Teamsters for a Democratic Union

TDU at Fifty: From Rank-and-File Rebels to Defenders of the Establishment

Dan La Botz

 November 7, 2025

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Photograph Source: Redteamo – CC BY 3.0

Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which will be celebrating the group’s fiftieth anniversary at its convention being held in Chicago this November 7 to 9, has for decades been known as the voice of reform in the Teamsters Union. But this year there will be those inside and outside the convention hall challenging TDU’s direction and arguing that it has abandoned its ideal. At the center of the controversy is TDU’s support for Teamster president Sean O’Brien who is allied with President Donald Trump.

Some Teamsters no longer see TDU as fighting for reform but rather as part of the establishment. They are appalled that O’Brien has aligned with President Donald Trump who has fired hundreds of thousands of federal workers, torn up their contracts, and effectively destroyed their unions, while at the same time he has reversed decades of Black workers’ achievements, and attacked immigrants. TDU’s alliance with O’Brien and thus with Trump has tarnished its reputation as a movement for union reform and social justice, while isolating the Teamsters from the majority of the labor movement.

For a number of TDU members and other Teamsters, TDU’s alliance with O’Brien and his support for Trump have become the central issue. Leonard Stoehr, a longtime Teamster now living in the Atlanta area, is an over-the-road driver for ABF company. Stoehr says, “I think a plurality of Teamsters voted for Trump, but without full information. They thought he was going to have a laser-like focus on the economy to help working people, but, once he took office, he went right back to representing the oligarchy, which is where he comes from. We will absolutely raise the Trump issue at the TDU convention, because support for Trump is a death-wish for organized labor.”

Dave Robbins, now retired, was a Teamster for fifty years and served as a steward or local officer in several local unions; he first joined TDU in 1977. He spent his life fighting for the union’s members. He will be going to the TDU convention with his wife Sol Rodriguez, also a TDU member. Dave doesn’t mince words. “Sean O’Brien is a terrible general president for so many reasons, but primarily for remaining silent about Trump’s racism, anti-immigrant attitudes. He’s a traitor, a class-traitor, and he should not be endorsed by TDU. Sean O’Brien is a pro-fascist, Trump-supporter.”

David Levin, TDU’s national organizer, the top staff person, disagrees. As he wrote to me, “Endorsing Sean O’Brien and the Teamsters United Slate does not mean endorsing Donald Trump or attacks on workers. TDU has been, and will continue to be vocal in our opposition to attacks on the working class, including OSHA, the NLRB, immigrant workers, and union-busting of federal worker unions.”  He argues that since O’Brien real gains have been made. “Under new leadership, the IBT is standing up to employers and mobilizing members.”

Or as Peter Landon, a longtime TDU activist and former TDU staff person puts it, “I don’t support O’Brien. I do recognize the opportunities he has created for the membership to play far more of a role in the union.”

Some in TDU appear to have bought the argument that though Trump is an authoritarian, a union-buster, a racist and a sexist, who dispatches ICE, the National Guard, and active-duty troops to our cities, nevertheless they will continue to back O’Brien as long as it gives TDU more latitude for organizing in the Teamsters. This is the devil’s bargain that TDU has made. They are willing to endorse O’Brien, accepting his alliance with Trump as long as he tolerates the TDU’s organizing in and through the union.

At this convention, TDU will be holding a vote on whether or not to endorse O’Brien for union president for five more years. If TDU does endorse him, it will renew the devil’s bargain in both senses of that phrase, making a morally compromised decision that accepts a short-term gain for a larger, long-term loss. Such an endorsement would be made with eyes wide open and the knowledge that Sean O’Brien is comfortable with the Teamsters carrying the mantle of MAGA’s favorite union.

TDU in its Heyday

Teamsters for a Democratic Union began fifty years ago as a small group of rank-and-file activists committed to union democracy and militancy. I was one of them. After its founding, TDU opened a national office and hired a small staff paid modest wages made possible by the members’ dues and by grants from progressive foundations. (Today according to public documents TDU has revenues of over $300,000 and its educational and legal arm, Teamster Rank And File Education And Legal Defense Foundation raised $1.43 million in 2023. These are modest amounts compared to the Teamsters union’s treasury and to the wealthy corporations against which TDU for years fought for the members rights.)

TDU fought for things like elected rather than appointed union stewards and ran reformers for local union office as well as for top offices of the international union. When the U.S. Justice Department brought a RICO suit against the union and threatened to take it over, TDU argued that instead, as the feds removed the mafia. it should allow the membership to have free elections with the right to vote on the union’s top officers. The Justice Department and the courts agreed with TDU and rank-and-file Teamsters won a real victory for democracy.

For nearly all of its history, TDU was in the opposition and often persecuted by the Teamster leadership and company bosses. TDU members elected to the top offices of local unions found themselves blocked at every turn by the Teamsters’ national leadership. Only for five years, during the presidency of Ron Carey, whom TDU had helped to elect, was TDU not only tolerated but accepted by the union leadership. Carey and TDU, while they did not always see eye-to-eye, collaborated on local elections and contracts. It was TDU’s heyday. That was the TDU that I described in my book Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union published back in 1990.

TDU Makes a Deal with the Devil

Under Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., who served as Teamster general president from 1998 to 2018, that is for twenty-five long years, TDU was a persecuted opposition. Veteran TDU leaders like Ken Paff, and his successor David Levin yearned to come in out of the cold, to be able once again to operate with the support of the union leadership as they had when Ron Carey was president. The 2022 Teamster presidential election provided that opportunity.

Sean O’Brien, the head of Boston Local 25, was running for President of the Teamsters Union and remaking himself as a Teamster reformer. The head of Boston Local 25, he had a reputation as a thug. For example, he intervened in 2013 in the local election in Teamster 251 in Rhode Island, threatening the TDU activists there who were running a slate against his preferred candidate. “They need to be punished,” said O’Brien. The Teamsters Independent Review Board charged O’Brien and found him guilty of violating the Teamster Constitution and federal law when he threatened TDU members and he was suspended for two weeks.

Yet in 2022, in their campaign for the union’s top offices, O’Brien and his running mate Fred Zuckerman, known as the OZ slate, put themselves forward as reformers. Seeing an opportunity, Paff and Levin, negotiated with O’Brien to form an alliance, and eventually won over the TDU leadership and the TDU convention. O’Brien, with TDU’s support, won the election and became Teamster president.

The first item on O’Brien’s agenda was the UPS contract set to expire in August of 2023. He gave the impression he was prepared to lead a national strike to win the union’s demands. Back in 1997, President Ron Carey working with TDU had led UPS workers in a tremendous strike and won a real victory. The slogan for that strike had been “Part-Time America Won’t Work,” and the union forced the company to agree to create 10,000 new full-time jobs. It was one of the most important strikes by any union in that era and many Teamsters now wanted to repeat it. To prepare, TDU worked with O’Brien on planning the strategy and tactics needed to educate and organize the members.

But the strike never happened. O’Brien negotiated a contract with the company, which TDU proclaimed a historic victory, and there were some significant gains, but it was, in fact, weak in several areas. Most importantly it failed to end part-time status for workers who now made up 60% of the workforce. As Sam Gindin, former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers wrote, “The union made big gains — but in opting not to strike over demands beyond wages, the Teamsters may have passed up a transformative opportunity for the labor movement.”

Having won the Teamster presidency and having settled the UPS contract in August 2023 without a strike, O’Brien went off to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ring, and then in July of 2024 O’Brien spoke at the Republican Party National Convention. While the Teamster leadership had declined to endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, O’Brien’s speech was clearly a tacit endorsement of Donald Trump. To quell any doubts about where the union stood, the Teamsters made large financial contributions to Trump and other Republican candidates. So, TDU, now allied with O’Brien, has come full circle, from fighting the powers-that-be to joining them.

Teamster Reform in a New Era

The TDU convention this year will be different from others because there will be vocal opposition to the leadership both within and without the convention. In an attempt to diminish the opposition, TDU steering committee members and staff have called some dissident members and suggested, “Maybe it would be better if you don’t come this year.” Still there will be dissident members on the floor.

Some opposition will come from organized groups who oppose TDU’s current course. One such activist group within the union is Teamsters Mobilize (TM).

One member of TM is Jennifer Hancock of Local 322 , a part-time UPS employee in the warehouse, a sorter at the Coach Road hub and package car center in Richmond. “I’ve been doing it for 34 years,” she explains. “I’m also the political coordinator for Teamster local 322. We support candidates who support labor,” and most of those she says are Democrats

A few years ago, Hancock got involved in a TDU discussion group among UPS part-timers, mostly young people, a group that subsequently evolved into Teamsters Mobilize. “The general word about part-timers is that we’re lazy, we’re stoned, etc. But a few years ago, a bunch of us on a TDU part-timer chat decided to put together a group hoping to influence the next contract. At that time, we were still trying to work with TDU, so we went to the TDU convention. We wanted a part-timer caucus. There were Black caucuses, Latino caucuses, and women’s caucus. So why not a part-timer caucus? We finally got a watered-down resolution passed, but then it just disappeared. We’re told we couldn’t organize a caucus and would just have to rely on grievances. So, our hands were tied behind our backs.”

Teamster Mobilize went from being a part-time employee caucus to a more general reform group within the union. Their website says, “Teamsters Mobilize is a grassroots organization of Teamster activists organizing to build up real worker power in our union against our employers and their cronies, to expose corrupt Teamsters leadership, and to build brick-by-brick a genuine fighting labor movement.” A statement that sounds like TDU back in the 1970s and 80s when it was fighting Teamster presidents Frank Fitzsimmons, Roy Williams, and Jackie Presser.

This year it seems Hancock won’t be going to the convention. “I’m still a member of TDU, but I’m not allowed to come to the convention.” David Levine wrote her saying she couldn’t attend because she and Teamsters Mobilize members intended to “crash’ the convention. Levine wrote, “TDU is not going to allow non-registrants to crash our Convention or the Convention hotel and we are not going to allow TM to have a mixed group of registrants and crashers.”

But Hancock doesn’t believe that’s the real reason she is being excluded. “I believe there is going to be a floor vote on Sean O’Brien and they know that we would be against that. So, they’re putting their finger on the scale to get the result they want. I would not have voted for Sean O’Brien in any case.  I don’t support Sean O’Brien because he is not supporting labor. Everything Sean O’Brien has done has been about supporting Sean O’Brien. His support for the Trump administration is also a big issue.”

She gives the example of Donald Trump’s firing of Gwynne A. Wilcox, removing her from the NLRB. When that happened, my principal officers and others went up to Washington, D.C. to protest—but the O’Brien and the International officers did nothing.”

Overall, says Hancock, “I am very disappointed in TDU. When I first joined TDU, this was before Sean O’Brien’s election, everyone told me what a great organization it was. We took TDU’s word and campaigned for Sean O’Brien. Then TDU snuggled up to the O’Brien administration and now there’s no light between them.”

John Palmer of the Hooker Slate

John Palmer, hails from San Antonio, Texas a member of Local 657 was a freight driver for ABF for years but is now international vice-president-at-large, elected on the O’Brien-Zuckerman slate. “I was played,” he says.  I knew what O’Brien was, I had sat next to him for five years, but Fred Zuckerman convinced me that O’Brien had found religion and would be a reformer.”

Palmer soon learned that was not so. “It started when I objected to the UPS contract. I was the only one on the executive board who raised an objection. And I did it in public. I went to the press about it.” At a meeting to discuss the tentative contract, “I was attacked by all of the other executive board members. When they were done, I told them, ‘I appreciate the dogpile. Now I’m going to put together a slate,’ ” meaning an opposition slate to run against them. And he did. Today Palmer is running on the Hooker Fearless Slate for the same position he now holds.

When O’Brien organized a meeting with presidential candidate Donald Trump, Palmer explained, “I refused to meet with Trump. I know who Trump is. I wouldn’t sit in the same room with him for two reasons. First, he was a draft dodger. I’m a veteran and my dad and his brothers all served. Second, he’s a scab.”

Like some of the others with whom I talked, Palmer is also disappointed in TDU. “How can TDU be a democratic membership organization, when so many decisions are made by the national organizer,” for 45 years Ken Paff and now David Levin.

Palmer says, “I won’t be going to the TDU Convention, but I and many of our slate members will be at the hotel in Chicago. “I’m not coming to raise a ruckus. I’m 67 years old. I’m past that. But I’ll be talking with the members.”

Richard Hooker, Candidate for General President

Richard Hooker is the secretary-treasurer, the top officer of Philadelphia Teamster Local 623. Before becoming a full-time union officer, he was a UPS worker. “I’ve done every job you can think of at UPS.” The son of a preacher, he began working at UPS while attending Drexel University, and is now married and the father of four children.

“I’m not going to the convention, but I will be in the same hotel, collecting signatures from those who are there. The signatures are to become an accredited slate, though if we have to, we could still get on the ballot at the convention. But the TDU convention is a good opportunity to listen to and to talk with our members.”

While not a TDU member, Hooker says, he used to support TDU. But no more. “I’m shocked by TDU’s support for O’Brien. Even though I never was a member I always respected their fight, their being there. From the very beginning I never supported Sean O’Brien because of his intimidation, retribution, and retaliation. He has a history of doing that. He’s also known for failing to win strong contracts. He has a history of concessions, 13 of the last 18 years we have had concessions and he has a lot to do with that.”

Like others, Hooker criticizes O’Brien for “his fascination with Trump.  He’s decided to go along with Trump and everything that he’s done. But not just Trump, also the ruling class, the employer class, the billionaire class, because that’s who Trump represents. He doesn’t represent the workers.”

Hooker is also critical of O’Brien’s actions within the Teamsters. “If you look at what O’Brien did when he first got elected. He eliminated a lot of people from the staff and 70 percent of them black and brown people.” As a result, Hooker explains, “The union, that is the union’s members, had to pay 2.9 million dollars as a result of a discrimination lawsuit. And then he fired three other officials for their support of the rival Steve Vairma slate. The union members had to pay 2 years back wages to each of those people. His policies don’t work for the Teamsters or for the broader working class.”

Hooker is disappointed with TDU today. “They have a go along to get along attitude. No matter what O’Brien does, they refuse to speak out against him. TDU was built to educate and empower and to call out wrong-doing.” But today, he says, TDU doesn’t speak out.  “When you are silent, you have taken the side of the oppressor. That is what TDU has done because they refuse to speak out against the oppressor of the Teamsters. They have become what they fought against.”

Sean O’Brien, candidate for reelection, will be speaking at the TDU Convention, though he is not a member, and Richard Hooker, also not a member, will not be given such an opportunity. Levin wrote to Hooker, “TDU is not going to spend the members’ time or funds to host a campaign speech by you.” While TDU certainly has a right to determine who speaks and its conventions, it seems a shame not to allow the two candidates for Teamster president—the only two so far—to debate or at least speak. What an educational opportunity for the members! But Levin, clearly committed to O’Brien, has no interest in helping his opposition.

What Next for TDU?

 With its fifty-year history, its substantial and expanding foundation fundraising capacity, its permanent staff, the continuity of its leadership, and its conviction that it’s the genuine voice of Teamster members, I think of TDU as something like a miniature version of the labor bureaucracy. Not financially privileged like most union officials, not corrupt like some officials have been, not tied to a political party, at least not until recently, but still a power center in the union which despite its theory and its genuine attempts to root itself among them remains separate from the union members.

Given all of this, TDU seems unlikely to change course, though there is the possibility that this convention could realign the organization, that it could return to its more militant roots. Denying O’Brien its endorsement would reestablish TDU as an independent organization speaking up for the Rank & File and holding leadership accountable, regardless of the risk. Not unlike the original founders of TDU some fifty years ago.

Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

This GOP extremist hypocrite fought unions. Guess what his new job is?

Janelle Stecklein,

 Oklahoma Voice
September 29, 2025


Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters prays for Donald Trump.

Screengrab / Oklahoma State Department of Education

It’s ironic that a man who built his political career railing passionately about teachers “unions” will soon be running one of his own.

But in a way it’s almost fitting that it will be the next move for Oklahoma education Superintendent Ryan Walters, who has made it his mission to babble bizarre, inflammatory rhetoric and launch random witch hunts against educators and their unions.

Maybe it will help him recenter on who is vitally important to the success of our public schools — the teachers. Because if he truly wants to be successful, the role will require him to collaborate with them and show some empathy toward their needs.

Those are two skillsets that he’s been sorely lacking the past two years and 10 months in his elected position.

And maybe it will serve as a rude awakening that he’s betrayed the trust of Oklahomans who believed he could turn our schools around. They’ll now find themselves with a politically appointed leader they didn’t get to choose, for the remaining year or so of what should have been Walters’ term.

In case you weren’t randomly tuned into Fox News at 10:43 p.m. last Wednesday, Walters was allotted just under 40 seconds on a national conservative talk program to announce he has accepted a new role as CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance. The group bills itself as an “alternative to traditional union membership,” but provides “professional support services and resources” for educators.

The group, which so far boasts a measly 2,800 members nationwide, is a new effort of the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit “dedicated to fighting government overreach, defending workers’ rights and protecting constitutional freedom.”

“For decades, union bosses have poisoned our schools with politics and propaganda while abandoning parents, students, and good teachers. That ends today. We’re going to expose them, fight them, and take back our classrooms,” Walters said in a statement released by the Freedom Foundation.

“At the Teacher Freedom Alliance, we’re giving educators real freedom, freedom from the liberal, woke agenda that has corrupted public education. We will arm teachers with the tools, support, and freedom they need, without forcing them to give up their values.”

THIS IS CALLED A SCAB, RAT OR YELLOW UNION, AN ANTI UNION ALIGNED WITH STRIKE BUSTERS INC.


The Teacher Freedom Alliance sure sounds like it has the same mission of a teachers union — you know, those groups Walters has loved to hate.

In January, Walters launched a tone deaf tirade attempting to link schools and teachers unions to the deadly truck attack in New Orleans and even used the phrase “terrorist training camps” to describe school classrooms.

This year, he also falsely claimed teachers unions love standardized testing (they don’t).

He pushed the state Board of Education to take away the teaching license of a former Norman High School educator for sharing a QR code to the Brooklyn Public Library’s free online catalog. He is trying to revoke two other educators’ licenses over social media posts related to the 2024 assassination attempt of President Donald Trump.

And most recently, he’s threatened to ban teachers for things they’ve posted on social media about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Now he’s going to be something of a union boss himself? That was not a square on my 2025 bingo card.

While the Teacher Freedom Alliance bills itself as a “viable alternative to unions,” it does appear to share many similarities with Oklahoma’s organizing groups. In Oklahoma, a few of the largest districts do have groups that collectively bargain for educators, but most don’t. However, one thing that makes Oklahoma’s associations different from unions in other states is that they cannot strike. But much like the Teacher Freedom Alliance, Oklahoma’s organizations provide their members liability insurance if they ever get sued as well as professional development training and an “engaged community of educators.”

In light of his new job, it sure appears that Walters has been spewing a whole lot of hyperbole about educators that he actually doesn’t believe. That’s pretty sad for our children and the teachers we’ve entrusted to educate them.

It also appears that Walters never intended to actually help fix our school system. Instead, he used the post that we entrusted him with to try to gain the attention of conservative groups so he could grab a cushy job.

Oklahoma voters — and teachers — deserve better. They deserve a public official who is committed to rolling up their sleeves and working together, and not someone who flees in terror when things get hard. And they need someone who is competent and understands how schools work and who isn’t motivated by grabbing headlines.

Hopefully fellow Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt will choose carefully when it comes time to fill the role. He’ll get to pick Walters’ successor once he officially resigns.

Walters has proven he doesn’t have a lot of respect for the voters who elected and believed in him if last night was any indication.


He couldn’t be bothered to let Oklahomans know he was leaving in a publicly accessible forum. Instead, he chose a late-night, cable talk show slot, which many Oklahomans don’t have access to, to announce he’s washing his hands of us.

Walters was likely a frontrunner in the 2026 gubernatorial race. I say that judging from the multitude of emails in support of him that I’ve received from people all over the state the past two years.

If he still harbored any plans to run for governor, I think he’s shot himself in the foot.

Oklahomans don’t like quitters. And they certainly don’t like hypocrites who preach one thing publicly while secretly believing something else.

Janelle Stecklein is editor of Oklahoma Voice. An award-winning journalist, Stecklein has been covering Oklahoma government and politics since moving to the state in 2014.

ENVIRONMENT: UNPACKING URBAN RESILIENCE

Sheheryar Khan 

Published April 20, 2025   

DAWN

The term ‘resilience’ has become a mainstay in global development and climate discourse, championed as a guiding principle for policy responses to climate change. Government institutions and civil society alike present it as a catch-all solution for addressing environment and climate-induced crises.

However, in the context of Pakistan’s rapidly urbanising landscape, where environmental vulnerabilities are intertwined with socio-economic precarity, the concept of resilience requires a deeper examination. Who is expected to be resilient, and what does resilience mean for those most affected by climate and environment risks?

In a country repeatedly battered by floods, heatwaves, resource scarcity and toxic levels of air quality, the resilience of urban populations cannot be reduced to mere adaptive capacity, it must be understood in relation to systemic inequalities, governance failures and the political economy of risk.

Resilience, as conceptualised in environmental and urban studies, refers to the ability of individuals, communities or systems to withstand, recover from and adapt to external shocks. Scholars studying resilience emphasise that it is not just about enduring crises, but about how social, economic and political systems interact to shape the capacity to respond to them.

In the face of recurring environmental disasters such as floods, heatwaves, resource scarcity and toxic air, what does it mean to promote ‘resilience’? Is it truly addressing the root causes or merely applying temporary fixes?

However, in Pakistan’s development sector, resilience is often framed in terms of technical solutions, such as infrastructure projects or disaster management strategies, without addressing the deeper social and economic inequalities that make certain groups more vulnerable in the first place. In Pakistan, where informal settlements, weak infrastructure and governance challenges exacerbate climate risks, resilience cannot be examined in isolation from broader socio-political and economic factors.

VULNERABILITY, RISK AND RESILIENCE

To meaningfully engage with resilience, it is crucial to distinguish it from vulnerability and risk. Vulnerability refers to the susceptibility of individuals or communities to harm due to their socio-economic and spatial positioning.

In Pakistan’s urban areas, factors such as informal housing, lack of access to water and sanitation and socio-economic marginalisation heighten vulnerability, making certain populations more exposed to external shocks. Risk, on the other hand, is the probability of a hazard or an external shock intersecting with vulnerability to produce adverse outcomes.

In cities such as Karachi and Lahore, risk is not just an environmental issue, but also one of class, as low-income communities often live in areas that have inadequate drainage system capacities that are vulnerable to urban flooding, thereby increasing their risk.

Resilience, in this context, must go beyond survival and instead focus on transforming the conditions that produce risk and vulnerability in the first place.

LIVED REALITIES

For many urban dwellers in Pakistan, resilience is not just about bouncing back from crises, but about navigating ongoing hardship and uncertainty. In recent years, extreme weather events and environmental crises, such as urban flooding, heatwaves and poor air quality, have exposed the inadequacies of resilience-building efforts that emphasise short-term recovery, while ignoring long-standing structural issues.

Major cities including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad experience frequent urban flooding due to poor drainage systems and unregulated urban expansion, disproportionately affecting informal settlements that remain excluded from formal planning processes.

In these spaces, resilience is often portrayed as a community-driven effort but, in reality, it is shaped by larger systemic forces that dictate who gets access to safe housing, clean water and reliable infrastructure. The burden of resilience falls disproportionately on those least equipped to bear it, such as women, daily wage labourers and marginalised communities, who are expected to adapt while the conditions that create their vulnerability remain unchanged.

THE GOVERNANCE OF RESILIENCE

In Pakistan, urban governance is characterised by fragmented institutional frameworks, weak disaster response mechanisms and a lack of inclusive planning. The air quality crisis in Punjab exhibits these shortcomings every year. The absence of long-term regulatory enforcement and weak institutional coordination mean that the air quality crisis is treated as a seasonal emergency rather than a chronic governance failure.

The burden of adapting to deteriorating air quality falls on individuals who are expected to self-protect through personal measures, such as masks and air purifiers — solutions that are financially inaccessible for many. The lack of a robust crisis response mechanism and the failure to integrate air quality management into urban resilience planning reflects these broader governance shortcomings.

A more critical and justice-oriented approach to resilience demands moving beyond adaptation to address the root causes of vulnerability. Pakistan’s urban resilience agenda must prioritise inclusive urban planning that strengthens land-use policies to prevent the marginalisation of informal settlements and which integrates low-income communities into formal city planning processes.

To that end, strong local governments are essential for fostering resilience at the community level, by creating mechanisms that allow cities to anticipate, absorb and adapt to environment-related challenges. A well-functioning local government system can implement proactive measures, such as improved urban planning, targeted social protection programmes in times of crises, and climate-responsive policies tailored to the specific needs of different urban populations.

Local governments play a crucial role in developing early warning systems, strengthening public services and ensuring equitable infrastructure development, particularly for marginalised communities. Moreover, they can facilitate participatory decision-making, engaging communities in resilience-planning and ensuring that adaptation strategies address the lived realities of vulnerable groups.

Without a decentralised and empowered local governance structure, urban resilience remains fragmented, reactive and ineffective in addressing long-term environmental risks.

The writer is a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Bristol in the UK

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 20th, 2025

Synchronized Global Climate Breakdown

Robert Hunziker

 April 18, 2025
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Photo by Melissa Bradley

The world has entered a new climate era that threatens the fabric of civilization because it’s the reverse of the climate system that society was built upon. As it happens, the biosphere is starting to unravel as the world’s long-standing normal climate system shows clear signs of breaking down while planetary heat throws scientists a curve ball. The normal climate system behavior 0ver the decades is gone.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (which Trump cannot cripple like NOAA) on a global basis the past year was the hottest in the 175-year observational record with record-setting ocean heat and record-setting sea-level rise. Ninety percent (90%) of global warming is hidden from society absorbed by the oceans. Remarkably, the world’s oceans broke temperature records every single day for 12-months-running. (BBC). Now it’s gotten so excessive that scientists are worried about “payback.”

Everything is on the line, major ecosystems like Antarctica and the Amazon rainforest are regurgitating years of abuse; only recently, West Antarctica was rushed to Red Alert status by freaked-out polar scientists, and large swaths of the Amazon rainforest emit CO2 in competition with cars, trains and planes for the first time in human history, as rainfall at Summit Station (10500’ elevation) has been a strange eerie twist for Greenland. This is climate breakdown in full living color.

A recent article in Science/Alert d/d April 9, 2025 is filled with examples warning of climate breakdown: ‘Exceptional’ – Ongoing Global Heat Defies Climate Predictions.

Weird stuff that never happened thoroughout human history is happening to the climate system. For example, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service, since July 2023, the world has sustained a near-unbroken streak of record-breaking temperatures by the month every month, e.g. March 2025 was the hottest March ever recorded for the European Continent. And every month for the past 21 months has exceeded the dreaded 1.5C upper limit, to wit: “March was 1.6C above pre-industrial times, extending an anomaly so unusual that scientists are still trying to fully explain it. That we’re still at 1.6 °C above preindustrial is indeed remarkable,’ said Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.” (Science/Alert)

It wasn’t so long ago when climate scientists thought exceeding global 1.5C above pre-industrial, labeled as the “danger zone” by the IPCC, would take decades. Guess what? It’s early!

Repercussions of Climate Breakdown – Worldwide

Anomalous/abnormal climate behavior is now the new normal. Extraordinary climate events from all corners of the world recently happened within a tight window of only 30 days of each other, events classified as either the worst ever or all-time record or unprecedented or once in 100 years, etc. Today, the planet is like a movie script entitled Climate Breakdown with climate disasters all happening all at the same time regardless of location or season. It’s a whacky script with people on the run, searching for a safe place.

In real life, evidence of this gonzo climate system is everywhere to be found, e.g., in March 2025 different parts of the European Continent experienced “the driest March on record” as other parts of the Continent experienced “the wettest March on record.” At the same time as Europeans didn’t know which end was up, climate change hit India, enduring record-setting scorching heat as Australia was swamped by all-time-record-smashing floods whilst Asia and South America hit new all-time records of devasting heat. This weird global climate system is off its rocker in synchronized fashion. Why is this happening? Human-generated burning of fossil fuels is at the heart of far too many concurrent global climate disasters to ignore any longer the necessity of sharp reductions in burning fossil fuels or suffer an explosive planet. Nothing is normal any longer. Get over it!

The following headlines are evidence of simultaneous, happening within 30 days of each other, record-breaking climate events across the globe (of note: not including Antarctica, which is clearly, and frighteningly, starting to breakdown in an “emergency mode” as is the world-famous Amazon rainforest and Arctic permafrost and Greenland:

Bigger Than Texas: The True Size of Australian’s Devasting Floods, The Guardian, April 4, 2025 “The extent of flood waters that have engulfed Queensland over the past fortnight is so widespread it has covered an area more than four times the size of the United Kingdom. The inundation is larger than France and Germany combined – and is even bigger than Texas.”

Dry Topsoil Across Germany Could Impact Crop Yields Following March Dry Spell, Clean Energy Wire, April 11, 2025.

Floods Batter Italy after Florence Sees a Month’s Rainfall in One Day, The Watchers, March 16, 2025. “Red alerts were in effect across Italy, including Florence and Pisa, following an extreme flooding event that triggered multiple landslides and caused widespread damage.”

Heavy Rains Hit Spain for Third Consecutive Week, Reuters, March 18, 2025. “Spaniards are still on edge after torrential rains four months ago in the eastern Valencia region led to the country’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.”

Record-breaking March Heat Reminds Us That Adaptation Cannot Wait, The Indian Express, March 20, 2025.

Record Heatwaves Hits South America: Urgent Call for Climate Action, Green.org, March 5, 2025. “This year has witnessed South America endure its hottest recorded temperatures, with some regions experiencing heat levels never seen before. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay are reporting temperatures soaring above 40°C (104°F). This isn’t just uncomfortable—it poses serious health risks and disrupts daily life.”

Extraordinary March Heatwave in Central Asia up to 10° C Hotter in Warming Climate, World Weather Attribution, April 4, 2025. “In March 2025, Central Asia experienced an unusually intense heatwave, with temperatures reaching record highs across the region.”

In the U.S, tornadoes in March were more than double the monthly average and three separate outbreaks produced more than 200 tornadoes. (National Centers for Environmental Information, March 2025) More to the point, from March 13th to 16th, 2025 the tornado outbreak was the largest on record for the month of March. Meanwhile, wildfires spread across southern Appalachia, exacerbated by additional fuel available from downed trees following Hurricane Helene (est. costs up to $250 billion). It’s a fact: Warmer ocean waters, a direct result of climate change, fuel stronger hurricanes with higher wind speeds, heavier rainfall, and more destructive storm surges. Hmm.

As stated in Science/Alert by Bill McGuire, climate scientist, University College London, the contrasting extremes “shows clearly how a destabilized climate means more and bigger weather extremes… As climate breakdown progresses, more broken records are only to be expected.” (Science/Alert)

Therefore, it’s fair to pose a nagging proposition of what happens when more all-time records continue to pile up one after another to what end? What is that end? And what can be done to stop the relentless pounding of harmful climate extremes. Maybe world leaders need to confront this reality by summoning climate scientists. But will Trump summon climate scientists for advice on how the US can help slow down the biggest, fiercest freight train in all human history barreling down the mountainside?

And what’s to stop this madness?

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Restoring the Wild: How Reintroducing Bison Could Revive Britain’s Landscapes and Ecosystems

Derek Gow

April 18, 2025
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Photograph Source: Charles J. Sharp – CC BY-SA 4.0

Although there is no evidence that the European bison (Bison bonasus), known as wisent, ever roamed the islands of the United Kingdom, its genetic heritage suggests that it is attuned to the environment. The European bison is a hybrid that descends from the steppe bison (Bison priscus) and the aurochs (Bos primigenius), both extinct species that were once native to the UK.

Britain once hosted a broad range of great beasts. We slaughtered the bears, elk, and lynx many centuries ago. The wolves lasted the longest. Now, only the names of their crags, hills, meres, or the ubiquitous deep pits where we caught and bound them for torture recall their former existence. As with the aquamarine blue moor frogs, black storks, and night herons, humans hastened the end of them all.

Today, one in seven of England’s surviving species is also threatened with extinction. In large part, much of the landscape that appears to be so green is dead. Chemicals and pesticides in the soil have killed smaller species. The disappearance of these minute species has caused a chain reaction within the natural order, starving, poisoning, or otherwise compromising the food chain.

Gone is the food for some creatures or the cover for others. The living space that remains is highly restricted and commonly of poor quality. The absence of one pivotal creature can mean the loss of natural function upon which others depend. Even when our understanding of this is crystal clear, we respond in a reluctant, slow-motion fashion.

The Downside of Conservation

Conservation comes in many forms, and my beginning was not with the wild but with the tame. At a time when you can drive through the landscape and see so many of the old black or spotted sheep, white long-horned cattle, or brick-red pigs more or less everywhere, it’s hard to remember that these relics were nearly extinct by the 1970s. Farming at that time was already set to conquer its Everests of “improvement.”

Rivers of government cash flowed into subsidies for everything imaginable, from the import of faster-growing continental livestock to new and super-productive crops, to fertilizers that flowed from white plastic sacks rather than freely from cows’ backsides, to pesticides that killed their target species, and much more besides.

Guilds of focused advisors in drab brown overalls and tiny vans met farmers free of charge to explain how to employ this largesse. Colleges produced legions of indoctrinated students who marched out in ranks to feed the world. Research stations, laboratories, and experimental farms, all centrally funded, were established throughout the land.

Meadows full of dancing wildflowers or woodlands where spotted flycatchers dipped and weaved to catch beakfuls of insects twirling in sunlit strobes did not fit the narrative of those times. Most were plowed under or ripped free from the soil that had held them for centuries, awaiting incineration on well-prepared pyres.

Birds of all sorts died in myriads when cornfields, old pastures, and orchards were sprayed with new toxins. Frogs returned to breed in the spring to discover their ancestral ponds had vanished. Photographers produced heartbreaking black-and-white images of them sitting in massed aggregations on their drying spawn.

Breeds of livestock with their roots buried deep in Britain’s culture were discarded as well. It did not matter that they had adapted to frugal living to produce something—a little meat, milk, horn, or dung to fertilize small fields—for folk who had nothing and could offer them less.

Who cared if they had been brought by the Norse, the Romans, or the Celts? They were out of time. Small or slow-growing and difficult to handle with independent spirits, the sooner they were all gone, the better. Their qualities of disease resistance, fine wool, or superlative meat meant nothing. Any adaptation to specific environments was meaningless in a time when whole landscapes could be rearranged.

Farmers Are Not the Problem

To be clear, farmers are not the problem. The problem is the great false idol of the industrial machine that so many unblinkingly worship. In general, farmers are a well-humored bunch. The old ones with good stories are always the best, and I have spent many hours sitting in their cozy kitchens listening to their tales as small dogs snoozed next to the iron cooker and busy wives bustled to serve cakes.

There was slight Henry Cowan, who regretted until the day he died that he had allowed a passing dealer to buy his last two horses, kept long after the others had gone, for the glue works. Tall Francis Watson, a big bear of a man who, at the age of 17, had guarded the palace of the Nizams in Hyderabad and whose great joy it was to linger for no particular purchase in our village shop to converse with its Pakistani proprietors in Urdu. And Miss Bartholomew, whose old cats pissed on her house chairs and whose ancient pet pigs were turned by her stockman daily to ease their bed sores when they could no longer stand.

All of them were once characters of great color who have now passed in time. Their world was simpler, of clear rights and dark wrongs. The reapers who harvested in their golden youths are not of the sort that scythe the earth today. The prospect that the land that they had cleared of rocks, drained and deforested, and then reforested, enriched, and impoverished in the swiftest succession would ever be used again for any purpose other than farming would not have seemed plausible to them at all. The notion that some of England’s oldest beasts could be restored to accelerate nature’s gainwould have seemed absurd.

The Benefits of Bison

So why bother bringing bison back to Britain when we could be content to sit back in our slippers and reintegrate beavers into the countryside, which, in theory at least, is as easy as falling off a stationary bus? The answer, in large part, is process. If, as it seems tantalizingly tangible, we are going to move from an era of unequivocal public subsidy for farming 70 percent of the British landmass (23 million acres) to a time when public money will be employed more evenly to repair nature, then at least a few of the large creatures we hunted to extinction may be restored in a limited fashion to assist this endeavor.

Bison, for example, are not cattle. They are high forest browsers. If you reinstall them in dark, dull plantation woodlands with little biodiversity value, they will smash and debark big trees, wallow in sand soils, gouge out damp clays, provide pesticide-free blood and dung in abundance for insects, and crunch down woody scrub at random in a jagged and irregular manner.

They rip the bark from the stems of broad-leafed trees in a frozen winter by inserting the teeth of their lower palate under the surface of the tree, gripping it tightly with their upper jaw, and tugging sharply downward in order to “whip crack” the length of the stem before it tumbles away like a falling curtain to be consumed.

A single bison can eat 32 kilos of bark in a day. Multiply this by a stamping herd, hoarfrosted with steaming nostrils, and the impact of bison on woodland structure becomes obvious. Whole groves of succulent, young trees are retarded or misshapen. Their wounds leach resin or sap, which snails cluster into to exploit.

Some bare areas may scab over and scar, while others decay completely for woodpeckers to peck full of voids. Bats, martens, and birds use these cavities as nesting sites, while specialists such as willow tits make their own abodes in desiccated pockets rotted down by mycelia of many sorts. Nature loves randomness, and there is more in the simplest of forms.

The fur from a bison’s woolly coat will be gathered by birds from the grasping thorns of bramble or rose or from their backs directly when it peels in scrofulous mats in the springtime. This warm, snuggly material, which is ideal for their nests, will be filched from them by small mammals and taken underground. The repetitive wallowing of bison in dry sandbanks scours these vegetation-free features in random patches.

In their well-trampled base lie easily excavatable egg-laying areas for sand lizards, while mining insects pit any exposed standing banks with their tunnels. Over time, the fragrant possibility exists that the European bee-eater, a child-painted wonder of yellows, blues, browns, and greens, will one day grace them as sites for their nest tunnels.

Bison will, in short, do some things that cattle are incapable of doing and others that cattle don’t do very well. This, of course, is hardly surprising, given that ten thousand years of preparation for domestication has profoundly altered the shape, biology, and behavior of cattle, while bison have retained their wild being intact.

This excerpt is adapted from Derek Gow’s book Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm Into a Lost Ark for Species (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022). It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) by permission of Chelsea Green Publishing and produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. 

Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and author of Bringing Back the Beaver (Chelsea Green, 2022) and Birds, Beasts and Bedlam (Chelsea Green, 2022). Born in Dundee, Scotland, he left school when he was 17 and worked in agriculture for five years. Inspired by the writing of Gerald Durrell, Dow jumped at the chance to manage a European wildlife park in central Scotland in the late 1990s before developing two nature centers in England. He now lives with his children, Maysie and Kyle, on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border, which he is rewilding. Gow has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole, and the white stork in England. He is currently working on a reintroduction project for the wildcat.

The Failure of US Conservation Groups to Criticize Wolf Slaughter

George Wuerthner

April 18, 2025
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Photo: George Wuerthner.

The state of Washington recently reported that its endangered wolf population had declined for the first time in 16 years. The state confirmed that it has 230 wolves, compared to 254 wolves in the previous year.

According to figures released by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington’s overall wolf population in 2024 decreased by at least 9.44%, and successful breeding pairs declined by 25%.

What accounts for this decline? Well, 37 wolves are documented as mortalities. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Department killed four wolves after the animals had conflicts with livestock.

In addition, an unknown number of wolves died from suspected poaching. Two wolves died while being captured by Fish and Wildlife. One wolf was killed by a cougar, and one by other wolves. One wolf was shot attacking livestock, one was shot in self-defense, and one died after ingesting plastic, according to Fish and Wildlife.

However, the most significant source of mortality was a consequence of tribal wolf slaughter. Colville tribal members accounted for more than half of the annual wolf mortality, killing a minimum of 19 wolves.

This ongoing killing of dozens of wolves by tribal members has been occurring for years, and it is hindering the recovery of endangered wolves in Washington. For instance, in 2022, tribal members slaughtered 22 wolves.

Wolves are covered statewide under the state’s endangered species law. Killing one of the animals without authorization can carry penalties of up to a year in jail or a $5,000 fine under the state’s law.

Last summer, the Fish and Wildlife Commission narrowly voted against downlisting wolves from “endangered” to either “threatened” or “sensitive,” moves that would have led to lower penalties for poaching and slightly easier access to permits to kill wolves that attack livestock.

Due to their Endangered Species Status, it is illegal for any citizen to kill in Washington State except in special instances, such as wolf-livestock depredation. However, tribal members are exempt from hunting regulations that restrict other citizens.

Unlike wolf trapping in states like Montana and Idaho, which allow the carnage of wolves, there are still limits on the number of animals that any individual trapper or hunter can take. However, the Colville tribe permits the trapping and hunting of wolves by any tribal member without limitations.

The high mortality of wolves by tribal members is setting back wolf recovery in the state. In particular, the Colville Reservation is a critical bridge between eastern Washington, where most of the state’s wolf population is found, and the colonization of the Cascades and western Washington.

The reservation contains excellent wolf habitat, which is why the tribe continues to massacre wolves in this area. The reservation is, in effect, a mortality sink. The good habitat (prey base) attracts new wolves and leads to their death.
Wolves return to the same places as the Colville Reservation because it is a suitable habitat for prey, and more get killed.

As much as I am dismayed by the tribal slaughter of wolves, I am even more outraged by the apparent willingness of so-called conservation organizations to accept the destruction of wildlife and wildlands by tribal people that they would denounce if perpetrated by anyone else.

While a few wolf advocacy organizations clinically noted the Colville tribe’s role in hindering wolf recovery in the state, none have chosen to criticize the tribe publicly.

This lack of accountability by the conservation community is part of what I call the Indian Iron Curtain, where environmental organizations are unwilling or, in some instances, even support the destruction of wildlife or wildlands done by tribal groups, which they would otherwise condemn if done by anyone else.

Not only does this perpetuate the myth that tribal people are somehow “natural environmentalists,” but it harms the wildlands and wildlife that are impacted. The annual tribal slaughter of bison by Yellowstone National Park, which many organizations support if a tribal member does the killing, is a perfect example of this double standard.

Throughout the West, these groups raise money off the backs of wolves. If a rancher or hunter kills wolves, I will get a message telling me to donate money to them to “save” wolves from slaughter.

One lame excuse I got from the ED of a wolf advocacy group for their lack of opposition to tribal slaughter was that the tribes have a “legal” right to kill wolves without restriction. Yet the same organization has no trouble blasting the annual carnage of wolves by hunters and trappers as unacceptable in states where it is legal to kill them.

For instance, a few years ago, there was outrage from conservation groupsafter 26 wolves were killed by trappers and hunters north of Yellowstone Park. Still, the very same organizations are silent about tribal wolf killings on the Colville reservation and elsewhere (like Alaska).]

Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense is one of the few people willing to condemn the tribal killings publicly.

Fahy says:” The silence from the “conservation” community on this subject is deafening.”

Fahy quips: “The Colville Tribe has essentially created an iron curtain of traps and bullets by preventing wolves from dispersing westward into the Cascades.”

As Fahy notes: “It does not make you an anti-Native American to be angry at what some of the tribes are doing, just like it doesn’t mean you’re antisemitic if you’re outraged over what Israel is doing in Gaza. It’s time to condemn unacceptable behavior.”

Most conservation organizations are loath to criticize tribes due to historical mistreatment, but in the end, it is the wildlife that suffers today. Why should wolves (grizzlies, salmon, bison, old-growth forests, etc.) have to accept the burden of past abuse of Indian people?

The double standard for tribal groups is part of a long-term change in conservation missions. When I came of age in the environmental movement in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a movement to consider ecology, evolutionary processes, and biocentric perspectives as the priority standard in advocacy. Since then, I have seen a significant shift towards anthropocentric attitudes and values in many organizations, to the detriment of overall conservation goals.

Social justice needs to be considered, but Nature Justice should have priority, for in the end, there is no social justice on a dead planet. We need to set limits on human exploitation, no matter who is doing it.

It’s time to take down the Indian Iron Curtain and hold all people who abuse, mistreat, or exploit Nature accountable. The wolves, bears, salmon, bison, old-growth forests, and wildlands will be glad you did.

George Wuerthner has published 36 books including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.