movement politics

By Ryan Clover - Eco Defense Radio, September 8, 2016

Audio File

Bio:

Alex has been the Shale Gas Program Coordinator for Energy Justice Network since 2011. Outside of his professional capacity, he has worked extensively as a volunteer organizer fighting for environmental justice in communities facing rural poverty.

Alex also has a labor union background and has been a union activist in both the private and public sectors, is a union delegate for the Industrial Workers of the World, and represents workers in unemployment compensation appeal hearings on a volunteer basis.

Main Message :

Foundations and major environmental groups (Big Greens) aren’t situated to help the people most in need and Organizers need to build their own support network if the most difficult and important work is going to get done.

What we talked about :

In this conversation Alex shares his experience working with his friends in Northeastern Pennsylvania. From working in rural communities, and with a history in labor organizing, Alex understands the importance of building support networks of our own – and not relying on large foundations or major environmental groups (Big Greens).

At first I was uncomfortable when Alex started sharing examples of how organizations like the Sierra Club can actually perpetuate the problems of fracking – I didn’t want this episode to come across as cynical. But Alex’s message isn’t cynical, it’s critically important – it’s empowering. He shares some concrete examples about how we can build support networks of our own, and has suggestions for how people working within large environmental organizations can help steer them toward supporting the front lines.

Links to stuff we talked about:

• Press Kit for Dimock Families
• Energy Justice Network
• Energy Justice Summer
• Halt the Harm Network
• Shalefield Stories : Friends of the Harmed

By Robert Lambert - New Internationalist, September 1, 2016

A cheer goes up every time a taxi driver honks his horn in solidarity. Passers-by stop to sign our petition and ask questions. A couple of well-heeled women hurry towards the hotel entrance, averting their eyes from the cluster of hospitality workers waving flags and chanting: ‘What do we want? Fair tips and a union! When do we want it? Now!’

We’re here on a busy London street, as the evening rush hour gridlocks the city, to support Robert, a Hungarian waiter at the luxury five-star Melia hotel, who has been sacked. His crime? To question the restaurant’s unfair practice of sharing tips – on which waiters depend to top up their low wages – between senior managers as well as waiting staff.

Robert had joined the London Hotel Workers branch of Unite, Britain’s largest trade union, and through its support found the courage to speak out. There is a lot to speak out about, because the capital’s hotels and restaurants are getting away with murder, exploiting the fact that most hospitality workers are migrants, desperate for jobs and unaware of their rights. ‘Hotel workers in the Philippines have more collective bargaining rights than those in London,’ says an exasperated Dave Turnbull, Unite regional officer.

Over 1,000 kilometres away in Barcelona, undocumented street vendors from Senegal are also fighting for their rights. As illegal migrants they cannot join an established union, so they have come together to create one for themselves: the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes (Popular Union of Street Vendors). Its activity, concedes Clelia Goodchild, whose documentary film El peso de la manta features Barcelona’s street vendors, is chaotic, because it has no experience, no contacts and often fails to communicate with its members properly – but it is a start. And it has already had some success, with the city council recently offering five street vendors the opportunity to attend a fishing course, which will then lead to papers and a regular job.¹

Organizing and collective action – whether with the backing of a national union, like Robert, or the support of a handful of co-workers, like the Senegalese street vendors – is a must in the 21st-century fight-back against rapacious employers and neoliberal governments. But it is not easy. In many countries of the Global South, trade unionists put their lives on the line every day to fight injustice, and many are murdered.

The power of transnationals is increasing, thanks to free-trade agreements signed behind closed doors by governments either in cahoots with the companies or lacking the political clout or will to object. The globalization juggernaut, in which profit is king and to hell with the workers, is dragging down industries from manufacturing to healthcare in a race to the bottom: zero-hours contracts, outsourcing, privatization and sub-contracting are all weapons in the transnationals’ armoury. Previously hard-won workers’ rights – gains we in the West take so much for granted we barely register that they were fought for at all – are being shot to bits.

Though trade unions have been standing up for workers for nearly 200 years, it’s fair to say that they have been on a roller-coaster ride. There have been highs: winning an eight-hour day and a five-day week; the golden age of the 1930s and 1940s, when employees’ rights were enshrined in law in the US and Britain. But there have also been lows. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher systematically dismantled trade unions in a full-scale attack on workers’ rights, as part of their neoliberal free-market agenda. Australia’s John Howard followed suit, introducing draconian legislation at the turn of this century which resulted in many unions losing half their membership.²

Trade unions also have a proud history of international solidarity. In the 1860s, Lancashire cotton workers supported the unionists in the US Civil War. In 1997, dock workers in 27 countries struck for a day in solidarity with the Liverpool Dockers, who had been on strike for two years. But there have also been moments when corruption, poor leadership and infighting have risked bringing the whole movement into disrepute.

These days, the lows seem to outnumber the highs. Trade unions, it would appear, have their backs to the wall just when we need them most. Governments continue to pass anti-union laws: between 1982 and 2012, 200 restrictive labour laws were passed by federal and provincial governments in Canada, and after 9/11 the US used the ‘war on terror’ as an opportunity to deny many federal employees the right to unionize – threatening to invoke anti-terrorism laws to stop strikes.³,⁴

But all is not yet lost. After a period of introspection in the 1990s, when the battered and bruised Western trade unions mutated into little more than a mediation service between employer and employee, offering member benefits such as cheaper insurance on the side, the movement has begun organizing again. There is a new sense of urgency and optimism among many unionists, who have dusted themselves down and are ready to resume the fight. But which battles? And with which weapons?

By the members - The Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, August 16, 2016

We prepared this short piece after several comrades were badjacketed in public and with pictures on social media at the 4th Precinct Shutdown. We believe those individual cases have been dealt with, and don’t wish to cause unnecessary division by complaining, or publicly calling any group or individual out. Instead, this is intended to provoke reflection, and conversation, amongst all of us, as to how to deal with the suspicions we may have of people we don’t know in our growing movements, without creating the sorts of divisions among ourselves that does the work of the State and the police for them. We intend to act in solidarity with those who know how to act in solidarity.

We ask that all organizations and groups working for a better world in which we have killed White Supremacy, Capitalism, and all other forms of oppression, consider that (1) none of us represent the mandate of all the people, (2) that we may have instead genuine and important strategic and tactical differences between ourselves about the best ways to accomplish that world, (3) that we will not win by pretending these differences do not exist, or dictating against difference, but instead by engaging on these differences in the most democratic and least hierarchical ways possible.

Therefore, we ask that groups and individuals read this document against the practice ofbadjacketing, discuss it, and consider publicly endorsing here that we will refrain from the practices of badjacketing. This is not a call to be lax about security; indeed, many of us have been very involved in the provision of security at the Fourth Precinct. Instead, it is a call to be democratic and accountable about our security practices.

By Nicole Vosper - The Guardian, June 8, 2016

have many middle class friends and comrades whom I adore, this post certainly isn’t directed at everyone. But after years and years of organising, coming up against similar frustrations, and after lots of conversations between working class mates, I want to write about what is draining about working with some middle class activists.

It’s important to flag up that I’m writing this as a white, cis woman in England and I’m aware of the privilege that carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this to perhaps talk to other middle class people and not email me about it. For once, please, just listen and reflect.

Also, because I want to be as constructive as possible, at the end of the post I’ve listed some of the character traits of middle class friends and organisers who don’t drive me up the wall.

Anyhow, here goes …

By Kate Aronoff - Common Dreams, April 30, 2016

For two weeks this May, organizers across 12 countries will participate in Break Free 2016, an open-source invitation to encourage “more action to keep fossil fuels in the ground and an acceleration in the just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.” Many of the month’s events — pulled together by 350.org and a slew of groups around the world — are set to take place within ongoing campaigns to shut down energy infrastructure, targeting “some of the most iconic and dangerous fossil fuel projects all over the world” with civil disobedience.

The Break Free site’s opening page invites viewers to “join a global wave of resistance to keep coal, oil and natural gas in the ground.” And that’s where some unions have taken issue.

The United Steelworkers, or USW, this week released a response. “Short-sighted and narrow-focused activities like 350.org’s ‘Break Free’ actions,” they write, “make it much more challenging to work together to create and envision a clean energy economy.” Three of the locations targeted — in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington — are USW-represented refineries. The union argues that, despite record growth in renewables, the economy will continue to be reliant on fossil fuels for some time. “Shutting down a handful of refineries in the United States,” they say, “would lead to massive job loss in refinery communities, increased imports of refined oil products, and ultimately no impact on global carbon emissions.” Rather, refineries and their workers should be brought into the clean energy economy.

The statement ends arguing that, “We can’t choose between good jobs or a healthy environment. If we don’t have both, we’ll have neither.” In more familiar terms, Breaking Free — for the USW — sounds like a case of jobs versus the environment.

While similar releases are standard fare for other unions, the 30,000-member USW is one of the country’s most progressive — even when it comes to environmental issues.

“People assume that because we’re an industrial union that our leadership doesn’t care about the environment,” Roxanne Brown told me. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Brown is the assistant legislative director at USW, and emphasized the union’s long history of work on environmental issues. The USW hosted a conference in support of air pollutant regulations in the late 1960s, early on rejecting the kind of weaponized jobs versus environment rhetoric that has cropped up around the Keystone XL pipeline and other extraction fights.

A Statement by Capitalism vs. the Climate, April 21, 2016

We reluctantly withdrew our sponsorship from an April 20th rally against fracked-gas infrastructure in Connecticut, organized mainly by the Sierra Club. While we found actions by the national Sierra Club leading up to the rally to be inexcusable, this statement should not be seen as a criticism of the Connecticut state chapter or its volunteer members. We have reached out to the national Sierra Club and chapter staff and attempted to discuss our concerns regarding the rallies mentioned below in Bridgeport and Hartford, but we have only received evasive responses and claims that our concerns are misled.