Labor and Climate Action
Striking for Climate Can Be As Easy As Taking a Snapshot
Take pictures with signs about labor’s support. In advance of September 20 or during the week of action, snap a photo with a younger person, a family member such as a child, grandchild, etc., with a sign that reads: “Workers support the climate strikes,” or “Labor supports the climate strikes,” or “Unions support the climate strike,” and post it to social media.
Workers Join Young People on Global Strike for Climate
by Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability On March 15, 1.5 million young people joined a School Strike 4 Climate in more than 2000 locations around the world. The school strikes have been occurring weekly since thirteen-year-old Greta Thunberg began sitting...
Just Transition
How to Protect Workers While Protecting the Climate
To protect against catastrophic global warming, the United States is preparing to rapidly reduce the burning of fossil fuels–coal, oil, and natural gas. As we transition to a climate safe economy, many people ask, “What about the workers who will lose their jobs in fossil fuels and other polluting industries?”
Postal Workers Take on Climate Change
The American Postal Workers Union has taken on the climate crisis within the national union structure by following up on their last national convention resolution “Climate Change, Jobs and Justice.” At its recent national All-Craft conference held in Las Vegas, the...
Labor-Environmental Cooperation
Union Members Don’t Oppose Environmental Protections. They’re Actually More Likely To Support Them.
[By Jeremy Brecher and Todd Vachon] Union workers attacking environmentalists—it has become a trope of our time. But what do union members actually think about the environment? In a study soon to be published in Labor Studies Journal, we report our findings on workers...
A Superfund for Workers
When the Dominion Corporation proposed, on April 1, 2013, to build a liquefied natural gas export facility at Cove Point, Md., right on the Chesapeake Bay,seven hundred people demonstrated against it and many were arrested in a series of civil disobedience actions....
Jobs and Climate
EPA Workers Need Your Help to Protect Your Climate!
Environmental Protection Agency workers protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and ensure a healthy environment for everyone. In the face of devastating climate change, we need them more than ever. The Trump Administration is gutting the EPA—slashing funding,...
Union Teachers Spreading the Word on Climate
How can unions educate their members about climate change? The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) just provided a sterling example. The entire current issue of its magazine American Educator is devoted to teachers and climate change. It is available free online....
Local Organizing
New Report on “Connecticut’s Clean Energy Future”
What can one state contribute to protecting the global climate? According to a new report “Connecticut’s Clean Energy Future: Climate goals and employment benefits,” Connecticut can realize its official climate goal – reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 80 percent...
Connecticut Needs a New Climate Change Action Plan
While global cooperation is required to address global warming, national governments are so far failing to adopt the necessary agreements and policies. Therefore people and governments have had to take the initiative for protecting the climate by reducing greenhouse...
Politics of Climate Change
Texas AFL-CIO Adopts Resolution on Climate Change
Ryan Pollock, an inside wireman with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) writes about the recent AFL-CIO Convention in Texas: Not only were many of my fellow trades siblings—plenty of whom work in the fossil fuel industry or represent fossil...
Using the “Public Trust” to Frame “Break Free From Fossil Fuels” Actions
[by Jeremy Brecher, David Solnit] What if we defined ourselves – to the movement, the public, and the courts – not as criminals but as law-enforcers trying to halt governments and corporations from committing the greatest crime in human history?
Art and Activism
The Flobots: Reviving the Poetry of Politics
[by Brendan Smith] In 2006, Neil Young told the Los Angeles Times that the silence of young songwriters during the Bush era compelled him to retake the stage as a protest singer: "I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18 to 22 years old, to write...
Artist Highlight: The Cardboard Poets
One of the alluring aspects the Occupy movement is the art it has generated. Days after OWS burst onto the scene, artists quickly set to work depicting the energy and message of the 99 percent movement. There are fine artists such as Molly Crabapple who composed intricate pen and ink drawings of fat cats and vampire squids against fairies of hope; star studded musicians inspired with the recently released “Occupy this Album,” featuring Laudon Wainwright III, Willie Nelson, Tom Morello and Immortal Technique; and of course the whimsical and iconic Adbusters photo of the ballerina dancing atop Wall Street’s raging bull.