direct action

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 14, 2015

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 news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• To Save the Planet, We Need to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—but Oil Companies Have Other Plans: They say no to any "stranded assets" -  William D. Cohan, The Nation, December 10, 2014

IWW Campaigns:

• I dreamed I saw Joe Hill with a safe crack use kit: Some harm reduction workers in Toronto have just joined the (Industrial) Workers of The World - By Joe Fiorito, The Toronto Star, January 13, 2015
• On the Beaches of Santa Monica, Temp Workers Organize - By Shyolanda Montana, Labor Notes, January 12, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Could Global Tide Be Starting To Turn Against Fossil Fuels? - By Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, January 13, 2015
• 2015: the fossil fuel endgame begins - By Melanie Mattauch, The Ecologist, January 12, 2015
• Halliburton cuts jobs in Houston - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 13, 2015
• Investment firm lays off 150 employees from oil field companies - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 12, 2015
• Oil price debacle likely to drive Alberta into recession - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, January 13, 2015
• Sand boom headed for uncertainty, Moody’s says - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, January 12, 2015

Other News of Interest:

• Coal Companies Dodging Royalty Payments + Manipulating Government Subsidy Programs By Selling Coal To Themselves, Report Says - By James Ayre, Clean Technica, January 13, 2015
• Good riddance to Vermont Yankee - By Steve Ramey, Socialist Worker, January 12, 2015
• 9 Job-Creating Clean Energy Policies That Trump Keystone XL - By NGC Team, Next Gen Climate, January 12, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By some ZADistas - Constellations, 2015

In the Autumn of 2015 the government once again announced that the building of the airport of Notre-Dame-des-Landes was about to begin. Since then they have been repeating their intention to evict those who live and farm together from the zad . With the combined force of the gendarme’s gas grenades and Vinci’s bulldozer’s, they want to try to finally get done with everything that is alive and thriving in the bocage “as soon as possible”.

Faced with this renewed threat, this text is a call to defend the zad everywhere, and the contagious hope it contains in these arid times. The zad as a conviction that it is possible to stop destructive projects fostered on us by those who claim to govern us. The zad as a space where different ways of inhabiting this world - fully and generously - are invented in the here and now. It is a hope rooted in histories we hold in common, enriched by the momentum of tens of thousands of rebels and relationships woven thick by time. The words that follow evoke certain decisive fragments of this adventure, they are like blazing bearings for the future.

Download PDF Here.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 30, 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 news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Did Somebody Say Direct Action? What’s Missing from the Victory Narrative - By Alexander Reid Ross, Earth First! Journal, December 22, 2014
• Everything’s Coming Together While Everything Falls Apart - By Rebecca Solnit, Tom Dispatch, December 23, 2014
• Protest too much? 2014 was a big year for rabblerousing - By Heather Smith, Grist, December 23, 2014

Other News of Interest:

• BHP, Rio, Anglo fear effects of Chile’s new labour bill - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, December 23, 2014
• Busting the Myth of “Job-Killing EPA Regulations” - By Ken Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists, Renewable Energy World, December 28, 2014
• Canadian Pension Funds To Invest In Renewables To The Tune Of $2 Billion - By Joshua S Hill, Clean Technica, December 24, 2014
• A Dollar a Day Keeps the Smokestacks Away [Fundraising appeal for a project involving IWW members] - By Josh, Energy Justice Network, December 23, 2014
• Electricity suppliers are shedding jobs, despite renewables growth - By Melissa C. Lott, Scientific American, December 23, 2014; [related]: Employment Drops in All Segments of the Power Sector—Except Renewables - By Julia Pyper, Greentech Media, December 24, 2014
• Environmentalists Are Gearing Up for the Next Phase of New York's Fracking Wars - By Peter Rugh, Vice, December 18, 2014
• The 4 Day Week? - By Tegan Tallulla, Earth Baby Blog, September 30, 2013
• Innovations or Hucksterism? Three Little-Known Infrastructure Privatization Problems - By Ellen Dannin, Truthout, December 22, 2014
• Marathon evacuates personnel from two North Sea platforms - By Robert Grattan, Fuel Fix, December 23, 2014
• Dave Kerin on Workers’ Cooperatives and the Climate Emergency - By Dave Kerin, Anarchist Affinity, November 12, 2014
• Phoenix warns of bus disruptions as union negotiates - By Brenna Goth, Arizona Republic, December 24, 2014
• Railroads seek permission to put a single person in charge of miles-long freight trains [Quotes IWW members] - By Josh Funk, Star Tribune, December 22, 2014
• Railroads, unions to begin collective bargaining talks next month - By Russell Hubbard, Omaha World-Herald, December 26, 2014
• Talcher workers up against coal mining privatization - Nyooz, December 2014
• TTIP: Chemical corporations against safety protections - By Patrick Gleeson, The Ecologist, December 24, 2014

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By Seed Coalition - Seed Coalition; images by David Hardy, December 3, 2014

Two activists with We Are Cove Point locked themselves to the doors of the offices of IHI/Kiewit in Lusby, Maryland this morning. IHI/Kiewit is a joint venture that serves as the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor for the Dominion Cove Point LNG export terminal project. IHI E&C, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based company IHI Corporation, is headquartered in Houston, Texas. Kiewit is based in Omaha, Nebraska.

During the lockdown and extraction, other activists with We Are Cove Point held signs rejecting the project and IHI/Kiewit’s involvement. They attracted the attention of shoppers at stores located in the same strip mall and handed out several leaflets providing information about the project and the campaign against it.

Today’s action comes just a few days after seven people were arresting for blocking the entrance to a construction site in nearby Solomons, Maryland, where Dominion and IHI/Kiewit are building a pier to land equipment for the project too large to bring in by land. To date, twenty-two people have been arrested for protests in Solomons and Lusby. Earlier this year, fourteen people were arrested protesting at three courthouses across the state of Maryland. Their actions demonstrated the breadth of the opposition to Dominion’s terminal and highlighting the broad consequences the project will have if it is completed, included increased hydraulic fracturing for methane gas and the rapid construction of the dangerous infrastructure needed to transport it.

By Cascadia Earth First! - Earth First! Newswire, November 18, 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.

So the Keystone XL bill failed to pass Congress. The Big Fail marks a huge success for groups who have been struggling to expose the KXL for the dirty policy it represents. The actions taken on the day of the vote, including the disruption in the Senate chamber and the blocking Senators Bennet (D-Col.) and Carper (D-Del.) from leaving their offices, speak to the dedication and tirelessness of the movement to stop the pipeline.

So we can all go home now, right? We won!

The problem is that the bill will be back in January, and the congress we’re dealing with right now is very different from the one we’ll see ushered into office at the beginning of 2015. Just because the lame-duck Congress voted against the bill (barely) with its Democratic Party majority does not mean that the Republicans will have any problem sweeping it through when they take the majority.

The Democratic Party’s vote does give Obama a mandate to veto the bill next year if and when it goes through, but the question remains as to whether or not he will use it. In short, the Big Fail and ensuing celebrations from the Environmental NGOs looks suspiciously like a setup. It’s definitely not time to demobilize.

By Alex Lubben - In These Times, November 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.

West Coast ports are stuck in gridlock. Earlier this week, truck drivers were waiting for as long as seven hours at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to try to retrieve single containers of cargo. The backup at these ports, which handle the majority of shipments from Asia, is threatening the timely delivery of billions of dollars’ worth of holiday goods.

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents the docking companies at ports along the West Coast, blamed the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for the initial slowdown, accusing the union of refusing to dispatch skilled workers at the ports, creating backups that are part of an attempt to gain leverage in contract negotiations. The union—whose workers have been without a contract since July—has denied that they are intentionally clogging the port’s flow of goods.

The “orchestrated job actions,” as PMA refers to the alleged slowdown, began at ports in the Pacific Northwest and has since spread to the Los Angeles-Long Beach (LA-LB) ports. PMA claims that the ILWU informed them that they would stop dispatching qualified workers.

ILWU denied this in a press release issued on November 10:

Obscuring months of data regarding the non-labor related causes of the current crisis-level congestion problem, PMA’s Texas-based public relations firm announced that the ILWU was the cause bringing “the port complex to the brink of gridlock.” The public relations firm also propagandized about the ILWU, its leadership, and false claims of safety issues.

By Anonymous - Beating the Bounds, October 26, 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.

Sometimes the world narrows to a very fine point. A certain slant of light. The head of a needle you need to pass through. I don’t care right now about the National Energy Board of Canada (merely a corporate tool for shoehorning global energy projects into other people’s territories—a funnel for money from the public, to the private sector). I don’t care about this or that court of law, appeals and constitutional challenges. I don’t care about the drones, unmarked cars, or CSIS agents. I don’t even care that much about the rain.

I care about the people who have come together to stand in a forest, on a mountain, in the path of a pipeline. I care about them because of their passion and commitment, their awareness of the fact that they are standing at once against local destruction (a nature conservation area, the animals we meet here every day, right near the edge of a large city) and against global destruction (adding carbon to an already warming planet through new fossil fuel infrastructure—the last thing we should be doing, if we truly care about the continuation of life on this planet, in the near future). I care too, about the trees I can touch, the animals I can see, and the future commons we need to preserve for life to continue, for this planet to be a place of biological diversity and human sharing.

As has been our intention all along, we will occupy public land, a city park, and prevent Kinder Morgan from carrying out its destructive work—work opposed by local First Nations, opposed by the City of Burnaby, and opposed by the majority of Burnaby residents. While the case goes back and forth in the courts, out intention is to keep Kinder Morgan wrapped up dealing with us, either until a court somewhere sides with the people against this mega-corporation, or until the NEB’s December 1 deadline for KM’s complete application.

We are doing this to protect the local environment and people. And we are doing this because we know that people everywhere have to begin taking a stand against fossil fuel projects, and thus doing whatever we can to mitigate climate change. This is no time for new carbon projects. This is the time to build a new economy, based on new, renewable sources of energy, providing new, clean energy jobs. There is simply no benefit to the citizens of Burnaby to have this pipeline here—it benefits only the US-based Kinder Morgan, and the global market its oil will be sold on. And there is no benefit to our ailing global climate. The time to change course is now, and the many volunteers on Burnaby Mountain, and their many, many supporters in the community and around the world, have realized this, and they are taking direct action.

By Andres Willes Garcés - Waging Nonviolence, October 2, 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.

On an ordinary Tuesday evening in April 2007, dozens of union janitors gathered outside a downtown office building in Sydney, Australia, to celebrate a victory: After a long fight, another cleaning contractor had agreed to sign up with the janitors’ union. Singing “Don’t Stop the Cleaners” to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’” and pounding drums and shaking noisemakers, the assembled janitors listened to union leaders talk about their next target: the cleaning contractor of that very office building in front of them, which was still nonunion. After sending this message, cheering and chanting, the group marched back to the union office for a celebratory barbecue.

As this example shows, marches and rallies can be a great way to celebrate a big campaign victory (and gear up for the next one). They’re accessible, often relatively simple to plan, and can easily incorporate participation from many kinds of people. Good marches and rallies have a few functions. They can be a good place to announce you’ve reached a new stage, or otherwise serve as a movement’s marking point, such as the 1963 March on Washington. They can inspire your grassroots base with new energy. Or, ideally, they can move you past the finish line and into your campaign victory lap.

But too often we use marches and rallies in place of any other public action to put pressure on decision-makers and build support for our campaign. They’re good for partying or as a mass mobilization after grassroots support is built — but there are many more effective ways to create low-risk opportunities for gathering people together. On the heels of the People’s Climate March last weekend, where more than 300,000 people gathered to demand international action on climate change, it’s important to take the time to reflect on what marches can accomplish — and what other tactics can be used instead.