‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks
Release Date: 04/17/2025
The biggest labor story in the US right now is happening at Microsoft
Working People
Current and former tech workers with the No Azure for Apartheid coalition continue to disrupt business as usual at Microsoft’s global headquarters in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide, and in protest of Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli military to provide tech that Israel uses to surveil, kill, and retroactively justify the killing of Palestinians. In this episode of Working People, which is a critical follow-up to our last episode, we speak with a panel of five tech workers and No Azure for Apartheid coalition members who have all been fired by Microsoft in the...
info_outline
‘Microsoft is an active partner in the genocide!’: Inside the tech worker revolt for Palestine
Working People
Tech workers at the heart of Microsoft are waging one of the most significant and under-covered labor battles in the US right now. For the last two weeks, members of the No Azure for Apartheid coalition, including current and former tech workers at Microsoft and community allies, have been taking bold, continuing, and escalating actions to disrupt business as usual in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide and in protest of Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli military to provide tech that Israel uses to surveil, kill, and retroactively justify the killing of Palestinians. Those...
info_outline
‘We want life”: Palestinians in Gaza describe their daily struggle to survive
Working People
Right now, Israel's military is invading and obliterating what remains of Gaza City. After 700 days of genocidal bombing, shooting, forced starvation, and the systematic destruction of schools, hospitals, farms, refugee camps, roads, houses, and the entire infrastructure of civilian life, the Palestinians clinging to life in Gaza City are being exterminated, while others run or limp for their lives with nowhere safe to go. Amid the horrors of Israel’s military onslaught, with starvation and illness spreading, Mohamed Abu Tawila, a former English teacher, and his nephew Abdul Rahman, a...
info_outline
Unions face extinction under Trump. What the hell is labor doing to fight back? (w/ David Huerta & Everett Kelley)
Working People
Every single one of us who considers ourselves part of the labor movement has some real deep, serious, and urgent soul searching to do this Labor Day. After already falling to historically low levels of union density, public and private-sector unions are facing an extinction-level event under the new Trump administration. That is not hyperbole; that is a fact. So the real question is: What the hell are workers, unions, and the labor movement doing to fight back? These are the essential questions at the center of both of the interviews we are sharing in this special Labor Day episode,...
info_outline
Railroad workers explain why Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific mega-merger will be a 'disaster'
Working People
Railroad workers are sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic consequences of the proposed mega-merger of two of the nation’s Class 1 freight rail companies. “Union Pacific said it would buy smaller rival Norfolk Southern in an $85-billion deal to create the country’s first coast-to-coast freight rail operator,” Reuters reported in July. “If approved, the deal would be the largest-ever buyout in the sector.” If this giant merger goes through, what will it mean for railroad workers, customers, and for the general public? In this episode of Working People, we...
info_outline
These ‘neighbors from the hood’ saw ICE terrorizing their community—and banded together to fight back
Working People
After seeing friends and neighbors in their community of Pasadena, CA, being terrorized, assaulted, and abducted by masked federal agents, Daniela Navin and Jeannette De la Riva joined together with other neighbors in their area to form Grupo Auto Defensa and fight back. From chasing ICE cars out of town with bullhorns to setting up security brigades so terrified residents can walk outside and go to the grocery store, from providing know-your-rights information to reclaiming public space, protecting each other, and rebelliously refusing to live in fear, the members of Grupo Auto Defensa are...
info_outline
Corporations and the government are turning the USA into one giant ‘sacrifice zone’
Working People
The Real News Network is honored to be for our on-the-ground documentary report, “.” “While corporate media covered the catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, with aerial views of ruined train cars and plumes of smoke likening the horrific crash to a disaster film,” The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) states in their award announcement, “Steve Mellon of the and Maximillian Alvarez of were on the ground telling the stories of people in the communities devastated by the deadly toxins released into their neighborhoods long after major media outlets...
info_outline
What good is a union in Hell?
Working People
On Sunday, July 20, 2025, Working People host and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. “I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything,” Alvarez told the crowd of union members. “And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the...
info_outline
How union organizing can change your life and the world w/Jaz Brisack | Working People
Working People
After getting a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, Jaz Brisack became a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helped organize the first unionized Starbucks in the US in December of 2021. In their new book, Get on the Job and Organize, Brisack details the hardwon lessons they and their coworkers have learned from building one of the most significant and paradigm-shifting worker organizing campaigns in modern history. In this extended episode of Working People, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian speaks with Brisack about their book, the facts and...
info_outline
"These cuts are death sentences": Trump's "Big, Disastrous Betrayal Bill"
Working People
Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which will now go back to the House of...
info_outlineOne 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 the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.
Additional links/info:
- Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website
- April 17: Day of Action to Defend Higher Ed website
- Mahmoud Khalil statement from ICE detention: “My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner”
- Allie Wong, The Intercept, “This is not about antisemitism, Palestine, or Columbia. It’s Trump dismantling the American dream“
- Grant Miner, The Nation, “Columbia expelled me for my palestine activism, but I won’t be silenced”
- Jonah E. Bromwich & Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times, “Columbia student hunted by ICE sues to prevent deportation”
- AAUP letter to college and university legal offices: “Institutions Should Not Provide Student and Faculty Info To Enable Deportations”
- Alan Blinder, The New York Times, “Trump Has Targeted These Universities. Why?”
- Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, “‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish”
- Alice Speri, The Guardian, “‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors”
- Annie Ma, Makiya Seminera, & Christopher L. Keller, Associated Press, “Visa cancellations sow panic for international students, with hundreds fearing deportation”
- Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities”
- Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘Kill these cuts before they kill us’: Federally funded researchers warn DOGE cuts will be fatal”
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
- 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
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor