Editor’s Note, August 3 2023: Michelle Pitcher looked at the President Biden’s response to the thirst strike in this update.
Jasmine Granillo was 11 years old when her family joined other workers in a “thirst strike”—a protest in which participants decline to drink water—on the steps of Dallas City Hall in 2015. For a full day, Jasmine’s father Gustavo Granillo went thirsty to draw attention to the death of his 25-year-old son Roendy Granillo and pressure the city to pass a water break mandate to protect construction workers from heat illnesses. Roendy had died three months earlier from heat stroke after reportedly being denied a break at a residential construction job. After the action, Jasmine and her family continued their activism with the worker rights organization Workers Defense Project, protesting and speaking to city council members. By the end of the year, Dallas passed an ordinance mandating that construction laborers receive a 10-minute rest break every four hours, a policy similar to one passed by Austin five years prior.
Now eight years later, Jasmine and her family will join other workers, labor unions, and elected officials in a day-long thirst strike Tuesday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to call on President Joe Biden to rapidly implement a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) heat protection standard, which would effectively trump Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to ban local water break ordinances like the one in Dallas. House Bill 2127, the so-called Death Star bill which bans the rest break ordinances, goes into effect September 1 of this year. Currently, Texas is withering under record-breaking summer heat; already, a Dallas mail carrier, a Houston construction worker, and a utility lineman from East Texas have died from the extreme temperatures.
