Tlaib rallies in support of Green New Deal at Detroit town hall

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) rallied her constituents Friday evening in a Detroit town hall to gin up support for the Green New Deal, a climate resolution favored by progressives to combat climate change.

“A Green New Deal is not bold or radical. This is our life. If there is anybody who deserves a seat at the table it is us in Wayne County! We can’t sit back and let corporate greed tell us this is not possible!” Tlaib said, referencing opposition to the plan.

Tlaib kicked off the event by explaining her personal connection to climate change and how polluted air and water impacted her neighborhood growing up in Detroit.{mosads}

“When I talk about the Green New Deal, our right to breathe clean air, clean water, I always say to people ‘you want to see what doing nothing looks like, come to the neighborhood I grew up in,’ where I smelled like hydrosulfide from playing outside, a rotten egg smell,” she said adding that one in five children has asthma in her district.

“There’s three times the high rate of asthma hospitalization among adults in one of my zip codes. When they say there’s 12 years (to cut emissions in half), I say our 12 years is here today. When you think about Wayne County and Metro Detroit, it is here today.” 

At the #Detroit stop of the Road to the #GreenNewDeal, @RepRashida said, “When they say there’s 12 years, I say our 12 years is here today. When you think about Wayne County and Metro Detroit, it is here today.” Stay tuned with @detroitnews hosted by: @sunrisemvmt pic.twitter.com/KqAcZwo0zt

— Sarah Rahal (@SarahRahal_) April 19, 2019

Tlaib’s comments came on the Detroit stop of the Road to the Green New Deal Tour, which was hosted by the Sunrise Movement. The congresswoman was joined by Abdul el-Sayed, a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate and fellow progressive who would have been the first Muslim governor in the U.S. if elected last year.

The eight-city tour seeks to highlight the need to combat climate change by underlining how a Green New Deal would benefit communities. Friday’s town hall in Detroit drew approximately 400 people, according to The Detroit News. 

Supporters of the Green New Deal kicked off the tour after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a Green New Deal resolution in the House and Senate in February.

The resolution has failed to pass the Senate, and isn’t likely to be taken up in the House. Supporters of the plan have since called it a “vision” that was never intended for a vote.

The Green New Deal has become a hot button issue within the Democratic presidential primary, with moderates expressing skepticism about the plan’s cost and feasibility while some progressives have thrown their weight behind the proposal.