Civil Eats

Shovel-Ready is quickly becoming one of the darling terms of 2009 as it becomes a proxy for projects that will quickly create jobs and economic growth. Most of the Shovel-Ready projects that are being discussed are massive in scale, and many of them will still take months to start after being given the green light. Read More

Van Jones was at the First Congregational Church in Oakland last Tuesday, ostensibly to talk about his green-for-all campaign, the subject of his recent bestseller The Green Collar Economy. But seeing as how he was back home, in the heart of his own congregation and community, he reveled in the show he put on and it was like we all had backstage passes. With his wife and two children in the audience and surrounded by old friends, including Ada de Leon (who read some of her poetry) and Alice Walker (who didn’t), he took us from bouts of hilarity to sober reflection and back again with memories of how this extended East Bay family had braved the last few decades and especially the last eight years.  “Barack Obama didn’t create this movement,” he said at one point, “this movement created the opportunity for Barack Obama!” He noted that joy over the Obama victory was twinned with outrage over the passage of Prop 8, adding that it “has an expiration date,” since voters 35 and younger overwhelmingly opposed it. But no one in this group is going to sit by passively and wait for justice to be served up to them. Read More