Editor Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

The Trump administration and its MAGA allies are destroying everything working people need for our wellbeing and our future. They are destroying the unions we need to protect us on the job. They are destroying the public service workforce we need for a safe and orderly life. They are staging an “administrative coup” against the democratic governance we need for a free society that serves the people. They are destroying our healthcare. They are threatening our retirements. They are even – literally – taking the food out of the mouths of our babies. They are depriving us of our most basic human and constitutional rights. And they are destroying the livability of our climate and environment. Our future is being smashed before our eyes – and so is our present.

They wish to impose an authoritarian, perhaps even a fascist, dictatorship on our country. But their sheer incompetence means that they may instead achieve only a long era of decline like that in Russia in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, when the rise of the oligarchs, the destruction of the healthcare and retirement systems, burgeoning drug and alcohol addiction, capital flight, decay of industry, inflation, unemployment, and war led to chaos in everyday life – leading Russians to die four years younger than before 1990.

Fortunately, pushback against the MAGA assault is already under way. It includes many constituencies, notably both a labor movement fighting for its life and a climate movement resolved to ward off the catastrophe that Trump’s policies are accelerating.

In this issue of the Labor Network for Sustainability newsletter Making a Living on a Living Planet you will find examples of that pushback, including some in which LNS has been directly involved. They include the labor-centered May Day Strong day of action, the upcoming June 14 No Kings Day, and actions at a state and local level.

While opposition to the Trump juggernaut has been slow to develop in the political arena, millions of people are now finding their voice in this movement-based opposition.

June 14: No Kings Day
Workers Will Not Sit Back While Our Rights Are Stripped Away

Mayday and Beyond in Baltimore
Want to Join LNS Young Worker Training? – Start Here!
School Finance Trainings

LNS Prez Joe Uehlein on Labor and Climate History

Unions Demand “Free Our Fellow Workers”

CT Unions Fight for Civil Liberties

Joshua Dedmond Elected to CJA Board 

Massive Strike in Panama Features Environmental Demands

On June 14, President Donald Trump is planning to spend $45 million in taxpayers’ money for a celebration of his birthday. In response, on that day people all over the country will celebrate NO KINGS DAY, a day of action described by its organizers as “a nationwide day of defiance.” From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, "we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism—and show the world what democracy really looks like. They’ve defied our courts, deported American citizens, disappeared people off the streets, and slashed our services—all while orchestrating a massive giveaway to their billionaire allies."

Initial labor partners include AFT, AFGE, CWA, National Treasury Employees Union, and PSC CUNY. More than 700 local events were already planned by May 21. NO KINGS DAY partners include many of the hundreds of organization that supported this year’s Hands Off!, 50501, and Mayday actions, which included millions of participants.

For more information: https://www.nokings.org 

To host an event: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/host/ 

To find and register for an event near you: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/ 

More than 1,500 marches, rallies, and protests took place From May 1st through May 3rd in more than 1000 cities and towns in all 50 states.

The events were organized by a May Day Strong coalition of more than 200 organizations including the Chicago Teachers Union, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers of America, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and United Electrical Workers, as well as the Sunrise Movement, the Center for Popular Democracy, Indivisible, and other issue-based organizations, from Palestine organizing to reproductive justice to immigrant rights.

In Philadelphia, hundreds of unionized hotel, food service and casino workers sat down on the main highway through the city center. The action was organized by UNITE HERE Local 274, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFGE District 3, AFSCME District 47, Teamsters Local 623, various SEIU locals, the Federal Unionists Network, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Make the Road Pennsylvania and other immigrant rights groups. 70 sit downers were arrested.

A statement from the Philadelphia AFL-CIO said the protesters were “inspired by the actions of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King and the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike.” Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Daniel Bauder said, "What we saw today, from the large crowds who rallied with us at City Hall, to the over 50 leaders and activists who were arrested with me earlier this evening, makes it abundantly clear that workers in Philly will not sit back while our rights are stripped away by billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk."

Follow-up actions promoted by May Day Strong include:

• Hands Off Our Schools! campaign
• Millions of “workers over billionaires” one-on-one conversations
• June 14 No Kings Day

For more on past and future May Day Strong actions: https://maydaystrong.org 

By Bakari Height and Virginia Rodino

In mid-March 2025, the radical Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) convened a national meeting of trade unionists, with some community groups representing key issues such as immigrant and racial justice. More than 200 attendees spent two days hearing plenary speakers and breaking out into regional strategy groups to plan coordinated actions for May 1, 2025, but also to build networks and coalitions that would continue to organize through May 1, 2028. This is a date at which United Auto Workers International president Shawn Fain called for a general strike. At the Chicago meeting, Fain spoke to the assembly, as did several others, with nearly all speakers indicating that the Democrat party has not and will not be protecting us from attacks. CTU held weekly calls, produced outreach materials decrying the “billionaire takeover”, and launched a website (maydaystrong.org) for cities and towns across the country to list their May Day events.

All 50 states participated, and the organizing calls reached over 2000 attendees.  

More than 1000 rallies and events were held across the country on May 1, 2025. In Chicago, the birthplace of May Day, there was a weeklong series of events and protests.

Although since 2006 May Day in the United States has been intertwined with the immigrant justice movement, in 2025 the attacks have been so ferocious on immigrant workers that there was a noticeable lack of immigrant workers on these demonstrations because of the high level of fear.

Because the attacks are so broad, the resistance has broadened and there have been very diverse coalitions that helped to organize these rallies. In many cities there was a much higher level of coordination and a linking of many issues recognizing that we are all in the Trump Administration’s sights.

In Baltimore, a city that was commemorating the ten year anniversary of the murder of Freddie Gray* by police, the one year anniversary of 6 Latin American construction workers killed during a bridge collapse, and the release of a report detailing how AFSCME member and sanitation worker Ronald Silver II died last August from 109 degree temperatures and no water or bathroom breaks, there was a visible knitting together of the issues at its May Day rally.  Seven feeder marches – including ones for Palestine, education, families and children, immigrant justice, and labor – began at different parts of the city and converged at a plaza at the busiest intersection of the city. 

LNS Transit Organizer Bakari Height joined the labor feeder march. “The feeder march really put into perspective on the power of coalitions. Whether it was the Labor march, the March on Palestine, the immigrant march, or the families march, Baltimore's May Day rally showed how many people from different walks of life can rally together for a single cause through different causes. Many causes were hyperlocal to the city of Baltimore and Maryland, keeping a local follow-up on the top of many minds as this would not be the last of these marches.” 

LNS Communications Director Virginia Rodino spoke at the rally saying, “We experience how much Baltimore suffers from climate catastrophe, from environmental injustice - the American Lung Association report that just came out saying Baltimore was the 36th worst city in the country for smog.

“Yet the workers and agencies that would protect us — the EPA workers, OSHA, NOAA, the environmental scientists, engineers and policy experts – have been suffering a tremendous reduction in force - being fired for trying to protect our health and lead us away from a climate catastrophe that the capitalist system is inevitably leading us into.

“The billionaires are profiting when they fire workers who provide these crucial services, increasing the pace at which our planet is being ravaged. We don’t have time and we can’t afford to have more of us suffer, to have workers die in the billionaires' war on the planet in their drive for more and more profit.”

Here is a video of Rodino’s rally speech and news coverage of the rally where she is briefly interviewed. 

Labor coalitions in Baltimore and neighboring counties continue to meet and plan next steps to resist MAGA tyranny and beyond. These coalitions are leading the organizing for June 14 rallies and strategic resistance through May Day 2028. 

*On April 12, 2015, Baltimore police officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, who sustained fatal injuries throughout the process of his arrest. Gray’s death sparked weeks of unrest in Baltimore; a federal investigative report, which found that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional and racially discriminatory policing and led to a federal court consent decree; and ongoing advocacy for police accountability.

LNS’s Young Worker Project is excited to announce its Young Worker Training Program, a six-week course aimed at young workers of all industries invested in using their labor power to advance climate and environmental justice! The program offers three initial sessions designed to develop workers’ political education on class struggle, unionism, and the climate’s relationship to worker power. The latter three sessions then shift focus to the workers and their organizing contexts, helping them to shape organizing, contract, or issue-based campaigns that leverage their power for climate victories. Workers leave the program with a built campaign and ongoing access to the LNS network.

If you want to learn more about the program, or believe you and your coworkers would be a good fit, please contact our Young Worker Organizer and program instructor Martina Manicastri at [email protected]."

For the Young Workers Project Report “Earth Is a Hot Shop: Findings of the Young Workers Listening Project”: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/files/YWREPORT2025.pdf 

For more on the LNS Young Worker Project: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/ywlp/ywlp-in-depth/ 

by Oren Kadosh

On May 7th, LNS partners at the Public School Strong campaign hosted a virtual training on Healthy School Finance. Public School Strong brings together parents, educators, and community members organizing in their school districts for healthy, safe, fully-funded public schools. The workshop was facilitated by experts in climate, labor, and school finance, representing organizations such as the Climate and Community Institute and the Debt Collective. LNS and the Educators Climate Action Network (ECAN) helped to organize the event.

The virtual training presented attendees from dozens of States and school districts across the country with a framework and tools to critically understand how school finance, and therefore school facilities and instruction, are made toxic when forced to rely on extractive Wall Street debt and racialized budget scarcity. Getting to the fundamentals of how toxic finance is bound up with toxic, carbon-intensive school buildings, was a boost to public school organizers in thinking about how climate and healthy school investment can leverage up campaigns.

A recording of the training can be viewed here.

LNS President Joe Uehlein recently spoke on a panel on Labor and the Environment at the Pacific Northwest Labor History Conference in Portland, Oregon. Joe talked about the critical importance of taking down silos that divide us, noting that now more than ever we need to come together to take on current challenges. He called for an end to transactional movement relationships and a move toward a transformational labor-enviro movement. Joe was asked to highlight a couple of events in labor-enviro history that have lessons relevant today.

Joe described how the Labor Network for Sustainability organized climate and enviro orgs to support the UAW strike in 2023: “It was a massive undertaking and we got over 50 climate and environmental organizations to call the auto corporation CEOs, flooding their offices with over a thousand phone calls, writing letters, showing up on the picket lines across the country, and more. We crashed the Stellantis (Chrysler) phone system. The lesson here is that enviros want to support labor, and if you believe something can be done, even though people are telling you it can’t, and you stick to your vision and organize effectively, you can win.”

Ten national unions and scores of locals representing more than 3 million members have issued a joint statement demanding “an End to the Assault on the Right to Organize and Protest.”

"Labor demands an end to the Trump administration’s assaults on immigrant workers, freedom of speech, the right to organize and bargain, and federal government workers, their unions, and the services they provide.

"We will not stand by as President Donald Trump terrorizes immigrant workers with abduction, detention, and confinement without due process in unmarked facilities, far-flung detention centers, and a notorious prison in El Salvador.

"The attacks are ramping up, and we need to act fast. In Washington state, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents smashed a car window and detained farmworker Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a leader in the berry-pickers union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, on his way to drop off his partner at work. They locked up SEIU Local 925 member Lewelyn Dixon, a lab tech at the University of Washington, when she returned from a family trip. They raided a roofing company where workers recently went on a safety strike, and arrested 37 people."

The statement called on all unions to “organize rallies, demonstrations, and other actions to demand that the administration stop these attacks and free our fellow workers.” The labor movement “must act to stop Trump's deportation, censorship, and intimidation machine. When necessary, we must disrupt business as usual.”

Edgar Franks, political director of independent farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia where Lelo Juarez is a leader, and a member of the LNS Board said, “Hopefully this is a sign of, maybe if there were past issues with unions or organizations that maybe had differences, this could be the thing that brings everybody together, uniting for one cause. From there we can have a united, fighting labor front.”

National unions signing the statement include American Association of University Professors (AAUP) • Association of Flight Attendants  (AFA-CWA) • American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) • American Postal Workers Union (APWU) • Inland Boatmen’s Union (IBU) • International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) • International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) • National Education Association (NEA) • National Nurses United (NNU) • National Writers Union (NWU) • Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) • Service Employees International Union (SEIU) • United Auto Workers (UAW) • United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). 

For text of statement: https://form.jotform.com/250850668516059 

Unions can sign on to the petition here.

Unions and their allies are organizing at state and local levels to end the assault on the right to organize and protest. Connecticut local unions endorsing the planning meeting for a Connecticut Civil Liberties Defense Mobilization included GEU UAW Local 6950, 4Cs SEIU Local 1973, Hartford Federation of Teachers, SEIU 1199NE, Connecticut State University AAUP, AFT 1942 FTCT, New Haven Federation of Teachers, Wesleyan AAUP, UCONN Professional Employees Association, along with dozens of allies.

A state-wide assembly April 6 voted a series of demands, including:

• Free Mahmoud Khalil and all targeted activists
• Stop all attacks on the rights to protest, organize, and due process
• Stop all attacks on queer and trans people
• Stop RFK’s Autism registry
• Protect and expand healthcare and social services
• Protect and fund our schools and universities
• Hands off our unions

The Connecticut Civil Liberties Defense Mobilization will go into action with a labor-community demonstration on the New Haven Green June 8, contingents in Pride Day events in multiple cities led by union Pride caucuses, and a state-wide “educational rally-meeting.”  

For more: https://www.ctcivillibertiesdefense.org 

LNS co-director Joshua Dedmond was recently elected to the Board of LNS’ allied organization Climate Justice Alliance. CJA was formed in 2013:

"to create a new center of gravity in the climate movement by uniting frontline communities and organizations into a formidable force. Our translocal organizing strategy and mobilizing capacity is building a Just Transition away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies. We believe that the process of transition must place race, gender and class at the center of the solutions equation in order to make it a truly Just Transition." 

CJA is a growing member alliance of 95 urban and rural frontline communities, organizations and supporting networks in the climate justice movement. It is composed of “locally, tribally, and regionally-based racial and economic justice organizations of Indigenous Peoples, Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, and poor white communities who share legacies of racial and economic oppression and social justice organizing.

Congratulations, Joshua!

The destruction of the world’s forests reached the highest level ever recorded in 2024, driven by a surge in fires caused by global heating. From the Brazilian Amazon to the Siberian taiga, Earth’s forests disappeared at a record rate last year.

Source: Global Forest Watch.

The number of people displaced due to disasters, most of them due to extreme weather, has nearly doubled, from 26.8 million in 2023 to 45.8 million in 2024, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center. Almost 30 countries have reported unprecedented disaster displacement. The United States makes up about one in four of those displaced globally by disasters.

Source: 2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement 

Photo credit: Anti-government protesters march against a law, which overhauls the social security agency, and the recently signed Panama-U.S. memorandum concerning the Panama Canal, in Santiago, Panama, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

For three weeks Panama has been on an “indefinite national strike” called by unions of teachers, university students, workers, environmentalists, and peasant and indigenous communities. Their demands to the government are:

• repeal of Law 462 of the Social Security Fund
• the elimination of the memorandum signed between Panama and the United States
• the non-reopening of an environmentally-destructive mine
• the fight for environmental defense against the reservoir on the Río Indio.

Source: https://aplaneta.org/more-than-15-days-of-indefinite-national-strike-in-panama/ 

For an update and great photos:
https://apnews.com/article/panama-protests-mulino-canal-reservoir-pension-reform-c06893a581cc524243c59b4b1759162d 

Making a Living on a Living Planet is published by the Labor Network for Sustainability. Copyright 2025 Labor Network for Sustainability. All rights reserved.

Content can be re-used if attributed to the Labor Network for Sustainability. The Labor Network for Sustainability is a 501(c)(3). All charitable gifts are tax deductible contributions. EIN: 27-1940927.

Editor
Jeremy Brecher, Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Virginia Rodino, LNS Communications Director

Labor Network for Sustainability
P.O. Box #5780, Takoma Park, MD 20913.