green syndicalism

By Max Perkins - Boston IWW, September 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.

Truly the most amazing thing I have ever been a part of, the Peoples’ Climate March in New York City was beyond the biggest mass of activists I have ever seen. Have you ever seen 200-300 Anarchists before? WOW! From every part of the country and from all over the world. The day started with meeting up with our wonderful comrades from NY Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, who did an amazing job organizing our Anti-Capitalist contingent. At 11:30 we started masking up, assembling our banners, unraveling our flags and meeting each other, then marched to meet 2-3 other groups that had been assembling between 90th St. and 87th St. by Central Park West. A beautiful day was in store. Never have I seen so many diverse groups: 350.org, Indigenous Rights activists, Vets for Peace, just to name a few. We assembled near the contingent from the Revolutionary Communist Party (Bob Avakian’s followers). This was at first very tense. A fight almost started when one of our comrades was explaining that a cult of personality is counter-revolutionary. However the issue was resolved peacefully.

Looking around me was stunning: A sea of black flags, red and black flags, also hundreds of folks of all ages and backgrounds — simply the most comrades I have ever seen in the US or in once place. Chanting, and singing a beautiful version of “Solidarity Forever,” the march began around 1-2 pm. It took hours for the first contingents to reach the end of the march, and even longer for us. The highlights included screaming up at the Banks, and most especially at Fake Fox News. So many people were asking, “Who are you?” And the reply was “We are Anarchists! Oh we need more of you! Yes we do!” The march was amazing and peaceful with much support for us, many people taking pictures and cheering us on. At one point a huge group of young POC on bikes saw us and there was a massive show of anti-police solidarity. Wonderful!

The march continued to Times Square, with wave upon wave of dedicated activists and no loss of energy. The changes never stopped and my voice was really gone. The follow up to this is that we made a huge statement, but received no press (not that we were seeking it, but to have so many of us (Anarchists) together, you would think that maybe someone would say something, but alas NO!). Coverage seemed, as is common, to focus on the “big” groups. Even Democracy Now did not mention the Anarchist involvement in the march. I feel that it means we have to work harder to bring the message to the people that this should not be a one-time thing, but a regular occurrence, for people forget all too quickly, and carry on with their lives as if nothing happened. Today I have been corresponding with Fellow Workers, including FW Maria, from the IWW’s Washington DC Branch, who like me wants to see better communication and solidarity actions that include many branches. Our struggle continues, and until we reach our goal of a world free from the shackles of Capitalist oppression we must carry on. For an Injury to One (planet) is truly an Injury to All! Solidarity Forever, and special thanks to Maria, DC IWW, NY Black Rose and Polish Anarchists, and any others who helped make this happen.

By Paul Messersmith-Glavin - The Portland Radicle, May 17, 2013

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.

In a previous essay (Capital and Climate Catastrophe, November, 2012), I outlined how capitalism is responsible for the current climate crisis and how it is not capable of solving it. Here I talk about the local effects of climate change, the effort to export coal through the Pacific Northwest, and about bringing an anti-capitalist perspective to organizing against climate catastrophe.

More Rain, But Less Water

Over the last century, the average annual temperature has increased 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, with increases in some areas up to 4 degrees. Changes in forest cover, stream flows, and snowpack are already occurring in our region and will continue. The average annual temperature is expected to increase up to 10 degrees by the time today’s infants enter old age. The winters here are likely to get wetter and the summers drier. Insultingly, people living in the Pacific Northwest are being asked to help further facilitate these devastating changes to our environment by allowing coal trains to export coal to Asia to accelerate global warming.

Much of the region’s water supply is stored in snowpack in the mountains. Snowpack melts in the late spring and summer, running into streams and rivers throughout the year, providing drinking water, a healthy environment for fish, and water for agriculture, and driving energy production through dams. Higher winter temperatures will cause more precipitation to fall as rain, rather than snow. The decreased snowpack, estimated to decline by 40% in only the next 30 years, would increase the incidence of drought in increasingly drier, hotter summers. Increased rain (rather than snow) at higher elevations in the winter would also increase the probability of winter flooding. Overall we’ll experience less availability of drinkable water.

Decreasing water availability would strain existing social relations, as people compete to use dwindling supplies for agricultural irrigation, hydropower, municipal drinking water, industrial uses, and the protection of endangered and threatened animal species. Seventy percent of electric power in the Northwest is supplied by hydropower. At the same time that rising temperatures will increase the demands for air conditioning and refrigeration, decreased summer water supplies will limit hydroelectricity. Salmon, already threatened, will become increasingly vulnerable, with at least a third of their habitat destroyed by century’s end.

Additionally, the impact on the region’s forests will be immense. We can expect increased damage due to proliferating insect attacks from the mountain pine beetle and others, slowed tree growth, and a bloom of forest fires.¹

This will all be exasperated by the increased population demands, as people from regions even worse off come to the Pacific Northwest. In the next fifty years, the Portland metro area could grow to as many as 4 – 6 million, from the current level of just under a million. Increasing numbers of ‘climate refugees’ in the region will likely lead to more authoritarian police enforcement. Police play a role of ensuring race and class divisions, often through brutality and murder. This will likely increase with more desperate people.

On the coasts, ocean acidification accompanying climate change is already impacting oyster and other sea life populations and will continue to affect all marine life, as coastal erosion and sea levels increase.

North Portland is most vulnerable to flooding, as the Columbia River floods natural areas such as the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, the airport, and potentially up to two miles of North Portland in the decades and centuries to come.²

As much as climate change will affect the ecological integrity of our region, it will continue to be much more devastating to people living in parts of the world not responsible for producing greenhouse gases. The largely white, European people of the so-called global North dominate and exploit the people of the South. It is primarily poor people of color, not contributing to global warming, who will endure its most devastating effects. It is mostly they who will continue to suffer and die. That’s the racist nature of climate change.

By Ben Manski and Jill Stein - Popular Resistance, September 24, 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 world’s capitals will not end the old economy or deliver the new one.  We can’t wait any longer because every day of waiting reduces our window for action. We need not wait because we already hold the knowledge needed for creating the new economy. And because a global climate strike can stop the machine responsible for creating the climate crisis, the most powerful person may be you.

You may think that Wall Street will change course and lead our economy in a new, climate-neutral direction. Or you may expect Washington D.C. — or Beijing, New Delhi, Brussels or Moscow — to decisively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect people and the planet.

If so, read no further.

But if you are unwilling to entrust your future to the money men and the political class, then consider this: Regardless of who you are, the person who holds the most power in the world to end the climate crisis may be you.

One way to guarantee an end to the climate crisis is to stop doing the things that are heating the planet. Stop  fossil fuel production and use. Stop greenhouse gas emissions. Stop rainforest devastation. And since the corporate and political capitals of the world are unwilling to stop themselves, we must stop them ourselves.

We can stop them by refusing our participation and cooperation. We can stop them by withholding our labor. By folding our arms we can halt the machine responsible for the climate crisis and create the space for the new, green economy to take root. We should go on strike.

By Rebecca Solnit - New Mint Press, September 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.

When we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we’re arguing against people who claim we’re disrupting a stable system.

There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly — from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.

Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we’re arguing against people who claim we’re disrupting a stable system.  They insist that we’re rocking the boat unnecessarily.

I say: rock that boat. It’s a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think they’re hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.

“If you want to know how potentially powerful you are, ask your enemies.”

As you probably know, the actual oceans are rising — almost eight inches since 1880, and that’s only going to accelerate. They’re also acidifying, because they’re absorbing significant amounts of the carbon we continue to pump into the atmosphere at record levels.  The ice that covers the polar seas is shrinking, while the ice shields that cover Antarctica and Greenland are melting. The water locked up in all the polar ice, as it’s unlocked by heat, is going to raise sea levels staggeringly, possibly by as much as 200 feet at some point in the future, how distant we do not know.  In the temperate latitudes, warming seas breed fiercer hurricanes.

The oceans are changing fast, and for the worse. Fish stocks are dying off, as are shellfish. In many acidified oceanic regions, their shells are actually dissolving or failing to form, which is one of the scariest, most nightmarish things I’ve ever heard. So don’t tell me that we’re rocking a stable boat on calm seas. The glorious 10,000-year period of stable climate in which humanity flourished and then exploded to overrun the Earth and all its ecosystems is over.

But responding to these current cataclysmic changes means taking on people who believe, or at least assert, that those of us who want to react and act are gratuitously disrupting a stable system that’s working fine. It isn’t stable. It is working fine — in the short term and the most limited sense — for oil companies and the people who profit from them and for some of us in the particularly cushy parts of the world who haven’t been impacted yet by weather events like, say, the recent torrential floods in Japan or southern Nevada and Arizona, or the monsoon versions of the same that have devastated parts of India and Pakistan, or the drought that has mummified my beloved California, or the wildfires of Australia.

By x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, September 25, 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 Monday, September 22, 2014, over 2,500 demonstrators punctuated the 400,000 strong People's Climate March, with a more in-your-face, anti-capitalist protest called "Flood Wall Street". Channeling the IWW soapboxers of the Pacific Northwest during the lumber strikes of the late 1910s, IWW EUC member and cofounder Morgen Hughes was the first to engage in civil disobedience (and the first arrestee). Thanks to one of the demonstrators we have ample, albeit very muddy, video and audio footage of the instance. here (as best we can manage) is a transcript of the audio (the video is imbedded below). Fellow Worker Hughes begins soapboxing at 4:48 into the video:

Mic Check!!! (mic check!)

I'm doing a civil disobedience right now! (etc.)

I'm a member of the Industrial Workers of the World!

We want all workers to rise up!

Take control of all industry!

(inaudible)

And dismantle anything that is unsustainable!

And through Workers' power

(inaudible)

We need to dismantle all forms of oppression!

Including sexism...racism...homophobia...transphobia...speciesism...

Together, we can build, an ecological, general strike!

To take over, all industries, and dismantle capitalism once and for all!

(inaudible)...indigenous people, who are on the front line, and join in the struggle against capitalism!

Utilize your privilege, and support (those on) the front lines!

...at this point (7:43) Fellow Worker Hughes began leading the crowd in a chant. After about a minute, the police began demanding that Morgen step down. At approximately 9:49 into the video, having committed no significant crime, FW Hughes stepped down, where police were waiting to detain her.

Press Release - Vancouver IWW, September 21, 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.

Members of the Vancouver, BC and Bellingham, WA branches met at the Peace Arch on the BC/WA border on Saturday to participate in this weekend's international Climate Action.

It was a great opportunity to discuss labour issues and organizing in our region.  It was inspiring to hear from a diverse group of speakers, several of whom directly tied industrial capitalism to the climate crisis.  Another world is possible.

A special thanks to The Wilderness Committee for organizing transportation to the event.

By Paul Messersmith-Glavin - The Portland Radicle, November 21, 2012

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.

Capitalism is changing the weather.  More fundamentally, it is changing the climate.  This is the byproduct of an economic system that relies primarily on burning oil and coal to fuel production and enable the transportation of people and goods.  In looking at capitalists’ responsibility for the climate crisis, a central question is whether capitalism must impact the environment in this way, or if it is capable of changing its mode of production so its continued operation does not change the climate.
A new report estimates that before the year 2030, 100 million people will die as a result of the changing climate.  Ninety percent of these deaths will occur in poor countries.   The ‘climate crisis’ should now be spoken of as the climate catastrophe, because this is what it is for the majority of the peoples of the earth.  The droughts, melting icecaps, tropical storms, and bizarre weather we have been experiencing is just the beginning.

The dominant economic system is the driving force of climate change.  It is based upon the exploitation of oil and coal, which contributes greenhouse gases to the environment, resulting in increasing global temperatures.   The innermost logic of this economic system is the accumulation of capital.  Whatever serves profit thrives.  Currently a large part of the capitalist machine is fueled by oil and coal.  The vast majority of scientific investigation points directly to the burning of oil and coal as having already raised the temperature of the Earth by 1.5 degree Fahrenheit, with the possibility of raising it over ten degrees by the end of this century.  To do this would make life on earth unrecognizable, like something out of a science fiction movie. This may happen by the time today’s infants enter old age.

At one time reformists called for a Green Capitalism, for developing Green technologies and the like.  Major unions, who have reconciled themselves with capital, call for Green Jobs. Reformists and unions suggest that capitalism could be ecological, that it does not have to do things like pollute the air and water and change the climate.  This may be true.  It may be possible to have an exploitative economic system like capitalism, based upon renewable, alternative energy.  After all, the slave trade and early colonial conquest were based upon wind-powered ships and mills.  A central question then is whether the logic of capitalism is inherently ecologically destructive; will capitalism continue to play chicken with our future, or will it revolutionize its mode of production to not change the nature of the environment so much that the future of civilization is put into question?

There is a debate amongst members of the ruling class, the so-called 1%, about which way to go.  Some argue for the development of “carbon markets,” in which the right to put carbon into the environment is bought and sold, thus continuing to profit from the emission of greenhouse gases, while slowly decreasing them.  They argue for developing alternative energy, such as wind and solar, to replace coal and gas.  They promote ‘lifestyle changes’ and taxing coal and oil companies for their emissions.  Right now, this section of the ruling class is losing.  No real change is coming from above to respond to climate catastrophe.

It seems that if the fundamental driving force of capitalism is the further accumulation of capital, it would make sense not to change the ecology so much that you severely reduce the number of producers and consumers, threaten food production, and endanger the future of humanity.  Without civilization, how can capitalism continue?  Right now, the most potent anti-civilizational force on the planet is capitalism.