DES MOINES, IOWA — ​“Who in this room has played Dun­geons & Drag­ons?” asks Cat Rock­et­ship, an orga­niz­er with the pro­gres­sive advo­ca­cy group Iowa Cit­i­zens for Com­mu­ni­ty Improve­ment (CCI), of a room of more than three dozen activists. They were envi­sion­ing the future under a Green New Deal dur­ing an exper­i­men­tal work­shop Nov. 16, 2019, at the Cen­tral Library in down­town Des Moines.

Iowans imagined new social roles in a 2030 society that has taken significant steps toward environmental and economic justice.

Rock­et­ship was intro­duc­ing a small-group activ­i­ty, imag­in­ing new social roles in a 2030 soci­ety that has tak­en sig­nif­i­cant steps toward envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic jus­tice. Instead of wiz­ards and cler­ics (per Dun­geons & Drag­ons), pro­posed roles ranged from the famil­iar, like com­mu­ni­ty plan­ners, to the more cre­ative, such as mem­o­ry stew­ards to record and pre­serve sto­ries about their communities.

The work­shop was led by Alex O’Keefe, cre­ative direc­tor of the youth-led cli­mate orga­ni­za­tion Sun­rise Move­ment, and mem­bers of CCI. Rough­ly a quar­ter of atten­dees trav­eled from oth­er states to dis­cuss a ​“Green New Deal for Iowa and rur­al America.”

“In Michi­gan, there is a very big divide between urban and sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties,” said Maria Ibar­ra-Frayre, 29, deputy direc­tor of work­ing-class orga­niz­ing group We the Peo­ple Michi­gan, who trav­eled from Detroit. ​“There is very lit­tle over­lay or rela­tion­ship-build­ing between those communities.”

Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en note­books (with cov­ers fash­ioned from recy­cled posters pro­mot­ing a past CCI event) to record their thoughts through­out a series of col­lab­o­ra­tive brain­storm­ing ses­sions. They wrote let­ters to their 2009 selves amid the Great Reces­sion, then let­ters to their 2030 selves imag­in­ing equi­table rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. Ideas for the future includ­ed afford­able loans for begin­ning farm­ers, more robust local food dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­kets, and guar­an­teed union jobs to plant prairie land, build elec­tric rail and enhance rur­al inter­net access.

At day’s end, orga­niz­ers col­lect­ed the note­books for deliv­ery to a group of ani­ma­tors who will cre­ate a short video to gal­va­nize sup­port for a Green New Deal. It will be released in mid-Jan­u­ary ahead of the Iowa cau­cus­es Feb­ru­ary 3.

As a mod­el, the work­shop opened with an ani­mat­ed short, A Mes­sage From the Future with Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, illus­trat­ed by Mol­ly Crabap­ple, pro­duced by The Inter­cept and nar­rat­ed by the con­gress­woman. In the video, Oca­sio-Cortez imag­ines the Unit­ed States after Medicare for All (described as ​“the most pop­u­lar social pro­gram in Amer­i­can his­to­ry”), a fed­er­al jobs guar­an­tee and nation­wide high-speed rail, to help envi­sion an inclu­sive, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, pro­gres­sive future.

The idea appealed to Lar­ry Gin­ter, a 79-year-old retired fam­i­ly farmer from Rhodes, a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of about 300 peo­ple in cen­tral Iowa where he grew up. He recount­ed how the New Deal revi­tal­ized his hometown.

“You couldn’t explain how great every­thing was,” Gin­ter recalled. The com­mu­ni­ty thrived until the ear­ly 1950s, when com­mod­i­ty price floors declined as part of the dis­man­tling of the New Deal. Where Rhodes once sup­port­ed two gas sta­tions, five church­es and a pub­lic school, he said, today it has no gas sta­tions or schools and one active church.

Gin­ter said he was enthused about the younger generation’s ambi­tious cli­mate efforts, but appre­hen­sive about the dystopi­an future they might inherit.

“My fear is that our gov­ern­ment and a lot of peo­ple won’t buy into the idea that we need … real struc­tur­al change to get things going on here” to fend off cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe, he tells In These Times. ​“If we don’t get a han­dle on this, we’re going to see things that we nev­er dreamed of.”

Already, Iowa farm­ers have felt the effects of a chang­ing cli­mate, with record rain­fall threat­en­ing crop yields and delay­ing the har­vest sea­son. Mean­while, the cor­po­rate agri­cul­tur­al lob­by, led by groups like the Iowa Farm Bureau, con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate pol­i­cy­mak­ing in a state where hogs out­num­ber humans more than sev­en­fold. This fac­to­ry farm­ing con­tin­ues to pol­lute the water with can­cer-caus­ing nitrates, which ulti­mate­ly flow into the Gulf of Mex­i­co, deplet­ing oxy­gen for marine life.

And with the com­ple­tion in 2017 of the Dako­ta Access Pipeline, which cuts 343 miles across the state under exten­sive spans of farm­land and the Mis­souri and Mis­sis­sip­pi rivers, Iowans face the increased poten­tial of crude oil leaks. That’s what inspired Daw­son Dav­en­port, 39, a mem­ber of the Meskwa­ki Set­tle­ment about 60 miles north­east of Des Moines, to attend the work­shop. He wants to encour­age oth­ers to spread cli­mate activism across Native communities.

Work­shop orga­niz­ers struck a hope­ful tone despite grim envi­ron­men­tal and polit­i­cal real­i­ties. The con­trast between a utopi­an and dystopi­an future was a recur­ring motif: We face both scarci­ty and plen­ty, iso­la­tion and con­nec­tion, divi­sion and solidarity.

Before the workshop’s con­clu­sion, facil­i­ta­tors dis­cussed what their next steps might be, includ­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in a nation­al cli­mate strike in Decem­ber and com­mit­ting to cau­cus in Iowa for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who sup­ports the Green New Deal.

“The New Deal is a source of inspi­ra­tion, but we’re going to do it a lot bet­ter this time,” says Shawn Sebas­t­ian, a CCI orga­niz­er who helped facil­i­tate the day’s events. ​“Our Green New Deal is going to include black peo­ple, include Lat­inx peo­ple, include domes­tic work­ers, include farm labor­ers. We’re going to [put] cli­mate and racial jus­tice at the center.”