‘Historic’: Seattle Passes First City Ban on AI-Enabled Surveillance Pricing

“The price you see shouldn’t be different based on who you are. Mayor Wilson and the City Council have made Seattle a leader on protecting shoppers from unfair grocery pricing tactics,” one advocate said.


Members of UFCW 3000 celebrate the passage of a Seattle-wide ban on surveillance pricing on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at City Hall.
(Photo by UFCW 3000)

Olivia Rosane
Sep 23, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Seattle became the first city in the country to ban surveillance pricing on Tuesday afternoon after the City Council voted 7-2 to approve a measure co-sponsored and championed by progressive Mayor Katie Wilson.

The Fair Pricing and Transparency policy bans big retail outlets—both online and brick-and-mortar—from using customer data such as race, gender, employment status, internet or social media history, and conversations with chatbots to charge different shoppers different prices for the same products.

“Food is an essential good that’s getting more expensive all the time,” Wilson said in a statement celebrating the win. “People have been clear: They don’t want their data fed into algorithms that decide how much they pay at the grocery store. Everyone deserves transparent pricing and equal treatment, not hidden systems that charge some shoppers more than others.”

“I don’t think we could do that without the kind of mayor that was elected and the moment that we’re in.”

Surveillance pricing is the practice of feeding shopper data to artificial intelligence, which then sets distinct prices for different customers based on what the AI thinks they can afford. A 2025 investigation from Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative, and More Perfect Union found that the practice could add $1,200 a year to the average Seattle family’s grocery bill.

“This is a huge win for consumers against companies that abuse their personal data to rip them off,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said on social media in response to the news.



Grace Gedye, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports, said in a statement: “Nobody should pay more for basic necessities because a data broker is quietly collecting information about what they’re searching for online, what they hover over, what their income is, or where they go. The price you see shouldn’t be different based on who you are. Mayor Wilson and the City Council have made Seattle a leader on protecting shoppers from unfair grocery pricing tactics with this bill. We commend this work.”

The Seattle ordinance comes amid an ongoing affordability crisis as grocery prices spike while President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have slashed the budget of crucial federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). At the same time, there is a growing national backlash against AI and Big Tech, with 78% of Americans favoring mandatory regulation of the technology. The ban on surveillance pricing follows a data center moratorium passed by the Seattle City Council in June.

Maya Morales, the founder of WA People’s Privacy and one of the organizers mobilizing grassroots support for the measure, told Common Dreams that harder day-to-day living conditions were leading to a “national shift” in awareness of how Big Tech and Big Retail make life even more difficult, likely enabling a major tech city like Seattle to take a stand against surveillance pricing.

“People are feeling the heat very intensely all over the nation, so in many ways it doesn’t surprise me that this would be the moment that we could get this done, because the harms are so obvious,” she said.

Progressive City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, another co-sponsor of and key advocate for the bill, also emphasized the importance of food security.

“Groceries are getting more expensive for everyday Seattleites, while the buying, selling, and leveraging our private information to manipulate prices is making big national grocery corporations millions in profit,” Rinck said in a statement. “This legislation is intended to put some guardrails on what big businesses can do with our personal information. At a time when SNAP reductions have rocked our community and people have less to spend on food, this is an important step we can take to prevent AI-assisted price gouging and ensure fair discounts for everyone.”

The measure was also co-sponsored by Councilmembers Dionne Foster and Rob Saka and backed by labor and community groups including WA People’s Privacy, Washington Working Families Party, Transit Riders Union, Lavender Rights Project, Queer Power Alliance, Washington Fair Trade Coalition, The Nexus of Privacy, MLK Labor, Consumer Reports, and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 3000.

Grocery workers supported the measure in part because they would be likely to take the brunt of customer complaints if a shopper sees that they are being charged differently than the person next to them at the self checkout. They were also concerned about their own food bills remaining affordable.

“Passing the strongest ban on AI-powered price gouging on groceries feels historic,” Seattle grocery store worker Kristen Wilder said in a statement. “My coworkers and the customers we serve proudly stood together to stop the grocery industry from imposing this scheme here in Seattle. Today that worked paid off for families who just want to know they’re paying a fair price and for workers who want to focus on customer service instead of defending some algorithm making decisions in a black box.”

In addition to fighting food insecurity, Morales emphasized that the measure “takes a little bit of a crack” at the privacy violations enabled by AI and embraced at the federal level as a way of targeting people of color, immigrants, sex workers, low-income and LGBTQ+ people, and other vulnerable groups.

“AI harms are generally privacy and surveillance harms,” Morales said, because “AI needs data in order to work. Mass commercial data surveillance is the reason we have AI and vice versa, and that is an infinite loop.”

However, from a privacy standpoint Morales said there was one disappointing aspect of the bill: an amendment passed to specify that nothing in the law prohibited “technology used solely for security, loss prevention, safety, fraud prevention, fraud detection, or compliance with law.” Morales said this provision was unnecessary because the bill’s language had been very clear that it was focused on pricing. She was also concerned it could open up loopholes, as it is difficult to prove a given technology is only being used for one purpose, and a grocery store might then be able to introduce an invasive surveillance technology—such as shopping baskets that track customers—under the guise of fighting shoplifting.

Because of that amendment, Morales told Common Dreams, “we managed to get a privacy win on pricing but not a privacy win at the grocery store.”

That said, five other corporate “bill-gutting” amendments were voted down, which Morales called a “spectacular win,” and the overall bill was itself an important victory.

Both Morales, and Jon of The Nexus of Privacy, credited the bill’s strength and ability to resist watering down in part to Wilson, who worked with stakeholders including smaller grocery outlets, labor, and community groups to build a coalition and write a strong ordinance from the get-go. Morales noted that Wilson came to office from an organizing background, and that she and Rinck did a good job of bringing grassroots organizations into the process to secure a victory, allowing Seattle policymakers to counter powerful local technology and retail interests.

“I don’t think we could do that without the kind of mayor that was elected and the moment that we’re in,” Morales said.

There is now hope that the bill would have statewide and even national implications. A surveillance pricing ban was introduced into the Washington Legislature in 2026 but failed to advance.

Morales said a legislative win at the local level can show state lawmakers: “This can be done. You don’t have to cave to the Big Retail and Tech lobby, and you can protect people.”

On a national level, Jon of The Nexus of Privacy wrote:
This huge win will help organizers in other cities and states... across the country. Industry had killed a surveillance pricing bill in California just a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve stalled New York’s surveillance pricing bill for months... but guess what, they’re not invincible! And as well as the strong legislation providing... a model of what’s possible, the Seattle coalition’s very successful tactics can hopefully be adapted by organizers elsewhere to reflect the dynamics wherever they are.

As Morales told Common Dreams, “I hope every city will pass something like this.”

 

This Year, Honor Black Reconstruction in America

Now is the time to study Du Bois’s greatest work

By Tom Goodkind

July 25, 2026

Source: The New Liberator

Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

In 1963, following George Wallace’s January speech demanding “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” following the daily sit-ins and marches of the SCLC’s spring Birmingham campaign, following MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, following the attack on the Birmingham Children’s Crusade with dogs and firehoses, following the June Jackson Mississippi assassination of Medgar Evers, following the August March on Washington, following the September KKK bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church killing Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, and following the November assassination of JFK, my white New York family packed up our blue Rambler American station wagon and drove south to the Florida Everglades. It was just 65 years since the final violent overthrow of Reconstruction and only 8 years since the lynching of Emmett Till.

We saw oranges and grapefruits in the trees, armadillos on the ground, and alligators in the swamps. But as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, after experiencing the “colored” and “white” water fountains, benches, bathrooms, and counters, and the Black chain gangs policed by shotgun-wielding sunglassed white police, I was never the same.

I didn’t read W.E.B. Du Bois’s magisterial Black Reconstruction in America until 11 years later. Du Bois had absorbed everything there was to find about Reconstruction; he relied on reams of government reports, primary sources, and unpublished research theses “by young Negro scholars.” He divided his copious secondary sources into “Standard—Anti-Negro,” “Propaganda,” “Fair to Indifferent on the Negro,” historians who “have studied the history of Negroes and write sympathetically about them,” and “Negro Historians…some judicial, some eager and even bitter in defense.” His is a work of stupendous scholarship, documentation, interpretation, and applied Marxism, and for me it opened up the continent of U.S. history.

Du Bois states of Reconstruction “…there was being put into force one of the most extraordinary experiments of Marxism that the world, before the Russian revolution, had seen” (358). He ends by observing, “We are still too blind and infatuated to conceive of the emancipation of the laboring class in half the nation as a revolution comparable to the upheavals in France in the past, and in Russia, Spain, India and China today” (708), finally closing with “…we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement…” (727).

Communist Party historian James S. Allen wrote Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy 1865-1876 in response to Du Bois’s work. Allen’s book was published in 1937, two years after Black Reconstruction, and republished by the CPUSA in 1942, 1943, 1955, 1963, 1966, 1970 and 2021. Reading Du Bois and Allen side by side is an instructive study project—especially for those of us concerned with the history and prospects of the U.S. labor movement. Two themes among others stood out for Allen: the objective limits to what could be accomplished in Reconstruction, and the relative “immaturity” of the (white) proletariat.

The “Editor’s Foreword” to Allen’s book responds directly to Du Bois, calling Black Reconstruction “praiseworthy” and noting condescendingly that it is “A refreshing antidote to the traditional acceptance of Negro inferiority and passiveness…” The International Publishers editor goes on to lecture Du Bois on Marxist theory (with which Du Bois was in fact well acquainted):

Du Bois’s failure to grasp the fundamental bourgeois character of the revolution leads him to the mistaken notion that what was occurring in the South during Reconstruction ‘was one of the most extraordinary experiments in Marxism that the world…had seen.’ Du Bois therefore very naturally falls into the error of characterizing the Reconstruction governments of the epoch as dictatorships of labor (that is, the proletariat) despite the fact that at the time such a type of dictatorship was out of the question (11).

Thus Allen’s aim was, in part, to rescue Reconstruction from Du Bois’s supposed idealism and, above all, to exonerate the white section of the working class from any responsibility for the revolution’s defeat. As against both Marx and Lenin, and like many in the Communist Party at the time, his theory was rooted in an evolutionist form of what Lenin might call “left-wing” economism. It implied that if only the Black workers could have waited for the maturation of a self-conscious industrial proletariat, their full freedom might have been won, but in the moment it was simply impossible. But Black workers would not wait; instead, for example, in the world as they found it, they were forced to create a “Colored National Labor Union” alongside William Sylvis’s white-only National Labor Union. The great communist labor leader William Z Foster in his 1954 book The Negro People in American History generally followed James Allen’s position, but he did point out:

The N.L.U. had no Reconstruction program for the South. Practically no attention was paid to the fight for the right of the Negroes to vote, and none at all to their struggle for the land. Sylvis, the most advanced of the N.L.U. leaders, denounced the Freedmen’s Bureau as “a stupendous fraud.” He proposed instead “to loan the planters a few millions of dollars at a reasonable rate of interest…$20,000,000 loaned in this manner,” he said, “would have done more to ‘reconstruct’ the South than a thousand millions spent upon the Freedmen’s Bureau.” The first convention of the N.L.U. endorsed the policy of President Johnson which was for “a speedy restoration of the South” at the expense of the Negro people, and ultimately, also of the white workers in the North (347).

(Du Bois, on the other hand, asserts that “In the Freedmen’s Bureau, the United States started upon a dictatorship by which the landowner and the capitalist were to be openly and deliberately curbed and which directed its efforts in the interest of a black and white labor class,” and goes on to call it “the most extraordinary and far-reaching institution of social uplift that America has ever attempted.” 219)

Ask yourself what has been the political highwater mark in the rich history of U.S. working-class struggle: the 1877 railroad worker and miner uprisings? The late 1880s battle for the 8-hour day? The 1912 Bread and Roses strike? The two million votes for Eugene Debs in 1912 and 1920? The 1935 founding of the CIO coupled with the 1937 Flint sit-down strike?

Yet it was precisely in the Civil War, and especially in Reconstruction, that the characteristic form of capitalist rule in the young United States was most radically exposed and threatened. It was the closest thing to the Paris Commune that we have ever known–when the African-American people, the overwhelming majority of whom were workers, coalesced and with a diverse mix of working-class and other allies used the federal government as a shield behind which to organize their revolutionary democratic struggle. And it was by reversing the working-class gains of Reconstruction—taking advantage of white labor’s indifference or worse, northern betrayal, southern terror and Jim Crow—that the Redeemers at both state and federal levels engaged in the first significant restructuring of white privilege since the establishment of racial slavery. It was at least as violent a counterrevolution as the defeat of the Paris Commune.

“Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina”

If you’re willing to wade through pages of Lenin’s 1921 denunciations of Trotsky and Bukharin, you’ll arrive at this timeless Marxist assertion: “…politics is a concentrated expression of economics…Politics must take precedence over economics. To argue otherwise is to forget the ABC of Marxism.” Here’s a simple way to think about that: if there’s one thing capitalism likes more than making profits, it’s continuing to make profits, and the political level of the class struggle is all about that continuation.

In historical fact, the closest thing to working-class political power this country has ever seen occurred in the Confederate states between 1863 and the bloody Wilmington Coup of 1898, and it’s remarkable how many socialists are blind to that actuality, even though today the country is in many ways closer to 1875 than to 1935.

Capitalism in the abstract exists exactly nowhere; instead, each capitalist social formation develops in the concrete conditions of its own inheritances and class struggles. And here in the U.S., just 150 years from our first Reconstruction and 80 years from our second, today’s Redeemers throughout three federal branches and half the states are engaged in the largest restructuring of white privilege since Jim Crow. And as Black and Brown working class people are hunted and murdered in our streets by federal agents and the flag of the Confederacy is carried throughout the country, it is worth remembering the foundational and continuing role played specifically by white supremacy in this particular historically constituted brand of capitalism. All leftists should be reading Black Reconstruction today and making our plans steeped in its lessons.

* * *

In June of 1964, just before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law and 14 months before the signing of the now-gutted Voting Rights Act, six months after our tour of the segregated South and less than 90 years since the defeat of the First Reconstruction, my white Jewish family moved from Long Island to the northern suburbs of Chicago. On my first day there, my father drove us through the small towns with large trees and larger houses. “This one,” he said, “is ‘restricted’: no Blacks or Jews allowed.” The Second Reconstruction had not yet made its way north. The Third is yet to come.

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This article was originally published by The New Liberator; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

Tom Goodkind

Tom Goodkind is a longtime machinist, rank-and-file labor activist, union president, and Liberation Road member.

Op-Ed

Tyrin Johnson Is Dead. Memphis Is Occupied. This Is Militarized “Public Safety.”

Tyrin Johnson’s killing is part of a larger militarization unfolding in Memphis, Tennessee, under Trump.

By Earle J. Fisher , 

Truthout

July 18, 2026

Members of the U.S. military listen as Donald Trump speaks during the Memphis Safe Task Force roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 23, 2026.

SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images

Imet Tyrin “Ty” Johnson neither through a police report, nor through a press conference, nor through the carefully crafted statements of elected officials or the endless speculation that too often follows the death of a young Black man, but rather through the people who loved him most: his mother, his grandparents, his great-grandmother, his aunts, and the grief that filled the room where they gathered only days after his death. I would find out later that I’ve known one of his cousins for over 25 years.

They did not describe a headline. They described a son, a father, a nephew, a cousin, a student, a young musician whose life began with extraordinary struggle after being born prematurely and whose life ended far too soon. A legacy cut short.

Like so many Black families before them, they were forced to mourn while simultaneously defending the humanity of someone they loved. They were not asking for special treatment. They were asking for something much more fundamental. They were asking for the truth.

That truth has become increasingly difficult to find in Memphis, Tennessee.

On July 5, National Guard troops assigned to the so-called federally led Memphis Safe Task Force shot and killed 20-year-old Johnson. His family immediately called for the release of all available footage documenting what occurred. This request should not be controversial. After all, Memphis already knows what happens when official narratives are accepted before evidence is examined.

Op-Ed |
MLK’s Struggle Against Policing and Surveillance Is Still Alive in Memphis Today
From surveillance of racial justice organizing to terror under Trump’s Memphis task force, we face ongoing repression.  By Earle J. Fisher , Truthout  January 19, 2026

The 2023 police-perpetrated killing of Tyre Nichols permanently altered the relationship between many Memphians and law enforcement. Initial descriptions of what officers claimed had happened collapsed under the weight of video evidence that revealed something altogether different. Since then, responsible people have learned to withhold judgment — not because we reject facts, but because we insist upon seeing them.

That is why the Johnson family’s request deserves immediate action.

National Guard troops do not typically wear body cameras. But law enforcement officials have stated that the encounter with Johnson began as a response to reports of shots fired. If local law enforcement officers responded alongside National Guard personnel, then body camera footage almost certainly exists. If local officers did not respond, then the public deserves to know why armed National Guard troops were deployed to confront civilians without Memphis Police Department officers present.

Transparency is not an inconvenience. It is the minimum requirement for public trust.

Unfortunately, Johnson’s death cannot be understood apart from a larger transformation unfolding in Memphis. The Memphis Safe Task Force was launched in late 2025 as a federally led initiative that brought together federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in an aggressive campaign to reduce violent crime. Promoted as a focused effort to target violent offenders and restore public safety, the initiative has instead become a flashpoint in an ongoing debate over mass enforcement, civil liberties, racial disparities, and the increasing militarization of policing in Black communities.

When Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee first announced that hundreds of National Guard troops would be deployed to Memphis, the public was assured they would serve primarily in support roles. They would not engage in frontline policing. Questions about armed soldiers patrolling Black neighborhoods were dismissed.

Those assurances did not last.

Soon, the governor acknowledged that whether National Guard members carried weapons would be “mission-dependent.” Quietly but unmistakably, the line separating military “support” from active military engagement in civilian policing disappeared.

Today, that evolution has produced a devastating reality. A National Guard soldier has now killed a Memphis resident.


We cannot police our way into public safety. We certainly cannot militarize our way there.

Several weeks before Tyrin Johnson’s death, I sat in a meeting with Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, U.S. Marshal Tyreece Miller, and U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant. Officials presented statistics intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Memphis Safe Task Force: More than 130,000 traffic stops. More than 25,000 citations. Approximately 10,000 arrests.

Those numbers have stayed with me — not because they demonstrate success, but because they force us to ask a different question altogether: What exactly are we measuring?

If public safety is measured primarily by stops, searches, citations, and arrests, then perhaps the task force appears successful. But if public safety is measured by public trust, constitutional rights, community well-being, and whether parents believe their children will survive encounters with the state, then the picture becomes far more complicated.

We cannot police our way into public safety. We certainly cannot militarize our way there.

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy recently argued that police officers need stronger training regarding the constitutional limits on deadly force. He is right.

But Tyrin Johnson’s death reveals an even deeper problem.

Before we debate how officers should exercise deadly force, we must ask why soldiers have been placed in the position of exercising deadly force against civilians at all. History refutes the underlying assumption that military presence produces community safety.

The timing of Johnson’s death makes that history impossible to ignore.

Only days later, Memphis marked the 10th anniversary of the historic bridge demonstration that brought thousands into the streets following the police killings of Black men across the U.S. We marched because our city understood something long before it became fashionable to say aloud: communities can be simultaneously intensely policed and still not safe.

Ten years later, that contradiction remains; perhaps it has deepened. The names have changed. The uniforms have changed. The rhetoric has changed. Many of the elected officials have changed.

But many Black neighborhoods continue to experience extraordinary levels of state surveillance while still lacking the investments that actually produce safety: stable housing, quality schools, meaningful employment, accessible health care, trauma services, and neighborhood infrastructure.

Memphis is increasingly becoming a proving ground for a model of governance that extends far beyond our city. Under the banner of “public safety,” military resources, federal agencies, and local law enforcement are converging in predominantly Black communities with extraordinary powers and remarkably little public accountability.

That should concern every American, because what is normalized in Memphis today may become commonplace elsewhere tomorrow.

The Johnson family deserves answers. Memphis deserves transparency.

The nation deserves an honest conversation about why militarized policing has become the default response to social problems that neither soldiers nor police were ever intended to solve.

I left Tyrin Johnson’s family with one overwhelming impression: Their deepest request was not revenge. It was not politics. It was not even certainty. It was truth and transparency. That is a modest request.If we cannot tell the truth about how Tyrin Johnson died, then we will never tell the truth about what Memphis has become. And if we cannot tell the truth about Memphis, we will have learned nothing from the last decade except how to perfect the very systems we once promised to change.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Earle J. Fisher

Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D., is a scholar, pastor, organizer, and public intellectual committed to Black liberation, civic empowerment, and institutional transformation. He serves as Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, where he has cultivated a vibrant model of Black faith, cultural expression, and prophetic social witness. Under his leadership, Abyssinian has become a nexus for community organizing, political education, and spiritual formation throughout South Memphis and Whitehaven. Dr. Fisher is the Founder of UPTheVote901, a nonpartisan, Black-led voter empowerment initiative designed to increase political power, information and representation across Memphis and Shelby County bridging the academy, church, and broader public square. Dr. Fisher serves as Associate Professor of Religious Communication and Africana Studies and the Inaugural Dean of Chapel at LeMoyne-Owen College, where he leads Chapel Soul Sessions and advances work at the intersection of Africana intellectual traditions, public theology, and liberative pedagogy. He also teaches at Rhodes College, Memphis Theological Seminary, Claflin University, and Brite Divinity School. The author of The Rev. Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Prophetic Tradition, Dr. Fisher is a sought-after speaker and commentator whose work amplifies marginalized voices and challenges systems that undermine Black political, spiritual, and cultural agency.

Greentech New Deals in the Cities

By Jeremy Brecher

July 17, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image in public domain

In Trump’s America the Greentech Revolution is being waged from below.

Although Trump’s attacks have slowed the advance of fossil-free technologies in the US, they have not prevented communities, cities, and states from creating their own Greentech New Deals. They are taking advantage of the enormous reduction in the cost of renewable energy and of technologies that use it despite Trump’s attempts to obliterate them.

Alongside the widespread pro-democracy resistance to Trump and MAGA, there is a constructive program being developed and implemented from below, utilizing the Greentech Revolution to make Green New Deals practical and affordable. Greentech and climate protection are at its core. But it also includes the full range of pro-people, pro-social programs represented by the Green New Deal.

Back in 2007, Xcel Energy won backing from the governor of Minnesota for a gas power plant in Becker, near Minneapolis, designed to replace coal-fired generators scheduled for shutdown in the mid-2020s. But clean energy advocates campaigned for better and cheaper alternatives, and regulators eventually baulked at the $1 billion price tag. Xcel gave up on the gas plant plan and instead proposed the Sherco Energy Hub, a 710-megawatt solar facility which includes a 600-megawatt storage system, the largest battery energy storage system in the Midwest. An Xcel spokesperson said, “Batteries help us store energy when it’s inexpensive to produce and dispatch it when needed, allowing us to continue delivering reliable electricity to customers while keeping bills low.” The site will also provide grazing for nearly 2,000 sheep, reducing mowing costs while also letting local sheep farmers expand their herds. Xcel also announced plans to close all its remaining coal fired plants in the region. Sherco’s solar plant will start producing electricity in 2026.

Sherco shows how Greentech’s reduction in the cost of energy and facilitation of battery storage opens the door for communities and governments to demand that fossil fuels be replaced by renewable energy. As climate journalist Tina Casey commented on CleanTechnica, the Sherco facility “demonstrates how community efforts and basic economics can push the needle on the energy transition.”

Manchester Public Schools is a suburban school district outside of Hartford CT with 17 schools, four of which are Title I schools serving low-income communities. While the state had many solar programs, by 2020 private solar developers had concluded that Manchester would “never do a project.” But in 2022, with support from the Connecticut Green Bank, solar panels were installed at 6 of Manchester’s 17 public schools, adding 1.6 MW to the town’s solar energy capacity. Now Manchester has three net-zero energy school buildings and is adopting cutting-edge technologies like ground source heat pumps. Manchester also has additional ongoing investments in net-zero buildings, including a new library. Solar installations are projected to save the Town of Manchester approximately $100,000 annually. Beyond financial savings, these renewable energy systems are now valuable educational tools, reportedly sparking curiosity and environmental awareness among students.

In Seattle, drayage trucks contribute significantly to air pollution, disproportionately impacting low-income communities along freight corridors in the Duwamish Valley. According to Seattle’s then-mayor Bruce Harrell, “Seattle’s port is the backbone of our economy, but diesel drayage trucks that transport goods are some of the Duwamish Valley neighborhoods’ heaviest polluters.” Seattle has now developed a Heavy Duty Electric Trucks Pilot to provide incentives for purchasing electric drayage trucks. The program results in part from interviews conducted with drayage truck drivers who pointed out electric trucks were too expensive for them to buy. The drivers’ insights helped shape a new approach that, according to the city’s Office of Sustainability and Environment, “centers equity to ensure a just transition for truck drivers, particularly independent owner-operators, who are critical to our region’s supply chain and who bear disproportionate environmental and economic burdens.”

Funding for the program comes from Seattle’s JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax on extremely high salaries. The funding was recommended by Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board, which develops budget and policy recommendations for environmental initiatives in partnership with communities. Said then-Mayor Harrell, “Through the Heavy Duty Electric Trucks Pilot, we’re investing in the technology that will ultimately reduce emissions in frontline communities while also supporting drivers to ensure they have real opportunities in the zero-emission economy.” The trucks are expected to be in operation by the end of 2026.

The drayage truck program is only one small component of Seattle’s much broader community participation climate effort. For example, Greenspace, Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment, partnered with Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board, the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council (MLK Labor), and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle to pilot “climate community assemblies” that included union members and workers, community members, and social justice and youth advocates to make decisions, influence government, and shape solutions. The Urban League’s neighborhood-based assembly focused on climate preparedness for BIPOC and working-class community members. MLK Labor, a labor council representing more than 100,000 workers in King County, led a worker assembly focused on workplace safety, green job standards, and improving public infrastructure to be ready for extreme weather. A follow-on project will turn ideas developed by the assemblies into policies for the city. And future community assemblies will help shape Seattle’s Climate Action Plan Update.

On the site of an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Southeast Washington, DC, a renewable energy project called Sycamore & Oak has just opened a “microgrid” — a self-contained system that includes energy generation and consumption. Solar panels provide electricity during daylight hours and charge batteries that continue to provide electricity during the night. The project’s workforce development program trained a cohort of 10 local residents, most of whom are from Ward 8 where the project is located, for the installation. According to Jordan Taylor of GRID Alternatives, the nonprofit that provides solar installation and workforce development for the project, “Ultimately the Black-owned businesses that are supported by Sycamore & Oak get to receive lower-cost power.” With fuel-based energy, “you’re emitting fossil fuel pollution into the local community,” which is “usually a low-income or disadvantaged community.” Taylor said that improvements in building science are not only better for the environment, but more cost-effective. These range from construction techniques to long-term energy usage over the lifetime of a building. “We can build the same structure for 90% less energy consumption. That’s both a cost-savings measure, as well as an energy efficiency and ecologically friendly one.”

In June 2026, Montgomery County MD announced 20 clean energy and energy efficiency projects. According to the Montgomery County Executive, the initiatives will “support practical projects that improve energy efficiency, strengthen emergency preparedness, and create more resilient public spaces, particularly in communities that are more vulnerable during extreme weather events. These investments will lower long-term operating costs for taxpayers while helping the County make meaningful progress toward our climate goals.”

The projects have a strong Greentech element. They include solar-powered backup systems at seven recreation centers; an agrivoltaics demonstration project at the Agricultural History Farm Park; and building automation system upgrades. County official David Dise says, “We are proudly advancing Montgomery County’s climate goals through innovative green energy solutions, including microgrids and resilience hubs.”

In the Bryant community in Ann Arbor MI, a quarter of residents spend more than a third of their incomes on utilities. After years of campaigning by local energy activists, 80% of Ann Arbor voters approved a new Sustainable Energy Utility. Operating alongside the existing privately-owned utility, the SEU will purchase, install, and maintain solar panels, battery backup systems, and other fossil-free energy infrastructure in residents’ homes. Those who choose to join pay a small monthly fee – far less than they save from their free solar installation. The city will own the facilities, but residents can sell whatever electricity they don’t need themselves. The plan will pilot in Bryant and spread to other locations in the city. The SEU could also build its own microgrids, for example putting solar panels on schools to provide power during school hours and then supplying other SEU users when school is out. Derrick Miller of the nonprofit Community Action Network says, “When we started having a conversation about how to decarbonize the neighborhood about four years ago, it felt outlandish. Now, it doesn’t feel like anyone can stop us.”

Alongside the Cow Palace arena just south of San Francisco, construction has begun on the Cormorant Energy Storage Project, whose 250-megawatt capacity will make it the largest battery array in any major US urban area. It will supply energy to MCE, a community choice aggregator which purchases electricity on behalf of local residents as an alternative to for-profit utilities. The battery will bring $73 million of property tax revenue to Daly City; the developer will donate $1.5 million in community benefits.

These are only a small sampling of the Greentech-facilitated programs in American cities, but they illustrate the diversity of such initiatives. They show that Greentech-facilitated programs are in place in every region of the country, in jurisdictions large and small, and in localities blue and red, exhibiting myriad forms of both energy production and energy consumption.

Such initiatives have been retarded by Trump’s attempts to wipe out Greentech. They have also met resistance from local MAGA and NIMBY forces. But as these examples show, they are continuing to bloom.

These initiatives are significant for several reasons. They directly improve the lives of the people they affect and reduce the emission of climate-destroying greenhouse gases. They demonstrate concretely how climate protection, racial and economic justice, grassroots democracy, and quality of life can be combined. They show that people acting together can overcome Trump’s anti-Greentech counter-revolution. And looking forward, they lay a foundation for the triumph of a Greentech New Deal once Trumpian resistance is overcome.

Greentech Revolution in the States

By Jeremy Brecher

July 16, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

A barn and wind turbines in rural Illinois. (Wikimedia Commons)

While Trump conducts his war against Greentech, many US states are forging ahead with energy expansion based on sun, wind, and water. Greentech’s slashing of the cost of renewable energy production and use has made states turn to it not only to protect the climate but to make energy affordable for their people.

A photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office with several of his Executive Orders, January 20, 2025. Photo credit: The White House, public domain.

The US federal system gives states a powerful position in energy policy. States regulate electric generation, local distribution of electricity, and infrastructure siting. They can set policy in myriad other areas from urban planning to public transit to housing that can help shape the utilization of climate-protecting Greentech.

Meanwhile, recent headlines have publicized retrenchment in state climate policies. New York state abandoned its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030, substituting weaker and squishier targets. California also relaxed requirements for emission reductions – although the change continues to be contested in the state legislature. In both cases energy affordability was given as a reason, although advocates of both changes acknowledged that they would not bring down energy prices any time soon. Both New York and California changes were preceded by heavy fossil fuel industry lobbying.

Such retreats register the reality that Trump’s attacks are restricting the development of the Greentech New Deal. Federal defunding of climate-protecting initiatives has made them more expensive; regulatory changes and subsidies have advantaged fossil fuels; and legal attack has undermined the Greentech revolution. But these retreats should not conceal the advances the Greentech Revolution has made in US states even during the first year-and-a-half of the Trump era.

Today’s Greentech advances in the states typically combine climate protection with affordability. That’s possible because Greentech has made production and use of renewable energy so much cheaper – rendering fossil fuels non-competitive.

California–Two steps forward, one step back?

California’s electricity is increasingly coming from solar. Photo credit: Tom Brewster Photography, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Data Source: US Energy Information Administration

California, now the world’s fourth largest economy, illustrates the collision of the irresistible force of the Greentech Revolution with the immovable object of the Trumpian fossil fuel counter-revolution. In recent years it has faced devastating heatwaves, droughts, storms, wildfires, and other extreme weather conditions resulting from global warming. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming proportion of Californians worry about climate change and back policies to fight it. In 2006 California passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and sets a declining limit on total emissions by the state’s major polluters. Over the next twenty years California substantially raised its targets and implemented many other climate protection policies. From 2001 to 2019, California reduced its carbon emissions by 25%, leaving a typical Californian emitting only half as much as other Americans.

In 2024, California’s natural gas generation fell by 8%; coal is expected to soon be eliminated entirely from its electrical supply. By the end of 2025 the state had 2.5 times more battery storage available than it did in 2022.

As soon as Trump was inaugurated president, he began a massive attack on California’s climate protection efforts. For example, he attacked the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The state sued to preserve the ban. In 2025 it extended the cap and trade program, renamed cap and invest, by 15 years. Then Governor Newsom, under heavy lobbying from California’s oil industry, announced a new plan which offers free pollution permits worth as much as $4 billion to oil refineries and other major polluters. Legislative leaders are refusing to accept the plan, however, and have refused to fund many of Newsom’s other programs until he abandons his plan. Contested negotiations are expected to continue until the legislative session ends in September. The result is hanging in the balance.

Other states go Greentech

The California climate drama should not obscure what is happening in other states.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued an executive order that directs the state to procure 10 GW of clean energy and 5 GW of battery storage by 2035. The governor’s office projects up to $10 billion in savings for residents and businesses. Massachusetts also announced $180 million in immediate utility rate reductions. This cut residential electricity bills by up to 25 percent for two months.

Upon her inauguration, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency on utility costs. An executive order directed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to pursue rate relief by pausing new hikes and delivering residential bill credits. Another ordered rapid expansion of solar and battery storage and streamlining of the permitting process. In March, the BPU approved the expansion of the state’s community solar program, adding 3 GW of new capacity, with low-income households guaranteed a discount of at least 25 percent on their bills. According to American Progress, this expansion was the largest of a state-run program in the country’s history, and the program has already delivered more than $70 million in bill credits to households across the state. The governor also signed a measure that increases transmission-scale storage across the state, helping store low-cost clean energy and deploy it during peak demand to reduce price spikes and improve reliability.

In Pennsylvania, the PA EDGE (Pennsylvania Economic Development for a Growing Economy) creates tax credit programs for billions of dollars in energy and advanced manufacturing investment, including clean energy technologies. In June 2026 the Pennsylvania House put a cap on profits from utility company investments in infrastructure and eliminated nearly $1.7 billion in taxes that electricity companies now pass along to consumers as part of their bills.

In Virginia, a clean energy package includes streamlining solar siting, expanding storage connections to the grid, limiting carbon-emitting backup generators at data centers, and expanding virtual power plant programs that let utilities draw on distributed clean energy sources such as rooftop solar and home batteries.

The obstacles fall

One of the main objections to renewable energy has always been that it becomes unavailable when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. This objection has been largely overcome by Greentech’s radical reduction in the cost of energy storage. As a result, the most recent wave of state programs has put battery storage front and center.

Illinois’s Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act instructs the state to procure three gigawatts of new battery storage by 2030 to help stabilize electricity prices. It also includes a “storage for all” program that provides incentives for income-qualified households and businesses to install battery systems co-located with solar projects. The Illinois Power Agency expects the act to save customers $13.4 billion over two decades.

Pennsylvania is investing $22 million to help battery manufacturer Eos Energy Enterprises expand battery manufacturing operations in the Pittsburgh area. The expansion is expected to create 735 new jobs in Allegheny County. Last year the workers at Eos Energy voted to join the United Steelworkers Union. Eos also announced a plan to develop energy storage projects across Pennsylvania.

New technology doesn’t always mean greater complexity. Witness the emergence of small solar systems that hang on a balcony and plug right into a wall socket. More than a million homes in Germany now have such “balcony power plants,” but they are forbidden in the US. Last year the Utah legislature voted unanimously to let residents use plug-in collectors. 23 other state legislatures are now considering similar bills. According to the New York Times, such legislation would “eliminate one of the technology’s biggest barriers in the United States”: homeowners or renters could install plug-in systems “without approval from their local utility.”

A common complaint against large-scale solar projects is that they use up land that would otherwise be available for agriculture. However, solar projects are now actually supporting agriculture by the new techniques known as agrivoltaics. State policies are now promoting agrivoltaics. Last year, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities launched a new dual-use pilot project to organize and accelerate agrivoltaics development in the state. The three-year pilot program calls for up to 200 megawatts of solar power, with Rutgers University applying its agrivoltaics research to develop best practices and guidelines. Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia also have agrivoltaics programs under way.

Renewable energy projects can also contribute to improved land use by utilizing currently degraded spaces like landfills and contaminated industrial sites. An example is New Jersey’s Brownfields Redevelopment Incentive Program, accompanied by a Landfill to Solar online guide for local governments and solar developers, created by the Governor’s Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy. An already completed example is the Toms River project, the largest solar power plant in New Jersey and also the largest solar array on a Superfund site anywhere in the US.

Beyond the blue

Wolf Ridge Wind Farm in Muenster, Texas. Photo credit: Ben (Out with the Old, In with the New), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The expansion of Greentech in the Trump era has by no means been limited to blue states. Some of the most extensive installations of Greentech are in red states – witness Texas. Utility-scale solar plants produced 45 terawatts from January through September, 2025, up 50% from 2024 and nearly four times what they generated in 2021. Wind power also continued to climb, producing 87 terawatts through September – a 4% increase from 2024 and 36% more than in 2021. Together, wind and solar supplied more than a third of Texas’ electricity in the first 9 months of 2025. Battery use is also growing. Three of the four largest US battery storage projects scheduled to open in 2026 are in Texas. Solar collection and battery storage are now being systematically combined: one dual project is adding 837 megawatts of solar power and 418 megawatts in battery energy storage capacity.

In Nevada, generally regarded as a “purple” state, a third of all energy demand is now met by solar panels. The state has the highest solar electricity generation per capita in the country, as well as the most solar-industry jobs per capita. The goal of producing half of its electricity from renewables by 2030 is enshrined in the state’s constitution. The Las Vegas region has the highest concentration of residential rooftop solar in the continental US. The city’s chief sustainability officer attributes this in part to the city’s easy permitting. “You’re pretty much in and out of our office with a permit in 30 minutes.”

In the absence of federal support, states are reaching out to each other to create regional alliances to implement Greentech. For example, thirteen states have formed the Geothermal Power Accelerator collaboration to rapidly expand geothermal power development. Another example: The California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 825 to begin the process of establishing a regional electricity partnership across the West. In late June, the state of Washington joined the partnership along with California and Quebec. And, after briefly withdrawing, Virginia rejoined the 11-member northeastern Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

In some states like Texas, the Greentech boom is occurring without much attempt to reap its potential social benefits. But in many states, as we will see in a subsequent commentary in this series, the Greentech revolution is enabling a broader program for jobs and justice that embodies the principles of the Green New Deal. That in turn is laying the basis for a national Greentech New Deal to come.

Looming over recent climate politics has been the issue of energy affordability. Because Greentech has made the production and use of renewable energy so much less costly than fossil fuel energy, states have accelerated their introduction of it. But the energy cost squeeze on consumers has in some cases also led states to shortsightedly reduce investment in Greentech and unleash fossil fuels.

These dynamics are now being exacerbated by the escalation in fossil fuel prices and the threat of energy insecurity that have accompanied the Iran war. The relative expense and unreliability of fossil fuel energy is likely to accelerate Greentech in the states. States that don’t want to render their economies “stranded assets” should go all out for the Greentech revolution right now.

This article also appears in Jeremy Brecher’s STRIKE! newsletter.

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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.