John de Graaf

John de Graaf is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker, speaker, and activist “with a mission to help create a happy, healthy and sustainable quality of life for America.” He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”

I have come to believe that Udall was actually in many ways, a conservative whose creative ideas may help point America’s way forward in a turbulent, polarized, and destructive time. Above all, Udall was devoted to conserving the land and the beauty of the American landscape.

With ideas like the Green New Deal, or the “Beauty New Deal,” which the Maryland-based Bread and Roses Party has proposed, we should be able to write another volume—2026: A New Agenda for Tomorrow.

The old word “beauty” speaks to our hearts as more academic or bureaucratic terms cannot.  I am especially persuaded by the power of the word to cross lines of political polarization. As, I believe, is the concept of Bread and Roses!

“Fortunately,” he says, “we here in California believe in climate change. We believe in the ecology of our land. We believe that we can make the positive changes that need to be made so that we have life on this planet.” And not only life, but a good life.

In my view, the most glaring omission in the GND is its lack of any challenge to consumerism and our current obsession with economic growth.