THERE IS TWITTER, and there is the real world. Occasionally, the two meet.
It happened over the last week, starting with a visit by a group of children and young climate activists to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Bay Area office last Friday. Their exchange — about whether the California senator would vote for or co-sponsor the Green New Deal resolution authored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — went viral. It led to a turbocharged debate about whether the video had been edited, but it also brought with it a tangible change in the halls of Congress.
In her now-infamous response, Feinstein said she was in the process of drafting her own, more moderate resolution on confronting climate change that she felt would have a better chance of passing in the GOP-run Senate. The group of young people, who ranged from 11 to 24, were from several different climate action groups, including the Sunrise Movement, Youth vs. Apocalypse, and Bay Area Earth Guardians. The viral Twitter clip has racked up more than 9 million views, and was the first time many people had heard of Feinstein’s alternative resolution, and when climate activists learned about it, they went into overdrive to stop it. Feinstein, facing pressure, this week elected to shelve it.
The senator’s reversal was one of several moments that has gone unnoticed in the fight for the Green New Deal, as young activists face skepticism from entrenched environmental groups and field regular criticism for their practice of protesting Democrats. What those critics miss is that it was a protest of a Democrat — then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — that put the Green New Deal on the map, and now a second action against a Democrat has yielded a second success for the activists. Read more
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