News and Views from the People's Struggle
Minneapolis, MN – With only a month left before Donald Trump becomes president, immigrant rights activists in the Legalization for All Network are demanding that President Biden do all he can to protect immigrants before leaving office.
St. Paul, MN – Members of the Minnesota Climate Justice Committee (CJC) held a bannering, December 15, in opposition to Lawton Standard (formerly known as Northern Iron) in Eastside neighborhood of Saint Paul on Sunday.
Minneapolis, MN – On December 3 and 5, activists from the Free Palestine Coalition and Students for a Democratic Society came together at the Public Service Center while the Minneapolis city council voted on a proposed resolution to stand in solidarity with the protesters arrested during the occupation of Morrill Hall – renamed Halimy Hall – at the University of Minnesota.
Minneapolis, MN – On Sunday, December 8, the Minnesota Anti War Committee held their annual Human Rights Day action. 200 protesters gathered in Minneapolis’s Washburn Fair Oaks Park and marched down the busy Nicollet Avenue, shouting demands for human rights for all and calling on the Minnesota State Board of Investment to divest from apartheid Israel and weapons manufacturers.
Minneapolis, MN – On November 22, over 100 union educators attended an informational event about Palestine, “Being an Educator in a Time of War and Genocide.” They braved a cold Friday night to attend, as well as attacks from backward groups outside their union, including smears from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Minneapolis, MN – Around 50 people rallied for reproductive rights outside Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office on the brisk afternoon of Sunday, November 24. The Minnesota Abortion Action Committee (MNAAC) organized the protest, which came at a pivotal time given the re-election of Donald Trump, whose first-term Supreme Court appointees voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Since the election, organizers with MNAAC have emphasized the need to take action against a familiar administration, one which promises to further do away with abortion rights. Addressing the situation in Minnesota, MNAAC member Maggie Moynihan told the crowd, “Clinics that offer real help and healthcare are few and far between in Minnesota, but the people who need their services are many.”
Organizers chose Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office as the location for the rally to draw attention to the bipartisan failures of politicians to codify abortion and to end the genocide in Palestine. While Klobuchar has a commendable track record speaking in favor of reproductive rights, she has failed to meaningfully pursue her campaign promise of “reinstating Roe.” She has also failed to uphold human rights at large, voting to continue military aid to Israel as recently as November 20.
Other groups at the protest included the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Climate Justice Committee and Anti-War Committee, as well as many supporters in the movement for women’s and reproductive rights.
While the rally primarily focused on the right to safe access to abortion, speakers also drew connections to the fight for a free Palestine. Crista Ocampo of the Anti-War Committee phrased this solidarity well, stating “The politicians who are sending bombs and military aid to uphold apartheid occupation are the same politicians who are stripping our rights away here in the states.” Ocampo went on to say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s here in the U.S. or in Gaza or the West Bank, when our rights are under attack, we will use everything we have to fight back.”
#MinneapolisMN #MN #WomensMovement #ReproductiveRights #Abortion #Trump #MNAAC
Minneapolis, MN – The 2024 United Nations climate conference, COP29, ended last Friday, November 22, after running into overtime, with little to show for its efforts. Every year, representatives from around the world convene at these conferences to negotiate agreements on how nations will cooperate – or not cooperate – to address the looming threat of climate change.
The attendees of COP, which stands for “Conference of the Parties”, as in, members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are a wide mix, ranging from climate scientists to NGO delegates, to government bureaucrats, to heads of state. Some take an active role in negotiations while others are just observers. Like at the U.N. more broadly, countries of all types are represented at COP conferences, but it is an open secret that the U.S., Canada and the EU members are the ones who really run the show – and the problems manifested by this unfair arrangement are what took center stage at COP29, especially around the issue of “climate finance.”
When you boil it down, the recurring problem of the COP conferences are as follows:
First, the dominance of North America and Europe in climate negotiations is at odds with the fact that these are the nations who are most responsible for climate change.
Second, the effects of climate change are projected to be most severe in the Global South – not just as an accident of geography, but because those countries have been subject to systematic plundering and deliberate maldevelopment by the so-called “First World,” and now have the least resources to invest in green development or even damage control.
And third, these wealthy nations that have spent centuries rigging the world economy in their favor, and who are increasingly divided amongst themselves, have the least interest in implementing any changes that could further jeopardize their slipping foothold.
The struggle over climate finance
The big subject at COP29 was around the issue of climate finance, meaning, how the world is going to pay for one, the shift towards sustainable economies, and two, fixing the destruction we’re already starting to see from climate change, both in terms of building preventative infrastructure and financing “loss and damage funds” to replace things destroyed by wildfires, floods, and so on.
Throughout the conference, delegates from developing countries – particularly from those in Africa and South America – insisted that the scale of the crisis is going to require investment by wealthier nations on a massive scale, something in the order of $3-plus trillion per year. North America and Europe on the other hand, complained that there was simply no budget for this, that these numbers put forward by other countries were based on bad data, and that more of the burden should fall on the private sector rather than government money.
By the end of the nearly two-week conference, the goal was set that by 2035 the world would be allocating just $300 billion annually, with a sizable portion of that coming from private banks. Panama's climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez captured the mood felt by many representatives as they prepared to head home: “I’m so mad. It's ridiculous. Just ridiculous,” adding, “It feels that the developed world wants the planet to burn.”
The specter of Trump
Just days before COP29 began, Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. In the past, Trump has called climate change a “hoax.” He used his powers during his first term to cut back environmental regulations and enforcement and has campaigned on doing more of the same. According to several reports, there was a general atmosphere of anxiety at COP29 that many of these negotiations wouldn’t even matter in a few months, since Trump is even less likely than Harris would’ve been to honor U.S. commitments pledged at the conference.
The other side of this, though, is that the election of Donald Trump signals to many countries that they can no longer expect any good to come from hitching themselves to the United States’ wagon, and that forging new alliances outside of U.S. dominion, such as with the BRICS nations, is going to be a major part of the road ahead when it comes to fighting climate change.
The need for a new system
As outlined above, the COP conferences lay bare a core problem with the world as it currently exists. Everyday people in every part of the world are starting to see the effects of climate change already; scientists in every part of the world agree that our current trajectory is towards catastrophe; but government officials in wealthy Western nations are bound by the intractable laws of monopoly capitalism -“increase profits forever, or die” – and thus are unable to right the ship.
There are few issues like climate change that expose this contradiction so plainly, where right in front of our eyes we see nothing but excuses, half measures, and false promises from the people who, in theory, should have the power to avert this global catastrophe. They instead use their resources to perpetrate genocide in Palestine, wage a proxy war in Ukraine, and prepare for all-out war on China and possibly Iran.
China, on the other hand, whose economy is not bound by the dog-eat-dog logic of the “free market” and aimless capital accumulation, is leading the world in the development and export of green technology. It is poised to become the main player in the world that nations can turn to for development aid. More importantly, that nation's economy is materially governed by a party of the working class, and thus is run in service of the working class, and that means popular policies like fighting pollution and climate change can be pursued for their own sake, not just as secondary measures when it’s politically convenient.
For the sake of our planetary future, those who care about the environment should look to countries like China as a model of what we ought to be fighting for – not just a seat at the table in failing institutions like COP29, but for an entirely different society where power is in the hands of the people, whose interests lie in actually stopping climate change at the source.
Charlie Berg is a member of the Climate Justice Committee – Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis, MN – On Wednesday November 21, 50 members of the newly formed Coalition for a Nuclear-free Mississippi River and their supporters rallied in front of Xcel Energy headquarters on Nicollet Mall in the heart of downtown. They demanded the energy company keep to its 2030 shutdown date for the Monticello Nuclear Reactor, because of the serious threats posed to public health, the Mississippi River, and drinking water for millions.
Minneapolis, MN – On Sunday, November 17, around 100 people gathered in Uptown Minneapolis’ Painter Park as Families Against Military Madness (FAMM) and the Climate Justice Committee (CJC) led a protest focused on bringing families into the climate and anti-war movements. Speakers discussed the post-election struggle and the need for young people to learn and practice organizing skills for the long struggles ahead.
Minneapolis, MN – On November 4, around 730 longshoremen in British Columbia, Canada walked off the job and began a strike. The striking longshoremen are represented by the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), Local 514 which is the foremen’s local.