Sunrise Activists Are Marching 400 Miles to Demand a Green New Deal Jobs Program

On May 10, as a pounding Spring rain eased to an intermittent sun-dappled drizzle, New Orleans’s Young PinStripe Brass Band played a supercharged fanfare of “We Got the Funk” to spur the first steps of the roughly 400-mile trek from the Superdome to Houston, Texas. Five activists from the Sunrise Movement, ages 17 to 31, are marching in support of the passage of a major jobs component of the Green New Deal. At a clip of 10 miles per day along their walkable route, the group is making stops to learn from locals in impacted communities about topics such as the depletion of Louisiana’s crawfish population, and to engage with laborers at petrochemical plants in “Cancer Alley” about dignified employment that does not require forsaking one’s values, health and family life in exchange for a paycheck.

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