From April 4-6, five Whitman students immersed themselves in speeches and workshops at the Dream Reborn, a conference in Memphis, that coincided with the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.The conference advocated for the growing Green-Collar Jobs movement, a movement that aims to provide environmentally-minded jobs and job training, especially to people who come from disadvantaged communities.Green For All, the organization behind the conference, says that the movements help to “fight both poverty and pollution at the same time.”First-years Masud Shah and Elli Matkin and sophomores Bailey Arend, Elena Gustafson and Natalie Popovich attended the conference. The five students, who are all members of Campus Climate Challenge, said that the conference really emphasized the importance of the movement to them.”I think green jobs are probably the only way to have a sustainable society and community,” Arend said. “There’s a triple bottom line: you need economic, social and environmental sustainability in order to be a sustainable community. Even if you have the latest green technology and have zero emissions, that’s not going to last long, and that’s not going be worth much if there’s still vast social inequity.”The concept of green jobs, said Arend, was a solution to the different problems, because it attempts to raise the disadvantaged communities up in society and also address environmentalism.”That’s really what we need to be moving towards as a whole nation,” Arend said.”Another key point that was that a lot of times people who are abusing the environment the most are not the ones who have to deal with the consequences,” Shah said. “It’s usually the poorest people who have to live in the communities where there are coal plants, and they don’t get the benefits because they’re not the ones who are working there either. It’s kind of a no-win situation for them.”Popovich described the conference as very inspirational and effective. She attributed much of this to the fact that the leaders of this movement are from the Bronx and other inner-city areas. This was inspiring to the 1,200 conference attendees, 70 percent of whom were people of color and over half of whom were of “modest means.””This was different than listening to this environmental discourse that has been around for decades by people who have the time and the luxury to talk about saving the planet,” Popovich said. “Getting somebody from a different economic situation that [attendees] can really relate to and have them really support is key.”The students are not sure what the next step for them is.”We’re still trying to go through what we learned from the conference and see how it applies here in Walla Walla and at Whitman,” Arend said. “We don’t have a clear game plan because we don’t know what’s out there and what projects would work and what wouldn’t.”Arend described how some of the projects that were successful in the inner city, such as training people to install solar panels, would be less successful in the Walla Walla community. Training crews would have to be brought in from Seattle or other bigger cities, because the resources and abilities are not readily available in this area.”The green collar jobs movement has made major improvements in many neighborhoods and the idea is gaining momentum. There’s a lot of force behind it and a lot of people who are really excited about it. So on a national level, this is something that we’re going to be hearing a lot more about,” Arend said.Popovich agreed with Arend.”I’ve been dreaming about it every night, consistently,” Popovich said. “I don’t know how to express that in paper to people.”She encourages students to watch clips of speeches from the conference at dreamreborn.org, claiming it’s the only way to truly understand the magnitude and power of what was said there.The group will present the information they learned from the conference on April 29 at 7 p.m. in Maxey 310.