man camps

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 7, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• Why Is the FBI Harassing Activists in Cascadia? - By Alexander Reid Ross, Defending Dissent, January 5, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Plunging Oil Prices Trigger Economic Downturn in Fracking Boom Town - By Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatch, January 3, 2015
• Investors falter as fossil fuels face 'perfect storm' - By Kieran Cooke, The Ecologist, January 1, 2015
• Midland Basin oil worker talks crude prices, fracking bans in Reddit AMA - By Joshua Cain, FuelFix, January 1, 2015
• Oil driller laying off 700 in California - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 2, 2015

Other News of Interest:

• Biomass Facility Fires a Regular Occurrence - By Josh Schlossberg, Vail Daily via Energy Justice Network, December 29, 2014
• India coal strike the biggest industrial action since 1977 - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, January 6, 2015
• Kinder Morgan: law-breaking, pollution, and cover-ups - By Derrick, West Coast Native News, January 5, 2015
• RMT pledges full support for general strike in Belgium - RMT Press Office, RMT, December 15, 2014
• This Changes Something - By Dru Oja Jay, Briar Patch, January 2, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 29, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• Workers must lead transition to green economy, unions say at climate talks - By Renee Lewis, Al Jazeera, December 9, 2014

Other News of Interest:

• Argentina: Mining Corporations vs. Democracy - By Ezequiel Adamovsky, Upside Down World, December 18, 2014
• Capitalism and the Commodification of Salmon - By Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen and Brett Clark, Monthly Review, December 2014
• Crude price drop triggers major layoffs in US oil industry - Russia Times, December 27, 2014; [related] Oil price panic and climate justice - By Jesse McLaren, Socialist.Ca, December 20, 2014
• It's easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than imagine the end of capitalism - by Zara Zimbardo, Center for Story-Based Strategy, December 19, 2014
• Low-Wage Legacies, Race, and the Golden Chicken in Mississippi: Where Contemporary Immigration Meets African American Labor History [EXCERPT] - By Angela Stuesse and Laura E. Helton, Species and Class, December 21, 2014
• Man Camps, Detention Centers, and the Whirlwind of Patriarchal Violence - Earth First! Newswire, December 19, 2014
• The spectre of social unrest is haunting Putin’s Russia - By Gabriel Levy, People and Nature, December 17, 2014
• Swiss 'Environmental' Anti-immigrant Plan Defeated - by Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism, December 18, 2014; [related] Why We Don’t Support the "New Ecology" Movement - Earth First! Newswire, December 19, 2014
• Two dead in explosion, fire at Oklahoma oil rig - Fuel Fix, December 19, 2014
• UK legislators call for an end to forced labour in Eritrea mines - Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, December 19, 2014
• What Greenpeace’s Insensitive Action Means for Climate Justice - by Alexander Reid Ross, Earth First Newswire, December 14, 2014
• What I learned from 30 years with the Forest Service - by Susan Marsh, High Country News, December 17, 2014

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By Maya Rao - Star Tribune, November 9, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

WATFORD CITY, N.D. – The dump truck rumbled over miles of unpaved roads in the hills just east of the Montana border, past the cattle and grain bins and haystacks, before arriving at the dirt pit. Bill Gore slid his truck onto the scale, inched up in line, and made a curving gesture to the man in the front-end loader.

That was the signal to pile the dirt on high, and the loader did: Gore’s five-axle truck pulled out of the pit north of Cartwright last week weighing 19,000 pounds more than its registered limit of 82,000 pounds.

“We try to run it as hard as we can,” said Gore, who’s been driving trucks here for four years.

Heavy trucks are the backbone of the ­Bakken oil fields, transporting the water, pipes, and sand needed to produce more than 1 million barrels of oil a day in western North Dakota. They move oil rigs from site to site, crude to pipelines and rail terminals, and dirt and construction materials to build the new roads, homes and businesses needed to serve the exploding population of new workers.

But the frenzied pace of the oil fields and spotty enforcement by authorities have encouraged the rise of overweight trucks. State authorities estimate that one-quarter of the Bakken’s water trucks alone are overloaded.

Trucks hauling larger loads than what they were designed for pose safety concerns because extra weight lessens their braking power and increases the potential damage they could cause in a collision. On the crowded Bakken roads, truck crashes that led to severe injuries jumped twelvefold during a recent four-year period. And 100,000-pound trucks, which are common in oil field traffic, take 25 percent longer to stop than 80,000 pound trucks, according to the Truck Safety Coalition.

Heavy trucks also degrade bridges more quickly and crumble prairie roads built for light farm traffic, prompting the state to make record investments in rebuilding roads and bridges and constructing new bypasses.

In McKenzie County, the state’s top oil-producer, the tiny Sheriff’s Office has a file cabinet containing enormous violations. A driver from an Alexandria, Minn., company was pulled over this summer while hauling a crane that was 61,300 pounds overweight. A trucker from a Clear Lake, Minn., firm was caught driving 76,100 pounds overweight while carrying an excavator.

Trucker Michael Fisher, who acknowledged driving overweight, said one problem is being able to adequately slow down.

“It’s the stopping power,” he said, adding that he tried to keep more distance from other vehicles. “Your brakes are set up to stop a certain amount of weight, and if you increase that, you have a lot more chance of something going wrong.”

By Laura Gottesdiener - Tom Dispatch, October 12, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

At 9 p.m. on that August night, when I arrived for my first shift as a cocktail waitress at Whispers, one of the two strip clubs in downtown Williston, I didn’t expect a 25-year-old man to get beaten to death outside the joint. Then again, I didn’t really expect most of the things I encountered reporting on the oil boom in western North Dakota this past summer.

“Can you cover the floor?” the other waitress yelled around 11 p.m. as she and her crop-top sweater sidled behind the bar to take over for the bouncers and bartenders. They had rushed outside to deal with a commotion. I resolved to shuttle Miller Lites and Fireball shots with extra vigor. I didn’t know who was fighting, but assumed it involved my least favorite customers of the night: two young brothers who had been jumping up and down in front of the stage, their hands cupping their crotches the way white boys, whose role models are Eminem, often do when they drink too much. One sported a buzz cut, the other had hair like soft lamb’s wool.

The rest of the night was a blur of beer bottles and customer commands to smile more. It was only later, after the clientele was herded out to Red Peters’s catchy “The Closing Song” -- “get the fuck out of here, finish up that beer” -- and the dancers had emerged from the dressing room in sweatshirts, that I realized everyone was on edge.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the scraggly bearded bouncer walking me to my dusty sedan, whose backseat would soon double as my motel room.

“The kid’s going to die,” he replied. Turned out one of the brothers had gotten his head bashed in by a man wielding a metal pipe. He’d been airlifted to the nearby city of Minot where he would pass away a few days later.

Catalysts for Instability

I hadn’t driven nearly 2,000 miles from Brooklyn to work as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. (That only happened after I ran out of money.) I had set off with the intention of reporting on the domestic oil boom that was reshaping North Dakota’s prairie towns as well as the balance of both global power and the earth’s atmosphere.

This spring, production in North Dakota surged past one million barrels of oil a day. The source of this liquid gold, as it is locally known, is the Bakken Shale: a layered, energy-rich rock formation that stretches across western North Dakota, the corner of Montana, and into Canada. It had been considered inaccessible until breakthroughs in drilling and hydraulic fracturing made the extraction of oil from it economically feasible. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced that the Bakken Shale contained 25 times more recoverable oil than previously thought, sparking the biggest oil rush in state history.

Now, six years later, the region displays all the classic contemporary markers of hell: toxic flames that burn around the clock; ink-black smoke billowing from 18-wheelers; intermittent explosions caused by lightning striking the super-conductive wastewater tanks that hydraulic fracturing makes a necessity; a massive Walmart; an abundance of meth, crack, and liquor; freezing winters; rents higher than Manhattan; and far, far too many men.

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