You are here

social justice

Frontlines to Big Greens: Stand with us in calling for #Ceasefire now and Justice for Palestine

By Hendrik Voss - It Takes Roots, October 31, 2023

Over 2 million Palestinian people have suffered under a 16 year blockade on Gaza and now endure a complete siege, as Israel bombs, starves, and displaces them. Israel has cut off food, water, and electricity to Gaza and has engaged in bombing of residential buildings, markets, schools, health facilities, and mosques – all with the support of the United States and other governments. Palestinians are forced between two decisions, stay and try to survive, or try to flee into exile, but will never see their home again. Our solidarity as environmental justice and human rights defenders globally is vital, as we are witnessing genocide before our eyes. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance at $3.8 billion a year, totaling more than $260 billion to date. Five of the top six global defense corporations based in the United States are profiting from and enabling the ongoing bombardment against Palestinians in Gaza.

As environmental justice frontline communities that have experienced violence and displacement at the hands of settler-colonialism, we stand in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle for self-determination and to live freely with their human rights fully intact on their lands.

Our It Takes Roots alliances comprise over 200 groups in more than 50 states, provinces and Indigenous territories across North America, Puerto Rico and Guåhan. Since the beginning of the most recent escalation in the 75-year history of settler-colonialism and violence across historic Palestine, many of our members have drawn upon their extensive grassroots organizing experience and we have taken our grief and outrage to the streets, into the halls of Congress, engaged in direct action, and educated our communities. Together, we continue our practice of international solidarity, and call for an end to the siege of Gaza, and an end to the occupation.

Further, we call on the larger environmental and climate movement to stand with frontline and Indigenous Movements around the world by calling for a ceasefire, an end to all violence and warfare, insisting that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and calling on our governments to refuse to send any additional weapons or funding to the Israeli military. Now is the time to build on our cross-sector relationships, and to appeal to all our partners and allies who might still be on the sidelines, to join the international struggle for a free Palestine. We must build momentum to prevent further loss of life.

Life is sacred. We mourn the devastating loss of all Palestinian and Israeli lives, and all casualties of colonialism and rising militarism around the world. It Takes Roots is determined to continue our work for justice and peace at home and globally. Liberation of one is only possible with the liberation of all.

Shift the Power!

By Diego Valerio - Labor Network for Sustainability, April 30, 2023

Powershift is a network that mobilize the collective power of young people to mitigate climate change and create a just, clean energy future and resilient, thriving communities for all. In April a Powershift Convergence brought together thousands of climate and social justice activists in Bvlbancha/New Orleans. Diego Valerio, a first-year apprentice in IBEW Local 716 in Houston, Texas who has been organizing worker-led campaigns with the Texas Climate Jobs Project and who has been active with the Labor Network for Sustainability’s Young Worker Project, provides theses reflections on the Convergence:

I attended the latest Powershift Convergence alongside other union workers, LNS staff, and other allies to discuss and learn about the intersection of labor, youth, and environmental justice organizing with resilience in the Gulf South. Workers from the building trades and educator unions facilitated programming to center the idea that prioritizing the well-being of workers is essential when considering a green transition, and to uplift the need for a just transition.

Participants from organized labor encouraged other participants to think more concretely about ensuring that those who are most vulnerable to job losses or other detrimental impacts are supported, particularly through adequate training and education to transition workers into green jobs. They also advocated that the jobs created in the green transition are unionized, and to create social safety nets for those who are unable to transition to new opportunities.

Those at the bottom are often the ones who face the most significant challenges and consequences, and their involvement and empowerment can generate a greater impact. At Powershift I had the opportunity to interact with many inspiring individuals whose passion and commitment to making a positive impact left a lasting impression on me. I am grateful for these experiences and am determined to contribute to the movement in any way I can going forward.

Labor and the Environment with GASP

New Foundations for the House of Labor?

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2023

Workers’ problems are not limited to their relationships with their immediate employers. How can they gain the power to affect the hidden decisionmakers who affect them both at work and in the rest of their lives? Two new books shed light on that question..

Books discussed:

  •  Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly, Simon and Schuster, 2022.
  •  The Future We Need: Organizing For a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century by Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta, Cornell University Press, 2022.

Kim Kelly’s Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor describes the heroic battles of workers to gain their rights and create a better life for all working people. It illuminates those who have often been left out of historical accounts, like “poor and working-class women, Black people, Latino people, Indigenous people, Asian and Pacific Islander people, immigrants of all backgrounds, religious minorities, queer and trans people, disabled people, the sex workers and undocumented people whose work is criminalized, and people who are incarcerated.” Many of them have been excluded not only from the history books, but from the self-declared “House of Labor” itself. This is labor history for the era of diversity.

Fight Like Hell not only recounts worker action in the past, it describes how these struggles are continuing today. Contemporary accounts range from the effort to win a union election at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama to recent struggles for equal rights for Black, LGBTQIA, and sex workers. Like workers in the past, such workers today have to put their jobs, their well-being, and sometimes even their lives on the line to win the most elementary rights on the job.

A park for the people: Jack Mundey and the Eastlakes green ban

By Alison Wishart - Overland, June 23, 2022

On 13 August 2021, the Geographical Names Board officially approved Bayside Council’s request to rename Eastlakes Reserve as Jack Mundey Reserve. Mundey was neither a local resident, councillor nor mayor. Yet sixty years ago, he led a movement that saved these four acres of land as a park for the local people.

The reserve, situated within the centre of a new housing development christened ‘Eastlakes’ (a much more appealing name than ‘Botany Swamps’, as it was previously known) is used for recreation, exercise and community events. To understand how Mundey—a rugby player, labourer and communist who left school at the age of fourteen—came to be honoured in this way, we need to go back to 1961.

Jack Mundey Reserve was once part of the much larger Rosebery Racecourse. In 1961, Sydney Turf Club contracted L.J. Hooker Real Estate to sell the racecourse to the highest bidder. The sales brochure proclaimed that this 56.5 acre site was just ‘four miles from the heart of the city’; ‘perfectly cleared and level’ and ready for development. In characteristic sales hyperbole, the brochure confidently declared that ‘without a doubt, it was this century’s greatest opportunity for developers and investors.’

Despite the sales pitch, the land was passed in at auction on 26 September 1961. Sydney Turf Club negotiated with the highest bidder and signed a contract for Rosebery Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Parkes Development, to purchase the site for £450,000 (£75,000 below the reserve price). Six acres on the eastern and western edges of the racecourse were reserved for the Housing Commission of NSW and not included in the sale. Harry Seidler, the famous modernist architect, would design the housing commission unit block on Maloney Avenue.

Transit Equity Day: Livestream 2022

Join us for Transit Equity Day 2022!

Firefighters on the front line of the climate emergency

By Denise Christie - Morning Star, November 19, 2021

From flooding to forest blazes, firefighters all over Britain are already engaged with the practical battle against the climate crisis – but our services are not yet fully prepared for the enormous implications of the emergency, writes DENISE CHRISTIE of the Fire Brigades Union.

COP26 is an opportunity for our movement to demonstrate our solidarity with working people and their communities around the world and to organise together to create the just and green world we want and need, to allow us to live safely and fairly.

We must also be fully active in the campaign that Cop26 must be a focus to organise against the climate emergency in solidarity with all working people.

The climate crisis is a crisis of social justice, with those who have done least to cause the crisis and who are least able to address it facing the worst effects.

What’s it got to do with firefighters and the FBU?

Firefighters are on the front line of tackling the climate emergency. Climate change is increasing the risk of wildfires, such as grassland and forest fires and floods, including from surface water, rivers and the sea.

It will also affect the supply and availability of water and may give rise to more extreme weather events.

These hazards will have implications for the working conditions of firefighters. The climate emergency will require significant changes to appliances, to the equipment available to firefighters, and to training.

We will also need greater awareness of firefighters’ health implications, greater pumping capability and water use and increased capacity within our operational fire control rooms.

The fire and rescue service needs the staff, resources and equipment to tackle the impact of this climate emergency. There is no logic to job cuts and shutting fire stations and control rooms when these risks are likely to increase in the years ahead.

In Celebration: Jack Mundey and the Green Bans

Green jobs at the carbon border?

By Nicholas Beuret - The Ecologist, August 11, 2021

A future of carbon neutral border industries criminalising climate migrants is already happening.

The number of people crossing the English Channel seeking refuge has risen in recent weeks.

This has been accompanied by the predictable right-wing decrying of the ‘invasion’, and populist politicians and commentators calling for the criminalisation of search and rescue services.

The context is a surging right-wing political activism. This is being led by the ruling Tory party, which is seeking to use its strong government majority to criminalise a range of dissenting, rebellious - or just-not-Tory - behaviours while they have the chance.

Pages

The Fine Print I:

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) unless otherwise indicated and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s, nor should it be assumed that any of these authors automatically support the IWW or endorse any of its positions.

Further: the inclusion of a link on our site (other than the link to the main IWW site) does not imply endorsement by or an alliance with the IWW. These sites have been chosen by our members due to their perceived relevance to the IWW EUC and are included here for informational purposes only. If you have any suggestions or comments on any of the links included (or not included) above, please contact us.

The Fine Print II:

Fair Use Notice: The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of scientific, environmental, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc.

It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal or technical advice.