 Welcome everyone. I'm Deborah Wimfimer. I'm the COO of the Queens Museum, and I'm delighted to welcome you here today. First, I want to welcome back those of you who have been with us since early this morning, and thank our partners for working so hard together to bring this forum here. The Temple Hoyen Buell Center, a study of American architecture at Columbia University. Please stand up, friends, so we can thank you properly. Great. The American Institute of Architects New York, the architecture lobby, Francisco Casablanca, Gabriel Hernandez Solano. You can stand up. Everyone can stand up. Partner and partners, the very same designers who created the Rube Goldberg machine at the Rube Goldberg Exhibition entrance, which is over there, and my colleagues Adrienne Coteen and Katherine Grau, who work so hard today on our behalf. Thank you. I also want to extend our thanks to all of today's invited speakers, including our elected representatives from Congressional District 14, Council Member Costa Constantinitas, I don't think he's here yet, State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assembly Member Cata Cruz. And finally, I want to thank you all for taking the time this afternoon to participate in this important discussion. So thank you. I thought I'd take a quick moment to introduce you to the history of this place, this building, and to explain why this particular location was chosen for our public assembly today. The Queens Museum is housed in the last surviving building from the 1939 World Fair, and this building was home to the United Nations General Assembly from 1946 to 1950, while the UN's headquarters were being built in Manhattan. It was then the New York City Pavilion for the 1960 World's Four World's Fair, and today the Queens Museum serves as a community space dedicated to the history of our site, the diversity of our community, and to showing exhibitions of contemporary artwork relating to both. And we have the distinct privilege of housing the panorama of the city of New York. Of the stunning relics from the 1964 World's Fair, including the unisphere outside our door, the panorama is an incredible 10,000 square foot model featuring the whole of New York City, displaying 895,000 buildings and structures on a 1 to 1200 scale, but one inch is 100 feet. And you really, I will not let you leave this building without seeing it. You must go see it today. We started this day looking at the impacts of the Green New Deal gathered around the panorama, followed by workshops focusing on energy and power, transportation and power, and government and power. And we're excited to begin this afternoon assembly where each of the working groups from this morning will help extend the conversations with you all. In fact, the work you see here in this central atrium by artist Pia Camille is an amazing example of recycling reuse, and I encourage you to take a closer look as we move on with the day. So without further ado, I'd like to continue the program by calling up Gabriel and Francesca, I'm sorry, co organizers. Thank you. Hello, everyone. It's loud. Thank you very much for coming. It's very exciting to see this finally come to fruition. We've been organizing this for a couple months now or more. And to see everyone come together is very exciting. Also just how far the Green New Deal has come from when I started organizing for the Ocasio has been amazing to see. I actually was at the first, one of the first climate change town halls in College Point. That's where I got to meet Randy Abodeo. Shoeikot was there, Corbin Trent, their communications manager, Demond Drummer from New Consensus. And I was just there taking pictures, tabling, and kind of trying to understand what the Green New Deal meant. And we ended up getting a drink at the bar after. And it was the first time I had met them. And I was just so refreshing to see this young group of thinkers, predominantly of color, just talking about the stuff. To see these conversations happen, this tiny little bar in Queens, to now driving the presidential primary in many ways and kind of defining the narrative, driving new cycles on a national scale, has been very exciting to see. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Thank you for the Bule Center, Jacob, Rainhole, Larissa, Caitlin, and Deborah. Also the architecture lobby. And, yeah, I think just giving a little more about that. Both of us are architects, so we thought that as an architect, we had our responsibility to really organize the architecture community to talk about the Green New Deal. Because our plan was really to cut the tactical framing to really show the public that this is possible. But at the same time, we figured out that not only was the architect's community can solve the problem. We need politicians. We need the community organization. We need everyone. And I think something that I learned during the past years, this year, and specifically with the Congresswoman, is this is not about left or right. It's really about justice. And justice is really have to be the driver because there's no price for justice. There's no nobody can put a tag on justice. And it's not an ideology of left and right. It's justice is blind. So here I think that's the driver for public housing in the Green New Deal, for environmental justice, justice for Puerto Rico that, you know, need, you know, being from here I can colonize a country for hundreds of years. And I think we're being impacted in, really in terms of environmentally, physically, as well as different communities of color, indigenous. And I think for me, that's the driver that kind of make me, you know, with Gabrielle go out and organize with people and bring everyone together to, yeah, to make a change and create justice. So now I think we're going to show the video of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, our Congresswoman for New Year 14. Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending the Green New Deal Public Assembly. Special thanks to our partner hosts at the Queens Museum right here at New York's 14th Congressional District and Columbia University. I'm so excited that we're here talking today about the Green New Deal. And I think as we go through our conversations today, it's important to remember that ultimately, the Green New Deal is centered on three core principles. The first is the full decarbonization of the US economy. We have at we are the precipice precipice of the climate crisis. And in order for us to do that, we need to mobilize our entire economy. So that's the core principle. The second core principle is a just transition for all frontline communities. And that just transition allows us to center the most impacted communities in the climate crisis and address issues of environmental injustice. And the third, of course, is to create millions of jobs in the process. Historically, people, frankly, lots of folks from the fossil fuel industry has tried to make environmental legislation anti economic stimulus and anti jobs legislation. We're here to reject that paradigm outright. And to show that in order to decarbonize our community, we can infuse and center justice for the most impacted while creating millions of jobs in the United States of America. So from housing to energy policy, all of this is possible, we just need to create the policy to do it. How can the Green New Deal justly eliminate the use of fossil fuels? So one of the core principles of the Green New Deal, as I had mentioned, is the just transition. What a just transition does is that it brings in and centers the folks that would be impacted economically or otherwise by a given policy. And so what that means for us is that when we first proposed the Green New Deal, some of the first meetings that we took were with coal miners in order to figure out how we were going to transition these communities and make sure that the jobs that are created are not just created in cities, but that they're also created in rural communities that really stand to lose in industry if we transitioned away from coal. And some of the conclusions that we got from that, for example, was to include in the Green New Deal, the fully funded pensions of coal miners, for which, frankly, big coal was actually trying to fight against. So it is entirely possible for us to create a just transition for those that would be economically impacted. How can the Green New Deal meaningfully avoid green gentrification? This is a really important question because historically, and this aligns with how economic injustice has been stratified where the dirtiest and most polluted communities have been the poorest and the greenest, most energy and efficient communities have been the richest. And what the Green New Deal seeks to do is to say that decarbonized buildings are not a luxury, but they are, they are frankly part of our view of health and healthcare as being right. Nobody should be able to, no one should be subjecting their child to higher asthma rates or even being exposed to lead exposure or cancer just because they are lower income. So what we do here is that we center, going back to our, to our principles of centering frontline communities, we bring in folks from these communities to design solutions for themselves. And this is evident, especially in our most recent proposal this week with the Green New Deal for public housing where public housing residents along with experts and scientists were able to come together and develop a transformational policy that centers public housing residents without displacing public housing residents. How can the Green New Deal equitably include frontline communities, workers and non-U.S. citizens? You know this is another great question. One of the reasons that we're so excited about the Green New Deal is because this is exactly who the Green New Deal is creating economic opportunities for. It's for the working class of the United States and because we're rooted in principles of universality, which means no ifs, ands or buts in terms of who is included in our policy. We include absolutely everyone and quite recently in September, October, we introduced our Just Society legislation, which is also rooted in principles of universality, which means the systems that we're going to create and the systems that we advocate for, whether it's a federal jobs guarantee or whether it's Medicare for all, we are not adding any asterisks. If you are in the United States, you will be part of the prosperity that we're creating together. Can you give us a few concluding thoughts? You know, I think one of the things that's so important that we remember about the Green New Deal is that this is movement based public policy and what movement based public policy means is that no one person has all the answers, myself included. And so what that means is that when we talk about the full decarbonization of the United States economy, every single person has a seat at the table and is capable of pushing and leading transformational change in any given sector of the economy. So I would just say don't be afraid to step up and to step in, whether you're passionate about regenerative agriculture, as some of our colleagues from Maine and other agricultural communities are passionate about, whether you're passionate about energy policy, housing, healthcare policy, and low-carbon work like child care, which our economy is starting to transition largely to, please feel free to step up and play a role. We will build a Green New Deal together and it's not just about any one person, but all of us contributing to public policy. Wonderful to see everybody here and to to see the full house that that has come to join us on this cold day in November here at the Queens Museum. I'm Reinhold Martin. I direct the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and I'm here first of all to thank yet again our many, many collaborators. First of all my colleagues at the Buell Center, Jordan Steingart and Jacob Moore, without whose efforts none of us would be standing or sitting here doing anything. And also of course our colleagues, Dave Badrian and Catherine and their colleagues, the entire team here at the Queens Museum and speaking of teams, the team of the Architectural Lobby, you can know them from their t-shirts and I think there are buttons and folks from the AAA and of course last but definitely not least Casa and Gabriel from whom you just heard because really I have to say this was really their idea. I mean they came to us from the sort of context that they were describing in which they'd been working on these issues. We had been at the Buell Center for some years working on parallel issues, in particularly the housing question. I encourage and I want to congratulate everybody here. A real shout out to anybody. I know there are a few here who were involved with the with the legislation that the congresswoman mentioned that it's been a long time coming to affirm the project of public housing and in principle in our society and in practice now we hope there'll be more to come and the person Randy Abray of whom I'm going to introduce to you now had a little bit of a hand in that as well and he can answer your questions I think. But before that just a couple of words at the Buell Center we were a research center at Columbia so we're not typically seen in settings like this but we have over the years sought to kind of orient our work sort of both outwards and inwards at the same time for in other words that if we want to address and try to assemble literally publics of various kinds around issues in ways in which we learn from one another and that's what I want to I want to stress and I know that you know as we learned this morning microphones like this one and learning don't always go together. People like me are used to spending a lot of time behind these microphones but I know there are a lot of people here who have spent a lot more time than many of us have working you know on the ground in the streets and in the housing quite all over on these issues and so what we've tried to do here is to model something like a democratic pedagogy a way a pedagogy of listening a kind of way of in a way passing the mic to others and listening and learning from one another and and it's so really in that spirit of modeling a democracy that listens that we're here with you today and we're again so pleased that you've joined us. Finally the last the last little piece of background on this is we hope that this this kind of an assembly is can be repeated over and over again and should be all over the country around the world and so what we're also trying to do is to model for others how and ourselves how how to do this kind of work together so so if you want to help us do the repeating and amplifying of these and also the debating because I know not we're not going to all agree then then please join in but for now I'm just here to introduce to you somebody who has has a lot to say on on these matters and and who'll be happy to answer your questions. Randy Ebreu who worked for both the House Judiciary Committee and the Federal Communications Commission before President Obama appointed him as an advisor in the U.S. Department of Energy's Technology Transitions and Clean Energy Investment Center. Currently Randy serves as the legislative assistant to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who as you know at 29 years old was the youngest woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from this very district District 14 here in in Queens and the Bronx and and Randy specializes on the Green New Deal portfolio and and it's it's about that that he'll be able to both speak in a little more detail and and and take your questions for a while as well so so welcome Randy and congratulations on the on the on the bill on the housing bill I know there's more to come so thank you Ryan all those were amazing words I really appreciate it. Hi everyone it's my name is Randy Ebreu it's a pleasure to be here with you Saludos a todos mejantes que hablan español and I promise to our translators that's the only time I'll do that um I that's the first time I've actually seen that video with the congresswoman talking about the Green New Deal in this video that she wanted to submit to the Bell Center and to Queen's Museum and after seeing the video I'm thinking like you didn't really need me here to speak she kind of handled exactly what we should have talked about which is what is the Green New Deal what impact will it have on people and how do we get this done what does a win look like so since she saved me six minutes I can just jump into the second part of what I was going to talk about today and that is what what did we actually do I know a lot of times we can say Green New Deal and something happened in DC and there was a vote and I'm not actually sure and to know to understand that maybe it's going to just take a step back and go back one year and see how this all came to be I'm from a far away place some of you may have been there it's called the Bronx New York and that's where I met Alexandria Ocasio Cortez while we were both public servants we're both in this for a greater vision of what we know our community in the Bronx could look like but what so many communities across the country who faced the same types disadvantages that we have in the Bronx how they can also improve after the historic congressional primary win little over a year ago while discussing which ones of the big bold agendas and proposals that came out during her campaign which one are we going to move forward with the answer was clear that it was the Green New Deal and it was the Green New Deal because of what you heard the Green New Deal is going to solve an emergency that we have right now the climate crisis is more than a crisis y'all it's an emergency we can predict the impact of what would happen if a hurricane strikes if a drought hits a farm town but we can't predict the climate's patterns we know this is destruction coming our way but we can't tell which way it's going to go all we know is that every year it's going to get stronger and it's going to amplify and the longer we wait to take action the more it's going to cost us in the future so yeah we have to decarbonize the energy sector we have to decarbonize the world but understanding that that decarbonization is already going to happen right this we're humans we we adapt we we've gone through struggles before if this transition in our energy system is already going to happen who's going to get the jobs who's going to get the contracting opportunities where is the workforce development going to go can we use this as an opportunity to enhance our societies can we take a look at our communities and say you know what i think we can level up that's what the Green New Deal means to us and that's what the Green New Deal means to me so about a year ago after winning the general election some of you may remember the congresswoman went to dc and politely visited speaker Pelosi's office and called for a Green New Deal and it was yeah you could clap for that yeah so in calling for a Green New Deal committee so let's study this let's take a look at what's happening how can we integrate the intersections of the climate disaster with the economy with a history in this country that's we can certainly do better when the climate Green New Deal committee was not established we didn't stop it's not because we we didn't stop because we didn't invent the Green New Deal we were standing on the shoulders of activists and climate and environmental activists and advocates that have studied this that have been on the front lines that have been pushing for these policy solutions for decades some of you were in this room today so we weren't going to stop when the committee wasn't started we said you know what we can put out a resolution and we got to work on h res 109 i thank the bell center in columbia university if you haven't grabbed one of the pamphlets uh that really lays out h res 109 and with some graphics and some great commentary you should you should also grab one of those pamphlets h res 109 is a resolution a resolution separate from a congressional bill a legislation so resolution think of it more as a policy call to action it was our call to action every member of the united states congress can look at h res 109 and see we established five green new deal goals we established 14 mobilization projects that need to go on and we laid out 15 guiding policies and principles to get us there and over to the finish line voting for a resolution yes or no doesn't really mean that's legislation doesn't really change what's happening on the ground and between february in releasing the resolution and this past week three days ago we got to work on a piece of legislation because we knew that we can codify green you deal into law the policies that are in the resolution you can exemplify in legislation and that is what we saw this past week with the green you deal for public housing in the green you deal for public housing you can see how the resolution is played out in real life the green you deal for public housing is comprehensive and establishes and encompasses upon several sectors of our economy and our society and that was intentional and a lot of what went into the green you deal for public housing was built by so many of you we engage with the community for months we spoke with public housing residents we spoke with engineers we spoke with architects we spoke with housing experts we spoke with workforce development experts worker cooperatives pre-apprenticeship programs unions i mean folks that just do weatherization programs in a tiny part of the Bronx and how would this public housing green you deal help you scale up how can your programs replicate throughout this community we conducted to the best of our abilities a public assembly and crafting that bill and the vision the research the thought your words so many of your words i can see in that bill and that inspires me and that is why when i walked in here today and i saw the separate sections that you all come and built up and you're having public assemblies for each one of these i'm seeing legislation replicated right here today and in that comprehensive building of the green you deal for public housing i'll i'd like to finish with one really cool story that about 10 years ago the bell center and there was professor diana martinez who's now at Tufts started to put together what is architecture and public housing and the future of public housing looked like it's just 10 years ago i had no idea this was happening 10 years ago as we started to engage with this project of our friend kasa showed me the books the research that was compiled together the creative ways that stories were being told and policies were being weaved with the politics which with what is capable and what is possible in terms of engineering and architecture while we had certain laws that we knew we wanted to touch upon with the bill while we had certain building and infrastructure upgrades that we knew we wanted to talk about in the bill it was this connection that helped tie the bill together public housing has almost 100 year history which could have been 100 years of promise but because of specific policies divestment and privatization we've seen the shrinking of this public good so what you work on today you can bet it'll probably end up in legislation 10 years from now so get to work thank you all so much for being here and if you have i'm happy to answer any questions thank you all thank you so much for that question and the comment i you raised a really good point in that i think we should take advantage of the opportunity to highlight the importance of the issue but also maybe be more comprehensive and holistic about our approaches to answer them i'll say even in the public housing piece we there's a specific grand section that focuses on people with disabilities and what would happen in the climate disaster and making sure that the the exit and everything so it was it was holistic in that piece but i'm sure even there there was so much more that we can do and taking advantage of that message would be great so i'd be happy to work with definitely chat after but i heard sunrise and that's a great group to connect with as well thank you part of that question be repeated for those i'm sorry who were unable to hear and also for the interpretation would that be possible yeah um do you want to repeat able to do it with this mic as well hi how's it going i'm steven i'm here with the disability accessibility team with sunrise and what they want to try to explain is that there's a lot of talk about just society legislation of equality of inclusion of listening to different voices but one large minority the largest minority here in the united states it's people with disabilities i feel a lot of the legislation has been built the language that's being used has been i want to say uninclusive but not integrated not as a prime talking point more of a subcategory even though people with disabilities are going to be greatly affected by the greener deal by this development they have challenges with finding jobs with limited income with limited savings not by their potential but by government's structure that if they try to save over two thousand dollars they lose all of their benefits that sort of thing um and i think there needs to be more inclusion and thought and perspective understanding of people with disabilities when developing further legislation and further acts in the future thanks thanks for repeating and clarifying i know this will take up from another question but i do want to follow up on what you said again because it is really important and moving forward what i've seen is a lot of issues that deal with the green new deal there's something specific about people with disability in every issue so the intersection there is even more relevant now especially as you're bringing it up again and i'd be really interested in working through what would a a person with disabilities bill of rights through the green new deal look like where we can tackle transportation housing and industry communications there's so many different issues i think like working together now using the policy and and the framework to really dive in maybe another public assembly maybe um would be really exciting for me so thank you so much for that and that might be it with so we have time for one more question here this is the first hand i saw but there'll be lots of questions later as well thank you hi randy thank you and such deep gratitude to you and to your boss thank you um and to youth with sunrise and with fridays for future all over the world um you know i just want to um really center transnational solidarity in our conversations and i'm sometimes a little i realize that uh hres 109 is meant as a conversation starter um but there is language in the bill that is you know oriented to our capitalist system to entrepreneurialism and to you know the u.s. has a competitive exporter of our our climate solutions to the rest of the world and i i think you know it's going to be important moving forward that we really prioritize the needs of the global south without pushing our solutions and our our system which has frankly caused a lot of the problem globally um on those folks thank you thank you for that comment i think that comment speaks for itself i just don't really need an answer we totally understand and with the currently what's happening throughout the country we are really excited to see as more people engage in politics and more people start getting out to register to vote and more people vote that those voices are heard and and we have a strong momentum to act on certain things thank you thank you so much everyone appreciate