Netroots Nation 2021 welcomes Tlaib, Barnes, Neguse, Granholm, McCarthy at first plenary

Hope and ener­gy for the future were the cur­rents run­ning through the open­ing ple­nary ear­li­er today at Net­roots Nation 2021, dur­ing an hour and a half long ses­sion that served as the book­end to the con­fer­ence’s first day.

First to speak was Jaime Har­ri­son, the Chair of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Har­ri­son did­n’t mince words in his sum­ma­tion of the state of the polit­i­cal land­scape in Capi­tol Hill. He spoke of Repub­li­cans’ con­tin­ued efforts to block vot­ing rights leg­is­la­tion, dis­re­gard health and safe­ty, and pan­der to an extrem­ist Right-Wing base. But rather than let rage and anger con­sume us, he urged lis­ten­ers to let their actions be a call to action.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “We can hit these clowns where it hurts. At the bal­lot box.” He encour­aged lis­ten­ers to unite around “shared values.”

He closed his speech with the fol­low­ing words: “Our mot­to as activists has to be while I breathe, I vote. That, my friends, is how we bring hope.”

The ple­nary also fea­tured a Q&A host­ed by Maris­sa Moli­na with U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Neguse of Col­orado’s 2nd District.

Over the past four years, the Trump regime undid a num­ber of pro­tec­tions for undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple and immi­grants, includ­ing fin­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and the rejec­tion of new DACA appli­ca­tions. How­ev­er, despite the dan­ger these actions left Dream­ers across Amer­i­ca in, Neguse expressed con­fi­dence in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to offer a path­way to citizenship.

Neguse also addressed the racist vio­lence towards Black Hait­ian immi­grants at the border.

“Amer­i­ca is at its best when we are a bea­con of hope and lib­er­ty to folks across the globe,” he said. He added that these hor­rif­ic actions “are not con­sis­tent with what Amer­i­ca is and must be.”

He said that he will con­tin­ue to pres­sure Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas to ensure that this vio­lence will not con­tin­ue, and ensure the dig­ni­ty of these individuals.

Next to take the stage was Joe San­berg, co-founder of Aspiration.

He deliv­ered a sober speech about our ongo­ing cli­mate cri­sis, char­ac­ter­iz­ing the atti­tudes of the Joe Manchins of Capi­tol Hill as “the wall of ‘It’s Too Expensive.’ ”

“We’ve all heard time and again, it’s too expen­sive,” he said. “But COVID has revealed that’s always been a lie. We can afford Wall Street and the for­ev­er wars.”

​He went on to describe the num­ber of myths per­pet­u­at­ed by the oppo­si­tion to impede progress on reforms from rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to can­celling stu­dent debt. Reliev­ing the finan­cial bur­den on the aver­age Amer­i­can lib­er­ates the econ­o­my rather than bur­den­ing it — and what’s more, we have the money.

“We can’t get that big, bold gov­ern­ment action until we tear down the wall called ‘It’s Too Expen­sive,’ to pro­tect a cheat­ing econ­o­my, built on the twin pil­lars of fear and cor­rup­tion,” San­berg said.

Man­dela Barnes, the cur­rent Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of Wis­con­sin, fol­lowed San­berg with a mes­sage of mobi­liza­tion. He echoed the sen­ti­ments of Har­ri­son and Neguse, shar­ing his sto­ry of run­ning for office at the ear­ly age of twenty-five.

Barnes told con­ven­tion­eers that Wis­con­sin faces a num­ber of chal­lenges, includ­ing hav­ing the high­est income gap along racial lines in the nation.

But these haven’t been rea­sons to despair, he said.

Wis­con­sin has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do better.

“We have done bold things before, and it’s time to do bold things again,” he said.

“Orga­nize here, over Zoom, wher­ev­er we have to…until all our insti­tu­tions are reflec­tive of the peo­ple we’re sup­posed to serve.”

Fol­low­ing Barnes was Michi­gan’s U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rashi­da Tlaib.

Tlaib talked about the dis­con­nect between many mem­bers of Con­gress and the lived expe­ri­ences of their con­stituents which, in her view, imped­ed the progress for life-chang­ing leg­is­la­tion such as Pres­i­dent Biden’s Build Back Bet­ter plan.

“Many don’t under­stand what it means to be under­in­sured or unin­sured, or what it is to send their child to a school with­out clean drink­ing water,” she said.

Suc­cess­ful pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy solu­tions, she said, were tar­get­ed towards alle­vi­at­ing these pain points, whether by mak­ing it eas­i­er to under­take home repairs, build­ing an infra­struc­ture around cli­mate resilien­cy, or expand­ing health cov­er­age to include things such as den­tal and vision care.

Bring­ing these real-life nar­ra­tives to Con­gress, she said, was the key to cre­at­ing the sense of urgency nec­es­sary to get such leg­is­la­tion passed.

The final seg­ment of the ple­nary was an ener­giz­ing pan­el mod­er­at­ed by Dr. Mustafa San­ti­a­go Ali, fea­tur­ing White House Nation­al Cli­mate Advi­sor Gina McCarthy and Sec­re­tary of Ener­gy Jen­nifer Granholm.

The pan­elists tout­ed the planks of Pres­i­dent Biden’s robust Build Back Bet­ter plan, break­ing down how the poli­cies are root­ed in the log­ic of the coun­ty’s pro­gres­sive val­ues. Granholm echoed Tlaib’s state­ments on the neces­si­ty of pass­ing the larg­er Build Back Bet­ter bill through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion along­side the bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture bill. “One alone isn’t enough to turn the ship on cli­mate change,” she said.

Ali turned to McCarthy to build off Granholm’s state­ment, ask­ing what she would tell some­body in Appalachia what Build Back Bet­ter would do for them.

McCarthy reeled off a long list of pri­or­i­ties, from invest­ing $27.5 bil­lion in renew­able ener­gy, fund­ing career train­ing for dis­lo­cat­ed work­ers, clean­er and qui­eter trucks, increased air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing, cool­ing cen­ters in schools, bet­ter hous­ing. These, she said, are just a few of the ways the Biden admin­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to improv­ing the lives of the Amer­i­can people.

The pan­elists agreed that there need­ed to be account­abil­i­ty with respect to the expen­di­tures. McCarthy explained that there were incen­tives built into the design of the invest­ments to ensure that once states received the fund­ing “it would not go to waste,” as has been a risk in the past.

Pro­gres­sives in the White House, she said, want to make sure these funds are “spent in a way that rec­og­nizes our com­mit­ment to cli­mate justice.”

Granholm cit­ed the enforce­able clean ener­gy incen­tive plan built into the Build Back Bet­ter bill as an exam­ple of this state account­abil­i­ty in action.

McCarthy went on to say that the chal­lenges fac­ing com­mu­ni­ties and orga­niz­ers are not inci­den­tal, but “sys­temic disinvestments.”

The goal is to reverse that through sys­temic investment.

Ali wrapped up the dis­cus­sion by ask­ing: in the face of the uncer­tain­ty and crises Amer­i­ca has weath­ered over the last sev­er­al years, but espe­cial­ly last year, how do they stay optimistic?

The admin­is­tra­tion is laser-focused on enact­ing poli­cies, Granholm replied, that invest in the future through address­ing cli­mate dam­age. The devel­op­ments she sees around her in the White House give plen­ty of rea­son to hope.

“It is a priv­i­lege to make it happen.”

McCarthy sec­ond­ed this, adding that: “diver­si­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty will make all the dif­fer­ence in the world.”

Peo­ple are ask­ing: “What things can we do in gov­ern­ment to help people?”

She said that she is inspired by hope­ful, ener­getic, and youth­ful vot­ers and ful­ly invest­ed in car­ing for the Earth, our shared and com­mon home.