Sick Georgia residents have been abandoned after toxic BioLab fire (w/ Hannah Loyd, Christina O'Connor, & Jeramie Julian)
Release Date: 12/14/2024
Trump cuts leave VA hospital nurses and veteran patients in a crisis
Working People
Already burdened by years of funding cuts and understaffing, registered nurses who work at Veterans Health Administration (VA) facilities across the country are facing a crisis as the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce take effect. In this episode of Working People, Maximillian Alvarez speaks with VA nurses and union representatives for National Nurses United about how these cuts, coupled with Trump’s attempt to strip over one million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, are hurting VA workers, the quality of care they’ve been...
info_outline
An update on the longest ongoing strike in the US: ‘Some things don’t change at the Post-Gazette’
Working People
In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper’s management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1 of that year. After more than 2.5 years...
info_outline
“It is our moral imperative”: Oregon students hunger strike for Gaza
Working People
At this very moment, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have managed to survive Israel’s scorched-earth siege and bombing are being deliberately starved to death as a result of Israel’s 11-week blockade preventing food and aid from entering Gaza. As Jem Bartholemew writes at The Guardian, “The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC [Tuesday] morning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time. Five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday but Fletcher described this as a “drop in the ocean” and totally inadequate for the...
info_outline
‘Like being tortured’: Texas residents living next to bitcoin mine are getting sick and being ignored
Working People
While state officials and legislators have positioned Texas to be “the bitcoin mining capital of the world,” in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant, loud, environmentally destructive data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom. “None of us are sleeping,” Cheryl Shadden, a Granbury resident who lives across the street from a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining data center owned by Marathon Digital, tells TRNN. “We can't get rid of this alien invasion in our homes…This is like being a prisoner of war. It's like being tortured with...
info_outline
FBI agents raid homes of pro-Palestine students at University of Michigan
Working People
The Trump administration continues to escalate its authoritarian assault on higher education, free speech, and political dissent—and university administrators and state government officials are willingly aiding that assault. On the morning of April 23, at the direction of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the homes of multiple student organizers connected to Palestine solidarity protests at the University of Michigan. “According to the group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), agents seized the students’ electronics...
info_outline
A bitcoin mine in Texas is “killing us slowly,” local residents say
Working People
I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for bitcoin and crypto,” US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2021. In 2024, Republican Governor Greg Abbott Texas “wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world.” But in small towns like Granbury, TX, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, residents are the ones paying the price for Texas’ crypto boom. Granbury’s 300-megawatt bitcoin mine, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida-based cryptocurrency company, uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent over 20,000...
info_outline
‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks
Working People
One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to...
info_outline
‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities
Working People
International students are being abducted and disappeared by ICE in broad daylight. Life-saving research projects across the academy are being halted or thrown into disarray by seismic cuts to federal grants. Dozens of universities are under federal investigation for their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, their allowance of trans athletes to compete in college sports, and their tolerance of constitutionally protected Palestine solidarity protests. In today’s urgent episode of Working People, we get a harrowing, on-the-ground view of the Trump administration’s all-out assault on...
info_outline
“Kill the Cuts”: Federally funded researchers warn DOGE cuts will be fatal
Working People
On Tuesday, April 8, unions, unionized federal workers, and their supporters around the country mobilized for a national “Kill the Cuts” day of action to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to life-saving research, healthcare, and education programs. As organizers stated on the Kill The Cuts website, "By cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care, the Trump administration is abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. These cuts are dangerous to our health, and dangerous to our economy. On Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 workers across...
info_outline
Trump escalates the war on federal unions
Working People
Last week, President Trump escalated his administration's war on the federal workforce and workers’ rights when he signed an executive order to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions across the government. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 government employees, has sued the Trump administration over the executive order.In response to these intensifying assaults on federal workers, agencies, and critical programs like Social Security, unions, social justice and community organizations, veterans groups, and people of conscience will be participating...
info_outline“In late September,” Timothy Pratt writes in Capital & Main, “a massive billow of smoke from a chemical fire spread over metro Atlanta, lingering for weeks and prompting national news coverage. The smoke has cleared, but the anger has not dissipated in Conyers, the city of 20,000 where the fire occurred, and in surrounding areas... Smoke from the blaze left some residents with breathing difficulties, headaches, dizziness and skin rashes in the days that followed, along with a deepening worry about their community’s safety... The fire was pool-chemical company BioLab’s fourth in the last two decades, a track record that has created what one observer described as “generational rage” among residents.” In this installment of our ongoing series Sacrificed—where we speak to people living, working, and fighting for justice in America’s “sacrifice zones”—we speak with Hannah Loyd, Christina O'Connor, and Jeramie Julian: three residents who live near, and have been directly affected by, the September fire at the Conyers BioLab facility.
Additional links/info below…
-
Hannah’s Facebook page
-
Conyers, GA, Facebook group: Helping Our Health
-
Timothy Pratt, Capital & Main, “Chemical fire at Atlanta-area plant sparks local movement against BioLab”
-
Holly Yan, CNN, “Weeks after a chemical plant inferno, nearby residents say they’re suffering prolonged illnesses and financial upheaval”
-
Status Coup News, “POISONED Georgians DEMAND toxic chemical plant close after chlorine gas inferno”
-
Joi Dukes, FOX 5 Atlanta, “EPA whistleblower on BioLab debris testing: 'You can’t find what you don’t look for'”
-
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, ““Let’s unite!”: Poisoned residents of America’s sacrifice zones are banding together”
-
Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH (DOCUMENTARY)”
-
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘Towns are gone’: In Helene-devastated Asheville, NC, volunteers battle misinformation and ‘apocalyptic’ wreckage”
-
Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times / The Real News Network, “Scenes from a sacrifice zone: South Baltimore residents fight back against industrial pollution”
Permanent links below…
-
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