8 pillars of the THRIVE Agenda

The THRIVE Agenda contains 8 pillars:

Pillar 1: Creating millions of good, safe jobs with access to unions.

  • We must invest in upgrading our broken infrastructure, building clean and affordable public transit, replacing lead pipes for clean water, expanding wind and solar power, increasing jobs, wages, and benefits for the work of caring for children, the elderly, and the sick, modernizing buildings to cut pollution and costs, protecting and restoring wetlands, forests, and public lands, supporting family farmers, agricultural workers, and rural communities, and creating high-skill, high-wage manufacturing jobs by expanding manufacturing of clean technologies. 

Pillar 2: Building the power of workers to fight inequality.

  • It’s time to give all workers access to unions and penalize employers that try to stop union organizing.
  • We must expand union representation for all workers, particularly women and people of color.
  • THRIVE ensures that millions of new clean energy jobs, existing low-wage jobs, and frontline jobs become the family-supporting jobs that everyone deserves.

Pillar 3: Investing in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.

  • The THRIVE Agenda calls for 40% of investment to go to communities that have been oppressed and harmed by unjust practices to support job creation, pollution reduction, and climate resilience.
  • It’s key that the most affected communities have the power to democratically plan, implement, and administer these projects. 

Pillar 4: Strengthening and healing the nation-to-nation relationship with sovereign Native Nations.

  • It is long past due that the United States government recognize the sovereignty of Native Nations.
  • The THRIVE Agenda calls for strengthening Tribal sovereignty and enforcing Indian treaty rights.
  • THRIVE includes the codification of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent so that Indigenous peoples can determine the outcome of all decision-making that affects them.

Pillar 5: Combating environmental injustice and ensuring healthy lives for all.

  • Everyone deserves clean water. Everyone deserves clean air. These are not controversial ideas, and yet Black, Brown, Indigenous, and working-class communities across the country have consistently been denied these basic rights and sacrificed to the fossil fuel industry.
  • We must curtail air, water, and land pollution; replace lead pipes; and address the health and environmental impacts of toxic pollution.
  • Under the THRIVE Agenda, communities affected by environmental injustice will receive the vital health and mental health resources they need, as well as access to healthy food, schools, hospitals, child care, senior care, and care for individuals with disabilities.

Pillar 6: Averting climate and environmental catastrophe. 

  • The plan will keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid increasing climate disasters and build climate resilience to keep communities safe.
  • New investments will spur the largest expansion in history of clean, renewable energy, emissions reductions, climate resilience, and sustainable resource use. 
  • We will transform the agriculture sector so that family farms and farming communities are fairly paid for sustainable, domestic production of healthy, nutritious food.

Pillar 7: Ensuring fairness for workers and communities affected by economic transitions. 

  • Workers impacted by the pandemic, climate change, and other economic transitions will receive guaranteed pay and benefits.
  • Communities impacted by economic transitions will not be left to wither but will be reinvigorated with investment in economic diversification; high-quality job creation; retooling and conversion of factories; and reclamation and remediation of closed facilities. 

Pillar 8: Reinvesting in public institutions that enable workers and communities to thrive.

  • The THRIVE Agenda will create new public institutions to strategically mobilize investments that tackle the interlocking crises of racial, economic, and climate injustice. 
  • As we rebuild vital public services and strengthen social infrastructure, new public institutions will help ensure universal access to critical resources.
  • Democratic governance and accountability in these new public institutions will ensure equitable access to the investments of the THRIVE Agenda.

Our asks for the Biden Administration are therefore:

  1. Implement the THRIVE Agenda principles through your upcoming economic stimulus package to help our communities recover from the intersecting crises of COVID-19, climate change, mass unemployment, racial injustice, and economic inequality. 
  2. Highlight the importance of the THRIVE Agenda and publicly declare your support for its principles during your State of the Union Address to Congress.