Points of Contact

Jemez vs. Just Transition

5 min read

This is a catch up from the previous weeks discussion as I have just now entered the class in Week 2

Jemez Principles

Just Transition Principles

  • Just Transition Alliance is a group founded in the late 1990s founded to build a more sustainable consumer economy

    • Aim to create a set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy

  • Both are environmental justice movements/frameworks responding to corporate globalization

Just Transition Principles

  1. Right to Clean Resources: Workers, community residents, and Indigenous Peoples around the world have a fundamental human right to clean air, water, land, and food in their workplaces, homes, and environments.
  2. No Contradiction: There is no contradiction between simultaneously creating sustainable development, maintaining a healthy economy, and keeping a clean, safe environment.
  3. Global Solidarity: Because corporate globalization and the liberalization of labor, health, and environmental laws know no borders, solutions must be rooted in local, regional, national, and global solidarity.
  4. Frontline Inclusion: The development of fair economic, trade, health and safety, and environmental policies must directly include both the frontline workers and fenceline communities most affected by pollution, ecological damage, and economic restructuring.
  5. Fair Cost Distribution: The costs of achieving sustainable development, a healthy economy, and a clean environment must not be borne by current or future victims of environmental and economic injustices or unfair trade policies.
  6. Right to Challenge: Workers and community residents have the explicit right to challenge any entity—including governments, the military, corporations, and international bodies—that commits economic or environmental injustices.

Jemez Principles

  1. Be Inclusive: True inclusiveness requires more than tokenism. It demands having diverse voices at the planning table, in staffing, and in coordination, which requires patience, advance planning, and a willingness to work constructively through conflict.
  2. Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing: Organizing must actively reach and empower the base of a community. Continually building and strengthening this base provides the credibility, strategies, and leadership development necessary for sustained movement energy.
  3. Let People Speak for Themselves: Organizers must ensure that the direct voices of those affected are heard, and that spokespersons are accountable to their respective constituencies.
  4. Work Together in Solidarity and Mutuality: Organizations with compatible visions must actively support one another. This means integrating the goals and values of partner movements into one’s own work rather than just offering passive, transactional support.
  5. Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves: Partners must treat each other with justice and respect by being transparent about decision-making processes, strategy sharing, and the distribution of resources.
  6. Commitment to Self-Transformation: Shifting from individualism to community-centeredness. Organizers must “walk our talk” and embody the very values of peace, justice, and community they are fighting for.

Contrast/Intersection

Intersection

  • Constitutes speak directly to leadership and are present for policy creation
  • Leadership is held accountable by spokespeople
  • Dismantle neoliberal globalization and cross border solidarity on trade
    • Jemez drafted at meeting on Globalization and Trade
    • Just Transition 3. Global Solidarity and 5. Fair Cost Distribution

Contrasts

  • Deepening Democracy: Both frameworks champion “deep democracy,” which is defined in Just Transition literature as a state where “workers and communities have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives”. While Jemez works to build this internally through inclusive planning tables, Just Transition secures it structurally by establishing clean resources as a fundamental human right and asserting the right of communities to challenge oppressive entities.

How They Contrast (Differences in Focus and Scope)

While sister frameworks, they serve distinct operational roles:

  • “The How” vs. “The What”:
    • The Jemez Principles are primarily process-oriented organizing guidelines. They act as an interpersonal and coalition-building blueprint, telling organizers how to build trust, share resources, manage internal conflict, and “walk the talk” through self-transformation.
    • The Just Transition Principles are systemic, economic, and policy goals. They focus on the what—proposing a structural vision for economic restructuring that protects labor rights, jobs, and environmental health simultaneously.
  • Bridging Labor and Environmental Justice:
    • Just Transition specifically aims to dismantle the historical, corporate-engineered divide between the labor movement (workers) and local communities (fenceline residents). It focuses on economic issues like job security, compensation, and workplace safety.
    • While the Jemez Principles can easily apply to labor-environmental alliances (and Principle #4 explicitly notes that labor unions should integrate environmental sustainability into their strategies), they are designed as a generalized democratic guide for any cross-cultural, cross-political organization or movement.
  • The Target of Action:
    • Just Transition Principles focus outward, explicitly naming systems of power that must be challenged (governments, corporations, the military, international trade bodies).
    • Jemez Principles focus inward on the movement itself, striving to establish “just relationships among ourselves” and shifting from individualistic behavior to community-centeredness.

A Practical Synergy: Just Transition Northwest Indiana

In practice, grassroots groups often treat these frameworks as two sides of the same coin. For example, during their 2023 door-to-door campaign against the MachH2 hydrogen hub, Just Transition Northwest Indiana (JTNWI) used Just Transition as the campaign’s macro-goal (transitioning fenceline “sacrifice zones” to a healthier economy). At the exact same time, they used the Jemez Principles in their canvasser training manuals as the microscopic organizing methodology, instructing canvassers on how to listen humbly, build trust, and let residents speak from their own lived experience at the doors.

🌱 Since Just Transition relies heavily on bridging the labor movement with frontline communities, we could look closer at how organizations navigate the historical tensions between “protecting jobs” and “protecting health.” Would you like to explore how that dynamic plays out in these sources?

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