Union Sellout, Lethal Heat, Climate Arson: Capital's Three Fronts

The Committee for Public Education, a rank-and-file educators' network, calls on teachers and educators to repudiate the government-AEU conspiracy against their rights, including by voting "no" in the union's rushed ballot. The leadership of the Australian Education Union in Victoria has aligned with the state government to push through a sell-out of Victorian educators' conditions, using a hastened vote to bypass meaningful debate.

On the job, Mamdani's initiative jumpstarts an essential discussion about the need to address a potentially deadly problem. Meanwhile Republicans make no mention of experts' warnings that climate change is supercharging the wildfires, even as Trump threatens tariffs on Canada for smoke crossing the border.

The arsonists have names. A climate advocate told Common Dreams that "Climate change isn't a tragedy, it's a crime. The fossil fuel industry are arsonists at a global scale. It's their pollution that's fueling these horrific wildfires." The Real News Network reports calls for Nuremberg trials for big oil. The language is deliberate: not accident, not tragedy — crime. The fossil fuel industry is named as a class actor, a global arsonist whose pollution drives the fires scorching forests and choking cities.

These three fronts are not disconnected. Democrats keep promising to fix the country's problems but refuse to name the corporate interests standing in the way. The rank-and-file network calls for a vote no against the AEU's rushed ballot. A climate advocate names the fossil fuel industry as global arsonists. Mamdani's initiative forces the heat discussion onto the agenda. Each is a fracture in the managed retreat. The institutions will not save us — they are the machinery of the sell-out. The organized left must turn these fractures into a break. The educators rejecting the conspiracy, the initiative forcing the heat discussion, the advocates naming arson: they are the same fight. Capital knows it. The union bureaucracy knows it. The only open question is whether we do.