Griselda Triana is a Mexican journalist, and human rights activist whose husband, Javier Valdez Cárdenas, was slain by a drug cartel on May 15, 2017, in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state. Valdez was the cofounder of the media outlet Riodoce, which investigated corruption and crime, and wrote about the bloody drug war. He paid the ultimate price—a grenade was thrown into his office in 2009. He had received death threats in the months before his murder, but he bravely continued his groundbreaking work despite the threats.

Ten days after his killing, Triana started receiving unexpected text messages on her mobile phone. She had no idea that they were suspicious until almost one year later, when it was discovered that there had been attempts to infiltrate her phone with the Pegasus system, a phone-hacking tool sold by Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, almost certainly by elements within the Mexican state. “Before Javier’s murder I did not know that we were being monitored,” she told me. Javier had never informed her about the possibility of phone hacking, and she presumed that he was taking precautions for his safety. “Javier knew about the risks of reporting criminal activities, but even so he was aware that someone had to document the atrocities of criminal organizations,” she said.

The murder of Valdez devastated Triana. “He was my husband and father of my two children. I was really shocked because Javier didn’t want to leave Sinaloa even though he knew they [the cartels] could kill him.” I asked her why she thought she had been targeted by Pegasus. She said she believed it was because “they thought that by tapping the phones they could get data from various sources of information or listen to calls related to Javier’s crime investigations.” To this day, Triana has never been told by the Mexican state why it spied on her—and there’s been no court case for the man accused of masterminding her husband’s death.

Both the Mexican government and NSO claim that Pegasus is used solely for the purposes of fighting crime and terrorism, but Triana’s case proves that this claim is false. Mexico has been a major testing ground for NSO technology. “The problem is that it has been used to spy on people who do not represent a danger to the country,” Triana said.

After Valdez’s death, Triana moved to Mexico City, where she works as a journalist and activist. The fear has never gone away, however—the feeling of being violated by both her husband’s gruesome death and the state’s intrusion on her communications. “I am afraid every time I visit Culiacán,” she said. “It is something that I have not been able to overcome.”

Israel’s surveillance apparatus is a competitor and ally of Washington’s National Security Agency (NSA), the most powerful eavesdropping network in the world. While outmatched in terms of manpower, Israel has a long history of spying on its closest ally, a fact that does not appear to publicly bother the superpower. Some estimates suggest that around 350 American intelligence officials spend their days spying on Israel. Despite this, the NSA partners with Israel and has passed on data-mining and analytical software. In turn, says a former NSA intelligence official, Bill Binney, Israel transfers this technology to private Israeli companies, which allows them to gather a massive amount of sensitive military, diplomatic, and economic information to be shared with Israeli officials.

This is the frame around which to see the role of NSO Group, the world’s most successful cyber-surveillance company, and other Israeli high-tech outfits. NSO works with the Israeli state to further its foreign policy goals, and is used as an alluring carrot to attract potential new friends. Since its inception, NSO has been funded by a range of global players, including London-based equity firm Novalpina Capital. One of the biggest investors in Novalpina, to the tune of US$233 million in 2017, before NSO was on the company’s books, was the Oregon state employees’ pension fund. In 2019 pension money for the British gas provider Centrica was also invested in Novalpina.

Former Haaretz tech reporter Amitai Ziv, who has done some of the most insightful work uncovering NSO, told me that the power of NSO is not in the money that it makes but in diplomacy: “When Israel is selling cyber-surveillance to some African country, they can assure their vote at the United Nations. Since there’s an occupation, we need the votes.”

Whether NSO lives or dies, however, will make little difference to the burgeoning global industry in spying tools and cyber weapons. Entire countries can be brought to their knees, such as Russia’s cyberattack on Ukraine’s entire business and government infrastructure in 2017, or government and private companies inserting “zero-day” hacks, bugs for which there are no known fixes, into virtually every piece of hardware or software on the planet from computers to TVs to fridges. NSO is the tip of the iceberg of this surging industry, which largely operates in the shadows with no public scrutiny. It’s not just the American, Chinese, Russian, Israeli, or Iranian authorities unleashing cyber hell but a litany of private entities, sometimes built in democracies, that often act as proxies for state actors. Regulation is virtually nonexistent.

If NSO collapses, many others will rise to take its place and countless Israeli rivals are already in business. One company, Paragon, promotes similar services and is backed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Unit 8200 veterans. Even if all private cyber-hacking firms are shut down globally, a highly unlikely proposition, far more powerful state actors, from Israel to the US and China to Britain, are more than willing to occupy the space. At least seventy-three nations have used spyware. NSO is just the most prominent spyware company, but large numbers of competitors are stepping in, making these tools even easier to obtain.

The role of Israeli surveillance globally is empowering antidemocratic and fascist governments, Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack told me, and it’s not just targeting journalists and human rights activists. The Israeli defense sector is evolving and becoming far less public. “In the coming years, I do not see police in Bahrain using Israeli rifles or Israeli drones or missiles being bought by the United Arab Emirates because it could cause another Cuban missile crisis type situation and inflame Iran,” Mack said. “But selling Israeli surveillance equipment is much easier to do and not be detected.” He wants NSO spyware completely banned.

When Mack tried in 2016 to force the Israeli state to stop granting NSO an export license, the government succeeded in making all deliberations private. Supreme Court President Justice Esther Hayut was honest about what was at stake: “Our economy, as it happens, rests not a little on that export.” The Israeli Ministry of Defense admitted selling weapons to about 130 countries in 2021.

The trajectory of NSO is symptomatic of an Israeli tradition in testing, marketing, and proliferating surveillance technology across the globe. The reasons behind this were explained by the former head of Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency, Eli Pinko, who told a private conference in late 2021 that Israel had no choice but to sell weapons and cybertech to anyone who asked. “It’s either the civil rights in some country or Israel’s right to exist,” he said. “I would like to see each of you face this dilemma and say: ‘No, we will champion human rights in the other country.’ Gentlemen, it doesn’t work.”

But it is not just a question of free enterprise. A source with intimate knowledge of Israeli surveillance told me that Israel’s Ministry of Defense had “almost complete control” of NSO Group. “The MOD controls ownership and rights and has a veto on shareholders, owners and operators,” he said. “The tech, patent, and IP [intellectual property] is also controlled and technology has to be protected in a way that it can’t be reverse engineered.”

“I think that it is not well understood by American leaders,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, to journalist Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker. “They keep expecting that the Israeli government will crack down on NSO for this, whereas, in fact, they’re doing the Israeli government’s bidding.” The same willful blindness should be directed at much of the international media for its years of viewing NSO as just a rogue corporation, whereas it has always been a crucial tool of the Israeli state.

Mexico was an enthusiastic user of Pegasus, and by 2013 it was installed in at least three Mexican agencies with hardware and software worth US$15 million. During this time, NSO sold for US$77 million a package of services that allowed comprehensive surveillance of individuals whom Mexico under President Felipe Calderon wanted monitored. Calderon called NSO cofounder Shalev Hulio, though ended up speaking to his colleague, and said that “I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present. With what you gave us, we can finally eradicate the cartels.”

From a private Mexican company hacking a journalist, despite NSO claiming that it sold only to governments, to advocates of a soda tax that aimed to tackle the huge amount of sugary drinks consumed by Mexicans, it was increasingly clear that the kinds of people being monitored had no connection to crime or terrorism.

Over a decade, Mexico spent over US$160 million on Pegasus, but local authorities said that they could not identify who in the country was behind its use to prosecute anybody. Nonetheless, the profits of NSO’s private security business soared. “The greater the violence and insecurity become, the greater the business opportunities for these companies,” said Dr. Paloma Mendoza Cortes, a Mexican national security investigator, to Haaretz.

The scandals kept on coming in Mexico, where for years NSO had its most profitable work. Drug cartels colluded with corrupt Mexican officials to gain access to Pegasus and use it to eradicate mutual enemies. Criminal networks bribed corrupt officials to target individuals they want removed or monitored. Cybersurveillance is a completely unregulated industry, and despite NSO’s assurances there is no indication that Pegasus is monitored for breaches once installed. Since the 2010s, Mexico’s voting pattern at the United Nations has shifted to a less critical stance toward Israeli policies.

Unknown numbers of journalists, critical of state corruption, had their phones hacked by NSO spyware and ended up dead. They included freelance reporter Cecilio Pineda Birto in 2017. Just hours after hosting a Facebook Live video in which he accused local politicians and state police of working with a renegade thug, he was shot dead in the town of Ciudad Altamirano in southern Mexico. A few weeks before his killing, his mobile phone number had been selected as a possible target of Pegasus surveillance by the Mexican state.

This was just the tip of the iceberg of NSO’s potential victims, for between 2016 and 2017 leaked data (revealed in 2021) showed that over fifteen thousand Mexicans had been listed as potential targets of surveillance. At least fifty people connected to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, including his close family, were placed on a list of phone numbers revealed by The Pegasus Project, a leak of fifty thousand numbers potentially used globally by NSO clients.

If Mexico was the first major NSO testbed, other states across the world soon followed. Pegasus was quickly purchased by often undemocratic clients, including the United Arab Emirates, Panama, Kenya, and Turkey, and reportedly assisted in the disclosure of terror cells, child abduction rings, and organized crime. Within a few years, NSO was celebrated across Israel, heralded by academic institutions and lavished with funds.

Research agency Forensic Architecture describes the role of NSO and cyber hacking actors as “digital infections” that do not “target civil society actors as individuals, but rather as networks of collaboration.” The group found that in India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, one person is initially hacked “before their professional networks are targeted within a similar time period. In each of these examples, the use of Pegasus occurs after or during periods where these civil society networks expose or confront controversial or criminal state policy.”

Pegasus was used by the Moroccan regime to target its critics, including outspoken opponents of the government who ended up in prison on bogus charges. Israel and Morocco normalized ties in late 2020, with the understanding that the US would recognize Morocco’s disputed control of Western Sahara. To sweeten the deal, Israel sold kamikaze drones to Morocco and in the past has sold a missile defense system. When Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Morocco in November 2021, there was no hiding that the two nations were principally interested in arms trading (with diplomatic relations further down the list). “Morocco is no chump in the cyber field,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in 2021, conveniently omitting to mention that it was Israeli technology that boosted Morocco’s cyberhacking abilities.

A full rogue’s gallery of dictatorships has bought and deployed Pegasus, nations that either had official relations with Israel or desperately wanted Israeli spyware. Bahraini and Omani activists have been targeted by NSO tech. Rwanda used Pegasus to monitor dissident Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the Hotel Rwanda film, who was tricked and then kidnapped by Rwandan officials in Dubai, put on trial in Rwanda in 2021, and found guilty of terror-related crimes. Morocco used Pegasus to spy on senior French politicians including President Emmanuel Macron. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Netanyahu, bought Pegasus to spy on opposition politicians and critical journalists. When this was exposed in 2021, Orbán’s spokesman defaulted to his government’s usual anti-Semitic refrain when under attack, blaming billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros. This was the kind of ally that Israel wanted to foster in Europe.

I asked the NSO PR team questions about how and why it sells its products to undemocratic states and what safeguards are put into place to ensure that its products aren’t abused by the buyer. In response, NSO directed me to its “Transparency and Responsibility Report,” released in 2021. In it, NSO claimed that it had “rejected over US$300 million in sales opportunities as a result of its human rights review processes” and said that Israel’s Ministry of Defense “restricts the licensing of some of our products and it conducts its own analysis of potential customers from a human rights perspective.” The report further claimed that the company is “committed to respecting human rights” by the establishment of a Governance, Risk, and Compliance Committee (GRCC). The GRCC “reviews potential sales, providing recommendations and decisions after an in-depth, risk-based due diligence process including a comprehensive assessment of potential human rights impacts.”

It is not only NSO that’s causing harm around the globe. Cellebrite is another Israeli company that works with repressive states and yet it has received far less criticism. It is hard to know exactly why it has escaped NSO’s notoriety, but perhaps it’s because Cellebrite prefers to operate under the radar with its phone hacking capabilities or because NSO’s alliance with despots has uniquely captured the attention of researchers and media outlets that often fail to make the necessary ties to the Israeli state. “Cellebrite sells equipment to hack phones from short distance and NSO Group from long distance, but the effect is the same for activists,” Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack told me.

Founded in the 1990s, Cellebrite started out as a consumer technology firm but by the 2010s was deep into the surveillance business and mobile phone hacking because it saw the potential of huge profits from working with law enforcement officials around the world. In late 2021, Cellebrite launched a large scale PR campaign called “Heroes behind the Heroes,” featuring online ads and physical billboards that promoted the essential work being performed by their “digital intelligence solutions” in police forces around the globe.

Unsurprisingly, the PR blitz was selective about what services Cellebrite offered and who these advertisements were intended to influence. In 2022 Eitay Mack wrote to the company and Israel’s Defense Ministry to remind it where Cellebrite equipment had ended up, including Russia, where journalists are pursued, and the Philippines, where countless reporters have been murdered during the reign of President Rodrigo Duterte. Neither the Israeli government nor Cellebrite could claim ignorance of what might happen to sophisticated surveillance gear in the hands of autocrats. There is a published photograph of Cellebrite employees meeting Duterte in 2018 and admitting that the corporation had trained a range of public bodies, some of whom were directly complicit in the murder of thousands of Filipinos during Duterte’s brutal “war on drugs.” When challenged on its complicity, Cellebrite told Haaretz that it had “strict oversight mechanisms” over its sales. It was a statement that was remarkably similar to NSO’s when pushed on its international relations.

The countries where Cellebrite surveillance tech has been used against critics, journalists, dissidents, or human rights workers include Botswana, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Uganda. This includes the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) hacking tool, which allows the extraction of information from mobile phones. In Bangladesh the hardware was used by the Rapid Action Battalion, a notorious paramilitary unit, which has been accused of extrajudicial killings and disappearances. When this connection was exposed in 2021, the company quickly announced that sales to Bangladesh were being suspended, though it was likely Bangladesh could still use the tech that had already been acquired. Furthermore, Cellebrite said it would establish an advisory committee to ensure that “ethical considerations” were prioritized moving forward. Once again, Cellebrite used the same PR-driven tactic employed by NSO. Bangladesh has no formal ties with the Israeli government, but this did not stop Israeli intelligence experts from training Bangladeshi officers during a four-day event on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary, in 2019. The Ethiopian federal police use Cellebrite products despite the government’s mass detention of minorities and repression of dissidents, journalists and activists.

The disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein wanted to hire the most effective private intelligence firm that money could buy to kill any media stories about his sexual assault on countless women. In 2016, he chose Israeli company Black Cube, founded in 2010 by former Israeli intelligence officers and the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan. The company would get a US$300,000 bonus if a major story about Weinstein did not appear in the New York Times. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted introducing Weinstein to the Israeli firm. Nonetheless, Weinstein failed in his mission, and he’s now in a US prison for a string of rapes.

London-based spy, former journalist, stockbroker, and IDF soldier Seth Freedman admitted to working for Black Cube and investigating ninety-one people associated with Weinstein who had some connection to his sexual assaults. They included actress Rose McGowan, who Freedman tricked, along with many others, into an interview for a supposed story in the paper he used to write for, the Guardian. When asked by the BBC if he regretted his work, he said that “my job is to get a piece of information that isn’t freely available, and as long as I stay within the letter of the law, I’m not worried about your ethics when you judge me.”

How to stop these NSO-type companies in their tracks? It will take systematic, global change because the disappearance of NSO itself will not remove the demand for tools like Pegasus by democracies and dictatorships alike. David Kaye, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression between 2014 and 2020, argues that “our attention shouldn’t be focused only on one company [NSO] because if we’re only focused on them then we might think that the solutions are just to restrain Israeli export control processes. Or we need to ensure that NSO alone abides by emerging standards for corporate, human rights responsibility. The problem is global.”

Kaye believes that an international code of conduct for cyber-surveillance firms is an important first step, though he acknowledges it would likely be nonbinding and thus making enforcement close to impossible. Government regulation was the better option, Kaye told me, because then companies would fear stepping out of line. He compared it to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention where most of the world, except the US, Israel, China, Pakistan, India, Egypt, and Russia, came together to outlaw the destructive weapons.

“You could imagine a process where some members of the international community want to ban this stuff [cyber weapons],” Kaye said. “My guess is that most governments would only be willing to regulate the export and use, because give me a reason why states would give up this ridiculously powerful tool?”

During his time as a UN Special Rapporteur, Kaye regularly called out NSO for its transgressions against human rights activists and journalists worldwide. At the end of his term in 2020 he acknowledged that global regulation was in its infancy. “Right now, it’s almost as if there are no shadows because there are no legal constraints,” he told the Committee to Protect Journalists.101 UN human rights experts, including Kaye’s UN successor, Irene Khan, issued a call in 2021 for states to “impose a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of surveillance technology until they have put in place robust regulations that guarantee its use in compliance with international human rights standards.”

The challenges of regulating this out-of-control industry may be hard to overcome, since it is already so ubiquitous around the globe. But as Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard professor and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, has said, this is the same feeling that many people had before unions started fighting for workers’ rights or the abolition of child labor. A simple, sensible suggestion is to ban all commercial tools in cyber-hacking. “Eliminating the profit motive reduces the risks of proliferation while protecting progress,” Edward Snowden argues, thus “leaving room for publicly minded research and inherently governmental work.”

Not doing so guarantees a proliferation of NSO-type tools where every person on the planet might have their mobile phone or digital devices vulnerable to exposure. But this is not enough. The purveyors of these tools, whether in Israel, the US, or Italy, must be held legally liable. A few major court victories against surveillance corporations could be morally clarifying for those in the trade.

Hacking of mobile phones is just the beginning of what is possible in the complete surveillance of our lives. Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, fears that the improved security of mobile devices in the future could “make it extremely difficult for NSO and others to target them. It may come to the point where it’s not feasible. Maybe they’ll hack smart cameras in homes instead, turning on microphones to listen in. Or fridges, toasters, and cars. There’s no shortages of domains to surveil.”

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Antony Loewenstein.

In a Saturday speech to the Georgia GOP, Donald Trump characterized the entire American justice system as deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election. “These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”

Trump is demanding once again that Americans choose sides. But in his deranged mind, this “final battle” is not just against his normal cast of ill-defined villains—Democrats, communists, socialists, Marxists, the “Deep State,” the FBI, and any Republican politician who dares cross him.It is between those who glorify him and those who detest him.

It will be a final battle over… himself.

“SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he told his followers Friday night in a Truth Social post, referring to his arraignment today in Florida.

It was a chilling reminder of his December 19, 2020, tweet, “Be there, will be wild!”—which inspired extremist groups to disrupt the January 6 electoral vote certification. Calls are already circulating online for a gathering outside the federal courthouse in downtown Miami.

At the Georgia Republican Party convention on Friday night, Arizona Republican Kari Lake—who will go to Miami to “support” Trump—suggested violence. “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake exclaimed to roaring cheers and a standing ovation. “Most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” the National Rifle Association gun lobby. “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”

Most Republicans in Congress are again siding with Trump rather than standing for the rule of law. A few are openly fomenting violence. Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted, “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS [a reference to the real president of the United States] has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all,” suggesting guerilla warfare.

Most other prominent Republicans—even those seeking the Republican presidential nomination—are criticizing President Biden, Merrick Garland, and Special Counsel Jack Smith for “weaponizing” the Justice Department.

All this advances Trump’s goal of forcing Americans to choose sides over him.

Violence is possible, but there will be no civil war.

Nations don’t go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders. They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes, and/or economic policies these leaders represent.

But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law.

In addition, the guardrails that protected American democracy after the 2020 election—the courts, state election officials, military, and Justice Department—are stronger than before Trump tested them the first time.

Many of those who stormed the Capitol have been tried and convicted. Election-denying candidates were largely defeated in the 2022 midterms. The courts have adamantly backed federal prosecutors.

Trump’s advocates are having difficulty defending the charges in the unsealed indictment—that Trump threatened America’s security by illegally holding (and in some cases sharing) documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” as well as sharing a “plan of attack” against Iran.

Many Republicans consider national security the highest and most sacred goal of the Republic. A large number have served in the armed forces.

Bill Barr, Trump’s own former attorney general, said on “Fox News Sunday”: “I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous.”

None of this is cause for complacency. Trump is as dangerous as ever. He has inspired violence before, and he could do it again.

But I believe that many who supported him in 2020 are catching on to his lunacy.

Trump wants Americans to engage in a “final battle” over his own narcissistic cravings. Instead, he is likely to get a squalid and humiliating last act.

In These Times is a 501(c)3 organization and does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

A version of this story also appeared at Common Dreams.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Robert Reich.

In a Saturday speech to the Georgia GOP, Donald Trump characterized the entire American justice system as deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election. “These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”

Trump is demanding once again that Americans choose sides. But in his deranged mind, this “final battle” is not just against his normal cast of ill-defined villains—Democrats, communists, socialists, Marxists, the “Deep State,” the FBI, and any Republican politician who dares cross him.It is between those who glorify him and those who detest him.

It will be a final battle over… himself.

“SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he told his followers Friday night in a Truth Social post, referring to his arraignment today in Florida.

It was a chilling reminder of his December 19, 2020, tweet, “Be there, will be wild!”—which inspired extremist groups to disrupt the January 6 electoral vote certification. Calls are already circulating online for a gathering outside the federal courthouse in downtown Miami.

At the Georgia Republican Party convention on Friday night, Arizona Republican Kari Lake—who will go to Miami to “support” Trump—suggested violence. “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake exclaimed to roaring cheers and a standing ovation. “Most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” the National Rifle Association gun lobby. “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”

Most Republicans in Congress are again siding with Trump rather than standing for the rule of law. A few are openly fomenting violence. Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted, “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS [a reference to the real president of the United States] has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all,” suggesting guerilla warfare.

Most other prominent Republicans—even those seeking the Republican presidential nomination—are criticizing President Biden, Merrick Garland, and Special Counsel Jack Smith for “weaponizing” the Justice Department.

All this advances Trump’s goal of forcing Americans to choose sides over him.

Violence is possible, but there will be no civil war.

Nations don’t go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders. They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes, and/or economic policies these leaders represent.

But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law.

In addition, the guardrails that protected American democracy after the 2020 election—the courts, state election officials, military, and Justice Department—are stronger than before Trump tested them the first time.

Many of those who stormed the Capitol have been tried and convicted. Election-denying candidates were largely defeated in the 2022 midterms. The courts have adamantly backed federal prosecutors.

Trump’s advocates are having difficulty defending the charges in the unsealed indictment—that Trump threatened America’s security by illegally holding (and in some cases sharing) documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” as well as sharing a “plan of attack” against Iran.

Many Republicans consider national security the highest and most sacred goal of the Republic. A large number have served in the armed forces.

Bill Barr, Trump’s own former attorney general, said on “Fox News Sunday”: “I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous.”

None of this is cause for complacency. Trump is as dangerous as ever. He has inspired violence before, and he could do it again.

But I believe that many who supported him in 2020 are catching on to his lunacy.

Trump wants Americans to engage in a “final battle” over his own narcissistic cravings. Instead, he is likely to get a squalid and humiliating last act.

In These Times is a 501(c)3 organization and does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

A version of this story also appeared at Common Dreams.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Robert Reich.

The road to going public wasn’t always straightaway. In January, as the group of non-tenure-track teaching and research employees moved closer to announcing their drive, union member Kara Fulton and her fellow organizers were having as many feelings of discouragement as they were elation. “It felt like we were kind of working on our own,” she said.

But then, later in January, other workers from across the Harvard campus and other Boston-area unions put fuel to their fire at a quickly organized roundtable event that the Harvard Academic Workers’ solidarity committee put together to draw insight and encouragement from other organizers, including Harvard dining-hall workers and Boston University graduate students.

It wasn’t long after that Harvard Academic Workers went public with its union drive on Feb. 6, asking colleagues to sign union cards in an effort to organize thousands of workers at the country’s richest university. The workers are organizing with the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, or UAW, and the union will include all eligible researchers, lecturers and other non-tenure-track workers.

“We all sort of left very lifted up,” said Fulton, a postdoctoral fellow in the school’s neurobiology department. “We knew people had been there before us and we were just the next in line trying to get a union and getting the benefits that we deserve. It was really powerful… It was definitely a turning point for us.” Organizers are currently still in the process of collecting union cards from workers.

If successful in winning recognition of their union, the nearly 6,000 Harvard Academic Workers members would total almost the entire number of workers who newly unionized with the UAW in 2022, according to federal data compiled by Miami University political science professor Kevin Reuning. And key to getting them over the final hurdle to going public, according to several organizers, were the solidarity efforts of other workers—both in the UAW and from other unions—who attended that roundtable forum.

“It’s a great example of why people should trust themselves, even if they’ve never organized a union before,” fellow organizer Sara Feldman, who works as a preceptor teaching Yiddish at Harvard, told In These Times earlier this year. “That was one of the most important things to come out of that forum… building the confidence of the organizers who attended, [confirming] that they do know what they’re doing and that they have instincts that are right and that they should have agency in driving their campaign and determining the shape of their organization.”

As union density continues its decades-long decline in the United States—dipping from 10.3% of workers in 2021 to 10.1% in 2022, according to federal statistics—organizers across the country are looking for ways to reverse that trend. And in some of the most high-profile organizing drives taking place across the country, there’s evidence that rank-and-file unionists organizing one another has helped make a significant difference.

In April 2022, there was the worker-run, independent Amazon Labor Union that became the first-ever successful effort to organize a warehouse at the online retail behemoth. That victory came amid a deluge of Starbucks workers organizing and winning elections across the country, beginning in December 2021. The model driving the Starbucks surge was based on worker-organizers from stores that had already gone public with their union drives meeting with workers from other shops who had expressed an interest in unionizing.

Other unions have even begun to formalize this kind of member-led organizing. That’s the case in the NewsGuild, which in 2018 began training rank-and-file workers who had just unionized their own workplaces to become “member organizers” who then work to unionize other shops across the country. (Full disclosure: the author has worked as a member organizer with the NewsGuild.)

Since that program began, the NewsGuild has seen explosive growth in new workplaces organizing. From 2015 through 2017, the union organized a total of 1,025 new workers, according to numbers the union shared with In These Times. From 2018 through 2020, that number jumped to 4,239. A record 2,128 workers unionized with the NewsGuild in 2021, and another 2,012 joined the union the following year.

Stephanie Basile, the senior campaign lead for the NewsGuild, said that the union would have never been able to meet that moment of mass organizing without member organizers.

“We should use this moment of really exciting activity to just get a bunch of people as trained up as possible so that we have rank-and-file workers who can organize with their coworkers, who can build something from the ground up, who can re-energize an already existing shop, build up a new shop,” Basile said.

Basile noted that the NewsGuild is hardly the first union to empower members to organize their industries. As one example, she said that the Guild’s parent union, the Communication Workers of America, trained “brigades” of AT&T workers to go out and talk to nonunion workers about organizing. Teachers unions, the Teamsters and others have developed similar programs.

In the case of Starbucks organizing, The rank-and-file energy behind the organizing efforts at Starbucks also inspired the Harvard Academic Workers.

When Starbucks workers went on strike for more than two months in Boston last fall, Feldman said that the picket line drew labor activists from across the city to the same place, where they were able to foster connections and share tips from their own organizing work. Some of the workers who attended the Harvard Academic Workers roundtable forum in January of this year were connected with that organizing effort through the Starbucks-strike network, Feldman added.

“It facilitated connections between the kind of union members who are interested in solidarity and interested in reaching out to other unions or helping out or answering questions,” Feldman said of the Starbucks strike. “Those are often the people who best understand what it takes to have a powerful, democratic, worker-run labor union. So they’re also the people who can be very helpful to talk to.”

The grassroots organizers who showed up to the Harvard Academic Workers’ roundtable brought not only motivation, but also some technical know-how, according to postdoctoral fellow Naveena Karusala. She said that she’s never been part of a union-recognition campaign before, and while you can know in theory what is going to happen, there are still day-to-day organizing questions that union members felt like they couldn’t answer themselves—like how to organize a solidarity rally, for example.

“All of these questions were bouncing around and I feel like the roundtable just did so much to kind of show the range of experiences,” Karusala said. It also helped, she added, to make the organizers feel “confident in the work we had done so far.”

The Harvard Academic Workers did end up helping organize two solidarity rallies a week after going public. Union organizers from across the city attended, including bus drivers, Starbucks employees and fellow higher-ed workers.

One of the workers who spoke at one of those rallies was Joseph Guidry, a graduate student at Boston University and organizer with the BU Graduate Workers Union, which went public with its own union drive in late 2022 with the Service Employees International Union. The BU grad-student union was also present at the Harvard Academic Workers roundtable event.

Guidry said that even though the BU Graduate Workers Union and the Harvard Academic Workers are separate and have members who work different jobs in higher education, they’re still engaging in similar efforts.

“It’s all the same fight,” he said. “So it’s important that we don’t do it alone. We’ll be stronger if we organize together.”

And, as is often the case for workers looking to unionize, the stakes for the Harvard Academic Workers are high.

Thomas Dichter, a lecturer in history and literature at Harvard, said that the monthly daycare bill for his two children is higher than his entire monthly paycheck for his half-time teaching position. Speaking to In These Times while on the bus to work after dropping his children off, Dichter noted that the Boston housing market is incredibly expensive.

“That’s a lot of motivation for me,” he said.

Dichter said that Harvard Academic Workers members recognize the vital role they play in keeping the university functioning and want to leverage that role to have a seat at the table instead of just being informed of decisions after administrators have already made them. And they’re making progress, he added, through rank-and-file organizing.

“I’ve been involved with this campaign for about four and a half years,” Dichter said. “We’ve spent a lot of time having one one-on-one conversation after another between workers. That took a while, but the amount of support and enthusiasm is huge.”

Feldman said that kind of ground-up organizing is important because, while union staff organizers play vital roles in campaigns, at the end of the day only workers can bring the authenticity needed to win.

“You know your workplace, you know your colleagues, your coworkers, and you know your capacity for what you can get done,” she said. “And that is always going to have to be up to the rank-and-file to assess and determine and plan.”

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Dusty Christensen.

Amazon: The company we hate to love, for its convenient next-day deliveries, and we love to hate, for its egregious treatment of the workers that execute that miracle.

It really needs no introduction. Amazon is a corporate giant with 1.5 million employees, most of which are in the Teamsters' bread and butter industry: logistics, meaning warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Only, these workers are almost entirely non-union. But the problem with Amazon is not just its own non-union pay and working conditions. Left unchecked, Amazon may just start a race to the bottom for the working class as a whole.

The Teamsters, alongside other unions and worker collectives, are trying to change that. And in April earlier this year, 84 of Amazon's delivery drivers and dispatchers in Palmdale, California joined Teamsters Local 396 and won a first contract. This is a huge deal, but it's not an uncomplicated victory.

In this episode, you'll hear from one of those Amazon drivers, Arturo Solezano, about their working conditions, and why he and his now-union siblings joined the Teamsters. We also spoke with Alex Press, staff writer at Jacobin magazine, who unpacked why Amazon is a threat that needs to be taken seriously by the Teamsters and the rest of organized labor.

Finally, you'll hear an update on UPS contract negotiations from Greg Kerwood, a package car delivery driver from Teamsters Local 25 in Boston.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Teddy Ostrow: I'm gonna make this intro pretty quick because we have a lot of ground to cover. In this episode we're unpacking the existential threat - to UPSers, to the Teamsters, to unions in general, and the working class as a whole: Amazon.

It really needs no introduction. Amazon is a corporate giant with 1.5 million employees, on pace to become the largest private sector employer in the country. And the majority of that workforce is in the logistics industry. Warehouse workers, delivery drivers. And surprise, surprise, they're mostly unorganized.

But Teamsters, alongside other unions and worker collectives, are trying to change that. Indeed, the Teamsters has its own Amazon Organizing Division, with organizers around the country, which it launched a few years ago.

And in April earlier this year, 84 of Amazon's delivery drivers and dispatchers in Palmdale, California joined Teamsters Local 396 and won a first contract. Now, this is a huge deal.

For this episode, we spoke to one of those drivers, Arturo Solezano, about the working conditions at Amazon and why he and his now-union-siblings joined the Teamsters.

But before you hear from Arturo, we're gonna zoom out with Alex Press, staff writer at Jacobin magazine, who is one of the key reporters covering Amazon workers' conditions and organizing over the past three years. She's gonna help us understand why Amazon is a threat that needs to be taken seriously by the Teamsters and the rest of organized labor. And she also recently wrote an excellent article about the UPS contract campaign that you should definitely read and I'll put in the description.

Now, before we even get to Alex, it's been a little while since we discussed the state of the contract campaign and negotiations between UPS and the Teamsters. I spoke to Local 25 UPS rank and file, Greg Kerwood, in Boston this past weekend about what's been happening since negotiations at the national level started.

But we did speak before Monday, June 5, when the international called for an in-person strike authorization vote.

That means that UPSers at the gates of their hubs, at their union halls. will be voting on whether or not the union has the permission to call a strike in the event there is no new contract by August 1.

The results will be known June 16. The IBT is recommending UPSers vote yes.

Now, how this vote goes - what percentage of UPSers vote yes and what percentage of the workforce participates at all - it's an important test of how successful the contract campaign has been over the past 10 months—how successful locals and rank and file around the country have been at organizing their ranks, educating Teamsters on the stakes of this contract, and why the threat of a strike is the greatest leverage any union has in bargaining.

Now, it should be clear from this show that many locals are more than prepared, but I think it'd be disingenuous not to note that it's been clear in my reporting that there are also many out there that will have their work cut out for them between now and June 16.

We'll have to wait and see just how ready the Teamsters are to take on UPS. And you better hope that they are. If there's an episode that makes that any clearer, it's this one.

Now for an update with Greg Kerwood.

Teddy Ostrow: Greg Kerwood, thanks for joining me on the upsurge.

Greg Kerwood: Thanks for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here.

Teddy Ostrow: So I just wanna make clear to everyone, Greg is not speaking on behalf of the Teamsters National Negotiating Committee. He's just an informed rank and file member of the International Steering Committee of the Teamsters for Democratic Union, also local 25 in Boston.

He's a union activist and he does a lot of work organizing and educating his union siblings. So that's why he's gonna give us an update. and since we last reported on this podcast, the supplemental or the regional agreements, they weren't going too well. They've since almost been completed entirely.

There's two left. and of course all of them will have to be voted on by the membership. But Greg, can you bring us up to date? We're, we're speaking on the weekend right before negotiations. We'll start up again. there was a week break, but perhaps you can summarize just how things have been going as far as we know since negotiations started at the national level?

Greg Kerwood: Well, so far, it seems to be a case of more of the same from the company. I know our committee put forth the elimination of the 22-4 position. I'm not sure how that worked out or what the company's response was. They also spent a week discussing technology issues.

Again, I don't really know for certain how the company responded or whether any of that was resolved. I know there is an agreement that came out this week, to limit some of the package flow into the SurePost system. Not too many specifics, but in general it seems to be very slow going.

There seems to be a lot of posturing on the part of the company. Not a whole lot of seriousness, still. So the clock is continuing to tick down. We're down under 60 days at this point. So it's really just, it seems to be more the same. I don't think the company has really taken this seriously since the beginning of negotiations, and it appears as though they're continuing down that path.

Teddy Ostrow: So we're talking about some progress made perhaps on basic technology. On everyone's mind, of course, are those inward facing cameras. SurePost, just so everyone knows, basically UPS is giving Teamster work away to the post office. And the big demands, 22-4’s, PVDs wages, those sorts of things, we're gonna have to wait and see.

But given what's happened so far, Greg, which doesn't seem like very much, what's your perspective on the possibility of a strike? We're speaking eight weeks out from contract expiration. Is there a chance that you believe they'll get to everything or. Are you guys barreling towards hitting the picket line?

Greg Kerwood: I would say that given the current pace of negotiations, a strike almost seems inevitable. Now obviously it's in the company's hands if they want to change that approach and come to the table and address issues in a more reasonable and more timely fashion. I haven't seen any indication of them doing that.

Perhaps that will change and perhaps, you know, the laundry list of major issues that we have can be addressed, I believe. I think our proposals, to my knowledge, are all there and ready and waiting.

It's just a question of whether the company wants to take them seriously and bargain in good faith. So it is still possible that that could be done, but if things continue at the current pace and with the current attitude of the company, I think it very likely that we will be on strike come August 1st.

Teddy Ostrow: Greg Kerwood., thanks for giving us that update and offering your perspective.

Greg Kerwood: My pleasure. Thank you.

Teddy Ostrow: Alex Press, thanks for joining me on the Upsurge.

Alex Press: Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Teddy Ostrow: So I wanna open with the threat of Amazon. Why should Teamsters, UPSers, but really the broader working class, be concerned about this one company?

Alex Press: Yeah, so I mean to say Amazon is just one company sort of downplays how big of a scale we're talking about when we talk about Amazon as well as the different kind-of core functions Amazon has, different parts of its business. Amazon is a gigantic employer of warehouse workers as well as delivery drivers, though, you know, important caveat that we'll get into, which is, those delivery drivers are not direct employees of Amazon. This is a gigantic workforce, the second biggest private employer in the United States, but you know, the joke I make is that Amazon kind of functions as a pacesetter of sorts, a vanguard of capital, if you will. What Amazon can get away with, other companies will then follow in that direction.

That often, quite literally, is true in that Amazon executives will go on to be hired as consultants, especially in human resources for other corporations, who will pay them gobs of money basically to implement and replicate Amazon's model. Amazon's model’s being squeezing workers, a very high pace of work, incredible use of surveillance technologies on the workforce. And this doesn't just mean warehouse workers or say delivery drivers like UPS workers, but actually, white collar workers as well. Amazon is sort of exporting these technologies and this sort of way of squeezing workers in a way that really applies to all kinds of people, including those who think “I have nothing in common with an Amazon warehouse worker.” You do.

Specifically about UPS, I think it's a pretty obvious argument here. You know, UPS has already existed as this sort of island of unionization within the broader, logistics industry, you know, they have fought very hard to have decent wages and benefits and a sustainable schedule for delivery, for example. Amazon exists to undercut that, right? That's, if it's not its aim, it's its function. So Amazon famously will get something to your door within a few hours if you pay enough money for it.

That means that they have this entire gigantic network of both warehouse workers and delivery drivers who are being worked at all hours, who work seven days a week, who have a very high pace of delivery. The famous stories about how no one who's delivering for Amazon has time to pee at all, you know, because there's nowhere to go, right? You need to get your next delivery out immediately. I often say this to people where I'm like, “Have you ever really had a conversation with an Amazon delivery person who is delivering packages to your apartment building? No. They don't have time for that.”

They, you know, even if you tried to stop them, you would actually be annoying them because they have a schedule to stick to. So that undermines the standards that UPS workers have fought for a very long time to get. I think the new leadership of the Teamsters, Sean O'Brien recognizes that existential threat that you cannot exist forever with this growing behemoth constantly undercutting your standards, you know, UPS will use Amazon as kind of a wedge and say, “Well, we can't agree to this in the contract because we're gonna go out of business if we keep having these heavy labor costs.” And while that's nonsense—UPS has an enormous amount of profits—it is a real argument that the Teamsters need to take seriously. The best answer to it would be organizing Amazon workers themselves.

Teddy Ostrow: You sort of began with this, but I do wanna take a step back. What even is Amazon? Is it a logistics company, retail tech? Can you give us a sense of the landscape?

Alex Press: Yeah. So it's a surprisingly complicated answer. It's all of those things. It is a logistics company. It is an e-commerce, retail company. It's one of the largest e-commerce companies in existence. It’s also, importantly, the web infrastructure that other companies rely upon. So, you know, if you're on a Zoom call, you're using Amazon Web services or AWS, which is the company's most profitable arm.

If you're using Uber, you're using Amazon's computational power and space. There’s also smaller things like selling surveillance technology to law enforcement. Amazon is a major cultural producer. It is a member of the producer organization that is currently being struck by the Writer's Guild of America.

They make television and films, and this is something Jeff Bezos really likes, you know, the cultural arm, the cache and glamor. It's also importantly one of the biggest platforms for third party vendors. So other companies, small businesses use Amazon's websites, as well as Amazon's warehouses and delivery drivers to get their goods to customers' doors.

So there are all these different arms going on. In the labor world, we speak the most about the warehouse workers and maybe to a lesser extent the delivery drivers, and rightly so—we're talking about hundreds of thousands of workers. It is also all of these other things and they're integrated together.

You need the computational power of AWS for the warehouses to function. Surveillance technology is tested in the warehouses and then exported not only to other companies, but to other countries as well. I think in trying to think about this, there are a couple of metaphors we could use.

One is that the company is in the company town: asort of private government, that functions kind of as an overlord of sorts, or a control mechanism, or, one metaphor I use a lot is kind of a toll collector. Amazon wants to be the thing you have to go through to get to everything else, whether it's goods, whether it's the internet and infrastructure, all of these things.

Amazon has been very good at warming its way into the middle of things, so that it gets a cut as a middleman from everything. There are all those different ways to think about it. Finally I would just say, thinking of it as a utility because it's so kind of inescapable for all of the reasons I just mentioned, also can be kind of productive in starting to think about what regulation of Amazon would look like.

Teddy Ostrow: That's a really interesting point to think of it as a utility. You did really great work covering the organizing at Amazon over the past few years. Could you give us a sense of how union organizing or organizing otherwise at the company has been going—what are people fighting for or fighting against and what are the different efforts we've seen, the obstacles, and the future of Amazon?

Alex Press: Yeah. So I often start to answer this question by sort of giving some perspective here in the form of an anecdote, which is that I was at the Labor Notes Conference, a biannual gathering of labor activists, rank and file workers and so on. I was there I think five years ago, and there was a sort of little secret side conversation going on, about salting Amazon.

Meaning, you know, purposely getting jobs at Amazon warehouses to then organize those warehouses. And this was a pretty controversial conversation. A lot of people were very negative on it. They thought this was a doomed strategy, that this was actually in fact sort of dangerous and that these efforts would fail.

Aren't there so many other warehouses with kind of decrepit unions? You know, for example, UPS warehouses, that might have kind of less active locals that would be much better uses of young radicals’ time. if they really felt the need to kind of intentionally get a job, with the purpose of organizing.

It seemed very obvious to me at the time that that all was true, that none of these people were incorrect about the problems with this idea, but also these young people in particular were gonna do it anyway, right? Like this was exciting. This is on, you know, on pace to be the largest private employer in the United States, and so these efforts were going to start and we sort of saw them start to, you know, the outcome of those early efforts has been finally going public over the past couple of years. So you know, everyone's heard about Bessemer, which, was the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to hold an NLRB election.

That was in 2021. It failed. There are endless back and forths about Amazon violating labor law during that election. But you know, as it stands, they did not vote to unionize that facility. I think it's an interesting example in that even failed efforts leave a trace on the working class—if you speak to Chris Smalls, the founder of the Amazon Labor Union out in Staten Island, he'll tell you that it was Bessemer and watching that failure that led him to decide to organize his own facility. It's why he decided to go with an independent union. He felt there were certain failures that came from the existing union trying to do it, and that actually it would only be an independent union that could win, for reasons that I think are arguable.

But certainly he was proven correct at JFK-8. So that was the first and only Amazon warehouse to win an NLRB election. I think that was what, April of last year? April 1st. Cuz I remember it being a very funny April Fool's joke that they had actually won.

And there are efforts at, at different different stages, in the works. So the ALU has tried to hold other NLRB elections at other Amazon facilities. They've yet to win any of those. There are other efforts underway. There's a warehouse in North Carolina that's being organized by a group that calls itself CAUSE, which stands for Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment. So their facility is in Garner, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, which is not where one would expect an Amazon effort to succeed. North Carolina has one of the lowest unionization rates in the country. but when you talk to the workers there, as I have, you know, they'll tell you that it sort of just happens organically.

Racism is a huge issue in this warehouse, which you'll hear from Amazon workers at just about every warehouse. It'll often be a majority non-white worker population, and then management will be almost entirely white. That's the case at this facility. And that's sort of organically led to a certain kind of unrest in the warehouse that then led to this organizing effort that's still underway. They have not filed for an N L R B election. And then there are other efforts, you know, in kind of earlier stages.

I think also just in closing it's worth mentioning this warehouse in Minnesota that has been kind of a site of organizing by Somali workers in particular. So that's just a short list. I mean, it's very funny that at this point my head is full of all of these incredibly indecipherable to anyone else names of these warehouses. RDU1, JFK8. This is what Amazon calls its facilities, and now it's, thank God the laundry list is getting really long. It used to just be JFK 8 that I would talk about. So that's what's going on as far as the warehouse organizing.

Teddy Ostrow: Yeah. Thanks for going through so many of those efforts. I mean, you know, there's also Amazonians United, the international efforts, the Make Amazon Pay campaign.

Alex Press: Yeah. I did wanna say, Amazonians United has been this interesting effort that preceded Bessemer and continues to exist in a sort of minority union, shop floor unionism, you know, where they don't have the majority of the workers involved.

They're not trying to build towards an NLRB election. They're just functioning as a union on the shop floor. And they have actually notched some real victories around working conditions. I think anybody who's interested in this topic really should also look into that because, you know, when it comes to Amazon, I often kind of explain to people, it’s just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. You know, no unions up until these recent years have been able to breach the impenetrable fortress of Amazon. So there are all different approaches going on, and while there's real disagreements and differences between these efforts, there is a sense in a larger kind of, meta view here that everyone is on the same page, that you just have to be willing to try some creativity, and that everyone kind of needs each other if anyone is gonna win at Amazon.

Teddy Ostrow: I think that's a great perspective to bring. And now let's, let's dig into one of the efforts right now that is pretty unique, and exciting, especially for teamsters.

So 84 Amazon drivers and dispatchers, just recently unionized Teamsters, local 396, that's out in Palmdale, California. That of course was super welcome, really, really exciting for labor folks. But it’s not an uncomplicated victory. This is because of something you hinted at, the structure of Amazon's Last Mile Delivery Services, which poses barriers to unionization, certainly getting a contract.

Can you unpack why this is such a big deal, but also why it's more complex than one would hope, such that this battle of the Teamsters in Amazon really is just getting started?

Alex Press: Yeah, so the most basic thing to mention is what I said at the top, which is these delivery drivers are legally, technically, not Amazon employees, which is absurd because as probably anyone listening to this show knows they drive in vehicles that are branded with Amazon branding.

They often wear Amazon branded uniforms. But Amazon very cannily set up this delivery service partner program to give themselves distance from the legal responsibilities of being an employer. So these workers have to petition their bosses for redress on all kinds of things, and their bosses are usually these small business owners who just started this company specifically to service Amazon. There are around 3000 of these companies nationwide, these delivery service partners or DSP’s. There are nearly, I think almost 300,000 drivers now who are driving for them at least part and full-time.

So that means under US labor law right now, until and unless Amazon is declared a joint employer, so also having the legal responsibility to bargain with these workers, right now, they have to petition, you know, just their small business, their DSP’s, which is what happened at that company, Battle Tested Strategies, in Palmdale.

When the news came out, not only that had they organized a union, but the owner of BTS had given them voluntary recognition—which is a sort of, while I think every boss should voluntarily recognize workers, it's pretty unusual these days in the United States—it's sort of displayed something that has since been kind of panned out in the reporting, which is that the owners of these DSP’s often have just as many problems with Amazon as their workers. There have been cases of these companies, their owners shutting down their companies in protest against Amazon's expectations for them.

They work these drivers through the bone and often they're not lying when they say “Amazon makes us do this”. So they have limited autonomy here. It's very funny in that if Amazon has set up this, this totally arbitrary distance, to pretend that these drivers are not their workers, the owners of these companies are gonna realize that in fact, they too are just lower level managers for a workforce.

So it's no surprise that they might end up kind of tacitly supporting unionization. The Teamsters announced that these workers had unionized, that they had gotten recognition, and in fact, they had voted and accepted a tentative agreement, so they have a contract.

Amazon immediately came out and said, “One, these are not our workers as laid out in the law. Two, we actually already told this guy who runs this company that he's gonna have his contract canceled for poor performance. And this is just a kind of PR play on his part and on the Teamsters part.”

No one has gotten the documents really about when the timeline of Amazon's contract cancellation happened. You know, if it happened after Amazon became aware of the union organizing, you could make the case that that was a violation of labor law. So that's all gonna play out in the courts. I think the BTS owner himself is now kind of going along with trying to sue Amazon.

It is worth noting that the Teamsters have tried this before and Amazon has just canceled the contract with that DSP, because they have the right to do that. They do have total control over these DSP’s. The owner of a DSP is always instructed to fight any union efforts.

Amazon by every legal standing should be considered the employer, but they also, as it stands right now, can simply retaliate by canceling a contract, effectively making these workers out of work, come the end of that contract. So we'll see what happens. I think it's just worth noting as a last point on this, that the teamsters have kind of anticipated that this would happen.

In May, they did file a complaint with federal Labor regulators, saying that Amazon should be considered a joint or sole employer of the Palmdale workers. I am not in the prediction game, especially when it comes to extremely, untested unionization efforts at Amazon. I think Sean O'Brien, and all of the rank and filers who are sort of leading this organizing at the ground level really understand that they need to find a way to break through at Amazon, even though the legal structure of these delivery drivers’ employment makes for immense obstacles. So I'm very glad that they are, again, throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Teddy Ostrow: Well, I certainly won't ask you to look into the legal crystal ball here, but I think it's also worth just noting that while there is this complex, complicated barrier for these workers, what they want in their contract would be life changing, right? $30 an hour, the right to refuse unsafe delivery, which is a serious problem across delivery services. A number of things that we’ll see if they get it. A no no-strike clause. This is kind of transformational stuff, if it’s implemented.

Alex Press: I just wanna add that when you talk to those Palmdale drivers, a key impetus for the organizing was that just like Amazon warehouse workers, just like UPS drivers, heat on the job was becoming incredibly unsafe. They'll say that one of these workers, I think last summer passed out and had to be taken to the hospital.

I think I read a quote from someone in the bargaining unit who said, it's like being in a sauna. It's completely unbearable. This has also led workers to organize across industries; these are very serious issues that Amazon certainly has proven it is not taking seriously and cannot be trusted to take seriously.

I know UPS workers similarly have been agitating not only for UPS to be responsible for regulating the temperatures both in the vehicles and in the buildings. The Amazon warehouse workers that I talked about earlier, often, that's also a leading thing. You know, they want higher wages, they want better benefits and better schedules, they want less unsafe work in the sense of less of a strenuous quota on them, but they also often are passing out in these warehouses or having heat stroke. So this is again, a unifying kind of issue across the industry. No matter what type of logistics work you're doing with rising temperatures, especially as summer approaches, you know, this becomes something that is not so hard to understand for anyone who works these jobs.

Teddy Ostrow: Let's bring in the Teamsters UPS contract campaign. You wrote a great piece about it in Jacobin that I encourage everyone to read. You noted how organizing at Amazon as well as negotiating a better UPS contracts as central to Teamsters United, Sean O'Brien's bid to the Teamsters general presidency. And I wanna try to thread these goals together.

What, what are the stakes of this contract campaign for the unionization of Amazon? And then what are the stakes of unionizing Amazon for the future of the Teamsters Union? And, you know, the greater working class.

Alex Press: Sure, sure. So it sounds complicated, but it really is not. So when you walk up, say you're a UPS driver and you walk up to, whether it's an Amazon warehouse worker who lives on your block or it's an Amazon delivery driver who is parked outside of the same apartment building as you.

So you start chatting about unions, they're gonna say, well, how's your union contract? Like, what do you get? Not to to pretend that workers are only interested in that, but of course that's what they want to know. and you know, I think it's not a secret that the Teamsters negotiated a very weak contract in the last round of negotiations. So weak that it ended Hoffa Jr's career and led to Sean O'Brien becoming the President of the Union. It has tiers. It has all these things that you've talked about on the show before. and so that is not something a worker can confidently approach an Amazon worker with and try to convince them that their union has their back, will never sell them out, will never abandon them, and is democratic.

None of those things were true in that last contract. A democratic vote was overridden by arcane union bureaucracy rules, you know, the classic kind of worst version of unionism. So it's very important that Sean can go out there and actually win a strong contract; pay for part-timers will be part of that because Amazon workers are often part-time and they're going to have more in common with the inside workers at UPS than they might have with the UPS drivers, as far as the direct Amazon warehouse workers. But similarly with delivery drivers at both companies, there needs to be this sense of victory that's very rooted in real progress, including undoing concessions. So that's on the one side, very practically, it's almost like suicide to go tell your rank and file organizers, your best union militants to go pretend to another worker that you have a great contract when in fact they're the ones who are most certain that they don't have good contract.

So that is existential. And then on the flip side, I think I've kind of laid this out earlier: what does organizing Amazon do for UPS workers? Well, as I said, if they don't organize Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers soon, they may just not exist as a union.

I mean, that's like catastrophism that I'm saying. But Amazon has so much power, has so much growth and so much political control as well. I mean, with the lobbying arm and the tax breaks that they get, and the influential people in their realm. It's hard to imagine how the UPS bargaining unit stays together going forward. They will be chipped away at every single contract round with UPS executives saying through their lawyers across the table, we can't do it because there's Amazon workers that are gonna undercut our business and they're gonna take our business and we're gonna go out of business unless you agree to concessions.

So these things are incredibly tied up with each other, and I think Sean O'Brien did a very good job of laying that out throughout his campaign. My understanding from speaking with the UPS workers who lead this Amazon organizing, sort of behind the scenes and on the ground, is that they really do feel like they're being charged with trying what they can to organize certain facilities, to support things at legislative levels that gives a little more power to workers, that makes it a little easier to actually organize them in the first place. So, you know, my hope is that that vision continues to stay kind of connected in that integrated way that was laid out during the campaign.

Teddy Ostrow: And while I have you, the Amazon guru of labor journalism, is there anything else that we didn't touch on on Amazon that you think is really important for the Teamsters listening for non Teamsters listening?

Alex Press: I'm sure it's been said on your show before if Amazon has come up, but you know, as I tried to say, there are very different efforts going on among Amazon workers, right?

There has been, you know, formal organizing with RWDSU in Bessemer, and with the Teamsters, both among warehouses, workers and delivery drivers. There has been minority unionism like Amazonians United. There's been independent use unionism like cause in North Carolina or the ALU. And again, like there are real tensions of course.

Before any of these efforts started many years ago, workers would say to me, “Our working conditions are so terrible. This work is so dangerous and detrimental to our bodies, and the pay is so low. Why aren't unions helping us?” You know, there was a real sense of loss or betrayal or just confusion about, you know, isn't the labor movement supposed to be here for us?

And so it's very hard to just immediately undo that distrust. But I think I've seen, just in the course of my short five years since that opening anecdote about the Labor Notes Conference, there have been real ties being built across these efforts, across these divisions of strategy. I just think UPS workers, everyone I've spoke to already understands this, but I just wanna underline it, that everyone needs each other if anyone is gonna win.

Whether a Teamsters’ organized warehouse down the line is gonna win, whether the ALU is ever gonna win a contract, it requires every single person in this broader kind of ecosystem of organizing logistics to have each other's backs, despite, and even with those differences. So that's really the thing I try to say to people, you know, often I think people outside of the labor movement or outside of the left, want to play up the divisions and say like, “So do these people hate the Teamsters? Do these people hate the ALU?” And it's like, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, everyone has each other's phone numbers and they need each other. That is kind of the perspective I try to take. I certainly would hope UPS workers would take that kind of bigger view, whether it's about organizing or about the fact that Amazon workers seem to undercut their job standards.

You know, everybody has the same enemies here. In fact, their enemies are like friends who hang out at dinners in DC; the CEO of one company or the other. I just never want people to lose sight of that.

Teddy Ostrow: Alex Press, thanks for joining me on the upsurge.

Alex Press: Thanks for having me.

Teddy Ostrow: Arturo Sono, welcome to the upsurge. So to start off, I just wanna hear about you—can you tell everybody about yourself? How did you come to the job, what exactly do you do, how long you've been doing it, uh, and where you are right now?

Arturo Solezano: I live in Hartsdale, California. I have a fiance, a baby on the way in August, it's gonna be a girl. We are trying to plan a big future together. Before driving, I was actually at a fulfillment center, but the drive was too far from me and this was a lot closer.

Teddy Ostrow: So you're a driver. How long have you been doing that?

Arturo Solezano: About two and a half years now.

Teddy Ostrow: And what, what exactly does that entail? Can you kind of explain on a day-to-day basis what you do?

Arturo Solezano: So, in the mornings we grab our pouches, we check the vehicles, make sure there's like no nails, nothing damaged, line up, load of our vans and go get gas if we need to, and then just start our routes.

Teddy Ostrow: So it's very similar, to what perhaps a, a number of other, so-called last mile delivery drivers do, like at FedEx, like at UPS, you pick up the packages, you drop 'em off at people's homes as I take it.

Arturo Solezano: Yes.

Teddy Ostrow: So I'm curious, around the country, we've been hearing a lot about some of the issues that drivers at Amazon deal with. Some of them are pretty similar to the issues at UPS, listeners of this show certainly know about those. Maybe you could get into some of those issues that you and your coworkers have with the workplace.

Arturo Solezano: In the summertime, those vans, they feel like saunas and they don't have AC so all day we're just sweating and being dehydrated and there’s only so much that water bottles can do for us; and then they get mad at us if we are trying to take our breaks cause it's just so hot, we're trying to recover.

I had a friend who actually had to go to the hospital cause she overheated. But thank God now she's safe. But she had to leave the job because it was just too dangerous for her.

Teddy Ostrow: Wow. So you guys don't have air conditioning at, at all, or it doesn't function or, and you guys have to deal with that in some sense?

Arturo Solezano: The air condition is supposed to work, but it is very light. Then we have like just the little fans, regular fans, but they just throw hot air.

Teddy Ostrow: Do you feel unsafe when you're doing this; you're in Southern California, right? So I assume it gets ridiculously hot.

Arturo Solezano: Yeah. So I try to, whenever I can just try to find somewhere with shade sometimes, I'm trying to protect myself.

Teddy Ostrow: Have you ever told your employer like, “Hey, look, it's, it's too hot out here.” What kind of responses do you get? Or is it not even worth going that far?

Arturo Solezano: We told 'em and they told us like, “Amazon are the ones that set the routes.” Sometimes the, the temperature would read 130, 140 even. We had customers that come out there and look at us and they feel so bad they'll rush back inside their house and get ice and stuff, cause they see how bad it is.

Teddy Ostrow: Wow. That's a major safety issue. As I understand it, that isn't the only safety issue you guys have, right? Can you tell me about some of those other issues that have to do with your safety?

Arturo Solezano: Yeah. I actually got bitten by a dog once, it was hiding underneath the van, and as soon as I stepped out, it bit me. And it was a stray dog. There were other houses and none of them claimed it. So I ended up getting a tetanus shot.

Teddy Ostrow: Wow. Do you ever feel like that might happen again? That you, you see a dog in a yard…

Arturo Solezano: Yeah, so now I don't even feel safe to go into people's yards to drop off their packages. Sometimes they'll order heavy things and I don't like to leave it on the sidewalk, you know? I'll call 'em and I'll wait.

But I can't stay there forever, cause Amazon is tracking my movements. They said you gotta do, you know, a certain amount by this time.

Teddy Ostrow: You know, UPSers for example, they can, if it seems like it's unsafe, they're generally allowed to say like, “Hey, this is an unsafe delivery. I'm not gonna make this delivery.” What would happen if you told your employer that, “Hey, this is too, this is too risky for me.”

Arturo Solezano: They'd rather have us try to risk it and deliver it anyway. Amazon will analyze us and then we end up losing days, you know, hours. And that's money that we need to provide for our families.

Teddy Ostrow: Speaking of money, the pay I've heard is an issue. Can you talk about that? Maybe your personal experience, but also those of your coworkers. What, what is the pay like at Amazon? Is it enough?

Arturo Solezano: No, we feel like we're getting underpaid. We should be getting paid at least the same as UPS, they get 40 or 30. We feel like we should get somewhere similar cause we're doing the exact same thing as them. And our conditions are probably a lot less safe than theirs.

Teddy Ostrow: What is it like to not get enough money? I mean, you, you live in Southern California, I can imagine the cost of living is high, where you are. What does it mean to not make the same as other drivers for you? You mentioned you have a fiancée and child on the way.

Arturo Solezano: Yeah, on the side, I have to donate my plasma to make the extra money for anything that I can't cover with my paycheck. On my days off I have to go do something to make sure I have that money for us to make sure we can get by.

Teddy Ostrow: Now, the last thing I wanted to touch on, because it seems like such a major issue, is these performance requirements that at times seem really extreme.

Can you talk about the pressure on you guys, and how Amazon is tracking you and wanting you to perform at a pace that is probably unsafe?

Arturo Solezano: So Amazon tracks our system through their van and our package count and they'll say, “Hey, you’ve only done certain amount at this time. Ask them why they're behind cuz they need to catch up.”

And when I tell 'em, you know, we gotta wait for this, we gotta do that. Apartments, sometimes it takes forever to get in. Customers don't wanna come out to get their packages cause their dogs are outside and they get mad at us and then we end up having to skip our breaks and stuff. Because we have to go and try to catch up.

Teddy Ostrow: Have people been disciplined or, or fired or cut? What kind of retaliation do you see?

Arturo Solezano: A couple of my friends have been let go. A lot of people have been cut their hours. They just like to monitor every little thing with us. they actually let go of someone, it wasn't the BTS people, it was Amazon that let go one of our workers instead. I don't know that much details about it.

Teddy Ostrow: Well, I'm glad you brought up that it was Amazon doing this. As I understand it, you drive an Amazon truck and you wear an Amazon uniform.

It seems like Amazon has a lot of control over your employment, but technically you don't work for Amazon. I'm curious, what do you think about that? Is Amazon not really in control of you? Who do you really work for?

Arturo Solezano: Even though they say we're not, we really are. Cause they get mad at us if we don't wear their Amazon uniform. People inside the building, they wear their pajamas and whatever they want. But if we get something like that, wear different color shorts or jeans or something, they send us home. Even though we're not really Amazon though.

But yet you're still trying to send us home for not being with you guys.

Teddy Ostrow: So we actually have you on the show because you and your coworkers did something really exciting that everyone seems to be cheering you on for rightfully; you unionized, your DSP or delivery service provider.

It's called Battle Tested Strategies. You guys unionized with the Teamsters Local 396. Um, That's kind of a brave thing to do. I'm curious, why did you guys want to unionize with the Teamsters?

Arturo Solezano: We just wanted our fair pay and everything, and safety with this job. Cause being in those vans, it's just extremely hot. Like a sauna. I’m doing this just cause I wanna be able to provide for my family. You know, my little daughter is on her way. I wanna make sure she's taken care of growing up.

I feel like they're the ones that are actually trying, that are actually looking out for me. They're the ones that have my back a lot more than Amazon ever did.

Teddy Ostrow: Have you noticed any sort of retaliation from Amazon since you guys joined up with Local 396?

Arturo Solezano: Yeah. The very first day, they grounded my van for something so small that was an easy fix, but it took him an hour to clear it. And one of the Amazon people actually came up to me, kind of talked to me like, “Oh, are you gonna be able to finish the route?” I'm like, “Dude, we're still working. You know, why? Why do you think we're here? Of course I can deal with my route. It's gonna take me a little longer now cause you guys are making me wait more, but I could still get it done.”

Teddy Ostrow: And you think this has something to do with organizing?

Arturo Solezano: Mm-hmm. Cause now they're picking every little thing they can with us, with our vans. They're cutting down our routes. Sometimes they're very hostile towards us, and we're just like, yo, we're just here just to do our jobs too. Why are you guys even being hostile towards us?

Teddy Ostrow: So you guys not only unionized, but you won a union contract and as far as I understand, you won some pretty transformational stuff.

Some of it may not be enforceable yet, but nonetheless, can, can you talk about some of the things you guys won, in this contract?

Arturo Solezano: Yeah, we fought for the vans, so they're now safer for us. We're able to refuse deliveries that are actually unsafe that we can't do. and we're fighting for a bigger raise.

Teddy Ostrow: How much money do you guys win? It’s pretty high, right?

Arturo Solezano: It's $30 a hour.

Teddy Ostrow: Is that gonna make a difference for you?

Arturo Solezano: Yeah, it'll help me out so much to provide for my family.

Teddy Ostrow: One thing I'm curious about is how you've interacted with other delivery drivers or other logistics companies like UPS. Have you interacted with any UPSers?

Arturo Solezano: Uh, yes. Some of them actually come and help us picket. I'll see someone on my delivery route and they'll say, “Hey. Welcome to the Union brother. Congrats. This is what we’re here for.”

Teddy Ostrow: Arturo, thanks for joining me on the Upsurge.

Kamau Franklin: I’ll back that up completely. I think Mariah’s completely correct. When we speak to folks in the community, there are folks who are informed, but there are a good amount of people who don’t know about it. And there are other folks who are carrying on with their day-to-day lives trying to survive, trying to make it out of here. But once you start talking about it, the innate reaction based on the conditions that people live in is like, well, why do we need that? We know that that means they’re going to just be in our neighborhoods and communities, arresting more people, taking away our young people that instead of providing centers for our folks to go to, providing other things and activities or improving the education system that they would rather spend again, not only just the 30 million that the city is supposed to be giving. And that number, again, is increasingly going higher once we do further investigation into how the money is actually getting to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

But the same corporations who several years ago were saying that they were on the side of Black Lives Matter, have now given 60 million dollars or close to 60 million dollars to fund a project like this. People see it on their face that these same corporations which underpay us or have enough money like Mariah mentioned earlier, to give to a project like this. So it’s not hard to convince people or it’s not hard to make it clear for folks what the purpose of a Cop City is and what the role is of police in their lives. And so when folks understand that and hear that, for the most part they have questions and they are opposed to the idea that this is the way the city should spend its money.

I will also say for the people who are working class, people who live adjacent to the forest, and it is mostly a working class black community that lives adjacent to the work to the Weelaunee forest, those folks were promised that the forest would stay intact and that it would be used for nature trails, for parks, for places for their kids to enjoy and understand nature and again, to continue to serve as a preventer of climate change.

That area’s prone to flooding. Clear cutting that’s already happening in that forest will only add to the flooding in that neighborhood which will impact working class black communities. Those communities overwhelmingly have said that they are opposed to the building of Cop City. That that was not what the promise was. The promise was for them to have an area where they can bring their kids to, where they can have a park and so forth. It was not to build a militarized training center, which is going to have shooting ranges where cops are practicing how to shoot day and night in that forest next to this working class community, that people understand that this is a targeted approach to dealing with working class communities as opposed to giving resources to these communities. They’re going to flood these communities with more cops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m going to lose my shit, man.

Mariah Parker: Does it not make you feel insane? It makes me feel so insane.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m losing it.

Mariah Parker: It makes you feel so insane. And particularly they started clear cutting the forest a little bit earlier this year. And so photography and drone footage is coming out where there’s this scar on the earth where this beautiful forest used to be. Where I was at a music festival. There are people out there just vibing, enjoying music. There’s folks camping out, there are families, there’s children. They used to take children here to do field trips, to study the ecology of the forest. And now there is this, you see footage come out, they’re giving some journalists a tour of the forest today or what used to be the forest. And it drives me totally insane to see this. And I feel like speaking of common reactions of working class folks, that same shit of just being mind boggled and infuriated instantly is something I get all the time when I’m talking to people about this who haven’t heard about it before.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know our task is to turn that into action, which again is why I’m so grateful to folks like yourselves and everyone else out there doing that unsung work, everyone listening to this who is also doing that work day in, day out. We need you guys always, and we need more folks doing that work even just to make sure that people know that this is happening in the first place, let alone building on that and talking about why we should be invested in the fight against it, what the future looks like if we don’t fight. And I think, yeah, it’s the point you both made is just so poignant and I really want folks listening to sit with it because in many ways you guys know this, but it does really bear repeating. The safest communities are not the ones with the most police.

They’re the ones with the most resources and the most kind of shared wealth access to things like drinkable water and a bed to sleep in, a house to live in, schools to send your kids to, grocery stores, not just dollar stores, so on and so forth. It’s not throwing more police at poor and working class neighborhoods, is not going to somehow magically make those neighborhoods safer. How do I know that? Because that’s what we’ve been fucking doing for the past half century or more. And it hasn’t worked, at least by the supposed goals of that approach to policing. But anyway, I digress. So because I know I only have you guys for about 10 more minutes, so I wanted to bring things back to, I think we’ve done a great job of communicating to people why the push to build Cop City, the construction thereof, the sort of shadowy government and industry forces behind it, why all of those are already an issue for working people that we should care about.

But then there’s also the draconian crackdown on the protestors against Cop City and it’s a fundamentally connected issue, but it is almost sort of an issue within itself that we and that the labor movement needs to have a serious discussion about, because that is also going to directly impact us. It’s not just that they’re all the other kind of aspects to labor, workers’ relationship to the police that we already know about when we’re on strike. Who are the ones beating picketers and clearing way for scabs to come through the picket lines? It’s the cops, right? So when coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama at Warrior Met Coal were on strike for two years, who was it who was escorting scabs past their picket lines? Who was it who was enforcing these business friendly rulings by local judges, these injunctions limiting the amount of people who could picket, how far away from the entrance they could picket?

It was the police. And so we already know that in terms of limiting workers’ ability to exercise their right to free speech, their right to assemble, their right to go on strike and to withhold their labor, the quote on quote, criminal justice system has a historically antagonistic relationship to working people expressing those rights. But it goes even deeper than that. And I hope that folks listening to this can sort of hear the resonances with the interviews that we’ve done with workers in different industries over the past six seasons. Just think about the railroad workers. They had their right to strike, stripped from them by the most, quote on quote, pro-labor union president that the US has ever seen, and a congress that happily went with that decision and they gave the bosses, the rail carriers, everything that they wanted. And so when workers have our rights to withhold our labor to speak up and to exercise those basic fundamental rights, the bosses win.

And also most people in this country can be fired without just cause. So it’s not even a question of do I have these rights at work? Most people fucking don’t. We already know that they don’t, you can’t speak up for shit without losing your job and potentially thus losing your home and if you lose your home and we live in a society that criminalizes poverty, so you’re going to get beat up by the police and shuttled into prison. So are you guys seeing the connections here?

Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Support the newly unionized Amazon drivers in Palmdale, California through their solidarity fund.

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Check out Alex Press's article on the UPS contract campaign in Jacobin magazine, and Teddy's video collaboration with More Perfect Union on why UPSers may strike this August.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh.

So Rivera and her colleagues—who are unionized with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU)—took action. On Thursday, she says they delivered a letter to their manager, alleging that their “safety [had] been ignored in favor of keeping the drive-through open” and demanding that their manager “protect [their] employees” by either closing the drive-through or providing them with proper personal protective equipment (PPE). The next morning, Rivera says they were provided N95 respirators and she was allowed to work away from the drive-through window.

Rivera and her colleagues were not alone. On Wednesday, Sarah Moore went to work at her Starbucks store in Buffalo—also unionized with SBWU—and tells In These Times that because of a broken drive-through window that left it open, her “eyes were burning,” her “throat was burning,” and “it was hard to talk” after less than two hours on the job.

Even though the district manager came to the store to check that everything was up to standard, Moore says she wasn’t told anything about the hazardous air quality by the company until near the end of her shift. Workers were simply told to wear masks—but she says the store didn’t have any.

“Just saying, ‘Sorry guys, fend for yourselves! Maybe try a mask.’ It’s not enough,” Moore says. “I mean, the sky is yellow. That’s not a healthy condition for anyone to be in.”

Starbucks did not return a request for comment about any of these issues.

On Monday, more smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires began drifting down and covering much of the East Coast. Three days later, Heatmap News reported that almost one in five Americans were exposed to levels of soot and ash five times what the World Health Organization considers safe.

Anything above 300 on the Air Quality Index scale is hazardous; multiple cities on the East Coast reached well above 400, the upper end of the scale. Millions of workers—many of whom received no advance warning from employers or governmental agencies—woke up and went about their lives as normal, only to find themselves laboring in what is dangerous, smoky air. Even short-term exposure to air quality this poor is highly problematic, but it’s especially harmful to those with preexisting conditions like asthma.

As Luis Feliz Leon first reported in Labor Notes on Thursday, conditions were especially hazardous for New York City’s nearly 65,000 gig delivery food workers, who as contractors find themselves without a direct employer to ask for PPE or better working conditions from.

“The companies classify the workers as independent contractors and offload all the costs of the job onto the workers themselves,” he wrote. "They also punt responsibility for the health and safety of workers."

In addition to those working outside, each time a door or window opens for a customer, it lets the thick air inside. As the smog lingered and continued to spread around the country, many workers looked to their unions and organized together to keep themselves and their coworkers safe.

Across the internet and around the East Coast, workers decried the situation and some asked for advice.

“Literally smells like a campfire inside my workplace right now. It's bad,” one commenter wrote on Reddit. “Anyone else feel nauseous from the smoke? ... I was feeling lightheaded and queasy,” wrote another. “Today I was working outside all day for work. The Air Quality Index was above 300 and hazardous. Is my employer required to pay us hazardous pay?” asked another. Some offered advice such as avoiding strenuous activities or explained how to build Do-It-Yourself air filters. One person joked: “Wear your N95 they gave you two years ago and expect you to still have.”

In New York, unionized workers at REI’s SoHo store announced they had "successfully pressured management to close" the store on Wednesday. However, according to an Instagram post from REI Union SoHo, it wasn’t until the AQI scale passed 400—well above hazardous—that REI agreed to close while still paying employees in full for the day. “Before that,” according to the post, “they held our reduced wages over our heads, forcing workers to choose between our own safety and our livelihoods.”

“This is a stark reminder,” the post concluded, “that direct action gets the goods—and that we, the union, keep us safe.”

At the Trader Joe’s Essex Crossing store, unionized workers also asked management to close the store on Wednesday, according to Jordan Pollack, who has worked there for almost a year. Pollack tells In These Times that despite wearing a mask, employees began to notice the air becoming smoky.

Pollack says they ran and bought some masks for their co-workers, and by their lunch break the AQI was over 300. They said that repeated attempts to convince management it was too dangerous to be working were met with accusations of sparking panic and an offer to go home—without pay.

“I was gaslit,” Pollack says. “Managers and maybe a few coworkers were not wearing any masks. It was as if there was this complete denial of the world being apocalyptic—that a huge climate catastrophe could actually affect working conditions.”

Eventually, Pollack says, 12 of the crew of roughly 20 working that day walked out.

Pollack wonders why workers weren’t notified or protected before the air quality got so bad. One justification managers used to avoid closing the store, they say, was that the New York government hadn’t issued a state of emergency. “Why were no precautions taken before then?” they ask. “Why did it take us feeling like the world was ending … for anyone to be like, ‘Oh, this is something we need to respond to?’ Are we living in completely different worlds right now?”

Both Trader Joe's and REI’s union efforts were aided by the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a project of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to keep workers safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. EWOC is a distributed grassroots organizing program that provides training and support to workers hoping to organize a union or simply stand up against unfair conditions on the job.

New York City issued an air quality health advisory, not a state of emergency, Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn’t until Wednesday morning—when air quality was already diminishing to historic levels—that New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul addressed reporters and residents about the crisis. At a press conference, Adams claimed “there is no blueprint or playbook” for this “unprecedented” event.

Meanwhile, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation first raised concerns about air pollution from the fires on June 1.

By Wednesday afternoon, the AQI index in New York City spiked past 400 out of 500—the highest ever recorded in the city, according to FOX Weather’s analysis of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data. Adams and Hochul told vulnerable New Yorkers to stay inside.

On Wednesday evening, as the sky turned from orange back to gray, Hochul tweeted out that one million masks would be made available across the state Thursday morning to pick up from select locations.

That same night, DSA members hopped on an emergency meeting to develop a plan to help support New York workers.

“Had the state responded effectively to the ongoing pandemic, we would not have had to organize our volunteer distribution,” NYC-DSA co-chairs Jeremy Cohan and Jaslin Kaur said in a statement. “This is a climate crisis, a public health crisis, a labor crisis—a crisis of capitalism.”

Volunteers delivered thousands of N95 masks to workers and unions: 4,000 to Teamsters Local 804 (which represents UPS workers), 6,000 to Amazon Labor Union, 900 to Los Deliveristas delivery workers, 200 to Trader Joes United, 300 to housing authority residents, and more than 700 to workers at restaurants, Starbucks stores, nail salons and ghost kitchens.

Upstate, near Rochester, organizers with the United Farm Workers distributed respirator masks to crews who had not been warned about the air quality and were laboring without PPE. This is horrifyingly a normal occurrence for agriculture workers; in California, an unofficial survey done in 2020 found that 92% of workers said they had not received N95 masks during wildfires in that state.

Exposure to wildfire smoke has been shown to increase rates of chronic respiratory and heart diseases. Individuals exposed to smoke without protective equipment risk lifelong effects—wildfire smoke is perhaps 10 times more harmful than other sources of air pollution.

Those on the east coast, including Adams, who say there is no precedent for this situation are somehow forgetting that similar events happen all the time on the west coast.

“In California, this has happened before,” says Matt Leichenger, a UPS driver and member of Teamsters Local 804. “The company should know how to respond.” He says when it's raining, the company often sends notifications to delivery drivers to remind them to increase the distance they are following other cars to avoid accidents.

But instead, he says, there was “radio silence” from UPS on Wednesday.

That day on his delivery route in Borough Park, Brooklyn, he found he was met with a particular kindness and appreciation from customers. When he pulled over to pick up a mask from a bodega, the clerk urged him to just take it.

“The bodega gives out free masks and my multibillion-dollar employer doesn't,” Leichenger laments.

In a statement emailed to In These Times, UPS said that they were "closely tracking this rapidly-developing situation of smoke from Canadian wildfires" and that "the wellbeing and safety of UPSers is our number one priority."

"We are working on a variety of immediate actions. This includes the speedy distribution of masks for our employees in affected areas," the statement read. "We are talking with our drivers and workers in affected areas to review CDC guidelines and local guidance from elected officials. We are following developments closely and will continue to be in close contact with our people as the situation evolves."

REI, Trader Joe’s and Mayor Adams did not return requests for comment.

On Thursday morning Leichenger, with the help of other Local 804 organizers and DSA, transformed their already slated UPS strike authorization vote rally into a mask distribution event. “This is what socialism looks like in a capitalist world,” he says. “Socialists organize solutions with fewer resources than the corporations.”

In New York and elsewhere, the smog began to subside on Friday evening.

Meanwhile, Steve Milloy, former tobacco industry lobbyist and a senior policy fellow of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a Koch-funded Right-wing think-tank that has fought greenhouse gas regulation, went on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle to declare that “this has nothing to do with climate.” He also went on to say wildfire and particulate matter are innocuous. “This doesn’t kill anybody, this doesn’t make anybody cough, this is not a health event,” he said.

Host Laura Ingraham laughed: “Steve, we’re back at the masks.”

Milloy’s claims are false: pm2.5 particles, found in wildfire smoke, are particularly dangerous.

Many of the workers interviewed for this article say they only want something simple from their companies.

“If I could say one thing,” Rivera, the Starbucks barista from New Jersey, concludes, “it would be to listen to us.”

“I wake up at 3:30 in the morning,” she says. “I work hard at my job. I just want to be respected.”

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Paige Oamek and Rohan Montgomery.

The 2020 protests that took place in the immediate wake of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd were a historic call for America to reckon with its racist, oppressive system of state-sanctioned police violence. Three years later, rather than a reckoning, that same system, along with the political and business elites propping it up, are giving us “Cop City” (ie, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the Atlanta Police Foundation’s 85-acre, $90-million police militarization and training complex where law enforcement from around the US and beyond will, among other things, train for urban warfare scenarios). Plans to build Cop City have been mired in controversy and civil rights violations from the beginning—from the city government’s attempts to ignore residents’ and activists’ objections and force through the construction of Cop City in Atlanta’s ecologically vital Weelaunee Forest, to police raiding an encampment of peaceful protestors and murdering one of them, Manuel (“Tortuguita”) Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, to the truly Orwellian crackdown on protestors and advocates, dozens of whom are being arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism.”

As Micah Herskind writes, “The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It’s not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It’s not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding. The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta. It’s a struggle over who the city is for: the city’s corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city.” Make no mistake, though, the fight to Stop Cop City is all of our fight, and that very much includes the labor movement. In this mini-cast, we speak with Kamau Franklin and Mariah Parker about Cop City, the fight to stop it, and why labor needs to get off the sidelines and join that fight.

Kamau Franklin has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. He is also a lawyer, writer, and the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Mariah Parker is labor and community organizer, a rapper (known by the stage name Linqua Franqa), and recently served as District 2 County Commissioner for Athens-Clarke County in Athens, Georgia, from 2018 – 2022.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kamau Franklin: Hi, my name is Kamau Franklin. I am the founder of a new grassroots organization called Community Movement Builders, where we do a combination of the things organizing against the issue of gentrification, and we also do a lot of organizing against police violence, which is what led us into the struggle against Cop City. We also do what we call sustainable development, which is to provide resources to people in southwest Atlanta, a working class, a poor black community, one of the last of such communities still intact. But we also do cooperatives, mutual aid, so forth. So we’re a power building organization that’s meant to support building institutions that black community controls and fighting against institutions that we feel oppress and control our community to its detriment.

Mariah Parker: My name is Mariah Parker. I’m an alumni of the United Campus Workers of Georgia 3265 at the University of Georgia where I was a PhD student. I also, from 2018 to 2022, served as an Athens-Clarke County commissioner and was very focused on worker empowerment from living wages for city employees to developing worker ownership models that we could back with public funds and things of that sort. But these days I am down in Atlanta organizing low wage workers in the fast food industry and stopping Cop City.

Maximillian Alvarez: All right, well welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So if you’re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, go check out the other great shows in our network. And of course, please support the work that we are doing here on Working People by sharing these episodes with your friends, your coworkers, and your family members, please leave us positive reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, the single best thing you can do to support our work is become a paid monthly subscriber on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/workingpeople.

Smash that subscribe button and you’ll immediately get access to all of our great bonus episodes. We’ve published some really great ones of late, including most recently an interview that I got to do with the industrial correspondent Taj Ali at the Tribune in the United Kingdom. Taj is doing great work covering the strike wave going on across the UK so you guys don’t want to miss that great conversation. So my name is Maximilian Alvarez, and as y’all heard, we’ve got a really special and urgent episode for y’all today. This is an episode that we’ve been wanting to record for a while. It’s one that touches on a subject that folks have been asking us about, especially after we posted the recording of our live show that we recorded down in Atlanta, which I started by mentioning like the issue of Cop City and the draconian repression of all those who are standing up and fighting against it.

And we wanted to kind of bring Mariah and Kamau on the show, two true working class warriors, folks fighting the good fight in their communities, standing up for poor black working people, oppressed people all across the south and beyond. And they are really on the front lines along with others in this incredible and necessary fight against Cop City. And so we wanted to bring them on to sort of answer our listeners’ questions about what the fuck is Cop City? Why is this massive thing called Cop City being rammed through against the wishes of working communities in the area? Who is supporting this move to build Cop City and especially what the hell is going on with these really Orwellian draconian crackdowns on protestors charging them with terrorism for standing up against Cop City?

I’m sure you guys have been seeing the headlines about this and we’re going to link to more coverage about it, but things are getting really, really dark down there in Atlanta and we ultimately want to make sure that people know about this struggle, why they should care about it, how they can get involved in the fight against it.

And also given that we’re having this conversation on this show, Mariah and I were talking about this in Atlanta, we need to also have a serious conversation about why labor needs to get its ass off the sideline and get involved in this fight and what that could look like, right? We’ve seen occasional hopeful signs with workers and union members kind of joining the protest against Cop City. We’ve even seen occasionally statements from union leadership like Jimmy Williams of the painters union speaking out against the crackdown on protestors against Cop City. But so much more is needed and that’s really where we are. That’s why we wanted to bring Kamau and Mariah on the show today because as I said, they’re right there on the front lines. I know that they got answers to all of your guys’ questions.

And so without further ado, let’s dig into this because I know you guys are super busy and I don’t want to keep you for too long. So I was wondering if we could just go around the table and just sort of give each of your takes on, if you’re sitting down across from someone who just heard about Cop City and the crackdown against protestors, what do you think they most need to know about what Cop City is, where it’s come from and what’s been going on down there in Atlanta these past few months? So Kamau, why don’t I turn it back over to you?

Kamau Franklin: When I talk about Cop City, I try to make sure that folks understand that this is not just some benign police training center that’s being built up because the police’s current training center is dilapidated or they just need a new area to train in. I think it’s really important to situate the idea of Cop City within the 2020 uprisings against the police murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and here in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks, that it was after these uprisings that took place across the country that Atlanta in particular felt flatfooted, like it didn’t have a proper response to the organizing that was happening across the city.

And as part of that response, they decided to initiate the idea of a 265 acre training center, what we call Cop City, basically a militarized slash paramilitary training center where they practice such things as urban warfare where they’re going to have over a dozen firing ranges where they’re going to have, well, at least originally in their plans, they’re claiming they took this out, but we shall soon see a station for a Black hawk helicopter to land where they’re going to be doing training with dozens of forces across the country, including internationally training with Israeli police.

And for us, this was a clear sign that the building of this training center via the Atlanta Police Foundation with funds from private corporations over 60 million dollars was pledged from private corporations, 30 million dollars at the very least, numbers are starting to tick up as we speak, that the city was supposed to give. And so we see this as a response to when people were calling for the abolition of the police or defunding the police or finding alternatives to public safety. Atlanta, the corporate class and the Atlanta Police Foundation decided to double down on militarized policing, which would be targeted not only towards movements and organizing, but continue the over-policing of black communities. Here in Atlanta, 90% of the arrests that take place in Atlanta slash Fulton County are of black people, even though black folks now represent less than 50% of the proper population of Atlanta.

So it’s really important for folks to understand that, again, in response to or organizing against Cop City, what the city of Atlanta decided to do was to double down on the militarized police and to continue with the over-policing which caused the uprisings in the first place in response to the police killing innocent people.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add—and I think that’s a perfect explanation of how we got here and what we’re dealing with—this facility is set to replace large swaths of the largest urban forest in North America, what they call one of the four lungs of Atlanta. So when you’re walking down the street every day, that air you breathe in, you have the Weelaunee forest. As you know, the Muscogee people originally named the river along which the forest sort of runs, the Weelaunee river, now that we call it the Weelaunee forest in their honor, that the air we breathe is cleaned by the trees that are currently being cut down in the forest. So this is not only an issue of police brutality, of honestly the rise of fascism as Kamau said, this is going to be training a paramilitary force that will be able to put down uprisings and control black neighborhoods.

But this is also an environmental justice issue, an environmental racism issue. This area surrounding the forests are overwhelmingly neighborhoods of color. Black people are the ones that are living near the aquifer that’s being poisoned by the lead in the soil from the bullets that the police are shooting already, have been shooting already at this site. Already environmental protections have been neglected along this aquifer. And even in the construction of this site, the Atlanta Police Foundation and others who are conspiring with them have been able to get away with getting around standards for construction and anyone else would have to follow to ensure that the environment is being minimally disrupted. And so what’s one thing that’s very interesting about this movement that has brought together police abolitionists, prison abolitionists, folks that just are not about the cops generally, as well as folks from the environmental movement who see this as a climate change issue, who see this as an issue of environmental degradation.

Another thing I would add about how we got here is that in response to the uprisings that’s come out, liberals were able to co-opt the demand to defund the police and things like that and argue for more training, even though studies have found that more training does not decrease police violence. In fact, officers that killed Rayshard Brooks had recently been involved in advanced training, it doesn’t actually help anything. But they’ve then used that argument to push through this facility because they’re aiming to train officers better. And I bring this up because we want to talk about fascism, we want to talk about repression, government repression. These are Democrats, these are liberals that are standing behind this project trying to push this project forward who have co-opted the movement to say that training’s what we need when we know that we need affordable housing.

We know that we need better access to healthcare. We know we need access to healthy food systems in order to keep our community safe. Now, the last thing I want to say on this, bringing it back around to why this is important to labor as Kamau also brought up, the Atlanta Police Foundation had pledged 60 million to help fund this project. Now, where is that money coming from? That money is coming from the corporate elite across the city of Atlanta and across the south. Talking about Delta, we’re talking about Waffle House, chick-Fil-A, talking about Inspire Brands. That is the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts. We’re talking about the who’s who of the corporate elite in the city and across the south. Now, where are they getting their money from? They’re getting money from, if it’s Chick-Fil-A, they’re getting that money from wage theft and abusing child labor, if they’re getting it from Waffle House, they have wage theft written into their employee handbook.

They’re taking that money from the workers that are creating all this profit and they’re reinvesting it into their oppression. And so even Delta, which right now they’re having a big union fight with the Delta workers here in Atlanta, they just recently fought for three years to get cost of living increases in their contract. Now, Delta doesn’t have money for that and wants to fight all day about that, but somehow they have all this cash with which they can lavish the Atlanta Police Foundation in order to build this facility. And so that to me is part of why this project is really nefarious and unites labor as well as folks that are liberation minded and want to get people free from cops. It’s that a lot of the money that’s been promised to put into this paramilitary facility is just coming straight out of the pockets of working people through these corporations that are funding the Atlanta Police Foundation and funding this facility.

Maximillian Alvarez: I want to circle back to kind of the point that Kamau, you started with because this was not lost on me and it’s so indicative of this perverse American psychosis when it comes to policing. The three of us are recording this episode on Friday, May 26th. Yesterday was the three year anniversary of Minneapolis Police murdering George Floyd. And at the Real News Network we released an interview that I was honored to do with George’s brother Philonise and his wife Keeta, talking about that horrific event that changed their family and in many ways changed the country forever. We talked about how they wanted George to be remembered, what they hoped change would look like, so that what happened to George would never happen to another person again. And we saw the uprisings that hit all 50 states in the wake of George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

We saw how much that movement spread even around the world. And for a moment it did feel like we were at the brink of a reckoning in this country. And here we fucking are three years later and saying, okay, the institutions, the establishment’s response is to construct an 85 acre, 9000 million dollar facility where militarized police can come and train and do sort of training operations, simulating urban warfare with the very same people who were protesting against their abuse just three years later. That’s where we are. We’re in America, of course that’s where we are. But I don’t want that ridiculousness and Orwellian nature of the situation to be lost on people because I think it does really highlight, as you were both saying, that there is a fundamental class warfare component to all of this. There is a sort of top-down pressure to stamp out the resistance that scared the establishment three years ago.

There is, the capital always does. It relies on this increasingly militarized arm of the police to push poor and working people back into subservience, to push us into jails and prisons to kill us as the kind of surplus of the system that they categorize us to be. So even just from the fundamental beginnings, we can see how and why working class people have a stake in this fight because this is a fight that is being directed back at us. That’s what’s going to be happening not just with the construction of Cop City, with the crackdown on protestors, but ultimately what is going to be produced at this fucking massive facility. Pardon my language.

And to build on what you were saying, Mariah, I want to sort of talk about that element of the forces that are arraying here to push this Cop City into reality, even if it means bulldozing this massive necessary forest, even if it means bulldozing the people trying to stand in the way of it. Can we talk a bit about, I guess, maybe over the past year, what that fight has looked like on the ground to you all? What sort of forces are involved here and what the resistance has looked like to the construction of Cop City?

Kamau Franklin: Sure. I mean, I think when we go back, this fight has been going on for now over two years. When we heard about Cop City again after the uprisings, organizers, activists, environmentalists, other folks understood again right away what this meant. And at first, the organizing was what you would consider standard campaign politics where we were doing everything from petition drives to demonstrations to call your city council person, call the mayor, town halls. This was before the city council took a vote, and we were doing those things to try to pressure the city council and the mayor who thought that this was a done deal. They didn’t think that they would have to do any explaining to the public, that they were just going to push this through. And even at that time, the police were violent in their tactics in terms of targeting organizers and activists.

So even in the early parts of the fight against Cop City, the police would come to the demonstrations. They would make arrests, people who were just standing on sidewalks. People would get pepper sprayed, they’d get thrown to the ground after they were arrested, they’d have their paperwork threatened to be lost if they complained about the food and the conditions. So that was happening early on. At that time, they weren’t charging people with domestic terrorism. They were charging people with things like disorderly conduct, obstruction of governmental administration. As we moved past the vote, when the city council decided to give the Atlanta Police Foundation basically this gift of over 265 acres of land for approximately, if I’m not mistaken, $10 a year in terms of a lease payment, part of the movement broke off and started doing forest defense particularly, and I think we should always call out and compliment young anarchist kids who decided that part of the struggle was to actually go in the forest, as Mariah mentioned earlier, with the Weelaunee forest and take up camp there.

And they packed up in trees, they created tree huts. They did everything they could to stop the forest, to put this into a space where you could see that the force needed to be defended and where you can see that people needed to understand what was happening in terms of the reaction to these young people doing it. It was shortly after that, and some of the tactics and tactics that we accept as tactics of fighting back to make sure that the trees weren’t burnt down, that basically the Atlanta Police Department joined in a task force with the county Police Department, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation with Homeland Security to form a task force. And they began discussing the idea of charging organizers and activists and forced offenders with domestic terrorism.

And so last year in December, the first raid in the force, which resulted in approximately six people being charged with domestic terrorism, then we had another raid in the force, and not only another six people was charged, but that is when for the first time in American history, an overt environmental activist was killed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and various SWAT teams in Atlanta, the Atlanta police, that young activist Tortuguita was murdered by the police, shot 57 times or having 57 bullet holes we should say, which include entrance and exit holes. That was as much as they could count. And then after that, there was another six or seven folks arrested in a demonstration downtown.

And then later on doing a music festival, doing a week of action, another 23 organizers who are arrested and charged with domestic terrorism. And so basically, the tactics of the state have been to intimidate, to criminalize and to scare people out of being supportive of this movement. But during that time, this movement has only grown. This movement has grown from one of a local issue to one where people were coming from outside and joining with those local protestors to one which took on a national significance. One that’s now taken on an international significance and one that now at this time is probably the preeminent issue amongst folks who are fighting against police terror and violence in this country.

And so that struggle continues. It’s been a long struggle. Many different factions, as Mariah has mentioned earlier, have come into this struggle and played a great role in forwarding, adding resources, adding nuance to it, putting word out to their particular constituencies that has kept this movement building and going, even as the city continues to push to build this, the movement is pushing back. And I think that’s one of the things that we have to remember again, particularly over the last year that this movement has not basically been run down under the heel of oppressive corporate interlockers, the city government, the state government, again, with federal helpers of all political stripes themselves, both Democrats and Republicans joining together to fight this fight against organizers and activists who are fighting against police violence. As that’s been happening, folks have continued to fight back and to try to stop Cop City from being built.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add, I’m really glad that Kamau spoke to the nature of movement building—in its early years, it’s a ton of canvassing, community outreach, and to this day, it’s a very important part of that as well as forest events. People actually taking up space in the forest to physically stop the construction from happening. But in this iteration of the movement with the forest now cleared under the violence of police that have taken the life of a protestor, folks have been leaning back upon typical civic engagement strategies like showing up to City Hall. And most recently when the legislation was first introduced to give 30 million dollars of taxpayer money to support this project, there was a record breaking seven hours of public comment of Atlantan’s who came out. And unanimously. 300 people came out and unanimously spoke against this project, folks who have been lobbying their city council people, trying to use these formal legal organs and political organs to ensure that their voices are heard by their supposed representatives.

So we have a ton of, I say this because we have ton of folks trying to do this, quote on quote, the right way, but ultimately if folks are unheard through these channels where we are supposed to have a voice, where we are told that these folks are supposed to represent the public, people have become really frustrated.

And that’s when we see things like folks taking to the streets, an extra legal means of making sure that they are heard and that the construction and the forces that are coming together to destroy this forest are stops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I mean, it’s just, they’re just so upfront with their bare contempt for what the public wants, what people say they want. I mean, they just want to squash us into silence or comfortably put us in those little protest zones where they can comfortably ignore us. I mean, it’s just so obvious what they’re doing and it’s so infuriating, which is why we need increasing kind of public pressure around the country and beyond to make sure that they know that this is not an issue that is just going to go away. And I’m going to circle back in a second to that kind of crackdown on free speech, on dissent, on the draconian use of anti-terrorism laws to silence people standing up against Cop City. But I guess I wanted to just hover really quick since I’ve got two seasoned community and labor organizers on the call right now.

And this is a show where we talk to workers every single week about their lives, jobs, dreams and struggles where we try to hear out what they are going through in their workplaces and make the connections with them between their lives, their struggles, and the struggles that we talk about with other workers around the country and beyond.

I wanted to just ask in the sort of day-to-day conversations that y’all have been getting into with other folks down there, I guess could you maybe share a little bit of that with our listeners?

I guess, how are people talking about this? How are working people sort of talking about this and seeing this as an issue that concerns them? What can those of us who are organizing in our workplaces in other parts of the country, what can we do better to talk to our coworkers about why this is such an important issue that all of us should care about?

Mariah Parker: I mean, one thing I’ll say from being out in the streets talking to a lot of fast food workers, retail workers, folks in low wage jobs, it is, first of all, not everyone has heard that this is going on, which I think speaks to a failure of public engagement on the part of the government that wants to see this happen. And I think that is partially by design. You want to have a city council meeting in the middle of the day when people are either picking their kids up from school or they’re themselves working, and so they can’t come and be part of that public comment. The fact that the paper of record for the city of Atlanta, state of Georgia is also owned by folks that are fundraising for Cop City. And so it’s very hard to get messages out about what the public is saying, that the public that is engaged in this project.

I am finding that a lot of the initial conversations we’re having with people is introducing the idea that this is happening in the first place, but you know what people do bring up and what people do know about and know needs to change? The fact that so many of the workers I talked to are living out of their cars or in hotels because they can’t afford housing in the city of Atlanta right now, folks that have experienced premature deaths of people in their family because they don’t have access to healthcare. And I bring this up because folks recognize that these needs, housing, healthcare, et cetera, are not being invested in. They live that day in and day out firsthand. And so when you bring up the fact that they don’t have money to make sure that you have affordable housing, well, I’m sorry I don’t have money so that your friend that passed away suddenly from a stroke in his thirties, sorry, that he didn’t have any healthcare, but they do have.

They did somehow find 90 million dollars to fund this facility. It really, really strikes people in a way that it’s easy is get as infuriated as I am pretty quickly to know that if they had a magic wand and could spend 30 million dollars anywhere they wanted, 30 million of taxpayer money anywhere they wanted, nobody you meet at a McDonald’s, an Arby’s at a Dollar General is going to say, we should have a small army here in the city of Atlanta. That’s now what I would pay for. So that’s what I would really notice in conversation with people. Not everybody is like we’re still doing a ton of outreach to get people involved and get people up to speed on this issue, but if you approach a conversation from like, yo, what’s going on in your life and learn about the issues people are facing, nobody wants Cop City, people want housing. People want the things that actually make communities safe, and that starts with investing in the neighborhoods where these people live.

Mariah Parker: Look, just a couple months ago I was helping organize a labor action downtown Atlanta. They actually haven’t even started yet when the police rolled up and told us to leave. And when we got to the target location, somehow there’s just people. So it was like some security there waiting for us when we got there. But we have to plan how we’re going to go about actions. It’s a huge factor in it that we’re not just dealing with the police, that we’re dealing with the Atlanta Police Department because we know what frenzy they’re in right now because I think they fear progressive social movements of all kinds rising up against them as even some liberal orgs have joined in the chorus of folks saying, stop Cop City. I’ve seen firsthand that they are here to break up any kind of working class movement. Labor isn’t excluded.

In fact, just yesterday the Atlanta Police Department moved into the building across the street from where all the major labor unions in the state of Georgia are headquartered. And that to me is not any kind of like, oh, coincidence and nothing like that. It’s keeping an eye on the folks that could be the missing piece to the movement puzzle of really stopping this. If labor unions came out in support of the movement, if they were leveraging their power within institutions like Southern Company, like some of these businesses that are giving money to cop city like Delta to make this demand on the bosses, these people, these employees who are stakeholders in these companies, that would be their worst nightmare. And so I mean we are already seeing even intimidation, I think, taking place. Not only out on the strike line, but in the very physical proximity of police departments to try to keep an eye on actors like this.

That could be very game changing in the movement. So yeah, there’s a long robust history all over and including in Atlanta, there’s a robust history being made now of police repression, of labor movements as well, which is why this is also an issue that labor units have a personal stake in. That, in order to have those robust rights to withhold our labor and to disrupt these businesses, to get what we are owed, we have to be a part of this movement to fight back on the people that would put down our movements as well. In my opinion.

Kamau Franklin: I mean, and I’ll only add, you mentioned what’s happening now around the police in the intimidation tactics, and I’ve already talked about the fact that over 40 folks have domestic terrorism charges. There has been well over 70 or 80 arrests in a total movement against Cop City by the police. And again, this is being done in conjunction or together with folks who could have right wing white conservatives. i.e the governor of Georgia with folks who claim to be moderate and or progressives i.e talking about the democratic black mayor of Atlanta. And so it doesn’t matter what their so-called political stripes are in terms of these elected officials, they are all about having a strong police force, a militarized police force that they can call out at a moment’s notice to protect property, to stop movements and to over police communities. They know what they want, they know how they want to deploy them.

The idea of Cop City is an idea that lets them have other police forces, as mentioned earlier, come down and train with them, basically having common tactics and strategies as if it was a national police force as well as international players who are coming in and training on tactics that they use to oppress their own or people or land that they stole from. Those tactics are being imported here. i.e the Israelis in terms of their work, their tactics and strategies oppressing Palestinians, that’s all being brought here. So we understand that the policing that’s happening is something that’s controlled by the elites for the purposes of supporting corporations, supporting developers in Atlanta.

This is around pushing out poor working class people, particularly poor working class black people, and turning Atlanta further into a playground of the rich, making Atlanta akin to a San Francisco in terms of a city where all you see is a vast amount of differences in wealth from the most poor to the richest, who are the only ones who can afford to live here.

And the poor folks are the homeless ones that people are trying to kick out and continue to criminalize. This is the city that they’re creating, the so-called black Mecca that they’re creating as they empty out black people from the actual city and they’re using the police as the tip of the spear, as their forward force in which they are going to push people out, control movements and stop Atlanta from having any sense of having a working class population here that can afford to live here and prosper here.

And they’re doing it knowingly, no matter what they say. You can’t have 40 years of gentrification under, again, majority black city councils and under black leadership and suggest that somehow it’s a fluke, it’s a mistake. We don’t know how we got here. It is under this leadership that we’ve got here because in the terms of the class issue, the black bourgeois leadership has sided with the corporations and the developers again to empty out the city of working class and poor people, particularly working class and poor black people.

Maximillian Alvarez: Man, again, it’s like so powerfully put by both of you and I’m just so grateful for you for the time that you’ve given us to kind of break this all down. And I want to kind of round things out. I’m going to ask y’all both in a second if you just have any final words about how people listening can get involved in this struggle or where they can find you all and the work that you and your orgs are doing, and then we’ll round out there. But I guess by way of getting there, I just wanted to read for folks listening, like I said, there has been some support from the organized labor movement, not nearly an enough, but it was encouraging to see Jimmy Williams, the general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades make a statement which we will link to so y’all can check it out.

It was short, but Jimmy did say, and I quote, “the right to speak up and peacefully protest is fundamental to our union and to all working people. Since the protest began, we’ve seen violence including the death of one protestor as well as dozens of arrests and incredulous charges of domestic terrorism in some cases stemming from the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. I believe that these tactics are designed more to quell dissent and to dissuade working people from exercising their rights to protest and demonstrate than they are to legitimately uphold the law. It has to stop. Our rights as working people must be upheld, and we deserve to live in a society free from police violence.” End quote. So shout out to Jimmy, shout out to the painters, but again, we need more. And in that note, Kamau, Mariah, I wanted to thank you both once again for joining me and ask if you could close us out with any final words that you have to working people out there listening to the labor movement in general and where can folks find you and what can they do to get involved in this struggle?

Kamau Franklin: I’ll go really quickly. So to find us. Our organization is Community Movement Builders, the website, communitymovementbuilders.org. We have a Stop Cop City page there where folks can learn a whole bunch of different ways in which they can be involved. Very important coming up is June 5th, which is going to be another day of action at City Hall where they’re actually going to take the vote to allocate the over 33 million dollars to the Atlanta Police Foundation. So we definitely want people to call in if they’re not in Atlanta. If they are in Atlanta, we want people to come down to City Hall from 11 o’clock eastern time on to protest, to organize, to speak out.

And my message to working class people is that we won’t win until we continue to get out into these streets, organize, push back and fight back. This is not a time period where we’re going to be able to bargain our way out of fascism, where you can only win against fascism if we fight back. If a large part of that fight back is organizing, being involved in the struggle, fighting in the streets, and winning victories for our people and challenging the oligarchs and the corporations which are trying to divide and conquer us.

Mariah Parker: Hallelujah. Amen. Only thing that I would add is that I mentioned earlier that stakeholders in some of these companies that are funding this project, Delta, Southern Company, a lot of these fast food restaurants, Inspire Brands. You can find out who is giving money to or somehow financially implicated in Cop City by going to stopcopcitysolidarity.org. And if you live in a city, no matter where you live, you might be able to find a target, someone like a bank that’s giving the insurance for the project.

You maybe find a Wells Fargo, maybe you work at a Wells Fargo and you and a couple clerks behind the window want to have an action to demonstrate to the overlords that y’all not happy with the complicity in this project. Anyone anywhere can take these kinds of actions. They’ve been very helpful for us for helping erode the power of capital and supporting this project for yanking some of this corporate support away from the project and ultimately undermining their ability to put that private money into Cop City. So if you go to copcitysolidarity.org, you can look up somewhere near you that is financially tied to this project and mobilize some folks, take some kind of action to let them know that their actions to support Cop City will not stand, not in your community, not anywhere.

Kamau Franklin: I’ll back that up completely. I think Mariah’s completely correct. When we speak to folks in the community, there are folks who are informed, but there are a good amount of people who don’t know about it. And there are other folks who are carrying on with their day-to-day lives trying to survive, trying to make it out of here. But once you start talking about it, the innate reaction based on the conditions that people live in is like, well, why do we need that? We know that that means they’re going to just be in our neighborhoods and communities, arresting more people, taking away our young people that instead of providing centers for our folks to go to, providing other things and activities or improving the education system that they would rather spend again, not only just the 30 million that the city is supposed to be giving. And that number, again, is increasingly going higher once we do further investigation into how the money is actually getting to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

But the same corporations who several years ago were saying that they were on the side of Black Lives Matter, have now given 60 million dollars or close to 60 million dollars to fund a project like this. People see it on their face that these same corporations which underpay us or have enough money like Mariah mentioned earlier, to give to a project like this. So it’s not hard to convince people or it’s not hard to make it clear for folks what the purpose of a Cop City is and what the role is of police in their lives. And so when folks understand that and hear that, for the most part they have questions and they are opposed to the idea that this is the way the city should spend its money.

I will also say for the people who are working class, people who live adjacent to the forest, and it is mostly a working class black community that lives adjacent to the work to the Weelaunee forest, those folks were promised that the forest would stay intact and that it would be used for nature trails, for parks, for places for their kids to enjoy and understand nature and again, to continue to serve as a preventer of climate change.

That area’s prone to flooding. Clear cutting that’s already happening in that forest will only add to the flooding in that neighborhood which will impact working class black communities. Those communities overwhelmingly have said that they are opposed to the building of Cop City. That that was not what the promise was. The promise was for them to have an area where they can bring their kids to, where they can have a park and so forth. It was not to build a militarized training center, which is going to have shooting ranges where cops are practicing how to shoot day and night in that forest next to this working class community, that people understand that this is a targeted approach to dealing with working class communities as opposed to giving resources to these communities. They’re going to flood these communities with more cops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m going to lose my shit, man.

Mariah Parker: Does it not make you feel insane? It makes me feel so insane.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m losing it.

Mariah Parker: It makes you feel so insane. And particularly they started clear cutting the forest a little bit earlier this year. And so photography and drone footage is coming out where there’s this scar on the earth where this beautiful forest used to be. Where I was at a music festival. There are people out there just vibing, enjoying music. There’s folks camping out, there are families, there’s children. They used to take children here to do field trips, to study the ecology of the forest. And now there is this, you see footage come out, they’re giving some journalists a tour of the forest today or what used to be the forest. And it drives me totally insane to see this. And I feel like speaking of common reactions of working class folks, that same shit of just being mind boggled and infuriated instantly is something I get all the time when I’m talking to people about this who haven’t heard about it before.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know our task is to turn that into action, which again is why I’m so grateful to folks like yourselves and everyone else out there doing that unsung work, everyone listening to this who is also doing that work day in, day out. We need you guys always, and we need more folks doing that work even just to make sure that people know that this is happening in the first place, let alone building on that and talking about why we should be invested in the fight against it, what the future looks like if we don’t fight. And I think, yeah, it’s the point you both made is just so poignant and I really want folks listening to sit with it because in many ways you guys know this, but it does really bear repeating. The safest communities are not the ones with the most police.

They’re the ones with the most resources and the most kind of shared wealth access to things like drinkable water and a bed to sleep in, a house to live in, schools to send your kids to, grocery stores, not just dollar stores, so on and so forth. It’s not throwing more police at poor and working class neighborhoods, is not going to somehow magically make those neighborhoods safer. How do I know that? Because that’s what we’ve been fucking doing for the past half century or more. And it hasn’t worked, at least by the supposed goals of that approach to policing. But anyway, I digress. So because I know I only have you guys for about 10 more minutes, so I wanted to bring things back to, I think we’ve done a great job of communicating to people why the push to build Cop City, the construction thereof, the sort of shadowy government and industry forces behind it, why all of those are already an issue for working people that we should care about.

But then there’s also the draconian crackdown on the protestors against Cop City and it’s a fundamentally connected issue, but it is almost sort of an issue within itself that we and that the labor movement needs to have a serious discussion about, because that is also going to directly impact us. It’s not just that they’re all the other kind of aspects to labor, workers’ relationship to the police that we already know about when we’re on strike. Who are the ones beating picketers and clearing way for scabs to come through the picket lines? It’s the cops, right? So when coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama at Warrior Met Coal were on strike for two years, who was it who was escorting scabs past their picket lines? Who was it who was enforcing these business friendly rulings by local judges, these injunctions limiting the amount of people who could picket, how far away from the entrance they could picket?

It was the police. And so we already know that in terms of limiting workers’ ability to exercise their right to free speech, their right to assemble, their right to go on strike and to withhold their labor, the quote on quote, criminal justice system has a historically antagonistic relationship to working people expressing those rights. But it goes even deeper than that. And I hope that folks listening to this can sort of hear the resonances with the interviews that we’ve done with workers in different industries over the past six seasons. Just think about the railroad workers. They had their right to strike, stripped from them by the most, quote on quote, pro-labor union president that the US has ever seen, and a congress that happily went with that decision and they gave the bosses, the rail carriers, everything that they wanted. And so when workers have our rights to withhold our labor to speak up and to exercise those basic fundamental rights, the bosses win.

And also most people in this country can be fired without just cause. So it’s not even a question of do I have these rights at work? Most people fucking don’t. We already know that they don’t, you can’t speak up for shit without losing your job and potentially thus losing your home and if you lose your home and we live in a society that criminalizes poverty, so you’re going to get beat up by the police and shuttled into prison. So are you guys seeing the connections here?

• Kamau’s Twitter page

• Community Movement Builders website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram

• Mariah’s Twitter page and LinkTree

• Stop Cop City

• Micah Herskind, Scalawag, “This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Cop City Protesters Face Felonies for Flyering as Police Repress Student Sit-Ins“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Atlanta Was a Constitution-Free Zone During “Stop Cop City” Week of Action“

• Stephen Janis & Taya Graham, The Real News Network, “Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Is a Blueprint for America’s Future“

• Frances Madeson, Truthout, “Domestic Terrorism Charges Against Cop City Demonstrators Spur Further Protests“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Atlanta Police Arrest Organizers of Bail Fund for Cop City Protestors“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protestor 57 Times, Autopsy Finds“

• Fair Fight Action Releases Statement Condemning Anti-Democratic Criminalization of Legal Aid Group Ahead of Vote on ‘Cop City’ Funding

• Jimmy Williams (General President of IUPAT) statement on Cop City

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Three Years Later, George Floyd’s Family Members Are Still Fighting for Justice“

• Morgan Simon, Forbes, “The Corporations Funding Cop City In Atlanta“

Permanent links below…

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• 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 (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Post-production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The 2020 protests that took place in the immediate wake of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd were a historic call for America to reckon with its racist, oppressive system of state-sanctioned police violence. Three years later, rather than a reckoning, that same system, along with the political and business elites propping it up, are giving us “Cop City” (ie, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the Atlanta Police Foundation’s 85-acre, $90-million police militarization and training complex where law enforcement from around the US and beyond will, among other things, train for urban warfare scenarios). Plans to build Cop City have been mired in controversy and civil rights violations from the beginning—from the city government’s attempts to ignore residents’ and activists’ objections and force through the construction of Cop City in Atlanta’s ecologically vital Weelaunee Forest, to police raiding an encampment of peaceful protestors and murdering one of them, Manuel (“Tortuguita”) Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, to the truly Orwellian crackdown on protestors and advocates, dozens of whom are being arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism.”

As Micah Herskind writes, “The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It’s not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It’s not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding. The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta. It’s a struggle over who the city is for: the city’s corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city.” Make no mistake, though, the fight to Stop Cop City is all of our fight, and that very much includes the labor movement. In this mini-cast, we speak with Kamau Franklin and Mariah Parker about Cop City, the fight to stop it, and why labor needs to get off the sidelines and join that fight.

Kamau Franklin has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. He is also a lawyer, writer, and the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Mariah Parker is labor and community organizer, a rapper (known by the stage name Linqua Franqa), and recently served as District 2 County Commissioner for Athens-Clarke County in Athens, Georgia, from 2018 – 2022.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kamau Franklin: Hi, my name is Kamau Franklin. I am the founder of a new grassroots organization called Community Movement Builders, where we do a combination of the things organizing against the issue of gentrification, and we also do a lot of organizing against police violence, which is what led us into the struggle against Cop City. We also do what we call sustainable development, which is to provide resources to people in southwest Atlanta, a working class, a poor black community, one of the last of such communities still intact. But we also do cooperatives, mutual aid, so forth. So we’re a power building organization that’s meant to support building institutions that black community controls and fighting against institutions that we feel oppress and control our community to its detriment.

Mariah Parker: My name is Mariah Parker. I’m an alumni of the United Campus Workers of Georgia 3265 at the University of Georgia where I was a PhD student. I also, from 2018 to 2022, served as an Athens-Clarke County commissioner and was very focused on worker empowerment from living wages for city employees to developing worker ownership models that we could back with public funds and things of that sort. But these days I am down in Atlanta organizing low wage workers in the fast food industry and stopping Cop City.

Maximillian Alvarez: All right, well welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So if you’re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, go check out the other great shows in our network. And of course, please support the work that we are doing here on Working People by sharing these episodes with your friends, your coworkers, and your family members, please leave us positive reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, the single best thing you can do to support our work is become a paid monthly subscriber on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/workingpeople.

Smash that subscribe button and you’ll immediately get access to all of our great bonus episodes. We’ve published some really great ones of late, including most recently an interview that I got to do with the industrial correspondent Taj Ali at the Tribune in the United Kingdom. Taj is doing great work covering the strike wave going on across the UK so you guys don’t want to miss that great conversation. So my name is Maximilian Alvarez, and as y’all heard, we’ve got a really special and urgent episode for y’all today. This is an episode that we’ve been wanting to record for a while. It’s one that touches on a subject that folks have been asking us about, especially after we posted the recording of our live show that we recorded down in Atlanta, which I started by mentioning like the issue of Cop City and the draconian repression of all those who are standing up and fighting against it.

And we wanted to kind of bring Mariah and Kamau on the show, two true working class warriors, folks fighting the good fight in their communities, standing up for poor black working people, oppressed people all across the south and beyond. And they are really on the front lines along with others in this incredible and necessary fight against Cop City. And so we wanted to bring them on to sort of answer our listeners’ questions about what the fuck is Cop City? Why is this massive thing called Cop City being rammed through against the wishes of working communities in the area? Who is supporting this move to build Cop City and especially what the hell is going on with these really Orwellian draconian crackdowns on protestors charging them with terrorism for standing up against Cop City?

I’m sure you guys have been seeing the headlines about this and we’re going to link to more coverage about it, but things are getting really, really dark down there in Atlanta and we ultimately want to make sure that people know about this struggle, why they should care about it, how they can get involved in the fight against it.

And also given that we’re having this conversation on this show, Mariah and I were talking about this in Atlanta, we need to also have a serious conversation about why labor needs to get its ass off the sideline and get involved in this fight and what that could look like, right? We’ve seen occasional hopeful signs with workers and union members kind of joining the protest against Cop City. We’ve even seen occasionally statements from union leadership like Jimmy Williams of the painters union speaking out against the crackdown on protestors against Cop City. But so much more is needed and that’s really where we are. That’s why we wanted to bring Kamau and Mariah on the show today because as I said, they’re right there on the front lines. I know that they got answers to all of your guys’ questions.

And so without further ado, let’s dig into this because I know you guys are super busy and I don’t want to keep you for too long. So I was wondering if we could just go around the table and just sort of give each of your takes on, if you’re sitting down across from someone who just heard about Cop City and the crackdown against protestors, what do you think they most need to know about what Cop City is, where it’s come from and what’s been going on down there in Atlanta these past few months? So Kamau, why don’t I turn it back over to you?

Kamau Franklin: When I talk about Cop City, I try to make sure that folks understand that this is not just some benign police training center that’s being built up because the police’s current training center is dilapidated or they just need a new area to train in. I think it’s really important to situate the idea of Cop City within the 2020 uprisings against the police murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and here in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks, that it was after these uprisings that took place across the country that Atlanta in particular felt flatfooted, like it didn’t have a proper response to the organizing that was happening across the city.

And as part of that response, they decided to initiate the idea of a 265 acre training center, what we call Cop City, basically a militarized slash paramilitary training center where they practice such things as urban warfare where they’re going to have over a dozen firing ranges where they’re going to have, well, at least originally in their plans, they’re claiming they took this out, but we shall soon see a station for a Black hawk helicopter to land where they’re going to be doing training with dozens of forces across the country, including internationally training with Israeli police.

And for us, this was a clear sign that the building of this training center via the Atlanta Police Foundation with funds from private corporations over 60 million dollars was pledged from private corporations, 30 million dollars at the very least, numbers are starting to tick up as we speak, that the city was supposed to give. And so we see this as a response to when people were calling for the abolition of the police or defunding the police or finding alternatives to public safety. Atlanta, the corporate class and the Atlanta Police Foundation decided to double down on militarized policing, which would be targeted not only towards movements and organizing, but continue the over-policing of black communities. Here in Atlanta, 90% of the arrests that take place in Atlanta slash Fulton County are of black people, even though black folks now represent less than 50% of the proper population of Atlanta.

So it’s really important for folks to understand that, again, in response to or organizing against Cop City, what the city of Atlanta decided to do was to double down on the militarized police and to continue with the over-policing which caused the uprisings in the first place in response to the police killing innocent people.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add—and I think that’s a perfect explanation of how we got here and what we’re dealing with—this facility is set to replace large swaths of the largest urban forest in North America, what they call one of the four lungs of Atlanta. So when you’re walking down the street every day, that air you breathe in, you have the Weelaunee forest. As you know, the Muscogee people originally named the river along which the forest sort of runs, the Weelaunee river, now that we call it the Weelaunee forest in their honor, that the air we breathe is cleaned by the trees that are currently being cut down in the forest. So this is not only an issue of police brutality, of honestly the rise of fascism as Kamau said, this is going to be training a paramilitary force that will be able to put down uprisings and control black neighborhoods.

But this is also an environmental justice issue, an environmental racism issue. This area surrounding the forests are overwhelmingly neighborhoods of color. Black people are the ones that are living near the aquifer that’s being poisoned by the lead in the soil from the bullets that the police are shooting already, have been shooting already at this site. Already environmental protections have been neglected along this aquifer. And even in the construction of this site, the Atlanta Police Foundation and others who are conspiring with them have been able to get away with getting around standards for construction and anyone else would have to follow to ensure that the environment is being minimally disrupted. And so what’s one thing that’s very interesting about this movement that has brought together police abolitionists, prison abolitionists, folks that just are not about the cops generally, as well as folks from the environmental movement who see this as a climate change issue, who see this as an issue of environmental degradation.

Another thing I would add about how we got here is that in response to the uprisings that’s come out, liberals were able to co-opt the demand to defund the police and things like that and argue for more training, even though studies have found that more training does not decrease police violence. In fact, officers that killed Rayshard Brooks had recently been involved in advanced training, it doesn’t actually help anything. But they’ve then used that argument to push through this facility because they’re aiming to train officers better. And I bring this up because we want to talk about fascism, we want to talk about repression, government repression. These are Democrats, these are liberals that are standing behind this project trying to push this project forward who have co-opted the movement to say that training’s what we need when we know that we need affordable housing.

We know that we need better access to healthcare. We know we need access to healthy food systems in order to keep our community safe. Now, the last thing I want to say on this, bringing it back around to why this is important to labor as Kamau also brought up, the Atlanta Police Foundation had pledged 60 million to help fund this project. Now, where is that money coming from? That money is coming from the corporate elite across the city of Atlanta and across the south. Talking about Delta, we’re talking about Waffle House, chick-Fil-A, talking about Inspire Brands. That is the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts. We’re talking about the who’s who of the corporate elite in the city and across the south. Now, where are they getting their money from? They’re getting money from, if it’s Chick-Fil-A, they’re getting that money from wage theft and abusing child labor, if they’re getting it from Waffle House, they have wage theft written into their employee handbook.

They’re taking that money from the workers that are creating all this profit and they’re reinvesting it into their oppression. And so even Delta, which right now they’re having a big union fight with the Delta workers here in Atlanta, they just recently fought for three years to get cost of living increases in their contract. Now, Delta doesn’t have money for that and wants to fight all day about that, but somehow they have all this cash with which they can lavish the Atlanta Police Foundation in order to build this facility. And so that to me is part of why this project is really nefarious and unites labor as well as folks that are liberation minded and want to get people free from cops. It’s that a lot of the money that’s been promised to put into this paramilitary facility is just coming straight out of the pockets of working people through these corporations that are funding the Atlanta Police Foundation and funding this facility.

Maximillian Alvarez: I want to circle back to kind of the point that Kamau, you started with because this was not lost on me and it’s so indicative of this perverse American psychosis when it comes to policing. The three of us are recording this episode on Friday, May 26th. Yesterday was the three year anniversary of Minneapolis Police murdering George Floyd. And at the Real News Network we released an interview that I was honored to do with George’s brother Philonise and his wife Keeta, talking about that horrific event that changed their family and in many ways changed the country forever. We talked about how they wanted George to be remembered, what they hoped change would look like, so that what happened to George would never happen to another person again. And we saw the uprisings that hit all 50 states in the wake of George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

We saw how much that movement spread even around the world. And for a moment it did feel like we were at the brink of a reckoning in this country. And here we fucking are three years later and saying, okay, the institutions, the establishment’s response is to construct an 85 acre, 9000 million dollar facility where militarized police can come and train and do sort of training operations, simulating urban warfare with the very same people who were protesting against their abuse just three years later. That’s where we are. We’re in America, of course that’s where we are. But I don’t want that ridiculousness and Orwellian nature of the situation to be lost on people because I think it does really highlight, as you were both saying, that there is a fundamental class warfare component to all of this. There is a sort of top-down pressure to stamp out the resistance that scared the establishment three years ago.

There is, the capital always does. It relies on this increasingly militarized arm of the police to push poor and working people back into subservience, to push us into jails and prisons to kill us as the kind of surplus of the system that they categorize us to be. So even just from the fundamental beginnings, we can see how and why working class people have a stake in this fight because this is a fight that is being directed back at us. That’s what’s going to be happening not just with the construction of Cop City, with the crackdown on protestors, but ultimately what is going to be produced at this fucking massive facility. Pardon my language.

And to build on what you were saying, Mariah, I want to sort of talk about that element of the forces that are arraying here to push this Cop City into reality, even if it means bulldozing this massive necessary forest, even if it means bulldozing the people trying to stand in the way of it. Can we talk a bit about, I guess, maybe over the past year, what that fight has looked like on the ground to you all? What sort of forces are involved here and what the resistance has looked like to the construction of Cop City?

Kamau Franklin: Sure. I mean, I think when we go back, this fight has been going on for now over two years. When we heard about Cop City again after the uprisings, organizers, activists, environmentalists, other folks understood again right away what this meant. And at first, the organizing was what you would consider standard campaign politics where we were doing everything from petition drives to demonstrations to call your city council person, call the mayor, town halls. This was before the city council took a vote, and we were doing those things to try to pressure the city council and the mayor who thought that this was a done deal. They didn’t think that they would have to do any explaining to the public, that they were just going to push this through. And even at that time, the police were violent in their tactics in terms of targeting organizers and activists.

So even in the early parts of the fight against Cop City, the police would come to the demonstrations. They would make arrests, people who were just standing on sidewalks. People would get pepper sprayed, they’d get thrown to the ground after they were arrested, they’d have their paperwork threatened to be lost if they complained about the food and the conditions. So that was happening early on. At that time, they weren’t charging people with domestic terrorism. They were charging people with things like disorderly conduct, obstruction of governmental administration. As we moved past the vote, when the city council decided to give the Atlanta Police Foundation basically this gift of over 265 acres of land for approximately, if I’m not mistaken, $10 a year in terms of a lease payment, part of the movement broke off and started doing forest defense particularly, and I think we should always call out and compliment young anarchist kids who decided that part of the struggle was to actually go in the forest, as Mariah mentioned earlier, with the Weelaunee forest and take up camp there.

And they packed up in trees, they created tree huts. They did everything they could to stop the forest, to put this into a space where you could see that the force needed to be defended and where you can see that people needed to understand what was happening in terms of the reaction to these young people doing it. It was shortly after that, and some of the tactics and tactics that we accept as tactics of fighting back to make sure that the trees weren’t burnt down, that basically the Atlanta Police Department joined in a task force with the county Police Department, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation with Homeland Security to form a task force. And they began discussing the idea of charging organizers and activists and forced offenders with domestic terrorism.

And so last year in December, the first raid in the force, which resulted in approximately six people being charged with domestic terrorism, then we had another raid in the force, and not only another six people was charged, but that is when for the first time in American history, an overt environmental activist was killed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and various SWAT teams in Atlanta, the Atlanta police, that young activist Tortuguita was murdered by the police, shot 57 times or having 57 bullet holes we should say, which include entrance and exit holes. That was as much as they could count. And then after that, there was another six or seven folks arrested in a demonstration downtown.

And then later on doing a music festival, doing a week of action, another 23 organizers who are arrested and charged with domestic terrorism. And so basically, the tactics of the state have been to intimidate, to criminalize and to scare people out of being supportive of this movement. But during that time, this movement has only grown. This movement has grown from one of a local issue to one where people were coming from outside and joining with those local protestors to one which took on a national significance. One that’s now taken on an international significance and one that now at this time is probably the preeminent issue amongst folks who are fighting against police terror and violence in this country.

And so that struggle continues. It’s been a long struggle. Many different factions, as Mariah has mentioned earlier, have come into this struggle and played a great role in forwarding, adding resources, adding nuance to it, putting word out to their particular constituencies that has kept this movement building and going, even as the city continues to push to build this, the movement is pushing back. And I think that’s one of the things that we have to remember again, particularly over the last year that this movement has not basically been run down under the heel of oppressive corporate interlockers, the city government, the state government, again, with federal helpers of all political stripes themselves, both Democrats and Republicans joining together to fight this fight against organizers and activists who are fighting against police violence. As that’s been happening, folks have continued to fight back and to try to stop Cop City from being built.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add, I’m really glad that Kamau spoke to the nature of movement building—in its early years, it’s a ton of canvassing, community outreach, and to this day, it’s a very important part of that as well as forest events. People actually taking up space in the forest to physically stop the construction from happening. But in this iteration of the movement with the forest now cleared under the violence of police that have taken the life of a protestor, folks have been leaning back upon typical civic engagement strategies like showing up to City Hall. And most recently when the legislation was first introduced to give 30 million dollars of taxpayer money to support this project, there was a record breaking seven hours of public comment of Atlantan’s who came out. And unanimously. 300 people came out and unanimously spoke against this project, folks who have been lobbying their city council people, trying to use these formal legal organs and political organs to ensure that their voices are heard by their supposed representatives.

So we have a ton of, I say this because we have ton of folks trying to do this, quote on quote, the right way, but ultimately if folks are unheard through these channels where we are supposed to have a voice, where we are told that these folks are supposed to represent the public, people have become really frustrated.

And that’s when we see things like folks taking to the streets, an extra legal means of making sure that they are heard and that the construction and the forces that are coming together to destroy this forest are stops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I mean, it’s just, they’re just so upfront with their bare contempt for what the public wants, what people say they want. I mean, they just want to squash us into silence or comfortably put us in those little protest zones where they can comfortably ignore us. I mean, it’s just so obvious what they’re doing and it’s so infuriating, which is why we need increasing kind of public pressure around the country and beyond to make sure that they know that this is not an issue that is just going to go away. And I’m going to circle back in a second to that kind of crackdown on free speech, on dissent, on the draconian use of anti-terrorism laws to silence people standing up against Cop City. But I guess I wanted to just hover really quick since I’ve got two seasoned community and labor organizers on the call right now.

And this is a show where we talk to workers every single week about their lives, jobs, dreams and struggles where we try to hear out what they are going through in their workplaces and make the connections with them between their lives, their struggles, and the struggles that we talk about with other workers around the country and beyond.

I wanted to just ask in the sort of day-to-day conversations that y’all have been getting into with other folks down there, I guess could you maybe share a little bit of that with our listeners?

I guess, how are people talking about this? How are working people sort of talking about this and seeing this as an issue that concerns them? What can those of us who are organizing in our workplaces in other parts of the country, what can we do better to talk to our coworkers about why this is such an important issue that all of us should care about?

Mariah Parker: I mean, one thing I’ll say from being out in the streets talking to a lot of fast food workers, retail workers, folks in low wage jobs, it is, first of all, not everyone has heard that this is going on, which I think speaks to a failure of public engagement on the part of the government that wants to see this happen. And I think that is partially by design. You want to have a city council meeting in the middle of the day when people are either picking their kids up from school or they’re themselves working, and so they can’t come and be part of that public comment. The fact that the paper of record for the city of Atlanta, state of Georgia is also owned by folks that are fundraising for Cop City. And so it’s very hard to get messages out about what the public is saying, that the public that is engaged in this project.

I am finding that a lot of the initial conversations we’re having with people is introducing the idea that this is happening in the first place, but you know what people do bring up and what people do know about and know needs to change? The fact that so many of the workers I talked to are living out of their cars or in hotels because they can’t afford housing in the city of Atlanta right now, folks that have experienced premature deaths of people in their family because they don’t have access to healthcare. And I bring this up because folks recognize that these needs, housing, healthcare, et cetera, are not being invested in. They live that day in and day out firsthand. And so when you bring up the fact that they don’t have money to make sure that you have affordable housing, well, I’m sorry I don’t have money so that your friend that passed away suddenly from a stroke in his thirties, sorry, that he didn’t have any healthcare, but they do have.

They did somehow find 90 million dollars to fund this facility. It really, really strikes people in a way that it’s easy is get as infuriated as I am pretty quickly to know that if they had a magic wand and could spend 30 million dollars anywhere they wanted, 30 million of taxpayer money anywhere they wanted, nobody you meet at a McDonald’s, an Arby’s at a Dollar General is going to say, we should have a small army here in the city of Atlanta. That’s now what I would pay for. So that’s what I would really notice in conversation with people. Not everybody is like we’re still doing a ton of outreach to get people involved and get people up to speed on this issue, but if you approach a conversation from like, yo, what’s going on in your life and learn about the issues people are facing, nobody wants Cop City, people want housing. People want the things that actually make communities safe, and that starts with investing in the neighborhoods where these people live.

Mariah Parker: Look, just a couple months ago I was helping organize a labor action downtown Atlanta. They actually haven’t even started yet when the police rolled up and told us to leave. And when we got to the target location, somehow there’s just people. So it was like some security there waiting for us when we got there. But we have to plan how we’re going to go about actions. It’s a huge factor in it that we’re not just dealing with the police, that we’re dealing with the Atlanta Police Department because we know what frenzy they’re in right now because I think they fear progressive social movements of all kinds rising up against them as even some liberal orgs have joined in the chorus of folks saying, stop Cop City. I’ve seen firsthand that they are here to break up any kind of working class movement. Labor isn’t excluded.

In fact, just yesterday the Atlanta Police Department moved into the building across the street from where all the major labor unions in the state of Georgia are headquartered. And that to me is not any kind of like, oh, coincidence and nothing like that. It’s keeping an eye on the folks that could be the missing piece to the movement puzzle of really stopping this. If labor unions came out in support of the movement, if they were leveraging their power within institutions like Southern Company, like some of these businesses that are giving money to cop city like Delta to make this demand on the bosses, these people, these employees who are stakeholders in these companies, that would be their worst nightmare. And so I mean we are already seeing even intimidation, I think, taking place. Not only out on the strike line, but in the very physical proximity of police departments to try to keep an eye on actors like this.

That could be very game changing in the movement. So yeah, there’s a long robust history all over and including in Atlanta, there’s a robust history being made now of police repression, of labor movements as well, which is why this is also an issue that labor units have a personal stake in. That, in order to have those robust rights to withhold our labor and to disrupt these businesses, to get what we are owed, we have to be a part of this movement to fight back on the people that would put down our movements as well. In my opinion.

Kamau Franklin: I mean, and I’ll only add, you mentioned what’s happening now around the police in the intimidation tactics, and I’ve already talked about the fact that over 40 folks have domestic terrorism charges. There has been well over 70 or 80 arrests in a total movement against Cop City by the police. And again, this is being done in conjunction or together with folks who could have right wing white conservatives. i.e the governor of Georgia with folks who claim to be moderate and or progressives i.e talking about the democratic black mayor of Atlanta. And so it doesn’t matter what their so-called political stripes are in terms of these elected officials, they are all about having a strong police force, a militarized police force that they can call out at a moment’s notice to protect property, to stop movements and to over police communities. They know what they want, they know how they want to deploy them.

The idea of Cop City is an idea that lets them have other police forces, as mentioned earlier, come down and train with them, basically having common tactics and strategies as if it was a national police force as well as international players who are coming in and training on tactics that they use to oppress their own or people or land that they stole from. Those tactics are being imported here. i.e the Israelis in terms of their work, their tactics and strategies oppressing Palestinians, that’s all being brought here. So we understand that the policing that’s happening is something that’s controlled by the elites for the purposes of supporting corporations, supporting developers in Atlanta.

This is around pushing out poor working class people, particularly poor working class black people, and turning Atlanta further into a playground of the rich, making Atlanta akin to a San Francisco in terms of a city where all you see is a vast amount of differences in wealth from the most poor to the richest, who are the only ones who can afford to live here.

And the poor folks are the homeless ones that people are trying to kick out and continue to criminalize. This is the city that they’re creating, the so-called black Mecca that they’re creating as they empty out black people from the actual city and they’re using the police as the tip of the spear, as their forward force in which they are going to push people out, control movements and stop Atlanta from having any sense of having a working class population here that can afford to live here and prosper here.

And they’re doing it knowingly, no matter what they say. You can’t have 40 years of gentrification under, again, majority black city councils and under black leadership and suggest that somehow it’s a fluke, it’s a mistake. We don’t know how we got here. It is under this leadership that we’ve got here because in the terms of the class issue, the black bourgeois leadership has sided with the corporations and the developers again to empty out the city of working class and poor people, particularly working class and poor black people.

Maximillian Alvarez: Man, again, it’s like so powerfully put by both of you and I’m just so grateful for you for the time that you’ve given us to kind of break this all down. And I want to kind of round things out. I’m going to ask y’all both in a second if you just have any final words about how people listening can get involved in this struggle or where they can find you all and the work that you and your orgs are doing, and then we’ll round out there. But I guess by way of getting there, I just wanted to read for folks listening, like I said, there has been some support from the organized labor movement, not nearly an enough, but it was encouraging to see Jimmy Williams, the general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades make a statement which we will link to so y’all can check it out.

It was short, but Jimmy did say, and I quote, “the right to speak up and peacefully protest is fundamental to our union and to all working people. Since the protest began, we’ve seen violence including the death of one protestor as well as dozens of arrests and incredulous charges of domestic terrorism in some cases stemming from the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. I believe that these tactics are designed more to quell dissent and to dissuade working people from exercising their rights to protest and demonstrate than they are to legitimately uphold the law. It has to stop. Our rights as working people must be upheld, and we deserve to live in a society free from police violence.” End quote. So shout out to Jimmy, shout out to the painters, but again, we need more. And in that note, Kamau, Mariah, I wanted to thank you both once again for joining me and ask if you could close us out with any final words that you have to working people out there listening to the labor movement in general and where can folks find you and what can they do to get involved in this struggle?

Kamau Franklin: I’ll go really quickly. So to find us. Our organization is Community Movement Builders, the website, communitymovementbuilders.org. We have a Stop Cop City page there where folks can learn a whole bunch of different ways in which they can be involved. Very important coming up is June 5th, which is going to be another day of action at City Hall where they’re actually going to take the vote to allocate the over 33 million dollars to the Atlanta Police Foundation. So we definitely want people to call in if they’re not in Atlanta. If they are in Atlanta, we want people to come down to City Hall from 11 o’clock eastern time on to protest, to organize, to speak out.

And my message to working class people is that we won’t win until we continue to get out into these streets, organize, push back and fight back. This is not a time period where we’re going to be able to bargain our way out of fascism, where you can only win against fascism if we fight back. If a large part of that fight back is organizing, being involved in the struggle, fighting in the streets, and winning victories for our people and challenging the oligarchs and the corporations which are trying to divide and conquer us.

Mariah Parker: Hallelujah. Amen. Only thing that I would add is that I mentioned earlier that stakeholders in some of these companies that are funding this project, Delta, Southern Company, a lot of these fast food restaurants, Inspire Brands. You can find out who is giving money to or somehow financially implicated in Cop City by going to stopcopcitysolidarity.org. And if you live in a city, no matter where you live, you might be able to find a target, someone like a bank that’s giving the insurance for the project.

You maybe find a Wells Fargo, maybe you work at a Wells Fargo and you and a couple clerks behind the window want to have an action to demonstrate to the overlords that y’all not happy with the complicity in this project. Anyone anywhere can take these kinds of actions. They’ve been very helpful for us for helping erode the power of capital and supporting this project for yanking some of this corporate support away from the project and ultimately undermining their ability to put that private money into Cop City. So if you go to copcitysolidarity.org, you can look up somewhere near you that is financially tied to this project and mobilize some folks, take some kind of action to let them know that their actions to support Cop City will not stand, not in your community, not anywhere.

Kamau Franklin: I’ll back that up completely. I think Mariah’s completely correct. When we speak to folks in the community, there are folks who are informed, but there are a good amount of people who don’t know about it. And there are other folks who are carrying on with their day-to-day lives trying to survive, trying to make it out of here. But once you start talking about it, the innate reaction based on the conditions that people live in is like, well, why do we need that? We know that that means they’re going to just be in our neighborhoods and communities, arresting more people, taking away our young people that instead of providing centers for our folks to go to, providing other things and activities or improving the education system that they would rather spend again, not only just the 30 million that the city is supposed to be giving. And that number, again, is increasingly going higher once we do further investigation into how the money is actually getting to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

But the same corporations who several years ago were saying that they were on the side of Black Lives Matter, have now given 60 million dollars or close to 60 million dollars to fund a project like this. People see it on their face that these same corporations which underpay us or have enough money like Mariah mentioned earlier, to give to a project like this. So it’s not hard to convince people or it’s not hard to make it clear for folks what the purpose of a Cop City is and what the role is of police in their lives. And so when folks understand that and hear that, for the most part they have questions and they are opposed to the idea that this is the way the city should spend its money.

I will also say for the people who are working class, people who live adjacent to the forest, and it is mostly a working class black community that lives adjacent to the work to the Weelaunee forest, those folks were promised that the forest would stay intact and that it would be used for nature trails, for parks, for places for their kids to enjoy and understand nature and again, to continue to serve as a preventer of climate change.

That area’s prone to flooding. Clear cutting that’s already happening in that forest will only add to the flooding in that neighborhood which will impact working class black communities. Those communities overwhelmingly have said that they are opposed to the building of Cop City. That that was not what the promise was. The promise was for them to have an area where they can bring their kids to, where they can have a park and so forth. It was not to build a militarized training center, which is going to have shooting ranges where cops are practicing how to shoot day and night in that forest next to this working class community, that people understand that this is a targeted approach to dealing with working class communities as opposed to giving resources to these communities. They’re going to flood these communities with more cops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m going to lose my shit, man.

Mariah Parker: Does it not make you feel insane? It makes me feel so insane.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m losing it.

Mariah Parker: It makes you feel so insane. And particularly they started clear cutting the forest a little bit earlier this year. And so photography and drone footage is coming out where there’s this scar on the earth where this beautiful forest used to be. Where I was at a music festival. There are people out there just vibing, enjoying music. There’s folks camping out, there are families, there’s children. They used to take children here to do field trips, to study the ecology of the forest. And now there is this, you see footage come out, they’re giving some journalists a tour of the forest today or what used to be the forest. And it drives me totally insane to see this. And I feel like speaking of common reactions of working class folks, that same shit of just being mind boggled and infuriated instantly is something I get all the time when I’m talking to people about this who haven’t heard about it before.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know our task is to turn that into action, which again is why I’m so grateful to folks like yourselves and everyone else out there doing that unsung work, everyone listening to this who is also doing that work day in, day out. We need you guys always, and we need more folks doing that work even just to make sure that people know that this is happening in the first place, let alone building on that and talking about why we should be invested in the fight against it, what the future looks like if we don’t fight. And I think, yeah, it’s the point you both made is just so poignant and I really want folks listening to sit with it because in many ways you guys know this, but it does really bear repeating. The safest communities are not the ones with the most police.

They’re the ones with the most resources and the most kind of shared wealth access to things like drinkable water and a bed to sleep in, a house to live in, schools to send your kids to, grocery stores, not just dollar stores, so on and so forth. It’s not throwing more police at poor and working class neighborhoods, is not going to somehow magically make those neighborhoods safer. How do I know that? Because that’s what we’ve been fucking doing for the past half century or more. And it hasn’t worked, at least by the supposed goals of that approach to policing. But anyway, I digress. So because I know I only have you guys for about 10 more minutes, so I wanted to bring things back to, I think we’ve done a great job of communicating to people why the push to build Cop City, the construction thereof, the sort of shadowy government and industry forces behind it, why all of those are already an issue for working people that we should care about.

But then there’s also the draconian crackdown on the protestors against Cop City and it’s a fundamentally connected issue, but it is almost sort of an issue within itself that we and that the labor movement needs to have a serious discussion about, because that is also going to directly impact us. It’s not just that they’re all the other kind of aspects to labor, workers’ relationship to the police that we already know about when we’re on strike. Who are the ones beating picketers and clearing way for scabs to come through the picket lines? It’s the cops, right? So when coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama at Warrior Met Coal were on strike for two years, who was it who was escorting scabs past their picket lines? Who was it who was enforcing these business friendly rulings by local judges, these injunctions limiting the amount of people who could picket, how far away from the entrance they could picket?

It was the police. And so we already know that in terms of limiting workers’ ability to exercise their right to free speech, their right to assemble, their right to go on strike and to withhold their labor, the quote on quote, criminal justice system has a historically antagonistic relationship to working people expressing those rights. But it goes even deeper than that. And I hope that folks listening to this can sort of hear the resonances with the interviews that we’ve done with workers in different industries over the past six seasons. Just think about the railroad workers. They had their right to strike, stripped from them by the most, quote on quote, pro-labor union president that the US has ever seen, and a congress that happily went with that decision and they gave the bosses, the rail carriers, everything that they wanted. And so when workers have our rights to withhold our labor to speak up and to exercise those basic fundamental rights, the bosses win.

And also most people in this country can be fired without just cause. So it’s not even a question of do I have these rights at work? Most people fucking don’t. We already know that they don’t, you can’t speak up for shit without losing your job and potentially thus losing your home and if you lose your home and we live in a society that criminalizes poverty, so you’re going to get beat up by the police and shuttled into prison. So are you guys seeing the connections here?

• Kamau’s Twitter page

• Community Movement Builders website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram

• Mariah’s Twitter page and LinkTree

• Stop Cop City

• Micah Herskind, Scalawag, “This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Cop City Protesters Face Felonies for Flyering as Police Repress Student Sit-Ins“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Atlanta Was a Constitution-Free Zone During “Stop Cop City” Week of Action“

• Stephen Janis & Taya Graham, The Real News Network, “Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Is a Blueprint for America’s Future“

• Frances Madeson, Truthout, “Domestic Terrorism Charges Against Cop City Demonstrators Spur Further Protests“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Atlanta Police Arrest Organizers of Bail Fund for Cop City Protestors“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protestor 57 Times, Autopsy Finds“

• Fair Fight Action Releases Statement Condemning Anti-Democratic Criminalization of Legal Aid Group Ahead of Vote on ‘Cop City’ Funding

• Jimmy Williams (General President of IUPAT) statement on Cop City

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Three Years Later, George Floyd’s Family Members Are Still Fighting for Justice“

• Morgan Simon, Forbes, “The Corporations Funding Cop City In Atlanta“

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 (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Post-production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The 2020 protests that took place in the immediate wake of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd were a historic call for America to reckon with its racist, oppressive system of state-sanctioned police violence. Three years later, rather than a reckoning, that same system, along with the political and business elites propping it up, are giving us “Cop City” (ie, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the Atlanta Police Foundation’s 85-acre, $90-million police militarization and training complex where law enforcement from around the US and beyond will, among other things, train for urban warfare scenarios). Plans to build Cop City have been mired in controversy and civil rights violations from the beginning—from the city government’s attempts to ignore residents’ and activists’ objections and force through the construction of Cop City in Atlanta’s ecologically vital Weelaunee Forest, to police raiding an encampment of peaceful protestors and murdering one of them, Manuel (“Tortuguita”) Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, to the truly Orwellian crackdown on protestors and advocates, dozens of whom are being arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism.”

As Micah Herskind writes, “The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It’s not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It’s not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has pledged to the project, to be supplemented by at least $60 million in private funding. The movement is all of those things. But even more fundamentally, the struggle to Stop Cop City is a battle for the future of Atlanta. It’s a struggle over who the city is for: the city’s corporate and state ruling class actors who have demanded that Cop City be built, or the people of Atlanta who have consistently voiced their opposition and demanded a different vision for the city.” Make no mistake, though, the fight to Stop Cop City is all of our fight, and that very much includes the labor movement. In this mini-cast, we speak with Kamau Franklin and Mariah Parker about Cop City, the fight to stop it, and why labor needs to get off the sidelines and join that fight.

Kamau Franklin has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. He is also a lawyer, writer, and the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Mariah Parker is labor and community organizer, a rapper (known by the stage name Linqua Franqa), and recently served as District 2 County Commissioner for Athens-Clarke County in Athens, Georgia, from 2018 – 2022.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kamau Franklin: Hi, my name is Kamau Franklin. I am the founder of a new grassroots organization called Community Movement Builders, where we do a combination of the things organizing against the issue of gentrification, and we also do a lot of organizing against police violence, which is what led us into the struggle against Cop City. We also do what we call sustainable development, which is to provide resources to people in southwest Atlanta, a working class, a poor black community, one of the last of such communities still intact. But we also do cooperatives, mutual aid, so forth. So we’re a power building organization that’s meant to support building institutions that black community controls and fighting against institutions that we feel oppress and control our community to its detriment.

Mariah Parker: My name is Mariah Parker. I’m an alumni of the United Campus Workers of Georgia 3265 at the University of Georgia where I was a PhD student. I also, from 2018 to 2022, served as an Athens-Clarke County commissioner and was very focused on worker empowerment from living wages for city employees to developing worker ownership models that we could back with public funds and things of that sort. But these days I am down in Atlanta organizing low wage workers in the fast food industry and stopping Cop City.

Maximillian Alvarez: All right, well welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So if you’re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, go check out the other great shows in our network. And of course, please support the work that we are doing here on Working People by sharing these episodes with your friends, your coworkers, and your family members, please leave us positive reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And of course, the single best thing you can do to support our work is become a paid monthly subscriber on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/workingpeople.

Smash that subscribe button and you’ll immediately get access to all of our great bonus episodes. We’ve published some really great ones of late, including most recently an interview that I got to do with the industrial correspondent Taj Ali at the Tribune in the United Kingdom. Taj is doing great work covering the strike wave going on across the UK so you guys don’t want to miss that great conversation. So my name is Maximilian Alvarez, and as y’all heard, we’ve got a really special and urgent episode for y’all today. This is an episode that we’ve been wanting to record for a while. It’s one that touches on a subject that folks have been asking us about, especially after we posted the recording of our live show that we recorded down in Atlanta, which I started by mentioning like the issue of Cop City and the draconian repression of all those who are standing up and fighting against it.

And we wanted to kind of bring Mariah and Kamau on the show, two true working class warriors, folks fighting the good fight in their communities, standing up for poor black working people, oppressed people all across the south and beyond. And they are really on the front lines along with others in this incredible and necessary fight against Cop City. And so we wanted to bring them on to sort of answer our listeners’ questions about what the fuck is Cop City? Why is this massive thing called Cop City being rammed through against the wishes of working communities in the area? Who is supporting this move to build Cop City and especially what the hell is going on with these really Orwellian draconian crackdowns on protestors charging them with terrorism for standing up against Cop City?

I’m sure you guys have been seeing the headlines about this and we’re going to link to more coverage about it, but things are getting really, really dark down there in Atlanta and we ultimately want to make sure that people know about this struggle, why they should care about it, how they can get involved in the fight against it.

And also given that we’re having this conversation on this show, Mariah and I were talking about this in Atlanta, we need to also have a serious conversation about why labor needs to get its ass off the sideline and get involved in this fight and what that could look like, right? We’ve seen occasional hopeful signs with workers and union members kind of joining the protest against Cop City. We’ve even seen occasionally statements from union leadership like Jimmy Williams of the painters union speaking out against the crackdown on protestors against Cop City. But so much more is needed and that’s really where we are. That’s why we wanted to bring Kamau and Mariah on the show today because as I said, they’re right there on the front lines. I know that they got answers to all of your guys’ questions.

And so without further ado, let’s dig into this because I know you guys are super busy and I don’t want to keep you for too long. So I was wondering if we could just go around the table and just sort of give each of your takes on, if you’re sitting down across from someone who just heard about Cop City and the crackdown against protestors, what do you think they most need to know about what Cop City is, where it’s come from and what’s been going on down there in Atlanta these past few months? So Kamau, why don’t I turn it back over to you?

Kamau Franklin: When I talk about Cop City, I try to make sure that folks understand that this is not just some benign police training center that’s being built up because the police’s current training center is dilapidated or they just need a new area to train in. I think it’s really important to situate the idea of Cop City within the 2020 uprisings against the police murders of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and here in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks, that it was after these uprisings that took place across the country that Atlanta in particular felt flatfooted, like it didn’t have a proper response to the organizing that was happening across the city.

And as part of that response, they decided to initiate the idea of a 265 acre training center, what we call Cop City, basically a militarized slash paramilitary training center where they practice such things as urban warfare where they’re going to have over a dozen firing ranges where they’re going to have, well, at least originally in their plans, they’re claiming they took this out, but we shall soon see a station for a Black hawk helicopter to land where they’re going to be doing training with dozens of forces across the country, including internationally training with Israeli police.

And for us, this was a clear sign that the building of this training center via the Atlanta Police Foundation with funds from private corporations over 60 million dollars was pledged from private corporations, 30 million dollars at the very least, numbers are starting to tick up as we speak, that the city was supposed to give. And so we see this as a response to when people were calling for the abolition of the police or defunding the police or finding alternatives to public safety. Atlanta, the corporate class and the Atlanta Police Foundation decided to double down on militarized policing, which would be targeted not only towards movements and organizing, but continue the over-policing of black communities. Here in Atlanta, 90% of the arrests that take place in Atlanta slash Fulton County are of black people, even though black folks now represent less than 50% of the proper population of Atlanta.

So it’s really important for folks to understand that, again, in response to or organizing against Cop City, what the city of Atlanta decided to do was to double down on the militarized police and to continue with the over-policing which caused the uprisings in the first place in response to the police killing innocent people.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add—and I think that’s a perfect explanation of how we got here and what we’re dealing with—this facility is set to replace large swaths of the largest urban forest in North America, what they call one of the four lungs of Atlanta. So when you’re walking down the street every day, that air you breathe in, you have the Weelaunee forest. As you know, the Muscogee people originally named the river along which the forest sort of runs, the Weelaunee river, now that we call it the Weelaunee forest in their honor, that the air we breathe is cleaned by the trees that are currently being cut down in the forest. So this is not only an issue of police brutality, of honestly the rise of fascism as Kamau said, this is going to be training a paramilitary force that will be able to put down uprisings and control black neighborhoods.

But this is also an environmental justice issue, an environmental racism issue. This area surrounding the forests are overwhelmingly neighborhoods of color. Black people are the ones that are living near the aquifer that’s being poisoned by the lead in the soil from the bullets that the police are shooting already, have been shooting already at this site. Already environmental protections have been neglected along this aquifer. And even in the construction of this site, the Atlanta Police Foundation and others who are conspiring with them have been able to get away with getting around standards for construction and anyone else would have to follow to ensure that the environment is being minimally disrupted. And so what’s one thing that’s very interesting about this movement that has brought together police abolitionists, prison abolitionists, folks that just are not about the cops generally, as well as folks from the environmental movement who see this as a climate change issue, who see this as an issue of environmental degradation.

Another thing I would add about how we got here is that in response to the uprisings that’s come out, liberals were able to co-opt the demand to defund the police and things like that and argue for more training, even though studies have found that more training does not decrease police violence. In fact, officers that killed Rayshard Brooks had recently been involved in advanced training, it doesn’t actually help anything. But they’ve then used that argument to push through this facility because they’re aiming to train officers better. And I bring this up because we want to talk about fascism, we want to talk about repression, government repression. These are Democrats, these are liberals that are standing behind this project trying to push this project forward who have co-opted the movement to say that training’s what we need when we know that we need affordable housing.

We know that we need better access to healthcare. We know we need access to healthy food systems in order to keep our community safe. Now, the last thing I want to say on this, bringing it back around to why this is important to labor as Kamau also brought up, the Atlanta Police Foundation had pledged 60 million to help fund this project. Now, where is that money coming from? That money is coming from the corporate elite across the city of Atlanta and across the south. Talking about Delta, we’re talking about Waffle House, chick-Fil-A, talking about Inspire Brands. That is the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts. We’re talking about the who’s who of the corporate elite in the city and across the south. Now, where are they getting their money from? They’re getting money from, if it’s Chick-Fil-A, they’re getting that money from wage theft and abusing child labor, if they’re getting it from Waffle House, they have wage theft written into their employee handbook.

They’re taking that money from the workers that are creating all this profit and they’re reinvesting it into their oppression. And so even Delta, which right now they’re having a big union fight with the Delta workers here in Atlanta, they just recently fought for three years to get cost of living increases in their contract. Now, Delta doesn’t have money for that and wants to fight all day about that, but somehow they have all this cash with which they can lavish the Atlanta Police Foundation in order to build this facility. And so that to me is part of why this project is really nefarious and unites labor as well as folks that are liberation minded and want to get people free from cops. It’s that a lot of the money that’s been promised to put into this paramilitary facility is just coming straight out of the pockets of working people through these corporations that are funding the Atlanta Police Foundation and funding this facility.

Maximillian Alvarez: I want to circle back to kind of the point that Kamau, you started with because this was not lost on me and it’s so indicative of this perverse American psychosis when it comes to policing. The three of us are recording this episode on Friday, May 26th. Yesterday was the three year anniversary of Minneapolis Police murdering George Floyd. And at the Real News Network we released an interview that I was honored to do with George’s brother Philonise and his wife Keeta, talking about that horrific event that changed their family and in many ways changed the country forever. We talked about how they wanted George to be remembered, what they hoped change would look like, so that what happened to George would never happen to another person again. And we saw the uprisings that hit all 50 states in the wake of George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

We saw how much that movement spread even around the world. And for a moment it did feel like we were at the brink of a reckoning in this country. And here we fucking are three years later and saying, okay, the institutions, the establishment’s response is to construct an 85 acre, 9000 million dollar facility where militarized police can come and train and do sort of training operations, simulating urban warfare with the very same people who were protesting against their abuse just three years later. That’s where we are. We’re in America, of course that’s where we are. But I don’t want that ridiculousness and Orwellian nature of the situation to be lost on people because I think it does really highlight, as you were both saying, that there is a fundamental class warfare component to all of this. There is a sort of top-down pressure to stamp out the resistance that scared the establishment three years ago.

There is, the capital always does. It relies on this increasingly militarized arm of the police to push poor and working people back into subservience, to push us into jails and prisons to kill us as the kind of surplus of the system that they categorize us to be. So even just from the fundamental beginnings, we can see how and why working class people have a stake in this fight because this is a fight that is being directed back at us. That’s what’s going to be happening not just with the construction of Cop City, with the crackdown on protestors, but ultimately what is going to be produced at this fucking massive facility. Pardon my language.

And to build on what you were saying, Mariah, I want to sort of talk about that element of the forces that are arraying here to push this Cop City into reality, even if it means bulldozing this massive necessary forest, even if it means bulldozing the people trying to stand in the way of it. Can we talk a bit about, I guess, maybe over the past year, what that fight has looked like on the ground to you all? What sort of forces are involved here and what the resistance has looked like to the construction of Cop City?

Kamau Franklin: Sure. I mean, I think when we go back, this fight has been going on for now over two years. When we heard about Cop City again after the uprisings, organizers, activists, environmentalists, other folks understood again right away what this meant. And at first, the organizing was what you would consider standard campaign politics where we were doing everything from petition drives to demonstrations to call your city council person, call the mayor, town halls. This was before the city council took a vote, and we were doing those things to try to pressure the city council and the mayor who thought that this was a done deal. They didn’t think that they would have to do any explaining to the public, that they were just going to push this through. And even at that time, the police were violent in their tactics in terms of targeting organizers and activists.

So even in the early parts of the fight against Cop City, the police would come to the demonstrations. They would make arrests, people who were just standing on sidewalks. People would get pepper sprayed, they’d get thrown to the ground after they were arrested, they’d have their paperwork threatened to be lost if they complained about the food and the conditions. So that was happening early on. At that time, they weren’t charging people with domestic terrorism. They were charging people with things like disorderly conduct, obstruction of governmental administration. As we moved past the vote, when the city council decided to give the Atlanta Police Foundation basically this gift of over 265 acres of land for approximately, if I’m not mistaken, $10 a year in terms of a lease payment, part of the movement broke off and started doing forest defense particularly, and I think we should always call out and compliment young anarchist kids who decided that part of the struggle was to actually go in the forest, as Mariah mentioned earlier, with the Weelaunee forest and take up camp there.

And they packed up in trees, they created tree huts. They did everything they could to stop the forest, to put this into a space where you could see that the force needed to be defended and where you can see that people needed to understand what was happening in terms of the reaction to these young people doing it. It was shortly after that, and some of the tactics and tactics that we accept as tactics of fighting back to make sure that the trees weren’t burnt down, that basically the Atlanta Police Department joined in a task force with the county Police Department, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation with Homeland Security to form a task force. And they began discussing the idea of charging organizers and activists and forced offenders with domestic terrorism.

And so last year in December, the first raid in the force, which resulted in approximately six people being charged with domestic terrorism, then we had another raid in the force, and not only another six people was charged, but that is when for the first time in American history, an overt environmental activist was killed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and various SWAT teams in Atlanta, the Atlanta police, that young activist Tortuguita was murdered by the police, shot 57 times or having 57 bullet holes we should say, which include entrance and exit holes. That was as much as they could count. And then after that, there was another six or seven folks arrested in a demonstration downtown.

And then later on doing a music festival, doing a week of action, another 23 organizers who are arrested and charged with domestic terrorism. And so basically, the tactics of the state have been to intimidate, to criminalize and to scare people out of being supportive of this movement. But during that time, this movement has only grown. This movement has grown from one of a local issue to one where people were coming from outside and joining with those local protestors to one which took on a national significance. One that’s now taken on an international significance and one that now at this time is probably the preeminent issue amongst folks who are fighting against police terror and violence in this country.

And so that struggle continues. It’s been a long struggle. Many different factions, as Mariah has mentioned earlier, have come into this struggle and played a great role in forwarding, adding resources, adding nuance to it, putting word out to their particular constituencies that has kept this movement building and going, even as the city continues to push to build this, the movement is pushing back. And I think that’s one of the things that we have to remember again, particularly over the last year that this movement has not basically been run down under the heel of oppressive corporate interlockers, the city government, the state government, again, with federal helpers of all political stripes themselves, both Democrats and Republicans joining together to fight this fight against organizers and activists who are fighting against police violence. As that’s been happening, folks have continued to fight back and to try to stop Cop City from being built.

Mariah Parker: To that I would add, I’m really glad that Kamau spoke to the nature of movement building—in its early years, it’s a ton of canvassing, community outreach, and to this day, it’s a very important part of that as well as forest events. People actually taking up space in the forest to physically stop the construction from happening. But in this iteration of the movement with the forest now cleared under the violence of police that have taken the life of a protestor, folks have been leaning back upon typical civic engagement strategies like showing up to City Hall. And most recently when the legislation was first introduced to give 30 million dollars of taxpayer money to support this project, there was a record breaking seven hours of public comment of Atlantan’s who came out. And unanimously. 300 people came out and unanimously spoke against this project, folks who have been lobbying their city council people, trying to use these formal legal organs and political organs to ensure that their voices are heard by their supposed representatives.

So we have a ton of, I say this because we have ton of folks trying to do this, quote on quote, the right way, but ultimately if folks are unheard through these channels where we are supposed to have a voice, where we are told that these folks are supposed to represent the public, people have become really frustrated.

And that’s when we see things like folks taking to the streets, an extra legal means of making sure that they are heard and that the construction and the forces that are coming together to destroy this forest are stops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I mean, it’s just, they’re just so upfront with their bare contempt for what the public wants, what people say they want. I mean, they just want to squash us into silence or comfortably put us in those little protest zones where they can comfortably ignore us. I mean, it’s just so obvious what they’re doing and it’s so infuriating, which is why we need increasing kind of public pressure around the country and beyond to make sure that they know that this is not an issue that is just going to go away. And I’m going to circle back in a second to that kind of crackdown on free speech, on dissent, on the draconian use of anti-terrorism laws to silence people standing up against Cop City. But I guess I wanted to just hover really quick since I’ve got two seasoned community and labor organizers on the call right now.

And this is a show where we talk to workers every single week about their lives, jobs, dreams and struggles where we try to hear out what they are going through in their workplaces and make the connections with them between their lives, their struggles, and the struggles that we talk about with other workers around the country and beyond.

I wanted to just ask in the sort of day-to-day conversations that y’all have been getting into with other folks down there, I guess could you maybe share a little bit of that with our listeners?

I guess, how are people talking about this? How are working people sort of talking about this and seeing this as an issue that concerns them? What can those of us who are organizing in our workplaces in other parts of the country, what can we do better to talk to our coworkers about why this is such an important issue that all of us should care about?

Mariah Parker: I mean, one thing I’ll say from being out in the streets talking to a lot of fast food workers, retail workers, folks in low wage jobs, it is, first of all, not everyone has heard that this is going on, which I think speaks to a failure of public engagement on the part of the government that wants to see this happen. And I think that is partially by design. You want to have a city council meeting in the middle of the day when people are either picking their kids up from school or they’re themselves working, and so they can’t come and be part of that public comment. The fact that the paper of record for the city of Atlanta, state of Georgia is also owned by folks that are fundraising for Cop City. And so it’s very hard to get messages out about what the public is saying, that the public that is engaged in this project.

I am finding that a lot of the initial conversations we’re having with people is introducing the idea that this is happening in the first place, but you know what people do bring up and what people do know about and know needs to change? The fact that so many of the workers I talked to are living out of their cars or in hotels because they can’t afford housing in the city of Atlanta right now, folks that have experienced premature deaths of people in their family because they don’t have access to healthcare. And I bring this up because folks recognize that these needs, housing, healthcare, et cetera, are not being invested in. They live that day in and day out firsthand. And so when you bring up the fact that they don’t have money to make sure that you have affordable housing, well, I’m sorry I don’t have money so that your friend that passed away suddenly from a stroke in his thirties, sorry, that he didn’t have any healthcare, but they do have.

They did somehow find 90 million dollars to fund this facility. It really, really strikes people in a way that it’s easy is get as infuriated as I am pretty quickly to know that if they had a magic wand and could spend 30 million dollars anywhere they wanted, 30 million of taxpayer money anywhere they wanted, nobody you meet at a McDonald’s, an Arby’s at a Dollar General is going to say, we should have a small army here in the city of Atlanta. That’s now what I would pay for. So that’s what I would really notice in conversation with people. Not everybody is like we’re still doing a ton of outreach to get people involved and get people up to speed on this issue, but if you approach a conversation from like, yo, what’s going on in your life and learn about the issues people are facing, nobody wants Cop City, people want housing. People want the things that actually make communities safe, and that starts with investing in the neighborhoods where these people live.

Mariah Parker: Look, just a couple months ago I was helping organize a labor action downtown Atlanta. They actually haven’t even started yet when the police rolled up and told us to leave. And when we got to the target location, somehow there’s just people. So it was like some security there waiting for us when we got there. But we have to plan how we’re going to go about actions. It’s a huge factor in it that we’re not just dealing with the police, that we’re dealing with the Atlanta Police Department because we know what frenzy they’re in right now because I think they fear progressive social movements of all kinds rising up against them as even some liberal orgs have joined in the chorus of folks saying, stop Cop City. I’ve seen firsthand that they are here to break up any kind of working class movement. Labor isn’t excluded.

In fact, just yesterday the Atlanta Police Department moved into the building across the street from where all the major labor unions in the state of Georgia are headquartered. And that to me is not any kind of like, oh, coincidence and nothing like that. It’s keeping an eye on the folks that could be the missing piece to the movement puzzle of really stopping this. If labor unions came out in support of the movement, if they were leveraging their power within institutions like Southern Company, like some of these businesses that are giving money to cop city like Delta to make this demand on the bosses, these people, these employees who are stakeholders in these companies, that would be their worst nightmare. And so I mean we are already seeing even intimidation, I think, taking place. Not only out on the strike line, but in the very physical proximity of police departments to try to keep an eye on actors like this.

That could be very game changing in the movement. So yeah, there’s a long robust history all over and including in Atlanta, there’s a robust history being made now of police repression, of labor movements as well, which is why this is also an issue that labor units have a personal stake in. That, in order to have those robust rights to withhold our labor and to disrupt these businesses, to get what we are owed, we have to be a part of this movement to fight back on the people that would put down our movements as well. In my opinion.

Kamau Franklin: I mean, and I’ll only add, you mentioned what’s happening now around the police in the intimidation tactics, and I’ve already talked about the fact that over 40 folks have domestic terrorism charges. There has been well over 70 or 80 arrests in a total movement against Cop City by the police. And again, this is being done in conjunction or together with folks who could have right wing white conservatives. i.e the governor of Georgia with folks who claim to be moderate and or progressives i.e talking about the democratic black mayor of Atlanta. And so it doesn’t matter what their so-called political stripes are in terms of these elected officials, they are all about having a strong police force, a militarized police force that they can call out at a moment’s notice to protect property, to stop movements and to over police communities. They know what they want, they know how they want to deploy them.

The idea of Cop City is an idea that lets them have other police forces, as mentioned earlier, come down and train with them, basically having common tactics and strategies as if it was a national police force as well as international players who are coming in and training on tactics that they use to oppress their own or people or land that they stole from. Those tactics are being imported here. i.e the Israelis in terms of their work, their tactics and strategies oppressing Palestinians, that’s all being brought here. So we understand that the policing that’s happening is something that’s controlled by the elites for the purposes of supporting corporations, supporting developers in Atlanta.

This is around pushing out poor working class people, particularly poor working class black people, and turning Atlanta further into a playground of the rich, making Atlanta akin to a San Francisco in terms of a city where all you see is a vast amount of differences in wealth from the most poor to the richest, who are the only ones who can afford to live here.

And the poor folks are the homeless ones that people are trying to kick out and continue to criminalize. This is the city that they’re creating, the so-called black Mecca that they’re creating as they empty out black people from the actual city and they’re using the police as the tip of the spear, as their forward force in which they are going to push people out, control movements and stop Atlanta from having any sense of having a working class population here that can afford to live here and prosper here.

And they’re doing it knowingly, no matter what they say. You can’t have 40 years of gentrification under, again, majority black city councils and under black leadership and suggest that somehow it’s a fluke, it’s a mistake. We don’t know how we got here. It is under this leadership that we’ve got here because in the terms of the class issue, the black bourgeois leadership has sided with the corporations and the developers again to empty out the city of working class and poor people, particularly working class and poor black people.

Maximillian Alvarez: Man, again, it’s like so powerfully put by both of you and I’m just so grateful for you for the time that you’ve given us to kind of break this all down. And I want to kind of round things out. I’m going to ask y’all both in a second if you just have any final words about how people listening can get involved in this struggle or where they can find you all and the work that you and your orgs are doing, and then we’ll round out there. But I guess by way of getting there, I just wanted to read for folks listening, like I said, there has been some support from the organized labor movement, not nearly an enough, but it was encouraging to see Jimmy Williams, the general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades make a statement which we will link to so y’all can check it out.

It was short, but Jimmy did say, and I quote, “the right to speak up and peacefully protest is fundamental to our union and to all working people. Since the protest began, we’ve seen violence including the death of one protestor as well as dozens of arrests and incredulous charges of domestic terrorism in some cases stemming from the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. I believe that these tactics are designed more to quell dissent and to dissuade working people from exercising their rights to protest and demonstrate than they are to legitimately uphold the law. It has to stop. Our rights as working people must be upheld, and we deserve to live in a society free from police violence.” End quote. So shout out to Jimmy, shout out to the painters, but again, we need more. And in that note, Kamau, Mariah, I wanted to thank you both once again for joining me and ask if you could close us out with any final words that you have to working people out there listening to the labor movement in general and where can folks find you and what can they do to get involved in this struggle?

Kamau Franklin: I’ll go really quickly. So to find us. Our organization is Community Movement Builders, the website, communitymovementbuilders.org. We have a Stop Cop City page there where folks can learn a whole bunch of different ways in which they can be involved. Very important coming up is June 5th, which is going to be another day of action at City Hall where they’re actually going to take the vote to allocate the over 33 million dollars to the Atlanta Police Foundation. So we definitely want people to call in if they’re not in Atlanta. If they are in Atlanta, we want people to come down to City Hall from 11 o’clock eastern time on to protest, to organize, to speak out.

And my message to working class people is that we won’t win until we continue to get out into these streets, organize, push back and fight back. This is not a time period where we’re going to be able to bargain our way out of fascism, where you can only win against fascism if we fight back. If a large part of that fight back is organizing, being involved in the struggle, fighting in the streets, and winning victories for our people and challenging the oligarchs and the corporations which are trying to divide and conquer us.

Mariah Parker: Hallelujah. Amen. Only thing that I would add is that I mentioned earlier that stakeholders in some of these companies that are funding this project, Delta, Southern Company, a lot of these fast food restaurants, Inspire Brands. You can find out who is giving money to or somehow financially implicated in Cop City by going to stopcopcitysolidarity.org. And if you live in a city, no matter where you live, you might be able to find a target, someone like a bank that’s giving the insurance for the project.

You maybe find a Wells Fargo, maybe you work at a Wells Fargo and you and a couple clerks behind the window want to have an action to demonstrate to the overlords that y’all not happy with the complicity in this project. Anyone anywhere can take these kinds of actions. They’ve been very helpful for us for helping erode the power of capital and supporting this project for yanking some of this corporate support away from the project and ultimately undermining their ability to put that private money into Cop City. So if you go to copcitysolidarity.org, you can look up somewhere near you that is financially tied to this project and mobilize some folks, take some kind of action to let them know that their actions to support Cop City will not stand, not in your community, not anywhere.

Kamau Franklin: I’ll back that up completely. I think Mariah’s completely correct. When we speak to folks in the community, there are folks who are informed, but there are a good amount of people who don’t know about it. And there are other folks who are carrying on with their day-to-day lives trying to survive, trying to make it out of here. But once you start talking about it, the innate reaction based on the conditions that people live in is like, well, why do we need that? We know that that means they’re going to just be in our neighborhoods and communities, arresting more people, taking away our young people that instead of providing centers for our folks to go to, providing other things and activities or improving the education system that they would rather spend again, not only just the 30 million that the city is supposed to be giving. And that number, again, is increasingly going higher once we do further investigation into how the money is actually getting to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

But the same corporations who several years ago were saying that they were on the side of Black Lives Matter, have now given 60 million dollars or close to 60 million dollars to fund a project like this. People see it on their face that these same corporations which underpay us or have enough money like Mariah mentioned earlier, to give to a project like this. So it’s not hard to convince people or it’s not hard to make it clear for folks what the purpose of a Cop City is and what the role is of police in their lives. And so when folks understand that and hear that, for the most part they have questions and they are opposed to the idea that this is the way the city should spend its money.

I will also say for the people who are working class, people who live adjacent to the forest, and it is mostly a working class black community that lives adjacent to the work to the Weelaunee forest, those folks were promised that the forest would stay intact and that it would be used for nature trails, for parks, for places for their kids to enjoy and understand nature and again, to continue to serve as a preventer of climate change.

That area’s prone to flooding. Clear cutting that’s already happening in that forest will only add to the flooding in that neighborhood which will impact working class black communities. Those communities overwhelmingly have said that they are opposed to the building of Cop City. That that was not what the promise was. The promise was for them to have an area where they can bring their kids to, where they can have a park and so forth. It was not to build a militarized training center, which is going to have shooting ranges where cops are practicing how to shoot day and night in that forest next to this working class community, that people understand that this is a targeted approach to dealing with working class communities as opposed to giving resources to these communities. They’re going to flood these communities with more cops.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m going to lose my shit, man.

Mariah Parker: Does it not make you feel insane? It makes me feel so insane.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m losing it.

Mariah Parker: It makes you feel so insane. And particularly they started clear cutting the forest a little bit earlier this year. And so photography and drone footage is coming out where there’s this scar on the earth where this beautiful forest used to be. Where I was at a music festival. There are people out there just vibing, enjoying music. There’s folks camping out, there are families, there’s children. They used to take children here to do field trips, to study the ecology of the forest. And now there is this, you see footage come out, they’re giving some journalists a tour of the forest today or what used to be the forest. And it drives me totally insane to see this. And I feel like speaking of common reactions of working class folks, that same shit of just being mind boggled and infuriated instantly is something I get all the time when I’m talking to people about this who haven’t heard about it before.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know our task is to turn that into action, which again is why I’m so grateful to folks like yourselves and everyone else out there doing that unsung work, everyone listening to this who is also doing that work day in, day out. We need you guys always, and we need more folks doing that work even just to make sure that people know that this is happening in the first place, let alone building on that and talking about why we should be invested in the fight against it, what the future looks like if we don’t fight. And I think, yeah, it’s the point you both made is just so poignant and I really want folks listening to sit with it because in many ways you guys know this, but it does really bear repeating. The safest communities are not the ones with the most police.

They’re the ones with the most resources and the most kind of shared wealth access to things like drinkable water and a bed to sleep in, a house to live in, schools to send your kids to, grocery stores, not just dollar stores, so on and so forth. It’s not throwing more police at poor and working class neighborhoods, is not going to somehow magically make those neighborhoods safer. How do I know that? Because that’s what we’ve been fucking doing for the past half century or more. And it hasn’t worked, at least by the supposed goals of that approach to policing. But anyway, I digress. So because I know I only have you guys for about 10 more minutes, so I wanted to bring things back to, I think we’ve done a great job of communicating to people why the push to build Cop City, the construction thereof, the sort of shadowy government and industry forces behind it, why all of those are already an issue for working people that we should care about.

But then there’s also the draconian crackdown on the protestors against Cop City and it’s a fundamentally connected issue, but it is almost sort of an issue within itself that we and that the labor movement needs to have a serious discussion about, because that is also going to directly impact us. It’s not just that they’re all the other kind of aspects to labor, workers’ relationship to the police that we already know about when we’re on strike. Who are the ones beating picketers and clearing way for scabs to come through the picket lines? It’s the cops, right? So when coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama at Warrior Met Coal were on strike for two years, who was it who was escorting scabs past their picket lines? Who was it who was enforcing these business friendly rulings by local judges, these injunctions limiting the amount of people who could picket, how far away from the entrance they could picket?

It was the police. And so we already know that in terms of limiting workers’ ability to exercise their right to free speech, their right to assemble, their right to go on strike and to withhold their labor, the quote on quote, criminal justice system has a historically antagonistic relationship to working people expressing those rights. But it goes even deeper than that. And I hope that folks listening to this can sort of hear the resonances with the interviews that we’ve done with workers in different industries over the past six seasons. Just think about the railroad workers. They had their right to strike, stripped from them by the most, quote on quote, pro-labor union president that the US has ever seen, and a congress that happily went with that decision and they gave the bosses, the rail carriers, everything that they wanted. And so when workers have our rights to withhold our labor to speak up and to exercise those basic fundamental rights, the bosses win.

And also most people in this country can be fired without just cause. So it’s not even a question of do I have these rights at work? Most people fucking don’t. We already know that they don’t, you can’t speak up for shit without losing your job and potentially thus losing your home and if you lose your home and we live in a society that criminalizes poverty, so you’re going to get beat up by the police and shuttled into prison. So are you guys seeing the connections here?

• Kamau’s Twitter page

• Community Movement Builders website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram

• Mariah’s Twitter page and LinkTree

• Stop Cop City

• Micah Herskind, Scalawag, “This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Cop City Protesters Face Felonies for Flyering as Police Repress Student Sit-Ins“

• Candace Bernd, Truthout, “Atlanta Was a Constitution-Free Zone During “Stop Cop City” Week of Action“

• Stephen Janis & Taya Graham, The Real News Network, “Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Is a Blueprint for America’s Future“

• Frances Madeson, Truthout, “Domestic Terrorism Charges Against Cop City Demonstrators Spur Further Protests“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Atlanta Police Arrest Organizers of Bail Fund for Cop City Protestors“

• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protestor 57 Times, Autopsy Finds“

• Fair Fight Action Releases Statement Condemning Anti-Democratic Criminalization of Legal Aid Group Ahead of Vote on ‘Cop City’ Funding

• Jimmy Williams (General President of IUPAT) statement on Cop City

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Three Years Later, George Floyd’s Family Members Are Still Fighting for Justice“

• Morgan Simon, Forbes, “The Corporations Funding Cop City In Atlanta“

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• 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 (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Post-production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

For Quiles, this also means speaking out against his former employer: Home Depot.

When he was fired from a Home Depot store in northeastern Philadelphia in February, Quiles was already struggling to support his toddler son on his salary, which he says never felt like enough, given the meager benefits. He says he was forced to lean on his “very strong support system.” This was despite his demanding job as a receiving supervisor, he notes, in charge of tasks like tracking incoming merchandise and overseeing maintenance of machinery in the store.

Quiles had been with the company for almost six years and played a leading role in a unionization drive that sought better pay, staffing and training. The drive was inspired by the successful unionization of an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island. His store’s effort, he says, was met with a “vicious union-busting” campaign from Home Depot management and culminated in an unsuccessful union election in November. Quiles, who comes across as friendly and direct, is adamant that he was fired about three months later in retaliation for trying to organize what would have been the first union in a Home Depot store. He says he is currently pursuing a wrongful termination charge with the National Labor Relations Board.

“The company would dispute this,” he says, “but I was fired for organizing.” Home Depot did not return requests for comment about Quiles’ claims.

But Quiles is not only concerned with his own situation—he is deeply upset about how the company’s policies and priorities are playing out in a city 800 miles away. Tax returns show that the Home Depot Foundation is a funder of the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), the private entity driving the fiercely opposed plan to build a $90 million police training center in the South River Forest, which protesters refer to by its Muscogee name, the Weelaunee Forest. Cop City is slated to include a shooting range, a driving course, and a mock city to train police from across the country in urban warfare, as activists put it, and would raze an important ecosystem and carbon sink in a majority-Black part of the Atlanta metro area.

“So Home Depot has money to allocate toward things like this, things that many people in that community don’t want because of the harm to the environment,” says Quiles, “but you can’t pay people more for the measurable value they bring to your company?”

Approved by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the plan has been met with months-long opposition from neighbors and protesters concerned with the destruction of the forest at a time of intensifying climate change and environmental racism. Protesters are also alarmed by the expansion of policing and its associated violence, and “Stop Cop City” has become a national rallying cry for environmental and racial justice movements. Law enforcement, in turn, has responded with a ferocious crackdown that has left one forest defender killed (Georgia state troopers riddled 26-year-old Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán with 57 bullets in January) and 42 charged with domestic terrorism. Three organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund, are now facing money laundering and charity fraud charges, following SWAT arrests at the end of May.

Quiles is not alone in expressing concern; his voice is part of an emerging labor effort publicly speaking out against police repression of the “Stop Cop City” protests. He is flanked by two unions—United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), a list that activists hope will grow—and quickly.

Quiles, meanwhile, is the president of Home Depot Workers United, an independent union which he says is in touch with workers at 25 stores around the country, some of which are actively planning union campaigns. He declined to disclose the exact number because he was concerned about retaliation and union busting tactics from the company. Home Depot Workers United released a statement in early April calling on Home Depot "to pull their support, both financial and otherwise, from the Atlanta Cop City project.”

The Home Depot Foundation gave $25,000 to the APF in 2021, $35,000 in 2020, and $50,000 in 2019. When asked about these payments, Terrance Roper, a spokesperson for Home Depot, said over email, "I can tell you we haven't donated to the Atlanta Police Foundation's proposed training facility. We have specifically donated to the Atlanta Police Foundation's veteran housing program."

But Maurice BP-Weeks, a fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, says "This doesn't pass the smell test. A dollar is a dollar, and Home Depot's dollars have helped enable APF's programs. Cop City is the signature program of APF at the moment."

The corporate relationship goes beyond funding: As LittleSis pointed out, Daniel Grider, Home Depot’s vice president of technology, sits on the APF’s board of trustees. (Grider is also on the leadership team of the Home Depot Foundation.)

"Corporations the size of Home Depot don't have executives join boards like this by accident,” says BP-Weeks. “They are sophisticated political actors, and when you see someone on a board, it's a sophisticated action. Home Depot clearly expects something out of the relationship."

Grider isn’t the only connection. Arthur Blank, the co-founder of Home Depot, has a family foundation that pledged $3 million to the “Public Safety First Campaign,” which is the term the APF uses for the project. (In a statement to In These Times reporter and editor Joseph Bullington, the foundation sought to distance itself from the project by claiming the funding went to a different project of the APF.) Furthermore, Derek Bottoms, vice president of employment practices and associate relations for Home Depot, is the husband of Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta who supported the construction of Cop City.

I spoke with a Home Depot worker and organizer who played a lead role in drafting the Home Depot Workers United statement—he requested anonymity to protect himself from retaliation. The worker said he was especially outraged to learn about these direct donations. “Home Depot’s profits come from my labor,” he says, “and we get a tiny fraction of that. The rest they get to decide what they do with. So often, what they do with that money is they enrich themselves or they give it to organizations or other things that don’t help the associates, and that actively harm workers.”

Some union leaders say the fight to stop Cop City has significant stakes for the labor movement as a whole. “Working people always have to be wary of any repression against protesters, because there is a history in our country that once it's used against anyone protesting government policies, it can be turned against workers in their union,” Carl Rosen, the general president of UE, says over the phone from Erie, Pennsylvania, where 1,400 UE members who work for Wabtec Corp. could soon go out on strike.

This is especially concerning amid increasing enthusiasm about unions, even if density remains low. “At a time when workers across the country are increasingly willing to strike and use other militant tactics to oppose rampant corporate greed, working people must remain vigilant and united against any attacks on our right to peacefully protest against injustice,” UE officers, including Rosen, wrote in a June 2 statement. UE says it represents at least 30,000 workers.

The leadership of IUPAT was the first major union to weigh in, a significant development from a construction trades union that says it represents “over 100,000 workers across the United States, including across the Atlanta metro region.” A late March statement from general president Jimmy Williams Jr. emphasized racial justice issues at the heart of the matter.

“The IUPAT was proud to stand in solidarity during the height of the pandemic with the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington D.C.,” according to the statement. “Today we stand in solidarity with the protesters in Atlanta who are facing egregious and unnecessary violence by the Atlanta Police force and others for simply disagreeing around matters of public policy.”

When Williams became president in September 2021, he was hailed as a progressive new leader, unafraid to talk about tough issues like racism.

The unions that have spoken out in defense of activists only represent a tiny fraction of the labor movement. But BP-Weeks says, “We are at the very beginning of reaching out, and the support we have is really exciting—good on them for getting out in front.” BP-Weeks is part of an effort to circulate a sign-on letter so that unions can show their solidarity.

“Larger institutions generally don't move as quickly, so we are continuing to reach out to the rest of labor, and we expect more sign-ons in the future,” BP-Weeks continues. “And we also realize not all of labor is in the same place on that. This moment can be a tool to organize and do some political education with unions as well.”

But even where union leaders—or their memberships as a whole—have not signed on, some workers and union members are involved in Stop Cop City organizing. Among them is Bill Aiman, a part-time United Parcel Service (UPS) worker who is a member of the Teamsters and is also involved in Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a rank-and-file movement for improved democracy and militancy. He is based in the Atlanta metro area and says over the phone that he has “been attending protests, and trying to organize where possible.”

“When I talk to coworkers,” he says, “the Cop City project is extremely unpopular.”

“Cops are the first line of defense for business owners and employers, so I think it makes sense for labor to be opposed to Cop City,” he says. “These cops are being trained at Cop City and will use the tactics they learn to crush our strike if we go out.” The UPS contract will expire on July 31, and around 350,000 Teamsters could go on strike.

Some union leaders say, in addition to the immediate interests of labor, there are bigger principles at stake. In their statement, UE officers noted that, “In a democracy, decisions about the use of publicly-owned land and public funds should be driven by robust public debate, including the right of members of the public to peacefully protest. Instead, Atlanta has chosen repression.”

Early Tuesday, Atlanta’s city council approved the allocation of $67 million in public funds for the project: around $31 million in public funds for the construction of Cop City, along with $1.2 million a year over 30 years for use of the facility. This was approved despite an outpouring of impassioned public opposition. The rest of the funding will be raised privately. The APF’s board is filled with a host of Georgia-headquartered corporate leaders, ranging from Delta Air Lines to Waffle House to UPS. Protesters say that the supporters of Cop City—in government, the corporate world, and police-aligned nonprofits—are ramming through the project without meaningful democratic input. Emory University conducted a survey in March which found that a plurality of Black Atlanta residents oppose Cop City. Many protesters say the funds should instead be invested in public programs that improve human and environmental wellbeing.

Kerry Cannon, the interim vice president of Home Depot Workers United, says, “Home Depot has a set of core values they like to say they live by, and their financial and other support of Cop City is in complete contradiction of their values, from destroying a forest to ignoring the will of the people of that area.” The company advertises a wheel of “core values” on its website—these include “respect for all people” and “taking care of our people.”

Cop City is not the first time Home Depot has come under fire for the actual values it promotes. Another co-founder, billionaire Bernie Marcus, has donated to the campaigns of far-right politicians, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In 2021, a coalition of Black faith leaders called for a boycott of the company, which is headquartered in Georgia, for its “indifference” to a sweeping law to curb voting rights, even as other corporations spoke out. Numerous Home Depot employees have also spoken out about a host of nightmarish working conditions, ranging from sexual harassment to timed bathroom breaks.

After losing his job, Quiles is organizing for Home Depot Workers United in a strictly volunteer capacity, and says he is having to “limit expenses in the household” and is “cutting it fairly close.” The “current corporate culture in the country” is what inspires him to keep organizing, he says, and speaking out about Home Depot’s links to Cop City is a critical part of that.

“The point of labor organizing,” he says, “is to improve society as a whole.”

This article is being co-published with Workday Magazine and The Real News Network.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Sarah Lazare.

As her first book since President Joe Biden’s election and the COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention the high-profile union elections at Amazon and Starbucks, Rules to Win By “extends the theory and logic of high-participation organizing into high-participation negotiations.” In Rules to Win By, Lawlor and McAlevey provide a playbook for successful negotiations, paving the way for the next chapter of a blossoming labor movement. McAlevey spoke with In These Times this May.

Paige Oamek: You write that how workers negotiate their contracts is fundamental to what kind of union they become, but that bosses’ legal strategies can often stifle that first strong contract. What kind of union busting can occur post-union victory?

Jane McAlevey: In the United States, few people understand that the employer gets two complete attempts to destroy a workers’ organization. The first is the terror campaign that goes on during the unionization effort. But unless and until workers go on to negotiate a first contract, functionally speaking, there isn't a union in place.

There’s nothing straightforward about how this works. For example, at Starbucks, the union election was certified by the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), which was great, but with certification, a time clock starts on securing that first contract. Under the National Labor Relations Act, once a union is certified, they have 12 months to reach an agreement or management can begin to decertify the worker’s union. Officially, workers have to file the paperwork for decertification, but in practice and in my experience, these are management-directed actions. Unfortunately, that’s what we just saw in Buffalo. It's classic union-busting.

I want to contrast that with the Amazon JFK8 election, where Amazon has been filing legal election objections to the NLRB since the workers won. So there isn't that same 12-month clock ticking, but there is a second route to break the union post election. There’s been no contract talks at all at JFK8 because the employer is taking what I call the “Smithfield Foods approach” of appealing the actual election, with Amazon asserting typical lies to invalidate what was clearly a legitimate election. In my book No Shortcuts, I talked about the near 16-year legal appeal strategy that Smithfield Foods infamously used to delay ever getting into contract negotiations.

The truth is, in order for a union to stand any chance of getting to their first contract negotiations, the organizing work has to continue. It has to be incredibly strong, high-participation and public for workers to stand a chance of overcoming the union-busting that will continue. You cannot stop organizing when you win the election. You must keep building power, achieve supermajority unity and, once the workplace shop is strong, you're probably going to have to bring the public into the campaign.

PO: How can workers fight back against these tactics?

JM: People must be clear, transparent and direct with workers upfront that their employer is going to have two bites at the apple. So they also need a two-pronged struggle: first to win the election and then to force them to the negotiation table. The clearer that is upfront, the better the chances are that the workers will understand what's required to actually get a contract.

One example is putting out something like a majority petition, which is a structure test. If you've won the election, you must keep people focused on the fact that their active participation is what's going to potentially lead to a good contract. That petition says the majority voted to form a union and now we demand that the employer start negotiating a fair contract.

We know the union busters are going to lie. They're gonna say, “The workers here don't really want a union.” That is Amazon’s message over and over, despite the fact that workers at JFK8 voted overwhelmingly for a union.

The petition process is also a great time to do a contract survey: “Hey, we just voted to form a union, let's figure out what we want from it.” A good contract survey is always done face-to-face and it’s an organizing process to start raising people's expectations. Sadly, the overwhelming approach of trade unions in the United States is to do anonymous surveys online. If you don't feel comfortable saying to somebody in a conversation, “What is it you want to win in the contract?” it's not likely that the worker will participate in the contract campaign. Every single structure test before and after an election is helping build relationships and trust worker-to-worker. By setting a majority goal for the contract survey process and conducting it through one-on-one conversations among coworkers, you’re communicating that these demands aren’t going to be won unless each person is actively involved in building the power to win.

PO: You explicitly lay out the goal of having every worker show up to negotiations at least once. Why?

JM: You’ll often hear unions say: ‘The U in union is you.” But how a worker comes to see themselves as central to their own organization is a different story. It’s one thing to talk about it, it's another to have them experience it. I have never seen a more transformational experience than when a worker actually sees their employer fighting them tooth and nail on basic demands. Particularly for workers who are skeptical about being part of a union, nothing transforms their understanding quite like that experience. For the first time, they’ll see through all the union busters' rhetoric and see that we are actually a group of workers going up against our employer.

It doesn't mean every worker comes for the whole bargaining session. It may be about getting them there for 30 minutes. The goal is getting everyone in that room at least once and making it easy for workers to participate.

PO: This is your first book since COVID, as well as the recent labor upsurge. Do you think we're in a fundamentally different place in the labor movement today?

JM: Yes and no. In 2018, we saw the largest number of strikes, and of workers on strike, than we had seen in 30 years. Before the pandemic, there was already a lot happening in terms of workers taking action, including in right-to-work states and illegal strikes. It's important to note there was already a turn happening with workers deciding to stand up and fight for themselves.

The pandemic consolidated that motion. Workers were told, “you're essential,” while CEOs and executives were sitting at home. Then, as millions of workers seek some justice for the sacrifices made during the pandemic, they get union busting, no raises or crappy raises, and no recognition or respect. That has expanded and consolidated the anger.

There's a lot of exciting energy happening right now and we're seeing it through lots of different strikes and unionization efforts. How long it lasts, in some ways, is up to the organizers and the decision makers in national unions: Do they enable workers to win, or do they continue their decades-long lowering of workers’ expectations?

PO: Among the flurry of new unions being created, we're also in the midst of a union reform movement, with the UAW, the Teamsters, the UFCW, etc.

JM: The changes in the UAW and Teamster leadership are very important and hold the potential for real change in those unions. But I think there are options for union reform in every contract negotiation in every union. For example, the focus of Rules to Win By is to show what union democracy looks like. The driving reason for most workers is not some idealistic image that unions make the world better. Instead, they form or join a union to achieve a good contract that's going to win them some material gains and dignity on the job.

Therefore, the simplest, best way to deal with the question of reform is actually to do it: by opening up the negotiations process, making it transparent, electing really big worker committees and then facilitating workers’ capacity to participate.

PO: A lot of workers are pushing back against tiered contract systems that were implemented in previous contracts, in which new hires lose out on the existing benefits won. How does union democracy help fight those tier-system workplaces?

JM: If workers are in the room and invited to participate in large numbers, it's not likely that they're going to agree to a multi-tiered contract. Which is precisely why most unions resist having workers in the room. If you're doing traditional, top-down, secret negotiations behind closed doors—meaning people agree to gag orders—workers have no idea what's going on in their own negotiations until it's time to ratify. It’s just, “Hey, do you want these raises?” along with screwing the workers coming behind you.

Most negotiators and most established unions are nervous about direct accountability from workers. If they're concerned about their next internal election, the union will promise existing workers they get to keep what they have, but they're going to sacrifice the people that come behind them. It seems like a simple solution but it destroys the entire union in the end. That's what tiered agreements do—they destroy solidarity and they destroy the organization. If workers are in the room, they're not likely to agree to such a thing.

PO: What other contract stipulations limit solidarity?

JM: 99% of contracts in the United States have “no strike, no lockout” language, which guarantees that workers won't be locked out during the life of the contract and that workers shall not strike until such time as the contract expires. This is one good reason to negotiate short-duration contracts, as I talk about in the book.

In October 2022, the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union made a really bold decision to endorse and fully embrace transparent and open negotiations and short contracts. They recognize that conditions change a lot, so why would you want to be locked into a four-, five- or six-year contract? What are you going to do if the cost of living or inflation goes crazy? One strategy is you have short contracts. I actually think that's really smart. If you're going to create a fighting union, then this is a terrific way, every two or three years, to keep rebuilding the union’s muscle.

No strike-no lockout language expires when union contracts expire, and that’s when workers can strike. But what can also happen is the employer has the right to cut off union dues literally the day the contract expires. In Massachusetts, a nurses’ union went through that experience when they issued a strike threat. The nurses leading that struggle decided that day that they were never going to risk having an employer be able to shut off their money again. Over a five-year period, they moved every single chapter from an employer-deduction method of dues collection (the most common among all unions), to a direct dues payment system, completely bypassing the employer.

PO: In the book’s conclusion, you move to consider negotiations on a larger scale: using the idea of high participation to build governing power.

JM: It's unfortunate there's such a lack of experience with negotiations outside of the trade union movement. It's a reflection of the lack of power we have as social movements right now. You have to build enough power to create a real crisis for an employer, to get corporate bosses or other decision-makers into the room to even have negotiations. These principles laid out in the book apply across the board, be it for tenant unions, community groups or legislative negotiations. The more people involved, the more people understand the stakes of the fight, and the more people understand what the opposition is, the better your side is set up to win.

This also translates into the electoral system in the United States. Part of what we know is that political education is a really fundamental responsibility of both unions and non-union formations in this country. There is no better political education than inviting people into the process of an organization’s small-n negotiation. All the employer’s or elites’ lies are out in the open in the negotiations process.

But we need way more power being built. We need people out of advocacy mode, out of mobilizing mode and into really serious organizing, so that more organizations of all kinds are actually in the position to have these kinds of negotiations. In both a union or non-union setting, the same principles apply. Transparent, big and open negotiations are fundamentally an asset to the political education process, which we need a whole lot more of in this country right now.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Paige Oamek.

At the time, economist Jeffrey Sachs breathlessly suggested that Joe Biden had the potential “to become the most transformative president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Mother Jones’ David Corn claimed Biden was giving big government “a big shot in the arm” and called mainstream Democrats “well positioned to champion and advance the argument for big government.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for his part, called the Biden agenda “what the American people want, what a majority of us in the Democratic caucus want,” while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) opined that Biden had “definitely exceeded” progressives’ expectations.

In the Biden administration’s early days, as America sought desperately to exorcise the specter of January 6 and the nightmarish Trump years, liberals and centrists were full of hope. And confronting an unprecedented pandemic—the need to meet the exigencies of the Covid crisis—had shifted the Overton Window decidedly to the left. The ARP wasn’t Biden’s only foray into progressive economics. By October 2022, following months of agitation from organizers, Biden released a program to cancel student loan debt, even if it was woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the student debt crisis and our overall debt crisis.

Yet rather than ushering in a new progressive era of government, Biden and establishment Democrats have since let their burgeoning welfare state wither. They have reverted to the same neoliberal orthodoxy which has wreaked havoc on working people for generations. This shift represents a failure of both policy and politics.

Fast forward from 2021 to the present, and comparisons likening Biden to FDR ring hollow. Biden’s student debt proposal is on legal life support, awaiting a Supreme Court decision that will likely overturn key aspects of the program, while House Republicans just passed a measure blocking the plan. Biden’s omnibus domestic spending plan, originally dubbed the American Families Plan and later Build Back Better, became the victim of death by a thousand cuts at the hands of conservative Democrats including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.).

Initially envisioned as a sweeping $6 trillion suite of social spending programs paired with infrastructure projects presented as one filibuster-proof reconciliation package, Build Back Better was pared down bit by bit from June 2021 until Manchin finally declared it “dead” on February 1, 2022. This result reflected centrists’ continued obsession with bipartisanship: Democratic leadership chose to pursue a separate bipartisan infrastructure bill, sequestering social spending from the infrastructure spending, thereby leaving the social programs vulnerable to Manchin and his ilk’s objections. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a hollow shell of the original American Families Plan, hasn’t substantially accomplished its titular task, and spending in the bill does not dramatically benefit social programs. For example, the IRA contained a mere $64 billion in Affordable Care Act expanded coverage subsidies, a pale shadow of the original Build Back Better Act’s ample social provisions.

Meanwhile, the pandemic safety net’s crown jewels—the expansion of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits; direct stimulus checks; expanded unemployment benefits which benefited 15 million people who aren’t normally covered; expanded SNAP benefits to help people eat; and the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) which temporarily cut child poverty in half—have reverted to their scanty pre-pandemic forms. In March 2023, 31 million Americans’ food stamp benefits plummeted, in some cases by $328 a month, in what’s been termed the “hunger cliff.” Repealing the expanded CTC in January 2022 caused 3.7 million more children to live in poverty and increased food insufficiency in families with children by 25%. And around 15 million stand to lose their Medicaid coverage due to the end to pandemic-era protections.

The result of these reductions in benefits amounts to what Branko Marcetic terms “one of the most significant contractions of the U.S. welfare state since the Bill Clinton years.” The transience of Biden’s welfare state expansion was hardly a secret. On March 11, 2021, Tessa Stuart wrote in Rolling Stone that “some critics are already fretting about a kind of child poverty ‘fiscal cliff’ effect that could plunge millions of children into poverty when the program expires.” Alexander Sammon noted that "despite the fact that these programs are effective and popular, there has been shockingly little vocal opposition from Democrats to the expiration of these benefits.”

Yet these programs did indeed expire, as was easily predictable. And now the Biden administration awaits a likely Supreme Court decision that would end his student loan cancelation program. Biden recently pleaded in his 2023 State of the Union for a divided Congress to restore the expanded CTC, a highly unlikely prospect with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. More recently, Biden acquiesced to a harmful debt ceiling deal after protracted negotiations with Republican racketeers who blackmailed him into imposing strict work requirements for food stamp recipients and cutting social spending as the price of staving off a calamitous default.

No FDR

How did we get here? And how is it that this whole rigmarole is eerily reminiscent of the Obama administration, despite claims that Bidenism represents the transcendence of neoliberal politics? Consider all the parallels: initial analogies to Roosevelt despite the absence of Rooseveltian statecraft; the penny-wise, pound-foolish approach of attempting to redress major problems with insufficiently large or long-term investments; policies stymied or hamstrung by resistance from both Republicans and centrist Democrats; and a contingent of far-right extortionists willing to risk financial default to secure the dismemberment of the social safety net.

It would be unfair to compare the political terrain in 2008-2010 or 2021-2022 with the favorable legislative landscape which FDR commanded in the 1930s and 1940s, or that of LBJ’s Great Society in the 1960s. The Democrats’ political situation in the more recent cases, despite exercising control of Congress and the presidency, has been far more tenuous (although it is worth noting that Roosevelt was the subject of a failed right-wing coup attempt). During the New Deal, Democrats controlled over 70% of House seats and around 60% of Senate seats, and LBJ’s administration enjoyed supermajorities in both chambers of Congress. To expect the Great Society coalition’s prodigious legislative productivity—LBJ and the Democrats passed around 200 laws—in today’s starkly polarized, politically dysfunctional country would be unreasonable.

But it would also be wrong to conclude that Democrats in the 2010s and 2020s have been blameless in their incapacity to emulate their predecessors’ legislative success. Unlike Roosevelt and Johnson, who were consummate political operators, the modus operandi of today’s Democratic establishment is to accept the political climate as given rather than understanding it to be fluid—and ameliorable—if they mobilize majorities around progressive policies which enjoy widespread popular support via old-fashioned organizing and legislative hardball.

Democrats seem to have unlearned the political knowhow that characterized the Johnson and Roosevelt eras. It’s hard to imagine the FDR who welcomed the hatred of Wall Street bankers or the Lyndon Johnson of the infamous “Johnson treatment,” which one reporter characterized as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages,” taking Manchin’s Build Back Better Act-torpedoing antics lying down. Johnson, a political force who was indispensable to the enactment of historic civil rights acts despite ferocious opposition, evinced great acumen in his politicking. His shepherding of the 1957 Civil Rights Act into law by tying a separate dam construction vote to the civil rights bill’s success defied conventional wisdom, which regarded the act’s passage as unattainable. As Robert Caro, LBJ’s preeminent biographer, commented, “To see Lyndon Johnson get that bill through, almost vote by vote, is to see not only legislative power but legislative genius.”

Likewise, the way FDR crafted and understood the New Deal exhibits his firm grasp of political calculus. When a public administrator spoke with him about payroll taxes being ill-suited to fund Social Security, FDR’s response, which defended the use of payroll taxes, was illuminating. “I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through,” he said. “We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” And he was right: even today, Social Security is American politics’ “third rail”: with notable exceptions, even Republicans tend to shy away from attacking it.

FDR framed his policies for the long term. He envisioned “a program of long-range planning” to achieve “a rounded and permanent national life" and declared that the "duty of seeing the country in a long-range perspective is one which, in a very special manner, attaches to this office to which you have chosen me.” Although it was also a response to immediate needs, the New Deal was designed to be monumental, to unabashedly use government power to improve people’s lives in tangible, concrete and permanent ways. In the first few years of the New Deal, the National Recovery Administration’s “blue eagle” logo was practically ubiquitous in stores. The Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Tennessee Valley Authority left concrete, enduring demonstrations of government’s efficacy nationwide, many of which persist to the present.

FDR and LBJ’s willingness to use strategic savvy and political entrepreneurship to promote state power for the long-term contrasts with modern Democrats’ reluctance to embrace power politics—and their reticence to institute programs which unapologetically raise people’s awareness of the government's role in their lives. Many voters perceived Obama’s stimulus as being largely ineffective, perhaps partly because the Obama administration was fixated upon rendering the stimulus as unobtrusive as possible, the result of an ideological affinity for the “nudge” psychology espoused by Richard Thaler and Obama’s regulation czar Cass Sunstein. In 2010, James Surowiecki wrote in the New Yorker about Obama’s hidden stimulus, noting that:

The most interesting aspect of the stimulus’s image problems concern its design and implementation. Paradoxically, the very things that made the stimulus more effective economically may have made it less popular politically. For instance, because research has shown that lump-sum tax refunds get hoarded rather than spent, the government decided not to give individuals their tax cuts all at once, instead refunding a little on each paycheck. The tactic was successful at increasing consumer demand, but it had a big political cost: many voters never noticed that they were getting a tax cut.

In politics, perception is reality. As political scientist Suzanne Mettler elaborated in an analysis of the “submerged state” and how “invisible government policies” endanger democracy, the Obama administration’s hesitance to sully its hands by framing policies which were noticeable in daily life as the act of government was self-defeating, not allowing the White House to reap political capital.

Zombie neoliberalism

Democrats’ self-defeating tendencies from the aughts haven’t gone away. Most obviously, the Republicans repeated their 2011 debt ceiling blackmail over the last few months. Yet Democrats, despite having had 12 years to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, were again caught flat-footed. Even when the Democrats still controlled Congress in 2022, Biden unilaterally ruled out abolishing the debt ceiling.

Biden has made other strategic blunders. When sending out direct stimulus payments, Biden decided not to put his name on the checks, breaking with his publicity-savvy predecessor. Instead, the checks simply bore “the signature of a career official at the treasury department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.” Reporting requirements for Biden’s stimulus program mean that innovative state and local programs often won’t be tracked by the federal government, making it harder for Democrats to garner acknowledgement for them. Unlike Obama’s stimulus, Biden’s program lacks even a logo. As members of the American Prospect’s staff note, “ARPA’s low legibility has made it harder for the Biden administration to recoup its political investment.”

If people don’t perceive the benefits of Democratic control of government, it makes it increasingly difficult to rally electoral coalitions around the goal of thwarting Republican victory. And Republican electoral victories, as we know from bitter experience over the last 50 years, lead to pain and anguish for the working class. Republicans’ standard operating procedure when in power is to withdraw social supports, slash environmental protections, and increase funding to the police and armed forces, all of which can have the effect of materially shortening people’s lives.

The latest installment of our ongoing debt ceiling debacle and Biden’s refusal to entertain creative approaches like minting a trillion-dollar coin—even in the face of cuts to the social safety net—underscore that we haven’t emerged from the shadow of neoliberalism. We’re facing, as we have since at least the days of President Reagan, a crisis of faith in the government’s capacity to accomplish positive projects. In this moment, we need more Democrats who understand the power of political symbolism, and are ready to deliver results that concretely improve people’s lives. Republicans will control the House of Representatives for at least the next two years, and we are confronting a crisis of oligarchic political paralysis which requires us to fundamentally restructure the American political system if we seek any hope of truly democratic reforms.

In the run up to the 2024 election, Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis slaver at the chance to end genuine electoral democracy and accelerate America’s descent into ethnonationalist, hyper-capitalist dystopia. What’s clear is that we need progressive leaders who plan for the long term and design programs which are built to last rather than to serve as temporary blips. If not, we already know how this story will play out—and who will pay the price.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Scott Remer.

Chicago mayors have since closed, reconstituted and turned-around (when all staff were fired and rehired) over 200 schools, almost exclusively in the city’s Black communities. This created incalculable harm by exacerbating violence and displacement, greatly undermining confidence in one of our most treasured public institutions. It was over the same period that Chicago Public Schools opened 193 privatized charter, military and contract schools.

In May 2008, as all of this reform was getting underway, myself and Al Ramirez, an elementary school teacher and union delegate from Irma C. Ruiz Elementary School, invited 10 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) into a spartan room inside the United Electrical Workers union hall, on the Near West Side of Chicago, to consider the state of our union. Many of those present were elected delegates at their schools like Stacy Davis Gates at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, Kenzo Shibata at Lake View High School, Jesse Sharkey, Wendy Boatman and Brian Roa at Senn High School, Jennifer Johnson at Lincoln Park High School, Jose Frausto at Enrico Tonti Elementary School, Norine Gutekanst at Whittier Dual Language School, Jay Rehak from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, and Kyle Westbrook from Walter Payton College Preparatory High School.

We were frustrated and fed up with the CTU leadership because they did not put up any significant opposition when Mayor Richard M. Daley unleashed the first round of school closings in 2004. For years, community organizations like the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) had called out city officials for the educational apartheid that anchored their efforts to close schools. The first attempt in 2004 was a plan to close 20 of 22 schools in the heart of the city’s Black communities. Many of us had spent years working internally both within our schools and citywide to cajole and encourage union officers and staff to provide organizing support and resources for rank-and-file union members, alongside community allies, to wage a fight against these existential attacks on public education. Those efforts had fits and starts but ultimately failed to generate a significant shift in strategy from the CTU. According to Ramirez, a co-founder of what would become the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), CTU leadership “was not asleep at the wheel, they were joyriding.” Jesse Sharkey, who would later go on to lead the CTU but was then a union delegate at Senn High School, noted at the time that “if we continue down this path, we won’t have a union for much longer.” CORE would go on to hold its first public event on June 7, 2008, which featured a keynote address by Jinny Sims, president of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, who shared how the BCTF had won an illegal strike focused on lowering class size in 2005.

A major reason for calling that first meeting was my experience as a union delegate at a predominantly Black school that was callously closed by the district. That school, Englewood High School, was abruptly phased out (allowing existing students to graduate but not accepting any new students) by Arne Duncan, who in 2005 was then CPS CEO. Largely on our own, we organized parents, students and community members to pack school board hearings, share our experiences, and oppose the closing which we knew would destabilize the school community. None of that changed the Chicago Board of Education’s ultimate decision, but the organizing and resistance built a network of educators, parents and community advocates willing to form a new and powerful coalition. That experience launched a 15 plus year collective project to resuscitate the CTU and accelerate the resistance to years of chronic underfunding and the bipartisan effort to close so-called underperforming public schools in the city.

The closing of Englewood was part of a program called Renaissance 2010 (Ren2010), when some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in Chicago called for closing 60-70 schools and opening up some 100 non-union charter and contract schools. Englewood, as one of the oldest Black majority schools in the system with a storied past and graduates like Gwendolyn Brooks and Lorraine Hansberry, was a grand prize. To justify the closing, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, published “Left Behind: A Report of the Education Committee,” which said there were “too few excellent teachers” and demanded “Chicago should have at least 100 charter schools, located predominantly in inner-city neighborhoods that are served today by mostly failing public schools.”

When Duncan called for the closure of Englewood, the CTU vice president at the time, Ted Dallas, told us to “get your resumes ready.” After Duncan announced Ren2010, based almost verbatim on the Civic Committee’s report, and called Englewood “a culture of failure,” the union tried to counter with a better plan to fix failing schools and remove so-called “bad” teachers. To demonstrate that commitment, the CTU brought in the former president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, Dal Lawrence, to tell the press that we should immediately terminate 10% of the teaching workforce. Lawrence asserted that the way to improve schools was to make tougher evaluation systems and police ourselves and terminate ineffective teachers. Marilyn Stewart, the CTU president at the time, nodded approvingly. We played the video of the CTU press conference during that May 2008 meeting at the UE hall as the 10 activists gathered there shook their heads in disgust.

We knew then what we know now: If workers want to shape their destiny, we must organize inside the workplaces where we have the most influence and maximize our deep connections as teachers to a broader set of social forces. That was the day we committed to form the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators as a way to revive the CTU in the mold of a fighting and organizing union, the only thing that could meet the challenges of the moment and set us on a better path forward.

The day after CORE was formed, in order to maximize the number of organizations working to stop Ren2010, we assembled a new coalition called the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) alongside a host of social movement organizations including KOCO, the Pilsen Alliance, Blocks Together, Action Now, Communities United, Teachers For Social Justice, Designs for Change, Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and Parents United for Responsible Education. We called community meetings, led book clubs based on Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, conducted study groups (often attended by 40 people) on our contract, and developed a constitution for the caucus that stressed community partnerships, democracy, and growing rank-and-file power to defend public education.

We learned from experienced unionists in Los Angeles and British Columbia that we could fight and win against seemingly impossible odds. Based on their advice, we held public events that even CTU leadership was compelled to attend. In the winter of 2010, a CPS insider shared us on a secret list of more schools that the district planned to close and enabled us to organize an event in the middle of a blizzard at Malcolm X College that 500 people attended. These residents came to speak out against the efforts to extinguish their school communities.

We also demonstrated a deep and sustained commitment to “Save our Schools” (a slogan used by GEM on banners and literature) by sleeping outside in the freezing cold to secure our place to speak out at Board of Education meetings and ensure that the public and media knew our story and could popularize a counter narrative of educator and community opposition. We sued the Chicago School Board in a pro-bono case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the racially disparate impact caused from firing a disproportionate number of Black educators at Black schools. We studied the school budget and testified at CPS budget hearings about the ways neighborhood schools were being starved while privatized and selective enrollment schools received more resources. In other words, we built a “union in the community” meeting by meeting and event after event.

These years of frenetic activity and careful planning set the stage for the CTU leadership election two years later in 2010, when legendary former CTU President Karen Lewis and our officer and executive board slate swept the incumbents out of power in a runoff election. The results represented a sea change in the history of public education and the teacher union movement.

When Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor in 2011, the CTU’s newly elected leadership knew we would have to become strike ready and curtail his efforts to legislate away our right to strike. Emanuel led an effort that resulted in a bill that made it impossible to strike unless 75% of our existing members authorized it. He then attempted to lengthen the school day by 20% without commensurate pay or resources. This created an incentive to achieve maximum unity, a standard we easily surpassed. To add insult to injury, Emanuel attempted to eviscerate an agreement forged from 70 years of bargaining history by turning a 300-plus page contract into a 50-page document stripped of rights that educators had endured multiple strikes in the 1970s and ’80s to win. As a result, we cleared the hurdle with over 90% of members voting to authorize a strike. Emanuel continued to demonize us by claiming “Teachers got a raise, children got the shaft” in a front page article in the Chicago Sun-Times, all but ensuring that a strike would be necessary.

Today, the CTU’s 2012 strike is often referenced as the dawn of an approach to contract negotiations known as Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG). While we started with more traditional proposals for lower class sizes and increased staffing, we experimented with demands for progressive revenue, equitable use of the Tax Increment Financing program and a teacher home visit program modeled after the Saint Paul Federation of Educators. By 2015, we expanded those efforts and submitted proposals to pay $15 an hour to all school district employees, even those outside our own membership. The solidarity with the Fight for $15 campaign is one example of what Stephen Lerner, one of the founders of the BCG network and an architect of SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign, has argued is a necessary innovation in how unions must use their leverage to advance broader societal demands. Another example of this approach was the CTU’s demand for affordable housing for all of Chicago’s 20,000 homeless students during our 2019 strike.

More and more unions are adopting BCG approaches as a result. In 2020, more than 4,000 janitors in Minneapolis in SEIU Local 26 led a strike that focused in large part on environmental justice demands.

“The Minneapolis janitors became the first U.S. union to go on strike for climate justice. … Local unions across the country have responded to the global pandemic by articulating demands that meet the needs of their members and the communities they live and work in,” according to a March 2020 article in The Forge by Todd E. Vachon, Gerry Hudson, Judith Le Blanc and Saket Soni. Los Angeles teachers recently settled an agreement that similarly ramps up environmental justice provisions in their new contract, following a tradition started in the education sector during the 2012 strike.”

That 2012 CTU strike encouraged teacher union locals across the nation, including those in red states without formal bargaining rights to fight back. The last decade represents the most successful organizing project that the labor movement has experienced in a generation. Community and union forces banded together and raised issues about inequitable funding, passed initiatives for progressive revenue that turned back decades of austerity that took the form of cuts to educational spending, and in some cases exposed educational apartheid in their advocacy and demands. The movement permanently disrupted the bipartisan neoliberal privatization agenda that produced record school closures, budget cuts, and the expansion of non-union charter schools.

No fewer than 25 teacher strikes in the past 10 years were launched to roll back the ongoing attacks on public education. The strikes have injected hope and momentum into the labor movement. From Arizona to West Virginia to Minneapolis, teachers waged city-based and state-wide strikes that led to unprecedented victories in school investment, class sizes, staffing formulas, and common good demands after decades of underfunding, privatization, and demonization of public school teachers and staff. As scholar Eric Blanc has noted, “a total of 425,000 workers struck in 2019, with a strong majority (270,000) again coming from the education sector. And this number does not include the numerous examples of school districts such as Las Vegas, where unions organized credible strike threats but management avoided walkouts by granting major last-minute concessions.”

In many of these efforts, teachers won because they have run strong contract campaigns focused on what organizer and author Jane McAlevey has referred to as “structure tests,” such as trying to ramp up the number of members wearing red of Fridays, engaging in informational pickets with parents, attending citywide rallies and events, all culminating in strike votes and strike action. Organizers engaged every member to take part in escalating actions that advanced a clear set of public good demands.

In 2018, numerous reports portrayed the West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky school walkouts as an extension of the new community orientation of the teacher union response to budget cuts and efforts to expand privatized school options. A renewed sense that collective action could turn the table on decades-long attacks against public education. Many activists see the CTU’s strike in 2012, and the formation of CORE in 2008, as initial flashpoints that set the course for these later actions. For example, Rebecca Garelli, a strike captain at Talcott Elementary School in 2012, went on to lead the Red for Ed statewide strike actions in Arizona years later as a science teacher. Additional evidence of CORE and CTU setting the stage was the proliferation of locals demanding a similar set of aspirational goals. Reports titled “The Schools Saint Paul Children Deserve” and “Schools LA Students Deserve” and “Schools Oakland Students Deserve” were all modeled after our 2012 report titled “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve.” Additionally, the strike created a wave of new rank-and-file teacher caucuses across the country like the Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-File Educators, the New York Movement of Rank-and-File Educators, the Caucus of Working Educators in Philadelphia and a national network called the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File Educators (UCORE) coordinated by Labor Notes.

Most of the demands advanced by educators in red states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arizona went beyond the narrow confines of traditional bargaining and often included the needs of public school families and even other workers. Though formal collective bargaining is prohibited in West Virginia, teachers there refused to end their strike until all of the state’s employees received the same raise they had been promised. Additionally, Arizona teachers organized for a ballot initiative that would block tax cuts that had defunded their schools, while North Carolina teachers called for Medicaid expansion.

In April 2023, a majority of Chicago voters opted to elect a new mayor, Brandon Johnson, an educator and CTU organizer who had been a key player in the fight against school closings and austerity. His election was a testament to the damage done by school closings and the rejection by voters of the neoliberal school agenda. For example, Emanuel’s popularity plummeted in the aftermath of his 50 school closings in 2013. As local school council co-chair of Harper High School, Clifford Fields, stated during the 2017 fight against the last round of school closings, "If these schools have to go, the mayor has to go."

The last 20 years of education reform policy have focused on privatization and destabilization of public schools in Chicago and nationally—and Chicago helped lead the way in the resistance to it. Now, with the election of a CTU member and middle school teacher as mayor of the nation’s third largest city, the Johnson administration can build on the work of CORE and the new CTU to bring forth a new era of investment and support for sustainable community school districts that foster equity over competition.

Happy 15th birthday CORE—we needed you then, we need you now—may the next 15 years bring similar advances and victories.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Jackson Potter.

Leading the move was Cody Smith, a top Republican lawmaker and chair of the state’s budget committee, who made no attempt to hide the fact that he was retaliating against librarians because they dared to join the ACLU in suing the state over a Republican-led book ban. Smith said, “I don’t think we should subsidize the attempts to overturn laws that we also created,” even though the ACLU is entirely funding the lawsuit.

Indeed, Republicans forced Missouri’s librarians into suing their state in what appears to be yet another flashpoint in the GOP’s increasingly desperate culture wars. In 2022 the GOP passed SB 775, criminalizing librarians for providing “sexually explicit” material to minors. They face a $2,000 fine or up to a year in jail if found in violation of the bizarre law.

Thankfully, the state Senate Appropriations Committee moved quickly to restore public library funding, with Senate Republican Lincoln Hough admitting, “I think it was kind of a punitive cut that the House made.”

But the threat still remains after Missouri’s Republican State Secretary Jay Ashcroft pushed through an administrative rule that threatens funding if libraries violate the book ban. He did so in an explicitly undemocratic manner, saying, “I have to figure out how to do this, because by rule I can get it done much more quickly than if I wait on the legislature.”

“Defund the Library” could be the GOP’s new slogan, succinctly encompassing a free-market agenda to destroy public funding of institutions that enlighten and educate, all under the disingenuous banner of “protecting children.”

Missouri’s library debacle isn’t an isolated incident. Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan, lost its public funding last November after it refused to ban books that conservative voters deemed objectionable.

Louisiana Republicans are also advancing a state bill that threatens library funding over material deemed objectionable.

And Texas Republicans voted to cut library funding in retaliation for “drag queen story hour” readings, again claiming to do so in order to protect children from being exposed to men and gender-nonconforming individuals wearing makeup and dresses with pride.

A Vox analysis of libraries under attack explained the disturbing trend: “Usually, lawmakers start with book bans. If the bans aren’t as effective as they’d hope, they escalate to threatening to defund local libraries.”

U.S. libraries have long been institutions embodying freedom: the freedom to learn, and to do so anonymously, without regard to one’s financial status. When Congress rushed through the USA PATRIOT Act in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, librarians were among the first to counter the anti-democratic law, refusing to spy on their users for the government. They stood up to the federal government and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One Connecticut librarian named Peter Chase, who was bound by a government gag order over a requirement to turn over records, said, “As a librarian, I believe it is my duty and responsibility to speak out about any infringement to the intellectual freedom of library patrons.”

Libraries offer free use of computers and free internet service, an especially important service for people living in low-income neighborhoods, rural areas, and tribal communities. During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns forced children out of classrooms, many libraries created community hot spots and enabled Wi-Fi access in their parking lots so that kids without home internet could connect remotely with their classrooms.

Libraries do so much more than lend books. They offer passport services, help with job applications and school research, and provide low-cost or free spaces for community events. They promote local authors and participate in city-wide reading programs and book clubs. A 2021 California report on libraries in the state concluded that “Through digital labs, makerspaces, career centers and business resources, memory labs, public programs, community partnerships, and online resources, public libraries help communities explore, learn, connect, and have fun beyond their traditional ‘library’ brand.”

When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ran for president in the 2016 election, he cited public funding of libraries as an example of democratic socialism in action, and libraries as “socialist institutions.”

Indeed, these socialist institutions are hugely popular. A Gallup poll of leisure activities conducted every 10 years found in 2019 that going to the library was “the most common cultural activity Americans engage in,” even more so than going to the movie theater. Libraries were far more popular among women than men, and low-income residents were far more likely to use their local library’s services than their higher-income neighbors.

In Michigan, where several libraries are dealing with book bans and where Patmos Library in Jamestown faced defunding, a March 2023 poll found broad support among the public, across party lines and political affiliations, to support libraries and the free dissemination of information.

These days it seems as though any public institution that actually helps and protects Americans is ripe for Republican-led destruction. It’s no wonder that conservatives are taking aim at this pillar of American democracy, deeming libraries “bastions of Marxism,” and “woke” purveyors of material that encourages racial justice and questions sexual orthodoxy. Not only have hundreds of books been banned across the country, but Republicans, like the ones in Missouri, are threatening librarians across the nation with fines and imprisonment. The Washington Post in a May 2023 analysis found that “[a]t least seven states have passed such laws in the last two years.”

Unlike police, who routinely kill and maim Americans, and who rightfully deserve to be targeted with defunding, and unlike gun manufacturers whose weapons continue to wreak constant violence and death across the country, librarians are the ones protecting and serving the public and its right to access information freely. But the GOP prefers to protect police and weapons makers while attacking librarians.

One New Jersey high school librarian named Martha Hickson was shocked to face unfounded accusations from a conservative of being “a pedophile, a pornographer, and a groomer of children,” during a heated debate over a book ban.

It turns out that not only do Republicans have a deep disdain for librarians, but also for children, the purported focus of their vociferous concerns.

Setting aside the GOP’s failure to protect children from mass shooters, Republican lawmakers have often shielded sexual predators. Pennsylvania Republicans refused to hold the church accountable for years of sexual abuse of children. Dozens of House Republicans refused to vote for the Respect for Child Survivors Act, a bill that would have protected child victims of sexual abuse. And Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert even praised a pastor friend and read his sermon on the House floor—a pastor who was a convicted child sexual abuser.

In fact, Daily Kos has a forum where readers submit news reports of “Republican Sexual Predators, Abusers, and Enablers.” The list is shockingly long.

Indeed, we should not be surprised to find out then that a Kansas City right-wing activist named Ryan Utterback, who pushed for Missouri’s book ban on the basis of protecting kids from LGBT-themed books, turned out to be an accused sexual predator. Utterback faces a felony charge of second-degree child sexual molestation.

In the battle over who really protects our children—librarians or Republicans—librarians are the ones who belong in our good books.

This article was produced via Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

For decades, people had hiked and hunted on the Sopris land, yet the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) handed it over to Leslie Wexner, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret and other corporations, at his request. The so-called “equivalent terrain” he offered in return was no match for access to trails at the base of the 13,000-foot mountain.

This ill-considered trade reveals how land management agencies pander to wealthy interests, do not properly value public land, and restrict opportunities for public involvement. It’s an ongoing scandal in Colorado that receives little attention.

Since 2000, the BLM and the Forest Service have proposed over 150 land exchanges in Colorado. Last year alone, the agencies proposed to trade more than 4,500 acres of public lands, worth over $9 million, in three major Colorado land exchanges.

Land to be traded away includes precious riverfront, lands recommended for Wild and Scenic River designation, and hundreds of acres of prime hunting and recreation territory.

Public land exchanges can be a useful tool. Federal agencies use them to consolidate land holdings, improve public access, reduce management costs and protect watersheds.

By law, the trades must serve the public interest, and the land exchanged must be of equal value. The agencies are supposed to analyze, disclose and mitigate the impacts of relinquishing public lands in exchanges, and also solicit public input on whether a trade makes sense.

But here in Colorado—and elsewhere around the country—this management tool has been usurped by powerful players who aim to turn valuable public lands into private playgrounds.

Often, the deals proposed sound good in terms of acreage. In the Valle Seco Land Exchange, for example, the San Juan National Forest in southern Colorado would trade 380 acres for 880 acres of prime game-wintering habitat. But the trade mostly benefits the landowners pushing the exchange.

Public lands for trade in the Valle Seco exchange include river access, corridors considered for Wild and Scenic River designation, wetlands, sensitive species habitat, and significant cultural sites.

Alarmingly, the Valle Seco exchange also includes more than 175 acres of a Colorado Roadless Area, a designation meant to block development of high-quality land. The exchange would allow a neighboring landowner to consolidate those 380 acres with his 3,000-plus acre ranch, opening the door to development.

The Valle Seco exchange follows a long-standing pattern. “Exchange facilitators,” people familiar with the land-acquisition wish lists of agencies, help private landowners buy lands the agencies want. Often, the landowners then threaten to manage and develop those lands in ways that undermine their integrity.

The Valle Seco proponents did this by closing formerly open gates and threatening to fence the 880 acres for a domestic elk farm and hunting lodge. This is blackmail on the range.

Too often, the agencies suppress public scrutiny by refusing to share land appraisals and other documents with the public until after the public process has closed—or too late in the process to make it meaningful.

The proponents and their consultants have ready access to these documents, yet the public, which owns the land, does not. In Valle Seco, appraisals were completed in August 2020, but they weren’t released to the public until December 2021, just a few weeks before the scheduled decision date for the exchange. Advocates managed to pry the appraisals out of the agency only after submitting multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and taking legal action.

In another deal, the Blue Valley Land Exchange, the BLM also withheld drafts of the management agreements until just before releasing the final decision. This is hardly an open and fair public process.

The federal government presents what are, in effect, done deals. Development plans and appraisals are undisclosed and comment periods hindered. By prioritizing the proponents’ desires over public interests and process, the land management agencies abdicate their responsibilities.

The result is that too many land trades are nothing less than a betrayal of the public trust as the public loses access to its land as well as the land itself.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Erica Rosenberg.

noun

1. The act of leisurely reading about politics for the purposes of, say, online
debates and armchair discussions, rather than actively working for change.

"What [political hobbyists] are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football." —Eitan Hersh, Political Science Professor at Tufts University

So I shouldn’t read the news?

Read the news! But we often treat reading the news as a form of political participation itself, when it’s at best a gateway to participation. A 2016 study found, for example, that most daily news readers weren’t part of any political group, didn’t go to any political meetings and had never worked with others to solve community problems.

The type of news matters too. Political scientist Eitan Hersh— author of the 2020 book Politics Is for Power: How To Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change—notes that hobbyists tend to focus on national politics while ignoring what’s going on nearby, where they could likely make the most difference.

But being a hobbyist is better than nothing, right?

It depends. Hersh notes how much time being a hobbyist takes—about a third of the respondents in a survey he conducted said they spend two hours reading, watching or listening to news media every day. A Pew Research study from 2010 found that Americans spend 70 minutes on news each day. Some of this time could otherwise be spent knocking on doors, organizing protests and going to community meetings. Hersh also worries hobbyists are more concerned about having “correct” opinions than about understanding one another. Lastly, Hersh argues having so many hobbyists creates a perverse incentive for politicians: They can win elections based on grandstanding sound bites rather than on their actual work.

That seems unfair—don’t hobbyists want change?

In theory, yes. But hobbyists are disproportionately white, college-educated and male—demographics less affected than many others by any policy change. Hersh notes, for example, the college-educated “spend more time on politics than other Americans do—but less than 2 percent of that time involves volunteering in political organizations.” That’s compared with 41 percent “spent mostly in news consumption” and 21 percent “contemplating politics alone.”

So how do I stop being a hobbyist?

Get involved! Attend a meeting about an issue you care about with activists. Volunteer for a municipal election campaign. Talk with your coworkers about forming a union and your neighbors about what the community needs. The good news is that hobbyists are well-informed. Put that information to good use.

This is part of ​“The Big Idea,” a monthly series offering brief introductions to progressive theories, policies, tools and strategies that can help us envision a world beyond capitalism. For past In These Times coverage of politics in practice, see, "How to Resist, in 6 Books" and "How to Build Fierce and Worker-Centered Unions".

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Dayton Martindale.

Tennessee has become ground zero for the nationwide surge in legislating away drag performance and gender-affirming care; the state’s drag ban was the first in the nation to be signed into law. Similar draconian measures are currently in legislatures across the country, which often define drag in terms so broad and vague that they limit communities far beyond drag. Critics of Tennessee’s ban, and of similar bills in other states, have been careful to note how the legislation leaves the legal status of trans people unresolved. Under Tennessee’s ban, any “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration” could be arrested, fined or imprisoned, based upon the judgment of any individual cop.

Many of the proposed bills also roll back access to gender-affirming care for minors. Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, restricted gender affirming care for trans adults on April 13. The Missouri restrictions are the first of their kind in targeting trans adults.

Both of Tennessee’s bans, as well as Missouri’s restrictions, are being challenged in federal court, while drag artists and their allies continue to blare fierce resistance to the bigoted legislation.

On one of drag’s biggest stages—the TV series RuPaul’s Drag Race—newly crowned queen Sasha Colby dedicated her victory to “every trans person, past, present and future.” Holding a glittery scepter and sporting a dazzling pink two-piece, Colby added on the show’s season 15 finale (which aired April 14): “[trans people] are not going anywhere.”

On April 21, on the ground in Knoxville, Tenn., Grammy Award-winning artist Lizzo filled her stage with several drag performers, inviting them to join her in a vibrant, lyric-filled protest. “I was told by people on the internet, ‘Cancel your shows in Tennessee. Don’t go to Tennessee,’” the “About Damn Time” singer said. “But why would I not come to the people who need to hear this message the most?”

The stadium full of Tennesseans erupted into cheers, their shouts serving as their protest song. Joining the chorus in righteous uproar from another time and place, Chicago’s queer community at the Metro was howling and hollering, tossing snaps and dollar bills toward the stage, making it clear that transphobia will not stand and that the movement is strong. As the show’s title suggests: Chicago truly does love drag.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Henry Hicks IV.

The good news is that at least one union is actively trying.

In Erie, Pennsylvania, more than 1,000 workers who build locomotives at the Wabtec factory are members of UE Local 506. The plant was owned by GE for more than 80 years before Wabtec took it over in 2019. Under GE, the union had the right to strike over grievances: If grievances were not resolved after a three-step process of meeting with progressively more senior managers, workers could strike to force a resolution. UE says that they used that right sparingly—only four times in the 15 years before Wabtec took over, and for just hours on each occasion. The average management-side lawyer would have you believe that such a right would make the union greedy and enthusiastic to constantly throw sand in the company gears, but that was not the case. Instead, the union says, that right to strike maintained the balance of power between workers and management, and by doing so encouraged a good working relationship, and labor peace.

As soon as that right went away in UE’s first contract with Wabtec in 2019, things deteriorated. Speaking on a conference call Wednesday, Leo Grzegorzewski, Local 506’s chief steward at the plant, said that annual grievances have more than doubled under Wabtec. Even worse, the company appears to be blowing them off: Only 3 percent of grievances are settled in the first two meetings with the company, according to Grzegorzewski, and the company proceeds to reject 95 percent of the ones that reach the third and final step. After that, the only remaining tool now is to go to arbitration, which costs the union about $9,000 per case. And there are more than 30 cases in a typical month. The system is broken. Researchers at the Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations published a study of the Wabtec plant just last week that confirmed everything that the union said: Under Wabtec, there are more grievances, they are less likely to reach closure, and the process drags on longer than ever before.

“Stall, stall, stall,” Grzegorzewski said, summing up the company’s approach. “Delay, delay, delay.”

Anyone with an iota of common sense can see what is happening here. GE knew workers could strike if it did not take the grievance process seriously, so it did. Wabtec knows the union has little recourse if it does not take the grievance process seriously, so it doesn’t. It's a textbook example of how a no strike clause can make the day-to-day experience of workers on the job dramatically worse. As anyone who has been in a union knows, winning a contract is only half the battle. The other half is enforcing it. Just as companies understand that it’s in their interests to violate laws during organizing campaigns because the penalties for illegal union-busting are paltry, they also understand that they can feel free to interpret the contract in the most hostile way imaginable if all they have to fear is the remote possibility of an arbitration case months or years down the road. The workers at Wabtec are living proof that the deal that has been implicit in almost every union shop for decades—a contract in exchange for a no strike clause—is a losing proposition.

When my colleagues and I at Gawker Media got our first union contract, it did not have a no strike clause (purely because the lawyer we were negotiating with was a media lawyer, not a labor lawyer, and didn’t know any better). Our newly unionized company was sold to Univision, and soon, we got word that our new owners were planning drastic, across-the-board layoffs. Every division was getting slashed. But us? No. We agreed that we would all walk out unless Univision sat down and negotiated with us. Which they did. We managed to score far fewer layoffs than the rest of the company, and fatter severance packages. That only happened because we held onto our right to strike. When we were forced to accept a no strike clause in later contracts, owners proceeded to disrespect the union with a smirk. They had lost their fear.

The UE contract at Wabtec expires on June 9. The union will take a strike authorization vote this weekend, and they expect it to pass overwhelmingly. If they are forced to strike—in part to secure, once again, the right to strike over grievances—they will be doing a heroic service for the entire labor movement. As important as it is to erase the idea that contracts must preclude strikes, it is hard as hell to find unions willing to take the enormous risk of striking over the issue of the right to strike itself. Money, yes. Benefits, yes. But a right that can seem theoretical? It’s not easy to find the people who will put their own jobs on the line to blaze that trail. Because of that, the entire union world must be ready to throw its support behind the workers in Erie who may have a chance to prove that this can be done.

The stakes are enormous. If the grassroots energy in labor today was paired with the right to strike during contracts, the potential material gains could be huge. It could be enough to actually shift the creaky see-saw of power away from companies and towards their employees. Sara Nelson, the head of the Association of Flight Attendants and unofficial spokesperson for the left wing of the labor movement, was on the UE conference call, and pointed out that unions like hers that operate under the Railway Labor Act actually do have the right to secondary boycotts—meaning that one union throwing up a picket line at an airport could, in theory, lead to a cascading effect of unionized airline workers refusing to cross that picket line that would shut down air travel.

Expanding the right to strike makes workers stronger. Period. Always and everywhere. Today’s automatic inclusion of no strike clauses in contracts “should be something that is off the table for all of labor,” Nelson said.

That will take a while. But in Erie, workers may be poised to take a big step towards the promised land.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Hamilton Nolan.

UPS is a patriarchal corporation – on the corporate and labor side. Whether it's sexual harassment or pregnancy discrimination, women at UPS confront particular workplace issues because of their gender. We spoke with Michelle Espinoza, a feeder driver out of Teamsters Local 135 in Indianapolis, about the gender discrimination she's battled at the company and the work she's doing to help other Teamster women.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Teddy Ostrow: Hello my name is Teddy Ostrow. Welcome to the Upsurge, a podcast about UPS, the Teamsters, and the future of the American labor movement.

For this bonus episode, I interviewed Michelle Espinoza, a semi-truck driver (or feeder driver in UPS parlance) out of Teamsters Local 135 in Indianapolis.

You may remember the story of Local 135 from episode 3. That is the local where rank and file pushed for a leadership change with the help of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. It's an inspiring story and you should go back and listen if you like.

But I spoke to Michelle because of her experience and organizing as a woman at UPS.

As you might imagine, UPS is a male-dominated corporation, both on the corporate side and on the union/worker side.

And like across all institutions of our society, there are structural obstacles, challenges, prejudices, issues that women uniquely face at UPS. You could say the same thing about non-white and particularly Black UPSers, as well as LGBTQ+ UPSers.

There is a long history of women organizing at UPS that we can't fully cover here. I'll throw some links in the show notes that you should definitely check out. That includes the group UPSurge. Yes, UPSurge, which was a largely women-led militant group in 1970s pushing for a fair contract at UPS, members of which eventually merged into the movement we all know Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

And also I will include some links about some high profile issues women, particularly pregnant women, have faced at UPS, one such legal case even reached the Supreme Court.

But this episode is focusing on Michelle's unique but also not so unique experience as a Black woman at the company, and that includes what she's doing to organize and educate other women in the workplace.

Michelle Espinoza, welcome to the Upsurge.

Michelle Espinoza: Hi Teddy. Thank you for having me.

Teddy Ostrow: I'd love to hear you introduce yourself. How'd you come to UPS? What you do there, you know, how long you've been there, your local, those kinds of things.

Michelle Espinoza: Michelle Espinoza is my name. I have been with UPS for eight years now.

I'm currently a feeder driver, which means I drive the semi trucks. Prior to that I did package car driving. Prior to that I worked in the hub, at one of our local UPS facilities. It was a huge career change for me. I came from the hotel and retail management industry. So eight, nine years in, I'm still pretty new to the gang because a lot of UPSs are 25, 30 year employees.

I kind of got baptized by fire, got my feet wet quick, and here I am.

Teddy Ostrow: So as I understand it, you, your husband and your son, all of you guys work at UPS—you’re like a UPS family?

Michelle Espinoza: We are a UPS family; it's my husband, myself and we have two daughters that are also UPSers. Our son is not a UPSer at this time. Not yet. But we have two daughters. One is a feeder driver along with us, which means she drives a semi as well. My husband is a feeder driver as well.

And we have a daughter that works inside of one of our main hubs here in Indianapolis.

Teddy Ostrow: Wow. Really a family affair full of Teamsters. That's so cool. I approached you initially at the TDU Convention in Chicago because I heard you speak before hundreds of people.

You responded to Sean O'Brien. You posed a question directly, mentioning some of the issues that specifically women at UPS were dealing with. Then we talked, and you kind of walked me through your journey at UPS and the obstacles you were forced to navigate because of your gender, your identity.

I want to get into your specific story, but first maybe we could start a little, generally: What are the specific gendered issues that women are having at the company?

Michelle Espinoza: Sure. These are my opinions, but I also gather information like this from other UPS women. I have a Facebook group of, I think we've reached about 8,500 women at this point, so it's my experience and information that I get from them.

So, some of the things that I've had to deal with working in a smaller hub: initially, it was all men except for three women. Well, drivers anyway. As you're going through a small hub like that, and it's majority male, you can only imagine some of the male type of comments that may come past a female.

Anything that you can think about, probably it gets said to you and they like to pass it off as joking, but after a while, if you don't develop tough enough skin, it can really get to you and tear you down.

A lot of the women deal with pregnancy issues, breastfeeding issues, how to navigate, how to cope. We have women in all facets of UPS careers, whether they're working in the hub, whether they're driving a package car, delivering packages to your home or driving the semi trucks.

So we hear a lot of different stories that women go through, even down to how a woman should dress working inside the hub. So we have to navigate [things] carefully. We have a few more landmines that we have to avoid that the men don't. We just kind of try to stick together and help answer each other's questions so that we can get through it.

Teddy Ostrow: Is it pretty rare for women to hold the feeder driver position? Can you tell me a bit about who works what job?

Michelle Espinoza: Being a woman in UPS, whatever your job is, you're gonna be the minority.

The feeder department is the top of the line job that you could have for UPS. It used to take, in our area, 10 years or more to start in the hub and make your way up into the feeder department. My path and my daughter's path was much quicker because the demand for semi drivers is so great.

Across the country, we're experiencing a demand for semi drivers, but right here in Indianapolis, our workload has doubled or tripled. Like I said, I've just been in the feeder department for five years now, six years. Before that I worked a package car in the hub, so that would make my total eight years.

My daughter got hired in February of 2020, I believe. As she got hired, she was able to come into the feeder department six months later.

That is normally unheard of, but because of the need for drivers, that was her story. She was able to move much quicker to get into this high paying job.

Teddy Ostrow: Yeah, I've never heard of anything like that. That's pretty incredible. Maybe you could bring us through your journey at UPS, and as I understand, throughout your time you've had to file grievances. You fought the company, you fought the previous administration of your local union.

Let's start at the beginning of when you tried to rise through the ranks and started seeing obstacles; and what you did about that. So maybe we can start with when you were in the hub, trying to become a package car driver?

Michelle Espinoza: When I started in the hub, here in Indianapolis, I was at a very small hub. They called our hub the country club, because it was so small and full of men and they had everything situated the way that they like it. I came in as a seasonal worker.

I came in just as a Christmas helper where I would ride with a driver that delivered packages to homes and I would hop out, deliver a few at homes and hop back in. He'd drive a little bit, he'd give me some more. I'd jump out. Run the packages to the door, scan them, ring the doorbell, and then jump back in.

That was what my seasonal work as a helper looked like. At the completion of that season, I got hired on, it's called permanent part-time, in the hub. So I started off, when the semis would pull in, I was unloading and loading those semis with the packages. Then as you progress, you move into loading the package cars or unloading them.

I did that for a little while and then I was able to qualify for what they call a premium hub job, where I moved into ‘small sort’, which is what they call it;. [sorting] packages you can hold with one hand or two hands that are smaller.

I was moving those through the building, putting them in bags and sending 'em on their way so that they could get loaded into trucks, and so forth. Then, I got word that my building needed to hire an early morning delivery person to get packages that had to be out before 9:00 AM delivered.

I thought I would be interested in that. So I signed up. That was the first fight. Because what I didn't realize that was I was taking that early morning work from the head union steward at the building. If he came in early to do those early deliveries, he got paid time and a half—it's a significant amount of money. With what they make, and he had been doing it probably three years at this point. So even though I had been awarded the job, it took three, four months for me to fight to get to actually do the job.

And mind you, it's a pay increase when you move into something like that. But I had to fight him and my union hall to actually get the job and start doing it. I had to make phone calls to corporate people with UPS waving the flag saying, “Hey, I got the bid, it says I should have been able to start within 30 days. Help me.”

So finally I got that. They liked me delivering those little quick packages. So then the opportunity came to become a part-time delivery person in their hub; I would work in the hub part of the day and then deliver another part of the day.

So that's when we get into, “Oh, well if you want to be more like a part-time or full-time package car driver for us, you're gonna have to go to inter grad.” Inter grad is like a package car UPS driver bootcamp. No one in that building had ever been required to go to inter grad.

But when I come along and sign the list that I want to become one of your regular package car drivers, guess who has to go to UPS boot camp? So even getting the opportunity to get to the bootcamp, even though no one else had to do it, I had to fight for that too. They tried their best to put a couple other men in front of me that they thought should want that job and should go to the inter grad. Well, none of them were able to make it. One guy who was supposed to go with me, we were supposed to meet at the airport to fly to Chicago. He didn't show up, he chickened out and backed out at the last minute. So from my hub, I was the only person going.

So I went. And they had bets, literal money bets against me that I wouldn't pass. I did. So I came back, and instead of crediting me the time I had already spent delivering their packages for them after bootcamp, they wanted to put me through the 30 day training period with them.

So now I had to go through another training period and pass their requirements. That means you have to run so many packages in so many hours of the day called “make scratch”, and they didn't think I would be able to do that either.

Honestly, Teddy, I didn't think I was gonna be able to do it. I was scared to death every day for 30 days, wondering if I was gonna get into a small accident or if I'm gonna be able to make scratch. Well, every time they gave me my route every day for 30 days, Teddy, I made scratch.

Teddy Ostrow: When, when you say that they were making bets, who, who was making bets? Is this other people at your hub, union stewards or who was making bets on you?

Michelle Espinoza: Drivers at the hub, other drivers.

Teddy Ostrow: And normally the male drivers don't have to go to this bootcamp. After that, this 30 day trial period, is, is that also normal for people to have to do?

Michelle Espinoza: Being that I had passed inter grad, I didn't then and I had already been driving for them. I didn't think they would make me do it again, but they did.

After all of that, I became a full-time package car driver. Once I have my sight set on something, then they're set. After I became a package car driver, I heard that going into the feeder department might actually be possible because they were gonna be putting the annual list up for anybody that was interested.

Well, I found out the lists had gone up at a big hub and a smaller hub, but it didn't come to my building. But per our contract, it says it was supposed to. Well, they said to me, because remember what I call this place, it's the country club. They have everything set the way they want to have it set.

They had worked it out somewhere prior to me that the list doesn't come to that building. Only if they don't get the drivers that they need from the other two buildings. The contract said when it goes up at the other two buildings, it's simultaneously supposed to go up at our building as well. That was my first grievance.

“You violated the contract because you didn't post it at the exact same time that you posted the others”. Someone with lower seniority than me may be having the opportunity to go into feeders and I haven't even been able to sign the list. That's my first grievance. It didn't take too much for that grievance to get a win.

I don't even know if the grievance even had to be heard because our human resources department actually agreed with me and said, we just never have put it up over there, basically, because they didn't want it, they didn't want to lose any of their package car drivers to feeder, so the list just had never gone up there and HR agreed that's not acceptable. Contract says it's supposed to be up, so the list goes up. This is what I start hearing from my, now we're talking managers. “Well, there's a pecking order. You'll never make it, here, you actually can use my pen and sign it, but I can guarantee you won't get the call.”

I signed it. There were specific requirements that said you have to have your permit by the such and such date. When we call you, you need to be ready to go to the class and so forth. Well, when that date came and went, the list came down.

I was the only one that had her permit and was ready to go. They did not let me go. They said, we need to give these other four men in front of you a chance to get their permit to see if they can qualify to go into feeders. That's where the next grievance was filed. NLRB charges were filed and EEOC charges were filed because it was very clear what the bid sheet said the requirements were. I was the only one to have it, and they started giving these men extra time to get the credentials they should have had. Two guys were able to get the credentials. One, unfortunately ended up not going into feeders because he had to go to prison.

The other guy got over into feeders. His first week, he has a horrible accident and tears down electricity in a small community. Well then guess who they're looking at again? Me, I get my chance to go into feeders. I passed the first round to get my CDL, and I've never had to look back.

The union hall's angry at me. Union stewards at the old building, at the new building, they hate me. I'm a troublemaker. I had to be willing to risk losing my job in order to get the rights that my contract said were owed to me, and that was very scary. That was very scary, to go up against UPS managers, and against your union.

But the reason why that happened to me that way is because, my heart just tells me, I was female. EEOC definitely was interested in the case and the NLRB was too. I got a phone call from one of the top leaders of my union hall; he said, ”darling,”—that was his favorite word to call me, darling—“if you pull those labor charges back, I know I can get you into that next class.” And I said, ”sir, get me into the next class and once I get into feeders, I'll pull them.” And that's what I did, and that's how I got into feeders.

Teddy Ostrow: Wow. It's incredible how you had to navigate both issues and resistance from your union as well as the company. Was it hard to kind of, you know, not just lose it at people who are clearly trying to just stop you from getting what you deserve?

Michelle Espinoza: My adrenaline. I can feel it right now, Teddy.

Just remembering it all, I can feel my voice kind of shake. It was one of the most frustrating and agitating and belittling events that I've ever had happen to me. I would go into work every day, I would keep my head up. I knew I was right and just trying to hold my chest up, but then when I would come home, I would pretty much collapse in tears and I would cry to my husband.

We’d pull out our union books, pull out paperwork, pull up the internet, looking at information, reading everything we could read to know what's the next thing to do. And it was scary because you know you have to pull these levers, but you know you're going to upset people that could affect your job.

They could find a reason to fire you, and because your union is angry with you for filing charges against them, they could find reasons to not help you get your job back. So I had to tell myself, I gotta risk it all in order to win it all. And that's scary and a lot of people can't do that. But because I had my husband and he was our provider, I could play that game a little bit, in order to get what I knew I deserved.

So it was very, very hard. It was excruciating at times. It got to a point where I would be on the phone with a union leader and we're, I'm cussing, he's cussing. I mean, we're yelling and I'd get off the phone and I'd come home and I'd tell my husband, I'm probably not gonna have a job tomorrow, but that never happened.

I finally got the call and he said, I'll get you in if it was still a negotiation, but it was a game that had to be played. I don't know what you want to call it, Teddy, but I got it and that's why I'm here, able to talk to you about it today. It's one of my passions, helping women navigate the sea of UPS corporate and union [politics], because it's not always cut and dry as the book says it should be when it comes to some of us.

Teddy Ostrow: It sounds like you aren't just fighting for your own job. Can you talk a bit about what you've done to help other people, and what you've heard from other people?

Michelle Espinoza: As soon as I got into the feeder department, [soon after], I had been asked to become a union steward.

The only reason I looked to be a good union steward was because of all the fighting I had already done. I had to memorize our contract. And I wasn't afraid to argue and fight with the Union Hall.

I wasn't afraid to argue and fight with the company. So when I came over into feeders and they offered that to me, I said yes. One of the first things I start doing was comparing apples to apples, my husband and my insurance packages. What do I have? What does he have?

I found out that I had a supplemental policy that he did not have, and I'm talking about a million dollar coverage that as UPSers we were able to get. I'm talking cents on the dollar is what it cost us. And he didn't have it. Well, as I start digging into that, many, most of the feeder drivers did not have this coverage because they were more senior drivers.

Well, seniority is seniority. There's no way a junior driver should have more than a senior driver. When I started digging into that and found out what they didn't know, it literally hurt my heart. I don't like when people don't know something because what you don't know can hurt you. So I filed a group grievance.

We got it all worked out. We had to fight for about a year and a half to get everybody who wanted that insurance to get it. At the same time as a union steward, I realized we have a lot of women that don't have a voice, we don't have an ear, we don't have a space. So I said, I'm gonna try to create a Facebook page for the women at my building.

Well, I did that with the feeder department and then I said, you know what? This isn't just about feeders. This is bigger. Women are the minority at UPS. So I had this crazy idea. Let me open it up to all UPS women—that's union and non-union women. We shared this page together and that's where a whole new family was born.

Corporate women management supervisors, union women, we are all on this page and you see them talking, sharing, helping, sending phone numbers. Hey, I can't talk about that here, but private message me, I can get you some answers. It took off on its own to where I had to get other women to help me administer the page.

I couldn't keep up with just approving the women cuz we make sure you're a UPSer or one way or another before we'll let you on the page. And we definitely, it sounds back backwards, but we keep men off. But it's because the women, what we talk about are UPS womens’ issues that if we were to ask, “Hey, what's the best breath pump that we can use while we're out here on the road? What have you guys been doing to keep the milk cold?” We can't ask that with all those men. You can only imagine the jokes that would go if we were asked that question over there. But on our page, we talk about what we need. And that's where I learned so much about how I'm not the only woman that's had to be shorted or fight, or, the sad part is women are afraid to fight because many of them are the sole provider for their household, so they can't risk losing their job to get what they deserve.

So, just trying to educate the women. I always try to tell 'em, educate yourself to make yourself equal. What you don't know can hurt you. So I tell them, get your contracts, read your information. Get on a UPS site. Read what corporate wants to have for you. Put it all together with the union contract and then go demand it.

And we just kinda walk each other through it. Some women just will never be as tenacious as someone like me and put up that kind of fight for herself. But sometimes those that can't, we just kind of try to give them support, encouragement, the best way we can. But that's what the page is for and that's how I call myself trying to help other people within UPS; just learning how to navigate and how to play the game.

Teddy Ostrow: Last time we spoke, you mentioned also starting a women's caucus at your local. I know that those exist at different locals, and perhaps at the international level as well. Has there been any progress on that?

And also how some of these issues that women specifically face, have people tried to try to fold that into the current contract campaign that's happening at UPS right now?

Michelle Espinoza: We haven't had to focus on it as far as the contract campaign, but I am proud to say that we will be having our inaugural women's meeting. We are ecstatic to be announcing that and sharing that with sisters and hoping we can pack the house and start some education and find out what their needs are on a local level and start giving them education to help themselves.

Teddy Ostrow: So what is on the horizon? What are the things that you want out of UPS, out of the union, specifically for women at UPS?

Michelle Espinoza: I would think for my union, because it's not just UPS workers at my union hall; I want to know other Teamster women here locally in Indiana. I want know who they are. I want to know what they do. I'm knowledgeable about UPS, but I've learned there are sisters that drive duck trucks. There are sisters we have that are airline stewards, they're our sisters. We have those that are daycare providers. They're everywhere in Indianapolis, and I don't know who they are. Our new leadership has taken the bull by the horns. We were so segregated before, each company to its own.

It's like they didn't want us to talk to each other because they didn't want one to know what the other had. It might create too much pencil work for them. So they kept us separate. For my local, I want to know who my Teamster sisters are, and I want to get to know them on a personal level.

As far as UPS is concerned, that is a bigger, bigger, bigger piece to bite off. I would like to see my Facebook group grow. I think last I asked a corporate lady, she said we had an estimated 22,000 women in the UPS system. That was her guesstimate at that time. I'd love to see that page get to 22,000. Then I’d like to see, Teamsters do a Teamster women's convention. I'd love to see, it sounds selfish because they can't do a men's convention because it’d probably shut down the company, but something that was initiated by UPS for the hub and the drivers. Something for women that we could grab onto that was from UPS that would bring us together, educate us. I would love to see more career paths laid out for the women; have them be a little more hands on with the women knowing that they're the minority group within this company.

I'm a mother of four daughters, and I was a widow early on raising my children. The thing that I always focused on with my daughters was education. I'm not talking just in the books.

I always said if they were old enough to reach it, they were old enough to learn how to use it. So I believe in teaching women and putting information in their hands to empower them to handle their own life. Now, I’m a married woman, but I know the struggle of being a widow. I know the struggle of being a single young mom. What you don't know will have you behind and I don't like women being in that predicament.

Teddy Ostrow: Is there anything else that you think is important to get across to people who might be listening about the issues we were just discussing or the contract campaign going on right now?

Michelle Espinoza: We may consider ourselves a minority because we're the lower number, but what I don't like people to do is use that as an excuse to not fight, to not educate. It's too easy to say, oh, they're gonna treat me that way because I'm this, or because I'm that. I'm a minority. They're not gonna pay any attention. It's very easy to sit back and just accept that type of plight.

That's why I say Teddy, educate yourself so you can be equal. Education is what will make you equal. If you don't know, you can't speak. I don't care if you're a woman. I don't care if you're African American, your sexual background; those boxes, they make us check to say what we are. We fit ourselves into those boxes, and then we stop working and we stop fighting. I don't want people to do that. What you want, you have a right to have and you have a right to have the seat at the table.

And I tell people, educate yourself so you can go there and demand it.

The Upsurge is produced in partnership with In These Times and The Real News Network. Both are nonprofit media organizations that cover the labor movement closely.

You can also show your support by sharing the episode on social media, giving us a five star rating and writing a review.

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But the best way to show your support is by becoming a patron of the show at Patre​on​. We are listener-supported and can’t continue without you. You can find a link in the description.

The podcast was edited by Teddy Ostrow.

It was produced by NYGP and Ruby Walsh.

Music is by Casey Gallagher.

The cover art was done by Devlin Claro Resetar.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh.

Learning that history was valuable in itself. Equally important was Kaba’s assurance that we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel—there was no analysis or strategy we were considering that hadn’t been used in the past. That might sound like reason for despair, but for me it was immediately empowering; white supremacy doesn’t want abolitionist organizers to know how close we’ve gotten to a common goal. As a Black feminist, it was a lightbulb moment: “We been doing this shit!” For once, I felt ok not having an original thought. There is a deep well of organizing history to draw on for the questions of today.

That tradition of political education, of learning together, is something our movements dearly need to recover.

Over the past two years, parts of our movements have become stagnant as organizers contend with burnout and groups struggle to replenish their ranks. It often feels like we’ve forgotten the importance of political education, for both new and existing members. Some of us have also forgotten that our work includes a lifelong commitment to learning—not just from texts, but from study groups and book clubs, workshops and teach-ins, discussions around dining tables or tucked in library corners.

Creating these shared learning moments allows us to sharpen our analyses, evaluate strategies and see how the landscape is changing. As my fellow organizer Santera Matthews says, it “helps us dream bigger.”

Without those opportunities, organizing spaces can fall into bad habits. The knowledge of political theory, organizing histories and essential contexts can become a tool for gatekeeping. The work can come to feel transactional. Opportunities for collaboration are lost when curious people are told they don’t need to know X to do Y and Z. Ultimately, members search for new political homes.

This absence isn’t just about in-person gatherings. The pandemic undoubtedly hindered our ability to gather, but it also created ways to find comrades from livestreams and virtual whiteboards, to join in from the road or while an infant naps. Today, many new discussion forums are short-lived due to a seeming lack of interest, external obligations, internal strife or changes to discourse wrought by social media. Fortunately, there are projects trying to withstand these challenges. Founded in 2019, rapper Noname’s eponymous book club and worker cooperative uplifts work from BIPOC authors, sends books to incarcerated people each month and aims to build community through political education.

Mariame Kaba can now be found sharing wisdom through Interrupting Criminalization, a research initiative she created with fellow abolitionist Andrea Ritchie, to foster cross-movement learning and build organizing capacity. The resource hub serves as one model for keeping our organizations flexible, intact, healthy and—most importantly—places where curiosity can thrive.

There remains something special about being in a room with a dozen other people who choose to be there. I miss it all deeply: post-workshop discussions and arguments on the L train home. Crowding a café table to pass around a legendary essay that illuminates everything. New comrades who start their sentences, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about [fill-in-the-blank].”

But the most important lesson I learned from those workshops is that community is at the heart of all we pursue. Regardless of platform, we can and must find ways to recreate that vital organizing space where humility and lightbulb moments can flourish. As Kaba reminds us, “Everything worthwhile is done with other people."

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Keisa Reynolds.

For years, the College Board, a nonprofit paying no taxes, has been profiteering in numerous ways, generating over a billion dollars in revenue annually. It has sold minors’ data without their consent, underbid its competitors to win government contracts and used its position of influence over federal education standards to tailor its products and win more contracts—all in the interest of lining their pockets, not improving students' futures.

If education was considered a public good in the United States—something every person inherently deserves—decisions about education would be centered on what benefits students the most. Centering the pursuit of profit, and doing shady things at the expense of young scholars, certainly isn’t that.

But the College Board’s educational profiteering is indicative of a systemwide issue, representing business as usual in education under racial capitalism.

The big money makers: AP Courses, the SATs and selling student data

Currently the SAT costs $60 with many taking the test repeatedly, in addition to taking the PSAT (another $18) to prepare. In the class of 2022, 1.7 million students took the SAT, generating tens of millions in test fees.

The College Board also works to maintain a monopoly in standardized testing. Until around 2014, the ACT, a competing college-entrance exam, was more common than the SAT in the Midwest and South. Many view the ACT, which is an achievement rather than aptitude test, as better able to assess what students have learned. But rather than letting states offer both tests, the College Board has aggressively lobbied many states to solely use the SAT so that their product can dominate the market.

For example, from 2001 until 2016, Colorado high school juniors were required to take the ACT. But through an increased investment in lobbying as well as underbidding the ACT, the College Board successfully changed state education policy, so that all Colorado juniors are now required to take the SAT instead. At least eight other states have followed suit, only contracting with the College Board for their students to take the SAT, rather than allowing both tests. Ultimately, despite being a nonprofit purportedly “mission driven” to “serve the education community,” the College Board pushes for policies to increase their wealth and not to benefit students.

But that’s not the only way the board monetizes standardized testing. It also makes about 47 cents for each SAT and PSAT student whose names it sells to universities—a figure that in 2022 added up to at least $800,000 (and perhaps far more). Those names help universities market themselves to students they already know they aren’t going to accept, but whose applications bring in more money and increase the schools’ selectivity rate, leading to higher rankings.

And those pennies are only a fraction of the total amount the board makes selling student data. Upwards of $100 million in some years comes from selling data to tech companies. When students create profiles on the College Board’s website in order to view their test scores, their information is sold to companies like Facebook (now Meta), Google, Microsoft, Snapchat and Yahoo for advertising purposes—a practice that in 2019 led one Illinois family to sue the College Board over charges that they illegally sold minors’ data.

One of the College Board’s biggest revenue generators is Advanced Placement (AP) exams and instruction, which together bring in about $490 million each year, with the cost increasing often.

The College Board is also woven into our public school system through the circular and mutually beneficial relationship it has with Common Core nationwide educational standards, which were created in part by the Board’s CEO, David Coleman. There have been many instances of the College Board changing tests to be more aligned with the Common Core, as they can get more market share than the ACT by aligning the tests with state standards.

The College Board and systemic racism in education

The College Board’s apparent failure to stand up to the DeSantis administration in Florida has led to widespread concerns that Black students won’t be allowed to learn their own history. But there's a deeper connection to racial capitalism here as well.

Schools that are majority Black are less likely to have AP classes. As a 2019 study found, white teachers often discourage Black students from taking AP classes. Taking AP courses as Black student within segregated schools often means you are one of the few Black students in the class. Although AP classes have long been touted as a means of making college more affordable—by allowing students to start earning college credits while still in high school—Black students face systemic barriers to taking AP classes, on top of the fact that Black people have more student loan debt and are more likely to struggle paying for college than white students.

Furthermore, the SAT was designed to weed out Black students and others seen as “inferior.” And while in past years, the College Board has published demographic data about participation and performance in its AP tests and courses by race, in 2022, they stopped, sparking criticism about the board’s lack of transparency regarding underrepresentation of Black and Latino students in AP courses. (The College Board claimed they were streamlining the data to make it more user friendly and did not stop publishing demographic data on its SAT tests.)

Then there’s the overall segregation, exclusivity and discrimination of the public school system, where majority white schools are better resourced and have more AP classes. All of these facts compound how ridiculous it is that white politicians control how Black history is taught.

What happened in Florida is getting a lot of attention, but it isn’t unprecedented. The AP World History course has been widely criticized as Eurocentric for focusing primarily on the Western World and at times implying the history of people of color started with our colonization. In 2015, the College Board changed its U.S. History course after right-wing politicians and organizations complained that it was not patriotic enough because it omitted “American exceptionalism” and focused too much on the impact of colonization on Indigenous people in North America.

When a large state like Florida changes curriculum, it influences what districts across the country purchase, so that reactionary and racist approaches like DeSantis' influence schools nationwide. But it’s not only a Republican governor’s actions that lead the College Board to side with white supremacy. For years a College Board executive was the Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, where he worked to prohibit discussions of racism in public school classrooms.

The image of the Yale-educated DeSantis limiting today’s students’ access to education may seem ironic, but it all makes sense when you consider that both facism and neoliberalism enable profiteering in our nation's schools, working to destroy education in different ways. The intertwining of state and federal government with this business masquerading as a charity illustrates how white supremacy operates within the school system.

Across the educational landscape, Black people are hyper-exploited: Black students are being undereducated in under-resourced schools to eventually be underpaid; Black students who attend “good” (read: majority white and well-resourced) schools and take AP classes are isolated and can’t learn accurate information about their own history. The College Board’s profiteering within this setting is a microcosm of broader racial capitalism, where white supremacy and capitalism are inherently linked and inseparable.

A market-based approach to what should be a public good hurts all students, but also deliberately fails to understand how both race and class impact the experiences of students of color, or to recognize that what hurts Black students hurts other students as well.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Kinjo Kiema.

Blank has tried to set himself apart from the other land barons of the New West. His philanthropic organization’s Western U.S. arm, AMB West, has given heavily to local causes. As of 2019, that includes $25,000 to the Livingston food pantry, $13,268 to the Park County Environmental Council, $17,500 to Yellowstone Forever and $110,600 to the Park County Community Foundation. He often invites local nonprofits to use one of his several luxury ranches for meetings and retreats. According to his statements and company websites, his interest in owning large swaths of my home state is driven not by profit, but by his environmental vision.

“This purchase is about conservation, not development,” Blank said in a statement after buying his third south-central Montana ranch in 2019. “We will respect the tradition of ranching while keeping our lands in their original, intact state for the sake of beauty and wildlife.”

I stumbled across Blank’s name again recently, this time in a different context—on a list of major donors to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), the group funding the destruction of an urban forest near Atlanta to make way for the massive police training facility that activists, who have positioned themselves as defenders, have dubbed “Cop City.”

The sprawling South River Forest, which forest defenders have taken to calling by its Muscogee name Weelaunee, lies in a poor, majority-Black area of South Atlanta and is one of the last large, undeveloped green spaces in the metro area. In 2021, the Atlanta City Council approved a plan to clear 85 acres of the forest to build the $90 million police training center, which would include a shooting range, a driving course and “a mock city for real-world training,” according to the APF website.

The project has proved unpopular: Of the more than 1,000 people who called into the public comment period during the city council vote, around 70% opposed it. Community groups and environmental defenders have confronted the project with stiff—often militant—resistance, with some camping in the forest, blocking construction and sabotaging equipment. If built, these opponents argue, Cop City would destroy scarce wildlife habitats and a natural carbon sink, damage the watershed, facilitate further police militarization and more police violence, and introduce more police to already over-policed neighborhoods. Proponents, on the other hand, argue the new facility is necessary to boost police morale and help the department overcome difficulties recruiting more cops.

The issue has blown up from a local conflict into a battleground in the national fight over environmental justice and policing.

The conflict had been escalating for months when, during a January sweep to clear defenders from the forest, police shot and killed 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a forest defender who went by the nickname Tortuguita. The official autopsy found more than 50 bullet wounds in Tortuguita’s body, including—according to an independent autopsy commissioned by Tortuguita’s family—exit wounds in the palms of both hands. The independent autopsy says the activist was likely sitting down when police fired. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says police shot in self-defense after Tortuguita wounded a Georgia state trooper.

Police have also arrested dozens of other forest defenders and charged them with domestic terrorism.

Despite the vehement opposition and the killing of Tortuguita, the city is pushing ahead. It’s a massive undertaking—and expensive. The APF, which is pushing the project as the “Public Safety First Campaign,” says the City of Atlanta will fund one third of the $90 million price tag. The APF will fundraise the remaining $60 million from private donors.

The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation pledged $3 million to the Public Safety First Campaign, according to a September 2022 report presented at an APF board meeting, which the movement-aligned Atlanta Community Press Collective said it obtained through a public records request and shared publicly earlier this year.

According to the document, other major donors to the campaign include the Woodruff Foundation ($13 million), the James M. Cox Foundation ($10 million), and the Coca-Cola Company ($1 million).

In response to a request for comment, Caroline Huston, a spokeswoman for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, said the “information included in this document about our grant is inaccurate.” The Blank Foundation actually pledged $4 million to the APF in 2019, Huston said, for a police affordable housing project, with the final installment paid in 2021. She’s not sure why this APF document lists the donation as part of the Public Safety First Campaign, but said “it’s not correct.” The APF did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Despite any discrepancies, what’s clear is that the Blank Foundation has been a major donor to the APF for some time. In addition to the grant at issue here, the foundation donated $1 million to the APF in 2017 and $737,000 in 2016. I asked Huston whether Blank saw any contradiction between conserving Montana’s wild land and funding an organization that is destroying part of an urban forest in Atlanta. Huston responded this way: “We’re proud of our track record and efforts in conservation beyond what you already know about in Montana. This is evident across the Blank Family of Businesses.”

Around the time the Blank Foundation made its most recent pledge to the APF, and around the same time many families in Montana were searching desperately for ways to hang on as a wave of rapid gentrification displaced workers and longtime locals, Blank was adding a fourth Montana ranch to his portfolio—the 5,300-acre Dome Mountain Ranch, listed for $45 million.

For many Atlanta residents, meanwhile, the South River Forest may be the closest thing to a “ranch” they will ever have access to.

Blank isn’t alone in this kind of hypocrisy. I’ve noticed that a great many of the wealthy elites so interested in “conserving” my home state have no such environmentalist sentiments about other landscapes.

This incongruity is part of a larger, longer tendency in U.S. conservation politics, which too often fixates on dramatic, mountainous landscapes at the expense of flatter, more easterly, less pristine places populated by poorer people. It’s the logic that creates a national park here and a national sacrifice zone there. And it’s the tendency at work now, gentrifying rural Montana into a picturesque playground for the rich and destroying one of the last urban forests in a poor neighborhood of Atlanta. This tendency can be called by other names too, like “environmental injustice” or “environmental racism.”

But what’s happening in the two places is not so much a contradiction as two sides of a coin: Blank’s philanthropy and conservation in Montana provide cover for the violence against the forest and its defenders perpetrated by the group he helps fund in Atlanta. In this way, the nonprofits and conservation NGOs that take Blank’s money in Montana and elsewhere collaborate in environmental injustice by greenwashing and burnishing his image. If they really care about environmental justice, they should immediately and publicly cut all ties with Arthur Blank—unless, and until, he cuts ties with the Atlanta Police Foundation.

Correction: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Shadowbox Studios was affiliated with a construction project in Intrenchment Creek Park.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Joseph Bullington.

It’s been over 100 days since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying over 100,000 gallons of toxic materials occurred in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb 3. Since then, residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania have had their lives turned completely upside down. Entire families have been uprooted from their homes, with many having to live in hotels or wherever they can find shelter, unable to return home out of fear of exposure to chemicals that were spilled into the water and soil from the derailment and spewed into the air from Norfolk Southern’s “controlled burn” of the vinyl chloride contained within multiple derailed train cars. Even though government and company officials have claimed the air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink, residents have continuously reported negative health effects from skin rashes, headaches, and dizzy spells to nausea, diarrhea, shortness of breath, and mouth numbness. Farm animals, pets, and crops have been contaminated, property values have plummeted, local businesses have shuttered or are barely surviving—all the while, frustrated residents report feeling lied to, misled, disregarded, and abandoned by Norfolk Southern and by their state and federal governments, and their ongoing nightmare has been gradually forgotten by the national media.

In this urgent episode, we speak with Ashley McCollum, Kayla Miller, and Christina Siceloff—three residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and members of the East Palestine Unity Council—about what they, their families, and their communities are going through, how they are banding together to provide mutual aid for one another, and what we can all do to help.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ashley McCollum: Well, I’m Ashley McCollum. I’m a resident of East Palestine, Ohio. I live about a block away from the derailment. I’ve lived there for about eight years. Life was normally slow-paced, really friendly environment. In East Palestine, we had church events, everything. Before that, I really didn’t do too much other than spend time with my kids, go camping, really be in the outdoors. Not too much of TV, radio – Well, music was one thing. But kind of slow-paced. Bingo on Sundays, hanging out with family and friends.

And the night of the derailment, whenever that happened, it was odd, because the first thing I heard was ambulance or sirens, and at that time it’s not common to hear in town. So after I heard the second round, I was a little bit alarmed. Me and my son jumped up and we looked out the front door, nothing was going on. But as soon as I opened the back door, all you could see were flames. It almost looked like our town was on fire.

My son started to go into a panic, and it happened exactly like how you see in movies. I got down to his level and I said, everything’s going to be okay. Grab what you need. I’m going to move the car around front and I’m going to grab our animals. He got everything together. I called my mom and told her to be there. She came out front and sat with my son while I tried to get the last of my animals. I have two dogs and two cats, so it was a little bit hectic to begin with and trying to wrangle them all up.

I started seeing people come out of their houses in a panic saying, what’s going on? I spoke to a neighbor. At that point, he said, this isn’t a normal fire. Can you smell it? I’m like, yeah, it doesn’t smell normal, just a normal bonfire or burn, it smelled chemical. It was really odd. I started going to different houses saying, you guys we’re probably going to have to leave, start evacuating. And they’re like, no, no one’s come and told us that. And the second I start saying that, someone comes around to tell us to evacuate.

I looked at my house, and I honestly thought that was going to be the last time that I would ever see it again, because I just thought the town was on fire still. I drove over to the neighbor’s house, going and following my mom to her home to stay at, and I gave her my number and I said, if my house catches on fire, please call me. Please let me know what happens. And she said, I will. At that point, I had another person coming over to talk and said, you have to be evacuated too. So at that point, everyone that I could see was being evacuated.

When we got back to my mom’s, we couldn’t sleep. We were up all night. My son still had issues even days after whenever we knew what was going on, him waking up at night and reliving it in his dreams. So the whole event really, really turned things upside down and has even affected him to the point where when he hears a fire alarm, he starts to say, no, not again. And he’s only six.

So we’ve kind of started growing and adjusting to what’s going on around us, whether we like it or not, and we know we can’t go back home. Even early on, I knew it would not be safe to go back home

Kayla Miller: My name is Kayla Miller. I live three and a half miles away from the derailment. I live beside Leslie Run, which is the contaminated creek.

The night of the derailment, I heard through social media that it had happened, and I had a friend staying with me at the time, and we decided to go up and see what was going on. And he works at NAPA right beside the tracks there, and he wanted to make sure that the store was okay, because we didn’t have a whole lot of details exactly where it was. There were conflicting stories.

And so we went up, and it was terrifying. The flames were massive, the smell, it literally took your breath away. So we went up and we didn’t stay extremely long because once we started smelling it, we knew something wasn’t right. Even though we didn’t know exactly what was going on, like I said, it took our breaths away.

So we came home, and like I said, I’m three and a half miles, so at that point in time I didn’t really think anything of it. I mean, yeah, it was terrifying, but I was far enough away, I thought. And then, I caught word through some friends and neighbors on Monday that they were going to be doing the controlled burn. And I actually have a friend who works on the railroad and he told me, he said, you have to get out. I know what we haul on these trains. You have to get out. So he helped me get out. I live on a small farm, but I have 100-plus animals and three kids. So I had to make really hard decisions that day and I took as many as I could in that stock trailer and we evacuated.

I think the big thing that really got to me to make the decision – Because I was not told I had to evacuate, it was my own decision – Was when I went, there was a road down from me, there were cops sitting at the end of it, blocking it. And I stopped and I asked him, I said, person to person here, I have three kids, I have 100 animals. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? And he looked at me and said, I don’t even want to be standing here right now. And we are ordered to leave at 3:15. And I said, enough said. I went home, and we packed up, and we left.

My animals went to a different place than I did. I went to a friend’s house and we stayed overnight, but I had to come back the next day. We came back the next evening once I had heard through the grapevine that everything seems to be calmed down and the smell wasn’t so bad where I was at, so I had to come back ’cause I had to feed the animals. So I’ve been back ever since, and I have smelled it a few times. I’ve been down to the creek and as of right now, I was just down there not long ago, it is still pluming with the rainbow chemicals and stuff.

It’s been a very crazy rollercoaster ride. My kids, it’s like the same with Ashley, my kids have had… When we hear sirens and stuff, they ask me, Mommy, is that another train? I’m still not drinking my water because my test results are still not back. Yeah, it’s been a very, very hard rollercoaster ride through all of this.

Beforehand, like Ashley was saying, we lived a simple life. I have a small farm, homestead, whatever you want to call it, live off the land. Teach my kids how to live off the land, raise the animals. I hatch chicks, and I sell eggs, and I sell baby goats. And now I can’t eat my eggs, I won’t sell them to other people. My hatch rate has decreased this year. And whether or not that’s just coincidental, I don’t know. There’s no way for me to know. I have goats that will be due here in July, and I’m hoping that we don’t have any stillborn, that we don’t have any deformities. I don’t know if it would happen yet. That’s the thing, they haven’t been transparent with us, so we don’t know what the future is going to be. We have no idea.

So it’s affected my life in that way. That’s my way of contributing, because I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband works out of town, so that’s my way of contributing to our income, and that’s been affected. So that part’s been hard, because it’s been something I’ve worked hard for.

I was born and raised here. My parents are my neighbors and they live in the house that I grew up in. So my kids are able to walk through the woods and go to grandma and grandpa’s. And people talk about how much do you think, Norfolk Southern, we’re entitled to with them? And as far as financially and… Honestly, I don’t care about the money, that’s not going to fix this. If they were to buy my house plus some, I’m still not going to be able to leave and have the same life that I have here. I have worked so hard to get this life, years I have worked to get this life.

So that’s the biggest frustrating part, is knowing it’s not safe. My kids have been sick for three and a half months. One gets better, the next one gets sick, and it’s been just a revolving door. I’ll have two sick at the same time. I’ve had them at the doctors, they’ve already put on their charts they’ve been chemically exposed. I myself have been to the doctors, chemically exposed. But they keep saying, everything’s fine, everything’s safe, your water’s safe, the air’s safe. They won’t even test for my soil. They knocked on my door asking to test my well, but they won’t test my soil, which makes zero sense to me.

And through all of this, I have joined a nonprofit called Soup Mama Official, and they have been bringing in donations from the beginning and continue to do so. They’re great people. And we have a supply drop coming up on June 3. They’re really trying to focus on water because we’re having a shortage of it and people can’t find it. And we’re even having a hard time finding it. It’s very frustrating.

With this whole experience, it’s been, you get a door that’s cracked open, it gets shut in your face, because you think that you have information and then something contradicts it or you get shut down. Our own governor actually shut down a benefit concert that we were going to have in Cincinnati, and he shut it down because he said that we are not in a state of emergency, we do not need donations, we do not need a benefit. Which to me, I didn’t even know was possible, because it was at a private venue. And this is the kind of thing that’s happening. And I’ve heard that a few times about different situations that the state is stepping in and not allowing things to happen.

I know of a water shipment that was supposed to come in and it got shut down by the state saying that it’s not an emergency, we don’t need it. But yet there’s me here who’s still waiting on her test results from Norfolk Southern and the Health Department. And I’ve been told not to drink my water until I get them, and I’m running out of water. So that’s what we’re dealing with, with the frustrations of it.

Christina Siceloff: So I’m Christina Siceloff, 5.9 miles from the derailment. I’m in South Beaver Township in Pennsylvania. I found out about the derailment through social media as well, and had just put my son to bed and was laying there next to him as he fell asleep, and saw that the derailment had happened and it had possibly affected one of the gas stations in town as well. And immediately I jumped up out of bed and tell my dad, who we live with, what had happened. And we went to look outside. We live in the middle of the woods. And when we went and we looked outside, you could see fire in the sky and you could see smoke through the trees as well. And immediately, we thought East Palestine was on fire. We went and started calling our neighbors and telling them… My dad, he said to the neighbor that East Palestine was on fire because we didn’t know what was going on.

All through the night till about 4:00 in the morning I had paid attention to social media because, where I’m at, we don’t really have access to cable, and so we get most of our news off the internet. And everything was just really crazy, and not really getting a lot of answers from the news aside from social media and people talking.

And so whenever the burn happened, I was getting ready to take my son to school. And I was even telling people, like, I don’t know if I should take my kid to school because I had heard that they could detonate some of the rail cars, and wasn’t sure if we would have a place to come back to once they did that. So right before I took him to school, they evacuated the school district – And he goes to afternoon classes – So they evacuated, that made my decision for that. But then I started thinking, do we need to leave? And I started looking into hotels. They were all booked up, and really we didn’t even know how far we should go.

We got evacuation notices on our cell phones, but they weren’t for us. So we still weren’t sure if we were in the safe zone. And then, when I ran up to town in Chippewa, PA, I went up there to go get food for our animals in case we were told to shelter in place. And when we were up in town, there were a bunch of police vehicles rushing around and they were shutting down some of the roads so that they could do their controlled burn. And when I saw that, it panicked me and I was like, well, I got to get home and we got to leave.

But when we got home, my dad… He’s lived here for 40 years, and he said, I’m not leaving unless they come and tell me to leave. And so I just kept waiting and seeing what news would come out if we needed to leave and contacting people, like family members or friends, to see if we could go anywhere to stay, and couldn’t get ahold of anybody. So we ended up, 15 minutes before the release, we decided, well, I guess we’re going to sit here and see if we get blown away.

And we stayed at home, and we’ve continued to stay here, because for where I’m at, there’s no help from Norfolk Southern. We’re on a private well as well. And we’ve been told in PA too not to use our private wells. And so we’ve been trying to use bottled water for almost everything. We even give bottled water to our animals, like our dog, cats, chickens. And we rely on donations a lot as well, because using that much water, it’s hard to afford bottled water for everything.

So before the derailment, I was just getting ready to look for work again, since I had my son and then COVID happened, so I stayed home with him to make sure he’d be safe. And my dad has medical problems too. So anyway, we went and I stayed home, and I was just getting ready to start looking for work. And I actually ended up having an interview somewhere when the derailment happened and I was like, I don’t even know what’s going on right now.

So once I called the place back to do the interview, they had said, well, we have a hiring freeze now and we don’t know what’s going on. So since then, I’ve joined with the Unity Council because there’s not really been much help for people in PA, and some of the residents here felt like we needed to get involved and try and get answers for our community and try and get help for our community.

And I’ve still not had my water tested. I’ve not had any soil or air testing done either. That was from the government I didn’t have any testing done, but we did have a guy from Purdue University come out and check our well water a couple weeks ago. So we’re waiting on results from that. But the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection had told me that they were not going to test anybody outside of two miles because they didn’t find anything wrong. But yet our representative has told us if we were on the list to have our water checked, then we were supposed to get our water checked. But since they told us that, they have also checked, and the DEP told them the same thing. So now we’re waiting to see if we can get results from Purdue and see if we can get some kind of filtration or anything to help with our water situation.

Maximillian Alvarez: All right, welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership within In These Times magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you.

So as y’all have been hearing over the past 15 minutes, we have a really important episode for y’all to listen to, and I really want to ask that y’all listen closely, because we are very honored to have Kayla, Ashley, and Christina joining us from in and around East Palestine, Ohio, including the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania. You guys know the basics of the story we’re going to talk about here today. If you’ve listened to our past episodes with railroad workers, if you’ve been following our coverage at The Real News Network or even the segments I’ve done for Breaking Points in the past couple months, then you know about the truly catastrophic Norfolk Southern train derailment that occurred on Feb. 3 of this year, followed a couple days later by a “controlled burn”.

This train, as we know, was carrying over 100,000 gallons of petrochemicals, including vinyl chloride. The decision was made at the time to, as we said, conduct what was called a controlled burn, but what looked to all of us like a massive fireball from hell spewing plumes of black gas into the air for miles and miles around.

And we’ve heard and read about the horrendous stories of the fallout of this train derailment. I mean, it’s been over 100 days at this point. And what you’re hearing from Kayla, Ashley, and Christina, this is what anyone who still listens and still cares about this catastrophe – Which we should – Anyone who listens will be hearing about people still getting sick, getting rashes, getting headaches, shortness of breath, other ailments, people not knowing if their water’s safe to drink, if the air is safe to breathe, if the soil has been contaminated beyond repair, if they’ll ever be able to grow crops on that land again.

Property values, of course, have plummeted. So who the hell is going to be able to sell their house and leave. Or those who want to stay, what kind of situation are they left in when Norfolk Southern itself has ostensibly taken charge of the cleanup efforts, and yet, residents like Kayla, Ashley and Christina are not getting their questions answered from Norfolk Southern? We’ve heard horror stories of people playing phone tag with the EPA, with government offices, trying to get basic answers like, can my children drink the water? and being given the runaround, not getting the support that they need. Trying to get money to pay for Airbnbs or hotels so that they don’t have to stay in their homes, which many suspect are still contaminated by the toxic fallout of that train derailment and the chemical burn that ensued.

So like I said, we have talked about this catastrophe in East Palestine, largely from the vantage point of railroad workers whom we’ve been speaking to over and over again for the past year and a half, as you guys know. As you guys also know, many of those railroad workers, back when we were interviewing them over the course of the high-stakes contract fight between the 12 rail unions and the major railroad carriers last year, a lot of those workers warned us that something like this was going to happen. That it was really only a matter of time before the railroad industry’s greedy practices: the cost cutting, the staff cuts year after year, reducing the size of the crews on those trains, reducing the number of people inspecting the cars, inspecting the track, responding to distress calls in the dispatch office, all while making the trains longer and heavier and piling more toxic materials on them, while maximizing their profits and their shareholder payouts. This was always a recipe for disaster. And the people of East Palestine and the surrounding area are the ones paying for that.

And so that’s what we’re here to talk about today. From Ashley, Kayla and Christina’s firsthand experience of what has really been happening on the ground over there in the East Palestine area, what folks are going through now, what help they’re getting or not getting, and what we, all of us, can do to support them and to get accountability from this company, from these government officials, and everyone who has failed the people of East Palestine – And many people have failed them.

And so again, I wanted to first start by thanking you three for taking time to sit down and chat with us amidst this hell that you are living through. I genuinely can’t express enough how sorry I am that you are going through this, how unjust it is, how unfair it is, how unforgivable it is. And I know it’ll mean very little, but I did just want to say, from the bottom of my heart, that I and all of our listeners are sending nothing but love and solidarity to you all, your families, your neighbors, and we’re going to do everything we can to get this conversation out there to make sure as many people are as informed and up to date as possible.

Now, I want to take a step back for a second, because y’all did such an incredible job with those introductions, really taking us back to that nightmarish moment on Feb. 3 and the hours and days afterwards. I want to, before we return to that moment, the immediate time surrounding the derailment, I want to take a quick step back before this event upended all of your lives.

Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and the life that you had in and around East Palestine before this derailment happened? What did a typical week look like for you and your family? What does this area look like? What kind of businesses are there? What do folks do for fun? That’s been really lost in a lot of the reporting, is that the whole area and the people have become synonymous with this disaster, but you guys are so much more than that, and your lives are so much more than that. So I wanted to start by honoring that and letting our listeners hear a little bit more about you all and the town that you lived in before this Norfolk Southern train derailment blew everything up.

Ashley McCollum: Well, like I said, we had such an inviting town and a great community to be in. I did the stay-at-home mom thing, took my kids to sports: karate, wrestling. So it was kind of the normal schedule. Hanging out with the kids. The weekends, we had a full house, everyone hanging out and different things here and there in town. We’d go and let the kids ride bikes, go to the park, and now we can’t really do that. So we had the normal basic kind of life. And I always refer to it as being a boring life, but no matter how boring you think it is in the moment, when it’s gone, that was the best life you ever had. And that’s what I’m really sitting in and thinking about. And you miss those silly little things, even, oh well that cart that’s here, I stubbed my toe on it. I would love to do that again. And I can’t even go back into my home because I’m afraid we’ll get sick.

I mean, even with school, my kids did really well, straight A’s, had no problems. So we had the normal, average, everyday life that everyone else has. And you sit and think this isn’t going to happen to you. Or you see things on the news, well, I’m in a safe area, it’s not going to happen. But it sure did. And I couldn’t even explain really fully what you sit and think. Like, I had this everyday schedule: wake up in the morning, take the kids to school, get stuff together, and now you sit in a hotel and really blankly stare and think, this has got to be a joke. There’s no way things are handled like this. I had it made. I didn’t live in riches or anything, but that was my life.

Kayla Miller: Before the derailment, pretty slow life. Stay-at-home mom. I have three kids: eight, five, and two. My husband works out of town, so I run a small farm here. I have all sorts of birds: chickens, geese, ducks, the works, pigs, goats. So a normal day for me, or normal week would be, get up, get the kids ready for school, take them to the bus stop – Because we’re luckily open enrolled. I’m in the East Palestine school district, but we’re open enrolled at a neighboring town – So get up, take them to the bus stop, come home, I have my two-year-old, get him breakfast, your normal everyday stuff, pick up the house, do laundry, take care of the farm. On weekends and stuff and in the summer, we camp, we ride four-wheelers. We like to hike a lot, especially around here. My parents have 15 acres, and I have 13 that connect to each other. So we have a lot of room to roam. My daughter’s really into forging and hunting mushrooms and stuff. So that’s something that we really like to do.

And now, I haven’t been on a hike with them yet this year because I really don’t want them out, because a lot of the time we would go down by the creek that is contaminated here and skip rocks and find crawfish. We haven’t done that this year because I don’t want them anywhere around it. And trying to explain that to an eight, five, and two-year-old is next to impossible. They don’t understand it.

And it’s gotten so bad to the point of… My kids are country kids. My closest neighbor is my parents, and they’re over 500 yards away and we can’t see each other. So trying to explain to country kids that you don’t want them playing in the mud puddles. And as they’re out here playing, I can’t keep them in, I can’t. I have an 800 square foot house. It’s not emotionally, mentally possible.

So when they’re outside, they’re playing in this stuff and they’re touching their toys and they’re touching the ground, and I have a two-year-old; they eat everything. Everything goes in their mouth. And the entire time you’re thinking to yourself, is this hurting my children? Is them playing outside, being children, is it hurting them? And that’s the thing is, we don’t have the answers because they’re not giving them to us. They’re telling us what we want to hear. And I say that in very literal terms, because they tell us one thing, but we flat out experience a completely different thing, and they expect us to trust them.

So my trust in our government, our officials has plummeted since all of this has happened. My anxiety levels are so much higher, because like I said, I’m letting my kids out to play and I’m wondering if I’m giving them a slow death sentence at this point. My biggest thing is, am I going to be able to see my kids graduate, or am I going to end up with cancer through all of this? Are they going to end up with cancer? Are they going to be able to graduate? Is my daughter going to be able to have kids? Are my boys going to be able to have kids? These are all things that are effects of these chemicals.

But yeah, we had a small town, slow life. I live out in the country, I grow my own food. I’m not doing that this year. I can’t put a garden in; I don’t know if my soil’s okay, they won’t test it. I usually do meat chickens, not doing that this year, because guess what? They eat off the ground. So our lives have definitely been turned upside down. And it’s a constant not knowing what’s going to happen, are you doing the right thing? And it sucks. That’s the bottom line, is it sucks big time.

Christina Siceloff: So before the derailment, my son and I, we had really just started getting back out visiting people – And he’s in preschool, so he just went to preschool this year. So just really getting out and starting to socialize with people again. But we would go up to East Palestine Park, and last summer we would go swimming up there, we’d go to the park and play, and other parks in the area as well. But last summer, we had a garden and we got chickens, started living more off of what we could grow at home. And so he was starting to learn a lot of that kind of stuff. And my neighbors, they’re pretty far away from us as well, so there wasn’t really a lot of people to play with in our area. So we would go to other places like East Palestine to have interaction with people.

But my neighbors farm… And a lot of that is just done for now. We’re not planting a garden either. Our chickens have had a reduction in their eggs as well. And so we’re not really sure if they’re going to continue to survive, even.

And since the derailment had happened, we pretty much stayed at home again. My son, he likes to go outside and play. But like Kayla said, it’s a lot of, you don’t know if it’s safe to be outside and play. And I don’t know if it’s safe for us to go outside and breathe. After being sick for three months, you wonder if you’re ever going to be better again. And when you go outside and you feel sicker, then it’s hard to say that it’s okay to go outside and play. And it’s not just at your home, it’s every town you go to around here that you feel sick. But still, we’re waiting for answers as to what is really going on. Because stuff just doesn’t make sense when you’re sick everywhere you go, but yet everything is supposed to be fine.

Maximillian Alvarez: I don’t know how you all are holding it together enough to say that so calmly, because I’m over here shaking in my chair. Because like you said, you’re all going through this, you’re sitting there wondering if your damn kids can even play outside or if that’s going to give them cancer. You don’t know what you’re going to be able to do with your chickens, your crops, your house, so on and so forth. You’re sitting there amidst an actual, massive crisis. And it’s like Norfolk Southern, the company in the first quarter of 2023 brought in over $3 billion dollars in revenue. The media made a circus out of East Palestine for a couple weeks and now they’ve moved on. Politicians, elected officials, people working in agencies like the EPA, who are supposed to be there to help, are not giving you the answers that you desperately need. Unacceptable is the most understated word I can think of. This is so beyond unacceptable. I don’t even know what to do with myself.

Kayla Miller: I think it’s gotten to the point where we’ve just become numb.

Christina Siceloff: I was thinking that.

Ashley McCollum: I get to the point too.

Kayla Miller: Some interviews I can do and I can hold it together, and then other ones I’m a mess. It just depends on the day. I don’t know. Yeah, I think we’ve become numb to it because we’ve talked about it so much and we’re screaming from the rooftops for help and it’s almost like a routine at this point. And it’s sad to say that, but we’re fighting so hard to try and get the help that we need and get the officials to do their jobs properly.

Maximillian Alvarez: I forgot to mention that amidst all of that, trains keep derailing. Like we kept saying in our interviews with railroad workers, it’s not as if this one-off, horrifying derailment happened, but it was a freak accident. It’s like no, there were like five derailments in the next week, and they just keep happening. It’s not just Norfolk Southern, it’s all of them. And it’s happening all over the place. Yeah, go ahead.

Kayla Miller: There’s a train on fire right now that is 10 miles from me.

Maximillian Alvarez: Oh, come on! Come on.

Kayla Miller: Right now, right before we got on here, we caught word of it. It is 10 miles from me and it is on fire.

Maximillian Alvarez: Unbelievable.

Ashley McCollum: In our group, we found this out in our group because we’ve come together, our community, we were strong as a community before, but it seems like after all this happened, I’ve met all these people, I’ve met these two ladies from that. And we’re constantly communicating, because if not, no one else communicates to us or with us. Even from the very beginning and from their stories, they didn’t know. They didn’t know what happened, and they found out more information from media and different outlets like that. And even at that point, it’s not full information. So everyone’s just sitting and waiting. And I get to the point where instead of crying, I kind of laugh because it’s just so insane. It’s the definition of insanity, because we’re sitting here asking –

Kayla Miller: If you don’t laugh, you cry.

Ashley McCollum: And that’s it. And even in the beginning, even sending kids to school, and I know we’ve all had an effect with the school. We didn’t know if we should send our kids there. I went to a town hall meeting in the school and I started to get rashes. I sent my kids two days and they got sick. My daughter complained she was having issues and feeling dizzy and her head hurt. And then my son kept saying his stomach hurt really bad. So at that point I had to pull them out of school, and now we do online school. It’s just been crazy.

And the school’s not acknowledging it. The EPA’s… They’re not communicating at all about anything. There’s a little newsletter that goes out, but we’re not getting any kind of answers. And even with what they said with the chickens, now we just heard two chickens aren’t producing properly. And that’s something that the EPA should really be looking into, because that’s their livelihood. That’s what they do, that’s what they consume, that was something that we could do where we live, and not many people have that option, but we can, so we choose to. And if that’s decreasing, what’s really going on with our health that we’re not seeing yet?

Kayla Miller: I had three chickens and three rabbits die two days after the derailment, all within 24 hours of each other. They literally dropped dead. I also had two chickens that were having neurological symptoms that ended up… I had to take down.

And they say that it’s just a coincidence. All of my animals are well taken care of and healthy, and to have six animals within 24 hours of each other, two days after the derailment die, come on, give me a break. And they’re telling us this is all in our heads. My stepdaughter, who was living with me at the time, has since moved out because of all of this. Because every time she would come outside here, she would break out in hives all over her body. Every single time she would come outside. My kid’s stepdad –

Ashley McCollum: My daughter couldn’t handle it either. She’s with her dad now.

Kayla Miller: Yeah, my kids have had diarrhea, breathing problems, respiratory problems. And like I said, it’s a revolving door. When one gets better, the next one’s sick. And it seems like when we spend more time up in town, because I have family that lives up there, we get headaches, we get diarrhea the next day. And even when we’re here, I notice if they’re outside playing a whole bunch, if one of them’s out more than the other, guess what? In a day they’re going to be sick. It’s almost become like clockwork at this point.

Maximillian Alvarez: Again, gaslighting doesn’t even begin to cover what you’re going through. But when you’re seeing it, you’re feeling it, you’re seeing it in your kids, you’re seeing your neighbors, and everyone’s telling you, no, no, it’s fine. It’s all in your head. It’s like, motherfucker, no, it’s not! – Pardon my French – But like, what are you talking about? This is insane.

Kayla Miller: You’re going to sit here and tell me that my two-year-old, it’s in his head? Because he knows what’s going on. Give me a break.

Maximillian Alvarez: Give me a break. So I want to be clear that I want us to finish off by… Y’all have mentioned how you, amidst this chaos and this tragedy, as a community, y’all have banded together, and you have been providing each other with the essential support, the mutual aid, the information that you need and you’re not getting from the sources that are supposed to be supplying it. So I want to finish off by talking about that and talking about what everyone listening around the country and beyond can do to support y’all.

But I guess before we get there – I know we’ve covered this in bits and pieces in the conversation so far, so please don’t feel like you have to retread the same territory – But I know folks have a lot of questions about what the hell has been going on the past three months. Y’all have mentioned those town halls, and we were watching from afar. The first ones that Norfolk Southern didn’t even bother to show up to because they feared for their safety

Could you give us a sense, from your vantage points, of what has happened in those three months? What are you experiencing? What are you seeing your neighbors experience? What does the cleanup look like? What are they telling you in terms of what’s available to you if you want to move or if you want to test your water, your soil? There’s a lot of those details that I imagine folks listening to this don’t have. So anything that you want to say to fill in for people, what has been happening or not happening for you and your neighbors in the three months since the derailment?

Ashley McCollum: Well, from the beginning they started doing air testing and they put up air testers outside. They were testing in homes, but they wanted us to sign an access agreement, which was very odd in the wording and allowed a lot more people than those who were there to test access to my property inside and outside. I wasn’t comfortable with it. A lot more people had the testing done. The testing was so vague. It would say VOC, but we all know if you look up what a VOC is, that is a range of chemicals.

So there’s a lot that goes into it with the way the testing’s being done, with how we’re getting the testing. If the testing’s even there. I’ve done my own independent air testing, I have results for that. Some wipe tests. We’ve had other scientists or people come in and do testing for us. But without that, we really wouldn’t have the exact answers. And it’s definitely coming up different from what the EPA CTAC, Norfolk, anyone that they have testing is coming back to us saying. I mean, it’s kind of alarming. And now the air testing is no longer available. But we’re still getting lodging provided by Norfolk Southern, lodging and food, but it’s very specific. It’s to the person that they choose, okay, well, we’ll pay for your groceries for this family, we won’t do it for that family. We’ll let you sit in here and argue with us and belittle you, sometimes laugh at you with your receipts.

I mean, to get a hotel is hard now because everything is booking up. They rent out things. Online, hotels, when someone’s going to travel over here, they book a hotel online, so they have no power over what’s being booked and what’s not. So we might not have anywhere to go, even if they’re paying for it.

I own my home, but I don’t want to go back. I don’t feel safe. If I can’t be in my house for more than a half an hour without feeling sick and having my teeth hurt and my mouth go numb and severe headaches, I couldn’t possibly live there. And the most they’re giving us is lodging, or some people they’re giving them rent. And it’s really not enough, because when they’re done giving this, where do we go?

It’s not okay how they’re doing this. And if they’re not going to offer testing after they’re done disrupting the soil and they think that it’s okay for us to be in a hotel, it doesn’t make any sense. So we can’t be in the area while they’re disrupting the dirt. But we can easily go back in without any more testing to say our home is safe. And that’s even what happened in the beginning. They let everyone go home before any testing was conducted.

Kayla Miller: And my situation’s a little bit different ’cause I’m a little further out. For us in Negley, number one, we are downhill, downstream, downwind from all of this. So it’s poured down into here. And we’re obviously outside the one mile. Like I said, I’m three and a half miles.

Since I live close to the creek, they did come down and I’m in zone two for my well to be tested. But not all of Negley has been able to be tested. So like she said, they’re picking and choosing. No soil testing down here at all. So like I said, they’ll test our wells, but they won’t test our soil. We don’t have public water down here. So we’re on our own. Filtration systems are expensive.

The biggest thing right now – And I know this is my side of things – I’m on the donations committee for the Unity Council because of the stuff that I’m involved in. But I’m involved with donating supplies and stuff that we need. And the biggest thing, like I said, is water. Because we don’t know… Even though they are testing and these wells are supposedly coming back negative for everything, I can’t even say that they’re coming back negative, because they’re not. They’re admitting that these chemicals are in people’s wells, but they’re under their threshold. The problem with that is these chemicals are bioaccumulative, so over time it’s going to get worse. So it’s literally a matter of when will my well not be okay anymore? And they’re also bioaccumulative in your body. So even if there is a low level, you’re still ingesting that. But they’re not letting us bring water in, and it’s hard to find.

And like I said, I’m involved with a non-profit, Soup Mama Official. If anybody that’s listening wants to donate or lend a hand any way they can, we are on every platform, basically. I am their social media director. So you’ll be talking directly with me unless you email, then you will be talking to our president. But anyway, yeah, if anybody wants to help, please by all means go on there. Any little bit helps. Just trying to get water. And we’ve also been trying to focus on food as well, because like we were saying earlier, we’re not putting gardens in this year. We’re not raising meat animals. So that’s going to be a big expense that we haven’t had to deal with in the past.

So our biggest focus, like I said, is food, water, and trying to make sure that this doesn’t go away. Keep us on your minds, talk to anybody that you can, keep the situation going, because as soon as we stop getting attention, it’s going to be swept under the rug and we’re going to be screwed. Bottom line, we’re going to be screwed. Because when this stops being talked about, nobody’s going to care anymore to hear us.

Christina Siceloff: So in PA, there’s not really been, for my area, there’s been one soil sample done in my entire township. And a lot of the soil sampling that was initially done in PA and water and air sampling was up in Darlington, in the one- to two-mile radius that they set up. But down where I’m at, the DEP said they would not check our water. The Department of Agriculture will not check our soil. And for three months, I pushed for somebody to come and check my water just so I would have a baseline to go by. I’m not real far from Kayla, and so the creeks do run down my way as well. Eventually the water will be contaminated.

Last week I was talking to a guy from the EPA who had told me that before they leave this area, we need to put a demand out there that we have a water testing program put in place for our entire area for the next couple decades, because it’s going to be a problem.

So I think, like Kayla said, that we do really need donations for water. Some people as well, well, many people as well, need to be relocated. And there’s a group that is helping with donations for that as well. They have a GoFundMe and a GiveSendGo, and it’s East Palestine Off The Rails! And it’s through a doctor who is in town. They’ve been really great with helping with donations. They just helped one lady get out of town. With every $10,000 that they get, they’re helping somebody relocate. And so any kind of donation for them really helps as well. And one thing, though, is we do really need water.

And I think another way that people could help is also by reaching out to our governments here and pushing them to do testing that’s not just the EPA and the DEP, but letting independent testers come in and test for us as well.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I assure listeners that we will link to all of these sources that you’re hearing about, we’ll link to Soup Mama Official, East Palestine Off The Rails! so on and so forth. So if you want to learn more about those, please check out the links in the notes to this episode.

And one other bit of information to make sure that we get on the recording for everyone listening, news did break late last month, or maybe it was actually in March, late March, that the Department of Justice is suing Norfolk Southern over the East Palestine derailment.

I will link to this article as well in the show notes. But in a piece published by Politico on March 31 by Matt Berg, Matt writes, “The Department of Justice is suing Norfolk Southern over its February 3rd train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last month, that spewed toxic materials and spawned weeks of furor over the Biden administration’s response. In the lawsuit unveiled Thursday, federal prosecutors accused the company of unlawfully polluting waterways with oil and hazardous substances from the derailed trains. The DOJ is seeking injunctive relief, cost recovery, and civil penalties to ‘ensure it pays the full cost of the environmental cleanup,’ according to the lawsuit. It does not accuse Norfolk Southern of negligence. ‘As a result of this incident, hazardous materials vented into the air and spilled into the ground, these substances contaminated local waterways and flowed miles downstream,’ the prosecutors wrote in the suit.

“Norfolk Southern spokesperson Connor Spielmaker said the company was, ‘working with urgency, at the direction of the US EPA,’ at whose request DOJ brought the lawsuit on, ‘cleaning up the site, assisting residents whose lives were impacted by the derailment, and investing in the future of East Palestine and the surrounding areas.’ ‘That remains our focus and we’ll keep working until we make it right,’ Spielmaker added, repeating a refrain that Alan Shaw, the railroad’s CEO, has said many times in his recent appearances before Congress, in which he’s apologized for the derailment.”

So I’m led to believe that part of this commitment that Norfolk Southern has made to the people of East Palestine is putting up a goddamn park or something somewhere [laughs]. Is that right? Isn’t that right?

Kayla Miller: He’s buying prom flowers and giving scholarships out, because that’s nice and all, but that’s fixing the problem. And if I hear him say he’s going to make it right one more time, I swear I’m going to throw the next piece of technology I have in my hand.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, again, like I said, I’m amazed that you aren’t doing more than that. And so I just wanted to give that update for folks, because that is happening too. But yeah, I think as y’all have rightly pointed out, there are so many parties that have failed you all here in your communities. And I think one of the really, really effed up consequences of this that is trickling out to all of us who are watching is how connected the government agencies and Norfolk Southern are, to the point where no one trusts any of them.

And so when you feel like the EPA is taking directions from a billion dollar company that’s trying to cover its ass for what it did to this community and what it’s been doing to its railroad workers to increase the likelihood that catastrophes like this would happen in communities like East Palestine. When the government and the officials that we elect and we expect to serve us are showing that they’re just toeing the line of these companies and vice versa, and we can’t get the answers we need, who do you turn to there? That is a really, really distressing situation. And I don’t think people in government really understand how much damage they are doing. Or maybe they do, maybe they do, and maybe they’re just all crooked pieces of shit. I don’t know. Again, this is just such a dire situation that I can’t hardly wrap my head around it.

But on the very light glimmer of a silver lining here is that amidst all of this tragedy, amidst all of this chaos, and amidst this catastrophic failure of the people of East Palestine and the surrounding area, you all have come together as a community. You all found each other. You all are doing your best to support one another and give each other that aid that you so desperately need but aren’t getting elsewhere. So I wanted to ask if you all could say a little more about that. By way of rounding us out, how y’all came together, what that community support has meant for you all and the other folks who are involved in it. And if there are other things beyond what you already said about what people can do to support y’all.

Ashley McCollum: I would like to say Unity Council is something that we formed. Jamie was the main person that really got it together. We all spoke with her, gave her our stories, and it started snowballing into this big group. And that was another question you asked, about the meetings and everything. Jamie and I put together a meeting with the mayor and EPA member, and that really got people questioning things and asking more questions, and even brought up questions that stumped the EPA, or they said that, no, you’re right, that was wrong what we did. So that got us even more involved and more people coming to us and really making our group a lot bigger.

We just had a meeting yesterday, and we had Scott Smith, he’s been testing water filters in our homes, soil, anything he can test he is trying to test and get information out there. We have doctors helping us like Dr. Chai, like Christina said, these people have been avid and they’ve really been coming to our group.

With Unity Council, we’re going to be doing a lot more, making it a lot more accessible to other people. We do have a Facebook group. We’re trying to keep the community together and not let anyone feel left out and giving the community a voice and letting them speak to the people they need to speak to or bring up these things that are not being addressed. There’s still so many concerns and nothing’s being answered, but we’re still not going to give up because we at least made a little bit of a ripple. So that’s enough. We’re going to keep going and keep going. I did encourage a lot of people to make independent GoFundMes for their families, because at the beginning we had a lot of pop-up foundations or people saying that they’re raising money for citizens of East Palestine, until it got to a substantial amount of money raised and it didn’t go to anyone.

So I started telling everyone, put on there EP or East Palestine and really tell your story. So then that way these people know exactly who they’re funding, where it’s going to, you can keep them updated on your stories. So we keep growing with this, and hopefully our Unity Council does do bigger things, and we plan on doing it.

Kayla Miller: As far as our community goes, down here in Negley, we’ve always been a very, very close-knit community to begin with. But I will say through this, I’ve had just about everybody tell me, they’re like, you’re the face of Negley, which is one of the reasons why I was asked to be on the Unity Council to represent our town. I’ve had them say, if we had a mayor, we’d vote for you. And that’s just because I won’t shut my mouth. I won’t give up. This is my kids’ lives and the other kids in our community, it’s messing with their lives. I don’t care about me. I care about them and their future.

But yeah, I’ve met so many people that I knew about but never actually met them, or I’ve gotten closer with people that I was just acquaintances with. And I’ve had volunteers, whenever we do our donation drops down here, we have a full semi come in and unload. And every single time I have called, I have had an army behind me. And that is an amazing thing. I have been so proud of my community and my town through all of this because we really have handled ourselves well and conducted ourselves well.

I helped organize our town hall down here because nobody was doing it. So I stepped up, went to the trustee meetings, started talking to officials, and like she said, snowballed from there. And we got a town hall together. We got every single representative here. They said it was the nicest town hall that they had been to because we conducted ourselves properly. It was very much policed that we didn’t do the name calling. We really wanted answers. We genuinely wanted answers. And even in the end of it, like they said, it was like the nicest one they had been to. We still didn’t get our answers.

So now people have been talking about wanting to do another one. And I’m hesitant because I don’t know if it’ll be conducted so well this time, because people, they’re getting fed up, is what it comes down to. But yeah, our community has become even more close-knit. Every single time I’ve called, I have an army behind me, and it’s been amazing. I’ve had people give me gifts thanking me, and that means a lot. It means more than you would think it really would. But it means the world. It keeps you going, because there’s days where I just want to give up. It’s like we’re getting nowhere, no answers. This is, it is what it is. But then little things like that happen and it keeps you going.

Christina Siceloff: My area, Jamie had reached out to me at one point in PA because I’d made some comment on social media about Pennsylvanians needing help as well. And nobody was doing anything here. Nobody was stepping up. And I’m usually a quiet and shy person. But after waiting so long, it was like, I think a month and a half I was waiting for somebody to step up, because sometimes it’s hard to do things with being a single mom. And so I waited, and nobody else was stepping up. And I said, you know what? I’m not going to sit here and watch my kid and everybody else’s kid be left behind and die.

And so when Jamie reached out to me, she came up with the idea to get in touch with other community members around my area, because where I’m at, it’s a mostly wooded area and people live far apart from each other. So we decided that we would get a person from each of the surrounding communities in PA to East Palestine. And I was watching people’s comments on social media of, well, we need to do something to help our future generations. And I reached out to another lady who I saw she had three kids. And I was like, if you’re a mother, you’re going to fight for your children.

And so she joined the Unity Council. And then another lady, we reached out to her through comments that she had made on social media, and we all got together through that. And then the Unity Council, we’ve been sucked into it. Being in PA with just four people in our group, you don’t have a power in numbers. So we went and joined the Unity Council so that we would be stronger, because we can’t let Pennsylvania be left behind either. Because the plume went into PA. These chemicals, they didn’t decide to stop at the border like Norfolk Southern and the EPA think that they did. So we got involved with talking to each other.

And then I think that we’ve also developed a community in the Unity Council with everyone in East Palestine and from the surrounding areas. And I feel like we’re going to end up being stronger than what people think that we are. Even though we’re just a little community, we’re strong.

Kayla Miller: And to touch on that real quick, as far as the community thing goes, I also feel like on a bigger scale, like me personally – And I know multiple people aside from me – On TikTok, that is how I found out a lot of information. And like Christina was saying, I was not a very… To my friends, I’m a loud person, but when it comes to the public eye, I’ve always been in the background, do what I got to do, and it was what it was. But I made one video on TikTok about it, and it literally blew up. It had over 300 and some thousand views and I could not believe how many people didn’t even know what was going on. My video is the one that told them what was going on, and it has created a community on there. I gained thousands of followers for it.

So I think it’s helped us in our own communities, but it’s also helped us in our country as a whole. I’ve had a lot of people come and offer kind words and prayers, and it’s been a really nice thing to help with having that extra support system. So yeah, not only has it brought us together locally, but I think it’s also brought a lot of people together nationally as well.

Christina Siceloff: I agree with that as well.

Ashley McCollum: And for us being so calm and talking right now, there’s still things going on. We had just received a message that another person couldn’t be a part of a different interview. She had an emergency with her one-year-old, stopped breathing and had rashes. And everyone’s giving her prayers right now, and as calm as we’re talking, this stuff is just going on. It’s insane. Every hour we find out something new or something more traumatic.

Kayla Miller: It’s like I said, we’re going numb to it all. It’s almost like, okay, what next? What’s next? What else do they have for us?

• Ashley’s Twitter page and GoFundMe
• Christina’s TikTok and CashApp: $safekeeper115
• Kayla’s TikTok and GoFundMe
• GoFundMe: East Palestine Off The Rails!
• Unity Council for EP Train Derailment Facebook group
• Soup Mama Official
• The Unity Council Presents: Community Demands Created by Community Members of Ohio and Pennsylvania Affected by the Norfolk Southern Train Derailment in East Palestine, Ohio
• Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “East Palestine Residents Plead: ‘By the Grace of God, Please Get Our People Out of Here’“
• Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “Seven Weeks After Rail Disaster, Residents Struggle with the Unknown“
• 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“
• Matt Berg, Politico, “DOJ Sues Norfolk Southern over East Palestine Derailment“
• Campbell Robertson & Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, “In Ohio Town Where Train Derailed, Anxiety and Distrust Are Running Deep“
• Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times, “Texas to New Jersey: Tracking the Toxic Chemicals in the Ohio Train Inferno“
• Status Coup News, “CHRONIC EXPOSURE to Cancer-Causing Vinyl Chloride Found in East Palestine Residents’ Urine Tests“

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 (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

One facetious lesson to be taken from the Succession series finale is that Kendall Roy should never go anywhere near water.

Recall the drowning death of a young waiter who drove Kendall (Jeremy Strong) to get cocaine in a remote part of the English countryside and Kendall’s near-death in the family swimming pool. These are the memories that come back at the very end of the series following a brief, idyllic period where Kendall and his siblings Siobhan (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) seem to reunite in almost child-like happiness. Shiv and Roman agree to back Kendall in his bid to wrest control of Waystar Royco, the corporation once run by their late media titan father Logan Roy (Brian Cox). They are on a mediterranean beach at which they have arrived by private jets, it is night, and Roman worries about sharks but Kendall swims away, unafraid, and hoists himself up onto a wooden floating platform and waits for them. Given his past and the eerie atmosphere, I held my breath, wondering if a shark might in fact rise up and devour him.

Kendall escapes unscathed that evening and the three siblings return to New York City to take back their legacy. But water and sharks are not far behind, even on dry land. In the luxurious villa owned by their mother Caroline (Harriet Walter), to which they had retreated (“the only place in Paradise with leaks”), the three have to fend off the greedy economic advances of her new and unctuous husband Peter (Pip Torrens), who brings an unexpected guest to try and score some kind of a deal.

In the end, what brings Kendall down—and what causes the siblings to lose Waystar Royco to Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), the Swedish billionaire—is a combination of blood and water, a metaphor for how everyone in this riveting and original series circles around—and hunts—each other. In the end, it’s Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) who gets to be CEO under Matsson’s control but, really, it could have been anyone—Shiv, or either of her two brothers, or anyone else from a long list of contenders. As Shiv says angrily to Tom’s face, he’s just “an empty fucking suit.” Capitalism and capital flow unimpeded, flitting from one body to the next. One monster will do just as well as another.

It is unfair to blame nature’s sharks for simply doing what they are programmed to do, and it is notable that the humans in this series—who do have choices—behave like the animals they so often stigmatize. None of the people in the nosebleed-inducing upper echelons of the Roy megacorp world know how to relate to each other except by extruding “the money, the corpuscles of life gushing around this nation, this world, filling men and women all around with desire,” as Kendall puts it in his eulogy for his father in the previous episode (season 4, episode 9).

Blood is what ties the Roy clan together, even as it also tears them apart. When Roman appears to balk at voting against Matsson in the series finale, Kendall hugs him, pretending to offer comfort and instead grinds his brother’s head so hard into his suit that the stitches on a fresh wound come undone, leaving Roman crying in pain and with blood trickling down his face, forcing him into contrition. And these are literally blood brothers.

Water returns when Shiv unexpectedly changes her mind about Kendall becoming CEO and reminds him that his part in the drowning of the waiter could come back to haunt and destroy the corporation.

All of this is monstrous behavior by the children of one of the most monstrous men on the planet (quite literally: Logan Roy commanded kings and governments with his influence). And yet, the greatest strength of Succession (it garnered 2.3 million viewers in the first episode of this last season alone, and the numbers rose after that) is that it has consistently presented one of the most clear-eyed representations of capitalism, unflinching in its refusal to sift through the humans who occupy this world in order to find the good capitalists and separate them from the bad ones.

Many commentators and viewers have remarked that Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), Logan’s older brother who never misses a chance to criticize him, is the much-needed moral center of the show, a counterpoint to his monstrous brother. In the penultimate episode, Ewan delivered a fiery—what shall we call it, an anti-eulogy?—at Logan’s funeral, a mass world event where political leaders, including the new (putative) president of the United States Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk), are gathered not simply to mourn and pay tribute but to see how the Roy heirs might handle a world without a man whom Shiv refers to, aptly, as a “world of a father.”

In fact, Ewan’s presence and his words—and his appearance in the last episode—only help to prove Succession’s central point: under capitalism, the monsters, the sharks, aren’t just the ones like Logan whom we might see in plain sight. Capitalism needs the contradictions and hypocrisies of people like Ewan to sustain itself.

Ewan forced himself onto the stage at Logan’s funeral to denounce his brother as a man who had “wrought the most terrible things … a man who has, here and there, drawn in the edges of the world. Now and then, darkened the skies a little, closed men’s hearts.” Referring to the ways in which Logan made his millions, Ewan continued, “He was mean, and he made but a mean estimation of the world. And he fed a certain kind of meagerness in men.” Ewan does all this even after revealing the most painful and mostly unknown details of Logan’s life, including his lifelong and tragically held belief that he killed his baby sister by transmitting polio to her. This, as is clear from their stunned and shocked faces, is new knowledge to Logan’s children.

“What kind of people would stop a brother speaking for the sake of a share price?” Ewan asks of the funeral attendees. But we might well ask: what kind of man reveals such tragic details to a man’s children—no matter how monstrous they are—publicly, in front of a world of television cameras, for the first time?

It fell to Kendall to recover the day—whatever comes after Ewan’s words has to present what he calls “the other side,” to rally investors and reignite their faith that the Roys are not about to destroy the corporation amidst family infighting but to, yes, draw in the edges of the world. It’s Kendall, then, who takes up the mantle of Chief Mourner, and in the plainest but most effective language, makes a gigantic pitch for capitalism itself, couched inside a magnificently wrought eulogy. Looking at his uncle, sitting glaring at him from a pew in the front rows, Kendall says, “And now people might want to tend and prune the memory of him to denigrate that force. That magnificent, awful force of him. But my God, I hope it’s in me.”

What Ewan regards as horrific (and it is) is in fact exactly what guarantees Waystar Royco’s success, according to Kendall’s words. In the end, Kendall is deeply successful in bringing back the investors and Mencken, watching keenly, to reassure them that he has the power to revive the company. But, ironically, the point he makes is that the corporation is robust—and that it can survive with or without him. Any monster will do.

In an interview with The Guardian three years ago, Cromwell claimed he had successfully pressured the creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, to make his character oppositional to the rest of the family—and especially to his brother and the show’s central, towering figure, Logan Roy—on account of the character’s politics and the damage he did to the world.

Cromwell is known for his animal rights and other social justice activism and clearly drew a parallel between the fictional show and real life. “I’ve played crooked characters, but it’s one thing to be the bad guy and chew the scenery up when it’s a totally fictive situation. This is not a fictive situation. There’s a family living in Australia that [they] epitomize.”

In a nod to Cromwell’s oppositional force, Armstrong (in season 2, episode 8) has Ewan describe his brother (who appears to be heavily modeled off Rupert Murdoch), as possibly “worse than Hitler.” “In terms of the lives that will be lost by his whoring for the climate change deniers, there’s a very persuasive argument to be made,” Ewan says in a scene to his grandson Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) who is part of the family entourage gathered to celebrate Logan’s life and career in his Scottish hometown.

Cromwell went on to tell The Guardian that “we are all aware that we live in a society where there is such wealth inequality that we would sort of like to know: ‘Who are these people?’ I think what Jesse is saying is: ‘Take a good look.’... It is a criminal enterprise.”

Consider now, the fleeting moments where we see Ewan's face in both the season finale and in the previous episode. As Kendall delivers his eulogy, looking pointedly at him, Ewan’s face is a combination of disgust and anger, and also shock. While it’s tempting to see this as the reaction of a man horrified that his attempt to thwart a major force of capitalism has not succeeded, we might consider instead that it is here, finally, that we see Ewan as the small, mean and pompous man he has always been.

We might think about how well Ewan fits into the meanness of the universe he has just described, and that his acknowledgement that he too may be mean does little to erase the force of that spite. Ewan has spent all his life eviscerating Logan as the monster who wrought a heartless world, even though he too is incredibly rich, worth $250 million, because of his brother’s corporation—on whose board he occupies a prominent seat. And despite all his blustering about capitalism, he doesn’t exactly step away from all the money (and the harm he claims it does, which it does)—and doesn’t hesitate to use an enormous, promised inheritance to make his own grandson Greg dance for it before finally actually disinheriting him. Instead of using his fortune to control people, he could have easily given away, say, even $200 million to organizations and lived ostentatiously for the rest of his life. Instead, he is the most flint-hearted among the lot and only shows up to needle and bruise Logan at every opportunity. As for his politics: He’s at best a tepid liberal, and never articulates a critique of U.S. values which he actually upholds. And, as we see, in the end, he’s not much more than a placater of capitalism: voting in his usual pompous way, he supports Kendall not with a simple “No” (to Matsson’s bid) but with a short speech about how it’s important to “first do no harm.” This completely evades the fact that capitalism does nothing but harm.

We are fortunate that Armstrong never took Cromwell’s admonition/demand so seriously that he let the show become a standard-issue moral fable. Instead, Succession ended as brilliantly as it did because it correctly pointed out that capitalism is an abstract, mobile entity, a shape-shifter doing what it must to survive. The Roy children are, in the end, surrounded by faceless, blurry suits with barely identifiable faces—Frank and Karl and Hugo all fade into each other. In the car heading away from his triumphant investiture, we see that Tom has managed to persuade Shiv to join him, and they hold hands like a Royal couple who hate each other but must practice affection in private before they show any to the public. Matsson, at least for now, emerges in a sharp mustard-colored turtleneck and dark brown pantsuit, a fashion choice he can indulge in because he’s the billionaire in the room who now owns everything—but even his team is clad in the same attire of dark clothing. Kendall cries that “this” is all he knows how to do—but he has never been tested in anything else: like a baby shark, told by his father at the age of 7 that he would inherit it all, he has grown into a role that he never had to question.

In the movie Alien and its sequels, the zoomorph enters various bodies, staying in stasis until it is ready to burst forth once again. Succession showed us with startling clarity that capitalism doesn’t need specific individuals to carry its charge: any monster will do, including the one who speaks in such anodyne terms of “doing no harm.”

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Yasmin Nair.

The referendum was reminiscent of Chicago’s 1983 election between Republican Bernie Epton and progressive firebrand Harold Washington, who was also promising a progressive platform to a city that felt let down by its previous mayor. After Washington won, David Moberg wrote about his calls for a striking and fresh look at Chicago with “the greatest grassroots effort in the history of the city.” Johnson, a former middle school teacher, is calling for a similar approach.

In 1983, David Moberg wrote:

With his first words as mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington made it clear that he was not retreating from the reform program of his campaign. Within three days, the old guard of the City Council made it equally clear that they were going to fight without quarter for their own power and for business as usual.

Beneath whatever working compromise emerges, that struggle will undoubtedly continue during the next four years. Yet the old guard can hold onto its power only through obstructionism and confrontation that would deeply damage the city economically and continue racial polarization. They may be ready to pay that price, but Washington may also be able to convince enough skeptical white voters—and the necessary margin of their representatives—that urban suicide is too much to pay for defense of the prerogatives of the old machine.

In a short, tough speech at his April 30 inauguration in the auditorium at the end of Navy Pier, Washington depicted the city as in a crisis comparable to that after 1 the great fire of 1871. The school system may be $200 million in the red next year. The public transit system faces its own $200 million deficit. And Washington's transition team estimated that the city's general fund could run as much as $150 million short this year out of a $2 billion budget, roughly half of which is locked into payments for interest, pensions and similar unavoidable items.

Washington called for immediate austerity and cuts. While outgoing Mayor Jane Byrne sat nearby staring ahead icily, he announced that he was freezing city hiring and wages and dismissing the 541 employees that she had added to the payrolls in a last-minute hiring binge. (Byrne tried to add many more and also attempted to switch political appointees into protected civil service slots.) Washington said that he would cut both unnecessary programs and executive salaries; the next day he slashed his own salary by 20 percent.

Although the city's severe financial problems, exacerbated by Byrne, will hamstring Washington as he attempts to improve city services and stimulate economic development, the austerity budget may give him greater flexibility in eliminating much of the waste built in by machine politics over the years. Court victories by liberal reformers have greatly circumscribed the mayor's powers to fire people for political reasons, but many of the leftover political appointees may be axed for economic reasons or their salaries could be cut so deeply that they will resign. It may be necessary for Washington to exercise such administrative powers in order to create a working majority in the City Council.

The old "evil cabal" of Democratic country chairman Ed Vrdolyak and Alderman Ed Burke—at first Byrne's enemies, then her allies—had an anti-reform movement well underway even as Washington minced no words about replacing the ancient, decrepit machine with a new politics of neighborhood involvement and openness in city government. By the Monday after the inauguration, despite last-minute lobbying efforts by Washington and his allies, Vrdolyak had assembled a majority of the Council behind a package of rules changes that would greatly strengthen the Council's powers to block legislation in committees—setting the stage for more direct Council control over hiring and personnel practices. He also drew up a plan to reorganize the Council: the 20 committees were expanded to 29 so that all of his allies, including freshmen members, were given chairs or top posts. Only three blacks were named committee heads, and Wilson Frost—chair of the finance committee and the leading black machine alderman—was stripped of his powerful position for playing the leading role behind the scenes in trying to organize the council to minimize Vrdolyak's influence.

Sensing that Vrdolyak had the upper hand, the Washington forces played for delay. When the first Council session was convened on May 3, Washington immediately recognized the one white machine politician in his camp, who moved to adjourn. Washington ended the meeting. Then, in the midst of calls for a roll call vote, the Washington bloc walked out. Vrdolyak, the former president pro tern, seized the floor, was elected acting president by the rump session and presided over 29-0 votes in favor of his rules and reorganization. With the exception of the lone Hispanic, a machine appointee, the Vrdolyak bloc was all white. All 16 blacks, the four liberal white reformers and one other white alderman were with Washington.

Some whites on the Council—some newcomers who ousted old machine hacks, some who are loyal to Richard M. Daley or other figures who distrust Vrdolyak—were considered potential Washington allies. And, despite the vote with Vrdolyak, some of them continued to indicate a desire for compromise and a willingness to support Washington. "I'm still not 100 percent in favor of it [the Vrdolyak plan for which he voted]," new member Joseph Kotlarz said later. "I'm very much in favor of a compromise."

Fear of reform motivated most of the Vrdolyak 29, but in the opinion of Council members, others came along out of fear of supporting a black mayor and out of a sense that "Fast Eddie" had the votes and that Washington, if he was truly going to abolish patronage, had little to offer them.

"Vrdolyak took the position some time last week [before the vote] that he was going to take control, and he wasn't going to talk to anybody," said liberal Alderman Martin Oberman. "He took advantage of racial fears in some of these fellows' wards. He took advantage of a new administration coming in and having a lot of things to worry about besides talking to every alderman. And he put together a majority.... These weighty decisions were not made because of a lack of phone calls. They were made because Vrdolyak and his cronies want to run the city."

Washington could have cut the same deal Byrne did four years ago—but he is apparently determined to fight for reform. "If it was a loss, it may be a loss on good grounds," said reformer Alderman David Orr. "Any mayor could get a victory by paying people's price. But at some point if you've got principles, you have to go down with your ship rather than give up."

Washington has neither given up nor has he gone down irrevocably. He immediately argued that the Council's "rump session" was illegal and its decisions are not binding, and afterward he continued to negotiate for a compromise. He also ordered his new acting comptroller not to issue checks for the new committees, which he estimated would add $500,000 in costs to the already beleaguered budget. Pushed early into a confrontation that he wanted to delay, Washington now must deal with a more highly polarized Council and a renewal of racial tensions that he hoped to diffuse. But if Vrdolyak has proven he has power, Washington can flex his muscles, too.

In his first day in office, Washington appointed a small core of officials—well balanced between blacks and whites—that include newcomers from outside and a few of the better Byrne administrators. Although the city's bureaucracy is highly politicized—most workers owe loyalty to one or another political boss—Washington could not afford to get rid of many of them, even if he had a free hand. He needs their knowledge of how the city works, even though as his transition team carries on its massive research into the city's past practices, it is reportedly discovering mind-boggling examples of waste, padding and outright corruption.

Even if he cannot and does not want to win Council support by offering jobs, he might be able to win support by agreeing not to dismiss certain friends and relatives of Council members. In the meantime, he is forced to work with a government apparatus that often cannot be trusted. While this infighting continues, part of the Washington campaign staff is beginning to work on a series of "town meetings" to be held throughout the city that will permit Washington to listen to neighborhood desires, establish better direct relationships with each part of the city and begin to mobilize grassroots support for his program.

Other reform elements are also moving-to expand their efforts—including the Task Force for Black Political Empowerment, PRO-CAN (Progressive Chicago Area Network) and a new Unity Democratic Congress —put together by Slim Coleman, a long-time white organizer in the poor Uptown neighborhood—that will support Washington and challenge the machine (for example, run delegates for the 1984 Democratic convention).

The struggles for power that marked the primary and general election continue unabated. In order to generate the "spirit of renewal" that Washington called for in his inaugural speech, the new mayor will have to rely on and strengthen what he saw as the key to his recent election—"the greatest grassroots effort in the history of the city."

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by In These Times Editors.

In January, more than 3,000 locals invoked Old Crockern’s spirit in one of the United Kingdom’s largest-ever countryside access protests. To beating drums and cheers, they hoisted a massive puppet of the ghostly rider as they marched across the estate of a wealthy landowner, protesting a court decision that would further shrink access to England’s already endangered commons.

In medieval England, landless peasants shared usage rights over millions of acres of land. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, landowners fenced off these areas to create vast farm estates. Subsequent rebellions were brutally crushed, and millions of impoverished peasants poured into Britain’s pre-industrial cities—creating a vast workforce with no choice but to work for meager wages. Marx described this mass dispossession as the “basis of the capitalist mode of production.”

Today around 1% of people own roughly half the country’s land. Even in the 10% of England and Wales that are national parks, access is limited. Most British park land belongs to farmers, estate owners and conservation organizations, not the government. Activities like camping and canoeing are often heavily restricted.

Dartmoor was exceptional among English national parks in permitting the practice of wild camping—the ability to pitch a tent anywhere in the park. But things changed in December, when Alexander Darwall—a hedge fund manager and the park’s sixthlargest property owner—filed a lawsuit over Dartmoor campers’ alleged littering and “antisocial behavior.” In January, the English High Court decided in Darwall’s favor, ruling that Dartmoor campers can now only pitch tents in a limited number of designated areas.

The ruling prompted an outpouring of public grief. Nature lovers on social media variously described the news as “devastating,” “insulting” and “gutting.” Sarah Fan, a 32-year-old local who regularly walks the moors, says she used to camp at Dartmoor with her late father and still goes every year to remember him. “I guess I won’t be able to do that anymore,” she says. Chris Parker, dad of two, mourns for the next generation. “Planned to go camping with my kids at Easter—not sure what to tell them,” he says. “We have lost something truly special.”

But campers are putting up a good fight. The Dartmoor National Park Authority—the local government body in charge of managing the park—is appealing the decision, with crowdsourced funding from local environmental organization Dartmoor Preservation Association (DPA). “Public access to the natural world should not be granted at the whims of landowners,” a DPA spokesperson tells In These Times.

The Dartmoor case has ignited a wider debate about unequal land access in England. Lewis Winks, a campaigner with land access group The Stars Are for Everyone, sees the court decision as “the latest act in a long history of land enclosures and the slow erosion of the commons.”

“Old Crockern symbolizes … our history of connection to place, [which] runs far deeper than the modern legal frameworks that govern access,” Winks says.

Even the limited access rights enjoyed by people in England and Wales were hard-fought. In 1932, hundreds of working-class walkers hiked up Kinder Scout, a plateau on the Duke of Devonshire’s land. Several spent months in prison for the act. The act of mass trespass helped pave the way for a 1949 law that created national parks and enshrined a modicum of public access to nature.

The ongoing Dartmoor campaign builds on this legacy. January’s action attracted thousands of campaigners, students and retired birdwatchers, all of whom hiked side by side and spent several hours on Darwall’s land. The action inspired others across the country to wild camp at their local parks, sharing posts captioned #SaveDartmoor.

While Dartmoor landowners have offered minor concessions, campaigners are thinking big—they want to overhaul English land access law completely. Current law guarantees access by foot to about 8% of the countryside that’s “mountain, moor, heath or down.” Just north of the border in Scotland, however, the right to roam, boat and wild camp across all open land has been protected since 2003. In Scandinavia, such privileges are protected by the allemansrätten (the “everyman’s right”), which enshrines public access to nature.

Campaigners want a similar model in England, and their demands are gaining traction. The Labour Party has promised to pass a Scottish-style right to roam act if it wins the next election. “The court decision has been a catalyzing moment,” says Daniel Davy, founder of the campers’ collective Dartmoor Wild Camping Action Group. Winks agrees: “It’s added fuel to a fire that’s already lit.”

As Dartmoor protestors showed in January, Old Crockern is rising.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Charlotte Elton.

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

  Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze

  Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees”

Before he entered the world

his umbilical cord clutched his neck tightly

constricting blocking the air that

had yet to flow through his body

He was born breathless

I wear a scar across my belly

to commemorate the day

I saved my son from himself

Did he find out that little brown babies

are not celebrated here

They are not held to the sun for the world to see

They are born and protected

held firmly in between bosoms

forced to shrink and silence themselves

and tiptoe to not disrupt

The breath of a brown baby boy

is large and loud like a

broken glass in a silent room

a gunshot in a large crowd

His inhale is thievery

and his exhale is a disturbance

I grip him tightly

his breath rumbles the ground

and raise hairs on necks

I try to cover his mouth

with survival lessons of

Do what you are told

  Don’t be too loud

    Don’t wear that hood

         Don’t go to that neighborhood

             Keep your hands where they can be seen

Comply always

He is forced from my grip

and suffocated until he is merely

just flesh on concrete

I hear him say momma

  in between each faded breath

I am not strong enough to save him

  
  “Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,

  for the rain to gather for the wind to suck,

  for the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

  here is a strange and bitter crop.”

It was worse than I thought, was my initial feeling after watching the killing of George Floyd play on the news. I debated whether to watch it that day in fear of the trigger that it might cause. Working in fields that address inequities and racial injustices for years, my experience as a black woman raising black children has made me sensitive to the triggers that these videos cause. With all the buzz that increased after the footage was released, I had to watch it.

It took me back to the coverage of the Rodney King beating in 1991. I was 9 years old at the time. I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of what I was watching. Although I had already experienced racist encounters by that time, I grappled with how the brown that coats my skin could evoke that level of rage and the assertion of power and control. My parents, angry but not shocked, tried to explain what transpired to my siblings and me.

I became my parents the day I watched the footage of Floyd being pressed into the ground and eventually robbed of every last breath he had. He screamed for his mother. That moment remained etched in my mind. I have had the privilege of birthing 5 children, 3 of whom are boys. I felt both joy and fear the day my oldest son was born. He was born by cesarean section with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The thought of him not being able to breath once bothered me because there was nothing I could do at that moment. All of the healthy food, prenatal pills, and exercise meant nothing.

One of my worst fears is not being able to protect my children from the hands of other people—people who will never see the beauty of my children or value them enough to treat them with care. Care was not a factor when Floyd screamed in desperation that he couldn’t breathe. Raising children is already challenging, but to raise black children who you may not be able to protect is immense pressure and emotional strain.

As we come to the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, I want to remember the life and the breath he had in him. I did not know him personally, but when I look at my black babies I think of him and all the other black and brown people whose lives were taken. Like my children, they were deserving of all that life had to offer them. To honor those lives and the lives of our children, we have to continue the work of calling out hate and white supremacy, so they won’t be diminished to just another black body on the ground.

The excerpts at the beginning and end of Cassie Williams’ poem is from “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropoland, sung by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.

This article first appeared in Workday Magazine.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Cassie Williams.

Almost 99% of that land is in Colombia. The company’s Dublin headquarters told In These Times it is committed to restoring “a healthy coexistence to the area and the communities,” but locals say the company’s vast landholdings are endangering both. Campesino activist Andrea Sierra (who asked for a pseudonym in fear of retaliation), from Cajibío, tells In These Times that, because of Smurfit Kappa’s presence, local peasants have lost much of the land needed for growing food. Smurfit Kappa’s monocropping and use of agrochemicals has “done great environmental damage,” Sierra says. “The native forests of my municipality are disappearing, as is the water of the streams.”

Over the past two years, Sierra and other Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino activists have fought to reclaim some of the vast tracts Smurfit Kappa controls in the Cauca and Valle del Cauca provinces. Since mid-2021, local activists have occupied forests where the company operates, demanding it return all the company’s land in Cajibío to local communities.

But resistance of any kind in Colombia is regularly met with violent repression, as Human Rights Watch documented in a study of human rights defenders killed in the country. Sierra, who has been an activist for decades, says she’s experienced significant retaliation since joining the fight against Smurfit Kappa, though the ultimate source of these threats is unclear. For a time, threatening vehicles lingering outside her house forced her “to move far from the area with my family because I felt my life was in danger.”

Sierra isn’t alone. Four months into the occupation, in October 2021, human rights activists tweeted graphic videos of a man with a serious head wound who they claimed was attacked by employees of Cartón de Colombia, a Smurfit Kappa subsidiary. Smurfit Kappa did not comment on this incident or Sierra’s claims when In These Times inquired.

In July 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council sent a letter to Smurfit Kappa documenting a series of anonymous threats allegedly made to Pedro Josse Velasco Tumiña, a prominent Indigenous leader in the land reclamation campaign, including a threatening phone call he reportedly received after confronting Smurfit Kappa shareholders at their annual meeting in Dublin. One caller threatened: “You already have a tombstone on your chest.” In their response, Smurfit Kappa rejected any connection between the company or its subsidiaries and the threats, and questioned Velasco’s legitimacy as a spokesperson for the Misak community.

The alleged threats aren’t easy to dismiss. Colombian news site El Tiempo reported an investigation into the death of Huber Samir Camayo, 23, allegedly killed by Colombian special forces trying to remove activists occupying Smurfit Kappa land. Smurfit Kappa did not comment on this incident to In These Times, but the company generally acknowledged that, in response to land reclamation efforts, they have “asked the relevant authorities to intervene, assist and protect the personal safety of employees and the local community, to ensure that the right to work together with private property rights are not infringed.” The company emphasized that the disputed Cajibío land was “legally acquired.”

Several months later, local newspaper Proclama del Cauca reported that hooded attackers raided and shot at an occupation on Smurfit Kappa land in Sotará, killing Kokonuko Indigenous leader Juvencio Cerquera Manquillo and wounding eight others.

Velasco says land reclamation activists claim they have faced intimidation from the “army, police and also paramilitaries who make anonymous calls to the leaders to threaten them not to continue.”

Alberth Ochoa, a representative for the campesino organization Coordinador Nacional Agrario, says that, in Colombia, “businessmen and paramilitaries have historically been linked—one gives the orders and the other carries them out.” The Chiquita fruit company’s use of paramilitaries to quell community activism is one well-known example, as In These Times has reported.

In March, according to campesino organizations in Cauca, Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Gaitanistas circulated a pamphlet announcing its intention to defend private property from land reclamation activists, accusing several of being communists and guerrillas and warning they had 10 days to leave the area. Smurfit Kappa has denied any connection to the pamphlet and filed a lawsuit against Coordinador Nacional Agrario for suggesting that they had one.

Smurfit Kappa did not respond to detailed follow-up questions related to this story, including questions about the allegations of anonymous threats to activists and the deaths of Camayo and Cerquera.

Activists like Rodrigo Vargas Becerra of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights say the repression Colombian land activists face is part of a long history of dispossession. Since 1964, Colombian paramilitaries have displaced millions of small farmers through violence and intimidation, as Human Rights Watch has reported, leading to the transfer of 7 million hectares of land to large landowners—including multinationals like Smurfit Kappa. A 2017 Oxfam report found Colombia has the most unequal land distribution in all of Latin America.

Campesino activists like Sierra hope that, ultimately, the occupation will compel Smurfit Kappa to return land to local communities. “To recover the land is to recover life,” Sierra says. “It is to recover the possibility of living with autonomy.”

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Tomás Ó’Loingsigh.

A second story, revealed in a press release in early May by the U.S. Department of Labor, found more than 300 children working for three McDonald’s franchises operating dozens of restaurants in Kentucky. The children were working longer hours than legally permitted and tasked with jobs that were prohibited. Some were as young as 10 years old.

If such stories are becoming increasingly common, it is not because there is more attention being paid. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis found a nearly fourfold increase in labor violations involving children from 2015 to 2022.

While this says volumes about existing loopholes in labor law and enforcement, and about the state of the U.S. capitalist economy more broadly, there is another, even more disturbing dimension to child labor in the United States. Lawmakers, mostly Republican ones, increasingly want to deregulate laws governing children in the workplace. According to EPI, “at least 10 states introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years.”

Among them is Arkansas, whose GOP governor is the former White House press secretary under Donald Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In March, Sanders signed a new bill removing employer requirements to verify the age of children as young as 14 before hiring them, calling such protections “burdensome and obsolete.” Her Republican colleagues in Iowa and Wisconsin have passed similar laws. In Ohio, one Democrat even joined in to loosen the state’s child labor laws.

It’s already legal for teenagers to take on certain types of summer jobs and paid internships. In an ideal world, such employment can offer them valuable work experience in a safe environment and allow them to earn extra spending money to save up for nice things. Indeed, children from privileged backgrounds have traditionally been able to land such jobs over their less privileged counterparts, using family connections.

Republicans are invoking such benign jobs as babysitting or lifeguarding to claim that deregulation will help kids earn money to save up for a car or prom dress. But children’s well-being is not driving their desires to ease child labor laws. These lawmakers are hardly concerned about making it easier for teens to deliver newspapers or wash cars during summer vacation. We would be hard-pressed to imagine their 16-year-old children or grandchildren serving alcohol for six hours a day at a bar past 9 p.m. on a school night and letting the bar owner off the hook if that child gets injured on the job—which is what Iowa Republicans have now legalized.

What they appear to care about is businesses having a larger pool of vulnerable workers to exploit at a time when worker demands for higher wages and better working conditions are rising and strike activity has increased. Who’s more vulnerable than children, particularly undocumented and low-income ones?

The idea to undo labor laws protecting children goes back at least a decade when conservatives began dreaming about reviving the good old days of children being able to legally work tough jobs. The Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank that ought to be credited with saying the unthinkable out loud, published an essay in 2014 unironically titled, “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions.”

In it, writer Benjamin Powell invokes an idea couched in the world of Charles Dickens’s dystopian literature: “Families who send their children to work in sweatshops do so because they are poor and it is the best available alternative open to them.” He added that the type of labor restrictions that protect children “only limits their options further and throws them into worse alternatives,” and that apparently “sweatshops play an important role” in the economic growth of societies.

Another right-wing think tank called the Acton Institute, one that obscures its agenda in religious thought, declared in 2016 that “Work is a gift our kids can handle.” The story is accompanied by a photo of a smiling, well-dressed, young white boy tending horses on a farm—a wholesome fantasy that is at odds with the abuse that Human Rights Watch researcher Margaret Wurth documented in a report on child labor in the United States: “a 17-year-old boy who had two fingers sliced off in an accident with a mowing machine. A 13-year-old girl felt so faint working 12-hour shifts in the heat that she had to hold herself up with a tobacco plant. An eighth grader said his eyes itched and burned when a farmer sprayed pesticides in a field near his worksite.” Wurth points out the “racist impacts” of labor law loopholes particularly on “Latinx children and families.”

The conservative organization Foundation for Government Accountability has also played a central role, taking the lead in convincing GOP lawmakers to loosen child labor laws. A Washington Post report credits the group for helping push through Arkansas’ new law and for lobbying Iowa and other states to do the same.

Now, advocates of fair labor standards are aghast, watching in horror at the Republican-led rollback of laws protecting children. Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO, told the Guardian newspaper, “It’s just crazy to me that we are re-litigating a lot of things that seem to have been settled 100, 120, or 140 years ago.”

Indeed, the past is precisely where grim lessons abound about how children suffer when there are no labor laws protecting them. One history article written in 2020 about the painstaking movement to regulate child labor begins optimistically: “At least in the United States, child labor is almost exclusively a thing of the past.” Stemming from a medieval mindset that children were the patriarchal property of their fathers, the young were pushed into servitude en masse during the Industrial Revolution where their small size and nimble fingers were as beneficial to employers as their inability to demand high wages or organize their workplace.

It was through the critical narrative work of a teacher and photographer named Lewis Hine, whose never-before-seen images of abused child workers between 1908 and 1924 helped to move public opinion, that labor laws were eventually changed. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act finally outlawed most child worker abuses at a federal level.

There was a time in the United States when, just a few decades ago, child labor was seen as a global problem of poorer nations where exploited children worked in unimaginable conditions making products for wealthy Westerners. A 1996 Life article famously offered a horrifying glimpse into the life of a Pakistani child making soccer balls for Nike. Child workers in Bangladeshi sweatshops making designer clothing spurred activism in the United States against such exploitation.

Garnering less attention were the loopholes in U.S. federal law allowing for child labor in the agricultural industry where hundreds of thousands of mostly immigrant children were found to be working on tobacco farms and elsewhere.

Rather than close these loopholes, like Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin wants to do with her newly introduced Child Labor Prevention Act, Republicans want to throw them wide open.

Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said, “The notion that we would be solving some economic turmoil by allowing the expansion of child labor hours, is at best, ridiculous, and at worst, very detrimental to young people.” There is no labor shortage. There is simply an unwillingness on the part of profit-seeking companies to pay workers enough.

Republicans claim they care about protecting children. But their actions speak louder than words: they have made it easier for mass shooters to kill children in schools, and they have attacked the rights of LGBTQ children to play sports, to use the bathrooms of their choice, to access gender-affirming care, and to learn about their community. They have barred children from learning accurate history about racism and white supremacy and unleashed police into schools in spite of evidence that school cops are targeting Black and Brown children.

Seen as part of this larger trend, the push to overturn laws protecting labor abuses of children is perfectly in line with the GOP’s agenda to harm kids.

This article was produced via Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

“It’s been a long time since a manufacturing site with 1,400 people has been organized, let alone organized in the South, let alone organized with predominantly African American workers, and let alone in the auto industry,” said Maria Somma, organizing director with the USW.

“It’s not a single important win. It’s an example of what’s possible—workers wanting to organize and us being able to take advantage of a time and a policy that allowed them to clear a path to do so.”

The vote was 697 to 435 with 80% turnout. At two factories and a warehouse near Macon, the workers build school buses and an array of specialty buses.

Blue Bird is the second-largest bus manufacturer in the country, after Daimler Truck’s Thomas Built Buses. The Auto Workers represent workers at a Thomas Built facility in North Carolina.

The main issues in Georgia were pay and safety. Workers began organizing in earnest at the height of the pandemic in 2020 after Blue Bird workers reached out to a Steelworker organizer following a union win at a tire factory in nearby Macon. They overcame a fierce anti-union campaign in a right-to-work state where only 4.4% of workers are union members.

But Somma adds that workers tapped into local union networks. “People think the South is non-union, but we have a lot of members in middle Georgia,” she said.

The Steelworkers represent thousands of members in the state—at BASF, which makes chemicals used in plastics, detergent, and paper manufacturing, Anchor Glass, and the paper giant Graphic Packaging International.

No rhyme or reason

Despite receiving torrents of federal subsidy money that was supposed to require it to remain neutral, Blue Bird pulled out all the stops to try to beat the union.

The company received $40 million in rebates as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean School Bus program, part of $500 million handed out last year to replace diesel school buses with ones with zero or low emissions. The funds are part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021, which includes $5 billion in funding for clean buses through 2026.

These funds can’t legally be used to thwart union organizing, but that didn’t stop the company from campaigning against the union. The Steelworkers filed seven unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

Among the charges for illegal union-busting were polling employees on their union support, threatening to close the plant, telling workers collective bargaining was an ineffective means to settle workplace grievances, and putting up slide shows telling workers to vote against unionization.

In one particular egregious move, the company allegedly told workers that if they were part of a successful union drive at Blue Bird, no other employers would hire them. With a high churn rate, Blue Bird workers often cycle through other manufacturing employers like Frito Lay, so the threat struck a nerve.

The company also launched a charm offensive, parking food trucks outside the warehouses and unfurling banners that read, “We Love Our Employees!”

When union-busting wallops didn’t do the trick, the company began making improvements—putting in place more predictable schedules, doling out optional overtime, and issuing company handbooks workers had never seen in all their years of employment.

The company even claimed to have patched up a leaking roof that was creating hazardous working conditions.

Crucially, it boosted pay. “Some people got a $2 adjustment, who were already making high money; some people got eight cents,” said Somma. “And so there was no rhyme or reason to the adjustments that anybody could see.”

Good jobs required?

Pro-union provisions have been attached to federal funds in the infrastructure package, as well as the $280 billion investment in the semiconductor industry and $370 billion to combat climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act. These include requirements to pay union scale wages on the construction of clean energy facilities, and prohibitions against using funds to campaign against unions.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its most ambitious new regulations yet for cutting pollution from vehicles, by requiring two-thirds of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. all-electric by 2032. Heavy-duty vocational vehicles like school buses have their own standards, aimed at cutting emissions in half by 2032.

Tailpipe emissions from vehicles on roads are the largest source of greenhouse gases. The U.S. is the second-biggest polluting country after China. Diesel-powered school buses can emit over 40 toxic air contaminants, causing asthma and other respiratory issues.

But the government guardrails in the Clean School Buses program are relatively weak. The EPA, for example, has asked recipients of federal subsidies for clean buses to disclose the benefits they provide their employees, including health insurance, paid leave, and retirement, though disclosing this information is not required.

Still, Somma said workers were able to shine a spotlight on the company’s union-busting and charge it with using public money to prevent workers from exercising their rights to organize a union.

The union also countered the company’s efforts to plead poverty, pointing out it had received millions from the government to build electric buses. The company's stock had shot up 37%, with 120 million in backlog deals with municipalities purchasing fleets of electric buses, according to The American Prospect.

“This was a campaign that was built by one-on-one conversations and by standard organizing tactics,” she said.

Federal policy started to be a factor once workers filed for a union election. “This is an employer that would have fired workers,” Somma said. “And so while they broke the law, this policy allowed us to calm the employer’s union-busting down.”

Water and electricity

The organizing spark predated all that.

Jontae Lockett, a 10-year veteran at Blue Bird, remembers the campaign’s origins when the coronavirus was ravaging the country. “We had to report to work like nothing was happening,” he said, and the company didn’t follow social distancing guidelines: “We were working on top of each other.”

Production demands were incessant—without hazard pay, another sore point—slowing down only for a week due to supply chain snags delaying part deliveries.

But the safety issues go beyond Covid. Some days, rain pours through the roof. The company has supposedly made repairs, but the problem persists. “The water is landing on electrical boxes and sockets, computers and fans,” Lockett says, and he worries about getting electrocuted in the sloshing water.

Fed up with their treatment during the pandemic, and the disrespect and favoritism supervisors dished out, Lockett and his co-worker Patrick Watkins began thinking about building a union.

“You see supervisors talk to a grown man like he’s a child,” Lockett said.

They began holding weekly committee meetings at churches, parks, and the local library, eventually transitioning to Zoom. Participants grew from a handful to two dozen.

People from different production lines came together to learn about the campaign. They spread union literature and information to the two factories and a warehouse in the complex.

Workers also heard from Steelworkers from union plants in other states who came to support their counterparts in Georgia.

In a series of videos posted to YouTube, Steelworkers organizer Alex Perkins interviewed former Blue Bird workers who had left the company and picked up unionized manufacturing jobs. They talked about the difference a union makes.

In one short video, Perkins interviews a former Blue Bird employee Quenterrious Booze, a USW member at the unionized paper manufacturing giant, Graphic Packaging. He says the union job is better: the pay is much higher and the work isn’t as hard.

The videos countered company union-busting tactics.

Built by hand

A long list of problems spurred Blue Bird workers to unionize. One is a hated attendance point system, where showing up late dings you half a point; six accrued points at any time results in a termination. The company says that points roll off on a monthly basis if there are no absences or lateness, but workers say supervisors command inordinate levels of power, selectively applying the policy.

Paltry vacation time is another sore point. Workers earn two vacation days after working five years at the company, and a week off after eight years.

Even these benefits are subject to the whims of supervisors. Lockett said favoritism runs rampant, from who gets hired to who gets their time-off requests approved.

Another complaint: unpredictable schedules. Long days on the assembly line can stretch past 10 or 12 hours in the sweltering summer to meet a production quota of 38 buses daily.

At the end of a shift, workers said, a supervisor would keep them on the line longer until the production quota was hit—or tell them they had to come in two hours early the next morning, making it difficult to get kids ready for school or strike a work-life balance.

One more shared grievance: unequal pay.

The hourly wage ranges from $13 for those just starting out to $25 for those with many years at the company—but ultimately, there’s no standardization, leaving pay up to the discretion of supervisors. With a decade in, Lockett is in the upper end of that range. But he finds the system unfair, echoing Teamsters and auto workers who say lower pay and benefits for newer hires wrecks solidarity.

“We’re building these buses by hand,” said Lockett. “Nobody should be making $13 an hour.”

This story was first posted at Labor Notes.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Luis Feliz Leon.

This is a special live episode of Working People produced in collaboration with the Action Builder / Action Network team on March 21 in Atlanta, Georgia. In this panel discussion, Max speaks with local organizers about the specific challenges workers in the South face in their workplaces and in their efforts to organize—and how they are finding creative ways to overcome those challenges today. Panelists include: Chris Daniel of the Georgia AFL-CIO; Melanie Barron of the Communications Workers of America / United Campus Workers; and Maurice “Mo” Haskins of the Union of Southern Service Workers.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome, everyone, to another special live show of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you.

So I am truly honored to be here with all of y’all here in Atlanta for our third collaborative live show with the great folks at Action Builder/Action Network. We are taking this national. We are going around to different parts of the country, talking to workers and organizers on the frontline to learn more about the struggles that they are engaged in, how they are winning, what we can learn from failures and missteps and setbacks. And, most importantly, what we can all do to better support one another and continue to grow as a labor movement and to continue to make connections with other social movements. And I want to pause on that for a second, because I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, up top, that, speaking for myself and on behalf of The Real News Network, we stand unequivocally with the people of Atlanta, and we condemn the actions taken against the protestors who are trying to stop Cop City here in Atlanta.

And make no mistake, to everyone listening to this, after the day’s events, this is all of our fight. SWAT murdered tree defender Tortuguita and lied about it. Police raided the six-acre property of the Lakewood Environmental Arts Foundation. Police also raided a peaceful festival, detaining over 30 festival goers and charging over 20 of them with domestic terrorism. Cops are swarming peaceful protesters around the city who are handing out flyers, giving information about Cop City. This is a serious crisis, and we all need to be invested in the fight against it. And I wanted to note that there has been a really positive development on that front. I was very pleased to see that The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades general president Jimmy Williams Jr. actually released a statement condemning the violence against Cop City protesters this week.

I wanted to read a quick passage from Jimmy’s statement, which reads, “The right to speak up and peacefully protest is fundamental to our union and to all working people. Since the protest began, we’ve seen violence; including the death of one protester, as well as dozens of arrests and incredulous charges of domestic terrorism, in some cases, stemming from the Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement. I believe these tactics are designed more to quell dissent and to dissuade working people from exercising their rights to protest and demonstrate than they are to legitimately uphold the law. It has to stop. Our rights as working people must be upheld, and we deserve to live in a society free from police violence.” Shout out to Jimmy and The Painters Union, and I encourage more folks in labor to join this necessary struggle and to speak out openly about it. And what Jimmy says about workers being able to express their rights is obviously what has brought us all here. And the right to not organize in the workplace, but to exercise our free speech, is fundamentally a labor issue.

I am currently wearing one of my two shirts from the United Mine Workers of America, this one featuring a great quote from MWA president Cecil Roberts about how the Constitution gives me the right to stand on a picket line and call a scab a scab. As great and as true as this quote is – The Warrior Met Coal strike in Alabama, as you all know, the longest strike in Alabama’s history, which came to an end or entered a new phase, with workers unconditionally returning to work without securing the contract that they hit the picket line for – Throughout this strike, workers have had their rights to speak stripped. Business-friendly judges have granted injunction after injunction, limiting their abilities to picket, thus curtailing their right to go on strike and to strike effectively. They’re not the only ones. As we covered relentlessly at The Real News and on my podcast, Working People, as I’m sure everyone here knows, railroad workers are among the class of workers who basically don’t have these rights.

We saw what that looked like last year when scab Joe Biden and Congress forced railroad workers back to work, effectively making their ability to strike illegal in late November. So again, this is fundamentally connected to the struggle against Cop City. It is connected to the struggle of workers here in the South, who have historically been really up against it—both in terms of legal barriers to exercising our rights to extra legal barriers, violent barriers, racist, and sexist barriers, that have made worker organizing, particularly for poor Black and Brown people, incredibly hard, if not next to impossible–but that’s what makes this event so crucial. And what folks here in the South, like you all, like our incredible panelists, what you’re doing is so important. Because folks are banding together and finding creative ways to get around those barriers. We are thinking outside of the structures of laws that were written by racists and that enforce racist and sexist and classist policies.

I really, really couldn’t be more honored to be joined by this incredible panel of folks, who are going to talk to us about how they—and the folks that they work with–are doing that, here in the South, on a day-to-day basis. So without further ado, let’s get to the good stuff. I want to start by quickly having our amazing panelists introduce themselves to you, and then we’ll go back around and we’re going to talk more pointedly about how y’all got into organizing and what that looks like. Normally on this show, I get to sit down and talk with workers one-on-one about their backstories, how they came to be the people they are, work the places they work, and what that work entails. We’re doing a condensed version of that with these live shows, focusing specifically on how we got into organizing. So we’re going to do that in the second round. But first, let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves to the good Working People listeners. Melanie, why don’t we start with you?

Melanie Barron: Hi, my name is Melanie Barron. I’m a senior campaign lead with the Communications Workers of America. I work with United Campus Workers. We’re organizing public higher education workers all over the Southeast and increasingly out West as well.

Chris Daniel: Hello, everyone. I’m Chris Daniel. I work with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations here in Georgia. Nationwide, we are Democratic Voluntary Federation of 60 National and International Labor Unions, and we represent about 12.5 million working people. Here in Georgia, that number is about 200,000 working people that we represent. So I’m glad to be here and learn more about what everybody’s doing.

Mo Haskins: Hey, I’m Mo, I’m part of the USSW, The Union of Southern Service Workers. I also have a lot of experience cooking, serving for a decade now; between Zaxby’s, Waffle House, and now working over at EAV. I have a lot of experience in it. I’ve noticed a lot of discrimination, struggles, and abuse, and people taking advantage of workers for a long time. And through USSW, I really see an opportunity to learn and grow.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. We have a real kick-ass panel here, and I am super excited to learn more about you all and the work that you’re doing and that your unions are doing and that the workers that you organize with are doing. Normally on the show, I get to do interviews that start with digging into people’s backstories, how they came to be the people they are, the path that led them to doing the work that they do, and I want to do a shortened version of that, specifically in regards to your organizing history.

So let’s start by going back around the table, and tell us about your own path into organizing. I imagine present company may be excluded, but most of us don’t grow up thinking, I want to be a labor organizer. There’s always an interesting story with how people get into the movement. So tell us a bit about your story, and tell us more about what the day-to-day work of organizing looks like for you. What did you originally think that work would look like? And how has your experience been compared to those expectations?

Melanie Barron: What a question. You are correct that I did not grow up thinking I would be a union organizer. I grew up in Dalton, Georgia, Northwest Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district if anybody… I know. It’s very scary. We’re all very scared up there. There’s nobody there that cares about anything. No, it’s not true. There’s a lot of people out there, like me. We don’t have a very strong voice. And so, my path to organizing is long and winding. I’ll shorten it by saying that I graduated from Georgia Southern University in the midst of the recession. There were no jobs at that time. And so, I had the opportunity to go to grad school and I took it, because it paid me real money. It felt like real money at the time, and it was more money than I had ever made, making $17,000 a year as a graduate student.

And once I started working it, I realized how little money that really is, and I ended up taking out a lot of student loans. I really loved what I was doing. I really believed in it. I thought that there was a really important role to play working in a university, and I still deeply believe that. I believe in public education, and I feel that we are not given a fair shake. I started grad school in 2010, learned about my union, United Campus Workers, in 2012, and fell in love with the labor movement.

It is the most beautiful thing to be a part of, and especially where I joined my union at the University of Tennessee, there’s a long history of United Campus workers and people that have been organizing there since the early 2000s, who taught me how to do everything, who taught me the methods that it takes to change the world. And it starts right in your workplace. I became a Superunion member, got involved in a campaign called Tennessee Is Not For Sale, where we defeated our billionaire governor’s attempt to outsource facilities workers across the state.

That was the campaign that got me hooked, and I was able to join the staff of my local [UCW-CWA Local 3865] and continue to organize and continue to show people those methods in changing the world. And I get to do that now as an organizer with the Communications Workers of America, who’s continued to invest in United Campus Workers and organizing public sector, higher education workers, all across the Southeast. And so, on a day-to-day level, at this point, my life looks like training more and more people to do the work that we do. One of the most challenging parts of organizing in the South, but probably in a lot of parts of the US, is that people don’t know how to do any of this stuff. What do you mean? A petition? What do I do with my petition next? Where do I take it? How do I do…? Wait, will the person that needs the petition, can they get there? Wait, where…?

So there’s a whole series of questions and a whole series of things that you can show other people how to do. And that’s what I do on a day-to-day basis; whether I’m training other union staff who are like me, or I’m training people in the rank and file to do this work as part of their day-to-day life, challenging the boss in day-to-day life. And that rules. So I’m excited to hear from the other panelists. Thanks for the opportunity to be here.

Chris Daniel: Awesome. Well, we have a lot of organizers in the room, I’m sure. And every other week, I have a family member asking me, what in the hell is an organizer? And what do y’all do? And I don’t care how many times I explain what I do, it’s still hard to understand, but I tell them that we do whatever we need to do for working folks. So sometimes that means I’m stuffing envelopes. Sometimes that means I’m calling up 100 affiliates. Sometimes that means I’m talking to rank and file members. It means a lot. But I got into this work from my senior year in college. I really didn’t have a direction in where I wanted to go. I was always interested in what’s going on in the community. And I started with a group called Voices for Working Families, which was convened by Arlene Holt Baker, who was one of the first high-ranking African American females in the AFL-CIO, along with Helen Butler.

Helen came onto my campus, she plucked a few students. She said, look, y’all are going to be leaders here. And she went about and made it her business to train us on how to become a leader in community organizing. We did a lot of work around voting rights during that time. And from there it was a natural progression to start with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees as an international organizer. I did that for a good while. Long story, I moved to Kenya, came back, did some work with the UAW, and now, I’m excited to be able to be in Georgia at this time. Because we have a tremendous opportunity now to change what the face of the union looks like here in the South. So I’m excited to be here and learn more from our panels and talk to you a little bit more about what’s going on here in Georgia.

Mo Haskins: So I joined the union while I was working at my current job. It was a weird experience. I never had any experience with unions. I never understood what it meant, but the whole thing was always foreign to me. There have always been bad things said about it. It hurts companies, hurts the economy. It’s bad overall. And it’s people being selfish. Once I joined the USSW specifically, they really showed me that it was a weird concept they’re forcing down your throat, which I always thought was weird. It’s people having power over the workplace. You come in every day, you make all the money every day, you do things your GM can never figure out by themselves. And it is you working every day, day in day out, sweating, breaking your back, people working like 17-hour shifts, two jobs, and still getting the crumbs.

But yeah, that’s what brought it to me. But when I joined it, I expected to be doing strike after strike. I go from one strike, well, that’s done. Let’s go to another one. Wake up, going to do two this day. But it’s nothing like that actually. It’s being down in the dirt every day. It’s talking to workers every single day, whether it’s at Zaxby’s, whether it’s at McDonald’s, whether it’s at your favorite restaurant, gas station worker, healthcare worker, it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s a service worker.

You pass them every day, you probably worked a service job, and it’s inescapable. But somehow, they’ve always been treated like dirt, less than people, machines, a cog in it. And if you’re broken, it feels like you get replaced, but no one understands that you are the machine. Without you, there’s nothing. And that’s really the purpose of worker power that I really appreciate and love.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Well, let’s drill down on some of the stuff that y’all already brought to the table. Because like Mo was saying, there are a lot of challenges and obstacles to organizing – Many of which are the perceptions that we have of ourselves as workers who even deserve to have a say in the workplace, that we deserve better than a $17,000 stipend a year, or that we deserve some regularity with our scheduling instead of having to figure out who’s going to watch our kids, how we’re going to get home, and accepting that we are as worthless as the system teaches us we are.

And that can look different in different sectors. I know in higher ed –speaking from experience–on top of those other challenges, you have the additional challenge of convincing folks that they are workers in the first place in higher education and that, as such, they deserve the same rights as every other worker. You also have the arms race to try to get grants or try to get jobs or try to get noticed for your work, so you feel competitive with your fellow workers.

So that’s one example of the challenges to the organizing that you’re doing that I want us to dig into here, both to organizing workers in general, beyond the South. What sorts of challenges and obstacles do we face in labor organizing today? And what challenges are we facing in the South specifically? And since we’re fortunate enough to have such an incredible range of folks on this panel, let’s talk about what those challenges look like in different sectors, and then we’ll talk about how we get around them.

Chris Daniel: I’ll start, if y’all don’t mind. I’m talking specifically right now about the Delta flight attendants, the ramp workers, and mechanics that are organizing. And one of the major challenges that we are having right now is how big Delta is and the type of immense wealth that they have to fight our efforts. And the way that we are getting around that, we are creating this type of synergy here in this state where we’re not fighting each other about jurisdictional issues right now. What we’re doing is combining our efforts, and we are moving together on these huge employers like Delta. So the thing that I’m most encouraged about in Georgia and in the South right now is the way that these unions are coming together and forming these multi-union organizing spaces. There’s going to be a lot more of that happening here in the future. We’re going to do a lot more winning; we’re going to kick some butt in that way.

Maximillian Alvarez: Before we move on–for folks who are listening to this, maybe outside the South–Delta has its hub here for a reason. Could you say a little more about that?

Chris Daniel: Well, a lot of people don’t know. So Delta is the largest employer here in the state. They employ more than 30,000 workers. Pre-pandemic, there were more than 33,000 workers. The type of revenue that they bring into the state is immense. So they have the funds to fight us, but we have the manpower, we have the will, we have the synergy that we’ve created, and we have some really amazing organizers and worker committees that have been developed to kick some ass. So we’ve got people power. They may have a little money power, but we’ve got people power. And that’s going to get us where we need to go.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah.

Melanie Barron: That rules, go Delta. I’m excited to see some of my coworkers in the back of the room, who showed up, who were organizing the campaign. It is huge, and I hope that all of us, in this city and across the South, participate in that amazing and transformative campaign. To build on what you were saying, part of one of the challenges that working people face in the South—and in many parts of the US, more generally–is the lack of organization itself. The employers that we’re going up against have unimaginable resources, unimaginable resources compared to the everyday people who are working for them.

And so, the intervention that we are making in United Campus Workers, a lot of the time, is we lack organization as working people, period. We’re completely disparate. We’re not talking to each other. I was at the University of Alabama last night, and one of the things that strikes me about that institution in particular is how separate people are on a day-to-day basis. And it is a college campus, it is a unit, it is a geographic unit. You can walk around and talk to different people, but on a day-to-day basis, people don’t interact. And that’s by design.

So the union that workers there are building functions as this connective tissue to share information, to share struggles that they’re facing on campus; whether it’s people who are teaching college classes and don’t have health insurance, to people who are working in the dining halls or working in residence halls, who make very little money. It varies from campus to campus, but sometimes people are making way less than $10 an hour, very close to that $7.25 line. And so, that’s unacceptable. The amount of challenges that people have to face in their day-to-day life to get by in the US economy is enough to be a huge challenge to organizing.

And then, let’s say somebody gets fired up and wants to do something about it. Where do they go? Who do they call? Often there’s not anything there. What we’re able to do with organizing, outside of the traditional labor framework in the US, is to create a place where people can go and learn the skills and be with their coworkers to organize more. I feel like a broken record about it – And many of us in CWA probably do – But building organization in itself and the lack of organization among working people is the fundamental challenge that we face as the working class.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Let’s give it up.

Mo Haskins: In the South—Specifically the Black Belt—it’s known for its racism, its sexism. That’s been going on for… Yeah, it’s been existing for as long as the South’s existed. And there’s been laws created since back then that still hold up to this day, laws that are here today—like the right-to-work law—laws created to stop the raising of the minimum wage. All these are based in racist and sexist origin. And there’s nothing being done about it still. Service workers have been struggling with this for, I don’t even know how long, but there’s always been a fight going on in the South for it, for as long as I can remember, since the origin of civil rights movements and the labor movements. And I’m happy that we, including the USSW, can carry on that fight today.

Maximillian Alvarez: So I want to focus even more on the specific campaigns that y’all are working on, are part of, and how, on a day-to-day level, you are working to get around these major obstacles. Because, Melanie, you said something that we should all take to heart, and Mo as well: even if we play by their rules, those rules are stacked in their favor, for very shitty historical reasons, that are meant to make it harder for us to actually win what we’re trying to win. So we know that, but even if we do play by their rules, they could always change them. And that has happened; we’ve gotten two object lessons in the span of a week.

I also produce this labor segment, occasionally, for Breaking Points, called The Art of Class War. The last episode I did was on legislators in the state of Iowa trying to roll back child labor laws. Here in the South, of course, there was the bombshell story about parts manufacturers for Hyundai and other car manufacturers having child labor. They should be a national scandal. And what does fucking Arkansas do?—pardon my French–they changed the laws to make it easier for children to go to work, to do more dangerous jobs, to work longer hours. This is how craven the ruling class is in general, but this is also how they’re weaponizing that here at the legislative level in the South on top of that.

Like I said, we’re recording this as a live show of Working People. The episode that is going to be published this week is a panel that I recorded with campus workers, graduate student workers at Duke University, North Carolina, and faculty workers at Rutgers in New Jersey, who were prepared to go on strike as well. The Duke grad student workers played by the rules. Now, the Duke University administration is not only refusing to recognize the union, they are flipping over the chess board, and they are vowing to challenge the National Labor Relations Board 2016 ruling that basically solidified the right of graduate student workers at private universities to unionize. So what Duke is saying is, not only are we not going to recognize you, our graduate student workers, as a union, we don’t believe you have a place at the bargaining table with us. But we’re going to go to the national level and try to rip this right away from grad workers at universities across the country. That is what we’re up against.

But there are signs of incredible hope and struggle and folks who, like y’all, are working around that. One example I would give, before I toss it back to our great panel, last week, I reported at The Real News Network on the five-day march, led by the Coalition of Immokalee Farm Workers in Florida. I don’t know if folks heard about that, but they’re an incredible group that emerged also out of the fact that, for very explicitly racist reasons, farm workers were written out of the National Labor Relations Act a century ago.

So they don’t have a lot of the same rights that other workers do, and that opens the door for hyper-exploitation, especially of migrant workers who can have their immigration status held over them. There’s rampant sexual abuse and harassment in the field, so on and so forth. And yet, this group of workers in Florida that could not band together in formal capacity banded together anyway, and they have managed to get huge corporations like Taco Bell and Walmart to say they will not purchase produce from farms that do not abide by a certain code of conduct that the workers themselves have crafted.

So they did it again last week; they did a five-day march. They are demanding that other companies that have refused to sign onto that pledge, other companies that have refused to say, we will not source produce from producers and growers where slave labor happens, where rampant abuse and exploitation happens. Those companies have names. They are: Wendy’s. Wendy’s has refused to sign on to this pledge for many, many years; Kroger: Kroger has also refused to sign this pledge. And so, workers, at great risk to themselves and their families, marched five days through the South of Florida to demand that these companies sign that pledge. That’s one example of how we can still use people’s power to work around the racist structures and barriers that are put in our way.

So I want to go back around the table and ask a bit more about the different campaigns that y’all are working on. How, with the Union of Southern Service workers, with campus workers, how you are still harnessing labor organization, people power, infrastructure building, so on and so forth, to make gains, even with all of these ridiculous barriers that are put in your way? So who wants to go first?

Chris Daniel: I’ll take it. So I’m going to start by saying this: the South got something to say. You’ll hear people say all the time, nothing is happening in labor down in the South, y’all aren’t doing nothing down there. Density is decreasing. It is not labor friendly in the South. But the South got something to say, workers here have something to say. What they don’t tell you about that statistic is that, actually, in the South, membership is growing around – Especially in Georgia – Membership is growing. It’s that the pool of workers is also growing. So density may be decreasing, but that doesn’t mean we’re not growing our numbers. So the South got something to say, people are ready now to organize and get this thing done. And I’m going to go back to it. We are facing immense challenges from folks who don’t think the way that we do.

When I think about this state, in the next couple of years, clean energy jobs will be here. We’ve got electric vehicle plants coming. There are about 13,000 jobs coming in electric vehicles in the next couple of years here. And talking about those challenges that we have, our governor sent a letter during the last election cycle to our congressional delegates in DC, basically telling them, do not negotiate with unions about this new clean energy money that’s coming out. So those are the challenges that we face. We face immense challenges. But what we have – And you talked about it – We have the fact that all of our work connects us. And now, our unions understand that, and they’re taking this challenge on together. So we’re not fighting as one small union against these huge organizations. We’re coming together and doing this thing together.

So what I hope that you take away from my conversation today is that we don’t have to fight these battles alone. One thing that our team is doing right now, we’re reaching out to all of our community allies. Our community allies, they face the same issues. The issues that we face in the communities are the issues that we face in the workplace. So it’s time to create that synergy, together with community and labor, and start to fight these fights together. And that’s what we’re doing at the Georgia AFL-CIO: we are creating spaces where we can connect the community with labor, connect labor with the clergy. We want to make sure that we connect all of these different connective tissues and fight this fight together. So that’s what we’re doing, and that’s how we’re ganging up on the boss.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah.

Melanie Barron: In United Campus Workers – For the most part, with very few exceptions – We have no collective bargaining rights, we have no pathway to that unless we change laws, and in some cases, change state constitutions. There’s a whole world of legal barriers. So we’ve been able to organize a union anyway, because a union is an organization made up of people who do things together collectively. One of the main ways around some of the challenges that we face is, like, what are y’all going to do to us? We’re talking about organizing with our First Amendment rights. If you’re going to take that away from us, then we have very big problems as a country, my friends. So we really lean on those rights, and we exercise those rights, in some ways to be able to protect them in the first place, in the political climate that we’re in.

But we also collect dues. Everyone who’s a member of United Campus Workers pays dues through a bank draft system. And with that, we’re able to build a serious resource base with which to fund ongoing organizing all over the place. That’s a really important angle of how we get around it. There’s also all kinds of fun campaigning that you can do, when you don’t necessarily have a lot of legal restrictions that you’ve got to call the legal department about all of the time. Usually, we can march on the boss, or have a picket, or do all kinds of tactics like that, because we’re exercising our rights as people who live in the US. We can do that, and it is effective.

There’s a lot of different campaigns active in United Campus Workers right now. Many places are fighting for a raise in the minimum wage, in particular, to match the real cost of living in our country right now, with the rising cost of living and inflation. So $25 by 2025 is a prevailing demand that’s being expressed in Atlanta, in Arizona, and lots of other places.

We also have grad students who are organizing. There’s a lot of energy in higher education organizing in general around graduate workers, and they’re routinely screwed over all the time. It’s so silly, not even being able to get paid on time. So workers at the University of Virginia this year rang in the new year by getting their paychecks sent to them on time. Workers at the University of Southern Mississippi made sure that they were going to get paid on time in the fall, because the university wanted to make sure that they didn’t. So there’s all kinds of different campaigns happening, and putting people in motion really does work over time. It’s good.

Mo Haskins: So the USSW really builds itself around being an anti-racist, multiracial union, which, in the South, is a very important thing to have. Honestly, It’s essential. And the five things we do are our five demands, which I really feel like gives us the basics that we deserve: higher pay; a fair schedule; being treated equally; a seat at the table; and very importantly, safety and concern at a workplace. I feel like safety is ignored at the workplace. You know how many times we walk to McDonald’s, you see them get into a fight with someone and right away, it’s McDonald’s. You go into these places and it’s a normalized thing that’s expected of them. They’re ghetto folks though. Doing what ghetto folks do.

Sorry, I’ve got some points I have to make sure I get to… And what we do that’s very important is direct action. Instead of going through the NLRB, when we unionize, we prefer to unionize the individual instead of the store. Since you’re in a service industry, odds are their jobs can have a high turnover and you’re going to be working two jobs, at least. And by giving the individual a union, you can create consistency throughout all their jobs, and that’s really important. The way we do this is by worker power. We do have organizers there to help us with the tools that we need, but honestly, it’s the workers with the power.

So we’re out there every day. I’m out there every day. When I’m not working, whenever I’m going by a place, if I see that they’re not being treated the way they need to be, I’ll tell them about it. I’ll tell them they have options. I worked in the industry for almost a decade and I never knew this. I came in there, I worked as hard as I could, I got shitty pay, and then I went home. And I did it over again. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s a job. But it’s not right, it’s not right at all.

So I made sure I told people that, and it actually took me a long time to learn that. My good friend, Monica – I love you, Monica – For as long as I’ve been working, she’s been over there telling me, that’s not fair. You shouldn’t be dealing with that. Don’t deal with that. Say something. I’m like, that’s your job. I ain’t trying to get fired, it’s not worth it. Keep doing it. She said it every day, over and over again, for years actually, until it finally clicked to me. Maybe I should say something. So I finally decided to speak up and say something. And it made a difference, my voice was heard. And that’s the thing about it. Closed mouths don’t get fed. If you want something to happen, you gotta make it happen. And I’m happy I figured that out through this.

Chris Daniel: I want to circle back and acknowledge a few campaigns. I know we’ve talked about Delta, and we’ve got some amazing organizers here from the Delta campaign, from AFA, from IAM, as well as the Teamsters. But also, today, we, about 7 different labor unions, went to support our sister, Jennifer Bennett, and the IATSE 798. [applause] Today, we went down to the NLRB to support them as they voted to have their own union. Now, that has been a tremendous fight for them over the past couple of years, and I didn’t want it to get lost in the conversation, that they are now ready to take that next step.

With that being said, while they did vote unanimously for their union, you know the boss ain’t going to let this thing happen easily, so the boss immediately contested it. But what we do know is that same synergy that you had today, all of the unions are behind you, and we’ll be there fighting along to make sure that this thing happens. So I wanted to prop up that fight.

Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Give it up one more time. And I want to be clear that this is a live recording, this is a live show, so we’re playing by those rules. But when we’re talking about certain campaigns or certain actions coming up, we don’t want to put all our goddamn cards on the table. We don’t want to tell the boss everything that we’re doing. So again, if you have questions about that, you can talk to us afterwards, but I don’t want to ask any of our guests to talk about anything that’s going to compromise them or the campaigns, so on and so forth. So I wanted to make that disclaimer.

And speaking of one of the really common threads that I’m hearing from y’all, which again is so exciting, not just for the South, but something that organizers everywhere should learn, is that your enemy does not shape the rules for you to play so that you can win easier; they do it for the opposite reason. And so, if you keep playing by those rules, there’s only going to be so much that you can do. But there actually can be real moments of liberation and creativity and exciting power when we start looking beyond those restrictive protocols for, say, organizing a union in a single shop, or, how are we going to get this worker who’s having their wages stolen from them their wages back?

I would point people to connect this across the continent, one of the most exciting labor stories that we’ve reported on at The Real News in the past year is by a group called the Naujawan Support Network in Toronto. Has anyone heard of them by any chance? They kick ass. Go Google them. They’re doing what y’all are doing in a really exciting way, because these are primarily Punjabi immigrant student workers in – [cheering] Hell yeah.

…In Canada, because of their student visas, they can only work, say, 20 hours a week. But they’re working to not only live in Toronto, but send money back home. And so, because of their immigration status, because of the restrictions on how much they can work, they are a rife for hyper-exploitation, which happens all the time in Toronto, which is very sad and infuriating. But like you said, individually, they have no power. And even as a workforce, they don’t have a whole lot of power, because the hammer can come down on them, they can get deported. There’s so much at stake, and the bosses know that. And they’ve been exploiting that. And they also can’t unionize because of their immigration status.

So what do they do? They essentially turn the community into a union, and they have grandmas, aunts, uncles, kids marching with them on the boss en masse, with signs saying, this guy’s a wage thief. They’re publicly shaming, they are adopting tactics that the farmers in India used when they launched the most massive worker mobilization in the modern era. And they’re taking that to Toronto, and it’s working. The bosses don’t like being called out in their neighborhoods and having their neighbors see the chalk written in front of their house saying, this guy’s a wage thief. So I’m not saying you necessarily have to do that, but that people across the working class are figuring this stuff out. And it’s very exciting to be amidst others like you all here, who are doing that as well.

And I wanted us to round out on that point, before we open it up to Q&A, because like the other live shows that we’ve done in New York and DC, we ultimately want folks who listen to this, after the fact, to realize we’re talking about them too. We all have a stake in this. This is all of our fight, and we can all learn really valuable lessons from everything that y’all have been sharing here. And so I want to focus on that on our final turn around the table. We should talk about some of the practical points, tips, and stories that we can build on and learn from in our own workplaces and beyond.

How has Action Builder played into the organizing work that you’ve done? And what can others do with tools like Action Builder? But even more broadly, what lessons do you think people can learn from your successes, setbacks, and approaches to organizing? And lastly, what can all of us learn from each other about how to fight and win? And how can we better support one another as a labor movement that isn’t in competition with our brothers and sisters and siblings on the other side?

Mo Haskins: Well, my failure is what I spoke about earlier: how I ignored good advice over and over again. Someone kept telling me something, but I kept believing the lies I’ve been told before. I chose to be ignorant. I never decided to really look into it and understand it, and I’m happy I did. Educating yourself on what’s really out there, your other options, your choices. It’s so important to do.

And honestly, communicating with other people around you. Everyone here has the knowledge in the room that they need to change the world. Now, not every single person has it, but the room together, we all have what we need. Talk to each other, communicate with each other, share information, and solidarity. That shit’s real, people power. It’s an important thing that we all have, and I feel like we should really focus on it as much as we can. Really uplift each other.

Chris Daniel: Yes, I’m with you, Mo, that was basically one of the points that I wanted to make. Solidarity. Every day, we make calls to affiliate leaders and community leaders, and we want to figure out where those connective issues are. We want to make sure that we can connect our issues with the issues of folks in the community. One of the big failures that we have as an organized labor body is that we sometimes let these jurisdictional fights – And the belief that we can better serve these workers – Sometimes that gets in the way of our progress.

But what we really should be doing is fixing the jurisdictional stuff in the beginning, figuring out where we have some common ground, and moving that way. Because we’ve been talking about it – And I know this has been a common theme that I’ve been talking about – Is some of these fights that we’re fighting, it’s going to take faith-based communities, with labor, to win these things. We talked about the Delta fight, we talked about the opera. It’s going to be hard to win these things on our own, but we know the amazing work that these different organizations do. If we get together, there’s no way we can be stopped. So that’s my thing is, like you said, solidarity. That’s how we win. And lack of solidarity is how we lose a lot of the time.

Melanie Barron: Amen to all of that. Talking to your coworkers about the things that you care about at work, you can do it. So many people are afraid to do it and are afraid to break those social boundaries. And that is the most powerful thing that you can do in your day-to-day life is say no, fuck you, to the boss, together, with your coworkers. And that does make a difference. It adds up over time. And I will be on brand for this panel and say I love Action Builder. I think it’s great.

And those tools can help you make sure that the knowledge that you’re gaining on a day-to-day basis from those conversations with your coworkers and other people across your workplace actually gets saved somewhere, actually can contribute toward building something over the long term. If we’re serious about building working-class power, then we also want to be serious about – Even at these beginning stages – Dreaming about, what does it mean to have a majority of people on this campus or in this workplace agree with us?

And it takes a really long time to do that. The people who are organizing in Delta right now, those databases are gold. You really need to know how people think and shift and change over time. And those tools are really helpful. And to all organizations out there, this is a really important tool to be investing in. And I want to shout out to my coworker, Taylor Mills, who is the best data specialist ever, [applause] and has built Action Builder for our campaigns, to be extremely useful. And I’m training people on it all the time and really evangelizing about it. So don’t be afraid of the tools that are there to help you. You can learn it, you can do it, and it will help you. Don’t shy away from that stuff. It’s very helpful.

Chris Daniel: I’m going to circle back around to, I’ll be taking the Action Builder training in the next couple of days, so I’m excited about being able to take what – And I know that they have reworked Action Builder for the AFL-CIO – So I’m excited about the possibility of using it and getting our affiliates on board, to make sure that we are using data, to make sure our work is efficient. Because data is really important in the work that our affiliates do. And Action Builder, I’m chomping at the bit to learn more, and I’ll be calling you –

Melanie Barron: Call Taylor. Sorry, Taylor.

Chris Daniel: …I’ll be calling you, Taylor.

Maximillian Alvarez: And rapid fire, final closeout round. For any working person who is in the South listening to this, what is your message to them about this moment and why they should get off the sidelines?

Melanie Barron: It can’t wait. Do it now. Do it today. Do it because your life is important. Do it because your coworkers’ lives are important. Yeah, do it now.

Chris Daniel: For me, the enduring point that I would leave with you is that work connects us all, and that’s it. Work connects us all.

Mo Haskins: I agree with both of them. Now is really the time. Ain’t no one got time to waste time. You really gotta do what you can. Communicate with everyone that you can. Create a community, because honestly, you already got a community. You got to bond it together.

Chris Daniel: I want to bring up one last point, and I’ll leave it here. For all of my folks who are seasoned labor folks, make sure you reach back and bring us some young folks, not to bring them in as grunt workers. Bring them in and let them lead. I remember a brother named the Rev. James Orange, and he was one of the folks that helped bring me up in this labor movement. And one thing that he would always do, I don’t care where we were, if you were with brother James Orange, he was going to prop you up into the forefront, and he was going to make you a leader that day. So the last enduring thought that I would leave you with is to bring up some young person behind you and make them a leader.

• Melanie’s Twitter page

• Communications Workers of America website, Twitter page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• United Campus Workers website and Twitter page
• Georgia AFL-CIO website, Twitter page, and Facebook page
• The Union of Southern Service Workers website, Twitter page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Action Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• Action Builder website
• Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue, “Union of Southern Service Workers Is Organizing Low-Wage Workers Across Industries“
• Saurav Sarkar, The Real News Network, “Punjabi Workers in Toronto Are Fighting Wage Theft—and They’re Winning“
• Jimmy Williams (General President of IUPAT) statement on Cop City
• Working People, “A “Do or Die” Moment for the Academic Labor Movement (w/ Matt Thomas, Kristina Mensik, Bryan Sacks, & Todd Wolfson)“
• Chris Kromm, Facing South, “A New Day for Labor in the South?“

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 (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
• Post-production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

As you know if you have ever hung around union people who are in the process of getting extremely mad, “captive audience meetings” are when the boss calls a mandatory meeting for employees, and then proceeds to lie to them about how bad unions are. Of all the tools in the union-busting playbook, captive audience meetings are probably the most brutally effective. Most working people have only a very tenuous grasp on the nuances of what a union is and what it does, so it tends to be very easy for employers to deceive them in outrageous but technically legal ways about the scary things that will happen if they choose to unionize. Also, most working people really need their jobs in order to live, so it tends to be very easy for employers to terrify them that if they unionize they will either be fired, or their job will disappear because of rising costs and whatnot.

Every captive audience meeting, from an Amazon warehouse to a college campus, basically goes:

Hi folks, take a seat, take a brownie if you like. I’m just here to rap with ya a little bit because as you know, we’re a family here. You may have been approached about organizing a union recently. Of course, that’s your right and the decision is totally up to you. We just want you to be fully informed. So: What is a union? It’s a business that wants your dues money. Every heard of Jimmy Hoffa, or the mafia? Yeah. And what happens if you unionize? You can never talk to a friendly manager again. You have to go through some third party. Pretty sad considering we have an open door policy here. Also, I can’t tell you that this business will close if you unionize, but I can say that some businesses do close when a union comes in. Money doesn’t grow on trees, sadly. That would be a bummer! Anyhow we got you all pizza.

These meetings can be tailored to be more friendly or more threatening, depending. I have reported on more of these than I can count at all types of businesses, and they are all full of lies. Highly paid consultants, all of whom should be in jail, write the scripts for these meetings, and sometimes come in and run them. If you ever in your life meet someone who is involved the captive audience meeting industry in any way (at a dinner party or something) you should spit at their feet and tell them to fuck off. They are bad people whose business cards should read “We Lie To Further Oppression.”

If you think about it, it’s pretty wild that these meetings are legal in the first place. What does your employer pay you for? They pay you for your work. They pay you to perform a set of tasks collectively known as “your job.” That’s it. It is highly unlikely that a legitimate part of your job is “being harangued about your boss’s extreme right-wing beliefs.” That’s what anti-union propaganda is, when you get right down to it. It is no different from going about your business stocking shelves at CVS and then being pulled into an hour-long meeting at which your manager explains in detail why communism is the one true and just economic system. It is no different from finishing your shift at the insurance company and then having to sit and listen to an outside consultant argue that the 13th amendment should be repealed, in order to help the company’s bottom line. The argument that you should not have a union—that you should act against your own social and economic self-interests—is kooky and insulting, even more so when that argument is being delivered by the person who is arguing purely for their own social and economic interests. “You shouldn’t have more power at work, because I want that power instead,” is the gist of what every boss who makes an anti-union argument to his employees is saying. “Better wages and benefits and control of your own life is on the table here, and you should reject it,” they are saying. It’s rude! Why would they say that to you—their family?

I would say that holding a captive audience meeting by definition creates a hostile workplace. Our legal system is just not quite enlightened enough to recognize it yet. But common sense is all you need to understand that it is unreasonable to force working people to attend mandatory meetings at which their boss delivers to them the equivalent of an Ayn Rand book reading. All your boss is entitled to is you doing your job, and listening to that shit is not your job. If all workers took a moment to marinate in the sheer shamelessness of a company forcing them to listen to a spiel about why they should voluntarily reject the idea of improving their own lives, captive audience meetings would lose their power. Any boss that tells you that a union is a bad idea is, at minimum, a boss who is willing to lie to you, and who is acting against your best interests. That person is not your friend. That person is your foe. I have a dream… that one day… the act of holding a captive audience meeting will automatically trigger unanimous support for the union, because all the workers will be so insulted by the audacity of such an act. But until that day, banning them is the only fair thing to do.

The PRO Act, the big fantastic labor reform bill that the Democrats cannot pass through Congress, would automatically make captive audience meetings an unfair labor practice. But the PRO Act will never pass until the filibuster is abolished (and maybe not even then—I have no doubt that there are a number of corporate friendly Democrats who say they support it now only because they know it can’t pass). Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel of the NLRB, who is the single most enthusiastic pro-union government official in America, is trying to regulate captive audience meetings out of existence on her own, though her ability to do so is still up in the air, and also anything good she does will automatically be reversed as soon as a Republican president is elected and nominates Simon Legree as her successor.

So the reality is that states are the playing field where these battles can meaningfully be fought. Over time, more blue states will emulate Minnesota’s reforms, creating an ever more stark divide between blue states with higher union density, higher wages, and greater legal protections for workers, and red states with low union density, lower wages, fewer regulations and a worse social safety net. It’s a natural experiment: Which is better, workers who are healthy and happy and earn enough to pay the bills, or the opposite? (We actually know the answer because the South has been running this experiment for several hundred years. You can drive around Mississippi to see the incredible flourishing of wealth that it has produced.) This divide, which in Fox News terms is presented as “Capitalism vs. Socialism,” can more accurately be seen as Semi-Regulated Capitalism vs. Plantation Capitalism, or Moderate Worker Power vs. No Worker Power. The theory that “labor” is not a word for human beings whose flourishing is the proper interest of the state, but rather a word for a cost that should be brought as close to zero as possible in order to accrue wealth for owners of capital, has been entrenched in red states and particularly the South for much longer than I have been alive. It’s confusing, since it actually makes red states poorer. It only makes sense if you leave enormous numbers of poor, non-white people out of your political calculus altogether, because you don’t consider them to be relevant to a discussion of human welfare.

The point is: Captive audience meetings are the equivalent of your boss stealing money out of your pocket and lying about it and then patting your head and calling you dumb and then saying “I didn’t call you dumb.” A friend would never do that to you. If you are ever subjected to such a thing, you should be insulted. You need not respond to such treatment respectfully. You should instead—respectfully, via collective bargaining—kick your boss’s ass.

This essay is republished from How Things Work, a reader-supported site. If you like it, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Hamilton Nolan.

It was positive.

“I cried, I cried, I cried,” Lationna says. “It was a surprise. Lord, it was a surprise.” She later figured out she was three months along.

Lationna’s face, framed by hair that hangs in long, soft curls, is round and pretty. Her cocoa skin glows and her large eyes, hidden behind thick glasses, are the same golden shade. She doesn’t smile often, but when she does, it spreads across her whole face, revealing a tiny piercing above her front teeth. At 26, she already had a 4-year-old son, Royalty, tall and skinny with his mom’s coloring and wide eyes. Lationna wanted to give Royalty a sibling someday, so he would be less lonely. But not like this.

Before having another child, Lationna wanted to be married to her partner, Kendall; to have a steady job that paid well; to get a new car; to live in a house instead of an apartment; and for Royalty to be in a better school.

Instead, Lationna worked as an IT clerk at a nearby elementary school, doing things like creating attendance reports and report cards. She liked the job well enough; her coworkers and the students made it worthwhile. But Lationna only earned $8.50 an hour. Her monthly check went immediately to covering rent—$853 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in a complex of dozens of identical buildings in West Jackson, Miss.—plus the internet bill. She lived with Kendall and the two shared expenses. Kendall earned $18 an hour as a welder and detailed cars on the side, but the two still struggled to put money away for savings or emergencies. They couldn’t afford cable; after rent, Lationna barely had enough money to gas up her car.

Lationna hoped to move as soon as they could afford it. The drive to the apartment winds along a road so full of deep, wide potholes that drivers have to swerve into the oncoming lane to spare their tires. Jackson’s water treatment facility failed in August 2022, leaving the city without clean water for weeks. Problems bubbled up again late that December, all connected to Mississippi’s decades-long underfunding of critical infrastructure in the majority Black city.

Lationna dreamed of moving “somewhere that’s nice and quiet and peaceful.” Her ultimate hope was to leave for Dallas, where she thought she could give Royalty better opportunities. But she would have been happy to move to Clinton, a town just five minutes down the road, made up of tidy subdivisions with squat houses that all have driveways and yards. A sign at the edge of town seemed addressed to her: “You belong here.”

But moving even five minutes away costs money they didn’t have.

“I just wanted everything to be better than what it is now,” Lationna says. Kendall felt the same. “We were not ready to have a baby.”

Shortly after Lationna took the test, she tried to make an online appointment to get an abortion at Jackson Women’s Health—commonly known as the Pink House, nicknamed for its Pepto Bismol-colored outer walls. Since 2004, it was the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. She never heard back.

Just a month prior, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that originated in Lationna’s home state when the Pink House sued Mississippi over its 15-week abortion ban. Mississippi’s preexisting abortion ban trigger law went into effect automatically on July 7; the Pink House ceased operations the same day.

The evening after she tried to contact the Pink House, while watching the news at her mother’s house, Lationna saw a TV segment about Mississippi’s abortion ban. That’s when she realized, “Oh, that’s why they’re closed. They passed a law already, so I can’t do anything.”

Lationna was, she says, “stuck.”

Lationna and Kendall looked into traveling to another state, but they didn’t have the money. The best option they could find was a clinic in Philadelphia, where the procedure alone would cost around $700, not including the hundreds it would take to get there and back. In the confusing aftermath of the verdict and the new bans, Lationna also feared if she left the state to get an abortion, she’d be arrested upon her return. (Mississippi’s ban charges anyone who performs an abortion in the state with a felony, although officials have said they won’t prosecute people who seek abortions themselves.)

Instead, Lationna had her baby at the end of January. That makes her one of the first people to give birth after being unable to end a pregnancy because of the new abortion bans that have been passed or gone into effect in 14 states since the Dobbs decision. (Five other states have banned the procedure after early gestational limits.) After a half-century of recognizing a constitutional right to abortion—even if access was spotty to nonexistent in many places—the United States has entered a new era.

Lationna found herself at a particularly cruel nexus: about to undertake having a child she hadn’t planned for in a state that ranks at the bottom of the nation in terms of the support it offers pregnant people and new parents. Even with a job, a partner and a family support system, Mississippi’s abortion ban put Lationna at extreme risk of poverty. She would face the added costs of caring for another child with no extra resources to do so. And she would more than likely be forced to put her life goals on indefinite hold.

Lationna’s story is a glimpse of things to come, on a massive scale, in our new, post-Dobbs America, foreshadowing the economic harm as yet untold numbers of people will endure and the dreams a new generation will be forced to put aside.

Driven into desperation

Even before Mississippi’s trigger law went into effect in July 2022, Mississippians were no stranger to the need to travel out of state to get an abortion because of the state’s lack of clinics. Mississippi also instituted a mandatory waiting period for people in need of an abortion, which led many to miss work and need additional childcare to make appointments. Women who lived in poorer areas, according to a study by Kari White, associate professor of social work at the University of Texas, Austin, were especially likely to face barriers to access and end up getting abortions later in their pregnancies.

As always, “those who have” can access abortion more easily than “those who don’t,” says Diana Derzis, who owned the Pink House. “But at least women had an option.” Most of the clinic’s patients were women of color who were struggling financially and already had children, Derzis says. Many were there because they couldn’t afford to have another child.

That steady drumbeat of need kept up right until the Pink House closed in the summer of 2022. The clinic stayed open seven days a week in an attempt to serve as many people as it could. “We were seeing 40 and 50 patients a day,” Derzis says. “The phone was off the hook.”

The Dobbs decision has enabled not just Mississippi but all of the surrounding states to ban abortion. “Given both the high levels of economic need and inequities that we have already seen in Mississippi,” White says, “it really does seem that very few people will be able to travel someplace else to get abortion care.” After Dobbs, only about half the people nationwide who were blocked from accessing an abortion in their home states have traveled elsewhere.

For a preview of what that will mean in the wide swaths of the country that now have little to no abortion access, we can look at the landmark turn-away study by Diana Greene Foster, a demographer at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2008, she started following women who sought abortions in states that banned the procedure at certain gestational limits, comparing what life looked like for those who were able to obtain an abortion with those who were refused.

“The two groups started out the same,” Greene Foster notes. But over time, those who were turned away fared far worse. Six months later, they were nearly four times as likely to be living in poverty and more than three times as likely to not be working. Those who did work were less likely to be doing so full time. They were also more likely to drop out of school and less likely to graduate, and those who had aspirational life plans were far less likely to achieve them. Even five years later, the women who couldn’t obtain abortions were 78% more likely to be in debt and 81% more likely to be bankrupt, evicted, or have a tax lien against them.

It’s not just the women who suffer. Their previous children—60% were already mothers—were more likely to live in poverty and struggle with developmental milestones. Most women who had wanted another child later in life, under different circumstances, didn’t go on to have another, because “when they have a child before they’re ready,” Greene Foster says, those better circumstances don’t arrive.

“Every area in which there was a difference, women who were denied an abortion fared worse than women who received it,” Greene Foster says—and they knew it. Greene Foster had initially asked her subjects why they wanted an abortion; years later, she found out: “Everything they were concerned about came true for the people who were denied.”

Other research has found that women living in states with what are known as TRAP laws—short for targeted restrictions on abortion providers, which make it harder for clinics to operate—were less likely to be able to switch jobs or find higher-paying work, perhaps because women forced to have children they aren’t ready for have fewer resources to tide them over while they look for better positions or go back to school.

TRAP laws have indirect impacts too, says Kate Bahn, who researched them as an economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Women unsure of whether they’ll be able to control when they have children might opt out of majors and careers that take a lot of time and work. The policy landscape “shapes how one plans for the future.”

Even if these states offered generous safety nets, however, they would never make up for the loss of autonomy people face when they can’t end unwanted pregnancies. “That’s the fundamental piece,” Bahn says. “Women need to be able to make choices for themselves to have economic opportunity and contribute to economic growth.”

Ready or not

Lationna never graduated from college. She was 21 when she got pregnant with Royalty, and then finishing school proved too much. Since then, she realized her real passion was in hair and makeup, helping others feel confident and powerful. “When you step out, you want to feel yourself, feel comfortable, can’t nobody touch you,” she says. “That’s how I want to make everybody feel.”

Even after Lationna started the school IT job, she did hair and makeup on the side, seeing clients at home to make extra money, charging $50 for makeup and $70 for hair—far less than what she could charge if she were licensed. In 2022, Lationna started making plans to get that license, calling around to cosmetology schools and looking into a program at her work that helps pay for education. She wanted to do “something I actually want to do and don’t mind getting up and doing it every day,” she says. She began dreaming of working for herself, even owning a salon.

But amid those plans, in spring 2022, she got pregnant. It happened during a remarkably short window: her hormonal birth control implant had expired, so she had it removed. That cost $300, even with health insurance, and she didn’t have enough money saved to get it replaced right away. Lationna was pregnant just a month later.

“I didn’t think I was going to get pregnant that fast,” she says.

Lationna has mixed feelings about abortion, but she is adamant that “it’s not my decision to make with anybody [else’s] body.” She wished Mississippi’s lawmakers felt the same. “I just hate that they [can] vote on it,” she says.

The states that have banned abortion are the same ones that do the least to help pregnant people and new parents make ends meet. Eight of the 14 states that now ban abortion also fail to ensure pregnant workers have the right to workplace accommodations. None have guaranteed paid maternity and paternity leave or paid sick days, and five have refused to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for mothers in the first year after giving birth—an extremely critical period for parents. Adding to parents’ struggles to provide and care for their new kids, 10 states haven’t raised their minimum wages higher than the federal rate of $7.25 an hour, six have refused to expand Medicaid to most low-income adults, and none give workers the right to humane scheduling practices.

“These policies cluster together in such harmful ways,” says Shaina Goodman, director for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Mississippi ranks dead last on all of these measures: It banned abortion while failing to guarantee paid family leave, paid sick days, pregnancy protections at work, scheduling rights and a higher minimum wage. It hasn’t expanded Medicaid, and only this March did it pass legislation extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for up to 12 months.

The outcomes for residents are grim. Mississippi has the highest overall and child poverty rates in the country, with more than a quarter of its children living in poverty. Its infant mortality rate also tops the list, and its maternal mortality rate is among the highest. Both outcomes are worse yet for Black Mississippians. Black babies in the state are twice as likely to die as white babies, and pregnant Black women are three times as likely to die as pregnant white women. The state also has the highest rates of preterm birth and low birthweights in the country.

“We want to tell people to have babies here,” says Sandra C. Melvin, chief executive officer of the Institute for the Advancement of Minority Health, “but when the babies get here, we don’t do the things we need to do to ensure they’re safe and healthy.”

With abortion banned, Mississippi is expecting at least 5,000 more babies to be born in the state each year.

“We just got to make it work”

Lationna’s first pregnancy, with Royalty, had gone smoothly. This time was harder. She had a lot of pelvic and back pain, which made it difficult to stay active. By December, she could no longer touch her feet and had trouble walking. It was hard to get out of bed in the morning and, even with a grace period to accommodate her pregnancy at the elementary school where she worked, she still had a hard time arriving before 8 a.m.

Lationna’s job didn’t offer any paid maternity leave—only paid sick days, and she had used all five of those, plus all of her six personal days, on prenatal appointments, along with the time Royalty was home sick with the flu for the entire week before Thanksgiving.

All she had was the federally mandated option of 12 weeks of unpaid leave. To avoid going entirely without income, Lationna planned to find a remote job she could do from home while watching the baby. Ideally, she could keep doing that rather than return to her school job. “I got to make ends meet, help his dad with the bills,” she said, and she sent out applications “left and right.”

Lationna got a bit of government help—$470 a month in food stamps and a voucher to cover Royalty’s $55-a-week after-school care—but Mississippi’s safety net is threadbare and hard to access. She never bothered to apply for cash benefits from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Applications are overwhelmingly rejected—just 4% of eligible Mississippians receive it, and even then, the maximum is $260 a month for a family of three.

Her employer-provided health insurance wasn’t great, with copays higher than $100 per doctor’s appointment, so she tried not to make appointments. When she got pregnant, she was able to enroll in Medicaid, which covered all of her prenatal care without a copay.

At one point, Lationna had looked into trying to get a Section 8 rental voucher; she gave up when she realized how long the waitlist was—in Mississippi, an average of 8 to 10 years. She once managed to secure an apartment in a low-income complex in North Jackson, when Royalty was a toddler, but it had such severe black mold that his clothes, shoes and bedding were constantly covered with growths. The landlord refused to treat it, so Lationna was forced to move to their current market-rate apartment.

In December 2022, Lationna was still trying to get clothes, a car seat and a stroller for the coming baby. They didn’t have the money. “It is stressful,” she said at the time. “I am so terrified.”

But Lationna and Kendall found ways to mentally adjust to the idea of having a baby together. After they realized they couldn’t afford an out-of-state abortion, they had a long talk, and Lationna “had a coming to terms” in realizing “this baby’s still going to grow.” She prayed and she talked to her mother, who told her she had to face her responsibilities. She tried to see it as “just another blessing.”

“We just got to make things work,” she resolved.

On Christmas morning, as Royalty opened the presents laid out under their tree, Kendall handed Lationna a box with a ring inside, then got down on one knee. “I started crying,” Lationna said. “I didn’t think he wanted to.” But she also had hesitations: She’d wanted to get married after her family was financially stable, once they were living in a house. She said yes while planning to put the actual ceremony off until she could find a new, better paid job.

She was very clear that she didn’t ever want to get pregnant again. “I really want to have my tubes tied after this,” she said. “I’m done.”

Bringing baby home

On morning of January 30, Lationna’s baby was born: Kingsley, a 7-pound boy with a serious face and soft curls covering his head. In the end, the delivery went well, except for the fact that the hospital had no hot water—something that may or may not have been related to the ongoing water problems in Jackson and which meant she had to take an icy shower after the birth.

Lationna wasn’t able to get her tubes tied after delivery as she had wanted. Her doctor didn’t give her the paperwork ahead of the delivery, and then, at the hospital, she was talked out of it, she says, because she was told it wouldn’t be 100% effective. Instead, she was given the hormonal birth control implant she had before—the same one she’d been unable to replace just before she got pregnant.

Two days after Kingsley was born, Lationna brought him home. Despite being on the first floor, their apartment was dark like a basement unit because of the shades covering their single living room window. Still, Lationna didn’t sleep. Kingsley, like many newborns, slept all day and was awake all night. When we met in early March, there were dark circles under Lationna’s eyes.

Kendall was back to work as soon as Lationna and the baby left the hospital, working from 7:30 in the morning until 6:30 at night, plus his side hustle detailing cars on the weekends. He came home exhausted. Since Kendall had become the breadwinner, covering all of their bills while Lationna was on unpaid leave, Lationna felt obligated to take care of everything at home. “I’m going to let you have your sleep,” she told Kendall, and stayed up with the baby by herself all night.

After a day or two, Lationna started to feel depressed, something she never experienced after Royalty was born. She would “just cry, cry, cry for no reason,” she says. She mentioned it at her four-week doctor appointment, but she was told it was normal, so she tried to cope on her own.

The only time Lationna was able to really rest was in the morning, when she let Kingsley sleep on her and she drifted off; if she tried to put him down, he immediately started crying. Most of the day he slept silently on her body, nestled on her shoulder or curled against her forearm, tattooed with “Royalty” in big red lettering. She planned to get another tattoo with Kingsley’s name, eventually. Every time she helped Kingsley shift to a new sleeping position, she showered his plump cheeks with kisses.

Lationna’s mother came by in the evenings after work, but even with that help, Lationna chafed at her situation. Kendall argued he had it harder, working outside for long hours, but Lationna felt her situation—being stuck at home all day caring for a newborn by herself—was worse. “I wish I was a dad [rather] than a mom,” she said, “because they get to get up and leave the house whenever they want to instead of being here with the kids.” Lationna longed for that freedom—freedom she’d had when she only had Royalty. “I feel like I’m in a prison,” she said.

She also felt stuck in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable body. She longed to be able to exercise and “lose this mom weight,” she said. She feared falling back into depression if she couldn’t move her body. She worried that her face and neck skin had been darkened by pregnancy and wanted to buy new makeup to better cover it up. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself anymore,” she said. “I just want to get my old body back. I want to get my old self back.”

Lationna told herself she had to suck it up. “I can’t complain, because I’m not providing. I can only sit here and just cope with it until I’m able to get back on my feet and get back to where I need to be at.” But she couldn’t get comfortable with the situation. “I really don’t like depending on anybody,” she says. “I’d rather have my own.

Barely, barely, barely

After Mississippi banned abortion, conservative lawmakers, including Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, vowed to offer more support for parents and babies. A study group was formed in the state Senate to consider legislation.

But most of the proposed bills this session, from tax credits for parents to more fiscal support for crisis pregnancy centers, failed. Out of 60, more than half had been rejected by early February. None advanced that would have helped parents access and afford childcare. Bills to ensure paid family leave and rights for pregnant workers, plus seven to increase the minimum wage, died without consideration.

Instead of finding more resources to help poor parents, Republican leaders want to use the state’s projected $3.9 billion budget surplus to entirely eliminate its income tax. That would erase a third of Mississippi’s revenue.

The one item the legislature accomplished this session on its post-Dobbs agenda was extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for 12 months. Previously, postpartum parents were kicked off after 60 days. The law goes into effect July 1.

It’s unclear if the law will allow parents like Lationna, whose 60 days ended March 31, to maintain Medicaid coverage. The state Medicaid department did not respond to In These Times’ request for information on whether people like her will be removed from the program before July.

Lationna never got a new job despite continuing her flurry of applications while home with Kingsley. Equipment she’d bought to work a remote position, including a monitor and headset, sat in the living room, left over from when she thought she had secured one that paid $15 an hour, only to realize she couldn’t swing the four-week unpaid training.

She was supposed to return to her school IT job March 24, before Kingsley would even be old enough to get the shots he needed to go to daycare. When she called the daycare she wanted in early March, it didn’t have any openings, and Lationna was told to call back the week before she returned to work.

Then there was the cost: $90 a week. Originally she had wanted to get a voucher, but Mississippi doesn’t make that easy. Before an unmarried mother can get a voucher, she has to cooperate with the Child Support division, which typically determines the paternity of the child and then orders child support payments from the father—no matter how involved he is with his children. The state then takes most of the money to pay itself back for benefits. If a mother doesn’t comply with that process for any reason, her application is automatically rejected. “It’s almost always a barrier,” said Carol Burnett, executive director of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. Mississippi has also consistently left millions of dollars in federal funding for childcare unspent, such that only 10% of eligible children were served before the pandemic.

Lationna and Kendall decided not to go through the onerous child support process. “He hates the words ‘child support’ because he’s going to be there for his kids,” she says. “We just decided he wanted to pay out of pocket.” (They eventually decided to pay Lationna’s 80-year-old great aunt $50 a week to watch him for the time being.)

Kendall and Lationna were making ends meet—but just barely. Determined to stockpile enough money so the family could move somewhere new, Lationna had done some hair and makeup for clients—putting Kingsley in a swing, praying he wouldn’t wake up, and asking her clients to hold him if he did. She tried to put that money aside, and they planned to open a joint savings account, but as of March they hadn’t managed to save anything.

Securing the things Kingsley needed hadn’t been a huge financial burden yet. Lationna’s coworkers had bought her enough diapers and wipes to fill a closet and her family gave her clothes and gear at her baby shower. But by one month, Kingsley was already outgrowing his clothes, and Lationna knew she would have to go shopping soon. Friends and family tend to be generous when babies are first born, but that largesse typically disappears as babies get older. And the cost of caring for an extra child was only going to grow. While Lationna’s family hadn’t yet faced extreme consequences like homelessness or hunger, their budget was significantly constricted.

Lationna’s dream of going to cosmetology school was put on indefinite hold. “Me getting pregnant and just having two kids, it’s going to be too hard for me to do,” she said, staring down at Kingsley’s sleeping face as she sat on her couch in fuzzy pink slippers and a flowered hair bonnet. “That just threw everything out the window.”

Lationna’s is one of thousands of dreams that have been and will be deferred as people across the country are blocked from getting the abortions they need and are forced to give birth to and raise children they weren’t ready for. Before the Pink House was forced to close, says former owner Diana Derzis, “I was seeing women who were able to attain things they would not have been able to attain had they not had that option there.” But “when you take that away,” she continues, “you have removed an option for their futures to be brighter and better, and that of their children.”

This article was supported by the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting and the journalism nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Bryce Covert.

That campaign never ended. Since 1948, Palestinians continue to face occupation and besiegement, which is codified by the Israeli government through the expansion of settlements, executed through policing Palestinians’ daily lives and solidified with constant settler violence.

Recent “democracy” protests are bringing to light the cracks in the concept of Israel as the so-called “lone democracy in the Middle East.” In 1984, Steve Askin took a deep dive into why Palestinians just don’t fit into that idea.

In 1984 Steve Askin wrote:

It is a sunny mid-may afternoon. Uprooted fig and olive trees, their spindly roots gently waving in the breeze, litter the hillside I am standing on, a few miles north of Jerusalem. An Israeli construction crew dug up this orchard two weeks ago, then bulldozed half the adjoining wheatfield. The remaining grain is almost ready for harvest.

Abdullah Saloman's farm died to make way for Giv'at Ze'ev, a planned community for 2,500 Jewish families whose hilltop apartments will tower high above the surrounding Arab farms and villages. The community is named in honor of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, founder of revisionist Zionism, the movement from which Israel's ruling Likud Party arose.

Jabotinsky's followers have, of course, entered into an uneasy coalition with the heirs to the once vibrant socialist-Zionist tradition of the Labor alignment, but bulldozers will continue to aggressively reshape Israel's future. The new government may slow, but will not halt, the displacement of West Bank Palestinians, a process that began under Labor Party rule, accelerated under Likud and makes the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the 36-year-old Israel-Arab conflict grow dimmer every day.

Likud supports full and permanent incorporation of the occupied territories into Israel. Though the Labor Party supports a "territorial compromise" in the occupied territories, it is a compromise acceptable to no Arab governments and few, if any Palestinians. In the past, the dominant position within a divided Labor alignment would have permitted, in exchange for a broad peace agreement, return of about 60 percent of the West Bank to the rule of Jordan. To most Palestinians, this stance is doubly unacceptable: first, because it would legitimize Israeli control and Palestinian dispossession on large expanses of West Bank territory; second, it would transfer the rest of West Bank to the control of a Jordanian government known for its harsh and sometimes brutal opposition to Palestinian nationalism.

The guidelines of the new coalition bar even the limited territorial compromise formerly backed by Labor. Using the biblical names for the West Bank preferred by expansionist Israelis, the agreement specifies that "there will be no change in the sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district" without consent from both parties.

From a distance, Labor appears to be the party of peace. And its more conciliatory leaders probably would be—if not hamstrung by more conservative coalition partners—more likely to take the bold initiatives needed to reach a peace agreement with their Palestinian adversaries. But, as I discovered on a visit to Israel and the occupied territories shortly before the July elections, few Palestinians believe that Labor rule can make a difference. To understand why, one must visit those who have been the victims—under Labor as well as Likud—of Israeli policies designed to drive large numbers of Palestinians from the land that once supported their families.

Reshaping Jerusalem.

Grainfields crushed by bulldozers, ancient fruit trees ripped from the ground and tiny villages cut in half by modern highways mark the intersections between Palestinian village life and an expanding ring of densely populated Jerusalem suburbs.

I toured these new settlements with an odd pair of guides: a U.S.-trained Palestinian economist and a journalist who immigrated to Israel from the U.S.

From our first stop at Giv'at Ze'ev, it was a short but roundabout trip to the Arab village below, Al Jib. Short because the new settlement sits partly on land taken from Al Jib. Roundabout because the village has been cut in half—the old road joining the Arab settlements severed—by the new blacktop highway built across Palestinian farms to speed Giv'at Ze'ev commuters into downtown Jerusalem.

Winding down into the village, we spotted a pile of rubble between two houses. A mangled refrigerator was visible among the broken building stones of the house where 20-year-old Tahsir Sha'- alan lived with his mother and three siblings. The Israeli army bulldozers struck after Sha'alan was arrested as a suspect in the killing of a Jewish settler in Hebron, south of Jerusalem. Under occupation rules, Israeli authorities routinely use bulldozers to punish suspected Arab terrorists—people charged with crimes ranging from stonethrowing to murder—before they are tried. (Jews are not subject to this punishment, so bulldozers have not moved against the homes of 27 people arrested as suspected members of an anti-Arab terrorist underground that bombed five Arab buses, used carbombs to cripple two West Bank Palestinian mayors and killed three people in a grenade and machine-gun attack against an Islamic college.)

Imposing though it is, Giv'at Ze'ev is tiny compared with other settlements around Jerusalem. The largest is Gilo, a still-growing maze of apartment buildings towering over the ancient town of Bethlehem on Jerusalem's southern edge and planned to house 48,000 people. A few stubborn Arab families cling precariously to tiny scraps of land in the shadow of Gilo's staggered rows of long white apartment buildings.

Mousa Mohammed Salomeh and his family are among those survivors. Their 600 grape vines and olive trees were destroyed to build a Gilo parking lot. Their three connected houses are perched on a narrow ledge between that parking lot and a new apartment building open only to Jewish settlers. About three dozen people live in this four generation extended family compound. An idled bulldozer and its tracks in newly turned earth are an ominous presence just behind the houses.

Seated in the simply decorated, highceilinged living room, we sip from tiny cups of Turkish coffee. A sad smile creases his lips as Salomeh unrolls a 1975 Israeli survey map on which his long-gone fruit trees are clearly marked. Speaking sometimes in Arabic, sometimes in Hebrew, he tells the story of his family, twice displaced.

Until 1948, they lived on a 100 dunam (25 acre) farm in the El-Maliha, a village of 7,000 people on the edge of Jerusalem. They fled, "afraid that we, too would be killed," after the April 1948 massacre at Deir Yasin in which 254 Arab civilians were killed by Zionist fighters of the Irgun Zvei Leumi. The family took refuge in a cave near the village of Beit Jala, where they bought and obtained clear title to seven dunums of land. Here they rebuilt. After the 1967 war, they found themselves again in territory controlled by Israel.

Gilo grew onto their land in 1978. Without warning, construction crews appeared one day to uproot the grape and olive trees. As the destruction began, : Salomeh approached a foreman and askc ed, in his best Hebrew, "What are you I doing?"

"We have to get this Arab family out of here," the construction boss responded. "It's going to be difficult, because these Arabs cover themselves in dirt, and they'll gladly live in dirt."

Later, Salomeh was told that the land had actually been expropriated eight years earlier under an August 1970 order. (Ibrihim Matir, the Palestinian economist, reports that four Jewish settlements have been built on the 14,000 dunums covered by the 1970 order. Palestinians learn their land was expropriated only when the bulldozers appear.)

Viewed from the Palestinian villages beneath them, developments like Gilo are the symbols and substance of dispossession: stone-walled fortresses, standing on expropriated Arab land. For Israelis who work in the city, they are merely bargain housing: low cost, government-subsidized condominiums 10 or 20 minutes from downtown.

This planned suburban sprawl is the hidden face of Israel's West Bank land takeover, hidden even from many Israelis. Gilo residents are "not like the Gush Emunim—it's part of Jerusalem and even Peace Now people would live there," insisted an Israeli acquaintance who became annoyed when I referred to Gilo as a settlement built on occupied territory.

• • •

The building of this Greater Jerusalem began under a Labor government shortly after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel formally annexed Arab East Jerusalem and extended the city limits to include land and a half dozen West Bank villages stretching almost from Bethlehem on the south to Ramallah in the north. Then they began a fast-paced construction drive.

The goal was to "build large neighborhoods around the city and thus to 'make it indivisible,'" according to a study by urban planner and former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meron Benvenisti. Benvenisti, who also served as Israel's administrator for Arab East Jerusalem, is now a dovish critic of Israeli settlement policies. He says the de facto annexation process is now well advanced in the rest of the territory occupied by Israel in 1967, including West Bank villages like Al Jib, which lies outside Jerusalem's expanded city limits.

Initially under Labor, but with new harshness since Likud came to power, Israel has evolved a dual legal and political system for the occupied territories, according to Benvenisti.

An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli law and receive all the benefits of the Israeli welfare state. West Bank Palestinians, more than 700,000 of them, are denied the economic and civil rights protections of Israeli law.

These Palestinians live under a military administration that enforces a confusing mix of Jordanian laws, 40-year-old British Mandate emergency regulations and more than 1,000 occupation edicts. Similar rules apply to nearly 500,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a densely packed 10 by 40-mile sliver of Mediterranean coastal land that was captured from Israel.

Militant settlers.

West Bank settlers are "the most realistic of all Israelis," insists soft-spoken Shiffra Blass, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Settlements. "You will find that there are those who identify themselves as liberals who don't want to live with Arabs, while we are living among the Arabs," she explained last May, when I visited her at Ofra, a 700-person Gush Emunim (bloc of the faithful) settlement. Her home, though only about 10 miles northeast of Giv'at Ze'ev, presents a very different aspect of Israeli West Bank settlement. Instead of urban relaxation for commuters, it offers a militarized enclave of the spiritually committed. As in all such enclaves, the men are reserve or active duty soldiers authorized to carry and use their weapons.

For Blass, the only legitimate claim to this land is set forth in the Bible. She therefore rejects the term "occupied territory" and speaks instead of the Jewish land of Judea and Samaria that Israel "rescued from domination" by Arabs.

Relations with surrounding communities are tense. Ofra's nearest neighbors are Palestinian villagers who say the settlers stole their land. According to Matir, the settlers seized 350 of the settlement's 400 dunams of land, and at least 400 fig trees. Ofra's site was vacant government land on which the Jordanians had started building a military base before 1967, says Blass, who insists that "the religious ethic of Gush Emunim is to only settle land that is not cultivated."

Like Mousa Mohammed Salomeh, Blass speaks passionately of her attachment to this land and bitterly of past terror. The 1929 riots in which Arabs killed 67 Jewish residents of Hebron, the May 1948 defeat and death of Jews defending the Etzion Bloc kibbutzim south of Jeru­salem are vividly implanted in her psyche. Unlike Salomeh, she was not present for these events that shape her consciousness. Born in Wisconsin, Blass came to Israel in 1972 "for religious Zionist reasons."

What is the difference, I ask Blass, be­ tween her passion for this land and that of a Palestinian who yearns for the farm he lived on before 1948?

''The difference is that one nation has roots in the area that are true and deep. The other's roots are very recent. The Jews, she says, have "returned to our ancestral homeland. No other nation can you point to and say they have been· thrown out of their land and kept their sense of nationhood for 2,000 years. The fact that I was born in America is an interesting part of my personal history, but it doesn't tell me where my homeland is. We have an unmistakable similarity to the people who were here 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. We may be wearing jeans but we still say the same prayers, follow the same religion, speak the same language, are part of the same culture."

While Blass speaks of cultural continuity with the ancient past, I am struck by the extent to which these settlers have planted a little piece of modern America or Western Europe on the inhospitable West Bank soil.

Remove the armed guard at the gate and the fence topped with barbed wire, and Ofra's prefabricated detached homes–their well-watered front lawns cluttered with toys and bicycles–would present the archetypal image of a modest income U.S. commuter suburb. Like all West Bank Jewish settlements, no matter how small, it is connected by bus to an m:ban center, Jerusalem.

Of course, without the guard and the fence, Blass would not feel safe in a small Jewish community surrounded by hostile Arab villagers. She could not calmly sit in a rocking chair, chatting with me and holding her youngest infant, while the other four children play outside, occasionally running in to raid the refrigerator. Ofra residents would not feel secure while they cultivate crops or work in their computer software business.

A few days before my visit, 27 settlers, including some key Gush leaders, were arrested as suspected members of the anti-Palestinian terror underground. All week, Israeli journalists had been quiz­zing Blass about those arrests. By now, she was so well prepared for the inevitable question-doesn't Gush's expansionist ideology make it a breeding ground for violence-that she raises the issue before I do.

''You wouldn't find here any serious advocate of the ideology justifying a violent underground," she asserted, because Gush Emunim is "against violence and against killing." Only later, when Israeli authorities released the suspects' names, did I learn that they included three of Blass' Ofra neighbors.

Self critical Israelis

Israel does not rest easily in its role as a conqueror and occupying power. Each act of violence, repression or expropriation against Palestinians in the occupied territories produces an anguished response somewhere within this intensely self-reflective society. It is not unusual for a newspaper “letter to the editor” to say that “Jewish terrorism is a cancer and if this disease is allowed to persist, the very life blood of Jewish society will be drained” or for a mainstream public figure like Benvensiti to warn that Israel’s West Bank policies may produce “a regime ominously similar to that of South Africa.”

“For me it is unbearable that already for 17 years we keep 1.25 million Arabs under military government, bereft of civic and political status," says Alouph Hareven, a 30-year veteran of the Israeli army and intelligence service. His views are shared by a sizable minority of Israeli Jews.

A smaller group of Israelis raise deeper questions about their government. Rabbi Jeremy Millgram, who coordinates Jew­ ish-Arab student dialog groups at Jeru­salem's Hebrew University, speaks, though with some hesitation, of wrongs that may be inherent in Zionism. In a highly militarized society he is a selective conscientious objector-unwilling to serve in Israel's Lebanon war and occupation.

Not that these are easy subjects for Millgram. As a one-hour interview turns into three hours of earnest discussion, he speaks slowly-sometimes pausing at mid-sentence, even mid-word-to re­ phrase his thoughts more precisely.

"For most Israelis the Arab population is almost an invisible population. There are certain professions that almost be­ come exclusively Arab: . the building trades, waiters, gas station attendants."

Moreover, "with the security problems we have, Arabs aren't simply invisible citizens, they are citizens who tend to be suspected An Arab who studies electri­cal engineering at this university can't get any job in industry, because almost all the industry is either involved with military contracts or would like to be.''

Housing segregation is almost universal. "There are certain built-in restrictions to integration. Housing is built for people who are immigrants or for people who have served in the army… But what's more important than that is really a pattern of habitation. Most Arabs want to live in their villages. In the pattern of modern Zionism, most Jews came and built new communities and those communities were Jewish communities.”

Millgram came to Israel from the U.S. as a teenager. Before his “aliyah” in 1981, he thought very little about Palestinians. (Aliyah, literally “ascent” in Hebrew, is the journey made by one who comes to Israel to be part of the jewish homeland.) He was attracted by the egalitarian vision of socialist-Zionism, repelled by a war-like and racially divided America.

Now, he sadly finds himself coming almost full circle. "In the States I was very much opposed to the war in Vietnam and upset about the black-white situa­tion. And unfortunately, I think we discovered here that those problems have pursued us."

The Israeli spirit of self-criticism is an important source of hope for change in Israel. Yet it may not be enough. For every hopeful sign, there is.a counten-something- ing source of despair.

Thus, the Jerusalem Post displayed one of Israel's greatest strengths when it condemned a top government official, Deputy Knesset Speaker Meir Cohen-Avidov, as a man "consumed by the racism and arrogance that inevitably infests those who would dominate another people or ethnic group, and squelch their dignity.” Most American newspapers would hesitate to respond so firmly to any utterance, no matter how vicious, by one of our congressional leaders.

But Cohen-Avidov also represents a significant strand of Israeli thought. In the remarks that provoked the Post, he said that a "strong hand" must be used when Israel deals with the Palestinians. “I’ve lived with the Arabs and know them only too well… I’d tear out the eyes and the guts of the murderers amongst them.” As the Post noted, such “evil words have a constituency” and “reflect the malignancy that has fastened itself upon the increasingly convulsive public mind.”

This lively and contentious Israeli democracy cannot drift unthinkingly toward apartheid. But there is an even more disturbing possibility: it could, step by step, in political decisions ratified at the ballot box after intense and angry debate, choose the path of repression. Many Palestinian Arabs and some Israeli Jews say this has already happened.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by In These Times Editors.

In the midst of it, Cai details the contrasting contexts of a working-class small town outside Peoria, Ill., with Audrey’s upwardly mobile ambitions in New York. There’s an immediacy in which Cai captures place and time that fully immersed me in this fictional world about a hometown return that is almost-but-not-quite exactly like her own.

Throughout Central Places, Audrey wrestles with questions about how to introduce Ben to her middle-class Chinese immigrant parents, whether it’s possible to repair fractured relationships she left behind in search of bigger dreams, and how to navigate an ongoing feeling of otherness. It’s these self-interrogations that drive the narrative of Cai’s work, which is effusive in its compassion for its ensemble of characters.

I was lucky enough to catch the Los Angeles leg of Cai’s book tour, where she sat in conversation with fellow Asian American fiction writer Elaine Hsieh Chou. Approachable and warm, Cai herself is still incredulous at the enormous success her writing has yielded the past few years. We related in the stubbornness and thick skin one has to develop in order to persevere in journalism. Over the past decade, her arc in media spans a fellowship at The Atlantic to running her media newsletter Deez Links to her new position as senior correspondent at Vanity Fair. Even now, she shares that the imposter syndrome feeling is very real.

I sat down with Cai via Zoom to discuss the tension and disbelief that is the backdrop to Central Places and a reflection of her own fish-out-of-water moments: her Asian American experience living between the Midwest and the coast, state school pedigree and Ivy League prestige, and the struggle to build community.

JIREH DENG: How did your passion for writing start and where did the inspiration for your book arrive from?

DELIA CAI: I was a big reader as a kid. My mom would drop me off at the neighborhood Barnes and Noble on Saturday afternoons so she could run her errands in peace. I loved it because I could just sit and read a bunch of books all afternoon. I remember writing little stories when I was a kid, coming up with skits with friends. But I started writing stories in earnest around middle school, because I got really into writing Harry Potter fanfiction. Then I began inventing my own stories.

JD: It’s interesting that you got your start writing Harry Potter fanfiction, because your book is almost like a spin-off of your own life, particularly with the political happenings that are the backdrop of this novel. There’s a general sense that this is the pre-Trump era of politics and a period where Midwestern communities are experiencing financial hardship and struggling with the opioid crisis. Even Audrey’s dad, who’s an engineer, is implicated in the working-class struggle of his peers—he’s preparing to be a scab during a strike. There’s all this texture that feels very journalistic to me. How did your journalism background inform your writing this book?

DC: Journalism helped me put things in historical and political context that I just didn’t really understand as a kid. For example, in my hometown, a small town outside Peoria, Ill., the manufacturing giant renegotiates contracts with the unions every six years. It’s a huge thing because most people know someone who works there, and it impacts everyone because there’s this idea of a strike looming and who’s going to run the plants? At the time, I only understood that whole dilemma in the way that my parents told it to me, and they understood from the way that their superiors at work explained it to them. We were not a family that read socialist or leftist media; it was just sort of this thing that happened. Now, getting older, I’m learning about labor rights and making these connections. I think a lot about the culture and norms we grow up with, that I didn’t notice until I was out of it. My journalism background helped me contextualize my own world, and helped me understand my childhood and the place I grew up in better.

JD: The characters and places in the book feel very fleshed out in a journalistic type of way with your attention to detail and everyone’s humanity. Audrey aspired to go to New York City to get away from her past, which prevented her from being close to the people from her hometown. I also sense that cultural expectations from her immigrant Chinese parents weigh heavily on Audrey so much that she’s developed this intense fear of failure. How does this track with your trajectory to New York City? How does it tie into how we think about immigrant parents, that pressure to do better and gain upward mobility?

DC: Something that I really love about the novel is that Audrey changes her mind about the stories that she’s told herself about people in her life. When she says, “My best friend and I fell out and we don’t talk anymore”—like, is that really true? What role did she play in that? Audrey spent her whole childhood telling herself, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” That’s definitely something I’ve wrestled with a lot in my life. If you know you’re going to leave, why would you invest in these relationships? Did I cut myself off from people, or was this really an isolating place to grow up? Did I contribute to that isolation by being really self protective? Aiming for upward mobility comes with this inherent rejection of one world you’re trying to escape from for another. It’s a meta immigrant narrative for Audrey. Her parents came from China to the United States, and she’s moving from this small Midwestern town to this big New York City life. She’s sort of split between these worlds.

JD: And it causes her to have fractured relationships with the people in her town and her family. The distance between what Audrey wants for herself and what her mom wants for her. Your book has us, as readers, sitting in discomfort, but I see that discomfort being generative as a tool. There’s that dichotomy between how her fiancé Ben sticks out in this Midwestern town, with racial tensions and that sense of political elitism coming from the coasts. Audrey is a Chinese woman, bringing home her white fiancé. How were you thinking about this tension as you were writing the book?

DC: When writing this novel, I was really curious about exploring these tropes of the Asian American mom or the trope of an interracial relationship between an Asian woman and a white man or even just the coastal elite versus middle America divide. It can be fun and snarky to take a stance one way or another on these dynamics. For example, during the Trump election, the New York Times did all these stories like, “Here’s what real America is like, we went to this diner and interviewed a bunch of people who represent a very specific Midwestern or Southern perspective.” It was really easy to make fun of that because it was so clear they were looking for a certain type of narrative which gave confirmation bias, you know?

So when looking at these dynamics, my thesis wasn’t so simple. Interracial relationships can be so fraught, people have really strong feelings about it and a lot of toxic beliefs, especially within the Asian community. It was important for me to give these things a 360-degree view. I tried to consider what about a relationship like this—for these two characters, specifically—is so appealing? What about it makes it work and not work for them? I didn’t want to make any sweeping theses. In the book there are these microaggressions, but then there’s one very blatant incident of textbook racism and I wondered for a long time if that was stereotypical to put in. Like, does there need to be a very obvious racist incident for it to be legit to the Asian American experience? Sometimes racism is really random, and I’m just like, “Wow, I feel like I’m living in a diversity and inclusion ad."

JD: I definitely know what you mean. It’s like you’re just going through life existing as a person and then it just smacks you in the face when someone else decides that you only exist as a category. Your book feels very reminiscent of the melancholy in the film Minari where this immigrant family is really isolated in their Korean American experience in Arkansas. You realize, “I’m really alone out here.” Can you talk about how you’re exploring experiences that aren’t always represented in media and how you’ve figured out your own path through that?

DC: I was so surprised when I moved to the East Coast and started meeting Asian Americans who grew up in these coastal enclaves where they felt really enveloped in the security of their identities. I just didn’t know that there were teenagers in SoCal or Flushing, who grew up not feeling the way I did. On TV, you see being Asian American as an isolated experience. There’s London Tipton on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, or the Chang Triplets on The Proud Family. I actually thought that was the norm, and then I met people and found out there are entire communities and subcultures where you could grow up Asian American and not feel singled out in everything you did. That was just so mind-blowing to me. I kind of just wanted to bring to light one very specific experience that I had. At the time, I didn’t realize in the context of the Asian American experience, that my experience is actually pretty rare statistically.

JD: In your interview with the Longform podcast, you talk a lot about feeling plucked out of your Midwest town and trying to make sense of New York City. I’m really curious to hear how your life experiences inform your own character development of Audrey.

DC: This is something I’m struggling with, just on a daily personal level, but I still feel like I don’t really belong anywhere. In some ways, growing up, that was the default belief of not looking like anyone else in my friend group. I’ve had this underlying implicit feeling that I don’t belong, and I carry it with me in these increasingly different circumstances and contexts. At Atlantic Media, my first job after school, many of my colleagues were Asian but most were Ivy League kids. No one cared that I was Asian but all of a sudden I felt like I didn’t belong because I’m from a small town, because I went to a state school. Some of my childhood beliefs come back to haunt me in different ways. I’m still figuring out how to actually form connections and create a sense of belonging for myself.

JD: Can you talk about the ways you’ve found community? Ways you’ve felt seen and like you aren’t alone?

DC: Right off the bat, so many Asian American women authors have really welcomed me into their network here in New York. Especially Qian Julie Wang and Elaine Hsieh Chou. They reached out to me to get coffee and go to picnics, it’s been so lovely. One example I’m really proud of: I live in an apartment building with six other people and over the past year we’ve slowly gotten to the point where we’re on a first-name basis with each other and we have a group chat. A few months ago, our front door lock wasn’t working and it felt like a problem for all of us that we helped each other out of. There’s this real sense of knowing that we got each other’s backs.

JD: That’s really sweet. New York can feel so big, but you’re trying to make it smaller in those intentional and person-to-person connections. Are there any particular artists or writers that currently inspire or inform your own work?

DC: It would be too hard to name all of them. I’m reading Jenny Odell right now. I really love her first book, How To Do Nothing, where she interrogates why we are so obsessed with productivity. And her new book, Saving Time, considers the concept of time. I don’t think most of us really understand our concepts of time have been taken from us. Both books fit into a lot of the stuff I’m working out for myself in terms of how I want to spend my life. Toward the end of How To Do Nothing, Odell talks about being at this super boring work conference, so she decided to play hooky and spent the day just walking around. At first she felt guilty for blowing off the learning and networking opportunities, thinking, “I should be at this conference to make myself a more productive worker.” But then she realizes that playing hooky was a better use of time, because she spent that day on Earth. I love that part and I try to remind myself every day that I’m here on Earth, in this time and in this place. To tie up all the other stuff we’ve talked about, I think that is what helps ground me when I feel like I don’t belong, if I’m getting really wrapped up in stuff from the past or I’m trying to forecast the future. Like, what really matters? How am I spending this day here on Earth? And so I just try to lean into that.

JD: That’s beautiful. I feel like that’s a nice way to end the conversation because I’m sure people want to know what’s next, like, “When is your next book coming out?” But you’re just thinking to yourself, “What if I just exist?”

DC: Exactly, exactly. I just turned 30, so it’s really been at the top of my mind because people are always asking what I want to do next and I think I’m done striving. I’m not so into achieving anymore. Some people have told me, “You must be so happy, you achieved your dreams,” and I am, but there’s a ceiling to that and now what I’m craving is the joy you get from existing and being with people. I’m just trying to live for community and connection and that’s all.

DELIA CAI'S debut novel is Central Places. Her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed, GQ, The Cut and Catapult, and her media newsletter, Deez Links, has been highlighted by the New York Times, New York magazine and Fortune. She lives in Brooklyn and is a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Jireh Deng.

In the midst of it, Cai details the contrasting contexts of a working-class small town outside Peoria, Ill., with Audrey’s upwardly mobile ambitions in New York. There’s an immediacy in which Cai captures place and time that fully immersed me in this fictional world about a hometown return that is almost-but-not-quite exactly like her own.

Throughout Central Places, Audrey wrestles with questions about how to introduce Ben to her middle-class Chinese immigrant parents, whether it’s possible to repair fractured relationships she left behind in search of bigger dreams, and how to navigate an ongoing feeling of otherness. It’s these self-interrogations that drive the narrative of Cai’s work, which is effusive in its compassion for its ensemble of characters.

I was lucky enough to catch the Los Angeles leg of Cai’s book tour, where she sat in conversation with fellow Asian American fiction writer Elaine Hsieh Chou. Approachable and warm, Cai herself is still incredulous at the enormous success her writing has yielded the past few years. We related in the stubbornness and thick skin one has to develop in order to persevere in journalism. Over the past decade, her arc in media spans a fellowship at The Atlantic to running her media newsletter Deez Links to her new position as senior correspondent at Vanity Fair. Even now, she shares that the imposter syndrome feeling is very real.

I sat down with Cai via Zoom to discuss the tension and disbelief that is the backdrop to Central Places and a reflection of her own fish-out-of-water moments: her Asian American experience living between the Midwest and the coast, state school pedigree and Ivy League prestige, and the struggle to build community.

JIREH DENG: How did your passion for writing start and where did the inspiration for your book arrive from?

DELIA CAI: I was a big reader as a kid. My mom would drop me off at the neighborhood Barnes and Noble on Saturday afternoons so she could run her errands in peace. I loved it because I could just sit and read a bunch of books all afternoon. I remember writing little stories when I was a kid, coming up with skits with friends. But I started writing stories in earnest around middle school, because I got really into writing Harry Potter fanfiction. Then I began inventing my own stories.

JD: It’s interesting that you got your start writing Harry Potter fanfiction, because your book is almost like a spin-off of your own life, particularly with the political happenings that are the backdrop of this novel. There’s a general sense that this is the pre-Trump era of politics and a period where Midwestern communities are experiencing financial hardship and struggling with the opioid crisis. Even Audrey’s dad, who’s an engineer, is implicated in the working-class struggle of his peers—he’s preparing to be a scab during a strike. There’s all this texture that feels very journalistic to me. How did your journalism background inform your writing this book?

DC: Journalism helped me put things in historical and political context that I just didn’t really understand as a kid. For example, in my hometown, a small town outside Peoria, Ill., the manufacturing giant renegotiates contracts with the unions every six years. It’s a huge thing because most people know someone who works there, and it impacts everyone because there’s this idea of a strike looming and who’s going to run the plants? At the time, I only understood that whole dilemma in the way that my parents told it to me, and they understood from the way that their superiors at work explained it to them. We were not a family that read socialist or leftist media; it was just sort of this thing that happened. Now, getting older, I’m learning about labor rights and making these connections. I think a lot about the culture and norms we grow up with, that I didn’t notice until I was out of it. My journalism background helped me contextualize my own world, and helped me understand my childhood and the place I grew up in better.

JD: The characters and places in the book feel very fleshed out in a journalistic type of way with your attention to detail and everyone’s humanity. Audrey aspired to go to New York City to get away from her past, which prevented her from being close to the people from her hometown. I also sense that cultural expectations from her immigrant Chinese parents weigh heavily on Audrey so much that she’s developed this intense fear of failure. How does this track with your trajectory to New York City? How does it tie into how we think about immigrant parents, that pressure to do better and gain upward mobility?

DC: Something that I really love about the novel is that Audrey changes her mind about the stories that she’s told herself about people in her life. When she says, “My best friend and I fell out and we don’t talk anymore”—like, is that really true? What role did she play in that? Audrey spent her whole childhood telling herself, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” That’s definitely something I’ve wrestled with a lot in my life. If you know you’re going to leave, why would you invest in these relationships? Did I cut myself off from people, or was this really an isolating place to grow up? Did I contribute to that isolation by being really self protective? Aiming for upward mobility comes with this inherent rejection of one world you’re trying to escape from for another. It’s a meta immigrant narrative for Audrey. Her parents came from China to the United States, and she’s moving from this small Midwestern town to this big New York City life. She’s sort of split between these worlds.

JD: And it causes her to have fractured relationships with the people in her town and her family. The distance between what Audrey wants for herself and what her mom wants for her. Your book has us, as readers, sitting in discomfort, but I see that discomfort being generative as a tool. There’s that dichotomy between how her fiancé Ben sticks out in this Midwestern town, with racial tensions and that sense of political elitism coming from the coasts. Audrey is a Chinese woman, bringing home her white fiancé. How were you thinking about this tension as you were writing the book?

DC: When writing this novel, I was really curious about exploring these tropes of the Asian American mom or the trope of an interracial relationship between an Asian woman and a white man or even just the coastal elite versus middle America divide. It can be fun and snarky to take a stance one way or another on these dynamics. For example, during the Trump election, the New York Times did all these stories like, “Here’s what real America is like, we went to this diner and interviewed a bunch of people who represent a very specific Midwestern or Southern perspective.” It was really easy to make fun of that because it was so clear they were looking for a certain type of narrative which gave confirmation bias, you know?

So when looking at these dynamics, my thesis wasn’t so simple. Interracial relationships can be so fraught, people have really strong feelings about it and a lot of toxic beliefs, especially within the Asian community. It was important for me to give these things a 360-degree view. I tried to consider what about a relationship like this—for these two characters, specifically—is so appealing? What about it makes it work and not work for them? I didn’t want to make any sweeping theses. In the book there are these microaggressions, but then there’s one very blatant incident of textbook racism and I wondered for a long time if that was stereotypical to put in. Like, does there need to be a very obvious racist incident for it to be legit to the Asian American experience? Sometimes racism is really random, and I’m just like, “Wow, I feel like I’m living in a diversity and inclusion ad."

JD: I definitely know what you mean. It’s like you’re just going through life existing as a person and then it just smacks you in the face when someone else decides that you only exist as a category. Your book feels very reminiscent of the melancholy in the film Minari where this immigrant family is really isolated in their Korean American experience in Arkansas. You realize, “I’m really alone out here.” Can you talk about how you’re exploring experiences that aren’t always represented in media and how you’ve figured out your own path through that?

DC: I was so surprised when I moved to the East Coast and started meeting Asian Americans who grew up in these coastal enclaves where they felt really enveloped in the security of their identities. I just didn’t know that there were teenagers in SoCal or Flushing, who grew up not feeling the way I did. On TV, you see being Asian American as an isolated experience. There’s London Tipton on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, or the Chang Triplets on The Proud Family. I actually thought that was the norm, and then I met people and found out there are entire communities and subcultures where you could grow up Asian American and not feel singled out in everything you did. That was just so mind-blowing to me. I kind of just wanted to bring to light one very specific experience that I had. At the time, I didn’t realize in the context of the Asian American experience, that my experience is actually pretty rare statistically.

JD: In your interview with the Longform podcast, you talk a lot about feeling plucked out of your Midwest town and trying to make sense of New York City. I’m really curious to hear how your life experiences inform your own character development of Audrey.

DC: This is something I’m struggling with, just on a daily personal level, but I still feel like I don’t really belong anywhere. In some ways, growing up, that was the default belief of not looking like anyone else in my friend group. I’ve had this underlying implicit feeling that I don’t belong, and I carry it with me in these increasingly different circumstances and contexts. At Atlantic Media, my first job after school, many of my colleagues were Asian but most were Ivy League kids. No one cared that I was Asian but all of a sudden I felt like I didn’t belong because I’m from a small town, because I went to a state school. Some of my childhood beliefs come back to haunt me in different ways. I’m still figuring out how to actually form connections and create a sense of belonging for myself.

JD: Can you talk about the ways you’ve found community? Ways you’ve felt seen and like you aren’t alone?

DC: Right off the bat, so many Asian American women authors have really welcomed me into their network here in New York. Especially Qian Julie Wang and Elaine Hsieh Chou. They reached out to me to get coffee and go to picnics, it’s been so lovely. One example I’m really proud of: I live in an apartment building with six other people and over the past year we’ve slowly gotten to the point where we’re on a first-name basis with each other and we have a group chat. A few months ago, our front door lock wasn’t working and it felt like a problem for all of us that we helped each other out of. There’s this real sense of knowing that we got each other’s backs.

JD: That’s really sweet. New York can feel so big, but you’re trying to make it smaller in those intentional and person-to-person connections. Are there any particular artists or writers that currently inspire or inform your own work?

DC: It would be too hard to name all of them. I’m reading Jenny Odell right now. I really love her first book, How To Do Nothing, where she interrogates why we are so obsessed with productivity. And her new book, Saving Time, considers the concept of time. I don’t think most of us really understand our concepts of time have been taken from us. Both books fit into a lot of the stuff I’m working out for myself in terms of how I want to spend my life. Toward the end of How To Do Nothing, Odell talks about being at this super boring work conference, so she decided to play hooky and spent the day just walking around. At first she felt guilty for blowing off the learning and networking opportunities, thinking, “I should be at this conference to make myself a more productive worker.” But then she realizes that playing hooky was a better use of time, because she spent that day on Earth. I love that part and I try to remind myself every day that I’m here on Earth, in this time and in this place. To tie up all the other stuff we’ve talked about, I think that is what helps ground me when I feel like I don’t belong, if I’m getting really wrapped up in stuff from the past or I’m trying to forecast the future. Like, what really matters? How am I spending this day here on Earth? And so I just try to lean into that.

JD: That’s beautiful. I feel like that’s a nice way to end the conversation because I’m sure people want to know what’s next, like, “When is your next book coming out?” But you’re just thinking to yourself, “What if I just exist?”

DC: Exactly, exactly. I just turned 30, so it’s really been at the top of my mind because people are always asking what I want to do next and I think I’m done striving. I’m not so into achieving anymore. Some people have told me, “You must be so happy, you achieved your dreams,” and I am, but there’s a ceiling to that and now what I’m craving is the joy you get from existing and being with people. I’m just trying to live for community and connection and that’s all.

DELIA CAI'S debut novel is Central Places. Her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed, GQ, The Cut and Catapult, and her media newsletter, Deez Links, has been highlighted by the New York Times, New York magazine and Fortune. She lives in Brooklyn and is a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Jireh Deng.

Read this article in English.

Les parents de Gloria Ortiz ont repéré un jour un panneau qui planait au-dessus des champs de fraises du côté central de la Californie. Ils annonçaient des salaires à 11 dollars l'heure dans un abattoir de Iowa. Ils cueillaient des fraises 35 dollars par jour.

« Nous sommes donc venus de Santa Maria, en Californie, dans cette ville, pour Tyson », explique Ortiz.

Ces parents ont été embaucher comme employés à l'usine de transformation de porc à Tyson Food Columbus Junction, Iowa, en 1994, au moment même où les conditions des travailleurs de l'industrie de viande étaient très déplorable la courbe tirait vers le bas. Dans les années 1980, les entreprises de viande avaient commencé à intégrer verticalement leurs opérations pour contrôler l'ensemble de la chaîne d'approvisionnement, des agriculteurs qui élèvent les animaux aux travailleurs qui les tuent et transforme la viande. Les patrons ont fermé des usines dans des bastions syndicaux comme Chicago (surnommé "boucher de porc pour le monde'' par Carl Sandburg), Omaha, Nebraska, et Kansas City, Missouri, pour se déplacer vers des villes à bas salaires comme Columbus Junction dans les États dotés de lois sur le « right to work » (droit au travail) qui affaiblissent les syndicats. Là, l'industrie pourrait retarder les campagnes syndicales et saisir les fermes en faillite.

Les entreprises ont recruté des immigrants, pour la plupart sans papiers, pour travailler dans les usines non syndiquées. Les salaires ont chuté tandis que les blessures ont grimpé en flèche. L’ONG des droits de l’Homme, observe dans son rapport de 2004 sur les abus de l'industrie de la viande, « Blood, Sweat and Fear » (Sang, sueur et peur), détaille comment la viande est passé d'une industrie dans laquelle "les travailleurs avaient des organisations sûres qui négociaient en leur nom à une industrie où l'auto-organisation est un gant à haut risque pour les travailleurs.” Pendant ce temps, le taux de syndicalisation dans l'industrie est passée de 90 % en 1952 à 33 % en 1983 à seulement 18 % en 2020.

Ortiz a eu du mal à s'adapter à sa nouvelle maison alors que ces parents travaillaient “sans arrêt », se souvient-elle avoir été victime d'intimidation à l'école, ciblée comme une des rares Latina dans une ville des blancs Elle a quitté l'école à 13 ans.

La mère d'Ortiz, 62 ans, travaille toujours chez Tyson, sur la ligne de coupe à l’usine et le travail a fait des ravages : des maux de canal carpien et douleurs chroniques à l'épaule. Elle rentre à la maison complètement épuisée à bout dit Ortiz.

Ortiz travaille également dans la chaîne de transformation de viande, dans une usine à 30 km de West Liberty, Iowa. L'usine de West Liberty Food appartient à “Iowa turkey growers cooperative“ (Coopérative des éleveurs de dindes d’Iowa), et Ortiz gagne 18,90 dollars l'heure en travaillant en la chaîne.

Travailler à West Liberty est « stressant », explique Ortiz (qui a demandé un pseudonyme par crainte de représailles). Elle décrit un "système de points draconiens, en vertu duquel six points de pénalité pour un retard ou une absence qui peuvent amener à un licenciement. « Ils ne pensent qu’à eux-mêmes pas aux employés » dit Ortiz. « Si vous êtes absent dues à un malaise ou une maladie vous vous faites virer »

À la voix douce et réservée, Ortiz, 36 ans, a une détermination inébranlable imprégnée par sa foi chrétienne et l’indignation face à l'injustice enracinée par des années de plaidoyer pour ses parents immigrés.

Lorsque les communautés d'immigrants se sont vu refuser l’aide fournie par les programmes de secours de la Covid-19, elles sont passées en action, rejoignant le groupe communautaire confessionnel Escucha Mi Voz (Écoute Ma Voix en espagnol) en 2021.

Maintenant, Ortiz fait partie d’un certain nombre de travailleurs d'Escucha Mi Voz (Écoute Ma Voix en espagnol) qui jettent l’éponge dès que nécessaire en participant à une campagne de syndicalisation à Tyson et West Liberty. Un syndicat ; réclame-t-elle, augmenterait, les salaires, les arrêts ou congés de maladie, les primes, les jours de vacances et, surtout, le respect.

Dans plus de 20 entretiens avec des travailleurs actuels et anciens des deux usines de transformation de viande, en ces moments il y’a des plaintes pour la baisse et même le manque de personnels, la présence des superviseurs abusifs en passant par la politique de présence punitives. Les travailleurs disent qu'un syndicat pourrait résoudre le problème au rythme effréné de la chaîne de travail. Ces pressions de production incessantes, selon eux, rendent les blessures inévitables et plus certaines. Ils soulèvent de lourdes carcasses de dindes sur des crochets à West Liberty et découpent des cuisses de porc avec des couteaux émoussés pas appropriées à Tyson. Les travailleurs disent qu'ils craignaient tellement d'arrêter la chaîne de travail qu'ils se sont souillés au lieu d'aller aux toilettes, et ils ont subis des blessures, des coups de couteau en les brandissant au coude à coude dans des espaces étroits.

La campagne syndicale vu le jour il y’a quelques mois et déjà en pleine risque. Avec 1400 employés à Tyson et environ 600 autres à West Liberty (l'entreprise ne confirmerait pas), il s'agirait de la plus grande campagne dans l’industrie de viande aux États-Unis depuis 2012, lorsque 1200 travailleurs de l'usine de volaille Pilgrim's Pride en Alabama ont rejoint la vente détaillée plutôt que celle d’en gros (Syndicat du commerce détaillé, et de grossistes des grands magasins). Récemment la campagne la plus importante a été la syndicalisation en 2008 du plus grand abattoir de porcs au monde, à Tar Heel, en Caroline du Nord, où 5000 travailleurs transformaient quelques 32000 porcs par jour. Cette campagne a duré 15 ans.

Mais les travailleurs de Iowa ont plusieurs facteurs en leur faveur. La pandémie a suscité l'action collective et l'indignation face au mépris des patrons pour leur vie. Le leadership réformiste de la section 431 des United Food and Commercial Workers (Travailleurs de l’union de l'alimentation et du commerce ou UFCW) s'est engagé à une nouvelle campagne de syndicalisation. Avec des racines dans la doctrine sociale de l’Eglise catholique et un record de succès en matière de lutte contre la pandémie, la campagne a eu une base solide.

David Goodner, codirecteur de l'organisation catholique Escucha Mi Voz, a des cheveux argentés blonds fins et porte des lunettes à monture de corne. C'est un travailleur chevronné et un organisateur communautaire avec une mine excitable et conspiratrice, un pétard enfermé dans un corps humain.

"Après des années, survivant aux pires abus de la cupidité des entreprises et la pandémie, la résistance des travailleurs à l'exploitation s'est développée de façon organique » explique Goodner « des tracts et des piquets pour le secours de pandémie aux grèves spontanées et aux débrayages, jusqu’à l’actuelle campagne de syndicalisation. »

Escucha a été fondée en avril 2021 pour organiser le secours de pandémie aux travailleurs sans papiers et à leurs familles, qui étaient souvent exclus de l'aide fédérale alors qu'ils représentaient, dans des nombreuses régions, jusqu'à 10 % de la main-d'œuvre essentielle. Les militants d’Escucha ont obtenu une aide en espèces à Iowa City et une aide aux services publics à West Liberty.

Fin 2022, l'organisation a été chargée de distribuer des chèques de 600 dollars. Elle créa un nouveau programme de secours du ministère de l'Agriculture pour couvrir les dépenses liées à la pandémie des agriculteurs et des bouchés de la transformation de viande. Selon Escucha, une enquête auprès de 927 travailleurs de Tyson et de 426 travailleurs de West Liberty Food a révélé que plus de 85 % souhaitaient un syndicat.

Une campagne syndicale typique prendrait des années pour compiler des informations aussi détaillées, mais Escucha a offert à UFCW 431 un accès aux résultats de l'enquête et a invité le personnel du syndicat à organiser des cliniques de secours où Escucha distribuait de l'aide entre fin Décembre 2022 et début Janvier 2023. Depuis, les militants d'Escucha se sont réunis dans les églises et ont fait du porte-à-porte pour sensibiliser les travailleurs sur la pandémie et les faire savoir leurs droits dans le travail.

Goodner m'a présenté quelques-uns, en commençant par Ortiz, à Columbus Junction.

A l'usine de Tyson, où 10000 porcs de 200 livres chacun sont abattus quotidiennement, on verra un panneau de protestation sur une clôture en grillage indiquant: «Notre travail nourrit la nation.»

Tyson a refusé ma demande de visiter l'usine, mais l'ethnographe Kristy Nabhan-Warren a pu y accéder pour son livre de 2021, Meatpacking America : How Migration, Work and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (L’Industrie de la Viande Américaine : Comment la migration, le travail et la foi unissent et divisent le cœur de l’Amerique). Elle a été témoin de « scier, découper, éplucher et éventrer, la cinétique de la lumière et du son. » Chaque travailleur, écrit-elle, effectue un travail distinct à scier le torse des porcs, leur arracher les ongles et les oreilles, découper les sabots, brûler les poils restants. Une symphonie sanglante de travail synchronisée qui a rapporté à Tyson 3 milliards de dollars en 2022, un autre en une série d'années record depuis le début de la pandémie.

Goodner m'a emmené à rencontrer une dirigeante ouvrière qui a soutenu clandestinement la campagne syndicale à Tyson, sensibilisait les autres travailleurs sur les secours de la pandémie et les représailles des patrons. Sofia Mercado entre dans un espace de location de fête vide après avoir refusé de m'inviter, moi, un étranger chez elle. Elle me questionne sur les syndicats et évalue mes réponses. Elle portait un masque dans le noir pour cacher son identité par précaution et insiste de garder les lumières éteintes.

Mercado (un pseudonyme) a travaillé dans un abattoir de Tyson pendant des décennies. Elle accuse le manque de personnel lui avoir causé une blessure par mouvement répétitif en 2021, expliquant qu'avant la pandémie, il y avait généralement 18 travailleurs dans sa section de l’abattoir. Alors que le virus se propageait dans l'usine, Tyson n'a pas ajusté les objectifs de production et a plutôt imposé le lourd fardeau de mutiler des milliers de porcs sur les épaules de seulement cinq travailleurs.

Lorsque In These Times a interrogé Tyson sur les plaintes de sous-effectif et la probabilité de blessures, leur porte-parole Liz Croston a répondu dans un communiqué : « La sécurité des membres de l'équipe est notre priorité absolue. Nos opérations fonctionnent à un niveau garantissant la sécurité des membres de l'équipe, le bien-être des animaux et l’hygiène, y compris dans notre usine de porc de Columbus Junction, et Iowa. »

Les travailleurs conviennent que « le bien-être des animaux » est valorisé, au moins. « Si l'usine ferme, c'est parce que quelque chose est arrivé aux porcs », explique Mercado, comme quand les porcs meurent de froid sur le chemin de l'abattoir. « Mais si c'est quelque chose qui affecte les travailleurs, l'usine ne s'arrête pas. »

Lorsque Mercado était malade du Covid-19 en avril 2020, elle dit que les managers l'appelaient sans cesse et la suppliaient de revenir. « Ils n'ont jamais rien fait pour nous sauvegarder alors qu'ils avaient les moyens financiers de le faire » déclara Mercado.

Alors que la pandémie reculait, Tyson imprima des chemises revendiquant le manteau des travailleurs de première ligne considérés comme héros. Ils m'ont remis une chemise disant « Mon travail nourrit la nation » avec l'image d'une fourchette et d'un drapeau américain » se souvient, Mercado.

Les travailleurs des abattoirs et usines de viande sont une main-d'œuvre largement invisible, faisant parfois la une des journaux après des cycles éphémères d'indignation publique. En février, une enquête du New York Times a révélé que des grandes marques nationales, y compris des abattoirs, utilise les enfants mineurs travailleurs dès l'âge de 12 ans, alors même que les législateurs Républicains de Iowa et d'autres États ont proposé d'assouplir les lois restreignant l'embauche d'enfants.

Au début de la pandémie, les projecteurs se sont braqués sur les travailleurs alors qu'ils étaient contraints de retourner dans les abattoirs par le décret exécutif d'avril 2020 de l'ancien président Donald Trump. L'attention de la nation a été rapidement attirée par les histoires de leurs morts. Moins d'attention a été accordée à leurs actions collectives, y compris les débrayages, les arrêts de travail et les campagnes de pétition pour exiger la transparence sur les infections du Covid, les politiques de distanciation sociale, les congés maladie payés et les augmentations de salaire.

Ces actions ont souvent gagné.

En été 2021, des centaines de travailleurs à West Liberty ont déposé leurs couteaux et sont entrés à grands pas dans la cafétéria de l'entreprise, refusant de travailler. Révoltant en raison des pénuries liées à la pandémie, leurs quarts de travail se sont étendus à 11 heures. De 5h à 16h dit l'ancien travailleur Rodrigo Hernandez Quiroz. (Il a été licencié après 10 ans pour avoir accumulé six points.)

Les travailleurs ont présenté leurs revendications aux patrons : une augmentation de salaire de 16 à 18 dollars l’heure et le rétablissement de la fin du premier quart de travail à 14h afin qu'ils puissent voir leurs enfants après l'école, selon le travailleur pro-syndical Pedro Sánchez (un pseudonyme).

L'entreprise a cédé. Le salaire est passé à 18 $ l’heure et la journée de travail a été raccourcie.

Mais au fur et à mesure que la pandémie progressait, dit Sánchez, l'entreprise aussi allait de mal en pire ; des abus de longue date de l'industrie, tels que des politiques de présence punitives et l'accélération des lignes. Sánchez travaille généralement avec cinq autres personnes ; ils ont perdu un travailleur, dit-il, et pourtant ils ont des quotas encore plus exigeants.

Sánchez et ses collègues ont vu l'action collective leur apporter gain de cause pendant la pandémie, et ils considèrent les syndicats comme les institutions durables pour pérenniser ces conquêtes en termes de salaire, d'avantages sociaux, de dignité et de respect.

« Nous devons avoir des droits » déclare Sánchez. Une autre employée de West Liberty Food, Fernanda Salazar (un pseudonyme), qui broie de la viande de saucisse et fait cuire du jambon, est toujours en colère parce que l'usine n'a fermé que trois jours pendant la pandémie. Salazar, qui est pro-syndical, se souvient que la direction a simplement dit : « Le peuple américain a besoin de manger. » West Liberty Food n'a pas répondu aux multiples demandes de commentaires.

Pour qu'une campagne syndicale réussisse à Tyson ou à West Liberty, les travailleurs se devaient de former des coalitions multiethniques. Après des raids d'immigration très médiatisés dans des usines de transformation de viande au milieu des années 2000, y compris un raid en 2008 à Postville, Iowa, les entreprises se sont tournées vers le recrutement de réfugiés, de demandeurs d'asile et d'autres immigrants en situation irrégulière. Aujourd'hui, la diversité des pays et des langues parlées dans les usines ressemble un sommet de l'ONU.

Les données de l'enquête d'Escucha suggèrent que les travailleurs sont originaires de 23 pays chez Tyson, avec les plus grands décomptes de la République démocratique du Congo, du Mexique, du Myanmar, du Libéria, d'El Salvador et de l'Angola. Les langues les plus parlées sont le français, le lingala, l'espagnol, le swahili et le portugais. Chez West Liberty, les travailleurs de la République démocratique du Congo constituent le groupe le plus important, la majorité provenant du Mexique, du territoire américain de Porto Rico et des pays d'Amérique centrale.

De nombreux travailleurs congolais viennent aux États-Unis avec des diplômes universitaires et certains apportant même des traditions syndicales. Allain Elenga travaille chez Tyson pour découper les estomacs de porcs. En RDC il était membre de syndicat des douaniers. Il soutient la syndicalisation de Tyson parce qu'il veut mettre fin aux licenciements à volonté, au système de points et aux heures supplémentaires obligatoires.

Mais surmonter les divisions raciales sera un défi pour la campagne. De nombreux travailleurs congolais considèrent les Latinos comme faisant partie de la structure du pouvoir dans les usines, car les postes de supervision sont souvent occupés par des travailleurs latinos. "Les blancs, ils sont tous puissants ; puis les Mexicains, et nous, les Africains, sommes comme de la merde pour eux », explique Jonathan Mamokbo, qui a travaillé chez Tyson jusqu'en 2018. (En Décembre 2018, des dizaines d'ouvriers africains de Tyson ont appelé en masse pour protester contre un superviseur latino qui surveillait leur usage de toilettes. La ligne a été ralentie au minimum et le superviseur a finalement été viré.)

Pour leur part, de nombreux travailleurs latinos en veulent aux Africains qui sont plus probables d’immigrer aux Etats Unis légalement. Certains estiment qu'ils sont en fait traités plus durement par les superviseurs latinos qui ne veulent pas être accusés de favoritisme racial ou qui utilisent la familiarité culturelle comme couverture pour des moqueries.

Les divisions ethniques et raciales enflammées font partie de l'histoire profonde du fonctionnement des usines de transformations de viande depuis le 20e siècle. Dans Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54 (Sur le sol de l'abattoir: Travailleurs noirs et blancs dans les usines de viande de Chicago, 1904-1954) Rick Halpern écrit comment les patrons ont déployé cette « segmentation du marché du travail » pour saper la solidarité. Ils ont exploité un marché [d'immigrants européens] pour la main-d'œuvre qualifiée et un autre, plus grand, pour le reste de leurs besoins », selon Halpern. « Un troisième bassin de travailleurs, composé d'Afro-Américains, a été mis en réserve pour être utilisé pendant les périodes de troubles ou de pénurie de main-d'œuvre. »

Le président de la section 431 de l’UFCW, Simplice Mabiala Kuelo, a personnellement constaté comment la direction joue sur les critères ethniques pour maintenir la division des travailleurs. Kuelo, le premier immigrant africain à diriger l'un des plus grands syndicats de Iowa, est arrivé d’abord dans le Bronx en 2011, après avoir gagné la loterie de visas. Malgré le diplôme de droit fourré dans sa valise, il peine à trouver du travail à New York. À la douce demande d'un ami, il a déménagé dans l'Illinois pour transformer le porc.

"Il y avait des lignes où vous ne voyez que des Français ou des Africains", explique Kuelo. "Il y avait des lignes où vous voyez que des latinos. Ou il y avait des départements où il n'y avait que des Blancs. »

Lors d'une formation sur les droits des travailleurs début Mars, Kuelo s'est adressé à une foule de quelques dizaines d'ouvriers agricoles et de viande latinos par l'intermédiaire d'un interprète : « La diversité signifie que tout le monde est à table », a déclaré Kuelo. « L'inclusion signifie que tout le monde peut parler. Appartenir signifie que lorsque vous parlez, ils écoutent. Les lieux de travail sont diversifiés parce qu'ils ont besoin de travailleurs, mais ce qui manque sur le lieu de travail, c'est l'inclusion et l'appartenance, et c'est ce que le syndicat apporte. »

Lorsque j’ai rencontré Kuelo en février dans son bureau syndical à Davenport, dans Iowa, il me posa des questions avec un charisme désarmant, mêlant ses antécédents d'organisateur syndical, de prédicateur catholique juvénile, de conseiller de campagne et de vendeur d'assurance-vie.

« Comment s'est passé ton voyage ? Tu as accéléré ou quoi ? » il taquine. Pendant que nous parlons, il s'arrête pour répondre aux questions sur le téléphone du bureau qui sonne fréquemment. L'une de ses promesses de campagne de 2021 pour la présidence de la section syndical était la réactivité envers les membres.

Selon le Des Moines Register, l'élection de Kuelo a été considérée comme un référendum sur la réponse ratée à la pandémie de l'ancien président de la section 431, Bob Waters. Alors que la Covid-19 faisait ravage dans une usine syndiquée de transformation de viande, Tyson à Waterloo, Iowa, en avril 2020, Waters aurait été en vacances. Près de 600 travailleurs effrayés et en colère, sur un effectif de 2 800, se sont spontanément déclarés malades le 13 Avril. En Mai 2020, plus de 1 000 travailleurs avaient testés positifs et sept sont décédés.

Pendant ce temps, les gérants de Waterloo ont cruellement fait un paris sur le nombre de travailleurs qui tomberaient malades, selon une poursuite infructueuse pour mort injustifiée déposée par cinq des familles des défunts travailleurs.

Parmi les travailleurs décédés se trouvait Axel Kabeya, un délégué syndical de l'usine et un ami de Kuelo depuis la RDC.

« C'était un signal alarmant » dit Kuelo. Il a lancé une chaîne YouTube, SimpliceBest TV, avec des informations sur la Covid en français et en lingala pendant l'été 2020. Il rassembla plus de 15 000 abonnés.

En 2021, Kuelo a postulé à la présidence de la section 431 de l’UFCW promettant une nouvelle campagne de syndicalisation et une relation plus conflictuelle avec les patrons. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, Kuelo fait écho aux réformateurs qui ont récemment pris le pouvoir de deux importants syndicats, les Teamsters (Routiers) avec 1,4 million de membres et les United Auto Workers (L’union des travailleurs de l'automobile) avec 400 000 membres et aussi l’effort de réforme inspiré par la pandémie dans l’UFCW mêmes.

Les campagnes syndicales dans les usines d'Iowa sont sans doute parmi les plus importantes de l'UFCW depuis des décennies, et les réformateurs se précipitent pour des postes de direction clés lors de la convention d'Avril. C'était autrefois, en 1979, le plus grand affilié de l'AFL-CIO, la fédération syndicale nationale américaine. Mais le syndicat de 1,2 million de membres est maintenant à son niveau d'adhésion le plus bas en 20 ans. Au cours de cette période, il a perdu près d'un quart de million de membres.

Kuelo possède l'instinct et les compétences d'un organisateur, mais le rôle de président du syndicat comporte ses propres engagements et contraintes. S'il devait se battre contre un géant de viande comme Tyson ou le formidable West Liberty, il voudrait le soutien de l'ensemble du mouvement syndical et du bureau international de l'UFCW. Kuelo est muet sur les prochaines étapes et catégorique sur la nécessité d'organisation patiente avec des évaluations correctes.

Pendant ce temps, il est clair que les travailleurs s'organisent eux-mêmes, discutant entre eux de ce qu'un syndicat pourrait faire pour rééquilibrer le pouvoir entre les patrons et les travailleurs. Les travailleurs ont partagé leurs craintes avec moi, surtout que l'usine ne ferme si une campagne syndicale réussissait, mais en tout cas ils signaient des cartes syndicales et s'exprimaient.

Ce qui n'est pas clair, c'est si la section 431 saisira cet élan. Si le syndicat hésite, il risque non seulement de recommencer mais aussi de perdre sa crédibilité. Et ces cartes syndicales ont une date limite de généralement de un an.

Goodner et moi conduisant vers le nord sur l'autoroute 70 à travers l'est de Iowa, des monticules de neige commençant à fondre, des champs de maïs blancs et noirs avec des arbustes qui pointent à travers. Puis l'odeur de la merde de porc nous frappe, juste à l'extérieur de Conesville. Là, les fermes industrielles qui élèvent les truies à abattre pulvérisent du lisier. La population de l'Iowa est de 3,2 millions d'habitants, mais les déchets fécaux provenant des porcs, des poulets, des dindes et du bétail équivaut à 168 millions de personnes, selon Christopher Jones, un chercheur à l'Université Iowa.

De retour à Iowa City, Goodner et moi avons rencontré un travailleur congolais dans une laverie et parlons à voix basse au-dessus du vrombissement de paquets de vêtements savonneux. Il a visiblement peur. Mécanicien chez Tyson, il avait participé à la clinique de secours d’Escucha et parlé avec des organisateurs syndicaux. Il a passé en revue toutes les justifications possibles dont le soutien au syndicat pourrait compromettre son travail. Après tout, dit-il, il était un migrant qui devait s'occuper de sa famille.

Tyson n'a pas encore lancé une attaque contre le syndicat, mais il a signalé qu'il surveillait la campagne. Selon Escucha, les gérants de Tyson ont commencé à se présenter dans les cliniques de secours en Décembre 2022. Escucha les accusent de voler une carte syndicale pour la publier sur les réseaux sociaux, ce que Goodner considère comme une tactique d'intimidation.

Dans une lettre du 6 janvier aux travailleurs, le directeur de l'usine de Tyson Food, Brent McElroy, a accusé Escucha de coordonner avec la section 431 pour « faire pression sur les travailleurs pour qu'ils signent des cartes syndicales pour demander une élection officielle auprès du National Labor Relations Board (Conseil national des relations de travail, qui certifie les syndicats). La traduction en espagnole de la lettre semblait impliquer que les travailleurs devraient démissionner s'ils signaient des cartes.

Dans une boîte à suggestions de plaintes le 17 Janvier, quelqu'un a demandé anonymement : « Pourquoi Tyson a-t-il si peur du syndicat ? » Un autre : « Pourquoi nous avez-vous dit dans votre message la semaine dernière que si nous signions une carte syndicale, nous serions obligés de démissionner ? »

Tyson a répondu : « Nous nous excusons mais il y a eu un malentendu dans notre traduction. Que vous ayez signé ou non une carte syndicale, il n'y aura AUCUNE représailles et personne ne devra démissionner ou perdre son emploi parce qu'il l'a fait. » Dans une déclaration envoyée par e-mail à In These Times, la porte-parole de Tyson, Liz Croston, a déclaré que la société a « encouragé les membres de notre équipe à solliciter » au programme de secours de la pandémie et avait « répondu à la confusion et aux questions que nous ont apportées les membres de l'équipe sur les conditions d'obtention de ces fonds. »

Selon Kuelo, les lettres équivalent à Tyson « faire une publicité pour le syndicat. Nous ne cherchons pas de personnes à organiser. Les gens viennent vers nous pour s'organiser. »

Au sujet d'un syndicat, le porte-parole de Tyson, Croston, a ajouté : « Nous respectons le droit des membres de notre équipe de choisir, en fait, c’est inclus dans la déclaration des droits des travailleurs affichée dans nos usines. Notre usine de Columbus Junction est exempte de syndicats depuis son ouverture en 1986, car nous entretenons de bonnes relations avec les membres de notre équipe et fournissons des réponses à leurs questions afin qu'ils puissent prendre des décisions éclairées. »

Mais le rapport de Human Rights Watch cite Tyson comme un excellent exemple de la façon dont « Les employeurs de l'industrie américaine de la boucherie et de la volaille interfèrent systématiquement avec la liberté d'association des travailleurs et le droit d'organiser des syndicats ». Il décrit les tentatives passées de l'entreprise de décertifier les syndicats, de briser les grèves et d’exclure les sympathisants syndicaux. Les travailleurs de l'usine de Columbus Junction disent que Tyson décourage l'adhésion à un syndicat lors de l'orientation des nouvelles recrues.

West Liberty peut constituer une cible un peu moins décourageante. Son propriétaire, Iowa turkey growers Cooperative (une coopérative d'agriculteurs dont les bénéfices ne sont pas publics), n'emploie que 2 700 travailleurs dans trois États, a également de l'expérience dans la lutte contre les syndicats.

Les travailleurs de West Liberty ont déjà tenté de se syndiquer deux fois avec la section 431 de l’UFCW. La première campagne, en 2004, a perdu par cinq voix, 303 contre 308. En 2005, le syndicat a perdu 231 contre 322. Dans un règlement judiciaire, West Liberty a admis qu'il avait violé les droits des travailleurs, notamment en distribuant des brochures antisyndicales pendant le vote et en menaçant de fermer l'usine. L'entreprise était tenue d'afficher un avis indiquant qu'elle ne ferait pas de telles menaces à l'avenir, mais le mal était déjà fait.

L'usine de Tyson a aussi connu une perte syndicale, un échec de la section 238 des Teamsters en Décembre 1989, alors qu'elle appartenait à Iowa Beef Processors (Producteurs de bœuf Iowa).

Goodner me dit que le moment est venu, soulignant « la pandémie et l'impact qu'elle a eu sur les travailleurs, le récent changement de direction syndicale pour refléter la diversité croissante et la mentalité de riposter des travailleurs, et les deux ans d'histoire d'organisation d'Escucha Mi Voz, qui a lutté et gagné pour les communautés de migrants et de réfugiés. »

Il ajoute : "C'est maintenant ou jamais, avancez ou reculez."

Gloria Ortiz est convaincue qu'un syndicat est la seule voie à suivre. « En tant que travailleurs, et personnes, nous nous devons de rester solidaire », dit-elle. « Si nous ne nous unissons pas, le changement ne se produira pas. »

Ceci est la première partie d'une série de deux.

Cet article a été sponsorisé par “Economic Hardship Reporting Project”.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Luis Feliz Leon.

According to data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as of May 10, workers had won union elections at 308 Starbucks stores since December 2021—yet not a single shop has come close to reaching a first contract. (Each Starbucks that has unionized is legally a separate bargaining unit organized into Workers United, an SEIU affiliate.)

The barista network Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) has made over a dozen proposals to date that serve as a basis for each store’s bargaining. These range from higher base wages to the right to wear union paraphernalia to stronger anti-discrimination language. But workers are not even receiving counter proposals from the company, says Brooklyn-based barista CJ Toothman.

The baristas and Workers United were previously determined to hold hybrid sessions with some workers attending by Zoom in order to expose baristas from across the country to a joint process of collective negotiations against their common employer. Hybrid sessions also served to accommodate such concerns as pandemic conditions, transportation difficulties, and long distances. Starbucks, meanwhile, has largely refused to take part in such sessions, arguing that they are not safe or secure and that face-to-face meetings are more productive.

Now, SBWU has decided to call Starbucks’s bluff on the company’s main objection against bargaining with baristas. Since late March, SBWU and its union have tactically conceded on the issue of Zoom during bargaining sessions, even as they fight through the NLRB to retain the right to hybrid bargaining sessions.

They have also come up with an inventive way to fulfill the same organizing purpose as the previously attempted hybrid sessions. SBWU is holding regional in-person bargaining meetings where members from across a section of the country all attend sessions in person. The first was held in Seattle on March 22 when baristas from across the Pacific Northwest attended a bargaining session.

So far, the change in strategy has yielded some results, with Starbucks representatives now sitting through meetings like the one in Seattle and hearing proposals rather than leaving the sessions almost immediately. But Starbucks’s intransigence remains an enormous obstacle. According to Toothman, “They have started listening to our proposals without walking out the door, but as of yet we have not received any counter proposals. They have not asked questions about our proposals.”

“In general, a lot of workers have found the attitude of these bargaining sessions to be pretty dismissive on the side of the company,” they said.

The impulse to change strategies came from the grassroots, according to New Jersey SBWU member Sara Mughal. But the National Bargaining Committee, the movement’s leadership structure for bargaining, still had to approve it, which it ultimately did after internal debate.

“[It] was really done with the intent of showing… ‘Hey, even if we concede about this issue, the company still is not serious about bargaining with us, we have been at countless tables, and they have either left or they have listened to proposals and provided no counter proposal [of] their own,” says Toothman, one of four facilitators on the National Bargaining Committee in the midst of a six-month term.

Both the company and the union are legally required to bargain in good faith after successful unionization. In this instance, each has accused the other of not doing so, but the NLRB has largely found the workers’ claims to have merit—and Starbucks’s not to meet that bar. For example, the NLRB ruled against Starbucks in November for refusing to bargain with workers at its Reserve Roastery in Seattle and is now seeking federal enforcement of the judgment. But Starbucks seems undeterred and continues to rack up violations from the NLRB as it drags out bargaining.

Previously, the $120-billion company had been stonewalling SBWU members at meetings around the country, a practice that continued for months. The sessions were nominally intended to hash out the details of a union contract, but in practice were more likely pro forma sessions designed to avoid accusations of bad faith negotiating.

For instance, Mughal and her fellow baristas from New Jersey felt it was clear they weren’t going to get anywhere in negotiations last fall for a union contract at her store in Hopewell.

“As soon as they would see that Zoom element, they would act really shocked as if this was not something they expected and would act really indignant,” says Mughal of the four bargaining sessions she attended across the state. The company’s representatives or its lawyers would then end the session until the workers’ “[shaped] up and got rid of the Zoom element,” says Mughal.

The New Jersey baristas fought back though, to “make sure that they knew we weren't going to be discouraged,” says Mughal. “We added our own flair to it, because, obviously, we're Starbucks workers—we're going to do that,” she adds.

For example, when Starbucks’s lawyers momentarily left the room, the baristas quickly looked them up individually on the website of Littler Mendelson P.C., the legal firm employed by Starbucks, and left the screens with lawyers’ profiles in view for them to see when they walked in.

At another bargaining session, for a store in Montclair, the New Jersey baristas unsuccessfully tried to give a card and flowers to the Starbucks’s negotiating team because the meeting fell on Valentine’s Day.

“We just kind of, you know, [tried] to have fun with it,” says Mughal.

For its part, Starbucks has claimed that the use of Zoom in bargaining sessions threatens the safety of management employees. “Union organizers have been at [Starbucks’s managers and district managers homes] and [the latter] have been outed on social media,” said former CEO and current board member Howard Schultz in testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) in March.

This allegation comes despite the fact that the company has engaged successfully in Zoom bargaining with the union over other issues besides first contracts like the closures of current stores, says Toothman.

Toothman joined the National Bargaining Committee in July 2022 when a call went out to baristas to get involved in framing nationally cohesive bargaining demands. “There's these shared problems that exist for every Starbucks store, and…we're stronger when we work together as a collective union than each individual store trying to negotiate individually their own contract,” says Toothman.

The group, working through subcommittees, first came up with non-economic proposals last year and then with economic proposals in April. Both sets of ideas were run by rank-and-file members of SBWU through a surveying process according to Lydia Fernandez, a Philadelphia-based member who joined the National Bargaining Committee in January and who is also a member of a baristas of color group.

“The reason the contract and bargaining is so important is…it's kind of…the whole crux of our work,” says Fernandez. Moreover, says Fernandez, she fears that after one year, workers at some stores may begin to try to decertify Workers United as their representative, a process that is generally on hold at stores until the company bargains in good faith or stops committing relevant Unfair Labor Practices. However, workers at three Starbucks stores around the country have started the process already.

Despite the level of resistance the company has shown—some baristas have even had to go on strike in order to attend bargaining sessions—SBWU members maintain that it’s vital for their network to devote large amounts of energy to bargaining.

And it’s not just because of the legal requirement for its union to do so in good faith, but also to exert pressure on the company. “Even if they're not going to bargain with us, [it’s]...to make noise and to be seen,” says Long Island-based barista Liv Ryan.

“The bigger the better,” Ryan said.

This content originally appeared on In These Times and was authored by Saurav Sarkar.

In a recent article for In These Times, Max Sawicky laid out a compelling case for why the Biden administration needs to hold firm against the GOP. The programs Republicans are attempting to cut are popular, and it’s important to protect them as worthwhile in their own right. Sawicky also briefly mentioned one idea of several creative paths to bypass the Republican game of chicken and stave off global economic disaster: the minting of a trillion-dollar platinum coin. As X-date—the date at which the country can no longer meet its obligations—gets even closer, it may be time for us to begin considering this option as the most reasonable and viable course of action.

Keep in mind that the debt ceiling is entirely arbitrary. The limit has been raised 78 times since 1960. And the limit is not a blank check for more spending. In reality, it is payment for spending that is already committed by Congress. Ninety-seven percent of these obligations were things agreed upon before the Biden Administration ever took office.

And Republican handwringing is, of course, entirely hypocritical. Congressional Republicans barely think of the budget when the GOP holds The White House. They only play this game of chicken when they are the opposition party.

Radical Republicans organize their domestic agenda around cuts to vital social services like Medicare, SNAP and Social Security. After regaining the House majority in January, they see a default on the country’s debt as their path to victory. They also hope to score political points ahead of the 2024 election. Their proposals to lift the ceiling roll back almost all of the Biden Administration’s signature achievements and push the next debt ceiling decision right in the middle of the final stretch of the presidential race.

In 2011 and 2013, Congressional Republicans pushed the country to the brink of debt ceiling crisis to score political points against former President Barack Obama. In 2011 they brought us so close to default that credit rating agencies for the first time downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. This time, they seem even more at odds with the White House, with both sides reluctant to compromise and upset important sections of their base. Progressive Democrats have shown signs of alarm at Biden’s opening of negotiations with McCarthy this week.

An economically catastrophic default is a real possibility. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

That’s why minting a trillion dollar platinum coin may not be quite as ridiculous as it seems. We’re in a game of chicken about an arcane limit on the mechanism we use to pay our bills. Why not take unilateral action to end this dangerous game? Biden could, today, instruct U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to mint that trillion dollar coin and deposit it in the country’s account. The legal authority to do so is crystal clear in 31 US Code 5112 section K: “The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.”

Was the intention of the law to stave off a potential financial crisis? Certainly not. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.

“This is a gimmick,” says Willamette University Assistant Law Professor Rohan Grey. ”The major difference is that this is a gimmick that the public can understand, that is so simple that children can get it, which will have a significantly positive public educational impact in addition to ending the destabilizing spectacle of recurring debt ceiling crisis once and for all.”

Right now, Democrats are dancing with another option: a procedure called a discharge petition that would force a House vote. It’s not a terrible idea, but it’s a complicated move and a million things can go wrong.

The beauty of the trillion dollar coin is that it’s unilateral and instantaneous. Once the coin is deposited, the country’s ledgers immediately reflect it, reducing the deficit by the amount of the newly minted coin. The coin is then essentially destroyed and we can continue with the business of agreeing on a budget and maintaining an economy.

Congressional Republicans would be foiled, and they (likely along with many others in Congress) would probably move to make sure this could not happen again. Grey, who is a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, predicts the episode could “cause Congress to reform the budget process permanently and get rid of the debt ceiling, or at least modify it significantly. But even if it doesn’t, there is nothing wrong with using the coin as a regular mode of deficit financing, indeed it actually simplifies things considerably.”

Even though Biden administration Treasury Secretary Yellen has been reluctant to endorse this idea in the past, as the clock ticks closer, she might not have a choice. Republicans seem content to have the alternative, the U.S. defaulting on its debts, come to pass.

To say a default would be catastrophic would be a tremendous understatement. The shockwave would almost certainly push the country into a recession, threatening any gains made by non-wealthy people in the years since the pandemic began. Positive signs in the economy like low unemployment or the shrinking gap between Black and white unemployment would surely be obliterated. Government services and the jobs that support them would have to be cut as cash dries up. Other specific issues will surely arise that are impossible to predict in advance of such an unprecedented event. But we know it will be painful.

“The past three years have been trying, with a pandemic and a war in Ukraine,” notes Claudia Sahm, an independent economist and founder of Sahm Consulting. “The last thing we need is another harmful event. We have made much progress, which is now at risk. We have much to lose now.”

Allowing us to fall over the cliff would indeed put all the progress at risk. And we know that, as usual, the pain will be felt extremely hard for Black folks: “When America catches a cold, Black America gets pneumonia,” says Jeremie Greer, co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation, quoting an old saying. “From postal workers to people who rely on food stamps to survive racial capitalism, failing to lift the debt ceiling will cause catastrophic economic pain to millions of Black people across the country. Unfortunately, this pain is too familiar and will once again be thrust upon us by lawmakers who care nothing for our well being.”

Defaulting on the U.S. debt would truly plunge the global economy into a black hole, and we are approaching the event horizon. If minting the coin is our only path out, it may be time to take it.