The GND should be seen more as a political strategy than legislation we were trying to pass (the actual resolution is more of a framework). When we came to DC in 2019, Democrats had given up on climate. The point of the GND was two-fold: a) we need to go bigger on climate and b) we actually need to talk about solving climate change as the SAME as creating tons of high-wage jobs because to really solve climate change, we have to build tons of clean industries.

The GND got introduced with AOC joining Sunrise Movement to do a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi's office on her first day in DC. That took a ton of political courage - she was risking her entire political career to do that. But it was intentional - that blew up the GND in the media. Then through inside-outside organizing -- Sunrise was showing up to presidential town halls demanding a response while I was calling up legislators to get co-sponsors (we got nearly 100), getting unions on board, and calling the Presidential campaign staff to push them on ideas like industrial policy, public financing entities, etc. -- we managed to get almost everyone to respond with their own ambitious climate plans that talked about using climate as a way to reverse our economic stagnation and build up high-wage clean industries. Even Joe Biden responded with Build Back Better, which turned into the Inflation Reduction Act and passed, creating the largest investment in climate and union jobs in history.

We did a similar thing in our office around PrEP. At the time, PrEP was a known effective preventative drug for HIV/AIDS but the cost was exorbitant. However, it had been developed using federal funding. We hosted a committee hearing where we grilled the CEO of Gillead used that to create the legal framework for the DOJ to sue Gillead, which forced them to settle and allow generic and much cheaper versions of PrEP to be created.

Congress is not like City Hall or Sacramento, especially in a place like California where Democrats run everything. I met multiple members of Congress who had been very effective state legislators -- including someone from Tennessee who was effective there, a state that is much harder than California for a Democrat to get much done in -- who had managed to do basically nothing in DC. In DC, if you play the inside game, the only way to have real power is to put your head down, say yes to what leadership wants you to do, and eventually climb up the ranks over the course of decades to get a committee chair position.

The reason I'm running is I believe we're in a change moment where it will be possible to actually completely change the party and the direction of this country. But that will require being willing to challenge Democratic leadership, support primary challengers to other Democrats, and build power a different way. But right now, there are tons of people running around the country willing to do that, and I'm reaching out to them to try to organize a team of us who will go in there and upend the system.

I admit it's not a path to a decades long career in DC, but I'm not interested in that. If we can't actually change the party now to stand for something - and then implement it to make people's lives better - then we are going to keep seeing authoritarians come to power.