THIRD WORLD U$A
Nonprofits making progress in tackling homelessness among veterans

By R.J. Rico, The Associated Press
Nov 12, 2023
This photo shows one of the the Veterans Empowerment Organization apartment buildings that offer permanent housing for 41 veterans, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023 in Atlanta. (R.J. Rico/AP)


ATLANTA — Along a busy Atlanta residential road, a 68-year-old Vietnam War-era Army veteran has found what he calls a “match made in heaven.”

Harold Tilson Jr. found himself homeless earlier this year but for the past few months has been living in transitional housing run by the nonprofit Veterans Empowerment Organization, or VEO. It provides emergency and permanent housing for dozens of previously homeless military veterans.


“If you’re homeless and you need help, you couldn’t ask for a better place to go because they take care of just about everything,” Tilson said.


In this photo provided by Gabriella Rico, Vietnam War-era Army veteran Harold Tilson Jr., stands in a room on the campus of the Veterans Empowerment Organization in Atlanta, Nov. 10, 2023. (Gabriella Rico via AP)

It’s part of a years-long effort by government agencies and nonprofits around the country to address homelessness among veterans. Since January 2020, the numbers of homeless veterans have fallen 11% and have gone down 55% over the past 13 years, according to a government count. That’s in sharp contrast with the general homeless population.

Authorities credit the Obama administration’s work to make housing veterans a top priority and more recently the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that boosted the Department of Veteran Affairs’ homeless programs and expanded rental aid. Advocates also point to partnerships between government agencies, nonprofits and corporate foundations.


Last month, the VA gave $1 billion in grants to community nonprofits for the upcoming year to tackle the issue, the most ever, said Jill Albanese, director of clinical operations at the Veterans Health Administration’s Homeless Programs Office.

“This isn’t something that we’re doing on our own: This is really something that we’re doing through partnerships,” Albanese said. “They’re the experts on homelessness in their communities.”

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VA helped house more than 26,000 at-risk vets since the start of 2023
That puts the department on pace to top its goal of 38,000 veterans aided by the end of December.
By Leo Shane III

Still, the number of veterans living on the streets is significant. There are more than 33,000 homeless veterans, according to the 2022 Point-in-Time count conducted by the VA and Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

And much still needs to be done, said Kathryn Monet, CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, calling it a “moving target” — just as people are moving out of homelessness, others become unhoused every day. Affordable housing is key, she said, though communities nationwide have struggled with that.


Along with housing, the VEO offers classes about financial literacy, securing VA benefits and how to get on a path toward employment and housing independence. There’s also a common area for reading and a gym for working out.

“We are proud to say that we are not a shelter. This is a program center, meaning the veteran has to put some skin in the game,” said Tony Kimbrough, a former military intelligence officer and CEO of the nonprofit, which started in 2008 with a single two-bedroom house. “We’re going to put a ton of it in there, but we expect a little bit of back-and-forth.”

Tilson became homeless in February when he was forced out of the triplex he was renting south of Atlanta.

He spent the next month and a half sleeping in the street or on business doorsteps, relying on friends from his church for food or access to a shower. Church members steered him to local nonprofits and he eventually landed at VEO, where he has been living in emergency housing, has taken a five-week financial literacy course and is focused on improving his credit score.


Tilson, who suffered a stroke last year, said he needs a knee replacement and hernia surgery to address the physical toll carrying his belongings took while he was homeless. A VA case manager is helping him get those, and he’s optimistic that in a few months he’ll get to move into his own place, with the help of VEO and another local nonprofit.

His friends from church are thrilled about the help he’s getting, Tilson said, but “nobody can be happier than me.”

In addition to 10 double-occupancy rooms housing veterans like Tilson in emergency shelter, the VEO campus has 41 apartment units where veterans pay a few hundred dollars in rent. VA funding makes up the difference, allowing the nonprofit to reinject the money and expand. Its next project is 20 single-occupancy bedrooms being built this winter.

VEO says it expansion would not be possible, without more than $2.3 million in corporate donations from The Home Depot Foundation.


The Atlanta-based foundation has helped some 50,000 homeless veterans nationwide through its partnership with nonprofits like VEO. It has donated $500 million to veterans causes since 2011, and on Friday announced a commitment to giving an additional $250 million by 2030.

Company employees have also volunteered more than 1.5 million hours in service to veterans, including building or repairing 60,000 houses and facilities for former service members. On Friday, 20 members of “Team Depot” were finishing a weeklong project to build a garden, complete with a water feature, in honor of Veterans Day.

“When we think about the role that corporate foundations can play, it boils down to three things,” said Jennifer A. Taylor, a political science professor at James Madison University and a military spouse who studies philanthropy and veterans issues. “Are you a funder — giving out grants for others to do the work? Are you a doer — taking employees out into the community? Or are you a convener — bringing thought leaders together? Home Depot is doing all of those things.”

Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said the company’s giving philosophy was always housing-centric but was “pretty disparate” before 2011. That’s when then-CEO Frank Blake, realizing that tens of thousands of employees were veterans or spouses of veterans, decided to focus the company’s philanthropy on veteran housing.

“It fit our culture,” Decker said.

Despite the progress that’s been made, there are still tens of thousands of homeless veterans, including nearly 3,500 in the Los Angeles area.

Navy veteran Malcolm Harvey III spent years living on the streets in Southern California, including Los Angeles’ Skid Row. In 2015, a representative from the nonprofit U.S. Vets helped him get a job with the organization. Speaking gigs on behalf of The Home Depot Foundation followed.

Now, Harvey, 62, is married, owns a condo and works as program director at the Long Beach nonprofit People Assisting The Homeless.

“We can’t become numb to this,” Harvey said of the homelessness problem among former service members.

“We made a promise to them when they took that oath and put on that uniform and decided to defend this country,” he said.

“We owe them a debt of gratitude. But we owe them more than that: We owe them action.”

Associated Press Writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

If you are a veteran who is homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness, call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-424-3838 for assistance.

U$ SOCIAL (IN)SECURITY

Public workers may receive reduced Social Security benefits. There's growing support in Congress to change that

By Lorie Konish | CNBC •

Araya Doheny | Getty Images


Public workers may receive reduced Social Security benefits. There’s growing support in Congress to change that
Workers may have jobs where they pay into Social Security or earn pension benefits.
When they have both, their Social Security benefits may be adjusted to reflect that.
There's growing support in Congress to either revise those rules or eliminate them altogether.

When Dave Bernstein, 87, started working at the U.S. Postal Service in February 1970, he was making $2.35 an hour.

To supplement his income, he also took on other work. Years later, Bernstein decided in 1992 to take a voluntary retirement.

"We knew there was going to be a reduced pension because of the early out," said Phyllis Bernstein, Dave's wife, who is 84.

But what came next was something the couple did not expect.

While Dave was expecting a monthly Social Security check of around $800, it ended up being just about half that amount – around $415 – even though he had earned the required 40 credits to be fully insured by the program. The benefits were adjusted based on rules for workers who earn both pension and Social Security benefits.

The couple, who reside in Tampa, Florida, have had a different retirement than they envisioned due to the lower income.

Phyllis kept working until she was 82. They have also turned to family for financial support.

Their lifestyle is frugal, with home-cooked meals and cars they kept for 20 years, or "until the wheels were falling off," the couple jokes.

But their limited resources have made traveling to Australia and New Zealand – Phyllis' dream – out of reach.

"When he retired, I was working," Phyllis said. "We just couldn't do the travel."

Today, Dave is pushing for the Social Security rules that reduced his benefits to be changed.

His union, the American Postal Workers Union, has endorsed the Social Security Fairness Act, a bill proposed in Congress that would repeal Social Security rules known as the Windfall Elimination Provision, or WEP, and Government Pension Offset, or GPO, that reduce benefits for workers had positions where they did not pay Social Security taxes, also called non-covered earnings.

The legislation has support from other organizations that represent public workers, including teachers, firefighters and police.

The bill has overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives – 300 co-sponsors – at a time when that chamber has been politically divided. That support recently prompted House lawmakers to send a letter to leaders of the Ways and Means Committee to request a hearing.

The Social Security Fairness Act has also been introduced in the Senate, with support from 49 leaders from both sides of the aisle.

Yet some experts say just getting rid of the rules may not be the most effective way of making the system fairer.
How the WEP, GPO rules work

The WEP applies to how retirement or disability benefits are calculated if a worker earned a retirement or disability pension from an employer who did not withhold Social Security taxes and qualifies for Social Security from work in other jobs where they did pay taxes into the program.

Social Security benefits are calculated using a worker's average indexed monthly earnings, and then using a formula to calculate a worker's basic benefit amount. For workers affected by the WEP, part of the replacement rate for the average indexed monthly earnings is brought down to 40% from 90%.

The GPO, meanwhile, reduces benefits for spouses and widows or widowers of recipients of retirement or disability pensions from local, state or federal governments.

Under the GPO, Social Security benefits are reduced by two-thirds of the government pension. If two-thirds of the government pension is more than the Social Security benefit, the Social Security benefit may be zero.

The impact of the rules is far-reaching, according to Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. Many firefighters work in second jobs in the private sector as cab drivers, bartenders or truck drivers, where they earn credits toward Social Security.

"They steal their money, because they're also public employees," said Kelly, who describes his union members as "passionately angry" about the issue.

"It affects hundreds of thousands, if not millions of public employees that paid into Social Security and essentially are being penalized because they also happen to be public servants, whether they are teachers, cops and, obviously, firefighters," Kelly said.
Why experts say another fix may be better

The WEP and GPO rules were intended to make it so workers who pay Social Security taxes for their entire careers are treated the same as those who do not.

But under those current rules, some beneficiaries receive lower benefits than they would have if they paid into Social Security for all of their careers, while others receive higher benefits, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Yet repealing the WEP and GPO rules would result in Social Security benefits that are "overly generous" for non-covered workers, research has found.

Part of what may create that advantage is that Social Security benefits are progressive, and therefore replace a larger share of income for lower earners. So someone who only has part of their salary history in Social Security may get a higher replacement rate without considering their pension income.

Fully repealing the WEP and GPO rules may also come with higher costs at a time when the program facing a funding shortfall. The change would add an estimated $150 billion to the program's costs in the next 10 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Another way of handling the disparity may be to create a proportional approach to income replacement. Instead of the WEP, workers' benefits would be calculated based on all of their earnings and then adjusted to reflect the share of their careers that were in jobs covered by Social Security. A similar approach may be taken with the GPO.

Certain bills on Capitol Hill propose a proportional approach.

However, a proportional formula may not solve all the inequities in the current system, according to Emerson Sprick, senior economic analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has prompted to think tank to work on refining its proposal.
'Extremely complex' to understand

An important advantage to reforming the current formulas would be making it easier for workers to understand and plan for their retirements.

"It is definitely extremely complex, and very hard for folks preparing for retirement or in retirement, to understand what it means for their benefits," Sprick said.

Social Security statements that provide retirement benefit estimates do not take these rules into account.

Consequently, many workers find out their benefits are adjusted when they are about to retire.

shapecharge | E+ | Getty Images


"The young guys don't pay attention to it because it's too far out; they're not worried about it," Kelly said of the firefighters.

"It's not until you're ready to go out the door that you actually start paying attention to what you're going to have to live off when you actually retire," he added.

The reductions to their Social Security benefits can be a shock.

For beneficiaries like the Bernsteins who start out with lower benefits, it can be difficult to catch up, even after a record 8.7% Social Security cost-of-living adjustments went into effect this year.

"Gas this summer and in the spring at $4 a gallon ate that money up like it wasn't even there," Dave Bernstein said.

This federal program that helps 2 in 5 babies may have to turn away families if Congress doesn’t act

By Tami Luhby, CNN
Sun November 12, 2023

Enrollment in WIC, which provides food assistance to pregnant women, new moms and young children, is rising.Allison Dinner/AP

CNN —

Without a little aid from the federal government, Whitley Hasty would have a tougher time buying the fresh broccoli her toddler son loves to eat with ranch dressing.

Hasty receives WIC, the food assistance program for low-income women, infants and young children. It has helped her purchase milk, cheese, juice, eggs, fruits, vegetables and other staples for 3-year-old Leni – a benefit that has been even more vital in recent years as the price of groceries and other necessities has soared.

In addition, a WIC staffer encouraged her to breastfeed both Leni and her daughter, Emilia, 9, when they were infants, connecting Hasty with peer counseling for extra support. And the program set her up with a nutritionist, who provides her with healthy recipes that have broadened the variety of food the children eat.


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WIC has provided Whitley Hasty, left, with more than just assistance buying food for her two children.Jane Grant

“It’s huge,” said Hasty, who works as a benefits navigation coordinator for a regional food bank, helping other families sign up for WIC and food stamps. “It’s more than just the benefits that you get every month that helps me financially.”

But WIC, formally known as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, may soon have to start putting eligible families on waitlists if Congress doesn’t increase its funding. Enrollment in the program has soared in recent months, hitting just under 7 million people in August, up from fewer than 6.4 million folks a year earlier.

Though WIC has long enjoyed bipartisan support, the additional money is far from guaranteed. Even before the jump in participation, a battle was brewing on Capitol Hill over the program’s appropriation for fiscal year 2024. And now lawmakers are racing to come up with a plan to fund federal agencies beyond November 17 or the government will shut down.

House Republicans, who are intent on slashing spending, have proposed reducing WIC funding to $5.5 billion, which would be $185 million less than last year’s level and $800 million less than the Senate’s appropriations bill would provide.

The House would also cut back the program’s enhanced fruits and vegetables benefit, which was initially authorized by the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and then renewed with bipartisan support in subsequent appropriations bills. Enrollees would receive between $11 and $15 a month to purchase fresh produce in fiscal year 2024, down from $25 to $49.

The enrollment surge prompted the Biden administration in late August to request an additional $1.4 billion to meet the increased demand. Without more money, 600,000 eligible new moms and young children could be turned away, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research group.
Soaring interest

While WIC has reached only about half of those eligible in recent years, it can have a meaningful impact on enrollees.

About 2 in 5 babies born in the US in 2022 benefited from WIC, according to Noura Insolera, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Children who received WIC and food stamps were less likely to be food insecure as young adults living on their own, she said.

There are several reasons why WIC is becoming more popular.

Federal and state policymakers have made it easier to enroll and recertify, improved the shopping experience and enhanced the benefits. Also, skyrocketing inflation, particularly for food, has squeezed the budgets of many Americans, especially low-income families.



4 charts show who will be hit the hardest as pandemic-era benefits end

Plus, the multitude of temporary Covid-19 pandemic relief programs – including the enhanced child tax credit, stimulus checks and, in particular, more generous food stamp benefits – have largely ended. These measures made Americans more aware of the ongoing government assistance that may be available to them.

“There’s more knowledge now about the ways in which the other public safety-net programs could kind of step in and fill that gap,” Insolera said.

The relief efforts temporarily improved children’s well-being. But last year, poverty and food insecurity among the nation’s youngest residents climbed. This setback underscores the importance of WIC, said Georgia Machell, interim CEO of the National WIC Association.

“This should actually be a really happy moment for the program because caseload is going up,” Machell said, noting that WIC celebrates its 50th anniversary in January. “And it’s just really bittersweet because folks have been working really hard to increase caseload. We’re seeing that increase happen now, but we just don’t have sufficient funding.”

Participating in WIC has helped Emily Church cope with inflation as she and her husband raise their daughter, Myles Mae, 3. On a recent trip to the supermarket, the benefits reduced her bill from $180 to $140, covering the cost of the milk, fruit and vegetables she picked up.

The assistance means the couple doesn’t have to juggle paying for gas, electricity and food.

“It makes a huge difference in our food budget on a monthly basis,” said Church, an Athens, Ohio, resident who works as the sales manager at Snowville Creamery, a local company that produces milk, yogurt and cheese.

WIC helps Emily Church afford food for her daughter, Myles Mae.Courtesy Emily Church

While she’s concerned that she could lose the benefit, Church is more angry that lawmakers may not fully fund the program and may force expectant and new moms onto waitlists.

“I just want our government to get it together. These are our women, our infants, our children in our country,” Church said. “The program was designed to take care of these people. And now we’re saying … ‘You’re coming for help? No, sorry. Here’s a waiting list.’ How do we do that? That’s crazy.”

Massive Tustin hangar fire reignites just days after initial blaze spewed asbestos and lead

By JACK DOLAN
LOS ANGELES TIMES • November 12, 2023

Orange County, Calif., firefighters battle a fire at the historic north hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023.

 (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times/TNS)

(Tribune News Service) — A massive former military hangar that burned in Tustin, Calif., earlier in the week, closing schools over asbestos worries, reignited Saturday night.

The city of Tustin tweeted that there was “an active flare-up above the north doors of the north hangar” around 5 p.m. Saturday, adding that the Orange County Fire Authority and the Tustin Fire Department were on scene.

The north hangar was one of two enormous structures on the property, 17 stories high and 1,000 feet long, that were used by the military during World War II and later served as sets for the TV show “Star Trek” and the film “Pearl Harbor.”

One of those hangars burned last week, creating a spectacle for drivers passing by.

After air quality experts discovered asbestos at the site, the Tustin Unified School District closed all campuses on Thursday and Friday.

The city also closed several public parks and canceled a planned Veterans Day celebration over health concerns stemming from possible contamination.


A note on the Tustin Unified School District’s website on Saturday said that Monday will be a “non-student day” on all campuses and that an environmental consulting company has been retained to test all schools for contamination stemming from the fire.

©2023 Los Angeles Times.

There’s another wildfire burning in Hawaii. This one is destroying irreplaceable rainforest on Oahu.

No one was injured and no homes burned, but the flames wiped out irreplaceable native forestland that’s home to nearly two dozen fragile species.

An Army helicopter douses a wildfire burning east of Mililani, Oahu, Hawaii, on Nov. 2.

Dan Dennison / Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources via AP

Nov. 12, 2023
By The Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) — A wildfire burning in a remote Hawaii rainforest is underscoring a new reality for the normally lush island state just a few months after a devastating blaze on a neighboring island leveled an entire town and killed at least 99 people.

No one was injured and no homes burned in the latest fire, which scorched mountain ridges on Oahu, but the flames wiped out irreplaceable native forestland that’s home to nearly two dozen fragile species. And overall, the ingredients are the same as they were in Maui’s historic town of Lahaina: severe drought fueled by climate change is creating fire in Hawaii where it has almost never been before.

“It was really beautiful native forest,” said JC Watson, the manager of the Koolau Mountains Watershed Partnership, which helps take care of the land. He recalled it had uluhe fern, which often dominate Hawaii rainforests, and koa trees whose wood has traditionally been used to make canoes, surfboards and ukuleles.

“It’s not a full-on clean burn, but it is pretty moonscape-looking out there,” Watson said.

The fact that this fire was on Oahu’s wetter, windward side is a “red flag to all of us that there is change afoot,” said Sam ’Ohu Gon III, senior scientist and cultural adviser at The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii.

The fire mostly burned inside the Oahu Forest National Wildlife Refuge, which is home to 22 species listed as endangered or threatened by the U.S. government. They include iiwi and elepaio birds, a tree snail called pupu kani oe and the Hawaiian hoary bat, also known as opeapea. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, does not know yet what plants or wildlife may have been damaged or harmed by the fire, spokesperson Kristen Oleyte-Velasco said.

The fire incinerated 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) since first being spotted on Oct. 30 and was 90% contained as of Friday. Officials were investigating the cause of the blaze roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Honolulu.

The flames left gaping, dark bald spots amid a blanket of thick green where the fire did not burn. The skeletons of blackened trees poked from the charred landscape.

The burn area may seem relatively small compared to wildfires on the U.S. continent, which can raze hundreds of square miles. But Hawaii’s intact native ecosystems aren’t large to begin with, especially on smaller islands like Oahu, so even limited fires have far-reaching consequences.

One major concern is what plants will grow in place of the native forest.

Hawaii’s native plants evolved without encountering regular fires and fire is not part of their natural life cycle. Faster-growing non-native plants with more seeds tend to sprout in place of native species afterward.

Watson said an Oahu forest near the latest fire had uluhe ferns, koa trees and ohia trees before a blaze burned less than a square mile of it 2015. Now the land features invasive grasses that are more fire-prone, and some slow-growing koa.

A much larger 2016 fire in the Waianae mountains on the other side of Oahu took out one of the last remaining populations of a rare tree gardenia, said Gon.

There are cultural losses when native forest burns. Gon recalled an old Central Oahu story about a warrior who was thrown off a cliff while battling an enemy chief. His fall was stopped by an ohia tree, another plant common in the incinerated area. Feathers from Hawaii’s forest birds were once used to make cloaks and helmets worn by chiefs.

Watson’s organization is coordinating with the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct initial surveys of the damage. They’ll devise a restoration plan that will include invasive species control and planting native species. But there are limits to what can be done.

“It’ll never be able to be returned to its previous state within our lifetimes,” Watson said. “It’s forever changed, unfortunately.”

The Mililani Mauka fire — named after the area near where the fire began — burned in the Koolau mountains. These mountains are on Oahu’s wetter, windward side because they trap moisture and rain that move across the island from the northeast.

But repeated and more prolonged episodes of drought are making even the Koolaus dry. Gon expects more frequent Koolau fires in the future.

“There has been a huge uptick in the last 10 years, largely in Waianae range, which is the western and drier portion of the island,” Gon said. “But now we’re seeing fires in the wet section of the island that normally doesn’t see any fires at all.”

Hawaii fires are almost always started by humans so Gon said more needs to be done to raise awareness about prevention. Native forests could be further protected with buffer zones by planting less flammable vegetation in former sugarcane and pineapple plantation lands often found at lower elevations, he said.

Many of these now-fallow fields sprout dry, invasive grasses. Such grasses fueled the blaze that raced across Lahaina in August, highlighting their dangers. The cause of that fire is still being investigated, but it may have been sparked by downed power lines that ignited dry grass. Winds related to a powerful hurricane passing to the south helped spread the blaze, which destroyed more than 2,000 buildings and homes for some 8,000 people.

The fire is likely to affect Oahu’s fresh water supply, though this is challenging to measure. Oahu’s 1 million residents and visitors get their drinking water from aquifers, but it usually takes decades for rain to seep through the ground to recharge them. Native forests are the best at absorbing rain so the disappearance of high-quality forest is certain to have some effect, Watson said.

State officials are seeking additional funding from the Legislature next year for updated firefighting equipment, firebreaks, new water sources for fire suppression, replanting native trees and plants, and seed storage.

Firefighters and rain last week finally tamped down the Oahu blaze, but Gon urged action now “to make sure that it doesn’t turn into yearly fires nibbling away at the source of our water supply.”

LABOR MOVEMENT

The UAW Won Big: What Does It Mean for the U.S. Labor Movement?

The UAW strike was not just a victory for auto workers. It was a victory for the entire working class.

James Dennis Hoff

November 12, 2023

Photo: John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune

LONG READ

On October 25, after 41 days on the picket lines, the United Auto Workers (UAW) secured a first tentative contract agreement with Ford. Within just four days, GM and Stellantis had followed suit — agreeing to almost identical wage increases, bonuses, and benefit packages — effectively ending what had been one of the most important, dynamic, and high-profile auto strikes in decades.

Though UAW members are still debating and voting on the tentative agreements, and though they did not win everything they aimed to (in fact, as the recent no vote at the Flint Michigan plant shows, they probably could have won more if the rank and file had been in the lead), this is nonetheless a victory for the auto workers. The gains in these proposed contracts are substantial, and represent a significant restoration of the concessions on wages and benefits made to the Big Three over the last 15 years. Not only did the union manage to secure wage increases of 25 percent across the life of the contract, with 11 percent in the first year and a $5,000 signing bonus; they also took significant steps toward the elimination of wage tiers at all three automakers and managed to win back cost of living adjustments that will protect those wages against inflation going forward.

In addition to winning these bread and butter issues, the union was able to use the strike to force all three auto companies to make big investments in new manufacturing and to secure pathways toward unionizing electric vehicle (EV) and battery plants that will help protect jobs and wages as the industry transitions to EV production. This includes reopening the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, and bringing the Ultium Cell battery plant in Warren, Ohio under the master agreement, a move that will bring about 1,000 additional workers into the union. Of all the gains won in this contract, however, the most important might be including the right to strike over plant closures in the contract, a major victory against potential layoffs that keeps the strike option on the table going forward.

But the UAW strike is not just a victory for auto workers; it is a victory for the entire working class, which has been watching with rapt attention and taking notes. The gains won in these agreements, made possible by the more than 50,000 UAW members who eventually went out on strike and all the others who supported them, are a demonstration of the power that working people can wield when they organize and stand together in solidarity. This has in turn been an inspiration to workers everywhere, many of whom came out to the picket lines to stand with the UAW, adding substantial heat to the still smoldering new labor movement taking shape in the United States.

Learning the lessons of this strike and helping to build the power and militancy of our unions, and of the new labor movement more broadly, is an important task for both unionized and non-unionized workers to take up, particularly in this moment of increasing political, economic, and ecological crisis. As police continue to kill with impunity, as trans people and women continue to be stripped of their democratic rights, as the U.S. wastes hundreds of billions of tax dollars and countless lives to enforce its power abroad, and as U.S.-funded bombs continue to fall on Gaza, it is imperative that we build unions capable of taking a stand against oppression and imperialism as well as exploitation.

A Historic Strike for the Whole Class

The UAW strike is without a doubt one of the most important labor actions in the United States in decades. But the strike was not built in a vacuum, and would not have been possible were it not for the massive shift in working class consciousness and labor struggle that has taken place over the last several years. From the wave of teacher strikes that began in 2018, to the 2020 uprising against police violence, to the explosion of new labor organizing that followed the pandemic, and the massive strikes of 2023 (which included almost 200,000 actors and writers), the U.S. working class has been slowly rebuilding the militancy it lost against the reactionary neoliberal offensive of the last four decades. It was this new combativeness and spirit of rising class consciousness that paved the way for the UAW strike, which has in turn helped to catalyze the already growing power of the new labor movement. This was made clear early on in the strike, when the more than 12,000 UAW workers that initially walked off the job at Ford, Stellantis, and GM, were joined by thousands of eager supporters, and inundated with solidarity from labor unions, unionists, and working people everywhere, whose actions stated clearly that your struggle is our struggle. Indeed, not long after the strike began, polls showed that a massive 78 percent of people in the U.S. said they supported the UAW against the Big Three, a far greater number than support either Trump or Biden.

The UAW and their allies then committed to a weeks-long battle that eventually grew to include one out of every three auto workers in the union. Even while other members continued to work and earn their regular wages, these workers heeded the call and bravely sacrificed their own livelihoods to take to the picket lines in defense of their union siblings. They showed up in cold and rain, they marched in front of gates, blocking trucks and delivery vehicles, and used hard pickets to confront the strikebreaking managers and the scabs that attempted to replace them. By defying anti-union laws that prohibit strikers from blocking the entrances of workplaces, the pickets became a school of war where workers came face to face with not only the power of the boss, but of the state as well. And it was precisely this spirit of militancy and dedication to fighting one day longer that allowed the UAW to force first Biden and then Trump, and then the entire industry to recognize that this time was different. The organizing efforts of the workers at the GM plant in Flint Michigan who just voted down the proposed contract because it failed to provide pensions to those hired after 2007, is also a demonstration of the militancy of the UAW rank and file and their willingness to continue to fight.

Although the militancy and power of the rank and file and the combative rhetoric of the UAW’s new leader, Shawn Fain gave the impression that this was an offensive strike, these agreements were really about winning back what had been lost in prior contracts. Going into this strike, the UAW had been on the backfoot for almost two decades. After the 2008 economic crisis, when automakers barely managed to stay alive thanks to government bailouts, the UAW leadership agreed to a series of major concessions in the misguided belief that what was good for the company was good for the workers. This business union approach had been the dominant organizing principle of the UAW until Fain’s rise to power in early 2023, and had led to decades of declining militancy and power. Unsurprisingly, the Big Three used this opportunity, and the billions it received from the federal government, to amass record profits, none of which it gave back to the workers. When the union finally went on strike in 2019, it did so following the old model of seeking to create a pattern by striking at just one company. This was largely a failure that led not only to sub-par wage increases that did almost nothing to undo the damage from the previous 11 years, but was followed by plant closures and mass layoffs that left a lasting scar in the memory of the membership.

In order to win back those concessions, and address those layoffs, the new leadership of the UAW knew that it had to do more than just mobilize for another strike. It had to make ambitious demands that would fire up and inspire the membership, it had to hit all three automakers at the same time, and, most importantly, it needed to build the solidarity of the entire class; and that is what they did. By aggressively putting forward a bold and unprecedented set of demands accompanied by a rhetoric of class struggle and solidarity, the UAW was able to build a strike that caught the attention of working people across the country, who quickly saw the fight as their own. Through a regular and concerted denouncement of the super rich, including the CEOs and executives of the Big Three, Fain and the UAW were able to call attention to the ways in which the assaults on the living standards and well being of auto workers were part of a larger assault on working people everywhere, and to reaffirm what every union advocate knows: that gains for union members help raise the standard of living for all workers. Indeed, just days after the Ford proposal, Toyota and Honda spontaneously increased wages for their production crews by 9 and 11 percent respectively in order to stave off possible organizing attempts by the UAW and to compete with the Big Three in what remains a tight labor market.

In one speech after another, Fain used the media attention around the strike to speak, not only to his membership, but to the whole class, about inequality, about exploitation, about the dignity of labor, and about the power of solidarity and the strike weapon. Using regularly scheduled Facebook events with live audiences upward of 60,000 people, he talked about the ways that corporations privatize profits and socialize losses; the importance of solidarity between workers across unions and between union and nonunion workers, both domestically and internationally, and he stressed over and over that it is working people that make the economy run. At a rally in Belvidere, Illinois on November 9, Fain drove this point home yet again when he told the audience of UAW members who would be returning to their jobs there: “the workers run this economy, and we the workers have the power to shut this economy down if it doesn’t work for the working class.” These displays of class anger and solidarity are directly at odds with the politics of business unionism and U.S. labor chauvinism, which regards foreign workers, and sometimes even workers at other corporations, as competition. In fact Fain directly said that unionized workers at other auto companies should be viewed not as competitors, but as future UAW members, undermining the bosses’ attempts to divide workers. He also regularly brought up the struggles of hyper-exploited Mexican auto workers, saying clearly that the only way to stop the bosses from using the threat of plant closures and offshoring was to unite the entire international working class together rather than in competition with each other.

But this wasn’t merely a strategy to win a good contract or to claw back some concessions from the Big Three. In many ways this strike was the first battle in what could be the beginning of a revitalized and fighting UAW. Fain and the new leadership of the union seem legitimately dedicated to using the momentum of this strike to help continue to grow the UAW as well as grow and empower the burgeoning new labor movement. The union has made it clear that they plan to aggressively organize at other auto companies like Toyota, Hyundai, and Tesla, and already workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant have formed an organizing committee with the UAW. In a move that would have seemed impossible even just four years ago, they also set the expiration date of all three contracts for April 30, so that any future strikes would happen on May Day, and then urged every other union in the country to do the same so that they might strike together. Such a move, if realized, would challenge and largely undermine the Taft Hartley Act’s prohibition of solidarity strikes, significantly increasing the political power of unions.

Building a Real Class Struggle Labor Movement Requires Self-Organization

This strike and the significant gains that were won clearly represent a shift away from the failed business union strategy of previous UAW leaders. However, turning around a vessel as massive as the UAW, with its almost 400,000 members is not an easy task and cannot be done from the top down. Despite Fain’s big ambitions, his class struggle rhetoric, and his admiration for the combative former UAW president Walter Reuther, the union remains controlled and limited by a bureaucratic leadership that continues to hamper the self-organization of its members and remains tied to the imperialist Democratic Party. Much of Fain’s criticisms of the “billionaire class,” for instance, echo the rhetoric of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 primary campaign, and his increasingly cozy ties with President Biden and other Democratic Party politicians show the contradictions inherent in the top-down bureaucratic model of unionism. This relationship with the Democratic Party — which recently culminated in Fain’s unofficial endorsement of Biden — represents an existential danger for the UAW and the union movement. The Democratic Party, after all, is the tool which the state uses to tie union leaderships closer to the state to prevent them from exercising their full power. Just in this strike, we saw how Biden attempted to use his “support” of the strike to push for a quick settlement and to revitalize his image as a progressive who cares about the concerns of the working class.

These contradictions were on full display throughout the strike campaign. As a tactic, the stand up strike was an innovative method of disruption that kept the bosses guessing at each turn and often played them against each other. Announcing new walkouts each week also allowed the union to keep the media’s attention and the strike on the front pages. However, this strategy also limited the number of UAW members who were able to participate in the strike. Many of the most important sites of production, including most engine, axel, and transmission plants remained up and running, allowing companies like GM to continue the majority of its production uninterrupted. This not only meant that the full power of the strike was never employed (one reason why the union did not win more of its demands, including the full restoration of pensions at GM), but, since the strike was largely contained and controlled from above, it also meant that many workers were left out of the struggle and the decision-making process. Indeed, auto workers not only did not decide when and whether to begin the strike, but even the decision to go back to work while the TAs were debated, was unilaterally made in advance without any discussion among or input from the rank and file.

Winning good contracts is important and unions need strong leaders, but the self organization of the labor movement and the rank and file is key to building the power needed to really challenge the bosses and the tyranny of capital — that is the ways in which decisions about production are made by a small minority for the purposes of profit, not need. If we want to do that we have to insist that strikes like these be led from below by strike committees in each workplace, where decisions about where and when and how to strike are openly debated and discussed and that the negotiations be public and open to all members throughout the bargaining process. As Luigi Morris and I explained last year:


To build truly democratic unions, we must empower the rank-and-file members as much as possible, for that is where the power of any union lies. This means creating open, democratic assemblies for regular discussion, debate, and decision-making among all members of the workplace. It means open and transparent bargaining and the direct election of shop stewards and bargaining committee members, subject to immediate recall by a majority of the shop or the union. And it means the direct election of local and national union leaders from within the workplace who are committed to the interests of the working class, subject to immediate recall, and who earn no more than the annual wage of the average worker.

This also, importantly, has to include the right of every worker, not only the leadership and the bargaining teams, to decide when to call off the strike and when to return to work. Fain claimed that the return to work at Ford was a tactical decision, meant to put pressure on the other auto companies who had not yet settled, and while this may be true, this has nonetheless weakened the union’s position to keep fighting for more and should have been decided by the workers as a whole.

The UAW Must Take a Stand against Oppression and Imperialism

Perhaps the greatest contradiction of the UAW and the U.S. labor movement more generally is its ongoing silence on state oppression, and its support — and sometimes complicity — with U.S. imperialism. With some exceptions, such as Starbucks workers’ defense of trans rights and the ILWU’s ongoing active defense of Palestinian liberation, most unions have tended to focus almost exclusively on so-called bread-and-butter struggles over wages, benefits, and working conditions, avoiding confrontations with the state over questions of politics. When labor unions do intervene in politics, it’s usually to win legislation directly related to workers rights or in the form of mere resolutions. This timidity is in part a product of the historic cooptation of labor unions by the state and the Democratic Party, which have offered legality and limited protections in exchange for labor peace and ideological conformity. The result is that the labor movement has shrunk considerably, and what remains has grown increasingly bureaucratized and politically weakened. No longer willing to represent the political interests of all working people, labor unions have, for more than half a century, retreated from a strategy of class struggle toward one of class conciliation and reconciliation.

This project of reconciling labor to the interests of the state has produced and continues to be reinforced by an ideological perspective which views the interests of labor unions, and of U.S. labor in particular, as tied to the fortunes of the state and separate from broader issues of oppression and exploitation at home and abroad. When otherwise progressive leaders like Fain (who criticize the “billionaire class”) stand proudly on stages adorned in the stars and stripes, proudly talk about how the UAW helped build weapons for the “arsenal of democracy,” or record happy selfie videos with the U.S. president, they provide cover for state repression of broader working-class struggles and drive a wedge between working people at home and those who are on the receiving end of U.S. imperialist violence.

This is perhaps best exemplified by the national UAW’s ongoing silence on Israel’s expanding occupation of Palestinian territories and its genocidal massacre of more than 11,000 civilians in Gaza, which was accomplished with weapons provided by the United States and its allies. The argument that taking sides on such events or using the power of labor to confront the perpetrators of such atrocities is somehow outside the realm of labor unions only further divides the working class where it is most powerful: in the workplaces where it is already well-organized and where it has the potential to cause massive disruption in the service of justice.

In this period of crises and wars that threaten the well-being and livelihoods of working people across the world, it is more important than ever that unions break free from both the ideological and structural chains of the Democratic Party and the state and learn again to use the power of labor to wage political struggles for the whole class. The significant victories won by the UAW strike and the increasingly emboldened labor movement it has helped empower show that the conditions are overripe to build an independent, working-class alternative to the Democratic Party. We cannot wait, however, for a savior to do this for us. We must build this ourselves through struggle and self-organization.




James Dennis Hoff f is a writer, educator, labor activist, and member of the Left Voice editorial board. He teaches at The City University of New York.
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Niger fashion designer wants to spread positive image of her country

Niger fashion designer, Alia Bare -

Copyright © africanews

Jerome Delay/Copyright 2023

 The AP. All rights reserved.
By Rédaction Africanews
with AP 
NIGER

It was all glitz and glamour at the Joburg Fashion Week, a celebration of pan-African couture featuring designers and fashion creatives from across the continent.

Taking centre stage this year was Niger fashion designer, Alia Bare, with a collection she hopes will spread a positive image of her troubled home, which faces instability and economic sanctions following a military coup in July.




Bare, who’s lived in India and Senegal, showcased an elegant collection on Thursday which drew from her experiences living in different countries.


"It is a very important collection for me because it represents what I am in terms of my culture, my background. I’m from Niger and I’m from different ethnic groups, and I wanted to show that in this collection,” she said.

“Nowadays this is the most important thing. We are melting pot. We are a different blend of things and this is what makes us unique and what we should embrace totally."

Speaking at the event, Bare said Niger has long been associated with political strife by the rest of the world, an image she says does not fully represent the beauty of her country.

“When people talk about Niger they always talk about conflict, they talk about poverty and death, they talk about negative things,” she said.

“I know most people associate fashion with superficiality. But I think that fashion, through culture, can help to send a good message outside, an image of the country that is positive.”

She said she was “trying to share the love” she has for her country and she hopes it is working.

Bare’s collection, called DNA, is a blend of influences from around the world, including symbols from Niger and design by a South African graphic designer.

Satellite data and 100-year-old images reveal quickening retreat of Greenland's glaciers

By Stefanie Waldek

published 2 days ago


Thanks to century-old photos taken by Danish pilots, we can study long-term changes in Greenland's glaciers.

Greenland has thousands of peripheral glaciers separate from the ice sheet. (Image credit: Laura Larocca)

When scientists study the effects of climate change on Greenland's ice, they typically focus on the ice sheet— the massive, contiguous body of ice that covers some 80 percent of the island. But there are thousands of peripheral glaciers separate from the ice sheet along Greenland's coast, and they've been little studied — until now.

Using a combination of historical aerial photographs and satellite imagery of Greenland, scientists have now analyzed the movement of more than 1,000 peripheral glaciers from 1890 to 2022. And, unfortunately, the results are bleak. According to the researchers, the rate of retreat for these peripheral glaciers has doubled in the last 20 years.

Related: Satellites show Antarctic ice shelves have lost 74 trillion tons of water in 25 years

"Peripheral glaciers only represent about 4 percent of Greenland’s total ice-covered area, but they contribute 14 percent of the island’s current ice loss — a disproportionately large portion," Laura Larocca, a climate and geospatial scientist who served as first author on a study about the findings, said in a statement. "If you look globally at all glaciers that are distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet, they have contributed roughly 21 percent of observed sea level rise over the last two decades. So, these smaller ice masses are an important part of the sea level problem."

An archival photo of Greenland, one of more than 200,000 taken by Danish pilots in open-cockpit airplanes in the early 20th century.

 (Image credit: Danish National Archives)

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The historical aerial photographs of Greenland were crucial to the team's analysis. Earth-observing satellites weren't launched until the 1970s so, for a long time, scientists had believed detailed observational records of Greenland's peripheral glaciers did not exist until that point. But 15 years ago, an archive of old photographs was discovered in a castle in Greenland, including images of the country's coastline. These images were taken by pilots in open-cockpit airplanes.

"Those old photos extend the dataset back prior to the satellite era, when widespread observations of the cryosphere are rare," Yarrow Axford, the William Deering Professor in Geological Sciences at Northwestern University, said in the statement. "It’s quite extraordinary that we can now provide long-term records for hundreds of glaciers, finally giving us an opportunity to document Greenland-wide glacier response to climate change over more than a century.”

Greenland Glaciers Are Receding Twice As Fast As They Did in the 20th Century

Greenland's glaciers retreated more rapidly in the last two decades, says research into changes in the glaciers over the past 130 years.

News  

Published: November 10, 2023

 

| Original story from Northwestern University

Photo of Greenland, taken during a field research trip by Northwestern University researchers. Credit: Laura Larocca

Greenland’s thousands of peripheral glaciers have entered a new and widespread state of rapid retreat, a Northwestern University and University of Copenhagen study has found.

To piece together the magnitude of glacier retreat, the research team combined satellite images with historical aerial photographs of Greenland’s coastline, which is dotted with thousands of glaciers that are separate from the island’s massive central ice sheet. With these one-of-a-kind data, the researchers documented changes in the lengths of more than 1,000 of the country’s glaciers over the past 130 years.

Although glaciers in Greenland have experienced retreat throughout the last century, the rate of their retreat has rapidly accelerated over the last two decades. According to the multiyear collaborative effort between the United States and Denmark, the rate of glacial retreat during the 21st century is twice as fast as retreat during the 20th century. And, despite the range of climates and topographical characteristics across Greenland, the findings are ubiquitous, even among Earth’s northernmost glaciers.

The findings underscore the region’s sensitivity to rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.

“Our study places the recent retreat of peripheral glaciers across Greenland’s diverse climate zones into a century-long perspective and suggests that their rate of retreat in the 21st century is largely unprecedented on a century timescale,” said Laura Larocca, the study’s first author. “The only major possible exception are glaciers in northeast Greenland, where it looks like recent increases in snowfall might be slowing retreat.”

The study finds that climate change explains the accelerated glacier retreat and that glaciers across Greenland respond quickly to changing temperatures. This highlights the importance of slowing global warming.

“Our activities over the next couple decades will greatly affect these glaciers. Every bit of temperature increase really matters,” Larocca said.

“This work is based on vast analyses of satellite imagery and digitization of thousands of historical aerial photographs — some taken during early mapping expeditions of Greenland from open-cockpit airplanes,” said Northwestern’s Yarrow Axford, a senior author on the study. “Those old photos extend the dataset back prior to the satellite era, when widespread observations of the cryosphere are rare. It’s quite extraordinary that we can now provide long-term records for hundreds of glaciers, finally giving us an opportunity to document Greenland-wide glacier response to climate change over more than a century.”

Axford is the William Deering Professor of Geological Sciences at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. When the research began, Larocca was a Ph.D. candidate in Axford’s laboratory. Now, Larocca is a NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow hosted at Northern Arizona University. She will join Arizona State University’s School of Ocean Futures as an assistant professor in January 2024.

While climate change’s effects on Greenland are well studied, most researchers focus on the Greenland Ice Sheet, which covers roughly 80% of the country. But fluctuations in Greenland’s peripheral glaciers — the smaller ice masses distinct from the ice sheet that dot the country’s coastline — are widely undocumented, in part due to a lack of observational data.

Prior to the launch of Earth-observing satellites in the 1970s, researchers did not have a full understanding of how temperature changes affected Greenland’s glaciers. Widespread and detailed observational records simply did not exist — or so researchers thought. A breakthrough came about 15 years ago when long-forgotten aerial photographs of Greenland’s coastline were rediscovered in a castle outside Copenhagen. Now housed within the Danish National Archives, the images enabled study senior author Anders Bjørk, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, to begin constructing the glaciers’ history.

“Starting in the 1930s, Danish pilots clad in polar bear-fur suits set out on aerial mapping campaigns of Greenland and ended up collecting over 200,000 photos of the island’s coastline,” Larocca said. “They also unintentionally captured the state of Greenland’s peripheral glaciers.”

In previous studies, Bjørk and his collaborators digitized and analyzed photos to study 361 glaciers in the southeast, northwest and northeast regions of Greenland. In the new study, Larocca, Axford and their team added records for 821 more glaciers in the south, north and west regions and extended Bjørk’s records to present day.

As a part of this effort, the team digitized thousands of paper-copy aerial photographs taken from open-cockpit planes and collected imagery from multiple satellites. The researchers also removed terrain distortion and used geo-referencing techniques to place the photos at the correct locations on Earth.

“There really aren’t any automated processes to digitize all these photos,” said Larocca, who began the project in 2018. “A project like this takes a lot of people and a lot of manual labor to scan and digitize all these analog air photos. Then, we had to do a lot of preprocessing work before making our measurements.”

Larocca, Axford and their team also extended records further back in time by leveraging clues hidden within the landscape. When glaciers grow larger and then retreat, they leave behind a terminal moraine (sediment transported and deposited by a glacier, often in the form of a long ridge). Locating these moraines enabled the researchers to map older glacier extents before pilots took their first flyover photos in the early 1930s.

Using the late 20th-century imagery as a baseline, Larocca, Axford and their team also calculated the percentage of length that glaciers have lost over the past 20 years. They found that, on average, glaciers in south Greenland lost 18% of their lengths, while glaciers in other regions lost between 5-10% of their lengths over the past 20 years.

As global temperatures increase, it has become more imperative than ever to better understand how these melting glaciers will affect rising sea levels and reliable sources of fresh water.

“Peripheral glaciers only represent about 4% of Greenland’s total ice-covered area, but they contribute 14% of the island’s current ice loss — a disproportionately large portion,” Larocca said. “If you look globally at all glaciers that are distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet, they have contributed roughly 21% of observed sea level rise over the last two decades. So, these smaller ice masses are an important part of the sea level problem. Millions of people worldwide also rely on glaciers for fresh water, agriculture and hydropower, so it’s deeply concerning that we’re allowing this to continue. The choices we make over the next few years will make a huge difference to how much ice we lose.”

Reference: Larocca LJ, Twining–Ward M, Axford Y, et al. Greenland-wide accelerated retreat of peripheral glaciers in the twenty-first century. Nat Clim Chang. 2023. doi: 10.1038/s41558-023-01855-6

Iceland declares state of emergency ahead of expected volcanic eruption near Reykjavik

An Icelandic town home to some 4,000 people near the capital Reykjavik could be heavily damaged by a volcano expected to erupt within hours or days, experts said on Saturday.


Issued on: 12/11/2023 - 

A general view of damage due to volcanic activity at a golf course in Grindavik, Iceland on November 11, 2023. 

© RUV / Ragnar Visage, via Reuters

By: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: FRANCE 24

The town of Grindavik on the southwestern coast was evacuated in the early hours of Saturday after magma shifting under the Earth's crust caused hundreds of earthquakes in what was believed to be a precursor to an eruption.

"We are really concerned about all the houses and the infrastructure in the area," Vidir Reynisson, head of Iceland's Civil Protection and Emergency Management told AFP.

The town -- around 40 kilometres (25 miles) southwest of Reykjavik -- is located near the Svartsengi geothermal plant, the main supplier of electricity and water to 30,000 residents on the Reykjanes peninsula, as well as a freshwater reservoir.

Grindavik is also near the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa resort, a popular tourist destination which closed as a precaution earlier this week.


"The magma is now at a very shallow depth, so we're expecting an eruption within a couple of hours at the shortest, but at least within a couple of days," Reynisson said.

The most likely scenario would be a fissure opening in the ground near Grindavik.

"We have a fissure that's about 15 kilometres long, and anywhere on that fissure we can see that an eruption could happen," Reynisson said.

However he did not rule out the possibility of an eruption on the ocean floor, which would likely cause a large ash cloud.

"It's not the most likely scenario, but we can't rule it out because the end of the... fissure goes into the sea," he said.

The quakes and ground lift caused by the magma intrusion have already caused damage to roads and buildings in Grindavik and its surroundings.

A large crack also tore up the greens on the Grindavik golf course, an image widely shared on social media networks.

Iceland, which has 33 active volcanic systems, has declared a state of emergency and ordered the mandatory evacuation of Grindavik early Saturday.

Emergency shelters and help centres have opened in several nearby towns, but most Grindavik residents were staying with friends or relatives, media reported.
'Unprecedented' magma flow

While the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) had for several days observed magma accumulating under the Earth's surface at a depth of about five kilometres, it said late Friday that the magma had begun rising vertically in a dyke.

"This magmatic dyke has been shallowing and the top depth has now been assessed to be 800 metres under the surface," IMO's volcanic hazards coordinator Sara Barsotti told AFP late Saturday.

She said experts were surprised by the amount of lava and the speed at which it was accumulating.

"What we are seeing now is an unprecedented event. We are talking about velocities for this process and volumes or inflow rates that are much higher than what we have seen on the peninsula so far."

Three eruptions have taken place on the Reykjanes peninsula in recent years near the Fagradalsfjall volcano: in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023 -- all far from any infrastructure or populated areas.

The Earth's crust has been fractured "so much over the past three years" by those eruptions, "helping magmatic fluids in finding their path faster", Barsotti explained.

Prior to the March 2021 eruption, the Reykjanes peninsula had been dormant for eight centuries.

Volcanologists believe the new cycle of increased activity could last for several decades or centuries.

Situated in the North Atlantic, Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

A massive eruption in April 2010 at another Iceland volcano -- Eyjafjallajokull, in the south of the island -- forced the cancellation of some 100,000 flights, leaving more than 10 million travellers stranded.

(AFP)

Iceland earthquake: Town of Grindavik ‘could be obliterated’ if volcanic eruption strikes


Iceland braces for an imminent volcanic eruption after thousands of earthquakes strike

Thousands evacuated as fears grow of volcano eruption in Iceland

Lydia Patrick

A volcanic eruption could destroy the Icelandic town of Grindavik or lead to extensive ash clouds, experts have warned.

The country has been shaken by more than 2,000 small earthquakes in the past few days prompting fears the tremours could disrupt the Fagradalsfjall volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula in the southwest of the country.


Thousands have been told to evacuate Grindavik as a precautionary measure as a magma tunnel stretches below the surface.


If an eruption occurs in or close to the town, the consequences will be devastating, volcanologist Ármann Höskuldsson warned.

He told news site RUV: “This is very bad news. One of the most serious scenarios is an eruption in the town itself, similar to that in Vestmannaeyjar, 50 years ago.

"This is [would be] much worse," says Ármann.

Ragga Ágústdóttir, who lives close to Grinvadik, said residents were fearful of what could happen if an eruption struck.


“The scenario on the table now is that it will happen in or just north of the town of Grindavik. There’s no good option here,” she told The Independent.

A general view of damage due to volcanic activity at a golf course, in Grindavik
(via REUTERS)

If a volcanic eruption does not happen in Grinvadik, one could occur out at sea, experts have said.

MP Gisli Olafsson said the country was praying the “worst case scenarios do not happen”.

He shared on X, formerly Twitter: “The situation in Grinvadik continues to become even more grave than before. The town has already suffered considerable damage from the earthquakes and from the shifts in the ground as the magma thrusts itself upwards.”


He said a 15km magma tunnel could turn into a fissure vent eruption as the chamber beneath the area was two times larger than previous eruptions in Reykjanes over the past few years.

There is a chance the eruption could occur under the ocean, resulting in an explosive eruption and extensive ash clouds, he said.



A danger zone has been defined based on the location of the magma tunnel
(Icelandic Met Office)

“Scientists have warned that they may not be able to give any further warning of when the magma reaches the surface, making it quite dangerous to go in there,” he added.


It comes as residents endured a less shaky night as 880 earthquakes below magnitude three were recorded overnight compared to the previous 1,485 earthquakes which rocked the country in previous days.

Some 3,000 residents have been evacuated, with many forced to leave their pets behind.

Seismic activity mapped around Grindavik
(Provided)

A meeting on Saturday afternoon determined that only residents from the Þórkätlustað district were safe to swiftly return to collect necessities, report RUV.

Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson, professor of geophysics, told RUV seismic activity continues, despite slowing down. He predicted three scenarios; the first is an eruption near Grindavik or north of the town; the second is that there is no eruption and the third, and least likely prediction, according to Mr Guðmundsson, is an undersea eruption.

Iceland is highly susceptible to natural disasters as it lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge – a divergent plate boundary where the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate are moving away from each other, leading to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

Lava spurts and flows after the eruption of a volcano in the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland, July 12, 2023
(via REUTERS)

“I don’t think it’s long before an eruption, hours or a few days. The chance of an eruption has increased significantly,” Thorvaldur Thordarson, professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, told state broadcaster RUV yesterday.

Reykjanes is a volcanic and seismic hot spot southwest of the capital Reykjavik. In March 2021, lava fountains erupted spectacularly from a fissure in the ground measuring between 500 750 metres long in the region’s Fagradalsfjall volcanic system.