JTA Executive Director José T. Bravo contributes to the Monarch Forum organized by Taproot Earth, New Orleans, LA, August 26, 2025. Photo Credit: Norman Rodgers, United Steel Workers, Local 675

As we approach Labor Day weekend, today marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina plowed through New Orleans and the Gulf South. However, as many of the most impacted people and communities powerfully testify, Hurricane Katrina must be remembered as much more than a Category 5 storm. In addition to being supercharged by climate colonialism, the violent systems and structures in place—and that persist today—made material and other conditions ripe for a deadly situation, which could and should have been avoided.

At JTA, we are honored to be collaborating with Taproot Earth and other justice-oriented, grassroots groups to commemorate Hurricane Katrina in ways that elevate calls for just transition and just recovery, while decrying the violent power of environmental racism and disaster capitalism. From Louisiana, to Mississippi, to Alabama, and far beyond, communities continue to tell their own stories of survival and endurance, showing that so-called “natural events” are neither “natural,” nor should they be reduced to an “event.” #Katrina20 gatherings and other actions powerfully demonstrate that building and strengthening relational ties and kinships among frontline communities in the Gulf South, the Global South, and the Global South of the North are indispensable efforts for supporting the right to stay and flourish in place, while nourishing intersectional climate justice solidarities across time and space.

JTA moves in solidarity with and deeply respects the work of Taproot Earth, Step Up Louisiana, Central Florida Jobs with Justice, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, United Steelworkers Local 675, and the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), among many other groups and coalitions. Our organization’s members look forward to participating in the LNS Convergence in October. We invite interested individuals and groups to follow JTA’s Instagram page and website for frontline worker-fenceline community organizing updates in the weeks and months ahead!

As federal efforts continue to try to deny working people organizing power, the long history of worker resistance, rebellion, and refusal, from which the US Labor Day holiday stems, continues tenaciously today. JTA Executive Director José T. Bravo reflected this ongoing determination in a message he communicated with the JTA team, following his involvement in the Taproot Earth Monarch Forum in New Orleans, on August 26, 2025. He expressed, “Down with disaster capitalism, up with community- and worker-driven resistance and real solutions!” That’s a rallying sentiment that will re-energize our efforts and, we hope, yours, too!