Working People
The student encampment movement last school year turned institutions of higher education into flashpoints of struggle over Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, US support for it, and the right to speak out against it. This year, college and university campuses have become laboratories of repression where different administrative efforts to silence Palestine solidarity and antiwar demonstrators are being deployed. And that is playing out right now at Cornell University. As Aaron Fernando writes at The Nation, “Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, has taken...
info_outline Microsoft AI Data Center Comes for Drought-Battered Mexican Town’s Water (w/ Diana Baptista)Working People
As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of “AI” is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget jobs—AI is coming for your water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.” In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to...
info_outline Alec PlantWorking People
Two years ago, workers from several different Trader Joe’s grocery stores joined the wave of unionization efforts spreading across the country. Workers in Hadley, Massachusetts, made history in 2022 by not only becoming the first Trader Joe’s store to vote to unionize but also by opting to form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United (TJU). However, like with Starbucks, Amazon, Medieval Times, and other companies where workers have been exercising their right to organize in recent years, rampant union busting has been part of the Trader Joe’s story from the beginning. What’s worse,...
info_outline When Work Inspires Art: Labor Poet George FishWorking People
While Max was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There’s something to be said about the people you meet when you’re sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today’s guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on...
info_outline Seven unions demand end to US military aid to Israel (w/ George Waksmunski & Brandon Mancilla)Working People
The death toll in Gaza continues to climb, with conservative estimates putting the numbers of dead around 40,000, but a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates the actual death toll could be 186,000 or even higher—that’s roughly 8% of Gaza’s population. And with each passing day, the humanitarian crises unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank gets orders of magnitude worse. Seeing the dire situation in Palestine, seven major US labor unions collectively drafted, signed, and sent a letter to President Biden demanding that US military aid to Israel stop...
info_outline 300 Episodes of 'Working People'! Announcements, reflections, & what comes next...Working People
In 2024, Working People officially crossed the 300 episode mark! Since we published our first episode back in 2018, the show has grown in ways we never could have imagined, and the world itself has changed in radical, hopeful, terrifying ways, the labor movement has undergone incredible changes, and we’ve done our best to document that change and this moment in history through the conversations we’ve had with workers across industries, from all walks of life, about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles. Over the past seven seasons of the show, we've interviewed working people,...
info_outline What it Means to 'Walk the Walk': the NEA Staff Lockout (w/ Rowena Shurn and Ambereen Khan-Baker)Working People
Today we have an urgent and important conversation with members of the NEA Staff Organization, the union of staffers at the National Education Association, who have been locked out of their workplace by NEA management for the past four weeks. The NEA, representing over 3 million members, is the largest union in the country. Staffers working for the NEA have been bargaining for higher wages and fairer treatment by the union, and have instead been locked out of their workplace after a 3-day ULP strike a month ago. We’ve brought on former educator Rowena Shurn and national board-certified...
info_outline From the East Palestine Derailment Disaster to the Toledo Water Crisis (w/ Mike Balonek & Chris Albright)Working People
From East Palestine, Ohio, to South Baltimore and beyond, we’ve been connecting you with residents living in the toxic wastelands left by private and government-run industry—ordinary working people who have been thrust into extraordinary fights for their lives. In the latest installment of our ongoing Sacrificed series, we go to Toledo, Ohio, a city that, in 2014, lost access to its water supply for three days straight due to a massive, toxic algal bloom caused by runoff from industrial animal farming. We speak with filmmaker Mike Balonek and welcome back Chris Albright, a resident of...
info_outline Teamsters Members React to Sean O'Brien's RNC Speech (w/ Amber Mathwig, Tony, Chantelle, Rick Smith, Zoey Moretti Niebuhr, Jess Leigh, Kat, & Robert Conklin)Working People
On Monday, July 15, on Day 1 of the Republican National Convention, Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, became the first Teamsters president ever to address the RNC. Invited by former president Trump, who is now officially the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, O’Brien’s speech was no ordinary RNC filler. And to anyone watching, or anyone paying attention to the political reality in this country, this was no ordinary RNC either. O’brien’s very presence on the RNC stage, and the contents of his speech, which lasted for 17...
info_outline Dispatch from Labor Notes & Railroad Workers United Conferences (Chicago, 2024)Working People
Two months ago, from April 17-21, workers and labor organizers of all stripes convened in Chicago for the bi-annual Labor Notes conference, which overlapped with the Railroad Workers United convention. As the registration website rightly noted, “Labor Notes Conferences are the biggest gatherings of grassroots labor activists, union reformers, and all-around troublemakers out there." This is not a buttoned up convention of union officials; this is a real grassroots gathering of people on the frontlines of struggle, talking openly, honestly, and strategically about their struggles, victories,...
info_outlineFeb. 3, 2024, marks the one-year anniversary of the Norfolk Southern train derailment that changed life forever for the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and the surrounding area. The derailment of 38 rail cars and the subsequent “controlled release” and burnoff of toxic vinyl chloride was one of the most catastrophic industrial accidents in our country’s history—and a catastrophe of equal or greater proportion could happen again tomorrow, because we have done little to substantively address the issues that caused it.
While the media and most of the country have forgotten about them, for the people still living in and around East Palestine, life will never be what it was on Feb 2, 2023. "At the one year mark," warns Christa, a resident who has lived in the area her whole life, "I want everybody across the country and across the world to know that this could happen to you... We were an invisible town, an invisible region, and we liked it that way. None of us ever wanted to be on the news... We were very happy being invisible, and then they poisoned our town, and it has changed everything forever."
To commemorate the anniversary of the East Palestine disaster, we begin Season 7 of Working People with this special compilation episode featuring firsthand testimonies of five East Palestine residents: Christa, Chris Albright, Jessica Albright, Stella Gamble, and Daren Gamble.
Additional links/info below…
- Jami Wallace, The Inquirer, "One Year Ago, a Train Derailment Upended My Town. I’ll Spend the Rest of My Life Worrying"
- Last Week Tonight, "Freight Trains: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)"
- Emily Baumgaertner, The New York Times, "One Family’s Toxic Train Wreck Ordeal: Illness, Exile and Debt"
- Working People, "12-HR LIVESTREAM: Let’s help East Palestine families have a good Christmas!"
- Savage Joy Marie Mann, "EAST PALESTINE OHIO MUTUAL AID FUNDRAISER"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "They Were Just Another East Palestine Family—Until Norfolk Southern Set Off a Bomb in Their Lives"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "The US Government Has Abandoned East Palestine"
- Maximillian Alvarez, "East Palestine Residents Still Need Help—the Labor Movement Should Be an Ally"
- Savage Joy Marie Mann, "My Full Recording of Meeting with Mark Durno of the East Palestine EPA"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "East Palestine Residents Still Need Help—the Labor Movement Should Be an Ally"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "East Palestine, 100 Days Later"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "East Palestine Residents Have Been Left Behind—and They're Running Out of Water"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "East Palestine, Ohio: A Hell of Wall Street's Making"
- Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "'This Was Preventable': Railroad Workers Explain How Wall St. Caused the East Palestine Derailment"
- Maximillian Alvarez, Breaking Points, "Rail Worker EXPOSES Ohio Disaster COVERUP"
- Mike L., The Real News Network, "A Carman's Perspective on the East Palestine Derailment and the Railroad Industry as a Whole"
- Al Jazeera English, "What’s Behind Train Derailments in the US? | Fault Lines Documentary"
Permanent links below...
- Working People Patreon page
- Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
- Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music...
- Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song
- Dark and Synthy music for this episode also by Jules Taylor