Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and radical Democrats protest outside of building where President-elect Joe Biden’s team is preparing policy.
By World Israel News Staff
The progressive faction of Democratic members of Congress lawmakers belonging to a group known as “The Squad” protested outside the Democratic National Convention in Washington Thursday, demanding that President-elect Joe Biden implement the proposed Green New Deal that would transform the U.S. economy to combat climate change, Fox News reported.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year tabled a resolution in Congress to adopt the New Green Deal and said she had the power of the people to back her up.
“We are all here today because of the movement… because at the end of the day, dollars don’t vote, people do,” said Ocasio-Cortez, commonly referred to by her initials AOC.
The house resolution she submitted in February of 2019 says it is “the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal” that would put climate change as the central focus of national policy with the goals of zero greenhouse gas emissions, “create millions of good, high-wage jobs,” and invest in infrastructure, in the framework of sustainability.
The deal also calls for social change “to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”
“This is a movement built out of the urgency people feel to protect our planet,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the Squad.
Biden’s campaign called the deal “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” but he has his own proposals for environmental change and did not lump in AOC’s demands for vast social programs or universal health care..
While AOC said her deal would cost some $10 trillion, critics say the plan is unaffordable and estimate it would cost the country between $52 trillion and $93 trillion over the next decade.