How Green New Deal from Below Programs Integrate Climate, Jobs, and Justice

The appeal of the Green New Deal lies in its drawing together the varied needs of diverse constituencies into a common program that realizes them all. Here’s how that works at the sub-national level.

By Jeremy Brecher

January 5, 2024

Source: STRIKE!

The Green New Deal from Below is not a random collection of isolated initiatives; it is a set of synergistic policies determined by a common purpose and exhibiting a common set of characteristics. It relies not on the market, but on action by public institutions and by the people themselves. It establishes Green New Deal policies and programs at community, local, state, and regional levels both for their own sake and as building blocks for a national and even a global Green New Deal. Rather than leaving outcomes to chance or the vagaries of the market, it embraces municipal, metropolitan, state, and regional planning. It mobilizes resources to provide for public needs in ways that also help reverse the rampant inequality of American society. And it pursues climate solutions that eliminate fossil fuel energy rather than using technological or economic fixes to perpetuate it.

All aspects of this Green New Deal from Below are driven by the existential necessity to protect the climate. This requires increasing climate-safe energy production; reducing the need for energy through energy efficiency and conservation; and managed reduction of fossil fuel burning. Climate protection is generally the pivot around which all the other necessary social transformations turn.

New, climate-safe energy from renewable sources is being created by Green New Deals from Below. For example, the third annual progress report of the Los Angeles Green New Deal found that the city is meeting 43% of its energy needs with renewables like wind and solar and will generate 97% of its energy with renewables by 2030.

Energy consumption is being reduced. For example, the Los Angeles Green New Deal plan cuts energy use in all types of buildings by 22% by 2025, 34% by 2035, and 44% by 2050.

Fossil fuel burning is being reduced and eliminated. Fossil fuel plants, pipelines, and mines are being ratchetted or shut down, such as the closing of 353 of the 530 coal-fired power plants that were active in 2010 and the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline after a 13-year struggle. California, America’s largest auto market, is phasing out the sale of gasoline-powered cars over the next 13 years.

Carbon is being withdrawn from the atmosphere through urban forestry programs in Boston, Philadelphia, and many other cities. Farming, forestry, and “Blue New Deal” ocean farming are contributing to atmospheric restoration.

The Green New Deals from Below are changing energy systems in ways that also rectify past injustices and open new opportunities. That ranges from planting trees in urban hotspots to shutting down polluting power plants in environmental justice communities to electrifying gas-guzzling vehicles or replacing them with public transit in highly polluted areas.

The original Green New Deal program included an expansive social welfare agenda, including education, housing, healthcare, and other social needs. That agenda is being implemented as part of the Green New Deal from Below. In California, for example, the same spurt of legislation that established accelerated climate protection also instituted free nutritious meals for all of the state’s six million public school students and removed restrictions that had significantly impeded the building of affordable housing.

Workers and communities are being protected against negative side effects of the transition to a just and climate-safe economy. In cities like Somerset, MA fossil fuel power plants have been shut down and replaced by non-polluting, job-creating renewable energy production. In Colorado and Illinois, legislation is providing jobs programs and new investment for communities that have been hit by the shutdown of coal mines. In cities like Philadelphia and states like California, new green jobs are being created and marginalized workers and communities are being trained to fill them.

A hallmark of these Green New Deal from Below programs is the way they integrate the varied needs of various constituencies. Consider, for example, Washington State’s 2022 “Move Ahead Washington” transportation program. It invests $1.45 billion for public transit. This is part of a multimodal transportation program that also includes bike and pedestrian projects to reduce accidents. The program not only reduces greenhouse gases and gives relief to highly polluted communities, but it provides new mobility options for disabled people and other non-drivers. And, in order to encourage a new culture of transportation use, the legislation provides free access to the state’s transit, trains, and ferries for riders under 18 and bicycle education for students – with a free bike for those who participate in the program. Or consider the Denver CARE Project (Clean Affordable Renewable Energy) which has built a community solar garden that provides reduced energy costs to low-income communities and provides training and jobs in the solar industry for under-served communities – all while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Beyond Neoliberalism

The Green New Deal represents a historic shift away from the dominant market-oriented ideology of the past four decades, often referred to as “neoliberalism.” It asserts the legitimacy and indeed the necessity of action by institutions representing the public and of collective action by the people themselves.

Neoliberalism has also marked much of the policy of the climate movement itself, which has often advocated so-called market mechanisms like cap-and-trade systems and carbon offsets in effect to bribe the rich and powerful to become climate good guys. The Green New Deal from Below pursues an entirely different climate protection strategy, based on mandatory emissions reductions, managed decline in fossil fuel extraction and burning, public investment, and climate-safe energy alternatives that create jobs and a more just economy.

Of course, the risk remains that the Green New Deal itself can be captured or coopted and made to serve the ends of exploitation and greenwashing. But its basic orientation toward public initiative, investment, and planning in the public interest provides an antidote to the blandishments of green “false flag” operations.

Much of the climate movement itself has presented climate destruction as largely a matter of deleterious individual consumption choices. The fix for climate change, accordingly, has often been posed as a need for individuals to turn off lightbulbs, eat less meat, drive electric cars, and otherwise change their consumption habits. This approach has often had a moralistic, self-blaming dynamic while leaving unchallenged the role of production and other broad social structures in climate destruction. The Green New Deal, while recognizing the role of consumption patterns, especially for energy consumption, has put production and other social dimensions front and center.

Green New Deal initiatives come in the context of an emerging struggle between the neoliberal policies that have dominated the US for 40 years and the reemergence of activist government “industrial policy,” embodied in Biden administration policies and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. From the 1940s until 1980 the US actually had an active industrial policy, but it was largely shaped and conducted by the military. For example, the substantial movement of US manufacturing to California in the 20^th century was largely promoted by military decisions. And a notorious 1965 Selective Service System memo titled “Channeling” laid out how the military draft and its system of exemptions funneled “manpower” into “endeavors” and “occupations” that are “in the national interest.” The current revival of industrial policy was implemented primarily by deals that President Biden made on the one hand with the forces of the Green New Deal and on the other with fossil fuel and other corporate interests, passing the Inflation Reduction Act by paying off conservative fossil fuel Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin.

The Inflation Reduction Act is providing some support for Green New Deal-type activities and other programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But much of its funding goes for very different purposes. Much is directed toward faux climate protection programs like carbon capture and hydrogen production which are primarily means to greenwash expanded fossil fuel production. Some may be going to environmentally dangerous projects, notably building a new “fleet” of nuclear power plants. And much of the new American industrial policy is driven by economic nationalism, designed to shift production – especially of “green” products – from other countries to the US. Such industrial policy programs were justified as part of an economic war against China (accompanied by such other economic nationalist policies as trying to prevent China from acquiring advanced computer chip technology) but in fact it is producing substantial “collateral damage” to the US’s supposed European allies.

The Green New Deal from Below is also engaging in governmental economic activism, but of a very different sort. Its goal is to produce public goods – like a healthy environment, economic security, and justice — for the public good. Under prevailing circumstances, in which private corporations have a disproportionate share of money and capacity, Green New Deals from Below may at times have to work with them and allow them to make a profit by serving the public good. Its driving purpose is not just corporate profit, however, but environment, jobs, and justice.

Cooperatives, public ownership, and public banks were part of the initial program of the New Deal of the 1930s – and of the Green New Deal. Green New Deals from Below are using them to establish alternatives to dependence on corporate capital to get things done. Green New Deal energy programs include energy coops, community-based energy production, and municipally owned power utilities. In a very different sector, the worker-owned Roxbury food cooperative provides free meals each school day for 50,000 Boston students. Connecticut, Illinois, and other states are financing Green New Deal programs with public Green Banks.

Green New Deal programs at local, state, and regional levels not only address the problems of varied constituencies, they provide the basis for drawing those constituencies together into a powerful force at the national and even the global level.

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Jeremy Brecher

Jeremy Brecher is a historian, author, and co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. He has been active in peace, labor, environmental, and other social movements for more than half a century. Brecher is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! and Global Village or Global Pillage and the winner of five regional Emmy awards for his documentary movie work.

Workers at Jollibee Are Taking on a Multinational Fast-Food Giant

FILIPINO FAST FOOD EXPLOITATION

By Trevor Clarke

January 13, 2024

Z Article

In a certain corner of New Jersey, the “hot labor summer” that recently swept the country began early. In January 2023, minimum-wage workers at a Jersey City location of Jollibee, the beloved Philippines-based fast-food chain, circulated a petition for better working conditions and higher pay. Their demands included a three-dollar wage increase over the state minimum (then $14.13 an hour), double-time pay on holidays, and other basic improvements. Within a few weeks, over 90 percent of their coworkers had signed the petition.

The store’s management caught on quickly; petitioners say they think it was tracking their activities online. In late February, management laid off nine workers, explaining that the store had been bleeding money since the pandemic. Weeks later, thirteen new hires were brought in to replace them.

Suspecting retaliation, the fired workers appealed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They also launched the Justice for Jollibee Workers (J4JW) campaign, calling on Jollibee to reinstate them, give them back pay, issue a public apology, and post parts of the National Labor Relations Act concerning employees’ rights and unfair labor practices in all its kitchens.

The J4JW campaign kicked off in July with a demonstration at the Jollibee store in Journal Square, the location where the nine workers were terminated. The action coincided with National Fried Chicken Day — one of the busiest days of the year for the chain, where “Chickenjoy” is the best-selling item on the menu.

“We do our jobs right, and we received this — getting laid off because we want a better workplace, holiday pay, and a three-dollar wage increase,” said Keyser Garganera, a fired worker.

Campaigners also handed management a letter. “You may have illegally terminated us, but you will not silence our voices and the voices of Jollibee workers,” it reads. “We know our rights.”

The demonstrators were removed from the store by police.

A Sense of Betrayal

Founded in 1978, Jollibee enjoys an “iconic” status among Filipinos, who are its main clientele and make up a significant portion of its workforce. Especially within the Filipino diaspora, Jollibee represents a taste of home and a point of pride. For many, the company’s poor treatment of its workers feels like a betrayal.

Many Jollibee workers are among the ten million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who hold jobs primarily in manual, service, care, and domestic work across Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America — all places where Jollibee seeks to expand its presence. Last year, OFWs sent home more than $36 billion in cash remittances, or 9 percent of the Philippines’ GDP.

A J4JW demonstration held in October at a Jollibee in Edison, New Jersey, was attended by Filipino community organizers, student groups, and union members — including striking nurses from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. One nurse related her experience as an OFW, having moved from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia before settling in New Jersey. The nurse said that Jollibee was complicit not only in exploiting Filipinos’ loyalty and nostalgia but their labor. “Those workers are my aunties and uncles, my titas and titos,” she said, referring to the fired Jollibee workers.

Exporting Exploitation

In large part, OFWs are motivated by the prospect of higher pay and better living and working conditions. Yet when Jollibee fired the nine workers from its Journal Square store, some wondered whether the company hadn’t brought its habit of violating workers’ rights abroad along with all the Chickenjoy.

Jollibee isn’t just the Philippines’ biggest fast-food chain, outselling even McDonald’s in its country of origin — it boasts more than 1,500 stores worldwide and over seventy in the United States. Still, this represents a fraction of its total footprint. Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC), the chain’s parent company, owns seventeen other brands besides Jollibee, notably Smashburger and the Philippine franchises of Burger King and Panda Express.

In total, JFC operates 6,500 restaurants around the globe, about as many as Wendy’s. The company has designs on opening another five hundred stores in North America by 2030.

Despite management’s claims that its Journal Square location is in dire straits, Jollibee’s parent company is doing record business. JFC reported nearly $5 billion in sales in 2022, roughly $1 billion more than in 2019, before public-health measures in response to COVID-19 dealt a heavy blow (borne in large part by workers) to restaurants. In 2022, JFC took in almost $150 million in profits, about $30 million more than in the last prepandemic year.

The family of Tony Tan Caktiong, JFC’s billionaire founder and chairman, is currently the fifth richest in the Philippines, with a net worth of $3.2 billion. Employees at the restaurants his company owns routinely decry labor violations relating to wages, misclassification, understaffing, and worse.

“What we are faced with is unbridled corporate greed,” said Yves Nibungco, one of the fired workers. Jollibee is “creating working conditions that really squeeze the life out of workers.”

Repressing Philippine Labor

Before it was taken down without explanation, the J4JW campaign’s Facebook page was flooded with messages of solidarity from Jollibee workers overseas. The campaigners also make a point of advocating on behalf of their counterparts in the Philippines, where labor faces especially fierce opposition.

“Their fight is also our fight,” said Garganera, one of the fired workers, speaking about Jollibee employees in the Philippines.

Many low-wage workers in the Philippines are employed on an “endo,” or end-of-contract basis, meaning they are hired for fewer than six months at a time. This lets companies off the hook for the kinds of pay, benefits, and job security that regularized workers are entitled to.

With nearly fifteen thousand “affected” workers in its employ, Jollibee earned the top spot on the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment’s list of employers taking advantage of endo arrangements. After the department directed JFC to regularize seven thousand endo workers in 2018, the company responded by laying off four hundred, sparking calls for a boycott.

Jollibee also appealed against the department’s directive, insisting it wasn’t responsible for deciding the status of its workers. Instead, it pointed the finger at “service contractors,” recruiting agencies that act as middlemen between employers and employees. Fees collected by service contractors often amount to as much as a quarter of a worker’s paycheck, adding a further degree of exploitation to low-wage work.

The natural bulwark against predatory recruiting agencies and employers would seem to be a robust labor movement. But unionists have long faced deadly repression at the hands of the Philippine government, which routinely brands organizers, activists, journalists, and left-wing political actors as supporters of the New People’s Army — the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines which, since the 1970s, has been waging “the world’s longest ongoing communist insurgency.” The practice of purposefully mislabeling civilians as communist militants is known as “red-tagging.”

Elmer “Ka Bong” Labog is the chairperson of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), an influential anti-imperialist labor center. Labog likens red-tagging to a deadly strain of McCarthyism. “When you’re red-tagged, this is an assurance of you being attacked or arrested without due process,” he said. “Worse, it would mean you’re dead.” KMU reports that seventy-two workers and organizers have been killed with impunity since 2016.

Red-tagging hearkens back to the state violence carried out by colonial occupiers (Spain, the United States, and Japan), as well as by the US-backed Ferdinand Marcos government. This legacy was rekindled in 2018, when then president Rodrigo Duterte created a militarized task force to quash “communist” dissent — a category broad enough to include pandemic-era community pantries. (Marcos’s son Bongbong, who assumed the presidency last year, seems set on upholding his predecessors’ morbid record on labor and human rights.)

Yet Nibungco said he still holds out hope that, having weathered three foreign occupations and a decade and a half of dictatorship, workers “will continue to play not only a historic but a decisive role in winning social change in the Philippines.”

Reinstatement Today, Higher Wages Tomorrow

J4JW’s struggle against Jollibee in New Jersey has so far been a success. Tapping into labor-movement momentum as well as existing channels of Filipino solidarity like the left-wing alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, also known as Bayan, the campaign has held demonstrations at Jollibee locations across New York and New Jersey and in Seattle.

In August of last year, the NLRB filed a complaint against the company, deeming the workers’ terminations illegal. Then, in October, after the campaign announced it would protest a networking event for Filipino business leaders in New York City, Jollibee North America president Maribeth Dela Cruz canceled her speaking engagement. Jollibee eventually pulled out of the event and withdrew its sponsorship.

In late November, after months of campaign pressure, Jollibee agreed to a settlement: back pay and damages amounting to $84,600, reinstatement, and a public apology. But the matter of wages remains unresolved, and the reinstated workers will go back to earning minimum wage (now $15.13 an hour in New Jersey). Workers say this is hardly tenable in a city where the cost of living is markedly high and median rent is $2,700 a month, 35 percent higher than the national median.

“The struggle doesn’t end here,” said Nibungco. “We are even more committed to fight for higher wages and better working conditions, not just in our store but across the United States.”

COP28

As the Planet Boils, Corporate Media Still Carry Water for Fossil Fuel Giants

When it comes to climate reporting, corporate media outlets are still failing the public.

By Steve Macek & Andy Lee Roth ,

TRUTHOUT

January 14, 2024

IGOR GOLOVNIOV / SOPA IMAGES / LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

The 28th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties summit (COP28), recently met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The president of the summit, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber — who also leads the UAE’s national oil company — drew criticism for rumors that he planned to use COP28 to make oil deals and for claiming there is “no science” behind urgent calls for a phaseout of fossil fuels, a statement he later walked back. CNN, CBS, The New York Times, and other establishment news outlets all ran stories about the uproar surrounding his mercenary defense of fossil fuels.

However, the blanket coverage of oil chief Al Jaber’s divisive role at COP28 was an outlier. Although commercial news media have recently given more coverage to the existential threats posed by anthropogenic climate change, more typically they pay only scant attention to the pernicious influence of the oil and gas industry. Corporate news outlets consistently underreport the devastating impact of fossil fuels on human health, and they tend to “greenwash” the economic and political forces that keep us dependent on carbon-intensive energy.
Energy Corporations’ Influence Suppresses Public Understanding of Their Depredating Impacts

The establishment press has failed to cover energy corporations’ contributions to the climate crisis, including how fossil fuel money skews university climate and energy research, and how fossil fuel investors have sued national governments to block climate regulations. Nevertheless, as documented by a 2021 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, national governments provide trillions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, effectively “propping up an industry that is in decline,” as Mike Coffin, a senior analyst at the climate change think tank Carbon Tracker, told the Guardian in 2021. This story also received little attention from establishment news outlets.

Corporate news media have also failed to cover reports that some of the most widely touted approaches to climate mitigation, carbon offset programs, are mostly “worthless,” according to reports produced jointly by the Guardian, SourceMaterial and Die Zeit in January 2023.

Global brands such as Disney, Shell, Gucci, Salesforce, Netflix and United Airlines have promoted their environmental commitments, based on participation in carbon offset programs sponsored by Verra, the world’s leading offset certifier. But Verra sets the standards for offset programs and profits from them, which encourages the company to overstate its offset programs’ climate benefits.


COP28 Gave Us Another Agreement Full of Loopholes for Fossil Fuels
It's further proof that sustained activism, not fossil fuel diplomacy, is our only hope for tackling the climate crisis.
By C.J. Polychroniou , TRUTHOUTDecember 19, 2023

One independent assessment, conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge, found that in 32 of the 40 forest-offset projects investigated, the claims concerning forest protection and emission reductions were overstated by an average of 400 percent.

Corporate news outfits have also failed to expose climate disinformation promoted by energy corporations. Electric utility companies have been knowingly spreading such disinformation for decades, Grist and The Atlantic reported in September 2022, citing a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The UCSB study examined nearly 200 utility industry documents spanning five decades — from 1968 to 2019 — which revealed that utilities including PG&E and Commonwealth Edison were well aware of the threats posed by climate change but adopted a strategy of “climate denial, doubt, and delay” to continue investing in polluting infrastructure for “several decades longer than scientists have advised is safe,” the study’s authors concluded.

In addition to inadequately covering disinformation and coverups about energy corporations’ crucial role in accelerating the climate crisis, corporate news media often fail to adequately inform the public about its immediate consequences. As our news watch organization Project Censored documents in its 2023 report of the year’s most important but underreported news stories, entire tribal towns in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest are being forced to relocate due to climate change, while two long-term epidemiological studies provide new evidence of health risks for people who live nearby oil and gas extraction sites, including high rates of childhood leukemia and a multitude of maternal health risks.

Omitting the Resistance

Finally, the establishment press has missed significant stories about the ways people are fighting back against fossil fuel-driven climate change.

For instance, in November 2022, 16 municipalities in Puerto Rico brought a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Shell, and other fossil fuel companies, charging that the 2017 hurricane season, which did an estimated $294 billion in damage to the island, was worsened by global warming to which their products contributed, and that the companies colluded to deceive the public about this crucial fact. Other cities and states have attempted to sue oil and gas companies for climate change-related damages, but this is the first suit attempting to hold those companies accountable under United States racketeering laws. This story was initially reported by Reuters, The Guardian, Common Dreams and Grist but was ignored by the big commercial media. It took until July 19, 2023, for The New York Times to finally report the story.

The corporate media has also largely ignored efforts by Clean Creatives, a movement of workers within the most prominent advertising and PR agencies, to end their employers’ ties to fossil fuel companies. The movement now has support from some 2,000 individuals and 800 agencies who have pledged not to work for fossil fuel polluters. The Clean Creatives campaign has gotten some coverage in the business and ad industry trade press but so far has not been covered by any major general interest news outlets.
The News Media’s Corrupt Relationship With Energy Corporations

As the existence of the Clean Creatives campaign serves to underscore, corporate media remain dependent on revenues from advertising by energy companies and industries that are particularly reliant on fossil fuels, such as auto manufacturers and airlines. That economic dependence helps explain the lack of critical news reporting about fossil fuels and their catastrophic impacts.

Sociologist Robert Brulle and his co-researcher Christian Downie found that, between 2008 and 2018, fossil fuel companies and the trade associations they fund spent a whopping $2.2 billion on advertising and promotions. Many of these ads erroneously suggested that oil and gas corporations are leading the efforts to address climate change. For instance, since 2020, one fossil fuel front group, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, has spent in excess of $10 million on ads designed to convince the public that fracked gas is a solution to the climate crisis, a position rejected by most climate scientists.

A 2020 study by the environmental think tank Influence Map found that the oil and gas industry spent close to $10 million that year on some 25,000 Facebook ads that were viewed more than 431 million times in the U.S. Another study, conducted by Greenpeace and the New Weather Institute, found that automakers and airlines spent roughly $13 billion on advertising in 2019, which researchers estimated “could be responsible for 202 and 606 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” more than twice what is released by the entire nation of Netherlands annually.

But the corporate media’s cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry goes beyond simply running their ads. Increasingly, respected news organizations such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters and Politico are partnering with fossil fuel companies to develop sponsored content — advertorials, podcasts and videos — that news outlets then host on their sites immediately adjacent to legitimate news. Reuters’s marketing staff even created a custom conference for “oil and gas digital innovators.”

As greenhouse emissions rise and global temperatures inch closer to critical levels, we need media that tell the truth about the corporate behemoths responsible for the climate crisis, not media that collaborate openly with them. The full story includes not only the health and environmental damage wrought by energy corporations and their efforts to obscure those realities but also grassroots collective resistance to its agenda. For this reason, we need to call out these failures by the establishment news media — and support independent and alternative news outlets that make hard-hitting reporting on climate issues and climate activism a priority.


Copyright © Truthout. 

STEVE MACEK  is professor of communication and media studies at North Central College and a co-coordinator of Project Censored’s campus affiliate program.

ANDY LEE ROTH  is associate director of Project Censored, a news watch organization that promotes independent journalism and critical media literacy education. With Mickey Huff, he co-edited Project Censored’s newest yearbook, State of the Free Press 2024, to be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on December 5, 2023.