 20 minutes ago, I had my last sip of water for the day alongside Dolores Huerta, who has joined us here today. Dolores, alongside Cesar Chavez, founded the United Farm Workers, and we try to honor that legacy today because we're a part of something bigger. We're a part of a bigger arc of history. And so as I engage in this strike, as we stand out here in the sun and even the rain all day, we remember those we've lost, we respect one another, and we hope and demand much better. You just watched a portion of a protest and vigil by Texas congressman Greg Cesar that he hosted to draw attention to the climate crisis and specifically how it affects workers in Texas. Now he staged a thirst strike to protest a bill that Governor Greg Abbott signed into law on June 14th that could literally kill workers in Texas who work outdoors. As NBC News reports, as Texas sweltered last month under a weeks-long record-breaking heat wave, the state passed a law that will eliminate mandatory water breaks for construction workers in cities where such ordinances had been in place to protect people from extreme heat. House Bill 2127 passed the state legislature and Governor Greg Abbott promptly signed it into law on June 14th. The bill, which goes into effect in September, strips construction workers in Austin and Dallas of the right to water breaks every four hours and time to rest in the shade while on the job. The new law comes as Texas endured three straight weeks of high humidity and triple-digit temperatures in June. Such intense and long-lasting heat waves are expected to become more common in a warming world, climate scientists have said. So climate change is here, and if we're not going to stop pumping greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere or even reduce it, then at a minimum, we have to adapt to the reality of climate change, right? And we have to do that right now. Yesterday, actually, states need to adapt by making accommodations in a number of areas. For example, cities could establish cooling centers for low-income people who don't have air conditioners. Prisons need to install air conditioners immediately. Believe it or not, most prisons in Texas don't actually have air conditioners. And of course, outdoor workers have to have laws mandating that they are able to take water breaks. Anyone participating in the sweat economy where they work outdoors, they need to have these types of protections. But rather than being proactive, Texas is going in the opposite direction, and they're making things worse as the climate heats up, and things are going to get worse. The climate is going to get hotter. Extreme heat will become more common, especially in states like Texas. But don't take it from me. Take it from climate journalist Jeff Goodall, who articulates the dangers of extreme heat in a PBS NewsHour interview. Well, based on your research, how hot can it get? What should we expect in the years to come? That is a really good and important and difficult to answer question. We know we can talk about general warming of the planet averages, but what we are seeing now, and what we saw, for example, in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 when there is that extreme heat wave that killed 1,000 people, it got to be 121 degrees in British Columbia. I mean, no climate models predicted that. It was like snow in the Sahara or something like that. So what we're seeing is as we mess with the atmospheric dynamics of the planet by burning fossil fuels, putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, we're changing the dynamics in ways that we can't really say where the next heat wave is going to hit, how brutal it will be, how long it will last. And it's a little bit frightening. In fact, it's more than a little bit frightening. It's very frightening because, you know, could it get to 125 degrees in Texas? No one knows. 125 degree heat in Texas. That is unfathomable. And I feel like most people haven't grappled with the reality that our planet is literally becoming uninhabitable before our very eyes. And we're all just going on with our daily lives as if this isn't an existential threat to all of us. And I mean, if we're not going to do anything about climate change, if we're not going to try to stop it, the very least that we can do is try to adapt to these new conditions. So that way its effect will be less deadly on all of us. But politicians are so cruel that even that's out of the question. And the end of mandatory water breaks for outdoor workers seems especially cruel, considering that they're going to bear the brunt of these changes. But the legislation that Greg Abbott signed goes even deeper than just that, because as NBC News continues, the measure has been nicknamed the Death Star Bill because it broadly preempts legislation at the local government level if it clashes with state law. The bill covers eight areas of government, including labor, business, and agriculture, overturning local ordinances that are already in place and preventing local governments from passing new ones if they conflict or deviate from state regulations. So it's not like Greg Abbott was saying fuck you specifically to the outdoor workers. They're basically collateral damage here. And the goal with this legislation is for him to consolidate power ultimately and take them away from blue cities who are trying to protect workers. But they're trying to stop that. And it's not just the outdoor workers who are going to deal with the repercussions of this. I mean, stripping away protections for renters means that if you become unhoused during an extreme heat wave, what's going to happen? Especially if you're vulnerable, if you suffer from asthma. But Representative Greg Casar gave us some additional details about this new law and he explains at the end of this clip here why Greg Abbott is doing this. So we passed multiple protections for renters against discrimination and water breaks. And the governor just signed a bill called the Death Star Bill. We didn't just name it that. They call it the Death Star Bill. Like they're proud of being the bad guys in Star Wars. I mean, that's how it is. They're proud of being the worst. And the Death Star, you know, destroyed planets in Star Wars. And what this Death Star does is it destroys and bans all worker and renter protections in the state of Texas. That are local. So it got rid of the water breaks laws. It got rid of the eviction protections laws. It's trying to get rid of those anti-discrimination ban the box laws. And so that is, and the question of why would he do that? It's just that's what the big money corporate lobby wanted. And so that's what Greg Abbott did. Surprise, surprise. He's doing this because that's what corporations wanted. So corporations destroy our planet. They then lobby the government to remove protections to save us from the destruction that they caused. And we're all just supposed to be okay with this. And we are because we've been conditioned to accept this as normal, even if it is not normal. But I mean, welcome to late stage capitalism, my friends. And to be clear, I don't want to make it seem like this is only the result of late stage capitalism specifically. Capitalism isn't bad just when it gets to this stage. Because capitalism always has a trajectory, right? It always ends in fascism. And it's bad not because sometimes it's worse than other times. It's bad because it always gets to this particular point. When you establish an entire economic system that prioritizes profits over people, this result right now is inevitable. So Greg Abbott, like the good little stooge that he is, is doing this because his corporate sugar daddies want him to. But politicians would not be able to get away with these crimes against their constituents if people actually held them accountable. But the one who's being attacked here, ironically, is Greg Casar for daring to shine a light on these human rights abuses taking place in his state against his constituents. And I want to show you what I mean by that. So in response to him announcing his thirst strike, these blue check Twitter users are the first replies that you see. Magamon asks, how is anyone to take you serious? Meme Headroom says, please leave Texas. Go ruin some other state. And then you have a gif of a clown. I'm assuming they're saying that Greg Casar is a clown for daring to care about his constituents. Seeing that enraged me because you have this member of Congress who's actually trying to do something good for the people that he represents. And then the first thing that you see are these responses from losers who paid to have their stupidity elevated on Twitter. But I do want to make it clear that that's not the totality of the response. There were a lot of people who responded saying solidarity. Thank you for doing this. But I mean, still, the fact that anyone can look at what he's doing and say, no, that's bad. I don't want you to protest the end of mandatory water breaks for workers. I mean, it just speaks to a problem that we have in this country where people are willing to let politicians who harm them off the hook. And they attack the people who are trying to fight for them all because of tribalism and hyper partisanship. I mean, why are mandatory water breaks all of a sudden a partisan issue? Are there no Republicans who participate in this wet economy who work outdoors? I mean, he's fighting for these people and the responses vitriol and anger. When that vitriol and anger should be directed at the governor who signed the legislation that could get their friends and family members killed if they do indeed live in Texas. So I mean, they may be partisan hacks, but the thing about climate change is that it doesn't discriminate based on your political affiliation. It affects all of us, right? But I want to not just hyper focus on the negativity, even though it blew my mind. But the real point in me covering this video, of course, is to amplify the message of Greg Casar and the individuals who he was working with here. So the event was organized by multiple organizations such as United Farm Workers, the Texas AFL-CIO and others. But the ultimate goal is to apply pressure on the Biden administration to take action. So as Julia Conley of Common Dreams explains, on Monday, Casar led more than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate in writing a letter that called on the Biden administration to establish a federal standard through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, to prevent heat-related work injuries, illnesses, and deaths. OSHA is working toward releasing a standard, but currently the agency does not require rest breaks for workers and the lawmakers urged the Biden administration to mobilize all of the resources necessary for implementing the standard as soon as possible. The campaigners at the Capitol on Tuesday called for requirements for employers to provide workers with adequate water, breaks, cooling areas, medical services, and training to identify heat-related illnesses. So listen, at the end of the day, Republicans are going to Republican. That is, they're going to do everything in their power to inflict as much pain and suffering on people as they possibly can, because that's what they want to do. But what matters ultimately is that the White House, since we have power currently, writes this wrong by establishing federal standards to make sure that these workplace protections for people who work outside, they don't just go the way of the dodo because Republicans in certain states don't care, right? It's an easy political win for Joe Biden going into the 2024 election. But more importantly, it's the right thing to do because climate change-induced heat waves are here to stay. They're going to become increasingly common, and if we're going to not try to stop the planet from getting warmer, at a minimum. Again, government should at least try to mitigate our suffering as the planet literally cooks us alive for as long as they possibly can. And it's sad that that's how low the bar is, but even the smallest ask is a very big ask in the dystopian world that capitalism has created for all of us. So, yeah, we'll leave that there.