By Brandon Weber - The Progressive, March 16, 2016

Unions from all over the midwest have donated time, water, dollars, and more to help the residents of Flint, Michigan get through the water crisis that still rages on there.

Firefighters, electricians, nurses, teachers, teamsters, auto workers, plumbers, and government workers have been working to provide help and a sense of humanity in a situation that, frankly, lacks a lot of both. Many have come from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, as well as across the state of Michigan to help lend a hand where necessary, including installing water filters—all with volunteer labor.

“A lot of our members live here in the community,” said Jeff Peake, organizer at Local 370. “We have a responsibility to pay back.”

It’s a community that has been on hard times for decades. The one-two punch of auto plants moving to places like Mexico resulting in a loss of union jobs, combined with the further economic damage of the Great Recession, means this city, once boasting 200,000 people, has about half that these days, and just over 40 percent of them live at or below the poverty level. 

In an article from The Grio, one Flint resident talked about watching it change. “It was a wonderful place to grow up,” said Lynntoia Webster, thirty-two. “But I saw a lot of changes by the time I was in the ninth and tenth grade. I could see our economy was changing. People in my family were getting laid off from the auto industry, and that’s when it became not such a great place to live.”

Recently, Flint residents learned that General Motors switched back to the Detroit River for its water after just four months because the Flint River water was rusting the engines at one of its auto plants. The troubling story continues to unfold. It’s clear that the people of Flint took the hit, while business leaders and the state officials responsible for the crisis looked the other way.

There are still many things that need to happen for Flint to be safe again, like replacing corroding water pipes to houses in many neighborhoods, but things are finally progressing — thanks in large part to the help of organizations like Flint Rising, which is leading a grassroots effort to push for change.

By Ron Kaminkow - Railroad Workers United, March 15, 2016

Railroad Workers United (RWU) – a coalition of railroad workers drawn from all crafts across North America – applauds the efforts by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to restrict the use of single employee train operations, and demand a two-person crew as a minimum staffing requirement on trains.

RWU has taken an unequivocal stand against single employee operations since our founding convention in 2008. In 2010, the RWU Steering Committee reiterated our position in a formal resolution in opposition to single mployee train crews (see attached). And in 2012, we initiated a campaign of activities designed to build opposition to the carriers’ plans for universal single employee train operations.

“Our efforts - together with those of the unions of the rail operating crafts in the last few years - have brought this issue before the general public and the government”, states locomotive engineer and RWU General Secretary Ron Kaminkow. “The proposed rule by the FRA released on Monday is a major step forward in the fight against the dangerous and reckless proposal by the nation’s rail carriers to run trains with a lone employee. While the FRA Proposed Rule is far from perfect, providing loopholes and allowing for exemptions in too many instances, it is certainly a major stride in the right direction.”

RWU - along with the rail unions and various citizens groups - have also been pushing on the legislative front at both the state and federal levels for a law that would outlaw single employee train crew operations. A number of states - most recently California - have outlawed single employee train operations, while a dozen or so more have bills pending. At the federal level, HR #1763 if adopted, would make the minimum train crew size of two employees - a certified engineer and a certified conductor - the law of the land. Opinion polls that have been conducted on the question find that more than 80% of the U.S. population favor such a law.

RWU will prepare a written statement in the coming weeks to submit to the FRA in the hope of improving the Proposed Rule. In addition, the organization plans to keep up its educational work and continue to mobilize railroad workers, citizens groups and environmental organizations to get behind efforts to outlaw single crew operations of trains.

By John Foran - Resilience, March 14, 2016

Introduction

We are living through an unprecedented crisis, in a world beset by massive social problems – the obscene poverty and inequality that neoliberal capitalist globalization has wreaked on at least two-thirds of humanity, the immobility of the political elite almost everywhere, and cultures of violence that poison our lives from the most intimate relations to the mass murder of the world’s wars.

These interconnected problems are rooted in long-standing processes of inequality – patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, and now corporate-controlled globalization – whose ongoing, overlapping legacies are making the early twenty-first century a crucial hinge of history.

And now, with climate change, we are facing a perfect storm of suffering. In fact, given the timeline that climate science is screaming at us, we confront a crisis of humanity and of all species that must be resolved for better or worse by those living on this precarious planet today.  We are called by the urgency of the crisis to “change everything” as Naomi Klein puts it, and to do so in something like the next two decades.

With other observers, activists, and scholars I believe that only the assembling of the broadest, most powerful social movement the world has ever seen has a chance of doing this in the narrow window the science imposes on us. The movements for environmental, climate, and social justice that I have spent my life studying and now participate in must become much stronger than at present.  But my reading of world history leads me to believe that they can succeed.  They must, if we are to safely navigate the present crisis and even come out of it living in ways that are far more egalitarian, deeply democratic, and fulfilling than the world we presently inhabit.

Those of us who are academics (or journalists, or writers and creators of culture of every kind) need to focus our minds now, I think, on the “wicked” problem of climate change, to reinvigorate our own disciplines and work on our interdisciplinary skills (another way of saying learning how to connect the dots) and bring all this into a wide open dialogue, in ways that are consistent with the first principle of sociology, of ecology, of systems thinking, and, ironically enough, of Buddhism, as I understand it (and of Gaia theory, for that matter):  everything is connected.

How Strong is the Climate Justice Movement?

The movement I study and am part of is growing, getting bigger, stronger, smarter, more diverse, and more creative with every passing year – and that’s important.

But it’s still not enough.

The task – and the question on every scholar-activist’s mind – is how do we get from where we are to where we need to be?  And how do we do that thoughtfully, quickly, and for the long haul?

If I had to try to sum up the broad outlines of what the climate justice movement is planning going into 2016, it would be something like Resist, Rethink, Retool, Re-imagine…

By Traci - Energy Justice Network, March 12, 2016

IWW members are involved in this campaign.

A federal jury awarded two couples from Dimock, Pennsylvania 4.2 million dollars after finding Cabot Oil and Gas negligent for contaminating their well water during drilling for natural gas.

The plaintiffs in the case are Nolen “Scott” Ely and his family, and Ray Hubert and his family who live next to the Elys. The Ely family has lived in Dimock since the 1800’s.

The Dimock federal civil litigation, which began under the caption Norma Fiorentino, et al., v. Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation and Gassearch Drilling Services, Inc. in 2009, and concludes under the caption, Nolen Scott Ely, et al., v. Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, had its final verdict in United States District Court of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, located in Scranton, PA.
The panel awarded Mr. and Mrs. Ely $2.6 million and their three children $50,000 each. The Huberts were awarded $1.4 million, while another of their family members was awarded $50,000.

"It's been a battle," said plaintiff Scott Ely. "I mean, you're up against a multi multi multi million dollar company. We are the lucky ones in the case, but there are still many more families in the Dimock area who are still without the benefit of clean water.”

“This is a huge victory for Dimock families who have fighting for clean water for over six years. Finally justice has been served for Scott and Monica Ely, their three children, and their neighbors, the Huberts,” said Alex Lotorto, Shale Gas Program Coordinator for Energy Justice Network stated.

Cabot Oil & Gas states that they plan to appeal the ruling, but Lotorto said, “No matter the outcome, we have publicly disclosed all of the facts of the case for the world to see and the couples have beautiful children which is their greatest wealth.”

Except for a two year period when Cabot supplied these plaintiffs with water, since 2008, the Elys and Huberts have been living without reliable access to water and under rationing conditions. To survive day to day, these families haul water at their own expense every week for drinking, bathing and other daily basics.

Beginning in the fall of 2008, Dimock families noticed problems with their drinking water, and began to experience rashes, nausea, headaches and dizziness. A trigger point to the litigation was the explosion of Norma Fiorentino’s private water well on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2008 due to methane gas accumulation in the well head.

The case eventually included 22 families from Dimock and Springville Townships in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, who sought fair compensation for damages to their property and their lives caused by Cabot’s failed natural gas drilling operations.
The travails of these plaintiffs, as well as those of other Dimock families, have been chronicled in the HBO documentaries, Gasland I and Gasland II.

The federal case number is 3:09-cv-02284-MCC.

Energy Justice Network fiscally sponsored the legal fund for the case and have been working with the family since 2009.

Adopted by UA Local 393 in San Jose - US Labor Against the War, March 9, 2016

Whereas;  On March 3, 2016 the temperature across the northern hemisphere,  crossed a line.  For a short time it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history.  Governments are supposedly working to avoid crossing that so called “red line.” Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date.  Last month a tropical cyclone hit Fiji with the highest wind speeds ever measured, causing substantial regional destruction. Storms on Mexico’s West Coast have carried the highest wind speeds in history for months and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere unexpectedly surpassed 400 parts per million,  drastically changing the historical natural balance. This February we’ve seen record high temperatures. This is a glimpse into our climate changed future if we do nothing and,

Whereas; the Zika virus, spreading on the wings of mosquitos in the newly warmed climate, is attacking the brains of our babies, and we can expect a multitude of health effects to come out of climate changes in the environment, and

Whereas; the future is clearly coming much faster than science predicted. Global warming is no longer just a threat. It is increasingly a reality and a menace to our children, our loved ones and civilization as a whole, and

Whereas; almost all scientists agree that human use of fossil fuels propels climate change and that a rational approach to defend against the catastrophic effects of climate change is to leave most carbon fuels, coal, oil, and gas in the ground and develop new energy sources to serve our industries, homes, and economy - solar energy, wind energy and perhaps tidal energy, and

Whereas; the necessary changes the global community will need to make to prevent  catastrophic climate change in a positive way will have a powerful impact on the men and women who work in the pipe trades, and

Whereas; as our world and our industry evolves to prevent global catastrophe, many traditional UA and Building Trades jobs may no longer be needed, but with that change will come a tremendous upsurge in other technologies, such as solar power, wind power, tidal power, water reclamation, desalinization plants, and others that will offer monumental job opportunities to expand work for our members while ensuring a future for our children, so

Therefore Be It Resolved; that we call upon the United Association to form a Climate Change Commission of officers, members and scientific experts to study and develop plans that will respond to the new climate issues in a manner to best protect the needs of our members, our families, our people, our planet, and our Union.

By Wayne Price - Infoshop.org, January 11, 2016

Theorists of the climate-justice movement have been raising decentralist ideas as part of their programs for an ecologically-balanced society. This ecological program means more local democracy, workers’ management of industry, consumer coops, and federations of radically-democratic institutions. Such ideas revive the decentralist ideas of anarchism.

From conservatives and liberals to Marxists, there is faith in big machines, big industries, big corporations, big cities, big countries, big buildings, and big government—a belief in the necessity of centralized, bureaucratic, top-down, socially-alienated, institutions. This is not to say that most people like giant cities, big business, or big government; but they do not see any alternative.

Instead, anarchists have advocated localism, face-to-face direct democracy, self-governing agricultural-industrial communes, workers’ self-management of industry, consumer cooperatives, appropriate technology, and federations and networks of such radically-democratic institutions. Many people reject anarchism because they believe such decentralism to be unrealistic.

However, in our time there is a new development: writers and theorists of the ecology/environmental/climate-justice movement have been raising decentralist concepts as part of their programs. They include moderate liberals, radical ecologists, and even Marxists. Mostly they have no idea that they are redeveloping anarchism. I will examine this phenomenon.

By Dan Fischer - CounterPunch, March 8, 2016

Paul Krugman has been writing about “salvation”. When it comes to global warming, the normally hard-headed economist puts aside his skepticism and awaits the fall of solar panels from heaven. Or rather, from Democratic politicians and polluting industries that dominate their climate policies. In a 2014 piece “Salvation Gets Cheap,” Krugman contended that thanks to price drops in renewable energy, small policy changes could put salvation “within fairly easy reach.” In last month’s “Planet on the Ballot,” Krugman argued that electing Hillary Clinton president would mean “salvation is clearly within our grasp”.

“So is the climate threat solved? Well, it should be.” The progressive pundit offers countless feel-good predictions along these lines. A deeper look at Krugman’s words, however, reveals a disturbing indifference to the loss of millions of lives, livelihoods, and homes. Currently, an estimated 400,000 people die each year from climate change, 98 percent of them in the Global South, according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by twenty governments. Krugman looks away, instead seeing salvation in pathways that increase global warming far above today’s already genocidal amount.

While he mocks conservative climate change deniers, Krugman himself is in denial about the necessary solutions. A fast-paced transition, while technologically possible, is not compatible with economic growth. This presents a problem for Krugman, who has spent his career defending a capitalist economic system requiring infinite growth. “All that stands in the way of saving the planet,”the Nobel prize winner declares in “Salvation Gets Cheap,” “is a combination of ignorance, prejudice and vested interests.” Unfortunately, his own columns offer a vivid illustration. Krugman’s liberal climate denialism has five basic steps.

By Antifascist Front - Antifascist News, March 4, 2016

Authors' Note: Before we get started, we want to unequivacably say that we do not think that AdBusters is a fascist or fascist allied publication.  We enjoy a great deal of what they publish, support their project, and will continue to re-post articles, videos, and art from them.  Instead, AdBusters is just an example where the left creates open points that fascists can infiltrate.

The conventional political spectrum often betrays the actual process for radicalization that takes places on what we call the “far-right.”  The term far-right is often negated by comparative fascist studies scholars because it lacks clear boundaries.  Is it right populism?  Was Hitler on the far-right, or Ron Paul?  What we generally mean is anything that is within the fascism spectrum, from racialist to masculanist to other forms of militant right-wing politics.  The defining feature of fascism is that it adopts many aspects of the left, while maintaining the values of the far-right.  This means it may critique capitalism, argue for protection of the environment, and be anti-war, yet do it for reasons that are racialized, based on hierarchy, and opposed to democracy and equality.  It is because of this that they have found easy entry points into the left, often using a lack of ideological coherence or the willingness to be open to conflicting views if they share some political affinity.

Fascist infiltration in left spaces is reported reasonably often, from participation in Palestinian support work inspired by their anti-Semitism to points when the American Freedom Party or National Socialist Movement will join actions against the TPP.  When we get to vaguer left spaces, where analysis is growing and reshaping, this can be the perfect place to slide in and create doubt and complicate the analysis.

AdBusters has been a left institution for a couple of decades now.  Coming out of the “Culture Jamming” period of the 1990s, it was really founded on anti-globalization principles that were critical of global capitalism because of the way it destroys human interactions, replaces consciousness with vapid branding, and generally destroys the earth, communities, and free thinking through compulsive consumerism.  This type of analysis has become less and less popular since the 2008 financial crisis, largely because it is a critique of the excesses of capitalism.  Today, many people would love to have access to that kind of suburban wasteland, but as poverty and the inability to join the working middle class grows, the focus on capitalism’s effects at creating “boredom” and general affluence is less central.  That being said, they have continued to be an incredibly relevant publication, and they were the rhetorical beginning of Occupy Wallstreet, even if they did not do any real organizing work.

While they are often criticized for using the same flashy style as the media organizations they critique, they have used a beautiful design model to subvert conventional communication.  They also attempt to go beyond the analysis of the left at many points and forgo conventional political essays in favor of appeals that are often more emotional, narrative, and experimental.

Within this model, a clear political line is lacking, and they likely support having a diversity of voices.  Inside of that model, however, there has been a lacking of discernment for how some voices have become present.  Part of this comes from the willingness to include voices that would be controversial, even on the radical left, and part of it comes from a lack of understanding among the editors of what fascist crossover politics actually look like.

By Energy Justice Network - EcoWatch, March 3, 2016

IWW Members have been involved in this campaign:

Guarded by heavily armed U.S. marshals, a Constitution Pipeline tree crew began felling trees in the Holleran family’s maple sugaring stand Tuesday while upset landowners and protesters looked on.

The cutting began 11 days after Federal Judge Malachy Mannion dismissed charges of contempt against the landowners for allegedly asking a tree crew that had arrived on the property not to cut the trees. The charges were dismissed due to the prosecution’s inability to show enough evidence of violation of the February 2015 order that cited eminent domain in giving Constitution Pipeline Company permission to cut on the property without landowner permission. The judge expanded on the original order, adding a 150-foot “safety buffer” to be maintained around all tree-cutting activity, effectively extending the size of the Right of Way. All visitors and family members are remaining outside of the buffer while trees are being felled this week.

North Harford Maple is a family business owned by Cathy Holleran that produces maple sap and syrup utilizing their sugarbush, which includes 1,670 linear feet of the proposed 125-foot-wide right of way.

“I have no words for how heartbroken I am,” Megan Holleran, a family member and field technician for North Harford Maple, said. “We’ve been preparing for this for years, but watching the trees fall was harder than I ever imagined it would be.” She admits that she expected more compassion from the company, but was wrong. This week’s cutting will destroy 90 percent of the only sugarbush that the family owns. “They refused to see us as people and brought guns to our home,” she added.

In February 2015, Judge Mannion in Scranton ordered that the Holleran property and several others in Susquehanna County be condemned using eminent domain for the private use of Constitution Pipeline Company.

A partial Notice to Proceed with non-mechanized tree cutting was issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Friday, Jan. 29 for the Pennsylvania portion of the Constitution Pipeline. According to the deadline set by FERC, felling must be completed by March 31.

The Constitution Pipeline is a project of Williams Pipeline Companies and Cabot Oil & Gas to be used to transport shale gas obtained through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The right of way would be at least 100 feet wide, with additional intermittent 50 foot wide workspaces and access roads.

According to Kelly Finan on her Facebook wall, “In 2015, the Constitution Pipeline company used eminent domain to seize my best friend’s family maple stand for their natural gas pipeline in New Milford, PA. The family has not been compensated for their land. In New York, the permitting for the pipeline has not been completed, so the family argued that cutting trees on their property was preemptive. When the family politely denied tree crews access to their property last month, the company took the family to federal court in an attempt to have them fined and put in federal prison for violating the eminent domain court order. Today the company arrived on the property with assault rifle-bearing federal marshals. They cut down the trees.”

“If the American flag stands for anything,” Rich Garella said on Finan’s Facebook page, “it stands for the rights that are enshrined in the Constitution. These pipeline companies are misusing eminent domain and the courts are on the side of the companies. They are taking land, scarring our countryside and destroying livelihoods for the sake not of public use, but of private profit and nothing more.”

By x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 3, 2016

The IWW has long been associated, for better or worse, with the tactic of "sabotage", so much so that it has become an essential part of the Wobbly lexicon (even though the tactic predates the IWW by at least a century). As I have detailed elsewhere¹, the radical environmental movement, initiated principally, though not exclusively, by Earth First!, beginning in the very late 1970s in the United States, drew much cultural inspiration from the One Big Union (and to a much lesser degree, some of its economic critique of capitalism). One of the most celebrated such "borrowings" was the strategy of direct action.

A classic IWW slogan, which appeared on many of the IWW's literature and imagery, reads "direct action gets the goods". The black cat or the wooden shoe (otherwise known as a "sabot"), often associated with the IWW, symbolizes "sabotage," and these same symbols and slogans would later appear in Earth First! literature and iconography.

Earth First! cofounder, Dave Foreman popularized "monkeywrenching" (sometimes also called "ecofefense"), a series or class of tactics involving small bands of anonymous guerillas entering into wilderness areas slated to be developed or have their resources extracted and vandalized the equipment that was to be used in the process or set traps that would hamper the same equipment from smooth and timely operations. This has often been called sabotage (or sometimes ecotage).

However, sabotage and monkeywrenching are not the same thing. In fact, many who practice, or at least preach, using the latter do not understand the difference, and economic conditions which led to the adoption of the former by workers. Indeed, may of them don't understand sabotage at all, and that's no coincidence. What most people have heard or read about the IWW and "sabotage" is fairly inaccurate, and most accounts are more romantic fiction than historical fact.