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Thousands of social activists gathered in Detroit in June for the U.S. Social Forum, marching through the streets, meeting in hundreds of workshops, participating in volunteer community improvement projects, and burying a pink Hummer to symbolize the end of the gas-guzzler era.
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Workers use fire to reshape the landscape. At Metro Beach Metropark near Detroit, a prescribed burn aims to eliminate an invasive plant, the giant reed (Phragmites australis), that has crowded out native vegetation. In Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, the National Park Service uses an annual controlled burn of Big Meadows to keep the meadow open and free of woody plants.
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Coal is cheap, but carries hidden costs, whether in the lives lost in mine disasters, the destruction of Appalachian mountains, or global warming from the release of carbon dioxide when coal is burned. Here are photos taken in West Virginia in recent months of mountaintop removal, hazardous coal sludge impoundment ponds, a power plant that is experimenting with the capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide, and memorials to the miners killed in the Upper Big Branch explosion.
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Gun owners who fear that their weapons are about to be taken away from them rallied in Virginia and Washington, DC on April 19. A small group exercising their legal right in Virginia to openly carry firearms gathered across the Potomac River from the Capitol. They were outnumbered by journalists covering the event. A larger group gathered, without weapons, on the grounds of the Washington Monument.
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Members of the International Union of Operating Engineers expand the power grid by building a high voltage power line in northern Virginia.
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Fort Benning, Georgia is the site of what has become an annual vigil demanding the closure of the School of the Americas. The School is where the U.S. military trains Latin American combat soldiers, who have been implicated in torture and murder in their home countries. SOA graduates led the recent military coup in Honduras. Thousands of people converged on Fort Benning November 21-22 carrying crosses bearing the names of victims of SOA graduates. They left many of the crosses on the fence surrounding the army base.
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Unions and community groups rallied outside an American Bankers Association conference in Chicago October 27. They demanded that the big banks and Wall Street firms stop spending their taxpayer bailout dollars to lobby against financial reform.
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Union members and progressive activists are fighting for health insurance reform, while others charge that reform will kill granny.
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Leaders of the AFL-CIO met in Pittsburgh in September. Former United Mine Workers President Richard Trumka took over leadership of the federation. Michael Moore showed his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. And delegates cheered President Obama.
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In 2008, floods swept through Iowa, devastating much of the city of Cedar Rapids. More than a year later, the scars are still obvious. Many volunteers are helping with the rebuilding effort.
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Partly due to warming temperatures, the mountain pine beetle is killing forests in the Rocky Mountains.
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The economic crisis has not been kind to Michigan auto workers, some of whom have taken to the streets to protest plant closings, lost pensions, and a broken health care system.
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Even as the recession and the crash of the auto industry have devastated the city of Detroit, volunteers in one east side community are doing what they can to save their neighborhood. One group is covering windows and doors of boarded-up homes with murals. Another is building a community garden on a vacant lot. Others are cleaning litter from parks, clearing away illegally-dumped trash, planting trees, and painting storefronts.
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Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, some parts of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast look like little progress has been made. But there is a lot of activity, much of it the work of volunteers. Habitat for Humanity continues to build new homes. Brad Pitt’s Make It Right organization is building environmentally-friendly homes in the lower ninth ward. Catholic and Methodist volunteers are renovating homes in the upper ninth ward and across the river in Gretna. Americorps volunteers working with the Preservation Resource Center are rehabilitating homes in the Holy Cross neighborhood. In the east end of Biloxi, Mississippi, architects from Mississippi State University are working with low-income residents through the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio to design new or repaired housing.
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All over New Orleans, people are creating community gardens to help reclaim their city from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Near the Superdome, the Latino Farmers Cooperative has lush crops of carrots, radishes, greens, and other produce. In the lower ninth ward, close to a canal that flooded the neighborhood during the hurricane, volunteers are turning over soil and removing debris in a vacant lot that will become a garden. Nearby, a former New York school teacher is establishing a small urban farm that will create learning opportunities for area youth while providing fresh produce for the neighborhood.
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About 250 miles northwest of Detroit, wind turbines are being manufactured in a former auto parts factory. Some displaced auto workers are among the workforce. The turbines are vertical axis Windspire models, suitable for residential and small business use. They are made for Mariah Power by MasTech Manufacturing.
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Income tax filing day included Tea Bag protests and anti-sweatshop protests, along with people rushing to get their returns filed on time.
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The Army Corps of Engineers is working on several projects to improve flood protection for New Orleans when the next hurricane hits. These photos show construction of a flood wall along the Harvey Canal and the beginning stages of construction of a surge barrier in the marshes east of the city.
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More than 5,000 unemployed people showed up March 12 for a job fair sponsored by the city of Detroit, waiting in long lines for an opportunity to talk to a recruiter. One official said she knew of at least one person who was hired at the event.
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Various methods of energy production photographed recently in Michigan and Ohio: wind, coal-burning, nuclear, garbage-burning, and gas drilling, with a few earlier photographs showing wind turbine construction, biofuel, methane from garbage, solar, and oil refining.
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Reflecting the state of the economy, a much larger than usual crowd of job applicants turned out as the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio began hiring workers for 4,500 summer jobs. The jobs start at $7.30 per hour, or $6.55 per hour for workers under age 16.
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Here is a selection of images surrounding the inauguration of Barack Obama: People in the crowd at the inauguration. Labor’s float in the inaugural parade. Unionists, church members, and students doing volunteer work during the Martin Luther King Day service projects the day before in neighborhood cleanups and soup kitchens. Political activists using shoes to say good-bye to Bush. Immigrants rallying at the ICE office the day after the inauguration, hoping for changes in federal immigration policy.
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Electric plug-in vehicles and gas-electric hybrids were the stars of the 2009 North American International Auto Show. Outside, auto workers picketed to defend their jobs and their wages.
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