"CSX has got to go!" Industrially Polluted South Baltimore Residents March to "Evict" Rail Giant from Their Community
Release Date: 06/17/2024
Cornell's Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity Protests Could Force Grad Student-Worker to Leave US (w/ Jawuanna McAllister & Jenna Marvin)
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 Plant
Working 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 Fish
Working 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_outlineOn June 10, in the working-class community of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore, over 50 residents, activists, and supporters from around the city marched through the streets of Curtis Bay to hold CSX Transportation accountable for polluting their community, homes, and bodies with toxic coal dust. Even after an expansive scientific study co-sponsored by the Community of Curtis Bay Association, the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, and the Maryland Department of Environment confirmed the presence of coal dust in the air of the South Baltimore community of Curtis Bay, CSX has denied culpability and called the study “materially flawed.” Residents say they’re fed up with the company refusing to take responsibility for the coal dust, and with the city government for ignoring their cries for help for years, and they’re not going to stay quiet.
“We got to stand together for Curtis Bay, for South Baltimore,” one resident and youth leader, Carlos Sanchez, told the crowd. “We have to remove CSX for the health of our communities.” With other locals watching from their porches, sidewalks, and storefronts, the crowd marched from the Curtis Bay Rec Center all the way up to the gates of the CSX terminal. There, they signed and delivered a giant “Eviction Notice” to CSX, a company that recorded over $10 billion in gross profits last year. In this on-the-ground edition of Working People, Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Curtis Bay residents on the day of the march and takes you to the heart of the action.
Speakers in this episode (in order of appearance) include: Shashawnda Campbell of Baltimore Community Land Trust; David Jones, a resident who has lived in Curtis Bay for over 35 years; Angie Shaneyfelt, a resident who has lived in Curtis Bay for 17 years; Angela Smothers, a lifelong resident of Mt. Winans in South Baltimore; Carlos Sanchez, a youth leader born and raised in Lakeland, South Baltimore; Roma Gutierrez, a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, South Baltimore, and an environmental organizer and youth leader with South Baltimore Community Land Trust; an unnamed representative of Malaya Movement Baltimore; and Maria Urbina, a South Baltimore resident.
Additional links/info below…
-
South Baltimore Community Land Trust website, Twitter/X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
-
Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "South Baltimore residents on the toxic reality of living in a 'sacrifice zone'"
-
Aman Azhar, InsideClimate News, “South Baltimore communities press city, state regulators for stricter pollution controls on coal export operations”
-
Nicole Fabricant, University of California Press, Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore
-
Nicole Fabricant, The Real News Network, “Opinion | CSX explosion in Curtis Bay should alarm Baltimore City and accelerate real change”
-
Michael Middleton & Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Maryland Matters, “Commentary: Maryland deserves a better environmental justice bill”
-
Chloe Ahmann, Baltimore Sun, “Curtis Bay residents deserve a coal-free future”
-
Christine Condon & Dillon Mullan, Baltimore Sun, “Curtis Bay residents ask state to shut down South Baltimore CSX facility after study documents toll of coal dust”
-
Maryland Department of Environment, "New scientific study confirms airborne coal dust in Curtis Bay community"
-
Adam Willis, The Baltimore Banner, "A state-backed report found coal dust across Curtis Bay. CSX isn’t convinced"
-
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
-
The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music...
-
Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song