Koch Brothers

By Tim Norgren  - Portland Rising Tide, October 5, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following is an open letter from  union member Tim Norgren to Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA). Read on as Tim explains why union support of fossil fuel export projects is short-sighted and generally not in the best interest of workers. 

Dear LIUNA and Fellow Workers,

In joining forces with avowed union enemies to lobby for export projects like coal and bitumen/oil terminals and pipelines, which would create some short term, but VERY FEW long term local jobs, I strongly feel we’re selling ourselves out, along with every worker in America!

The propositions stand to benefit billionaires like the Koch brothers and other members of ALEC, which as you know are behind state by state attacks on worker’s rights via campaigns like the “right to work” bill recently pushed in OR (see www.alecexposed.org for more).

Export proponents Arch and Peabody coal (ALEC members) were featured in the Labor Press last summer for shifting pensions worth over $1.3 BILLION (owed to some 20,000 beneficiaries) to a shell company- then bankrupting it, leaving retirees destitute. This “success” opened the door for Detroit to become the first city to declare bankruptcy and default on pensions. Scrutiny showed this to be an ALEC “model” scheme. Supporting companies which commit such crimes against dedicated workers is UNACCEPTABLE for anyone who purports to be part of a labor movement!

According to Greg Palast (investigative reporter for the BBC), the Koch brothers stand to save about $26 a barrel bringing in the oil from the Keystone XL instead of from H. Chavez in Venezuela. The Koch’s Houston refineries are designed to refine only the high carbon tar sands oil available from those sources and cannot even process the lighter Texas crude. $26 a barrel would add up to a lot more ammo in their union-busting arsenal.

Should proposals succeed, then when our job’s over, coal will continue being extracted from public lands, with mainly non-union miners and huge federal subsidies (taxpayer expense) in obscenely higher quantities than now, then carted though our neighborhoods alongside explosive fracked oil tankers. Tar sands oil will keep flowing into Koch Industries refineries. And while NOT keeping us working, it WILL continue to profit enemies of labor (fueling their next campaigns) as it’s shipped to Asia, providing cheap fuel for deathtrap factories where subsistence workers slave at jobs outsourced from living wage employment in America!

Indeed as industrial and other jobs are replaced with government subsidized resource extraction and privatization schemes, across the board from fossil fuels and lumber to such basic staples as water and social services, we can see in our mirror a third world nation.

In my humble opinion as a member of LIUNA, pursuing these proposals rather than insisting on cleaner, more labor-friendly energy and transmission projects IS SUICIDE! Are we truly willing to follow the short-term carrot on a stick, like an ass to the slaughter? To feed ourselves willingly to those who would destroy us? Or do enough of us still have the conscience, guts and faith to stand up with those who’ve struggled at such cost to give us rights as workers?

Sincerely,

Tim Norgren, Laborers Local 320

Story and image by Kari Lydersen - Midwest Energy News, May 14, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s. IWW member Tom Morello took part in this event!

“Stunning, just stunning, just stunning,” said Sheilah Garland, shaking her head as she stared out the window of the bus rolling along a dirt road next to towering black piles of petroleum coke on Chicago’s Southeast Side.

As an organizer of National Nurses United, a labor union representing about 6,000 nurses in Chicago and 185,000 nationwide, Garland has seen a lot. She represents nurses working in grueling and traumatic situations on a daily basis. And the union has picked fights with powerful politicians, including former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But Garland was shocked by the piles of petcoke, about six stories high, located across the street from homes. She was also perturbed to see employees walking onsite without respiratory masks.

The nurses union has joined local residents’ fight to get petcoke transportation and storage banned in Chicago. They see it as a serious public health issue and part of their larger social justice advocacy mission.

By the Earth First! Journal Staff - Earth First! Journal, May 1, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

When the Global Climate Convergence announced the Earth Day to May Day series of events and actions, it revealed a gap between daily reality and Hallmark posturing. More than 100 actions—such as the occupation of the DEQ in Portland, Oregon, by Rising Tide—have taken place in dozens of cities as part of the Climate Convergence.

Over the last few days, IWW fellow workers in California have protested the Koch Bros PetCoke Facility in Pittsburg, the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, and Crude by Rail at the Union Pacific’s Ozal Train Yard in Martinez.

One Wob organizer named Elliot Hughes U-locked himself to the gate of the Koch Brothers facility to halt business as usual. “Our goal is the liberation of the people on the planet that is our home. With the increasing amount of industrial disasters, we cannot wait any longer because the health and safety of all workers of the world is on the line.”

EF! shares numerous crucial membranes with the IWW and the labor movement, dating back to Judi Bari’s founding of the IWW timber workers local #1 in Northern California in the late 1980s. The goal of uniting loggers against Maxxam’s junk bond dealing, land grabbing, and clear cutting was to restore timber lands to the public interest. While some hardcore EF!ers were repulsed by the notion of chatting up loggers, let alone working to move timber lands into the hands of communities that would take part in “sustainable logging,” most agreed that the terms were vastly superior to clear cutting old growth.

Indeed, growth from the Redwood Summer movement at the turn of the 1990s fed the entire radical movement, developing critical understandings that would be cultivated and emerge in Seattle 1999 and again during Occupy. According to stories passed down to us over the years, activists being shot at in Northern California’s redwood forest by the same loggers they were trying to organize later on that night in the barroom would, ten years down the line, take part in the free states of Cascadia, and the No Borders Camp of the Sonoran desert five years later.

In the words of Buenaventura Durutti, “The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.” The inter-generational movement of Earth First! grows in the interstices of stories and ideologies, yet we often lag behind when it comes to social analysis.

By x344543 - May 1, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Now the Bureau of Land Management is part of the U.S.,
And they manage the Earth much better than anyone else I guess,
They know about the forest and the mountains high above,
And they know what each damn tree is worth 'cause trees are what they love.

Now they lease our land for cattle 'cause they love the wildlife so,
And keeping all the trees cut down helps the grass population grow,
But our land is reaping fortunes so the U.S. can survive,
Each acre stomped by cattle earns a dollar thirty five.

Hey BLM you ain't the friend of the eagle and the bear,
But the corporations love you 'cause they get the lion's share,
Could it be you're jealous of the world you're tearing down?,
'Cause if you was one tenth of a eagle, You'd be see better than you see now.

--Lyrics Excerpted from The Ballad of the BLM, by Darryl Cherney, from the album, I Had to Be Born This Century, 1986

By now many people have heard news from the western US state of Nevada about rancher Cliven Bundy's standoff with the United States Government--specifically the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)--ostensibly over grazing rights and land use fees. Between April 5 and 12, 2014 federally contracted wranglers had impounded approximately 400 head of cattle from federal land near Bundy's ranch in the southern part of the state, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas. However, on April 13, they ceased doing so, and the BLM released all of the cattle they had coralled.

The US government declares that they had been removing Bundy’s cattle and impounding them in a corral in nearby Mesquite, NV, because the rancher has kept his more than 900 head of cattle on a piece of 600,000-acre federal land for the past two decades and has refused to pay taxes since 1993, when the federal government increased the grazing fees in order to save critical habitat for the endangered Mojave Desert tortoise.

Bundy, a self-described "self-made" rancher, disputes the government's claims. He insists that his Mormon family has owned the land in question since the 1800s--before the creation of the Department of the Interior and before the government tried to save endangered species, which he says should make him immune from having to pay these federal taxes. He is also a staunch advocate of "states' rights", and as such, he challenges the US federal government's ability to charge grazing fees at all. Failing that, he claims that his faith also gives him special privileges to do as he pleases.

Bundy may claim that the BLM's sudden reversal was due to his claims having merit, but it's much more likely that the BLM backed down because the rancher received support from several hundred armed right wing "militia" and tea party zealots from various states including Utah, Virginia, Texas, Montana, Idaho and Wisconsin, all of whom were more than willing to come to the supposedly embattled rancher's aid, and the local government officials backed down hoping to prevent a violent stand off.

As a result, Bundy became an overnight sensation and a capitalist media darling, at least for the far right

Environmentalists have--with much justification--reacted disdainfully to this turn of events, opining that the results will be further degradation to the embattled desert environment (certainly due to Bundy's continued grazing activities, not to mention the further abuses that the BLM's capitulation will no doubt enable from others of like mind).

Meanwhile, crypto fascist ideologues, fake "libertarians", and other assorted right wing talking heads are spinning this as a "victory" against the "guv'mint", "communism", and "heathen environmentalists". No siree-bob, these "law abiding Americuns" aren't gonna be bullied by agencies being controlled by a secret cabal of "granola eating, Prius driving, commie loving, latte sipping, liberal elitist unwashed-out-of-town-jobless-hippies-on-drugs."

Predictably, the Capitalist Media has been spinning this squabble as a case of an (overzealous, perhaps) land owner and an equally overzealous and over reaching government agency. It certainly hasn't helped matters that the television "news" outlets have shown images of one of the Bundy supporters being tazed by law enforcement agents, though, of course, this is an image taken out of context. The capitalist state has been, in general, far more violent towards peaceful unarmed demonstrators on the left.

Unfortunately, even some self-described anarchists who should know better have expressed sympathy for Bundy, "because"--they argue--"he's anti-government, taking direct action against the state, and fighting against (sic!) enclosures", and what's more, "he's no different that indigenous people being told they cannot engage in subsistence grazing on wilderness lands by privileged, white environmentalists"!

In truth, this series of events goes far deeper than a mere land dispute or a battle between those who support individual property rights versus those who desire a bureaucratic state and "burdensome" environmental regulations.

Bullshit!!!

So many inaccuracies, untruths, and utter falsehoods have been uttered in the wake of this incident, it's difficult to tell who is producing more manure: Bundy's cows or Bundy's supporters, the naive and gullible "radicals" who actually believe Bundy is a closeted fellow traveler, and the all-too-compliant capitalist media.

By Karen Hansen - SF Environmental News Examiner, April 28, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The Environmental Unionist Caucus announced they will protest the Koch Bros PetCoke Facility today Monday, April 28 in Pittsburg; the Chevron Refinery tomorrow Tuesday, April 29 in Richmond; and Crude by Rail at the Union Pacific’s Ozal Train Yard in St. April 30 Martinez, Calif.

Union organizer and environmental activist Elliot Hughes released a statement this morning that his organization would be taking several direct actions over the next 3 days to orchestrate a general strike of the poor, the unemployed, and the working class. “Our goal is the liberation of the people on the planet that is our home. With the increasing amount of industrial disasters, we cannot wait any longer because the health and safety of all workers of the world is on the line.”