Sacramento City Unified School District employees and supporters rally at Rosemont High School, on Monday, March 28, 2022. Photo Credit: Andrew Nixon / CapRadio
By LNS California Organizer Veronica Wilson
Mass mutual aid operations, demands for disaster preparedness, and calls for climate readiness are just a few examples of the working class responding to the climate catastrophe brought by the extreme Santa Ana windstorm and devastating wildfires on January 7th in Los Angeles.
As first responders fought gigantic blazes in Altadena, an historic Black neighborhood, and the Pacific Palisades and more fires flared up, threatening areas of Hollywood and the Valley, next level solidarity and worker-led action was mobilizing. LA labor leaders, worker centers, community organizations and their networks mounted massive operations of assistance, care, and support as fire spread, taking lives and structures, and forcing people to evacuate and businesses to shutter.
Workers and organizers rallied thousands of volunteers to help at distribution centers, providing basic goods and services for those who lost loved ones, homes, schools, and jobs. Labor and Community Services, a nonprofit partner of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, with sixty years of experience mobilizing support for unionists in times of disaster, stood up an enormous distribution center. At the LA Labor annual MLK breakfast, only days after fires broke out, organizers added donation drop-offs to the event, attended by more than 1,300. The Pasadena Job Center, a mile and a half from the fire perimeter in Altadena, operated by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (@daylaborernetwork), deployed second responders to safely clear debris covering residential streets in disaster areas and surrounding neighborhoods, managing thousands of volunteers who came to sort and distribute donations to local residents.
Following a unified response from Los Angeles Unified School District unions to demand the Superintendent temporarily close worksites without loss of compensation, union vice president Julie Van Winkle laid out reasons for planning ahead in the reality of intensifying climate crisis, making the case for climate-ready schools.
Into the months and years ahead, workers and communities will need to stick together in intermediate and longer term economic recovery, prioritizing work that strengthens climate preparedness, adaptation, and resilience.