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environmental racism
From Fields to Kitchens, the Fight Against Extreme Heat Is a Fight for Workers’ Lives
Worker organizing points the way forward, reminding us that the fight for safe working conditions is inseparable from the fight for dignity, racial justice, and migrant rights.
Oct 13, 2025
As temperatures shattered records across North America this summer, Jeremiah, a greenhouse worker in Ontario’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker program, stepped inside a plastic tunnel where the heat doubled the 32°C (89.6°F) outside. Within hours, workers fainted and vomited, while supervisors worried only about the plants. Another day, Jeremiah himself had to be carried out on a cart after collapsing.
Unwilling to put up with the conditions any longer, Jeremiah and his coworkers came together on one of the season’s worst days to demand managers implement safer conditions. Using broken Spanish, “tu casa, mucho calor,” they signaled to fellow Mexican, Guatemalan, and Honduran workers to walk out in unison, knowing they’re stronger when united.
Jeremiah’s story is not unusual. Across the food chain, from farm fields and greenhouses to warehouses and kitchens, workers are enduring escalating, life-threatening heat. What is new is how boldly they are organizing for change.
I have been an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) for 25 years. In that time, I have seen how rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves have transformed the daily lives of migrant and food system workers. And I have also witnessed something else: workers resisting, demanding protections, and refusing to be sacrificed to profit and climate inaction.
The climate crisis is not some distant threat; it is here, bearing down on workers who already face some of the most exploitative conditions.
Workers themselves are the most credible experts on what is happening. At a 2024 People’s Tribunal hosted by the Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA), dozens of testimonies revealed the same pattern: temperatures climbing, employers refusing to adapt, and workers bearing the cost.
Lelo, a farmworker from Washington, remembers when rain was the biggest concern back when he started picking berries in 2012. "When I started picking berries, I didn’t see workers pass out… in 2022 I saw and heard about many."
A farmworker in Florida, with 18 years in the fields, reported temperatures now reaching 105°F (40.5°C) with little protection from managers. "The bosses do not adapt… There are times when they give us water, but when we tell them it's over, they don't give us more.”
Heat dangers are not limited to farm workers. Lorena, a warehouse worker in Illinois, described how tin roofs trap suffocating heat. “Employers could give workers water or 15 minutes every hour to get some fresh air, or reduce the speed of the machines, but they don’t,” she said. “The office managers don’t notice it because they’re comfortable with air conditioning.”
Ingrid, a restaurant worker in New York, spoke about kitchen conditions: “The heat is overwhelming, tiring, and it lasts all day. There’s no time to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. The only thing we can do is hydrate before we get in and use wet towels on our bodies while we work.”
These are not isolated grievances; they are the lived realities of a workforce that feeds millions while being denied basic safety.
International agencies have started to catch up. The World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization recently warned that “protecting workers from extreme heat is not just a health imperative but an economic necessity.” Their new report underscores what workers have long said: Productivity drops as temperatures rise, and unchecked exposure leads to kidney disease, heatstroke, and premature death. According to the International Labour Organization, more than 2.4 billion people worldwide are exposed to workplace heat stress. That is nearly1 in every 3 workers on Earth.
Yet policymakers in North America are moving backward. In Ontario, the provincial government promised heat protections in 2023, only to quietly kill them a year later. In the United States, agricultural and construction lobbyists have stalled a federal heat stress law. These retreats are not neutral; they are a direct assault on racialized and immigrant working-class communities, who make up the backbone of the food system.
Faced with government inaction, workers are taking the lead. This summer, on one of the hottest days yet, Ontario farmworkers and allies staged a street protest. They fried eggs on the pavement outside the Ministry of Labour and inside a car that reached 68°C (154.4°F). Their message was unmissable: The conditions we endure at work are deadly. When the minister refused to act, they called it what it was—environmental racism.
Acts of resistance like these are multiplying. Whether walking off the job, holding tribunals, or staging creative protests, workers are asserting that survival should not depend on employer goodwill. They are demanding enforceable regulations: access to shade and water, mandated rest breaks, and the right to stop work in unsafe conditions. And they are insisting that climate justice is part of migrant justice. Because for local workers and seasonal guest workers alike, it's nearly impossible to exert your right to protections when employers can hold the threat of immigration law over your head. That's why we support permanent status for all migrant workers.
This is a fight that stretches across borders and industries. Under guest worker schemes like Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program or the US H-2A system, bosses often pit workers of different nationalities against one another. Yet when Jeremiah and his colleagues risked retaliation to walk out together, they showed the power of cross-border solidarity. That spirit echoes in warehouses, restaurants, and processing plants where workers are refusing to be divided by language, status, or immigration papers.
The climate crisis is not some distant threat; it is here, bearing down on workers who already face some of the most exploitative conditions. Governments may drag their feet, but workers are on the move. Their organizing points the way forward, reminding us that the fight for safe working conditions is inseparable from the fight for dignity, racial justice, and migrant rights.
When the heat rises, so do workers. And if we want a food system that is sustainable, just, and resilient in the face of climate change, we must follow their lead.
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'We the People—Not the Wealthy Few': Voters Target Greed of Landlords, Insurers, and Gas Giants
"We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations," said one protester.
Feb 26, 2025
After meeting with their members of Congress, working-class voters on Wednesday marched to the Washington, D.C. offices of three companies behind the nation's housing, health, and climate crises that are set to cash in on federal Republicans' planned tax giveaways.
Organized by People's Action Institute, the protest targeted Blackstone, an investment company that has become the world's largest corporate landlord; UnitedHealth, the country's biggest health insurance company; and American Gas Association, which represents more than 200 energy companies that provide services to 189 million Americans.
The participants—who hailed from 60 congressional districts across 27 states—emphasized issues including unaffordable rent rates, housing insecurity, homelessness, denied medical treatment, unpayable healthcare costs, high utility bills, health harms from fossil fuels, and corporate lobbying for tax cuts that benefit companies and billionaires rather than working people.
"We're here today because we want to make the rich pay their fair share!" declared JJ Ramirez of People's Action Institute member organization VOCAL-Texas. "Blackstone is a private equity company that has over 300,000 rental properties across the country. They gobble up these homes, raise our rents, price gouge us, and then evict us when we can't afford to live in their places. We're here today because Blackstone has conspired with other corporate bad actors so they can gobble up everything that we have."
While the protesters gathered outside Blackstone, they stressed that corporate landlords in general are an issue. Ann Kiesling of Progressive Maryland, which supported tenants at the Enclave Silver Spring apartment complex, said that "I will never forget a woman with a disability telling me about the time she had to hop up, with the help of a neighbor, 15 flights of stairs to get to her apartment because the landlords refused to fix the elevators. I will never forget the parents of a four-year-old telling me how they had to heat up water on their stove to give their kid baths because their landlord refused to fix their hot water for over a month."
"An out-of-state private equity landlord, Hampshire Properties, is raking in massive profits by charging luxury rent prices while letting the building fall apart and leaving tenants with the consequences," Kiesling continued. "And while we are here fighting for basic living conditions against mold, broken elevators, pest infestations, corporate landlords like Hampshire Properties, like Greystar, like Blackstone, are pouring our rent money into lobbyists and elected officials' campaigns instead of fixing their buildings."
Hannah Peterson, a disabled veteran, seminary student, and member of the People's Lobby in Chicago, pointed out Wednesday that "just last night, House Republicans passed their budget resolution to cut millions from Medicaid."
That resolution
sets the stage for cutting not only $880 billion from the healthcare program that serves low-income Americans, but also $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Elected Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, want to gut safety net programs to fund an expansion of tax giveaways to the rich that GOP lawmakers passed and President Donald Trump signed in 2017.
"Republicans are already funneling our tax dollars out of programs our communities need and into pockets of private corporations and billionaires," Peterson said. "We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations."
As Medicare for All advocates often highlight, although the United States has Medicaid and Medicare, which serves seniors, it is the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. Instead, the U.S. has a for-profit system that often leaves patients unable to access or afford necessary care, including because of denials from insurance companies.
"To the folks at UnitedHealthcare... if you really care about people's health, why don't you publicly come out and oppose the cuts to Medicaid?" asked Citizen Action of New York's Amelia Bittel—who has dysautonomia, a disorder that led to a heart surgery at age 35 and requires weekly blood draws.
"In my city of Syracuse, New York, 48% of the population relies on government-funded programs to get their insurance," said Bittel. "You don't need the $1.3 billion that you stand to profit from these cuts. Your company routinely reports the highest profits. Why not give back to the patients?"
At the American Gas Association, Gloria de Graves from Citizen Action of Wisconsin explained that in the Midwestern state, "if you're not familiar, we hit negative 30°F sometimes, and that means that people can freeze to death in their homes if they do not have a way to heat their homes."
"So all I'm saying is We Energies and Xcel Energy, who I have paid plenty of money to over the years, need to stop charging us so much money so that we can afford to feed ourselves, we can afford to stay housed, and when we are fleeing domestic violence, that there is a safe, electrified, and heated home to go into so that we are warm and safe in the winter," de Graves said.
Celebrating the multisite protest on Wednesday, progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said that "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because there are people in my community that can't afford to come up here."
"It is so important to understand corporate greed and how it is embedded in environmental injustices, embedded in environmental racism," she said. "They want the federal government to continue to literally fund poisoning us, while we get sick here in our country. So they're making us sick, and we're subsidizing the fact that we don't have access to healthcare that supports our families."
In a dispatch earlier this week, People's Action executive director Sulma Arias wrote that her group "refuses to give up. We believe ordinary people have the power to rise and meet this and every moment, if we act together. We believe in the fundamental dignity of every person, without exception, and we believe government exists to serve all people—We the People—not the wealthy few."
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We Need A Real Path To Clean Energy, Not Dirty Fossil Fuel Deja Vu
Though the EPRA alleges to improve energy projects’ approval processes, it does so through fossil fuel racism, with giveaways to big oil and gas while hurting vulnerable communities and the environment.
Dec 06, 2024
To achieve a “clean energy revolution,” we cannot replicate the injustices of our current and past energy systems. As the next administration promises massive increases for fossil fuel projects and near total removals of environmental protections and agency functions, we must hold the line and set a standard for the future we need and deserve.
The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPRA) (S. 4753) introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), is being sold as a “necessary” and bipartisan path. But why does it feel so dirty, and so familiar?
Fossil Fuel Racism
We’ve seen this before. There have been multiple attempts to advance legislation that weakens environmental protections and sacrifices vulnerable communities to fast-track energy projects driven by fossil fuel interests. As foreshadowed during previous attempts in 2022, “The industry will keep trying these secretive, last minute efforts to push forward dirty deals.”
Unjust energy policies being marketed as for the “common good” is an age-old practice—as old as redlining, the industrial revolution, and earlier. Our energy systems have long been controlled by extractive, industry-driven forces, resulting in what is known as “fossil fuel racism.” Fossil fuel racism creates disproportionate impacts on people of color from the fossil fuel cycle and requires:
- Sacrifice zones, where the hazards of energy production and consumption are centered in disadvantaged communities;
- Disproportionate racialized impacts from climate change driven by fossil fuels; and
- Outsized industry influence in politics undercutting democratic spaces.
So what’s different about EPRA? Nothing. Not only does it contain goals straight out of Project 2025, the American Petroleum Institute and “two dozen energy companies and trade groups’” lobbying reports mention EPRA by name. Though the bill alleges to improve energy projects’ approval processes, it does so through fossil fuel racism, with giveaways to big oil and gas while hurting vulnerable communities and the environment. Here’s how:
1) Sacrifice Zones and Fossil Fuel Expansion
The Energy Permitting Reform Act continues to exploit environmental justice communities by reinforcing sacrifice zones, which include predominantly people of color and low income, by greenlighting fossil fuel projects. EPRA would undo the Biden administration’s pause on approving Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export projects, overwhelmingly situated in these communities. EPRA would also dramatically shorten time for the Department of Energy (DOE) to perform environmental reviews and mandates automatic project approvals after 90 days, regardless of potential negative impacts. Additionally, modeled emissions reductions used to justify support for EPRA rely on continued use of environmental justice communities as sacrifice zones.
2) Climate Crisis and Public Health
People of color and low income disproportionately experience the worst climate crisis impacts. The modeling that claims the transmission pieces of EPRA would reduce greenhouse gas emissions are cherry-picked scenarios and assumptions, according to and underscored by over 100 scientists. Modeling also ignores localized pollution contributing to increasing health crises. The models’ reliance on greenhouse gas calculations overlooks realities for communities on the ground.
3) Industry Control and Democracy Broken
The bill undermines the ability of communities burdened by pollution to have a say regarding projects that threaten their health and environments. EPRA would reduce the time communities and Tribes have to challenge projects in court from six years to 150 days. It goes further to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act by voiding essential environmental impact assessments for fossil fuel projects.
Environmental Injustice and Community Impact
EPRA sets a dangerous precedent and has serious implications for frontline communities. Zulene Mayfield, of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) in Chester, Pennsylvania, is fighting a proposed LNG facility in her backyard. Chester—a majority working class, Black neighborhood—is already dealing with a health crisis from trash incinerators and sewage treatment facilities. Community members received no public notice about the project and were locked out of public hearings. With EPRA’s extreme project approval timeline coupled with an intentional lack of transparency, safeguards from hazardous projects are gone.
Hilton Kelley of Community In-Power and Development Association Incorporated (CIDA Inc.) in Port Arthur, Texas has also been fighting to free his community from fossil fuel racism. As a resident of the “cancer belt,” he is now dealing with two new LNG facilities in his neighborhood.
Voices against EPRA are rising with over 680 organizations opposing the bill. Environmental Justice leaders have spoken out including Richard Moore of Los Jardines Institute: “It [EPRA] is a stark reminder of the priorities of those who continue to put corporate profits above the health and well-being of our communities.”
Finding a Path to True Equitable Energy Reform
EPRA is built on a false policy dichotomy. We don't have to sacrifice environmental protections and communities to fast-track clean energy projects. There are other legislative proposals that are designed to protect communities with significant support, such as the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act, which was written in partnership with environmental justice communities. This bill would cement key protections including cumulative impacts analysis; first, early, and ongoing engagement models; and civil rights and NEPA requirements. The Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act (CETA) similarly strengthens engagement through environmental justice liaisons facilitating relationships between project sponsors and communities.
Our communities are opportunity centers full of vision, solutions, and wisdom—not sacrifice zones. Our communities are worth investing in to achieve a just, sustainable energy future and address the climate crisis now, if decision-makers would only open their eyes.
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