Democracy Now’s segment on Power Shift ‘09.  Last weekend, 12,000 fired-up high school and college students traveled to DC for “the largest youth summit on climate change in history.”

This clip features interviews with young Power Shifters explaining why they came — from the environmental injustice of living near a coal plant to uranium mining on Native lands to coal strip-mining in Appalachia.

The We Campaign shot people at the conference telling their green jobs stories for a new feature on their Repower America website, which will have people from every state talking about the work they do to help build the new green economy.

Cathy Zoi, the CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection (which runs the We Campaign), delivered a good speech explaining the communications strategy behind their (happily) ubiquitous TV spots.

In her speech, Winona LaDuke called for “democratizing energy production,” which I thought was a neat formulation for the basis of the new green economy.

James Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The coalition of labor and environmentalists is still tenuous (more a salad than a smoothie, despite what some presenters have said), but this statement was a welcome olive branch for some members of the Sierra Club, particularly because Hoffa followed it with the observation that “it’s about finding out who your friends are.”

Environmentalists stood with the international labor movement when it really mattered — in particular, the Battle of Seattle — and Hoffa and his brothers and sisters don’t pay lip service for loyalty.