Green Recovery For All Toolkit

Since President Obama signed the stimulus package on February 17, our phones at Green For All have been ringing off the hook. Thousands of people want to know how their communities can access the billions of dollars the federal government is about to invest in green jobs and job training.

The short answer is: it’s up to you. We know which agencies will get which resources to invest. We know roughly when those agencies will decide what to invest in. But how they make those decisions is not written in stone. There is no law saying this money will get to our communities, our programs, our people. There is no law saying it won’t. It depends on you.

A couple of things are certain

1. This is the best chance to create green jobs for everyday people that we’ve ever seen.
2. If we want this to be a green recovery, not just for a few but for all, we cannot leave it up to local politics and business as usual.
   

We have to get organized and head to City Hall, ready to work and ready to serve our communities.

It’s not like you haven’t done this before. After all, it’s how you earned this opportunity. Tens of thousands of you organized rallies, made phone calls, sent emails, and some even lobbied on Capitol Hill. On February 17, Washington responded with a nearly $800 billion bill, which promises more than $50 billion for green jobs and $500 million for green job training.

Now the battle moves from Washington to City Hall.

Big business and political insiders are already making their case to your Mayor why they should get this federal money. These bigwigs want to do what they always do: pay the lowest wages with the fewest benefits while reserving the most profit for themselves.

We can do better this time. You know it — it’s why our phones are ringing off the hook. The question is, how do we make sure that it IS better?

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