The average family travels three hours each way to get to the Preston Youth Correctional Facility. It took us two hours from our office in Oakland. When we arrived, Jennifer and I were treated to what has become a typical experience for families visiting Preston—an exhaustive (and intimidating) search of our vehicle by local police and their dogs. The search ended abruptly when staff learned we weren’t here to visit family—we were here for a tour.

Our three tour guides—the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, and a supervising parole agent—met us in the administrative office at the mouth of the facility. As we exited through the back, the first thing I noticed was the quiet. It felt like the parties to our tour were the only people on the grounds. The basketball courts—weeds cutting through concrete, and backboards soaked with rust—were empty, as was the swimming pool and the dry grass where rattlesnakes are known to curl in the sun. “It looks like a junior college, doesn’t it?” the parole agent said cheerfully. To me, Preston looked more like an inactive military base, its buildings worn, its spirit forlorn.

This was a tour of gaps and silences, and I’ll remember it as much by what we did not see as by what we were led to see. We did not have the chance to visit the living unit where young people adjudicated for sex offenses are housed—one of the poorest-kept units from the previous Books Not Bars tour—nor did we see the showers, where last November, parents told us their children were sprayed with mace after a fight erupted, the chemicals so thick in the air it was difficult to breathe. Of the 300 youth housed at Preston, we were in the presence last Saturday of maybe thirty of them, and spoke to even fewer. When I recall the tour now, the image that comes to mind is of the first living unit we visited, with its forty or fifty empty metal beds, many triple bunked and each topped with what could have been slices of a single mattress. The light was dim, the caged security station unmanned, and all to be heard was the dull hum of a fan.

Our guides seemed to take a certain pleasure in leading the tour—offering to take us to the top of the watchtower, twice recommending the wine tasting and open house at the historic castle nearby—as if we had come to visit not a prison but some site of national pride. Since the youth prisons have fallen under a federal consent decree for their deplorable conditions, the superintendent and his staff give tours quite often, and Saturday’s program, very much a highlight reel of piecemeal improvements, likely followed the path that numerous state officials and agents of the courts have also taken. While the superintendent and other staff we met along the way were more than welcoming and assured us we could visit whatever we wished to see, there is only so much you can see on a Saturday morning when most young people are either visiting their loved ones or in the mess hall or someplace else we do not visit.

For the superintendent, the tour was his way of saying the old, dark days are behind us, as he made it a point to lead us through his proudest accomplishments. He took us to the “Behavioral Treatment Program” unit (BTP), where youth once confined to 21-hour solitary are now housed. Most have access to a common area, and all receive programming outside their cells (though they still spend the majority of the day in lockup). In a different unit, we were introduced to a staff member well versed in the language of conflict resolution. According to the superintendent, court-mandated decreases in the number of youth housed on each living unit have helped reduce the number of incidents in which staff members resort to force (though the improper use of chemical restraints, we would add, remains a huge issue).

Midway through the tour, the sight of imposing metal cages outside the Sequoia living unit cast a silence over the group. The superintendent kept walking, and we followed. With his back to the cages, the superintendent said, “We don’t use any of that stuff any more.” From the way he said it, you’d think decades had passed since young men spent hours peering out from those cages during recreation time, but it has actually been just a couple years, if that. The superintendent quickly added that he plans to acquire dogs from the local SPCA, which some youth will be responsible for training, and in the abandoned cages, the dogs will be kept. And so cages for men become cages for dogs. The policy is rewritten, regulations updated, and the indiscretion is erased. The institution self-corrects and plows ahead like a steam train, or so the superintendent would have it.

But do the young people at Preston see the transformation? I was the last to leave the common area of one of the “high risk” living units, when a group of eight young men flagged me down. I explained who I worked for. “We have some concerns,” one of them said. The grievance process—another of the reforms the superintendent had touted—still wasn’t working. “They are throwing our complaints in the trash. We can’t do anything about it.” “The tour they’re taking you on,” another youth said, “it’s a joke. They’re putting on a show for you. As soon as you leave, we’ll be back in our cells again.” “And see,” the first young man cut in again. He cocked his head to gesture to the corrections officer stationed across the room. “We’ll all have trouble for talking to you.” His friends nodded wearily.

Preston is not a place that shows itself in an hour, especially to visitors, but there were moments like this when I caught glimpses of its character. In the BTP unit, while everyone else sat in orange chairs by the television, two youth remained locked in their cells. The cells are dank closets and each features a single window slat. One of the two young men stood right up against the door, looked out through the slat with heavy eyes, and waved. Apparently Sacramento County had paid the Division of Juvenile Justice to house him and his companion before their trial, but due to liability concerns, they were to have no contact with the DJJ youth, which meant they were isolated, in their cells or otherwise, at all times.

On the way home, I thought about what the young man I’d met had told me, that when the show was over, he and his compatriots would be back in their cells, too. And for a second, I imagined rows of youth holed up in their cells, just as the design of the facility—with its long, dark halls—prescribes. Like the old castle that shares its grounds, Preston is a fortress—obdurate and insular and tethered to misery. The superintendent’s protocol and pronouncements won’t take the misery away from those halls. No, he’ll need a bulldozer to do that.

The conversation about incarceration is slowly changing: The Economist’s not-exactly-progressive columnist Lexington recently slammed the United States for a prison system that involves 1 in 31 adults and targets people of color. It’s not every day that a major international publication calls out the U.S. for its tendency to use imprisonment as a solution for social problems such as drug use, poverty and mental illness.

From  the article:

But in one area America is going from strength to strength—the incarceration of its population. America has less than 5% of the world’s people but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average. About one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one-in-three chance of being imprisoned at some point in their lives. “A Leviathan unmatched in human history”, is how Glenn Loury, professor of social studies at Brown University, characterises America’s prison system.

Conditions in the Leviathan’s belly can be brutal. More than 20% of inmates report that they have been sexually assaulted by guards or fellow inmates. Federal prisons are operating at more than 130% of capacity. A sixth of prisoners suffer from mental illness of one sort or another. There are four times as many mentally ill people in prison as in mental hospitals.

. . .

As well as being brutal, prisons are ineffective. They may keep offenders off the streets, but they fail to discourage them from offending. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are re-arrested within three years of being released. The punishment extends to prisoners’ families, too. America’s 1.7m “prison orphans” are six times more likely than their peers to end up in prison themselves. The punishment also sometimes continues after prisoners are released. America is one of only a handful of countries that bar prisoners from voting, and in some states that ban is lifelong: 2% of American adults and 14% of black men are disfranchised because of criminal convictions.

. . .

But Mr Webb is now America’s leading advocate of prison reform. He has co-sponsored a bill to create a blue-ribbon commission to report on America’s prisons. And he has spoken out in every possible venue, from the Senate to local political meetings. Mr Webb is not content with incremental reform. He is willing to tackle what he calls “the elephant in the bedroom”—America’s willingness to imprison people for drug offences.

You can thank Senator Webb for his leadership in a campaign run by our partner organization, ColorOfChange.org.

The way the U.S. has fought its “War on Drugs,” much like its “War on Terror”, has severely damaged our credibility as a promoter of human rights across the United States and around the world. The U.S. has sent billions in counter-narcotics aid to support ineffective and inhumane policies, such as failed “supply-side” aerial fumigation eradication strategies in Colombia. The United Nations estimates that 383,000 Colombians are involved in coca production—the raw material for cocaine. The vast majority of these are family farmers forced to grow coca for economic reasons yet punitive eradication policies designed in Washington drive them further away from the Colombian government in a country immersed in a civil war.

At home more than two million people languish in U.S. prisons, most due to nonviolent drug offenses. The communities most harmed by these ineffective and inhumane policies are low income communities and people of color in the U.S. and Colombia. Drug demand reduction activities at home coupled with alternative development abroad, by far the most cost-effective and humane solutions to our nation’s drug problem, get short shrift. The following video highlights some of these issues. For more information go to www.witnessforpeace.org

Shoveling Water: War on Drugs, War on People is a journey to the heart of coca country where United States tax dollars have financed the aerial fumigation of 2.6 million acres of land in Colombia – the world’s second most biodiverse country. In this documentary you will see crop dusters target coca plants, the main ingredient of cocaine, with concentrated herbicide as part of the U.S. war on drugs and listen to people on the ground, hear about the impacts, and learn new ideas about how to solve this deadly problem.

In “Hellhole,” published in the March 30 issue of The New Yorker, Atul Gawande condemns the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons as a form of torture. If solitary confinement is torturous to adults, imagine the impact of prolonged isolation on young people whose brains are still developing.

A 2004 lawsuit against California’s youth prison system revealed that young people in state custody who violated institutional rules were being held 20- to 23-hours per day in solitary confinement for weeks and months on end. Four years later, solitary confinement—known as SMP or Special Management Program by corrections officials—remains a routine practice of California’s Division of Juvenile Justice.

The effects of solitary confinement, as Atul Gawande documents, are deeply troubling:

• Experience confirms that solitary confinement is torture. “A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam [...] reported that [the aviators] found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.”
• Solitary confinement impairs normal functioning of the brain. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have shown “diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement.” One of these studies concluded: “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.”
• The experience of prolonged isolation often leaves people “unfit for social interaction.” A study of one hundred people in isolation at California’s Pelican Bay supermax revealed that many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind,” as they fall into an essentially catatonic state. Ninety percent of those studied exhibited “difficulties with ‘irrational anger’” compared to just three percent of prisoners from general population.
• Solitary confinement raises serious mental health concerns. A Boston psychiatrist interviewed two hundred prisoners in solitary confinement and found that “about a third developed acute psychosis with hallucinations.”

Gawande says prison officials defend solitary confinement as a “necessary evil” to reduce violence and maintain order inside correctional institutions. But this theory belies the facts. “The most careful inquiry” into the effects of solitary confinement on prison violence and disorder found that use of solitary confinement had no impact on inmate-on-inmate violence and no logical correlation with inmate-on-staff violence.

With twenty-five thousand incarcerated people isolated in supermax prisons and as many as eighty thousand detained in restrictive segregation units, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons is widespread. A form of solitary confinement is also a fixture of the disciplinary regime at California’s six state juvenile facilities.

Under the DJJ’s Special Management Program (SMP), youth in California are locked in isolation up to 21 hours a day. These young people are limited to a single one-hour visit per week with family from behind a glass window—they are barred from any physical contact with their loved ones. According to Books Not Bars’ DJJ Report Cards, the average length of stay for youth placed in SMP was 42 days in 2004; in 2007, that average rose to 65 days.

Administrative lockdowns—when an entire unit or youth prison is shut down—also occur regularly. In 2007, Stark and Preston together imposed five administrative lockdowns, lasting a total of 30 days. Under an administrative lockdown, youth are forced to remain in their cells and cannot attend classes or programming, even if they were not involved in the offending incident.

Some states are beginning to recognize that what is harmful cannot heal. The state of Missouri, which has piloted a successful model of regionalized, rehabilitative care for young people in trouble, places youth in isolation rarely and never for more than a few hours. The problem with solitary, the director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services told the New York Times last week, “is that a young person doesn’t learn how to avoid that aggressive behavior and it will get worse.” Instead of spending time in isolation, young people in Missouri are trained in how to de-escalate conflicts.

All young people—and all adults for that matter—require opportunities for social interaction and self-expression. Disciplinary programs ought to attend to people’s needs in order to prevent misbehavior and facilitate positive growth.

This is a guest post by Jerome Ringo, the President of the National Apollo Alliance, one of our key allies in the movement for green-collar jobs.

Apollo Alliance Answers $789 billion Question

Today’s news is filled with images of an economy in crisis — shuttered factories, hollowed-out cities, and neighborhood blocks littered with foreclosure signs.  Even before we heard the word “recession,” America’s workers were at the center of our country’s economic storm. We’ve seen firsthand how quickly once-secure careers can be replaced by fleeting jobs.  We know too many employers don’t respect the dignity of work and family. And every time we visit the grocery store or sit down to pay the bills, we’re finding it harder to stretch our paychecks to pay for rising food and fuel prices and exorbitant healthcare costs.

President Obama takes office at a time of unprecedented challenge for our country.  We must not only reverse the short-term economic slump, but also re-focus our economy away from cheap fossil fuels and toward new, clean energy alternatives.

And so we at the Apollo Alliance are thrilled that after hearing the voices of labor, President Obama and Congress made passing the $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act a top priority. The Act addresses short term economic needs while laying out a path to a better future, with unprecedented new investments in energy efficiency, upgrades to the nation’s transmission grid, home energy makeovers for low-income families, and job training to create pathways out of poverty and into the career track of green jobs.

Good, “green-collar” jobs can and will be nearly everywhere in a new, clean energy economy –  from manufacturing and installing wind turbines, to retrofitting residential and commercial buildings, to getting a 21st century electric grid on line. But we must step up the pressure to make sure the Recovery Act is only the beginning of a long term investment, and to ensure stimulus dollars create the maximum benefit for our economy and our families.

To that end, states and localities must follow these core principles in spending stimulus dollars:

Create Quality Green-Collar Jobs and Economic Growth. Recovery Act funds should be directed toward creating “green-collar” jobs – jobs that are well-paid, on a career track, and contribute directly to preserving or enhancing our environmental quality. To help move more families into the middle class and spur economic growth, strong labor standards must be attached to all public investments. We must fund high-quality green jobs programs and projects that create jobs for unemployed, underemployed, and dislocated workers.

Ensure Transparency and Accountability. The President and Congress tied Recovery Act funding to an unprecedented level of federal transparency and public accountability requirements. State and local policymakers should follow this model and employ the Internet and multi-stakeholder oversight bodies so taxpayers know how the money is being spent.

Benefit All Workers and Communities. While hard times have fallen on every corner of the nation, some communities have suffered more than others. As we build a new clean energy economy, we can’t leave behind our rural families, urban centers, and communities of color. We must target investments toward creating jobs in areas with high layoff and unemployment rates, as well as heavily polluted areas and low income communities.

Rebuild America Clean and Green. Every recovery dollar should be spent in a way that promotes climate stability and energy security by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on foreign oil. This means targeting transportation dollars to repair and upgrade projects and expanding public transit, and focusing environmental dollars on those projects that increase urban density and return vacant land to sustainable, productive use. For all building construction projects, policymakers should exceed federal minimums and apply energy efficiency and “green building” standards to all projects funded by federal stimulus dollars. And policymakers at the federal, state and local level should incorporate American-made systems and component parts into all clean energy projects, to create manufacturing jobs while reducing carbon emissions and oil dependence.

Create Green Jobs at Scale. The best way to create long-term growth, and to ensure that unions are a vital part of the green economy, is to fund projects of a large enough scale so that they can create multiple jobs and training opportunities. Combining stimulus programs and scaling up projects will create opportunities in fields such as energy efficiency retrofitting or solar panel installation. This will allow businesses to achieve economies of scale and allow job training programs to create career ladders into these professions for low-skill job seekers.

We are proud to have worked with you to create an unstoppable momentum for big changes in Washington.  Now we must work together to ensure that our leaders seize the $789 billion opportunity to take America in a new clean and green direction.

By now you’ve probably heard the good news that Van Jones will join the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) as its Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Needless to say, we here at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights are ecstatic. It was just 13 years ago that Van co-founded our organization — working out of a closet. (Yes, a closet!) Today, we’re a thriving social justice action center, and Van is headed to Washington to work for President Obama.

Based in Oakland, California, the Ella Baker Center has tackled some of the most troubling issues plaguing urban America by promoting positive alternatives to violence and incarceration. Over that time, we’ve seen the fruits of our labor come in the form of victories such as landmark juvenile justice reform, effective violence-prevention policy, and successful implementation of the historic Oakland Green Jobs Corps.

But never in our organization’s history have we seen a moment more beautiful than this. It’s truly remarkable to have one of our own ascend to the nation’s highest levels of power — and almost unbelievable that he’s been tapped to craft an inclusive green agenda that ensures the emerging clean energy economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Van’s dream for a green and equitable future for all began with a straightforward idea that was elegant in its simplicity years ago: Fight poverty and pollution at the same time.

Back then, “going green” wasn’t as sexy, appealing or marketable as it is now. But Van was tireless in his commitment to move our cities past the pollution-based economy that destroyed the planet and made people — most often people of color and low-income people — sick. There were more doubters, more cynics, and more critics than you could count challenging these groundbreaking ideas, but we kept at it, spreading our “Green Jobs Now” message from conference to conference, city to city, town hall to town hall.

As all things green eventually became all the rage, the term “green-collar job” was tossed around with increasing frequency. It was up to us to protect and promote the true ideals behind the trendy rhetoric. Van has been steadfast in calling for not only the creation of clean energy jobs, but also for job training for people with barriers to employment, so they, too, can reap the benefits. The vision — the same vision Van now brings to the Obama administration — is an equitable America where the people who most need work are connected with the work that most needs doing.

Our work continues to gain momentum. Today, the Ella Baker Center’s Green-Collar Jobs Campaign is partnering with dozens of California’s most influential and respected organizations to form the “California Green Stimulus Coalition.” This new coalition is working to make sure officials in California — at the state, regional, and local levels — use federal stimulus funds in the greenest and most equitable way possible.

Van’s vision for an equitable America was, and remains to this day, a guiding light for our movement. Having worked with him for 10 years, I witnessed his tireless passion every day. His commitment to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty didn’t stop with his work at the Ella Baker Center. After moving on from our organization, Van went on to found Green For All, an organization that builds upon the green-collar jobs work we’ve done here in California at the national level. Green For All has been advocating for — and winning — local, state and federal commitments for job creation, job training, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy, especially for people from disadvantaged communities.

What this movement has already been able to do is truly extraordinary. Working together, we’ve brought to light real solutions to the economic and environmental crises facing the country and the world, while creating a huge shift in the thinking of millions of Americans who finally understand that global warming is real. We can’t drill and burn our way out of the problems created under the gray economy; we must invest and invent in a green pathway out of this mess.

For years, Van has helped lead this movement with solution-oriented ideas that provide some of our most marginalized communities with effective tools to create lasting change in their lives. He has co-founded dynamic organizations to carry the work forward, and is leaving Green For All in good hands. Now, Van is going to help chart a green pathway for the nation.

To have someone from our family advising the White House on how to put America back to work in a new, clean, and green economy brings renewed hope to our movement. During this time of global war, global recession, and global warming there is no one more effective at addressing the needs of the everyday American than Van Jones.

This is the first in a series of blog posts about Black History month.

Ever wonder how black history month got started? And why is it in February instead of any other month? I bet you’d be surprised to know that Black History Month was born in a coal mine.

Black History Month was started by educator and scholar, Carter G. Woodson, but before he became all that, he was just a coal miner. While on the job, Woodson had conversations with Black Civil War Veterans he worked with and learned many historical facts that for some reason didn’t make it on the pages of the history books. Woodson realized that it was significant no one was documenting and telling our story.

Woodson eventually left the coalmines and went on to earn a Ph.D. in history and in 1915 he co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History aimed at funding research and writing projects about black history.

In 1926 Woodson finally had the idea that made his name synonymous with Black History Month. Negro History Week was set during the second week in February because it marks the birthdays of Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976 it finally became what we know today as Black History Month.

Source:

Gates, Henry Louis and West, Cornel, The African American Century, Touchstone, 2002.

Calling it a “step backwards for California’s children and communities,” the Children’s Defense Fund joins the Ella Baker Center in taking a strong stand against Proposition 6. One of the most harmful provisions of Prop 6 is to try more children as adults — even though studies show that children’s brains are different and that outcomes for youth in adult prison are even worse than those that go to juvenile hall. In their own words:

Proposition 6, an initiative on the California ballot this November, is a misguided and costly effort to increase funds for law enforcement and prisons at the expense of children and their communities. Falsely touted by proponents as the “Safe Neighborhoods Act”, Prop 6 re-writes or adds more than 50 criminal laws and statutes in order to criminalize children at younger ages and unfairly target at-risk youth.  Instead of investing in evidence-based strategies to reduce crime, Prop 6 takes California communities in the wrong direction by increasing the arrest and incarceration of at-risk youth who are then less likely to stay in school and become productive citizens.  If passed, Prop 6 would put more children behind bars and spend billions of tax-payer dollars on programs that are not proven to make neighborhoods safer.

We welcome the Children’s Defense Fund to the broad coalition — including firefighters, teachers, community groups and law enforcement — opposing Proposition 6. Learn more about Prop 6 at VoteNoProp6.com, and read the Children’s Defense Fund’s full statement against it.

Our very own Joyce Cook is participating in the Equal Voices for America’s Families Lifecasting Across the Digital Divide project. Each week, she records a new video and adds it to her page, chronicling the life of a mother working to reform California’s youth prison system. Follow Joyce as she reflects on the political process, talks about life in Richmond, and shares Books Not Bars victories.

Every Tuesday, Equal Voices will post a new video from Joyce on its blog. You can see all of Joyce’s videos on her own video page. She’s also been featured on the Huffington Post.

Here’s a sample video:

June Zeitlin, Executive Director of Women’s Environment and Development Organization, submitted this guest entry. As the climate crisis deepens, we can’t afford to leave any voices out of the solution. Read on for an exploration of the pivotal role women play in preventing and coping with climate change.

The more we experience the effects of climate change, the clearer it becomes that everyone on the planet has a huge stake in what we decide to do now. That is why it is appalling that women are still being overlooked as key to the solution.

When storms and mudslides devastate a neighborhood, women shoulder most of the cleanup, stay home from work or school the most and take care of the injured. When drought hits the developing world, it is women whose crops and animals suffer most, as they produce most of the food in Africa and Asia. Women are the ones who risk assault to go further and further in search of water and firewood.

Women, in short, are the most affected by the disruptions of climate change. But women also have the most experience in coping. Women drive less, consume less and have smaller carbon footprints than men. Women’s initiatives are creating green jobs and slowing environmental damage worldwide. Yet women are generally left out of policy deliberations on what to do about global warming.

It is time for this to change. Next year’s new Congress will consider legislation to mandate new greenhouse gas emission standards and invest in measures to grow a greener U.S. economy. Election season offers politicians the chance to stand out from their opponents by recognizing women’s centrality on this issue and pledging to involve them in its solution. So far, it isn’t happening.

Women produce 65 percent of all the food in Asia and 75 percent of it in sub-Saharan Africa. Erratic weather means they must spend more time farming and gathering food, which leaves less time for education, outside work, personal and family life. The result: ill health, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, forced migration and conflict. But in Kenya, for example, Wangari Maathai started the Greenbelt Movement, urging women to be leaders in planting trees to prevent erosion and stand up for democracy. For this she won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

In Suriname, no one listened when women pointed out that a local river’s annual floods were getting worse and that perhaps the village should relocate to higher ground. It was wiped out the following year. When drought hit Micronesia, women were digging wells and creating new water sources long before the government decided what it could do. When Hurricane Mitch killed thousands in Central America in 1998, no one died in the Honduran town of La Masica because women there participated equally with men in all relief operations, went on rescue missions, rehabilitated local infrastructure, distributed food and took over the task, from men, of monitoring the early-warning system for disasters.

Women are a majority of the world’s poor, and the poor by definition live in substandard housing in marginal areas prone to drought, floods or resource shortages. Up to 70 percent of those killed in the 2004 Asian tsunami were women. In Bangladesh, the 1991 cyclone and flood killed 71 of every 1,000 women, compared to 15 of every 1,000 men. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, women forced into overcrowded housing suffered high rates of sexual abuse, while lack of child care facilities has cost many their jobs and health insurance. Contemplating the slow government response, Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton sponsored a resolution at the 2007 national lieutenant governors’ conference calling on officials to commit to action in their states against climate change.

Political candidates should take note that women are both those most affected by climate change worldwide and leaders in dealing with it. At the moment, the debate focuses on technical and economic issues. True, those are crucial: an effective policy should require emission cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020, suspend new coal plants and end U.S. fossil fuel dependence through incentives for energy efficiency and renewable resource production.

It should also require research on gender-specific patterns of resource use, vulnerability and coping mechanisms. It should call for new data collection about every proposal’s effects on women, and mandate involvement by women and gender experts in preparing U.S. policy and contributions to international discussions. It should recognize that success of the technical fixes will depend on the ways that women use natural and economic resources and the way they react to policy initiatives.

The planet’s future is at stake in the global warming debate, no question about it. Women are weighing in with reports and suggestions from the field where they know the terrain. It’s time for their voices to be heard and heeded.

***
June Zeitlin is the executive director of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO). Founded in 1991, WEDO is an international organization that advocates for women’s equality in global policy.