Last week, farmworker and union leader Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez was taken by ICE in Washington State along with at least one other labor organizer, Llewelyn Dixon, a member of SEIU 925, and potentially several other community members. Lelo organizes with Familias Unidas Por Las Justicia in Washington State, where fellow members say these detentions are politically motivated and intended to suppress farmworker advocacy. You can find ways to support Lelo here, by attending an upcoming action, demanding his release, and donating to support Lelo's legal defense fund.

Take Action for Lelo

Lelo is a leader in his community and knows that farmworkers are on the frontlines of the climate crisis everyday.

LNS Spotlight:

Lois Henson Tanglao

Lois (she/her) is a UC Berkeley student and the Labor and Climate Coordinator at Campus Climate Network, a coalition of environmental justice organizations that trains people to win campaigns. Last semester, she worked with CCN to organize the West Coast College Climate Gathering, where 70 students from all over the West Coast came to Berkeley to learn about organization base building and power mapping.

Recently, she organized a Labor and Climate workshop with LNS to talk about how student climate groups can work with unions, and she is currently making a short guide on the same topic. She is also involved in Campus Climate Network's work on finding the role of the student climate movement in the 2028 general strike.

You can find Lois at ltanglao@campusclimatenetwork.org!

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

Donald Trump might like you to believe that he has lured or intimidated Americans into silent acquiescence to his MAGA attacks on working people, American society, and the climDonald Trump might like you to believe that he has lured or intimidated Americans into silent acquiescence to his MAGA attacks on working people, American society, and the climate we all depend on. But consider these facts:

 

• The Crowd Counting Consortium, which began tracking protests during the first Trump administration, says that in February 2025 alone, “we have already tallied over 2,085 protests, which included major protests in support of federal workers, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination, Ukraine, and demonstrations against Tesla and Trump’s agenda more generally. This is compared with 937 protests in the United States in February 2017.
•  36% of Americans told Harris pollsters they are or will be participating in the boycotts that have been making headlines over the last few weeks, making the boycotts one of the largest if not the largest protest in American history. 53% of gen Zers, 46% of millennials, 53% of African Americans and 51% of Hispanics said they are boycotting. Top reason? “They want to show companies that consumers have economic power and influence and express their dissatisfaction with current government policies.”
•  As reported below in this newsletter, resistance actions are burgeoning among government workers, education workers, immigrant workers, and many other sectors of the working class.

  

Nationwide “Hands Off” demonstrations on April 5 are already planned at 500+ locations demanding “to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history.” They are backed by America’s two largest unions.

 

These actions are part of what has been called “social self-defense” -- the uprising of people in all walks of life against the emerging MAGA tyranny. They are proving that we don’t have to wait for politicians or elections to fight for democracy and our wellbeing. All those harmed by the MAGA assault have the power to halt it – if we join together. 

Support Our Work

Earth Day Actions Defend Public Education Workers

May Day Actions Demand Protection for Immigrants

Chicago Teachers Wins for Climate: Join the Webinar

Trump Cancels Union Right to Bargain: Is Your Union Next?

Government Workers Push Back

“They Want to Strip America for Parts” - April 5 Mass Mobilizations

Washington Unions Say: Divest from Fossil Fuels to Protect State’s Assets
To Protect the Food Chain, Protect Immigrant Farm Workers
Fascism and authoritarianism on the rise - How is this related to climate change? 
Greenpeace Verdict is a Threat to Labor
A Warning from Environmental Protection Workers

Climate and Infrastructure Funds Under Threat

LNS is working with unions and allies to promote a cascade of actions from Earth Day to May Day – April 22 to May 1.

 

At the forefront of these actions is the Educators Climate Action Network (ECAN). It says:

 

Public schools are enduring cuts, closures, and immigration raids, as well as suffering toxic facilities, extreme heat, and climate disasters. These harms are coming from a common set of fossil fueled, racist billionaires, corporations, and politicians.

 

The billionaire class will ruin the public sector and the planet we share if it means more power, profit, and control for them. They strap districts with unsustainable debts, while leaving our schools and environment falling apart. Without a strong public sector, there is no community resilience or protection against billionaire rule and climate disaster. 

The public sector, especially public school communities, are the frontline of democracy and resilience against billionaire attacks, Trump attacks, and climate disasters. 

 

ECAN is organizing “Walk-In” actions at schools around the country on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22. Educators along with students, parents, and community members will walk-in collectively to school in the morning, host rallies or town halls at the entrances, and have conversations with others coming in about the connections between healthy school facilities, sustainable educator jobs, community resilience, the environment, and our common billionaire adversaries. Their goal is to organize people in support of fully funded, healthy community schools with clean air and clean energy. 

 

Educators who want to participate can contact [email protected]. Sign up for ECAN at www.labor4sustainability.org/ecan.

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On May 1 a broad coalition led by immigrant advocates will be demanding protection for the rights of immigrants in actions around the country.

 

A center of action will be Chicago. Jorge Mujica, a longtime organizer with Arise Chicago, told reporters,

 

We are calling for a full week of civil disobediences on the Lower West Side on Wednesday. We are demanding that the [Trump] administration stops the attacks on immigrants, stop the raids, stop the detention of working parents, stop the criminalization, mass incarceration and deportation.

 

Chicago’s week of action will start with a mega march on May 1 from Union Park to Federal Plaza. Work stoppages are planned for May 2 and 3. May 5, the Cinco de Mayo, will be a “day without margaritas and guacamole.” 

 

Omar Lopez, a longtime organizer with the Immigrant Defense Resistance Council, said,

We are powerful because we are workers. Our power comes from the work we do in the restaurant industry, in agriculture, in construction, in gardening and in other industries. Without us, the economy of this country will collapse. Being a worker is having power.

 

Source: Chicago Sun-Times 

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The Chicago Teachers Union, long an advocate for climate protection, has just won language in its new contract spelling out climate and climate justice provisions for students and educators. These provisions are important not only in themselves, but because they provide a model that other unions can include in their collective bargaining agreements.

 

The Labor Network for Sustainability is partnering with the Chicago Teachers Union on a webinar on April 21 at 5 PT/7 CT/ 8 ET to amplify this victory and let other workers know how they can do it, too.

 

Sign up for the webinar here!

 

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Photo Credit: Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images

 

Can your employer cancel your union’s right to bargain by issuing a press release?

 

On March 7 the Department of Homeland Security announced plans “ending collective bargaining” for TSA’s transportation screening officers by issuing a press release.

 

Could any employer, public or private, do the same thing? Surely it would be illegal. But with both the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the National Labor Relations Board lacking a quorum due to Trump administration firing of their chairs – currently tied up in the courts -- it is not clear what legal recourse there could be.

 

The AFGE, which represents the TSA employees, is suing the Trump administration. AFGE president Everett Kelly says, "This attack on our members is not just an attack on AFGE or transportation security officers. It’s an assault on the rights of every American worker. Tearing up a legally negotiated union contract is unconstitutional."

Meanwhile, in a March 12 memo the Trump administration has ordered agencies to ignore any provisions in their collective bargaining agreements with federal unions that would impede reductions in force (RIFs), as agencies take steps toward implementing their initial RIF plans.

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Organizing and action by government workers to oppose the Trump-Musk assault on public services is burgeoning. Here are some examples:

 

Federal Unionists Network (FUN), which brings together workers from all federal government unions, has launched a “Let Us Work” campaign to “Refuse Musk's Illegal Layoffs and to Save Our Services!”

Watch the FUN Save Our Services: Let Us Work Mass Call, with 7000 federal employees and representatives of all major unions of federal employees: 

 

On March 19 union educators held a day of action to Protect Our Kids. 

 

On the week of March 20, thousands of postal workers and their supporters rallied across the nation to protest proposals to dismantle the US Postal Service and cut 10,000 jobs in the next few weeks. Social media posts showed rallies from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to Indiana, Missouri and Florida to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. 

 

AFGE locals have held scores of demonstrations at government offices and elsewhere around the country and have launched an AFGE Strong Campaign.

 

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America’s two largest unions, the National Education Association and the Service Employees International Union, are among dozens of sponsors of a nationwide mobilization April 5 “to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history.”

 

The call for the mobilization states:

 

Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights—enabled by Congress every step of the way.

 

They want to strip America for parts—shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid—all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich.

 

If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.

 

The call adds:

 

We are facing a national crisis. Our democracy, our livelihoods, and our rights are all on the line as Trump and Musk execute their illegal takeover.

 

They’re dismantling Social Security and Medicare—forcing seniors and disabled Americans to jump through hoops to access the benefits they’ve already paid into.

 

They’re handing trillions to billionaires—while forcing the rest of us to pay higher prices for food, rent, and healthcare.

 

They’re gutting protections for working people—so payday lenders, banks, and credit card companies can scam Americans with zero consequences.

 

They’re assaulting our communities and our rights—targeting veterans, kids, seniors, farmers, immigrants, transgender people, and political opponents.

 

Across the country, thousands of people will march, rally, disrupt, and demand an end to this billionaire power grab. We’ll show up at state capitals, federal buildings, congressional offices, and city centers—anywhere we can make sure they hear us.

 

For information on the April 5 Mobilization: https://handsoff2025.com  

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Photo Credit: 350 Chicago

 

Washington trade unions, including UFCW and AFT, have begun organizing a campaign for the state to divest its pension and other funds from fossil fuels. As Jeff Johnson, a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and a longtime member of the LNS board recently wrote:  
 
Climate change is a job killer, a budget killer, and a species killer.
Every additional dollar invested in fossil fuels contributes
to arable land becoming increasingly scarce; shrinking fresh
water reserves; a further loss of jobs, lives, and property;
and tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing for their
lives.

 

There is a moral imperative to divest from fossil fuels,
since every dollar invested in fossil fuels accelerates climate
disaster.

 

There is an economic and budgetary imperative to di-
vest from fossil fuels, since every dollar spent cleaning up
climate disasters is a dollar not spent on education, health
care, addressing poverty and inequality, affordable housing,
or public safety. This, of course, translates into thousands of
lost jobs and a declining quality of life for most of us.

 

There is a fiscal imperative to divest from fossil fuels,
since fossil fuels are consistently underperforming other
assets. Sometime in the future, fossil fuel assets will become
stranded assets. Financial prudence should, if nothing else,
dictate replacing underperforming fossil fuel assets with
climate-affirming assets with a promise of higher returns.

We should dramatically reduce our public and private
consumption of fossil fuels and divest our state funds and
public and private union pension funds from fossil fuels as
well.

 

There is still time left to make good choices. How about
we save our assets and our asses at the same time.

 

For Jeff’s full article “Protecting Our Assets and Protecting Our Asses”: https://www.psara.org/copy-of-advocate-home 

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LNS Board member Edgar Franks is the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworkers’ union in Skagit County, WA. He was recently interviewed on a Northwest Public Broadcasting feature on “Immigrant enforcement concerns farmers and farmworkers in Washington.”

 

Franks said,  "There are people that are getting picked up by ICE on their way to work. Like, in the morning, when they get out of the house. They’re driving to work, they get pulled over and questioned, and that’s where they get detained."

 

The state protections under the Keep Washington Working Act are good, according to Franks, but need to be reinforced. “Nobody really takes into consideration everything immigrants and farmworkers did during COVID to keep the food coming to our tables and the economy from collapsing. So farmworkers have done a lot.”

 

It’s time for farmers to “recognize that immigrants and farmworkers need to be protected.” Franks called for better wages, housing and rules to protect workers’ health and safety. “To be protected, we also need all these other things, like good wages, better housing, better rules to protect our health and safety.”

 

Listen to the program: https://www.nwpb.org/2025/02/28/immigration-enforcement-concerns-farmers-and-farmworkers-in-wa/ 

 

For how immigrant rights connect with climate protection, read “Immigration Justice Must Be a Climate Fight, Too” co-authored by a climate activist and an immigrant rights advocate: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/climate-and-immigrant-justice 

 

 

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A jury in North Dakota jury recently ordered the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace to pay pipeline corporation Energy Transfer more than $660 million dollars for defamation and other claims connected to protests at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016-17.

 

The decision represents a direct threat to unions and other groups that oppose corporate policies, opening the door to ruinous suits for anyone accused of “defaming” a corporate opponent. Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said that the lawsuit serves as a “tax on speech,” one that makes it too expensive to go against “litigious, deep-pocketed corporations.”

 

"If companies can sue critics, advocates and protesters into oblivion for their speech and the unlawful acts of third parties, then no one will feel safe protesting corporate malfeasance.

 

"When the civil rights movement used economic boycotts against segregationist businesses segregationists retaliated with civil lawsuits against groups such as the NAACP, trying to frame their activism as a conspiracy."

 

Such attacks can have a devastating effect on unions. Perhaps the most famous example is the 1908 Danbury Hatters Case, which held unions and even individual union members subject to enormous damages based on harm done to employers by their secondary boycotts. The decision not only devastated the hatters union, but effectively outlawed the secondary boycott, one of labor’s most powerful weapons at the time.

 

For more on the Greenpeace decision: 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/21/oil-protest-activism-greenpeace-dakota-pipeline-verdict

Photo Credit: National Centers for Environmental Information

 

The just-released report of the World Meteorological Association on the state of the global climate in 2024 found that last year was the hottest on record and that for the first time in history the 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the last decade. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest since records began.

 

The report identifies 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024 – events that  were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit hit Western Australia, Tabas in Iran, and nationwide in Mali. Unprecedented rainfall caused floods, landslides, and power failures in Italy; destruction of homes in Senegal; and major crop losses in Pakistan and Brazil. An unprecedented six typhoons hit  the Philippines in under a month; in Vietnam Super Typhoon Yagi affected 3.6 million people; The Big Bend region of Florida was hit by Hurricane Helene, the strongest ever to strike the region.

 

For more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/19/unprecedented-climate-disasters-extreme-weather-un-report 

 

For full World Meteorological Association Report on the Global Climate 2024:
WMO’s report on 2024

Photo Credit: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

 

A group of current and former employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency recently issued this warning:

 

The Trump administration is making accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse associated with federal environmental justice programs under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as justification for firing federal workers and defunding critical environmental programs. But the real waste, fraud, and abuse would be to strip away these funds from the American people.

 

For full statement: An open letter from EPA staff to the American public - EHN

Nearly $700 billion in funding for infrastructure- and climate-related projects were passed under the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. The environmental magazine Grist has developed an interactive map you can use to find lots of information about projects near your city or zip code. Thank you Grist!

 

Here’s the tool: https://grist.org/accountability/climate-infrastructure-ira-bil-map-tool/?utm_campaign=fy25-membership-special-email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=membership-email 

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