Sept. 13: Valley View inmate firefighters working in Butte County, CA
As fire and hurricane seasons become longer and increasingly dangerous, incarcerated workers are on the frontlines fighting to protect our communities. Often risking their own lives to save those on the outside, these workers receive little pay if any.
In California, thousands of incarcerated firefighters receive only $2-$5 a day and an additional $1 per hour during active fires even though they have the same training as Cal Fire’s non-incarcerated firefighters who earn an average of more than $70,000 per year. The State of California has admitted stealing $100 million per year in wages from incarcerated firefighters.
Louisiana: Unpaid incarcerated workers from Hunt Correctional Center work 12-hour shifts to make tens of thousands of sandbags ahead of Hurricane Barry in 2019.
Here on the Gulf Coast, incarcerated workers regularly work during storms and other disasters such as oil spills. In Louisiana, those who work on storm preparation and recovery are generally not paid even a penny for their long hours.
None of us is free while any remains in chains, and no worker should tolerate slave wages for any other worker. Not only is this exploitation wrong but it results in our own inability to find work at decent wages. If governments and other employers are allowed to pay slave wages to incarcerated workers, why would they decrease their profits by paying even minimum wage to someone on the outside?
Workers unite across the prison bars! Together, we will win!
Sept.25: Over 3,200 demonstrations against climate destruction took place worldwide, including in Bangladesh (above).
The capitalist system doesn’t just hamper our ability to recover from disaster; it is the principle cause. Capitalism thrives on toxic growth and expansion. So as to not be taken over by their rivals, corporations must forever seek out new sources of profit. The U.S. and other imperialist militaries are used for this purpose. On behalf of the owners of monopoly corporations, the military is dispatched to other countries to rob, dominate, and control resources such as oil and to establish new markets. In the process, the U.S. military emits more greenhouse gasses than most countries, making the Pentagon a top cause of global warming.
Anyone can observe the exponential increase of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere since the rise of industrial capitalism. Atmospheric carbon dioxide was at 285 ppm (parts per million) in 1850. Before now, in 800,000 years of earth’s history, atmospheric carbon dioxide had not surpassed 300 ppm. It is now greater than 410 ppm. This sharp increase is the reason for the rise in global temperatures and for the amplified environmental catastrophes across the world.
The acceleration of climate change will only increase the intensity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. U.S. coasts have been slammed by Katrina, Rita, Ike, Gustav, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, and Laura over just the past two decades.
Production for profit (instead of planned production) has put the future of human life in jeopardy, as Louisianans know all too well. Oil companies such as Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil are allowed by the state and federal government to scour the landscape for profits, destroying habitats and displacing people from their homes. Sea level rise as well as canal digging by the oil companies have caused Louisiana to lose one football field of land every hour. The culprit oil companies who pay next to nothing in taxes get off scot free.
Take away the incentive to hoard obscene amounts of wealth, and workers can easily meet all the needs and desires of society by producing according to a plan. More than ever, humanity needs a plan to deal with the disasters that the capitalists have left us to deal with. It’s time the working class takes the driver’s seat; the future of the world depends on it.
OXFAM REPORT SHOWS THE 1% ARE KILLING US AND THE PLANET
A September report by Oxfam concludes that, over the past quarter century, the world’s richest 1% has produced double the carbon emissions of the bottom 50% (over 3 billion people). Biden himself has already promised this wealthy, donor class that, “No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. In other words, keep your mansions, luxury bunkers, and piles of cash while the world’s people flee water and flame.
The world can’t wait for the rich to grow a conscience. It’s time to rise up!
Amazon workers in over 25 cities and 14 countries walked out their workplaces in solidarity with the global climate strike on September 20. More than 1,800 workers participated in the walkout, protesting the company’s contracts with fossil fuel companies, their shareholders’ funding of climate denying lobbyists and politicians, and the continued contracts with ICE and other agencies responsible for the oppression of refugees.
The group that organized the walk out, the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, recognized the leadership shown by tech workers at Google who last year successfully organized to demand the termination of a company contract with the Pentagon. They also emphasized the global reach of Amazon as well as its multinational workforce of 600,000. They pointed to the enormous potential and responsibility of these workers to become leaders in the movement to fight climate change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Global Climate Strike took place took place from September 20–27. Actions were held around the world. Top to bottom: Indonesia; Australia; Kampala, Germany; Kenya; Puerto Rico.
Only a global organization of the working class is up to the task of halting the climate and environmental crisis. We must fight to meet the needs of all peoples of the world equally.
By Gavrielle Gemma
Youth climate strikers have forced the environmental crisis on to the world stage. They have also forced the capitalists and all the governments they control to scramble to come up with plans that sound responsive while they protect the profits of the fossil fuel and weapons industries along with the politicians in their pockets.
We must keep the movement going strong in the streets but to succeed, we need to honestly size up the opposition.
President Trump is an enemy of the planet and the people, but the Democratic Party politicians also personally benefit from the status quo. For decades they’ve been totally bought out by the capitalists in charge of oil, chemical, agribusiness, banking and military industries.
We must recognize that though they rule by different methods—one more openly fascist, the other more deceptive—both uphold the rule of capitalism, private property and oil profits. Hillary Clinton received millions from the oil industry and the Saudi Monarchy.
Why do millions starve when there is a global surplus of food? Why are countries bombed for oil? Why is a trillion U.S. tax payer dollars going to war profiteers every year? Why do we continue to use fossil fuels when clean and sustainable energy alternatives are available?
Because capitalists do not care how many millions die and suffer as long as they prosper.
More than ever the movement needs the leadership of those with the most to lose from the global ecological crisis—the workers, the displaced, and the oppressed nations of the world. That’s why we must fight to end capitalism, imperialism, and racism. We must fight for global economic equality.
United Nations is not the answer.
While 193 countries belong to the United Nations, it is controlled by the security council which is made up of superpowers and is dominated by imperialist countries. The United Nations gave cover to the invasions of Iraq and Libya – both wars for oil.
Were the United Nations a real force for the people, its delegates would have marched out of the UN headquarters to a nearby meeting of oil executives and ordered a mass arrest for crimes against humanity and other species. The oil executives had called this emergency meeting to figure out how to rebrand themselves and co-opt the movement.
“The change that needs to take place—the trillions of dollars of investment—is only going to come from companies with resources and scale,” said Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell. In other words, please don’t come after us.
If the climate change movement rose up against the $1 trillion a year U.S. military budget, we would have plenty of resources to be used for all the needs of humanity, other species, and the planet. The obscene profits they are sitting on need to be seized by the masses and used for survival, jobs and the environment. Clean energy, water, air, food and medical care cannot be under the control of private profiteers; it must belong to the people.
The climate struggle must recognize the inequality caused by imperialism in order to build solidarity and strengthen the movement.
We cannot fix the climate disaster with individual efforts or by thinking technology is the problem. Posing less air conditioning or more bike-riding as solutions fosters the right-wing phony claim that the movement is elitist. Air conditioning is a health necessity and should be available free to all people in every part of the world that needs it. Safe bike riding is important, but we need clean mass transportation for all. Poor people here and around the world lack these necessities.
Climate struggle and anti-imperialism are two wings of the same bird. The U.S. Military is a private army for the oil barons, not for democracy.
The U.S. budget is looted for a trillion a year that could be used for social benefits and earth repair. Politicians that support a “Green New Deal” but vote to increase the military budget are dangerous. We cannot fight for the earth without fighting for peace, against the weapons industry, imperialism, inequality, and racism.
Sheer numbers won’t do. On June 12th, 1982 a million people demonstrated in New York city against nuclear power. But its leaders were silent on nuclear weapons and U.S. wars. On the very day of the protest Israel was using U.S. weapons to bomb people in Palestinian refugee camps. A million voices were ignored easily by the government which said, “Let them march and sing, in the end they support us.” No struggle succeeds unless the rulers feel threatened by economic loss or fear that they may lose the people’s allegiance to their rule.
The movement must understand the root cause of the crisis; this will guide us in knowing where and how to build alliances among communities of all nationalities, and between youth and the working class.
The fight to save the planet must be the fight to uproot the cause of the environmental crisis. To win this fight we have to harness the enormous untapped power of the working class who once they know which side they’re on will be unstoppable. Organized, the working class can decide for itself what we will and won’t produce.
A worldwide day of outreach to the workers is the next step.
Let future strikes be led by youth and workers.
We should fight against pipelines and pesticides, and we should fight to save all species threatened by extinction. By mass action we can force change to some laws and this is important. But to save the planet, the human race and all species, to guarantee a healthy future for all the people of the world, it will take an overthrow of the capitalist system which puts profits above life itself.
Unions are joining the effort against climate change; workers are asking why they can’t have jobs that are safe for their communities and grandchildren. Youth of all countries have taken the lead once again, just like they did in the fight for civil rights in the U.S. displaying great courage and determination.
But a strong movement needs to think ahead, think strategically and understand that only with the workers on their side can we win. We will win.
