It was the best of school funding, it was the worst of school funding. 
In one corner of Melbourne, at Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC), the sun rose on the bustling construction site of an expansive, state-of-the-art swimming and sports complex. The school’s halls gleamed, echoing with the buzz of students discussing future extracurriculars—swimming lessons in their Olympic-sized pool, dance classes in a dedicated aerobics room, badminton tournaments in a fully reconfigurable gymnasium.
The day started differently in Melbourne’s northern suburbs at a local public secondary college. The sun may have risen, but the mood was subdued. Teachers hurried between classrooms, covering for absent colleagues, their numbers stretched thin as the school faced another day without enough casual relief teachers to fill the gaps. Inclusion aides faced the difficult decision of supporting this student or that one, to assist in this classroom or the other. The ancient photocopier groaned under the strain of last-minute worksheets. There was no swimming pool to speak of, much less an $85 million sports complex.
The chasm between these two schools, separated by geography and a stark disparity in resources and opportunities, is widening. This is the almost Dickensian reality of Victoria’s education system in 2024. While wealthier private schools build new swimming pools and welcome students with an array of luxuries, many public schools are battling to keep the classrooms staffed and students supported.
At PLC, where annual fees hover around $38,000, students enjoy not just the basics but some of the best that education can offer. The new sports complex alone—complete with spectator seating, a gym, spin room and underground parking lot—demonstrates the level of privilege at play. Along with student fees, PLC collects $9.25 million in combined government funding annually. The school offers its students a wealth of extracurricular activities, small class sizes and personalised attention from staff. PLC claims the school’s reserves and donations entirely fund its new swimming pool, but the generous government funding that flows to the school undoubtedly frees resources for such extravagant projects.
Compare this to our secondary college in the northern suburbs, where 64 percent of students come from the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic spectrum and 67 percent speak a language other than English at home. This school faces serious challenges made worse by funding inequality. With a student body of just over a thousand, the school must get by on significantly less than PLC—around $18,600 per student per year when state and federal government funding are combined. Here, classrooms are often overcrowded, and the programs designed to support students with high needs are perpetually underfunded.
The differences between the two schools are not limited to facilities. They reflect broader systemic inequalities that play a crucial role in shaping the future of the students who pass through their doors. In wealthier private schools, students are surrounded by resources that encourage them to excel in both academics and extracurricular activities. Small class sizes and abundant staff ensure that students receive individualised attention, which helps them succeed in exams and ultimately gain entry to elite universities.
In contrast, our public schools are struggling to meet the basic needs of our students. Teachers are overstretched, and schools often lack the resources to retain enough staff or run full-scale literacy and numeracy programs. Students needing extra help may find themselves slipping through the cracks, with fewer academic or personal development opportunities.
The disparity in funding—and, by extension, the quality of education—reinforces pre-existing social inequalities rather than addressing them. While students at wealthier private schools are primed for success, with a network of alumni and well-resourced programs that set them up for high-status careers, students at many public schools face a much steeper climb. Without access to the same level of resources and support, many students from underfunded schools will struggle to break free from the socioeconomic circumstances into which they were born. This situation seems to be by design.
Universal access to education is often hailed as a great equaliser, the force that can lift horizons for students from all walks of life. But in Australia, it is increasingly becoming the opposite: the great reinforcer of socioeconomic hierarchy. The funding model that allows private schools to receive significant government support while public schools languish is a clear example of how education policy can entrench inequality rather than reduce it.
If politicians are serious about providing quality education for all students, this inequality must be reversed. Public schools cannot continue to struggle while private schools flourish. The state and federal governments need to fund public schools fully to meet 100 percent of the Schooling Resource Standard outlined in the Gonski report over a decade ago. And that is just a start.
The growing divide between schools like PLC and this northern suburbs secondary school is not just an issue of fairness—it is an issue of justice. Without urgent action, education in Australia will continue to perpetuate the very inequalities it should be dismantling.

Dave Bishop

A tale of two schools: an education in inequality

Three-quarters of Victorian private schools now receive more combined government funding than comparable public schools. The revelation, in a <a href="https://www.aeuvic.asn.au/three-quarters-vic-private-schools-get-more-public-funding-comparable-public-schools">new report</a> from the Australian Education Union (AEU), highlights the deepening crisis in our education system—one that leaves public schools starved of resources and struggling to meet students’ needs.
According to the union’s estimates, funding for private schools in the top 15 percent of socio-educational advantage (ICSEA 1100+) rose by more than 40 percent over the last decade.
While private schools continue to benefit from government largesse, public schools are being denied the resources they need to recruit and retain teachers and to address student needs. A staggering funding gap of up to $7,282 per student between private and public schools in the same ICSEA range and size group is shocking and indefensible.
“This unfair private school funding advantage translates into a school resourcing and staffing advantage and has fuelled a private school capital works boom, while at the same time denying public schools the recurrent funding needed to attract and retain teachers and to address the high level of student needs in the classroom”, AEU federal President Correna Haythorpe has pointed out.
The consequences of the funding disparity are felt most acutely by public school teachers, who are overworked, underpaid and increasingly burnt out. A <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/victoria-education/victorian-teachers-say-they-are-overworked-and-underpaid-forcing-them-to-quit/news-story/d4fbe123bd36ed8eb65e6d469fb91aa3?amp&amp;nk=a181793a2cd70113e7084d950977109e-1725813104">recent article</a> in the Herald Sun noted an exodus of Victorian teachers from the profession, many citing unbearable workloads, chronic staff shortages and aggressive behaviour from students and parents as reasons for leaving.
With more than 3,000 vacancies listed on the Victorian government’s jobs portal, it’s clear that the situation has reached a breaking point. Teachers work long unpaid hours to manage the demands of their schools. On average, Victorian teachers work more than ten hours of unpaid overtime each week. The workload is unsustainable and drives educators out of the profession, exacerbating the plague of staffing shortages.
The findings of a Monash University statewide survey of more than 8,000 teachers are similarly alarming. According to the study, only 30 percent of public school staff plan to remain in their roles until retirement, with mid-career teachers—the backbone of the profession—most likely to leave. The top reason for this exodus? Excessive workloads, compounded by inadequate pay and the increasing challenges posed by student behaviour and safety concerns.
The crisis was entirely avoidable. The Victorian and federal governments had ample opportunity to address the issues, but they have repeatedly prioritised elite private schools instead. Public funding for private schools has continued to rise over the past decade, reaching absurd levels. According to the AEU report, some of Victoria’s most privileged schools receive more than double the funding of disadvantaged public schools.
The funding inequality isn’t an accident; it’s a political choice. Governments, both Liberal and Labor, the ministers of which are predominantly private school graduates themselves, have repeatedly caved to the demands of the private school lobby, ensuring that the wealthiest institutions are looked after. 
The Monash research paper shows that the need for substantial investment in the public school workforce—through salary increases, reduced workloads and enhanced flexibility—remains unmet. Meanwhile, private schools use their lavish government funding to build new theatres and swimming pools, while public schools struggle to staff our classrooms.
If the Victorian and federal governments were serious about ensuring quality education for all students, they would fully fund public schools to meet 100 percent of the Schooling Resource Standard. Anything less is a betrayal of the students and teachers who rely on the public system.
Reversing educational inequality requires a campaign beyond the classroom. Education workers’ unions can lead the way. For Every Child, the AEU national campaign for fully funded public schools, is a start, but it will take more than lobbying to win real change.
Victorian teachers and education staff enter negotiations for a new contract in 2025. If government funding does not meet the minimum requirements for full staffing and schooling resources, industrial action must be seriously considered. 
This argument is made clearly in <a href="https://schoolworkbulletin.au">School Work Bulletin</a>, a new publication written by rank-and-file activists in the AEU.
Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. It’s well past time governments took them seriously.

Public schools in crisis as funds go private

In the small town of Kroscienko, Poland, on the border with Ukraine, hundreds of cars have continuously lined the road as ordinary Polish people wait to welcome refugees. Massive piles of donated food, water, clothing and children’s toys are overseen by volunteers. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people have opened their homes to those fleeing the carnage of Russia’s invasion.
These scenes, repeated all along the Polish-Ukrainian border and in other European countries bordering Ukraine, are nothing short of marvellous. Political leaders across the world, even as far away as Australia, have encouraged these acts of basic solidarity and promised to provide special protection for Ukrainians in their countries. Sympathy for Ukrainian refugees is promoted in the Western media as unquestionable—as it should be. This is exactly how refugees from every conflict and crisis should be welcomed.
Yet it is impossible not to view all this without recognising a stark contrast between the treatment of refugees from Ukraine and those from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
How can we understand and explain the double standard? Blatant racism is certainly a feature. This has bubbled to the surface in media coverage. On BBC News, a reporter described being emotional because “I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed”. On CBS News, the capital of Ukraine was described as a “relatively civilised” city in comparison with the cities of Iraq and Afghanistan. And as an NBC News reporter put it, “These are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine ... they are Christians, they are white, they’re very similar [to us]”.
Political figures have been equally discriminatory. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who came to power on the back of a xenophobic campaign against refugees from the Middle East and Africa, has defended his new policy of open borders for Ukrainians <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/hungarys-orban-defends-response-to-ukraine-war-refugees">by declaring</a>, “Migrants will be stopped, refugees can get all help”. In Denmark, there is a law that requires immigration officials to strip refugees of their valuables on arrival. This disgusting law, established as people fleeing civil war in Syria sought refuge in the country, is likely to be <a href="https://www.thelocal.dk/20220303/danish-government-likely-to-exempt-ukrainians-from-controversial-refugee-jewellery-law/">set aside for refugees from Ukraine</a>.
The double standard is clearly racist. But the explanation for these racist statements and policies lies in the broader geopolitical framework of imperialism. People from the Middle East and Africa have long been portrayed as the menacing “other”, who can’t be trusted to live peacefully in Europe, Australia or America. This helps provide justification for the US and other imperial powers to rampage around those regions with impunity, disregarding the millions of refugees displaced by the wars and poverty the West is responsible for.
Tens of thousands of refugees have drowned in the past decade attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. Rather than throw open the doors to these human beings in need, governments have instead criminalised assistance to refugees in transit and opened refugee camps with a strategy modelled on that of Australia’s brutal border regime.
It’s not just Ukrainians who are treated very differently. There are many examples of Western powers opening their arms to refugees perceived to be the victims of the crimes of countries, like Russia, deemed a threat to Western interests. One of the first immigration reforms enacted by the Biden administration, for example, provided targeted relief to more than 300,000 Venezuelan people who had been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-grants-new-deportation-protection-for-venezuelans-in-the-u-s-illegally-11615238111">staying in the US without permission</a>. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees from other South and Central American countries are detained at the border.
The double standards are clearly on display in Australia too. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised an increase in humanitarian visas for Ukrainians, and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has pledged to work with the federal government on this policy. But this welcoming stance doesn’t extend to the refugees the government continues to detain in offshore prison camps like Nauru or in makeshift detention facilities like the Park Hotel in Melbourne. If Morrison and Andrews were genuine about their concern for the plight of refugees, they would free and settle these people in the community today.
Australia’s imperial interests have been a major factor in its barbaric treatment of refugees fleeing the violence and repression of its allies. In Sri Lanka, the genocide of the Tamil people was excused and enabled by Australia. As Tamils fled persecution before, during and after a brutal civil war, the Australian government not only continued to supply military and policing equipment to the Sri Lankan government but also actively worked to prevent the arrival of Tamil refugees in this country. When they did arrive, many faced detention and even deportation back to danger.
As socialists, we reject the idea that anyone’s status as a human being deserving of our support should be dependent on their usefulness as a symbol that can be harnessed to the goals of empire. The solidarity and support currently being offered to Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion should be extended to all refugees, whether from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia or anywhere else.

West’s blatant double standard on refugees

The United States government labelling another country an “aggressor” is about as ironic as the phrase “US Department of Defense”.
The US has roughly 750 military bases in more than 80 different countries. At least 173,000 troops are deployed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive">around the world</a>. By comparison, China has just one military base outside its borders. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—along with simultaneous interventions in dozens of countries—demonstrate that this power projection is not just for show.
The United States has formally declared war only eleven times in its history, but the invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are not on the list, because the US has not formally declared war since World War Two, despite invading or intervening in dozens of countries. According to a <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf">report</a> from the Congressional Research Service, there have been more than 200 instances of the use of US armed forces abroad from 1945 to today—not including covert operations or interventions led by intelligence services.
According to the <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human">Costs of War</a> project at Brown University, at least 929,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in countries targeted by the US since 2001. The number of civilians killed in US drone strikes is known to be high, but precise figures are impossible to determine because the military has modified its definition of “combatant” to cover up <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html">mass murder</a>.
The US is an exporter of weapons and training to governments around the world, including military dictatorships. From Saudi bombs dropped on homes in Yemen to Israeli rockets landing in Gaza, shrapnel around the world often carries the label “Made in USA”.
So many aircraft and ships are patrolling trade routes, deploying to conflict zones and performing drills so consistently that the US military remains the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report-the-u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-many-industrialized-nations-infographic/?sh=3ad640684372">top polluter and carbon emitter</a> of any single organisation on the planet.
In 2020, US military spending represented nearly 40 percent of the global total with an estimated expenditure of US$778 billion, tens of billions above the budget allotted by Congress. Despite withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Biden administration is now calling for a further increase in the military budget to US$768 billion.
In the post-WWII period, Australia has forged a close alliance with US military might as a way of enhancing its own power in the Asia-Pacific region. The recent AUKUS deal cements that relationship for decades to come and ensures that Australia will continue in its role as the US empire’s main attack dog in this region. It is therefore incumbent upon socialists in Australia to oppose Australian imperialism in the wider fight against US imperialism.

The United States is the world’s biggest military aggressor

“Amazon won’t let us leave”—those were the last words Larry Virden sent, via text message, to his partner. That night, on Friday 10 December, a tornado ripped through the warehouse in Illinois where Virden was working, killing him and five co-workers. Their lives were sacrificed so that Amazon could make a few more dollars during peak delivery season.
More than half an hour passed between the issuance of a tornado warning by the US National Weather Service via text message and the moment the tornado landed in the parking lot outside the warehouse. While there are two emergency shelters at the warehouse, many workers were forced to keep working, and rushed into bathrooms and hallways at the last moment. Contributing to the disaster, most of those onsite weren’t carrying their mobile phones due to company policy and thus didn’t receive the tornado warning directly. An Amazon worker at a neighbouring facility <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-12/deadly-collapse-at-amazon-warehouse-puts-spotlight-on-phone-ban">told Bloomberg</a>, “After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe”.
After reports had already emerged of the carnage in Illinois, Amazon’s founder, former CEO and current Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos took a moment to post on social media—celebrating the launch of the third crewed flight into space by another of his ventures, Blue Origin. It would take <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeff-bezos-criticized-late-response-amazon-warehouse-collapse-illinois-tornado-2021-12">several more hours</a> before Bezos’ public relations team bothered to offer condolences to the families of those killed. Amazon CEO Dave Clark merely offered his “thoughts and prayers”.
This callous disregard for workers’ lives isn’t limited to Amazon, but is a systemic feature of capitalism. On the same night, a tornado ripped through western Kentucky, killing more than 90 people—including at least eight workers at a candle factory in the town of Mayfield. Another eight workers are still missing under the twisted metal and debris. Among the workers who survived, several told NBC News that supervisors had threatened to fire anyone who left <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-tornado-factory-workers-threatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581">before the tornado hit</a>.
At least fifteen of the more than 110 workers at the candle factory did request to leave, grouping together to make the case, but they were rebuffed each time. Company executives denied this, but workers were adamant. “‘If you leave, you’re more than likely to be fired’. I heard that with my own ears”, McKayla Emery told NBC. Emery was trapped under the rubble for over six hours and remains in a hospital bed with swollen, immobile legs and chemical burns from candle wax across her body.
These tragedies highlight multiple interlocking problems arising from a system that prioritises profits over human life. Casualised workforces, attacks on conditions, competitive pressures, supply chain issues, and, of course, climate change are all problems that can be tied to the devastation in Kentucky and Illinois.
The weather pattern that generated storms in the US Midwest that night isn’t common in December. “The heat and humidity across the South was pretty uncharacteristic for this time of year,” Victor Gensini, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/tornado-outbreak-kentucky-rare-weather-conditions-climate-change-rcna8565">told NBC News</a>. “I remember waking up, looking at the weather maps and saying, ‘Geez, this looks a lot more like late April than mid-December.’” Combined with La Niña conditions, the unseasonable warmth increased the potential severity of storms in the region.
Amazon is the second largest employer in the US. Earlier this year—in a race to meet increased demand and avoid supply chain disruptions—the company rushed to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-faces-more-than-slowing-sales-growth-it-needs-more-warehouses-2021-07-30/">build more warehouses</a> and pump-up its delivery capabilities. Of the 190 workers at the Amazon warehouse hit by the tornado, only seven <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/business/dealbook/amazon-warehouse-tornado.html">were full-time employees</a>. Using so many contractors helps Amazon limit its liability when disasters strike. It also makes it more difficult for workers to organise and fight for better wages and conditions.
While a much smaller company, the operators of the candle factory—Mayfield Consumer Products—have a <a href="https://kycir.org/2021/12/13/mayfield-candle-factorys-labor-practices-under-scrutiny-in-wake-of-deadly-tornado/">reprehensible record of their own</a>. In pursuit of cheap, more easily exploitable labour, the company has recruited economically-disadvantaged workers from Puerto Rico and opened at least two contracts with nearby jails to bring in incarcerated workers. Competition compels every company, large and small, to drive down wages and conditions in pursuit of profit.
The workers who approached the bosses at Mayfield in small groups knew they couldn’t do so individually—unfortunately, even that wasn’t enough. While US federal law protects the right to refuse to work in dangerous conditions, this right is meaningless in a moment of danger without the unified demand of the majority of workers onsite. The farm workers who fought for new protections in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/north-americas-heatwave-hell">the midst of the US west coast heatwave</a> this summer can testify to that.
Investigations by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration are now underway at both worksites. Without the backing of a militant and organised workforce, however, these investigations won’t bring justice for the workers murdered by their employers at Mayfield and Amazon. Real justice can only be won through class struggle.

‘Amazon won’t let us leave’: Corporate greed gets workers killed in US tornado disaster

Michael* is a network technician at Frontier Communications in southern California and a member of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 9. In October, Michael and his co-workers struck twice for six hours at a time. They claim Frontier engaged in “unfair labor practices” (a term in US workplace law for actions by employers that violate the National Labor Relations Act) after management threatened to discipline workers, including Michael, who raised safety concerns.
On a usual morning, Michael’s jobs for the day are pre-loaded onto a handheld device. When Michael and other technicians downed tools, it created a backlog of more than 2,000 jobs. The impact of the strike was amplified by the participation of the dispatchers, fellow CWA members, who upload the jobs onto the workers’ devices. When management contacted outside dispatchers at call centres in nearby states, hoping they would reschedule the jobs with contractors, those dispatchers, also CWA members, refused to cross the “digital picket line”. Each strike cost the company at least US$3 million in fines from California’s Public Utility Commission for uncompleted jobs.
Michael told Red Flag that he is “usually a fairly passive guy”, but that his politics became more radical after the Black Lives Matter movement and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on his community and workplace. “The history of unions”, Michael argues, “shows us that for beneficial outcomes in a time of struggle, a militant response is needed”.
Michael isn’t the only one in his family who took action during a month now widely referred to as “Striketober”. Michael’s partner Patricia* is a nurse working for healthcare company Kaiser and a member of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals. She recently participated in a ballot in which 96 percent of workers in a membership of 24,000 approved strike action. They join upwards of 50,000 Kaiser workers across several states preparing to strike after the company proposed an annual pay rise of just 1 percent.
Patricia’s and Michael’s struggles demonstrate several common themes in workplaces across the US that have contributed to the events of Striketober. Both work on contracts with separate tiers for workers hired before and after a certain date. Both have been offered a pay rise substantially less than the current annual rate of inflation of 5.4 percent. Both have encouraged co-workers to become active members of the union despite their own reservations about union officials. And both are tired of empty rhetoric by politicians celebrating “essential workers” while doing nothing to improve their lives.
Alongside coal miners in Alabama and nurses in Massachusetts who have each been on strike for eight months, there have been strikes, in October, of whiskey distillers, bus drivers, hotel workers, teachers, academics and more. Fast food workers continue to organise walkouts for an increased minimum wage and a union. On 15 October in Sioux City, Iowa, the predominantly Latino workforce at a Curly’s/Smithfield food processing plant marched out to chants of “Sí, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”—a strike chant first popularised in 1972 by Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers).
The total numbers involved in the strikes aren’t high by historic standards, particularly after a strike called by 60,000 film and television studio workers was averted when a tentative agreement was reached. But the strikes do mark a return to a modest upswing in industrial action that began before the pandemic. In 2018, teachers made up the majority of 485,200 US workers who went on strike, the highest number involved in work stoppages in a year since 1986. In October 2019, 48,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike at General Motors alone, more than the total number of US workers on strike this October.
The recent uptick in strikes, while perhaps not qualifying as a “wave”, in its social and political context appears ripe with new possibilities. Some workers are feeling confident because of a tight labour market. As Johnnie Kallas of Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker told <a href="https://therealnews.com/beneath-striketober-fanfare-the-lower-frequencies-of-class-struggle-need-to-be-heard">Real News Network</a>, “We are witnessing a unique opportunity for many workers who have been on the front lines of a global pandemic and recognise that employers are struggling to hire”. This has manifested not just in strikes with stronger demands, but also a record number of resignations. For others, the labour shortage has led to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-25/-suicide-shifts-7-day-weeks-fuel-rare-flare-up-in-u-s-strikes">a rise in forced overtime</a>, a catalyst for strikes in steel production, food processing and health care.
So far this year there have been at least <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/hospitals-labor-shortage-covid-delta-516303">30 strikes of healthcare workers in pandemic hot spots</a> where understaffing, deteriorating conditions, and the extreme demands of the job have worn people’s patience thin. Jamie Lucas, executive director of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, told Politico: “From our members, I’ve never heard the word ‘strike’ uttered so many times, whether they’re covered by a contract or not. Whether they’re in negotiations or not. They’re fed up. The reasons have always been there, but there’s a new realisation that they have the upper hand”.
A strike at Deere, a farm equipment company, began after 10,000 workers represented by the UAW rejected a collective bargaining proposal that reinforced a tiered system in which different sections of the workforce have different rights and conditions. UAW officials were caught by surprise when the contract they negotiated was rejected by 90 percent of the voting membership. That original proposal included an annual pay rise below inflation and would have completely eliminated pensions for all new hires.
The determination of Deere workers to strike was fuelled in part by an awareness of the company’s massive profits and increased executive compensation during the pandemic. One reason they are feeling confident is a shortage of parts created by global supply chain disruptions. The shortage has prevented Deere from building up inventory to tide it over during the strike. Deere has tried using its office staff to replace striking workers on the production line—a move that <a href="https://jalopnik.com/john-deere-put-temporary-workers-on-the-factory-floor-1847872374">resulted in a number of accidents</a>, leading to multiple ambulance calls. On 2 November the workers <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2021/11/02/john-deere-strike-iowa-continues-after-uaw-members-reject-second-contract-united-auto-workers/6251849001/">voted down a second contract proposal</a> by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, and the strike will continue.
A strike at Kellogg, a breakfast cereal company, involves 1,400 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union and was sparked by similar issues. Workers there are holding out against another two-tier contract. One of the strike captains at Kellogg, Jason Schultz, a 44-year-old forklift operator, was photographed standing alone, staffing a picket line by himself through an intense rainstorm in the middle of the night. When VICE News <a href="https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/jg8y3p/the-kelloggs-worker-in-this-viral-photo-told-us-why-hes-braving-the-storm">asked about the viral image</a>, he responded, “Many will see one person [in the photo]. To me, that is over 1,400 brothers and sisters standing as one”.
As they move into action, many unionised workers are bumping up against the management-friendly approach of their unions’ officials. This became starkly apparent with the rejection of two-tier agreements across multiple workforces. The two-tier model was first popularised in the 1980s and has been championed since then by officials subscribing to the business union strategy—an approach characterised by top-down, management-friendly control of the union. A sudden wave of rejections of these kinds of agreements by rank-and-file activists is a positive development in the US labour movement.
Within two of the biggest unions in the country—the UAW and the Teamsters—a related battle is underway. Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) is a democratic reform movement within the UAW that emerged after a series of corruption scandals. UAWD calls for direct elections of union leaders rather than the current delegate system. In the Teamsters, where direct elections were enacted after their own corruption scandals years ago, an <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/hoffa-teamsters-for-a-democratic-union-reform-labor-militancy-election">ongoing election process</a>, which will be finalised in November, pits a faction endorsed by the outgoing president, James P. Hoffa, against an insurgent faction that claims to be more militant. Hoffa is widely despised by Teamsters members after he ratified a two-tier agreement covering 280,000 workers at UPS in 2018 even after union members <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/ups-contract-rejection-james-hoffa-hybrid-drivers">voted to reject it</a>.
“Socialists”, as long time Teamster Joe Allen put it in <a href="https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/11/striketober/">an article on Striketober</a> in Tempest Magazine, “need to actively organize rank and filers to work with union officials when they fight for us but act independently of them when they don’t”. This is a lesson being learnt in real time, it seems, by many workers on the front lines of the class struggle in the US today.
Amid this apparent rank-and-file rebellion, there are also questions about the US labour movement’s ties to Democrats and expectations of the Biden administration. Top union officials have maintained loyalty to the president. One, president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, went so far <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article255364701.html">as to tell McClatchy</a>, “Frankly, I don’t know another president who’s done this much for labour”. Other officials and union members have voiced discontent with the administration’s relative inaction throughout Striketober. Marlena Pellegrino, one of 700 nurses on strike for eight months at Saint Vincent Hospital in Massachusetts, told NBC News she was unsure about Biden’s <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1282094">commitment to workers</a>. “It is time for someone to step up”, she said. “We would absolutely love and implore the president to get involved. There hasn't been any direct involvement at that level.”
Biden sent his labour secretary, Marty Walsh, to speak at a Kellogg workers’ picket line in Pennsylvania, and the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, visited a Deere workers’ picket in his home state of Iowa. This kind of support, however, is purely symbolic.
Meanwhile, negotiations with Senate Democrats over Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill have significantly whittled down the original commitment of US$3.5 trillion—jettisoning much of the social spending and other provisions that could have improved US workers’ position somewhat. Unionists like Michael and Patricia have been particularly disappointed with the inability or unwillingness of Biden to deliver more for workers in this marquee bill.
Kellogg workers in Michigan say most of their co-workers vote Republican but are keenly aware of the lack of support for their strike from the party. Quotes on this topic from strikers—published in the Detroit Metro Times—show <a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/10/29/as-kellogg-strike-stretches-past-3-weeks-workers-say-theyve-noted-lack-of-gop-lawmaker-support">a marked shift in consciousness</a>. “You should be doing what’s best for everybody and not [just] you or a select group of people like you”, says one. “Whether you’re blue or red, certain things just transcend that, and getting everybody treated equal should fall in that line”, says another.
At a Deere picket line in Iowa, this trend went even further. Allen’s report in Tempest quotes a UAW delegate who was met with loud cheers when he declared, “It’s no secret there’s been political conflict on the shop floor. But I say it’s time to put those differences aside. We need to unite against a greedy corporation, we need to unite around what we have in common and that’s that we are workers. We need solidarity”.
Across the political spectrum, support for labour unions is at its highest since 1965, according to <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/354455/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx">polls by Gallup</a>. Polls by More Perfect Union and Blue Rose Research show that low income and non-college-educated Americans are <a href="https://perfectunion.us/low-income-education-voters-support-strikes-union/">among the strongest supporters of organised labour and strikes</a>.
An energised and militant labour movement could potentially revive unionism in the US after decades on the back foot. But the movement can’t rely on support from the Democrats any more than from the Republicans: both parties exist to serve big business interests counterposed to those of workers. The rising class consciousness expressed by workers in Striketober has, unfortunately, no significant political force to cohere and organise it. Alongside building the labour movement, the project for socialists in the US, as in Australia, must be to build an independent political force of that kind.
*Names have been changed.

US ‘Striketober’ puts class struggle in the spotlight

When fascists attacked the headquarters of an Italian trade union confederation this month, tens of thousands of anti-fascists responded by taking to the streets. We should take note in Australia.
The COVID-denialist, anti-vax protests around this country must be opposed publicly. Those organising and attending such events, including fascists and figures from the Australian far right, are not only denying the seriousness of the pandemic and undermining essential health measures—they are trying to build a reactionary political movement to live on beyond the pandemic.
Despite the strange brew of forces involved in the anti-vax mobilisations, there is no question that they have been driven by the far right. In Melbourne, the most prominent figure has been Avi Yemini. At the raucous protest outside the CFMEU in late September, a section of the crowd <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/inside-three-days-rage-melbourne">chanted his name</a>. Harrison McClean, well known for sharing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests">anti-Semitic conspiracy theories</a>, has been a central organiser.
Members of the Proud Boys have attended most anti-vax demonstrations. The Proud Boys, known to harass pro-refugee and Invasion Day events, have now added attacking supporters of public health measures to their repertoire.
In the west, Reclaim Australia Rally - Western Australia—one of the largest WA white supremacist pages on Facebook—has shared anti-vax “freedom” rallies with its followers and encouraged them to attend.
An anti-vax protest in Perth on 16 October was clearly a far-right mobilisation. Although many attendees badged themselves as “concerned citizens” the crowd included QAnon promoters and white supremacists. Beyond far-right core were members of One Nation, the AustraliaOne Party and the United Australia Party. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these far-right parties were advocates of alternative medicine who had no problem chanting alongside the likes of Dennis Huts, one of the state’s most notorious fascists.
The main chants at the demonstration were about “freedom of choice”. But speakers also railed against impending communism and urged supporters to “reclaim Australia”. White supremacism was thinly veiled; when the only non-white speaker announced he was Indian, a large section of the crowd tried to drown him out with chants of “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!”
The broader arguments, it became clear, were not just about mandatory vaccinations, but any public health measures at all.
In Brisbane, alternative health advocates made up a significant portion of those attending another anti-vax rally. For years, the far right has successfully spread anti-Semitic and QAnon conspiracy theories into the “wellness community”. Without a coherent understanding of the dynamics of capitalism, alternative health advocates’ concerns about Big Pharma have evolved into conspiracy theory quackery. The term “conspirituality” has been coined to describe the phenomenon.
There is nothing left wing about alternative medicine, the rejection of scientific research or ostensibly anti-authoritarian stances against state regulation. The individualism, entrepreneurialism and “conspiritualism” at the heart of the wellness movement fits alongside the far right’s claim that state-enforced public health measures are totalitarian. Fascism is the apogee of the cult of the individual. And this is what wellness circles, small business owners and far-right opponents of vaccine mandates all support.
While some may laugh at their nonsense or consider their numbers to be non-threatening, we only have to look abroad to see the potential impact of far-right politics on public health. In the United States, several Republican governors are mobilising anti-vax ideas as justification for repealing mandates for vaccinations <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/republican-party-gop-vaccine-mandates-repeal-covid-anti-vax/">against all diseases</a>.
The scale of the anti-vax rallies in Australia are a significant leap forward for forces opposed to public health measures. Their efforts help normalise the acceptance of mass deaths for some perceived sense of individual freedom. By contrast, the lesson the left should be drawing is that we are all connected and that collective participation in public health measures is necessary to save lives.
Not only have these demonstrations bolstered ideas hostile to social solidarity, but they have also opened yet another opportunity for far-right organisations to grow.
Globally, fascist movements have grown where street mobilisations are linked with far-right electoral parties. The <a href="https://www.unitedaustraliaparty.org.au/reignite-democracy-australia-joins-united-australia-party/">official ties</a> announced between Clive Palmer’s UAP and Reignite Democracy Australia—a branch of the international organisation behind coordinated anti-vax mobilisations globally—should be setting off alarm bells. The UAP now claims to have the largest registered membership of any political party in Australia. These forces must be confronted before they grow even more dangerous.
It is true, many of the rally-goers are not hardened fascists. They can be broken away if confronted about the fascistic company they keep. Successful counter-mobilisations against Reclaim Australia after its formation in 2014 offer some important lessons; while their initial rallies brought out thousands, most stopped attending when confronted for marching with fascists. Even as a minority, anti-fascist activists can have this effect when they stand united in opposition.
In Brisbane and Perth, where the COVID situation is markedly different from Melbourne and Sydney, anti-fascists have already taken to the streets to try to build counter protests. As the situation changes nationally, we must act urgently. The rise of fascism in our streets cannot be ignored.
As with far-right mobilisations historically, these ones will likely continue if they are not publicly challenged. We cannot allow them to feel a sense of ownership over the streets of our cities, or confidence that they somehow represent a silent majority.
We need to have more counter-mobilisations to discredit their movement’s ideas, highlight the involvement of the far right and put forward our own arguments: vaccination is about social solidarity, good unionists support workplace safety and COVID-19 is a serious threat. We need to counter them in numbers and with energy.

Vashti Fox

It’s time to confront the anti-vaccination far right

International cooperation at a historic, unprecedented scale is essential if the world is to avert the looming climate catastrophe. Anyone can see that and, for their part, our world leaders are happy to go through the motions. This international act plays out at conference after conference in which governments sign on (so we’re told) to fight climate change together: from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement to the International Solar Alliance. 
In November the world stage will once again be crowded with leaders keen to display their climate credentials when the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is convened in Glasgow. We can only hope that this time, people will see through the inevitable fanfare (in Australia, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/unistudentsforclimatejustice">Uni Students for Climate Justice</a> are organising to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/994322471356285">protest</a> as part of a global day of action coinciding with the conference).
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe that any new agreements for global cooperation on climate change emerging from the conference will achieve any more than all the many other agreements that have come and gone in the past four decades. Maintaining a clear-headed assessment of such events is helped by an understanding of the competitive dynamics of capitalism that mitigate against serious globally coordinated action on any issue—whether climate change or, for example, COVID-19.
Capitalism is a system defined by the pursuit of short-term profit and cut-throat competition between businesses and between the nation states in which they’re situated. And just as no boss will knowingly do anything that puts them at a disadvantage in relation to their rivals, no national government will be willing to sacrifice the interests of “their” capitalists to those of capitalists in rival countries. The “national interest”—which equates with the material interests of the capitalist class of any particular nation—will always trump a commitment to the “global community” or any other high-flown liberal abstraction.
This is made clear by the economic and military rivalry between the US and China. Neither country has skimped, in recent times, on idealistic-sounding rhetoric about the need for the world to take climate change seriously. In April they even put out a <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-china-joint-statement-addressing-the-climate-crisis/">joint statement</a> outlining their plans to cooperate in addressing the climate crisis. But while the US (with the exception of Donald Trump) and China have been prepared to sign on to many such statements and international agreements and commit billions to fight climate change, they’ve never for a second let this get in the way of spending much greater sums to prepare their economies and militaries to fight each other.
Hence the spectacle of US President Joe Biden talking a big game on climate change, while simultaneously presiding over a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/1015581092/biden-promised-to-end-new-drilling-on-federal-land-but-approvals-are-up">record-</a>breaking pace of approvals of new oil and gas wells on public land. The climate change talk is in no small part a matter merely of diplomacy—a prerequisite for maintaining a claim to leadership on the world stage. The domestic oil and gas boom, which his Democratic Party presidential predecessor Barack Obama <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/21/investing/trump-energy-plan-obama-oil-boom/index.html">pursued with similar vigour</a>, is a matter of economic and military supremacy. And it’s the latter that, under capitalism, will always rank first.
Many people recognise this problem in a superficial way. They can see that the potential for global cooperation is threatened by economic and military rivalries. But they respond by demanding merely that global leaders take cooperation more seriously. In July, for instance, 48 of the world’s leading environmental advocacy organisations delivered an <a href="http://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Cooperation-Not-Cold-War-To-Confront-the-Climate-Crisis-129.pdf">open letter</a> to the Biden administration calling for global cooperation and de-escalation between the US and China. 
 “Amid a climate emergency that is wreaking havoc on communities across the globe”, they concluded, “the path to a liveable future demands new internationalism rooted in global cooperation, resource sharing, and solidarity. Nothing less than the future of our planet depends on ending the new Cold War between the United States and China”. All of which is true, of course. The rivalry between the US and China is a major barrier to serious climate action. And should this rivalry evolve into a military confrontation, it would be catastrophic for human life and the environment around the world. 
The problem lies in thinking that letter-writing or any similar forms of lobbying by environmental organisations will convince world leaders to put their countries’ rivalries aside. It’s not the individual opinions and outlooks of leaders like Joe Biden or Xi Jinping that are pushing the world towards war—it’s the “zero sum game” of global imperialist competition. And that’s not something that any leader of a capitalist country, never mind the world’s biggest economic and military powers, can simply opt out of.
In a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ff94df96-b702-4e01-addd-f4253d0eecf6">recent opinion piece</a> for the Financial Times, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson pointed to the material, economic roots of the problem. “We can burn about 900 more gigatons of carbon”, he writes, “before we cross the 2C average global rise in temperature that will put us in truly dangerous territory. But we’ve already located thousands of gigatons of fossil fuels around the world. Most of those, which simply must be left in the ground if we want to avoid cooking the biosphere, are owned by national governments, who consider these reserves part of their national assets. They’re already collateral, and a steady source of income and, for quite a few of these nations, a big portion of their wealth”.
Compliance with the Paris Agreement, as Robinson explains, would carry trillions of dollars in opportunity costs and potentially bankrupt some nations. The short-term financial hit is only one part of it. The bigger problem, from a capitalist perspective, is the hit to a country’s global competitiveness. The geopolitical clout enjoyed by many imperialist powers today, such as, in addition to the US and China, Australia, Russia and Saudi Arabia, owes much to their abundance of fossil fuels. And we can see in Australia’s case how hard the capitalist class and their political servants will fight to maintain that advantage.
Witnessing the slow-motion car crash of rival blocs of capital, each driven by “national interests” and imperialist rivalry into mutual catastrophe, is not without historical precedent. And just like today, before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, it was common for liberals and reformists alike to believe in the potential of global cooperation between capitalist nations to steer clear of disaster. 
The arguments made by Karl Kautsky, a leading member of the German Social Democratic Party at the time, strike a note that we might find familiar. Kautsky believed the mutual interest of capitalists to avoid disruption to the normal functioning of the system would ultimately drive them to seek to eliminate conflict between states. Even after the war started, he held to this position. “There is no economic necessity”, he <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm">wrote</a> in late 1914, “for the continuation of the great competition in the production of armaments after the close of the present war. At best such a continuation would serve the interests of only a few capitalist groups. On the contrary capitalist industry is threatened by the conflicts between the various governments. Every far-sighted capitalist must call out to his associates: Capitalists of all lands unite!”
In their own way, they gave it a shot. Emerging from a war that killed millions was the League of Nations, an international body set up (in theory) to mediate conflicts between states. But the League was a sham from the start, accurately <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1945/08/uno.htm">described by Lenin</a> as “a thieves’ kitchen” and “a group of beasts of prey”. The League did little but fight over the spoils of war, contributing to the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the subsequent outbreak of the Second World War, which was far more devastating and expansive than the First.
The United Nations should be seen in a similar light. Beneath the facade of diplomacy and cooperation is the same old capitalist battle for power and influence, fought for the sake of the economic fortunes of each respective national capitalist class. The chances of such a body actually bridging the economic and military divides of today and leading the world into a new era of global cooperation to tackle the climate crisis are approximately zero. The fact that we’re coming up to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (the first was held in Berlin way back in 1995) and yet global greenhouse gas emissions are higher than ever, should be evidence enough of that. 
Rather than dreams of global cooperation between capitalist rivals, what we need today is socialist internationalism and ultimately revolution to rid ourselves of the irrational, profit-driven system that’s driving human civilisation towards catastrophe. The climate crisis demands international cooperation and planning on a massive scale. To achieve this, we need to look to the only class with both the power, and material interest, to deliver it: the working class.
Unlike capitalists, whose outlook is shaped by their participation in the competitive global scramble for profit, workers’ lives are defined, at the most basic level, by cooperation. This cooperation occurs, most obviously, at the level of individual workplaces. Factories, warehouses, supermarkets, schools, offices and so on can’t operate effectively without a high level of coordination between workers. And while most workers, most of the time, aren’t conscious of it, this coordination of activity extends well beyond individual workplaces to entire industries, and through increasingly giant and sophisticated global supply chains, the entire world.
So while the bosses and their political servants are focused on the fight to secure for themselves the biggest slice of the global economic pie, workers are getting on with the job of cooperating to keep the wheels of the world economy turning. Most of the time, of course, the outcome of all this activity is to keep the profits flowing to the ruling class. As long as workers are not conscious of their collective interests, and remain unorganised and incapable of asserting their collective power, their central role in the system doesn’t actually give them any real agency.
But when workers enter into struggle, it’s another story. Strikes, by definition, must be done collectively; you can’t “go on strike” on your own. To take such action, workers have commonly elected strike committees to plan and coordinate the struggle. When strikes in individual workplaces grow to encompass whole industries, or become general strikes involving workers across many industries at once, the coordinating bodies grow accordingly—from workplace strike committees, to industry level bodies and ultimately to institutions like the Russian soviets in 1917, which comprised the democratically elected representatives of the entire working class.
These kinds of institutions have sprung up again and again throughout the 20th century. And in each case they’ve provided a glimpse of the potential power of the working class to put society on a completely new foundation. Instead of the competitive scramble for short-term profit under capitalism, we get, instead, democratically planned production and distribution to meet the needs of society as a whole. 
Where this has occurred, it has had a clear internationalising dynamic. The example of the Russian soviets that sprang up and ultimately took power in October 1917 was followed, in 1918, by workers in Germany. In November that year they rose up against the ongoing slaughter of the First World War and formed workers’ councils to coordinate their actions. It was this revolution, and not capitalist diplomacy, that finally brought an end to the war. Throughout the history of capitalism, workers have shown the potential for revolutionary struggle to cut across borders in this way and overcome the seemingly intractable conflicts arising from the competitive nature of the system. 
To really tackle a global catastrophe like climate change, a similar scale of struggle will be necessary. Climate-related disasters are already upon us, and we need to be clear about who is to blame and what is to be done. As daunting and complex as this challenge may seem, there is also optimism and simplicity in the endeavour. As the Irish revolutionary socialist James Connolly once put it, “Our demands most moderate are—we only want the Earth”.

Why only socialist internationalism can solve the climate crisis

More than a thousand people died and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/deadly-heat-wave-in-pacific-northwest-overwhelmed-healthcare-system-11625493601">thousands were rushed to hospital</a> during an unprecedented heatwave in the western US and Canada, a region already experiencing severe drought. As temperature records were smashed all up and down the Pacific coast in the last week of June, reports emerged of rolling blackouts, buckling roads, damaged wires and newly sparked wildfires.
In the city of Portland, Oregon, the high temperature on 28 June—the third straight day of all-time record breaking heat—was 46.7 degrees Celsius, blowing away the longstanding record of 41.7 set in 1965. Similar gaps between new and previous all-time record highs were seen in hundreds of towns and cities from Oregon up to the Northwest Territories of Canada.
The highest temperature of all was recorded in Lytton, British Columbia, where the heat rose to 49.4 degrees Celsius—far above the previous Canadian national record of 45. Less than a week later the entire town was burnt to the ground in a wildfire fuelled by the heat and tinder-dry conditions, a fire which generated pyrocumulonimbus clouds like those seen during the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7501">“black summer”</a><a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7501"> of 2019-20 in Australia</a>. The firestorm clouds generated dry lightning strikes that sparked new wildfires across the province.
In an <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/07/western-canada-burns-and-deaths-mount-after-worlds-most-extreme-heat-wave-in-modern-history/">article</a> published in Yale Climate Connections on 1 July, climate scientists Bob Henson and Jeff Masters wrote, “[N]ever in the century-plus history of world weather observation have so many all-time heat records fallen by such a large margin”. “It’s not hype or exaggeration”, they argue, “to call the past week’s heatwave the most extreme in world weather records”.
As with other climate-related disasters like Australia’s bushfires, perhaps the most striking thing about this heatwave is how much the death and destruction were concentrated among workers and the poor. Shamefully, it was those without air conditioning or running water, and those who—amid an ongoing homelessness crisis—had no shelter at all, who suffered most. 
Those who died or risked death were those—like the region’s army of largely migrant farm workers—forced to work through the sweltering heat, the elderly trapped at home or those living in a tent under a freeway overpass, while the rich were able to escape to the comfort of their climate-controlled mansions and office buildings.
The death of a farm worker in Oregon on the first weekend of the heatwave highlighted the dangerous conditions for workers, who were already hit hard by the pandemic and smoke from wildfires in 2020. Heat stress is a known risk for farm workers, especially on the west coast, more than <a href="https://www.iowawatch.org/2019/05/09/lack-of-federal-heat-protections-for-outdoor-farm-workers-draw-advocates-ire/">800 dying on the job since 1992</a>.
Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), a farm workers’ union in Washington state, spoke to Red Flag about the current situation, the politics involved and the demands that farm workers are making to win new protections. According to Franks, emergency reforms from Washington state Governor Jay Inslee’s office “can help, but they aren’t permanent, and he can do away with them as soon as this event is over”.
Franks and the FUJ aren’t waiting for laws negotiated between politicians and business owners to protect workers. The union, led by Indigenous Mixteco and Triqui workers, is making new demands for “water, shade, limited hours on hot days, supervisors trained to recognise heat stress, access to medical care in rural locations, and other changes that can prevent tragedies in our workplace”.
Like the FUJ in Washington, recent work by the farm workers’ union in Oregon, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), reflects the impact of compounding crises on a particularly vulnerable workforce. An existing emergency fund run by the union to support farm workers who lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s wildfires has now been opened to those losing income due to extreme heat and drought. They have also, like the FUJ, been pushing for the state to deliver new safety rules related to heat.
The farm workers’ demands won’t be won without a fight. They directly conflict with the desire of agricultural business owners to limit damage to their profits. Instead of seeking to protect lives, the owners have pressured farm workers to speed up and harvest crops like cherries before they are spoiled in the heat. And, due to the frequently highly precarious nature of their employment—<a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-012420-105014">at least half of US farm workers are estimated to be undocumented immigrants</a>—they are more likely than other workers to face intimidation and retaliation when they resist.
The heatwave has subsided for now, but the danger is far from over. Franks is concerned that fire, and the hazardous air pollution associated with it, will be next. Last year, megafires up and down the West Coast caused <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7380">unprecedented levels of air pollution</a>. Already this year, the area burnt by fires in California is <a href="https://activenorcal.com/california-wildfires-are-already-outpacing-last-years-historic-fire-season/">greater than at the same time in 2020</a>. Exposure to smoke from fires can be just as dangerous for workers as the extreme heat.
The increasing scarcity of water is another ongoing issue. The current drought across the west is a continuation of one that has <a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/western-us-drought-news.htm">lasted nearly two decades</a> with varying degrees of severity and regional coverage. The decades-long rainfall deficit was a factor in the extremity of the heatwave. If there were more moisture in the soil, evaporation could have provided a cooling effect to counteract the heat. Instead, dry soil simply baked under the sun.
The impact of the drought has been made worse by the long-term misuse of the region’s water resources. For over a century, <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/droughts-exposed-california-s-thirst-groundwater-now-state-hopes-refill-its-aquifers">groundwater on the US west coast has been pumped out relentlessly</a> by thirsty businesses in farming and heavy industry. Groundwater pumping was entirely unregulated in California until 2014. While there is a permit system in Oregon, it has long been abused by farm owners <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/page/draining_oregon_day_1.html">growing cash crops in the state’s eastern deserts</a>, with the open complicity of political leaders.
In the battle for increasingly scarce water, business profits have trumped community needs at every point. Rights to water are bought and sold between businesses while at the same time there are entire towns where residents have been forced to <a href="https://thecounter.org/california-town-no-running-water-heat-wave-teviston-central-valley/">rely on bottled water alone</a>. Families of farm workers in California’s Central Valley, where more than two-thirds of America’s fruit and nuts are grown, have had to turn to community activists to provide jugs of water as their taps at home <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/us/california-central-valley-tainted-water.html">spew toxic filth</a>. “Clean water flows toward power and money”, as water rights activist Susana De Anda told the New York Times in 2019.
Farm workers are among those most impacted by extreme weather associated with climate change. But urban workers and the poor have also been hit hard. And unsurprisingly, given the US’s racist history, it’s Black and Latino people who are on the front line.
Redlining (discriminatory policy in city planning, real estate and financial services) and other racist policies segregated neighbourhoods and limited the services available in those that were predominantly Black or Latino. Even where Black communities had become integrated in places like San Francisco’s Fillmore—once renowned as the Harlem of the west—<a href="https://hoodline.com/2016/01/how-urban-renewal-destroyed-the-fillmore-in-order-to-save-it/">urban development projects smashed up homes</a> and forced many Black families across the Bay to the more industrial city of Oakland.
Freeways continue to be built through neighbourhoods in a manner that clearly targets populations with less political and economic power. According to a 2019 <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6001">study</a> published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Black and Latino people in America are, on average, exposed to significantly higher levels of air pollution than whites.
Certain neighbourhoods are hotter, too. The lack of public investment in historically working-class, Black and Latino neighbourhoods has led to an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/30/opinion/environmental-inequity-trees-critical-infrastructure.html">uneven distribution of tree cover in cities across the country</a>. The lack of shade, along with wide expanses of exposed cement, makes these neighbourhoods significantly warmer—increasing the risk of deaths in heatwaves like the one we’ve just seen. The same issue effects working class neighbourhoods around the world, including in Australian cities like <a href="https://theconversation.com/fewer-trees-leave-the-outer-suburbs-out-in-the-heat-33299">Melbourne</a>.
It’s notable that this kind of disparity in the impacts of climate change is just as clear along the US Pacific coast—where supposedly progressive parties have a tight grip on political power—as anywhere else. Despite the lip service paid to climate and social justice by these parties, action remains limited, and inequality in the region has not only persisted but deepened over recent decades.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, recently signed a cap-and-trade climate policy into law in his state, but community activists including Franks say it will do <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/05/24/tribal-leaders-blast-washington-governors-cap-and-trade-betrayal">little to stop carbon emissions or curb air pollution in their neighbourhoods</a>. Just before the heatwave, the Biden administration announced the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/climate/biden-climate-infrastructure.html">removal of a number of much-hyped climate measures</a> from its proposed infrastructure spending bill.
Whether at a state or federal level, the Democrats have shown time and again they’re not interested in driving real change. Rather, just as with last year’s massive Black Lives Matter protests, their role has been to divert and coopt any movements building power from below that could pose a challenge to the pro-business (and pro-fossil fuels) status quo of US politics.
The actions being taken by organisations like the FUJ point the way forward. While Franks says he supports new government policies for climate action, he wants workers at the table when these decisions are made, and he wants them to walk in with the backing of a strong workers’ movement. Too many labour organisers, he says, are focussed on lobbying politicians instead of building class power: “We need to get back to being in contact, and that means organisers have to be on the ground”.
This approach is working. Since it formed in 2013, the FUJ has made significant gains for its members. In 2016, it won a US$15 an hour minimum wage, improved employer-provided housing and a grievance process after years of abuse from bosses. In the years since, a health plan and child care have been added to the list. Franks says the FUJ will pursue climate change-related demands in the same way it has pursued all its others: through industrial action.
The FUJ also has strong ties with groups like the <a href="https://mixteco.org/">Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/frente.indigena/">Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional</a> that organise and advocate for Indigenous communities across the western US and northern Mexico. Organisations like these support many farm workers, but also people living in cities and towns on either side of the US-Mexico border. The connections being forged here—between urban and rural labour and migrant and Indigenous workers, and in working class communities along the US Pacific coast and into Mexico—will be crucial to future struggles, whether around climate change or the many other challenges facing the region.
Like Australia’s “black summer” of 2019-20, North America’s hell under the heat dome provides a glimpse of what we’ll face if we fail to rapidly reduce emissions in the coming years. And it’s perhaps appropriate (though also tragic for those who are suffering from it) that some of the worst current impacts of climate change should be felt in a region long held up as realising the dream of a progressive capitalist utopia.
Along with the melting asphalt and power blackouts, we can see the crumbling of an image of the future—one held dear and messianically propagated by Silicon Valley billionaires and Democratic Party politicians alike, in which the magic of technology and “entrepreneurial spirit” will save the world from climate disaster. The more events like this heatwave we see, the clearer it becomes that the only people the rich and their political servants are planning to save <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6974">are themselves</a>.
The Pacific coast has, historically, also been a major site of resistance—from the Modoc War, to the 1934 waterfront strike, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Black Panthers, the Chicano movement and more. It’s to this history of struggle, and to the organisations like the FUJ that are writing the next chapter, that our side should look for inspiration. Even in the most extreme conditions, the rich can use their resources and wealth to protect themselves. For workers and the poor, there’s no option but to resist: no-one is coming to save us except ourselves.

North America’s heatwave hell

At a rally against the detention of refugees in Melbourne’s Park Hotel on 8 May, organised by the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/campaignarf/">Campaign Against Racism and Fascism</a> (CARF), Victoria Police once again attempted to stop protesters marching.
The rally began like many others. A crowd of 200-300 gathered outside the State Library of Victoria. After a series of chants and speeches from activists including CARF’s Nahui Ludekens, local artist Maddie Haa and Tasnim Sammak, co-founder of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FreePalestineMelbourne/">Free Palestine Melbourne</a>, the crowd gathered on Swanston Street and began to march north towards the Park Hotel, where 35 refugees are being detained. Students and young workers took up megaphones, and a cacophony of angry voices echoed off the canyon walls of city towers. “Free, free the refugees!” was followed by “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here!” 
At first, the police response was reserved—officers walked in single file on either side of the march, while vans and horses tailed the crowd. But when the march neared Lincoln Square, a block from the hotel, the police tactics changed.
Without warning, a police line formed in front of the march. They refused to allow marchers to move forward. Protesters began to chant “Let us march! Let us march!”, while being shoved back by officers. Video of the moment, <a href="https://youtu.be/HxTusDEemW0">posted online by Box4</a>, shows officers throwing multiple people to the ground, and tussling with those who came to their aid. 
But their attempt to stop protesters from reaching the hotel failed. The back half of the march surged into the open space of Lincoln Square, around the police line and onward to the hotel. The police tried in vain to fan out and hold the line but were soon outflanked and thrown into disarray. 
It was a small moment of victory. Under the windows of the Park Hotel, protesters revelled in the moment, remembered what they were fighting for, waved to the refugees looking down from the windows and chanted for their freedom in hoarse but spirited voices. 
Indefinite detention of refugees at hotels in major cities across Australia has illuminated the hypocrisy of local authorities who claim it is solely a federal government issue. The actions of Victoria Police and the City of Melbourne in particular have demonstrated a preference for challenging the right to protest rather than challenging the government’s torturous detention regime.
Police used the cover of COVID-19 restrictions to lay <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/melbourne-refugee-protesters-fined-43-000-for-breaching-coronavirus-rules">heavy fines on the organisers</a> of a car convoy protesting refugee detention in the Mantra Hotel in Preston last year. When the refugees were forcibly moved to the Park Hotel in Carlton in December, police clashed with protesters and arrested several, including an Indigenous activist who was left handcuffed in the back of a hot police car for hours.
City of Melbourne compliance officers have gotten in on the act, too. As protests began outside the Park Hotel in January, council officers came out <a href="https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/city-of-melbourne-threatens-to-fine-protesters-for-excessive-noise-20210115-p56ufj.html">to enforce a local bylaw</a> against the unauthorised use of amplified sound. Backed up by a swarm of police, council officers issued fines of $500 each to protest organisers for the use of megaphones. The following week, Victoria Police attempted to snatch megaphones from activists, then gave move on orders to the leaders of a march.
Clamorous disapproval from activists as well as the Melbourne Activist Legal Service helped put an end to this <a href="https://melbactivistlegal.org.au/files/2021-01-15-Misuse-of-Local-Laws-to-Restrict-Protest.pdf">misuse of local laws</a>. Subsequently, Greens city councillors, led by Rohan Leppert, put forward a motion to condemn refugee detention in Melbourne and demand the release of the refugees in accordance with international law on human rights. Lord Mayor Sally Capp and her allies amended the motion, however, removing the demand for the refugees to be released and replacing it with a request merely for the federal government to provide an “explanation for the continued detention of those people”. 
Leppert responded, “We’re not speculating on whether there ‘might’ be human rights abuses here. We have incontrovertible evidence that the Commonwealth government is committing human rights abuses right smack bang in our municipality”.
Attempts to stymie protests are nothing new in Melbourne, but the actions of police and council officers remind us about their <a href="https://redflag.org.au/index.php/node/7220">role in a deeply unequal and oppressive society</a>. They demonstrate yet again that appealing to state authorities on issues of state violence is a dead end. They also call into question threats by <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/climate-activists-shouldnt-call-cops-each-other">certain</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1586241278331190/posts/2895169500771688/?d=n">activists</a> to leverage police forces in political disputes with other activists.
As the rally moved back into the park, a final set of speakers took aim at every level of government in Australia. Lavanya Thavaraja of the <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/">Migrant Workers Centre</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tamilrefugeecounciloz/">Tamil Refugee Council</a> criticised the inherently violent nature of hard borders and the capitalist system that demands them. Ellen Sandell, Victorian Greens MP for Melbourne, questioned whether the heavy police presence was an “appropriate use of state resources”. 
To wrap up the rally, Omar Hassan of Socialist Alternative pointed out that, more important than the police repression, the defiant resistance of the refugees themselves and the refusal of their supporters to be shut down was the real story of the day. Hassan <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SocialistAlternativeMelbourne/videos/816480075628610/">went on to say</a>, “The amount of time and money and energy spent on punishing innocent people is something to reflect upon ... Why does our society do this? It does this because the people who run it know that as long as they can get away with treating some people like that, they can get away with treating all of us like that one day. They want to normalise that level of brutalisation. They want to normalise that level of barbarity. And they want to keep it up their sleeve”.
As we enter a time of imperialist conflict, compounding crises of climate and disease and economic recession, it becomes increasingly important that we defend the right to protest and dissent, and keep fighting for refugees enduring the torture of detention, whether in the Park Hotel, on Christmas Island or anywhere else.

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