“Green Jobs for Life”: (How Green Jobs can Reduce Poverty and Violence and Help Save the Planet)

May 03, 2009  |  Download PDF

"Green Jobs for Life"

(How Green Jobs can Reduce Poverty and Violence and Help Save the Planet)

 Last year Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) sponsored the "Save Lives Now" campaign, demanding that the City of Oakland adopt what OCO called the "Oakland Strategy," a comprehensive homicide reduction program based on coordinated street outreach.  This effort by all the OCO-member congregations and schools was successful, and Street Outreach Teams are now working in some of the most dangerous Oakland neighborhoods, reducing violence and saving lives by offering our at-risk young people alternatives to gangs and crime.  Their task is Herculean, and they need more and better resources to connect people to real economic opportunities, such as comprehensive paid training programs that lead to decent jobs with a future.

 This is not a good time to seek financial support from the business community or other private sector funding for jobs programs.  The economy is in a major downturn, our city and state are running large deficits, but there is money out there in the form of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" (the federal economic stimulus package).  The package includes money for job training programs and money for rebuilding infrastructure.  In addition, there is dedicated funding for green projects.  If combined creatively, these funds can be used to provide the training and jobs our young people need.

 Ahora es cuando.  Now is when.  Why?

• 1. The money is coming. The only upside to this economic downturn is that the federal government is taking it so seriously that it's sending money to stimulate the economy. President Obama has stated the goal as putting America to work on the work that needs to be done! Green jobs are the jobs that will get our economy moving, rebuild the country and save the planet. This is the work that needs to be done.

• 2. Oakland is the birthplace of the Green Jobs Movement. Check out Van Jones' book, "The Green Collar Economy", for the unimpeachable argument that to save the planet we need the buy-in of masses of people, not yet turned onto the environmental movement. If you lend people money to, say, weatherize their homes, let them repay the loan from decreased PG&E costs, allowing them to keep a share of the savings for themselves, AND employ some of the same people, from the inner cities, to do the weatherizing work, there are many advantages and absolutely no down side.

• 3. The President's economic stimulus package includes money for the purpose of weatherizing homes, as well as encouraging solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.Kehilla and other OCO congregations are combining forces to make sure Oakland's share of this money helps ALL of Oakland's people!

• 4. Kehilla's Local Organizing Committee (LOC) conducted a Listening Campaign, completing 100 one-to-one intentional conversationswith congregation members, and found widespread concern about two Tikkun Olam issues: global warming and under-served young people who are at-risk of crime and violence. We recognized that Green Jobs could be an important part of the solution to both issues, because green jobs provide the crucial intersection between economic justice and healing the planet.

• 5. What is a Green Job? One that focuses on improving our common environment. One that pays a living wage. One that offers a future for both the worker and our planet.

• 6. Who should get these new Green Jobs? In Oakland, and everywhere in American where there's poverty for that matter, it is imperative that a fair share of these jobs go to the perennially unemployed in the inner cities. This means including under-educated youth and people who have criminal records or face other barriers to employment. This in turn means training people so they'll have the skills to qualify for jobs, and since these are low- or no-income folks, it must be paid training. Since some of these folks are woefully unprepared, some will need paid training that goes back to basic math, literacy and life skills.

• 7. Save the planet! We are not going to be able to combat the paramount challenge of global climate change without involving everyone! To get people to use less energy and thereby cause fewer emissions requires all our skill and determination. This cannot be accomplished by the privileged few. EVERYONE has to use less fossil fuel; EVERYONE's house has to be insulated; EVERYONE has to understand what's at stake. As Van Jones says, as the coastal waters rise we have to make sure the rising tide carries everyone's boats up to a cleaner future that uses less energy and puts more people to work on what's important for the human species' health and survival.

• 8. Here's what you can do right now: join our campaign to make sure Oakland gets a fair share of green jobs, and that those jobs are used to reduce poverty and provide a brighter, greener future for everyone.

 Kehilla is one of the OCO congregations organizing and leading this effort, so we need your participation.  We're working closely with the West Oakland Cluster, a group of OCO-member churches, with support from OCO and the PICO National Network, but we can achieve our vision of using green jobs to reduce poverty and ensure the success of Oakland's homicide intervention program only if city leaders and elected officials formally adopt and actually implement this agenda. Street outreach workers, the front line in the violence reduction effort, tell us they need more resources.  They need more paid training and job placement programs to offer our at-risk young people and others with barriers to employment.  Local officials, including members of the City Council, have indicated their willingness to support targeted green jobs programs, but this campaign is far from over.  There is a very small window of opportunity in which to secure federal economic recovery funding for these programs.  We will redouble our efforts to move our agenda forward through the labyrinth of local government, and as we do, we gain support from other stakeholders and policy-makers. We also need your support and are confident Kehilla members will respond when called upon to demonstrate our community's commitment to this issue.

To get involved or for more information please contact

Helene Frommer, hfrommer@sbcglobal.net, (510)536-7864,

or Ralph Silber, ralphsamuel1@yahoo.com, (510) 547-2374.