MANY New Allies!

group of people posing with fists

EJ & Labor leaders meet to discuss solidarity strategies for 2025 and beyond.  Photo credit: Ananda Lee Tan

Learn More about JTA’s Partners

Because of a little technical difficulty with our website, JTA had not updated our list of allies recently.  Finally, we are very happy to share that we have corrected that issue, and we are excited to highlight our many new allies.  Please check out the new Our Partners page, which now allows you to sort by alphabetical or chronological order to view our continuously evolving, increasingly diverse and wide-reaching network of alliances between Labor and EJ groups.  More than ever, we are bringing together frontline workers and fenceline communities, united for justice!

Here is a simple list of all of our partners as of January 2025, beginning with the most recent.

Standing on the rich history of the resilience and strength of our culture, Black Women for Wellness envisions a future for Black women and girls where, in our full wellness, we use our power, beauty and intelligence, to pursue and attain healthy lives and families.  We build and sustain healthy communities and within them, empower other women and girls to improve their own well-being.

The mission of Valley Improvement Projects is to improve the quality of life of underrepresented and marginalized residents of California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley by advocating for social and environmental justice.

Mother Earth Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes zero waste practices and policies in the Philippines. It offers various services, programs and projects to help businesses, communities and individuals reduce their waste footprint.

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) is a union of waste pickers organizations representing more than 460,000 workers across 34 countries. Our members participate in the collection, separation, sorting, transport, and sale of recyclable and reusable materials and products (paper, plastic, metal, glass and other materials) in an informal or semi-formal capacity, as own account workers, or in a cooperative settings.

The Alliance defends their work and its recognition, in pursuit of public policies that improve the working and living conditions of the waste pickers of the world.

The New Mexico No False Solutions Coalition includes PAA, YUCCA, LJI, Indigenous Lifeways, Earth Care, and New Energy Economy.  After a strong presence during the 2022 New Mexico legislative session opposing eight iterations of hydrogen and net zero climate bills, PAA, YUCCA, and LJI organized a second No False Solutions Gathering to bring communities together to discuss current and future false solutions and begin strategizing for the next legislative session and other upcoming events and trainings. This coalition continues to provide popular education and resources to help communities understand what are “false climate solutions,” how they greenwash proposed climate solutions, and how they uphold the neoliberal agenda. We aim to continue mobilizing communities that are facing the impact of the climate crisis and continue the protection of what is sacred.

Comunidades Aliadas Tomando Acción (Allied Communities Taking Action) is a grassroot led organization serving vulnerable, minorities and farm working communities. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Comunidades Aliadas Tomando Acción, has been taking on the initiative to be educated, so we can better inform the farmworker and marginalized communities. Due to many disadvantages and systemic environmental injustices this organization was created by farm workers with the purpose of supporting communities of color. We recognize the valuable organizers and powerful farm workers that work in collaboration with other groups to change systems while transforming their lives.

Our mission is to motivate and empower low-income, and farmworker communities to pursue lifelong learning opportunities. We are working together towards social and environmental  justice by encouraging education, wellness, developing leadership among youth, and residents. Our vision is to create a culture of well-informed residents  and secure healthy environments with more protections and our goal is to continue informing vulnerable communities on different topics such as heat illness prevention, health education, healthy, safe and sustainable environments. We are glad to say that we have increased healthy lifestyle outcomes and have created safe environments in low-income communities. Residents are taking action to live a healthier, informed and more dignified lifestyle.

Pacoima Beautiful is a grassroots environmental justice organization that provides education, impacts local policy, and supports local arts and culture in order to promote a healthy and sustainable San Fernando Valley.

Established in 2021, the Environmental Justice Communities Against Plastics coalition (EJCAP) tackles the life cycle of plastic pollution, prioritizing frontline communities’ needs. We support developing local, environmentally responsible, zero-waste alternatives led by communities and workers.

The Hoodwinked Collaborative is an international coalition of organizations and activists that was convened to produce and distribute the groundbreaking publication on false solutions to the climate crisis, Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist False Solutions to Climate Change. Our education and movement building work seeks to shift the narrative on climate change away from false solutions that perpetuate systems of extraction and exploitation, and towards real solutions for climate justice.

Central Florida Jobs with Justice is a local coalition of labor unions, community organizations, faith and student groups that convene on strategies to achieve economic justice for workers within the state of Florida. Through research and community organizing, Central Florida Jobs With Justice promotes collective bargaining rights, employment security, and a decent standard for all workers within the state of Florida.

The Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) conducts workshops for labor organizations on climate change, and for environmental organizations on the history, structure, function and culture of the labor movement; so that deeper relationships can be cultivated.

The mission of LNS is to engage workers and communities in building a transition to a society that is ecologically sustainable and economically just.

Major themes and strategies:

  • Climate change is the real job killer; not the answers.
  • Just Transition is a bedrock principle, not an add-on.
  • Keep the science front and center.
  • Be a network, not a coalition.
  • Focus on bottom up organizing coupled with top-down strategies.
  • Build bridges to bring together these two great movements, labor and the environment, that made great gains when they worked together, but each time progress was made working together, something would happen that would drive them apart. Address these pitfalls and fault-lines head-on.

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) is a community-based organization that works to facilitate self-advocates in East Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach.  By providing workshops and trainings, EYCEJ prepares community members to engage in the decision-making processes that directly impact their health and quality of life.

National Nurses United (NNU), with nearly 225,000 members nationwide, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in U.S. history.

NNU affiliate members are renowned as leading advocates of guaranteed health care, fighting for expanding and updating Medicare to cover all people in the United States, for negotiating many of the best collective bargaining contracts for RNs in the nation, and for sponsorship of innovative legislation and regulatory protections for patients and nurses.

Through energetic advocacy we are organizing to:

  • Win health care justice; accessible, quality health care for all, as a human right.
  • Win major national legislation to promote comprehensive, mandatory RN-to-patient staffing ratios modeled on successful California laws sponsored by NNU affiliate CNA.
  • Attain guaranteed robust protections against workplace violence with an emphasis on prevention through collective bargaining agreements, regulations, and legislation at the federal level, modeled on California’s 2014 landmark workplace violence prevention bill.
  • Secure mandatory health and safety standards in the workplace to protect patients and nurses against infectious diseases such as Covid-19, building on the precedent-setting Ebola guidelines won in California, and advocate for regulatory policy and collective bargaining agreements that guarantee nurses the education, training, and personal protective equipment they need at work.

Familias Unidas por la Justicia  is an independent farm worker union of indigenous families located in Burlington, WA representing over 500 Triqui, Mixteco, and Spanish speaking workers at Sakuma Bros. Berry Farm. Familias Unidas formed in 2013 with the hopes of securing a better future for hand harvesters in the local berry fields of Whatcom and Skagit Counties in Washington State. Nearly four years later, on September 12, 2016, Familias Unidas won a historic secret ballot election ushering in a new era for farm worker justice in WA State. Familias Unidas is led by a leadership team including Ramon Torres, President, and Felimon Pineda, VP.

The contract with Sakuma Bros. guarantees a $15 hourly wage, sets up a process to calculate a fair piece-rate wage for berry pickers, establishes a grievance process and protects against arbitrary termination, among other protections of basic worker rights. Ramon Torres has said, “The union helps workers understand their rights and empowers them to stand up for themselves. It is the goal of Familias Unidas that the workers manage the contract themselves.”

The Climate Justice Alliance is a new collaborative of community-based and movement support organizations uniting frontline communities to forge a scalable, socially and economically just transition away from unsustainable energy and false solutions to climate change. They do this through building local living economies, building community resilience, and climate justice for all.

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance joins more than 60 U.S.-based grassroots organizing (GRO) groups comprised of working and poor people and communities of color. GGJ brings GRO groups into a long-term process of relationship building, political alignment and transformational leadership development, weaving and bridging together U.S.-based GRO groups and global social movements working for climate justice, gender justice, an end to war, and a just transition to the next economy.  At its 7th Membership Assembly in 2018, the membership of GGJ refined its framework for a holistic approach to building grassroots global justice: No War, No Warming, Build a Just Transition to a Feminist Economy, echoing the framework of Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy of the Triple Evils of Poverty, Racism and Militarism and integrating the current day pressing issues of climate change and feminism.

Coming Clean is a nonprofit collaborative of environmental health and environmental justice experts working to reform the chemical and energy industries so they are no longer a source of harm. Coming Clean:

  • Coordinates hundreds of organizations and issue experts—including grassroots activists, community leaders, scientists and researchers, business leaders, lawyers, and advocates working to reform the chemical and energy industries.
  • Envisions a future where no one’s health is sacrificed by toxic chemical use or energy generation.
  • Is guided by the Louisville Charter, the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing, and the Principles of Environmental Justice, we are winning campaigns for a healthy, just, and sustainable society by growing a stronger and more connected movement.

For more than 40 years, PSR-LA has been bringing the voices of health professionals to the front lines of the fight for a safer future, and working hand in hand with communities impacted by environmental racism, pollution, and injustice. PSR-LA began by advocating for an end to the nuclear arms race and nuclear weapons abolition, a fight that continues to this day.

The United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675 in Carson, California, represents workers in the oil, chemical, bedding, printing, carwash and paper sector industries.

The Farmworker Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, established in 1994,  serves nine agricultural worker membership organizations from the U.S., the Caribbean and Mexico. They work on:

  • reducing agricultural pesticide hazards
  • establishing worker protection standards and worker rights
  • supporting direct organizing
  • and promoting mutual support among agricultural worker organizations, sustainable agriculture, and occupational health and safety.

For decades, the hard work of campesinas (farmworker women) has built and fed California. Líderes Campesinas is a growing movement where we come together to advocate for and win what our communities need.

We build on the long legacy of women using organizing, outreach, and grassroots mobilization to improve the lives of farmworker communities. Our origins stretch back to 1988 in the Coachella Valley: due to immigration status, lack of formal education, and abusive work conditions, women were susceptible to violence in the fields and in their homes. Using theater and storytelling as educational tools, these women came together to raise awareness about their rights and connected women to resources to disrupt the violence.

Now, we are a statewide network of powerful advocates based in sixteen farm working communities where we impact thousands of women and their families. We organize to create healthier working conditions, safer environments, and engaged women leaders. Líderes Campesinas focuses on the inherent power and leadership of farmworker women because when we invest in them, we take care of entire families and communities.

Los Jardines Institute (The Gardens Institute) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, builds and supports healthy and sustainable communities and workplaces by providing opportunities that promote multigenerational, community-based models of learning, sharing and community building. The Institute prioritizes traditional land-based ways of knowing in the places ‘where we live, work, play, pray, and go to school.’

The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), established in 1990, is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, environmental protection of our lands, water, and air and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions.