The Story

The idea for a creative hub to turn an iconic paean to fear into a playfully subversive ode to possibility originated in November 2018 when an inspired new crop of young activists from the nascent Sunrise Movement, joined by freshmen representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, burst onto the national scene by storming House Speaker-to-be Pelosi’s office to demand a Select Committee for a Green New Deal.

The thinking went that for the proposed structural and societal transformations to become a reality they would have to be powered by a collective shift in consciousness. And what better way to inspire a new way of looking at things than to showcase the creative expressions and endeavors that shine a light on what’s possible.

The project began to take shape during a Green New Deal Create-a-thon a month after House Resolution 109 — “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal” — was released in February 2019. During a weekend of collective brainstorming, a team of visionaries fleshed out the framework for The Art of the Green New Deal as a journal of culture shift that would collect and chronicle the creative endeavors in support of the adoption and implementation of Green New Deal programs.

Throughout 2019, a core group of volunteer curators got to work on developing the design and content for the initial manifestation of the journal that you can enjoy on these pages. The Art of the Green New Deal — or TAO the GND as we like to call it — launched in November 2019, just in time for the one year anniversary of the now legendary march on Nancy Pelosi’s office.

Read the entire TAO the GND creation story here.