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The New York State legislature has just passed the Build Public Renewables Act with support of unions representing a million New York workers. The Act authorizes the New York Power Authority – the largest state-owned power company in the US –to start investing in renewable energy. It requires that all state-owned properties that ordinarily receive power from the New York Power Authority (NYPA) are run on renewable energy by 2030. It also requires municipally owned facilities like hospitals, schools, public housing, and public transit to convert completely to renewable energy by 2035.

Labor protections written by the state’s AFL-CIO preserve existing collective bargaining agreements for New York Power Authority workers and require collective bargaining agreements for all projects. Contractors and subcontractors are required to pay prevailing wages. Employers must sign a memorandum of understanding with labor unions to uphold and protect pay rates, training, and safety standards for workers supporting the operation and maintenance of such projects. Job applicants who have lost employment in the oil and gas sector will be prioritized for those positions. The Authority will allocate up to $25 million each year toward worker-training programs for the renewable energy sector through a newly created Office of Just Transition.

The Act establishes a program allowing low- and moderate-income electricity customers in disadvantaged communities to receive credits on their monthly utility bills for any renewable energy produced by the power authority.  It also accelerates the closing of six highly polluting “peaker plants” in Queens, the Bronx, and  Harlem, which have some of the highest asthma-related death rates in the country. 

For more information:

• New Republic: “Green New Deal Advocates Just Won Big in New York. Here’s How They Did It.”
• Truthout: “4 Years of Organizing Paid Off: New York Says Yes to Publicly Owned Renewables”
• The Guardian: “New York takes big step toward renewable energy in ‘historic’ climate win”
• DSA: A short video capturing this historic win

The post New York State’s New Clean – and Public – Energy Plan first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image Source: Becker 1999. (2019). Make Detroit the Engine of the Green New Deal! img 100. Wikimedia Commons.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the original sponsors of the Green New Deal, have reintroduced the Green New Deal legislation, whose goal is to eliminate fossil fuels in a decade while creating millions of well-paying jobs. According to the Washington Post, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez say they’re aiming to ensure that Democrats’ landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is implemented in a way that upholds the Green New Deal’s core principles.

 According to Markey, “The Green New Deal jump-started the movement that won the IRA, a historic accomplishment that represents a major down payment on the Green New Deal goals.” He added, “We want to make sure it’s implemented so that front line environmental justice communities, who have for too long borne the brunt of the climate crisis, are getting the benefits which they were promised.”

 Green New Dealers unveiled Delivering a Green New Deal, an implementation guide that tells states, localities, tribes, and others how to use funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. It tells how communities can use federal funding to meet the principles of the Green New Deal — “creating good-paying jobs, promoting justice and equity, and acting on climate with the urgency and scope demanded by the science.” According to the Delivering a Green New Deal, every program in the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act “must be explicitly designed and implemented with these principles in mind — otherwise, these investments could worsen inequality and climate change.”

For more on this story:

The Washington Post: “AOC, Markey try to influence new climate law with a new Green New Deal”

The post Green New Deal Reintroduced – with Implementation Guide first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image Source: Viacheslav Yakobchuk- stock.adobe.com

By Veronica Wilson, LNS California Organizer

California teachers, education, and health advocates took a major step toward winning on climate in May when the California Senate unanimously passed (39-0) SB 394, a mandate to create a master plan for healthy, sustainable, and climate-resilient schools. 

The vote moves the state closer to committing to the Climate Ready Schools Coalition’s vision – green grass under playground structures, children arranging seedlings in burlap wall planters, a teacher in hiking boots facing eager young learners surrounded by redwood trees. Making this vision a reality requires securing funding in the state budget and making sure schools in low-income areas are first in line. 

Who will install the solar panels and upgrade the HVAC systems to heat pumps in the 730 million square feet of school buildings? Are there school staff who know how to maintain school learning gardens on the 125,000 acres of the K-12 school footprint in the state, or repair the zero emission buses? These questions were of keen interest to the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and other members of California Labor for Climate Jobs, a statewide coalition organizing a worker-led transition to a just and climate-safe economy, which supports the Master Plan in part because of opportunities to ensure equity and quality union jobs. 

The potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making climate-resilient spaces is particularly urgent. Teachers and students in California have been forced to sit and lay on the floor of classrooms when wildfire smoke blankets the region; last Labor Day temperatures reached 116 degrees; and recent winter storms flooded schools in the Central Valley.

The Master Plan for Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Schools will show how K-12 infrastructure investments can meet the state’s carbon-neutrality targets while promoting educational equity, strong labor standards, and the health and safety of children and workers. The bill is now moving on for consideration by the California Assembly policy committees.

The post California Educators Promoting Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, Climate-Resilient Schools first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image Source: @steelworkers tweet. 5/12/2023.

After a three-year organizing struggle, workers who manufacture school buses for Blue Bird in Fort Valley GA voted last month to be represented by the Steelworkers. Blue Bird is the second-largest bus manufacturer in the country. Steelworkers organizing director Maria Somma said, “It’s been a long time since a manufacturing site with 1,400 people has been organized, let alone organized in the South, let alone organized with predominantly African American workers, and let alone in the auto industry.” Only 4.4 percent of workers in Georgia are represented by a union.

The federal Clean School Buses program, which subsidizes Blue Bird’s bus production, prohibits recipients from using funds to campaign against unions. Enforcement is weak, but the federal policy nonetheless had a deterrent effect. According to Somma, “This is an employer that would have fired workers. And so while they broke the law, this policy allowed us to calm the employer’s union-busting down.”

To Learn More:

Labor Notes: “Union Win at Bus Factory Electrifies Georgia”

The post Green Yellow Bus Makers Go Union first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image Source: adrenalinapura- stock.adobe.com

Jeremy Brecher’s review of Dimitris Stevis’ new book Just Transitions: Promise and Contestation 

The late president of the AFL-CIO once quipped that the reason he didn’t believe in a just transition is because he had never seen one. It’s too bad that he didn’t live long enough to read Dimitris Stevis’ new book Just Transitions: Promise and Contestation. He would have been able to learn something about the just transitions that are occurring in countries around the world.

Stevis traces the idea of a “just transition” back to Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers, now part of the Steelworkers. He shows that just transition is “now on the agenda” of “intergovernmental organizations and negotiations, governments, environmentalists, business, churches and labor unions around the world.” And he teases out the often contested ways the term has been used – and the varied strategies that are being advocated and used to implement it. 

Dimitris Stevis is the co-director of the Center for Environmental Justice at Colorado State University and a co-author of the LNS report Workers and Communities in Transition: Report of the Just Transition Listening Project.

The post Just Transition – New Book Tells All first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image source: Kalyakan- stock.adobe.com

On October 30, 2020, the Marathon oil refinery in Contra Costa County, California, was permanently shut down and 345 unionized workers laid off. A new study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that 74% of former Marathon workers (excluding retirees) had found new jobs. Nearly one in five (19%) were not employed but actively searching for work. Their unemployment rate was 22.5% Their jobs paid $12 per hour less than their Marathon jobs, a 24% cut in pay. 

The report made eight recommendations to support displaced workers, including:

• Extended cash payments to maintain pre-layoff income levels
• Financial support to cover the 24% average gap in workers’ pre-layoff wages and their post-layoff wages
• Bridge-to-retirement funding that provides full retirement benefits to workers eligible for early retirement within one year following layoff

 In an op-ed about the report, Tracy Scott, President of Steelworkers Local 5, which represents Marathon workers, wrote:

In California and across the country, working people support addressing climate change and transitioning to renewable energy. But when refineries like the former Marathon facility shut down without a clear plan in place that involves unions from the outset, workers and the community inevitably get left behind.

In order to guarantee that California has an economy that works for everybody, impacted workers must be at the center of planning for the ongoing transition to clean energy, and they must have access to union jobs that guarantee financial security, strong protections, and good benefits.

Read the Report Summary: UC Berkeley Report – Refinery Closures

Read Tracy Scott’s op ed: Newsweek Local 5 –

The post What Happens to the Workers When Oil Refineries Close? first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

The Labor Network for Sustainability’s Young Worker Network is holding network calls on the first Tuesday of every month. We hope you or young workers from your union or organization can join us for our first Young Worker Network call on Tuesday, June 6th at 4 pm PT/5 pm MT/6 pm CT/7 pm ET. We intend for this to be a space for young workers to share & learn insights with and from each other at the intersection of labor and climate organizing, and strategize around how we can better support each other to meet our material, emotional, and social needs through collective action. Register with this link!

The post LNS Young Workers Network Launches Monthly Calls first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

LNS is cosponsoring the June 10 Teach Truth Day of Action to defend the freedom to learn and the rights of LGBTQ+ students. Protecting teachers’ right and responsibility to teach truth to our future generations is vital for a sustainable and just world. Standing up for curriculum based on truths about U.S. history and that are inclusive and caring of our LGBTQ+ teachers, students, and community is part and parcel of standing up for education about the truth of climate change and the need for climate justice. Already, we see attacks on climate truth in education taking shape in the States. 

The day of action is hosted by the Zinn Education Project, the African American Policy Forum, and Black Lives Matter at School. More than 40 co-sponsors have signed on to help with outreach and local media. Groups that sign up receive a media toolkit, Teach Banned Books buttons, graphics, an optional pop-up Teach Banned Books display, and the chance to meet other event organizers from around the country. Sign up to host a #TeachTruth event on June 10! It is easy — pick a site (historic, a library, or any public space), invite people to join you, and speak out. You can read banned books, host a history walking tour, do a book swap, take photos with a Teach Banned Books frame, etc. Read more and sign up here!

The post A Day for Truth first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

The world is getting hotter and the headlines are scary. So does climate change mean the world is about to pass the 1.5 degree limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement? And what would passing this limit even mean? Rather than showing that it's game over, increasing extreme weather and sea level rise would indicate that it's never been so urgent to stop climate change - it's never been so urgent to stop punching ourselves in the face..

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

After almost six months of a coup regime that has murdered over 80 people during continuous protests against the illegal ouster of President Pedro Castillo, survivors of another case of human rights abuses may finally be seeing justice. On May 19th, former dictator Alberto Fujimori was summoned virtually from Penal de Barbadillo (where Pedro Castillo is also imprisoned on preventative detention) by the Chilean Supreme Court for the cases of forced sterilization during his regime in the 1990s. Between 1996 and 2000, approximately 270,000 women and 22,000 men were forcibly sterilized under the dictatorship’s “family planning” measures, all from poor rural indigenous areas.

The post Justice For Forced Sterilization Cases During Fujimori Dictatorship appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro participated in a joint press conference on Monday May 29 from the Planalto Palace in Brasília and highlighted the importance of the neighboring countries resuming ties. The press conference was held following a bilateral meeting between the heads of state ahead of the South American Presidents’ Summit.

Lula told national and international media that, “This is a historic moment. After eight years, President Nicolás Maduro is back to visiting Brazil and we have recovered our right to have a foreign policy with the seriousness we have always had, especially with the countries that border Brazil.”

The post Maduro Makes Historic Trip To Brazil For South American Presidents’ Summit appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

When Japan invited the leaders of Brazil, India and Indonesia to attend the G7 summit in Hiroshima, there were glimmers of hope that it might be a forum for these rising economic powers from the Global South to discuss their advocacy for peace in Ukraine with the wealthy Western G7 countries that are militarily allied with Ukraine and have so far remained deaf to pleas for peace.

But it was not to be. Instead, the Global South leaders were forced to sit and listen as their hosts announced their latest plans to tighten sanctions against Russia and further escalate the war by sending U.S.-built F-16 warplanes to Ukraine.

The post When Will The United States Join The Global Call To End The Ukraine War? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

UK counter-terrorism police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in his home country from Belgrade, Serbia, on 17 May, subjecting him to an extended interrogation over his “political views” and his reporting.

Klarenberg has written extensively for The Cradle, exposing London’s many covert operations in West Asia.

According to The Grayzone, six plainclothes police were waiting for him outside his plane, promptly moving him to a back room and informing him of his detention under Schedule Three, Section Four of the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act.

The post UK Police Detain Journalist Kit Klarenberg Over ‘Political Views’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

There needs to be a particularly high standard of cynicism and cruelty to rob destitute people. In many ways, this is what capitalism is all about. But to use the fact that people are near ruin to exploit them is as cold as it gets.

People in Gaza are confined to living with few resources in what amounts to a prison. They are permitted levels of nutrition and medicine that are just enough to prevent total starvation and disease. This is only because Israel, which controls the piece of land known as the Gaza Strip, does not want disease to spread into its own borders.

Israel exploits the suffering of Gazans in order to recruit collaborators and garner whatever intelligence they may be able to provide.

The post The Cultural Looting Of Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

Over the weekend, US House of Representatives speaker McCarthy and president Biden announced a tentative agreement on raising the debt ceiling. The deal—almost certain to pass Congress later this week—represents a typical Neoliberal fiscal policy deal.

Ever since neoliberal capitalism policies were introduced under president Carter in the late 1970s, and subsequently expanded dramatically under Reagan, Neoliberal fiscal policy has been characterized by accelerating Pentagon and war spending; simultaneous cutting of business-investor taxes; acceptance of consequent escalating budget deficits—and in turn US national debt levels; and the use deficit/debt to cap and reduce social program spending.

The post Biden-McCarthy Deal: Neoliberal Fiscal Policy Continues appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

In May of this year, we took the long, 27-hour train ride from Moscow to Crimea to see how life is there and what the sentiment of the people are as the US and Ukraine sharpen their threats to "recapture" this peninsula from Russia. And, while we were there, these threats were backed by a series of terrorist drone attacks in Crimea which, while doing little serious damage, signaled an escalation in the US/Ukrainian assault on Crimea.

Despite such threats and attacks, what we found in this historic peninsula on the Black Sea was a beautiful, almost idyllic place with a bustling economy and a general sense of prosperity and hopefulness. We also found a people who seem quite content to remain a part of Russia just as Crimea has been, except for a brief interval, since 1783.

The post What We Saw And Heard In Crimea appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

It’s been over 100 days since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying over 100,000 gallons of toxic materials occurred in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb 3. Since then, residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania have had their lives turned completely upside down. Entire families have been uprooted from their homes, with many having to live in hotels or wherever they can find shelter, unable to return home out of fear of exposure to chemicals that were spilled into the water and soil from the derailment and spewed into the air from Norfolk Southern’s ​“controlled burn” of the vinyl chloride contained within multiple derailed train cars.

The post Norfolk Southern Won’t Clean Up Their Mess Unless We Make Them appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.