In 2016, Soros’s Open Society Policy Center provided $705,000 to the Center for Popular Democracy’s Action Fund.
CPD is highly involved in anti-Trump activism. In May 2017, CNN reported that the Center for Popular Democracy Action fund unveiled an “$80 million effort to coordinate the work of dozens of smaller progressive groups from around the country” as part of what the news network characterized as the anti-Trump “resistance” movement.
People’s Action, another Sunrise partner pushing the Green New Deal, is a merger of a group that previously went by the name of National People’s Action. National People’s Action was also funded by Soros to the tune of $1.2 million and reportedly helped to train protesters for the Occupy Movement, which was also close to Soros funding. The Washington Times previously reported that Soros donated to People’s Action itself.
350.org, which is aiding Sunrise in pushing the Green New Deal, has disclosed a donation from the Tides Foundation. Tides, in turn, has been financed by Soros and has been a donor partner of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Also forming the backbone of advocacy for the Green New Deal are the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Sierra has received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Greenpeace has been funded by the Soros-financed Tides Foundation. Tides also funds the Sierra Club.
The Green New Deal, meanwhile, is viewed in progressive activist circles as taking the mantle from something called the Leap Manifesto, a so-called clean energy plan co-authored by radical activist and author Naomi Klein.
Leap was initiated by the Tides-funded 350.org as well as Black Lives Matter-Toronto. Leaked documents from Soros’s Open Society Foundations previously disclosed donations to Black Lives Matter.
On its website, meanwhile, Sunrise advertises its partnership with Justice Democrats, with the two groups working together with Ocasio-Cortez to craft the Green New Deal.
Justice Democrats backed the Congressional campaign of Ocasio-Cortez when she was largely unknown and the two are closely linked. According to reports, it was Justice Democrats that originally recruited Ocasio-Cortez to run in the first place.
Waleed Shahid, Justice Democrats’ communications director, reportedly worked on Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign prior to joining the group. Justice Democrats was co-founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, who serves as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.
Justice Democrats does not hide its socialist ideology, with Shahid telling Vox that the organization seeks to nudge the Democratic Party toward democratic socialism.