Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: Support Oil & Gas Workers’ Fight for a Just Transition

Oil workers in West Africa commemorate the 11 workers killed in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS NEED TO FIGHT FOR WORKERS

By Meg Maloney

Workers in the fossil fuel industry feel the effects of polluting industries on their families’ lives, including the threats to their homes due to loss of wetlands & sea level rise, water and air pollution, and the destruction of wildlife habitats. Some unions have put out statements saying they are for stopping climate change but express concerns over the transition to a sustainable energy economy. Will their new jobs be unionized and have good pay? Will their pensions be safe? Will they have access to health care? Society owes a lot to oil workers and their communities who suffer from the ups and downs of the global oil market and who often have dangerous jobs. The environmental movement needs to stand behind a just transition that recognizes oil workers and communities as leaders in the fight for their demands.

We cannot trust the Democrats or Republicans to secure a just transition for workers; we must fight for ourselves. All the benefits or rights that we have—and that we defend from constant attack—have come about as a result of workers and communities organizing.

Both bosses and their politicians seek to increase profits. Neither care about the effect on workers or the environment. We’re nearing the 10 year anniversary of the BP disaster where 11 workers were killed on the job. On top of dangerous work environments, workers face under staffing, and bosses replacing union jobs with independent contractors. With continuous layoffs, increasing climate crisis, and an increasing push towards sustainable energy, workers will have to fight to make sure that the transition is carried out on the workers’ terms, not the bosses.

A just transition could include the following demands:

  • Fossil fuel companies fully fund workers’ pensions and healthcare funds before anything else
  • Full unrestricted access to labor unions
  • Workers must receive the union access, pay and benefits they were receiving at their previous jobs
  • New workers should have full access to a union, living wages, and benefits
  • Full reemployment for all workers coming out of dying industries.
  • Priority to local hiring and paid training for affected communities.
  • Reparations from the old industries to communities affected by their negligence
  • Investment in job creation and training for sectors that are needed to address changing climate, such as jobs building infrastructure, wind, solar, environmental research, and wetland and forest restoration
  • Giant fossil fuel companies take responsibility for funding retraining, retooling, and remediation of polluted land
  • Demand the state fund initial stages of transition by finally taxing big oil.

For a just transition to happen the environmental movement and the workers must unite to draw up a plan and mobilize to demand its implementation. We cannot put our faith in congress or any politicians to do what is needed. Just like the housing crisis they will bail out the banks before the people, the bosses before the workers. We must organize and unite the labor and environmental movements to demand a just transition that meets the needs of the workers, and fully addresses climate change.

Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: Keep the Pentagon Out of Space

On August 29, 2019 Trump announced the formation of Space Command.
By Adam Pedesclaux

In another act of aggression against the whole world but especially the people of Russia and China, Trump recently proposed another thing that is both expensive and useless to working class people: Space Command (SpaceCom). Following closely behind the U.S. withdrawal from the INF treaty in which both the US and Russia agreed to stop developing intercontinental nuclear weapons, Trump undoubtedly has the aim of holding nuclear power over other countries from space. Earlier this year the Trump administration announced that they wanted to squander $14 billion of tax-payer money in order to carry out their plan of weaponizing space. Most of the world is already afraid of the United States and its hellish arsenal of weapons capable of leveling entire countries. If Trump’s plans are carried out, it’s not a far cry to say that the U.S. military would be capable of raining death from the heavens in their quest to force the world into submitting to the will of the capitalists they protect. We must not allow this to happen.

Working people have nothing to gain from this. We still don’t have healthcare, affordable housing or paid vacations, among other things, and yet the government has the audacity to give billions of dollars to morally bankrupt bomb and weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. People in Flint still depend on poisoned water and people in Gordon Plaza are still living on cancer-causing soil. The workers of this country continue to be trampled underfoot by the rich and powerful while our tax money is being wasted on weapons that threaten and kill innocent people around the world. We must open our eyes to see our real enemies who live lavishly in mansions and yachts that WE pay for.

Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: Pentagon Is Biggest Polluter, Army for the Oil Companies

By Gabriel Mangano

The world’s single largest consumer of petroleum—and therefore the largest polluter on the planet — is the US. Department of Defense (DoD).

To secure control over the world’s oil, U.S. capitalists have created the largest, most destructive army in world history. They have used this army to overthrow elected governments and destabilize others, even wrecking whole regions at the cost of millions of lives and untold environmental destruction. Ironically, to seize control of this oil, the capitalists have built an army almost entirely dependent on oil, the energy resource most responsible for global warming.

The DoD is the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases and uses more oil each day than the total usage of 175 countries. It produces more climate pollution than most countries and totals 80% of the US Government consumption. In fact, the DoD burns through more than 144 million barrels of oil annually. That does not include their allies’ forces, military contractors, and fuel consumed to make weaponry, all in pursuit of more oil. This criminal activity has been kept under cover; the US made sure, at the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, that fossil fuel emissions from the military were excluded from regulatory oversight. Add to this the environmental destruction from 18 years of endless war and criminal regime change. The results have been disastrous.

In Afghanistan, 18 years of war have left 111,000 killed including 30 pine nut farmers massacred in a mid-September drone strike which they call “collateral damage”. Besides the release of millions of tons of CO2, environmental devastation includes deforestation and the release of toxic pollutants like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury from open fire pits for the burning of trash.

In Iraq the situation has been more devastating with 400 millions tons of CO2 released to date. Iraqis have also suffered from the U.S. use of depleted uranium that has created elevated rates of cancer and crippling birth defects. After U.S. attacks in Fallujah, residents suffer “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied”. And the U.S. is still using depleted uranium in Syria, despite saying it would desist. The genocidal use of uranium and biological and chemical weapons repeats the crimes of the imperialist war against Vietnam.

We also must consider the environmental destruction caused by the over 900 US military bases around the world from trash burning to defoliates to chemical toxins to drone strikes. Almost nowhere is safe from the destruction wrought by the DoD. The DoD is the largest purveyor of poisonous toxins like Agent Orange, napalm, and nuclear waste. Around 70% of environmental EPA Superfund sites were caused by the DoD.

We are at a significant juncture in human history, and the survival of humanity is clearly at stake. We know the Democratic Party will not save us and that even so-called socialists in Congress voted for the military budget. Workers and environmental fighters are building a movement and learning that the U.S. military was not created to defend us but is in fact the enemy of workers and oppressed people the world over. More and more, we see that to sustain human life on the planet, to foster life in harmony with all living things, it is necessary to fight against the U.S. imperialist army and its allies if we want real environmental justice.

Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: Environmental Movement Must Demand Nuclear Disarmament

While capitalist caused climate change presents unprecedented challenges to the species, nuclear war remains the most dangerous threat to life that humans have ever known.

The U.S. government maintains a nuclear arsenal of over 6,000 nuclear warheads.

The current number of deployed (operational) nuclear weapons would be enough to instantly kill around 647 million people. All out nuclear war could easily spell the end of humanity.

More than 200,000 people were killed by U.S. nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to a report by the news agency McClatchy, more than 107,394 Americans have suffered from cancer or other serious diseases as a result of working at nuclear weapons plants.

Any serious environmental movement must recognize the complete nuclear disarmament of the U.S. military as a top priority.

Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: Out-of-State Oil Barons and Chemical Plant Owners Profit from Destroying Louisiana

A father and daughter attend the climate change protest together on Friday, September 20.

By Jennifer Lin

Energy corporations pillage and destroy the environment for profit, crushing the lives and livelihoods of workers in the process. As the climate crisis worsens, hurricanes and floods will become more destructive. These events have always revealed the intention of rich capitalists to profit from disasters.

After Katrina, the Road Home Program was designed to make it nearly impossible for Black workers to rebuild their homes. Real estate speculators then carried out a land grab.

Even systems that are supposed to protect people from natural disasters are being used against us, because they are the private projects of city officials and land developers based on profit contracts and bank loans. Drainage canals and artificial levees deplete the soil of groundwater and nutrients, causing land to drop below sea level. Worse, the lack of natural outlets for the Mississippi allows pressure to build up around the levees downriver, making the working-class communities that live there particularly vulnerable to flooding.

Of course, this is business as usual for the millionaires on the Sewerage and Water Board, who are now trying to impose a new drainage fee on workers that will push more and more people towards foreclosure and eviction. Meanwhile, the residents of Gordon Plaza continue to wait for a fully funded relocation. They have been struggling to have their humanity recognized for over thirty years since the city colluded with real estate vultures to build their homes on a toxic waste landfill in the Upper Ninth Ward. In Cancer Alley, the highest cancer-causing area in the U.S., people living near industrial plants are protesting the relentless poisoning of Black communities by petrochemical companies.

DEMAND REPARATIONS FROM OIL COMPANIES
Oil and gas extraction account for about 60% of wetland loss and coastal erosion in the Gulf. Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of coast since 1930. Most of that land belonged to the Houma people, who have had their lands stolen and their histories erased for centuries, first by colonial settlers and now by oil tycoons.

Few people today mention the Taylor oil spill. Back in 2004, Hurricane Ivan destroyed an oil rig owned by Taylor Energy Co., which continues to leak 100 barrels of oil into the Gulf every day. Disasters like this and the Deepwater Horizon spill pervade the oil industry, which endangers workers’ lives and destroys entire ecosystems for profit.

We cannot stand for the wholesale destruction of our communities and livelihoods by rich capitalists. We must stop corporations from continuing to poison the land we live on, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the people we love. Under capitalism, only what is profitable is valuable. Until this violent system of oppression and exploitation is completely overturned, the measure of our worth as people and the worth of the planet that shelters us, nourishes us, and sustains us will be dictated by a handful of rich CEOs who will never stop extracting the precious, collective resources of the earth for profit. Calling for an end to capitalist-driven ecological catastrophe is a necessary part of the revolutionary struggle towards liberation. An entire world is at stake, and we have no time to lose.

Posted on

Women’s Reproductive Rights Under Renewed Attack

The Trump administration is carrying out an assault on Title X, a law that created programs to provide birth control and other reproductive health services to millions of workers across the United States. Planned Parenthood and other organizations funded through Title X were recently informed that they must comply with a gag rule that will prevent providers from giving birth control or information on abortion to patients. The administration is moving forward with the gag rule in spite of multiple cases in the courts.

While Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive healthcare in the country, is the primary organization affected, almost all providers of reproductive care will be restricted by this rule. Planned Parenthood alone will lose $60 million in funding, and as clinics who cannot find funding elsewhere shut down, those that are still open are overwhelmed. Some clinics are increasing the number of patients by 70% to make up for the loss. Rates are already going up at clinics as they try to make up for the lack of funding.

The rule is another attack on reproductive rights which attempts to criminalize abortion and miscarriage and prevent the working class from having control of their bodies and lives. By attacking access to birth control and abortion, the ruling class is attempting to prevent women from fully participating in society. The ruling class will still have access to reproductive care, being able to afford providers who do not rely on Title X funding; this gag rule is a specific attack on poor folks, people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.

Though Roe v. Wade has not yet been overturned and the legal right to an abortion still exists, states have been restricting abortion access at an accelerated rate in the past year. Actions around the country have protested each new law, with a coalition of activists in Louisiana even holding a die-in at the state capitol and a major protest that blocked New Orleans’ Poydras St. in midday traffic.

A larger, militant movement is needed to prevent the complete rollback of reproductive rights. Restrictions on reproductive rights not only keep women from participating in society, they also rob women of the autonomy needed to organize for their liberation. Because women’s labor (inside and outside the home) generates enormous wealth for society, capitalists will always have a vested interest in exploiting them. This is why women must step into their revolutionary power and fight back against the capitalists. The path to women’s liberation is bound up in the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism.

Posted on

Food is a Right— No Cuts to Food Stamps!

By Antranette Scott

Once again capitalist figurehead Donald Trump has continued his assault on the working-class. This time he’s focusing his attack on hungry working class families and students who receive reduced/free lunch. The administration is trying to strip more than 3 million workers of food stamps.

The attack will cut $25 billion from SNAP over the next decade by ransacking the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility. This important provision helps states streamline SNAP eligibility for families that have applied for certain other assistance programs for low-income people. This key categorical eligibility also gives states the flexibility that they need to smooth benefit cliffs in SNAP that prevent low income families from facing sudden loss of benefits whenever a wage goes up slightly.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities gives a concrete example of how the loss of this eligibility is bad for workers. They give the example of a woman earning $12.50 an hour and raising two kids. This puts the family at 125 percent of the federal poverty level, and they receive approximately $161 per month in SNAP. Thanks to the categorical eligibility, if that worker gets a 50 cent raise per hour (an additional $86 per month in earnings), the family’s monthly food assistance benefit will go down by $31, leaving them with a net gain of $55. Under Trump’s heartless rule, that same worker would lose all their SNAP benefits overnight! For making 50 cents more per hour the worker would be losing $75.00 a month.

This sudden loss of benefits also would have devastating effects at school cafeterias across the country. When a family loses SNAP benefits through the gutting of categorical eligibility at home, that immediately makes school children ineligible for a reduced/free lunch. For some students this is the only time in the day that they have access to a nutritional meal.

Here at the Workers Voice we know that the best way to trim the budget is to stop feeding the Pentagon our hard-earned tax dollars. With nearly 1 trillion dollars of OUR tax dollars being allotted to imperialist wars and the highest polluters on our planet, we see where the Trump administration’s priorities lie: in fattening the wallets of war profiteers! Trump and his goons do not care about working people.

We need our tax dollars spent on quality education, access to adequate healthcare, and job development. This resolution to undermine and defund SNAP is not going to benefit the working class. We need to organize to get our needs met. We need to agitate and say NO to defunding SNAP! No to Imperialist Wars! No to politicians that don’t care about workers!!! Only by ending the rule of the capitalist class can the workers see the wealth that our labor generates go to uplifting us ALL!

Posted on

Mayor Cantrell’s Affordable Housing Meetings Are a Sham

By Sanashihla

An August 29 meeting in the 9th Ward called by the mayor about the housing crisis was beyond disappointing. One after another city official droned on about proposals mostly benefiting developers, not homeowners or tenants. 9th ward residents were not allowed to speak but merely put a question on a card where the officials could pick and choose. Residents should be allowed to get up at these meetings and the politicians should shut up and listen. What are they afraid of?

Black New Orleanians are being pushed out of homes and apartments all over the city to be replaced by mainly white professionals. The city backs this scheme by granting tax incentives to developers and pursuing code violations that are unimportant but expensive.

The only “relief” offered were loans to fix homes; Mayor Cantrell even threatened homeowners who hadn’t made these repairs. Far from fighting new assessments which are raising taxes in Black neighborhoods like Gentilly or Treme and further pushing people out, Cantrell is actually pushing to get those extra tax dollars out of working class New Orleanians.

When the Residents of Gordon Plaza showed up to the meeting en masse, they were also ignored.

Initially, the mayor didn’t mention anything about Gordon Plaza on her own. It took an audience member’s question/comment card submission for the mayor to mention that the city “might have—but no promises” plots of land that can be considered.

Gordon Plaza was a city initiative, framed as “affordable housing,” promoted toward Black residents as an opportunity, that led to the crisis at Press Park and Gordon Plaza being built on toxic soil in the first place.

The residents are demanding a fully funded relocation, where they can be fairly and justly compensated for their homes in the context of an increased cost of living, increased property taxes, and the fact that their houses could sell for top dollar if the neighborhood that it sits on were not toxic. Cutting checks in the name of the Residents only requires resolve. And considering the Residents of Gordon Plaza are not even seeking restitution for the impact on their health or medical bills associated with living in the second-highest cancer-causing neighborhood in the state of Louisiana, this is a small request.

A fully funded relocation of 52 households would only cost half of what the City of New Orleans spent on installing red and blue flashing surveillance cameras all over the city.

It’s the working-class residents across New Orleans who need the real breaks, not a handful here and there but all. Working class residents can’t keep up with the constant rise in the cost of living, particularly with increases on rent and property taxes.

Posted on

Stop Caging Workers!

Photo: Christina Tareq

On Friday, September 27, dozens of hospitality workers and supporters gathered in Congo Square for a Workers Unity Rally called by the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance. Organizers stressed the urgent need for workers to resist police and ICE terror in the workplace. Speakers included Eugene Grant of the Slow Rollas Brass Band who spoke on behalf of street musicians who have been targeted for harassment by the police who take their orders from gentrifiers and real estate developers. From Congo Square demonstrators marched through the French Quarter, calling on their fellow workers to come together to fend off cops and ICE agents who are attacking workers on behalf of greedy, racist bosses. Demonstrators chanted “Lift the wages, no more cages!” Grant summed up the attitude of the marching workers best, chanting “We gotta fight to get it!”