“The most radical piece of literature in America reaches the home of every American each month. . . . It’s called the utility bill." This quote from labor leader Tony Mazzocchi was recited at both ends of my recent trip from Michigan to Maine. The possibility for organizing conjured up by the quote lifted my spirits, but i wanted to dig into it for myself, because passively receiving the bill alone hasn't produced widespread change. Transformative change requires all of our actions together.
So i began to think about the sort of solidarity possible because of the shared experience receiving this bill and made that the focus of my thinking during the course of my trip. In between hearing the quote 15 days apart, separated by a thousand miles over land, i had dozens of conversations with climate movement workers, coalfield organizers, policy professionals, lawyers, academics, funders, and other labor unionists alike.
Each conversation put one small piece of this solidarity puzzle in front of me at a time. As a systems thinker, it all came together clearly by the time i'd hear it said on my last day on the road.
In most of the discussions about my work on energy utilities, the monthly bill is talked about as a relationship back to the company that sent it to us. With electricity rates rising relentlessly and us on the verge of a catastrophic summer of shutoffs, the public utility commission appears more frequently now as a character, too. A common idea keeps emerging across the country: form a ratepayer union, and innovate a new form of place-based organizing that builds a coalition strong enough to take on the utility regulator. (Perhaps using a structure-based model like Jane McAlevey taught.) This is worth experimenting with, and I think ratepayer unions have the potential to turn protest into promises.
But while this framing of an 'us' versus the utility regulator or the utility itself is easy to access, i wonder if it gives license to narrow our organizing strategies too early. If we take that path, does the maximum potential of our organizing strategy shrink? What happens when we focus too early on the limited possiblity of action at the utility commission? Rather than going from a shared experience to the utility ratepayer union in one straightforward move, can we imagine the ratepayer union as just one piece of a larger strategy on the chess board, one possible move out of many linked organizing moves? Can we look across the board before we leap to action?
We have options beyond this three-part dance between 'us', our bills, and the regulator. There is a greater 'us' to organize with.
Right before leaving, someone i met on Bluesky was chatting with me offhandedly about one of the last open coal mines and power plants in Illinois, Prairie Station. This plant stuck in my mind for no other reason than one of its operators, Ken Bone, went atmospherically viral in 2016. Without this trip, it might have become one of the dozens of funny facts i manage to learn and forget just as quickly every day. Yet just 72 hours later, over drinks at a Cleveland brewery to talk about the vision for Our CPP (Cleveland Public Power), i was told by a seasoned climate advocate that most of the public power agencies across Ohio had open and long-term contracts with Prairie Station to buy its coal-powered electricity.
In many movement discussions about public power, the steps are often laid out as (1) convert from investor-owned utilities to public power, (2) use the power of community ownership and local control of the utility to wind down fossil fuels, then (3) solve the climate crisis by using democratic ownership to grow renewables. To make these steps into realistic, implementable plans, we must think about these concrete details that become apparent when grounded in our the actual conditions we have to address. Tracing which agencies are linked to which coal-fired power plants and which coal mines, particularly, puts a tangible link between the energy user and the workers touching each part of the physical energy system.
Over empanadas in Pittsburgh, i was told about patient and dedicated organizing by the Center for Coalfield Justice to build the community power of residents near the largest underground coal mine in the United States, the Bailey Mine. The community's stability is tied up with the economic future of the coal mine, and their organizing has begun to provide moral and material support as that future has become less and less certain. The remaining mine workers who produce the coal ship it out to electric power plants across the country, linking the economic and environmental injustice at the mining site to the same injustices at the combustion site. As we left the restaurant, trying to cram in just one more piece of information to our energized chat, the organizers reminded me the coal moves by rail and that Railroad Workers United have a just transition strategy.
It all clicked. There is an opportunity for public power movement organizers to think about the ratepayer union as one component of many where there are workers and community members to organize and unite in struggle along the entire value chain.
Beyond the feeling of receiving a bill you can't afford – an experience that happens in private, alone – linking people located across the utility value chain in a greater level of detail can build power across community and labor groups. Every worker along that route understands the experience Tony Mazzochi mentioned. That's the uniting factor, the solidarity potential, of each of us receiving this radical piece of literature every month when our utility bill shows up. Resisting the drive towards individualism to think about the collective experience of people across the wires, power plants, and fossil mines and wells is required if we're going to organize for a just transition for all.
In Detroit, i listened to a presentation from Salma Elmallah, professor in Geography at Arizona State University. She described energy insecurity, receiving this monthly bill and perhaps even accruing utility debt, as an experience that is depoliticized. Depoliticization, she says, happens because we reduce people to someone good (who is paying their bills on time) and someone bad (who isn't). She says this is paired with a process of decontextualization, severing any interrogation into why some people can't afford their bill. Energy insecurity is made into an issue of dollars and cents, rather than of system designs, like poor housing quality or wages that are lower than the cost of living.
From her analysis, i want to build further, and imagine that the 'most radical piece of literature in America' can recontextualize our shared experiences, from one received utility bill up through the physical networks and along the path connecting every person working working on the utility value chain who also receives that utility bill in the privacy of their own home.
This idea of recontextualization to make transformative change possible stuck in my mind, much like imagining Ken Bone at the control desk of his power plant in Prairie Station. In Maine, it came as I listened to a presentation about research in the labor-climate movement from Todd Vachon, author of Clean Air and Good Jobs and professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He described how there are multiple possibilities for a just transition: protective, proactive, and transformative. Protective might look like paying workers in Pennsylvania simply not to make more coal and paying their medical bills and pensions early; proactive might look like much of the vision of the Green New Deal, one centered on green growth, both care and manufacturing jobs; and transformative looks like thinking in bigger systems altogether. Transformation reimagines the economy, including changing ownership and decommodifying energy, as the public power movement demands.
Thinking with Salma, Todd, and each of these conversations along the way, i realized how depoliticization and decontextualization keeps us from recognizing transformative visions of a just transition, and locks us into protective ones. Protecting my home's connection to the grid. Protecting my job in my community. Looking around the country today, this is an attitude i see slipping into more discussions about the possibilities for our future energy systems, largely inherited from the wider political discourse. Rather than recognizing our power when we stand together in solidarity, across the utility value chain people are being pitted against each other to prevent the green transition from happening.
Transforming the entire electricity system so that we all make it out together requires radicalizing, politicizing, contextualizing, and transforming our experiences together. In 2023, the write-up from the public power movement's national summit highlighted that crafting a worker and community centered strategy is an essential part of our future success. This will require deeper understanding of what we have to win or lose together, then building many more connections across state lines, professions, and organizations. It's not solidarity for its own sake, but because solidarity is what produces the potential for transformation at all.