A Whole New 'Green' Deal

[Joanne98]

by Peter Seldman

About two years ago, a group of North Bay residents gathered around a table in a Novato restaurant to talk about missed opportunities.
The idea that old paradigms aren't meeting the unprecedented economic and environmental challenges facing the North Bay today was the topic of the meeting. "I called a bunch of people," says Norman Solomon, "and we met in the back room of the restaurant. There were about 20 people around the table for a few hours."

The group talked about how constituencies such as organized labor and other advocates for workers' rights, the environment, social justice and economic justice, while tending their own fields, weren't cross-pollinating. The enormous problems of dealing with environmental protection and at the same time stimulating a new economy that can provide good jobs needs new thinking, says Solomon, a West Marin resident who organized the meeting. He's the founder and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a consortium of policy researchers and analysts. He's also the national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Welfare campaign and the author of a dozen books on media, political discourse and public policy.

"One of the conscious goals I had was to get labor and environmentalists together and talk it out, not just say, 'I will add my laundry list to your laundry list,' but let's talk about issues, concerns, paradoxes, dilemmas and possibilities." Solomon says it struck him that during that first conversation and in subsequent meetings, "How separate Marin and Sonoma County often really are." Just as advocacy groups were separating along special-interest lines, the counties were separating along geographical lines.

If taken to extremes, parochialism undermines a rational regional vision. Even an issue as important as the proposed expansion of the Redwood Landfill was not on the minds of representatives from Sonoma County, Solomon says. If any issue has a regional slant, it's waste hauling and landfills. People from each county expressed interest in issues important to the neighboring county, but their knowledge of the issues was lacking.


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/18