The Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conference

“The Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment” is the title of two back-to-back conferences; the first on Saturday, March 14, 2015 in Richmond, California; the second on Saturday, March 21 in Olympia, Washington.

Everyday a tragic trail derailment occurs, often transporting highly flammable Bakken Shale or Tar Sand, from North Dakota or Alberta, to refineries across North America. The 47 -- preventable-- deaths in Lac-Mégantic has wakened people to the dangers of oil trains and the movement of trains in general through their communities. Environmental activists are up-in-arms about the amounts of fossil fuels moving by rail. Farmers and other shippers are concerned about the congestion that has occurred in recent months, but in part to the oil boom. The rail networks in the U.S. and Canada and clogged with crude-by-rail, displacing the already heavy traffic of grains headed to port for export.

The public generally has no idea what goes on daily on America’s railroads. Chronic crew fatigue, single employee train crews, excessively long and heavy trains, draconian availability policies, short staffing, limited time off work create challenging safety issues of concern not just to railroaders, but to the entire population.

Please join us at this cutting edge conference that brings together railroad workers, environmentalists, community activists and concerned workers from other sectors, in order to build the movement for a safer and greener railroad, on that is more responsive to the needs of workers, trackside communities, citizens in general, and society as a whole.

Members of the Empire Logistics/Global Supply Chains Study Group (http://thepublicschool.org/node/38423) will facilitate the following workshop:

● Energy Supply Chain Inquiry

Interactive workshop where all participants will brainstorm ways for solidarity to flow through the various working class sectors down the chains – and model ways for strikes and direct action to flow from the point of extraction to the point of consumption, including the communities where the energy commodities pass through. All necessary materials (maps of rail lines, rail yards, ports & refineries; flowcharts of fossil fuel supply chains; etc.) will be provided.

Other workshops will be:

● Railroading 101
Single Employee Train Crews
Importance of Teamwork & Crew Fatigue
The Problem with Long & Heavy Trains

● Environmentalism 101
Climate Change & Crude-by-Rail 101
Political Ecology 101

● Solutionary Rail: A vision for electrified higher-speed rail

For more information and to register online, see the website at http://www.RailroadConference.org

● Railroad Workers United: http://railroadworkersunited.org/

● Empire Logistics Mapping Project: https://www.empirelogistics.org/#10/37.7783/-122.2703