Tag: Solidarity

An Open Letter from Environmental & Climate Justice Organizations on May Day

  By

via Climate Workers

An Open Letter from Environmental & Climate Justice Organizations on May Day

Worker power, immigrant rights, and racial justice must be at the heart of environmental and climate movements

As environmental and climate justice organizations, we declare our support for protests planned for International Workers Day (“May Day”), May 1st, 2017 and for workers who choose to participate by honoring the general strike.

International Workers’ Day was first established to commemorate the deaths of workers fighting for the 8-hour work day in Chicago in 1886. It has long been a day to uplift the struggles, honor the sacrifices, and celebrate the triumphs of working people across the world. The day has taken special significance in the U.S. since May 1st, 2006 when 1.5 million immigrants and their allies took to the streets to protest racist immigration policies.

Today, workers face unprecedented attacks on wages, benefits, workplace safety, and the right to organize free from fear and retaliation. But we know that we are all stronger when workers in our communities have safe, fair, and dignified employment with which they can support their families without fear of deportation or violence.

The effects of our fossil fuel economy fall first and worst on working class communities, communities of color, immigrants, and indigenous peoples who have not only contributed the least to climate disruption, but have the least resources to shoulder the burden of a transition to a new, climate-friendly economy. It is these frontline communities who are also at the forefront of change and whose solutions and leadership we most need.

As organizations working to transition our economy away from profit-seeking resource extraction toward ecological resilience and economic democracy, we know that worker power has to be at the heart of that transition.

We urgently need the wisdom and skills of millions of workers to transform our food, water, waste, transit, and energy systems in order to live within the finite resources of this planet that we call home. But the Trump agenda only promises jobs building more prison cells, border walls, bombs, and oil pipelines. Workers deserve not only fair wages, but work that makes our ecosystems and communities more resilient, not destroys them.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. No significant social change in this country has come without tremendous risk and sacrifice by ordinary people – from workers who walk off the job to water protectors facing down water cannons and attack dogs.

As environmental and climate justice organizations, we support workers who choose to walk off their jobs on May 1st because we know that the fight to protect land, water, air and soil is inseparable from the fight to protect the life and dignity of workers, migrants, and communities of color.

To workers participating in protests on May 1st, we say: “Thank you. You deserve better. And we’ve got your back.”

To that end, we join with unions and worker-led organizations throughout the country in asking that there be NO RETALIATION against any worker – union or non union – who exercises their rights by taking time off from work on May 1. Further, should workers face retaliation, we pledge our strong support for efforts to defend those workers.

To sign your organization onto letter and to specify what type of support you can pledge, click here.

 

AUTHORED BY

Climate Workers and Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project

 

SIGNED BY

350.org

350 Bay Area

350 Mass for a Better Future

350 Santa Barbara

Amazon Watch

AMP Creeks Council

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Azul

Bay Area Justice Funders Network

Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice

Bay Area System Change Not Climate Change

Beyond Extreme Energy

Blue Heart

California Environmental Justice Alliance

Center for Economic Democracy

Center for Environmental Health

Center for Popular Democracy

Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

Climate Justice Alliance

Climate Justice Project

Climate Workers

CODEPINK

CoFED

Corporate Accountability International

Diablo Rising Tide

Filipino / American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES)

Food Empowerment Project

Food First

Friends of Broward Detainees

Friends of the Earth

Fund for Democratic Communities

GAIA: Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

Global Climate Convergence

Global Environmental Justice Project

Grassroots Global Justice

Greenbelt Climate Action Network

Greenpeace

Groundswell Fund

Industrial Workers of the World

Labor Network for Sustainability

Liberty Tree Foundation

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization

Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE)

Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project

Movement Strategy Center

NAACP Portland Branch

National Economic and Social Rights Initiative

New Economy Coalition

New Jim Crow Movement – Vallejo

No Coal in Oakland

North Bay Organizing Project

Oakland Climate Action Coalition

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center

Oil Change International

People’s Action

People’s Climate Movement – Bay Area

PODER (People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights)

Post Carbon Institute

Power Shift Network

Pesticide Action Network North America

Planting Justice

Popular Resistance

Railroad Workers United

Raizes Collective

Rainforest Action Network

Real Pickles

Right to the City Boston

Rising Tide North America

Rising Tide Sacramento

Sierra Club

Sierra Club Massachusetts Chapter

Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter

Sonoma County Conservation Action

Students for a Just & Stable Future

Sunflower Alliance

SustainUS

The LEAP

Urban Habitat

U.S. Department of of Arts and Culture

U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives

U.S. Human Rights Network

 

Rising Tide North America Solidarity Delegation to the Philippines Begins!

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philippines_typhoon2This week, Rising Tiders from Portland and Seattle traveled to the Philippines on a solidarity mission to visit Indigenous communities in Mindanao on the frontlines of climate destruction, capitalism and imperialism.

They will be traveling in Kidapawan, currently in a state of calamity due to a crippling drought and the recent site of a massacre in which farmers and indigenous folk were fired upon after setting up a street blockade to demand that inaccessible government food rations be distributed.

And then traveling to Davao for two human rights conferences: the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines general assembly, and the International Conference on Peoples’ Rights in the Philippines.

As the group has said:

“We believe that joining our allies on this trip to the Philippines is the most important way we can show our solidarity with this People of Color led movement in the United States, and our allies in the Global South. In fact it is the thing we have been repeatedly asked to do by our BAYAN kasamas.”

Historically conditioned as a colonial experiment and geographically located in the rapidly changing climate of the Global South, the Philippines stands as a frontline nation against political and environmental repression.  As international mining companies seek to drive communities off their ancestral mineral-rich land, the Philippine Armed Forces uses its monopoly on violence to enforce this destructive logic of capital accumulation, while escalating deforestation is wiping out ecosystems, poisoning water sources, and removing natural sources of carbon sequestration.

Meanwhile, though the country is hardly industrialized enough to be a major contributor to climate change, it bears some of the worst effects, such as increased risk from sea level rise and massive typhoons.  Yet despite it all, the Filipino people rise up and resist.  Now is the time for uncompromising solidarity with our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live.

Transnational solidarity is an important step in fighting the root causes of climate change. Furthermore, ensuring that our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live are given support and solidarity from the Global North.

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Statement of Solidarity with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis

  By , ,
justice

A demonstrator speaks about his encounter with attackers who shot five protesters near the Minneapolis Police 4th Precinct on Monday night.

Rising Tide North America Statement of Solidarity with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis

In response to last night’s shooting of five unarmed Black Lives Matters activists at the Justice for Jamar Clark Encampment in Minneapolis by masked white supremacists, Rising Tide North America issued the following statement:

“Rising Tide North America stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter community in Minneapolis, the protest encampment demanding justice for Jamar Clark and communities everywhere in the struggle for racial justice and against white racist violence, state sponsored or otherwise. We stand in solidarity with the right of communities to express their grief and rage, and to take action for justice.

We join the call for the release of the tapes of Jamar Clark’s murder. We condemn the extreme racist and violent rhetoric of white hate groups and individuals, leaders of both political parties, police officials and opinion-makers that target the movement for Black lives. In this moment, we particularly call on members of the climate justice movement to join the fight for racial justice and put their bodies on the line to confront white supremacy — both in the form of vigilante violence and in police departments.

Rising Tide North America is a continental network of climate justice groups and individuals committed to challenging the root causes of climate change. We stand for social, racial, environmental and climate justice. We can only address climate change by exposing the intersections between the oppression of humans, communities and the planet. In order to create a livable and just future, we work toward the empowerment of marginalized communities and the dismantling of the systems of oppression that keep us divided.

On this day, the anniversary of the non-indictment of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, we still believe climate justice is inextricably linked with racial justice. We cannot have the one without the other. Our hearts and actions remain in this fight to create a just and climate stable world.”

Please donate here to support our friends and allies with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis.

Please sign the pledge to show up with Black Lives Matter and the movement for Black lives.

Read Rising Tide’s statement of solidarity with Ferguson.

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Canadian Police Arrest 24 Resisting Kinder Morgan Pipeline on Burnaby Mountain

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burnabyRCMP arrests 24 on Burnaby Mountain
Caretakers call for ongoing solidarity presence, say “This pipeline will not be built”

VANCOUVER – RCMP have arrested at least 24 Burnaby Mountain caretakers and supporters today, as police moved in to remove a long-standing protest presence against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline survey crews.

Arrests include
– Sut-lut, a S?wx?ú7mesh elder who started the sacred fire onsite
– Kaleb Morrison and Erin Flegg who have been at the site for months
– Adam Gold, a named defendant in Kinder Morgan’s injunction and civil law suit
– A tree sitter who has been camped out on top of Borehole 1 drill site
– Tamo Campos, David Suziki’s grandson who has been supporting the site for weeks.

Fourteen of those arrested have been released on civil contempt charges, the other ten remain in-custody.

Kinder Morgan crews, escorted by RCMP, are currently at the clearing and have begun work. The Burnaby Mountain caretakers are calling for an ongoing presence at the mountain, as well at the RCMP detachment at 6355 Deer Lake Avenue.

“We are sending a clear message that the pipeline will not be built on unceded lands without the consent of Indigenous nations and the approval of all those who love these lands,” the group gathered has declared.

For photos and updates on the situation: https://www.facebook.com/burnabymountain