Dozens of ‘Green New Deal’ supporters arrested outside Mitch McConnell’s office
February 26, 2019
Gage Skidmore / CCL
Dozens of radical environmentalists were arrested outside of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) Capitol Hill office Monday afternoon.
The ignorance of youth
Around 100 protestors from the progressive “youth grassroots organization” Sunrise Movement stormed the Russell Senate Office Building demanding that McConnell co-sponsor the extreme Green New Deal recently proposed by Democratic Party leaders. When the crowd refused to disperse, Capitol Police arrested 42 protestors and escorted them out of the building in handcuffs.
Capitol Police arrested 42 protesters advocating for Green New Deal outside of Senate Majority Leader McConnell's office Monday. - @frankthorp
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Just before 11:00 a.m. local time, activists entered the Russell Building bearing signs that read, “Mitch, look us in the eyes,” and wearing t-shirts that said, “We have a right to good jobs and a livable future.” The Kentucky-based youth group presented a petition containing 100,000 signatures demanding that McConnell co-sponsor the Green New Deal, a controversial resolution promising sweeping environmental reforms to mitigate the impact of climate change.
“I am here because people in my community don’t have jobs, are starving and turning to opiods [sic] and dying. Mitch McConnell refuses to do anything about,” said Lily Gardner, a 15-year-old high school student from Kentucky.
However, jobs are coming back to Kentucky, and the steel and coal industries have been revitalized thanks to a Republican majority in the Senate and a conservative in the White House. Additionally, opioid overdoses declined by nearly 3 percent in 2017 due to a series of public health reforms implemented by the Trump administration.
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Radical New Deal
Yet, standing outside McConnell’s office on Monday, the Sunrise Movement’s executive director Varshini Prakash ignored Kentucky’s recovery and said that the Green New Deal is “our best and only solution right now.”
Kentucky, with its vast reserves of bituminous coal and a manufacturing-based economy, would be among the hardest hit states if the Green New Deal were ever realized. The ambitious plan calls on lawmakers to convert the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy in ten years, a nonbinding resolution which some are calling “a collection of impossible dreams that are impossible to achieve and impossible to pay for.”
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“[T]he Green New Deal is far more ambitious – and unrealistic – than Roosevelt’s New Deal,” wrote Justin Haskins, executive editor and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute. “Instead of creating jobs, as the New Deal did, the Green New Deal would destroy them. And instead of lifting America out of a Great Depression, the Green New Deal would likely plunge us into one.”
Co-sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the details of the Green New Deal were first unveiled via an outline and FAQ which proposed the complete elimination of air travel and “economic security to citizens unable or unwilling to work.” Despite these radical goals, Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) are among dozens of prominent Democrats who have come out in support of the bill.
The enemy within
Not all Democrats are on board with the anti-capitalist resolution, as children brought in by the Sunrise Movement learned when they confronted California Sen. Dianne Feinstein about the plan on Friday. “There’s no way to pay for it,” she told the student-protestors outside her own office.
“We have our own Green New Deal” Feinstein continued, referring to a more moderate draft resolution that she later said “provides specific responses to the climate change crisis.” When one student shouted that “some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around” or face a catastrophe, Feinstein answered, “It’s not going to get turned around in 10 years.”
One of the adults accompanying the youth tried to shame Feinstein by saying, “You’re looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with these consequences.” A visibly frustrated Feinstein shot back: “You know what’s interesting about this group? I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing.”
If an ultra-liberal Senate Democrat couldn’t convince the Sunrise Movement protestors that they were invested in a hopeless and misguided cause, Sen. McConnell’s chances were nonexistent. Still, a spokeswoman for the Senate majority leader tried to convince the protestors that McConnell had no issues with bringing the resolution to the Senate floor.
“As with all Kentuckians visiting D.C., we welcomed them to the office today. It’s worth noting that two weeks before, Senator McConnell had already announced that he will be bringing the Green New Deal up for a vote in the U.S. Senate,” communications director Stephanie Penn told The Hill.
Of course, don’t expect any Democrats to support McConnell’s plan. If the Senate is forced to vote on the Green New Deal, Democrats will have to go on the record endorsing a radical social and economic plan that will only hurt the party moving forward.
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