(The New Yorker) Early Tuesday, Representatives-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York’s Fourteenth District, and Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan’s Thirteenth, in Washington for congressional orientation, visited a protest outside of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office. Climate activists with the Sunrise Movement were there to demand that Pelosi and House Democrats, who will control the chamber in January, begin crafting a “Green New Deal” to transition to a carbon-neutral economy. “I just want to let you all know how proud I am of each and every single one of you,” Ocasio-Cortez told the group of about two hundred. “For putting yourselves and your bodies, and everything on the line to make sure that we save our planet, our generation, and our future.”
In response to the protest, Pelosi issued a statement saying that House Democrats are “inspired by the energy” of young climate activists, and reaffirming her commitment to resurrect a select committee on climate change in the new Congress. But, as the Sunrise Movement noted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, the previous incarnation of the select committee, which was formed in 2007 and disbanded in 2011, when Republicans won the House, was not authorized to draft legislation. Ocasio-Cortez added that, “to be truly effective,” the new committee “should have a mandate to draft a Green New Deal plan by 2020.” That’s a time frame in keeping with the ambitions of the insurgent left and the increasingly dire warnings of climatologists.
Beyond climate policy, Tuesday’s protest seems to presage a contentious relationship between Democratic leaders in Congress and the progressive newcomers and activists who helped to deliver the House majority and who hope to pull the party to the left. Pelosi, in the absence of viable challengers, will have little trouble reclaiming the Speaker’s gavel in January. Whether she can reclaim control of the Democratic agenda is another question. Source Page
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