“We didn’t ask to have the responsibility of protecting human civilization on our shoulders. But we’re stepping up to the plate.”
Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement on Climate Justice, the Green New Deal, and Revolution
WS: I want to talk about your theory of change and the problem of the political system—whether it’s even possible to get something like a comprehensive Green New Deal within our current system, or if changing the political system is central to the challenge. As I’ve written recently, I’m pessimistic, I think it’ll require a democratic revolution. You’ve echoed Bernie Sanders’s call for a “political revolution.” Can we get a political revolution simply by winning the next election?
VP: No.
WS: I guess you’d need to define what you mean by political revolution.
VP: Yeah. I think it actually does go back to Sunrise’s theory of change, in a lot of ways. We have three prongs to our theory of change: First, we need people power. Then we need political power [i.e., winning elections]. And the third one is the political revolution piece. We need a new governing alignment in this nation. And we need a new dominant common sense that governs American society. Right now, we think there is a real crack in neoliberalism, and there’s an opening to set the new dominant ideology that could govern American society. We really believe in a government and an economy that works for all people, no matter your skin color, how much money you have in your pocket, where you live, whatever. And we believe the only thing that can get us to that point is a broad-based people’s alignment of movements, think tanks and academics, businesses, unions, artists, everything under the sun.
