Sean Sweeney recently joined the Murphy Institute to direct the International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment. This past December, Sweeney spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about the potential effects of the since-vetoed Keystone XL pipeline on job creation. See the video here.
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) got a plug in the Guardian on Tuesday with a letter from Bert Schouwenburg, International Officer of GMB, the energy union in the UK. The letter was in response to an article by Mark Lynas called We must reclaim the climate change debate from the political extremes.
From Schouwenberg:
Had Lynas attended the alternative people’s summit at the COP 20 climate change talks in Lima last year, he would have heard a succession of speakers from Latin America’s indigenous communities rejecting development models imposed on them by transnational capital. They are in the frontline of the fight against climate change and are struggling to stop the destruction of their environment by mining and mono-crop agriculture for export. They would not see themselves in terms of left or right, but fully understand that an economic model based on infinite growth, with the commensurate depletion of the planet’s natural resources, is incompatible with saving the Earth from the catastrophic effects of global warming.
This does not mean sufficient energy cannot be provided for the needs of future generations, but that it must be responsibly sourced and publicly owned instead of being left to market forces and monolithic corporations whose priorities lie in ripping off consumers and making money out of burning fossil fuels. As an energy trade union, we support the necessary, just transition to a low-carbon economy, and are members of the global network Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. As the slogan read in Lima: “Let’s change the system – not the climate.”
Another March week gone by and it’s looking more like Feburary out in snowy New York City. Here at Murphy, martial arts met the workplace in a striking feature from our Arts & Culture section. And around the world of labor…
Organizing 2.0 brings together hundreds of leaders, organizers, fundraisers, techies and activists to share our collective wisdom, skills, and talents. There will be workshops, trainings, discussions, consulting and networking opportunities, visionary speakers, and a provocative debate around strategy and practices.
Over two days here at the Murphy Institute, we will bring together hundreds of people to learn from each other, share stories and strategies and build our skills, organizations and movements. Featured tracks focusing on online to offline organizing, digital strategy, member engagement and much more.
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By Zenzile Greene
Our idea for this piece was to use images as a way to explore the extracurricular life of a worker and place it directly into the context of her work space. It is a visual dialogue between her journey as a martial artist and the role it has played in her evolution as a mother, and worker as well as other identities.
<click through to see the slideshow>
The process of photographing Ellie in her traditional Gi uniform using our midtown city work space as a backdrop was a pleasantly disorienting experience. For me, photographing Ellie in this setting changed the meaning of the space as well as Ellie’s place within it. The passages in each slide are sections of an essay that Ellie wrote about her martial arts training. We wanted to convey Ellie’s body in trained movement, juxtaposing her thoughts against a series of battle positions. Continue reading Work, Play, Fight
