climate justice

By Káráni: Escribir o Volar - Káráni, June 30, 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.

Bellingham, WA – Farmworker families in northwest Washington have brought their berry boycott to Costco Wholesale, a respected Washington grocer that purchases berries from Driscoll’s, global small-fruit supplier that sources berries from Sakuma Bros. Farms and from several farms in the San Quintin Valley in Baja California, Mexico where there are ongoing labor disputes over unfair wages and wage theft, mistreatment and sexual harassment in the workplace, and against the dependency upon child labor for production.

A small independent farmworker union called Familias Unidas por la Justicia began their boycott of Sakuma Bros. Farms berries in 2013, successfully forcing the firm to discontinue selling fresh market berries with under their own label. In 2014, after discovering that the firm had shifted production towards processed berries and began packing fresh market berries exclusively into Driscoll’s label cartons, the farmworker union began to focus their campaign on Driscoll’s because the wholesaler refused to meet the union’s demands, stating instead that they fully supported Sakuma Bros. Farms, Inc. and had not found any wrongdoing via their corporate audits of their supplier. A finding that the Skagit Valley Superior Court’s legal register disproves when it comes to the firm interfering with the farmworker’s right to engage in concerted activity, reprisals, their tenant rights, and the firm’s failure to follow Washington state’s legislation regarding paid rest breaks. Meanwhile, the farmworker union’s boycott campaign convinced five US cooperative grocers and the University of Washington to discontinue sourcing berries from Driscoll’s by early 2015.

On March 17, 2015 over 50,000 Mexican farmworkers organized a general strike in Baja California’s San Quintin Valley in the berry fields of Driscoll’s subsidiaries, BerryMex and MoraMex, Reiter Affiliated Companies along with several other fruit and vegetable growers in the region. As a result, J. Miles Reiter, the owner of the subsidiaries, stepped down as CEO of Driscoll’s on March 31, 2015 and was replaced by Kevin Murphy. The powerful strike immediately impacted the supply chain for all fresh market commodities in California on the U.S. side of the border.

On April 8, 2015 the emerging independent farmworker union named La Alianza de Organizaciones Nacionales, Estatales, y Municipales por la Justicia Social joined forces with Familias Unidas por la Justicia by announcing their endorsement of the Driscoll’s boycott and calling for it’s expansion to an international scale. Familias Unidas por la Justicia leadership had reached out in solidarity to the emerging union shortly after the strike because their extended family members who lived in the San Quintin Valley had participated in the strike and were reporting incidents of reprisals.

By Stephyn Quirke - Earth First! Newswire, June 24, 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.

Is our weather getting funny?

Some bushes and flowers started to bloom near the end of January this year, and in the spring cherry blossoms were blooming weeks early. This capped a winter with extremely low snowfall in the Cascade Mountains. The abnormal heat, combined with the drought now covering 80% of Oregon, has actually raised temperatures in the Willamette River above 70 degrees, recently killing chinook salmon as they made their way up-stream to spawn.

In March, tribal leaders from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians converged in Portland to discuss this ongoing phenomenon of strange weather, which they cannily dubbed “climate change”. These changes, they said, were related to a pattern of global warming, and were creating unique hardship on Northwest tribes. In 2013, the ATNI also passed a resolution opposing all new fossil fuel proposals in the Northwest, citing harm to their treaty rights, cultural resources, and land they hold sacred. Now the Affiliated Tribes are discussing plans for adaptation and mitigation, and asking how to undermine the root causes of climate change.

In addition to the sudden onset of strange weather, Portland has also seen the abrupt arrival of strange, mile-long trains loaded with crude oil – a very unusual sight in the Northwest until just two years ago. In the event of a derailment or crash, these trains are known to increase the temperature of surrounding areas by several hundred degrees – a strange weather event by any standard. This phenomenon has become so common that the train engineers who run them actually call them “bomb trains”.

While the danger of unplanned explosions is universally recognized, the risks of strange weather, and the planned explosions that take place in our internal combustion engines, are typically less appreciated. But the connections are becoming more obvious as the figure of the oil train valiantly pulls them together.

The sudden appearance of oil trains in the Northwest is one effect of the unprecedented crusade for oil extraction in North America – one that has produced a massive wave of opposition from residents and elected officials. In Washington state alone, nine cities representing 40% of the state’s population have passed resolutions that oppose oil trains. In Alberta resistance to oil politics recently replaced a 44-year ruling party with socialists. And in Portland, anger against oil trains just smashed a city proposal to bring propane trains into the port.

In recent months rail workers have become increasingly vocal about the industry-wide safety problems that lead to fiery train accidents. They are also critical of the latest safety rules that allegedly protect the public from accidents. Rail Workers United, a coalition of rail workers and their unions, says that the best way to make trains safer is to increase worker control and self-management; they propose a host of reforms that profit-obsessed rail companies are not interested in hearing. For many rail-side communities there is a parallel interest in community control over the railroads: no fossil fuel trains are safe for them as long as trains derail and the climate unravels. Together, the two movements are calling for a better future for our railroads and our environment, and demanding more public influence to safeguard both.

By John Cartwright - Rabble.Ca, June 24, 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.

Years ago, someone in the global disarmament movement came up with a humorous way to draw attention to a desperately serious topic. The slogan a single atomic bomb can ruin your entire day soon appeared on buttons everywhere, and it came to symbolise the absurdity of the military strategy of mutually assured destruction.

Decades later, another kind of assured destruction looms as climate change dramatically change weather patterns across the world. When Hurricane Sandy swept into the American eastern seaboard, many New Yorkers experienced aspects of devastation that hit like the aforementioned nuclear bomb. Suddenly, climate change was no longer an abstract conversation. People's lives had been affected in a way they never imagined. In New York City, there was a new immediacy to the issue of global warming.

And so, last September, I found myself surrounded by thousands of New York trade unionists as the People's Climate March surged through Manhattan. In the labour rally at the start of the march, the leader of a New York nurses' union described the scene in her hospital emergency room as the victims of Sandy poured in, while her members elsewhere were evacuating patients from hospitals that had lost electricity.

Transit workers saw the subway tunnels flooded for days, janitors were impacted as scores of office buildings shut down, and IBEW electricians worked overtime to repair damaged power lines and transformers. SEIU Local 1199 members were out in force carrying signs that proclaimed "climate change is a health issue." Teachers and Teamsters and City employees shared the street with a message of common concern. It was breathtaking.

By the Centre for Social Justice and Socialist Project - Socialist Project, June 21, 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.

It is no longer plausible to propose incremental solutions to the ecological crises of our time. The numbers are clear: to avoid a trillion metric tons of cumulative carbon emissions by 2039, and an increase in global average temperatures of 2°C, it is necessary to stabilize immediately Greenhouse Gas emissions. The ecological scars of desertification, coastline loss, species extinction, destruction of habitat, and much else is evident for all to see.

The main culprit of runaway climate change and environmental degradation, as Naomi Klein points out in her new book, is the economic system itself: capitalism. This is a class system that requires endless growth and is incompatible with sustainability and meaningful climate action. Market solutions from the last decades of neoliberalism have miserably failed. The tactics of even "Big Green" environmental groups have too often pursued immediate reforms that fail to address the real sources of the crisis in the unequal relations at work, the need for endless consumption, and the hollowness of democracy today.

But what might serve as an alternative political program for an ecological transition? Where might new radical political movements emerge to carry forward such an ecological revolution? Is "Blockadia" enough? Or is there even more needed to, as Klein suggests, "build the world that will keep us all safe"?

Moderated by Lana Goldberg. Presentations by:

• Niloofar Golkar is a Toronto-based activist with Rising Tide Toronto and a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at York University.
• Greg Albo is a professor of Political Economy at York University, co-editor of the Socialist Register (recent volume: Transforming Classes), and director of the Centre for Social Justice.
• Jodi Dean is a professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York State. She has been active in the We Are Seneca Lake anti-gas struggle and is the author of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (2009), Blog Theory (2010), and The Communist Horizon (2012), among others.

The forum was sponsored by: Centre for Social Justice and Socialist Project.

By Stephyn Quirke - Earth First! Newswire, June 15, 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.

Two months ago I reported on the plan to build propane export facilities at the Port of Portland. This report investigated bomb trains and the blast zone around the proposed terminal, dug into Pembina’s operations in Canada, and reported on their heavy participation in both tar sands extraction and fracking in Western Canada.

Much has happened since this last report. On April 7^th the Swinomish tribe in Washington filed a lawsuit against BNSF oil trains. On April 9^th Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC) voted in favor of Pembina’s pipeline, raising howls of opposition from the crowd. On May 6^th the Tories of Alberta were unseated after 44 years of rule – kicked out by a wave of opposition to the fossil fuel industry that finally crashed along with oil prices, with the socialist New Democratic Party now in charge promising to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On May 7^th Mayor Hales cleaned up the PSC’s mess and dropped his support for Pembina. On May 16th, thousands of activists showed up in Seattle to obstruct Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet, including hundreds of “kayactivists” on the water, who took leadership from Alaskan and Puget Sound tribes fighting coal and oil companies. On May 19^th, an oil pipeline ruptured on the California coast, spilling over 100,000 gallons of oil and creating a 9 mile ocean slick. And on June 4th the Coast Salish Nation, representing dozens of powerful tribes in the region, announced a unanimous agreement to protect the Salish Sea from crude oil shipments by rail, pipe, and sea.

Following these successful calls for solidarity from First Nations, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland is asking people to bear witness to tribal struggles to protect sacred land – particularly the Lummi Nation in Washington’s Puget Sound, who are currently fighting the largest coal export terminal in the country.

On June 27^th, members of the Lummi Nation will join the Unitarian Universalist’s annual General Assembly to discuss how the public can address climate change by centering indigenous struggles. The event organizers say their intent is to create stronger alliances across environmental and faith groups, and send a strong message of solidarity to indigenous nations in the fight against fossil fuels and other extractive industries. Their event begins at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland at 4:45 pm, and is both free and open to the public.

By Out of the Woods - Novara Wire, May 24, 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.

Climate change is an issue so big it can be paralysing. It doesn’t help with the paralysis that proposed solutions tend to be either hopelessly inadequate (change your lightbulbs! buy local!), or hopelessly ambitious (just replace capitalism with global eco-communes!). Out of the Woods is a blog focused on research and theory; obviously, we think that’s important, but it does leave people asking, “OK, but what should we actually do?” In our view, the only meaningful way to fight climate change is to fight the people whose interests and choices are wrecking the climate. In that spirit, here are six ways to become part of the global movement against fossil fuels and climate chaos.

1 Join Blockadia.

From Elsipogtog to Balcombe, a movement Naomi Klein has dubbed ‘Blockadia’ is developing to prevent new fossil fuel extraction. In the case of Elsipogtog this is part of wider indigenous struggles for the land. These kind of struggles have been at their strongest when strong waged through alliances between local residents and environmental activists. Potential ‘Blockadia’ flashpoints in the UK include the ‘new dash for gas’, stopping new coal coming online, and preventing road and airport expansion. With the government opening up large swathes of this country for fracking, Blockadia could be coming soon to a place near you.

2. From divestment to non-cooperation.

We think that divestment campaigns are unlikely to have much impact. This is because many fossil fuel companies are not publicly traded corporations. Those that are don’t typically raise investment capital through the stock market.

That said, divestment campaigns may serve a movement-building function. They have been prominent in universities, where – in the other direction – a lot of funding goes from fossil capital to university research. There are also many cases of curricula tailored to the fossil fuel industry. Divestment campaigns could serve as a springboard to wider demands for non-cooperation with fossil capital. That could start to impact the development of new fossil fuel reserves.

If the world is to avoid climate chaos, new reserves absolutely have to stay in the ground. In fact, at this point the best case scenario is probably mitigating climate chaos. Climate change isn’t a possibility that might happen in the future: it’s happening now and will continue. What we’re fighting over is how fast and how bad climate change will be.

3. Green syndicalism.

‘Green syndicalism’ is a term coined by anarchist organiser-turned-academic Jeff Shantz to describe radical worker-based ecological organising. For example, in the 1970s the Building Labourer’s Federation in Australia implemented ‘green bans’ against ecologically-damaging projects, as recounted in the inspiring film Rocking the Foundations.

Another example is the historic joint ‘Local 1’ of eco-activists Earth First! and revolutionary unionists the IWW, which organised timber workers against the destruction of old growth forest in northern California in the 1990s. Green syndicalist tactics include sabotage, workers tipping off external activists, and activists occupying work sites as a pretext for workers to down tools in unofficial work stoppages.

Elements of these kind of tactics have been used in the UK, such as the McLibel Support Campaign linking up with McDonalds Workers Resistance in the early 2000s, and the occupation of the Vestas wind turbine factory in 2009, following factory-gate agitation by environmentalists. The basic tenet of green syndicalism is that the interests of capital are opposed to those of both workers and the environment. This provides a strong basis for a ‘red-green alliance’, to counter workers and environmentalists being played off against each other in a capitalist ploy of divide and rule.