Green Labor Journal - Working for a Substainable Future

The State of the Union

Where we need to go from here

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In his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out his priority for the year, saying “jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.”

He emphasized the importance of clean energy jobs to revive and stabilize the economy, saying, “…the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.  And America must be that nation.”

To accomplish this goal, Obama called on Congress to send him a jobs bill.
If you had told me two years ago that our next President would make clean energy jobs a central theme of his State of the Union and domestic agenda, I would have been floored.  

Today I'm more skeptical.  Maybe it’s because the health care bill, a top Obama priority, is floating in legislative limbo; or because climate and energy legislation (which has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs) is mired in the Senate, and received only a tepid mention from the President in the State of the Union.

Absolutely, America needs jobs.  And federal legislation that helps create those jobs through incentives and investments will be essential.  Yet simply inviting Congress to create a new jobs bill, then leaving it up to them, will not transform our economy into one that is healthy and thriving, for our workers, communities, and planet.

Without strong leadership from the President, the jobs bill is likely to suffer the same fate that threatens the climate bill and health care reform.

The President’s rhetoric on job creation and the importance of America rapidly building up a clean energy economy is right on.  But rhetoric alone will not suffice.  And focusing on new legislation alone won’t either.  
President Obama must change his governing style, and put bold action behind the bold words. The Obama administration must make a clear decision to fight for the interests of the people and the causes that came together to elect him 15 months ago.

To begin with, the President ought to follow his own advice to Congress from the State of the Union. “I know it’s an election year,” he said. “… But we still need to govern.  To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.”

The President needs be ready to fight for what he believes in, alongside the people who believe in the same things – people who are desperate to have their faith in him re-affirmed, and desperate to be able to secure a better future for themselves and their communities.

If President Obama’s first year as President teaches us anything, let it be this: a people-powered movement for progressive change holds the key to change, not any one leader it sweeps into office.

The American people started the job of change in November 2008 when we elected President Obama and expanded the Democratic majorities in Congress. It is not only up to President Obama to bring change to America. That is our job, too.

We must raise our voices and demand a better, healthier, more just future for all Americans.

And we must have President Obama’s back, not just to support him when opponents attack, but to push him firmly, steadily forward.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the Chief Executive Officer of Green For All, a national organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean-energy economy. Green For All works in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to create and implement programs that increase quality jobs and opportunities in green industry – all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of its agenda.  (http://www.greenforall.org)