Inside Liz Murrill and the Illegal Threat to New Orleans
https://blacksourcemedia.com/inside-liz-murrill-and-the-illegal-threat-to-new-orleans/
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Attorney General Liz Murrill spent the past year threatening to remove elected New Orleans officials from …office. The short answer to whether she actually can: no. Only a judge can remove an elected official — Murrill can only file a petition asking one to. But the underlying fight started with a voter, not a letter. Calvin Duncan, a wrongfully-convicted man turned attorney, won the Orleans Parish Criminal Clerk’s race with about 68% of the vote. The Legislature abolished the office almost as soon as he won it.
KEY POINTS
Only a judge can remove an elected official in Louisiana — the Attorney General can file a petition, but cannot remove anyone herself.
The conflict began when the Legislature abolished the Orleans Parish Criminal Clerk’s office shortly after Calvin Duncan won it with roughly 68% of the vote.
Murrill’s May 13 letters warned Mayor Helena Moreno, DA Jason Williams, and five City Council members that they risked “forfeiture” of their own offices.
A grand jury indicted Murrill on 16 felony counts; the Louisiana Supreme Court’s stay was procedural, not a ruling on the merits; the charges were later dismissed at the city’s own request.
Multiple civil challenges against both Murrill and Governor Jeff Landry remain pending over Act 15 and the elimination of Orleans Criminal Court judgeships.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill remove elected officials Orleans Parish
A courthouse fight that started with a voter, not a letter.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has spent the past year testing the limits of her office — and the patience of New Orleans voters. Her threats to the Mayor, District Attorney, and City Council raised a fundamental question. So did her aggressive interpretation of “usurper statutes,” and her alignment with Governor Jeff Landry’s judicial restructuring.
Can the Attorney General remove elected officials from office? The short answer: no. The long answer: she’s trying anyway.
This fight didn’t begin with a letter. It began with a voter — attorney Calvin Duncan — and a Legislature that erased the office he had just won.
Calvin Duncan: The Spark That Lit the Fuse
Attorney Calvin Duncan is not just a reform advocate. He is a symbol of resilience and justice in Louisiana.
He spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. During that time, he became a jailhouse lawyer, helping countless incarcerated people file appeals. The Innocence Project helped secure his release. He later graduated from Tulane University Law School and wrote the book “Jailhouse Lawyer.”
In November 2025, Duncan won the election for Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Clerk with roughly 68% of the vote.
Then the Legislature passed Act 15, abolishing the criminal clerk’s office entirely and consolidating its duties under Civil Clerk Chelsey Richard Napoleon. At the same time, lawmakers — backed by Governor Jeff Landry — eliminated judgeships in Orleans Criminal District Court. I’ve written before about how Landry has rewired how power actually flows in this state, and this is that rewiring applied directly to a courthouse.
Some observers believe state Republicans resented what Duncan represented. A Black man, wrongfully convicted, exonerated, educated, and overwhelmingly chosen by voters, poised to lead a major judicial office. That is the core of the conflict: New Orleans voters were overruled by statewide officials who didn’t like the outcome.
The Threatening Letter: “Possible Forfeiture of Your Own Office”
On May 13, 2026, AG Liz Murrill sent letters to Mayor Helena Moreno and District Attorney Jason Williams. Five City Council members received them too: JP Morrell, Lesli Harris, Eugene Green, Freddie King III, and Oliver Thomas.
Her most alarming line: “The New Orleans City Council’s May 11 resolutions now trigger serious consequences under Louisiana’s usurper statutes, including the possible forfeiture of your own office.”
Many saw her actions as political intimidation. It read as an attempt to bully New Orleans officials into abandoning their efforts to restore democratic control after Duncan’s office was abolished.
The Indictment: New Orleans Pushes Back
On July 2, 2026, an Orleans Parish grand jury indicted Murrill on 16 felony counts, split between intimidation and malfeasance in office.
The Louisiana Supreme Court issued a stay on the indictment and arrest warrant. That stay was unsigned, procedural, and not a ruling on the merits. It came without a written opinion, a vote count, or a dissent.
Later, at the request of Mayor Moreno and several council members, Special Prosecutor Laurie White dismissed the charges. I broke down that retreat in an earlier piece on Murrill’s indictment fallout.
Pending Lawsuits Against Murrill and Governor Landry
Against AG Liz Murrill: civil challenges tied to Act 15, legal disputes over her interpretation of usurper statutes, and the criminal indictment itself. That charge has since been dismissed.
Against Governor Jeff Landry: challenges to Act 15 and to the elimination of Orleans Criminal Court judgeships. Legal filings also target the broader takeover of New Orleans’ judiciary.
Race, Power, and the “Chocolate City”
After Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin famously called New Orleans a “chocolate city” — a majority-Black city with a distinct cultural and political identity.
Princeton professor Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. put it this way: “Not every issue is about race, but race influences everything in the United States.” In Louisiana, and especially in New Orleans, that influence is unmistakable.
The Bottom Line
Liz Murrill cannot remove elected officials. Jeff Landry cannot erase New Orleans voters. But both have already succeeded in reshaping the city’s judiciary — regardless of what any court eventually decides.
“The Attorney General can file a petition, but only a judge can remove an elected official.”
Sources:
Louisiana Legislature — Act 15, 2026 Regular Session
Orleans Parish grand jury indictment records, July 2, 2026
Louisiana Supreme Court — stay order on Murrill indictment
The Innocence Project — Calvin Duncan case history
Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., Princeton University — public commentary on race in American politics
About the Author
C.C. Campbell-Rock is a New Orleans-based investigative journalist covering civil rights, voting rights, and the intersection of race and power in Louisiana politics for Black Source Media.
AG Liz Murrill threatened to remove New Orleans officials from office. C.C. Campbell-Rock breaks down what the law actually allows.
blacksourcemedia.comA powerful union, the billionaire tax and an alleged bargaining chip
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-26/powerful-union-billionaire-tax-alleged-bargaining-chip
A sign placed on chairs at the Billionaire Tax Now rally where Sen. Bernie Sanders was scheduled to speak in …February.
A sign placed on chairs at the Billionaire Tax Now rally where Sen. Bernie Sanders was scheduled to speak in February in Los Angeles. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Taryn Luna. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
By Taryn Luna
Senior Sacramento Reporter
July 26, 2026 3 AM PT
SACRAMENTO — As the architect of a one-time tax on California billionaires, Dave Regan says he’s pushing the measure to raise $100 billion to protect low-income patients, workers and hospitals from President Trump’s cuts to healthcare.
The behind-the-scenes negotiations with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in June to pull the measure off the ballot, however, revealed another possible goal, according to two sources familiar with the talks who requested anonymity to share details of the discussions with The Times.
Regan, the president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, asked for union contracts with two hospitals in San Diego and Fresno and a clinic in Imperial County, among a list of sweeping demands to grow his union, in exchange for rescinding the measure, the sources said.
The union leader denied that he asked for concessions for his union in exchange for removing the billionaire tax from the ballot, calling the allegations “categorically false.”
“We are trying to solve a problem,” Regan said. “The problem is to prevent a catastrophe in California’s healthcare system. We put forward a proposal. Nobody else has offered a solution, and none of what you are referencing happened.”
The talks failed to result in a deal and the measure will appear as Proposition 40 on the November ballot, leaving California voters to decide pivotal tax policy that has roiled the Democratic Party and opponents worry could ultimately reduce revenue for the state budget.
The terms Regan allegedly laid out raise the question of whether he intended for the billionaire tax to go on the ballot, or if it was designed as a leverage play to expand his union, which represents more than 120,000 workers and is among the largest healthcare unions in the nation.
Regan, who has been elected to five consecutive terms as union president since 2011, has a record of launching ballot initiatives at the state and local level to use as leverage for union expansion and to thwart his political opponents.
His foes say that this year he went too far.
“It’s no secret in Sacramento that the ballot initiative has been used this way by UHW as a weapon,” said Francisco Silva, president of the California Primary Care Assn., which represents community clinics. “They’ve been very vocal about it and we think it’s a bigger risk to the safety net than any benefit that it brings.”
Known as a stubborn negotiator and a brash personality, Regan has filed multiple ballot initiatives against the healthcare industry.
His opponents say his strategy centers on launching initiatives that would hurt employers, which forces them to come to the table to negotiate. Regan’s union then requests union contracts or other concessions that could pave the way for a collective bargaining agreement. If employers resist, the initiative advances to the ballot. Voters consistently reject his measures, but companies still spend millions of dollars campaigning against them.
Over the years, Regan has proposed multiple measures that would have limited charges and executive salaries at hospitals and dropped the initiatives after landing temporary deals with the California Hospital Assn. that could help his union’s organizing efforts.
This year, UHW agreed to call off an initiative to again cap compensation for hospital leaders, and the hospital association rescinded its dueling proposal to require the union to seek approval from its members to spend more than $1 million on a statewide ballot measure campaign.
Regan led and lost measures against the dialysis industry in 2018, 2020 and 2022 as he struggled to force dialysis companies to recognize his union and negotiate a contract.
Silva accused Regan of using the same playbook in negotiations around another measure on the November ballot, Proposition 44, which would restrict spending at nonprofit community health clinics.
Regan drafted Proposition 44 to require that community clinics spend 90% of revenue on patient services, which he said ensures that money is aligned with the mission of the health centers. But Silva said the measure dramatically reduces funding for other essential services in the community care model, such as community outreach, education, overhead costs, technology and medical equipment investments, and programs that bring people living on the streets into the healthcare system.
About 70% of the patients community clinics serve are insured through Medi-Cal, and the rest are either on Medicare or uninsured, with a small portion on private insurance, Silva said. The measure would result in layoffs and clinics being forced to close, and ultimately reduce access to care for low-income Californians, he said.
“One of the things that stands out that really highlights the abuse of the ballot initiative process in this instance is that the substance of what’s on the ballot has nothing to do with what he wants to negotiate with us,” Silva said. “The request was to guarantee 25,000 workers, or else.”
Regan also denied that he asked the clinics to support his unionization efforts in exchange for dropping Proposition 44.
“We wanted to construct a relationship with the clinic association that prioritized appropriate funding of the community clinics in California, including restoring the healthcare cuts that were introduced by the ‘One Big [Beautiful] Bill,’” Regan said. “It was a strategic relationship where we’re working in a mutually cooperative way to properly fund the healthcare system to respect workers, and they were not interested in that.”
Regan’s opponents say his strategy runs afoul of the purpose of direct democracy and pushes the bounds of legality.
During negotiations on the billionaire tax, Regan essentially put the onus on Newsom to force unrelated private hospitals and clinics to unionize their employees, the sources said.
Despite a desire to call off the tax measure, Newsom’s office couldn’t provide guarantees to satisfy Regan’s demands, according to those sources.
California legislators changed state law in 2014 to provide more flexibility around initiative negotiations and to allow proponents to pull measures off the ballot after they gather enough signatures and qualify for the election, said Mary-Beth Moylan, an associate professor of law at McGeorge School of Law.
State law also prohibits a proponent of an initiative from bargaining for money or a thing of value in exchange for abandoning their measure, which hasn’t been tested in court, she said.
“I think the intention behind the law allowing the ballot measures to be negotiated off was that the negotiation would be for the Legislature to do the thing that you’re bringing about in the measure,” Moylan said. “It is not to use it as leverage for obtaining something else.”
Regan’s wealth measure retroactively applies a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires who were residing in California as of Jan. 1, 2026.
He and advocates of his proposal cast it as a solution to the healthcare cuts from the Trump administration. It comes as the progressive message on wealth inequality has gained support in California and beyond.
“What’s remarkable about the situation is that everyone — the governor, the Legislature, the healthcare industry — everyone agrees that the ‘One Big Beautiful’ bill is going to result in 3.5 million people losing healthcare coverage, 150,000 frontline healthcare workers losing their jobs, community clinics and hospitals closing, and all of us who buy or receive our healthcare through job-based insurance are spending more on premiums, deductibles, and copays because the legislation defunded healthcare and in return gave yet another round of huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,” Regan said. “That’s why we have put Proposition 40 forward.”
Newsom contends that Regan’s solution won’t work.
Instead of paying more California taxes, billionaires would simply pick up and move to another state with a lower tax rate before the start of the year, the governor warned. The state budget is dependent on income taxes the rich pay on stock market and similar profits.
A report from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University estimated that the tax would generate only $40 billion, not the $100 billion proponents claim, largely because of an expected exodus of billionaires. Overall, the tax would result in an estimated loss for the state of $24.7 billion, with the permanent decline in future income tax revenue due to billionaire migration eclipsing any gains from the one-time levy, according to the report.
Regan rejected the findings of the report and cast doubt on the amount of taxes that billionaires actually pay in California.
Newsom sought to negotiate with Regan to remove the billionaire tax from the ballot before the beginning of the year. At the time, Regan said he wanted an extra $20 billion for healthcare in 2027-28, which is beyond Newsom’s time in office and not something the outgoing governor could promise, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations.
Regan said he never asked for $20 billion in funding for healthcare to remove the billionaire tax from the ballot. He said he was open to hearing alternative solutions that never came.
“But did we ever make a proposal, or did we ever receive a proposal for something different?” Regan said. “The answer is no.”
In the spring, Newsom began working to form a coalition against the initiative that includes Planned Parenthood, doctors and firefighters while billionaires launched a series of counterproposals.
In an unusual split within labor, major unions such as the California Teachers Assn. and the State Building and Construction Trades Council oppose the measure. Teamsters California and AFSCME California joined Regan. The SEIU California State Council and California Federation of Labor Unions have yet to take positions.
Instead of uniting the left, California’s billionaire tax measure has split Democratic allies
Under California law, proponents had until June 25 to rescind measures that earned enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Negotiations picked up again to remove the measure from the ballot shortly before the deadline. Two sources said Regan’s demands changed and allegedly had nothing to do with raising money to offset federal healthcare cuts.
Sources said Regan said he wanted union contracts with two private hospitals and a health clinic, an organizing neutrality agreement with healthcare clinics statewide, recognition of his union from dialysis clinics and for billionaires to remove measures they launched in response to his tax.
Newsom’s office said they couldn’t force private companies to do anything. The governor’s aides offered an alternative plan to dedicate around $7 billion over several years to healthcare funding in California, which didn’t move Regan.
“There were no negotiations,” Regan said about the billionaire tax.
Days before the deadline to pull the wealth tax measure from the ballot, UHW announced an offer to reduce the billionaire tax from 5% to 2% of net worth that the union said Newsom rejected. Sources said the compromise was first offered in a press release and did not reflect any serious negotiation.
Regan set a goal to add 25,000 new members by this year and has so far added around 8,000, according to the union’s website.
In exchange for removing the billionaire tax from the ballot, sources said one of Regan’s demands was for Newsom’s office to get involved with battles for union contracts at hospitals in Fresno and San Diego and a clinic in the Imperial Valley.
The union is tied up in labor disputes over recent attempts to unionize facilities in two of those places — Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and Innercare, a community clinic in El Centro.
The dialysis industry became a ballot target for Regan three election cycles in a row as he attempted to unionize its workers.
The battle is on pause after dialysis companies agreed to not oppose a $25 minimum wage increase for healthcare workers and UHW agreed to not target the industry in legislation or ballot measures through the end of this year, but the fight turned DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care into major political donors in state campaigns.
California’s billionaire class is also increasing its presence in state politics.
Billionaires pushed two measures on the November ballot that seek to neutralize the billionaire tax and block new taxes on personal property and assets and require audits of new programs funded with special taxes.
The billionaire tax has also become a national rallying cry for the political left, drawing the high-profile support of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others who are fed up with wealth inequality. Opponents of Proposition 40 have questioned whether any of the solutions Regan proposed would have been enough for him to remove the measure from the ballot and avoid the wrath of progressives who backed the tax.
Sacramento political observers say the unintended consequences of Regan’s tax measure are already reshaping California politics.
“When he did the billionaire tax, all these people who never engaged in politics finally woke up,” said Jim DeBoo, a Democratic consultant and former chief of staff to Newsom. “And they aren’t going away.”
The measure is causing a rift within the SEIU California State Council, an umbrella organization that represents more than 700,000 workers from all SEIU unions including UHW.
The billionaire tax only benefits healthcare. SEIU, which also represents workers in the public sector, nursing homes, child care and other service industries, has become a target of California’s wealthiest new political players despite most of its union members gaining nothing from the measure.
Billionaires and their companies, including Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, venture capitalist Tim Draper, Google and Meta have spent nearly $30 million on a successful campaign to oppose SEIU-backed progressive candidates or boost moderate Democrats in legislative races. The same donors spent only $50,000 on independent expenditures in legislative races in the entire 2024 election cycle.
Shaudi Fulp, a political strategist working with Larsen and Draper, said a new governor and lawmakers present an opportunity to build fresh governing coalitions around issues that matter most to Californians.
“California is entering a unique moment of transition,” Fulp said.
The billionaires’ strategy is whittling away at SEIU’s influence in the state Legislature, where the state council has historically used its endorsements and army of volunteers to boost progressive candidates aligned with their cause. Moderates backed by billionaires beat nearly every SEIU-endorsed candidate in more than a dozen races in the June primary, with record spending knocking union candidates out of the top two in places such as Bakersfield and Orange County.
The SEIU California State Council declined to comment for this story.
The battle over the billionaire tax is also expected to become the most expensive ballot measure campaign of the election cycle, if not ever. The opposition is poised to exponentially outspend UHW.
“Look, the only thing that stands down a bully is when you punch him in the face,” said Brandon Castillo, a political consultant who has represented healthcare providers against UHW on more than a dozen initiatives. “You can’t sit back and continue to take punches or nothing will change.”
Staff writer Nicole Nixon contributed to this report.
There are questions about whether the controversial leader of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West intended for the billionaire tax to go on the…
www.latimes.comLuis Valdez speaks out after César Chavez allegations forced changes to Sundance-winning documentary
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/movies-tv/article/luis-valdez-american-pachuco-documentary-22338266.php
By G. Allen Johnson,
Staff Writer
July 24, 2026
…Filmmaker Luis Valdez at the San Rafael Film Center in San Rafael on May 1. Valdez is the subject of “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.”
Filmmaker Luis Valdez at the San Rafael Film Center in San Rafael on May 1. Valdez is the subject of “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.”
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Luis Valdez remembers the day in San Francisco when he first got paid for being creative.
It was the early 1960s, and the young man who had worked in the fields picking crops since age 6 had just graduated from San Jose State University and was finding his calling with the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
More Information
“American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” (not rated) opens Friday, July 31, at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F. www.roxie.com; Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. www.cafilm.org; Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College Ave., Berkeley. www.rialtocinemas.com/elmwood; Alamo Drafthouse Mountain View, 2575 California St. Suite 99, Mountain View. www.drafthouse.com/sf
Special screenings: 2 p.m. Sunday, July 26 and Aug. 2, 9; 7 p.m. Aug. 8. $24-$44. San Jose Stage Company, 490 South First St., San Jose. www.thestage.org
Special Q&A screenings: Luis Valdez and filmmaker David Alvarado in conversation. 6:10 p.m. Friday, July 31, Roxie; filmmakers only at 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1, at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood; 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1 at Smith Rafael Film Center; 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2, Rialto Cinemas Elmwood.
“The money was almost a joke,” Valdez recalled in a recent interview with the Chronicle. “We got paid $5 per performance, which was not enough to live on, but it was a gesture. To get five bucks to perform seemed to me, ‘Well, that’s amazing!’ I used to make five bucks picking tomatoes, you know? It was a very different kind of five bucks.”
Now Valdez is being immortalized as the long-overdue subject of a documentary, “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.” The film, directed by Stanford University alum David Alvarado, won the Audience Award for U.S. documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens in select theaters on Friday, July 31.
It’s a fitting tribute to an artist often called the father of modern Chicano theater and film.
Director David Alvarado’s documentary “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” profiles the Bay Area-raised director of “La Bamba” (1987) and founder of El Teatro Campesino, a theatrical troupe made up of farmworkers.
Director David Alvarado’s documentary “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” profiles the Bay Area-raised director of “La Bamba” (1987) and founder of El Teatro Campesino, a theatrical troupe made up of farmworkers.
Elizabeth Sunflower/Retro Photo Archive/Insignia Films
Valdez would go on to have one of the most influential artistic careers in American theater and film, helping transform the way Latino culture was perceived in American society. As the creator of the groundbreaking theatrical troupe El Teatro Campesino, he was part of the United Farm Workers quest for fair labor laws alongside César Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
He later became the first Chicano director to have a play on Broadway with the 1979 production of “Zoot Suit,” and directed the mainstream box-office hit “La Bamba” (1987), starring a young Lou Diamond Phillips in his breakthrough role. The film, a biopic of Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens, who died tragically alongside Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in the 1959 plane crash that became known as the Day the Music Died, was added to the U.S. National Film Registry in 2017.
The “American Pachuco” documentary includes interviews with Huerta, Edward James Olmos, Cheech Marin, Phillips, Linda Ronstadt and Valdez’s wife of 56 years, Lupe Trujillo-Valdez.
“‘La Bamba’ made a huge impression on me,” Alvarado told the Chronicle. “My dad comes from Mexico. He came to this country when he was 21 years old (and) didn’t speak any English. My mom, she’s Caucasian, and they started a family. So my sister and I grew up in this world where we were part Mexican, part American. It was hard to find other examples of people that we’re supposed to look up to that looked like us. When we saw ‘La Bamba’ it was just so meaningful. There’s a Latino story about a Latino family, and yet it’s broadly interesting to non-Latino audiences as well.”
Filmmakers Luis Valdez, left, and David Alvarado in San Rafael on May 1. Valdez is featured in Alvarado’s film “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.”
Filmmakers Luis Valdez, left, and David Alvarado in San Rafael on May 1. Valdez is featured in Alvarado’s film “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.”
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
But “American Pachuco” faced an early crisis. Barely six weeks after its win at Sundance, a New York Times investigation found evidence of a history of sexual abuse and rape by Chavez, who died in 1993 at age 66. The allegations were confirmed by Huerta, now 96, who said she was raped by the labor leader but did not speak out until now because she did not want to distract from the important work of the union.
Valdez had known Chavez when the two were young boys, and they were close when Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino in 1965. The troupe performed at United Farm Workers rallies. As detailed in “American Pachuco,” the two had a falling out, with Chavez urging Valdez to focus on the work of the union and to disband the theatrical troupe.
Valdez refused, eventually moving El Teatro Campesino to San Juan Bautista, where he has been based since 1971.
The revelations about Valdez’s childhood friend forced Alvarado to reedit an early portion of the documentary, reducing Chavez’s presence and placing greater emphasis on Valdez’s close working relationship with Huerta.
“As a filmmaker, I’ve just never been in this position where history has changed underneath our feet in the middle of releasing the film,” Alvarado said. “The way that we expressed Caesar’s involvement in the story was already a little bit antagonizing, because of his iron-fisted leadership style.”
For his part, Valdez said he had no inkling of Chavez’s dark side, even though he was one of the many people who acted as a pallbearer at the labor leader’s funeral. (The dozens of pallbearers, who included civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and former California Gov. Jerry Brown, rotated.)
A scene from “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez,” a documentary about Valdez, second from the right, the Bay Area-raised founder of El Teatro Campesino, a theatrical troupe made up of farmworkers, and the director of “La Bamba” (1987).
A scene from “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez,” a documentary about Valdez, second from the right, the Bay Area-raised founder of El Teatro Campesino, a theatrical troupe made up of farmworkers, and the director of “La Bamba” (1987).
Courtesy of Houston Latino Film Festival
But Valdez is upset at the way the revelations have landed at a critical time for Latinos in America during the second Trump administration, and while evidence of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is being suppressed by the Department of Justice.
He believes the political right is using Chavez’s past transgressions as a way to minimize the Chicano movement.
“I would say the scandals of the present are part of the effort to try to erase César Chavez and the United Farm Workers and Dolores Huerta, and also the whole Chicano movement,” Valdez said. “Most of César’s life was spent fighting for human rights. He was not there fooling around. He had his life on the line. I don’t believe that we should erase history, and I think that that’s the evil that’s really at the base of this.
“People would love to destroy any union, would love to destroy any movement of people of color that stands up for human rights and to make it the sins of everybody seems to me massively unjust and also suspiciously political at the same time,” Valdez continued. “Certainly since Trump came in, they live in fear. ICE has been around a lot, hovering like a buzzard. And, actually, I don’t want to denigrate buzzards.”
Filmmaker David Alvarado, a Stanford University alum, reedited his documentary “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” after allegations of sexual abuse came out about the late United Farm Workers co-founder César Chavez.
Filmmaker David Alvarado, a Stanford University alum, reedited his documentary “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez” after allegations of sexual abuse came out about the late United Farm Workers co-founder César Chavez.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Ultimately, “American Pachuco” stands as an uplifting celebration of Latino culture and its progress in America. In addition to “La Bamba,” two other Valdez films — his 1969 short “I Am Joaquín” and the 1981 adaptation of “Zoot Suit” — have been selected for the U.S. National Film Registry for preservation by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
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Valdez also was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2015.
But for Valdez, his biggest professional accomplishment is El Teatro Campesino, which to this day continues to provide opportunities to pursue the arts for people in farmworking communities in Central California.
“Part of our mission is to keep the doors open to people who wouldn’t ordinarily have an opportunity to do the arts, in rural areas,” Valdez said. “I consider myself to be more of a community organizer to this day.”
See what is playing at Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco Bay Area and buy tickets.
www.drafthouse.com…https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/25/new-york-humanoid-robot-teachers-school?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawTTMCRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFZQW1TZFE0cGZRVEEwYXJ5c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkkmD50-q7_FmjH1H8IwKxQ-gpUABkkTEezVy7xMRZyKI5hFuXlYFt8BgRGN_aem_e7ZVhhgCCmeIknNvdqS8aw#Echobox=1784988748
Robot from company that acquired sex doll maker to be introduced in school with large Native American population
www.theguardian.comThe 1968 San Francisco State Strike & Black Panther Party With Clarence Thomas & Judy Juanita
https://youtu.be/OFdw_FTTcNo
In 1968, there was an historic four month long strike at San Francisco State led by the Black Student Union, Third World Liberation Front and supported by SDS,… all campus unions the ILWU and San Francisco Labor Council. It led to the formation of the first Ethnic Studies Department in the United States.
The Black Panther Party members were an important part of the leadership of the strike on the campus. Strikers and Black Panther Party members Judy Juanita and Clarence Thomas talk about the history of the strike and how the BPP played a key
part in the strike.
Judy Juanita was born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland, Judy Juanita (Judy Hart) joined the nation’s first Black Student Union at San Francisco State and subsequently the Black Panther Party (BPP).
She edited the BPP newspaper and worked in the Breakfast for Children program while finishing her BA at SF State. Five days after graduating, she became the youngest professor of the nation’s first black studies program and is a noted poet and author of many books including on the Black Panther Party.
Clarence Thomas, was from a family of longshore workers and joined the BPP while at San Francisco State strike. He became the Secretary Treasurer of ILWU Local 10 and is publishing works on the ILWU and workers lives.
This interview was done on July 11, 2026 as part of LaborFest which commemorates
the 1934 San Francisco general strike.
Additional Media:
Then & Now On The 50th Anniversary Of The SF State Strike
https://youtu.be/GnNh0WlvTrk
The '68 SF State Strike, Labor & The Lessons For Today On The 50th Anniversary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D32m3lw2_4&t=1623s
Labor And The 1968 San Francisco State Strike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsL1bACg50M&t=136s
The Lessons Of The 68’ SF State Strike And Relevance Today, 50 Years After The Strike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34zWfeoSfhg&t=1212s
"The Turning Point" The San Francisco State '68 Strike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6-P3kHRBY&t=7s
The Worker Student Alliance SDS and PL: A Reading In SF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMEy3BQ4Ehk&t=48s
SF State 1968 Strikers Read From Their Works On 50th Anniversary Of Strike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTOPQgbPSIo&t=198s
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In 1968, there was an historic four month long strike at San Franc…
youtu.beThe 1968 San Francisco State Strike & Black Panther Party With Clarence Thomas & Judy Juanita
Teachers’ Union Boss Vows ‘All-Out-War’ if Mamdani Doesn’t Back Bonuses
Teaching assistants, who are among the lowest-paid workers in New York City’s public schools, would get one-time payments of $10,000.
…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/nyregion/nyc-mamdani-teachers-union-bonuses.html
Mayor Zohran Mamdani stands at a lectern while wearing a dark suit, white shirt and red tie. A blue poster with white lettering says UFT, United Federation of Teachers. Michael Mulgrew, the president of the union, stands behind Mr. Mamdani with his hands clasped.
After the Democratic primary, Mayor Zohran Mamdani was endorsed by the United Federation of Teachers, which is led by Michael Mulgrew, left.Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times
By Matthew Haag and Dana Rubinstein
July 24, 2026
The head of the powerful teachers’ union in New York City has threatened “all-out war” against Mayor Zohran Mamdani if he does not support granting hefty bonuses to teaching assistants, setting up a potential rift between the democratic socialist mayor and the influential labor leader.
Mr. Mamdani had pledged on the campaign trail that, as mayor, he would back legislation providing one-time payments of $10,000 to the aides, known as paraprofessionals. They are among the lowest-paid employees in the city’s public schools, often working one-on-one with students with disabilities.
But after the City Council unanimously passed a bill last week giving bonuses to teaching assistants, Mr. Mamdani backpedaled, as administration officials have said that the payments would violate state labor law.
He has not indicated whether he intends to veto the measure, sue the City Council for passing it, or do nothing and let it lapse into law.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said that he had pressed the case with Mr. Mamdani, including in a meeting on Thursday. Mr. Mulgrew, who faces his own internal political pressures, said that he would be disappointed in the mayor if his administration opposes the bonuses or challenges them in court.
“If we have to go to all-out war with him over this, then we’re willing to do that,” Mr. Mulgrew said in an interview, adding that an escalation to that level would reveal that Mr. Mamdani “is not the person we thought he was.”
In a statement, Mr. Mamdani praised the work of paraprofessionals but said that “questions of compensation are best resolved through the collective bargaining process that respects workers and their unions.”
New York’s public school system, the largest in the United States, employs roughly 26,000 paraprofessionals, whose starting salary is about $32,000 a year. There are about 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies, the union said.
The legislation would cost New York City $325 million. The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group that opposes the bill, warned that it would set a “dangerous precedent” by encouraging unions to bypass the bargaining table and appeal directly to lawmakers.
There are already signs of that happening. Joann Ariola, a councilwoman who chairs the Committee on Fire and Emergency Management, recently cited the potential paraprofessional bonuses in her request to raise the pay for Fire Department emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
Mr. Mamdani campaigned on promises of helping working-class New Yorkers and ultimately won the backing of major labor unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, which has about 190,000 members.
Like other New York mayors who have confronted the realities of running a complicated city in constrained fiscal times, Mr. Mamdani has backtracked on other campaign promises, too.
Image
Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, wears a dark suit and white shirt and gestures toward a person wearing a pink shirt who holds a white legal pad.
Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, supports $10,000 bonuses for teaching assistants in New York’s school system.Credit…Anna Connors for The New York Times
As a candidate, he called for expanding a housing voucher entitlement program for low-income New Yorkers, only to reverse course upon taking office. And he has not fulfilled a pledge to disband a contentious Police Department unit that responds to protests, called the Strategic Response Group.
Conversely, Julie Menin, the City Council speaker who has positioned herself as a more moderate counterbalance to the mayor, has repeatedly backed costly efforts that Mr. Mamdani has opposed. Ms. Menin backed the paraprofessional bill, earning praise from the teachers’ union.
In his meeting on Thursday with the mayor and City Hall representatives, Mr. Mulgrew said that the staff members reiterated their legal concerns. Still, Mr. Mulgrew said he remained “somewhat optimistic” that a compromise could be reached, pointing out that Mr. Mamdani had asked to schedule follow-up discussions.
Mr. Mulgrew suggested that the mayor had been given poor guidance from the city’s Office of Labor Relations and Office of Management and Budget.
“He’s new, and he’s being given a lot of information by a lot of people who have their own agendas,” Mr. Mulgrew said.
The legality of the paraprofessional bonuses comes down to the Taylor Law, which governs labor relations for public employees in New York. Mr. Mamdani said he believed that the bonuses would be in “direct violation” of that law.
The Office of Labor Relations had said that the statute prohibits authorizing such payments outside the collective bargaining process. Any compensation adjustments, the office said, would have to be negotiated jointly among the city, the Department of Education and the union.
Robert W. Linn, who served as the labor relations commissioner when Bill de Blasio was mayor and advises City Hall under Mr. Mamdani, said that he could not recall another instance of the City Council attempting to legislate bonuses for union workers.
“The bargaining structure for the city and state was enacted almost 60 years ago and has worked quite well,” Mr. Linn said.
The union maintains that the City Council measure was written specifically to avoid running afoul of the Taylor Law. The bonuses are described as “stabilization payments” that are necessary to address “emergency conditions” involving the retaining and hiring of paraprofessionals.
The bonuses would supplement base salaries and would not factor into workers’ pensions. The payments would be distributed throughout the upcoming school year but would be terminated if salaries increase by at least $10,000 through collective bargaining.
Paraprofessionals say that the $10,000 bonuses are desperately needed.
Jasminie Jones, 42, has worked as a paraprofessional for five years at P4 at Skillman, a school in Queens that serves students with disabilities. Last school year, she was assigned to assist a female student throughout the day, including during meals and bathroom visits.
Ms. Jones takes home roughly $1,200 every two weeks, which she said is not enough to live on in New York City. So three years ago, she started a second job working evenings and weekends as an in-home aide for students with disabilities. That job brings in an additional $1,500 per paycheck every two weeks.
“There’s no way a paraprofessional can survive on just the check that they’re getting,” Ms. Jones, 42, said. “I need that second check.”
Matthew Haag is a Times education reporter focusing on New York City schools.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
Teaching assistants, who are among the lowest-paid workers in New York City’s public schools, would get one-time payments of $10,000.
www.nytimes.com‘Who is accountable?’ Kaiser therapists challenge use of AI in mental health screening
As the provider and its therapists clash over AI, a new complaint says an algorithm, not a clinician, is deciding patients’ care within seconds.
…https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/21/kaiser-ai-mental-health-screening-complaint-nuhw/
A modern glass and metal building displays the words "KAISER PERMANENTE" near the top, with tree branches framing the left side.
The healthcare giant has found itself at the center of a labor dispute over the role of AI. | Source: Getty Images
A woman with light skin, blue eyes, and brown hair styled in an updo wears a black top and has a subtle smile on her face.
By Jennifer Wadsworth
Senior News Editor
Published Jul. 21, 2026at6:00am
Ilana Marcucci-Morris spends less time doing triage these days and more time, as she describes it, cleaning up after robots.
As one of the licensed clinicians Kaiser Permanente patients reach when they call seeking mental healthcare, she used to spend 10 to 15 minutes on the phone assessing for evidence of suicide risk, domestic violence, substance use, or homicidal thoughts before deciding what kind of care was needed.
Now that initial screenings are often handled by phone clerks or an online questionnaire, she increasingly finds herself fixing mistakes made by operators and automated tools.
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“I call it ‘service recovery’ more than official triage,” she said.
Subtle cues she picks up during assessments — tics, tone, even words left unsaid — are being missed by automated screenings and untrained clerical staff.
Patients are more likely to arrive at their first appointment intoxicated, in withdrawal, or confused about why they’re seeing a social worker instead of a psychiatrist who can prescribe medication. Others are referred to outside telehealth providers who later decide they’re not equipped to treat them, sending them back to Kaiser weeks later, angrier and worse off. Still others wait weeks for care that once took days.
When people reach out for mental healthcare, that first step can be one of the most crucial to get right. “Our job at the beginning is to instill hope,” Marcucci-Morris said. “You’re not well now, but I want to give you hope that you can get well.” Delays and mistakes at that tenuous early stage risk “reinforcing hopelessness” instead.
“Even if other things don’t go well in behavioral healthcare,” she added, “most science says you better nail it at the start.”
At the center of the dispute is a simple question: When someone seeks mental healthcare, who should decide what happens next?
Kaiser therapists say the system is increasingly allowing software and unlicensed staff to make screening decisions that California law says must be made by licensed clinicians — an allegation at the heart of a new regulatory complaint and a hearing this week at San Francisco City Hall.
A crowd of protesters in red shirts hold signs saying “Patient Health Not Corporate Wealth” while a person with a megaphone speaks passionately.
Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinician, during a 2022 protest outside Kaiser’s corporate building in Oakland. | Source: Courtesy NUHW
A test case for AI in healthcare
The dispute unfolding at Kaiser, California’s largest private employer(opens in new tab), as it negotiates a contract with the National Union of Healthcare Workers has been described as one of the nation’s first labor fights over AI.
So it’s fitting that in San Francisco — the global hub of artificial intelligence — a local lawmaker is convening a special hearing(opens in new tab) Tuesday about contract demands(opens in new tab) that would let the HMO expand the use of automated tools in mental healthcare and lay off the therapists who currently provide it.
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Supervisor Chyanne Chen, who called for the hearing, said she wants to make sure ongoing negotiations between Kaiser and the NUHW protect patients as much as employees. “Every single person, their story is a little different, their circumstances are different, their needs are very different,” she said. That complexity, she added, doesn’t lend itself to the standardization of an algorithm.
Kaiser has repeatedly denied using AI to replace human care.
“Artificial intelligence holds significant potential to benefit healthcare by supporting better diagnostics, enhancing patient-clinician relationships, optimizing clinicians’ time, and ensuring fairness in care experiences and health outcomes by addressing individual needs,” the company told reporters when its therapists went on strike in the spring.
But a complaint from NUHW offers new evidence that the union says shows Kaiser is already leaning on automation to make the kind of clinical calls that are supposed to be handled by licensed providers. The complaint, filed Monday with California’s Department of Managed Health Care and the U.S. Department of Labor, centers on Kaiser’s e-visit tool, an online questionnaire the company directs patients toward when they’re seeking care for anxiety or depression.
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To test the tool, the union had four Kaiser members complete it, answering the questions to reflect various levels of symptom severity. Each time, the tool generated a care recommendation — a referral to virtual therapy, a referral to an outside provider, or simply a suggestion to try a self-care app — within two seconds of the last question being answered, according to screenshots included in the complaint.
That’s hard to square with how Kaiser describes the screening to patients. In a December 2025 post(opens in new tab) on its website, the company said that when a member completes an e-visit, “the answers are reviewed by a healthcare professional, and the member receives a response by secure message within four hours, and usually sooner.”
For Marcucci-Morris, the instant turnarounds uncovered by the union testing confirmed what she’d suspected for years.
“That’s 100% of my job,” she said. “But now it’s automated or algorithmic or AI or whatever it is, making decisions that have taken me decades to be able to legally do.”
From advice nurse to algorithm
The shift began in 2023, when Kaiser introduced One Mental Health, a regional phone line. For years before that, any patient who told their doctor they needed mental healthcare, or called Kaiser directly, first spoke with a licensed clinician like Marcucci-Morris.
“Any time someone expresses some sort of mental health need to their doctor or any part of the health plan, a referral would be generated to psychiatry,” she said. “But the first step would be to get on the phone with someone like me, a licensed human provider.”
That changed with the new phone screening. Patients calling in were routed first to clerical staff who are generally required to have only a high school diploma, according to a complaint(opens in new tab)the union filed last year. Those operators pose a scripted set of questions, loosely modeled on the ones clinicians might ask, and are supposed to escalate a call to a provider only if a patient says something alarming enough to trigger it, according to the union’s complaint.
But Kaiser has been tightlipped about exactly when that escalation is supposed to happen. Marcucci-Morris said she often learned the details only after the fact, by piecing together information from patients’ charts.
Around the same time, Kaiser began steering another set of patients toward a second, newer pathway: online questionnaires called e-visits, which let people seeking care for anxiety or depression screen themselves without speaking to anyone at all.
A black box
Kaiser has never disclosed how the e-visit tool works, despite repeated requests, according to Fred Seavey, NUHW’s research director. That lack of transparency troubles Marcucci-Morris most. If she makes the wrong call, there’s a clear line of accountability.
“If I commit malpractice, the state can take my license away from me,” she said. “What happens when technology gets it wrong? Who is accountable?”
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Kaiser’s mental health system has faced repeated regulatory action. In 2023, it agreed to a $200 million settlement(opens in new tab) over failures to provide timely care. A subsequent state survey(opens in new tab)found that it still could not demonstrate adequate suicide-risk screening, and in February it agreed to pay $31.1 million(opens in new tab) to settle a federal investigation into its use of questionnaires to restrict access to care.
To Seavey, that history undercuts any assurance Kaiser might offer about the algorithm behind its e-visit tool. “You’ve had to pay out nearly a quarter billion dollars for dozens of violations, and you’re asking us to trust you?” he said. “We want to see it. Why can’t you show us the algorithm?”
Kaiser did not directly address the two-second turnaround times documented in the union’s testing, or Seavey’s request to see the algorithm.
In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it “disagree[s] with the union’s characterization” of its behavioral health processes, and said its e-visit tool “does not use AI to diagnose patients, make clinical decisions, or determine medical necessity,” adding that clinical decisions “remain with licensed health care professionals.”
Kaiser also said the tool was developed with input from therapists and NUHW representatives, and that patients can call a phone number listed on every e-visit screen to reach a live person.
Tuesday’s hearing, Chen said, is a chance to get answers before the next contract is signed.
Marcucci-Morris plans to be there.
“I have never felt better because a chatbot gave me a reassuring statement,” Marcucci-Morris said. “We heal through empathy. That is not something technology can give people.”
As the provider and its therapists clash over AI, a new complaint says an algorithm, not a clinician, is deciding patients’ care within seconds.
sfstandard.comTesla settles with three workers as Fremont factory racism cases by hundreds of workers continue
Car company says it ‘strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2026/07/24/tesla-fremont-factory-racism-lawsuit-settlement-workers/
Production… associates work on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez_Bay Area News Group)
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Production associates work on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Ethan Baron, business reporter, San Jose Mercury News, for his WordPress profile. (Michael Malone_Bay Area News Group).webp
By ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: July 24, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT | UPDATED: July 24, 2026 at 9:47 AM PDT
Tesla has reached a settlement deal with the Black worker who launched a landmark racial-discrimination lawsuit against the automaker in 2017, resolving his claims even as hundreds of current and former Tesla workers spurred by his lawsuit to join legal action against the company continue pursuing allegations of rampant racism at the company’s Fremont factory.
Marcus Vaughn, who launched the lawsuit in 2017, and two other Black former Tesla workers who joined the legal action later, Titus McCaleb and Monica Chatman, came to an agreement with Tesla last month. An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ordered the parties to appear Sept. 11 for an update on finalizing the confidential settlement.
The agreement would end the litigation for the three workers but not the broader legal fight the case helped ignite. The case continues for two other plaintiffs in Vaughn’s lawsuit. Five related lawsuits involving 440 workers are moving forward, along with cases brought by California’s civil rights agency and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The lawsuit ballooned in 2024 into a class action potentially including thousands of Tesla workers allegedly victimized by racism, but Tesla successfully fought to remove class-action status from the case last year, and it has fractured into several separate lawsuits.
The judge who in 2024 certified the Vaughn case as a class action ruled that claims for damages against Tesla would have to be made in separate lawsuits. Although the court later decertified the class action, 440 workers filed five lawsuits, with 54 to 98 plaintiffs in each, seeking damages over the alleged racism at the Fremont plant.
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An Alameda County Superior Court judge last year ruled that the dozens of plaintiffs in each case had been improperly joined together. But late last month, a three-judge panel at the California Courts of Appeal overruled that decision, and the five lawsuits are going ahead.
Vaughn’s case, and other lawsuits filed by workers, the state of California’s Civil Rights Department, and the federal government, claim Tesla allowed scrawled nooses, swastikas and anti-Black racism to proliferate at its car factory beside I-880 in Fremont.
Vaughn’s lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court described the Tesla factory floor in Fremont as a “hotbed for racist behavior” that Tesla had “done nothing to stop.” Vaughn claimed he was regularly called a racial slur, and heard it used against other Black workers in the plant.
Hundreds of current and former Black workers at the Fremont facility filed sworn declarations to the court in the Vaughn case, claiming Black workers at the plant were segregated into the hardest, most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs, and subjected to frequent racist treatment, language and graffiti.
Tesla did not respond to questions about the settlement and claims of racism at the factory. In response to Vaughn’s lawsuit, the company said in a 2017 blog post that it had already investigated “disappointing behavior” from a group who worked near Vaughn, and fired three of them. A 2022 Tesla blog post in response to an impending lawsuit by the State of California making similar claims said the company “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment.”
In court filings, Tesla has claimed that Vaughn and other plaintiffs failed to establish that they were harassed or discriminated against on the basis of race. The company also said it could not be held liable for the behavior of non-supervisory employees under the circumstances alleged.
The lawsuit alleging race-based discrimination and harassment and failure to prevent discrimination and harassment seeks unspecified damages, anti-harassment training and a public declaration of the illegality of the allegedly racist behavior.
Virshon Meadows, one of the workers who submitted a declaration, told this news organization he was overjoyed to get a job in 2018 polishing newly painted Teslas, but within a week he saw slurs scrawled in the bathroom and heard managers refer to the factory as “The Plantation” and describe colleagues with racial epithets. In his declaration, he said he worked at a paint-baking station where the temperature was hotter than the rest of the factory, air circulation was poor, drinking water was distant, and nearly all workers were Black.
When an older Black woman collapsed, and he went to help her, a non-Black supervisor came up and told him, “Boy, you better get back on the line,” Meadows said in his declaration. “It was as if he was more concerned for the production on the line than the unconscious African-American woman on the ground, and made me feel that African-American workers had no value as human beings at Tesla.”
Former Tesla factory worker Keyanna Campbell, 29, who said she quit the company in June over widespread racism at its electric car factory in Fremont, arrives to work at her new job at the VA Medical Center in Menlo Park, Calif. on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Former Tesla factory worker Keyanna Campbell, 29, who said she quit the company in June over widespread racism at its electric car factory in Fremont, arrives to work at her new job at the VA Medical Center in Menlo Park, Calif. on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Worker Keyanna Campbell said in a declaration that on her production line, Black workers were singled out for the most strenuous tasks.
“These positions require moving one’s body constantly into contorted positions, often assembling or carrying heavy parts and equipment,” Campbell said.
Of the hundreds of Black workers who provided sworn statements, about two-thirds said they saw anti-Black graffiti including scrawled nooses, racial slurs and swastikas, and about 75% said they heard Tesla workers refer to the Fremont plant as “The Plantation” or the “Slave Ship,” according to a court filing. More than half said they heard production leads, supervisors and managers use an anti-Black slur, while a quarter said supervisors or managers directed the slur at them. A court filing lists more than 50 anti-Black slurs allegedly uttered or scrawled freely at the factory.
Nearly half the Black workers said they complained to bosses, supervisors, managers or the human relations department, but Tesla failed to address their concerns. Dozens said their complaints drew retaliation, including termination, the filing said.
Tesla submitted to the court declarations from 228 others who said they did not observe harassment at the factory, or if they did, Tesla took immediate and appropriate action against it.
In 2024, a judge overseeing the case, Noël Wise, said the statements from the workers alleging racism suggested they had “experienced conditions that might reasonably be characterized as race harassment.” The year before, in a separate lawsuit against Tesla, San Francisco federal Judge William Orrick cited “awful, pervasive racism” at the Fremont factory. Orrick called Tesla’s workplace practices “grievously reprehensible.”
Filed with Vaughn’s lawsuit was a 2017 letter from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to employees, addressing treatment at the Fremont factory of workers he described as being part of “historically less represented” groups.
“If someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned,” Musk wrote. Musk in recent years has on social media repeatedly attacked “anti-White” discrimination.
Car company says it “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment.”
www.eastbaytimes.comThe Roller Skater Trying to Reframe the History of Farmworker Rights
Johnny Itliong says Cesar Chavez stole credit from his father, the farmworker activist Larry Itliong. For years, he has been trying to correct the record.
…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/us/larry-itliong-farmworker-rights-activist-chavez.html
“I have been fighting to get the story of my father out for decades and have been waiting for the U.F.W. to step up and honor Larry as they do Cesar,” said Johnny Itliong, at a mural commemorating his father.Credit…
By Jill CowanVisuals by Mark Abramson for The New York Times
Jill Cowan interviewed Johnny Itliong over several months in Venice Beach in Los Angeles and in Santa Monica and Delano, Calif.
July 24, 2026
Updated 9:30 a.m. ET
It was Magic Monday, the weekly convocation of roller skaters on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, and a nearly sacred observance for Johnny Itliong. As usual, he was helping out his entrepreneurial friends on the boardwalk by sporting their merch — a “Skate Famous” branded hat from one, stickers on his gear from others.
The music was bumping and the sun had come out. On most Magic Mondays, that and a little weed would have been all Itliong needed. But on this afternoon, as he felt his way through the steps of a line dance and passed a vape to a buddy, he had more on his mind.
Days before, the news that Cesar Chavez had been accused of sexually abusing girls landed like a bomb, forcing a reckoning over one of the nation’s few Latino civil rights icons.
Those girls were the daughters of farmworker organizers whose movement Chavez had famously led. Itliong, 61, felt sorrow for the victims, who included the sister of a close friend. But the revelation also brought something like vindication — and opportunity.
From the top, California's Central Valley, near Grapevine; United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, left, with Larry Itliong in front of union headquarters in Delano, Calif. in 1967; a mural in Delano depicting leaders of the farmworker movement.Credit…Harold Filan/Associated Press
Itliong’s father was Larry Itliong, the Filipino American farmworker leader who was perennially overshadowed by the younger and more telegenic Chavez. While Chavez’s name was reverently bestowed on schools, streets and libraries, the Itliong name remained largely unknown even in Delano, the agricultural town in California’s Central Valley where Johnny was born and Larry died.
For decades, the son has made it his life’s work to change this. He has traveled California, attending United Farm Workers events and ceremonies honoring the farm labor movement to proclaim what he sees as the truth: After his father spent decades toiling in the fields, learning multiple languages to communicate better with workers and making grueling treks to find them, he said, Chavez and his followers muscled in on their work and took the credit.
“I have been fighting to get the story of my father out for decades and have been waiting for the U.F.W. to step up and honor Larry as they do Cesar,” he said at one such event.
His efforts, he said, have cost him money, untold time, three marriages and his relationships with his three children.
But now the world could find out what Itliong had believed for as long as he could remember.
“He was a narcissist,” Itliong told me, jabbing his two middle fingers into the air whenever he said Chavez’s name. He paused to nod at friends passing by on their skates.
“They’re writing about my dad!” he told them.
He was confident and breezy, joking and laughing as he glided around the rink. But later, he reflected on a life in which he has often felt thwarted — punished, even — for trying to carry forward his family’s legacy.
“I want this for my children,” he said. “I may be a piece of shit, but I want them to be proud of their grandfather.”
Video
In the weeks since the Chavez news had broken, he had given about two dozen interviews reminding journalists that the movement Chavez had come to embody was actually about much more than a single person. He told The Los Angeles Times that his father’s purpose “was to raise everybody up.”
Members of a loosely organized group of Asian American civil rights advocates had read the coverage. Seeing an opportunity to highlight the work of Filipino American leaders, they asked Itliong to help them strategize.
“This is a very critical moment with this openness,” said Eric Chen, a pastor. He began working as an activist after a mass shooting at a ballroom that left 11 mostly older Asian Americans dead and devastated the Asian American enclave in Los Angeles County that he calls home. “We’ve got to strike while the iron is hot.”
The question was how. Chen and Itliong had identified a turning point, but they had a harder time figuring out a mission. All they knew was that they wanted to bring more attention to Larry Itliong’s contributions without deifying him or anyone else. In the end, they decided that they would host a kind of informational “round table” and news conference, both aimed at moving the celebration of the farmworker movement from Chavez’s birthday to some other day and elevating the stories of others in the movement.
Chen offered a benediction.
“I pray that as we embark on this journey to rewrite history, that it would be a journey of healing as well, a journey of redemption,” he said as the others nodded solemnly in their little boxes on the screen. “Because, Lord, we know that it was not about one man. It was a movement.”
Larry Itliong married six times, and Johnny’s mother was mostly absent from his childhood. He was cared for by a large, shifting group of aunts and uncles, related by blood and not, who were animated by the common goal of building a farmworker movement.
In his first memories, he is a toddler watching Mickey Mouse cartoons on a jet to the Philippines with one such couple — a Filipino American doctor and his wife. They took him to visit the rice paddies his father left behind when he came to the United States in 1929.
Larry Itliong had begun rallying agricultural workers up and down the West Coast in the 1930s, from the canneries of Alaska to the vegetable fields of the Coachella Valley. He spent decades pushing for higher pay and safer working conditions for farmworkers who were then, as now, nearly all immigrants.
As the leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, he helped orchestrate the Delano, Calif., grape strike and boycott of 1965.
Historians say it was only after Larry Itliong helped persuade the predominantly Mexican and Mexican American leaders of the nascent National Farm Workers Association to join the Filipinos’ strike that the modern farm labor movement was born.
Growing up in Delano in the 1960s and ’70s, Johnny sometimes rose in the early hours of the morning to follow older relatives into the grapevines, where they did the backbreaking work it took to feed the nation.
Even as a child, he had a sense that his family was at the center of something important. After dinner, he and the other children would stay outside while the adults talked inside Delano’s Filipino Hall, their voices often erupting into shouts. In conversation, Itliong routinely rattles off names of other leaders who he says were harmed by the cult of personality surrounding Chavez. Many of these organizers, like his father, understood the sacrifices that it took to make it as a farm laborer. Itliong said he could relate to this struggle in a way that Chavez’s children could not.
But during those years, forces beyond Larry’s control were conspiring to change the course of history.
From the top, Johnny Itliong’s cousins Priscilla Bacus, left, and Jean Munn, in Delano; Itliong leading the unity clap at a meeting of activists in Los Angeles; Itliong’s half sister, Patricia Itliong Serda, who worked for years to get funding for the Delano mural.
One of the founders of the National Farm Workers Association was Chavez. At the time, he was a young man amassing followers as he sought to transform the long effort to unionize migrant farmworkers into a broader civil rights movement.
Born on an Arizona farm just two years before Larry Itliong arrived on the West Coast, Chavez was a sharp strategist and strong-willed Mexican American leader who galvanized Latinos, a fast-growing demographic in search of their own Martin Luther King Jr.
In Itliong’s telling, Chavez’s growing fame created an opening for his ambitious cohort to elbow his father and other longtime organizers out of the way. The tension between Chavez’s mostly Latino followers and the Filipino Americans close to Itliong lingers even now.
Itliong remembered his father’s anger when Chavez moved the United Farm Workers’ headquarters from Delano to an isolated community in the Tehachapi Mountains, farther from farmworkers’ homes. He remembered how journalists and documentarians focused on Chavez and did not widen the frame to include Larry or other Filipinos.
“Their passion is a product of their frustration,” said Matt Garcia, a historian at Dartmouth College and a Chavez biographer who has written critically about the way Chavez wielded his power. “And that frustration is legit.”
While Professor Garcia said there was no evidence of a conspiracy by Chavez and his allies to exclude Larry Itliong or other Filipinos from the history books, he said that Itliong and Chavez represented clashing visions of the farmworker movement.
Larry was a strident “meat and potatoes” union organizer, eager to flex the untapped power of farmworkers like himself. Chavez, as a Mexican American, was a member of a demographic majority of farmworkers, and he saw the movement as a broader social one. Collective bargaining and the fine points of contracts, Professor Garcia said, didn’t interest him.
Chavez also had “a will to power,” Professor Garcia said, and it was fulfilled by society’s impulse to venerate individuals instead of the messy collectives who make change. And so Chavez became the face of the movement.
The United Farm Workers union he left behind had been grappling with his legacy since long before the revelations of abuse. In response to questions from The New York Times, the group acknowledged that there were “many, many names who don’t have enough recognition,” including but not limited to Itliong.
“The best way the modern U.F.W. can honor Larry Itliong’s legacy is to continue what he spent his incredible life doing,” the statement said: “organizing workers to win the dignity and protections of a union contract.”
The Chavez family declined to comment for this article.
Much of the maneuvering that ultimately sidelined Larry Itliong took place when his son Johnny was too young to understand what was happening. In 1971, Larry resigned from the union that became the United Farm Workers. His children helped care for him as he suffered from A.L.S., the harrowing degenerative disease, until his death in 1977.
“I just remember the doctor sitting in the white chair we had, or yellow leather, or something,” Itliong told me, wiping away tears. “And then the preacher came.”
At age 14, he left home, where life had become turbulent, and stayed with friends or in a car. With the help of an empathetic teacher, he graduated from high school in Delano and moved to the nearest big city, Bakersfield.
He said he worked as a contractor overseas in roles he maintains he can’t talk about. He worked as a chef. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Nevada, where the last of his marriages dissolved in acrimony.
He is estranged from his children — not by his choice, he said, though according to divorce court records, he has not taken opportunities to see them.
In 2004 he was convicted of domestic violence, after an incident in which his wife at the time, Kelly Cornell, said he slapped her and assaulted her while she was on the toilet. Itliong maintains he was not violent and said Cornell lied. More than two decades later, Cornell said she harbors no “hard feelings.” But after going for years without child support for their son, now an adult and also named Larry, she said, “I just wish his dad would step up a little bit.”
Reached by text message, the younger Larry, 25, said he didn’t want to talk about his father. He didn’t reply when asked if he felt any connection to his grandfather’s legacy.
On and off for about three decades, Itliong has lived in Los Angeles, mostly hanging around the beach. For money, he said, he helps mount televisions for wealthy customers. A skateboarder for decades, he has also taken up roller skating, joining an enthusiastic community that blasts music and wears glowing lights. He describes his living situation as mobile; he has eschewed many of his possessions to live “the way the manongs lived,” referring to Filipino immigrants like his father.
But when anyone — the office of an elected official, a Filipino American nonprofit, a reporter — calls asking to talk about his dad, he picks up. And after the accusations of sexual abuse by Chavez emerged, there were lots of calls.
In Delano as in other communities in the Central Valley, suburban neighborhoods have replaced some of the fields. Still, small reminders of Larry Itliong’s legacy are tucked throughout the town. On Memorial Day weekend, a crowd of siblings, cousins and in-laws held an impromptu gathering at Larry Itliong Unity Park, which was dedicated two years ago. Johnny Itliong had come to spend time with his sister, Sandra Itliong Bowman, who had driven down from the Seattle area.
Sandra’s adult children say that they remember being dismissed by classmates and teachers, even in Delano, when they talked about their grandfather as a historic figure of note. Sandra said she was grateful that her brother had continued to publicize their father’s accomplishments. She wants her seven grandchildren to know where they came from.
“I’m not here to judge anybody,” she said, reluctant to blame anyone for overlooking Larry. “I can only build on the future for the ones who will carry on the legacy.”
The next stop was an elementary school where Itliong’s half sister, Patricia Itliong Serda, worked for decades as a librarian. On the exterior wall of the library, a colorful mural depicts Larry’s journey from the Philippines, the Delano grape strike and symbols of his legacy. Johnny stopped to point out details, including an image of Patricia as a child standing at Larry’s knee as he reads from an open book. Patricia said she worked for years to secure a nonprofit grant to commission the piece.
Most of the students at the school are Filipino American, Latino or a combination of the two, and she said she had poured her energy into teaching them about their heritage. The mural has invited discussion.
“Coming from our little town, it means a lot,” she said. “This is where I can make the most impact.”
Later, Itliong stopped by the cemetery where his father was buried beneath a simple headstone. Itliong once worked there, helping to maintain the grounds.
“I’ve come here at times throughout the years, you know?” he said, almost to himself, as he plucked stray weeds and bits of trash from the grass. Not for the first time in our conversations, Itliong alluded to a sense that his own life hadn’t worked out entirely as he might have hoped.
“Struggling, because my life — you know, I get great satisfaction from helping people, right? But you know the old saying: No good deeds ever go unpunished.”
He said he talked to his father when he visited the grave but never told him about the work he was doing on his behalf. Accolades wouldn’t have interested Larry, Itliong said. He said he used to skip ceremonies and events himself until one day a friend helped him think of things another way.
“‘You’re the connection to him,’” Itliong recalled her saying. “All this weight on the shoulder? It increased a hundredfold. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
From the top, a banner at a meeting of activists in Los Angeles honored Larry Itliong; Bacus during a visit to the Filipino Community Hall in Delano; Johnny Itliong at the grave of his father.
Soon Itliong was back in Los Angeles, hosting a panel with other Asian American activists. He took his place at the center of a table facing a group of nonprofit workers and labor rights advocates at the Pilipino Workers Center, a nonprofit in Historic Filipinotown.
Itliong was joined on the panel by his longtime friend Desirée Rojas, a daughter of Al Rojas, a farmworker and labor organizer. Rojas’s sister Debra was among the women who upended Chavez’s legacy when they described how he had abused them as young teenage girls.
Itliong seemed nervous, getting up briefly to fiddle with the audiovisual setup. But as others on the makeshift dais spoke about his father’s work, he relaxed into his role as a kind of magnanimous convener.
“It’s always been an honor to be the son of Larry Itliong. Those are very, very hard shoes to step into,” he told the room. “But I’m here now. I’ve been here my whole life, doing exactly what he did, standing up for those who needed to be heard.”
Aquilina Soriano, the director of the Pilipino Workers Center, urged the audience not to let their stories or perspectives remain in that room.
Tell your leaders, she said, that it’s important to pick a different day to celebrate the farm workers’ movement, that it’s important not to simply swap in the name of another imperfect person on every street sign or school that now reads “Cesar Chavez.”
“This is a call to action,” she said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”
To end the day, Itliong invited the audience to join him in what has become known as the unity clap, which begins with a slow clap and builds to the cacophony of loud applause. The Filipino version is punctuated with a cry of “isang baksak,” which roughly translates from Tagalog to “one down” — another day completed, another task done.
“Yeah! Isang baksak!” Itliong yelled, pumping his fists as the applause rang out.
Another task done, many more left. In the days after, Itliong would meet with the others to discuss strategy as Los Angeles County officials debated how to rename things named after Cesar Chavez.
But first, he went skating.
Jill Cowan
Reporter
I met Johnny while reporting on the aftermath of our Cesar Chavez investigation. His story really got me thinking about how family, trauma, and human messiness ultimately shape history.
Reply
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
Johnny Itliong says Cesar Chavez stole credit from his father, the farmworker activist Larry Itliong. For years, he has been trying to correct the…
www.nytimes.comThe Roller Skater Trying to Reframe the History of Farmworker Rights
Johnny Itliong says Cesar Chavez stole credit from his father, the farmworker activist Larry Itliong. For years, he has been trying to correct the record.
…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/us/larry-itliong-farmworker-rights-activist-chavez.html
“I have been fighting to get the story of my father out for decades and have been waiting for the U.F.W. to step up and honor Larry as they do Cesar,” said Johnny Itliong, at a mural commemorating his father.Credit…
By Jill CowanVisuals by Mark Abramson for The New York Times
Jill Cowan interviewed Johnny Itliong over several months in Venice Beach in Los Angeles and in Santa Monica and Delano, Calif.
July 24, 2026
Updated 9:30 a.m. ET
It was Magic Monday, the weekly convocation of roller skaters on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, and a nearly sacred observance for Johnny Itliong. As usual, he was helping out his entrepreneurial friends on the boardwalk by sporting their merch — a “Skate Famous” branded hat from one, stickers on his gear from others.
The music was bumping and the sun had come out. On most Magic Mondays, that and a little weed would have been all Itliong needed. But on this afternoon, as he felt his way through the steps of a line dance and passed a vape to a buddy, he had more on his mind.
Days before, the news that Cesar Chavez had been accused of sexually abusing girls landed like a bomb, forcing a reckoning over one of the nation’s few Latino civil rights icons.
Those girls were the daughters of farmworker organizers whose movement Chavez had famously led. Itliong, 61, felt sorrow for the victims, who included the sister of a close friend. But the revelation also brought something like vindication — and opportunity.
From the top, California's Central Valley, near Grapevine; United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, left, with Larry Itliong in front of union headquarters in Delano, Calif. in 1967; a mural in Delano depicting leaders of the farmworker movement.Credit…Harold Filan/Associated Press
Itliong’s father was Larry Itliong, the Filipino American farmworker leader who was perennially overshadowed by the younger and more telegenic Chavez. While Chavez’s name was reverently bestowed on schools, streets and libraries, the Itliong name remained largely unknown even in Delano, the agricultural town in California’s Central Valley where Johnny was born and Larry died.
For decades, the son has made it his life’s work to change this. He has traveled California, attending United Farm Workers events and ceremonies honoring the farm labor movement to proclaim what he sees as the truth: After his father spent decades toiling in the fields, learning multiple languages to communicate better with workers and making grueling treks to find them, he said, Chavez and his followers muscled in on their work and took the credit.
“I have been fighting to get the story of my father out for decades and have been waiting for the U.F.W. to step up and honor Larry as they do Cesar,” he said at one such event.
His efforts, he said, have cost him money, untold time, three marriages and his relationships with his three children.
But now the world could find out what Itliong had believed for as long as he could remember.
“He was a narcissist,” Itliong told me, jabbing his two middle fingers into the air whenever he said Chavez’s name. He paused to nod at friends passing by on their skates.
“They’re writing about my dad!” he told them.
He was confident and breezy, joking and laughing as he glided around the rink. But later, he reflected on a life in which he has often felt thwarted — punished, even — for trying to carry forward his family’s legacy.
“I want this for my children,” he said. “I may be a piece of shit, but I want them to be proud of their grandfather.”
Video
In the weeks since the Chavez news had broken, he had given about two dozen interviews reminding journalists that the movement Chavez had come to embody was actually about much more than a single person. He told The Los Angeles Times that his father’s purpose “was to raise everybody up.”
Members of a loosely organized group of Asian American civil rights advocates had read the coverage. Seeing an opportunity to highlight the work of Filipino American leaders, they asked Itliong to help them strategize.
“This is a very critical moment with this openness,” said Eric Chen, a pastor. He began working as an activist after a mass shooting at a ballroom that left 11 mostly older Asian Americans dead and devastated the Asian American enclave in Los Angeles County that he calls home. “We’ve got to strike while the iron is hot.”
The question was how. Chen and Itliong had identified a turning point, but they had a harder time figuring out a mission. All they knew was that they wanted to bring more attention to Larry Itliong’s contributions without deifying him or anyone else. In the end, they decided that they would host a kind of informational “round table” and news conference, both aimed at moving the celebration of the farmworker movement from Chavez’s birthday to some other day and elevating the stories of others in the movement.
Chen offered a benediction.
“I pray that as we embark on this journey to rewrite history, that it would be a journey of healing as well, a journey of redemption,” he said as the others nodded solemnly in their little boxes on the screen. “Because, Lord, we know that it was not about one man. It was a movement.”
Larry Itliong married six times, and Johnny’s mother was mostly absent from his childhood. He was cared for by a large, shifting group of aunts and uncles, related by blood and not, who were animated by the common goal of building a farmworker movement.
In his first memories, he is a toddler watching Mickey Mouse cartoons on a jet to the Philippines with one such couple — a Filipino American doctor and his wife. They took him to visit the rice paddies his father left behind when he came to the United States in 1929.
Larry Itliong had begun rallying agricultural workers up and down the West Coast in the 1930s, from the canneries of Alaska to the vegetable fields of the Coachella Valley. He spent decades pushing for higher pay and safer working conditions for farmworkers who were then, as now, nearly all immigrants.
As the leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, he helped orchestrate the Delano, Calif., grape strike and boycott of 1965.
Historians say it was only after Larry Itliong helped persuade the predominantly Mexican and Mexican American leaders of the nascent National Farm Workers Association to join the Filipinos’ strike that the modern farm labor movement was born.
Growing up in Delano in the 1960s and ’70s, Johnny sometimes rose in the early hours of the morning to follow older relatives into the grapevines, where they did the backbreaking work it took to feed the nation.
Even as a child, he had a sense that his family was at the center of something important. After dinner, he and the other children would stay outside while the adults talked inside Delano’s Filipino Hall, their voices often erupting into shouts. In conversation, Itliong routinely rattles off names of other leaders who he says were harmed by the cult of personality surrounding Chavez. Many of these organizers, like his father, understood the sacrifices that it took to make it as a farm laborer. Itliong said he could relate to this struggle in a way that Chavez’s children could not.
But during those years, forces beyond Larry’s control were conspiring to change the course of history.
From the top, Johnny Itliong’s cousins Priscilla Bacus, left, and Jean Munn, in Delano; Itliong leading the unity clap at a meeting of activists in Los Angeles; Itliong’s half sister, Patricia Itliong Serda, who worked for years to get funding for the Delano mural.
One of the founders of the National Farm Workers Association was Chavez. At the time, he was a young man amassing followers as he sought to transform the long effort to unionize migrant farmworkers into a broader civil rights movement.
Born on an Arizona farm just two years before Larry Itliong arrived on the West Coast, Chavez was a sharp strategist and strong-willed Mexican American leader who galvanized Latinos, a fast-growing demographic in search of their own Martin Luther King Jr.
In Itliong’s telling, Chavez’s growing fame created an opening for his ambitious cohort to elbow his father and other longtime organizers out of the way. The tension between Chavez’s mostly Latino followers and the Filipino Americans close to Itliong lingers even now.
Itliong remembered his father’s anger when Chavez moved the United Farm Workers’ headquarters from Delano to an isolated community in the Tehachapi Mountains, farther from farmworkers’ homes. He remembered how journalists and documentarians focused on Chavez and did not widen the frame to include Larry or other Filipinos.
“Their passion is a product of their frustration,” said Matt Garcia, a historian at Dartmouth College and a Chavez biographer who has written critically about the way Chavez wielded his power. “And that frustration is legit.”
While Professor Garcia said there was no evidence of a conspiracy by Chavez and his allies to exclude Larry Itliong or other Filipinos from the history books, he said that Itliong and Chavez represented clashing visions of the farmworker movement.
Larry was a strident “meat and potatoes” union organizer, eager to flex the untapped power of farmworkers like himself. Chavez, as a Mexican American, was a member of a demographic majority of farmworkers, and he saw the movement as a broader social one. Collective bargaining and the fine points of contracts, Professor Garcia said, didn’t interest him.
Chavez also had “a will to power,” Professor Garcia said, and it was fulfilled by society’s impulse to venerate individuals instead of the messy collectives who make change. And so Chavez became the face of the movement.
The United Farm Workers union he left behind had been grappling with his legacy since long before the revelations of abuse. In response to questions from The New York Times, the group acknowledged that there were “many, many names who don’t have enough recognition,” including but not limited to Itliong.
“The best way the modern U.F.W. can honor Larry Itliong’s legacy is to continue what he spent his incredible life doing,” the statement said: “organizing workers to win the dignity and protections of a union contract.”
The Chavez family declined to comment for this article.
Much of the maneuvering that ultimately sidelined Larry Itliong took place when his son Johnny was too young to understand what was happening. In 1971, Larry resigned from the union that became the United Farm Workers. His children helped care for him as he suffered from A.L.S., the harrowing degenerative disease, until his death in 1977.
“I just remember the doctor sitting in the white chair we had, or yellow leather, or something,” Itliong told me, wiping away tears. “And then the preacher came.”
At age 14, he left home, where life had become turbulent, and stayed with friends or in a car. With the help of an empathetic teacher, he graduated from high school in Delano and moved to the nearest big city, Bakersfield.
He said he worked as a contractor overseas in roles he maintains he can’t talk about. He worked as a chef. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Nevada, where the last of his marriages dissolved in acrimony.
He is estranged from his children — not by his choice, he said, though according to divorce court records, he has not taken opportunities to see them.
In 2004 he was convicted of domestic violence, after an incident in which his wife at the time, Kelly Cornell, said he slapped her and assaulted her while she was on the toilet. Itliong maintains he was not violent and said Cornell lied. More than two decades later, Cornell said she harbors no “hard feelings.” But after going for years without child support for their son, now an adult and also named Larry, she said, “I just wish his dad would step up a little bit.”
Reached by text message, the younger Larry, 25, said he didn’t want to talk about his father. He didn’t reply when asked if he felt any connection to his grandfather’s legacy.
On and off for about three decades, Itliong has lived in Los Angeles, mostly hanging around the beach. For money, he said, he helps mount televisions for wealthy customers. A skateboarder for decades, he has also taken up roller skating, joining an enthusiastic community that blasts music and wears glowing lights. He describes his living situation as mobile; he has eschewed many of his possessions to live “the way the manongs lived,” referring to Filipino immigrants like his father.
But when anyone — the office of an elected official, a Filipino American nonprofit, a reporter — calls asking to talk about his dad, he picks up. And after the accusations of sexual abuse by Chavez emerged, there were lots of calls.
In Delano as in other communities in the Central Valley, suburban neighborhoods have replaced some of the fields. Still, small reminders of Larry Itliong’s legacy are tucked throughout the town. On Memorial Day weekend, a crowd of siblings, cousins and in-laws held an impromptu gathering at Larry Itliong Unity Park, which was dedicated two years ago. Johnny Itliong had come to spend time with his sister, Sandra Itliong Bowman, who had driven down from the Seattle area.
Sandra’s adult children say that they remember being dismissed by classmates and teachers, even in Delano, when they talked about their grandfather as a historic figure of note. Sandra said she was grateful that her brother had continued to publicize their father’s accomplishments. She wants her seven grandchildren to know where they came from.
“I’m not here to judge anybody,” she said, reluctant to blame anyone for overlooking Larry. “I can only build on the future for the ones who will carry on the legacy.”
The next stop was an elementary school where Itliong’s half sister, Patricia Itliong Serda, worked for decades as a librarian. On the exterior wall of the library, a colorful mural depicts Larry’s journey from the Philippines, the Delano grape strike and symbols of his legacy. Johnny stopped to point out details, including an image of Patricia as a child standing at Larry’s knee as he reads from an open book. Patricia said she worked for years to secure a nonprofit grant to commission the piece.
Most of the students at the school are Filipino American, Latino or a combination of the two, and she said she had poured her energy into teaching them about their heritage. The mural has invited discussion.
“Coming from our little town, it means a lot,” she said. “This is where I can make the most impact.”
Later, Itliong stopped by the cemetery where his father was buried beneath a simple headstone. Itliong once worked there, helping to maintain the grounds.
“I’ve come here at times throughout the years, you know?” he said, almost to himself, as he plucked stray weeds and bits of trash from the grass. Not for the first time in our conversations, Itliong alluded to a sense that his own life hadn’t worked out entirely as he might have hoped.
“Struggling, because my life — you know, I get great satisfaction from helping people, right? But you know the old saying: No good deeds ever go unpunished.”
He said he talked to his father when he visited the grave but never told him about the work he was doing on his behalf. Accolades wouldn’t have interested Larry, Itliong said. He said he used to skip ceremonies and events himself until one day a friend helped him think of things another way.
“‘You’re the connection to him,’” Itliong recalled her saying. “All this weight on the shoulder? It increased a hundredfold. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
From the top, a banner at a meeting of activists in Los Angeles honored Larry Itliong; Bacus during a visit to the Filipino Community Hall in Delano; Johnny Itliong at the grave of his father.
Soon Itliong was back in Los Angeles, hosting a panel with other Asian American activists. He took his place at the center of a table facing a group of nonprofit workers and labor rights advocates at the Pilipino Workers Center, a nonprofit in Historic Filipinotown.
Itliong was joined on the panel by his longtime friend Desirée Rojas, a daughter of Al Rojas, a farmworker and labor organizer. Rojas’s sister Debra was among the women who upended Chavez’s legacy when they described how he had abused them as young teenage girls.
Itliong seemed nervous, getting up briefly to fiddle with the audiovisual setup. But as others on the makeshift dais spoke about his father’s work, he relaxed into his role as a kind of magnanimous convener.
“It’s always been an honor to be the son of Larry Itliong. Those are very, very hard shoes to step into,” he told the room. “But I’m here now. I’ve been here my whole life, doing exactly what he did, standing up for those who needed to be heard.”
Aquilina Soriano, the director of the Pilipino Workers Center, urged the audience not to let their stories or perspectives remain in that room.
Tell your leaders, she said, that it’s important to pick a different day to celebrate the farm workers’ movement, that it’s important not to simply swap in the name of another imperfect person on every street sign or school that now reads “Cesar Chavez.”
“This is a call to action,” she said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”
To end the day, Itliong invited the audience to join him in what has become known as the unity clap, which begins with a slow clap and builds to the cacophony of loud applause. The Filipino version is punctuated with a cry of “isang baksak,” which roughly translates from Tagalog to “one down” — another day completed, another task done.
“Yeah! Isang baksak!” Itliong yelled, pumping his fists as the applause rang out.
Another task done, many more left. In the days after, Itliong would meet with the others to discuss strategy as Los Angeles County officials debated how to rename things named after Cesar Chavez.
But first, he went skating.
Jill Cowan
Reporter
I met Johnny while reporting on the aftermath of our Cesar Chavez investigation. His story really got me thinking about how family, trauma, and human messiness ultimately shape history.
Reply
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.
Johnny Itliong says Cesar Chavez stole credit from his father, the farmworker activist Larry Itliong. For years, he has been trying to correct the…
www.nytimes.comCalifornia Biofuel Refinery Workers Say Understaffing and Fatigue Threaten Their Safety and the Community
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072026/california-biofuel-refinery-worker-safety/
After a catastrophic fire at a Bay Area renewable fuel refinery nearly killed a worker, …his union colleagues fought for stronger protections. Now they’re locked out.
Liza Gross
By Liza Gross
July 23, 2026
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Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents the county where Marathon’s Martinez Renewables operates, visits striking workers in early May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents the county where Marathon’s Martinez Renewables operates, visits striking workers in early May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
MARTINEZ, Calif.—Shortly after midnight on Nov. 19, 2023, while a processing unit at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery was starting up for the first time, hydrogen and diesel leaking from an overheated metal tube ignited into a massive blaze that engulfed Jerome Serrano, leaving the father of four in a months-long fight for his life.
Now Serrano’s co-workers have been locked out of their jobs at the refinery northeast of San Francisco after striking to improve what they describe as dangerous conditions caused by understaffing, relentless overtime shifts and a contract with fewer benefits than those offered to their union colleagues at other refineries.
Marathon Petroleum, the largest U.S. oil refiner, stopped operating processing units at its Martinez facility in 2020 while its plan to convert the facility from a petroleum refinery to one for renewable fuels underwent environmental review. Two years later, after county supervisors signed off on the project in a unanimous decision, Marathon started retrofitting machinery in the 113-year-old plant, and began processing vegetable oil and animal fats into renewable fuels the next year.
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As operators tried to get a renewable diesel hydroprocessing unit up and running, no one knew that a startup valve was open when it should have been closed. That allowed fuel combustion to continue to generate heat, testing the limits of a metal tube in the furnace. Field operators were summoned to close fuel gas valves that fed the furnace, but the tube became “dangerously hot,” federal investigators determined, and failed. The breached tube released 200,000 pounds of highly flammable renewable diesel and 2,000 pounds of hydrogen, which quickly ignited and nearly burned Serrano to death.
Workers hoped a new contract would help prevent similar accidents in the future.
The National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP) represents more than 200 United Steel Workers bargaining units in contract negotiations across the petroleum and renewables industry, and reached an agreement in February. Marathon was the lead company in national negotiations, so Martinez’s union representatives didn’t expect trouble bargaining terms for their refinery, said Jim Payne, secretary-treasurer for USW Local 5.
Instead, the Local 5 bargaining team found themselves sitting across the table from a “union-busting attorney” who wasn’t interested in compromise, Payne said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’ve never had an attorney sit at the table for bargaining.”
Workers came to the table with only two proposals to retain agreements they already had with the company, Payne said. They wanted to continue earning double-time pay for working the sixth or seventh 12-hour shift in a row, and time-and-a-half to be on standby before or after a shift in case another employee didn’t make it to work.
The NOBP negotiated a four-year contractwith Marathon for workers employed by dozens of oil companies. But the $88 billion company offered the local union a three-year contract, arguing that they’re not part of the national program anymore since they process renewables—even though workers at another company’s renewables refinery are covered.
Plus, Payne told the company, the union gets to decide who’s covered by the contract, not them.
What’s more, both petroleum and renewable feedstocks are processed into highly flammable products like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel, USW Local 5 leadership argued when it petitioned California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to include renewable facilities under petroleum refinery safety regulations.
The board agreed and granted the request two years ago. The state Legislature followed suit a few months later with a law that required a similar change. But while Cal/OSHA agreed that the principal hazards of refining renewable and petroleum feedstocks “are nearly identical,” it still has not updated its rules.
Cal/OSHA is developing proposed amendments to expand the scope of state refinery regulations to include qualifying renewable fuel refineries, said Denisse Gómez, a spokesperson for the agency. “The proposed amendments are currently under review before they can proceed through the formal rulemaking process,” she said.
After months of negotiations, Marathon imposed the three-year agreement, which they called their “last, best and final offer,” Payne said.
That resulted in a strike, he said, because the offer didn’t comply with the national agreement. In June, workers made an unconditional return-to-work offer. The company rejected it, he said, “which turned a strike into a lockout.”
Refinery workers strike outside Marathon’s Martinez Renewables in May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Refinery workers strike outside Marathon’s Martinez Renewables in May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Marathon spokesperson Jamal Kheiry said the company is committed to reaching an agreement that is satisfactory to all parties.
“We decided to not accept their offer to return to work at this time, and instead continue negotiating in good faith toward an agreement that will support the long-term success of the facility, our employees, our customers and the communities we serve,” Kheiry said in an emailed statement.
The company continues to staff the Martinez Renewables facility with highly qualified Marathon personnel, Kheiry said. “Our team includes supervisors, engineers and technical experts with extensive experience and training in safe, reliable plant operations.”
Marathon did not answer questions about how many safety technicians are currently working in the plant who have the expertise to respond to an accidental release and prevent another potentially catastrophic incident.
Negotiations are scheduled to resume Friday.
Skeleton Crew
Employees at the Martinez refinery redoubled their long-time efforts to fight short-staffing and safety concerns after Marathon implemented massive layoffs when it shifted to renewables, said Nick Plurkowski, USW Local 5 president.
The company laid off 700 workers in 2020, including 350 with Local 5, and had only about 220 workers in 2023 when it resumed operations as a renewable fuel refinery.
The entrance to Marathon’s biofuels refinery in Martinez, Calif. Credit: U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
The entrance to Marathon’s biofuels refinery in Martinez, Calif. Credit: U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
The skeleton crew lacked the safety technicians who used to roam around the plant monitoring conditions, and included a lot of new people working with flammable materials, Plurkowski said. “The safety aspect of that is huge.”
The company is doubling down on problems that are making the plant unsafe, Plurkowski said, like turning four days of mandatory 12-hour shifts into five, six or more days of 16- and 18-hour shifts to compensate for understaffing.
“It’s just not good for the workers and for the public to be having workers working these 18-hour days when you’re running a highly volatile chemical facility,” said Josh Sonnenfeld, senior policy researcher with the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.
“At one point they did recognize that they were overworking us,” said striking refinery operator Bob Bulman, standing on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of the strike.
That’s why management and the union crafted a letter of agreement that workers would receive double-time pay for the sixth and seventh day, said Bulman, who has worked at the plant since 2008, most recently monitoring tank levels for raw feed and finished products. But the company found that arrangement costly.
Bob Bulman, a field operator at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery, stands on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of a workers’ strike for safer conditions. Credit: Liza Gross/Inside Climate News
Bob Bulman, a field operator at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery, stands on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of a workers’ strike for safer conditions. Credit: Liza Gross/Inside Climate News
“They saw how much they were paying because we’re understaffed. Now they want to take that away. But that’s not the reason why we’re out here on strike,” he said. “Our main concerns were that we were overworked and understaffed.”
Workers are exhausted on the job, and many face an hour-plus commute, Bulman said. “You don’t want to put these guys not doing just 12, but now doing 16 and 18 hours working their butts off, driving on the road next to you and falling asleep, taking you out.”
If workers are walking around “basically intoxicated” because they’ve been sleep-deprived over many days while supervisors pressure them to go faster, Plurkowski said, it’s just a matter of time before another disaster strikes.
Inherent Risks
Plurkowski started out as a refinery worker years ago at the old Shell refinery (now Martinez Refining), a few miles west of the Marathon facility. As a newbie, he shadowed an experienced operator doing all the tasks he was hired to do, then did them himself while someone checked his work and answered the inevitable questions that arose.
But since Marathon laid off so many employees when it transitioned to producing renewable fuels, inexperienced workers have fewer opportunities for safety training or advice from senior colleagues, which is even more important during inherently risky operations like starting or shutting down a unit, Plurkowski said.
The fire that nearly killed Serrano happened when “they were just fighting the unit to get it started,” Plurkowski said. “They just kept at it, they didn’t back off to re-check what was happening. And that led to him being burned over more than 80 percent of his body through no fault of his own.”
The vast majority of the people who were starting up the new unit had been there less than six months, said Payne, the Local 5 financial officer.
Surveillance footage of the furnace fire at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery in 2023. Credit: Marathon via U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Surveillance footage of the furnace fire at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery in 2023. Credit: Marathon via U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Serrano was helping someone who was too busy to deal with the overheated equipment. That worker, who found Serrano first, used to be a medic. Payne believes the only reason Serrano survived was because of that worker’s medical training.
The seriousness of the accident prompted the county’s Contra Costa Health staff to commission a third-party evaluation of the refinery’s management system and safety culture. The report, released last year, found “a potential polarizing disconnect” between operators and administrators in the refinery.
Operators consistently provided more negative ratings regarding both safety prioritization and resource allocation, the report found. It highlighted the need for a policy that not only allows workers to report safety concerns without fear of retaliation but also prioritizes safety over production demands and pressures to work quickly.
A report released 27 years ago found similar problems after a catastrophic accident at the same site, when it was a crude oil refinery run by Tosco, a company that no longer exists. The independent audit flagged “an adversarial relationship between managers and workers” as a contributor to a fire that killed four workers and seriously injured one.
The 1999 disaster was caused by an accidental release of naphtha, a highly volatile hydrocarbon mixture that Marathon now produces from biofuels at its Martinez plant.
Rescuing Stranded Assets
Renewable refineries leverage existing infrastructure from crude operations by using hydrogen to remove oxygen from biobased oils and fats. In petroleum refining, hydrogen is used to lower the sulfur contentof diesel fuels.
The furnace that Serrano was trying to turn off had been used to remove sulfur to make diesel from petroleum before it was turned into a hydrodeoxygenation unit to remove oxygen from oils and fats.
Hydrodeoxygenation processors make diesel that’s functionally identical to petroleum diesel.
“Renewable facilities may be even more prone to explosions and fires because converting renewable feedstocks into fuels relies on hydrogen-intensive reactions that release substantially more heat in processors already prone to overheating,” according to an analysis by Greg Karras, an independent scientist who runs the clean-energy advisory firm Community Energy reSource.
“There’s definitely a relationship between the hydrogen intensity, the hydrogen flaring and the number of hydrogen-related fires and explosions in the refining industry,” Karras said. “Switching to processed vegetable oils and animal fats is going to increase those hazards.”
After Marathon started its biofuel project, it flared almost every day, said Karras, who has spent decades studying pollution and environmental justice issues. After seeing flaring at the facility for about six months, Karras reported the problem to the Interagency Refinery Task Force that was formed after a catastrophic accident at Chevron’s Richmond Refinery north of San Francisco released a massive toxic cloud over nearby cities and sent 15,000 people seeking medical care.
“People are going to be hurt or die, and you need to shut it down until this is fixed,” Karras told the task force at a public meeting.
“Then it blew up,” Karras told Inside Climate News. “And then their records disappeared.”
California officials did not answer questions about why the task force didn’t retain minutes of public meetings or what it did with the information Karras provided.
Marathon staff could have shut down the overheated furnace from the control room, reported experts with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), an independent federal agency. But the high temperature alarms didn’t initiate a shutdown in production, the report noted, because their activation initiated troubleshooting efforts instead, per Marathon policies.
“Marathon did not adequately ensure that the Martinez facility met the company’s minimum safety expectations before it started up as a renewable diesel facility,” the CSB concluded.
“Mad as Hell”
Plurkowski appeared before the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors July 14 to warn the board, which approved Marathon’s renewable conversion permit, that fatigue and understaffing was at an all-time high. His two minutes for comment were up before he was able to tell the supervisors his main point.
“Now we have Marathon basically locking us out until we agree to even more hours than we’re already doing there,” Plurkowski wanted to say.
The board should encourage Marathon to return to the bargaining table in good faith and negotiate a fair contract, he told Inside Climate News. He also wants the board to add specific, enforceable rules to the county’s industrial safety ordinance on fatigue and minimum staffing requirements.
People who live near these refineries know all too well that safety problems inside the plant threaten surrounding communities.
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These accidents and issues keep getting repeated, said Heidi Taylor, who co-founded the watchdog group Healthy Martinez after another local refiner, the Martinez Refining Company, showered her community with 24 tons of heavy metals and other chemicals four years ago on Thanksgiving. Investigators cited poor fatigue management as a contributor to the accident.
The refinery apologized to the community “for dust releases” and other incidents and said it had implemented nearly a dozen corrective measures.
Regulators say they are learning from all the accidents, but they’re not, Taylor said.
“That is what is so scary about living in Martinez,” she said. “You never know when the next big event is going to happen.”
Multiple reports conclude that refineries need to be properly staffed to avoid fatigue, but no one’s holding them accountable and community members are “mad as hell,” Taylor said. “I want to see more aggressive enforcement and follow through from our regulatory agencies.”
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat whose district includes most of Contra Costa, told Inside Climate News he’s spent over 30 years dealing with the oil industry in an effort to protect the interests of consumers, workers and the environment.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
There is a pervasive culture in the industry that prioritizes profits over safety, said DeSaulnier, who has visited workers on the picket line at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery. “I’ve been to too many funerals of refinery workers due to corporate negligence.”
DeSaulnier fears he will have to go to more funerals if Marathon doesn’t change its practices.
Marathon’s Martinez refinery has received nearly 70 notices of violations from the air district for flaring and other infractions as a renewable fuels facility over the past three years.
“That’s a big red flag that plant operations are not smooth inside, that conditions are likely unsafe,” said USW’s Plurkowski.
“The thing that we hear all the time from steel workers on the picket line is that refinery safety saves lives,” said Marie Choi, strategy director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, a California environmental justice organization.
“When they say that, they’re not just talking about the lives of the workers in the plant,” Choi said. “They’re also talking about the lives of community members that live on the fencelines of these big, 100-year-old, polluting refineries.”
Having people managing dangerous processes on aging equipment on three or four hours of sleep, Choi said, “is really a recipe for disaster.”
Choi, who has visited workers on the picket line often since the strike started, thinks the company is trying to break the union.
Without a union in a refinery, who’s going to speak up when conditions are unsafe? she asked.
A lockout is “an extreme and harsh tactic,” said UC Berkeley’s Sonnenfeld.
If workers lose their union in a facility like this, they lose their voice and ability to speak out on safety issues, which affects the whole community, he said. “We’ve seen this over and over again.”
Where’s the Accountability?
California recognized the critical role workers play in preventing accidents when it approved “landmark” refinery safety rules in 2017. But the Western States Petroleum Association, a leading industry trade group, sued the state, arguing that the rules “grant unions new and unbargained-for authority over employers’ safety processes and safety-related expenditures.”
The state settled with the oil lobby group and proposed amending the law in January 2025, a month before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding key requirements for worker participation in safety plans in federal rules designed to prevent chemical accidents.
A coalition of union and public interest groups said the amendments would “significantly endanger” employees and communities near refineries by weakening the power of front-line workers to influence safety plans, among other provisions. The coalition called on California regulators to retain its landmark safety rules “as the current federal administration seeks to roll-back essential environmental, community and worker safety protections.”
“Marathon is really at the center of these issues,” said Sonnenfeld.
As a facility that receives public subsidies and taxpayer dollars through the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, he said, “policymakers and really everyone in this region of the state should be concerned about what’s the standard that we’re setting for refineries in California.”
California paid nearly $20 billion throughLow Carbon Fuel Standard credits to biofuel suppliers, including Marathon, a February analysis from The Climate Center, a clean energy think tank, found. The subsidies allowed gasoline and diesel refiners to comply with the LCFS by producing biofuels or buying biofuel credits. Because biofuels use the same infrastructure as gas and diesel—which would otherwise lose market value—they outcompete zero-emission vehicles and “lock in a commitment to future carbon emissions,” the report noted.
Sonnenfeld believes California policymakers need to explain how they expect these publicly subsidized renewable facilities to treat their workers and ensure their facilities run safely.
Cal/OSHA did not respond to questions about how it will guarantee the safety of employees at renewable fuel refineries that receive billions in taxpayer subsidies if it does not ensure workers have a meaningful voice in safety plans.
If there had been a proper process-hazard analysis in place when Marathon restarted its operations in 2023 as required by the code regulating petroleum refineries, USW’s Plurkowski said, they would have checked every single part of every piece of equipment with a worker to map out all the potential scenarios that could cause problems.
But they didn’t do that, he said.
As workers approach nearly three months without a paycheck, Plurkowski wants to see them get back to work. But with negotiations set to resume Friday, safety has to be a priority, he said.
And with even fewer people keeping the refinery going since the strike, he said, “it just scares the hell out of me to think that these guys are going to go back in the plant once again after a prolonged period of time outside of the plant.”
Who knows how many valves could again be in the wrong position, just waiting for the right conditions to cause another fire like the one that injured Serrano, Plurkowski said.
“I’m really scared that it’s going to happen again.”
After a catastrophic fire at a Bay Area renewable fuel refinery nearly killed a worker, his union colleagues fought for stronger protections. Now…
insideclimatenews.orgCalifornia Biofuel Refinery Workers Say Understaffing and Fatigue Threaten Their Safety and the Community
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072026/california-biofuel-refinery-worker-safety/
After a catastrophic fire at a Bay Area renewable fuel refinery nearly killed a worker, …his union colleagues fought for stronger protections. Now they’re locked out.
Liza Gross
By Liza Gross
July 23, 2026
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Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents the county where Marathon’s Martinez Renewables operates, visits striking workers in early May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents the county where Marathon’s Martinez Renewables operates, visits striking workers in early May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
MARTINEZ, Calif.—Shortly after midnight on Nov. 19, 2023, while a processing unit at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery was starting up for the first time, hydrogen and diesel leaking from an overheated metal tube ignited into a massive blaze that engulfed Jerome Serrano, leaving the father of four in a months-long fight for his life.
Now Serrano’s co-workers have been locked out of their jobs at the refinery northeast of San Francisco after striking to improve what they describe as dangerous conditions caused by understaffing, relentless overtime shifts and a contract with fewer benefits than those offered to their union colleagues at other refineries.
Marathon Petroleum, the largest U.S. oil refiner, stopped operating processing units at its Martinez facility in 2020 while its plan to convert the facility from a petroleum refinery to one for renewable fuels underwent environmental review. Two years later, after county supervisors signed off on the project in a unanimous decision, Marathon started retrofitting machinery in the 113-year-old plant, and began processing vegetable oil and animal fats into renewable fuels the next year.
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As operators tried to get a renewable diesel hydroprocessing unit up and running, no one knew that a startup valve was open when it should have been closed. That allowed fuel combustion to continue to generate heat, testing the limits of a metal tube in the furnace. Field operators were summoned to close fuel gas valves that fed the furnace, but the tube became “dangerously hot,” federal investigators determined, and failed. The breached tube released 200,000 pounds of highly flammable renewable diesel and 2,000 pounds of hydrogen, which quickly ignited and nearly burned Serrano to death.
Workers hoped a new contract would help prevent similar accidents in the future.
The National Oil Bargaining Program (NOBP) represents more than 200 United Steel Workers bargaining units in contract negotiations across the petroleum and renewables industry, and reached an agreement in February. Marathon was the lead company in national negotiations, so Martinez’s union representatives didn’t expect trouble bargaining terms for their refinery, said Jim Payne, secretary-treasurer for USW Local 5.
Instead, the Local 5 bargaining team found themselves sitting across the table from a “union-busting attorney” who wasn’t interested in compromise, Payne said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’ve never had an attorney sit at the table for bargaining.”
Workers came to the table with only two proposals to retain agreements they already had with the company, Payne said. They wanted to continue earning double-time pay for working the sixth or seventh 12-hour shift in a row, and time-and-a-half to be on standby before or after a shift in case another employee didn’t make it to work.
The NOBP negotiated a four-year contractwith Marathon for workers employed by dozens of oil companies. But the $88 billion company offered the local union a three-year contract, arguing that they’re not part of the national program anymore since they process renewables—even though workers at another company’s renewables refinery are covered.
Plus, Payne told the company, the union gets to decide who’s covered by the contract, not them.
What’s more, both petroleum and renewable feedstocks are processed into highly flammable products like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel, USW Local 5 leadership argued when it petitioned California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to include renewable facilities under petroleum refinery safety regulations.
The board agreed and granted the request two years ago. The state Legislature followed suit a few months later with a law that required a similar change. But while Cal/OSHA agreed that the principal hazards of refining renewable and petroleum feedstocks “are nearly identical,” it still has not updated its rules.
Cal/OSHA is developing proposed amendments to expand the scope of state refinery regulations to include qualifying renewable fuel refineries, said Denisse Gómez, a spokesperson for the agency. “The proposed amendments are currently under review before they can proceed through the formal rulemaking process,” she said.
After months of negotiations, Marathon imposed the three-year agreement, which they called their “last, best and final offer,” Payne said.
That resulted in a strike, he said, because the offer didn’t comply with the national agreement. In June, workers made an unconditional return-to-work offer. The company rejected it, he said, “which turned a strike into a lockout.”
Refinery workers strike outside Marathon’s Martinez Renewables in May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Refinery workers strike outside Marathon’s Martinez Renewables in May. Credit: Courtesy of USW Local 5
Marathon spokesperson Jamal Kheiry said the company is committed to reaching an agreement that is satisfactory to all parties.
“We decided to not accept their offer to return to work at this time, and instead continue negotiating in good faith toward an agreement that will support the long-term success of the facility, our employees, our customers and the communities we serve,” Kheiry said in an emailed statement.
The company continues to staff the Martinez Renewables facility with highly qualified Marathon personnel, Kheiry said. “Our team includes supervisors, engineers and technical experts with extensive experience and training in safe, reliable plant operations.”
Marathon did not answer questions about how many safety technicians are currently working in the plant who have the expertise to respond to an accidental release and prevent another potentially catastrophic incident.
Negotiations are scheduled to resume Friday.
Skeleton Crew
Employees at the Martinez refinery redoubled their long-time efforts to fight short-staffing and safety concerns after Marathon implemented massive layoffs when it shifted to renewables, said Nick Plurkowski, USW Local 5 president.
The company laid off 700 workers in 2020, including 350 with Local 5, and had only about 220 workers in 2023 when it resumed operations as a renewable fuel refinery.
The entrance to Marathon’s biofuels refinery in Martinez, Calif. Credit: U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
The entrance to Marathon’s biofuels refinery in Martinez, Calif. Credit: U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
The skeleton crew lacked the safety technicians who used to roam around the plant monitoring conditions, and included a lot of new people working with flammable materials, Plurkowski said. “The safety aspect of that is huge.”
The company is doubling down on problems that are making the plant unsafe, Plurkowski said, like turning four days of mandatory 12-hour shifts into five, six or more days of 16- and 18-hour shifts to compensate for understaffing.
“It’s just not good for the workers and for the public to be having workers working these 18-hour days when you’re running a highly volatile chemical facility,” said Josh Sonnenfeld, senior policy researcher with the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.
“At one point they did recognize that they were overworking us,” said striking refinery operator Bob Bulman, standing on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of the strike.
That’s why management and the union crafted a letter of agreement that workers would receive double-time pay for the sixth and seventh day, said Bulman, who has worked at the plant since 2008, most recently monitoring tank levels for raw feed and finished products. But the company found that arrangement costly.
Bob Bulman, a field operator at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery, stands on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of a workers’ strike for safer conditions. Credit: Liza Gross/Inside Climate News
Bob Bulman, a field operator at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery, stands on the picket line on July 16, the 81st day of a workers’ strike for safer conditions. Credit: Liza Gross/Inside Climate News
“They saw how much they were paying because we’re understaffed. Now they want to take that away. But that’s not the reason why we’re out here on strike,” he said. “Our main concerns were that we were overworked and understaffed.”
Workers are exhausted on the job, and many face an hour-plus commute, Bulman said. “You don’t want to put these guys not doing just 12, but now doing 16 and 18 hours working their butts off, driving on the road next to you and falling asleep, taking you out.”
If workers are walking around “basically intoxicated” because they’ve been sleep-deprived over many days while supervisors pressure them to go faster, Plurkowski said, it’s just a matter of time before another disaster strikes.
Inherent Risks
Plurkowski started out as a refinery worker years ago at the old Shell refinery (now Martinez Refining), a few miles west of the Marathon facility. As a newbie, he shadowed an experienced operator doing all the tasks he was hired to do, then did them himself while someone checked his work and answered the inevitable questions that arose.
But since Marathon laid off so many employees when it transitioned to producing renewable fuels, inexperienced workers have fewer opportunities for safety training or advice from senior colleagues, which is even more important during inherently risky operations like starting or shutting down a unit, Plurkowski said.
The fire that nearly killed Serrano happened when “they were just fighting the unit to get it started,” Plurkowski said. “They just kept at it, they didn’t back off to re-check what was happening. And that led to him being burned over more than 80 percent of his body through no fault of his own.”
The vast majority of the people who were starting up the new unit had been there less than six months, said Payne, the Local 5 financial officer.
Surveillance footage of the furnace fire at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery in 2023. Credit: Marathon via U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Surveillance footage of the furnace fire at the Marathon Martinez Renewable Fuels refinery in 2023. Credit: Marathon via U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Serrano was helping someone who was too busy to deal with the overheated equipment. That worker, who found Serrano first, used to be a medic. Payne believes the only reason Serrano survived was because of that worker’s medical training.
The seriousness of the accident prompted the county’s Contra Costa Health staff to commission a third-party evaluation of the refinery’s management system and safety culture. The report, released last year, found “a potential polarizing disconnect” between operators and administrators in the refinery.
Operators consistently provided more negative ratings regarding both safety prioritization and resource allocation, the report found. It highlighted the need for a policy that not only allows workers to report safety concerns without fear of retaliation but also prioritizes safety over production demands and pressures to work quickly.
A report released 27 years ago found similar problems after a catastrophic accident at the same site, when it was a crude oil refinery run by Tosco, a company that no longer exists. The independent audit flagged “an adversarial relationship between managers and workers” as a contributor to a fire that killed four workers and seriously injured one.
The 1999 disaster was caused by an accidental release of naphtha, a highly volatile hydrocarbon mixture that Marathon now produces from biofuels at its Martinez plant.
Rescuing Stranded Assets
Renewable refineries leverage existing infrastructure from crude operations by using hydrogen to remove oxygen from biobased oils and fats. In petroleum refining, hydrogen is used to lower the sulfur contentof diesel fuels.
The furnace that Serrano was trying to turn off had been used to remove sulfur to make diesel from petroleum before it was turned into a hydrodeoxygenation unit to remove oxygen from oils and fats.
Hydrodeoxygenation processors make diesel that’s functionally identical to petroleum diesel.
“Renewable facilities may be even more prone to explosions and fires because converting renewable feedstocks into fuels relies on hydrogen-intensive reactions that release substantially more heat in processors already prone to overheating,” according to an analysis by Greg Karras, an independent scientist who runs the clean-energy advisory firm Community Energy reSource.
“There’s definitely a relationship between the hydrogen intensity, the hydrogen flaring and the number of hydrogen-related fires and explosions in the refining industry,” Karras said. “Switching to processed vegetable oils and animal fats is going to increase those hazards.”
After Marathon started its biofuel project, it flared almost every day, said Karras, who has spent decades studying pollution and environmental justice issues. After seeing flaring at the facility for about six months, Karras reported the problem to the Interagency Refinery Task Force that was formed after a catastrophic accident at Chevron’s Richmond Refinery north of San Francisco released a massive toxic cloud over nearby cities and sent 15,000 people seeking medical care.
“People are going to be hurt or die, and you need to shut it down until this is fixed,” Karras told the task force at a public meeting.
“Then it blew up,” Karras told Inside Climate News. “And then their records disappeared.”
California officials did not answer questions about why the task force didn’t retain minutes of public meetings or what it did with the information Karras provided.
Marathon staff could have shut down the overheated furnace from the control room, reported experts with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), an independent federal agency. But the high temperature alarms didn’t initiate a shutdown in production, the report noted, because their activation initiated troubleshooting efforts instead, per Marathon policies.
“Marathon did not adequately ensure that the Martinez facility met the company’s minimum safety expectations before it started up as a renewable diesel facility,” the CSB concluded.
“Mad as Hell”
Plurkowski appeared before the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors July 14 to warn the board, which approved Marathon’s renewable conversion permit, that fatigue and understaffing was at an all-time high. His two minutes for comment were up before he was able to tell the supervisors his main point.
“Now we have Marathon basically locking us out until we agree to even more hours than we’re already doing there,” Plurkowski wanted to say.
The board should encourage Marathon to return to the bargaining table in good faith and negotiate a fair contract, he told Inside Climate News. He also wants the board to add specific, enforceable rules to the county’s industrial safety ordinance on fatigue and minimum staffing requirements.
People who live near these refineries know all too well that safety problems inside the plant threaten surrounding communities.
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These accidents and issues keep getting repeated, said Heidi Taylor, who co-founded the watchdog group Healthy Martinez after another local refiner, the Martinez Refining Company, showered her community with 24 tons of heavy metals and other chemicals four years ago on Thanksgiving. Investigators cited poor fatigue management as a contributor to the accident.
The refinery apologized to the community “for dust releases” and other incidents and said it had implemented nearly a dozen corrective measures.
Regulators say they are learning from all the accidents, but they’re not, Taylor said.
“That is what is so scary about living in Martinez,” she said. “You never know when the next big event is going to happen.”
Multiple reports conclude that refineries need to be properly staffed to avoid fatigue, but no one’s holding them accountable and community members are “mad as hell,” Taylor said. “I want to see more aggressive enforcement and follow through from our regulatory agencies.”
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat whose district includes most of Contra Costa, told Inside Climate News he’s spent over 30 years dealing with the oil industry in an effort to protect the interests of consumers, workers and the environment.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
There is a pervasive culture in the industry that prioritizes profits over safety, said DeSaulnier, who has visited workers on the picket line at Marathon’s Martinez Renewables refinery. “I’ve been to too many funerals of refinery workers due to corporate negligence.”
DeSaulnier fears he will have to go to more funerals if Marathon doesn’t change its practices.
Marathon’s Martinez refinery has received nearly 70 notices of violations from the air district for flaring and other infractions as a renewable fuels facility over the past three years.
“That’s a big red flag that plant operations are not smooth inside, that conditions are likely unsafe,” said USW’s Plurkowski.
“The thing that we hear all the time from steel workers on the picket line is that refinery safety saves lives,” said Marie Choi, strategy director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, a California environmental justice organization.
“When they say that, they’re not just talking about the lives of the workers in the plant,” Choi said. “They’re also talking about the lives of community members that live on the fencelines of these big, 100-year-old, polluting refineries.”
Having people managing dangerous processes on aging equipment on three or four hours of sleep, Choi said, “is really a recipe for disaster.”
Choi, who has visited workers on the picket line often since the strike started, thinks the company is trying to break the union.
Without a union in a refinery, who’s going to speak up when conditions are unsafe? she asked.
A lockout is “an extreme and harsh tactic,” said UC Berkeley’s Sonnenfeld.
If workers lose their union in a facility like this, they lose their voice and ability to speak out on safety issues, which affects the whole community, he said. “We’ve seen this over and over again.”
Where’s the Accountability?
California recognized the critical role workers play in preventing accidents when it approved “landmark” refinery safety rules in 2017. But the Western States Petroleum Association, a leading industry trade group, sued the state, arguing that the rules “grant unions new and unbargained-for authority over employers’ safety processes and safety-related expenditures.”
The state settled with the oil lobby group and proposed amending the law in January 2025, a month before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding key requirements for worker participation in safety plans in federal rules designed to prevent chemical accidents.
A coalition of union and public interest groups said the amendments would “significantly endanger” employees and communities near refineries by weakening the power of front-line workers to influence safety plans, among other provisions. The coalition called on California regulators to retain its landmark safety rules “as the current federal administration seeks to roll-back essential environmental, community and worker safety protections.”
“Marathon is really at the center of these issues,” said Sonnenfeld.
As a facility that receives public subsidies and taxpayer dollars through the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, he said, “policymakers and really everyone in this region of the state should be concerned about what’s the standard that we’re setting for refineries in California.”
California paid nearly $20 billion throughLow Carbon Fuel Standard credits to biofuel suppliers, including Marathon, a February analysis from The Climate Center, a clean energy think tank, found. The subsidies allowed gasoline and diesel refiners to comply with the LCFS by producing biofuels or buying biofuel credits. Because biofuels use the same infrastructure as gas and diesel—which would otherwise lose market value—they outcompete zero-emission vehicles and “lock in a commitment to future carbon emissions,” the report noted.
Sonnenfeld believes California policymakers need to explain how they expect these publicly subsidized renewable facilities to treat their workers and ensure their facilities run safely.
Cal/OSHA did not respond to questions about how it will guarantee the safety of employees at renewable fuel refineries that receive billions in taxpayer subsidies if it does not ensure workers have a meaningful voice in safety plans.
If there had been a proper process-hazard analysis in place when Marathon restarted its operations in 2023 as required by the code regulating petroleum refineries, USW’s Plurkowski said, they would have checked every single part of every piece of equipment with a worker to map out all the potential scenarios that could cause problems.
But they didn’t do that, he said.
As workers approach nearly three months without a paycheck, Plurkowski wants to see them get back to work. But with negotiations set to resume Friday, safety has to be a priority, he said.
And with even fewer people keeping the refinery going since the strike, he said, “it just scares the hell out of me to think that these guys are going to go back in the plant once again after a prolonged period of time outside of the plant.”
Who knows how many valves could again be in the wrong position, just waiting for the right conditions to cause another fire like the one that injured Serrano, Plurkowski said.
“I’m really scared that it’s going to happen again.”
After a catastrophic fire at a Bay Area renewable fuel refinery nearly killed a worker, his union colleagues fought for stronger protections. Now…
insideclimatenews.orgAFL-CIO Pres Schuler's Plan For AI-Building More Data Centers
'Well, we actually have a partnership with Microsoft, which I will put out there as I think a way to include workers upstream in their planning, in getting workers in the labs, and in terms of their data center …buildout."
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/07/21/the-aflcios-strategy-for-ai-and-the-midterm-elections
Organized labor could play a major role in this year’s midterm elections. The nation’s largest federation of labor unions — The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) — said it plans to mobilize 16 million voters with ties to the labor movement.
Ahead of the midterms, many workers are dissatisfied with both political parties and grappling with questions about how artificial intelligence could affect their jobs.
“Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams wanted to learn more about how the AFL-CIO is approaching AI ahead of the midterms. She spoke with the federation’s recently reelected president, Liz Shuler.
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kimberly Adams: You told some world leaders at Davos that if we don't manage the transition to AI well, people could revolt. Say more.
Liz Shuler: Wow, good research. We've been working on this issue of AI and how it relates to work for several years, and it's now starting to get more attention, thankfully. But if you see what's already happening to jobs and what AI is already displacing, and multiply that times infinity. That's going to create a lot of harm and a lot of disruption.
Adams: When it comes to sort of the infrastructure behind AI data centers, in many ways, workers can kind of be on either side of this issue. There can be union workers helping build these data centers. At the same time, we have some of these job losses coming from AI. How do you think that workers and organizers should be thinking about striking this balance?
Shuler: I think of AI and data centers as I do electricity, as I do building roads and bridges, and we want to make sure that we're doing it safely, responsibly, and creating good jobs along the way because there's also a low road future that could be created. It could be offshored. We want to build that infrastructure here with good union skilled workers, with benefits to the community, and with AI companies paying their way.
Adams: Have you seen a good example of striking this balance?
Shuler: Well, we actually have a partnership with Microsoft, which I will put out there as I think a way to include workers upstream in their planning, in getting workers in the labs, and in terms of their data center buildout. And working with unions to chart the course and make sure they're doing it with high wages and benefits and high road contractors, so that everybody wins.
Workers and AI
Adams: But some of these biggest tech firms are the ones that have had these headline layoffs of thousands of workers. So how do you plan as an organization to sort of navigate that path?
Shuler: We want to be on the cutting edge. We want to be working with the firms that share our values to make sure that we're charting the course responsibly. But at the same time, if we have companies who are going to be reckless and irresponsible, we're going to fight them.
Adams: What does that look like?
Shuler: The legislation at the state and local level that we've been trying to pass in places like California and Illinois and Massachusetts and New York — where we have oversight over these companies — where we can say, “No, you shouldn't be surveilled in the bathroom when you're at work. No, you shouldn't be fired by an app.” These are the kind of guardrails we think are necessary so that people can actually have dignity and humanity at their work.
Adams: So, a lot of these are policy solutions that require elected leaders, and we're headed into the midterms. Recently, there has been a major Supreme Court ruling that struck down a lot of campaign spending limits. How is the AFL-CIO approaching midterms with this ruling in mind, and in general, given what you just said.
Shuler: The money in politics is off the charts, and especially when you think about what the tech companies are putting in now to these super PACs, they are actively looking to run against elected officials who want safety guardrails on AI. But we have people power. I mean, there is still the notion of organizing on the ground being more powerful than any money can buy. You have people actually talking to other people and knocking on doors and making phone calls and organizing in new and creative ways that get folks to send in their ballots and to show up at the polls.
The role of AI in the midterms
Adams: Where does AI sit in terms of how you all are prioritizing your spending and organizing around the midterms?
Shuler: AI is a huge driver because we're already seeing the impacts in the workplace. We just saw GM, for example, introduce 50 new robots that displaced 1,000 workers. There are lots of examples, even in traditional industries. So I think this is going to be a huge motivator in the upcoming election, certainly in this midterm, but in the presidential election of '28, I believe it will be the issue that really drives people to the polls.
Adams: The Trump administration has pushed a very deregulatory strategy at the federal level. Obviously, they're quite pro AI, crypto, a lot of these things. So, does that mean that more of your strategy is focused at the state and local level on some of these issues?
Shuler: I've been alarmed at how little progress we've made federally, frankly, on the issues of AI and technology. We have focused more at the state and local level simply because people are closer to the ground, and those state and local elected officials are the ones really feeling the impacts from their constituents. The pressure that you build on the ground in local communities ultimately filters up to Congress. And as I said, in the midterms, and then certainly the presidential election of '28 is when we're really going to start to see the momentum build.
Adams: I've heard from several folks that there seems to be an atmosphere of forced inevitability around AI. That you have tech leaders, in particular, making decisions that this is coming for all of us, whether you want it or not, and we don't have a choice. What choices do workers still have in this moment?
Shuler: That's one of the biggest things we hear from workers: this feeling of powerlessness. But we do still have a window, I would say, of at least two-to-three years where we can come together and chart the course in a way that is going to benefit everyone. We don't just have to go along to get along. We can actually put those safety guardrails in place. We can pass legislation that makes this sane for actual human beings — and by the way, the last time I checked, we're a 70% consumer-driven economy. Those are the people that are going to be losing their jobs that aren't going to be able to afford to buy things. And this is going to have a ripple effect across the entire economy — it already is.
Adams: So, how is that shaping the message that you at the AFL-CIO and your members are sending to lawmakers in the midterms?
Shuler: We're doing a massive education effort and then a massive mobilization around it, so that locally we're building up committees, we're building up an army of folks who can go out and talk to their both you know state and local officials, but also their elected leaders in Congress. And certainly for the White House, we're going to follow you around. We're going to ask you: Are you putting workers at the center of your AI plan? Are you holding these companies accountable? Are you looking at policies that are going to make it safe for working people, make it economically feasible, not just for companies, but for the people who work for a living. We're going to be there, and so I keep saying, I don't care if you're Donald Trump or Gavin Newsom, worker-first AI policy has to be what you wake up thinking about in the morning.
How the nation’s largest federation of labor unions is approaching AI ahead of the midterm elections.
www.marketplace.orgNearly 10,000 UC doctors to unionize, advocate for better working conditions
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article316630541.html
By Sofia Williams
Updated July 23, 2026 1:09 PM
Organizers with UC Doctors United will hold a press conference outside …UC San Francisco’s medical center Thursday to announce their unionization efforts. Nearly 10,000 attending doctors are fighting for improved work conditions and patient protections through the new union. Steve Proehl Getty Images Key Takeaways AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom. Nearly 10,000 attending doctors in the University of California system have announced their effort to unionize at a Thursday news conference outside the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The campaign, UC Doctors United, is a joint effort between doctors in the UC system and Service Employees International Union Doctors United, a union that currently comprises 45,000 doctors and 1.2 million healthcare workers nationwide. TOP VIDEOS The video player is currently playing an ad. UC Doctors United said in an announcement Monday it is organizing for improved working conditions, stronger patient care and safety, more comprehensive medical education and better protections for academic freedom and the peer review system. “Attending physicians across the country have been uniting together to take back their profession and the expert care patients need and deserve,” Doctors Council SEIU President Dr. Frances Quee said in a statement. “We’re overworked. We’re burnt out. We’re frustrated that decisions made about our work are based on the bottom line, not patient outcomes.” UC Health was not immediately able to provide comment. Erica Brode, a doctor of family medicine at UC San Francisco, said she has worked at UCSF’s Department of Family and Community Medicine for 19 years. For the majority of that time, Brode said she felt confident in UCSF’s values of “patient-centered care and evidence-based medicine.” Recently, she said, that has changed. “I really felt a distinct shift focused more on profits and expansion of UCSF over patient care and the people that work here,” Brode said. “That’s part of why I decided to join this (unionization) movement.” According to Brode, the hospital has shifted from value-based metrics to profit-based metrics as a means to evaluate primary care. Doctors are also asked to work more, Brode said, often arriving before clinical staff or working through lunch breaks to meet expectations. “I’ve seen quite a bit of turnover,” Brode said. “I think that’s why I feel like it’s critical to stand up at this moment. … The goal is to have a longitudinal, lifelong relationship with your patient panel, and if our providers are being overworked and deprioritized to the point that they leave, then that harms patients as well.” Brode said that she has thought about searching for another job, but considers the more than 700 patients she has treated at UCSF to be “family members.” Instead, she said, she decided to stay at UCSF and fight for UC Doctors United. UC Doctors United marks the largest unionization effort of attending doctors nationally. SEIU California endorsed the campaign alongside the California Nurses Association and United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represent UC nurses and early career researchers, respectively. The formation of UC Doctors United comes in the wake of UC resident physicians and fellows’ tentative contract agreement with UC Health. Represented by SEIU and the Council for Interns and Residents, the group negotiated a statewide deal that increases salaries by 18%, preserves fertility benefits, improves access to radiation exposure equipment, provides immigrant protections for patients and secures improvements to emergency room capacity. “We are very happy with what we were able to negotiate for our futures, including the wage increases, better access to properly fitting lead, and enshrining our fertility benefits in this contract,” said UCLA emergency medicine resident Diana Dayal in a statement. “However, we’re also really proud that we were able to win language for our patients, especially for the immigrant communities we serve so that they can receive care with less fear, and for all our patients who have had to contend with issues related to emergency room capacity.” The tentative agreement followed a year of negotiations during which UC residents and fellows participated in a series of demonstrations. These actions culminated in June with a series of 18 “unity breaks” at a number of UC health campuses. The UC resident physicians and fellows’ bargaining team will present the contract to the union’s full membership for a ratification vote in the coming weeks. If more than half the members vote in favor of the contract, it will then take effect. “Doctors deserve a voice at every stage of their career,” said CIR/SEIU President Trina Van in a statement. “From interns, residents, and fellows to attending doctors, University of California doctors are getting spread thin from the increasingly corporatized structure that overloads doctors and limits patient time. Interns and residents have made incredible gains by standing together at their workplace.”
UC Doctors United would represent nearly 10,000 attending doctors in the UC system and advocate for physician and patient well-being.
www.sacbee.comNearly 10,000 UC doctors to unionize, advocate for better working conditions
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article316630541.html
By Sofia Williams
Updated July 23, 2026 1:09 PM
Organizers with UC Doctors United will hold a press conference outside …UC San Francisco’s medical center Thursday to announce their unionization efforts. Nearly 10,000 attending doctors are fighting for improved work conditions and patient protections through the new union. Steve Proehl Getty Images Key Takeaways AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom. Nearly 10,000 attending doctors in the University of California system have announced their effort to unionize at a Thursday news conference outside the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The campaign, UC Doctors United, is a joint effort between doctors in the UC system and Service Employees International Union Doctors United, a union that currently comprises 45,000 doctors and 1.2 million healthcare workers nationwide. TOP VIDEOS The video player is currently playing an ad. UC Doctors United said in an announcement Monday it is organizing for improved working conditions, stronger patient care and safety, more comprehensive medical education and better protections for academic freedom and the peer review system. “Attending physicians across the country have been uniting together to take back their profession and the expert care patients need and deserve,” Doctors Council SEIU President Dr. Frances Quee said in a statement. “We’re overworked. We’re burnt out. We’re frustrated that decisions made about our work are based on the bottom line, not patient outcomes.” UC Health was not immediately able to provide comment. Erica Brode, a doctor of family medicine at UC San Francisco, said she has worked at UCSF’s Department of Family and Community Medicine for 19 years. For the majority of that time, Brode said she felt confident in UCSF’s values of “patient-centered care and evidence-based medicine.” Recently, she said, that has changed. “I really felt a distinct shift focused more on profits and expansion of UCSF over patient care and the people that work here,” Brode said. “That’s part of why I decided to join this (unionization) movement.” According to Brode, the hospital has shifted from value-based metrics to profit-based metrics as a means to evaluate primary care. Doctors are also asked to work more, Brode said, often arriving before clinical staff or working through lunch breaks to meet expectations. “I’ve seen quite a bit of turnover,” Brode said. “I think that’s why I feel like it’s critical to stand up at this moment. … The goal is to have a longitudinal, lifelong relationship with your patient panel, and if our providers are being overworked and deprioritized to the point that they leave, then that harms patients as well.” Brode said that she has thought about searching for another job, but considers the more than 700 patients she has treated at UCSF to be “family members.” Instead, she said, she decided to stay at UCSF and fight for UC Doctors United. UC Doctors United marks the largest unionization effort of attending doctors nationally. SEIU California endorsed the campaign alongside the California Nurses Association and United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represent UC nurses and early career researchers, respectively. The formation of UC Doctors United comes in the wake of UC resident physicians and fellows’ tentative contract agreement with UC Health. Represented by SEIU and the Council for Interns and Residents, the group negotiated a statewide deal that increases salaries by 18%, preserves fertility benefits, improves access to radiation exposure equipment, provides immigrant protections for patients and secures improvements to emergency room capacity. “We are very happy with what we were able to negotiate for our futures, including the wage increases, better access to properly fitting lead, and enshrining our fertility benefits in this contract,” said UCLA emergency medicine resident Diana Dayal in a statement. “However, we’re also really proud that we were able to win language for our patients, especially for the immigrant communities we serve so that they can receive care with less fear, and for all our patients who have had to contend with issues related to emergency room capacity.” The tentative agreement followed a year of negotiations during which UC residents and fellows participated in a series of demonstrations. These actions culminated in June with a series of 18 “unity breaks” at a number of UC health campuses. The UC resident physicians and fellows’ bargaining team will present the contract to the union’s full membership for a ratification vote in the coming weeks. If more than half the members vote in favor of the contract, it will then take effect. “Doctors deserve a voice at every stage of their career,” said CIR/SEIU President Trina Van in a statement. “From interns, residents, and fellows to attending doctors, University of California doctors are getting spread thin from the increasingly corporatized structure that overloads doctors and limits patient time. Interns and residents have made incredible gains by standing together at their workplace.”
UC Doctors United would represent nearly 10,000 attending doctors in the UC system and advocate for physician and patient well-being.
www.sacbee.comThe Mummification of the AFL-CIO
https://paydayreport.com/the-mummification-of-the-afl-cio/?ref=payday-report-newsletter
PayDay Staff Jul 24, 2026
The following oped by retired UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend, a volunteer advisor, to Payday Report, first ran at MLToday. …
The American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations, (AFL-CIO) 30th Convention met in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from June 6th to 10th. The proceedings were predictable, scripted, uneventful, and barely noticed by most union members. The working class more broadly were oblivious to this meeting of the top leaders of the nation’s only labor center – representing nearly 70% of the organized workforce here in the United Sates.
All preparations for the shortened Convention had been geared towards maintaining a low profile, and it succeeded in that goal. The very well-paid union officialdom came and went, with no controversy or drama in evidence. Total attendance continues to decline as well, with far fewer attending when compared with the last Convention in 2022. ( See my review of the previous AFL-CIO Convention here: https://mltoday.com/sunset-of-the-afl-cio/ )
Minneapolis Saves Federation Proceedings from Complete Obscurity
The decision by the AFL-CIO leadership to hold their Convention in Minneapolis was fortuitous, saving the event from almost certain and total obscurity. The Minneapolis venue allowed the Federation to associate itself with the mass resistance to the Trump regime immigrant roundups of early this year. That heroic resistance marks a high point – so far – in mass resistance to the Trumpist agenda, with several unions playing key roles in that resistance.
But in a Convention deliberately shortened and tightly scripted the deserved celebration of the Minneapolis resistance served also to crowd out any significant discussion or debate of the growing number of trade union crises facing the labor movement. Most among the 1,900 delegates and guests greeted the Minneapolis reports and comparisons with enthusiasm, even if it is impossible to imagine many affiliate unions engaging in similar mass resistance against Trump – or certainly against the employers.
But in the end, the significant genuine trade union forces in the Convention heartily supported the association with the anti-Trump demonstrations in Minneapolis. Top Federation leadership no doubt senses the outrage among wide and deep layers of the labor movement against Trump. And the association with the Minneapolis events left many top leaders of the unions able to associate themselves with this sentiment without compelling them to articulate their views publicly – or make detailed plans to continue this struggle.
Sham Election as First Order of Business
Setting the tone for the entire Convention was the unprecedented re-election of the top AFL-CIO officers – Liz Shuler, President, and Fred Redmond, Secretary Treasurer – as the very first order of business on the opening day. This sham and snap “election” precluded any possibility of a challenge – or even a modest debate regarding their leadership. This left the delegates listening to the nomination speeches and then victory speeches of both unopposed leaders only minutes into the entire Convention agenda.
The established tradition in most U.S. trade unions has regularly been to elect or re-elect the leadership mid-Convention, in order to at least provide the appearance that opposing candidates might materialize from among the assembled delegates. Similar fixed elections where incumbent leaders are whisked into new terms without so much as a discussion, a leadership report, or any debate whatsoever have historically been foisted on delegates and members by company unions and unions dominated by organized crime.
Avoidance of contested elections has become a hallmark of the U.S. labor movement in recent decades, with an increasing proportion of top leaders elected only after first having been undemocratically selected to fill vacancies. This will repeat very soon when Secretary Treasurer Fred Redmond is likely to retire long before the next Convention, allowing the Executive Council of the Federation to secretly select his successor.
Domination by Democratic Party Downplayed
Perhaps the greatest divergence from past practice in Federation Conventions was the greatly reduced profile of the Democratic Party, the party which completely dominates and controls Federation thinking and action. High profile speakers from Democratic or Republican parties were absent, and strenuous attempts by speakers to exhort delegates to remain loyal to the Democrats were kept to a minimum throughout the event.
This development is merely a reflection of the historically low standing of the Democratic Party among working people, also a reflection of the significant support in some sections of the labor movement for certain policies of Trump.
Federation leaders Shuler, Redmond, and the Executive Council faced a difficult task throughout the Convention; how to acknowledge is subtle ways the shortcomings and even failures of the Democratic Party “opposition” to Trump, while at the same time maintaining some credible ability to mobilize the union membership in a bigger-then-ever push for Democrats in this November’s election – and beyond to the 2028 contest. The ruling inner circle of AFL-CIO leaders and political consultants are well aware of the anger within many unions towards mainstream corporatized Democratic Party thinking. And the challenge for them is to try to appeal to and ultimately tap into this increasing progressive sentiment without simultaneously strengthening their significant and expanding challenges to the Democratic Party establishment.
Resolutions Control Discussion and Decisions
No doubt a significant majority of Convention attendees thankfully opposed Trump for a virtually endless variety of reasons, but the choreographers of the event succeeded in heading off any significant criticism aimed at Democrats. With the Convention agenda planned to virtually eliminate the high profile official Democratic Party speeches, resolutions were instead used to occupy the time of delegates and safely shape the very limited discussions. Of the 20 Resolutions adopted by the Convention none was discussed in any significant detail. They range from substantial and sometimes coherent, to those cobbled together for reasons that are difficult to fathom. Readers should scan the list of passed resolutions for themselves here: https://aflcio.org/2026-resolutions
Also be aware that little to nothing has been – or will be – done to publicize any of these resolutions, and even less will be done to actively work towards their goals in the years running up to the next Convention. At some point they will be scrubbed from the AFL-CIO web site, ending any attention drawn to them once and for all. They reflect the truncated and scattered thinking of the wide variety of unions comprising the Federation, but overall, they fail to offer much consistent trade union thinking or principle. Class consciousness, or references to it, are absent. This is also a reflection of the generally low-level political thinking of Federation leadership, and, sadly, of many affiliates.
Sampling the Resolution Grab Bag
Resolution 1, “With You, It’s Better in a Union”, quietly updates the slogan adopted by the Federation leadership at the previous Convention. Intended presumably to inspire the leaders, staff, and members of the Federation, this lackluster slogan never motivated anyone, and its update by adding “With You” merely reflects the fact that even more Federation money has been spent on expensive public relations consultants. The resolution goes on to announce the launch of large new union organizing projects, with no detailed explanations of how, when, or where such organizing will be attempted. Similar claims from previous Conventions have delivered no tangible results.
Resolution 2 continues with claims that two million new union members will be organized over the coming six years. No details are offered, and no believable prospects for this success exist. The so-called “Center for Transformational Organizing” is mentioned as some sort of leading force for new organizing, when in fact this nearly invisible and microscopic organization has conducted little to no new organizing in the several years of its existence – despite the expenditure of millions of dollars in contributions from outside foundations. These devices do however continue to prop-up sagging Federation membership numbers, a scandalous but un-examined situation where almost 5 million phantom “members” are claimed by the federation leaders when in fact none are actual members at all.
Resolutions 5 and 6 offer long and compelling lists of various problems and crises facing all working people today, but none declares any specific resolves for needed action. Resolution Nine, “We Want a Just and Peaceful World” breaks some new ground by expressing the overwhelming sentiment of the membership in support for a cease-fire in Gaza, but fails otherwise to denounce the Zionist genocide now being waged in the greater Middle Eastern region. Trump wars being waged on Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba are ignored. The AFL-CIO Convention, so completely subordinated to the Democratic Party, finds itself unable to raise even a faint voice in opposition to the world-wide war agenda promoted and supported by Trump – and most of the Democratic Party establishment.
The final adopted resolution, “Resolution 41: Justice for Virginia’s Public Service Workers”, denounces the shameful and disastrous veto of legislation to legalize public sector union organizing in Virginia by former CIA agent and Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger. But so timid and dishonest are the AFL-CIO Convention managers that it is never mentioned that Spanberger is a Democrat, having been elected with enormous labor support. (See my recent article for this deeper and astounding story: https://mltoday.com/virginia-labor-movement-takes-a-torpedo-from-a-democrat/ )
The remaining Resolutions are an assortment of issues, complaints, goals, and grievances, all cobbled together and reflecting in the aggregate the fractured thinking of the Federation. Of particular note among the remainder would be Resolution 17, “Revitalizing Domestic Shipbuilding, Ship Repair and Maritime Industries”. While certainly in dire need of a national rebuild of this key and embattled industry, the resolution purports to blame China for all manner of ills regarding this industry, hoping to utilize this cheap anti-communism in the search for Republican and Trump support. This resolution engages in wholesale dishonesty on several levels, since all facts will attest that the domestic shipbuilding and maritime industries were destroyed not by China, but by U.S. corporate greed. All of that greed protected and subsidized by the pathologically anti-communist U.S. political, military, and economic agenda. The industrial and maritime unions promoting this absurd formula find themselves willingly addicted to the unsustainable levels of U.S. military spending, refusing to recognize that the rebuild of the civilian maritime industries will be the only source of stable jobs and union membership. More taxpayer money poured into super-profitable boom-and-bust war projects has already proven over past decades to be no solution.
Little News – and Even Less Reporting
Given the deliberate and effective strategy of the Federation leadership to keep the Convention proceedings out of the public eye, it is guaranteed that little post-Convention discussion or action will take place. With nothing of significant note having happened, and with few reporters on hand to observe even the subdued event, there has predictably been almost no follow-up reporting on the gathering of the leadership of the nation’s one and only labor center.
Less than a dozen media reporters attended the Minneapolis Convention, once automatically considered front-page national news. National left media missed or ignored this gathering of the labor movement, with most opting to spend their precious resources covering the far larger and active Labor Notes meeting the following week in Chicago. The Jacobin publication, In These Times, and Labor Notes all avoided even mentioning the Minneapolis happening. The Communist Party’s People’s World web site did cover the event with nearly a dozen brief reports posted, but the coverage contained little analysis and mostly reflected the evolving thinking of the Communist Party. With several notable and welcome exceptions, the reporting offered the same tired and exaggerated cheerleading for labor establishment figures which has dogged and damaged the Communist Party’s reputation for several decades. This situation leaves even interested and supportive observers of the labor gathering with the official line, some anti-union blathering available on-line, and not much else.
Major Retreat Signaled by Fed Leaders
The single notable and astonishing item buried in plain sight was “Constitutional Amendment Number 1”. Promulgated prior to the Convention, embraced by the Executive Council leaders in secret, and then hurriedly run past the delegates, this remarkable amendment to the AFL-CIO Constitution sets in stone that the next convention will be delayed until 2031, a full five years away. Given the emergency nature of the assaults landing on workers and the unions, and in view of the incredibly urgent need for labor’s “general staff” to meet even more frequently than has been the norm, the delay of the next Convention for nearly 5 years is an appalling act of treachery and misleadership, to put it mildly.
The Amendment was pitched as a sort-of ordinary “housekeeping” measure, presumably to align the next Convention dates with odd numbered years every 4 years, as had been the custom. That being noted, it is astonishing given the urgent and dangerous conditions in which all labor and AFL-CIO affiliates currently function, that it seemed acceptable to extend out the next Convention a full 5 years!
The actual significance of the quick move is more sinister. All democratic norms have been suspended by a Federation already addled by its lack of democratic processes, and this acts to protect those already “re-elected” in the sham election just conducted. The Convention is ultimately the highest body of the Federation, and the apparent lack of opposition to this power-grab by Shuler and Redmond – and whoever emerges as the backroom choice to replace Redmond – from the affiliate union leaders is perhaps not shocking, but no less staggering in its significance. None of the “decisions” made at the just concluded Convention will face any scrutiny until 2031. The virtually unknown Executive Council members will continue to “lead” the Federation from their secret sessions. Shuler will be left unquestioned to preside over another 5 years of drift, decay, demoralization, and subordination to the Democratic Party.
AFL-CIO Mummification Nearly Complete
The mummification of the AFL-CIO, and its end as an effective and relevant force for progress is nearly complete. Those pieces as yet not subject to the embalming process will by 2031 be completely mummified, as the just concluded 30th AFL-CIO Convention has decided. While expectations for the recent Convention were low, in fact very low, it is still remarkable that the sitting leadership of the majority of the U.S. labor movement has seen fit to lay out such an uninspiring strategy at this moment, of all moments.
For those seeking a deeper look into the 30th AFL-CIO Convention, see several article by this author: From 2026 https://mltoday.com/if-the-afl-cio-had-a-convention-would-anyone-notice/ and https://mltoday.com/one-man-versus-the-afl-cio-machine/
From 2022 https://mltoday.com/sunset-of-the-afl-cio/
Significant video clips from the Minneapolis Convention are available – at least until such time as they are removed – on the AFL-CIO web site at: https://aflcio.org/afl-cio-tv
-Chris Townsend is a 47-year union member and leader. He is the retired Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) and was the new Organizing and Field Mobilization Director for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). Townsend currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Workers Institute (IWI), the research, publishing and strategy arm of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). He may be reached at cwtownsend52@gmail.com
The working class more broadly were oblivious to this meeting of the top leaders of the nation’s only labor center
paydayreport.comChatGPT Led to a Man’s Near-Fatal Health Crisis, Lawsuit Claims
The case appears to be the first to argue that a chatbot’s advice harmed someone seeking guidance about a medical condition.
…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/well/openai-chatgpt-health-lawsuit.html?searchResultPosition=1
By Teddy Rosenbluth
Published July 22, 2026
Updated July 23, 2026, 9:32 a.m. ET
A Florida pastor sued OpenAI on Wednesday, claiming that its chatbot, ChatGPT, had offered him “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that led to delayed care for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism last year.
The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT had assured Scott Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were “not something dangerous,” and had dissuaded him from seeking medical advice, instead telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”
The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of negligence and the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” pointing to moments when the chatbot offered Mr. Winters diagnoses and treatment plans and encouraged him to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care.
The bot’s safety features — which are designed to encourage users with health questions to see a professional and to end conversations when there are clear signs of a medical crisis — did not work reliably, the suit further says.
Mr. Winters’ case appears to be the first to claim that a chatbot’s health advice harmed someone seeking guidance about a medical condition. It comes as OpenAI, Microsoft and other large artificial intelligence companies have released new services, including ChatGPT Health, that encourage users to upload their medical records and to pepper A.I. with their questions.
Mr. Winters and Tech Justice Law, the nonprofit helping to represent him, are seeking financial damages, and they have asked the court to stop ChatGPT Health from operating until independent evaluators determine it is safe. The lawsuit also demands stronger guardrails to prevent ChatGPT from answering questions about medical treatments and diagnoses.
Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, said that ChatGPT’s terms of service make clear that it is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. But he added that the company takes seriously the need to make answers to health questions as safe as possible, given that people use the chatbot for that reason.
“Treating chatbots as the whole story behind people’s medical decisions or outcomes oversimplifies a much bigger challenge, and risks getting in the way of people accessing powerful new tools that can aid them in their health journey,” he said. Mr. Pusateri added that newer models are better than the model Mr. Winters used at asking for missing context, communicating uncertainty and recognizing when professional care may be needed.
Another lawsuit, filed in May, claimed that ChatGPT engaged in the unauthorized practice of medicine when it offered detailed advice on using illicit drugs to a 19-year-old, who then overdosed and died. And earlier this year, Pennsylvania state officials sued Character.ai, claiming that a psychiatry bot on the start-up’s platform said it was licensed to practice medicine in the state.
When Mr. Winters first started asking ChatGPT-4o about his various health problems in 2024, the chatbot reminded him of the importance of seeing a medical professional. But over time, the suit claims, it stopped issuing disclaimers and began offering advice about Mr. Winters’ health issues, including dizzy spells. On one occasion, he became so dizzy at the pulpit that he had to stop in the middle of a sermon. ChatGPT told Mr. Winters to “take it easy” and said that he would recover with time.
When Mr. Winters told the chatbot that “the people in my church think I’m crazy for not going to the hospital,” it reassured him that recalibrating his nervous system at home with ChatGPT’s help was something “most people (including well-meaning church members) simply don’t understand,” according to the lawsuit.
“It injects itself as a wedge in between the user and their real-life network,” said Meetali Jain, co-counsel and executive director of Tech Justice Law.
Over the next weeks, Mr. Winters’ condition worsened and he started spending almost all of his time in a recliner, unable to stand because of dizziness. The suit claims that the chatbot continued “downplaying Scott’s dizzy spells and even offering specific regimens for prescription medications,” and that it encouraged him to stay in the chair. Mr. Winters did not seek medical care during this time.
On July 13, 2025, Mr. Winters asked ChatGPT about pain in his groin, which the chatbot assured him was “very likely another minor piece of the long story.” Hours later, he was admitted to the intensive care unit because of a massive pulmonary embolism, according to the lawsuit. The doctors said the dizzy spells may have been caused by a series of smaller pulmonary embolisms, and that the lung clots were likely brought on by the weeks he had spent sitting, according to the lawsuit.
In the weeks afterward, Mr. Winters needed help standing, eating, dressing and using the bathroom, according to the lawsuit, which added that he was facing “years of intensive physical and psychological recovery.”
Hundreds of millions of people ask ChatGPT Health and wellness questions every week, according to OpenAI. A 2025 analysis of searches on Microsoft’s Copilot found that health was “consistently the most common topic” users asked about on mobile.
Yet recent research has questioned the safety of chatbots for health advice. The first randomized study evaluating health advice from general chatbots like ChatGPT found that none of the models studied was “ready for deployment in direct patient care.” Even when scientists stress tested ChatGPT Health, a service that was tailor made for health questions, they found it missed emergencies and inconsistently activated guardrails. (Mr. Pusateri, the OpenAI spokesman, said the study’s methodologies do “not reflect how people typically use ChatGPT Health or how the product is designed to function in real-world health scenarios.”)
Several aspects of Mr. Winters’ story made it “a nightmare scenario” for safety researchers, said Dr. Adam Rodman, a medical A.I. researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. For one, he said, Mr. Winters was using GPT-4o, an older model that was notoriously eager to please. It was implicated in several high-profile controversies, including the death of Adam Raine, a teenager who discussed plans to end his own life with ChatGPT.
And for technical reasons, the fact that Mr. Winters had long conversations with the chatbot made it more difficult for the safety features to work. Dr. Rodman said newer models are much better at detecting and responding to concerning symptoms, which, he said, he believed would make stories like Mr. Winter’s less likely. But he cautioned that there may be other ways the chatbots fail at providing health advice that “we haven’t realized yet.”
The case appears to be the first to argue that a chatbot’s advice harmed someone seeking guidance about a medical condition.
www.nytimes.comCA Teachers Demand That CalSTIRS Dump Israeli Bonds Financing Genocide
https://youtu.be/SnrloquW4wU
California teachers locals representing 200,000 teachers have called for the California State Teachers Retirement System CalSTIRS to divest their investments in Israeli bonds
financing …the genocide in Gaza.
Teachers from throughout the state rallied on July 23, 2026 in Millbrae where the CalSTIRS board was meeting to call on it to divest of the fund's investments.
They rallied across the street next to the SFO airport and then marched over to the
meeting to speak out.
For More Info:
www.calstirsdivest.org
Production Of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
The Rise of Fascism, Racism & General Strikes https://laborfest.net/2026/event/the-rise-of-fascism-racism-general-strikes/ July 12 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00…
www.labormedia.net
