The future demands environmental justice
Solidarity Ecosocialist Working Group
September 14, 2019
While the forests in the Amazon and Congo are in flames, while extreme weather demolishes island countries from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, while the Great Lakes suffer from both flooding and the spread of algae, politicians and corporations fail to address the climate crisis. So youth around the globe are taking a stand, demanding that we break with the fossil-fuel economy. On September 20 youth are striking for climate justice. We stand with them!
As ecosocialists we see capitalism’s demand for continuous growth and the exploitation of our natural resources creates agricultural and industrial models rooted in profit for the 1%. In destroying the balance that must exist on planet Earth, this economic system also fails to meet the material and social needs of the vast majority. As a result, growing inequality and changing weather conditions have already led to more than 70 million refugees, with more to come.
Youth are demanding an end to subsidizing destructive industries: stopping the construction of pipelines, halting resource extraction on indigenous lands, decommissioning coal, gas and nuclear facilities and building a free and public mass transportation system to replace the individual car. We stand with them in requiring that investors and polluters who bankrolled and built this chaos pay for the transition, not workers and their communities. They recognize that pollution, like other aspects of capitalism, impacts people of color most severely. It is the most vulnerable who have been on the front line.
We need a “just transition,” one that retools and repurposes manufacturing, replaces the inadequate system of food production and builds communities where people have the right to good, healthy and meaningful work. In short, youth are demanding a future for themselves and for the planet!
We believe it is possible for humanity to break with the destructive logic of the capitalist system...
It is often claimed that disabled persons are invisible, disregarded by mainstream society, and irrelevant to the workings of society. This analysis has attempted to explain that the “unemployables” have been deliberately shut out of the labor force due to a capitalist economy that so far has dictated their exclusion by measure of economic calculations that favor the business class. It further posits that disabled persons are further oppressed in capitalist societies by having been purposely...
On 5 August, over 350,000 workers took part in Hong Kong’s first general strike in generations. Flights were cancelled en masse and the city’s transportation system was thrown into chaos. The strike was the culmination of weeks of protests against proposed amendments to Hong Kong’s extradition laws, which would grant the chief executive unprecedented power to dictate extradition decisions and bypass the legislative council. It was an impressive display of solidarity between workers and students,...
In an unsettled world, amid violent wars and imperial occupations, with all norms ruthlessly cast aside, did Kashmir really have a chance to be free? As unrest spreads, India, the vaunted “world’s largest democracy,” has imposed a total communications blackout. Kashmir is cut off from the world. With even the most conciliatory and collaborationist political leaders now under house arrest, one can only fear the worst for the rest of the region’s...
The Indian parliamentary elections of 2019 ended with a huge victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). What was significant was not just the huge increase in votes and seats of the BJP and the NDA, but the total shift of votes and discourse to the right. Any attempt to minimize this by mechanically referring to classical Marxist texts and quotations would be suicidal.
Before we go into left responses, though, we have to begin by looking...
The modern concept of disability—indeed, the conception of disability itself, as there was no identical concept before modern times—is a by-product of capitalism. Capitalism spawns disability both as the primary producer of impairment (through industrial workplace accidents, the physical and emotional toll of exploitation, and the effects of widespread toxic contamination on congenital development) and as its conceptual primogenitor.
Yet there is a distressing dearth of scholarship...
Puerto Rico: Summer 2019: results and perspectives Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez*
These two weeks of mobilization provided a great purifying blast against the widespread idea that “nothing can be done” faced with a reality that was considered unalterable. They have expanded our sense of reality. They have shown that what was previously considered impossible is possible.
Since 2016,...
Puerto Rico: Summer 2019: results and perspectives Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez*
These two weeks of mobilization provided a great purifying blast against the widespread idea that “nothing can be done” faced with a reality that was considered unalterable. They have expanded our sense of reality. They have shown that what was previously considered impossible is possible.
Since 2016,...
Puerto Rico: Summer 2019: results and perspectives Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez*
These two weeks of mobilization provided a great purifying blast against the widespread idea that “nothing can be done” faced with a reality that was considered unalterable. They have expanded our sense of reality. They have shown that what was previously considered impossible is possible.
Since 2016,...
Puerto Rico: Summer 2019: results and perspectives Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez*
These two weeks of mobilization provided a great purifying blast against the widespread idea that “nothing can be done” faced with a reality that was considered unalterable. They have expanded our sense of reality. They have shown that what was previously considered impossible is possible.
Since 2016,...
Some 1,056 delegates to the Democratic Socialist of America convention, representing around 55,000 DSA members, met in Atlanta over the weekend and voted to adopt a series of resolutions that will continue to build a strong national organization capable of carrying out ambitious campaigns in labor and community organizing as well as electoral politics. The central division in the convention, largely...
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On Living Wage Campaigns: Part I
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On The Politics of Extractivism
On "Elysium": A Working Class Fantasy