“It shows that organizing works and activism works.”
BY AUGUST 26, 2022
KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES
President Biden has signed into law a historic bill addressing climate change and health care, among other issues — thanks, in no small part, to the young congressional staffers and activists who kept the bill alive. Throughout the summer, as the country experienced some of its hottest months ever, the legislation was repeatedly declared dead after negotiations that seemed to lead nowhere. Still, young aides and climate activists stayed focused on Democrats’ possibly last best chance of passing major climate legislation while they still hold narrow control of Congress.
Lauren Manus, the 21-year-old advocacy director of Sunrise Movement said there was no choice but to press on, given the looming thread of worst-case climate scenarios. “Young people [are] rising up and saying this is a matter of our survival,” Manus said. “We’re not going to take a backseat.”
After working to help Democrats secure Congress and the Presidency in the 2020 election through record youth voter turnout, Manus said it was clear that was the moment to act. “We knew that we could not pause,” she said. “That was our moment to demand that our generation had a major role to play in shaping the priorities of this administration.” In June 2021, months after Biden took office, Manus and her Sunrise colleagues shut down the entrance to the White House. Dozens of youth activists were arrested. Sunrise activists went on to campaign for a robust response to climate change: from launching a hunger strike outside the White House to starting the Good Jobs for All Campaign. When Manus looks into the future, she wants to know she worked for a brighter future than one consumed by wildfires, droughts, and climate disaster after climate disaster. “We didn’t cause this problem, but we don’t want to live in the fallout of it,” Manus said. “We want to reverse it so that our children and our children’s children can have a greater future.”
The final legislation falls far short of what progressive activists hoped for, lacking provisions for free universal pre-K, food assistance, and a civilian climate corps. But it does provide for a historic investment in clean energy, aim to reduce carbon emissions, and bring health care costs down.
One Democratic staffer, who asked to remain anonymous, said they see the 2018 sit-in in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and the 2022 sit-in in Senator Chuck Schumer’s office as the bookends to the success of the Inflation Reduction Act. “Lots of folks deserve credit for what’s good in the IRA,” they said. “But the frontline communities and young people who are most affected both created the conditions [to pass the bill] and refused to give up during this process.”
Aria Kovalovich, a 26-year-old staff member for the House Oversight Committee, told Teen Vogue that young staffers were working behind the scenes to push the legislation through, even as the national media conversation largely focuses on Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) as dealmakers and what the act means for Biden. Kovalovich said “historic coalitions,” including “frontline voices,” other activists, and congressional staffers came together over the past 18 months to work on the legislation that ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act. They worked both inside and outside of Capitol Hill to keep up the pressure on Democratic politicians. “A lot of people…think activism does nothing, that it’s like screaming into the void,” Kovalovich said. “But working for politicians, I know they pay attention when people are sitting in their offices or rallying just outside them. It’s really important for young people, especially, and frontline communities to hold the powerful to account and let them quite literally feel and hear your frustrations.”
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Kovalovich was one of six staffers arrested in June after a sit-in in Schumer’s office. “At the point of the sit-in, climate wasn’t in the news anymore,” she said. “We were really trying to keep up the pressure and let Mr. Schumer know we haven’t forgotten.”
Kovalovich says the political world of Washington, DC, “incentivizes people keeping their mouth shut,” but that she didn’t move to the nation’s capital to stay quiet. Though she knew that her reputation as a staffer could take a hit over repeated arrests, she called the sit-in “the last tool” at her disposal. “I came to Congress to work on climate policy. For me, this was our last chance. It could be 10 years before we have enough seats to pass climate policy again.”
And though the Inflation Reduction Act has been called a “pared-down version of [Biden’s 2021 legislation] Build Back Better,” Kovalovich says she feels an amazing sense of relief. “It’s such a win for young people,” she said. “It shows that organizing works and activism works. I hope it’ll help people who are frustrated by things in their workplace and by a lack of transparency or leadership to stand up and to use these tools because they are effective.”
It wasn’t only people in Washington, DC, who kept up the pressure. Elise Joshi, the director of strategy for Gen-Z for Change talks about the climate crisis every day to her nearly 119,000 TikTok followers. She says the lowest moments of the recent legislative effort — like when Senator Manchin appeared poised to kill the bill or when it wasn’t clear if Senator Sinema (D-AZ) would support the final legislation — were learning opportunities, even though she sometimes felt defeated. “I felt hopeless all the time,” Joshi said. “[What helps is] surrounding myself with climate activists online and in person that feel the grief I feel every time a pundit says it’s not going to pass or Manchin refuses negotiations. It’s like you’re grieving every time.”
While Joshi is glad to celebrate the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been called the biggest win yet for climate activists, she wants people to know they can’t be complacent just because this bill has passed. She knows what she wants to keep the focus on: phasing out fossil fuels and building up renewable energies while keeping the needs and jobs of working-class people top of mind. Joshi rattles off statistics and goals before sighing. “Was I rambling?” she asked. “It’s just, we can make this an even better country.”
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