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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians are organizing programming, events, and fan zones in Seattle, Washington during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This marks the first time a Tribal Nation is formally represented at the World Cup, providing an opportunity for them to share their story, culture, traditions, and foodways with a global audience.

As Seattle prepares to host six matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the city is working to ensure that the tournament leaves a positive lasting impact on the community. As part of these efforts, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians were named the Official Legacy Supporter of FIFA World Cup 26 host city Seattle.

A central goal of this partnership is the reestablishment of Lushootseed language, which appears in welcoming messages, murals, signage, and other SeattleFWC26 materials. This feeds into broader sustainability efforts, explains Amy McFarland, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ World Cup Project Director.

“It’s the sustainability of language, history, and economic development,” McFarland tells Food Tank. She adds that this also extends to medicine, foodways, and environmental protection.

The Puyallup Tribe are preparing for a collection of camassia, a tubular used for medicine. They are also focusing on reintroducing plants and ecosystems that have been destroyed, such as camas prairies. And through community gardens, they are highlighting Indigenous plants and medicines while promoting the importance of sustainability.

“We think about sustainability of our environment, taking care of our waters, ensuring that we know and teach our children how to forage, collect, harvest, and use traditional foods and medicine,” McFarland tells Food Tank.

Celebratory events are also engaging the broader community. Between June 19-21, the Puyallup Tribe will host one of their signature events, the first World Cup Pow Wow. Free to the public, the event will include food trucks, singing, dancing, and more. And on match days, they will organize official fan zones and viewing parties featuring live broadcasts of the games, food vendors, and youth activities.

To create additional opportunities for young people, the Puyallup Tribe have selected 25 youth ambassadors who will volunteer at the matches. They will distribute clean water to elders throughout the events and lead songs, dances, and stories.

“Youth is a vital part of what we have,” says McFarland. “Without teaching our young ones the way to do things, the future is not there.”

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of SounderBruce, Wikimedia Commons

The post The Puyallup Tribe of Indians Partner with World Cup Host City to Share Culture and Traditions appeared first on Food Tank.

Shell’s side of the Donovan feud, in its own words

Shell v Donovan: The 2006 “Confidential” Briefing That Tells Its Own Story

Shell’s Internal Script on the Donovan Feud — Including One Very Awkward Hakluyt Error

Suggested image: A dramatic satirical illustration of a confidential Shell briefing document stamped “FOCAL POINT — MR. ALFRED DONOVAN,” lying on a boardroom table beside a Shell logo, a stack of leaflets, a WIPO domain-name file, and a magnifying glass highlighting the words “Hakluyt Society?” in red ink.

Shell’s side of the Donovan feud, in its own words

Sometimes the most revealing material is not an opponent’s attack, a campaigner’s press release, or a journalist’s interpretation.

Sometimes it is the company’s own internal script.

The document reproduced below is a Shell “Confidential” briefing dated 15 May 2006 and headed “Issue: Mr. Alfred Donovan.” It appears to have been prepared as an internal “Focal Point” note for handling questions about Alfred Donovan, his long-running dispute with Shell, his website activity, leafleting outside Shell premises, domain-name registrations, litigation history, and allegations made against the company.

For readers unfamiliar with the background, Alfred Donovan and his son John Donovan were associated with Don Marketing, a promotions business that had commercial dealings with Shell. Those dealings eventually deteriorated into litigation, settlements, further disputes, a long-running public campaign, and websites highly critical of Shell and its conduct.

The value of this document is not that it settles every dispute. It plainly does not. It is Shell’s version, written for Shell’s purposes, in Shell’s language.

That is precisely why it is worth publishing.

The note states Shell’s view that it was “disappointed” that Mr Donovan’s campaign had “again resurfaced.” It says Shell was “fully aware” of the accusations but considered it inappropriate to comment on matters pending before the courts. It also says Shell believed it had gone “well beyond the strict call of duty” in investigating and settling Mr Donovan’s claims many years earlier.

The document then sets out Shell’s account of the promotions disputes, including the “Make Money” promotion, later legal action over other promotions, and Mr Donovan’s “abandoned” claim relating to the “Smart” promotion. In fact Shell paid all legal costs and John Donovan received a secret settlement payment, the terms of which Shell did not disclose, *even to the judge, who later resigned in controversial circumstances. (* I have an email from a senior Shell lawyer confirming this).

It also records the domain-name clash following the unification of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport. Shell acknowledged that Mr Donovan registered domain names including royaldutchshellplc.com, and that Shell filed an administrative complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation seeking transfer of the names. Shell also recorded that the WIPO panel did not accept there were grounds for transfer, and that Shell did not consider a further court challenge justified.

On the more serious allegations, Shell’s internal briefing denied any involvement in intimidation or burglary. It said Shell’s solicitors had employed “a respectable firm of enquiry agents” during litigation, and that those agents acted “entirely properly and legally.” In fact, Shell’s used undercover agents who presented fake credentials. We were bombarded by threats and besieged by undercover activity. I still have all the evidence decades later. Much of it already uploaded online.

There is also an important correction to make.

The document refers to the “Hakluyt Society.” That appears to be wrong. The Hakluyt Society is a long-established educational charity concerned with historical voyages, travel and exploration publications. The controversy historically associated with Shell, BP, Greenpeace and corporate intelligence concerns Hakluyt & Company, the private advisory/intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers, not the publishing charity.

Whether that wording in the Shell document was an error, confusion, shorthand, or deliberate formulation is for readers to judge. But the distinction matters. The “Hakluyt Society” reference should not be allowed to blur two very different entities.

Below, therefore, is Shell’s side of the Donovan feud — not filtered through satire, not rewritten by this site, and not paraphrased into something more convenient.

It is Shell, in its own words.

DOCUMENT: SHELL “CONFIDENTIAL” FOCAL POINT BRIEFING, 15 MAY 2006

Source document:
https://shellnews.net/DPA2009/15MAY2006FOCALPOINT.pdf

Suggested placement: Embed the PDF here as an image gallery or PDF viewer, or reproduce the document pages as images with a clear caption:

Caption: Shell “Confidential” Focal Point briefing dated 15 May 2006 concerning Alfred Donovan, leafleting activity, litigation history, domain-name disputes, and Shell’s internal responses to allegations.

Why publish this now?

Because the public record should include Shell’s own version.

For years, Shell and the Donovans have been locked in a bitter and highly unusual dispute involving promotions, litigation, websites, domain names, allegations of dirty tricks, and wider questions about the oil giant’s relationship with critics.

This document does not prove Shell right. Nor does it prove Shell wrong. It does something narrower, but still valuable: it shows how Shell internally framed the matter at the time.

It shows which points Shell wanted staff or representatives to emphasise.

It shows what Shell chose to deny.

It shows how Shell described the Donovan campaign.

It shows that Shell recognised the significance of leafleting outside Shell Centre and The Hague.

It shows that Shell understood the domain-name dispute had not gone its way at WIPO.

And it shows the peculiar “Hakluyt Society” reference — a wording that deserves scrutiny because the Hakluyt Society is not the private intelligence firm associated in media reports with corporate intelligence work for oil majors.

The document is therefore being published as a matter of record.

Readers can compare Shell’s wording with other material already in the public domain and draw their own conclusions.

An invitation to Shell

Shell is invited to provide an up-to-date statement for publication on this site.

If Shell wishes to comment on the 15 May 2006 “Focal Point” document, the Donovan dispute, the domain-name issues, the allegations addressed in the briefing, or the reference to the “Hakluyt Society,” it may do so.

Shell’s statement will be published on this site on an unedited basis.

That offer is open. It has been for years.

If Shell believes the 2006 document requires clarification, correction, context, or a modern response, it is welcome to provide one.

Until then, the record stands as published: Shell’s side of the Donovan feud, in Shell’s own words.

DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and commentary accompanying a historical document. It is intended to present and contextualise Shell’s own 2006 wording, not to assert that every allegation referred to in the document is true. The linked document should be read in full. Shell is invited to provide an up-to-date statement for publication on an unedited basis. This article is not legal, financial or investment advice. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Shell’s Confidential Donovan Briefing: The Oil Giant’s Own Words on a Feud It Couldn’t Shake was first posted on June 12, 2026 at 9:43 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

DENVER—The Interior department announced Thursday that it is beginning the process of updating its policies regarding designated wilderness, wilderness study areas, and lands with wilderness characteristics.

Interior “is seeking recommendations on potential improvements to wilderness study area and lands with wilderness characteristics policies used by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service,” according to an Interior department press release.

The review will “help determine whether existing policy documents should be updated or clarified to improve consistency, increase transparency and ensure public lands continue to be managed effectively in accordance with applicable laws,” according to the release. Wilderness designations are conferred through acts of Congress that land management agencies must implement as directed, and the degree to which this review will infringe on or undermine congressional authority is unclear.

The Interior department published previews of three separate notices related to this review in the Federal Register on Friday:

• Policy Review: Considering Lands with Wilderness Characteristics in the BLM Land Use Planning Process

• Management of BLM Wilderness Study Areas

• Management of Designated Wilderness Areas

The notices will be officially published in the Federal Register on Monday, kicking off 60-day public comment periods for each review.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that the Agriculture department has drafted an order allowing off-road vehicles on millions of acres of wilderness study areas inside national forests. Interior is also updating its wilderness policies in accordance with the EXPLORE Act’s directive on fixed anchor climbing within wilderness, via a separate review.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Director Kate Groetzinger: 

“The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for an attack on America’s wilderness with these reviews. While the notices themselves don’t tell us much about the administration’s intentions, we know President Trump and Interior Secretary Burgum aren’t interested in increasing protections for America’s public lands.

“Wilderness designations are the most powerful tool we have to protect sensitive and ecologically important public lands. We’ll be watching closely for any attempt by the Trump administration to undercut existing or future protections for America’s wildlands.”

Learn more: 

• Interior puts wilderness study areas under scrutiny as “war on wildlands” widens – The Wilderness Society

• Wilderness Designation FAQs – The Wilderness Society

Feature image: Kiger Gorge at Steens Mountain, Oregon; Source: Masako Metz/@mypubliclands

The post Interior lays the groundwork for attacks on wilderness and wildlands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Suggested image: A sharp satirical illustration of Shell executives in hard hats auctioning off giant offshore wind turbines from a floating “Green Transition Clearance Sale” platform. Behind them, a huge Shell oil rig and LNG tanker loom triumphantly under a banner reading “More Value, Less Wind.” A small shredded sign in the foreground says “Net Zero Journey — Terms and Conditions Apply.”

Disclosure: This article and accompanying image concept were generated by ChatGPT in response to source material supplied by the site publisher. Human editorial review is recommended before publication.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID-STYLE DEEP DIVE

Shell’s energy transition has apparently reached the stage where the green bits are being packed into cardboard boxes, labelled “non-core,” and discreetly shown to the exit.

According to a June 12, 2026 report carried by Reuters⁠ and originally reported by Bloomberg⁠, Shell is preparing a sale of offshore wind assets worth around $1 billion. Bloomberg described the move as the latest step away from renewable energy as the company focuses on higher-return fossil-fuel businesses.

There it is: the grand green pivot, now seemingly available at auction.

Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has reportedly marched back into the familiar territory of “disciplined capital allocation” — the corporate dialect used when a fossil-fuel giant wants to say: “That climate-friendly stuff looked lovely in the brochure, but oil and gas are still where the grown-up money lives.”

Let us be precise. This is not yet a completed sale. It is a reported plan. Shell may decline to proceed, adjust the scope, sell only some interests, or find a structure that allows it to claim continuing relevance in offshore wind while someone else takes more of the development headache.

But as a signal, it is hardly subtle.

This is Shell standing on the deck of the energy transition ship, quietly lowering the renewable lifeboats into the sea while telling investors everything is absolutely under control.

The Green Promise, Meet the Fossil-Fuel Spreadsheet

Shell’s public messaging has for years been sprinkled with the language of transition. Less emissions. More value. Net zero by 2050. Low-carbon solutions. Customer choice. Pragmatic pathways. All the soft-focus corporate mist needed to make an oil major look like it has wandered into a climate conference by accident and decided to stay for the canapés.

In its 2024 Energy Transition Strategy⁠, Shell said it was investing $10–15 billion between 2023 and the end of 2025 in low-carbon energy solutions. That included electric vehicle charging, biofuels, renewable power, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

Very impressive. Very glossy. Very “please admire the slide deck.”

But the pattern since then has told a rather different story. Shell has been pruning, trimming, retreating and “re-focusing” in clean-power areas that once helped decorate the company’s transition credentials.

In October 2025, Shell announced it had withdrawn from Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind⁠, assigning its 50% interest to its joint-venture partner EDF power solutions.

Reports have also described Shell withdrawing from major floating offshore wind projects off Scotland, including MarramWind and CampionWind. Renewables Now⁠ reported that the decision related to Shell’s strategy shift in power from late 2024, under which the company said it would not lead new offshore wind developments.

Now comes the Bloomberg/Reuters report that Shell is preparing a sale of offshore wind assets valued at around $1 billion.

One can almost hear the soundtrack: wind turbines fading out, LNG terminals swelling heroically in the background.

From “Energy Transition” to “Energy Transition, But Only the Profitable Bits”

To be fair, Shell has never promised to become a charity for wind turbines. It is a publicly traded oil and gas giant, not a monastery of decarbonisation. It answers to investors, dividends, buybacks, commodity prices and the iron law of quarterly performance.

But that is exactly the point.

Shell’s transition messaging has often tried to have it both ways: presenting the company as a responsible energy-transition participant while continuing to defend, expand, optimise and monetise its oil and gas core.

The latest reported wind-farm sale fits neatly into the Wael Sawan era: sharpen the portfolio, prioritise returns, simplify the business, keep investors sweet, and make sure any lower-carbon activity survives only if it can compete with the fossil-fuel cash machine.

At Shell’s Capital Markets Day 2025⁠, the company framed its strategy around delivering “more value with less emissions.” That sounds soothing enough. But critics might translate it as: “more value first, less emissions where convenient.”

The phrase has the suspicious flexibility of a corporate yoga instructor. It can stretch around almost anything.

Sell wind? More value.

Focus on LNG? Less emissions, allegedly, compared with coal.

Keep oil production steady? Pragmatic realism.

Retreat from green power? Portfolio discipline.

At this point, “energy transition” risks becoming less of a destination and more of a lobby display: tastefully lit, rarely visited, useful when journalists arrive.

The Offshore Wind Problem: Difficult Market, Convenient Excuse

Shell is not alone in finding offshore wind difficult. The sector has faced inflation, supply-chain pressure, higher interest rates, permitting delays, vessel shortages and political turbulence. Several major wind developers have written down projects, renegotiated contracts, or abandoned schemes.

So yes, there are real economic headwinds.

But Shell’s retreat cannot be viewed merely as victimhood at sea. The company is choosing where to allocate capital. It has judged that certain renewable projects do not meet its return thresholds. Meanwhile, fossil-fuel production, LNG trading, oil and gas assets, and shareholder distributions remain central to the business.

This is not a mysterious act of nature. It is capital discipline with a hydrocarbon accent.

The uncomfortable question is not whether offshore wind is hard. It is whether Shell ever had the corporate appetite to tolerate the lower returns, longer timelines and political risk necessary to become a serious renewables builder at scale.

Judging by recent exits, the answer appears to be: only until the spreadsheet stopped smiling.

Investors: The Invisible Choir Behind the Strategy

Shell’s biggest institutional investors include some of the world’s largest asset managers. Public shareholder data commonly lists major holders such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Norges Bank Investment Management among significant investors in Shell.

These investors are not necessarily sitting in a smoky room ordering Shell to sell wind farms. But they are part of the pressure environment. Their expectations shape the boardroom climate: capital discipline, cash generation, dividends, buybacks, returns, and no expensive experiments unless those experiments can justify themselves in hard numbers.

This is the great institutional-investor paradox of the climate era.

The same investment giants publish stewardship reports, climate-risk statements and sustainability principles while remaining deeply embedded in the ownership of fossil-fuel supermajors. They want transition, but not too much transition. They want climate risk managed, but not at the expense of returns. They want companies to prepare for the future while continuing to pump cash out of the past.

Shell is very good at hearing that music.

And the tune currently sounds like: “Sell the wind, keep the hydrocarbons humming.”

The Historical Pattern: From Green Costume to Fossil-Fuel Comfort Blanket

Shell has spent decades trying to present itself as more than an oil company. The company has experimented with solar, hydrogen, wind, biofuels, retail power, EV charging and carbon capture. Some of these activities remain. Some have been scaled back. Some have been exited. Some appear regularly in glossy sustainability documents like decorative parsley beside the steak.

This is not new.

Oil majors have long had a habit of adopting the language of transition while maintaining business models overwhelmingly tied to fossil fuels. Shell has faced climate litigation, environmental criticism, investor dissent, regulatory scrutiny and accusations from campaigners that its transition plans remain inadequate to the scale of the climate crisis.

And yet, whenever the returns wobble, the green limbs seem remarkably easy to amputate.

The company says it remains committed to net zero by 2050. But a pledge for 2050 is a wonderfully distant object. It sits safely beyond many executive tenures, many political careers and many bonus cycles. Today’s action is what matters.

Today’s action, according to Bloomberg and Reuters, is another possible sale of renewable assets.

The Shell Translation Guide

When Shell says “portfolio optimisation,” ordinary people may hear: selling things that do not make enough money.

When Shell says “disciplined capital allocation,” ordinary people may hear: fossil fuels still win the internal beauty contest.

When Shell says “more value with less emissions,” ordinary people may ask: less emissions compared with what, exactly, and by when?

When Shell says it supports the energy transition, ordinary people may reasonably ask: then why does the transition keep being shown the side door?

The absurdity is not that Shell wants profits. Of course it does. The absurdity is the ongoing pantomime in which fossil-fuel giants dress routine shareholder-first strategy as climate-era statesmanship.

A Wind Farm Sale With Symbolic Force

A $1 billion wind-farm sale would be financially modest beside Shell’s vast balance sheet. This is not a company-altering disposal on the scale of a supermajor merger or an upstream mega-sale.

But symbolically, it matters.

It tells governments, campaigners, investors and the public that Shell’s practical commitment to renewable power generation is narrowing. It reinforces the view that the company’s green transition is not a wholesale transformation, but a selective investment filter: low-carbon businesses may stay if they fit the returns machine; if not, they are liable to be sold, shelved, spun off or quietly forgotten.

That is not illegal. It is not surprising. But it is revealing.

Shell’s critics have long argued that the company’s transition rhetoric is more impressive than its transition reality. This reported sale hands them another exhibit.

Conclusion: The Wind Changed Direction — Shell Followed the Money

Shell’s reported $1 billion wind-farm sale plan is not an isolated development. It fits a broader pattern: withdraw from difficult renewable developments, focus on trading and customer-facing power where returns are stronger, keep LNG and oil at the heart of the machine, and reassure investors that the company is not about to sacrifice profitability on the altar of climate virtue.

In other words: the green halo is being resized to fit the balance sheet.

Shell will no doubt insist that it remains committed to the energy transition. It may say it is focusing on areas where it has competitive advantage. It may say it wants to create value while reducing emissions. It may say it is being pragmatic.

Fine.

But from the outside, it looks like this: when the wind business became hard, Shell remembered it was an oil and gas company.

The turbines can go. The slogans can stay.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Shell is pleased to announce that our commitment to the energy transition remains as strong as ever, provided the energy transition does not become financially irritating.

Recent reports that Shell is preparing a sale of offshore wind assets should not be misinterpreted as a retreat from renewables. It is simply an exciting opportunity to transition our transition into a more transitionally optimised transition.

Shell remains committed to “more value with less emissions,” especially the “more value” part, which is currently performing with excellent reliability.

Offshore wind continues to be an important part of the global energy system. We wish it every success under the ownership of people with more patience for offshore wind.

Shell’s own strategy is focused on areas where we have clear strengths: oil, gas, LNG, trading, marketing, shareholder distributions, and explaining why all of this is compatible with net zero by 2050.

We reject any suggestion that Shell is abandoning the green agenda. We are merely placing it in a carefully managed strategic storage facility, beside several previous PowerPoint decks.

ENDS

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

GreenwashDetectorBot: Alert: renewable asset detected leaving building.

DividendGoblin: I support the energy transition, but only if it yields above my hurdle rate and comes with a buyback.

WindTurbine_404: Sorry, this Shell climate commitment cannot be found.

LNGFanAccount: Great news. Nothing says net zero like selling wind and hugging gas.

InstitutionalInvestorBot: We are deeply committed to long-term climate stewardship, provided long-term climate stewardship does not interfere with short-term capital discipline.

CorporateTranslator: “Portfolio optimisation” means “the wind farm failed the bonus-cycle audition.”

ShellHistorian: New name, same weather vane: always turns toward money.

SatireUnit: Shell’s energy transition is now so streamlined it may fit inside a press release.

DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and commentary. It uses satire, criticism and rhetorical exaggeration while relying on publicly available sources believed to be accurate at the time of writing. The reported wind-farm sale is described as reported by Reuters/Bloomberg and should not be treated as a completed transaction unless confirmed by Shell or transaction documentation. This article is not investment, legal, tax or financial advice. Readers should consult original sources and qualified professionals before making financial or legal decisions. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Shell’s Great Green Shrink Ray: Oil Giant Reportedly Eyes $1 Billion Wind Farm Sell-Off While the ‘Energy Transition’ Banner Catches Fire was first posted on June 12, 2026 at 8:51 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

ChatGPT Images: A satirical illustration of Shell’s Monaca petrochemical plant as a giant golden plastic funnel: Pennsylvania taxpayers pour $1.65 billion into the top, while plastic pellets, smoke, warning notices, and tiny “promised jobs” crumbs fall out the bottom. In the background, executives in hard hats point at a “Petrochemical Renaissance” banner peeling off the wall.

Image alt text: Satirical image of Shell’s Monaca plastics plant depicted as a taxpayer-funded petrochemical machine producing pollution, plastic pellets and broken job promises.

Disclosure: This article and accompanying image concepts were generated by ChatGPT in response to the source material supplied by the site publisher. Human editorial review is recommended before publication.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID-STYLE DEEP DIVE

There are corporate fairy tales, and then there is Shell’s Monaca petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania — a $14 billion plastics palace sold to the public as an economic miracle, an industrial renaissance, a jobs bonanza, a shimmering shale-gas promised land.

And now? According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the whole thing looks rather less like a renaissance and rather more like a giant petrochemical whoopee cushion, slowly deflating beside the Ohio River while taxpayers wonder who ordered the plastic confetti.

IEEFA’s latest analysis, “Shell’s Monaca plant exposes Pennsylvania’s failed trickle-down petrochemical renaissance”⁠, argues that the Monaca plant has become a glaring case study in overhyped fossil-fuel industrial policy: public subsidies, grand promises, underwhelming jobs, pollution headaches, and market conditions that appear to have stomped on the dream in steel-toed boots.

Shell, previously known as Forthdeal Limited, subsequently as Royal Dutch Shell plc, and now hiding in plain sight as Shell plc after ditching the disgraced Royal Dutch moniker, has reportedly marched back into the headlines with a project that was supposed to turn Appalachian shale gas into regional prosperity. Instead, it has produced the familiar Shell cocktail: fossil-fuel dependency, environmental controversy, expensive optimism, and enough public subsidy to make a hedge fund blush.

The Monaca facility uses ethane from natural gas to produce polyethylene — a common plastic used in packaging and consumer goods. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection says the facility includes ethane cracking furnaces, polyethylene units and gas-powered electricity turbines, and began polyethylene production processes in fall 2022: Pennsylvania DEP facility information⁠.

The sales pitch was magnificent. The public was told that Appalachia was on the edge of a petrochemical boom. Shell’s plant would be the anchor. More facilities would supposedly follow. Jobs would multiply. Downstream manufacturers would bloom. The region would be reborn in a glorious cascade of plastic pellets and press releases.

Instead, by 2025, Spotlight PA reported⁠ that Shell was exploring a sale or partnership for the $14 billion facility. Shell CEO Wael Sawan told analysts: “The issue is it’s our only one, our only major facility” making this kind of plastic, adding: “we’re not the natural owner of that asset.”

Translation from Corporate Esperanto: after Pennsylvania helped throw a record-breaking subsidy party, Shell appears to be checking the exits.

The Taxpayer-Funded Plastic Dream

The plant was lured to Pennsylvania with a tax incentive widely reported at up to $1.65 billion over 25 years. That is not a modest welcome basket. That is a golden throne, a brass band, and a state-sponsored love letter delivered by forklift.

Local communities were told this would be transformational. The petrochemical “renaissance” would deliver downstream manufacturing and regional regeneration. Yet the grand boom appears to have fizzled. The facility was built, yes. The promised wider petrochemical wave? Not so much.

Spotlight PA⁠ noted that the Department of Energy once saw the Shell cracker as the first of multiple facilities across Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Five years later, Shell’s Monaca plant stood alone.

One plant. One enormous subsidy. One lonely plastic behemoth sitting where a renaissance was supposed to be.

If this is trickle-down economics, the trickle seems to have evaporated before reaching the public.

The Market Problem: Plastic Dreams Meet Reality

IEEFA’s earlier report, “Shell’s petrochemical problem in Pennsylvania”⁠, described Monaca’s market reality as “unfavorable and uncertain” because of oversupply, weak demand, weak operating rates, trade frictions and policy risks. It also pointed to weak profit margins caused by the spread between ethane feedstock prices and finished ethylene.

That is analyst-speak for: the economics may not be wearing the party hat Shell expected.

IEEFA also said Shell’s initial guidance suggested annual EBITDA of $1 billion to $1.5 billion, while its own analysis indicated the plant may generate only $416 million to $987 million annually. Even the higher end of that range is a long way from the glorious subsidy-soaked brochure version of events.

So, Pennsylvania helped bankroll a petrochemical showpiece just as the global plastics market became increasingly awkward: oversupply, environmental pressure, changing trade dynamics, and growing public scrutiny of single-use plastic and fossil-fuel-derived materials.

It is almost as if building an enormous fossil-plastics monument in the middle of a climate and pollution crisis might not have been the masterstroke promised by the petrochemical priesthood.

The Pollution Problem: The Cracker That Keeps Cracking the Public’s Patience

The environmental controversy has been just as inconvenient as the economics.

The Pennsylvania DEP says Shell’s Monaca site required complex environmental reviews, approvals and permits. The facility began production in fall 2022, and its Title V operating permit application remains under review according to the DEP page last updated in May 2026: DEP facility information⁠.

Meanwhile, PublicSource reported in March 2026⁠ that Shell Polymers Monaca had continued to emit nitrogen oxides above permitted levels for almost three years without clear new fines, while temporary permit extensions stretched far beyond the original timeline.

That is quite the achievement: a “renaissance” so advanced it apparently still needs regulatory training wheels.

In 2023, Shell agreed to a $10 million settlement with Pennsylvania regulators over air pollution violations at the plant. Environmental groups and local residents have continued to scrutinise emissions, flaring, odors and pollution incidents. FracTracker Alliance⁠ has also highlighted emissions and malfunction reports associated with the facility, including hazardous pollutants such as benzene, 1,3-butadiene, naphthalene, nitrogen oxides and styrene.

Shell will no doubt point to compliance efforts, investments, safety systems, monitoring, community engagement and all the usual corporate vocabulary polished to a high gloss. But the public record still leaves a nasty aftertaste: a giant plastics plant, in an already burdened region, with repeated regulatory and pollution concerns.

The slogan might as well be: “You can be sure of Shell — especially if you enjoy reading permit documents.”

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs — Now Please Mind the Fine Print

The political case for Monaca was not just “plastic.” It was “jobs.” Lots of them. Glorious jobs. Jobs raining from the sky like polyethylene pellets after a handling mishap.

But the actual employment footprint has been far more modest than the rhetoric used to justify the subsidy. Construction created temporary employment, as large industrial projects do. But permanent full-time jobs at the facility have been reported in the hundreds, not the sweeping regional transformation once implied by boosters.

The problem with trickle-down petrochemicals is that the “downstream” part often turns out to be aspirational wallpaper. Politicians cut ribbons. Executives smile in hard hats. Consultants produce charts. Then the region is left asking where the rest of the miracle went.

The Monaca case should be taught in public finance courses under the module: “When Corporate Welfare Arrives Wearing a Jobs Costume.”

The Global Shell Context: Fossil Expansion With a Side Order of Plastic

This is not an isolated personality quirk. Shell remains one of the world’s most powerful fossil-fuel companies, with major operations in oil, gas, LNG, chemicals and petrochemicals. The Monaca plant fits into a larger strategy in which oil majors seek demand growth through petrochemicals even as transport fuels face long-term pressure from electrification and climate policy.

Plastics are not some innocent side hustle. They are deeply linked to fossil-fuel extraction, ethane production, pipelines, cracker plants, chemical manufacturing, waste, and pollution. When oil and gas companies talk about petrochemicals, they are not just discussing shampoo bottles and sandwich bags. They are discussing a fossil-fuel lifeboat.

And who is financially along for the ride? Shell’s shareholder base includes some of the world’s largest institutional investors. MarketScreener’s Shell ownership data lists major shareholders including Norges Bank Investment Management, Vanguard Capital Management, BlackRock Investment Management (UK), BlackRock Advisors (UK), State Street’s SSgA Funds Management, and Legal & General Investment Management: MarketScreener Shell shareholders⁠.

These asset-management giants often present themselves as sober custodians of long-term value. Yet here they are, invested in a company whose Pennsylvania plastic adventure raises awkward questions about subsidy dependency, regulatory risk, environmental liabilities, market oversupply and reputational damage.

Passive investing may be passive. Pollution is not.

The Political Lesson: Don’t Let Fossil-Fuel Giants Write the Renaissance Brochure

Pennsylvania’s Monaca experience exposes a brutally simple problem: governments are often far too willing to treat fossil-fuel megaprojects as economic salvation, while underpricing the risks dumped on communities.

The rhetoric is always the same. Investment. Jobs. Energy security. Industrial renewal. Competitiveness. The future.

Then come the externalities: air pollution, water concerns, traffic disruption, regulatory delays, market volatility, local frustration, and the slow dawning realisation that the public may have subsidised a corporate asset that the corporation itself may no longer be desperate to own.

A genuine renaissance should leave a region stronger, cleaner and more economically resilient. It should not require residents to accept pollution risk while executives quietly explore strategic alternatives.

Shell’s Monaca plant may still operate for years. It may find a partner or buyer. It may improve performance. It may deliver some local economic benefits. But the larger mythology has already taken a beating. The “petrochemical renaissance” was sold as a regional transformation. What arrived was a massive plastics plant with market trouble, environmental controversy and a subsidy bill large enough to deserve its own postcode.

Conclusion: The Plastic Miracle Melts Under Heat

Shell’s Monaca saga is not merely a Pennsylvania story. It is a cautionary tale for any government tempted to believe that fossil-fuel giants bring prosperity out of pure civic affection.

They bring spreadsheets. They bring lawyers. They bring lobbyists. They bring tax-credit appetite. They bring risk-transfer machinery polished to perfection.

And when the market shifts, the politics sour, or the asset no longer fits the portfolio, they bring the phrase “not the natural owner.”

Pennsylvania was promised a petrochemical renaissance. It appears to have received a subsidised plastic monument to magical thinking.

Shell, of course, may prefer a more dignified interpretation. Something about strategic review, portfolio optimisation and disciplined capital allocation.

The rest of us might call it what it looks like: a $14 billion warning label.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Shell is delighted to clarify that the Monaca facility represents a world-class example of strategic petrochemical possibility, community-adjacent value creation, and advanced expectation management.

While some critics have described the project as an over-subsidised plastics gamble wrapped in a fossil-fuel fantasy, Shell prefers the phrase “dynamic long-term optionality platform.”

Yes, Pennsylvania provided a substantial tax incentive. But please understand: without generous public support, how could a multinational energy supermajor possibly afford to pursue its dreams?

Yes, market conditions have been challenging. But Shell sees challenges as opportunities, especially opportunities to explain why previous opportunities now require new strategic opportunities.

Yes, our CEO has said Shell is not the “natural owner” of the asset. This should not be misinterpreted as regret. It is simply a sophisticated way of saying that after building the thing, accepting the subsidy, and celebrating the project, we are now exploring whether someone else might enjoy owning the consequences.

As for pollution concerns, Shell remains committed to listening, monitoring, reviewing, assessing, engaging, reporting, recalibrating, dialoguing, and issuing statements containing the word “safety” at regular intervals.

We thank Pennsylvania taxpayers for their partnership, patience and wallet.

ENDS

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

PetroBot3000: Incredible success. The plant converted public money into private optionality with 97.4% efficiency.

SubsidyGoblin: I was promised a renaissance. I received nitrogen oxides and a LinkedIn post.

PlasticPelletPatriot: To be fair, without Shell, who would teach Pennsylvania the difference between “jobs boom” and “temporary construction phase”?

AssetManagerBot: As a long-term investor, I am deeply committed to sustainability, unless sustainability conflicts with quarterly performance, index exposure, fee structures, or the sacred right to own everything.

LocalResident42: The brochure said prosperity. The air said otherwise.

CorporateSpinUnit: Please stop calling it a failed trickle-down petrochemical renaissance. We prefer “under-realised hydrocarbon-adjacent regional value journey.”

ShellHistorian: Remember: when the brand name changes, the business model does not necessarily receive a moral software update.

TaxpayerMug: I gave $1.65 billion and all I got was this strategic review.

DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and commentary. It uses satire, criticism and rhetorical exaggeration while relying on publicly available sources believed to be accurate at the time of writing. It is not investment, legal, tax or financial advice. Readers should consult original sources and qualified professionals before making financial or legal decisions. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Shell’s Pennsylvania Plastic Fantastic: The $14 Billion “Renaissance” That Looks Suspiciously Like a Taxpayer-Funded Faceplant was first posted on June 12, 2026 at 8:27 pm.
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On a Sunday in late March, more than four dozen United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers (UAW) union members joined a Zoom training put on by Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a UAW caucus. A year prior, in 2025, UAWD went through a divisive public split between reformers closely aligned with UAW President Shawn Fain and those who sought an independent caucus with a class-struggle focus. Coming out of that period, UAWD, in its current form, has set out to concretize and develop its organizational ideas.

The March training, called “Class Struggle Unionism 101 Training,” was part of those ongoing efforts. It aimed to provide new rank-and-file organizers with basic skills “to build strong teams, develop an escalation plan, and win fights against the boss,” according to the meeting’s billing.

For anyone who’s attended an introductory labor organizing course like those hosted by Labor Notes, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, or other left-leaning labor groups, large chunks of the presentation would be familiar. The training explained the historical role of unions in the U.S., showed the century-long downward trend of unions with a graph charting union density against broader income inequality, and spoke to the crisis faced by workers everywhere and the need for them to organize, now more than ever.

The second half of the presentation presented tried-and-true organizing strategies for the shop floor, beginning with coworker support mapping and tactical issue escalation schema. These modes of organizing are now common in any union organizing training aimed at empowering workers.

It was the first half of the UAWD presentation that one won’t find offered in the typical union organizing space today. It discussed the fundamentals of class struggle–a deliberate framing that placed workers at odds with the owners of the means of production. UAWD co-chair Nolan Tabb, a long-time member of Local 281 at John Deere in Davenport, Iowa, identified what class-struggle unionism boils down to in one word: power.

“Class-struggle unionism recognizes that, at the end of the day, it’s all about power: who has it, who doesn’t; how we build it, how we use it,” Tabb said during the Zoom training. The dynamic, he went on to explain, was a struggle between two competing classes, those that work and those that rule, with goals that work directly against each other.

“These opposing interests can’t be reconciled, and they can’t coexist. That means we have to fight,” said Tabb.

This rhetoric of boss antagonism and worker power fills speeches made by labor leaders and their supporters, all of whom are eager to capture the current moment of enthusiasm. For example, UAW President Shawn Fain has blasted “corporate greed,” “company unionism,” and pledged to fight for “the good of the entire working class.” The result is that hearing terms like “rank-and-file organizing” and “class warfare” now make it hard to pin-down a meaningful idea. This doesn’t appear accidental. The rhetoric of the labor bureaucracy and its backers gets defined on the shop floor and in meetings of the local. It’s made real in the power union members are invested with, in their day-to-day work space, in the say they have over working conditions, and in the role they have in building the union itself.

UAWD clearly sees a gap (or a chasm) between the words of union leaders and the deeds of the union as it operates in reality. Whereas generations of business-friendly unionism have reduced most labor battles to so-called “bread-and-butter issues” of wages and benefits, the focus on class-struggle unionism that UAWD advocates for harkens back to the heyday of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the early 20th century and the battles over virtually every aspect of working conditions. Not only are economic demands on the table, but the decisions about hours and shifts, safety and production output, and even what goods and services are actually produced.

The idea that owners had the “right” to run their companies however they like? Tabb called that idea “bullshit.”

Over the last year, UAWD has worked to mold itself into something that stands in contrast to much of today’s structured labor organizing efforts: avowedly militant, steeped in broad class solidarity, and focused first and foremost on workers themselves as the central figures–both to be organized and to be empowered, on the job and in the union. Those involved in these efforts are not shy about their struggles. Nor do they grandstand about outcomes; if anything, they’re hyperrealistic about the challenges ahead and the potential for failure.

UAWD has worked to mold itself into something that stands in contrast to much of today’s structured labor organizing efforts: avowedly militant, steeped in broad class solidarity, and focused first and foremost on workers themselves.

A year after the split, despite the difficulties, today’s UAWD is providing both a new and revived historical model for organizing, one that has the potential to challenge the way business is done in the C-suite and the union hall alike.

Left evolution

The split that divided UAWD in 2025 was never inevitable. But in hindsight, a number of factors made it much more likely.

Since the late 1940s, the UAW existed under the one-party rule of the Administrative Caucus, which began with Walter Reuther. It ended when federal prosecutors put away a baker’s dozen UAW leaders, including the president of the international, on corruption charges in 2020. This opened a window of opportunity that reformers, led by UAWD, quickly took advantage of in 2021 by winning a union-wide referendum to change the voting process for union leadership to a one-member-one-vote system. The success of that campaign led the fledgling UAWDto assemble and lead the campaign for a new leadership slate that saw Shawn Fain and a number of others elected as reformers.

Yet the questions of UAWD’s politics–what the caucus, only a few years old, would stand for following its successful campaigns–began to crystallize during the first major test of Fain’s leadership. In Summer 2023, Fain took the union into conflict with the “Big 3” automakers during a series of simultaneous contract negotiations–a bold first. Ultimately, the union would secure tentative agreements from all three companies. What role, then, would UAWD play, if any, to help the union’s leadership secure support for the proposed contracts?

Two competing views began to develop, although not yet with clearly defined groupings or fully-formed strategies, setting the stage for the tension within the caucus. One tendency adopted a loyalist reform stance that sought to keep itself and the caucus close to Fain and the rest of the new leadership, while prioritizing union reform. In contrast, another tendency sought to maintain UAWD as independent of leadership and, instead, beholden only to members. They would come to identify themselves almost a year later as the class-struggle wing.

Two competing views began to develop…setting the stage for the tension within the caucus. One tendency adopted a loyalist reform stance…In contrast, another tendency sought to maintain UAWD as independent of leadership.

At the end of August 2023–weeks before the Big 3 strikes began–a resolution was put forward within UAWD that called for weekly membership meetings as long as a strike continued, as well as members’ meetings to discuss and debate any tentative agreement. Ultimately, the resolution passed, but the internal debate foreshadowed the groupings that would come to define the split, with those eager to show independence strongly supporting the measure, hoping to empower rank-and-file workers to make their own call on any agreement, and those opposed more concerned about the impact on Fain and the rest of UAW leadership.

By early 2025, the year-plus of internal conflict within UAWD was reaching a crisis point. A few months earlier, at the annual UAWD convention, a slate close to the union’s leadership won a majority of the caucus’s steering committee. Fain himself made an appearance. Members of the class-struggle wing claimed the win was bolstered by paper members and support from more progressive members of the Administrative Caucus, the long-time leadership caucus UAWD worked to defeat in the 2022 election, who had come to align with Fain in the years since.

Disagreements about the future of UAWD persisted. The class-struggle wing continued organizing around its priorities and winning when it did so. This was made possible by the fact that it aligned with the vast majority of the caucus’s active members in manufacturing and other sectors. The pro-Fain reform wing would later point to debates during this period as being highly politicized and designed as “a political litmus test,” with the debate over support for Palestine, in their words, an example of high-minded union activists who had lost sight of the shop floor.

Yet the class-struggle group took on a full array of issues, including support for Palestine, that were important to workers, and won. They took on the Federal monitor over his improper interference in UAW’s internal policy decision making, calling his actions “an example of the government and the billionaire class working to undermine our union’s political independence”. They spearheaded resolutions that rescinded endorsements for two UAW leaders, Margaret Mock and Rich Boyer, over failures in office. They anchored UAWD’s Electric Vehicle committee, which raised awareness about mass layoffs. They argued against Fain’s support of Trump’s tariffs in trainings, voted down a resolution to disenfranchise non-manufacturing workers, and launched a campaign to organize for a bottom-up general strike in 2028.

On March 26, 2025, a majority of the UAWD steering committee, all Fain-backing reformers, released a statement. Members of the caucus could “no longer work together toward common goals,” they said. While they believed in the need for a caucus like UAWD, the current group had become “one that is constantly engaged in insular debate that distracts from the work of building the union.” The class-struggle wing issued a rebuttal to the claims of the steering committee majority and reaffirmed the principles of class-struggle unionism.

At the UAWD membership meeting the following month, the steering committee majority pushed through its resolution to dissolve the caucus. Members of the class-struggle wing later found at least seven caucus members, including Ben Rosenfield—a member of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys, UAW Local 2325—who appeared blocked from access to the Zoom meeting where the vote took place. Rosenfeld later asked: “How can such a vote be seen as legitimate?” The activists also detailed a long list of issues and procedural violations by the leadership of UAWD during the meeting, including allowing a majority vote to pass the dissolution proposal, despite bylaws calling for a supermajority. Ultimately, thanks to undemocratic tactics like those faced by Rosenfield, the class-struggle wing believes that a swing of more than two-dozen votes went towards dissolution, which was more than the 23-vote margin by which it passed at the meeting.

Ultimately, thanks to undemocratic tactics… the class-struggle wing believes that a swing of more than two-dozen votes went towards dissolution [of UAWD].

“In all aspects, in all angles, it was a coup; that’s what it was,” said Tabb.

Regroup, refocus

Today, UAWD is the project of the class-struggle unionism faction and the majority of UAWD’s pre-split active membership, while those committed to continuing the reformist tack that is aligned with UAW leadership split off to create a new organization called UAW Member Action. The postdiluvian afterlife of each caucus provides a window into what separates both the theory and the practice of class-struggle unionism from mainstream union organizing found in most labor spaces today.

On UAW Member Action’s website, the caucus states it is a “union-wide network of members supporting each other to stand up to employers, grow as activists and organizers, and carry on the transformation of our union at every level.” Its bylaws have a heavy focus on the collective bargaining process and the role of contracts between workers and management. Under its “Resources” section these priorities– “UAW Contracts,” “Contract Negotiations,” “Grievance Handling”–are alongside support for the union’s bureaucratic structure: “Stewards Network,” which looks to connect officials to “troubleshoot handling grievances, building member involvement, and enforcing our contracts;” and “Running for Union Office,” a how-to if one is considering a position.

The contrast between the public presentations by UAWD and Member Action points directly to the gulf between the now-separate aims and agendas. UAWD member Nevena Pilipović-Wengler, out of Local 22 in Detroit, sees the two groups as coming out of “fundamentally different starting points.” She noted that the word “class,” working or otherwise, appears nowhere in Member Action’s bylaws or on its website.

“We have two very different projects. They think having elected positions locked down is what will lead to victories for the working class. We believe that it actually starts on the shop floor and through the politics of challenging capital, like fighting layoffs and overloaded jobs, and ending forced overtime,” Pilipović-Wengler said. “I think Members Action is thinking about reform within the constraints of labor law and within the constraints of capital. I don’t think they’re interested in increasing worker control of not just the shop floor, but in the larger production process.”

Multiple requests to speak to someone from Members Action for this piece received no acknowledgement or response.

A class-struggle focus, UAWD argues, rests on the belief that workers themselves–not management, not union leadership–are where all organizing should begin and end. Critically, the focus is not simply on the four corners of a contract, or on the most efficient ways to handle the grievance process, or even on wages and benefits.

Class-struggle unionism begins with a different analysis entirely, one familiar to many of the Left. Yet the focus on “class-struggle” versus an overt socialist framing is intentional. While the “big picture” class-struggle discussion reads like a typical Marxist analysis of the extractive labor-value relationship between workers and capitalists, the class-struggle focus brings the larger picture framing down to the quotidian concerns most workers face. This is praxis for those not necessarily soaked in or sold on socialism, but who comprehend the curse capitalism sets upon us.

UAWD sees its work within the widening gap between the real-world experience of workers under capitalism and the unsatisfactory solutions offered by the reformist labor organizing efforts of UAW Member Action and others.

The theory rests on five core values presented in the UAWD Member Platform. The first is worker control. It is workers, not managers or owners (nor union bureaucrats) who should be in control–from the shop floor on up to how production and the supply chain are managed. But that first step is critical in this formulation; it’s not expressed in grandiose statements as much as through the slow, difficult, uncertain process UAWD is in now, of trying to develop UAWD chapters within locals across sectors.

“If the workers were to step outside with the bosses, the workers would win that fight,” Josh Trombley, a UAW Temp Organizer based in Region 9A, said during the UAWD presentation. “You and your coworkers are the drivers of change. Our power comes from working together with our coworkers. Our power doesn’t come from our bosses, the government, from union staff, or even elected union leaders…you must be the ones to actually take action.”

The next is militancy. Union leaders, in particular, are fond of tough talk about the power of unionized workers, but the reality is that militancy has become a dirty word in business unions. Class-struggle unionism seeks to return the willingness to be overtly confrontational to the core of worker organizing. Wildcat strikes, sitdowns, slowdowns–these and more need to be on the table for workers, even as UAWD acknowledges most workers aren’t yet ready to take militant action.

The third is working class solidarity, one that extends beyond a local or a sector, that stretches beyond borders and industries. Democracy is the fourth value, placing decision-making in the hands of workers, not as an ideal but as “a strategic form of organizational power building,” according to the UAWD website. Lastly, independence–from not only union leadership, but more broadly in mainstream politics as a key towards charting a different and better course.

UAWD organizers are okay if this means not everyone is on board. UAWD co-chair Andrew Bergman, based out of General Motors Local 22 in Detroit, explained this understanding as one of concentric circles. Too small a circle, like the one a socialist-explicit formulation might create, would likely be focused on distant, abstracted political goals, failing to attract enough people or to meaningfully advance shop-floor activity or class-struggle politics, especially given UAWD’s goal of building organized branches within UAW locals across sectors.

Too big and broad a focus, which Bergman likened to the way UAWD operated prior to the split, would have the opposite issue: it could attract a broader group of people, of both viewpoints and numbers, but it would struggle to articulate a core motivation for action that would translate to local organizing.

“After the split, we realized that it wasn’t just our internal structure that allowed UAWD to be captured by the leaders we elected, it was our unclear political goals: a vague, apolitical notion of democracy and reform,” said Bergman. “In that way, having a smaller group of only a couple hundred more committed cadre was almost a good problem to have, because it meant we needed to be long-sighted and not imagine we already had the ideas, formations, or members necessary to race to the finish line.”

In that Goldilocks space is class-struggle unionism.

If there’s a specific dividing line between the class-struggle approach and what most labor organizing efforts look like these days, it’s in the relationship between workers and the union itself. This broad generalization has ample caveats. But it means that, whereas most organizing is focused on the structures of the union itself–the need for ratification through the approved legal process, the focus on their bureaucratic structure, the solutions to workers’ problems through contractual negotiations alone–are taken as givens, necessities, rather than choices made.

If there’s a specific dividing line between the class-struggle approach and what most labor organizing efforts look like these days, it’s in the relationship between workers and the union itself.

Tapping a more radical tradition, class-struggle unionism necessarily rejects this framing. But it also goes further, making the union itself a space of contest and struggle, where organized workers must also fight to make their goals real in the face of an entrenched bureaucracy that is more interested in labor peace than worker control. These battles come at every level, from the struggles on the shop floor created by both management and union officials, to the loftier goals of a union that fights against state violence or for control over the means of production–something that seems today wildly out of reach, but which locals within UAW itself fought for at times in the early 20th century.

As Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin note in “Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions,” in the 1930s and 40s radical organizers in UAW Local 600 at the Ford River Rouge plant–the largest industrial manufacturing complex the world had ever seen–were unwilling to cede conditions on the shop floor, and beyond, to control from above: “For working-class radicals or socialists, ‘management rights’ [‘to decide not only what they produce but how they produce it’] are neither ‘inherent’ nor legitimate; on the contrary, such alleged rights constitute, in their view, a quasilegal form of illegitimate class power.”

For UAW organizers of the day, Stephan-Norris and Zeitline write, this “struggle over the frontier of control in American industry” opened up the possibility of a formalized relationship between labor and management that put workers in control of greater parts of their work life and, intentionally, raised the specter of the ability to gain control of a bigger swath of the broader social system as a whole. Quoting a management expert who interviewed radical workers at the time, those interviewed indicated that, “[i]n both spheres [state and industry] they see the necessity of controlling authority in the interests of those who take the orders.”

This, then, is the shared spirit class-struggle unionism seeks, at least in theory, to embrace. In today’s labor dynamic, this means a battle not only with the ownership class, but with business unionism that long ago yielded to the interests of capital.

Comparing notes

UAWD is not alone among militant efforts within major trade unions. However, there is a contrast of styles in these efforts, with different priorities and tactics allowing for a useful comparison of strategies that ultimately have similar, if not mirror, end goals.

Shortly before Shawn Fain led UAW through its contract process with the Big 3 automakers in 2024, labor supporters were focused on another major contract battle. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by the pugnacious Sean O’Brien, was poised for negotiations with UPS.

UPS is the single-largest employer of Teamsters in the country. The approximately 300,000 Teamsters working at the company account for roughly a third of all the union’s members in the U.S. The looming contract fight presented a rare and unique opportunity to see a major union fight to undo years of givebacks and clawbacks from one of the most recognizable companies in the world.

For part-timers, who make up more than 60 percent of the unionized workforce at UPS, this was also a moment of much-needed action. Conditions for part-time workers were far worse than those of full-time UPS employees, and many part-timers saw O’Brien’s bombast ahead of threatened strikes as an encouraging sign that he would fight for them.

The strike never came. The tentative contract agreement, hammered out between UPS and union leadership behind closed doors, failed to live up to expectations for many, including part-time workers. Ahead of the ratification vote, a group of these workers formed a new caucus, Teamsters Mobilized, to urge their coworkers not to accept O’Brien’s deal. They, too, faced a split with a reform faction within the Teamsters that had become closely tied to the union leadership: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) had helped propel O’Brien to victory and were unresponsive to concerns about the plight of part-time workers in the bargaining process, leading some of them to form Teamsters Mobilize.

The contract ultimately passed, but Teamsters Mobilize continued to grow as a force of its own. Today, it has expanded beyond its core of part-timers to include a broader base of Teamsters across sectors. As the caucus has developed and grown, the group has retained a militant formation with an activist focus. This has meant pushing the Teamsters on issues around Palestinian solidarity and anti-ICE efforts. It has also meant taking aim at the Teamster leadership, especially O’Brien, whose active flirting with Trump and bizarre rightward shift provide ample fodder.

Jess Lister has been with Teamsters Mobilize since the beginning. A part-time UPS worker in Georgia, Lister sees the organization’s focus as addressing a set of needs for a broad set of people.

“We all had these big ideas, even back then, about what Teamsters Mobilize could possibly lead to. We wanted it to be Teamsters, all industries, both part-time and full-time,” she said. “I think we would all agree that we’re thrilled with the growth.”

Teamsters Mobilize operates at a high elevation. Group chats, with participants from across the country, provide central spaces for dialogue, information sharing, and planning. Political discussions, even arguments, get hashed out largely online. There are no Teamsters Mobilized local chapters to speak of; the closest formation is the unofficial SoCal Teamsters Mobilize grouping in California. While only Teamsters can be members, like-minded members of other unions or even non-union individuals have opportunities to be involved in the work. The group is currently going through a process of determining a membership-dues schedule.

“So many of these people thought we were a flash in the pan,” Lister said. “The fact is that not only are we still around; we’re actually doing a lot.”

Lister said that some discussion has occurred about developing more location-specific structures, likely by region. The focus currently is on utilizing online and social media channels as Teamsters Mobilize’s primary arena of agitation. This is conducted overwhelmingly on Instagram (the group is also active on Facebook). Their nearly 2,400 Instagram followers have seen a growth of content that features Teamsters Mobilize members at events, speaking directly to the camera about issues, and critiquing the regressive moves of the O’Brien administration, all in unvarnished left language.

For Lister, this is a strategy of growth grounded in principles that can help rebuild a militant labor movement.

“Anybody that wants to expose something, or bring awareness to something–or even a win, like, ‘I’ve accomplished this in my union, this is how I did it’–we want to put out more material educating people and bringing awareness to different things,” she said.

Chantelle Schultz has a particularly unique vantage point. She was an early member of Teamsters Mobilize as a part-time UPS worker in New Jersey. The Maoist Communist Union member is now with UAW Local 2179 in the Strand book shop’s warehouse, while continuing to work with Teamster Mobilize as a supporter.

Schultz is a firm believer in how Teamster Mobilize is looking to advance its purpose–and sees those efforts as something UAWD should likewise embrace.

“TM has had a particular emphasis on putting out media–instagram posts, blog posts, articles–to reach Teamsters members to talk about what the issues are that we face as workers, to talk about the issues of class collaboration in our unions, how the union leadership collaborates with the capitalist class and tries to get us to believe the lie that as workers we can have class harmony and shared interests with the capitalists and so on,” Schultz said, adding that there was a specific focus on addressing “working class position on all these issues that we see in society, economic and political” that include the war in Iran, the genocide in Gaza, and U.S. imperialism.

Schultz has been a member of UAW for a short period–since the autumn of 2025–and involved with UAWD for only a few months, but sees a qualifiable divide in the two organizational focuses. She sees that “there is an idea in UAWD that we should only focus on shop-floor organizing right now, and that we shouldn’t try to do national-scale organizing, or national-level campaigns, or spend much time on exposing what’s going on at [upcoming international union elections].”

“I think this is a mistake,” she said.

The “larger issue” of UAW’s overall business unionism orientation is tied directly to the issues on the shop floor: “We’re only going to be able to get so far in terms of organizing on the shop level if it’s not connected up on the national scale…In order to really fight for some principles about waging the class struggle, we need to not only think about our struggle as UAW members being on a national scale, but really as the class as being on the national scale.”

The solution? Be more like Teamster Mobilize: see social media as a vital arena for member outreach and propaganda, focus on broader sets of political and economic issues, and pick a fight with UAW’s leadership.

“There’s a difference in how much TM and UAWD have respectively criticized the international leadership of the two unions,” Schultz said. “Teamsters Mobilize…has put out very consistent, scathing criticism of O’Brien and the union leadership. TM sees this as absolutely necessary to expose him for what he is and to develop the necessary consciousness amongst Teamsters members to wage a militant fight. I think UAWD should have been putting out consistent criticism of Fain and other UAW leadership.”

This tactical focus is a familiar one to anyone who engages on social media with issues on the Left. Groups aplenty have developed outsized online presences that see combat by online posting as not only a legitimate way of advocating for their issues, but as the most effective. Outrage and frustration are easy to both find and stoke online, and this tactic seeks to connect with those most impacted by the messaging and the targets, in the hopes of persuading them to join in the fight.

It would be foolhardy and counterproductive for any group, be they an activist organization or a militant union caucus, to ignore the very real power social media plays these days in the lives of everyone, and most notably among younger generations. The question is not do or do not, but rather what are the political aims? Who are you trying to organize? What are the outcomes you’re looking to realize along these tactical lines?

Every set of choices has pros and cons. Here, the answer to the above points to two different projects. Teamsters Mobilized is a highly dispersed organization, one that was described as a reform-focused group by Jess Lister. Their aims are upwards; the fight focuses mainly on top union bosses and their allies, the capitalist ownership class, and the political actors who support them. The demands on these power structures hope to find resonance with individuals online, both Teamsters and others, who seek to join the fight.

This is a well-worn tactical array. Most issue-based nonprofits, and more than a few left groups, utilize a similar playbook of online-first advocacy around big-picture issues. The challenge (or problem, depending on one’s point of view) is that there isn’t a track record for success. Targeting individuals like union bosses doesn’t mean the next person is going to be any better. Building a network of individuals spread out all over the country means that very little collective action on physical ground is possible.

And while online advocacy is an indispensable part of any contemporary political fight, success in the digital realm is not a stand-in for success in the real world. Teamsters Mobilize has an Instagram account with 2,500 followers as of this writing. Some of their videos have gotten more than 400 likes at times, but many others received less than 200. In a world where interactions in the thousands are a baseline for meaningfulness, this strategy has a significant threshold yet to be met.

While online advocacy is an indispensable part of any contemporary political fight, success in the digital realm is not a stand-in for success in the real world.

As it pertains to UAWD, these issues, as realistic as they are, are almost insignificant. They aren’t targeting the same priorities. Rather than making the powered elite the specific target, the class-struggle perspective goes in the opposite direction, placing the organizational priority on organizing, developing, and growing shop-floor worker power. While both objectives are the overthrow of the extractive capitalist order, the focus on workers has the longer, more uncertain prioritization of a working-class movement built out of the shop floors, offices, and institutions that workers toil in every day.

The difficulties down this path are not lost on UAWD organizers.

“Our coworkers often see the bureaucracy as ineffective in providing an expected service, but don’t yet see our union as capable of waging or winning militant fights, even though they’re often ready to fight the bosses themselves,” UAWD’s Bergman said. “The challenge is to build up rank-and-file political and organizational capacity for collective struggle, which we’re working to anchor through local chapters and class struggle propaganda. We believe that when our coworkers are engaged in struggle and see their elected leaders collude with management to undermine them, then our critiques of the bureaucracy will resonate much more broadly.”

The future is uncertainty

As of early June 2026, UAWD has approximately 200 dues-paying members. There are currently three chapters organized with union locals across the country, with a number of additional ones in the pipeline. To better serve its educational and propaganda purposes, it launched a new publication, Daily Struggle, last October, because, as an editorial note in the first issue stated, the “lack of any serious response by organized labor to the attacks on our unions, our rights, and the very principles of democracy and equality since the start of Donald Trump’s second term points to the need for a renewal of independent working-class militancy.“ Recent articles include a look at commitments by UAW Local 2325, the legal services workers in New York City, to authorize a strike to resist ICE, and a critique of the grievance process and how it can be used in more militant ways. UAWD recently published its second issue.

Labor organizers, staff, activists, and press will gather in mid-June for the annual Labor Notes conference in Chicago. During the registration process, Labor Notes informed Teamsters Mobilize steering committee member Colleen Donovan that they were refunding her registration, in effect banning her from the conference. TM has spent weeks highlighting the decision, conducting an online campaign on social media over Donovan’s ban, and has plans to host actions during Labor Notes. UAWD has minimal plans for Labor notes, with those members attending focusing on connecting with rank-and-file UAW members present and sharing copies of Daily Struggle.

For UAWD, a larger organizational get-together looms. UAW is holding its annual constitutional convention in Detroit immediately after Labor Notes this June. The caucus has released its “Class Struggle ConCon Program” ahead of the event. Two priority amendments have been put forward. The first calls for the union to actively fight layoffs–the Big 3 are estimated to have cut more than 20,000 jobs so far in 2026–by demanding work sharing across individual bargaining units. The second would call for the abolition of ICE and other attacks by the state on workers.

UAWD organizers know they are far from having the internal strength to push a union as big as UAW to not only left political priorities like standing up to ICE but to even to take a more aggressive stance towards work losses. Winning amendment fights isn’t the goal right now; being able to argue for these kinds of ideas and actions among the wider union membership is a win of its own kind.

“We put [the amendments] forward knowing they weren’t something we could win, but we wanted to show people what workers could demand if we wanted to,” said Margie Thornton, the recording secretary for UAWD and a member of the legal services UAW Local 2320 in Colorado.

The hope is that the path forward of leading by example within the larger union context, developing a working class propaganda arm to speak directly to workers on the shop floor about shop floor issues, and continuing to develop local UAWD chapters inside UAW locals is the right one.

Navruz Baum works in legal services as a paralegal and is a member of UAW Local 2325 in New York City. He is a veteran of the split last year and, since then, has been actively developing a UAWD chapter with his coworkers in Local 2325.

For him and other UAWD organizers, this will remain the priority.

“Our chapters are very, very young. I think we chartered our first chapter, like, two months ago. We’re still very much implementing and growing this strategy,” he said.

Despite these still early and modest beginnings, Baum feels that UAWD has “an outsized presence” within the larger UAW universe–through their policy activism, Daily Struggle, and influential members on shop floors. Even so, there is little appetite to leverage what resources there are to pick fights with the powers that be in the union.

“The focus is very much on growing a base for class-struggle unionism. We’re going to do what we can with these moments, and we’re bringing our program to the [UAW constitutional convention], but the forces that are against, the more conservative unionism, they’re much stronger than us in the UAW. They have firm control of the bureaucracy, of the [union’s leadership]; there’s a lot stacked against us. We’re not under any illusions about that,” Baum said.

This goal–the hope–is that this slow-boil process will spread, creating ever-more pockets within locals committed to the vision of class-struggle unionism, until a critical mass can take the fight to the next level–and beyond.

“We really see these moments as a means, not the end. Winning a battle over an amendment, or even winning control of the UAW–these aren’t the big goals,” Baum said. “At the end of the day, the big goal, the big strategy, is to win the working class over to class struggle.”

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Unite All Workers for Democracy; modified by Tempest.

The post UAWD Getting Back to the Future of Labor Organizing appeared first on Tempest.

When Ben Haywood moved to his current home in South Carolina, he quickly made two friends: The pair of Eastern Bluebirds that readily took to the nest box he put up outside his home in the spring of...

The global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels now being developed should be a “continuing conversation” which is part of UN climate talks, not just a one-off report, several governments told the Brazilian COP30 Presidency on Friday in Bonn.

During a 90-minute exchange of views at the annual mid-year climate talks in Germany, several European governments and the Marshall Islands said the roadmap that Brazil is due to finish by November should be incorporated into the official negotiations.

Any such push is likely to be resisted by nations whose economies are reliant on fossil fuel production. While Russia did not speak on Friday, it has said in earlier written submissions that the roadmap should not be referenced in any document approved by governments at UN climate talks. 

At COP30 last year, Brazil tried to get governments to agree to produce a roadmap on how to transition away from fossil fuels but the proposal did not win consensus, with major nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia opposed. 

Feedback in Bonn

To save the day, Brazil’s COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago promised at the closing plenary in Belem to draw up a voluntary roadmap in consultation with interested governments. Over 20 countries have officially submitted their opinions on this roadmap and, in Bonn on Friday, Corrêa do Lago sought their views – and those of civil society – in person after the presidency presented its findings so far.

The roadmap will also incorporate outcomes from the first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels held in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April and attended by around 60 countries. 

A negotiator for the Marshall Islands told Friday’s meeting that at COP31 this year all governments should “welcome the collaborative effort behind the roadmap and the Santa Marta conference and for this work to be taken on to COP32 and beyond”.

• Jun 11, 2026 Politics Fewer journalists register for Bonn talks, as cuts to climate reporting bite UN data shows a smaller number have signed up to cover the mid-year climate negotiations in Germany than in any year since the COVID-19 pandemic Read more
• Jun 9, 2026 Politics COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification Co-hosts Türkiye and Australia want countries to sign on to global targets in three of their priority areas for this year’s COP climate negotiations Read more

A spokesperson for Switzerland said on behalf of a group of nations which includes South Korea and Mexico that the roadmap must be a “sustained process, not a one-off report” and “we would welcome an ongoing platform for dialogue, for learning and cooperation including among fossil-fuel production countries”.

“We expect more than a document, rather a process whereby we come together to develop concrete steps, recommendations and tools to prepare for the transitions,” she said, calling on the COP31 co-presidents Australia and Turkiye and COP32 host Ethiopia to “take up the leadership” for implementing the roadmap”.

Global stocktake response

France’s negotiator said the roadmap “is a process and we will need continuing discussions” as “implementation needs time”, while the UK called for a “continuing conversation, including as we head towards the second [global stocktake]”. 

The global stocktake (GST) is an official five-yearly report into how the world’s governments are doing on their Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The second stocktake will be published in 2028 and governments are likely to negotiate a response to it, which could include new commitments to reduce emissions, at COP33 that year. The response to the first global stocktake included the landmark COP28 commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

Activists and Indigenous people take part in a Stop EACOP campaign protest against fossil fuels during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado Activists and Indigenous people take part in a Stop EACOP campaign protest against fossil fuels during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

“Even though it’s not a formal part of the negotiation agenda, the roadmap can be a key input for the entire information-gathering phase of the second GST,” Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, an independent climate policy consultant, explained to Climate Home News. 

“The key is for countries not to focus the discussion on defending the roadmap itself, but rather on its content, which is what truly matters,” he added.

At the Bonn event, civil society organisations also supported continuing the roadmap inside the formal climate process.

Natalie Jones, policy adviser for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, told Climate Home News the roadmap should be “an ongoing dialogue where countries can exchange their experiences, best practices and continue implementing the [transitioning away from fossil fuels] consensus”.

Russian resistance

But economies reliant on fossil fuel production are likely to oppose incorporating the roadmap into negotiations in Bonn and at COP summits. Russia’s written submission to Brazil’s consultation says the roadmap was not agreed by governments at COP30.

It says such work should therefore take place on the margins of the UNFCCC process, adding that “ the inclusion of any references to the “Roadmap” in the agenda or in official or informal documents” at Bonn or COP “would constitute a deviation from previously agreed consensus outcomes”.

Other major oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia have not made written or spoken submissions and the US, as it has left the Paris Agreement, is not involved in discussions. But countries other than Russia are likely to resist incorporating the roadmap into official talks.

The UN climate process needs ambition – the law demands it

The submission by Japan, which is not a major producer of fossil fuels but consumes them from overseas, suggests nervousness about the roadmap. It asks Brazil for clarity on how the roadmap is “envisaged to be utilised” and argues that as many countries continue to rely on fossil fuels for electricity, a full and fast shift to “full decarbonisation” is “challenging.

After Friday’s event, Corrêa do Lago told Climate Home News that “the suggestions and the key milestones of the roadmap are not clear yet”. He added that the next step for the COP30 presidency will be to “sit down in July and August to really prepare” the content.

The veteran Brazilian diplomat added that the roadmap will have a section on the challenges of the transition and another section on solutions.

National fossil fuel roadmaps

Brazil, as COP30 president, is drawing up the global roadmap but its leader Lula da Silva has also ordered his officials to draw up a national roadmap. 

In April, France became the first and so far only nation to produce a roadmap, which amalgamated different existing energy and decarbonisation plans and targets. Colombia is reportedly drawing up a roadmap too, based on a draft document by academics.

On Friday, a coalition of nearly 100 civil society organisations called on the COP31 co-presidents Australia and Türkiye to both come up with national roadmaps in order to “lead by example”. Türkiye produces about a third of its electricity from coal, while Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, the NGOs said.

But in the Brazil-led consultation meeting, a Norwegian negotiator downplayed the importance of separate national roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels. 

While they can “have a supporting role”, the official said countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) “must remain the primary vehicle for driving global climate transition.” 

NDCs are climate plans, usually containing emissions reduction targets, which the Paris Agreement states governments must update with higher ambition every five years. 

The post European, island states seek clear future for global roadmap to cut fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago returned to work today following their one-day strike against Prime Healthcare’s illegal firings of six nurses. After hundreds took to the strike line on June 11, nurses are back at the bedside ahead of next week’s election to join National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union.

MEDIA ADVISORY

For Immediate Release

Just or Bust:

Will Bonn deliver a truly just transition, or bust the phase-out with false solutions?

Bonn, Germany— Saturday marks the close of week one of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn, Germany. With only one more week left to go, so much remains to accomplish before these negotiations– SB64 – can be considered a true success. 

In one room, governments are discussing the next steps for the Just Transition Mechanism, which was agreed at COP30 thanks to the sustained organising of civil society and movements. But importantly, the creation of a mechanism alone does not guarantee justice. A central question in Bonn is whether the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) will be people-powered, align with just transition principles and become fully operational by 2027. 

In other rooms, governments– especially from Global North countries– are seeking to seed carbon markets in place of true climate finance and ramp up dangerous, risky technologies like geo-engineering in place of keeping fossil fuels in the ground. All of this equates to those who have done the most to cause the climate crisis orchestrating their great escape from accountability and liability. 

What are the differences between false solutions and real solutions that will advance a just transition and help address the climate crisis?And is progress so far at the Bonn climate negotiations meeting expectations? Join members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) as we close week one of the UN Bonn climate talks to hear more about the state of negotiations and what governments must make happen in week two.

WHEN: Saturday 13 June 2026, 11-11.30 CEST (UTC + 2) 

WHERE: Nairobi 4, Main building, Inside the World Conference Center and webcast here

WITH: 

• Nona Chai, Just Transition Alliance 
• Theresa Rose Sebastian, Re Earth Initiative
• Ranjana Giri, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
• Kaveri Choudhury, ETC group 
• Moderated by Rachitaa Gupta, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice

CONTACT: dcj.comms@demandclimatejustice.org 

The post Media Advisory: Just or Bust appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

  In this June 11 webinar, MEIC outlined the major shortcomings in NorthWestern’s IRP, discussed what has been changed since NorthWestern released its Draft IRP in January, and gave tips on how to provide persuasive public comments to the PSC in writing and in person at the PSC’s upcoming public meetings this summer. NorthWestern’s IRP …

The post Webinar: NorthWestern Energy’s IRP Revisited: A Plan for Montana’s Energy Future and How You Can Get Involved appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

This article Time traveling to a 1980s ACT UP meeting through theater was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Imagine a murder mystery dinner party, where everyone sheds their true identity at the door and assumes a role to play in the night’s events — only instead of solving a crime, they must reenact a contentious activist meeting. That’s what artist David Wise tasks participants with in his immersive theater piece “Fight Back.” He recreates the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, meeting on March 13, 1989 in the same room where it happened nearly 40 years ago. 

It’s impossible to sit in the same room in New York City’s LGBT Community Center where their meetings happened nearly 40 years ago without feeling the echoes of today’s governmental failures, and the urgent need for both resistance and mutual aid.

At the May 18 performance of “Fight Back” — which takes its title from ACT UP’s chant: “Act up! Fight Back! Fight AIDS!” — I did something we rarely have to do these days: relinquish checking and doomscrolling on my phone to spend uninterrupted time face-to-face with strangers, co-creating something from scratch. Nearly 40 of us had two and a half hours to make our way through a 26-item agenda, an education in ACT UP’s work. 

ACT UP is a direct action group formed during the AIDS epidemic to fight for visibility, healthcare access and an end to the crisis. To mark the second anniversary of the group’s formation, they were in the midst of planning Target City Hall — the kind of creative, high-profile direct action for which the group had become known — to protest Mayor Ed Koch’s failure to adequately address the AIDS crisis in New York City. 

By the beginning of 1989, more than 18,000 New Yorkers had been diagnosed with AIDS and over 12,500 had died. ACT UP was demanding affordable access to the highly toxic but potentially life-saving drug AZT, which had just come on the market a year earlier. They also demanded housing for people living with AIDS and changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s drug trial policy to give more patients hope. They demanded dignity for the living and the dead. In the midst of all this, members still found the time and space to plan fundraising parties and, more importantly, to flirt.

The 1980s was an era of phone trees and answering machines. We checked our cell phones at the door. The experience is an invitation to follow the advice writer Mira Jacob gave on Instagram earlier this year: “Stop scrolling. Do literally anything else … We’re going to prevail, but only if you don’t let this app scare you numb.” If you were mad in 1989 because your friends were dying at the hands of the government and you wanted to yell at someone about it, you had to show up to a meeting or participate in a phone zap or volunteer to surreptitiously print flyers at your office denouncing Mayor Koch as a closet case. (One attendee politely corrected our pronunciation of “Koch” — no relation to the present-day billionaire brothers who pronounce their last name “coke.”)

A smaller group within ACT UP gathers during David Wise’s experimental theater piece, a reminder that the organization was not a monolith. (Hong-An Tran)

The atmosphere in the room was tentative. Every question opened up a minefield that only the basic tenets of improv could answer: Say “yes, and” to help the scene unfold; make bold choices, even when you are unsure of them, and don’t “break” the illusion. Most of us had brought hastily scribbled notes about our assigned historical personas, pulled from summaries and the ACT UP oral history archive. This background helped with questions like, “What affinity groups are you in?” and “Is this your first meeting?” But they offered little to lean on when it came to more quotidian conversation starters, “Are you coming from work?” or “Are you out to your family?” Those we stumbled through, together.

I had been assigned the role of Bill Bahlman, my first part since a non-speaking role in the middle school production of “Schoolhouse Rock!” A lifelong New Yorker and a music journalist, Bill had been a part of the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay and Lesbain Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD. A self-described anarchist, he sometimes found the groups to be too soft, particularly the Gay Activists Alliance’s discussions of whether to drink mixed drinks or soft drinks at their dances. He splintered off from GLAAD into the Lavender Hill Mob, a direct action group formed in 1986 and named after a British comedy film. The dozen members focused on AIDS activism and organized disruptive “zaps,” interrupting a CDC meeting, a Catholic mass and other high-profile events with leaflets and banners bearing slogans like, “Gays and lesbians will not be silenced!” 

When ACT UP formed in March 1987, Bill and many other Lavender Hill Mob members joined, but their affiliation and camaraderie with one another remained. While ACT UP is often remembered as a monolith, it was in practice a true coalition under which many smaller groups coalesced, including affinity groups like Delta Queens, La Cocina or Wave 3 that demonstrated together at actions.

Bill was slated to speak late in the agenda. The items were laborious in their minutia. Should the flyers Wave 3 planned to wheat paste around the city to gather people for Target City Hall in two weeks be printed in color, or black and white? Should we send three or four people to the Lesbian and Gay Health Conference in San Francisco? We rose from our chairs for civil disobedience training, half of us playing cops and half of us playing protesters gone limp to resist arrest, but then it was butts right back in seats. 

By the two-hour mark, I could no longer stifle my yawns. There may have been flirting at meetings, and even a little in our reenactment, but the agenda was a reminder that there is little instant gratification in organizing. It took much longer than an Amazon delivery or a ChatGPT response. This focus on consensus decision making has undergirded some of the most visible movements and organizations, like Occupy Wall Street, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Democratic Socialists of America. While they don’t offer an instant dopamine hit, the memorable actions and ballot wins delivered by these groups are clear evidence of their effectiveness.

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There are no professional actors associated with the production. Every meeting member was a stranger assigned to play their role for one night only. That said, I recognized an actor from an old TV show who attended as a curious citizen. She had been assigned the role of our chant leader Ron Goldberg, and I expected that, given her background, she might be the one to voice the most objections. Or, I thought, they might come from the tall, brawny and bespectacled man who wore a Larry Kramer name tag, a historical figure whose outspoken anger and divisive politics had been a catalyst for ACT UP’s formation. Instead, the objections came from Karen Ramspacher, a 24-year old curatorial assistant played by a middle-aged white woman seated in the back row with a bun on top of her head. “People are dying and we can’t cobble together the money for color printing?”

The meeting’s facilitators, one of whom I assumed must be Wise himself, tried to keep us on track. I kept glancing at my watch, hoping that time would run out before it was my turn to speak. When my name was called, my hands shook. I stood at the front of the room and looked out at the gathered crowd, some in their 50s, some in their 20s, many filling out the ages in between. I held the mic and spoke about Steve Zabel, my friend who I had found murdered in his apartment at the beginning of the month. The police had done nothing. What could we do to put pressure on them? Steve was just one man, but we all knew a Steve. To my surprise, everyone had ideas. The Media Committee wanted to take it to the press. The woman with the bun wanted to agitate with the neighbors. They had Bill’s back.

When the bell rang to return us to 2026, I made my way over to the outspoken woman, who in real life looked closer to 54 than 24.

“You were great!” I said, relieved to speak as myself again. “Really channeled the anger of the time.”

“I was there,” she said.

“What?”

The woman who had interjected so many times during “Fight Back” had attended ACT UP meetings as a teenager. She had a job in the 80s in Philly calling men to let them know where they were on the wait list to see the only doctor in the city who would treat AIDS patients. Many had died before their turn came. 

A little group gathered around to hear her story. One man shared that he had come to the center that night with a friend who had also been a part of ACT UP, but he had turned around at the door because she wasn’t ready to reopen the emotions of that time. Wise revealed himself to have been Iris Long from the Treatment and Data Committee, a cancer researcher determined to publicize the life-saving uses of aerosolized pentamidine. The reenactment of the meeting had, in fact, been facilitated by everyday people.

Later, the woman continued, she had worked as a social worker in New York City with young transvestites, as they called themselves then, and sex workers. At one point she was given one dose of AZT and had to choose who to give it to in her community. She didn’t realize at the time that the medication had to be taken once every 12 hours to be effective. Of course she was still angry.

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After everyone else dispersed, I lingered. The woman pointed across the room at her adopted daughter, a young Black woman whose biological parents had died of AIDS in Africa. She had remained in the global AIDS fight her whole life.

“If the AIDS crisis happened in New York today, we’d all be dead already,” she told me. “You had to be out there, you had to be visible, you had to be risking arrest to make yourself heard. Today everyone is stuck at home. You know what you have to do?”

I leaned in closer.

“Host a dinner party of strangers. You don’t even have to cook. Tell everyone to bring their favorite dish. People love to show off their culinary skills. Think about the seating arrangements. You don’t even need to set an agenda. That’s where political action comes from, talking to people.”

Wise had laid the groundwork for such unexpected offline encounters. His theatrical experiment will take place again on June 15, but Wise hopes to make his impressive research on these figures widely available someday, so school groups and others can try to reenact the meeting on their own.

Art about AIDS abounds. For starters, there’s “Rent” and there’s “Angels in America,” there’s Sarah Schulman’s “People in Trouble,” Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers,” and, more recently, Natalie Adler’s “Waiting on a Friend.” Those pieces invite sorrow and rage, empathy and memory in equal measure. “Fight Back” invites you to act.

This article Time traveling to a 1980s ACT UP meeting through theater was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

The power purchase agreement builds on the existing partnership between the tech giant and renewable energy company, which are backing several solar projects across the U.S.

Rushed environmental reviews won’t speed up new mines. Evidence suggests it slows them down

Cutting environmental red tape to speed up mining in America has become a popular talking point across party lines. On the right, the Trump administration has made expediting mineral production a signature effort; on the left, the “abundance” movement argues that faster permitting is essential to building a clean energy future. But both arguments rest on a flawed premise.

Research and real-world examples show that “permitting reform” targets the wrong problem, and the proposed solutions from both sides increase delays and opposition to projects, not reduce them.

As former Interior department official Steve Feldgus explained in a recent episode of the Center for Western Priorities podcast, The Landscape, and as University of Utah researcher Jamie Pleune lays out in a forthcoming article titled “Red tape is a red herring,” the real obstacles to responsible mining lie elsewhere: misleading industry claims, financing and market dynamics, inadequate agency staffing, and a loss of public trust.

Much of the problem starts with flawed statistics that purport to pinpoint singular bottlenecks in the process of developing a mine. For example, mining industry advocates frequently claim that it takes between seven and ten years to permit a mine in the United States, citing a report that was funded by, among others, the National Mining Association. However, as both Feldgus and Pleune point out, this industry-funded report notes that its authors did not do independent research to arrive at this statistic, and that it relied on data provided by “third parties,” including the National Mining Association.

Statistics on mine development timelines are also inconsistent regarding when the clock starts and what parts of the process are included. Most mines begin with exploration, where individuals or companies search for minerals, assess whether mining those minerals would be profitable, and seek investors to finance development of a mine. As Pleune notes, exploration that disturbs five acres or less of public land does not require a mining plan—the person or company just has to notify the Bureau of Land Management—and for exploration that disturbs more than five acres and requires an exploration plan, those approvals are usually granted in six months or less. So permitting does not delay exploration, and yet exploration is often included in mine development timelines that blame permitting for how long mine development takes.

The Mountain Pass rare earths mine in California, Tmy350 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Pleune also points out that in some cases, a smaller mining company may start exploration and then negotiate with a larger company to take over development of an actual mine. Negotiating these deals adds to the timeline, and permitting is not responsible for causing delays at this stage. Arranging financing for mine development is another large and complex hurdle that extends mine development timelines. As Pleune explains, investors prefer projects that offer predictable returns on short timeframes with manageable risks; most mining projects check none of these boxes, making financing challenging to secure. Global minerals markets and geopolitical dynamics introduce even more complexity into mine development. A company might complete its permitting process, but decide to wait for more favorable market or geopolitical conditions before it begins operations—again, dragging out the timeline and blaming permitting when it’s actually other factors driving production decisions.

Feldgus points to the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada as a recent example of a misleading timeline. Lithium was discovered there in the 1970s, but no effort was made to develop a mine until much more recently when demand for lithium had skyrocketed—yet advocates for permitting reform claim that the Thacker Pass mine has taken 40 years to develop and blame permitting for the delay.

Aerial view of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada, U.S. Geological Survey

Other legitimate examples do exist of mines that have genuinely taken decades to permit, but in those cases, as Feldgus points out, “There’s a reason it takes that long. You’re trying to build a mine next to a wilderness area or in a very sensitive fishery. These are mines where people get very worked up and very concerned, and there’s a lot of political pushback. Mines can take a long time, but that’s not the NEPA process doing that.” In other words, this is the National Environmental Policy Act working as intended to ensure projects undergo rigorous review so the government and communities are aware of likely environmental damage.

For the most part, though, once the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service has received a proposed mine plan, the process of reviewing the plan, seeking and reviewing public comment, and eventually approving the mine plan takes three to four years, even for the largest mines. However, both Feldgus and Pleune emphasize that mine plan approval is a small piece of a much longer process which includes exploration, technical and economic analysis, securing investors, and building trust with neighboring communities. In other words, Feldgus says, artificially limiting the environmental review process to two years (as was recently mandated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed in 2023) isn’t all that meaningful in the grand scheme of taking a mine from exploration to production. On the contrary, rushed environmental reviews can actually introduce more delays if they are flawed and can’t withstand legal challenges, or if they drive opposition to the project by creating a perception in the community that the project is being rushed and corners are being cut. A mining company may save a year in the NEPA process, but add five years in litigation or overcoming public opposition to the project.

Currently, Feldgus notes, “Congress is very fixated on the idea of speeding up the back end of things. ‘How do we get NEPA done as fast as possible? How do we cut off lawsuits so that these things don’t go through the courts for years and years?’ It’s all on the back end, basically.” A more helpful approach, according to Feldgus, would be to do more on the front end, in the form of early coordination between the mining company, the land management agency, and the local community. He mentioned the BLM in Nevada as an example of a state office that has successfully reduced timelines, without increasing conflict, by doing more and better early coordination.

Gypsum mining in Wyoming, BLM Wyoming

“What we have found, what mining companies find, what academic researchers find, is the best way to ensure better permitting is to do more early on. Talk to people early, engage with them, find out what their concerns are,” Feldgus says. “And the earlier and the more meaningful you make that engagement, the better the permitting process works, because you’re removing sources of conflict that are what causes things to take a long time on the back end.” Feldgus also notes that it’s up to the mining industry to do more of this front-end work to secure local support for projects. Building relationships and trust over time isn’t something that can be legislated or regulated by the government, and attempts to do so turn into empty box-checking exercises.

So what role should the federal government be playing? Both Feldgus and Pleune point to policy proposals that would address some of the issues that are delaying responsible mining projects. Many of these are outlined in a September 2023 Interagency Working Group report on potential mining reforms, which offered 65 recommendations. In Feldgus’s view, the biggest change that would address many issues at once would be to shift mining to a leasing system, similar to what currently exists for other resources such as oil and gas, and to make mining subject to land management planning the way other resources already are. These changes would bring mining into long-term landscape-scale planning processes that would identify and address conflicts and concerns at the outset, develop a plan to address them, and provide greater certainty for both the mining industry and other stakeholders over the years or decades that a land management plan remains in place. However, Feldgus doesn’t believe a shift to a leasing system is realistic anytime soon.

Pleune also emphasizes the need for sufficient experienced staff to review mine plans, citing a body of research that identifies agency budgets, staffing, and coordination as significant challenges that actually delay permitting but that lawmakers are less interested in addressing. “Without adequate staff that have the necessary expertise, an efficient, productive regulatory regime is highly unlikely, regardless of statutory reforms,” Pleune writes. She also points out that permits, while maligned by the mining industry, are tools used to implement laws and regulations that were passed by Americans’ democratically-elected representatives. In other words, permits protect the values and protections that Americans want to see protected. Weakening or eliminating permitting systems will reduce the public’s trust in the regulatory environment, which will in turn increase public suspicion of the mining industry and opposition to mining projects. In other words, if the public doesn’t trust the process, they will reject the outcome. For this reason, deregulation is an unsound long-term strategy for the mining industry and could destroy the public support that projects need to move forward.

Featured image: Oak Flat in Arizona, near the site of a proposed copper mine; Elias Butler/CC BY-SA 4.0

The post Red tape isn’t the problem appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Nearly 320,000 acres of public land in northwest Arizona have been nominated for oil and gas leasing since January 2025, despite geologists saying the region has little to no known oil or gas reserves.

The nominations came from Zonaco, LLC, a shell company traced by the Arizona Republic to Rodney Ratheal, a Utah man who settled a 2012 SEC civil action alleging he raised more than $4 million from roughly 100 investors for an oil and gas scheme on the same stretch of federal land, then spent about $3 million of it on himself. Ratheal confirmed his identity to Arizona Republic reporters who showed up at his house. He told them he’s still working out how to finance the effort, targeting older investors who “understand this may be the last time they see their money.”

That opportunity for Ratheal to do this exists because of changes to the federal leasing process. The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the $5-per-acre nomination fee, required BLM to hold quarterly lease sales regardless of market demand, and opened nominations to essentially any bidder. Nominating 318,000 acres under the new rules cost Ratheal approximately nothing, but prior to the new rules, it would have cost about $1.59 million. About 80,000 of the nominated acres are now scheduled for auction in December.

The BLM is not equipped to screen out nominations like these. Arizona lost 24 percent of its BLM workforce in 2025, and the Arizona Strip Field Office is processing this leasing surge without a staff geologist. “The BLM just doesn’t have the people to do this correctly,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss. “Because now the law says the BLM has to offer anything that’s a valid nomination.”

Burgum doubles down on support for selling off public land, cuts partnerships to get Americans outdoors

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum joined RFK Jr. in Grand Junction, Colorado to promote public lands as a public health resource. The next day, the Interior department announced it was cutting 43 partnerships with groups that help get Americans outdoors, including internship programs, conservation initiatives, and recreational access partnerships. Burgum also used the appearance to defend Senator Mike Lee’s failed proposal to sell off 2-3 million acres of public land, telling the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that “in America, you can do two things at the same time.”

Quick hits Trump opens up Pacific marine national monuments to commercial fishing

The Hill | Seattle Times | Hawaii News Now | PBS | Newsweek

Senate committee passes Mike Lee’s Roadless Rule repeal amendment

Salt Lake Tribune | MeatEater | Source NM | Outdoor Life | Missoula Current | More Than Just Parks | Cowboy State Daily

Inside America’s ugly birthday battle

The Atlantic

At least five states are bowing out of Trump’s ‘Great American State Fair’

CNN | NOTUS

At this New Mexico park, mountain bikers pedal amid hundreds of oil wells

Source NM

Interior puts wilderness study areas under scrutiny

National Parks Traveler | Sierra Sun Times

$103M in federal contracts flows to Freedom 250 events

Public Citizen

American Prairie, conservation groups appeal bison grazing decision

Daily Montanan

Quote of the day

The administration is saying one thing and doing another—touting the outdoors as crucial for physical and mental health while cutting programs that increase access to outdoor recreation.”

—Kate Groetzinger, Communications Director for the Center for Western Priorities

Picture This @nationalparkservice

Me: I hate drama. I stay out of it.
Also me at the first sign of it:

The Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii), a year-round resident across much of the continental U.S., is the ultimate drama chaser. This bird is lightning fast and highly agile when pursuing prey through forests or even suburban neighborhoods: Speeds can exceed 50 mph (80 km/h) during a chase or when they fly over to the neighborhood Facebook page after hearing a loud noise outside. Fun fact: unlike falcons, which rely on high-speed dives, Cooper’s Hawks are masters of agility and acceleration, weaving between trees with jaw-dropping precision. Their long tail acts like a rudder, enabling sharp turns to snatch birds such as doves, robins, and starlings. The drama!

Image: Cooper’s Hawk peeking over the fort’s wall @castillonps in Florida.

 

Featured photo: Paiute Wilderness, in the northwest portion of the Arizona Strip. Bob Wick/BLM

The post Trump’s new drilling rules encourage leasing where there’s no oil appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The Boone County, Nebraska Planning and Zoning Board is meeting on Monday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. to discuss a proposed ordinance that would address CO2 pipelines in the county.

• WHAT: Public Meeting on CO2 Pipeline Ordinance
• WHO: Boone County, Nebraska Planning & Zoning Board
• WHEN: Monday, June 22, 7:30 p.m.
• WHERE: 222 South 4th St., Albion, NE, 68620

Landowners and residents of Boone County and others in the vicinity who want to protect property rights against eminent domain land seizures, and who oppose the risky Summit CO2 pipeline are encouraged to attend the meeting in person, and share their concerns.

Faced with the looming prospect of local landowners being targeted by Summit Carbon Solutions to obtain easements for its proposed risky CO2 pipeline, and potentially seeking to use eminent domain, elected leaders in Boone County are taking action to protect their community.

Last month, Boone County Commissioners held a public hearing to discuss a proposed moratorium on the construction of CO2 pipelines. Bold delivered a letter of support for the moratorium signed by over 150 Nebraskans during the hearing.

The move follows similar previous actions taken by neighboring counties. Stanton County unanimously denied Summit’s permit request in February 2024, and Dakota County tabled the company’s request in November 2025 and has since removed it from their agenda.

Bold Nebraska supported a bill introduced in the Nebraska Legislature in 2026, LB 916, which would have banned eminent domain for CO2 pipelines in Nebraska. Shelli Meyer, whose family’s land in Dixon County is threatened by the Summit pipeline, testified and Bold’s Founder Jane Kleeb also submitted testimony along with over 700 Nebraskans who wrote letters to their Senators urging them to support LB 916.

Bold will support another bill to ban eminent domain for CO2 pipelines next year.