Green Jobs, Not Packed Jails––A Mighty Force for Change

by Van Jones, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Now is the time to create real solidarity between the movement for ecological sanity and the movement for racial justice. At the crossroads of these two movements, we can create a mighty force for change.

Think about it. We have two big problems: social inequality and environmental devastation. What if there were one elegant solution––one big idea that solved both big problems at the same time? Wouldn’t that be worth coming together and fighting for?

Well, on the social side, the United States has become the number one incarcerator in the world, locking up 700 people for every 100,000 citizens. That’s compared to, say, China, which incarcerates only 110 people for every 100,000. But US prisons don’t rehabilitate people. They just add damage to already-damaged individuals, perpetuating a downward cycle of community disintegration. Yes, it is true: the same system that is clear-cutting continents, is also clear-cutting a generation of Black and Brown youth. The same system that has endangered non-human species around the world and thrown them on the trash heap, is also endangering the lives of its inner city youth and is throwing them, too, on the trash heap.

But there is an alternative to this punishment-based system: restorative justice. This approach to crime, which is already very successful in New Zealand, is based on reconciliation, restoration, healing and rehabilitation. It is cheaper, more healing for the victim and more effective in correcting the behavior of the perpetrator. Restorative Justice represents a wisdom-based approach that is the opposite of our failed, bloated, punishment-based system.  

We also have solutions to our environmental problems. Most importantly, we have brilliant eco-innovators as entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world. They are pioneering the creation of clean energy, and of green products and processes. Through responsible and ethical enterprise, they are working to heal the earth through business. Their efforts could help the entire human family pull off the ecological U-turn that we need if we are to survive on this planet.

But the US government has done practically nothing to help these eco-innovators. And while they struggle often at the micro-enterprise level, the US government continues to give huge tax breaks and boons to the nuclear power industry; to dirty energy companies promoting oil and coal; and to poison-based agriculture. And––of course––to the massive prison industry.

So we have two problems––environmental degradation and radical social inequality, especially in the prison system. And we have two quite promising, but under-funded solutions: restorative (green) economics and restorative justice.

So let’s work and fight for both. But more importantly, let’s bring these solutions together to solve both problems at once––by creating green and clean energy jobs in the inner cities. We can create jobs for the disenfranchised and bring them into the legal economy. Those jobs, in turn, can begin and accelerate the ecological U-turn. The people who have been locked out of the pollution- and poison-based economy, will be central players in the new, restorative, green economy.

Under the rallying cry “Green Jobs, Not Packed Jails,” we can unite both movements. And this unity can be the cornerstone for a New Deal Coalition for the new century. Let us begin!

Van Jones is the founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. MAILING ADDRESS (NOT PHYSICAL LOCATION): PO BOX #409, 1230 Market, San Francisco CA 94102, (415) 951.4844x225 EllaBakerCenter.org BooksNotBars.org