To call it good timing is perhaps an understatement.

I'm in Washington at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference (February 4-6), and it's a sellout crowd of 2,500 enviro experts, green business people, justice activists, a ton of trade unionists and, yes, community organizers.

They are revelling in the power of their new place in the political matrix of a country that is both forced into and blessed with the job of reinventing itself.