A new activist group, the Sunrise Movement, has partnered with rising Democratic stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push the ambitious policy into the national conversation

The Green New Deal is suddenly on everyone’s lips. Freshman superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is championing it. The GOP’s anti-tax jihadi Grover Norquist is trashing it. But what is it? And where did it come from? And why were its backers protesting Nancy Pelosi?

Rolling Stone spoke to Varshini Prakash, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, the grassroots outfit that is partnering with a new generation of Democratic leaders to push the ambitious agenda to the fore. The Green New Deal has three pillars, according to Sunrise: 100 percent clean energy by 2030; investment in communities “on the frontlines of poverty & pollution”; and the guarantee of a quality job for “anyone ready to make this happen.”

The push for this climate-focused revival of the economic mobilization that rescued America from the Great Depression in the 1930s has surprising momentum.