Integrating climate, economic, and racial justice through a Boston FutureCorps

Amidst a rapidly evolving political landscape, with the 2021 Boston Mayoral Election, recently passed Massachusetts State climate policy, and President Biden’s Executive Order to create a Civilian Climate Corps, the City of Boston has the opportunity to integrate its response to climate change, economic inequity, and racial injustice through the creation of, what I have titled, the Boston FutureCorps. Following Councilor Michelle Wu’s call for an Urban Climate Corps and Councilor Kenzie Bok’s proposal for a Boston Conservation Corps, the Boston City Council is now in the process of developing a new corps program that will join the city’s existing network of green workforce development infrastructure. In order to strengthen, rather than duplicate, this existing infrastructure, this thesis examines the complex cross-section of current public, private and nonprofit efforts to prepare Boston residents for green jobs and address racial inequity in green sectors. This work contributes to the City of Boston’s collective response to the climate crisis through a city-level ecosystem analysis for the operationalization of the Green New Deal-based Boston FutureCorps. I participated in two Boston City Council meetings, convened a focus group, and conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders — including Boston workforce development programs, as well as environmental, community, and labor organizations — and visualized the current organizational landscape in Boston through a series of ecosystem maps. The ecosystem maps relay the existing relationships among stakeholders, potential green career pathways, and external factors necessary for the consolidation of an equitable and just corps. Critically, this thesis also explores stakeholders’ perceptions of this current system, the concept of “green jobs”, and the potential design and impacts of the Boston FutureCorps. Stakeholders stressed the need for a participatory program design process and partnerships with community organizations, long-term and reliable funding sources, and the need for the corps to connect participants to meaningful jobs with living wages. In conclusion, I consider how such stakeholder perspectives can inform the institutionalization of this effort; I then recommend a series of values-based indicators that decision-makers can use to ensure that policy efforts to introduce a Boston FutureCorps are rooted in climate, economic, and racial justice, both in theory and practice.M.C.P