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Welcome to the third iteration of the Designing a Green New Deal Studio.

Our goal is to elucidate the past and present relationships between the environmental and socioeconomic systems in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia regions – namely,

the carceral state,
industrial agriculture,
and the fossil fuel industry.

In doing so, visitors may better grasp the urgent need for transformative solutions in these regions and beyond.

APPALACHIAN ELEGY
BY bell hooks

1.

hear them cry
the long dead
the long gone
speak to us
from beyond the grave
guide us
that we may learn
all the ways
to hold tender this land
hard clay direct
rock upon rock
charred earth
in time
strong green growth
will rise here
trees back to life
native flowers
pushing the fragrance of hope
the promise of resurrection

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The Green New Deal

On February 7th, 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Senator Ed Markey (MA) introduced H.R. 109, a non-binding resolution “recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” In it, they provide a framework for a 10-year national effort to bolster actions on climate change mitigation and resilience.

Climate change has a global impact, but is especially cruel and unjust toward communities that continue to face long-standing oppression from racialized capitalism. This studio focuses on how two regions, Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, are deeply relevant to the GND and are enmeshed in carceral, fossil fuel, and industrial agriculture industries. A GND that strives to achieve climate justice must work with and work for the Appalachia and Delta regions.

America’s path toward environmental sustainability cannot resemble its current path toward collapse, one that is capitalist, racist, and anthropocentric. It must reflect a natural world and society that are in constant conversation with one another, and it must push environmental policy beyond its white, middle-class view to include the voices of rural and multicultural America.

This study has been conducted in three parts–field guides, how-to manuals, and works of climate fiction radically reimagining future community and environmental flourishing. Below is the timeline that leads to the realization of a Green New Deal, and this reimagined future.

Designing a Green New Deal

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