EXCERPT:
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Looks like they've got composting going on, which is so awesome, too, because composting is really hard to do in a neighborhood like this. We just don't have the pick ups and the ease of it that a lot of other communities have. So that's really how you do it, right, that is such a core component of the Green New Deal, is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context. And it's an area that I — we get the most pushback on, because people say, like, why do you need to do that? That's too hard. But when you really think about it, when someone says that it's too hard to do a green space that grows yucca instead of, I don't know, cauliflower or something, what you're doing is that you're taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements, because they come with the colonial lens on them. And it should be no surprise that sometimes a lot of these projects don't work out occasionally because our communities are naturally attuned to live in an environmentally conscious way.”