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Valerie V. M. Jefferson is a dedicated labor and community advocate based in New Orleans. She made history as the first female President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1560 (2019–2022), representing more than 300 transit workers. During her tenure, she gained national recognition for her leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ida, including a high-profile legal battle defending transit workers’ rights.

She currently serves as Southwest Regional Representative for the ATU International Black Caucus (as of May 2025). Beyond labor leadership, Jefferson is President of Women of Action of New Orleans, and holds executive board roles with the NAACP New Orleans Branch and the Independent Women’s Organization. She also hosts the radio show “Advocate for Justice” on WAMF 90.3FM LP and works as an outreach consultant.

Originally from Illinois and raised in Mississippi, Jefferson has deep roots in Louisiana. She studied at Alcorn State University, Southwest Mississippi Community College, and the University of New Orleans. After beginning her career as an educator and law enforcement dispatcher, she became a bus operator with the Regional Transit Authority in 1993, serving for 27 years.

Jefferson is an active member of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church and New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church. Her advocacy spans workers’ rights, women’s rights, voting access, and environmental justice, including the fight for clean air and water. She is married to John A. Jefferson and is the proud mother of one adult child.

The post March 2026 LNS Spotlight: Valerie V. M. Jefferson first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Throughout the week of February 2-8, the Labor Network for Sustainability joined partners across the country to celebrate Transit Equity Day under the theme Transit Moves Democracy. Together, workers, riders, unions, and community organizations uplifted public transit as essential climate infrastructure and as a public good worth protecting.

This year, many transit agencies and advocacy partners took to social media to celebrate the day, sharing stories, rider testimonials, and calls to action. Several agencies honored the legacy of Rosa Parks by symbolically saving a seat on buses in her memory, while others made fares free for the day.

Check out LNS’ Instagram to see the transit equity content we shared throughout the week!

Here are some examples of actions from across the country:

In Pittsburgh, Pittsburghers for Public Transit hosted a press conference celebrating two years of grassroots wins that brought new bus shelters and safer sidewalks to riders.

In Buffalo, the Buffalo Transit Riders Union organized a “Bowl for Better Buses” tournament, building community support for reliable and inclusive transit.

In Madison, Madison Area Bus Advocates partnered with their local library for a Transit Justice book display spotlighting equity and mobility.

At a time when privatization, union-busting, and service cuts threaten public transit systems nationwide, Transit Equity Day was a reminder: every bus line defended is a vote defended. Public goods are the foundation of democracy, and they must be funded and protected.

The post Transit Equity Day first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Ahead of the annual AFGE Legislative Conference, more than 1,000 workers and students braved frigid temperatures Feb. 7 to participate in the first-ever Young Worker March on Washington, organized by AFGE National Vice President Dr. Kendrick Roberson, AFGE’s, AFGE’s National Y.O.U.N.G. Committee, and AFGE’s Women’s and Fair Practices Department.

Participants marched to and from the Capitol before hearing from labor activists about the ability of collective action to effect meaningful reforms for current and future generations. The event was centered on a “Young Workers, Real Demands” platform to secure stability and dignity for the youth workforce.

A common thread repeated during the rally was a call for higher wages for high-value workers.

“Young workers are fed up with being told to work harder, and harder, and harder, meanwhile, we take home less and less and less,” Roberson said. “We will not quietly accept a destiny as a livestock workforce, such that this country can give us the minimum to survive, while milking us for our astonishingly high value.”

Another focus for these young workers was on affordable housing.

“In 2026, it feels like you need a lottery ticket — not a paycheck — just to afford a place to live,” AFGE Y.O.U.N.G. National Committee Chair Aaron Barker said.

The Young Worker March and rally showed immense solidarity across the labor movement and provided hope for the next generation of labor leaders.

Read more at AFGE.

The post Young Workers March first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Podcast on Youtube: Redneck Gone Green with Special Guest Joshua Dedmond

Our Executive Director, Joshua Dedmond, was a guest on the Redneck Gone Green podcast with David Cobb! Here’s a sneak peak of what he discussed:

Same Boss, Same Enemy: Why Workers and Environmentalists Win Together—or Not at All

For too long in the United States, environmentalists and organized labor have been told that they stand on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide: jobs versus the planet, paychecks versus polar bears. That framing has always been a lie—one carefully cultivated by corporations that profit from both ecological destruction and worker exploitation. Building durable unity between labor and environmental movements is not a “nice idea” or a messaging tweak: It is a strategic necessity for anyone serious about democracy, economic justice, and ecological survival.

Watch/listen to the full podcast.

The post LNS ED on Redneck Gone Green Podcast first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Downtown Minneapolis demonstration January 23, 2026. Photo credit: Creator:Lorie Shaull, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

On the ground resistance by the people of Minneapolis to violent armed occupation by ICE has led the Trump administration to announce an end to its violent “surge” of attacks on immigrant workers and withdraw hundreds of its stormtroopers from the city. It has swung public opinion nationwide against ICE and to sympathy with immigrants. And it has led Democrats in Congress to temporarily halt funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Whether these achievements will persist currently hangs in the balance.

An interview with Kieran Knutson, the president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in Minneapolis, described the role of community self-organization, immigrants, and Minneapolis unions:

“In the neighborhood that my wife and I live in, for example, there are 700 people in the rapid response network. There are eight or so similar neighborhood networks across the Twin Cities.” These networks mobilized instantly through social media chat groups to converge on the location of ICE raids with whistles, cameras, and cell phones.

“The immigrant portions of the working class are an incredibly important part of the working class in the Twin Cities and have really strengthened it to be much more pro-union and more militant. Some unions are heavily immigrant, so what’s been going on can’t help but affect them.

“It’s an attack on oppressed sections of the working class, some of the poorest paid sections of the working class, and sections of the working class that have the least rights. I think that unions which want to be fighters for the working class have to be a part of this fight. This army that’s being constructed could just as easily be unleashed against workers who are organizing or on strike, or on social movements.”

The idea for the climactic Day of Truth and Freedom came out of the labor movement.

The unions built the coalition which includes a lot of faith groups and community organizations, ones that represent the Somali community, the Latino community, Native American groups. There’s this problem in U.S. labor law where almost every collective bargaining agreement has a [no-strike] clause. And while this action was not able to avoid that, what it did do was create a situation where tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of workers were absent from work, almost like a mass sick out.

For full interview:
https://inequality.org/article/labors-role-in-minnesotas-ice-resistance/

The post Minneapolis vs. ICE first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Photo Credit: Chad Davis, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

More than 1400 Google workers have petitioned the company to halt its contracts with DHS, CBP, and ICE. Their petition said:

We are Google workers appalled by the violence inflicted by United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP). In cities across the country we have witnessed these agencies conducting paramilitary-style raids, kidnapping hundreds of civilians, and murdering protestors and legal observers. Just in the last month, Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti have been murdered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies ICE and CBP. ICE’s detention & deportation machine has killed at least 35 people in detention centers since July 2025.

They point out many specific ways that “Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression.”

“Through its ICE operations, DHS is violating civil and national law as well as civil and human rights. We must end our complicity in powering them. As workers of conscience, we demand that our leadership end our backslide into contracting for governments enacting violence against civilians. Google is now a prominent node in a shameful lineage of private companies profiting from violent state repression. We must use this moment to come together as a Googler community and demand an end to this disgraceful use of our labor.”

For text of the petition: https://www.googlers-against-ice.com

The post Google Workers Demand: Stop Powering ICE Violence first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Youtube video: Social Strikes

Znetwork has just released a series of seven short videos based on Jeremy Brecher’s LNS report “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny?” They include vivid footage of social strikes around the world.

To view “Social Strikes” videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzkWWI6eVu3_aM1tv8I8wv6OVHPSEmyFi

The post See It Now: Social Strikes first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Photo credit: Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

A new study finds that just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024.

Source: Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms, study shows | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

For full report: Carbon Majors

The post In Case You Haven’t Heard… first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Feminist agrarian reform is a struggle against invisibilisation and violence. No genuine agrarian reform will take place if diversities are not recognized as political subjects with equal rights in public policies for land and agrarian reform.

The post Free Bodies, Free Territories: Reflections on the Right to Land, Water and Territories for Gender and Sexually Diverse People in Rural Contexts appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

" The struggle for land and water is a struggle for the continuity of life and ancestral knowledge."

The post Youth at ICARRD+20: The Struggle for Land, Water, and Life in the Territories appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development brings together governments, peasant movements and indigenous peoples to discuss land for whom and for what.

The post Land reform rebounds in Latin America: “Get back what they have taken from us” | ICARRD Series appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The Indonesian Peasants' Union strongly condemns the latest expansion of the United States government's economic blockade against Cuba.

The post SPI Condemns Escalation of US Economic Blockade Against Cuba, Calls for International Solidarity appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Popular movements of more than 70 countries discuss proposals that will be brought to the International Conference on Agrarian Reform that will be held in Cartagena, Colombia, from this Tuesday, the 24th.

The post Forum of popular movements precedes international conference on land reform in Colombia | ICARRD+20 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Hundreds of intellectuals, activists and peasant militants from more than 70 countries began arriving in Colombia to advance and fight for the construction of agrarian reform at the ICARRD+20.

The post ‘We must fight to move forward’: movements from several countries arrive in Colombia for conference on land reform appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

ICARRD+20 offers a historic opportunity to reaffirm the importance of agrarian reform and rural development, to take stock of transformative examples of agrarian reform, to update the meaning of agrarian reform, and to forge a shared vision for popular, feminist, decolonial, and eco-social transformation.

The post ICARRD+20 must move beyond technocratic fixes to implement real, integral agrarian reform: Global Social Movements in Cartagena appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The first half of the Forum of Peoples and Social Movements opened with a strong and unified call from leaders of social movements to place land and territories at the centre of global political action.

The post “Land Grabbing, Extractivism and Conservation-driven Dispossession are Intensifying” : Forum of Peoples and Social Movements – Day One appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Our vision is grounded in four mutually reinforcing axes: restitution, redistribution, recognition and regulation (4Rs).

The post ICARRD+20 Briefing Note : Redistribution, Restitution, Recognition and Regulation as the four mutually reinforcing axes of an integral reform appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

"The issue of land has to do with everything that involves caring for the planet. For us, it not only includes access to land, but also to territory, and the social role of producing food for the people."

The post Women From Rural, Forest, and Waterside Communities Fighting for Comprehensive and Popular Agrarian Reform | ICARRD Series appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

On March 8, we raise our voices in all territories against imperialism, fascism, racism, and the rollbacks of historical rights, and we say enough to structural violence, dispossession, displacement, and femicides.

The post March 8 | International Day of Struggle for Working Women | Call to Action appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The IPC urges governments to move beyond voluntary commitments and adopt binding, measurable actions to ensure redistributive land reform, equitable access to natural resources, democratic governance, and agroecological rural development.

The post IPC releases its position paper on agrarian reform ahead of ICARRD+20 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.