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Climate crisis: an opportunity to transform our communities

We need a just transition to renewable energy – before the bosses impose an unjust transition on us, say REEL NEWS as they prepare for a tour of Britain

THE latest damning IPCC report published last week states that we have just 11 years to stop runaway climate change by moving the global economy away from fossil fuels: transition to renewable energy now seems inevitable.

However, if we don’t control that transition, it will be imposed on us.

The move to a greener economy that takes into account our jobs and communities is known as a “just transition” — we only have to look at the aftermath of the miners’ strike to see what happens without a just transition: workers and communities get thrown on the scrapheap.

Alternatively, with a just transition, we could be creating a million extra jobs in this country (an estimated 120 million jobs worldwide), ending austerity and transforming communities.

Two video-activists from the London-based Reel News collective travelled North America to look at grassroots organising on the ground with a climate-change-denying president in charge.

What we found were visionary struggles starting to implement a just transition through collective action which, if combined with our experience as a movement here, could lead to climate change being seen not as a threat but as an opportunity to create the communities we want to live in and at the same time put right historic injustices and inequalities.

In the 14 states we visited, it was very noticeable that combating climate change is a movement led by working-class communities in the US — and one that is completely integrated with the struggle against austerity, racism, mass incarceration and gentrification.

For example, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — an early “extreme weather” event directly linked to climate change — was used to force black working-class communities out of the city and gentrify it, while accelerating the privatisation of schools.

People quickly began to realise that you can’t fight one aspect of neoliberal capitalism without dealing with all the others.

Richmond, California, is a prime example of a working-class community we can learn a lot from.

A city of 110,000 with over three-quarters of the population being black, Latino or Asian, Richmond has been dominated by the oil giant Chevron for the past 100 years.

Living next to the oil refineries, there are serious health problems — particularly cancer. Yet only 5 per cent of the refinery jobs go to local people.

Chevron had historically bought off local politicians to look after its interests — so despite there being very strong social movements in the city, protests often had limited effects.

So in 2014 the people decided to stand their own community candidates. Despite Chevron spending an astonishing $3 million on a local election, every one of its candidates lost.

Since then not only has Chevron’s power been curbed but it has been forced to build the largest publicly owned solar farm in the Bay Area on its land — and in addition Richmond now has the highest minimum wage in the state, rent controls have been introduced to fight gentrification and police violence has been reduced through a new community policing model.

All these were demands coming out of the “Our Power” coalition — an umbrella movement building what they call a just transition framework.

So they have movements opposing mass incarceration, working alongside housing movements, food-growing networks, bike co-ops and other initiatives reclaiming space in the city for public use.

These seemingly disparate initiatives are part of an overarching strategy to inspire residents to envision the community they ideally want to live in and work out how they achieve it.

Increasingly, this process is being managed through local assemblies starting from people’s immediate needs and priorities.

Perhaps the most visionary project we found was Co-operation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi — an 80 per cent black, overwhelmingly working-class and overwhelmingly impoverished city in the heart of a state run by Tea Party Republicans — described by locals as “Trump on steroids.”

Jackson was one of the key centres of the civil rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s where people bravely fought back against the violent reality of Jim Crow laws — and now it’s inspiring movements throughout the US again with a revolutionary just transition model, with people’s assemblies at the centre of it.

In a city with over 50 per cent permanent unemployment, Jackson is income-poor but resources-rich in terms of the skills that people have.

So they’ve started building what they call a solidarity economy, based on a network of workers’ co-operatives exchanging skills and resources with each other and reducing the need for money.

The latest is a 3D-printing and fabrication co-op, where local people can come in and get training in the new technology, and then use it to build things they need — from shoes to housebuilding materials.

The co-ops are being set up on land strategically bought up while it was very cheap in the heart of impoverished Jackson, right next to affluent downtown — intentionally acting as a barrier to further gentrification.

Significantly, Jackson is another city where radical councillors have gained power — but Co-operation Jackson has drawn back from the electoral path, arguing that an assembly-based movement on the ground needs to be greatly expanded to make sure that councillors carry out the wishes of the people.

Like the movement in Britain, there concerns that progressive politicians, forced to work with the budget they are given, simply end up implementing austerity.

We found many more inspiring struggles, from ex-coalminers in Harlan County, Kentucky — one of the centres of historic militancy in the US trade union movement — organising to end coal burning and move to renewable energy to bring back jobs, to teenage organisers in the Puerto Rican community in Brooklyn, New York, fighting gentrification and organising a grassroots just recovery from the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico, to First Nations activists all over the country, inspired by the epic battle to stop an oil pipeline at Standing Rock, now blocking new pipeline and fracking projects.

There are inspiring struggles happening here too. The battle to stop fracking is well known, but maybe less well known is the occupation at the BiFab yard in Scotland last year to successfully stop its closure.

BiFab used to manufacture platforms for the offshore oil industry, but now makes platforms for wind turbines. Significantly, the workers said no retraining was required — showing how easily we could make a green transition in a lot of areas.

When the privatised company that ran the yard tried to shut it down and sell it off, the occupation forced the Scottish government to step in with a £15 million loan to keep it open.

This has opened up a conversation about what could be achieved with a bit of planning. Research by Stephen Salter at Edinburgh University shows that if wind and tidal power were to be implemented on the north-east coast of Scotland, enough energy could be produced to power the whole of Europe and create thousands of jobs — so why are we allowing future projects to be at the mercy of the market?

We are now organising a tour of Britain to take films from all of these struggles around the country, bringing people together to discuss and plan a just transition led by workers and communities in order that we benefit, not the bosses.

We’ll be doing the tour in conjunction with the Million Climate Jobs campaign already have interest from Unite Community branches, particularly in communities where industry has been devastated.

Whatever you are fighting for in your community, this is a perfect opportunity to learn from our documentaries and consider how your work can fight into the ecological struggle.

Of course as well as showing films we will be filming too as we travel, making a similar record of the inspiring struggles and projects that are already under way.

These new films will then be shown at subsequent screenings and sent back to activists in the US so that we can start linking and supporting each other’s struggles.

The American Climate Rebels: Just Transition Tour starts in January: contact [email protected] to arrange a screening in your area.

There will be a pre-tour London screening on Wednesday October 17, 7.30pm, Gik-Der RWCA, Top floor, Wedge House, White Hart Lane, Tottenham N17 8HJ (entrance in Beaufoy Road). For more information visit the Reel News website reelnews.co.uk or the One Million Climate Jobs website campaigncc.org/climatejobs.

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