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Complaint regarding alleged illegal surveillance of social organisations in Panama submitted to UN special rapporteurs
The Letter to the UN special rapporteurs calls for an independent investigation, protective measures for those affected and a response from the Panamanian State within 60 days.
The post Complaint regarding alleged illegal surveillance of social organisations in Panama submitted to UN special rapporteurs appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.
Latin American and Caribbean Organizations Faced with the Lack of Participation in the 2026 Plastics Treaty Negotiations
PUBLIC STATEMENT BY LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ORGANIZATIONS FACED WITH THE LACK OF PARTICIPATION IN THE 2026 PLASTICS TREATY NEGOTIATIONS
September, 2026.
The undersigned organizations, which have been monitoring the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations since 2022, wish to express our deep concern and alert the public to the following facts:
Since the beginning of 2026, only so-called “informal” meetings have been taking place between heads of government delegations, and according to available official information, these modality of meetings will continue to be held to address the fundamental issues for negotiating the Global Plastics Treaty. These meetings are conducted behind closed doors and in confidence, without access for observer organizations, which severely limits the transparency of the process and prevents informed participation by civil society. This situation creates a worrying lack of transparency surrounding key discussions for the future of the treaty and marginalizes the voices of civil society organizations that defend the public interest.
The situation is such that during this year it has been impossible for us to fully exercise this role due to the working modality adopted by the chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), Ambassador Julio Cordano.
While heads of delegations hold meetings to address the substantive aspects of the negotiations, observer organizations have been relegated to virtual meetings with the INC presidency. During these sessions, the only available interaction mechanism is a chat, which is clearly insufficient to foster genuine dialogue. These virtual spaces neither substitute for nor can replace direct interaction between observer organizations and government delegations, which is an essential component for ensuring effective and meaningful participation in the negotiation process.
This format of online meetings with the INC presidency only allows us to learn general guidelines and organizational aspects of the process, information that is largely already public and does not offer real opportunities to exchange perspectives with national delegations, present evidence and recommendations during substantive discussions, or contribute to strengthening the positions that governments bring to the negotiating table.
We firmly believe that the participation of observer organizations cannot be limited to receiving information about decisions already taken or about the planning of the process. Meaningful participation requires access to spaces where the contents of the treaty are discussed, and the possibility of dialogue directly with government delegations before and during the definition of their positions. Excluding civil society organizations from these bodies reduces the transparency of the process and weakens the principles of participation and accountability that should guide the construction of a global treaty of this relevance.
We denounce this practice as contrary to the principles and standards of environmental democracy, which in our region are enshrined in the Escazú Agreement, particularly regarding access to information, public participation, and transparency in environmental matters. These principles require that decision-making processes be conducted with openness, timeliness, and effective participation of stakeholders.
Therefore, it is legally paradoxical that the president of the INC, who was a promoter of the Escazú Agreement in the region, adopts working methods that do not conform to the principle of progressivity, recognized in international environmental law as an obligation to advance in a sustained manner in the expansion and strengthening of access rights.
In this regard, the implementation of closed spaces and the restriction of substantive interaction between observer organizations and government delegations constitute a clear regression in the standards of participation previously achieved in the negotiation process itself, weakening the minimum democratic guarantees that should govern the drafting of an international instrument of this nature. Ultimately, these are implementing procedures that restrict the effective influence of observer organizations.
Even more concerning is the INC president's request that observer organizations appoint representatives from among our organizations. Implementing this measure will widen the gap between our organizations and government delegations, limit the diversity of voices, and diminish the wealth of scientific, technical, territorial, and public policy contributions that our organizations directly share with our governments during negotiations.
In this context, civil society organizations working to protect human health, planetary health, ecosystems, and independent science denounce our exclusion from discussion forums that define essential aspects of the treaty. This situation has limited our timely access to the debates, hindered our ability to understand the evolution of government positions, and restricted our capacity to contribute independent scientific evidence, technical expertise, and experiences from territories directly affected by plastic pollution.
Our role as civil society is to accompany the negotiations, understand and analyze the positions of our governments, and contribute to strengthening decision-making through evidence and independent recommendations free from industry conflicts of interest, incorporating the realities of the affected communities and territories and oriented towards the protection of the public interest, human rights, human and planetary health, and ecosystems.
For all the above reasons, we call upon the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee, Ambassador Julio Cordano, and the Board of Directors of the INC to reestablish mechanisms that guarantee effective, direct and meaningful participation of observer organizations in all stages of the negotiation process.
A global treaty on plastics can only aspire to be legitimate, solid and ambitious if it is built through a transparent, inclusive process that respects the principles of environmental democracy.
Signatories:
Acción Ecológica México, México
Aliança Resíduo Zero Brasil
Alianza Basura Cero Chile
Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador
Alianza Global para Alternativas a la Incineración GAIA
AMAR Associação de Defesa do Meio Ambiente
BREAK FREE FROM PLASTIC
Centro de tecnologías aplicadas de Argentina
CESTA, Amigos de la Tierra, El Salvador
Coalición Ciudadana Antiincineración, Argentina
Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco, México
Colectivo Tz’unun Ya’ -Guatemala
Colectivo Viento Sur, Chile
El Poder del Consumidor, México
FAS, PANAMA
FUNAM, Argentina
Fundación Agua Clara, Venezuela
Fundación PlastiCo. Project, Ecuador
Hospitais Saudáveis, Brasil
Manos Abiertas La Bandada, Argentina
Mingas por el Mar, Ecuador
Organización Ecologista Piuke, Argentina
RADA, Chile
RAPAL, Uruguay
Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente. República Dominicana
Taller de Comunicación Ambiental, Argentina
Taller Ecologista, Argentina
Toxisphera Associação de Saúde Ambiental, Brasil
Youth Accion Co:Lab
Organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean Denounce the Exclusion of Civil Society from Negotiations on the Global Plastics Treaty
August 2026—Civil society organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean denounce the lack of opportunities for effective participation in the negotiations for the Global Plastics Treaty and warn of the impact this situation has on the transparency and legitimacy of the process.
The organizations, which have been following the negotiations since 2022, note that throughout 2026, heads of government delegations have participated in so-called “informal” meetings to discuss substantive aspects of the treaty, while observer organizations have been denied access to these forums.
Instead, they have been invited to virtual meetings with the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), led by Ambassador Julio Cordano, in which the primary means of interaction available is a chat function.
“The Global Plastics Treaty cannot, under any circumstances, create new ‘sacrifice zones’ or consolidate existing ones—zones marked by opacity and decisions made without public input—and observers are working to ensure that this does not happen. Keeping them on the sidelines of delegate meetings is not merely a procedural decision: it is a political act that widens the gap between those who make decisions and those who suffer the consequences. If the treaty aspires to be fair, it must be participatory from the very beginning,” explains Cecilia Bianco of the Argentine organization Taller Ecologista.
According to the organizations, this approach prevents them from timely contributing independent scientific evidence, technical expertise, and the experiences of communities and territories affected by plastic pollution, as well as from understanding and contributing to the debate on the positions that governments bring to the negotiating table.
They also expressed concern over the INC Chair’s request that observer organizations designate single representatives. They believe this measure could limit the diversity of voices and reduce the range of scientific, technical, and territorial contributions available to the delegations.
The organizations maintain that the lack of substantive participation represents a step backward from the standards previously achieved in the negotiation process itself and runs counter to the principles of environmental democracy, particularly those related to transparency, access to information, and public participation established in the Escazú Agreement.
“We have insisted that the Escazú Agreement represents a benchmark of progress for our region. Therefore, it is concerning that, while Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress in recognizing higher standards of transparency, access to information, and public participation, the negotiations for the global treaty on plastics are adopting procedures that restrict the opportunities for participation that civil society had enjoyed in earlier stages of the process. This change represents a step backward in terms of participation and transparency, particularly given that these negotiations will shape responses to a global environmental and public health crisis.
“This situation is even more paradoxical in a region deeply affected by ‘Waste Colonialism,’ which historically has received and borne a disproportionate share of the impacts of plastic pollution and waste generated by other countries,” states Larisa de Orbe of the Mexican organization Acción Ecológica.
In light of this situation, the organizations are calling on INC President Ambassador Julio Cordano and the Executive Board to reestablish mechanisms that guarantee direct, effective, and meaningful participation by observer organizations at all stages of the negotiations.
The organizations maintain that a global treaty on plastics can only be legitimate, robust, and ambitious if it is developed through a transparent, inclusive process that respects the principles of environmental democracy.
Signatory Organizations
Acción Ecológica México; Alianza Resíduo Zero Brasil; Alianza Basura Cero Chile; Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador; AMAR Asociación de Defensa del Medio Ambiente; Libérate del Plástico; Centro de Tecnologías Aplicadas de Argentina; CESTA, Amigos de la Tierra (El Salvador); Coalición Ciudadana Antiincineración (Argentina); Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco (México); Colectivo Tz’unun Ya’ (Guatemala); El Poder del Consumidor (México); FAS (Panamá); FUNAM (Argentina); Fundación Agua Clara (Venezuela); Fundación PlastiCo. Proyecto (Ecuador); Alianza Global para Alternativas a la Incineración (GAIA); Manos Abiertas La Bandada (Argentina); Mingas por el Mar (Ecuador); Organización Ecologista Piuke (Argentina); RADA (Chile); RAPAL (Uruguay); Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente (República Dominicana); Taller de Comunicación Ambiental (Argentina); Taller Ecologista (Argentina); Toxisphera Asociación de Salud Ambiental (Brasil).
September 2, 2026 Read great news article about the August 28th town hall meeting in Hanford in California’s Central Valley to educate, unite and mobilize residents against proposed AI Data Centers! Join Greenaction in this fight!
September 2, 2026
Read great news article about the August 28th town hall meeting in Hanford in California’s Central Valley to educate, unite and mobilize residents against proposed AI Data Centers! Join Greenaction in this fight!From Hollowed-Out Communities to Resilient Local Economies
Di Maxwell
What happens when communities lose too much local capability? Di Maxwell shares the story of The Old Packhouse Market Project in the far north of Aotearoa (New Zealand), which began as an effort to secure and protect a …
Speaking with Youth who are Speaking for the Voiceless: A Conversation with Jasmine Smith
An introduction from Britt Gondolfi, Bioneers Indigeneity Special Programs Coordinator
I first met Jasmine Smith in her ancestral homeland, the Great Smoky Mountains, along the banks of the Long Person, the Cherokee name for the river and stream system that has sustained the Cherokee people for millennia. We were camping streamside at a Protecting Mother Earth gathering hosted by the Indigenous Environmental Network. Over several days, we attended workshops and strategic visioning sessions together, learning directly from tribes working to protect and preserve our precious planet.
When Jasmine took the stage at an open mic, her powerful poem about the legacy of Cherokee women carried the audience 20 generations back and 7 generations forward, leaving them on their feet for a standing ovation. My 7-year-old was so moved by the Indigenous teen on stage that she found the courage to share an impromptu song of her own. That moment captured one of Jasmine’s great gifts: lifting up, inspiring, and empowering other young Indigenous women to speak up and join in.
At 16, she founded a junior chapter of the North American Indian Women’s Association so young women in her tribe could build a support network of sisters and aunties and get organized. After taking Bioneers’ Indigenizing the Law course, Jasmine connected her organization of Indigenous teenage girls with our Native Youth Ambassador Program. With grit, determination, brilliance, ferocious faith, and guidance from elders, parents, and mentors, these young women helped pass the first-of-its-kind Rights of the Long Person Resolution in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Council. The resolution created a task force and inspired the council to initiate efforts to undam a section of the Long Person on the Ewa River.
In this conversation, Jasmine shares the journey behind that work, the power of young Indigenous women organizing together, and what it means to indigenize the law by speaking for “that which cannot speak for itself.”
What follows is an edited excerpt of a conversation recorded at the Bioneers 2026 conference.
BRITT: Would you share how you decided to start the NAIWA Daughters, and who NAIWA (North American Indian Women’s Association) Daughters are?
Jasmine SmithJASMINE: NAIWA is a nonprofit within our tribe with elder women members. They’re known for their cooking, but we always wanted to bridge the gap and have youth talk to our elders more. I remember the day we went in there; we were talking about creating this pilot program and building that partnership. I was so nervous talking to our elders about it. Now we’ve built those relationships, and they’re supporting our work, and we’re supporting theirs.
My third great-grandma, Ruth Littlejohn, is a very big pillar within our community. She helped found our fire station and raised money for our housing program. She’s a very impactful and strong woman. She and Ethylene Conseen and another woman they knew got together to create a network of Indigenous women across Turtle Island, and that’s when they started NAIWA. It grew from the Cherokee chapter into a national nonprofit.
NAIWA Daughters is also contributing and partnering with national NAIWA more. We’ve attended several national conferences, and this year, the national organization is coming back to the homelands. They’re having their conference in Cherokee, and we’re planning that and will host youth caucuses for the first time in a long time. They originally had youth as part of it, but it kind of dwindled away after my great-grandma passed away. So we’re getting to bring that back to our homelands.
My second great aunt is the treasurer for our chapter, and for the national nonprofit. We have four generations within NAIWA this year. So my aunt, my grandma, my mom, my sister, and me. We have four generations on our homelands, affecting change and starting youth caucuses. So it’s a really historic moment, and it’s part of our family and lineage.
BRITT: You’ve talked about patriarchy and the importance of Indigenous women having a platform and a place of leadership in the community. This is a very wise and grounded awareness to carry. How old were you when you started the NAIWA Daughters? How old are you now, and how did you get to this place of understanding?
JASMINE: I started NAIWA when I was 11, and this understanding of how Indigenous women lead goes back to our ancestral ways. As a community, we understood that women were pillars and lifegivers, and we honored them, but we were an egalitarian community. So everyone was equal, but we honored women for what they did for our community and how they gave life. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. That’s something that they passed down through generations.
Coming from a family that has such strong matrilineal women and matriarchs, it’s kind of in my DNA to lead. And harnessing this in NAIWA Daughters was an outlet for that, and it fostered that environment. And through, I think, intergenerational trauma, our community’s looking at how we can reconnect with those ancestral values.
It reflects within our tribe. I grew up not having seen Indigenous women within our tribal leadership. And now, since the ‘90s, we’ve had four women on our tribal council. It was an honor bringing our resolution for Rights of Nature into the chambers, and there were already four women on the council supporting us. It was great, because it wasn’t like we were talking to a bunch of men. We got to see women who looked like us in those seats, and they have really been empowering, supporting us.
We’ve always seen, at least in my family, women taking leadership. And my mom’s someone I always look up to because she always takes that leadership role. And she does so much, but she does it the right way, and understanding when we do anything, we have to do it under a certain set of values. So it kind of goes back to those values of how we live and how we interpret things, and just a way of being.
BRITT: You all originally started with a Rights of Nature initiative for the Eastern hellbender salamander. Will you walk us through the journey and thought process, and how you ended up narrowing your focus to this immense water body? And share a bit about the Cherokee history of the Long Person?
It all ties back to our water. We are water. Water is life. We couldn’t do any advocacy for land without talking about water. You can’t talk about Cherokee people without talking about water.
JASMINE: Yes, Long Person’s what we call our waterways. Its head begins in the mountains, and its feet travel to the sea. That’s over roughly 800 miles. This is a personal connection for me because my Cherokee name’s Agasga, meaning “rain”. So when you’re a baby, in our community you’re introduced to water. And for us, traditionally, we went to water and had ceremony sometimes seven times a day. It was a daily routine to have that relationship.
The journey to create the resolution all started when we were tubing down the river, and we would have to stop all the time because tourists would stack rocks, which disrupts the ecosystem and the homes of the juwa, the hellbender salamander. We got so frustrated, we wanted to do something about it. So we started conversations, and thought, “what if we made a resolution that says you can’t do this?” Then we talked about advocating for the land. We didn’t really know about Rights of Nature efforts until we met you. We understood this isn’t a new concept, it’s a cultural concept, something we’ve done since time immemorial, advocating for nature, and being a voice for the voiceless.
We submitted a public comment, and that was one of our biggest community events. We had over 60 youth participants and adults come in just one night, planned out the public comment, wrote it as a community, and advocated for the juwa. We even had a survey about how many of the adults here had seen a juwa, and three or four raised their hands. Then we asked the youth, and nobody raised their hand. That’s a connection point that we’re losing because our waters have been unclean, and the hellbender has always been an ecological count, a mark, for us. What we say is that if the water flows over its back five times, it’s clean enough to drink. And what is it telling us when the juwa’s going endangered, and it’s going extinct? The juwa has been around since the dinosaurs. It survived all of that, and it’s starting to be endangered now. So what are we doing, as humans, for it to be going extinct? It’s a cultural loss as well.
This resolution has opened many doors for other projects, like the dam project. We’re working on undamming one of the big parts of our Long Person, and reconnecting the sicklefin redhorse fish with the juwa. They haven’t been in connection for almost 101 years.
But it all ties back to our water. We are water. Water is life. We couldn’t do any advocacy for land without talking about water. You can’t talk about Cherokee people without talking about water. You can’t talk about our homelands without water, because it is the center of Cherokee. If you look at where we lived traditionally, it was always in a water bend, and the importance of water to us has always been there.
BRITT: Take us back to that day in the council chambers. There were thousands of people watching online, and the room was packed. Feelings, memories, what did it feel like that day?
JASMINE: We started the Rights of Nature process 18 months before, and we kept asking: What’s it going to be like on Council day? Over those 18 months, I created scenarios in my head: Am I going to do this, am I going to do that? When it came to writing my speech and talking to Council, one of the things I really wanted to say is that we can’t flex sovereignty if we aren’t going to our ancestral roots and decolonizing our legal systems. In my speech, I talk about how we can’t be Cherokee without our land, and if we don’t pass this resolution, are we really upholding those Cherokee values, and is this a priority for our tribe?
The river is right beside our tribal council, so before even going into the chambers, we started with a water ceremony and brought the Long Person into the conversation in a pot that was made by a beloved woman. We had to make sure that we were doing this the right way, and with intentionality by having Long Person, because we couldn’t have had that conversation without it in the room.
Within our group, we were trying to figure out who was going to cry first, and we all thought it would be our mentor, Kim, and it was me first. I tried not to get emotional, but even now, any time I talk about it, I do, because it was such a significant moment.
Having community support was the biggest thing, prioritizing this in our tribe. NAIWA were there supporting us. Having my elders there, government leaders, tribal council leaders taking time out of their day to come support this. We saw that other people saw the value in this program, and what we’re doing to help mold these Indigenous women into being the future leaders of our tribe. And it felt right. It was a full circle moment.
It was very hot in the room, and people there were talking about how you could just feel the ancestors there. One of our council women, Shennelle Feather, talked about how we get to honor and reconnect with our Long Person, our relative, and have that relationship go to a deeper level. That’s something we haven’t had in a very long time. So through the Long Person Resolution, we’re reconnecting with our ancestors. And having that relationship and advocating for things that don’t always have a voice. So being a voice for the voiceless.
So that’s kind of what the day was like. I was happy to see my fellow Indigenous young leaders speaking up and advocating and making change. And I’m always so proud of them. I never envisioned us doing this, but it was almost like our ancestors entrusted this to us, a calling to restore ancestral ways, and to heal intergenerational trauma.
BRITT: That’s beautiful. I watched it remotely. I was crying my eyes out. Other allies were texting me; they were all crying. I had jokingly said that obviously we’re honoring water here, because water is flowing out of all of us watching what was happening in this Council Room. So it was so beautiful to see y’all carry the Long Person in that beautiful pottery made by this beloved woman. It was only right, I think, that tears fell because we’re water. And so by recognizing the Long Person as a rights-bearing entity but also relative, it’s like it’s honoring the water in us and in the ecosystem and in the spirit of that person.
So what was it like to be a teenager going to your tribal council and telling them: I want you to pass this law.
JASMINE: It was not an easy process. We had separate meetings with tribal council members to gain their support, and meetings with the chief to talk about how this would affect our fishing department, and how it would affect other fish and wildlife, and how our tribe operates, and tubing companies. And yes, all those things are so important, but talking about that – it’s almost as if we’re forgetting the real importance of the resolution and advocating for Long Person, because it hasn’t had an advocate in so long.
We realized we had to get community input, and get the community behind it to get it over the finish line. Educating the community was hard, but beautiful at the same time, because they reconnected to a cultural concept that we’ve always had, and it empowered them. And a big success was making our Rights of Nature T-shirts, and having it say “Water Protector” in Cherokee and in English. So when anyone wears the T-shirt, they’re a water protector too, just by wearing that T-shirt and empowering our community members to affect change.
So with the survey, we got those responses that showed we had pretty much full support, which was a big factor in our tribe’s support. Because at the end of the day, they’re supposed to be there for their community. And when we showed them that, it was really, really hard for them to say no. It was healing for the tribal council and just for our tribe in general because this was the first resolution in our tribe that doesn’t look at water as something to be owned or profited from, and giving rights back, and having this resolution in places like our visitor center, and some of our biggest achievements as a tribe. It was a lot of work, but it’s so rewarding to know our waters are protected.
Now we’re looking at what specific laws we need to protect the Long Person. One of the things my mom always jokes about is that if you need anything done, let the youth handle it.
BRITT: That’s incredible. I love what you said in your presentation, that, you know, this is not a new legal concept. And you brought in that traditional value of doing good. I think for many people in the Rights of Nature movement, there’s this idea of this hot, new legal, environmental movement, and that it’s brand new in 2008 in Ecuador, in the constitutional amendment, but I think the real truth of the matter is this is old.
Right relationship, reciprocity, seeing oneself as a part of the ecosystem, not separate from it, not allowing people to poison the well and kill all the animals and ruin the food and the air. I mean, there were laws before there were the current governments that are operating in this territory now. People think that everyone was just running around wild, but there were laws and value systems, and that’s how you have thousands of years of continuous culture; that’s how you have thousands of years of language and practice and spirituality; that’s how people survive where they’re placed for thousands of years is because there are rules. And what I find so powerful and so beautiful and inspiring is that y’all are the youngest leaders in your community, but you’re bringing forward some of the oldest rules.
Would you share a bit about the Cherokee value system and principles of doing good? What did you learn about Cherokee values in the process of bringing about this good work? And for people that aren’t familiar with Cherokee, if you could help them understand the rules that you all live by.
One of my favorite things about our language that I find so fascinating is that you see how our values are built into just the way we communicate, and understanding relationship and reciprocity, and all of those components. Two examples are how in Cherokee “root”, in direct translation, means “to help”. And for basket, whenever you’re talking about making a basket, you never say, “I made a basket,” you always say, “I mended wood to sculpt this object.” It’s that understanding that we utilize these things but it’s a relationship we have with them, and respecting that.
JASMINE: That’s actually how we start our resolution off, we list the Cherokee values that correlate with the resolution itself. And that’s what we try to encompass in everything we do, as a tribe, as NAIWA Daughters, and just as people. And understanding that everything we do reflects our ancestors’ sacrifices. It’s also things like meeting people, making connections, supporting one another. Those are all Cherokee concepts. And it’s the little things that amount to the big successes. And without partnerships, conversations, and reciprocity, work and relationships, we wouldn’t have been able to get this resolution going and finished.
Throughout this process, we made sure to uphold those values with everything. When we’re talking to elders, we make sure we’re listening more than talking, and soaking up the knowledge, sitting in space with them. Talking to educators and attorneys in this process, how can we make sure that our words are translated into legal government systems today?
One of my favorite things about our language that I find so fascinating is that you see how our values are built into just the way we communicate, and understanding relationship and reciprocity, and all of those components. Two examples are how in Cherokee “root”, in direct translation, means “to help”. And for basket, whenever you’re talking about making a basket, you never say, “I made a basket,” you always say, “I mended wood to sculpt this object.” It’s that understanding that we utilize these things but it’s a relationship we have with them, and respecting that, so anything we do, every time we speak our language, throughout this process, it’s going back to those values. And everything we do we need to do the right way.
We really learned that through this process, and doing anything with NAIWA Daughters, making sure our projects instill those values. That’s one of the things the girls were talking about when we first started, is why doesn’t our tribe already have these things built into our constitution, and have them as the basis of our tribe? This is what the youth are supposed to be doing today, this is our job. We get to bring these values back and be the leaders that we need today, and be the future leaders our tribe needs.
BRITT: That’s beautiful. What’s next for you all?
JASMINE: What’s next, specifically for Rights of Nature, is the dam project. We have this resolution put in place; it lays the foundation for anything environmental, anything talking about land or water, we can always refer back to this. It’s great to know that because we’ve effectively made it possible for so many other projects. That’s one of the bigger things coming up for NAIWA Daughters. But outside of our priority projects, we’re speaking at conferences on Rights of Nature, and empowering other youth.
BRITT: What is your call to action or advice or counsel, especially for young people? You were inspired by a group of young people who did something in their tribe; you went home, you made it uniquely yours and did it in your way, and have had beautiful outcomes already would be your message to youth in Indian Country.
JASMINE: Sitting with the Mashpee NEA and learning about their efforts for the rights of the herring was so helpful, having those conversations and understanding, what to expect if something happens, what’s your counter. But it also creates a community, a network of Rights of Nature advocates. That’s one of the things that we really wanted to voice, is while NAIWA Daughters is doing work, we’re always open to supporting youth and giving guidance, and helping out, because Rights of Nature is so important; we want to support other tribes.
What I love about having conversations with youth and empowering them is that they can always do it better than we did. My advice for youth is never, never give up on the work, because you’re not just advocating for other youth now; you’re advocating for youth in the future.
Community is one of the biggest things. If it’s hard, creating a network and making relations makes it so much easier. Garner support. We had support from people who weren’t even from or non-Native companies and organizations. If their values are the same as ours, and they want to partner, creating a network of supporters outside of the tribe is really helpful when we’re talking about sovereignty and having people in the community that can support and uphold the work.
It’s important to advocate for our waterways, and to effectively make Mother Nature whole and healthy all together, we have to create these networks. It’s good here, but it also has to be good here, and over there. We’re doing it for not my sixth grandchild, but my great, great, great, great, great, great-grandchild that I’ll never meet. Knowing that I made a difference and made their life better. You do it to honor your ancestors, because they made sacrifices for you to be where you are, and you have to do the same for future generations.
Honestly, it gives me chills sometimes just talking about it, because before the Long Person Resolution, I had an innate connection with water, but now it’s different. It’s more of a “I see you, and you see me” deeper relationship, and knowing you’ve protected me for so long, I’m going to give back in a time when you need it. It’s understanding if your ancestor speaks to you and you get this feeling to keep going. That was really our fuel to do this, and understanding that it’s meant to be and it just takes time.
The post Speaking with Youth who are Speaking for the Voiceless: A Conversation with Jasmine Smith appeared first on Bioneers.
Ford just changed who can get Ontario Works and ODSP.
The new rules shut more migrants out of basic financial and health supports. Here is who is affected, why it matters and why we need to speak up.
What are Ontario Works and ODSP?In Ontario, financial support is available to some people who need help paying for basic needs.
Ontario Works (OW) supports people with little or no income. The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) supports low-income people who meet the program’s disability requirements.
These programs are already small and exclusionary. A single person on Ontario Works receives only $733 per month – nowhere near enough to pay rent, buy groceries and meet basic needs.
That amount has been frozen for eight years.
What did Ford change on August 13?On August 13, 2026 the Ford government changed Ontario’s OW and ODSP regulations to explicitly exclude people based on their immigration status.
The new rules say that people are not eligible if they:
- do not have authorization to remain in Canada; or
- are only authorized to remain temporarily, including people on work and study permits,
unless they fall within specific exceptions, including having made a refugee claim or certain applications for permanent residence.
The same new exclusion was added to ODSP.
The government also removed an existing protection for some people with enforceable removal orders who cannot leave Canada for reasons completely beyond their control.
The new rules Immigration situationBefore August 13: what the regulations saidSince August 13: what the regulations sayRefugee claimantsCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirementsPeople who have applied for permanent residenceCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirements.Migrant workers, international students and other work permit holdersThe regulations did not explicitly say that everyone with temporary status was ineligible. They excluded people categorized as “visitors” and “tourists”.Now explicitly excluded.Undocumented people without an enforceable removal orderCould qualify for ODSP and OW. Now explicitly excluded. People with an enforceable removal order who cannot leave Canada for reasons completely beyond their controlCould qualify for ODSP and OW. Now explicitly excluded.People with an enforceable removal order who have made an H&C application for permanent residenceCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirements.Before August 13, the regulations excluded “visitors” and “tourists,” but neither term was defined in the legislation or regulation.
The Ford government has now removed those words and replaced them with much broader language explicitly covering temporary immigration status and lack of immigration status.
Were migrants receiving OW and ODSP?Ontario had a longstanding unjust practice of caseworkers treating many people with work and study permits as “visitors.” As a result, many migrants were often denied OW or ODSP. Those who could, challenged those decisions at the Social Benefits Tribunal.
The regulations did not previously say that every person with temporary immigration status, or every person without immigration status, was automatically excluded, so hearings at the Tribunal were often successful.
The Ministry describes this as a “clarification” of its longstanding policy. But what it has actually done is put a much broader immigration-status exclusion directly into Ontario law.
Who will this hurt?These rules affect people who may have lived, worked and paid taxes in Ontario for years and then suddenly need help because of illness, unemployment, abuse or another crisis.
Patel: Patel is a 40-year-old man who came to Canada from Bangladesh after fleeing persecution because of his bisexuality. His immigration applications were denied, but he was afraid to return. He was later diagnosed with liver failure and cirrhosis. Because of his serious health condition, Canada cannot remove him. ODSP provides him with essential financial and medical support. Ford has now removed that protection. People in Patel’s situation can now be denied the basic financial and health supports they need to survive.
John: John is a 30-year-old seasonal agricultural worker from Jamaica who has been coming to Canada every year since 2020 to grow and harvest our food. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2024. He could not work while receiving chemotherapy and temporarily relied on Ontario Works. Today, John is in remission and back at work. Under Ford’s new regulation, most workers in John’s immigration situation are now explicitly excluded from Ontario Works.
Vanessa: Vanessa is a mother from Jamaica who worked as a home support worker caring for elderly people. During the pandemic, she fled abuse from her ex-partner with her children and entered the shelter system. After losing her job, she temporarily relied on Ontario Works while looking for work and child care. Her family later became permanent residents and she returned to care work. Under the new regulations, migrant women on temporary status in similar situations can be explicitly denied basic financial support while trying to escape violence or survive a crisis.
Why is the Ford government doing this?Meanwhile, Ontario’s Auditor General found that the Ford government spent a record $111.9 million on government advertising in 2024–25. Six of its ten largest advertising campaigns would not have passed Ontario’s former, stricter rules against partisan government advertising.
And while poor people and migrants struggle to pay rent and buy food, Premier Ford used taxpayer money to buy a $28.9 million dollar jet for his own private use. Members of Ford’s government have spent hundreds of thousands of public dollars on hotel rooms and fancy dinners.
The government announced these changes after media attention around a Social Benefits Tribunal case involving a man who had lived and worked in Canada for decades before losing his home. He challenged the denial of social assistance and won. Ford responded by changing the regulations.
No one should be denied food, housing, medicine or the means to survive because of the immigration documents they have or do not have.
At a time when rent and food prices are soaring and decent jobs are harder to find, blaming migrants will not make anyone’s life more affordable.
Taking $733 a month away from someone with cancer, someone escaping violence or someone who has lost their job will not lower the rent, raise wages or fix health care.
These changes are another attempt to pit migrants and poor people against each other while those responsible for the affordability crisis escape responsibility.
We must reject divide-and-rule and speak up together.
I’m a migrant and I’m worried. Where can I get support?Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is a group of current and former migrants. We come together to support each other and push back against unfair rules and laws like these.
If you live in the Greater Toronto Area, we offer free, confidential, in-person Migrant Support Clinics every second Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
You can share what is happening and work with other migrants to understand your options and find solutions.
Can’t come in person? Fill out the form anyway and we will get back to you.
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The post Ford just changed who can get Ontario Works and ODSP. appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Migrant Farm Worker Safety During Niagara Elections
A pledge for Niagara municipal candidates
Road Safety for AllEveryone deserves the freedom to move safely through their community. Migrant farm workers are asking candidates to commit to practical action so that every worker can get to work, reach essential services and return home safely.
See where candidates stand Read the commitments Candidate? Sign the pledge Sign the petitionFreedom of mobility
Road safety is about the freedom to live a full life.Freedom of mobility means being able to travel between work, home, grocery stores, health care, legal services and community without risking your life.
For many migrant farm workers, there is little or no public transit. Workers may have no choice but to walk or cycle on dark rural roads without safe shoulders, bike lanes, crossings or lighting to get privacy and access basic needs.
Essential Work. Invisible to public planning.Migrant workers have helped sustain Niagara’s farms and food economy for sixty years. Their labour is visible everywhere. Their safety, transportation needs and voices have too often been missing from road design, transit planning and government decisions.
They have names
These deaths and injuries are part of a pattern.At least seven migrant farm workers have been killed or seriously injured on Niagara roads since 2019. Behind that number are workers, neighbours, friends and family members.
2026 Sinhue GarciaSinhue was killed while cycling home on Concession 6 near Line 4 in Niagara-on-the-Lake. He was 39 years old and leaves behind his wife and two daughters in Mexico.
2019 ZenaidaZenaida, a Mexican farm worker and mother, was killed in a hit-and-run in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
2022 Fermin Soto Sanchez and two co-workersFermin was killed and two of his co-workers were seriously injured when they were struck near St. Catharines.
2022 Ceto ReidCeto, a Jamaican farm worker, was seriously injured while cycling home from a laundromat.
2023 OmarOmar, a migrant farm worker, was injured in a hit-and-run on Lakeshore Road.
Sinhue Garcia was a neighbour, a co-worker, a friend and a father. He deserved to get home safely. So does every migrant worker who comes to Niagara to work.
The Road Safety for All Pledge
Candidates who sign commit to:Working with migrant farm workers, community members, municipal staff and regional partners to advance the following actions.
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Create and fund a migrant farm worker road safety plan
Support multi-year funding for improved lighting, protected shoulders or bike lanes, traffic calming, safer crossings and lower speeds on routes used by workers.
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Complete a worker-led road safety audit and map
Ensure migrant farm workers directly identify dangerous roads, routes and destinations and help set priorities for action.
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Put worker-identified routes into municipal and regional plans
Use transportation and master planning processes to prioritize routes identified by migrant workers.
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Assign responsibility and report publicly on progress
Identify a lead Niagara Region staff person and provide at least two public reports to council each year: one before and one after the height of the agricultural season from May to September.
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Ensure migrant worker housing is safe and dignified
Support proactive inspections through Niagara Region Public Health, including access to basic facilities, privacy, adequate space and protection from unsafe conditions.
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Call for a coroner’s inquest
Publicly support a coroner’s inquest into migrant farm worker road deaths and serious injuries in Niagara.
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Meet directly with migrant farm workers
Hold direct meetings with workers and release a public implementation plan during the first year of the new council.
For municipal candidates
Sign the pledgeAdd your name to publicly commit to the Road Safety for All Pledge and to working directly with migrant farm workers on implementation.
By signing, you commit to supporting all seven actions listed above.Your contact information will be used to confirm your response and communicate with you about the pledge. Only information you have agreed to make public should be published.
Candidate pledge formPlease complete the form below. We will follow up to confirm your response.
For everyone
Justice for Sinhue GarciaAdd your name to demand safer roads and real support for migrant workers in Niagara. Together, we can push municipal leaders to act so no one else is killed simply trying to get home.
Send a message now calling for safer roads, dignified housing and action with migrant workers at the table. Sign the petitionAdd your name and send your message to decision-makers.
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The post Migrant Farm Worker Safety During Niagara Elections appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Saving Democracy Means Ending Extreme Inequality
Labor organizer Saru Jayaraman makes a clarion call to action: support workers across the United States who are saying there’s always been an affordability crisis and are asking politicians what has democracy done for me lately? Addressing inequality worse than the infamous Gilded Age requires ensuring living wages for all.
FeaturingSaru Jayaraman (JD, Yale, MPP Harvard), an academic at UC Berkeley and a renowned labor activist, is President of One Fair Wage, which organizes to raise wages and end sub-minimum wages nationwide. She is author of: Behind the Kitchen Door; Forked: A New Standard for American Dining; and One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America.
Credits- Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
- Written by: Kenny Ausubel
- Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
- Associate Producer and Program Engineer: Emily Harris
- Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
Take This Job and Shove It: The Great Resignation or The Great Revolt? | Bioneers Podcast
Saru Jayaraman – What has Democracy Done For Me Lately? Engaging Working People in the Fight to Save Democracy | Bioneers 2026 Keynote
Saru Jayaraman – The Great Revolution: What A Worker Power Moment Can Mean for Climate Justice | Bioneers 2023 Keynote
A Dime a Day: The Impact of the Miller/Harking Minimum Wage Proposal on the Price of Food
‘Give Me a Chance to Survive’: Workers, Employers Dread Deportations’ Effect on Health Care | Labor Notes
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast TranscriptNeil Harvey (Host): In his book Goliath’s Curse, researcher Luke Kemp at Cambridge University looks at the rise and collapse of over 400 societies over the past 5,000 years. At the center of every collapse is extreme inequality caused by wealth extraction by the one percent. As inequality spikes, these increasingly hollowed-out societies become acutely vulnerable to shocks, collapses and rebellions.
Fast-forward to Peak Inequality in the U.S. in 2026. The Goliath wealth pump has been cranking at warp speed to extract the biggest wealth transfer in history from bottom to top. They want to have their cake and eat yours too.
The world’s 12 richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. The top one percent control $58 trillion in assets, more than the combined GDPs of the U.S. and China. That’s more than enough to eliminate global poverty 22 times over.
About three to five giant corporations dominate around 80% of almost every industry and marketplace. About 60% of rising costs since the pandemic can be attributed to corporate “greedflation.” “All that the market will bear,” as the Robber Barons fondly put it.
While basic living costs balloon, savage policies are shredding the social safety net and workers’ rights, hurling people into economic free fall. Labor’s share of income is the lowest since the Great Depression.
But when the mass immiseration becomes this extreme, people fight back against Goliath.
This is the terrain where labor organizer Saru Jayaraman takes her stand. As founder and president of One Fair Wage, a national organization of over 300,000 restaurant and service workers, 1000 restaurant owners, and organizations, she leads campaigns to raise wages and end all subminimum wages nationwide. She spoke at a Bioneers conference.
Saru Jayaraman speaking at Bioneers 2026. Photo: Alex AkamineSaru Jayaraman (SJ): I have been organizing for 25 years and represent an industry, the restaurant industry, which is 13.6 million people in the United States who work in the lowest wage jobs in the United States. The largest employer of women and people of color, and youth and immigrants, and pretty much all of us, gets to pay $2.13 an hour in 2026.
When half of America cannot afford to feed themselves, their families to survive, they also cannot engage politically, and as long as they are paid the wages they are paid, as long as they’re working three jobs instead of one, and as long as they do not see any reason to vote because the people in power, the people who run all represent the antithesis of everything they need and stand for. [APPLAUSE]
So I’ve been sharing this and facing a lot of push-back. In 2024, when we were trying to raise money to put wage increases on the ballot in key states like Arizona and Michigan, donors told me that’s cute, you’re trying to raise wages. We’re trying to save democracy. And I had a really hard time trying to explain to people that raising wages is saving democracy. [APPLAUSE] It is the same thing, because there is no world in which democracy can function with these incredibly high levels of inequality. And I’m sad to say we haven’t heeded the warnings that working people have been trying to tell us for so long. We’re in a moment when working people either stayed home or went the other way because we didn’t listen; we didn’t pay attention; we did not say your lives matter.
Host: Saru and her organization are traveling around the country, organizing meetings and rallies with the Living Wage for All Coalition. In every state, workers are joining and telling their stories…
Credit: OFW member and photographer Nortei DowuonaJohannah: My name is Johannah Alabi. I am a CN certified nursing assistant from Connecticut. I dedicate 15 years to this work caring for those who cannot care for themselves. But today I stand before you not just as a CNA, but someone who is struggling… I have 2 fulltime jobs over 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. I do not have a day off. I make under $25 an hour at both jobs even with my experience. I work endlessly to provide for my kids, but we just make it. My wages cover food and roof over our head. But there’s nothing left over for savings or for emergency. Caregivers are working 60, 70, 80, even 100 hours a week to make ends meet. This is not sustainable. This is not respect. That is not care. It’s time for $25 an hour minimum wage for all. Thank you so much! [CHANTING]
Silvy: My name is Silvy, I’m from Bridgeport Connecticut. I’ve been bartending since 2018. I work hard, I work long hours, sometimes up to 13 hours a day. My base pay is $8 an hour, which is $8 less than the Connecticut state minimum wage. It hasn’t changed since the cost of living has skyrocketed. Service workers are often grouped under unskilled labor and we are told that our work isn’t valued much. And when profit is the dominant interest at large, it will only be service workers who are paid less than they’re worth. I ask that we are paid the full minimum wage plus tips. We are human beings who deserve to be paid a living wage! No less than $25 an hour. Thank you!
Host: There’s not a single state, city or county where a full-time worker making the minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom rental. Roughly half of Americans can’t afford a thousand-dollar emergency. Poverty is now the fourth leading cause of death.
As director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, Saru witnesses the real-world human costs of these chilling statistics every day. She’s authored several books, including One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America. She’s working with over 100 labor and community organizations on a Living Wage for All campaign to address the twin affordability and democracy crises.
She knows that the affordability crisis is actually a billionaire crisis, which in turn is a democracy crisis. The most unequal countries are seven times more likely to experience democratic backsliding or autocracy.
Raising wages is not a left-right issue – it’s a top and bottom issue. Meanwhile, she says, both major political parties play a cynical game of political football that sidesteps tackling the imperative for a living wage.
SJ: We were struck by a series of USA Today articles that came out documenting a rumor video that the right had been circulating among MAGA voters saying that Donald Trump had already raised the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour. The videos were so popular and gained so much attention among right-wing voters.
Now, we all know it’s a lie, and they lie all day. No big deal. That’s not the news here. The news here is that they didn’t say Donald Trump raised the wage to 15 or 17 or 20. They said he raised it to $25 an hour, which is the least you need to live anywhere in the United States of America right now. The MIT Living Wage calculator says the cheapest county in the U.S. is McLennan County, Texas, and you need $25 to survive. So they picked the very number that affects all of us, including MAGA voters.
When I saw these articles, I said we have a five-alarm fire. The right is talking about 25 and agitating their base about 25, and the left is stuck on 17, some places 15. And I gotta tell you, this is why people hate us. People hate us because they see us negotiating against ourselves before we even get to the room. [APPLAUSE] They see us arguing for half a loaf.
Even as I’ve started talking, I’m sure there are people in the room who, some part of their brain is saying, “What about small business?” “What about will the economy survive?” “Can we manage 25?” And I’m not blaming you. That is what you have been fed your entire lives. But we negotiate against ourselves before we even tell working people we are fighting for you; we are fighting for the full loaf, not half a loaf. We know what it takes, and it’s no less than 25. So it is time for a living wage for all, a floor of 25. Let higher cost regions go to 30 and higher.
So we polled across red, blue and purple districts – overwhelmingly popular. And I gotta tell you, people are so angry right now. If you tell them we can’t raise the wage, prices will go up, they say, “What are you talking about? Prices have already gone up!” The only price that hasn’t gone up is the price of human beings.
We have to give people some sense of hope that a different future is on the horizon, one in which they can survive, and, yes, maybe thrive.
Source: Saru Jayaraman / One Fair WageHost: Taxpayers are subsidizing wages because companies refuse to pay a living wage or provide enough hours. Saru Jayaraman says that while it’s clear a living wage is essential for people to survive and thrive, the general focus of politicians has been only on reducing costs and inflation.
SJ: There’s so much talk about affordability, but most of it is “bring costs down”, “freeze the rent”, “affordable childcare”, “affordable healthcare”. Nobody is saying those things aren’t essential, critical, important and there is no world in which we achieve affordability by simply bringing costs down.
Look at inflation over the last 75 years. It has never come down. It has never gone backwards. Do you know that now half of Americans earn less than $25 an hour? Half of America earns less than what it costs to live in the cheapest place in the United States of America. So half of America thinks maybe things are okay, and half of America has been in a five-alarm fire for a very long time.
And if you look at the last six years in particular since the pandemic, it is double or triple the level of inflation of the last 75 years. So this is not the stagflation of the ‘70s. This is not anything we have ever experienced as a country. This is unprecedented. Unprecedented affordability crisis means an unprecedented democracy crisis, means unprecedented crisis, period.
I have heard from so many older people: I am so sad to say that the young people in my life will never leave the house. Because they can never afford to! And that’s a funny thing and a heartbreaking thing because the California budget office just reported recently that a new trend we’re seeing among minimum wage workers is that young people are deciding never to have children because they can’t afford to; they can’t imagine a life where they could actually afford their own place and have their own children. How heartbreaking is it that we are denying the next generation the ability to have kids?
Host: Saru says that ensuring a living wage for everyone is a popular policy, but big business often discourages that support by repeating the false claim that raising wages will hurt small businesses.
SJ: It’s, you know, fair game and exciting and popular for everybody to say billionaires, trillionaires. I think there’s still this reverence for small business over people that is used by the billionaires and the trillionaires and the corporations to get even the most progressive people on our side to shy away from raising wages.
And so, let us push our representatives, even our best friends, to say this cannot be a one-sided conversation. It has to be about prices and paychecks. It has to be about, yes, bringing costs down or freezing them, but life will never be affordable unless people have enough money in their pockets.
Host: We’ll hear more from Saru Jayaraman when we return.
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature.
Host: Extreme concentration of wealth leads to extreme concentration of power. In 2024, just a hundred billionaire families poured two billion dollars into U.S. federal elections. That’s about a 160-fold increase since the Supreme Court passed Citizens United in 2010, allowing unlimited dark money to be poured into elections. A billionaire is 4,000 times more likely to run for office than a regular citizen. Few policies pass that they don’t want.
The National Restaurant Association – the extremely powerful corporate lobby that’s often referred to as “the other NRA” – continues to wage class war on restaurant workers by swaying state and federal policy. It came about in 1919 with the express intent of being able to hire newly freed Black women after Emancipation, not pay them, and have them live only on tips. That is the origin story of the miniscule $2.13 an hour wage for restaurant workers today.
SJ: Since 1938, when FDR first – created the first federal minimum wage in the United States, you have to know that the opposition has used the exact same arguments over and over again for a century – “prices will go up, jobs will be lost, people will lose hours, small businesses will close, and the economy will tank”. Right? Whole industries will collapse. Same thing over and over and over and over again.
Your restaurant didn’t need to raise prices, they just did. And, you know, the National Restaurant Association’s own data shows there’s a natural closure of about 20 percent of all restaurants every year, but when the wages go up, they’ll pull those restaurants in particular and say, look, they closed because of this.
Prices have not actually gone up that dramatically each time we’ve raised the wage. In fact, I did a study with another professor here at UC Davis, and the title of the study was—at the time, this was way back when we were doing Fight for 15 and all the same arguments came up, prices are going to go up, jobs will be lost, blah, blah, blah, and we—the title of this study was A Dime a Day, because we studied—if you gave every worker in the food system, from farm workers up to restaurant workers $15 an hour, how much more would it cost the average consumer, and the answer was a dime a day. It’s not a dollar to dollar increase, y’all.
Our calculation is it’s about, at most, at 10 percent over many years. None of the wage increases, none of the bills we’re moving raise the wage overnight. We can afford that, especially we can afford that if we’re earning enough to consume.
Host: Saru says it’s well documented that countless initiatives across the country to create living wage policies have been stymied by the same tactics of disinformation, intimidation, and fear that the National Restaurant Association has deployed for decades. Even minor wage increases in Blue states have often been rolled back – by both political parties.
SJ: We’ll have hearings in blue states, very Trifecta blue states – Colorado, Maryland, New York – and the restaurant association will require all workers to attend a pre-shift meeting, and tell them, listen, the legislators are trying to take your tips away. Right? When the law is: Let’s raise the wage to a full minimum wage with tips on top. “The legislators are trying to take your tips away, so we’re going to shut down the restaurant, pay you all $15 an hour”, which, by the way, they could never afford to pay normally, because they normally pay $3 in the very blue state of Maryland. $2 in the very blue state of New Mexico. You know? Most of the country, it’s 2, and 3, and 4. And they’re like, you know, this law is about taking your tips away, so we’re going to shut down the restaurant, pay all of you. Come, come—you know, and then it’s 75 or 100 workers getting up one by one: “Please don’t take my tips away.”
And we do everything in our power to get workers to come to say, “No, I need a raise!”, which the overwhelming majority, of course, of workers want. But those workers are working three jobs and terrified of showing up with their name and their face, and their employers see it. So democracy doesn’t work when the majority of people are unable or terrified to come speak up. And then a minority of people are paid to come speak for their bosses. Right?
And the Democrats, I don’t believe they’re this dumb. Maybe they’re this dumb. But their response is, oh, we can’t do this because workers don’t want it. And I really believe it’s a good excuse, or maybe they are that dumb to be taken in by what we call an AstroTurf campaign, right, Fake grassroots campaign.
But that’s been my experience of democracy, is Democrats blocking wage increases because of the restaurant association, rolling back—Do you know in 2025, as the affordability crisis became the thing that everybody understood, it was Democrats, who for the first time in United States history, rolled back workers’ wages, cut them in half in Michigan, in Colorado, in DC, in Chicago. I could say state after state. Republicans would never touch this with a ten-foot pole, because turning back workers’ wages they would always consider to be political suicide. Democrats thought it was okay because we have not created the consequences for those Democrats.
Do you know what the Republican stand on minimum wage is? It’s not leave it where it is. I mean, I’ve debated them on The New York Times podcast. Their stance is there should not be a minimum wage. The free market should take care of wages. They never negotiate—Do you think they sit in a room with policy wonks and say, “What’s acceptable? What’s feasible? What’s palatable?” before they come out and say there shouldn’t be a minimum wage? No. They don’t care. They will say exactly what they need and want.
So this has been my experience of democracy. What would it look like in a real democracy? In a real democracy, workers would be able to have one job instead of three. They could show up en masse and say, oh, take your hands off our wages. If we can make it a big deal in the policy arena, then we see workers who’ve been afraid start to talk about it with one another. If you are alone in a workplace and you’re like, we deserve $30, and nobody else is talking about $30, it becomes really, really hard. But if it’s on the television and everybody’s talking about it, suddenly it becomes something we can talk about. “You know? Let’s talk about it. Do you think we’re worth $30, first of all? Hell yeah, we’re worth $30.” They could overpower any lies or AstroTurf campaign, and they would be listened to. That’s what democracy would look like; that’s why it would be important.
Host: More and more people are seeing the reason they’re sicker, poorer, and chronically insecure is the giant sucking sound of the Goliath wealth pump.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress could make policy changes, like an embarrassingly modest wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires, which would raise an annual estimated $414 billion for social programs and fighting poverty. Remember, from WWII until 1980, the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 81%.
But the most effective, lasting change comes from the grassroots. Saru Jayaraman calls for a bold, proactive vision that unites working people across the country and that addresses their key concern: the cost of living.
SJ: I know there’s a lot to be unhappy about, I know there’s a lot to cry about, there’s a lot to be angry about, there’s a lot to defend. Yet if all we do is defense, we will lose.
But I have to tell you in terms of democracy, I have been hearing so often from our members across the country, if I ask them, ‘Come to Saturday’s rally, No Kings; help us save democracy,’ they’ll say, “Save democracy? I earn $3. I work three jobs. What has democracy done for me lately?”
And I have asked workers: What would you do? What would you do if you actually had the capacity to engage in the democratic process? If you had one job instead of three, if you could engage politically, what would you work on? Do you know what they tell me time and time again? They say the climate crisis.
Working people live in the communities that are most impacted by environmental crisis. So of course they care, but they do not have the capacity, again, nor do they see people in power doing or speaking to anything that represents them or resonates with them, or frankly addresses the top need they have, which is the cost of living.
Photo: Steve Sanchez Photos / ShutterstockAs sad as this moment is, there’s a moment of opportunity where the pendulum could swing in the exact opposite direction. And yes, they would have time to engage on the issue they said they would engage on if they had capacity, which is the climate crisis.
What’s so hopeful to me is that when I travel the country, I’m in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or even the South, every red, blue, and purple district, the one thing I find working people across the political spectrum can agree on is if you work, you deserve to earn enough to feed your family, to have a roof over your head, maybe even to take a vacation. What a concept.
But I really want to ask you to join me in stopping this notion of “saving democracy”. It’s not working. It didn’t work in 2024. The messages we were told – “you’re wrong, the economy is working; you’re wrong, there’s so much that we’ve done, we’re just not messaging it right.” No! No! You know what the best message is for working people? Delivering. Delivering on the things that allow them to survive and thrive and live.
So that is why I feel such deep urgency to work with you to deliver, to deliver on wage increases that will put more money in peoples’ pockets, that will give people a sense of hope. And, yes, together, building a different future in which all of us can thrive. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Host: Saru Jayaraman, “Saving Democracy Means Ending Extreme Inequality.”
The post Saving Democracy Means Ending Extreme Inequality appeared first on Bioneers.
The Village We Lost: Rebuilding Maternal Care From Gaza to Oakland
Across the world, mothers and children are absorbing the sharpest edges of humanitarian catastrophe — in Gaza, in Sudan, in conflict zones where medical infrastructure has collapsed entirely. And here in the United States, the crisis wears a different face but is no less urgent: Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, a disparity that has held steady for decades despite the country’s wealth and medical resources.
These are not separate emergencies. They are the same failure, showing up at different scales — systems that were never built to protect the most vulnerable, and the people stepping in, often without pay or institutional backing, to hold the line anyway.
The following conversation brings together four women doing that work from radically different vantage points: Brandi Gates-Burgess, founder of Breast Friends Lactation and Support Services, who has spent her career closing the breastfeeding gap in Black communities across the Bay Area; Sandra Adler Killen, an ER and pediatric nurse who has deployed to Gaza three times to train local clinicians in infant nutrition and lactation care amid famine and mass casualty; and Dr. Cindy Nelly, a global health consultant and midwife who has spent 25 years building health systems in conflict zones from Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Gaza. They were brought together by Sandra, and guided in conversation by journalist Tiffany McElroy.
What emerges is not a comparison of suffering, but something more like a shared diagnosis of what happens when the people closest to a crisis aren’t the ones being listened to, and what changes when they finally are.
What follows is an edited excerpt of a conversation recorded at the Bioneers 2026 conference.
TIFFANY: My first question is for all of you: why did you choose to get into the specific work you’re doing right now? Brandi, let’s start with you.
BRANDI: Black women are least likely to breastfeed their babies. There are enormous health disparities behind that fact, and it’s what drew me into this work.
I was 21, in college at UC Riverside, when I had my daughter. I breastfed her because I was a broke college student — but once I learned how critical breastfeeding is to Black maternal health, and how much it reduces infant mortality, I knew I had to get the word out. I changed my major to sociology so I could understand how these outcomes were shaping Black birth in this country.
The numbers are what convinced me this was my life’s work: Black women and birthing people are three times more likely to die in childbirth than any other race or ethnicity. If we can get Black families to breastfeed for at least six months, it changes the health trajectory of an entire community — lower rates of diabetes, asthma, allergies, obesity, breast cancer. Once I understood that, the mission became simple: We support each other, and we get moms breastfeeding for at least six months.
In 2023, I launched Breast Friends Lactation to bring that support to low-income families in the Bay Area, specifically pairing them with lactation consultants who look like them and understand what it means to navigate motherhood as a Black woman in America. We’ve been at it ever since, and we’re booked solid.
SANDRA: Nursing is actually my fifth career. I came to it late — I became a nurse at 50, after working in several very different fields, because I wanted to dedicate myself to this work. I worked as an ER nurse and a postpartum nurse, and I’d always wanted to do lactation support. I breastfed my own two children and saw firsthand the health benefits, the bonding, how emotionally powerful it was. So I became an IBCLC, just like Brandi.
For many years now, I’ve done international humanitarian work, first in Syria and Lebanon with refugee populations, and for the last two years in Gaza, training neonatologists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs, midwives, doctors, and nurses to deliver this kind of support in some of the most challenging environments imaginable.
CINDY: My own path, I’ll admit, wasn’t especially altruistic at the start. I began traveling early, and as someone very privileged to be able to do that, I started noticing the disparities around me. I wanted to keep traveling, but I wanted it to mean something — to give something back to the communities I was moving through. If I don’t have a plane ticket in hand, I get anxious. I just need to be on the road.
Then I had my daughter at 23. I chose a midwife without really thinking about why, but my great-grandmother had been a midwife, and somehow, through whatever force that is, maternal lineage, I knew that was how I needed to give birth. My first career had actually been in environmental science, but in that moment of giving birth, with that connection to my midwife, I realized: This is what I want to do.
As healthcare providers, we have incredible privilege. We’re present with people during the most painful, and sometimes the most joyful, most intimate moments of their lives. When else do we get that? It’s sacred. We can find that connection with trees, with plants, with nature — but connecting human to human in such a vulnerable space is powerful in a different way.
TIFFANY: In so many systems, especially healthcare, it feels like the most vulnerable end up working against the odds the system creates. Brandi, can you talk about why breastfeeding matters so much in the Black community, and what the barriers are? And then Sandy and Cindy, I’d love to hear why breastfeeding matters even amid everything going on in conflict zones.
BRANDI: Breastfeeding is a safety net for every baby. Every baby deserves their birthing parent’s milk — it’s uniquely designed for that specific baby. Throughout pregnancy, the body is creating the optimal food for that particular child. We do families a disservice when we say formula is just as good. I tell my clients: Formula is good if a baby doesn’t have a mother. But if they have one, that baby should be fed her milk, because it’s built specifically for them.
That said, there are real barriers here in America — not just for Black families, but for everyone. One is our reflex toward medical intervention at every step. We’ve forgotten what normal newborn behavior and weight loss actually look like, so we over-supplement early on. That first month is critical for establishing milk supply for the entire breastfeeding journey. If it’s not established properly, families end up needing donor milk or formula to make up the gap.
Another barrier is that we have no paid maternity leave. We live in a country where you can’t legally separate a puppy from its mother before eight weeks, but we tell a woman her body isn’t healed and she still has to return to work at six. During COVID, we proved this doesn’t have to be the case. People were paid to stay home. If we can do that, we can provide six months of paid maternity leave. Instead, in the U.S., many people don’t even get six weeks; some go back after two.
Formula companies also heavily target Black and Brown families. We already have high cesarean rates, and when someone feels like their body “failed” at birth, that insecurity carries over into feeding. So when a formula ad shows up on Instagram or TikTok asking, “Is your baby getting enough?”, it lands. That’s how formula gets introduced, along with the early risks that come with it: allergens, digestive issues, and more.
These barriers hit the Black community hardest, but really, all women and birthing people in America face them — the lack of paid leave, and the early, unnecessary push toward formula.
SANDRA: I’ll speak to Gaza specifically. Many of you already know, from the news, what’s transpired there — periods of starvation, no food, no medical supplies. Add in environmental factors like asbestos and munitions exposure, plus malnutrition, stress, and PTSD, and it’s a perfect storm for infant mortality and morbidity.
Culturally, families have their own traditions and religious practices around infant feeding. I’m not Muslim myself, but I’ve learned a great deal about Islamic tradition, including that Muhammad called for breastfeeding for two years, long before Western medical bodies caught up with that same recommendation. I use that with the families I work with, because there’s often a fear that their milk isn’t good enough, or that they’ll pass on toxins to their baby. We’re seeing high rates of cleft lip and palate, congenital birth defects, prematurity, and extremely low birth weight.
When aid does get in, one of the first things allowed through is formula in massive quantities. I believe that’s not an accident. Poorer health outcomes follow. I’d go so far as to say that using formula this way is itself a strategy of this genocide.
I’ve worked with well-meaning clinicians and surgeons who hear formula is needed and bring it in their luggage — and I have had to tell them, directly, not to. Their intent is to place a can of formula at every mother’s bedside immediately after delivery. But once formula is introduced, milk supply drops and health outcomes worsen. I had to work directly with hospital directors at al-Aqsa Hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, and facilities in Gaza City to stop well-meaning charities from distributing formula this way. Formula is medicine. We use it when it’s medically necessary, not as a default.
CINDY: You can’t talk about formula without talking about water. Globally, one in four health centers lacks access to clean water — water that’s often used to mix formula.
That’s before you even get to displacement camps or rural areas.
And this isn’t only a Global South problem. In the U.S., we have water deserts — over two million people without access to safe water. Combine unsafe water with formula feeding, and you get the full range of illnesses that come with it. Those two issues are inseparable.
But there’s real hope, too. Milk banks are one of the most incredible developments I’ve seen. There’s one in Gaza. I saw it firsthand in the NICU, and the team there was rightly proud of what they’d built. A milk bank is where a mother with an abundant supply, or one who has lost her baby, continues pumping and donates that milk to other infants who need it.
CINDY: Domestically, we face this too. At the tertiary care hospital where I work — where we take care of the sickest of the sick babies, many requiring surgery and immediate intervention — we have a milk bank, but more barriers than systems to support it.
Policy around safe milk banking in the U.S. is something we need to take seriously. And globally, there’s a tendency to assume that in places facing poverty or crisis, something like a milk bank is too ambitious, even a privilege. It’s not — it’s fundamental. In fact, we have a lot to learn from systems already in place. I think of Pumwani, in Africa, which delivers over 20,000 babies a year and has an incredible milk bank system. That’s a model worth studying, not underestimating.
TIFFANY: Brandi, tell us about your nonprofit. How do you get women excited about breastfeeding, and what connections do you help them make?
BRANDI: My nonprofit is Breast Friends Lactation and Support Services. We now run eight support groups throughout the Bay Area — in Richmond, Concord, Pittsburg, West Oakland, Fruitvale, San Leandro, San Francisco, and Rancho Cordova — providing in-home lactation support for Black and Brown families. We have four lactation consultants who go directly into people’s homes. If a client reaches out, they don’t even need to see a doctor first. We bring everything with us: a scale, pillows, formula if it’s needed for weight issues, nipple shields, feeding tubes, syringes, ice packs. It’s basically a lactation office in a suitcase.
We also run a peer support program built on a workforce development model: We take mothers from the community who’ve successfully breastfed for a year — our goal for every family — and train them through the USDA’s Loving Support peer counselor model, which includes 20 hours of lactation-specific education. They go on to work as peer counselors themselves.
We’re entirely grant- and donation-funded. Our peer counselors call clients weekly for the first eight weeks to make sure breastfeeding gets off to a strong start, and even if a client doesn’t pick up, we send text check-ins — “Congratulations, you made it through the first two weeks. Your baby may start feeding more frequently, so this is a great time for skin-to-skin contact” — so they’re still getting guidance either way.
We also run a “latchline,” our version of a breastfeeding warmline, available by call or text every day from 7am to 7pm, and a NICU support group for families with babies in intensive care. And we train birth workers directly — doulas, nurses, pediatricians, midwives — because they don’t always have the lactation-specific knowledge to catch red flags early. Instead of a provider saying, “Your baby’s losing weight, here’s some formula,” we want them saying, “Let’s get you to a lactation consultant and start pumping” before jumping straight to supplementation.
Our groups are open to the whole community, but they’re intentionally tailored to Black families, because our goal is to increase Black breastfeeding rates specifically — creating a safe space that’s led mother to mother, peer to peer.
Most recently, we launched DABS — Dads About Breastfeeding — a support group from the father’s perspective, led by my husband, who I had trained as a peer counselor. Dads often feel left out of the feeding journey, so DABS gives them a space to learn how to safely handle breast milk, assemble pumps, and support bottle-feeding — moving them from “I don’t know, he seems hungry, feed him more” to actually being part of the process. We launched it in October, and it’s already working well.
TIFFANY: Cindy, can you tell us about your work in the field? Brandi walked us through her work with clients — I’m curious what your day-to-day looks like.
CINDY: I’ve spent the last six years working internationally. While most people were home during COVID, I wasn’t. I worked in over four countries during that time, building healthcare infrastructure at a senior level for the federal government, the WHO, and the UN.
My work now is focused on systems, specifically, where they’re broken.
It’s easy to celebrate rescuing people from crisis, whether it’s Katrina or Gaza, any conflict or natural disaster. But why do we keep having to rescue people in the first place? Why does that keep being the model, and where does it break down?
There’s a concept in global health called the Humanitarian Development Nexus. On one side, you have humanitarians — the “cowboys,” as they’re sometimes known, myself included at various points, working with organizations like MSF. We rush in and put a bandage on the hemorrhage. On the other side, you have development actors — organizations like USAID — implementing, or trying to implement, long-term policy and infrastructure. The problem is these two groups rarely coordinate. And the biggest failure, in my experience, is that neither group reliably listens to the people on the ground.
That’s the work I’m focused on now: How do we build systems that actually lead from the ground up? In Gaza, the Ministry of Health had produced a new maternal health protocol — remarkable, given it happened during a war. But it hadn’t been implemented. When I arrived, I spent the first two days doing nothing but listening. I didn’t rush in to deliver babies; that wasn’t my role. I just listened to the providers.
One issue that came up repeatedly was episiotomies — the surgical incision made during childbirth, cutting the perineal tissue between the vagina and anus. The new protocol said doctors shouldn’t be performing them routinely; the evidence doesn’t support it as standard practice. But every first-time mother was still getting one.
Think about what that means in context: A woman has this incision, then returns to a tent, sharing a bathroom with 300 other people. The tissue breaks down. Infection sets in. There are long-term consequences. I’ve seen this pattern before, in the DRC, in cases involving sexual violence. It’s not unique to Gaza; it’s a practice still happening in the U.S. too, despite decades of evidence against it.
The point is: Gaza’s government had already put out a policy ready to change this, during a war, no less — and plenty of people had come to help, but no one had taken the time to actually listen and act on it. Just by listening first, I was able to help the incredible providers already on the ground solve a problem they were already trying to solve, rather than showing up with outside ideas about what needed to change.
I still get texts from providers there — “Another first-time mom, no episiotomy.” The physicians were remarkably open; they just hadn’t had support in changing the practice.
SANDRA: I want to share something specific about my practice. The first time I went to Gaza, I was part of a team doing mass casualty support — treating gunshot wounds and explosion injuries — working out of tents in the Al-Mawasi area, near Khan Yunis. We became one of the medical points of care for that community: primary care, wound dressing changes, mothers giving birth, mothers with mastitis, babies with hypoglycemia. When those cases came in, I could help. I had the training. The local clinicians started asking, “Can you teach us this? We know nothing about it.”
So I put together a training proposal. I was fortunate that an NGO brought me on, because very few international humanitarian healthcare workers are allowed into Gaza — I believe it’s down to around 10 a week now, and since the war with Iran, even fewer, sometimes just one entry a week. Many people get denied.
My work is about capacity building. I go in, I listen, and I ask what they want to be trained in. Then I build that plan and teach with the goal of making myself obsolete. I’m not a white woman coming in with answers. I ask: What do you need? What do you want? I’ll educate you, keep coming back as long as you want me to. And when there’s peace, I’ll come back simply to visit.
CINDY: That’s exactly why I came when you asked me to. It sounds obvious, put that way, but you’d be surprised how many people go into this work with a different agenda entirely.
TIFFANY: I can imagine. What does the future of maternal health and reproductive care look like to each of you, and where do you find hope, given everything going on right now?
CINDY: Just recently, Representative Adams introduced what’s known as the Momnibus legislation — a reintroduction of a bill aimed directly at the fact that Black women in this country face three times the maternal mortality rate of other groups. Even in the middle of everything happening politically right now, people are still putting forward legislation to address that.
There’s also a push through the International Confederation of Midwives to train a million more midwives worldwide. Midwives, nurses, and IBCLCs are critical frontline infrastructure. The estimate is that expanding access to them, along with community health workers, could reduce maternal and child mortality by 67%. That’s a campaign worth joining.
Even in the darkest moments, grassroots organizations keep pushing good work forward. Those are two efforts close to my heart, especially working in the Southeast. I still don’t understand why we aren’t listening to Black and Brown mothers, or why we haven’t built a workforce of midwives, nurses, and IBCLCs that actually reflects the people giving birth. That’s on us — on me, too, as someone in this field.
BRANDI: There’s a bill right now — AB 2160 — that would let lactation consultants bill for our services like any other healthcare provider. That would matter enormously, because this work is so often unpaid; it’s done purely out of passion. Getting reimbursed for these services would make organizations like Breast Friends far more sustainable.
There’s still so much work to do in reproductive justice, and I don’t know how quickly things will change. But my hope is built on initiatives like these — more midwives, more lactation consultants, more community members stepping in, professional or not. I tell people all the time:
My dream is that you won’t need me. That we build a village again, where this knowledge — how to breastfeed, how to care for our babies — is just something we know and share with each other, the way it always used to be. My hope is that I put myself out of a job, because everyone already knows how.
SANDRA: When I was in Syria and Lebanon in 2023, working with internally displaced people and refugees — Palestinian and Syrian — women who weren’t nurses, midwives, or doctors, women who worked in building administration, would come up to me and ask if they could just sit in on my trainings. When I asked why, they’d say: “I just want to be the person in my camp that moms can come to for support.”
That’s what this comes down to. Whether it’s advocating for these bills, or being that person in your own community — it’s us. Change happens over time. It’s not a hundred-yard dash; it’s a marathon. We stay committed, we don’t give up, and we remember that even two minutes today, 20 minutes in three weeks, two hours next month, adds up. That sustained effort is what changes things.
The post The Village We Lost: Rebuilding Maternal Care From Gaza to Oakland appeared first on Bioneers.
Are you an Undocumented Care Worker in Toronto? Join Our Meeting.
Join a private and confidential meeting for undocumented care workers.
Request an invitation Meeting details
Saturday, August 8
3:00–5:00 p.m.
In person in Toronto
The location will be shared only with people who are invited and confirmed to attend.
Who is this meeting for?This meeting is for people who:
- Live in the City of Toronto
- Do not currently have valid immigration status in Canada
- Currently work or have previously worked in care
The criteria for this meeting were set by the City of Toronto, which is funding this project.
Space is limited. We will review responses and contact people who are invited.
People who are invited and attend the full two-hour meeting will receive:- A $50 gift card
- Food
- PRESTO fare
- Access to health care, housing, transit and other City services
- What support undocumented care workers need
- Problems at work, including low wages, unpaid wages, abuse or unfair treatment
- Immigration status, permits and access to permanent residency
- What needs to change in Toronto and across Canada
Your experiences will help us identify the changes, services and resources undocumented care workers need. We will also share information about services and support available in Toronto.
Need support or do not meet the criteria?Contact us for support , join us as a member or call 437-518-8662.
This is a private and confidential process. Your name, immigration status, employer information and other personal information will not be shared with the City of Toronto, immigration authorities or your employer. We will not contact your current or former employer. Request an invitationShare your information below. We will contact you if you are invited and send you the meeting location.
Request an invitation (function () { var registrationSection = document.getElementById("mwac-registration"); var stickyButton = document.getElementById( "mwac-mobile-register-button" ); if ( !registrationSection || !stickyButton || !("IntersectionObserver" in window) ) { return; } var observer = new IntersectionObserver( function (entries) { entries.forEach(function (entry) { if (entry.isIntersecting) { stickyButton.classList.add("is-hidden"); } else { stickyButton.classList.remove("is-hidden"); } }); }, { threshold: 0.08 } ); observer.observe(registrationSection); })();The post Are you an Undocumented Care Worker in Toronto? Join Our Meeting. first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
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LFF Volume #29: Across Borders, a New Vision for Maternal Care
This is Volume #29 of the Leading from the Feminine newsletter, a vibrant resource in the flourishing world of leading from the heart, hands and spirit.
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Motherhood has become one of the defining fault lines of our time. From the dismantling of maternal health systems in Gaza to the ever-present crisis of Black maternal mortality in the U.S., the policies around and resources for caregiving are increasingly shaped by those who have the political and economic leverage to bypass restrictions created by our failing systems and institutions. Yet across these vastly different contexts and continents, the people at the center of intervention are often the same: midwives, nurses, lactation consultants, community organizers, and mothers themselves.
From Gaza to Oakland, the work of nurturing mothers and children—and expectations around how mothers should nurture their children—reveal just how intimately braided social, environmental, and reproductive justice are. When maternal healthcare systems collapse, when clean water becomes scarce, and when communities lose the threads to traditional and intergenerational knowledge that once sustained them, the damage disrupts generations. These systems we’ve built often exploit both the planet and the people whose labor sustains it, especially women, caregivers, and communities on the frontlines of injustice.
These realities raise an urgent question for us all: what does it mean to care for life in a time of cascading crises? As ecosystems unravel, conflict displaces communities, and inequities deepen, the health of our societies is inseparable from the health of the living world.
The most attuned solutions to ecological and social crises emerge by listening to the people closest to them. The Earth—our first mother—offers an abundance of models for generosity, interdependence, and regeneration. Nurse logs—old fallen trees—provide homes, water, and food for tiny new seedlings to grow. Fungi connect tree roots underground to trade water and nutrients through mycorrhizal networks. In wetlands marshes filter dirty water and renew the health of local rivers. These other mothers—the nurse logs, the tree roots, the wetlands—demonstrate how to sow the seeds of renewal and rebuild a village from the ground up.
Their work challenges us to imagine a culture where care is recognized as essential infrastructure, where communities hold the wisdom to heal, and where the work of mothering, in all its forms, becomes a blueprint for building a more just and life-affirming future. It’s time to turn to our mothers and ask: what do you need in order to caretake safely, with dignity?
The following conversation brings together four women approaching this work from radically different vantage points: Brandi Gates-Burgess, founder of Breast Friends Lactation and Support Services, who has spent her career closing the breastfeeding gap in Black communities across the Bay Area; Sandra Adler Killen, an ER and pediatric nurse who has deployed to Gaza three times to train local clinicians in infant nutrition and lactation care amid famine and mass casualty; and Dr. Cindy Nelly, a global health consultant and midwife who has spent 25 years building health systems in conflict zones from Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Gaza. Sandra brought everyone together, and journalist Tiffany McElroy facilitated the conversation.
What emerges is not a comparison of suffering, but something more like a shared diagnosis of what happens when the people closest to a crisis aren’t the ones being listened to, and what changes when they finally are.
What follows is an edited excerpt of a conversation recorded at the Bioneers 2026 conference.
TIFFANY: Why did you choose to get into the specific work you’re doing right now? Brandi, let’s start with you.
BRANDI: Black women are least likely to breastfeed their babies. There are enormous health disparities behind that fact, and it’s what drew me into this work.
I was 21, in college at UC Riverside, when I had my daughter. I breastfed her because I was a broke college student — but once I learned how critical breastfeeding is to Black maternal health, and how much it reduces infant mortality, I knew I had to get the word out. I changed my major to sociology so I could understand how these outcomes were shaping Black birth in this country.
The numbers are what convinced me this was my life’s work: Black women and birthing people are three times more likely to die in childbirth than any other race or ethnicity. If we can get Black families to breastfeed for at least six months, it changes the health trajectory of an entire community — lower rates of diabetes, asthma, allergies, obesity, breast cancer. Once I understood that, the mission became simple: We support each other, and we get moms breastfeeding for at least six months.
In 2023, I launched Breast Friends Lactation to bring that support to low-income families in the Bay Area, specifically pairing them with lactation consultants who look like them and understand what it means to navigate motherhood as a Black woman in America. We’ve been at it ever since, and we’re booked solid.
SANDRA: Nursing is actually my fifth career. I came to it late — I became a nurse at 50, after working in several very different fields, because I wanted to dedicate myself to this work. I worked as an ER nurse and a postpartum nurse, and I’d always wanted to do lactation support. I breastfed my own two children and saw firsthand the health benefits, the bonding, how emotionally powerful it was. So I became an IBCLC, just like Brandi.
For many years now, I’ve done international humanitarian work, first in Syria and Lebanon with refugee populations, and for the last two years in Gaza, training neonatologists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs, midwives, doctors, and nurses to deliver this kind of support in some of the most challenging environments imaginable.
CINDY: My own path, I’ll admit, wasn’t especially altruistic at the start. I began traveling early, and as someone very privileged to be able to do that, I started noticing the disparities around me. I wanted to keep traveling, but I wanted it to mean something — to give something back to the communities I was moving through.
Then I had my daughter at 23. I chose a midwife without really thinking about why, but my great-grandmother had been a midwife, and somehow, through whatever force that is, maternal lineage, I knew that was how I needed to give birth. My first career had actually been in environmental science, but in that moment of giving birth, with that connection to my midwife, I realized: This is what I want to do.
As healthcare providers, we have incredible privilege. We’re present with people during the most painful, and sometimes the most joyful, most intimate moments of their lives. When else do we get that? It’s sacred. We can find that connection with trees, with plants, with nature — but connecting human to human in such a vulnerable space is powerful in a different way.
Read the full excerpt of the conversation For Further ComplexityWe would be remiss in not touching on what often gets lost in the conversation around infant feeding: women’s choice. For some mothers, breastfeeding is an empowering and rewarding experience. For others, it can be physically difficult, medically contraindicated, or simply not possible.
Factors including low milk supply, infant feeding difficulties, workplace barriers, and the need to continue medications for mental or physical health can all shape feeding decisions. In these situations, discussions about infant nutrition can sometimes overlook the health, well-being, and autonomy of the mother herself. While public health messaging has emphasized the benefits of breastfeeding—which are real and substantial—many parents suffer from pressure and guilt when their circumstances do not align with that ideal. These considerations are especially relevant in communities where safe drinking water and infant formula are readily available, making formula feeding or combination feeding safe options.
Holding these truths together means recognizing that promoting breastfeeding and centering maternal well-being are not competing priorities but complementary ones: children flourish when the women caring for them are healthy, supported, and empowered to make informed choices for themselves and their families.
Some of the resources below offer additional perspectives on the complexities of infant feeding, including a “fed is best” perspective.
Featured MediaWatch:
Indigenous Milk Is Medicine from director Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo) and the American Indian Cancer Foundation
Andrea McLean on letting go of breastfeeding pressure from Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby Podcast
Read:
‘For the women who gave birth in the dark’: a portrait of motherhood in Gaza from The Guardian
When breast isn’t best by Laura Frances Callahan in Aeo
Listen:
Midwifing a Movement: Birth Centers and the Care Economy – Bioneers Radio & Podast episode
Trump Destroyed USAID. Now People Are Dying. Reveal Podcast episode
Earth Altars by Laura LoescherThe post LFF Volume #29: Across Borders, a New Vision for Maternal Care appeared first on Bioneers.
Petition: Justice for Sinhue Garcia. Safer roads and support for migrant workers now.
Sinhue Garcia, a migrant farmworker from Mexico, was killed while riding his bicycle in rural Niagara-on-the-Lake. He leaves behind a wife, two children, and many loved ones. He is not the first. At least six other migrant farmworkers have been killed or seriously injured on Niagara roads in recent years.
Send the email nowWe grieve with Sinhue’s family, friends, co-workers, and the migrant worker community. But his death is not an isolated tragedy.
Migrant farmworkers keep Niagara’s farms, greenhouses, wineries, restaurants, and food system running. Too many have no choice but to travel long rural roads by bike or on foot, often at night, without safe transportation, wide shoulders, bike lanes, proper lighting, or access to public transit.
This is a public safety crisis and reflects serious gaps in road infrastructure, housing, workplace protections, and political responsibility.
We are calling for action at every level of government.- Safer roads and transportation, including lighting, protected shoulders and bike lanes, lower speeds, and traffic calming.
- Worker-led road safety planning, with dangerous routes identified by workers, acted on, and publicly reported.
- Safe and dignified housing, with stronger standards and enforcement.
- More control over work schedules and protection from reprisals, so workers can make decisions about their own safety.
- A coroner’s inquest, compensation, and support for injured workers and families of workers who die in Canada.
- Permanent resident status so migrant workers can speak up, change jobs, and exercise their rights without fear.
Migrant workers are not disposable. They are our neighbours, co-workers, friends, and community members. They deserve to live with dignity.
Send an email now to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada, and election candidates.
This petition is co-hosted by Niagara Community Legal Clinic, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change and other local migrant worker organizations.
Send the emailAdd your name. You can edit the message before sending.
One message goes to all listed decision-makers. It takes less than two minutes. Every message increases public pressure. Migrant workers feed our communities, care for our families, and keep the economy running. Safe roads, safe work, support and permanent resident status cannot wait.The post Petition: Justice for Sinhue Garcia. Safer roads and support for migrant workers now. first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
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Challenging American Patriarchy at Its Roots
Sociologist, storyteller, and best-selling author Anna Malaika Tubbs calls for dismantling the key system that has determined who actually gets to be considered human in the United States: The American patriarchy. She says that transforming the forefathers’ vision of a republic of men requires deep change at the personal, community, and national levels.
FeaturingAnna Malaika Tubbs, Ph.D. is a bestselling author and leading multidisciplinary expert on race, gender, and equity. Her most recent bestselling book is Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us (2025).
Lisa Rudman, Partnership Director at the San Francisco Public Press, a local investigative newsroom, is a lesbian feminist journalist, media professional and environmentalist.
Credits- Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
- Written by: Stephanie Welch and Emily Harris
- Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
- Producer: Teo Grossman
- Associate Producer and Program Engineer: Emily Harris
- Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast TranscriptNeil Harvey (Host): After 250 years of existence as a republic, the United States stands as a symbol of many things to many people. Some struggle every day to counter the popular notion that the U.S. is a thriving democracy. They work to shed light on how the country has always been separate and unequal for Black people and other people of color, and how the patriarchal structure that the founding fathers crafted from the very beginning remains firmly embedded in the systems that shape U.S. society.
As a scholar and author, Anna Malaika Tubbs has carefully studied how patriarchy and systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism intersect and reinforce one another.
In a conversation at a Bioneers Conference, Lisa Rudman, Partnership Director at the San Francisco Public Press, spoke with Anna Malaika Tubbs about her book Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us, and strategies to move beyond this deeply embedded and destructive system.
Lisa Rudman (LR): Anna is a New York Times best-selling author and multi-disciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender and equity, with a PhD in sociology and a Master’s in multi-disciplinary gender studies from the University of Cambridge, in addition to a Bachelor’s in medical anthropology from Stanford. You see why I wanted to go through this. [LAUGHTER]
Anna Malaika Tubbs (AMT): I’m just a nerd, just a proud nerd. [LAUGHTER]
LR: Anna translates her academic knowledge into stories that are clear – that is true – and engaging.
Please join me in welcoming Anna Malaika Tubbs. [APPLAUSE]
AMT: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
LR: You made a distinction earlier that I think is a good segue. You said, you know, in America, we like to talk about patriarchy everywhere else. You specifically talk about the brand of American patriarchy. I really want you to start there, and if you can define what you mean by both those words together, both those words separately, anywhere you want to take that.
Lisa Rudman and Anna Malaika Tubbs speaking at Bioneers 2026. Source: @annamalaikatubbsAMT: Yes. I love defining it. It’s one of my favorite things to do. So thank you. And I’ll say, when I wanted to talk about American patriarchy, it’s not because I think that it’s the worst patriarchy in the world. I’m really not in the business of ranking patriarchies. They’re all bad. [LAUGHTER] We’ll just say that. But I think that we haven’t spoken as much about patriarchy in the United States. And I think that, from what I’ve observed and from what I’ve studied, patriarchy operates differently in each of the places that it exists.
And so our definition of patriarchy has often really been reduced to this notion that it’s about men against women. That’s not the case. That’s not the definition of patriarchy. It’s actually about how we define who gets to be human in any nation, and that changes, right, from place to place. So patriarchy in the U.S. is different than patriarchy in India. It’s different than patriarchy in France. It’s different.
And so, in the U.S., I point to the founding fathers, and that doesn’t mean that they created patriarchy. Right? Obviously, they’re taking from the monarchy, etc. But when we’re looking at each nation, we can really point to the leaders who chose patriarchy. So we have to remember patriarchy is not divine. It’s not the natural order. It wasn’t our first way of organizing ourselves. Right? Indigenous people organized themselves very differently. There still made of—might have been some elements of patriarchy, but it’s different than what we’re seeing right now.
And so, in 1776, if we just all go back to look at the founding fathers for a second, they win the Revolutionary War. This is a surprise to everybody. They were the underdogs. They weren’t expecting to win. [LAUGHS] No one was really expecting them to win. Many of them were young men. They are very fearful that this revolutionary spirit is going to spread across this new nation, because they’re also oppressing a lot of people who they needed to win the Revolutionary War, so they’re oppressing the women in their lives, they’re certainly oppressing Indigenous people, they’re certainly oppressing people who are enslaved – Black people. So they’re very afraid of what happ—they’re oppressing poor people, poor farmers, especially. They’re afraid of what would happen if that revolution spreads.
And so the period of time between writing—or the Declaration of Independence, winning the Revolutionary War, and then writing the Constitution, we all—we see several rebellions taking place, one of them, the most famous, being Shay’s Rebellion. It’s the thing that makes them want to go and write the Constitution, because they’re worried that they couldn’t actually quell this rebellion fast enough, and they want to form a national military, mainly inspired by and—a local conflict, not an international one. So they’re motivated to write the Constitution and decide who is going to get to have power in this nation. This is when we choose patriarchy – they do. And they say that they want to create a republic of men.
Anna Malaika Tubbs. Source: annamalaikatubbs.comSo the Constitution tells us that they are the ones that are going to get to own land. They are the ones that are going to get to vote. There’s a lot of other things they’re going to get to do, but these are two of the primary ones. They, on purpose, leave out women. And we see in the letters that they write to their mothers, to their wives, to their daughters, that women should not participate politically. They do not want that to happen.
“Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight. I am sure every good Politician would plot, as long as he would against Despotism, Empire, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Ochlocracy.”
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776
Now this is not just a sign of the times, because there are other countries that are choosing differently. In fact, we see in France, not that women could vote, but that women could have Parisian salons where they talk about politics and voice their opinions, at the very least they’re allowed to talk about it. And Thomas Jefferson says that this is going to ruin France. And so he says, in particular in the United States, we will not repeat the mistakes of the French.
So they’re aware there are other ways and other things that they could choose. They choose a republic of men.
So they define women as those who are simply meant to reproduce the power of men through children. This is where we get the binary in the United States, of—there’s a man that’s recognized, there’s woman that’s recognized. Clearly that’s leaving out a lot of people who they’re not recognizing as neither man nor woman, so they create a problematic binary. But then we have, in the Constitution, clauses to protect the institution of slavery. So they’re not including Black people in the definition that’s already limited of man and woman. They’re not including Indigenous populations. They’re not including immigrants from that point forward. They’re no longer including them. They’re not really including poor white people either. They make it up to the states to decide if people who don’t own property can vote. It was really important to some of the founding fathers it would only be people who could—who owned property who would be allowed to participate.
So then all these people who are excluded from notion of man and woman are told: You’re not going to be treated as human beings, however, you may some day be treated as human beings if you assimilate to the two groups that are recognized. And if you do your part to protect this social order, then one day you might be able to ascend this made-up ladder of humanity. And that’s where the trick of so many people who are not included in it fully still support it, protect it, because they think some day they’ll be able to get there.
And so all of American history can really be summarized by a group of people who loved that social order, who thought this is the way that this nation needs to be organized, who said that that was democracy, but it’s not democracy, because democracy means that power is vested in the people, all of the people. So we’ve not actually experienced that. So what we’ve actually experienced is American patriarchy.
But then you have a part of American history, the other part of it, which were all the people who were not included but who did not fall for the trick, and who said: This is not good enough, this is not democracy; we can get closer to democracy. The more that we include people, then we will be closer to that ideal, and that has been the tug of war of American history ever since.
LR: You have to. Yeah, I mean…[LAUGHTER]
To your point about these structures and systems are not accidental, they get set up, they… give power and privilege to certain people, it’s not about a conspiracy, it’s saying this is not an accident. And so I’m going to ask you, how do you see, then, the structures and systems of white supremacy and racism interlocking with American patriarchy? Because even though this book is defining American patriarchy, I’m trying to think of gender binaryism and – it’s more than sexism. It’s really about everything underneath that umbrella. So how do you see those systems interlocking and working? And maybe there’s a story from the book that you want to refer to.
AMT: Yeah. So I see American patriarchy encompassing all of those -isms, because if you’re saying that people who are enslaved are not counting as man or woman, that’s how we’re furthering the justification of racism in the United States. And if you’re saying that people who don’t own land cannot participate, that’s where we have classism. If we’re saying that in order for us to be human we must be man or woman, of course, you’re leaving out people who are non-binary, and you’re very specifically erasing many Indigenous belief systems that did recognize people beyond this gender binary. It’s where all of it kind of stems from under first telling us that you either have to be a man or a woman.
And so, in a way, we’ve all been told that we’re kind of fighting for our right to be gendered in the United States, that gender becomes our path to humanity. But it’s not just gender, it’s white elite gender. So it is all of those things. That’s why American patriarchy is really unique. That’s where—That’s the difference.
And as an example, if—in the example that I gave earlier, where the founding fathers are saying we are the ones who get to have power, we are the ones who get to have status, and the women in our lives are solely meant to reproduce that status through children, if we look instead at Black women at the time, Black women who are enslaved, the law was saying that their children were not children but were somebody else’s property, and that no matter how a Black woman came to have children – and we know that there horrific ways in which this has happened – no matter how, that child would always carry the status of the mother. So this is a direct opposite definition than what they’re showing of the white male.
So this is why, in many ways historically, Black women have been seen as the antithesis of that power. But what I argue is that actually that, having been so separated from it, is the power that Black women hold, because if you were told by law you’re not a human being, your children are not human beings, in fact, you’re somebody else’s property, Black women don’t go, oh, well, if the law says it, it must be true. [LAUGHTER] Instead, you immediately wake up to the con, and you say this is BS, this is made up; I don’t believe you, and therefore I need to make up something else; I need to create new systems; I need to reclaim systems before patriarchy; and I need to make this nation worthy of me, worthy of my children. That is how progress has happened in the United States. That’s how change has happened. It’s not ever been that those who loved the original social order woke up one day and said: [SIGHS] I feel like giving people their rights today. You know? I’ve changed my mind. They deserve their rights. No. It’s been that those who did not have those rights guaranteed to them, they grabbed it with their hands, they fought, they bled, they sacrificed. They made it so that we made it to where we are today.
July 4, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly depicting slaves escaping to a Union ship in the Combahee River Raid, organized by Harriet Tubman. Source: Library of CongressAnd so when we’re having even conversations right now, where so many people are saying this is the worst it’s ever been, we don’t know what to do, that is just a complete misunderstanding of American history, quite frankly. This is a continuation of the pattern, and now we’re being called to fight like those who had to redefine and make new systems, and claim those rights and protect them.
Host: More from Anna Malaika Tubbs and Lisa Rudman when we return…
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature.
Host: Let’s return to the conversation with Anna Malaika Tubbs and Lisa Rudman… Waging a fundamental challenge to the American patriarchal system, Anna says, requires solidarity and looking to the long tradition of collective struggle in the United States, which has repeatedly confronted and reshaped American institutions.
Lisa asked Anna about the role of white women in sustaining and challenging patriarchal structures—a complicated dynamic, given that white women both benefit from, and are harmed by, those structures.
AMT: So white women…So the reason—And I will say it first, too. My mom was a white woman, so I’m also going to talk about the allyship of white women, but first I want to talk about the problematic part. A lot of people ask this question: Why are white women voting for Trump? Why are they protecting this? What is—You know, this is not in their best interests, and they’re voting against themselves, all those things. But if you understand American patriarchy, you understand that actually, in a lot of ways, they’re not, in their minds, voting against their interests, because in American patriarchy, they’re at least recognized, they’re seen. If we’re looking at the scale that I described, and you have the white elite man, and then you have the wife connected to him who has a role to play – you can talk about “trad wives” if we want to – she has a role to play in reproducing the power of that man. And we see that everyone else has just said you don’t get any of this recognition. Okay? Well, in that case, that person is saying I kind of would like to stay in this; I have some proximity to this power.
So, similar to what I was saying earlier around how Black women were cast so far away from that power, that they see it very clearly; they’re not trying to fall for the trick, those who have any proximity to the power can be fooled.
LR: A little more erased for them?
AMT: Yeah. They can be closer to it. They want to replicate it. They want to protect it. They want to play their role in it.
But that’s not all white women. And so in the book I also talk about allyship. I talk a lot about how my mom, in particular—it’s something that I took for granted because she’s my mom. I wasn’t really even thinking of her obviously in the sense of an ally, but the more I had conversations with people who struggled with allyship and what it means to be an ally, I realized that there was a lot that they could learn from my mom, because my mom never said to me that she knew, because she was a woman too, what it would be like to be a Black woman. Never. In fact, she said, “I don’t know what that is like, but I will do my part to learn; I will walk alongside you.” And similar to what I was saying earlier about Black mothers, she said, “I will do what I need to do to make this world worthy of you, my child.” And that’s allyship.
So even if it doesn’t—you don’t feel like you know exactly that experience, you have to see what it means to change this world for all of us to be included.
LR: And you don’t need to be stuck, if I can say, in the essentialism of who you are. You need to recognize that. You might feel guilty for a couple minutes, but guilt is not really motivating emotion, really—doesn’t really get you into change. But then you can decide where you want to be—What I always say, like, in relationship to struggle. And really, it’s beautiful what you said about your mother saying my relationship is to change the world to deserve you.
You get to choose how you want to—and it might mean you have to give up some stuff to move away from that proximity to power, and to join with people who—who you know are really fighting for the new world.
AMT: Yeah. And the thing is it’s this trick of power and what that means. Right? Everybody’s losing in this system. It’s hurting everybody. It’s hurting those who were supposed to be the primary beneficiaries. Even, you know, white men who seem to have it all, if they are not aware of the trick of this system, they’re actually experiencing really high levels of depression, drug dependency. People don’t realize there’s a lot of pain, no matter where you fall in this system. And that’s where those who have kind of woken up to it, to the con, choose allyship, choose let’s stop trying to ascend this ladder, it’s made up; the system isn’t working; let’s try to change the system versus let me try to thrive within it.
LR: Yeah. And individually navigating a way as opposed to collectively seeing where liberation is.
You talk about “breaking free”, so we want to talk about what we can do and how to actually work together. But I know that you have some more to say about men particularly, and fear, how fear motivates a certain amount of staying stuck in what’s not really even good for any humans.
AMT: Yeah. I think that anything that comes from fear and insecurity is going to lead to control. It’s going to lead to having to silence parts of yourself that keep you from being vulnerable, that keep you from being an actual human being. You know, obviously the violence that’s been waged against women is not something that I’m trying to minimize by any means, and so much of that has come from men not being allowed to be fully human. And so there is just a conversation to be had there.
And then in terms of the layers of how we start to break free from this, I think the first layer is it happens on a personal level. This book is deeply personal for a reason. I want the reader to also really take kind of—to see how it’s operating in your own life, first of all, how are you speaking about yourself to yourself. For many of us, we really have internalized the notion of I am supposed to be quiet, I am supposed to be in the background, I am supposed to allow somebody to talk to me any kind of way. Or we’ve internalized I’m supposed to dominate, people are supposed to listen to me— so what’s going on internally? That’s going to be really important as a step. And all of this can happen simultaneously, it doesn’t have to be one at a time. But internal work is really important.
The second part is in our relationships, we may be replicating American patriarchy, whether that’s in our friendships, whether that’s in romantic relationships, certainly within parenting. If we look at our children and we’re thinking, actually, I need to just tell you how the world works right now, and you need to fit into that; or are asking them something June Jordan said is that “when a child is born, the world begins again”. And if we look at children in that way, instead we think what beautiful new world are they carrying, and how do I protect that as much as possible. That would be the opposite of American patriarchy. But if we’re saying to them: This is how things work, and this is how you need to do it, and this is the box you need to fit in, that’s one way in which we’re replicating it. So then we need to analyze it on that relationship level.
Public domain image donated by Robert “Bob” SimpsonThe third level is really kind of one of the most important. This is the community level. This is where we see new systems forming all the time. This is actually where change happens always first, is at the community level. It doesn’t happen nationally first. It always happens where a neighbor sees a mother who needs help with childcare, and they help; where a person says, “It doesn’t make sense that children don’t have food,” and let’s say the Black Panther Party, they make free meal systems. Right? These are where we see the models of what the world could look like. If we look at American history and we look at Black American history in particular, the Black church was one example. There’s other issues with—we could talk about the Black church, but the good parts have been meeting the community needs and creating a nation within a nation. It’s why so many of the powerful orators in American history have come from Black church, because that was one of the first places where they were allowed to speak as human beings, and be taken seriously.
And then, that’s when you actually start to see something take hold on a national level, because people have been able to see it operating. And so they then advocate for that on a political or policy level. And that’s really kind of like a fourth layer of change.
So, yes, it can feel very daunting when you’re coming up against American patriarchy because it’s in all of our experiences. It’s in all of our systems. Every law that came out of this vision of insecurity, every—the medical system, you know, why Black women are dying at such high rates when they go in to give birth, all of it comes back to this. And we’re not just—None of us are going to solve this on our own. It’s not going to be one person who brings the solution to everything, but if we recognize that we’re a part of a larger team of people in this tug of war, and we recognize the needs of those around us, and we recognize that we actually have the power to always create something new in every single one of our interactions, you can start right away.
And the final part is that when we talk about people saying: We don’t know what to do right now; this is so scary. I’m not minimizing how scary it is, I agree. It’s scary. It’s one of the scary times. But this is when you really learn how people have done this in the past. What did they create together in order to achieve change, in order for us to have many years of, honestly, privilege that we’ve forgotten what it means to be brave? This is the time to study them. We know how to live differently every single day. We have the tools, we have the stories. If we’re not doing so, that’s just our choice.
Host: “Challenging American Patriarchy at Its Roots” with Anna Malaika Tubbs and Lisa Rudman
The post Challenging American Patriarchy at Its Roots appeared first on Bioneers.
ACTION ALERT: Pittsburgh City Council Considers New Slush Fund for Downtown Developers—on our Dime
Developers are asking Pittsburgh City Council to vote on another major tax giveaway scheme – giving up to $200 million dollars to a handful of Downtown private real estate companies, without any requirements around public benefit. This vote to implement the Downtown Transit Revitalization Improvement District (TRID) will divert tax revenue from the Strip District, Downtown and the North Shore for the next 40 (!) years into the coffers of private corporations.
Right now, when working people and our public agencies are struggling to make ends meet, Pittsburgh City Council is being asked (via the Urban Redevelopment Authority) to hand the Golden Triangle yet another golden ticket.
Take Action: Tell Council to fund neighborhoods, not developers What is the TRID proposal?A TRID is a type of legislation intended to fund transit improvements—but this one won’t do that. Instead, here’s how this proposal would work:
- The City (i.e., taxpayers) would initially borrow $50 million to invest exclusively in the TRID area: the Strip District, parts of the North Shore, and Downtown. This money would effectively be a grant paid to wealthy developers, with the City gambling on future tax revenue to pay down the debt.
- Many Downtown developers are concurrently challenging their commercial property assessments, so that they could pay lower taxes in the future.
- Many Downtown developers are concurrently challenging their commercial property assessments, so that they could pay lower taxes in the future.
- Only 20% of this money would be invested in public infrastructure—but they’ve not named any particular public projects that would benefit. By contrast, the remaining 80% has been earmarked for specific, private, for-profit real estate developers.
- All future public tax dollars from Downtown, the Strip District, and the North Shore for the next 40 years would be diverted to a “Golden Triangle Reinvestment Fund”, exclusively financing development in a small pocket of Downtown. This fund would be controlled by the non-elected Urban Redevelopment Agency (URA)—not City Council, a public body that is accountable to the public.
Members of Pittsburgh City Council and the Mayor’s administration have said that we are facing a massive City budget crisis. So why are they fast-tracking a $200 million handout to Downtown developers, with almost no public process?
What’s at stakeWe have already given almost a billion dollars to Downtown developers in tax breaks over the past 5 years. Enough is enough.
Our communities deserve so much more: public transit infrastructure, affordable housing, local food initiatives, street and sidewalk repairs, childcare programs and more. These are critical investments for the well-being of our City—and we cannot fund them if our City Councilmembers signs away millions in tax dollars to private developers for the next four decades.
Transit riders must tell our elected officials to vote NO on implementing the Downtown Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID). Public dollars – whether borrowed or generated from tax revenue – should be invested across all communities – from Fairywood to Fineview, Brookline to Bloomfield. Our resources should be allocated through the annual City budgeting process, with robust public input to ensure that our tax resources are distributed equitably and address the needs of the moment.
We say: no more handouts to Downtown corporations until our neighborhoods, our small businesses, our workers and our students are given their fair share!
Take Action NowAfter you send a letter, CALL your City Councilmember to urge them to vote NO (find your councilmember here):
- District 1 (Northside, Strip District, Parts of Downtown):
Bobby Wilson (412) 255-2135 - District 2 (West End, Sheraden, Elliott, Banksville):
Kim Salinetro (412) 255-8963 - District 3 (Oakland, Southside, Arlington, Allentown):
Bob Charland (412) 255-2130 - District 4 (Beechview, Brookline, Carrick, Overbrook):
Anthony Coghill (412) 255-2131 - District 5 (Greenfield, Hazelwood, Lincoln Pl, Swisshelm Park):
Barb Warwick (412) 255-8965 - District 6 (Manchester, Downtown, The Hill, Uptown, Perry Hilltop):
Danielle Lavelle (412) 255-2134 - District 7 (Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, Stanton Heights) :
Deb Gross (412) 255-2140 - District 8 (Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Oakland):
Erika Strassburger (412) 255-2133 - District 9 (East Liberty, Larimer, Homewood, Garfield):
Khari Mosley (412) 255-2137
The post ACTION ALERT: Pittsburgh City Council Considers New Slush Fund for Downtown Developers—on our Dime appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Transporte Público para la Gente: Únete a la campaña de Socios 2026
Me llamo Evelyn Ulysse Alcántara. Uso el transporte público a diario para ir al trabajo, al médico, actividades de ocio, reuniones, llevar a mi hijo al colegio— para todo.
Soy latina y mi inglés no es perfecto, así que cuando me mudé a Pittsburgh me costó usar el transporte público porque había muy poca información disponible en español. Por eso me ofrecí de voluntaria para ayudar como embajadora en los Recorridos de tránsito de PPT. Fue muy frustrante y aislante intentar aprender a usar el sistema de transporte público por mi cuenta. Sabía que si podía hacer algo para apoyar el aprendizaje de mi comunidad, ¡tenía que hacerlo!
Ser miembro de PPT no solo ha mejorado mis propias necesidades de transporte. Me abrió la puerta para ayudarme a marcar la diferencia.
Cuando hubo recortes en el transporte público en Beechview, hubo ocasiones en que el autobús o el Tren no venían—y no sabía la razón, porque los cambios sólo se comunicaban en inglés. Pero hoy, si vas a Steel Plaza o Wood Street Station, ¡escucharás anuncios en español! Y hay instrucciones paso a paso en español en la web de PRT. Esto se debe a que PPT y Casa San José se unieron para dar voz a mi comunidad, para que PRT pudiera entender el verdadero impacto que esto estaba teniendo en nosotros.
Este es el verdadero poder de PPT: realmente escuchan a la gente.
Cuando descubrí que PPT, me pedían testimonios sobre el papel que tiene el transporte público en la vida de las personas, para mostrar lo importante que sería un programa de media tarifa. Sabía que tenía que dar mi testimonio, porque necesitábamos actuar para mejorar el acceso. En aquel entonces solo era una idea y un proyecto, pero hoy es una realidad que lleva el servicio de transporte a la gente.
Me encanta el PPT porque sé de primera mano lo que podemos lograr juntos.
Solo en 2026:
- Llevamos a 120 miembros a Harrisburg para arrojar luz sobre la brecha presupuestaria de 80 millones de dólares y enfatizar la importancia de los servicios para tránsito y viajes compartidos para nuestros representantes.
- Compartimos habilidades y construimos poder con 170 personas de todo el país, compartimos habilidades y construyeron poder en nuestro Entrenamiento de Primavera 2026.
- Formamos a 13 becarios de organización comunitaria en toda la colina del barrio de PGH, y las regiones de Lancaster y Lehigh Valley en Pensilvania.
Por eso quería preguntar: ¿apoyarán el trabajo urgente de PPT haciéndote miembro que paga cuotas hoy?
Puedes apuntarte por solo 2,75 $, ¡el precio actual del billete de autobús del PRT! Ese dinero va directamente a la defensa de un presupuesto de transporte que mueve a TODOS los habitantes de Pensilvania. Todo el mundo merece acceso al transporte público.
¿Nos ayudarás a hacer realidad ese sueño?
The post Transporte Público para la Gente: Únete a la campaña de Socios 2026 appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Transit for the People: Join the 2026 Member Drive
Image Description: Evelyn Ulysse Alcantara, a dark-skinned woman in a red PPT shirt, smiles in front of a collaged picture of Pittsburgh
I’m a mother and member of the Latino community fighting with PPT for a transit system that truly serves everyone. Will you join me by becoming a dues-paying member? Donate to become a PPT member!My name is Evelyn Ulysse Alcantara. I use public transportation daily for going to work, the doctor, leisure activities, meetings, bringing my son to school—everything.
I’m Latina and my English isn’t perfect, so when I first moved to Pittsburgh I struggled to use public transportation because there was so little information available in Spanish. This is why I volunteered to help be an ambassador for PPT’s Transit Tours. It was so frustrating and isolating to try and learn how to use the system by myself. I knew that if I could do something to support my community’s learning, I had to do it!
Being a PPT member hasn’t just improved my own transit needs. It opened the door to help me make a difference.
When there were cuts to transit in Beechview, there were times the bus or T didn’t come—and I didn’t know why because the changes were only communicated in English. But today, if you go to Steel Plaza or Wood Street Station, you’ll hear announcements in Spanish! And there are step by step instructions in Spanish on PRT’s website. This is because PPT and Casa San Jose came together to uplift my community’s voice, so that PRT could understand the true impact this was having on us.
This is PPT’s real power: they truly listen to the people.
When I first found out about PPT, they were asking for testimonies about the role transit has in people’s lives, to show how important a half-fare program would be. I knew I had to give my testimony, because we needed to take action to improve access. Back then it was just an idea, but today it’s a reality that brings transit service to the people!
I love PPT because I know firsthand what we can accomplish together.
In 2026 alone, we have:
- We brought 120 members to Harrisburg to shed light on the $80 million dollar transit budget gap, and emphasise the importance of paratransit and shared ride services to our representatives.
- We trained 13 community organizing fellows across the Hilltop neighborhood of PGH, and the Lancaster and Lehigh Valley regions of PA.
- Shared skills and built power with 170 people from across the country at our 2026 Spring Training.
That’s why I wanted to ask: will you support PPT’s urgent work by becoming a dues-paying member today?
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From remunicipalisation to the democracy of the commons
By Vanessa Mascia Turri
Naples became one of Europe’s most ambitious experiments in democratic water governance after Italy’s 2011 referendum against water privatisation. Yet bringing water back into public hands did not necessarily redistribute power over how water itself would be governed.
In 2011, after the Italian referendum against water privatisation, Naples became one of the most ambitious experiments in remunicipalised water governance in Europe. The city transformed its water utility into ABC Napoli (Acqua Bene Comune Napoli), a publicly owned entity presented not simply as a return to public management, but as an attempt to implement the “democracy of the commons” theorised by the Italian Forum of Water Movements.
Within this perspective, water was understood not only as a public service, but as a common good whose governance should involve the direct participation of citizens and social movements.
Over the following decade, Naples became a testing ground for a broader political question that has emerged across many remunicipalisation struggles: what happens when the language and practices of the commons enter public institutions? The Neapolitan experience shows that bringing water back into public hands does not automatically democratise its governance. Instead, participation became continuously negotiated and reshaped through political conflict, financial pressures and struggles over who should control public resources.
From water struggles to the democracy of the commonsSince the early 2000s, struggles against water privatisation have connected local mobilisations to broader debates around the commons. Struggles against water privatisation in Europe have often gone beyond opposition to market reforms and increasingly connected demands for public ownership with broader claims around the commons and direct democracy, as explored throughout the Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water series. In many countries, water movements have challenged not only privatisation, but also the idea that essential services should be governed through technocratic and top-down forms of management, increasingly linking water struggles to broader claims around the commons and direct democracy, as discussed in Transforming capitalism? The role of the commons and direct democracy in struggles against water privatisation in Europe.
In Italy, these debates converged in the Italian Forum of Water Movements, one of the broadest water movements in Europe. As broader discussions around the commons in Italy have shown, these debates extended well beyond water itself and raised wider questions about collective resources, democracy and institutional change. Under the slogan “si scrive acqua, si legge democrazia” (“it is written water, it is read democracy”), the movement argued that remunicipalisation should involve not only public ownership, but also direct civic participation in water governance.
Naples became the most ambitious attempt to translate this political vision into institutional practice.
Poster from the 2011 Italian referendum campaign against water privatization reading “Water is not for sale.” Image courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua.
Naples became the most ambitious attempt to translate this political vision into institutional practice.
Yet public and academic debates on remunicipalisation have often focused on privatisation conflicts and legal transitions, paying far less attention to what happens afterwards. How are participatory mechanisms actually organised inside remunicipalised utilities? How much power are institutions willing to share with social movements and citizens once remunicipalisation has taken place?
My article From theory to practice: evaluating civic participation in Naples’ remunicipalised water service examines these questions through the case of ABC Napoli, reconstructing how participation was progressively organised, contested and reshaped during the decade following remunicipalisation.
Participation and the limits of the commonsAt the moment of remunicipalisation, Naples faced deteriorated infrastructures, chronic underinvestment and a massive municipal public debt. For many activists of the Neapolitan water movement, remunicipalisation was therefore not only about public ownership, but also about transforming the priorities of water governance through ecological restoration, infrastructural investment and more equitable access to water.
Over the following decade, ABC Napoli experimented with different forms of civic participation. Initially, the municipal government opened the board of directors to representatives linked to the Italian Forum of Water Movements and to environmental associations. Yet local activists who had led the mobilisation against privatisation were largely excluded from these arrangements, generating immediate tensions over who had the legitimacy to participate in the governance of the utility.
The most ambitious participatory experiment emerged with the creation of the Civic Council, a public assembly open to citizens, activists and ABC workers. Meetings were held directly inside the company and addressed issues such as tariffs, infrastructure maintenance, hiring policies and investment priorities. Delegates from the assemblies also participated in discussions with the board of directors, creating one of the most advanced attempts in Europe to institutionalise direct civic participation inside a remunicipalised water utility.
However, participation became far more conflictual once these assemblies started intervening in concrete political and economic questions. Members of the Civic Council promoted long-term infrastructural investments and the recruitment of specialised personnel while defending the financial stability of the utility. According to several interviewees, these priorities increasingly clashed with those of the municipal government, which was more focused on short-term employment policies and the management of public-sector jobs within a broader context marked by debt, unemployment and political pressures surrounding public employment.
These tensions ultimately led to the removal of the board of directors and to the progressive weakening of participatory governance. In the following years, participation increasingly shifted towards weak consultative mechanisms with limited influence over decision-making processes. Many activists gradually distanced themselves from the experiment, while severe financial constraints continued to limit investments in infrastructures and ecological renewal.
Rather than evolving towards deeper forms of democratic governance, the Neapolitan experience progressively revealed the difficulties of institutionalising the “democracy of the commons” within existing municipal structures and political priorities.
Remunicipalisation without democratisation?Poster from the Italian public water movement following the 2011 referendum campaign, emphasising water as a public right rather than a source of profit. Image courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua.
The experience of ABC Napoli complicates many celebratory narratives surrounding remunicipalisation. Bringing water back into public hands did not automatically redistribute power inside public governance. On the contrary, the Neapolitan case shows how quickly the language of the commons can become absorbed into existing institutional structures once participation starts challenging concrete political and economic interests.
The weakening of participatory governance inside ABC Napoli did not result from a lack of civic mobilisation or technical expertise. Quite the opposite: activists involved in the water movement developed increasingly detailed proposals on tariffs, infrastructures and long-term investments, becoming capable of intervening directly in the governance of the utility. Participation became problematic precisely when it stopped being symbolic and started questioning how public resources, infrastructures and employment should be managed.
In Naples, these tensions unfolded within a broader context marked by public debt, deteriorated infrastructures, unemployment and long-standing systems of political mediation surrounding public-sector employment. Under these conditions, the “democracy of the commons” increasingly collided with the political and administrative logics shaping municipal governance.
More broadly, the Neapolitan experience suggests that remunicipalisation alone cannot democratise essential services without a real willingness from public institutions to share decision-making power. Commons become politically difficult when they move beyond participation as consultation and start demanding participation as co-governance.
Rather than offering a linear model of democratic transformation, Naples reveals the unresolved tensions that emerge when social movements attempt to institutionalise the commons inside existing state structures. The question, then, is not simply whether remunicipalisation is possible, but whether public institutions are truly willing to democratise the power through which public resources are governed.
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Featured image: Protest sign reading “Public water, public management. Clear?” during a demonstration of the Italian water movement. Photo courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (acquabenecomune.org).
The post From remunicipalisation to the democracy of the commons appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.
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