“Let’s unite!”: Poisoned residents of America’s sacrifice zones are banding together (w/ Hilary Flint, Melanie Meade, Elise Keaton Wade, & Angela Shaneyfelt)
Release Date: 11/15/2024
Catholic nurses at Ascension call on Bishops to help with contract fight (w/ Gideon Eziama & Lisa Watson)
Working People
On November 12, unionized nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore held a rally in front of the Marriott Hotel downtown, where the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was holding a meeting. St. Agnes nurses rallied with supporters from around the city, and they were even joined by fellow Ascension nurses who traveled from Wichita, Kansas, and Austin, Texas. According to a press release from National Nurses Organizing Committee / National Nurses United (NNOC-NNU), the purpose of the rally was to “highlight how Ascension has failed to follow to both serve and...
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“Let’s unite!”: Poisoned residents of America’s sacrifice zones are banding together (w/ Hilary Flint, Melanie Meade, Elise Keaton Wade, & Angela Shaneyfelt)
Working People
Sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that threaten life itself, from toxic industrial pollution to the deadly, intensifying effects of man-made climate change. In a more just and less cruel society, the very concept of a “sacrifice zone” wouldn’t exist. And yet, in America, after decades of deregulation and public disinvestment, more working-class communities are becoming sacrifice zones, and more of us are being set up for sacrifice at the altars of corporate greed and government abandonment. America’s sacrifice zones are no longer extreme...
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How will railroad workers vote after Biden and Congress blocked their strike? (w/ Hugh Sawyer, Mark Burrows, & Ron Kaminkow)
Working People
Two years ago, the US was on the cusp of seeing its first national rail strike in decades. Then, President Joe Biden, at the urging of the rail companies, and with the help of both parties in Congress, preemptively blocked railroad workers from striking in December of 2022. Workers were forced to accept a contract that did not address the vast majority of issues that have been putting them, our communities, and our supply chain at hazard. How has this all shaped railroad workers’ attitudes and approaches to the upcoming elections? In this urgent panel discussion, we pose this question...
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SpoOoOoky Special 2024: The Movie that Traumatized Us All
Working People
Last year, we summoned all the Alvarez siblings from the ether to record our annual Halloween episode. Sadly, we were not able to record a new Halloween episode in 2024, but to celebrate the holiday and give listeners a break from all the heavy news, we are publicly releasing last year's spooky special. Jesse, Zak, Max, and MacKenna break down THE defining horror movie of our childhood, the movie that scarred us all: John Carpenter's The Thing. From the whole Alvarez family, we're wishing everyone out there a Happy Halloween! Permanent links below... Working...
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Workers take on Kaiser Again, Strike for a Fair Contract in SoCal
Working People
On Monday, Oct 21, 2400 behavior health workers at Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California locations walked off the job in their ongoing struggle for a fair contract. Over the summer, negotiations between the health system and the bargaining committee, represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), failed to close the gap between their proposals, opening the door for a strike. The workers are now well into their second week on strike. The healthcare giant refuses to bargain seriously with the workers, offering paltry raises instead of agreeing to the workers’ demands for...
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After two years of striking, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren’t ready to give up
Working People
We’re coming up on a pretty mind-blowing anniversary in the news labor world–Two years ago, in October 2022, after the newspaper unilaterally cut off insurance benefits to production workers and newsroom workers filed ULPs for bad-faith bargaining, the workers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette walked off the job on strike. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with Post Gazette management for SEVEN years - since 2017 - and have battled bad faith bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions, and loss of vacation...
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Look for the Helpers: Organizing Relief Aid in Asheville, NC, After "Apocalyptic" Hurricane Helene (w/ Byron Ballard & Lori Freshwater)
Working People
Over the past two weeks, people around the country have watched in horror as our neighbors and fellow workers have been battered by the successive disasters of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. “After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26 and tearing through the Gulf Coast of Florida,” Adeel Hassan and Isabelle Taft write in The New York Times, “Helene plowed north through Georgia and walloped the Blue Ridge Mountains, washing out roads, causing landslides and knocking out power and cell service for millions of people. Across western North Carolina, towns...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineSacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that threaten life itself, from toxic industrial pollution to the deadly, intensifying effects of man-made climate change. In a more just and less cruel society, the very concept of a “sacrifice zone” wouldn’t exist. And yet, in America, after decades of deregulation and public disinvestment, more working-class communities are becoming sacrifice zones, and more of us are being set up for sacrifice at the altars of corporate greed and government abandonment.
America’s sacrifice zones are no longer extreme outliers; they are, in fact, a harrowing model of the future that lies in store for most of us if the corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires destroying our communities aren’t stopped. And residents of different sacrifice zones across the country, fellow workers on the frontlines of all this reckless and preventable destruction, are connecting with each other, learning from one another, and working together to fight back. In this Working People liveshow, recorded on Oct. 19 at Red Emma’s worker cooperative bookstore, cafe, and community events space in Baltimore, we speak with a special panel of residents from four different sacrifice zones in the US about how the situations they’re facing in their own communities and their struggles for justice and accountability are connected.
Panelists include: Hilary Flint, communications director of Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community and a former resident of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a few miles from the site of the Feb 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio; Melanie Meade, a community organizer, educator, and life-long resident of Clairton, Pennsylvania, the site of US Steel's Clairton Coke Works, which was named the most toxic air polluter in Allegheny County in a 2021 report by PennEnvironment; Elise Keaton Wade, a real estate attorney by trade, longtime environmental justice activist, and a native of Southern West Virginia; Angela “Angie” Shaneyfelt, a resident of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore, who lives just blocks away from an open air coal terminal owned and operated by rail giant CSX Transportation, which has been polluting her community for generations.
Special thanks to Dr. Nicole Fabricant and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust for organizing this live show.
Additional links/info below…
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South Baltimore Community Land Trust website, Twitter/X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
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Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community website, Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter/X page
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Hilary’s Instagram
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Nicole Fabricant’s Instagram
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Melanie’s Facebook page
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Angela’s Facebook page
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Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "South Baltimore residents on the toxic reality of living in a 'sacrifice zone'"
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Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "East Palestine residents demand fully-funded healthcare"
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Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “One year later, East Palestine residents want Norfolk-Southern held accountable”
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Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘Towns are gone’: In Helene-devastated Asheville, NC, volunteers battle misinformation and ‘apocalyptic’ wreckage”
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Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times / The Real News Network, "Scenes from a sacrifice zone: South Baltimore residents fight back against industrial pollution"
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Maximillian Alvarez & Molly Crabapple, In These Times, “Wasteland warriors”
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Laura Gottesdiener, The Nation, “You can wipe out coal, but you can’t bring the mountains back”
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Nicole Fabricant, University of California Press, Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore
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Nicole Fabricant, The Real News Network, “Opinion | CSX explosion in Curtis Bay should alarm Baltimore City and accelerate real change”
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Adam Willis, The Baltimore Banner, "A state-backed report found coal dust across Curtis Bay. CSX isn’t convinced"
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Melanie Meade, PublicSource, “Family history, loss and hopes for a bright future fuel my fight for clean air in Clairton”
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Daniel Shailer, PublicSource, “The Mon Valley holds its breath as the latest U.S. Steel settlement promises a fresh approach”
Permanent links below…
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Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
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Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
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The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music…
- Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Studio Production: Max Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor