Republican Party

By Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, April 30, 2023

By Kari Lyderson, Ron Kaminow, and Maximillian Alvarez - The Real News Network, April 26, 2023

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and David Grisco - Valley Labor Report, April 20, 2023

By Amna A. Akbar - Dissent, Spring 2023

On Saturday, March 4, I arrived at Intrenchment Creek Park in DeKalb County, Georgia, for the first day of a week of action against a $90 million construction project undertaken by the Atlanta Police Foundation—a private entity, backed by local CEOs and political leaders, that advances police interests. The foundation wants to raze eighty-five acres of public forest to build the largest police training facility in the United States, complete with a firing range, a burn building, and a “kill house” designed to mimic urban combat scenarios. It also argues that the facility will boost morale among officers. The size and scale of the project, and the destruction and deforestation it will require, have led a growing number of activists, organizers, and community members to object to what they call “Cop City.” The campaign against Cop City is simultaneously a campaign to defend the Weelaunee Forest, the name used for the area by the Muscogee Creek people forcibly displaced by settlers from the land in the early 1800s before it became the site of the notorious Atlanta Prison Farm. These elements of the campaign—the histories on which it draws, what it’s fighting against and for, who it is bringing together, and how—have given it tremendous staying power despite extraordinary odds.

Locals often describe Atlanta as “a city in a forest,” with trees and a tree canopy covering almost half of the land. The ecosystem depends on this foliage, and activists say that the deforestation required to build the facility will harm air quality, hasten climate change, and contribute to flooding in predominantly poor and working-class Black and brown communities. The proposed development will further distance residents from accessible green space while bringing toxic waste closer. But the project will do more than fracture the largest green space in Atlanta. The activists fighting against Cop City argue that police violence itself constitutes an environmental hazard, and that toxic chemicals associated with explosives that could be used on the site will destroy the air, water, and land on which myriad forms of life depend.

The week of action I attended was organized in remembrance of Tortuguita, or Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, the twenty-six-year-old nonbinary forest defender killed by Georgia State Patrol on January 18. Activists I met affectionately abbreviated their name to “Tort.” While police originally claimed self-defense, body-camera footage and two different autopsies show police shot Terán thirteen or fourteen times and suggest they were sitting cross-legged with both hands up when the police fired. Terán’s mother has since come to Atlanta from Panama to file suit against the city for records of her child’s murder, and to demand justice with a growing coalition at her side.

Terán is the first environmental activist killed by police in recent U.S. history. Their death is part of an intensifying campaign of repression waged against protesters fighting environmentally destructive developments across the country, most famously the Standing Rock encampment against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The arrests, raids, and prosecutions evoke the Green Scare of the early 2000s, when the federal government infiltrated, surveilled, and prosecuted environmental and animal activists across the country. The recent protests, however, come at a time of greater popular recognition of the climate crisis—and the seeming futility of turning to elected officials to take climate action against the same corporations that fuel their campaigns and structure the economy.

In Atlanta, there have been three waves of arrests and at least as many forest raids since December. Sixty-eight people are facing variations on common charges brought against protesters—disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and assault, and obstruction of governmental administration. But forty-two among them face domestic terrorism charges, which carry a mandatory minimum of five years of incarceration and a maximum of thirty-five. The thin affidavits suggest the basis of the charges are affiliation with Defend the Atlanta Forest, “a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists.” (A DHS official told the Washington Post it never made such a classification.) Those who have been released on bond are prohibited from having contact with their codefendants or with Defend the Atlanta Forest. Multiple activists have insisted, however, that Defend the Atlanta Forest is not an organization at all: instead, it is a demand, a social media account, and a shorthand reference for a loosely affiliated group of autonomous individuals, protecting the land against encroachment and seemingly motivated by anarchist principles. This insistence is about their political commitments as much as it is a rejection of the state’s theory of criminalization.

By Union Jake and Adam - Valley Labor Report, March 3, 2023

By Bret Wilkins - Common Dreams, March 3, 2023

"If the language is not precise, the Class 1 railroads will avoid the scope of the law without violating the law, yet again putting the safety of our members and American communities into harm's way," said one union leader.

Amid heightened national focus on railway safety in the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio disaster and other recent accidents, one railroad workers' union warned Friday that, while welcome, a bipartisan rail safety bill has "loopholes big enough to operate a 7,000-foot train through."

The Railway Safety Act of 2023—introduced earlier this week by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Fetterman(D-Pa.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—is meant to "prevent future train disasters like the derailment that devastated East Palestine."

The legislation would impose limits on freight train lengths—which in some cases currently exceed three miles. The measure was introduced a day after Democratic U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna(D-Calif.) and Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) put forth a billthat would require the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to impose stricter regulations on trains carrying hazardous materials.

"We welcome greater federal oversight and a crackdown on railroads that seem all too willing to trade safety for higher profits," Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), said in a statement.

By Jeff Ordower and Daniel Hunter - Waging Nonviolence, February 22, 2023

The Inflation Reduction Act wasn't written for climate justice, but there’s a ton of money for organizers and movement players to access.

Yes, the Inflation Reduction Act is the most consequential piece of climate legislation in the U.S. Yes, it’s also the only federal legislation. Yes, it’s imperfect. Yes, parts of it are downright vile. Yes, the negotiations exacerbated tensions between insider green organizations and those on the frontlines. 

But let’s be real, nothing more is going to pass at the federal level in the foreseeable future. So now that the IRA is the law of the land, how do organizers and movement players work with it? 

As long-time organizers and climate justice activists, we see organizing opportunities in the roughly $390 billion in climate funding available. As an analysis from Just Solutions points out, the bill was not written for climate justice. But there’s a ton of money that suddenly we can access for poor and disenfranchised communities — and it would be a wasted opportunity to leave that money on the table.

With all its limitations, the IRA can further our campaigns if we use the opportunity.

By Jay, Marilee Taylor, John Tormey, Matt Parker, and Maximillian Alvarez - In These Times, February 10, 2023

After a three-year saga of stalled contract negotiations between the country’s freight rail carriers and the 12 unions representing over 100,000 railroad workers, ​“pro-union” President Biden and Congress ​“averted” a national rail shutdown by overriding the democratic will of rail workers and forcing a contract down their throats. So, what happens now? 

In December, shortly after the Biden administration and Congress intervened, Working People convened a special all-railroader panel to break down the events of the last week and to discuss where railroad workers and the labor movement go from here.

Panelists include: Jay, a qualified conductor who was licensed to operate locomotives at 19 years old, and who became a qualified train dispatcher before he was 23; Marilee Taylor, who worked on the railroads for over 30 years and retired earlier this year from her post as an engineer for BNSF Railway, but is still an active member of Railroad Workers United; John Tormey, a writer and BMWED-IBT member who works as a track laborer for the commuter rail in Massachusetts; and Matt Parker, a full-time locomotive engineer who’s worked on the railroads for 19 years and also serves part-time as Chairman on the Nevada State Legislative Board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

By Bret Wilkins - Common Dreams, February 8, 2023

"Now it's time for the entire rail industry, which made over $26 billion in profits last year, to provide at least seven paid sick days to every rail worker in America," said Sen. Bernie Sanders in response.

After sustained pressure from organized workers and their allies, freight rail giant CSX Transportation agreed Tuesday to provide 5,000 employees in two unions with four days of paid sick leave each year—an industry-first move progressive said should serve as an example for other companies to follow.

The agreement reached between Jacksonville, Florida-based CSX and two unions—the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC) and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED)—will provide four days of fully paid sick leave each year, while allowing union members to take up to three personal leave days annually. Additionally, employees can apply their unused paid sick days to their 401K retirement accounts or take payouts.

"We are extremely proud that BRC is one of the very first unions to reach this type of an agreement," said Don Grissom, president of the BRC—which represents mechanical workers—in a statement. "This agreement is a significant accomplishment and provides a very important benefit for our members working at CSXT. The other carriers should take note and come to the bargaining table in a similar manner."

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2023

For the past year I have been researching and writing about initiatives around the country to implement the core ideas of the Green New Deal at a community, state, and local level – what I call the “Green New Deal from Below.” I have discovered hundreds of projects, policies, programs, and new laws that embody the principles of the Green New Deal at a sub-national level. But as I begin to tell people about what I am finding, I often get a response that I could paraphrase as “The Green New Deal – isn’t that just last-decade’s fad?” That is often followed with the question, “What’s left of the Green New Deal?” That’s the question I address in this Commentary.

Green New Deal – the Backstory

The Green New Deal is a visionary program to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice. It became an overnight sensation with a 2018 occupation of Nancy Pelosi’s office by the youth climate movement Sunrise supporting a congressional resolution by newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for a Green New Deal. A poll released December 14, 2018 by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 40% of registered voters “strongly support” and 41% “somewhat support” the general concepts behind a Green New Deal.[1]

Soon after the occupation of Pelosi’s office, a wide swath of public interest organizations endorsed the Green New Deal, which also instantly became a prime whipping boy for the Right. Its core ideas were embodied in legislation by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edwin Markey, which divided the Democratic Party into pro- and anti-Green New Deal factions. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden convened a Unity Task Force that included Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the head of Sunrise, which came up with a plan incorporating many elements of the Green New Deal but eschewing the name. Biden called his program Build Back Better, and after the 2020 elections this became the nomenclature of Democratic Party and allied climate, jobs, and justice programs. A broad coalition of organizations called the Green New Deal Network, for example, developed and promoted an extensive legislative program, described on its website as “in line with the Green New Deal vision,” which it dubbed the THRIVE Agenda.[2] Supported by more than 100 members of Congress and 280 organizations, the THRIVE Act was introduced in Congress in the fall of 2020.