Got Green?

Got Green Seattle is a non-profit organization concerned with promoting communities of color (and the lower-income communities of Southeast Seattle) and sees the movement for an equitable, green economy as the best way to fight poverty and global warming at the same time. The organization began with the realization that the sustainability movement/green economy is not being communicated in a way that everyone can understand, especially in lower-income neighborhoods. "It's hard to translate carbon footprint into Chinese". Their goal is to translate the green economy, its benefits and challenges, in a way that both interests and stimulates people within these communities. People of color have been left behind.

The organization decided training community members for green jobs was a good start to getting caught up. They applied for, and received, federal stimulus funding to train local workers for green jobs, but they realized after training that the workers they trained were not getting jobs. (Interestingly, they gave some stimulus money back as a result of their inability to place workers in green jobs.) Further, they realized women were still being left out. Women were surveyed and asked to prioritize between access to healthy food, green home (energy efficient/healthy living conditions), green jobs, and public transportation. Women chose access to healthy food as their top priority, so Got Green set out to improve access to (affordable) healthy foods.

Mostly though, the group is active in the lower-income communities to bring jobs to the communities or have construction companies working nearby hire local workers from within the communities where they are building rather than bringing in their own crews.

The majority of our visit with Got Green centered around jobs to the point that it was difficult to identify how "green" plays a role in their organization. Instead, it seems to be a social equity group and seems more like an example of using green to get funding without actually being green. I think their intentions are pure, but I think the name is misleading. They are confusing "green" and "sustainable". Eventually, they don't mean the same thing. Got Green wants jobs for communities of color and wants to keep things local, which is certainly a component of a sustainable community, but it does appear as though they are playing on the "green" movement and the efforts of government to promote green initiatives to disguise and fund their ultimate goal of social equity for Southeast Seattle.