During my recent time away from Washington, D.C., I have noticed that the notion that this country and its federal city can for a moment offer an honest proposal for sustainable and equitable growth is cause of great skepticism.
A good friend of mine recently suggested that the new green movement is merely camouflage for a shy lefty U.S. movement, the idea being that the movement takes green ideas from the hard left and so-called environmental loonies and turning it into a marketable idea. His argument was that in some cases, the "camouflaged" and more palatable versions of green ideas are just as superficial as ideas with no basis in innovation. In his view, if this green camouflage is not recognized for what it is—an initiative to bring equitable, long term change—it will be further trivialized, commodified, appropriated, and used precisely by those who would oppose deep transformations. If good ideas are camouflaged, what's to stop anti-green ideas from putting on the same disguise?
If my friend's fears are to be proven unfounded, the green movement will have to craft and implement viable initiatives that will incorporate sustainable processes as an integral component of political, cultural, grassroots, or private activities. Thus D.C. activists must both defy low expectations some people have of this city and continue the real progress many are making at the local level in order to transform the perception and priorities of the city.
In that context, initiatives and platforms like this one are going to prove critical if we actually want to shift the discourse from lip service to responsible action, if we want to shift the paradigm from what some see as a fad to something embedded in our daily common culture. I believe that ultimately the success of ambitious and necessary proposals will lie in their capacity to tie vision to local transformational initiatives and vice versa. The path ahead has to be one that creates the processes that enable us to craft a common equitable ground and that is no camouflage.
