Green New Deal Rising

Who we are

We are young people and we’ve only ever known crisis. We’ve grown up in austerity and come of age in a pandemic, all while sailing past climate tipping points. Watching as storms and wildfires fill our phone screens, and then our streets. Our classrooms are overcrowded and our libraries have closed down. Our energy bills are unaffordable. Half our paychecks go on renting flats from landlords who don’t care if our ceilings rot from mould. Meanwhile, the billionaires and fossil fuel CEOs profiting from these crises have gotten richer and richer. And our political leaders have done nothing to stop it.

Our culture and values

So far, this Labour government has let us down. The thing is, we know they can deliver the change we need. After all, it was the Labour Party that gave us the NHS, equal pay, and the world’s first Climate Change Act. But the truth is, they made those changes because a groundswell of people demanded it and relentlessly organised to make it happen – and we can do that again.

take action with us

There’s no point denying it: what we’re up against is big. We’ve got Nigel Farage and his billionaire mates, pretending to care about whether we have decent jobs and warm homes. Piping up to tell us it’s all the fault of migrants or people on benefits that we don’t. Trying to pit us against one another so we don’t turn against multi-millionaires like him. But we know they are not on our side, and their solutions will only benefit them. 

The only thing that has ever altered the course of history are huge disruptive movements willing to do what it takes to win.  Movements that kept going even when their goal felt impossible. The people who came together to build the NHS, the trade unionists that fought for decent working conditions, and the activists that put their bodies on the line to win us equal rights. Now, our generation has a choice – to rise up and force this government to deliver, or watch our future burn up in front of our eyes and fall to the far-right.

We choose to fight. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

GND Rising is a diverse movement of people who are fighting to stop climate change and win a Green New Deal. Including all voices is central to not only to the world we want to create, but to the way we get there. It is vital to both our goal and our process.

We seek to create a movement where dialogue and learning are key, where there is respect, understanding and kindness as well as a recognition of difference and an expectation to hold each other to account.  We also understand that it is a crucial part of the work that we all reckon with the systems of oppression that we have been raised in; and accept what we must do to dismantle it. Our personal experiences and work will be different, but we will support each other wherever we may find ourselves on the journey.

At Green New Deal Rising  we want to create brave spaces that encourage dialogue, learning, honesty and courage. We hold each person accountable to do the work of sharing experiences and coming to new understandings – a feat that’s often hard, and uncomfortable.

We have high expectations of how we behave towards each other in our meetings, actions and social spaces. We recognise that our ambition to be inclusive requires us to pay attention to a diversity of voices, including those who may not yet be active in our movement. 

In doing this we will: 

• Embed our movement principles in all our work and aim to bring them alive through concrete practices 
   
• Actively seek to widen the circle – being thoughtful about and including the experiences of people who may not yet be involved in our movement and take steps to reach out and engage as widely as possible, using the widen the circle checklist. 
   
• Actively create space for underrepresented people and stories  to lead in our spaces
   
• Acknowledge that we are all shaped by our backgrounds and experiences – that might be a racist, patriarchal environment and it might be an environment where we are subject to systemic racism or other forms of oppression. 
   
• Place the responsibility for this situation with the system, not the individual. However, we will also recognise that each person has the responsibility and opportunity to change and be transformed through learning about systemic exclusion.
   
• Be supportive to one another in our journey towards inclusion, by creating spaces of learning and facilitating training.