LNS Spotlight:

Martina Manicastri

Each issue of Making a Living on a Living Planet we feature a member of the LNS network. This time it's LNS’ new Young Worker Organizer Martina Manicastri. Martina writes:

I am excited to be joining the LNS team as a Young Worker Organizer and I am dedicated to helping young workers build foundational knowledge on political economy, climate justice, and the labor movement to encourage them to lead organizing initiatives that prioritize a healthy planet and a just transition. 

Prior to joining LNS, I was a Communications Specialist and Labor Organizer for CWA Local 1036 where I primarily worked with membership in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. I’ve been a community organizer since 2018 and am currently Co-Chair of my local DSA chapter. I have helped organize robust mutual aid programs, community political education sessions, and have been in the fight for a free Palestine for many years. 

As a New Jersey resident, I’ve seen firsthand the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Sandy and Ida, as well as the effects of increasingly harsh winters and summers on agricultural workers and unhoused members of my community. Like many young workers, my climate activism is shaped by the looming and deeply felt threat of global warming to the lives and futures of the working class, and I am committed to organizing for a sustainable planet run and shaped by workers. 

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

The MAGA threats to working people and the climate have begun. So has the defense against them.

This newsletter tells how unions are organizing to protect immigrant workers – many of them union members. It portrays labor’s nationwide solidarity in support of those devastated by the climate-induced Los Angeles fires.  It describes how unions and communities are joining to fight for public transit. And it discusses how the “Green New Deal from Below” is creating bastions of labor-community power around the country.  

This newsletter tells how the Los Angeles fires show the new, more devastating face of climate change. It is telling that, as Los Angeles experiences the most expensive fire in US history, much of the country experienced life-threating cold and the Gulf South experienced the worst winter storm in more than 120 years. The destabilization of our climate is not hard to understand: In 2024 levels of carbon dioxide rose more quickly than ever previously recorded. And the global average temperature set a new record in 2024, worsening the extreme heatwaves, storms and floods that affected billions of people. That will only get worse until we radically reverse our greenhouse gas emissions. 

In his first days in office, President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement and taken steps to cut climate protection and increase the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. At the same time, he has taken measures that threaten the health and wellbeing of all working people, withdrawing from the World Health Organization and cutting access to Medicaid for millions of people. He has already started undermining fundamental democratic institutions, for example by defying the Constitutional principle of birthright citizenship -- a move immediately blocked by a federal judge. And President Trump’s “First Buddy” Elon Musk is suing in the Supreme Court to have the 1935 National Labor Relations Act – the fundamental law establishing worker rights against unlimited employer domination -- declared unconstitutional.  

Such moves are not just aimed at one or another group – they threaten society as a whole – all of us. And there is a basis in public opinion for resisting them: In a poll taken shortly after the election, 55% of Americans said they did not approve of Donald Trump – and only 41% approved. Many more are likely to disapprove as they experience the actual consequences of MAGA actions.     

With Trump and his MAGA supporters in control of all branches of the federal government, how can even a supermajority of opponents deter his destructive juggernaut? That is the question addressed in the new LNS report "Defending Society Against MAGA Tyranny: A Prospectus for Action," described below. It lays out a strategy fort a unified defense of society in both electoral and non-electoral arenas. The actions described in this newsletter represent starting points for that kind of “Social Self-Defense.” Indeed, they are starting points for reversing the MAGA threats to working people and the climate.  

Transit Equity Day
Los Angeles Fires: Workers Responding; How to Help
Social Self-Defense for the New MAGA Era
Traveling for Labor and Climate Justice
AFL-CIO: "The real threat is billionaires”

Unions Mobilize to Protect Immigrant Workers

“Snowflakes That Start an Avalanche”: LA Review of Books on GNDB

By Bakari Height, LNS Transit Organizer

For the seventh year, the Transit Equity Network of the Labor Network for Sustainability will celebrate Rosa Parks' birthday with a nationwide Transit Equity Day. Transit rider organizations, labor unions, and transit equity advocates will take actions locally around the country to dramatize the need for just transit for all.

There’s still time to register your action here!

Also- tune in here to our annual Transit Equity Day Livestream on February 4th at Noon EST. Come hear about fare-free transit policies, testimonies from our labor partners, as well as a roundtable on passenger rail in North and South Carolina!

We will also have a special interview with our own Jeremy Brecher on his new book, “The Green New Deal From Below.” You won’t want to miss this!

Excerpts from an LNS Statement on the fires in Los Angeles:

The Labor Network for Sustainability mourns the catastrophic loss of life and homes in California.

The science is clear: Fossil fuels have driven the climate crisis and are fueling these fires.

The greenhouse gases humans continue to emit are fueling the climate crisis and making big fires more common in California. “Emissions from the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel companies are responsible for 37% of the cumulative area burned by forest fires in the western US and south-western Canada between 1986 and 2021.”

We need a system that protects us, NOT causes fatal disasters. The Labor Network for Sustainability is committed to building a world that takes the climate crisis seriously. We are part of movements that are pushing our governments to invest in the renewable energy transition necessary to mitigate further climate catastrophe. We are in solidarity with the labor movement that is fighting for fully funded services that can handle the disasters we can no longer prevent – thanks to decades of putting corporate profit over workers and our planet. We know this work needs to be well-trained and well-paid — not forced on the most vulnerable people in our society for little or no pay. We uplift those organizations racing to meet the immediate needs of destroyed communities, but we need more than distribution systems for aid.

Join LNS in building a society where the work we do nourishes and protects our planet and all who live on it.

For full statement: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/the-labor-network-for-sustainability-mourns-the-catastrophic-loss-of-life-and-homes-in-california/ 

Photo Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

According to a statement on the Los Angeles fires by the Labor Network for Sustainability, “The fires are not a natural disaster.”

Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California in January, which is supposed to be the rainy season. Melting Arctic ice creates changes in the jet stream’s behavior that make wind-driven large wildfires in California more likely. Climate scientists told Yale E360 that with climate change, California’s dry season has extended into early winter when the Santa Ana winds – which bring hot, dry air from the mountains out to sea during the winter months – typically form. The scientist said that this, “is the key climate change connection to Southern California wildfires.” As the atmosphere warms, hotter air evaporates water and can intensify drought more quickly.

According to meteorologist Eric Holthaus writing in The Guardian, the ingredients for these “infernos in the Los Angeles area, near-hurricane strength winds and drought,” foretell “an emerging era of compound events – simultaneous types of historic weather conditions, happening at unusual times of the year, resulting in situations that overwhelm our ability to respond.”

These fires are an especially acute example of something climate scientists have been warning about for decades: compound climate disasters that, when they occur simultaneously, produce much more damage than they would individually. As the climate crisis escalates, the interdependent atmospheric, oceanic and ecological systems that constrain human civilization will lead to compounding and regime-shifting changes that are difficult to predict in advance.

For full statement: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/the-labor-network-for-sustainability-mourns-the-catastrophic-loss-of-life-and-homes-in-california/ 

Sacramento City Unified School District employees and supporters rally at Rosemont High School, on Monday, March 28, 2022. Photo Credit: Andrew Nixon / CapRadio

By LNS California Organizer Veronica Wilson
 
Mass mutual aid operations, demands for disaster preparedness, and calls for climate readiness are just a few examples of the working class responding to the climate catastrophe brought by the extreme Santa Ana windstorm and devastating wildfires on January 7th in Los Angeles.
 
As first responders fought gigantic blazes in Altadena, an historic Black neighborhood, and the Pacific Palisades and more fires flared up, threatening areas of  Hollywood and the Valley, next level solidarity and worker-led action was mobilizing. LA labor leaders, worker centers, community organizations and their networks mounted massive operations of assistance, care, and support as fire spread, taking lives and structures, and forcing people to evacuate and businesses to shutter. 
 
Workers and organizers rallied thousands of volunteers to help at distribution centers, providing basic goods and services for those who lost loved ones, homes, schools, and jobs. Labor and Community Services, a nonprofit partner of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, with sixty years of experience mobilizing support for unionists in times of disaster, stood up an enormous distribution center. At the LA Labor annual MLK breakfast, only days after fires broke out, organizers added donation drop-offs to the event, attended by more than 1,300. The Pasadena Job Center, a mile and a half from the fire perimeter in Altadena, operated by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (@daylaborernetwork), deployed second responders to safely clear debris covering residential streets in disaster areas and surrounding neighborhoods, managing thousands of volunteers who came to sort and distribute donations to local residents. 
 
 Following a unified response from Los Angeles Unified School District unions to demand the Superintendent temporarily close worksites without loss of compensation, union vice president Julie Van Winkle laid out reasons for planning ahead in the reality of intensifying climate crisis, making the case for climate-ready schools. 

Into the months and years ahead, workers and communities will need to stick together in intermediate and longer term economic recovery, prioritizing work that strengthens climate preparedness, adaptation, and resilience.

Photo Credit: AFP

Unions such as the Los Angeles Federation of Labor and the California Teachers Association are providing resources to impacted communities. We applaud UTLA’s leadership in the unified response from united unions in the LA Unified School District to protect children and their families during this ongoing tragedy.

There are several ways to help support and make donations to victims of the wildfires. LA’s Mask Bloc has a form for people to request masks or offer volunteer time. As a means of survival, some displaced Black families, formerly of Altadena, have resorted to the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to rebuild through financial support as the fires continue to ravage L.A. Be advised that any rent increases above 10% are considered price gouging which can be reported anywhere in the country, and by calling LA 311 at 213-473-3231 or by reporting it to the LA County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs if you live in Los Angeles.

Black LA Relief & Recovery Fund – www.pledge.to/BlackLA  
Inclusive Action for the City – Outdoor Worker Fund - bit.ly/workeraid-donate  
Domestic Workers Relief Fund - domesticworkers.org
NDLON https://linktr.ee/ndlon
CHIRLA iRelief: https://chirla.org/irelief
LA Unity & Solidarity Fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/california-wildfires

UTLA Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Fund  https://utlastore.com/products/utla-mutual-aid-disaster-relief-fund 

The Labor Network for Sustainability issued a report January 1st titled Defending Society Against MAGA Tyranny: A Prospectus for Action. The report, authored by labor historian and LNS co-founder and senior strategic advisor Jeremy Brecher, says:

     "There is a movement emerging in response to the MAGA threat. But is it even possible for this emerging movement to develop the power it will need to counter a Trump tyranny?

     "Gandhi once wrote, 'Even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.' A Trump tyranny will not be able to continue without the support and acquiescence of those whose lives and future it is destroying. It will only be able to pursue its destructive course if they enable or acquiesce in it. A movement can overcome the most powerful regime if it can withdraw that cooperation.

    "But how can that power be concretely realized? There are several ways that resistance to Trump’s MAGA regime can exercise significant power:

- Constituent power: the ability of a mobilized electorate to influence leaders whose own power depends on election.

- Protest power: the ability of masses of people to demonstrate the large numbers and willingness to act of those who share their views.

- Disruptive power: the ability to exact costs on powerful institutions by disrupting their functioning through civil disobedience, strikes, and other forms of direct action.

- Social strikes: the mobilization of an entire society to withdraw support from a regime in order to bring it to an end through a nonviolent uprising or 'people power'."

For full report: https://labor4sustainability.org/files/__LNS_newsletter_assets/MAGATyranny.pdf 

By LNS Co-Executive Director Liz Ratzloff

This past December, I had the privilege of traveling to four incredible cities across the globe to discuss how we can build the power necessary to challenge the fossil fuel industry, strengthen worker power, and protect our planet. Each stop underscored the urgency of our mission and the shared struggles we face in this fight.

My first stop was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city with a deep labor history rooted in its industrial past. We talked about the importance of a just transition—and how we can better plan for ending fossil fuel extraction in a way that supports workers and communities. Pittsburgh’s legacy of generating energy and denigrating the environment provided a rich backdrop for these discussions.

Next, I traveled to Washington, D.C., where we met with allies in the climate movement to emphasize the importance of labor and collective action in countering corporate power and navigating the dangers posed by the new administration. The conversations were dynamic, and the timing was fitting—my next stop would provide a striking real-world example of the power of organized labor.

In Seoul, South Korea, I witnessed history as labor unions staged a massive strike in response to the president’s abuse of power, culminating in his impeachment. This extraordinary display of working-class solidarity mirrored the very principles we had been discussing with our allies in D.C. It was a humbling reminder of the strength of collective action.

Finally, I spoke at a just transition conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Like Pittsburgh, Kaohsiung has an industrial legacy marked by environmental degradation. We explored ways to build coalitions between communities, environmental justice movements, and labor unions to forge a sustainable and just future.

People all over the world want an ecologically sustainable and economically just future.

We just need to get organized.

The day after newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed executive orders promoting mass deportations and the rolling back of immigrants’ rights, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler issued a statement that said in part: 

"The executive orders President Donald Trump signed amount to an unprecedented attack on immigrant workers and their families that will weaken our economy and our country. While Trump and extremist Republican leaders propagate divisive rhetoric about immigrants to stoke fear, working people know that our fellow workers aren’t the problem—the real threat is billionaires like Trump and Elon Musk who seek to distract and divide us so they can seize even more power and make ever greater profits off of our labor. The bottom line: An immigrant doesn't stand between you and a good job—a billionaire does. 

"Joining together as workers and unions is how we stand up to abusive bosses, hold greedy corporations accountable, and build an economy that works for working people. An injury to one is an injury to all. The labor movement stands proudly in solidarity with the millions of valued members of our workforce, our communities and our unions who are targeted by Monday’s announcements. Deporting people whose labor helps our country prosper and cutting off pathways into the United States is not only a betrayal of our values—it is also a recipe for economic disaster.  

"Our unions will fight to defend and preserve fundamental rights for all working families, including access to education and health care, as well as the birthright citizenship protections enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. We will join community allies to counter Trump’s unfair and unconstitutional attacks, so together we can ensure that everyone is safe on the job and can continue to build an economy that supports working families, not corporate billionaires."

Source: https://aflcio.org/press/releases/afl-cio-president-trumps-unprecedented-attack-immigrant-workers-and-their-families 

Many unions and labor councils have been creating emergency response programs and trainings to counter imminent immigrant raids. For example, responding to Donald Trump’s promise to conduct early raids in Washington, DC, and Maryland, the DC and Maryland AFL-CIOs called an Emergency Meeting with this statement:
 
"Maryland State and DC AFL-CIO is ground zero.
 
"All of our unions will be impacted when the incoming Trump administration conducts high-profile raids targeting immigrants allegedly living in the United States illegally at a workplace in the Maryland/DC metropolitan area. Targets include businesses in the agriculture, construction, hospitality and health care industries.
 
"Under the leadership of the AFL-CIO Executive Council Committee on Immigration, (27 National Unions dedicated staff and resources) we developed a proactive strategy to prepare for the attacks on immigrant workers that president-elect Trump has promised to begin on day one of his administration. We recognize the urgency to equip our movement to respond and are pleased to announce the rollout of Frontline Solidarity: A Mass Deportation Fight-Back Toolkit for Union Activists and Organizers." 
 
To get the toolkit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xJtYqtnTvoXCuslT_p8a0KqDcWja2J7Xg2jEkPuDm5E/viewform?ts=6761ffc8&edit_requested=true  
 
Union contracts are one way to provide protection for immigrant workers. The Chicago Teachers Union contract forbids the Chicago Public Schools to ask about or keep track of the immigration status of students or their families and barred ICE agents from entering school grounds unless they provide their credentials, a reason for their request, and a signed warrant. SEIU Local 26 janitors in the Twin Cities recently negotiated a contract that requires employers to disclose in writing any inquiries into workers’ documentation, and protects workers’ jobs for up to 120 days, with full seniority, while any issue is addressed. 

In the first Trump presidency, Teamsters Joint Council 16 (including 27 Teamsters locals in the New York metropolitan area) announced that it was a sanctuary union. The locals pledged to resist cooperation with federal agents in prosecuting or deporting members and to fight for contract language protecting immigrant workers. The National Union of Healthcare Workers passed a similar resolution pledging that the union “will not voluntarily cooperate with federal agents to enforce immigration laws.”

Source: https://labornotes.org/2025/01/how-labor-can-fight-back-against-trumps-mass-deportation-agenda

Labor Notes and Workday Magazine have compiled a repository of collective bargaining agreement language protecting immigrant workers as well as resources on sanctuary resolutions and workers’ rights. You can access it here. 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/economic-growth-could-fall-50-over-20-years-from-climate-shocks-say-actuaries

A new report from risk management experts at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries finds that the global economy could face 50% loss in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonize and restore nature. At 3 degrees Celsius or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.

For full report: https://actuaries.org.uk/document-library/thought-leadership/thought-leadership-campaigns/climate-papers/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/ 

Levels of carbon dioxide, the most significant planet-warming gas, rose more quickly than ever previously recorded last year. Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are now more than 50% higher than before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30dn5dn53jo

The global average temperature set a new record in 2024, worsening the extreme heatwaves, storms and floods that affected billions of people. The earth passed the 1.5C (2.7F) level agreed as a target by the Paris climate agreement for the first time. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, blamed the fossil fuel industry for pocketing profits while their products “wreak havoc.”

Source: Copernicus Global Climate Highlights: https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024 

According to the Climate Research Accountability Project, in the first two weeks of 2025 the total wealth accumulation of Trump’s top 15 fossil fuel billionaires has increased by $2.42 billion.

Source: https://jumpshare.com/v/u1NYajn1fFOyb1qYCMb3  

A review by Anjali Vaidya of The Green New Deal from Below by LNS newsletter editor Jeremy Brecher was just published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Vaidaya writes in part,

The book’s aim is to shift “the sense of what is possible.” To that end, from a large constellation of local Green New Deal efforts, Brecher—co-founder and senior advisor to the Labor Network for Sustainability—has selected a few dozen bright stars to illuminate and connect.

Brecher’s examples of how California and Boston are, independently, providing universal free meals for kids in school might not have immediately signaled climate action to me before I read this book. Nor would I have automatically put school lunches in the same category as a fight for affordable housing in Chicago. Or the program in Philadelphia, PowerCorpsPHL, which has been providing green job training to the recently incarcerated. 

“What connects these projects,” they write, is “an intersection of goals: to fight, simultaneously, for the environment and for social justice. Put together, “they seem like the snowflakes that start an avalanche.

It’s an odd moment to be reviewing a book with the sheer energy and optimism that suffuses this one. The Green New Deal from Below is not an unrealistic book, but its political realism is still a far cry from the pessimistic dirge into which Western environmentalism so often slips. Cynicism can be oddly comforting. Hope is painful because it makes you open your eyes. It is striking, and invigorating, to see how many people in these pages don’t just hope but also act, taking the contagious idea that none of us is saved unless all of us are, and putting that idea to work. 

For the full review: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/snowflakes-that-start-an-avalanche/

To purchase the book: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088278 

Making a Living on a Living Planet is published by the Labor Network for Sustainability. Copyright 2024. 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.