Photo: Andrew Butitta

On a straightforward level, unionized public workers maintain our parks, ensure our water is clean, and protect our air quality. Unions lead to longer-term employees and, in many cases, additional job commitment and higher quality services. Collective bargaining also leads to healthier workplaces. And when people have more job security and fewer worries about job safety, they are able to focus more on their communities, their children, and efforts to protect the environment. That could help explain why 60 percent of Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions, according to a new poll.

Unionized workers and environmentalists have found a common adversary in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R). He showed himself to be a friend of multinational corporations with the $140 million in tax breaks he gave them in January. In a direct attack on environmental values and jobs, he rejected more than $800 million in federal funds for a proposed high-speed rail line. His alliance with the Koch brothers — confirmed by last week’s prank phone call — cements his standing as an enemy of environmental progress.

But this fight is much bigger than Wisconsin, and it’s about much more than the strength of public unions. A joke that’s been circulating on the internet gets at the heart of the issue: A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a corporate CEO sit at a table with a dozen cookies on a plate. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, “Watch out for that union guy — he wants a piece of your cookie.”

This is not about public sector versus private sector or union versus non-union. It’s about preserving and growing our middle class rather than widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It’s about standing up to corporations like BP and Peabody Coal and their political cronies. It’s about challenging the continued tax breaks and giveaways to dirty energy companies and Wall Street banks while working people’s wages and benefits are slashed. And it’s about realigning our budget priorities so the aim is to build healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities with quality career jobs, not to coddle politically connected corporations.

“These attacks on workers, the attacks on the EPA’s ability to protect our land, water, air, and health — they are all coming from the same place: corporations and their political allies,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.

Two years into the Obama era, we expected we’d be making bold change on behalf of regular people and the communities where we all live; instead, we in both the labor and environmental movements find ourselves on the defensive. But this reactive moment could lead to proactive efforts to make the progressive movement stronger. As rallies pop up around the country to show solidarity with workers in Wisconsin, people are banding together, voicing their outrage, and calling out the real bad actors who got us into this financial and environmental mess in the first place. As Robert Pollin and Jeffrey Thompson write in The Nation, “let’s remember that the recession was caused by Wall Street hyper-speculation, not the pay scales of elementary school teachers or public hospital nurses.”

Labor and environmental organizations share a complicated history and have not worked together as often as they could have. This fight in Wisconsin provides an opportunity to shift that dynamic, hopefully for the long term. Joining together to defy Walker is the first step. Both of these movements should be about good jobs and a healthy environment; these goals are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.

At its core, this fight is about power — making sure that power isn’t concentrated in the hands of the super-rich. Both the labor and environmental movements want to move power away from corporations and spread it to everyday Americans. Together, we can work to restore America’s middle class and stand up to corporate greed and abuse.

A May Day protest against Arizona’s immigration law.Photo courtesy th.omas via Flickr

Meanwhile, even with an ongoing environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, I have yet to see similar organizing and energy from the environmental movement on Facebook (or anywhere else). This is particularly striking since the majority of my friends are connected with the environmental movement, if not formally as organization staff then informally as self-identified environmentalists, while only a handful are directly connected to immigration reform. 

Why aren’t my Facebook newsfeed, inbox, and voicemail overwhelmed with calls to boycott BP or stand with anglers and fishermen in the Gulf region — or with calls to use this disaster to build broad support and momentum to pass comprehensive climate-change legislation?

If Facebook reflects the zeitgeist, immigration reform has definitely one-upped the environmental movement in the past month. The environmental movement used to be known for its outrage, big demonstrations, and calls to action — but right now, immigration reform is out-organizing us.  

Before the Arizona law passed, immigration activists were already pushing for letters and calls to Arizona lawmakers. When the bill was signed, activists escalated their organizing, calling for boycotts of Arizona and organizing marches and vigils, pushing this law as an example of exactly why we need comprehensive immigration reform.

Meanwhile the response to the oil spill has been surprisingly narrow — some petitions calling for ending offshore drilling and a few asks to call senators about climate change. There have been no massive marches or vigils. Calls for a boycott of BP have been small and muted, and not even endorsed by big green groups. With the media reporting ceaselessly on the disastrous consequences of dirty fuels, this should be our moment to organize, strike hard, and turn this disaster into an irrefutable call to pass climate and clean-energy legislation. 

The environmental movement in recent years has become increasingly mainstream and especially focused on D.C. and the inside game. Many who walk the halls of Washington as environmental lobbyists rely more on their own personal access and influence rather than powerful movements from outside the Beltway backing them up. 

Immigration-reform activists, on the other hand, have always been outside the system, using massive rallies and demonstrations to build power. Because immigration reform addresses a traditionally excluded base, activists focus constantly on movement building and action. The movement has also been consciously inclusive and has explicitly made the connection between the effects of bad immigration policy on families and communities and the need for reform. The breadth of the movement makes it more politically powerful. That has not been the case for the environmental movement, where much work remains to be done to diversify, encourage inclusiveness, and make strong connections between environmental causes and communities.

Although young, the immigration-reform movement has already demonstrated its power, and it seizes every possible opportunity to remind elected officials of that power. As momentum has been building, immigration reform has recently leapfrogged up the legislative calendar. Representatives, senators, and even President Obama are speaking out about the need for immigration legislation, because the constant pressure means they must. While the environmental movement is focused on moving legislation that is politically possible, the immigration-reform movement is focused on making the legislation it wants politically necessary.

Strong political donor organizing and grasstops lobbying work is a hard-worked-for strength of the environmental movement — a strength other movements should seek to emulate. However, these activities concentrate power in the hands of a few, rather than moving power out broadly. The desire of big environmental groups to control the messaging and focus on policy details makes it prohibitive for the average person to engage in the push for climate legislation. But a science-based movement doesn’t have to incomprehensible to non-scientists, and policy-based solutions don’t have to be impenetrable to non–policy wonks. The environmental movement needs to look beyond D.C. and make plainspoken calls to action.

And now we have the perfect opportunity. We environmentalists should look at this oil spill as our Arizona moment. We must rally people to the cause, name fossil fuels as our enemy, engage our base, and help people channel their outrage toward a positive outcome. With the power of a real and broad movement behind us, we can make the argument that a comprehensive energy bill would impact elections in every state. And, once we make that argument with real authority, then Congress has to listen.

How many enviros can you spot in this picture?Photo: Salina Canizales

Sounds like a typical childhood for a kid in an environmentally conscious family, right?

It was typical — except that my parents spoke Tamil at home and had only just emigrated from India a few years before my oldest sister was born, while my friends and neighbors spoke English at home and had families that had lived in Spokane, Wash., for generations.

Mine was and continues to be a classic immigrant family, blending the best of the American dream with traditional values and beliefs from India. It never struck me as odd to be an immigrant and an environmentalist.

So after I began working in the environmental community, I was disturbed to find that when friends and respected colleagues talked about immigration and the environment, it was often (albeit unintentionally) from an anti-immigrant perspective.

Much of this seems to stem from large anti-immigrant organizations “greenwashing” — using environmental messaging to cloak anti-immigrant sentiments. Publicly, the mainstream environmental community has largely remained silent on immigration issues (with the exception of a couple of contentious debates in 2004 and 2005 that sprang up around Sierra Club board elections). In this silence, anti-immigrant groups have co-opted the green messaging and started gaining public support from those who generally ascribe to environmental values. These groups suggest that limiting immigration would be a good way to slow the population growth of the U.S. — and without any prominent environmental voices countering them, they’ve had plenty of room to make the case that immigration is a main driver of environmental degradation.

While their argument might sound green at first, it is far from it. The argument blames individuals rather than focusing on the main causes of degradation — polluting industries, bad policies, and rampant consumption. Author Betsy Hartmann calls this “the greening of hate — blaming environmental degradation on poor populations of color.”

There are good reasons for environmentalists to be pro–immigrant rights:

First, people who are invested in and connected to their communities are more likely to value things that will impact them and their families over the long term: clean water, clean air, parks and open spaces. When our broken immigration system keeps families split apart for years — children without parents, spouses without partners — their lives are marked by impermanence and uncertainty. It’s hard to raise your children to be good environmental stewards when your family is always wondering if they will still be in the same place tomorrow. If we care about healthy environments, then we need to care about making sure that families stay together, investing themselves in their communities and building stable futures.  

Second, most environmental protections are funded by tax dollars, and immigrants contribute a lot of those dollars.  The 14 percent of U.S. residents who are foreign-born and the additional U.S. citizens who live in mixed-status families foster environmental protection every day, by paying their taxes and contributing to economic growth that generates still more tax revenue.

Third, the demographics of our country are changing. We have a president who is the son of an immigrant. In recent elections, the votes of new Americans have been tipping outcomes — electoral power that will only continue to grow. If the environmental movement were forward-thinking, we would be strategizing — like both the Republicans and Democrats — about how to court immigrant voters. For environmentalism to be relevant to the future voters of America, we need to proactively seek to diversify our movement and connect with new Americans who could support pro-environment candidates and sustainable policies.

Fourth, in the coming years, immigration pressures are likely to increase as climate change disproportionately affects people living in developing countries.  Environmentalists should help poorer nations adapt to the effects of climate change and work to develop compassionate immigration policies so those who must leave their homelands have a decent chance to rebuild their lives.  To be effective, we must build partnerships within immigrant communities now so that we can address this future challenge. If we turn our backs on immigration reform, we are not just enabling but creating a future in which climate refugees become one more forgotten byproduct of an unjust political, social, and environmental system.

Finally, our global challenges are big enough that we need everyone working together to solve them. Our movement should be about taking care of each other while taking care of the environment; we must act on these values and advocate for the rights of our immigrant friends and neighbors.

Immigration reform and climate change are both poised to get attention in Congress over the coming months. Is the environmental community going to engage in one debate and completely ignore the other? 

I believe we environmentalists must take action on immigration reform. If we truly want to build a long-term movement reflective of the entire United States, we need to understand that immigrants are an essential part of the future. Unless we recognize the changing demographics of the country, support immigrant integration that helps people build stable and connected lives, and take an active role in promoting a more just immigration system, the relevance of the environmental community — and our ability to affect real change — will never reach its full potential. 

I have three young nieces whose parents are raising them with strong environmental values. I hope when they are older, they won’t find a divide between being pro-immigrant and pro-environment. Instead, I hope they find an environmental movement that promotes equity and justice for all and embraces the pro-immigrant culture on which this country was built.