Summer                     Waxing Summer Moon

A strange sensation today as I walked up the long flight of stairs at 2828 University Ave. SE.  Not deja vu exactly, I knew was this not a relived moment of my past, but a definite sense of having been here before, walking in to a strange room, meeting people, shaking hands, thinking further down the road.

It was the celebration of the Blue/Green Alliance’s opening its new offices.  The mayor’s of Minneapolis and St. Paul, RJ Rybak and Chris Coleman gave speeches, Ellen Anderson and Melissa Hortman were there along with others including Mark Andrews, former Hennepin County Commissioner.  There were labor leaders, leadership of the Sierra Club and a number of other folks whose personal and political lives pull them somehow into the orbit of labor and/or environmental politics.

I met Michael Porter, a guy from Macalester who runs their intern program.  I shook hands with Mark and saw Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club and Joshua Low who has done great work as the Green part of the Blue/Green Alliance.

Crowded rooms make hearing a difficult task for me, so I look to get away when I can, but it felt familiar to be there, getting ready for something months away, the second session of the 2009-2010 legislature.

This particular group and what they represent give me real hope in a couple of different directions.  Labor unions have had a tough go of it over the last twenty years or so and this represents a new and promising direction.  David Foster, the executive director of the Blue/Green Alliance, put it this way in a speech in Germany recently:  I want every job to be a green job and I want every green job to be a union job.  Sounds right to me.  Second, the environmental movement has often looked away from the difficult politics of economic justice, yet no lasting change in environmental policy will take place if those in the lower income sectors of our economy have to bear the brunt of it.