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If you have information about cases or investigations paused or dropped by either the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission, contact Corey G. Johnson at corey.johnson@propublica.org or 917-512-0287.

The Trump administration has halted litigation aimed at stopping civil rights abuses of prisoners in Louisiana and mentally ill people living in South Carolina group homes.

The Biden administration filed lawsuits against the two states in December after Department of Justice investigations concluded that they had failed to fix violations despite years of warnings.

Louisiana’s prison system has kept thousands of incarcerated people behind bars for weeks, months or sometimes more than a year after they were supposed to be released, records show. And the DOJ accused South Carolina of institutionalizing thousands of people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses — sometimes for decades — rather than provide services that would allow them to live in less restricted settings, as is their right under federal law.

Federal judges temporarily suspended the lawsuits in February at the request of the states and with the support of the DOJ.

Civil rights lawyers who have monitored the cases said the move is another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat from the department’s mission of protecting the rights of vulnerable groups. Since January, President Donald Trump’s DOJ has dropped racial discrimination lawsuits, abandoned investigations of police misconduct and canceled oversight of troubled law enforcement agencies.

“This administration has been very aggressive in rolling back any kind of civil rights reforms or advancements,” said Anya Bidwell, senior attorney at the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice. “It’s unquestionably disappointing.”

The cases against Louisiana and South Carolina were brought by a unit of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division tasked with enforcing laws that guarantee religious freedom, access to reproductive health services, constitutional policing, and the rights of people in state and local institutions, including jails, prisons and health care facilities for people with disabilities.

The unit, the Special Litigation Section, has seen a dramatic reduction in lawyers since Trump took office in January. Court records show at least seven attorneys working on the lawsuits against Louisiana and South Carolina are no longer with the DOJ.

The section had more than 90 employees at the start of the year, including about 60 front-line attorneys. By June, it had about 25, including around 15 front-line lawyers, according to a source familiar with its operation. Sources said some were reassigned to other areas of the department while others quit in protest against the direction of the office under Trump, found new jobs or took early retirement.

Similar departures have been seen throughout the DOJ.

The exodus will hamper its ability to carry out essential functions, such as battling sexual harassment in housing, discrimination against disabled people, and the improper use of restraints and seclusions against students in schools, said Omar Noureldin, a former senior attorney in the Civil Rights Division and President Joe Biden appointee who left in January.

“Regardless of your political leanings, I think most people would agree these are the kind of bad situations that should be addressed by the nation’s top civil rights enforcer,” Noureldin said.

A department spokesperson declined to comment in response to questions from ProPublica about the Louisiana and South Carolina cases. Sources familiar with the lawsuits said Trump appointees have told DOJ lawyers handling the cases that they want to resolve matters out of court.

The federal government has used settlement talks in the past to hammer out consent decrees, agreements that set a list of requirements to fix civil rights violations and are overseen by an outside monitor and federal judge to ensure compliance. But Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, Trump’s appointee to run the DOJ’s civil rights division, has made no secret of her distaste for such measures.

In May, Dhillon announced she was moving to dismiss efforts to impose consent decrees on the Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis police departments. She complained that consent decrees turn local control of policing over to “unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.”

A DOJ investigation in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer accused the department of excessive force, unjustified shootings, and discrimination against Black and Native American people. The agency issued similar findings against the Louisville Metro Police Department after the high-profile killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot in 2020 when officers forced their way into her home to execute a search warrant.

Noureldin, now a senior vice president at the government watchdog group Common Cause, said consent decrees provide an important level of oversight by an independent judge. By contrast, out-of-court settlements can be subject to the political whims of a new administration, which can decide to drop a case or end an agreement despite evidence of continuing constitutional violations.

“When you have a consent decree or a court-enforced settlement, the Justice Department can’t unilaterally just withdraw from the agreement,” Noureldin said. “A federal judge would have to agree that the public interest is served by terminating that settlement.”

In the case of Louisiana, the Justice Department issued a scathing report in January 2023 about the state confining prisoners beyond their sentences. The problems dated back more than a decade and remained widespread, the report said. Between January and April 2022 alone, more than a quarter of everyone released from prison custody was held past their release dates. Of those, 24% spent an additional 90 days or more behind bars, the DOJ found.

Among those held longer than they should have been was Robert Parker, a disc jockey known as “DJ Rob” in New Orleans, where he played R&B and hip-hop music at weddings and private parties. Parker, 55, was arrested in late 2016 after violating a restraining order brought by a former girlfriend.

He was supposed to be released in October 2017, but a prison staffer mistakenly classified him as a sex offender. That meant he was required to provide prison authorities with two addresses where he could stay that complied with sex offender registry rules.

Prison documents show Parker repeatedly told authorities that he wasn’t a sex offender and pleaded to speak to the warden to clear up the mistake. But nobody acted until a deputy public defender contacted state officials months later to complain. By the time he walked out, Parker had spent 337 extra days behind bars. During that period, he said, his car was repossessed, his mother died and his reputation was ruined.

“I lost everything,” he told ProPublica in an interview from a nursing home, where he was recovering from a stroke. “I’m ready to get away from Louisiana.”

Louisiana’s detention system is complex. Unlike other jurisdictions, where the convicted are housed in state facilities, inmates in Louisiana can be held in local jails overseen by sheriffs. A major contributor to the so-called over-detentions was poor communication among Louisiana’s court clerks, sheriff’s offices and the state department of corrections, according to interviews with attorneys, depositions of state officials, and reports from state and federal reviews of the prison system.

Until recently, the agencies shared prisoner sentencing information by shuttling stacks of paperwork by van or truck from the court to the sheriff’s office for the parish holding the prisoner, then to corrections officials. The document transfers, which often crisscrossed the state, typically happened only once a week. When the records finally arrived, it could take staff a month or longer to enter the data into computers, creating more delays. In addition, staff made data errors when calculating release dates.

Two years ago, The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Parker could pursue a lawsuit against the former head of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, James LeBlanc. That lawsuit is ongoing, said Parker’s attorney, Jonathan Rhodes. LeBlanc, who resigned last year, could not be reached for comment, and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill acknowledged that the state’s process to determine release dates was unreliable but said the issue had been overblown by the Justice Department’s investigation, which she called “factually incorrect.”

“There were simply parts of it that are outside state control, such as clerks & courts,” Murrill stated.

Murrill said correction officials have been working with local officials to ensure prisoner releases are computed in a “timely and correct fashion.” Louisiana officials point to a new website that allows electronic sharing of information among the various agencies.

“The system has been overhauled. That has dramatically diminished, if not completely eliminated this problem,” Murrill stated. She did not address questions from ProPublica asking if prisoners were being held longer than their release dates this year.

Local attorneys who are handling lawsuits against the state expressed skepticism about Murrill’s claims.

William Most, an attorney who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of incarcerated people who had been detained past their release dates, noted that as late as May 2024, 141 people who were released that month had been kept longer than they should have been, 120 of them for more than 30 days.

“I have seen no evidence suggesting the problem in Louisiana is fixed,” Most said. “And it seems unwise to dismiss any cases while that’s the situation.”

South Carolina’s mentally ill population is grappling with similar challenges.

After years of lawsuits and complaints, a DOJ investigation determined that officials illegally denied community-based services — required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and a 1999 Supreme Court decision — to over 1,000 people diagnosed as seriously mentally ill. Instead, the state placed them in group homes that failed to provide adequate care and were overly restrictive, the department alleged.

The DOJ report didn’t address why the state relied so heavily on group homes. It noted that South Carolina’s own goals and plans called for increasing community-based services to help more people live independently. But the investigation concluded that the availability of community-based services varied widely across the state, leaving people in some areas with no access. And the DOJ said the state’s rules for deciding when someone could leave were too stringent.

South Carolina funds and oversees more than 400 facilities that serve people with serious mental illness, according to a state affidavit.

Kimberly Tissot, president of the disability rights group Able South Carolina, said it was common for disabled adults who were living successfully on their own to be involuntarily committed to an adult group home simply because they visited a hospital to pick up medicine.

Tissot, who has inspected hundreds of the adult facilities, said they often are roach-infested, soaked in urine, lacking in adequate medicine and staffed by untrained employees. Her description mirrors the findings of several state and independent investigations. In some group homes, patients weren’t allowed to leave or freely move around. Subsequently, their mental health would deteriorate, Tissot said.

“We have had people die in these facilities because of the conditions,” said Tissot, who worked closely with the DOJ investigators. Scores of sexual abuse incidents, assaults and deaths in such group homes have been reported to the state, according to a 2022 federal report that faulted South Carolina’s oversight.

South Carolina has been on notice about the difficulties since 2016 but didn’t make sufficient progress, the DOJ alleged in its lawsuit filed in December.

After two years of failed attempts, state lawmakers passed a law in April that consolidated services for disabled people into a new agency responsible for expanding access to home and community-based treatments and for ensuring compliance with federal laws.

South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, has argued in the DOJ’s lawsuit that the state has been providing necessary services and has not been violating people’s constitutional rights. In January, his office asked the court for a delay in the case to give the Trump administration enough time to determine how to proceed.

His office and a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities declined to comment, citing the ongoing DOJ lawsuit.

Tissot credits the federal attention with creating a sense of urgency among state lawmakers to make improvements. While she said she is pleased with the latest progress, she warned that if the DOJ dropped the case, it would undermine the enforcement of disabled people’s civil rights and allow state abuses to continue.

“It would signal that systemic discrimination will go unchecked and embolden institutional providers to resist change,” Tissot said. “Most importantly, it abandons the people directly impacted.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Corey G. Johnson.

“’That Suffering Haunts Me Even Here’ - The Struggle for Human Rights of the Antandroy People Displaced by Climate Change from Southern Madagascar”, documents how Antandroy people have been forced to travel to other parts of the country in search of better conditions, with many internally displaced people (IDPs) making the arduous 1,500km journey to the northern Boeny region. The report exposes the government’s violation of their rights to freedom of movement and choice of residence within state borders, adequate housing, and an adequate standard of living.

“From insufficiently addressing the impacts of droughts in the south, to its lack of protection and support for internally displaced persons, the government has repeatedly failed the Antandroy,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.

“To mitigate against these failures and their effects on IDPs, Madagascar must do more to improve its response to a changing climate by urgently adopting comprehensive national and local strategies to address drought-induced displacements, and by prioritizing the human rights needs of displaced Antandroy.”

Drought-induced displacements in southern Madagascar are deeply rooted in the French colonial era which introduced cochineal parasites to eradicate the opuntia monacantha, a drought-resilient cactus growing in the region. This policy contributed to the vulnerability of the Antandroy people to droughts, which the government of Madagascar and scientists have in recent years linked to global climate change.

More recently, the effects of climate change have made droughts more severe, leading to displacements towards the Boeny region in north Madagascar and other parts of the country.

“Madagascar’s contribution to global carbon emissions is negligible. Yet, the Antandroy people find themselves bearing the brunt of a crisis created, in part, by the actions of high-income historical emitting countries and French colonial rule. France must own up to its historical role in the ongoing crisis and provide reparatory justice for the colonial wrongs against the Antandroy,” said Tigere Chagutah. “High-income, historical emitting states must financially support Madagascar with grants and the transfer of environmentally sound technologies.”

To understand the plight of those displaced, Amnesty International visited six villages of Antandroy IDPs and the main arrival bus station. In total, Amnesty International interviewed 122 IDPs, and also consulted government officials, local and international organizations, academics, climate scientists, and analysed satellite imagery.

The government responded to Amnesty International, underscoring efforts to improve drought resilience in southern Madagascar. It also explained that plans for a local displacement management strategy had been delayed partly due to limited logistical and financial resources. The response, however, failed to address France’s responsibility dating back to the French colonial period, the 2021 forced evictions, or the inadequacy of the 2023 pilot resettlement site.

An arduous journey

Between 2018 and 2024, about 90,000 people from southern Madagascar, mostly the Antandroy, were forced to leave their ancestral lands due to drought-induced famines.

Those interviewed by Amnesty International described the journey from Androy to Boeny as long and difficult. In most cases, they travelled by bus, with two main routes connecting southern Androy to northwestern Boeny, which are about 1,500 km apart. Many could not afford the trip and had to borrow money, sell their belongings, take stops on the journey to do casual jobs, or call on family members to send them money. In some cases, families made stops along the way to work and feed themselves, sleeping in markets and forests before continuing their journey.

The journey put families at risk of exploitation. One woman, Lia, told Amnesty she was coerced into exchanging sex with bus drivers for a seat.

One man, Masoandro, 48, said: “I negotiated with the driver. To repay him, he employed my son as a herder for one year, and the debt to the driver amounted to 220,000 Malagasy Ariary (about US$50). My son did this because he had no choice, as the driver had threatened to imprison us if the debt was not repaid.”

Upon arrival

Once in Boeny, they received no support from the government, including access to productive land.

Boeny Governor Mokthar Andriatomanga told Amnesty International: “All available land has already been allocated to the local community.”

Rather than providing support or alternatives, from April to July 2021, the government forcibly evicted Antandroy people who had built homes or cultivated land within a designated reforestation area bordering the Ankarafantsika National Park, violating their right to adequate housing.

Betro, a 28-year-old woman, recalls how she was taken by surprise during an eviction in July 2021 as the gendarmes stormed a church where she was praying: “At that time, upon the shock of seeing them, I gave birth and then I fled [she was nine months pregnant]. The umbilical cord had not even been cut yet...The state did not do anything... They just arrested people.”

The authorities’ failure to address the Antandroy’s plight and its root causes, including historic neglect by central government, has resulted in families being separated, with no support from the government or aid organizations for reunification.

Reny, 46, said: “Those strong enough to work and earn money are the ones who leave [for Boeny]. Those with children, and those who are weak, stay behind.”

Amnesty International calls on the Madagascar government to ensure all evictions comply with international human rights law.

Placed in an open-air prison

A resettlement site constructed by the Boeny regional government lacks essential services. It consists of 33 tiny huts with leaky walls, which let in rain, wind, and sweltering heat. During the rainy season

the nearby Kamoro River swells dangerously, encircling the site with fast-flowing and crocodile-infested waters cutting access to essential services such as markets, chemists, hospitals and schools. In 2023, one man was killed by a crocodile and another drowned while trying to cross.

Mandry, a mother of eight, expressed her frustration: "What can we say? There’s not much we can do. If we fall ill, it’s death because we can’t cross this body of water – we don’t have money for a pirogue (small boat).”

In January 2025, a newborn, Anakaondry, died after her mother, weakened by hunger and thirst, could no longer breastfeed.

Despite these conditions, the regional government estimates that around 100 Antandroy IDPs enter the region each week.

“Responsibility for the support and protection of the Antandroy IDPs goes beyond Madagascar - regional and international partners including the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU), the United Nations, as well as humanitarian organizations, must mobilize resources to speed up adaptation efforts,” said Tigere Chagutah.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

People with disabilities are among those most heavily impacted by Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. “I know so many people like me, disabled adults living and thriving now, who were able to get to adulthood because Medicaid existed,” says Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. We feature additional testimonies from disabled members of the advocacy group Caring Across Generations, and speak to Town, who says she fears “so many kids [will] not get a chance to make it to adulthood,” while countless adults “will not be able to live into old age because of these cuts.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Janine Jackson interviewed the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ Iman Abid about the economy of genocide for the July 18, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Al Jazeera (7/1/25)

Janine Jackson: Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, has called down all manner of official and unofficial grief for saying what any thinking person would know: that a mass extermination and displacement project, such as Israel is carrying out in Palestine, doesn’t fund itself.

As US citizens, we know we’re involved, that our “tax dollars” are used by politicians we may or may not have elected to do things that we don’t condone, much less endorse. But what US elite news media seem to hate above all things is the connecting of dots, the recognition that we are all related across borders and boundaries.

That the thing that brought US sanction was Albanese’s naming of defense companies providing weapons used by Israel’s military, makers of equipment used to bulldoze Palestinian homes, is telling. Watching corporate media try to maintain the notion that, yes, Citizens United said money is speech, and you can’t curtail that, but no, you absolutely cannot say that people might not want to support companies who are funding a genocide. Well, that’s telling about media as well.

Joining us now to talk about this is Iman Abid. She’s director of advocacy and organizing at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Iman Abid.

Iman Abid: Thank you so much.

JJ: The statement in Albanese’s report, “While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many”—I mean, it’s only in a weird world of elite media that that would be something that you can’t say. That should just be a point of information in our understanding, yes?

IA: At any point in time that we target or uplift the war crimes that these large corporations are partaking in, we’ve seen just how silenced or suppressed people are, and Francesca has now been a part of that. She’s brought a lot to light in this new document that has come out, information that many people, in various forms, have already uplifted, but has done a really incredible job at trying to both consolidate and make the information a lot more accessible. And so, since it is a lot more digestible to see, it’s easier to access. Weapons manufacturers and large corporations have been extremely disappointed in what the world is able to finally see.

Iman Abid: “Weapons manufacturers and large corporations have been extremely disappointed in what the world is able to finally see.” (Photo: Thomas Morrisey, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.)

JJ: Right. Transparency is their enemy.

IA: Yeah, exactly.

JJ: And you would think that journalists—whatever they want to say about it—would support the idea that the public can understand exactly what’s happening. And yet that’s not the response that we’ve seen, from certainly the US officially, but also from journalists. I don’t feel that they are celebrating this report in a way that one would hope.

IA: Absolutely. I think that the reality is that much of the documentation, and the notes that are provided to us for review in this report, showcase not just what has been going on, and what corporations have been enacting for the last two years, throughout the duration of the genocide, but rather for the last few decades. This information has been available to the public, available to journalists and reporters, for a really long time, and for whatever reason, people generally choose to still avoid it.

Now, whether or not they themselves—certain news outlets have partnerships with some of these corporations, and they’re keeping them quiet for that purpose, or if there’s any other reason where maybe they as individuals are profiting off of these corporations themselves, we’ve seen just how silent people are when it comes to uplifting the harms of these corporations.

JJ: What do you hope or think might be the impact? Because it seems, obviously, Marco Rubio saying, “Ah! Shut up! Sanctions!” is telling that this information is important. What do you hope might be used? How do you think it might be used?

IA: My hope is that, especially for the American people, in any point in time, when this administration tries to silence someone, when they implement sanctions or any of that, I really encourage people to take a look at their work. And Francesca Albanese is an incredibly profound, extraordinary being who has spent their career building up and bringing awareness to the atrocities happening to the Palestinian people. This report is only one aspect of the work that she’s been so committed to.

NPR (7/10/25)

And I think that people like Marco Rubio, and other people within the Trump administration, don’t want you to see this, because they themselves are, again, establishing partnerships, or have established partnerships, with these corporations. And even some of the members of Congress, who have also uplifted and supported the sanctions on Francesca Albanese, some of them are war profiteers. They are the ones who are both building up the contracts with the federal government, or supporting the contracts with the federal government, to keep these corporations alive and thriving.

I think the report itself mentions on every single page just how Palestine is being used as this sort of military technology incubator. It’s an opportunity for these companies to use their work, and to see how it works on the Palestinian people. They’re almost using us as dispensable objects for their weapons. And I think that a lot of that is uplifted in this document.

And because of the atrocities that are being highlighted, and because of the direct connection to the United States Congress, the United States administration, it just shows an incredibly bad light on the US. And it also showcases just how harmful the partnerships and the military investment really is, across not only the US, but across the globe.

JJ: Elite media seem vigorously invested in policing lines between “us” and “them,” but it’s not working. Support for Palestinian human rights is growing, even as it’s being seriously criminalized. So where are you seeing daylight? Because I see a lot of people being extremely brave and using information, such as in this Albanese report, to say, “We’re armed. We’re armed with information, and we’re not going to buy the line that we’re being sold.”

IA: Absolutely. I think the movement has grown exponentially, and I think it’s simply because of the fact that we have watched this livestreamed genocide take place. And I think that when people see the level of death, when people see the level of atrocity, especially for those who’ve sat on social media platforms and watched the video footage and documentation of what’s been happening across Gaza, it’s become extremely difficult to deny what’s actually happening.

And people are moved. People are moved to speak up, people are moved to stand up, even against the faces of oppression, the Zionist forces that are trying to silence people, and they’re choosing to say that I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, I want to take a stand on this, and not just a stand in the streets, but a strategic stand that allows me and my community to actually move towards getting this genocide to end, and for us to stop upholding these atrocities being committed against Palestinians.

Al Jazeera (6/26/24)

It’s been deeply fortunate that so many reports have come out, even just the last two years alone, not only of the weapons that have been used on Palestinians, but just what specific correlation there is between the US, the complicity of the US, and what’s been happening across Gaza and the rest of the West Bank, and even in parts of Jerusalem. And so people are starting to really see that direct line between themselves as US taxpayers, and where and what their money is being spent on, and just how it’s actually being used to abuse, assault and murder Palestinians. And people don’t want to be on that side. People don’t want to be complicit. I don’t think anyone wants to be complicit in war crimes being committed, and mass genocides being committed.

And so I think we’re starting to see just how people are really trying to take that next step, and acknowledge there are different avenues that people can take to really get things to stop. And whether it’s the targeting of weapons manufacturers like Caterpillar or Hyundai or Elbit, whoever is actually equipping Israel with the technology and the software and the technology that’s being used to destroy homes, whatever it may be, people are using these sorts of reports to help uplift the documentation that already exists, to bring attention to these corporations that we, as the United States, as US taxpayers, are investing in.

And they’re choosing to say that we don’t want this. We don’t want this to continue. And we, again, as taxpayers can do something about it.

JJ: And I’ll end on the media thing, that it calls out the media hypocrisy, because when folks were pouring out their Bud Light because they had a trans person in an ad, media were sort of celebrating: Oh, you’re using your consumer voice, you’re speaking with your dollars, right? And then out of the other side of their mouth, they want to say, Well, BDS is criminal. You’re not allowed to not shop at a store, or whatever, that supports genocide. So to me, it tells the tale on US media’s understanding of what a consumer gets to do with their voice.

IA: Absolutely. Again, yes, the exceptionalizing of Palestine, the exceptionalizing of the BDS movement, still exists, but we are seeing a shift. We are seeing people break beyond that, and actually start to question and start to ask themselves, why has the BDS movement actually existed for as long as it has?

Again, boycotting, divestment, sanctions is not an area that’s just particular to the Palestinian movement. It’s been used with South Africa, it’s been used in other parts of the world, because it is something that actually works. When we stop the transfer of dollars to these corporations, and to these entities like Israel that are actually upholding the genocide and the mass expulsion of Palestinians, we do start to see the shifting of it.

Mondoweiss (5/8/25)

And the Israeli economy, as a matter of fact, is actually beginning to decline, because of the level of education and the expansion of the Palestinian solidarity movement across the globe. And people are trying to be wiser about where they’re spending their dollars. And so I think that we’re not in the exact place we want to be just yet, but we are moving the needle towards where we want to go, and people are being wiser about where money is going.

And so while governments and elected officials are really still working hard to suppress any sort of BDS movement, whether it’s through the anti-BDS proposals, or if it’s through the sanctioning of certain individuals, the people themselves are starting to actually say: “Well, wait a minute. Why are you choosing to suppress us for engaging in this, when we know it’s the right thing to do?”

And members of Congress are starting to be a little more alert, and start to say, “Wait a minute, this isn’t actually a winning issue for me if I choose to engage in it. And it’s not necessarily something that I should really be pushing for.” Because people are becoming more attentive. And it’s allowing us, again, to move the needle where we really want to see us going.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Iman Abid from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. They’re online at USCPR.org. Iman Abid, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

IA: Thank you so much.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

On Sunday, July 20, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. “I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything,” Alvarez told the crowd of union members. “And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?”

Additional links/info: 

• NOLSW-UAW Local 2320 website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram

Featured Music: 

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits: 

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor 

Below is the transcript of the speech Alvarez delivered at the 2025 NOLSW-UAW convention in Baltimore, Maryland. The text has been lightly edited for length. 

Over the years—on my podcast Working People, on The Real News Network, in my book The Work of Living, on channels like Breaking Points—I’ve interviewed workers from all walks of life, from industries across the economy, from just about every union you can imagine. Railroad engineers and conductors with SMART-TD and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. VA nurses with National Nurses United. Young baristas with Starbucks Workers United. Strippers in Hollywood who unionized with Actor’s Equity. Longshore workers with the ILWU. Public school teachers with the Chicago Teachers Union. UMWA coal miners and UPS Teamsters. Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh workers at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette who have been on strike for over two years. UNITE HERE hotel and hospitality workers from the Las Vegas strip to colonial Williamsburg. Legal aid advocates and attorneys with UAW Local 2325, UAW graduate student workers, UAW autoworkers at the Big Three automakers. And so many more. 

I’ll be honest, when I started doing this work, I didn’t really know shit about unions. I did not grow up in a union family. And the dominant consensus in the Southern California I knew in the ‘90s and early aughts was that unions, at best, had served important functions in the past but were unnecessary today; at worst, they were corrupt, self-serving, bloated bureaucratic institutions that hurt businesses and held individual workers back from advancing in their jobs. By the time I started my podcast in 2018, a lot of those anti-union sentiments I absorbed as a kid had melted away, and I myself was part of a union for the first time—shout out to the Graduate Employees Organization, AFT Local 3550 at the University of Michigan. 

Still, I knew way less about unions and the labor movement then than I do now. And while I have since become a staunch advocate for both and become known as a fierce, unapologetic advocate for workers’ rights, that is not what I set out to be—and Working People was never intended to be a show about unions. As the title makes clear, it was and is a show about people; it was and is a “podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” I did not start the show because I hoped to one day be speaking in rooms like this to union members like you. I started the show because I did not want my father, Jesus Alvarez, to live the rest of his life and to go to his grave feeling like a failure. Pops was the first working person I interviewed for the podcast, and I often joke that I basically started the show as a ruse to get my dad to talk about the trauma he and our family had experienced, because I could see the shame and hurt eating him alive, destroying his sense of self, destroying my parents’ marriage, destroying our family.  

What I saw happening to my own father was what I had seen happen to so many of my coworkers at the restaurants, retail stores, and warehouses I worked at; what I myself had felt as a low-wage worker in America. He had become convinced that his life was as small and worthless as this rigged system trains us to believe by beating and cheating and wearing us down until, eventually, we stop dreaming of a better life, we stop believing we deserve better, and we accept “getting by” as good enough. From that first interview with my dad to every interview I’ve done and every report I’ve published since, my primary goal has been to honor the humanity of working people, to remind us that we do deserve better, that our lives are beautiful and every life is precious, that our stories are worth sharing, worth listening to, worth remembering, worth celebrating, and that we cannot and must not keep internalizing as personal failures the indignities and injustices of economic and political systems designed to fail us. 

It was in that context that I came to learn much more about unions, the history of organized labor, and the existentially vital role unions play in our individual and collective struggles to believe we are worth more—to not only dream of but demand better workplaces, better lives, and a better world, and to fight to get them together. I have also learned about and railed against the many real problems unions have, from the local to the international level, the unfathomably restrictive and boss-friendly nature of US labor law, and the failures of organized labor to live up to its promise to union members and to the working class writ large as the ruling class takes back all that our ancestors fought for and won. But I have never wavered in my understanding that we will not get to the world we deserve without unions, or in my belief that unions CAN live up to their promise when they are more democratic, more accountable to the rank and file, more militant, and when they understand and take seriously the responsibility unions have not just to their members, but to the entire working class. Unions are one of the only institutional forces we have for working-class people to independently organize themselves and fight for our needs as workers, as a class. 

That is what I want to talk to you about with the time I have left. When I was initially invited to speak at this convention, I researched the proud and incredible history of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers—you guys have a hell of a history. I planned to talk to you about the importance of your roles as justice workers in our unjust society, the specific issues you could lead the way on in your contract bargaining and workplace organizing, the specific challenges you all are facing now under the current administration and the specific opportunities you have to empower the powerless, the poor, and the exploited, as you have done for so many decades. And I cannot overstate how vital the work you all do in your day-to-day work and in your union is. It’s so, so important. But a lot has changed in our world these past few months. 

As a reporter myself and as editor in chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network, I have seen these monstrous changes up close. Again, I’m not just a labor reporter, and I don’t just report on unions. You could say that I and everyone at The Real News are class-war correspondents, reporting from the front lines of the ruling class assault on working people’s lives, our health, our communities, our freedom, our democracy, our planet, and on life itself. I don’t need to tell you that we are losing this war, but I need you to understand all that we are losing with it. I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything. And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?

My brothers, sisters, siblings, we stand here now, on July 20, 2025, on the precipice of oblivion. We are cooking our planet at a blinding pace and life is dying off en masse all around us, war and genocide and imperialist plunder are ripping our world and our people apart, the maga-rich are speedrunning our society to collapse and pillaging everything they can like Earth is having a going-out-of-business sale, placating us with lies and AI-generated fake realities so we keep rejecting the monstrous truth in front of us and keep fighting each other as we lower ourselves into the mass grave of human civilization. We have descended quickly into what sisters Astra Taylor and Noami Klein rightly call “end-times fascism.” The levers of power are controlled by a ghoulish death cult of billionaire oligarchs, war hawks, bigoted misanthropes, and religious fanatics who have given up on this world and the very notion that we can have a society that works for everyone. 

“Not so long ago,” Taylor and Klein write, 

It was primarily religious fundamentalists who greeted signs of apocalypse with gleeful excitement about the long-awaited Rapture. Trump has handed critical posts to people who subscribe to that fiery orthodoxy, including several Christian Zionists who see Israel’s use of annihilatory violence [against Palestinians] to expand its territorial footprint not as illegal atrocities but as felicitous evidence that the Holy Land is getting closer to the conditions under which the Messiah will return, and the faithful will get their celestial kingdom… But you don’t need to be a biblical literalist, or even religious, to be an end times fascist. Today, plenty of powerful secular people have embraced a vision of the future that follows a nearly identical script, one in which the world as we know it collapses under its weight and a chosen few survive and thrive in various kinds of arks, bunkers and gated “freedom cities”… Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.

I see the inhumane results of this dismal, anti-human, anti-life politics everywhere. I see it in the dozens and dozens of documentary reports we have published over the last two years from the Occupied West Bank and from what remains on the blistered earth that was Gaza. I hear it in the stories of working-class people, union and non-union, who are living in sacrifice zones that are multiplying in every state, from East Palestine, Ohio, to here in South Baltimore, from Honolulu to rural Texas. People whose communities have been made unlivable by corporate and government pollution, people whose lives are sacrificed at the altars of greed and deregulation, people whose communities have been abandoned and are being obliterated by the predictable and unpredictable consequences of man-made climate change. 

I saw it last week when I returned home to Southern California to report on the terror campaign and fascist occupation of the neighborhoods I grew up in by armed, masked, unidentified men kidnapping people who look like me and my family off the street, from their job sites and bus stops, from immigration courts, from their homes. No one I talked to even knows if these people are agents of the state, bounty hunters, or vigilante impersonators, but they’re being told to stand by and do nothing as they or their loved ones are kidnapped without warrants, disappeared, and possibly sent to blacksite prisons in countries they’ve never been to before without access to lawyers or contact with their families. 

Again I ask you, not in an accusatory or presumptuous way, but in desperation and hope that you will find a forceful answer: what good is your union, or any union, to them? 

That may seem like an unfair question to ask of any union, any local, but when history calls our number, fairly or unfairly, it is the duty of every person of conscience to answer the call. These are not normal times, and business as usual won’t cut it. For instance, I have seen firsthand the truth of labor’s claims that unions raise the floor for all workers, not just their members. But we cannot rely on such traditional axioms when the end-times fascists and oligarchs are attacking the very right of unions to exist while smashing holes in the floor and pushing more of us into the black abyss below. 

From the massive tax cuts to the catastrophic cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, Republicans know that their policies today, like the policies Republicans have been pushing my whole life, will continue to supercharge inequality, will continue to enrich and empower the same oligarchic ruling class destroying our planet and our society, and will continue the 50-year trend of making life measurably harder for poor and working people. While they rob us and our economy in broad daylight, the insurance policy of Trump and the ruling class he represents is the hyper-expansion of an unaccountable police state to execute his mass deportations. You know what was also included in the “big, beautiful bill” Congress passed and Trump signed two weeks ago? $170 billion in new funds for border security and immigration enforcement that will make ICE the largest domestic police force in the US, bigger than most countries’ militaries, and the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the entire government. Trump’s implicit, and increasingly explicit, promise is that deporting or incarcerating immigrants, people who LOOK LIKE immigrants, citizens, dissidents, and an ever-expanding class of “undesirables” will eventually leave only a deserving few for whom the manufactured scarcity of capitalist class war will seem like abundance when there are fewer human beings left around to fight over the scraps. 

That is their dark vision. They are executing it now, as we speak, and the traditional checks and balances that have protected us in the past are being gleefully smashed in front of our eyes. I can’t tell you how all of this will end, because that depends on what we all do right now, but I can tell you where we’re going if we do nothing. And the more atomized, disunified, alone, and fearful we are, the easier it will be to break us, control us, disappear us, and deliver us to the dark dystopia on the horizon. 

Brothers and sisters, this is the defining moment of our lives and our generation, and what we do or don’t do now will define the course of our future or the lack thereof. Politicians aren’t coming to save us, corporations aren’t coming to save us, it is up to us, the workers of the world, the great laboring masses, to save ourselves. 

This isn’t just about fighting for better wages and working conditions. It was never just about that. But it sure as shit can’t be about just that now. This is about who is willing to fight for life itself, for liberty, and for the needs of all met so all can pursue their happiness… Who is willing to fight against the imposing forces of death, control, lies, greed, and destruction? 

I have met fighters from all corners of society. I met a group of them in Pasadena, California, last week. They call themselves Grupo Auto Defensa. They’re not part of an official organization, they have no backing from unions or nonprofits or local government; they’re just a group of neighbors from the hood, as they describe it, who saw the fascist terror spreading in their community and decided to band together to do something about it. From chasing ICE cars out of town with bullhorns to setting up security brigades so terrified residents can walk outside and go to the grocery store, from providing know your rights information to reclaiming public space, protecting each other, and rebelliously refusing to live in fear. 

These everyday heroes have shown extraordinary bravery by making the decision to get up, organize, and do something. Just like you all or your predecessors organized and did something at your job when they formed a union. And if we’re gonna survive this, if we’re gonna stop this, if we’re gonna keep hope alive that we can still have a future worth living in, we need working people everywhere coming together, forming unions in the most literal sense. You are in labor unions, you have a lot to teach people out there. And the labor movement has a lot to learn from people like Elizabeth Castillo, Jesus Simental, and their neighbors who all formed Grupo Auto Defensa. 

What transferable skills, structures, and strategies for bringing people together as a union of the willing can you bring from organized labor and help others harness and develop in their struggles? What support, material, legal, or otherwise, are you as unions willing to give to this fight? What coalitions can you help build to bring working people together in a united front that fights for light and life as such? How can we leverage the positions and different legal restrictions of labor unions, tenant unions, and grassroots unions of all kinds to creatively marshal working-class resistance, apply pressure, and build power on and off the shop floor? What rights and privileges as union workers are you willing to put on the line for those whose rights, from their reproductive rights to their very right to exist, are under attack? What will you do, as unions, to stand up for immigrants, queer and trans people, Palestinians obligated by weapons paid for by our tax dollars, students imprisoned for exercising their first amendment rights? How can we in the movement use our skills, our spaces, our connections, and our resources to physically bring disconnected people together in real spaces where they can know one another, like Grupo Auto Defensa is doing in Pasadena and like you are all doing right here? 

Resignation, despair, acceptance of our own powerlessness as a permanent, unfixable state—this is, simply and truly, unacceptable. We will not accept it. We cannot afford to be paralyzed by fear and defeatism; there is too much at stake—for us, for our children, our planet, and for our future. Now is the time for bravery, and history is calling upon all of us to be brave and to instill bravery in others. We must model bravery in our everyday lives by how we carry ourselves, by how we treat each other, and by standing firmly for what’s right, always, even if no one is watching. 

Your international union president, brother Shawn Fain, famously said “the working class is the arsenal of democracy and the workers are the liberators.” If that is true, brothers and sisters, then for ourselves, for each other, for our children, this is our time to prove it. 

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

“Jeanine Pirro is yet another nominee being put in a position of enormous power to serve the interests of Donald Trump. The Fox News host has repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election, justified pardons of January 6 insurrectionists, and called for January 6 prosecutors to be investigated. This is not indicative of a qualified US Attorney, but rather a Trump collaborator who will serve Trump, not the American people.

This president must not be allowed to install corrupt prosecutors who will advance his interests at the expense of the American public and our freedom.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

I definitely get up early, but it’s never a solid, particularly hardcore regime. I do get up early and usually write stuff every day, but it can vary. If I’m home, I’ll do something around the house, and then maybe go play golf and then be back around noon, then work on some guitar stuff. And usually if I’m playing guitar, I’m writing songs. I’m not just practicing playing guitar. So, that’s usually how that ends up happening, and I really can’t do it any other way. I just have to write a whole bunch of crap to find stuff that’s actually any good. It’s not like I sit down and only write good stuff. Most of it’s not good. That’s how it works—you force your way through it.

Do you know right away if something’s not working, or is it more of a feeling of, “This isn’t great right now, but maybe it could be something”?

Yeah, that’s more like it. And then stuff will sit there for a long time without being finished. I’ve said this before, but when you put a new album out and people think it’s new stuff, well, it’s actually not new. Some of it’s new—all of it’s new to you—but I actually wrote this a long time ago. Or at least the first half of it, and could never figure out what to do with it until later.

How close to finished does a song need to be before you get together with Dale to work on it?

I’ll make demos first, but I make fairly primitive demos. I don’t like spending a lot of time on demos. I’d rather put that effort towards when we actually record it. And plus, you don’t want to spend too much time on a demo and then have it be something that you fall in love with and then you want to replicate the demo. You don’t want to get too used to something that sounds too good, then blindsides you into what it’s going to sound like with the band. Most of my demos don’t have drums on them or anything. [Melvins drummer] Dale [Crover] will have some idea about what I want to do for drums, and then we’ll take it from there.

Do you play guitar every day, or do you make a point of taking breaks?

I don’t really take breaks. At my house, I’m pretty much ready to play anytime. I’ll just pick it up and go. I’ve got a lot of guitars I use in the studio or at home, but those aren’t ones I would play live because I need a specific thing for live. But I use all kinds of different guitars in the studio. On the Bad Mood Rising record, I kept track of every guitar and every effect and everything I used on every song. I’ll have to put that out sometime. I don’t think people would believe it.

So many guitar players tend to be gearheads and very particular about certain amps, guitars, or strings. It seems like you’re more open to experimentation, though.

I can make almost anything work. We’re at the point now, after all these albums, I could probably go in the studio and just use whatever gear they had there and still make a record without too much trouble. But live, I like to play a Les Paul style with the switch in the top, because I use it during the whole show. I use the three-position switch for three different sounds on the guitar without having to stomp on a lot of pedals for that. I’m really used to playing that way live, so I need it in that situation. But for the studio or writing songs, it doesn’t really matter. I like a variety of different guitars. I’ll have three or four guitars at any given time set up, ready to go, and then each of them will play different. And I’ll write a different kind of song on a certain guitar than I would on another guitar. I think each guitar has its own stories in it, and you’ll play different on it. I heard that somewhere, and I really liked that idea. Every guitar has its own stories.

You’ve made a ton of Melvins albums, you’ve done solo records, you’ve played in other bands, and you’re a photographer. Do you have a creative philosophy that you bring to all of those things?

Yeah, I guess so. It’s like Andy Warhol said: “While they’re figuring out the last thing you did, do more work.” I’m not very precious with that kind of thing. Do you want to be a photographer? Take pictures, and it doesn’t matter what kind. People get so caught up in this digital versus analog thing. I think it’s a mistake. My photography only got better with digital. I can see exactly what I just took. I don’t have to wait two weeks. I’m not building a fucking darkroom in my house, just like I’m not buying a two-inch Studer tape machine to use at home. I’m not going to do it. People have to get over that. “Well, it’s not real photography.” What is real photography? Just by using a film camera, you’re taking great pictures? What the fuck are you talking about?

They get so caught up, but that whole thing has nothing to do with creativity. My wife is a graphic designer, and she said she doesn’t give a shit how you do it if it’s good. If you just care about the medium, then you’re worrying about something that is not about art.

Have you always felt that way, or did you arrive at that conclusion through experience?

I’ve always loved photography, but I could never afford it. You have to buy film all the time and get it processed. And when you shoot a roll of film, you get one good picture or maybe nothing, because you can’t see. Once digital came along, I could see exactly what I was doing. So, what I do when I take pictures is I delete as I go. I don’t take 50 pictures and then try to decide. No, I decide right then. I want this one; delete the rest. I want that one; delete the rest. I don’t want to look through 100 pictures.

I spend a lot of time talking about what makes a good image because I’ve lived with a graphic designer for the last 30-plus years. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about why certain art or photography or movies are good. Even billboards: Why does this billboard work and that one doesn’t work? And, of course, album covers and so on. It’s really helped me as far as my perception of what a good picture is. But I was always pretty good at taking pictures for some reason. I don’t know why. But you can take a good picture with any camera. It’s not how you do it; it’s what you’re doing. I firmly believe that I can make a good recording with any kind of medium. We always laugh: Digital versus analog? I can make a recording with either.

You’ve worked in several musical collaborations over the years. The Melvins have had many lineups, you’ve played in Fantômas and Venomous Concept, and you’ve made guest appearances on other people’s records. But you’ve also made solo albums. What do you see as the pros and cons of collaborating versus working by yourself?

Well, Fantômas was not a collaboration. I just did whatever Mike [Patton] wanted me to do. I would’ve happily collaborated with him, but he had no interest in that. I added nothing to that stuff. His deal is, he’s very precious about the maestro type of situation: “I wrote all this, I did this.” And it’s like, “Okay, great.” It was nice to not write anything, but if it had been a collaboration, I think it would’ve only benefited. But I wasn’t asked what my opinion was on anything, so I didn’t bother offering. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that. He invited me into this situation. I knew exactly what it was from the beginning, and I just left it that way.

But we did a new thing with Napalm Death, and I brought in songs, those guys brought in songs, and it was a true collaboration. I played guitar, bass—I played a bunch of different things on a wide variety of songs, as do they. I don’t even remember who played what, because a lot of it was done about a year ago. But that was a true collaboration where we really wrote songs together. So that was cool.

With the Melvins, I’m always happy to hear what they’re doing. I’ll make a suggestion, like, “I think maybe this bass part should be like this,” and then let Steven [McDonald] elaborate on it. That’s fine with me. He can make it better. I heard Bowie said something to Adrian Belew when Belew joined Bowie’s band: “Play the songs like this or make them better.” I agree.

I’m very much an accidentalist, too. I might think I know what I want, but then when I hear it a certain way, I go, “No, that’s better.” You have to be smart enough to know when to change things. You also have to be smart enough to know when a song is done. Because you can overcook it to where you’ve flung the life out of it completely. And it will sound like that on the recording.

How long did it take you to figure that out?

When we did our first few records, all we ever did was rehearse because there was nothing else to do. But I think that if we redid those songs now, we would do a much better job because it wouldn’t be over-thought. There’re songs on our records that we’ve rehearsed and songs we haven’t rehearsed. I dare you to try to figure out what’s what. There’re songs that we learned the same day we recorded them, as well as ones that we rehearsed a lot. And you can’t tell the difference.

The Melvins have had many lineup changes over the years. Some have been out of necessity, and some have been in the spirit of doing something different. In fact, a lot of what you do seems to be in the spirit of trying things a different way. Why is that important to you rather than, say, the Ramones or AC/DC approach of finding your thing and sticking with it?

It’s more like I behave in a way that I would appreciate other bands behaving. A lot of people hate it, but I really appreciated when Metallica did that album with Lou Reed. To me, it might be their best record. I think it’s really good. I’d heard so many bad things about it, I thought it was going to be terrible. When I heard it, I was like, “This actually doesn’t sound bad at all. I kind of like this.” I mean, do I need another straight Metallica record? Probably not.

But I can handle a lot of weird stuff. It doesn’t bother me. Pink Floyd doing Atom Heart Mother or Obscured by Clouds, those records don’t bother me at all. Or Meddle: “Echoes” takes up one whole side of the album. Is that a bad thing? Well, it’s different, but is it bad? No. It might be one of the best things they ever did—if not the best thing they ever did. Is it a hit single? No, but for some reason hit singles are a certain way, and I don’t understand that, either. None of it makes any sense to me.

When you say that you’re doing what you’d like to hear other bands do, do you also mean challenging yourself?

Well, it’s what I do. I make music for a living. I’m a professional musician, and so I feel like that’s what I should do. If you compare me to everybody else, then yeah, I look like I’m an incredible workaholic. But it might just be because they don’t do much at all. Most of them are sitting around doing nothing or taking decades between records. Even with five years between records, it’s like, “What were you doing that whole time? Isn’t this what you do?” I write songs and play guitar and sing and record albums and play live. I don’t find it to be that overbearing and that difficult. I’m not sure what the problem is most of the time. I think a lot of it has to do with laziness, lifestyle—things like that, I would guess.

You mentioned Metallica earlier. They started two years before the Melvins did. They’ve got 11 studio albums and you guys have 32. There’re clearly two different mentalities at work here.

I’m only prolific in comparison to them. I don’t feel like it’s way over the top, personally. I think I could probably do more if I pushed myself. I think I could do two albums a year without any trouble at all. I don’t see why not. People are like, “You should work harder on the records.” Well, you should shut up. Why don’t you let me do the driving? I don’t remember asking you what you thought, anyway. If you don’t like our records, don’t buy them. You’ll be one of millions and millions of people in the world who don’t buy our records. So what?

On this new Melvins 1983 record, Thunderball, you’re working with Mike Dillard, the original Melvins drummer. The one before that was with Steven McDonald, Roy Mayorga and Dale Crover. Years before that, you had the guys from Big Business in the band. I imagine the lineup shifts are creatively stimulating, but does it ever feel like you’re starting over again with each new arrangement?

Maybe a little, but not too bad. I’m not afraid of that, either. If I’m going to make a Melvins 1983 record, I’m going to write songs specifically for that. I’ll figure out or look at songs that I have that would work in that scenario. With Melvins 1983, I can’t quite do the exact same thing I can with the regular Melvins. It’s not possible because he’s not physically capable of playing that stuff. I have to come up with things that he can do. But they’re still good. Difficult doesn’t mean it’s better. Some of our best songs, like “Night Goat,” aren’t particularly hard to play. It doesn’t mean one thing or another.

Have you ever experienced writer’s block?

No. Not ever. What you do is, you just play through it. You just keep doing it. I think writer’s block comes from people wanting to do something specific. “I have to do this.” No, you don’t. Do something else. If you can’t come up with songs, come up with some other idea. Just think of something. What do you want to do? Look back through your demos; figure it out. And that all falls into place eventually.

So, you prefer to push through and make something happen rather than walking away for a while and coming back to it?

Well, it’s both. I record stuff on my phone, just sound memos, and I think I have about 700 on there right now. And those are just little riffs and ideas. I could probably not ever write anything again and have enough to keep putting out albums, but new ideas keep coming. I’ve just got to go back through them. A lot of it, I don’t even remember doing. And that’s just on my phone. I have my little recording devices that are filled with stuff, too. If I lost my phone or I lost all those recording devices? Oh, well—just move on. It’s part of the process.

Last but not least: To what do you attribute the longevity of the Melvins?

They asked Bob Dylan this question: “Why do you do what you do at this age? Why do you keep doing it?” He said, “That’s a deal I made. All I ever wanted to be was a musician. I never went to college. I never did any of those kinds of things. I wanted to play music. Now I get to do that. I work very hard at it, and I don’t take it lightly. And I have a ton of respect for the idea that I get to do that. So, I’m going to honor it by working as hard as I can.”

That’s it, really. It’s what I do. Would people ask a plumber or an architect, ”Why are you doing this?” It’s what I do. They design buildings or work on pipes. It’s all engineering and science, and the good ones understand that—and you can tell by their work. So, that’s the way I look at it. I heard this from a professional skateboarder, and I totally agree: You retire because you don’t want to do it anymore, or no one cares if you do it anymore.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by J. Bennett.

The Trump administration has shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific arm, the EPA Office of Research and Development. Hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists will lose their jobs under the administration’s plan to aggressively tear down environmental regulations and defund the EPA. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a former top administrator in the Office of Research and Development, says the loss of the division means the loss of essential services like air and water quality monitoring that protects public health. “We are losing a treasure trove of historical knowledge, of scientific expertise, and really it’s going to limit what information, what science would be available for the agency to consider in protecting our health and our environment,” she says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

After getting a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, Jaz Brisack became a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helped organize the first unionized Starbucks in the US in December of 2021. In their new book, Get on the Job and Organize, Brisack details the hardwon lessons they and their coworkers have learned from building one of the most significant and paradigm-shifting worker organizing campaigns in modern history. In this extended episode of Working People, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian speaks with Brisack about their book, the facts and fictions characterizing today’s “new labor movement,” and why union organizing is essential for saving democracy and the world.

Guests:

• Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Jaz got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States in December of 2021. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry’s to Tesla.

Additional links/info:

• Jaz Brisack, One Signal Publishers, Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World
• Jaz Brisack, Teen Vogue, “Starbucks Workers United grew out of Jaz Brisack’s undercover organizing. Here’s how”
• Starbucks Workers United website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Inside Organizer School website

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Today, Taiwan is caught in the crosshairs of two imperial rivals: the US and China. This is nothing new for the island nation, which has been a battleground for competing empires for centuries, but what is new is the critical role Taiwan plays in the 21st-century world economy. For example, Taiwan manufacturers 90% of the world’s most advanced microchips—the key component in everything from consumer electronics to the US military’s F-35 fighter jets. In this episode of Solidarity Without Exception, co-host Ashley Smith speaks with Brian Hioe, journalist and editor of New Bloom magazine, about the history of Taiwanese struggles for self-determination, the country’s position in the contemporary US-China rivalry, the increasing threat of imperial war, and the urgency of building solidarity among working-class people in Taiwan, the US, and China.

Guests:

• Brian Hioe is a freelance journalist, translator, and one of the founding editors of New Bloom, an online magazine featuring radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, Hioe has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Studies Programme, as well as board member of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

Additional resources:

• New Bloom website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, & Ashley Smith, Haymarket Books, China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry
• Brian J. Chen, Boston Review, “Semiconductor Island: The colonial making of Taiwan’s chip supremacy”

Credits:

• Pre-Production: Ashley Smith
• Stdio Production / Post-Production: TRNN

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Ashley Smith.

Below is a statement by Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Thanks to this bill, millions of people will lose access to federal safety net programs, like food assistance and health care, to fund tax cuts that benefit the ultra-wealthy. The bill also trades the health and well-being of people across the country for the profits of oil, gas and coal companies. Our country will be paying the price for these reckless policies for decades to come.

“In passing this bill, lawmakers repeatedly overrode the needs and interests of their constituents. When benefits are lost, when energy prices spike, when major clean energy and clean transportation investments are canceled, when jobs are cut, when climate-exacerbated extreme weather disasters hit, people should know who they have to thank.

“This bill is a damning indictment of Congress' priorities and values. Our country needs policymakers willing to confront the challenges of our time and fight for a better tomorrow, not sell out America for the benefit of a few.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with Lorraine Chavez and Chrstine Rodriguez, who were among the dozens arrested for their peaceful act of civil disobedience on June 25, about what’s in this bill, what it will mean for working people, and how working people are fighting back

Guests:

• Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.
• Chrstine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.

Additional links/info:

• The Debt Collective website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, “Medicaid defenders in wheelchairs arrested ahead of Senate vote on ‘betrayal of a bill’”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “What’s in Trump’s big, beautiful bill? Tax cuts, deportations and more”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “Senate Republicans pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill, clearing major hurdle”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Martin Averick.

History was made Tuesday night as democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani carried out a stunning upset and defeated Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. As the results became clear Tuesday night, Cuomo conceded and called Mamdani to congratulate him. The New York state assemblymember will now be the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City in November’s general election. “Tonight we made history,” Mamdani told supporters. “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done. My friends, we have done it.”

Moe Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, says Mamdani’s campaign helped “create a multiracial working class alignment against authoritarianism [and] for a type of politics that is hopeful, that is visionary, that says we want something, we don’t simply want to fight against something.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In Los Angeles, CA, armed, masked agents of the state are snatching and disappearing immigrants off the street, peaceful protestors and journalists are being attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, National Guard troops and active-duty Marines have been deployed to police and intimidate American citizens. Fear and uncertainty have gripped America’s second largest city as a barrage of misinformation obscures the reality on the ground; nevertheless, Angelinos continue to defy the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities and authoritarian crackdown on civil rights. In this episode of Working People, we take you to the streets of LA and speak with multiple on-the-ground eyewitnesses to the events of the past two weeks to help you better understand what’s actually happening and where this is all heading.

Guests:

• Sonali Kolhatkar is an award winning journalist, broadcaster, writer, and author; she is the founder, host, and executive director of Rising Up with Sonali. She is the author of Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice.
• Javier Cabral is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning, independent outlet L.A. Taco
• Michael Nigro is an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia journalist who is among the numerous journalists to have been assaulted by police while reporting on assignment in LA.

Additional links/info:

• Javier Cabral, L.A. Taco, “A ride-along with Union Del Barrio, L.A.’s leading community patrol against ICE”
• David Folkenflick, NPR, “Press group sues L.A., alleging police abuse of reporters at ICE rallies”
• Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times, “Trump has put a target on SEIU, and the labor movement is fighting back”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

In a 6-3 decision on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender youth, paving the way for other bans on trans healthcare to remain in effect in 24 other states. According to the ACLU, over 100,000 transgender people under the age of 18 now live in a state with a ban on their healthcare. “This is a fight that extends back 100 years, and we will keep fighting for 100 more years,” says Chase Strangio, the first openly trangender attorney to make oral arguments before the Supreme Court and the co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

That idea defies conventional political wisdom, which typically holds that people hate taxes. It emerged in a survey of 40,680 people in 20 nations that found strong support for a carbon tax that would transfer wealth from the worst polluters to people in developing nations. Most of them support such policies even if it takes money out of their own pocket. 

Adrian Fabre, lead author of the study published in Nature, wasn’t surprised by the results. He studies public attitudes toward climate policy at the International Center for Research on Environment and Development in Paris, and said this is the latest in a long line of studies showing that climate-related economic policies enjoy greater support, on the whole, than people assume.

This study asked people how they’d feel about a global carbon tax: The larger an individual’s contribution to climate change, the more they’d pay. In exchange, everyone in the world would receive about $30 per month. “People with a carbon footprint larger than the world average would financially lose, and those with a carbon footprint lower than the world average would win,” Fabre said.

The survey included 12 high-income countries and eight “middle-income” countries like Mexico, India, and Ukraine. The researchers surveyed at least 1,465 people in each nation over several weeks in May 2024. Japan showed the highest support, with 94 percent of respondents backing the idea of linking policies that combat inequality and climate change. 

That said, the policy was least popular in the United States, where the average person is responsible for about 18 tons of CO2 a year. About half of Americans surveyed supported the tax. (Three in 4 Biden voters favored the idea. Among Trump voters, just 26 percent did. In contrast, support ran as high as 75 percent across the European Union, where per-capita emissions are 10 tons. “We found that people in high-income countries are willing to let go of some purchasing power, if they can be sure that it solves climate change and global poverty,” Fabre said. Americans would end up foregoing about $85 a month, according to the study. 

That’s not to say such policies would remain popular once enacted. Canada learned this lesson with its tax-and-dividend scheme, which levied a tax on fossil fuels and returned nearly all of that money to households — most of which ended up receiving more money in dividends than they lost to the tax. People supported the plan when the government adopted it in 2019. But support slid as fuel prices rose, and the government scrapped it earlier this year amid pressure from voters and the fossil fuel industry.

“What matters ultimately is not the actual objective benefits that people receive,” said Matto Mildenberger, “but the perceived benefits that they think they are receiving.” 

Mildenberger studies the political drivers of policy inaction at the University of California Santa Barbara. In Canada’s case, the higher prices people paid at the gas pump weighed more heavily in their mind than the rebate they received later — especially when opponents of such a tax told them they were losing money. “One of the most critical factors in my mind that generates friction for these policies is interest group mobilization against them,” Mildenberger said.

Regardless of whether carbon pricing is the answer to the world’s climate woes, the fact that people are more supportive of climate policies that also fight poverty is telling, he said. 

“Inequality-reducing policies are a political winner, and integrating economic policy with climate policy will make climate policies more popular,” he said. “The public rewards policies that are like chewing gum and walking at the same time.” The question now is whether governments are listening. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A majority of people around the world support a carbon tax — even if they’re paying it on Jun 20, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sophie Hurwitz.

In honor of Pride Month, singular acts of courage and "being brave, strong and gorgeous," enjoy the glad spectacle of four drag queens dolled up to kill, see Les Misérables, and crash Dear Leader's first visit to a Kennedy Center purportedly scrubbed of wokeness. Yet here they were - buoyant, sparkling, cheered by a crowd that moments before had loudly booed the ugly tyrant and his MAGA cohort. The queens' gist, said Mari Con Carne: "You can’t erase us."

The queens turned up for an evening already bursting with irony if any MAGA goons and losers were capable of it. Amidst a Pride Month he refused to recognize - and fierce pushback to his hate - the Bigot-In-Chief who already decimated a time-honored institution devoted to art and open-mindedness witlessly chose to attend a beloved show about an oppressed people fighting back against tyranny much like his.

Accompanied by the grotesque likes of Vance, Bondi, Loomer, RFK Jr., Kellyanne Conway and a fragile Gym Jordan who visibly cringed when he walked past four people who don't look like him, Trump et al were roundly booed by the modest crowd. There were also shouts of "Felon!" and "Rapist!" - what a time to be alive - along with a muted, incongruous chant of "USA!" on behalf of the cretins who are working so hard to destroy it.

In full, defiant finery, the four drag queens - Tara Hoot, Ricky Rosé, Vagenesis, and Mari Con Carne - were greeted by the audience with joyful whoops, cheers and applause as they sashayed in and took their seats below the presidential box. Their tickets had been donated by season ticket-holders through Qommittee, a national advocacy network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of high-profile hate crimes like the Pulse and Club Q mass shootings.

"It was delightful,” said Hoot, stressing their "message of inclusivity" but adding, "I love musicals. I mean, I’m a drag queen." "Kudos to all bringing art to the world," she said. "Unfortunately, there were some other people there too, but I think we brightened the audience as much as we could." In family story time events, she noted, "I often read books about being brave (and) true to who you are. Showing up (here) with my fellow drag stars allowed me to live those words. Here's to being brave, strong, and gorgeous."

Trump, ever uncouth, left before the lights came up. Still, Mari Con Carne felt it was "crucial" to be there before him. As a drag queen and an immigrant, "I wanted it to be known you can prevent us from performing on your stages, but you can’t erase us...We aren’t going anywhere and we will face you head-on with every ounce of courage we have." When Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables, he was shocked by the silence of his compatriots before "the negation of all law, equilibrium resting on iniquity." This week's troupe of "delightfully audacious" drag queens might give him hope.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

On June 6, thousands of veterans, union members, VA hospital nurses, elected officials, and more gathered on the National Mall in Washington D.C. at the “Unite for Veterans, Unite for America rally” to protest the Trump administration’s attacks on veteran jobs, benefits, and healthcare. In this on-the-ground edition of Working People, we report from Friday’s rally and speak with veterans and VA nurses about how Trump’s policies are affecting them now and how to fix the longstanding issues with the VA.

Speakers:

• Peter Pocock, Vietnam War veteran (Navy) and retired union organizer
• Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees
• Terri Henry, Air Force veteran
• Ellen Barfield, Army veteran and national vice president of Veterans for Peace
• Lindsay Church, executive director and co-founder of Minority Veterans of America
• Lelaina Brandt, veteran (National Guard), 2SLGBTQIA+ advocate, and part-time illustrator and graphic designer.
• Eric Farmer, Navy submarine veteran
• Irma Westmoreland,  registered VA nurse in Augusta, GA, secretary-treasurer of National Nurses United, chair of National Nurses United Organizing Committee/NNU-VA
• Andrea Johnson, registered VA nurse in San Diego, CA, medical surgical unit and the NNOC/NNU director of VA Medical Center- San Diego
• Justin Wooden, registered VA nurse in the intensive care unit (ICU) at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, FL
• Cecil E. Roberts, Vietnam War veteran (Army) and president of the United Mine Workers of America

Additional links/info:

• Tim Balk & Helene Cooper, The New York Times, “Military parade in Capital on Trump’s birthday could cost $45 million, officials say”
• Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, “Transgender troops face a deadline and a difficult decision: Stay or go?”
• Eric Umansky & Vernal Coleman, ProPublica, “Internal VA emails reveal how Trump cuts jeopardize veterans’ care, including to ‘life-saving cancer trials’”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “Trump cuts leave VA hospital nurses and veteran patients in a crisis”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to another on-the-ground edition of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class Today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and I am here on the National Mall in Washington, DC at the Unite for Veterans Unite for America rally, where thousands of veterans from all military branches and age groups, union members, VA hospital nurses, elected officials, and more have gathered to send a message to the Trump administration. This is a critical follow-up episode to our recent interview with VA nurses and national nurses, United Union reps, where we talked about the devastating impact that President Trump’s cuts to federal agencies and attacks on federal workers are causing for VA healthcare workers and the veteran patients that they serve as national nurses.

United describes in their press release about today’s rally on Friday, June 6th, the anniversary of D-Day, dozens of registered nurses from National Nurses Organizing Committee slash National Nurses United will join Senator Tammy Duckworth, veterans federal workers, military families and allies in Washington DC for the Unite for Veterans, unite for America rally organized by the Unite for Veterans Coalition. This rally is modeled after the 1932 Bonus Armies march on Washington DC and will spotlight attacks on veteran benefits, call out attempts to privatize the VA and rally the veteran community to defend the institutions that serve them. So I am here on the ground talking to folks about why they’re here, why it’s important, and what message they want to send to the administration and to their fellow workers around the country.

Peter Pocock:

I’m Peter Pocock. I’m out on the mall here in DC with a whole bunch of other veterans. I’m an old timer. I’m pushing 80. I’ll be 80 this year. I was in the Vietnam era and happily for me and intentionally for me, I was in the Navy because you were more likely to avoid bullets in the Navy. Yeah, we’re out here on the mall today because the Veterans Administration, which takes care of a lot of us, myself included, I’m 90% disabled and we can go into that later, but we’re here because certain parties who are in the government are really trying to cut the hell out of what we have supposedly earned by our service over the years. Yeah, Gary from the podium, we’re here to fight back. First of all, there’s a whole lot of vets that actually are losing their jobs, particularly government jobs.

We got a preference. That was one of our benefits of being in the service. We got a little bit of a preference for jobs coming out and especi people who have been working for the government for 10, 20, 30 years who are being basically told, we don’t need you anymore. Thank you very much. Actually, no, thank you very much. Let’s just go away. Not happy about that. I tend to do only family friendly language and interviews, but there’s a whole lot of words I could use to describe what the Trump administration is trying to do to labor. That’s something that the right wing has been after for what decades, maybe more, and I’ve been fighting. I was in the labor movement my whole working life after the Navy and been fighting it that whole time. Even in retirement. Keep on showing up is the way that you win every time.

We’re not going to storm the capitol. We’re not going to surround the White House and take prisoners and things like that. What we’re going to do is keep on showing up everywhere in the country, every opportunity we have, every chance to have a conversation with somebody about it, talk to ’em about what’s going on, talk to ’em about the fact that people’s livelihoods are being taken away. Things that people have worked for their whole lives are being taken away. That’s not just veterans, that people with jobs. You got a job, you want somebody to take it away from you for no good reason except to send a little more money to some folks that have no need of more money. Thank you very much. I came back in 1970 to an environment that was not particularly friendly to veterans

And I kept showing up. I kept telling people I never held it against somebody that they thought that I was at fault for this war. I was against the war myself. Well, another thing that has got me out here is I’m 90% disabled according to the Veteran’s Administration, and it’s because I’ve got Parkinson’s disease. See, there’s what I got is Parkinson’s Disease, and it’s generally attributed to the fact that I was exposed through Agent Orange during my service. My bet is that basically any of the folks that were in Southeast Asia in the late sixties and the early seventies all have been exposed to Agent Orange and many of them will if they haven’t already be displaying all kinds of symptoms because of it. In my case, Parkinson’s.

I’m lucky that it didn’t show up until late so that I’m still, I’m going to make it to 80. Anyhow, a lot of my people have, the VA takes care of people like me. The VA takes care of people who are in wheelchairs because of their service for laying flat on their backs in a hospital bed because of their service, and that’s where they’re going to be. The VA’s taking care of them. That’s not waste, that’s not fraud, that’s not abuse. That’s what they have earned is that care and that’s what everybody in this whole country earns just by being citizens is care. How come we are not taking care of our people? We had all kinds of very interesting things going on in the Navy, in the army. I got friends that were doing some really good anti-war stuff that endangered them. So when I came back, that’s what I started doing and I mean doing it ever since. I wasn’t in a labor movement at the beginning. I was in left wing politics, anti-war politics, and from there being in the labor movement was just a natural. As soon as I got the kind of a job that actually had that kind of stuff going on in it, we don’t need to go into it too much, but I was a real hippie organizer in Politico. I was not in a position to be in anything but the IWW. So yeah, but I spent 30 years in the labor movement and I’m still with it.

Everett Kelley:

My name is Everett Kelley. I’m a proud Army veteran and I have the pleasure as the National President of the American Federation of Government Employees A FGE. First and foremost, I want to thank the Union Veteran Council for inviting me to speak and for putting on this necessary undue event. Now I want to welcome all of you who came here today from out of town. Your commitment is aspiring and I want to thank you for being here today. We’re here to unite on behalf of all veterans and to bring awareness and attention to this unprecedented and un-American attack on veterans jobs, benefits, healthcare and union rights. What do you say? Well, it doesn’t matter what branch you serve in, right? We’ve all made a huge sacrifice for our country and all of you are my family. Now though we all come from different backgrounds and different races have different religious beliefs and political views.

We all have similar stories as veterans. My story starts in good water, Alabama, where at 18 years old I joined the United States Army and went on to serve in the Army Reserve for another eight years. After my three year tour, like many of you, after I my military services, I wanted to continue to serve my country. So I became a federal employee working at Anderson Army Depot with my fellow veterans while we continued supporting the mission. You see, just because the job change doesn’t mean your service is complete. Our mission has not changed. Our mission is protect and to serve, to support and defend, and that has not changed. But now what has changed, however, is the government’s promise to be there for us when we get home that changed the promise to care for our families, our caregivers, and our survivors. For years, politicians on both sides of the aisle have campaigned on their support of veterans, but once they get in the office, they cut our benefits on the fund, our services and take every opportunity to privatize our healthcare.

What do you say about that? No, and guess what? Brothers and sisters, we are tired of it. Veterans are tired of being celebrated on Veterans Day remembered on Memorial Day and forgotten about after election day. What do you say about that? Are you tired? We’re tired of being thankful. Our service in the public and stabbed in our back in the private. We are tired now. This S ring no true than today. In January, the VA presented employees, what a fuck in the road. Wow. They encouraged members to end federal services in February, VA recklessly terminated more than 1500 probationary employees resulted in chaos and confusion within the department. In March, the VA announced plan to cut 83,000 jobs for no rhyme or reason whatsoever under disguise of efficiency. I say it’s not efficiency, it’s fraud and a FG been fighting sensely because we know what the big ass will do, don’t we?

Right? And if you don’t know what the big enough plan for Americans veterans is, let me share it with you. The big enough plans for Americans, veterans, it’s a privatized veteran healthcare. In order to make themselves wealthier, they want to make a quick buck offer the sacrifices of the pain and the scars of all those of us who have served this country. They want to take away our VA medical centers claiming that private healthcare is better. However, study after study showed that vegetable prayer to get their care to be VA because it was created for us. Now, the VA is a place my brothers and sisters to go too far camaraderie and for exchanging stories where we are treated with respect and honor because nearly 30% of the employees are veterans too, and they understand who we are. They understand the sacrifices that we’ve made.

They understand the specialties that’s needed. They understand a person that has PTSD. They know it’s not a sham. They know it’s for real. The VA plays for veterans by veterans and for veterans. However, these master reorganization plans that stand before us today is the targeted attack on veterans job, on healthcare, on benefits and union rights. The layoff plans aren’t just figments of our imagination. They are here. We’ve already seen thousands of employees being fired, but brothers and sisters, lemme tell you this, I got to leave you, but before I go, I want you to know that you have doctors, nurses, housekeepers, es, chiropractors, pharmacists, social worker, benefit specialists, police officers, janitors, engineers, painters, electricians, psychiatrists, cooks, greeters at the front door at the va.

Terri Henry:

I’m Terri Henry. I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I’m here in Washington DC today to protest the Trump administration’s treatment of veterans. I am a veteran. I’m married to a Vietnam veteran. My father is a veteran. My brother is a veteran. I believe in veterans. My husband and I had nowhere to go after high school graduation. We weren’t born with a silver spoon like Donald Trump. So we joined the military and his two brothers joined as well, and we got our educations through the va. So we are all college educated people who were able to improve our lives by virtue of our military service. That would not have been a path open to me. Only marriage and children would’ve been open to me. I had no education and no way to earn a living. The military taught me skills and I used those skills and I believe in America.

The other thing that happened is my husband got agent orange cancer for his Vietnam service. So we rely on the VA for his cancer treatment. If it had not been for the va, I tell you, I would’ve had just a complete breakdown. But they were wonderful. They took him in, they gave him chemo. We never had to worry about a bill. Every American that gets cancer in America has to worry about how they’re going to pay for their treatments in the military. We never worried about that. We went to the doctor when we needed to go to the doctor and they gave us what we needed and they promised us that that care would continue after we left the military. And in my husband’s case it has. But now in the Trump administration that care is threatened, these veterans are threatened. We’ve got new veterans, young veterans, Afghanistan, veterans, Iraqi veterans, Vietnam veterans still alive.

We need that care. You promised that care. Donald Trump is a draft dodger 1968. He refused to take the cough. In fact, he got his father to pay for a bone spurs excuse. That’s not courage. That’s not courage. And that man is insisting that we the veterans or the active duty military march in front of him like puppets and he is a draft dodger and a felon. The irony, the insult, it is such an insult to the American military to make them parade for him. This is not Hollywood. This is real life. And those federal workers that you’re un employing, they actually take a military member out of a combat seat. Why? Because the federal workers do the things behind the scenes that allow the military to deploy forward. Every federal worker you fire, you’re taking someone out of combat and you should know that you’re harming the mission and they don’t have time to do your petty tasks.

Like this parade on the, what is it, 14th of June, which by the way, that parade is not a birthday parade for Donald Trump. It’s not a birthday parade for the army. What it is is a show of force, a show of force as was conducted in 1939 at another birthday parade in another nation where that dictator showed the world, his military and what they had to be afraid of. That’s what this parade is about. He’s using the US army to threaten the rest of the world with our military might. We’re very proud of our military. We have a great military, but they are already overt, tasked and now he’s cutting them as is Pete Heg said. Now Trump’s priority is real estate. What he wants to do is put Gaza puts the French Riviera in Gaza. He wants to own Greenland. All he sees when he sees other nations is real estate opportunities, opportunities to make money.

That is not what the government does. The government is here for. We the people, they only exist to serve. We the people just as a church passes a collection plate. The government passes the tax plate, we put the money in with the intent that’ll be spent on our needs, not on his. And there’s quite the difference between the two. So I say to you, don’t believe Donald Trump, he is lying every day. He has a network that does that Cox News. He’s cutting down on journalism like N-P-R-P-B-S so that you will never hear the truth. And now voice of America as well. So this is a very dangerous time in our nation and it is time for us to stand up and say, no, no, Donald Trump, we see you. We’ve seen this before, but it’s not going to happen here in America.

Ellen Barfield:

My name’s Ellen Barfield. I’m a nearly 30-year-old Baltimore aunt originally from, did a lot of my life in Texas and I did four years in the Army, 77, 81. I’m the co-founder of the Baltimore Chapter of Veterans for Peace, and I’m back on the national board.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, it’s so great to chat you and yeah, Baltimore out here representing, we are literally sitting on the National Mall right now at the Unite for Veterans Unite for America rally. I wanted to just ask if you could say a little more about yourself, about why you’re out here and what the message today really is.

Ellen Barfield:

Well, the main messages stop trashing veterans and stop taking away our benefits and firing. So many of us disproportionately veterans are employed in the federal government. They do get a little bit of a point for being veterans and they come from that kind of mindset. So they want to keep serving, if you will. So the threats to our VA healthcare and the firings of so many veterans, those have got to be stopped and reversed. And that’s why we’re here now. A lot of the folks here are a good bit more politically conservative than veterans for peaces, but that’s okay. We have to get together to defend the promises this country made to its veterans to take care of us in exchange for our possibly being sacrificed. I personally think war is the enemy and humanity better unlearn war. It’s going to finish us. So I don’t glorify wars, but it is something nations have done for a long time. It’s had militaries. And part of the deal is you potentially risk your life in exchange for benefits afterward. That’s the promise. And they’re taking that away and we got to hang together here. Even if we don’t politically agree to say hell no, we’re not going to let you do that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And can I just ask, as a veteran yourself as an organizer with Veterans for Peace, have we been fulfilling that promise to our veterans? And I guess that’s a two part question. How have we been treating our veterans in the aggregate before 2025 and what are these new attacks from the Trump administration doing to our veterans on top of that?

Ellen Barfield:

Yeah, thank you. Because that’s exactly right. The VA has essentially never been fully funded. It was already down about 60 or 70,000 staff around the country before Trump even got back into office. And now there’s threats of about 85 or 90,000 more cuts and they’re talking about, oh, we’ll keep the essentials doctors and nurses, excuse me, if the floor is a wash and trash and the toilet won’t flush and all of the staff is important, it’s not just the professionals. So give me a damn break.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Brian and I literally just interviewed multiple VA nurses to say like, look, when you cut our support staff, who do you think has to pick up the work us? Which we can’t tend to

Ellen Barfield:

Our patients take care of the patients, exactly. We got to have medical tests and we got to have clean bathrooms and all of that. I wear this shirt the same, our VA shirt when I go to the VA and talk to some of the staff. And some of them are very grateful to see it and some of them are kind of puzzled amazingly, this one guy who’s been doing the check-in for me, the blood pressure and whatnot before I see my endocrinologist have a thyroid condition. And this was before Trump got back in, but that’s exactly what I was talking to him about. The staff is way, way down across the nation. I’m sure y’all are tight here. And he said, yeah, as a matter of fact, you’re right, we are. So it was interesting that I was helping him understand, and you’re absolutely right, it was far from perfect for a long, long time, but it was a lot better than we’re looking at and being fearing right now. So yeah, it’s chipping away at something that was already far from the strength that needed to be.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I guess, I know there’s a broad question, but we got a lot of folks who listen to the show who are not veterans, right? They’re workers union and non-union. I’m sure they’re curious if you had to give a general sort of overview, how is this country treating its veterans?

Ellen Barfield:

Well, how is this country treating anybody who isn’t a massively wealthy person? And I have said for a long time that VA healthcare, if fully funded and staffed is the way everybody’s healthcare should be. Single payer, everybody in, nobody out. And sadly, the VA has never been everybody in. They don’t cover everybody and they really should. It depends on timing, depends on a lot of things as to whether they will take you or not. But a large chunk at least of veterans, but it is a single system where your records are all together, your care is all in one place. They understand the specifics of you being a veteran. And there are lots of other categories of people that need particular attention paid. Everybody should have single payer get rid of the 30% insurance premium that the civilian world pays for their healthcare.

Then we could afford to make sure everybody had primary care, everybody had preventive care. It wouldn’t be showing up at the emergency room at the last minute when you’re catastrophically sick and if they’re going to save you, they’re going to have to spend a lot of time and money, preventive, preliminary, that’s what everybody needs. The VA at least theoretically and to a large extent in fact is damn good. It’s a unified system where it’s all together and they take care of it all. It’s so much easier than having to ferry records across town because you have to go to a specialist who’s never seen you before. Everybody should have it. So yeah, the nation’s not being kind to veterans, but it’s not being kind to anybody that isn’t filthy rich.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Listen, truer words never spoken. And you mentioned something at the beginning of our interview here where you said there are a lot of conservative folks out here. There are folks more on the left, but this moment of crisis is bringing those folks together here as one crowd on the National Mall. Things are getting so bad that it is forcing a lot of folks to come together in common struggle. And I wanted to kind of end on that note from the veteran side of things. What possibilities, possi, do you think this moment presents and what do people need to do to seize on that moment and fight for our rights, fight for our future before they’re all gone?

Ellen Barfield:

Well, I have really avoided the thought that things have to bottom out to energize people, but it’s obviously happening sadly. People are terrified as they have reason to be here. And are we going to lose our Medicaid? Are we going to lose our healthcare? Are we going to lose our social security? And then what the hell are we going to do? Yeah, there is reason to be terrified and we have to unify across our differences and across our skin color and our religion and all those things that they are using. It is what imperialists fascists always do is to divide and conquer, to teach you that somebody who’s on the same level as you is threatening you. When that’s bullshit. Immigrants don’t threaten us. Black folks or white folks or brown folks don’t threaten each other. Pretty much all of us in the same boat now, there was a middle class, it’s pretty much gone.

So we don’t have any damn choice and it is pulling people together. I’m glad of that, but I’m horrified that it had to get so bad. But here we are, veterans for Peace is 40 years old this year. We’re fixing to have our first face-to-face conference in a while because of COVID and other things. We are small. We’re only about 3000. We got up about 10,000 in the earlier Iraq years, but we’re small, but we speak out about challenging all war and there’s got to be a better way that the imperialists of Europe and the US have got to figure out they need to be just part of the world like the rest of it. We got to, there’s struggle in the United Nations and other international forum to recognize that the climate is going to kill us if we don’t stop pumping crap into it. And we have to work together to solve that. And the ridge world owes the global south a huge amount of funds to help them take care of it. And we got to do it here too. And that’s totally the direction we’re not going right now. We can’t possibly, as human beings expect it continue if we don’t come together. And sadly, when it gets this bad, it kind of knocks people upside the head and they understand it a little better.

Lindsay Church:

Good afternoon. My name is Lindsay Church. I’m a Navy veteran, the executive director of Minority Veterans of America, and someone who still holds tightly to a belief that this nation is worth fighting for, not with weapons or wars, but with truth, with compassion, and with conviction that we all deserve to belong. We stand here today not just in protests but in protection one another of our shared future of the Soul of public service itself. Because what we are witnessing is not theoretical, it is not slow moving. It is here, it is deliberate, and it is already doing harm. Today marks the beginning of what history will remember as a purge of transgender service members, an unconscionable order from Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexes that puts thousands of service members across the country and around the world in the crosshairs of their own government. Troops who serve with integrity and distinction are being told that their presence is a problem, that their identities are incompatible with patriotism, that they must choose, walk away from the careers that they’ve built or stand and stay to be persecuted. This week I walked to the halls of Congress beside some of them. Brave, steady, remarkable people who are carrying the weight of betrayal was grace that shouldn’t be required of them. I watched as they told their stories calmly, powerfully, beautifully. And I watched members of Congress and their staff move from polite interest to a deeper knowing. Those weren’t statistics in front of them, they were patriots. And no matter what, some want to believe they belong.

But Secretary Hex says is not the only one making these decisions. At the Department of Veterans Affairs secretary Doug Collins has announced his goal to eliminate 83,000 jobs. Jobs failed by the very people who care for us. When the wars are over, people who process disability claims answer crisis lines, help veterans find housing and walk alongside us through recovery. Many of them veterans themselves, many of them survivors of the very systems now being dismantled. This isn’t reform, it’s abandonment, and it’s not isolated to VA today. The cuts, the job cuts are there, but they’re already spreading the workforces. Its social security, FEMA education, those pillars of community stability are already being slashed. Public servants across the country are being demoralized, discarded, and erased. Not because they failed in their duties, but because they dared to serve the people that those in power find inconvenient. This is not about cost saving, this is about consolidation of power, of control, of the very definition of who gets to be counted as an American. This week, the Navy quietly announced that it will rename the USS Harvey Milk.

A name meant to honor courage, authenticity, and sacrifice stripped from our national memory. Without ceremony, without justification and without shame, the Harvey Milk story is not one they can erase. And neither are the stories of Harriet Tubman or Medgar Evers or Ruth Bader Ginsburg or John Lewis. All namesakes of navy ships, these aren’t just names, they’re the scaffolding of American progress. They remind us who we’ve been and they point to us towards who we could become. When we erase them, we do not become stronger, we become smaller. And while these symbolic erasers continue, the real world harm accelerates. Just weeks ago, the VA rescinded protections that in turn, the transgender non-binary veterans like me could access medically necessary care. Care that is affirming care, that is evidence-based and care that saves lives. This isn’t about budget, it’s not about medicine, it’s about cruelty, cloaked in bureaucracy.

And while the spotlight is aimed at transgender people benefits for others, women, people of color, disabled veterans are being quietly dismantled in the shadows. Let me be clear, we are the canary in the coal mine. What they do to us in the headlines they will do to you in silence. I’ve stood besides veterans as we slept on the steps of the capitol to pass the Pact Act because our sick and dying friends deserved better. I’ve traveled to Ukraine with fellow veterans to stand with our allies in their fight for freedom. I’ve stood my life in the military and far beyond it answering the call to serve. Because to me, service isn’t defined by the uniform. It is defined by what we choose to protect, by who we choose to stand up for. Whether we leave behind a world that is more just more compassionate and more free. So I say this to secretaries, he Collins, and to every person who believes that they can quietly erase us from this country’s fabric. We are not going anywhere. We are your neighbors, your coworkers, your classmates, your family. We’re veterans, we’re public servants, we’re Americans, and we’re still here. We will not be erased. We’ll not be silenced, and we’ll not stop fighting, not just for ourselves, but for the America we know is still possible. Thank you.

Leilana Brandt:

So my name is Leilana Brandt. I am a veteran of the Army, national Guard, served from 1996 to 2002 in the 36 50th maintenance company in Colorado.

Eric Farmer:

My name is Eric Farmer. I served from 1999 to 2020 in the Navy. Did most of my time on submarines, also did a tour to Iraq and I come from Texas.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, thank you both so much for chatting with me. We are standing here on the National Mall to unite for veterans, unite for America rally. I was wondering if we could just hear a bit more about you all your time in the service and what the hell’s going on right now that is bringing so many folks out here to the mall?

Leilana Brandt:

Well, I am a transgender person and I also was in the military during Don’t ask, don’t tell last time. So I was completely closeted for my own safety, not just in the military, but in my life in general. And it took me a very long time to have the courage to do what some of the service members now are doing, which is being themselves while being in the military. And each and every one of us have taken an oath to the constitution just like every other service member and veteran. And I feel that them being stripped away from the military right now, not only losing their livelihoods but also their homes, their friends, they’re just being stripped from their lives completely just because of how they were born. And I think it is appalling and insulting to all of us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And can I just ask on that note, could you remind folks who maybe forgotten what the hell it was like in the Don’t ask Don’t Tell era? It felt like we made quite a bit of progress in a short amount of time and now we’re just yanking it right back.

Leilana Brandt:

While for anyone in the two s LGBTQI plus community, they were expected to not speak of it, to not have any hints of who they were. And so they basically had to hide themselves in order to serve. And there were many that were separated through no fault of their own, but because they were outed by other people. And then there were just folks that used that as an opportunity to shirk deployments and stuff like that by falsely claiming it. So it’s not anything that makes sense as far as readiness goes. And also Hertz enlistment because there are many folks in the queer community that want to serve or that need to serve because that is the best way for them to make a livelihood for themselves in a country that discriminates against them already. And the military has long been a place that started to be more diverse before the public sector was. And so I believe that that’s something, or sorry, before the private sector was. So I believe that that’s something that should continue, that it should be at the front of the pack as far as allowing everyone who wants to serve to do so.

Eric Farmer:

My time in the Navy, like I said, was mostly on submarines. When I first started out, it was strictly men, it was strictly men. When I first started out in the submarine community, it wasn’t until about 2006 that they started allowing females to serve on submarines and that was started out as officers. My last submarine that I was on that I did a deployment on was integrated with enlisted females as well. And they stepped up. They stepped up and did the job that all the other men said that they wouldn’t be able to do. And so I have a feeling that what’s about to happen is that they’re going to try to do away with females in the submarine community and it’s not going to make us ready. The jobs are being filled by females right now, and if you take all those females out, we’re not going to be capable of deploying our submarines.

Now what’s bringing out the veterans here is the fact that they are trying to take away the jobs of the veterans. They’re saying that that’s going to help the veteran community with the va. And I’m telling you that we’re about to find out that you can’t do more with less. I have had three to four phone calls where I’m trying to get community care on the phone so that way they can send something to the VA so I can get my work done. And they’re, they’re not picking up the phone. I’ve been on three or four phone calls where it’s been 30 plus minutes and no one’s picking up and it just cuts off and I have to call back. And so I’m waiting. I’m already waiting. And the cuts have just begun.

Maximillian Alvarez:

One, it really gives a grim meaning to that phrase, right? We are doing more with less, but it’s not what people think. You have more plane crashes around the country when you have fewer air traffic controllers. You have more wait times for veterans like yourselves when you have less healthcare staff at the va, right? That’s the kind of more we’re getting for less, which is nuts. But I wanted to ask you if you could both touch on that a bit more. Since your time in the service, what has your experience been like as veterans? How have we been doing as a country in caring for our veterans before the new Trump administration? And then we’ll talk about what the hell’s going on right now.

Leilana Brandt:

Well, I think that what I have seen, I never used the VA because I was never overseas, but my father was Lifetime and had multiple deployments and he has been someone who used the VA and he has always had complaints. He has always had complaints, and it is mostly about the understaffing. It’s not that there is waste happening as far as personnel goes, and that’s the place where they’re trying to make cuts is personnel. That’s the thing they need more of, not less. So if they need to find ways to make it more efficient, that’s great, but personnel is not the place to start with that.

Eric Farmer:

So when I first got out in 2020, I was scared about to go into the VA because I’ve heard all the horror stories. And for me, when I first got out, it was actually pretty good. Not very long wait time to get ahold of somebody. No wait time to get in. It wasn’t until recently that the wait times have become longer and longer and I’m not getting the care that I feel like I need. In fact, I go Wednesday to have a surgery on my shoulder from an injury from the Navy that I re-injured, but I’m not going through the va. I’m having to use my personal insurance. I’m going through TRICARE because the VA wants you to go through physical therapies before they do anything, and I have a tear in my labrum that needs to be fixed.

Maximillian Alvarez:

There’s been so much going on in the past three months alone, it’s hard to even know where to start. But like you said, the cuts to federal agencies across the board, including Veterans Affairs, and I just interviewed some of the nurses at VA hospitals, so they’re feeling it. Folks here in DC are feeling it on the administrative side. It’s going to take a while for us to really wrap our hands around the impact of all this. But I think one silver lining of the terrible moment we’re in is that it’s bringing so many folks out of complacency to gatherings like this. Even people who don’t normally agree on stuff, people who maybe aren’t down with L-G-B-T-Q rights, but who are saying, fuck it, we’re all getting destroyed right now. If we don’t start learning how to work together, we’re all going to fall like dominoes. So I wanted to kind of end on that note because things are obviously pretty grim right now, but what do you think it signifies that so many folks have come out to the mall, that there’s so many diverse groups of veterans, there’s union folks, non-union folks, older folks, younger folks. What message does that send and what do you think it’s going to take for us to really stand together as working people to fight this?

Leilana Brandt:

Well, I think that the military needs to continue to lead that way in diversity as it always has. Every person I ever served with, regardless of what their personal political views, religious views, anything like that, they didn’t give a shit what their buddy in the foxhole believed or where they came from or anything like that, as long as they had their six. And that’s something that we need to remember is that we need to have each other six. We need to be there for each other knowing that we all have a common goal and we have a common enemy, and that is anyone who is an enemy to the constitution that we took an oath to support and defend, and if any of us are under attack, then we all come together to fight that.

Eric Farmer:

I think the silver lining of having the diverse group to show up today is sending a message. It’s going to send a message that the oath that we took does not end, that it’s going to continue until we eradicate the fascism that is trying to implement our country. My grandfather fought in World War II against this, and never in my mind did I think that we would have to fight this, but taking it to the front lines today, to the front steps, to the front door of the capitol, as long as someone, even if they support a certain person, just listens to some facts from today, that might change their mind and go, you know what? I have that oath. I need to defend the constitution because I’ve asked people, well, what are you going to do whenever the constitution starts getting taken away? And they told me that they would fight, but they’re not here. They’re not protesting

Leilana Brandt:

Because they’d be here today if they

Eric Farmer:

Actually recognized it was already happening. They don’t go to any protests. They sit idly by and we can’t do that as veterans with the support of non-veterans. This is what it’s going to take. Non-veterans supporting the veterans, the veterans coming up and being the bonus army that this is about bonus Army of 2025.

Irma Westmoreland:

Well, good afternoon you guys. My name is Irma Westmoreland and I’m a registered nurse in Augusta, Georgia for the va. I’m also secretary treasurer for National Nurses United and chair of our VA division. While I’ve worked for the VA for 34 years as a nurse, some of my earliest memories are going to the VA in Augusta, Georgia to work with the veterans on bingo nights or dance parties. When I got older with my mother who spent 50 years as a VA volunteer, I know. Pretty cool, huh? Also, my husband is a retired SFC Army veteran of 21 years of service who has disabilities from its service. So the VA is deeply personal to me. Our servicemen and women were told, if you need us, we’ll be there for you. It’s a promise. Now, secretary Collins and the administration want to take that promise away and we’re not going to allow it. That’s why it deeply pains me to see these attacks on the va. When we have a contract for the VA care, the nurses and the doctors are going to be caring for these patients. When the administration says they won’t cuts, we say, no, we need to live up to what we told and promised our veterans. We told them that we would be there for them and we need to do that. They stood for you and me and I ask you now to stand for them. No cuts to the va.

Maybe some of you know someone or love someone ill from burn pit smoke or from Agent Orange or lost a limb from an IED exposure or died or suffered from PTSD, military sexual trauma or other chronic illnesses. We know the VA is the best place to get care for these ailments and more. The VA is the only healthcare system centered around the special needs of service members. 30% of our employees are veterans themselves, but it’s more than that. It’s also the only healthcare system in the country that’s fully integrated will help with veterans in poverty, with homelessness, offers, clothing, allowances, and much, much more. I’ve seen magic happen at the VA friendships form fast and it’s not unusual to see veterans helping veterans, whether it’s pushing a wheelchair or walking them down the hall to an office. These veterans share a deep sense of camaraderie and a sense of belonging. That goes a long way in making a person feel better and stronger. Now, if you ask, is the VA perfect? No, it’s not. I can’t tell you that it is, but let me tell you, we’re light years better than the private sector.

That’s why I will not stop fighting to see the VA improved and not destroyed. As you all know, secretary Collins is now looking to cut tens of thousands up to 80,000 jobs from the va eight. Yeah. These decisions are being made at the atmospheric level. The staff that do the work know best where things can be improved and streamlined. And I say ask them. He says, no mission critical positions will be cut. But let me tell you that all positions in the VA are mission critical. It’s important for every person to keep their job from the engineering staff to the housekeeper, to the dietary staff, secretarial staff, and many, many more. When cuts are made, who will be there to have to pick up the work that needs to be done? The nursing staff and the medical staff that are left when supply folks are cut. I heard that operations were being postponed so nurses could run, get clinical surprise. Let me explain that for you. In one place, a nurse had to go and to the warehouse in the VA to get supplies for surgery needed in the OR for a patient who was waiting. That’s not right. That’s right. But that veteran finally got their surgery. It was delayed, but it was done. But it was because the nurses stood for that veteran.

When housekeeping was cut, I heard delays in veterans getting into beds because there was no one to clean the rooms. This causes delays for our patients getting needed treatments started, and in some cases it may need to lead for a more elevated critical need of treatment. It’s common sense cutting 80,000 jobs will cause delays in veteran care. So we say absolutely no cuts. That’s right. We know. We know we are. What we’re witnessing is an effort to push the VA past its breaking point. The ultimate goal is to privatize the VA and pour billions of taxpayer dollars into giant healthcare corporations and the pockets of billionaires instead of the veterans who served our country.

Don’t sell us out because what they do, they know the VA and the federal government. It’s going to pay them on time every time. That’s why they want our care, but they don’t know our care. They don’t know how to provide our care. They don’t know that the VA does it better than anybody. The nurses and the doctors are specifically trained to do it. We’ve been training for years since the VA was incepted and while right now we are not going to go away for sale, we are not for sale. That’s exactly right. It is the nurses and the government workers who are standing up to block this privatization effort. It is because of our unwillingness to back down that nurses and other unions are filling the retribution that came down on March 27th with an executive order designed to strip us of our union rights. It is union busting and intimidation, plain and simple, but we’re fighting back national nurses united along with other federal workers, labor unions, and other veterans groups. We sued the administration over this outreach of executive power. This is not about us, it’s about our patients. We must have collective bargaining protections that allow us to advocate for our veterans and to speak up about issues in our facilities that cause us concerns for our patient safety. One example is we’ve had shortages of IV normal saline to mix medications. How stupid is that?

With that being said, you all understand the VA is not a contract. The union’s not a contract. The unions are nurses. We represent, the union says, and I say no cuts. Keep the VA strong so that we can care for every veteran. NNU knows that an injury to one is an injury to all. So we say when we fight, we win. When we fight, we win and we will prevail. The VA will stand strong for our veterans. Thank you.

Andrea Johnson:

My name is Andrea Johnson and I’m a registered nurse. I work with veterans in San Diego.

Justin Wooden:

And I’m Justin Wooden. I am a registered nurse in the ICU and I work in Tampa, Florida.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Andrea, Justin, thank you both so much for chatting with me today. We are of course standing out here on the National Mall at the Unite for Veterans, unite for America rally. You all with National Nurses United have shown up in full force because of course, these cuts that the administration is doing to the federal agencies across the board are impacting workers, including workers at the VA and across the board across the country. So I wanted to ask if you could just say a little more about who you guys are, the work that you do, and what it’s like to work where you work under the conditions we’re under right now.

Andrea Johnson:

So we’re a special breed, and I say that because we care for patients that are not typical patients. Veterans went overseas, they fought wars. They’ve done many things that affect them morally and mentally. And because of those actions and the things that they had to choose to do in wars, they come back broken. And that’s what is unique about the VA system and VA nurses and healthcare providers in general, is that we have that knowledge and experience to care for the veteran in their entirety, right? Outside public hospital systems don’t have that knowledge or experience working with veterans and the special, unique needs that they come back after serving their country with. So as BA nurses we’re there, we’re taking care of that whole veteran. We’re taking care of their medications, we’re taking care of their home life. We’re coordinating with social workers to make sure that they have all the resources that they need. It’s not just passing medications. We’re caring for that whole veteran. And I think that’s what’s special about being nurses

Justin Wooden:

And our veteran population that we care for is also different than the fact that I’ve worked private sector before and I’ve worked the va, the veterans, they’re not like the average person when it comes to their care. They want it straight, don’t beat around the bush. They want to know what’s going on, cut to the chase, just tell me what is going on. They don’t want sugarcoated. They want direct answers and we offer that.

Andrea Johnson:

That’s right. And I think the other thing that makes veterans unique is that they come from a system where they’ve been told what they can wear, how they can act, what they can say, what they can do. And soner, VA nurses and healthcare providers in general struggle sort of with this authority in a way where we educate and try to teach our veterans better ways to care for themselves.

But we have that sort of roadblock because they put up a wall, it feels like we’re telling them what to do, and that’s never what we are trying to do. So we always have to find unique ways with each veteran. Each veteran is unique in how they receive and retain information. So I think that’s what makes us unique too than outside hospitals, is that veterans are a very special population and taking away the care that the VA provides them is despicable. And like I said, no outside hospital system could take on the number of patients that the VA system cares for or the special needs that the veterans have.

Justin Wooden:

And veterans, they have a little camaraderie. If you’re in the army, you’re army strong. If you’re in the Marines, you’re strong. So every branch kind of has a little internal battle with each other, but when it comes to it, they’re all a brotherhood. They will stand behind each other. A lot of our veterans in Tampa where I go, they come to the VA hospital just to be around veterans. So it’s a community to them. It’s not just a place to get healthcare, but they go there because they feel the camaraderie, they feel the brotherhood. So while they have appointments, they come early just to talk with other veterans that they know from places or they just feel more secure. And a lot of military veterans don’t like to talk about their time and their service, but at the va, we encourage it, it therapeutic, it’s cathartic, and they feel free to tell stories there that they haven’t told their families.

I mean, we have patients who are towards the end of their life and they have all these things that they haven’t said that they finally want to say, and they feel comfortable with the nursing staff, with the doctors at the VA to have those conversations and tell the things that they were so afraid to talk about before. So I love working for the va. I think it’s a phenomenal thing and a wonderful place to work. But the current administration is causing a lot of rifts and making it a lot more difficult in a lot of ways.

Andrea Johnson:

These actions by the government are creating anxiety and fear for healthcare workers coming to the va. That’s not stopping us from coming to the va. We’re dedicated to our mission and we show up day in and day out to deliver that care despite what’s happening. But that’s why we’re here today, right? We’re fighting for what we know the vets earned and what they deserve.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Could you guys say a little more about what has been going on inside the VA over the past three months? I mean, how have these policies from the Trump administration affected you all in your day-to-day work? Right. I mean, there’s the current attack on the collective bargaining rights of federal employees, over a million federal employees, including nurses at National Nurses United work for the va, right? There’s like the voluntary resignations, staff cuts that are impacting agencies across the board in different ways. Could you just give listeners a little on the ground view of how has this been affecting you all and the work you do over the past few months?

Andrea Johnson:

Well, like I mentioned earlier, nurses, at least the nurses I’ve been speaking to in San Diego, and I’m hearing from my colleagues across other VA facilities as well, is that there’s a decrease in morale. People are feeling fearful and anxious coming to work because we don’t know what’s next. We don’t know if tomorrow when I go into work, I’m going to lose my job. So we’re dealing with those fears, but we’re still coming in, right? It’s not stopping us from coming in. It’s not making me want to quit my job and go find a job somewhere else. I know what I do at the VA is important, and I know that the veterans appreciate the care that they receive there. And I think the government and the people making these decisions need to actually come and spend some time with these people to better understand where they’re coming from, making these decisions without any of their, in my opinion, without any of the veterans in mind, any of the federal workers really, or the American people for that matter. But specifically for today, they’re making these decisions, not considering what the veterans want.

Justin Wooden:

So I work in the ICU at the bedside, and it affects me in ways because sometimes they send us to areas because they’re short staffed, that we are going to areas and covering areas that we’re not familiar with or used to working in these areas. And a lot of people are like, oh, well, you’re a nurse, you can work anywhere. Well, and I like to is like, would you go to a podiatrist to get your teeth done? They’re both doctors, but it’s similar. We have different specialties. And also as a leader in the union at my facility, I round the hospital and talk with all the nurses and all the units to see what their concerns are. And a lot of ’em come to me. They’re like, well, we’re told there’s no union. There is a union,

Andrea Johnson:

Andrea, Andrea. It’s really confusion.

Justin Wooden:

There’s a lot of animosity every day. You don’t know what’s going on. It’s just very tense. I guess that’s a good way to put it. But going around the hospital, a lot of the nurses that I work with are saying they feel that there’s more focus being put on numbers and metrics as opposed to the care of veterans or the staff. They’re putting numbers over the patients. And ever since I’ve been at the va, which is, I’ve always had a wonderful time, but recently it’s becoming very, like you said, very anxious. It becomes very nerve wracking like you’re walking on eggshells just because you don’t know what’s next.

Andrea Johnson:

Yeah. We just don’t have any clue. But I think, and Justin made a good point, that a lot of our nurses are concerned about the union because of these executive orders and attacks on union unions and the federal government in general. But as union leaders, we remind them that the contract our CBA, our contract is not the Union National Nurses United. Yes, we are the union. I’m not the union. It’s every single one of our nurses that are on the floor, right, collectively, so they can try to take us down, but they’re only going to succeed if we let them. And so I’m using that as sort of a motivator to keep my nurses motivated and encouraged to continue to fight the good.

Justin Wooden:

Because right now the current administration is, they’re doing union busting tactics. So being a federal government agency, they took away union dues being done through a direct deposit through your paycheck. So essentially we lost every member we had, and now we have to start from the ground up getting everyone to reset up. So essentially it’s like a grassroots project starting from the ground

Andrea Johnson:

Up. It’s very grassroots right now. Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can I just ask a blunt question? What does eliminating collective bargaining rights and changing the structure of how union dues are paid, how does that serve the American people? How is that? Are you creating efficiency or cutting waste?

Andrea Johnson:

It has absolutely nothing to do with government efficiency and cutting waste. If anything, especially federal agency unions provide protections to the employees that they represent to speak out about fraud, waste, and abuse. We provide that layer of protection for VA nurses to speak out about patient safety issues when there’s not enough staff or if we have broken equipment, our collective bargaining agreement provides, in a way, it’s a bubble. It sort of insulates us from retaliation from being targeted by management. So I think that’s the importance of our collective bargaining agreement.

Justin Wooden:

And I worked in private sector, so I can see. So in the private sector, say you’re an employee and you’ve done something. So I call you into the office, say, Hey Max, you did this. Can’t be doing that. Here’s a writeup, right? If you are opposed to that or don’t agree with it, that’s your opinion and you have no say in a union, you have a union backing, you have union rights. You can have a representative there to say, Hey, I don’t think this is right. And we can investigate it and say, Hey, I don’t think this is just what you’re doing. So we stand up for our members.

That’s just one scenario. We also ensure, like Andrea said, safe working additions. We make sure the veterans are safe, making sure that if they change any policies that, or any changes in working conditions that it’s safe for the staff or things like that. So there’s a lot of things the agency does to help protect workers, not just, it’s not saving money. I mean, yes, the union does fight for, we look at locality pay and we look at all the area hospitals, how much are they making? Why is our pay not equal or similar to the surrounding areas? We do those things as well. We also help our employees who have problems with hr. A lot of our time at my facility is spent because HR payroll hasn’t done what they’re supposed to do or bonuses weren’t given or a lot of unjust things are being done by HR because this is the federal government. It’s not just we don’t have our own HR department. We have to go through multiple steps to get things done. So we have a lot of resources that we use to get to the people so we can help our employees.

Andrea Johnson:

Yeah, yeah. Just to kind of last little thoughts on that, like I said, the collective bargaining agreement, and I hate to describe it this way, but it’s sort of an insurance policy for some people because like I said, there’s sometimes fear to speak out about safety issues and when something is being done incorrectly because of that fear of retaliation or being singled out and like I said, that collective bargaining agreement provides that protective layer. It makes people feel safe and comfortable to be able to speak out. And that’s why those are important. It holds management accountable. They can’t just decide to do whatever they want because if it’s written in a contract, they have to follow that

Justin Wooden:

Essentially having union is having a democracy. There’s due process and checks and balances in the private sector, it’s more authoritarian. This is what I say, do it

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well. And that’s always been my retort when I hear folks say they want government to be run a business. And I was like, well, as someone who interviews workers at businesses across the country, I can tell you you’re saying you want our government to be run like a dictatorship. How most businesses are run. I could talk to you guys for hours, but I know I got to let you go here, but I wanted to just pick up on something that you were saying both of y’all. But we’ve interviewed a lot of healthcare workers on this show over the years

And through those interviews from folks who work at private Catholic hospitals to public hospitals, university hospitals, certain common like horrifying trends have become apparent in terms of what’s going on in healthcare. The crisis that we have been facing with more work being piled onto fewer workers, patient care, the quality of patient care going down as patients are increasingly treated like commodities to come in, get their care and get kicked out. This whole sort of McDonald’s model of healthcare is something that I’ve heard described from different healthcare workers around the country. I wanted to ask how much the VA has sort of been going the same way or how things are different within the va. I guess maybe to end on that note, what do you all in the VA deal with on a day-to-day basis that is indicative not only of problems that need to be fixed at the va, but problems that we’re facing in our healthcare industry across the board right now?

Justin Wooden:

I can speak to that first.

Andrea Johnson:

I’m going to let you go ahead

Justin Wooden:

Because working in private sector

Before coming to the va, I’ve seen both sides. So I know everything is about billing. In private sector, it’s about getting money. Because they’re for profit, they need to make money. So every procedure that’s done has to be documented so they can bill for it to get money. At the va, it’s not like that at the va. So you were describing healthcare as like a fast food restaurant. So drive through, get what you need, and then at the VA we care about the veteran whole. So when they come in, we’re worried about discharge planning when they come in. So are there anything you need at home? Do you need shower bars? So we’re working on the discharge to make sure when they do leave, when it’s time for them to go, they have the appropriate things. Do they have problems with any meals? We’re going to get every resource.

Mental health, we schedule their appointments before they leave. Where in private sector, they don’t do that. So before you’re discharged from the va, any follow up appointments, we we make sure they’re scheduled before you walk out the door and we print out a calendar of here’s all your upcoming appointments so you know what you have to have done and all your medications are listed, all these things are there. We don’t want to set up for failure. We want them to know their health course, know what they need to do and follow up with those treatments. We have social workers who call after they leave to make sure, hey, it’s been a week since you’ve been home, is everything okay? So those are the things that I see the biggest difference. I think that’s the biggest strength the VA has. So for them to do cuts and try and eliminate that system, I think is the worst thing we can do.

Andrea Johnson:

And to sort of piggyback off of what Justin was saying is, I mean you made a good point, max. Our people are talking across the country about our healthcare system and how broken it is. And so taking 9 million veterans who receive care in a system, that one has significantly higher standards than any hospital outside of a federal agency. Were held to a higher standard when we screw up. That’s in the news. When local hospitals make a mistake that’s not in the news because they’re smaller, it’s more central. But the VA is a federal agency where across the entire country. So if the VA does make a mistake, it’s known. But what we do very well isn’t necessarily spoken about in the public as much, but the VA does a lot of things very well for our veterans

Justin Wooden:

And veterans choose to come to the VA

Andrea Johnson:

That outside hospital systems cannot, cannot do. And if we eliminate the va, if we try to continue to push veterans into the community with a system who already or that already cannot serve the citizens that they’re set out to serve and we add 9 million more people to that system, what’s going to happen? We’re going to have a very sick America that is unhealthy, that can’t happen

Justin Wooden:

Paying through the nose

Andrea Johnson:

And paying through the nose. And

Justin Wooden:

The PAC Act added 400,000 more veterans that can get care and then they want to cut 80,000 plus jobs. So who’s going to care for those veterans, those newly signed veterans? You’re offering more services for veterans, but now you have less people to provide those services.

Andrea Johnson:

Right. And we know studies show our experience and our knowledge knows that the more staff you have on hand to care for people, the better healthcare outcomes there are. And that’s just, you can’t make that up. It’s documented, very well documented. And we should be looking at not dismantling one healthcare system that serves 9 million people, but looking at the healthcare system as a whole on how we can make it better. Not taking one away and throwing it into this other one that’s already a disaster. We need to be looking at trying to make our outside hospital systems more like the VA as far as standards and things like that go. I think we’d be better off in America if more outside hospital systems followed in the va, which is why we need to keep the VA in place.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and just a final question on that note to everyone who’s out there listening right now, whether they’re in a union or not, whether they’re veterans or not, why should they care about this and what can they do to help? How can they stand in solidarity with you all at National Nurses United and what can they do to join this fight to save the va?

Andrea Johnson:

Okay. I think this fight, whether you’re Democrat or Republican, you are union or non-union. I think that this is an important issue because we’re dealing with our veterans. These are people who risk their lives, gave up time from their families, were injured, witnessed some atrocious things. And if we’re not supporting them and receiving healthcare, then there’s something wrong. And I think that we need to be focusing on making sure that the veterans continue to receive the care that they have earned and that they receive. And because this is just me, but what they’re doing to the veterans, this is just one step. They could easily turn that to people who are not in the union, to people who are not veterans, to just regular old Americans. And then what are we going to do when our already broken healthcare system is even worse? So I think that healthcare in general should be a human issue no matter what side of the aisle you fall on.

Justin Wooden:

And my point I always like to say is every one of us has family member. If your family member is sick and in the hospital and they hit their call bill because they need help, you want somebody to be there to respond with the way the current healthcare system is going. We’re being put spread more places, so it’s taking us longer to respond to those calls. We as humans, as you said, our job as nurses, we want to care for our patients. We don’t want do any harm to our patients. We want to be there. So we are just fighting and want people to know that we’re here fighting for your family members, for your loved ones and for our veterans because that’s our job. That’s our oath that we’ve taken as nurses. So we just want to be able to have the supplies, the tools and the resources we need to give the best care we can to our veterans and patients.

Cecil E. Roberts:

My name is not just Cecil Roberts, president of United Mine Workers of America. I used to be Sergeant Cecil e Roberts in Vietnam in 1 96, like infantry brigade.

When I first got to Vietnam, I want you to listen to this. Some people tell me I was never scared when I went over there. You’re looking at a guy that was scared to death.

I tell the truth, that’s the truth. I was scared when I first got here. It appeared that nobody liked me. These people with 15 months, 10 months, eight months counting the days, they looked at us new guys as like, that guy’s going to get me killed when they hurt my accent. Oh no. Another hill belly from West Virginia. That’s what they thought. They looked at me, these veterans, they said, how you going to act? I didn’t understand the question. How you going to act? I want you to remember that because I’m going to ask you how are we going to act moving forward from this place? That’s right.

And then bullets go right by your nose. They look at me and say, don’t mean nothing, man. I’m thinking bullshit and say something to me and I want you to think about that. You get immune to this and I saw so many wonderful people with kids at home, mom and dad’s at home, wives at home, and all kinds of friends at home. Not make it. When I first got there, somebody with 30 days got killed, had a daughter he never met. Somewhere in this United States of America, there’s a 57-year-old woman, had never met her father. Now, how many veterans we have here? By show of hands, you’re going to get a test right now. How many of you met a million there in Vietnam or where you are stationed? How many of you met a millionaire? There’s a good reason millionaires don’t defend a country. They take advantage of the country, and if there’s people listening to this live broadcast, you could be mad. Your feelings could be hurt and I don’t care.

The other thing I want to ask you, when you got back home, how many people patted you on the back, particularly if you was a Vietnam veteran? Didn’t happen. Didn’t happen. But I want to thank everybody, every veteran because we’ve been embraced for the last 20 years and that means so much to me. Thank God for you. It isn’t, isn’t enough to come here and rally. This is a great first step. Abraham Lincoln said, this is a country of the people by the people and for the people it has turned in to a country for the rich people who don’t care about the rest of us, I’m going to tell you what we should be planning on doing. We should demand that every person who worked for the federal government and lost their union rights be restored. Right now, I was in the army and I’m glad people recognized the service of people who were in the army, but we shouldn’t be having a parade.

We shouldn’t be having to parade until every veteran has the healthcare they deserve and we shouldn’t be having a tax plan send to the rich who don’t need money. Here’s another tax cut for you. Until every American who has a job, doesn’t have a job, has a job until every homeless person has a home, we should make, I’m going to close with something. First of all, I’m calling on Congress. I’m calling on everybody that’s elected. I’m calling on every American, how are you going to act? Because this is terrible what’s happening to this country, and that’s why we’re here today.

You do know, this is my last quote, okay? On map next to last, Dr. King was assassinated. One month before I left Vietnam and I watched these African-American soldiers so desperate, so frustrated, so hurt, pick up their rifles, pick up their M sixties, and went out into those rice patties and defended the United States. When the United States didn’t defend them, that was wrong. This one will really challenge you. Dr. King in the middle of the civil rights movement said this to those who were being bitten by dogs. He said, listen to this. If you don’t have something, not somebody, not your wife, not your daughter, got your mom, not your dad, something that you would die for, you don’t have a life worth living. Think about that.

This is the last one. It’s strange that I jumped from Dr. King to Mother Jones. My great grandmother and Mother Jones were friends, two great radicals, and I’m so proud of our heritage. You may not know this history, but when you leave here today, read it. How many of you heard La Lulo at Ludlow? The gun thugs came off the hill after taking the machine gun and firing into the tent calling all day long. Sometime in the middle of the day, they cut a 12-year-old boy In two later in the day, they murdered the leader of that tent colony, and then they set those tents on fire and burned 13 women and children alive. That happened. That’s part of our history. Mother Jones did not quit. She called for a rally in Trinidad about 15 miles from the Ludlow site. She looked out on a crowd probably twice this size, and she looked at them, take this W when you go home. She said, sure, you lost. Sure you lost. But they had bayonets and all you had was the Constitution of the United States of America. And then she posed. Lemme assure you, any confrontation between a bayonet and a constitution, the bayonet will win every time. But you must fight. You must Fight and win. You must fight and lose, but you must fight. What must you do? You must fight. You must fight. You must fight.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

“We have some heavy mapping to do today!” Francis announced, breaking into a toothy smile, her dark hair pulled back neatly into a bun. 

Most of St. Lucia, which sits at the southern end of an archipelago stretching from Trinidad and Tobago to the Bahamas, is poorly mapped. Aside from strips of sandy white beaches that hug the coastline, the island is draped with dense rainforest. A few green signs hang limp and faded from utility poles like an afterthought, identifying streets named during more than a century of dueling British and French colonial rule. One major road, Micoud Highway, runs like a vein from north to south, carting tourists from the airport to beachfront resorts. Little of this is accurately represented on Google Maps. Almost nobody uses, or has, a conventional address. Locals orient one another with landmarks: the red house on the hill, the cottage next to the church, the park across from Care Growell School.

Our van wound off Micoud Highway into an empty lot beneath the shade of a banana tree. A dog panted, belly up, under the hot November sun. The group had been recruited by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, or HOT, a nonprofit that uses an open-source data platform called OpenStreetMap to create a map of the world that resembles Google’s with one key exception: Anyone can edit it, making it a sort of Wikipedia for cartographers.

The organization has an ambitious goal: Map the world’s unmapped places to help relief workers reach people when the next hurricane, fire, or other crisis strikes. Since its founding in 2010, some 340,000 volunteers around the world have been remotely editing OpenStreetMap to better represent the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and other regions prone to natural disasters or humanitarian emergencies. In that time, they have mapped more than 2.1 million miles of roads and 156 million buildings. They use aerial imagery captured by drones, aircraft, or satellites to help trace unmarked roads, waterways, buildings, and critical infrastructure. Once this digital chart is more clearly defined, field-mapping expeditions like the one we were taking add the names of every road, house, church, or business represented by gray silhouettes on their paper maps. The effort fine-tunes the places that bigger players like Google Maps get wrong — or don’t get at all.

As we filed out of the bus, Christopher Williams, a consultant for the World Bank, stood waiting for us in a tangerine-colored polo, jeans, and gym shoes. He looked ready to trek through the Amazon, handing out bottles of water and clutching a stack of clipboards as everyone crowded around him. Each held a map, created with satellite images gleaned from Microsoft Bing, of the area we were about to walk. “OK, everyone,” Williams announced. He squinted at the document from behind square-framed glasses. “We just want to get a baseline of what is out there. What is the street layout, where are the houses, what are the types of businesses, what are their names? That’s pretty much it. Just map out what is there.” 

Gros Islet village is a largely residential community. It sits at the northwestern tip of St. Lucia, hugged by dense forests to the east and the Caribbean to the west. There is little to protect from storms that race across the ocean. The last time the government counted, in 2020, 981 people lived there. Fewer live there today. Those who can afford to move to areas with better infrastructure. 

“Where do we start?” Alaine Weeks asked as she examined her map, clutching a pen with 3-inch pink acrylic nails. Weeks, like the other women, were volunteers from the Youth Emergency Action Committee, which teaches young locals how to be first responders. The group has been at the forefront of these island expeditions, believing, as Francis explained to me, that its mission was to “do a good deed while having fun.”

“We’ll begin at the farthest point on the grid,” Williams told her, tracing his thumb over the perimeter of the map, where the sea met land. He divided the women into groups of three; each was assigned a section of the village. Soon, everyone splintered off in different directions. The charts they were supposed to complete covered about half a square mile of the village and a fraction of Gros Islet district, which is a little larger than Manhattan in New York City. Eventually, they hope to account for every foot of St. Lucia, which covers 238 square miles and includes more than a dozen peaks and ridges, broad valleys, and lush rainforest. 

They are running out of time. Rising sea levels, dangerously high temperatures, and coastal erosion threaten the very existence of St. Lucia and other Caribbean islands, which are warming rapidly and experiencing sea level rise at rates as much as 67 percent faster than the global average, leading to more extreme weather. The climate crisis will only deepen, but maybe, with a more complete picture of the country’s geography, its most adverse outcomes can still be mitigated.

The central challenge in drawing an accurate map of the world has plagued cartographers for centuries: The world is spherical and paper is flat. They’ve tried and failed to get around this problem since the second century, when Ptolemy drew the first intelligible representation of the world in Geographia. His handiwork showed a lattice of blue oceans and bulges of undefined land, with more than half the world as we now know it missing. Its lines of latitude and longitude gestured toward a working scale of the planet — an attempt to think of Earth’s magnitude beyond what the eye could see. It would take many centuries before the full expanse of terra incognita came to light. As navigators sailed ever farther from shore and, later, airplanes took to the sky, once unknown features came into view. The Space Age widened the lens further as satellites allowed humanity to view Earth from the heavens. Still, the puzzle that stymied cartographers for millennia remained, raising the question of whether it would ever be possible to create a map so accurate as to represent reality itself. 

Google was among the first to get around this. In 2001, a software startup called Keyhole developed an innovative approach to mapping. The California company combined a bunch of satellite and aerial images purchased from commercial suppliers, then chopped them up to create tiles a user could zoom in on. Rudimentary data from the two largest digital map providers at the time, TeleAtlas and NavTeq, helped with roads and addresses. The result was a truly interactive digital tool that allowed users to zoom, pan, and drag a 3D simulation of the world. Yet early iterations were flawed. The geospatial data they started with was not always of the best quality, and although Keyhole could provide a realistic sense of the Earth’s scale, users couldn’t always discern what they were zooming in on. “We had a very spotty Earth,” Brian McClendon, who co-founded Keyhole and was a Google vice president until 2015, told me. 

Google acquired Keyhole in 2004 and used the company’s satellite imagery to help create a nascent version of Google Earth — whose core technology was integrated into what would become Google Maps. The acquisition led to a bigger budget, and the new Google team purchased higher-quality aerial imagery to get around the coverage problem. The following year, Google Maps used the technology to launch its first digital, interactive map, with the goal of helping “People get from Point A to Point B.” Within a few years, Google was flying planes over as much of the world as possible — excluding places like North Korea or China that didn’t allow them in their airspace — to create a live digital image of the world we live in. 

This fundamentally changed the concept of mapping. “People had never seen satellite imagery before.” McClendon told me. “The most important thing that people got out of this was they could see their house, they could see how their space fit into the world. They could go to Iraq and see how the Iraqis were living.” The map data, however, was a disaster. While the app marked the first time anyone could see the entire planet, then zoom in on a particular city or town, the data that makes such a thing useful — the names of streets and roads and towns and buildings — was sparse and inaccurate. Entire towns were misidentified or even unidentified. Roads disappeared into an abyss. Earth could be seen from above, but not always from the ground up.

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One day in 2004, McClendon recalled how Google executives Marissa Mayer, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page were driving around Stanford University when Page took out a camcorder and started recording. “Why can’t we do this?” Page asked them. Three years later, Google bolted a panoramic camera to the hood of a van and sent it to five cities, capturing spherical images every 30 feet or so. It worked, but it was slow and expensive. That led to “ball and stick” cameras mounted on hundreds of cars. Google dispatched some 100 drivers to cover every possible inch of the country. Entire towns that hadn’t been mapped began to appear on a scale that made it seem almost as if users were standing inside the map itself. Google named the feature Street View and today has covered over 10 million miles of roads.

The problem with trying to create a life-size digital version of the world is that the world is not static. “Mapping everywhere all the time in 3D, even today, is impossible,” McClendon said. “You have to make choices about what data to get and where to fly.” Google’s choices mostly came down to two priorities: population density and revenue. It focused resources where it enjoyed the easiest access: North America and much of Western Europe. Photographing streets in places like China or North Korea was impossible. It didn’t focus on countries like South Sudan or Cambodia because there was little profit to be made there. Until it started using AI and machine learning, the company relied on contractors to do much of the grunt work — just covering North America was a task that, in its first iteration, took 18 months. Today, the map is updated every second — more than 100 million updates made each day.

One of Google’s competitors, OpenStreetMap, took a different approach. The company, founded six months before Google Maps and launched by a physics student in London named Steve Coast, started with a simple question: What if a map were free and open to all? And what if it could be a collaborative effort involving people all over the world? When OpenStreetMap launched in 2005, it enjoyed immediate popularity in Western countries with access to the technology required to fill in the map. 
Yet even as the modern, digitized representation of the world began coming together quickly, a fundamental cartographical inequity emerged. Street View provided excellent data in big cities and tourist destinations. OpenStreetMap was beloved by adventurers and hikers in Europe. But no one offered much data from developing nations or corners of the world that remained off the grid. But it was precisely in those kinds of places that the threat of disaster — intensified by  climate change— was most severe. Who would map the spaces that remained terra incognita? And how?

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ravaged Haiti, creating one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes to date. Rescue teams were ill-prepared. Maps of the country were imprecise, and with so many major landmarks destroyed, first responders had trouble orienting themselves even as aftershocks hit. By some estimates, a quarter of a million people died and at least four times that many were left homeless. Many of those displaced crowded into unsanitary, makeshift camps that led to a cholera epidemic, creating a crisis within the crisis. 

That same day, Mikel Maron, a freelance software engineer who’d been involved with OpenStreetMap, or OSM, from its start, helped assemble a team. In the five years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, he’d seen the humanitarian potential of OSM’s method — a way, as he put it to me, “to make a map that could be as dynamic as disasters are.” A friend who volunteered in New Orleans following the inundation noticed that the Red Cross was sending workers on a route where a bridge had been destroyed because it still existed on Google Maps, which was slow to incorporate updates. “At the time it was a really crazy idea to suggest that we use OpenStreetMap for disaster,” Maron told me. “OSM was a hacker project. We were still trying to figure out how to make it work — it wasn’t something you’d want to rely on in an emergency.” 

But by the time the earthquake struck Haiti, the technology had become much more user-friendly. Word spread quickly and within two weeks some 600 volunteers around the world were contributing to a map that grew intricately detailed, like a spider spooling out its web. The challenge shifted to getting it into the hands of aid workers. 

Ivan Gayton was in Port-au-Prince working for Doctors Without Borders when the cholera epidemic erupted. Gayton was overwhelmed. Clinics were flooded with desperate Haitians, their numbers multiplying faster than he could count. He’d never seen an epidemic of this scale before. His priority was to figure out how to stop the transmission. To do that, he needed to locate the source of the outbreak. It was standard to ask people who came into the clinic where they’d just come from, but he quickly realized that they lacked the tools and data to make use of any of the answers. When Gayton tried to pinpoint their responses on Google Maps, he drew a blank. Villages were improperly labeled, and aside from a few major highways, entire districts were a giant lacuna of pale yellow.

Then one day, a software engineer from Google brought a hard drive full of data generated by the nascent Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and introduced the mapping system to Gayton. “The trick to OSM was that it was wide open,” Gayton told me. “I could take the data and do what I wanted with it to get what I needed. That was demonstrably, evidence-based life saving.” 

The tool also was surprisingly accurate after months of contributions. It provided proper names of many villages, districts, makeshift shelters, and hospitals. Like the British physician John Snow who, in 1854, used addresses of cholera victims and a map of London to trace the outbreak to a single contaminated pump, Gayton used a similar method to pinpoint clusters of cases. To his great surprise, it worked, and his team identified several transmission hot spots, including in a neighborhood called Mariani, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. “To this day I maintain that if we’d had a proper map of Haiti from the start,” Gayton said, “we could’ve stopped cholera dead.”

Not long after HOT’s official launch in 2010, some of the worst natural disasters of the century struck. Earthquakes throughout Asia and the Middle East. A typhoon in the Philippines. Major flooding, then major drought, in India. Wildfires in the Amazon. Hurricane Maria in the Caribbean. HOT’s small team found themselves inundated with requests from aid workers who needed better maps of the disaster zones. “We were basically running on a crisis-by-crisis model,” Kate Chapman, one of the startup’s co-founders, told me.

In its early days, HOT had just three full-time employees and about 20 contractors working in Indonesia. By 2015, the small organization had grown to around 11,000 online volunteers. Yet with so many crises hitting, it was difficult to measure their progress — or predict where the next emergency would strike. HOT’s team started collaborating with humanitarian organizations to find a way to work together when a disaster hit. “The question became, Could you map ahead of time?” Chapman explained. “Then that question became, What if we mapped ahead of time?” 

Their projects grew more targeted, focusing not just on vulnerable and unmapped places, but on the specific issues facing communities in those places. In Tanzania in 2017, for example, HOT supported a local mapping group, Crowd2Map, to help young girls escape mandatory genital mutilation ceremonies. Its network of online cartographers identified buildings, roads, and villages in the Serengeti district where the illegal ceremonies often occurred. Over 277,000 buildings in the district were added to the map. According to The Guardian, the new map helped a legal aid worker locate a 16-year-old girl who was being held against her will in her home days before she was to be circumcised. 

But there were too many places in the world that were on the brink of extreme poverty, civil war, and migration crises, as well as prone to climate disasters. HOT’s team realized that while it could start remote mapping projects anywhere, completing them required being on the ground. They would have to narrow their focus. But that, too, proved impossible. There were too many places that were poorly charted — 94 countries, the organization estimated in 2019, and roughly a billion people. The only way to change that was if people in those countries showed a desire to do the work. HOT decided to open four regional hubs – informal offices in Kenya, the Philippines, Senegal, and Uruguay. One of its earliest priorities was getting a project up and running in the Caribbean — a region the United Nations’ secretary general called “ground zero for climate change.”

The sun had climbed high and grown unwaveringly intense as the women set off on their expedition of Gros Islet. From where I stood, studying Google Maps on my phone, I realized we were entering what felt like a modern version of terra incognita. Satellite imagery captured the basic contours of the village with all its streets and silhouettes of buildings, but few businesses or roads were labeled accurately. Alleyways and roads were missing. Buildings that lay in ruins still stood according to Google Maps.  

I followed my mapping group toward an empty road. A few chickens broke into a trot in front of us. I was already disoriented: Without street names or addresses, it was difficult to find our place on the map. We reached an intersection where a grand stucco church with gilded windows stood before us. A few women in the group already knew it as St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, which they used as a landmark to orient us on the map. Then, Weeks spotted a green street sign, likely leftover from a century of British and French colonial rule, its white lettering all but faded by the sun. It wasn’t until we were a few feet away that we could make out the faint word “Marina.” Weeks pinpointed the narrow lane on the map on her clipboard and labeled it. We took a left, down a street named Church, toward the shoreline. 

Weeks was 24 when she discovered HOT’s cartography through a charity at her church. In 2021, she joined a field-mapping trip in St. Lucia’s southernmost city, Vieux Fort. With a small group, Weeks went door-to-door to record houses, street names, and businesses. Afterward, everyone went to a school computer lab to add their findings to OpenStreetMap. When Weeks pulled up the map of St. Lucia, she was stunned. She’d used Google Maps before, mostly to check traffic patterns, but had never seen her island from above. She spent hours correcting mistakes. Weeks was hooked. “It’s so addictive!” she told me as we stood at an abandoned bar near the water, surveying where we were. In the past two weeks alone, she’d made 5,584 edits, clicking away online, filling in the contours of buildings as seen from above.

We rounded another corner, passing a row of single-story wood homes, each no larger than a few hundred square feet. The stillness of the village felt deafening. We passed many abandoned houses and empty lots, which the women labeled “R” for ruins on their maps. But many places were still very alive, painted bubble-gum pink and lime green, azure blue and canary yellow. On the side of one bar, someone had painted a mural of a man gazing through binoculars with the words “Stay curious.” Near the shore, Weeks stopped in the middle of the road, furrowing her brow at her clipboard as she tried to position herself. A woman in a fitted, tan beach dress picking at a box of plantains and salted fish looked up at her. “Are you lost?” she asked.

Weeks nodded. “We are just mapping out the village. Is this a bar?” she asked, pointing at a two-story building with shuttered windows and a sign that read “Whispering Lionz.” The woman clapped her hands together excitedly. “It’s my new bar!” she replied. “We’re opening in two weeks.” Weeks noted the name on her map, while the woman helped identify the rest of the bars lining the street. She’d never used a map to orient herself in the neighborhood before. 

All was still and quiet, the Caribbean Sea gently lapping the shore of Rodney Bay, the November sun burning intensely down, casting shadows onto the road in front of us. Stray dogs napped in the underbrush of leafy banana trees. It hardly seemed like the sort of place where a perilous, life-threatening storm could strike with little warning. But that was exactly the point of the mapping project: being prepared for the inevitable disasters long before they hit. The ability to identify who lived where could help apportion resources to poorer areas like Gros Islet. In times of acute crisis, the goal was for rescue teams to use the map to find people.

Like many residents of many island nations, St. Lucians live on the front lines of climate change. They are surrounded by turquoise waters that are slowly rising. Dense rainforest is prone to wildfires. Warming seas feed devastating hurricanes. Acidification threatens the marine habitat. Despite having some of the lowest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, small island nations are paying the highest price for the warming planet. “The problem is the governments of the developed countries, they still believe that there’s time or that this is not as serious as we make it out to be,” said Dr. James Fletcher, St. Lucia’s former minister of public service, sustainable development, energy, science, and technology. “I don’t think they appreciate just how much of a life-or-death threat it is for us. I think this whole question of mapping is a very important one: How do we use empirical data to determine which are the most vulnerable communities?”

In 2013, an unexpected storm struck St. Lucia on Christmas Eve — a time typically in the dry season. The “Christmas trough,” as locals now call it, shredded roads, destroyed houses, and flooded low-lying areas. Rescue workers found it nearly impossible to know where to go, or how to find people. Five people died. The disaster made the government and first responders realize that their Achilles heel lay in not being able to locate communities that were off the grid. “A lot of the communities might have an official route to reach them, and then when you go, it might be covered or doesn’t exist,” Marcia Haywood, the regional coordinator of Caritas Antilles, a  nongovernmental organization  focused on poverty and disaster relief, told me. “I want to see a map of St. Lucia that is a living, breathing document.”

After a few hours of exploration, my team reached an impasse: a busy highway leading into a dense forest. Weeks knew about a croissant stand at the corner — a business that didn’t appear on Google Maps but that she swore existed. We climbed a dusty hill and, sure enough, found a little wood lean-to with a red, white, and blue sign reading “Bonne Café Authentic French Bistro.” It was shuttered. None of the women knew how long it had been out of business or whether to include it on their maps. Williams decided it was time to turn around. Our team had covered about 0.05 square miles and labeled 15 businesses. “That’s a lot!” Williams told them encouragingly. The women seemed more dubious. We began making our way back to the van, where Proann Francis doled out fish sandwiches and brownies in white Styrofoam containers. Standing by the bus, I noticed a small sign reading “Centre for Adolescent Renewal and Education: the C.A.R.E. Grow Well School,” which Google had told me was in India. I logged onto OpenStreetMap on my phone to update the map. Someone had beaten me to it.

It is not until you get into the business of trying to map far-flung, disaster-prone areas that the question of what a map is becomes muddled. As HOT began expanding its mission in different parts of the world, from Zimbabwe to Dominica to Syria, the nuances of each place made creating a universal map ever more difficult. Roads, borders, buildings, and village names have a different meaning depending on whom you talked to. Once, during a project in an informal neighborhood in Dar es Salaam, a city on the Tanzanian coast that experiences regular flooding, HOT’s team was collecting data on historical inundations. They noticed that the information varied wildly, with households next door to each other reporting large variations in flood height. The next day, rather than asking people to estimate the water’s depth, they asked people to indicate where on their bodies the water had reached: their ankles, feet, knees, or hips. The findings were much more consistent. “From a traditional cartographic angle, you think that’s not good data,” Rebecca Firth, HOT’s executive director, told me. “But that’s the language people talk in. And that is actually extremely important data.”

For many people in developing countries whose villages or neighborhoods are poorly mapped, the very idea of a Western, Cartesian map can be antithetical to how they navigate the world. “When you take data out there in the world and reduce it to a line on a map, you are making an inherent argument about that place,” Robert Soden, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto and co-founder of HOT, told me. “And it tends to be people who are more powerful who make these datasets.” The OpenStreetMap model, in theory, is intended to hand that power to anyone who wants it.

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Just as Wikipedia relies on the honesty of its community to keep its pages up to date, HOT is at the mercy of its 339,000 or so volunteers. It is easy to make mistakes while editing OpenStreetMap. Although the software relies on a seasoned “editor” to “approve” edits before they are published, the sheer number of revisions outweighs the expertise. An even greater challenge lies in the fact that users’ intentions are sometimes nefarious. As Sam Colchester, who leads disaster response for HOT, explained to me, “online vandalism” is a challenge. Malicious users might mislabel or even eliminate things. “It often happens in conflict areas,” Colchester told me. “Russians were deleting data in Ukraine, or renaming all the streets in western Ukraine to Russian names.” While HOT’s volunteers keep watch for such things, he said, they are often difficult to catch quickly.

The best way to ensure a map’s accuracy is to chart the place in person. But HOT’s limited resources make it impossible to launch expeditions in the 94 counties it has identified as most needing to be chronicled. Building the community needed to keep that document current is even harder. Sodden discovered that as he visited Haiti several times in 2010 and 2011, training locals on how to do just that. Eventually, the funding fell through, and it became difficult to keep the project going. “I don’t think we were successful in creating any sort of long-term map in Haiti,” he told me. “I think it’s safe to say we didn’t build a robust and self-sustaining community of mappers there.”

In the week I spent in St. Lucia, I found myself wondering what it would take to keep any map alive. How could HOT build a self-sustaining community of mappers to continuously update the ever-changing world we live in? No one who participated in the effort to document Gros Islet had returned to finish the project. Other, more pressing projects lay ahead, like Bexon, which sits between two rivers, in a basin in the middle of the island, just barely above sea level. When heavy rains come, the highway floods and the residents are cut off like a severed artery.

One day, HOT’s regional coordinator, Louise Mathurin-Serieux, picked me up in her SUV to take me to Bexon. She wanted to survey the work of a field-mapping trip taken a year ago. It had proven more challenging than Gros Islet: The small community of a few hundred people lay off a major highway that had seen frequent fatal accidents, and the rainforests teemed with venomous snakes. Houses sat in clusters and it could take 10 minutes to walk from one neighborhood to the next.

“This is the flood zone,” Mathurin-Serieux explained to me ominously, parking at the side of the road just after we crossed a yellow bridge spanning a trickle of water. When the rain is heavy, flash floods wash over the bridge, effectively cutting off everyone in Bexon. “Water!” Francis, who’d joined our trip along with Weeks, chimed in. “Water is our biggest problem!” 

We stood before a handful of dilapidated houses built on stilts. Water coursing over the land during a flood last year had left its mark on many of them. One had been destroyed and lay in a pile of kindling. The government tried to get people to move to higher ground, but few wanted to budge. “A hurricane is like childbirth,” Francis explained. “You forget how bad the pain gets.”

As I walked around the houses, I met an older woman named Olive, who sat watching us curiously from her front porch. She’d grown up in the same house; it was passed down to her from her grandparents. Leaving was out of the question. But she was getting increasingly worried about the changing weather. She kept a card near her front door that the government had provided that reads “Flood Warning Messages.” It was part of a system devised for locals, color-coded to rate the severity of an incoming storm. Red indicated serious flooding, orange meant inundation was expected anytime, yellow meant it is possible, be prepared. When a storm was coming, residents were instructed to run down the road to compare their cards to a sign that would indicate the severity of an incoming storm. The card was, for her, a personal map to navigate future storms. 

A life-threatening storm was hard to imagine as we stood surveying Bexon, under the bright sun, with not a cloud in the sky. But that was part of the irony of HOT’s work: The success of the projects would only truly be put to the test when a major disaster hit. Since its founding 15 years ago, HOT’s small troupe of online volunteers has mapped more than 2.1 million miles of roads and 156 million buildings. Despite that progress, it is hard not to feel like their mission is a game of whack-a-mole with impending crises. Nobody had seen the Gaza invasion coming, for example, or the outbreak of an impending civil war in Haiti. More often than not, the crises were coming faster than the mappers could complete their work. Mathurin-Serieux was not deterred by this. “When it comes to mapping, we are still in our infancy,” she told me as we climbed back into her vehicle. “But if we don’t have a thriving community, then we have an outdated map in five years.”

As our car left Bexon, ascending the large hill out of town — one that was prone to landslides that would further entrench the village during heavy rain –—Weeks pointed out two new houses that had gone up since the last flood. She pulled out her phone to add the structures to OpenStreetMap. In the stillness of the calm sun, it was hard to feel the gravity of adding two small wooden lean-to residences to the map of St. Lucia. But tomorrow, those could be two lives saved.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can a crowdsourced map of the world help save millions of people from climate disaster? on Jun 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maddy Crowell.

"This is what people have feared."

That was how American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick responded on social media Monday to reporting that a man impersonating a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent zip-tied a woman working as a cashier at a cash-only auto repair shop in Philadelphia and stole around $1,000 on Sunday afternoon.

The incident comes as Republican U.S. President Donald Trump tries to deliver on his campaign promise of mass deportations, sparking protests, including in Los Angeles, where Trump has deployed Marines and federalized the California National Guard—a move the state's Democratic governor and attorney general are challenging in court.

"Expect many, many more stories like this. The Trump administration is a criminal enterprise, emboldening street crimes and white collar crimes."

"He kept saying he is immigration officer," the 50-year-old cashier in Philadelphia, a legal U.S. resident who is from the Dominican Republic, told Fox 29's Steve Keeley. Showing the journalist her bruises, she said that the man tied her arms behind her back, and "every time I tried to turn around to look at his face, he twisted me around roughly."

Although the shop is next to the Philadelphia Police 15th District, it took over two hours before the victim could connect with law enforcement. Police said in a Tuesday statement that the man, who escaped in a white Ford cargo van with red dashes around the middle, remains at large.

Police released surveillance photos of the van and the man, described as a white male in a "black baseball cap with U.S. flag on the front, black sunglasses, black long sleeve shirt, wearing gloves, black tactical vest with 'Security Enforcement Agent,' and dark green cargo pants."

— (@)

In response to Keeley's social media posts about the robbery, journalist Ryan Grim said early Tuesday that "this type of crime is now possible because ICE agents insist on going around like masked thugs."

Author and Philadelphia native Robert A. Karl warned: "Expect many, many more stories like this. The Trump administration is a criminal enterprise, emboldening street crimes and white collar crimes."

The social media account of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota's Senate District 45 similarly said: "Any criminal can now put on a mask, say he is from ICE, and conduct any crime (including kidnapping and rape) and people are expected to just stand aside? Actual law enforcement DOES NOT conceal their identity and act like street thugs while doing their job. This must stop!"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Through his dehumanisation of Palestinians, his racist incitement and mindless conflation of “Israelis” and “Jews”, Morgan continues to add fuel to the fire of genocide.

I already had a very low opinion of Piers Morgan. But I was stunned by his display of racist ignorance last night while interviewing the Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who showed great fortitude and dignity throughout.

Outrageously Morgan berates Alnaouq, whose entire family in Gaza was wiped out by Israel early on in its genocide, for insisting that there is a distinction – recognised by Palestinians, if not Israel – between Israelis and Jews.

Alnaouq points out that Palestinians have a problem, not with Jews, but with Israelis for violently occupying and colonising their land for many decades, and for putting Palestinians in Gaza under a brutal 17-year siege that has now been transformed into campaign of starvation.

The exchange has to be heard to be believed, starting at 59 minutes and 50 seconds.

“How can you say you have no problem with the Jews, but you have a problem with the Israelis, given that most Israelis are Jewish?” Morgan asks incredulously.

Alnaouq: “I am simply astonished that you can’t make the difference between the Jews and the Israelis, Piers.”

Morgan: “I am astonished you would try to draw a distinction.”

Morgan then insists that Hamas is a “death cult” determined to kill all Israelis because they are Jews.

Alnaouq: “It’s dangerous when you make this [out to be] a religious war.”

Morgan: “It’s dangerous when you try to pretend that they’re not after killing Jews…

“You don’t think Hamas target Jews because they are Jews.”

Alnaouq: “Of course, not.”

Morgan: “It’s nonsense.”

Alnaouq: “I am surprised that you are saying this, Piers. Genuinely, I am surprised.”

Morgan (again incredulous): “You’re surprised that I think Hamas target Jewish people.”

Alnaouq: “Of course.”

Morgan: “I find that staggering, Ahmed. It’s obviously a ridiculous thing to say.”

Alnaouq: “Why?”

Morgan: “Because obviously they target and murder as many Jewish people as they can get their hands on. And you say it’s because they are Israelis, not Jewish.”

Alnaouq: “Because they are occupiers, because they occupied our country.”

Morgan: “And because they are Jewish.”

Alnaouq: “No. Because they occupied our country, and colonised our country. Because they came to our country and kicked us out in 1948 and they killed thousands of Palestinians, including my grandparents.”

Morgan: “But you know why Israel was set up after World War Two. Because Jewish people were the victims of an appalling Holocaust by Hitler and the Nazis where 6 million of them were exterminated purely for their ethnicity and for being Jewish. So the Jewish people were given the state of Israel.”

Alnaouq: “My country.”

Morgan: “I understand that argument, but it wasn’t ‘Israelis’ given that land. It was the Jewish people.”

Alnaouq: “Who are you to give the Jewish people my country?”

You can learn much from this exchange about why the western political and media class have been so comfortable watching Israel commit a genocide against the Palestinians.

Journalists like Morgan are so immersed in their own confected narrative bubble, they have so bought into the dehumanisation of Palestinians, that Israel’s brutal, illegal occupation, colonisation and apartheid system is invisible to them – and therefore any resistance from Palestinians to their oppression by Israel can only be understood as an attack on Jews, as evidence of antisemitism.

Illustrating the trap faced by Palestinians, Alnaouq’s very attempts to make a clear distinction between “Israelis” and “Jews” is turned against him – becoming evidence for Morgan of his antisemitism.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Morgan introduced Alnaouq by pointing out that the Palestinian journalist had written on X / Twitter last year, after his family in Gaza were killed: “I blame you, Piers Morgan, for their murder and the murder of all innocent people in Gaza.”

Morgan’s subsequent exchange with Alnaouq proved precisely his point. Through dehumanisation of Palestinians, through racist incitement, through mindless, antisemitic conflations of “Israeli” and “Jewish”, Morgan continues to add fuel to the fire, he continues to give succour to the genocide apologists 20 months into that genocide.

His sudden, extremely belated reversal over the past two weeks about whether Israel has “overstepped the rules of war” – conveniently coinciding with a similar reassessment in European capitals – should be welcomed. It may finally help to turn the tide on Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. But let us not forget that, had Morgan and others decided to turn that tide sooner, many thousands of Palestinian children might still be alive.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Issued on World Environment Day, UNIVAJA’s open letter calls for “more than promises” as Brazil prepares to host the COP30 climate change conference in Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, in November. “We demand protection for the guardians of the forest. We demand real, urgent and transformative action.”

Phillips and Pereira went missing during a reporting trip in the Indigenous territory of the Javari Valley, and their remains were found 10 days later, with gunshot wounds.

Read the full manifesto in Portuguese.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“My grandparents right now are under occupation,” he says. “We can reach them once a month on the phone.”

Motorniuk and his family’s story is a common one in eastern Ukraine. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, the war has devastated both occupied and liberated regions. Over a million people on both sides have been killed or injured in the war, according to recent estimates. Whole towns have been flattened and infrastructure destroyed, leading to almost 6 million people displaced internally and 5.7 million refugees taking shelter in neighboring European countries. For those who remain, the psychological toll is mounting. 

“They shoot rockets really close to Zaporizhzhia,” Motorniuk said. “[Last August] they got the region with artillery shells, and they hit in the place where children were just hanging around and killed four children.”

The conflict has become highly politicized and volatile in recent months. The United States in April signed a deal with Ukraine to establish a joint investment fund for the country’s eventual reconstruction, in exchange for access to its wealth of critical minerals. At the same time, President Donald Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one time even questioning which country incited the conflagration, and U.S. attempts to advance a ceasefire have stalled. 

Now, just past the three-year mark, the conflict’s long-term costs are becoming more apparent, including the damage to the country’s natural resources. Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine  stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.

But not all rockets explode when they’re shot, and mines only go off when they’re tripped, meaning these impacts will linger long after conflict ceases.

This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.

The Serebryansky Forest serves as a strategic passing point for Russian forces and a key defense point for Ukrainian forces. To completely occupy the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russia has to pass through the forest. Holding the line here has allowed the Ukrainians to stop the Russian advance, but at a steep cost.

“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”

When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished. 

“You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.

Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.

These forests have also served as a physical refuge for people in Ukraine fleeing persecution or occupation. For generations, local populations sheltered among the trees to avoid conflict with neighboring invaders. This theme continues today, shielding Ukrainians fleeing cities demolished by Russian troops. Fires are threatening this shelter. 

Preventative measures like removing unexploded ordnance that could ignite or intensify fires are now unimaginably dangerous and significantly slower when set to the backdrop of explosions or gunfire, said Sergiy Zibtsev, a forestry scientist at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center. In a country as heavily covered in mines as Ukraine, this turns small embers into out-of-control blazes. 

Matsala added that forests under these war-ravaged conditions may not ever truly recover. Consistent shelling, explosions, and fires leave a graveyard of charred trees that barely resemble a woodland at all. Consistent fighting since February 2022 has left the Serebryansky Forest an alien landscape. 

“The local forest now looks like some charcoal piles without any leaves, and it’s just like the moon landscape with some black sticks,” Matsala said.

In liberated regions of Ukraine, the wildfire management strategy involves removing land mines one by one, a process known as demining. It’s a multistep system where trained professionals first survey a landscape, sometimes using drones, to identify regions where mines are likely to be found. They then sweep the landscape with metal detectors until the characteristic pattern of beeps confirms the presence of one. Next, they must disable and extract it. Even without the risk of accidentally triggering unexploded ordnance, demining in an active conflict zone is incredibly dangerous. Deminers elsewhere have been killed by enemy combatants before. And a misstep can cause an explosion that sparks a new fire, which can spread quickly in Ukraine’s war-denuded landscape. Demining is a “square meter by square meter” process that must be done meticulously, said Zibtsev. 

These challenges are what spurred Brian Milakovsky and Brian Roth, two professional foresters with Eastern European connections, to found Forest Release in 2023. 

The U.S.-based nonprofit helps coordinate and disseminate monitoring research in Ukraine’s forests. Using satellite products that take into account vegetation greenness, Milakovsky, Roth, and their collaborators can identify particular forests in Ukraine that might be under the most stress from fires. Forest Release can then send this information to local firefighters or forest managers in Ukraine so they can tend to those forests first. It also collects firefighting safety equipment from the U.S. to donate to firefighters in Ukraine. Both of these activities allow Forest Release and its Ukrainian counterpart, the Ukrainian Forest Safety Center, to train foresters to fight fires and get certified as deminers. 

To make drone-based mine detection more effective and safe, two other American researchers launched an AI-powered mine-detection service in 2020 that’s being used in Ukraine: Jasper Baur, a remote sensing researcher, and Gabriel Steinberg, a computer scientist, founded SafePro AI to tap artificial intelligence to more autonomously and efficiently detect land mines in current and former warzones. 

“I started researching high-tech land mines in 2016 in university,” Baur said. “I was trying to research how we can detect these things that are a known hazard, especially for civilians and children.”

Surface land mines, as Baur explained, can seem particularly innocuous, which makes them even more dangerous. “They look like toys,” he said. He and Steinberg worked to turn their research project into a tangible application that would help deminers globally. 

SafePro AI is trained on images of both inactive and active unexploded ordnance — everything from land mines to grenades. The model works by differentiating an ordnance from its surroundings, giving deminers an exact location of where a land mine is. When not being trained on images from Ukraine, it learns from images sourced elsewhere that Baur tries to ensure are as close to reality as possible.

“A lot of our initial training data was in Oklahoma, and I’ve been collecting a lot in farmlands in New York,” he said. “I walk out with bins of inert land mines, and I scatter them in farm fields and then I try to make [the conditions] as similar to Ukraine as possible.”

Because a lot of land mines are in fields adjacent to Ukrainian forests, focusing removal efforts at the perimeter can stop fires before they spread. SafePro AI has team members in the U.S., United Kingdom, and also in Ukraine. In fact, Motorniuk, from the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine who also works for SafePro AI as a developer, said that his work has shown him that he can make a difference without picking up a gun. SafePro AI has received funding from the United Nations Development Programme to deploy the technology in Ukraine through humanitarian land mine action organizations. So far, the company has surveyed over 15,000 acres of land, detecting over 26,000 unexploded ordnance.

Much of the protection of Ukraine’s forests in and around the war is predicated on information. Can land mines be located? Can wildfires be slowed or stopped? In a geospatially data-poor country like Ukraine, Matsala highlights that this kind of work, and the creation of robust datasets, is necessary to ensure the survival of Ukraine’s natural ecosystems. It also offers a chance to rethink the country’s forestry in the long-term. 

“This is a huge opportunity to change some of our … practices to make the forests more resilient to climate change, to these large landscape fires, and just [healthier],” Roth, of Forest Release, said.

Roth agrees with Matsala that Ukraine’s stands of non-native, highly flammable pine trees pose a prolonged threat to the country’s forests — particularly as climate change increases drought and heat wave risk throughout Europe. In Roth’s opinion, losing some of these forests to wildfires during the war will actually allow Ukrainian foresters to plant less flammable, native tree species in their place. 

The scientific and humanitarian collaboration unfolding to protect Ukraine’s forests amid war may also provide a record that would allow the country to claim legal damages for ecosystem destruction in the future. 

Matsala recalled what happened in the aftermath of the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Amid fighting, invading Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities, leading to widespread pollution throughout the region. Although Iraq was forced to pay out billions of dollars to Persian Gulf countries including Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia for both damages and remediation, the payments may not have covered the totality of the environmental impacts. Following the war, neighboring Iran requested millions of dollars in damages for a myriad of environmental impacts, including for acid rain caused by oil fires. The United Nations Compensation Commission ultimately found that Iran had “not provided the minimum technical information and documents necessary” to justify the claims for damages from the acid rain. Matsala worries that without extensive data and reporting on the war with Russia, future Ukrainian claims for environmental reparations might go nowhere. 

Whether that tribunal comes to fruition, or the forests are properly rehabilitated, remains to be seen. But the work continues. And with hostilities still happening, and no clear end, it will continue to be dangerous.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How 3 years of war have ravaged Ukraine’s forests, and the people who depend on them on Jun 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Chad Small.

“My grandparents right now are under occupation,” he says. “We can reach them once a month on the phone.”

Motorniuk and his family’s story is a common one in eastern Ukraine. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, the war has devastated both occupied and liberated regions. Over a million people on both sides have been killed or injured in the war, according to recent estimates. Whole towns have been flattened and infrastructure destroyed, leading to almost 6 million people displaced internally and 5.7 million refugees taking shelter in neighboring European countries. For those who remain, the psychological toll is mounting. 

“They shoot rockets really close to Zaporizhzhia,” Motorniuk said. “[Last August] they got the region with artillery shells, and they hit in the place where children were just hanging around and killed four children.”

The conflict has become highly politicized and volatile in recent months. The United States in April signed a deal with Ukraine to establish a joint investment fund for the country’s eventual reconstruction, in exchange for access to its wealth of critical minerals. At the same time, President Donald Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one time even questioning which country incited the conflagration, and U.S. attempts to advance a ceasefire have stalled. 

Now, just past the three-year mark, the conflict’s long-term costs are becoming more apparent, including the damage to the country’s natural resources. Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine  stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.

But not all rockets explode when they’re shot, and mines only go off when they’re tripped, meaning these impacts will linger long after conflict ceases.

This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.

The Serebryansky Forest serves as a strategic passing point for Russian forces and a key defense point for Ukrainian forces. To completely occupy the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russia has to pass through the forest. Holding the line here has allowed the Ukrainians to stop the Russian advance, but at a steep cost.

“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”

When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished. 

“You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.

Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.

These forests have also served as a physical refuge for people in Ukraine fleeing persecution or occupation. For generations, local populations sheltered among the trees to avoid conflict with neighboring invaders. This theme continues today, shielding Ukrainians fleeing cities demolished by Russian troops. Fires are threatening this shelter. 

Preventative measures like removing unexploded ordnance that could ignite or intensify fires are now unimaginably dangerous and significantly slower when set to the backdrop of explosions or gunfire, said Sergiy Zibtsev, a forestry scientist at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center. In a country as heavily covered in mines as Ukraine, this turns small embers into out-of-control blazes. 

Matsala added that forests under these war-ravaged conditions may not ever truly recover. Consistent shelling, explosions, and fires leave a graveyard of charred trees that barely resemble a woodland at all. Consistent fighting since February 2022 has left the Serebryansky Forest an alien landscape. 

“The local forest now looks like some charcoal piles without any leaves, and it’s just like the moon landscape with some black sticks,” Matsala said.

In liberated regions of Ukraine, the wildfire management strategy involves removing land mines one by one, a process known as demining. It’s a multistep system where trained professionals first survey a landscape, sometimes using drones, to identify regions where mines are likely to be found. They then sweep the landscape with metal detectors until the characteristic pattern of beeps confirms the presence of one. Next, they must disable and extract it. Even without the risk of accidentally triggering unexploded ordnance, demining in an active conflict zone is incredibly dangerous. Deminers elsewhere have been killed by enemy combatants before. And a misstep can cause an explosion that sparks a new fire, which can spread quickly in Ukraine’s war-denuded landscape. Demining is a “square meter by square meter” process that must be done meticulously, said Zibtsev. 

These challenges are what spurred Brian Milakovsky and Brian Roth, two professional foresters with Eastern European connections, to found Forest Release in 2023. 

The U.S.-based nonprofit helps coordinate and disseminate monitoring research in Ukraine’s forests. Using satellite products that take into account vegetation greenness, Milakovsky, Roth, and their collaborators can identify particular forests in Ukraine that might be under the most stress from fires. Forest Release can then send this information to local firefighters or forest managers in Ukraine so they can tend to those forests first. It also collects firefighting safety equipment from the U.S. to donate to firefighters in Ukraine. Both of these activities allow Forest Release and its Ukrainian counterpart, the Ukrainian Forest Safety Center, to train foresters to fight fires and get certified as deminers. 

To make drone-based mine detection more effective and safe, two other American researchers launched an AI-powered mine-detection service in 2020 that’s being used in Ukraine: Jasper Baur, a remote sensing researcher, and Gabriel Steinberg, a computer scientist, founded SafePro AI to tap artificial intelligence to more autonomously and efficiently detect land mines in current and former warzones. 

“I started researching high-tech land mines in 2016 in university,” Baur said. “I was trying to research how we can detect these things that are a known hazard, especially for civilians and children.”

Surface land mines, as Baur explained, can seem particularly innocuous, which makes them even more dangerous. “They look like toys,” he said. He and Steinberg worked to turn their research project into a tangible application that would help deminers globally. 

SafePro AI is trained on images of both inactive and active unexploded ordnance — everything from land mines to grenades. The model works by differentiating an ordnance from its surroundings, giving deminers an exact location of where a land mine is. When not being trained on images from Ukraine, it learns from images sourced elsewhere that Baur tries to ensure are as close to reality as possible.

“A lot of our initial training data was in Oklahoma, and I’ve been collecting a lot in farmlands in New York,” he said. “I walk out with bins of inert land mines, and I scatter them in farm fields and then I try to make [the conditions] as similar to Ukraine as possible.”

Because a lot of land mines are in fields adjacent to Ukrainian forests, focusing removal efforts at the perimeter can stop fires before they spread. SafePro AI has team members in the U.S., United Kingdom, and also in Ukraine. In fact, Motorniuk, from the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine who also works for SafePro AI as a developer, said that his work has shown him that he can make a difference without picking up a gun. SafePro AI has received funding from the United Nations Development Programme to deploy the technology in Ukraine through humanitarian land mine action organizations. So far, the company has surveyed over 15,000 acres of land, detecting over 26,000 unexploded ordnance.

Much of the protection of Ukraine’s forests in and around the war is predicated on information. Can land mines be located? Can wildfires be slowed or stopped? In a geospatially data-poor country like Ukraine, Matsala highlights that this kind of work, and the creation of robust datasets, is necessary to ensure the survival of Ukraine’s natural ecosystems. It also offers a chance to rethink the country’s forestry in the long-term. 

“This is a huge opportunity to change some of our … practices to make the forests more resilient to climate change, to these large landscape fires, and just [healthier],” Roth, of Forest Release, said.

Roth agrees with Matsala that Ukraine’s stands of non-native, highly flammable pine trees pose a prolonged threat to the country’s forests — particularly as climate change increases drought and heat wave risk throughout Europe. In Roth’s opinion, losing some of these forests to wildfires during the war will actually allow Ukrainian foresters to plant less flammable, native tree species in their place. 

The scientific and humanitarian collaboration unfolding to protect Ukraine’s forests amid war may also provide a record that would allow the country to claim legal damages for ecosystem destruction in the future. 

Matsala recalled what happened in the aftermath of the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Amid fighting, invading Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities, leading to widespread pollution throughout the region. Although Iraq was forced to pay out billions of dollars to Persian Gulf countries including Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia for both damages and remediation, the payments may not have covered the totality of the environmental impacts. Following the war, neighboring Iran requested millions of dollars in damages for a myriad of environmental impacts, including for acid rain caused by oil fires. The United Nations Compensation Commission ultimately found that Iran had “not provided the minimum technical information and documents necessary” to justify the claims for damages from the acid rain. Matsala worries that without extensive data and reporting on the war with Russia, future Ukrainian claims for environmental reparations might go nowhere. 

Whether that tribunal comes to fruition, or the forests are properly rehabilitated, remains to be seen. But the work continues. And with hostilities still happening, and no clear end, it will continue to be dangerous.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How 3 years of war have ravaged Ukraine’s forests, and the people who depend on them on Jun 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Chad Small.

Already burdened by years of funding cuts and understaffing, registered nurses who work at Veterans Health Administration (VA) facilities across the country are facing a crisis as the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce take effect. In this episode of Working People, Maximillian Alvarez speaks with VA nurses and union representatives for National Nurses United about how these cuts, coupled with Trump’s attempt to strip over one million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, are hurting VA workers, the quality of care they’ve been trained to provide, and the veterans they serve.

Guests:

• Irma Westmoreland, a registered VA nurse in Augusta, Georgia, who currently serves as secretary-treasurer of National Nurses United and chair of the National Nurses United Organizing Committee/NNU-VA
• Sharda Fornnarino, a navy veteran who has worked as a VA nurse for 25 years, and who currently serves as the National Nurses United director of the Denver VA.

Additional links/info:

• National Nurses United website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• National Nurses United – Veterans Affairs website
• NNU Press Release: National Nurses United RNs join Unite for Veterans, Unite for America rally in Washington, DC
• NNU statement on executive order seeking to strip federal employees of their protected union rights
• Eric Umansky & Vernal Coleman, ProPublica, “Internal VA emails reveal how Trump cuts jeopardize veterans’ care, including to ‘life-saving cancer trials’”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “What’s really behind Trump’s war on federal unions?”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our on the ground reporting on the Trump administration’s attacks on the federal workforce and the people who depend on their services. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the second largest department in the United States government. Second only to the Department of Defense as Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman report at ProPublica, the VA has cut just a few thousand staffers this year, but the administration has said it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 through layoffs and voluntary buyouts within the coming months.

The agency, which is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States currently has nearly 500,000 employees, most of whom work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1200 clinics. Documents obtained by ProPublica show Doge officials working at the VA in March prepared an outline to transform the agency that focused on ways to consolidate operations and introduce artificial intelligence tools to handle benefit claims. One Doge document proposed closing 17 hospitals and perhaps a dozen more. Now, VA workers and veterans advocates have been sounding the alarm that these cuts and proposed restructurings could upend services that have already been burdened by years of underfunding and understaffing. And it’s not just the cuts. Workers employed by the VA have joined other unions ensuing the Trump administration over President Trump’s attempts to override the law through executive order and strip more than 1 million federal government employees of their collective bargaining rights.

In an April press release from National Nurses United NNU President Nancy Hagens said the VA nurses rely on collective bargaining to advocate for patient safety and ensure the best care for our veterans, most of whom are over 45 years old and many of whom have a disability. Without these bargaining rights, we risk retaliation for speaking up and holding our employers accountable. Our veterans deserve nurses who can fight for their care without fear. This latest move by the administration is a clear attempt to intimidate us for standing up against its efforts to dismantle and privatize the va, which studies have shown is a better place for veterans to receive care compared to the private sector, we will not be silenced by this bully behavior. And I just want to give a disclaimer up top here that our guests here are speaking as healthcare workers and member officers of National Nurses United.

They are not speaking on behalf of the VA or the federal government. I want to make that very clear. Now, Irma, Sharda, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show, especially amid all the chaos going on right now. I know this is a really hectic time, but our listeners are desperate to hear from y’all about what’s going on in the va. So I’m really, really grateful to y’all for making time for this and I want to kind of dig right in. And before we get to everything that’s been happening under the new administration, I wanted to ask if we could start by having y’all introduce yourselves, tell us more about you and the work that you do at the va, how you got into that work, and let’s give listeners a sense of what it’s been like working as a VA healthcare professional before 2025.

Irma Westmoreland:

Okay, well, I’ll go first. My name is Irma Westmoreland. I’m a registered nurse at the Charlie Norwood va and I’ve been here for 34 years. I started working at the VA because I wanted to work where I could give back to veterans. My mother was a volunteer at the VA for 50 years and one of my earliest memories was being taken into the VA to do bingo parties for our veterans or dance parties for the veterans. And we had to drag all of our friends with us because we needed ’em and it was a great time, but also because my husband is a veteran, many members of my family are veterans or were married to veterans or part of our family and we wanted to give back and support the va. I’ve been doing this, like I said, for 34 years and I wouldn’t do anything else.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Irma, could you just say a little more about what the on the ground work has been like for you? I know it’s a big question to cover 34 years, but just give us a little sense of the day-to-day work and how that work has changed over the time that you’ve been at the va.

Irma Westmoreland:

I’ve been working at the VA, like I said, for 34 years. My first job was an ICU nurse and I’ve been a manager for a while, IV team manager, med surg manager. And then my latest job and last job at the VA has been as an informatics nurse, which means I’ve been working with physicians and nurses and helping them to learn how to document with our computerized charting system, developing charting tools and assisting them in that way.

Sharda Fornnarino:

So I’ve been a nurse for about 25 years at the Denver va. I started off as an ICU nurse or say a med surg nurse and then eventually evolved into the ICU and it was truly amazing. I worked with some amazing, amazing nurses and then eventually I got injured on the job and then I had to transition from inpatient care to outpatient. And since then I’ve been doing what’s called a float coordinator. I’ve worked in different medical specialties. What that means is I go where there’s people needed. I worked in neurology assisting doctors with procedures. I’ve worked in neurosurgery and I’m currently working in dermatology, assisting with procedures and help running their clinics day to day and connecting the patients with the providers. I would tell you that before all the stuff that’s happening now, the VA was a great place. It’s still a great place to work and the amazing people that I work with, a lot of us are veterans.

That’s really one of the reasons why I started to work at the va. When I got out of nursing school, I was looking at trying to get a job like everybody else, but I really wanted to give back. I served in the military for active duty for four years and I served in the reserves for about eight years and I really connected with the veteran patient. We were always able to joke around, we’re always able to talk about our past service and it’s always heartwarming to, they always enjoy talking about the old times, I should say, where they serve. They enjoy that comradery. There’s something about being in the military, you connect with all these people in just a different level. So that’s one of the reasons that had me join the Veterans Administration and just to know that I work with some really wonderful people and half of them are veterans too. We joke around, we just have this unique bond.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Was there anything about your service that sort of led you to feel like healthcare was where you wanted to give back or was that kind of more of an accident?

Sharda Fornnarino:

Well, I was a Navy corpsman, which is basically like an LPN on the outside. And so I provided a lot of nursing care while I was in the military and I worked in the psychiatric unit where mental health overseas was definitely needed and the nurses I worked with there basically said to Meda, you should really go into nursing. You would do benefit, it’ll benefit you greatly benefit your patients. You really have a knack for connecting with the patients and so you should go into nursing. And so they were really influential. One of my captains was very influential in leading me toward nursing, so I felt that it was eventually a good fit.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Sharda Irma, I wanted to ask if we could just go a little bit deeper and reveal a bit more about the VA healthcare system itself. Because a lot of folks listening to this, especially if they’re not veterans or they don’t have veterans in their family, they don’t know a lot about what goes on in there or how the VA itself is different from the healthcare that say they get. So I wanted to just ask if we could help listeners understand a bit more what the VA healthcare system is, how it works across the country and who it serves.

Irma Westmoreland:

VA care is very special. The care that our veterans need is mostly care for injuries that they served while in combat or while in service. So when a person signs up for the military, we tell them, Hey, if you get hurt, we’re going to take care of you. But what I have found, my husband was in the military for 23 years, he’s retired from the Army, and it’s changed just dramatically over the years about the benefits that our veterans get. So we have shrunk those benefits. Unfortunately, we tell them, Hey, you get hurt. We’re going to take care of you forever. But some of those things have changed, but we do better in the VA more than anywhere else is that we do PTSD, which is mental health care, spinal cord injury care, military, sexual trauma care, care for rehab, rehabilitation people with prosthetics. We do that better than anybody, our care, the nurses and the doctors in the va.

We train every single year. We have to take a course in what kinds of injuries in the different kinds of theaters of war or actions would we expect our veteran to have. So patients from World War I or different from patients from World War II or different from patients that were the Korean War and the Vietnam War and in the skirmishes that follow. And so each year we do that. We train on what kinds of things are we going to look for, what kind of injuries your care in the VA has been researched because the kinds of injuries that our veterans get has changed over time based on the technologies. So now we get a lot more traumatic brain injury, what we call TBI injury. So we need a lot more different and people lose limbs more than and come back more from injuries because of the advances in healthcare.

So we have a lot of rehab care and that care has been researched and studied and it’s also been researched and studied and how we get that care in the va, provide that care in the va and then how it’s provided on the outside. It’s light years better in the VA because our veteran comes to a place where they are around fellow veterans and there is some support from that. But there’s also, we provide care for people who are homeless. We provide care for people who again are spinal cord injury or people who need supportive care versus nursing home care versus acute care. All throughout the va, we have around the clock veterans care for your whole life. So we call it holistic care.

Sharda Fornnarino:

I would tell you what’s unique about the VA Max is really just to reiterate what Ermo is saying, it does encompass from mental health to any kind of physical injury. So where you would have to go on the outside and go to different areas and go to different hospitals, I feel like it’s a little fragmented in that way. The VA does provide it all encompassing. It’s all usually in the same place. Like my particular va, we have a spinal cord injury center. We have A-P-T-S-D Ascend program, which is an inpatient intensive program, and we have everything. We take care of everything between heart surgeries to minor hernias. So you can see it runs the whole gamut of everything. And we also were affiliated with some nursing home, so the VA has some nursing homes with us. So everything that we’re doing is all together. It’s all in one. The system is completely connected, which is different from the outside. I don’t want to say it’s better or worse, it’s just different. Everything is all there. And so when you see a VA provider, they can see all those things and look in your records and everything is all there where they in one spot where they don’t have to research to find different things or

Irma Westmoreland:

Go to different providers and such. You see a primary care physician right on the outside. So if you see your primary care physician, if you need to see a specialist, you have to farm you out right to somebody else. And then you have to get those records sent back to you. If you go to a facility, if you’re a primary care physician. Now a lot of them are only outpatient. So at a hospital you have to go to a hospital and see a hospital. Intensivist. In our facility, in our facilities in the va, we are 100%, like she said, integrated in that your primary care facility also is your hospital facility also is your other outpatient and specialty facilities. And all of that’s together. Like at the Charlie Norwood VA where I work, we have the same things like she’s talking about, we have inpatient mental health units, we have outpatient mental health care, and we have nursing home care, we have blind rehab centers, spinal cord injury, and all of the acute care and in between.

So all in one place. And we of course we both, we are both in big cities and so we have metro facilities, but we also have clinics that are attached to our facility that are in the rural areas of Georgia. And we even have one into South Carolina from our facility. The same thing that’s going on in Denver. So it’s an integrated thing. And you also have one medical record, which is really key in that everything is integrated no matter where you see. So if my patient was seen in Denver last week and is on vacation in Augusta, Georgia and gets ill, we have the same medical record so we can look at everything that was related to him, anything that happened to him, if he left his medications at home, we can go in and give him a prescription, which we have a pharmacy that gives it out to them right there.

And so our ER doctor, if they come in, ill can see everything that’s happened to them. One of the biggest big things that you said earlier that I want people to really see is it’s the biggest largest integrated healthcare system in the country, and integrated is the key. We are integrated one medical record, one system of how do we do things? One set of care standards for spinal cord injury, one set of care standards for our primary care clinics. And so that’s what makes us so great. We are all doing the same thing. People will tell you, oh, it’s one VA is one va, but that’s not true. We are integrated 100% and that makes us even better than anywhere else. I wish we all had the same thing that the VA offers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I wanted to ask, in the spirit of walking us up to the current attacks, one of the things that folks in the civilian population have heard over the years about the VA is that it’s underfunded, that there are long wait times, like the typical fodder that you get when someone’s trying to privatize a government agency. Because I’ve been hearing the same stuff in industries across the country, and I’ve been interviewing workers in those industries dealing with chronic funding cuts over years, like education. How many public school teachers have I interviewed over the years who have said, yeah, we have class sizes that are too big and we can’t retain teachers because our funding keeps getting cut and they keep piling more work onto fewer teachers and the same thing’s going on in the railroads, the same things going on in retail. Right? I So I wanted to ask before we take a quick break here, you guys could just, if you had anything you wanted to respond to folks out there who are maybe just thinking about those stories. They don’t know the VA themselves, but they’ve heard that the VA is yet another government run agency isn’t adequate that it’s something wrong with the agency itself. Can you give us an on the ground view of what folks are not seeing when they’re hearing those kinds of stories?

Sharda Fornnarino:

I was just going to say yes, just like teachers. My husband is a teacher, and so we have the continued same woes of anything, any agency that’s funded by the government right now over the years, you’re correct. Our funding has been getting chipped away. And so really what we need, what people are saying, well, what’s wrong with the va? What’s wrong with the fact that we can’t keep getting the ultimate healthcare? We keep hearing about the issues that we’re having in the va. Well, we need the funding is ultimately what we need. We need to get a fully staffed va. We need to get all our funding, not getting leached out to the outside, but bringing back that funds back inside, invest in our va, invest in our staff, invest in our nurses, so that way we can give the best care and protect our veterans moving forward and provide the programs that we have so we’re not short staffed so we can give all the things that we say we want to give.

Irma Westmoreland:

One thing that can go with that is that I would like people to really look at what’s going on in the outside. If in the VA right now across the country, we have our primary care appointments, you can get a primary care appointment with your doctor in less than two weeks. We have same day appointments just like they do outside. They only have a few a day, just like outside. My husband is an army veteran. He was in an outside hospital because he got very sick and was taken there and he had to wait. If he didn’t see a different doctor and not his doctor he was assigned to for cardiology, he would’ve had to wait two and a half months for a cardiology appointment. And that’s on the outside, not as a veteran, but just as an outside person paying a private pain citizen in the va, we have the same kinds of things because we do have those staffing specialties, but we don’t have enough of them either.

So if you’re telling me I have got to send my patient outside, if he can’t get an appointment in 30 days, he’s got to go outside. That way you leach the funding away from the VA and send it to somebody outside because here’s what I’m saying, those doctors outside, they’re going to want to see the VA patient because the VA pays on time every time federal government on time, every time we’re going to pay you. So you’re going to your funds all the time. So those patients still have to wait, you go to send them outside. The appointment outside is longer than the appointment they had to wait for in the va. Correct. It’s ridiculous. Nobody is telling you that. I’m not saying that there aren’t some appointments that you can get faster. I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is many times what we are finding is that those specialty care appointments are just as long wait outside or longer than it is in the inside. And what we see is if you come back to the VA and be seen in the va, your care is faster, quicker, and better. And research has shown over and over that the morbidity and mortality rates and complication rates, death rates of our veterans are much less when we treat them in the VA than when they’re treated outside the va.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now, Sharda, Irma, we’ve sort of given listeners a bird’s eye view of the state of the VA leading up to 2025. Let’s talk about what the hell has been going on over the past few months, like the attacks from the Trump administration, both on federal agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also federal workers, many of whom we’ve interviewed on this show and at the Real News Network. There’s been so much happening in just the past few months alone. I wanted to ask if you could just sort of talk us through what the hell’s been going on in your world since the new Trump administration came in. What attacks have been affecting you all and your work directly?

Irma Westmoreland:

What I wanted to say about that is as I represent nurses from all of our VAs that we represent, I hear from across the country what’s going on. And what we have been seeing is that the first set of cuts that came forward was the terminating of probationary employees. And in general, none of those were nurses, registered nurses that I have been able to find. But what we have found is that the terminating of employees and cutting of employees has been all of the support staff kind of folks. So in a hospital where we work, every single person is important, whether it’s the groundskeeper to the housekeeper who cleans the beds and turns over our beds so that we can get them them back to us quickly and put a patient in, whether it’s the dietary staff bringing the food, the respiratory therapist doing Jet N treatments or the physical therapist, every single person is important.

The person who transports our patients or transports our labs down to the lab, all of those people are important. When you cut those people, when the Secretary Collins is saying to everybody that will listen to him and please hear exactly what he’s saying, he’s saying he’s not going to cut doctors and nurses that are front what he’s calling front facing staff. So that means people that are taking care of our patients on our med search units and our clinics and those sorts of things. So he’s not going to cut those people. But if you cut the secretary who’s answering the phone, who is going to answer the phone, it’s got to be the nurse. And when I am having to stop or my nurses are having to stop and answer the phone, when a patient needs something, they have to wait. And that is a problem for us as nurses.

We want to be able to spend our nursing time taking care of our patients, making relationships with them, assessing them so that when I come in to see you, max, if you’re my patient, I’ve had you for eight hours today. I’ve been in and out of your room multiple times. I’ve done my assessment with you, you and I, I’ve had you this my second day. I see you. I come in in a split second. I can tell you there’s something wrong with you. I know if you’re having a problem because I’ve been seeing you. I know I’ve watched you multiple times, I’ve spoken to you. I know in a split second there’s something wrong. We got to get something. What’s happening. I need to assess you. I need to reassess you what’s happening, and that’s what giving me my time to see you does. But also if you call me and you need pain medication, should you have to wait long for that because I’m having to go and take another patient down to radiology because I don’t have anybody to take care of radiology.

And then the nurses that are left on the floor that are taking care of patients got to pick my patients up too. So now instead of my five or six that I have, they’ve now got 10 or 11 or 12 patients they’re listening out for who can do that? Nobody can do that adequately. So what we need is to have adequate funding to fully fund the va. What’s happening with all these cuts and the proposed cuts is to starve the VA of not only dollars but to starve the VA of resources like staffing. When we’ve had these cuts, what people we’ve got freezes have a vacancy. Who’s going to want to come to the VA if they know now I’ve got firings coming, guess who goes first? The police senior who wants to come if they know who’s going to leave their solid job to come and work even in an ancillary job when they know those people are going to be fired first. So that starves us not only of dollars, funding dollars that ARD has been talking about, but also staffing dollars and resource dollars.

Sharda Fornnarino:

Max. I was I thinking about the question and a good analogy. What I can give you is really right now at RVA, we don’t have enough HR staff to even hire or go through the vetting process for an employee that does want to take the chance to come in and work with our veterans. So where a hiring process may take maybe three to four months for the va, it’s now taking longer. We just hired a PA dermatology. It took her 10 months to get onto the va and thank goodness she was dedicated and really wanted to come and work with our staff and our veterans. So she waited it out and was willing to come. But that tells you we can’t give that kind of timely care. We can’t fill these open positions fast enough in order to give that care to that patient. So that’s definitely a problem. And also Secretary Collins, as Irma alluded, they’re not cutting medical doctors, nurses, which thank goodness they’re not. But we don’t send in time of war. We don’t send just our frontline out to battle and then leave all their support people in the back and just behind and cut them out. We need all the support we can get to make the frontline snipers, whoever to be successful in the battle. So that’s how I feel. It’s like we’re going into battle without all our support, if that makes any sense.

Maximillian Alvarez:

No, it makes tons of sense. And I wanted to also impress upon listeners that there is no shortage of need for this healthcare, right? I mean, before COVID-19, the fastest growing sector in the workforce was home healthcare and elder care because we have a generation of folks who are aging out of the workforce who need elder care. These are also veterans of 20th century wars who are going to need that care. But we also have this influx of new veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are also needing that care. All the while the situation that y’all are describing sounds catastrophic, especially not only for retaining the existing healthcare staff that the VA has, but attracting new workers to join the va. It really does, I think kind of sound the alarm for us because I wanted to just ask if you could say a little more about that from the worker or perspective worker’s point of view, what exactly folks are signing up for if they’re signing up to work at the VA now, and what the hell we’re going to do when folks stop signing up because of all the things we’re talking about here?

Irma Westmoreland:

Well, what we’re going to get is exactly what they’re trying to get. Doge and all of the Trump administration, secretary Collins, they’re trying to the va, that’s what we’re going to get. So you keep taking the dollars and the resources away and then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Oh, the VA’s not doing their job. We need to streamline the care so we can streamline it. We need to cut 80,000 people so that we can streamline care, but it’s not going to affect that the care we give our veteran is the public stupid. No, they are not. All they need to do is listen to exactly what Secretary Collins says, we’re going to cut 80,000 people, but it’s not going to cut the direct care the patient gets. Let me tell you this. Or the veteran gets, you can’t cut 80,000 anything from any type of job or any type of anything and expect that they’re not to have any effect on the bottom line of a company or the bottom line of the amount of work that you get.

So people right now are afraid. So now we have chaos. They’re talking about, well, should I take a buyout if I can get a buyout because they’re not doing buyouts for a lot of nurses and doctors because guess what? We’re not going to cut them. So they’re not allowing buyouts to happen. They are allowing some early voluntary retirements or retirements, but then we’re going to have these cut staff. So we’re not allowing that to happen. So then people are thinking, am I going to be the person who’s going to be left? So then we have chaos, right? People are worried about their job, they’re afraid. People are scared about the va, scared about coming to work for the VA because what might happen with us, but what’s the bottom line is it’s again a self-fulfilling prophecy that we’re going to cut the VA to the point or cause such chaos that there is an issue and then we’re going to farm that out, right?

We’re going to privatize that, we’re going to farm that out. Then you farm more and more of it out with it goes the dollars to take care of it. When if you had just put those dollars back into the VA and reinvested in the va, we’d have it even better of a system than we have right now. But what will happen is that you get to a point where there’s a tipping point. It’s like a rollercoaster. You go up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, and when you get to a certain point, bam, you’re done. And so it becomes to a point when you tip the scale so far, it then goes over and what happens is they’re going to try to privatize the va, which would be the absolute worst possible thing that could happen for our veteran because our veterans need the care that we give because we over and over again provide the best care for our veteran in the care that they need and the systems that they need.

Sharda Fornnarino:

I can tell you max, that a lot of our veterans over and over will tell us they prefer waiting for the va. They want to be seen at the va. I have veterans every day that tell me they’d rather wait, and sometimes I have to encourage them to go to the outside to make sure they’re getting their care. But really this is why we’re here today is speaking up because of all this chaos that’s happening. We as union, we’re trying to make sure that we’re able to use our voice and say, look, you can’t scare us. We’re here. We’re here to stay. We are here to stand alongside with our veterans and give the best possible care that we can.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I apologize for kind of asking a question about something that you both have already touched on, but I really want to drive this point home for listeners. Could you just say a little more about what the cuts translate to on the ground? Irma, you were talking about the fact that when you don’t have an assistant to take your patient down to another ward to the hospital, you as the nurse got to do that, which means you are not tending to your patients. I want to just tug on that thread a bit more because on this show we talk to workers about their jobs, like the day-to-day reality of what they’re doing. And if we’re talking here about workers providing care and veterans and fellow workers or retired workers receiving care, could we just drive home a bit more like what the quality of care looks like when you are dealing with these impossible circumstances, not only from the recent cuts from the Trump administration, but decades of underfunding and understaffing?

Irma Westmoreland:

Absolutely. One of the things we’ve had is not just cuts in where we’re at right here, but logistics, which are the people that buy our supplies and then the people that bring them up to the units. So we have had shortages of supplies where we just came through the holiday weekend, Memorial Day weekend a couple weekends ago, and so we are supposed to have enough supplies on Friday afternoon to get you through till Tuesday morning of supplies. And routinely what we have is that there are supplies that are missing. We don’t have enough supplies, we don’t have people to get them. I’m running, I’m sending people to go to another unit. I’m on the phone calling down to the emergency room. I had a nurse explain to me. One of my nurses said, look, I didn’t have urinals. I mean just something just crazy that we have majority of veteran male staff patient, so I didn’t have urinals.

I’m calling around to every single unit to see who’s got some extra so I could run down to the found. I found four in the er. They gave me two of the four they had. So we run to do that. I had a nurse anesthetist tell me a story where they had to hold an OR case in the waiting room in what we call our holding room because they didn’t have the supplies that they knew were ordered for the case. They had to leave our facility, go to the other facility, which is about 10 minutes away, 10 15 minutes away, go up to the dock, warehouse dock, search through the stuff in the warehouse till they found the tray. They needed to take care of that patient and come back. And that is unfortunately not just an isolated story because there’s also shortages of supplies like normal sailing that have been national shortages across the country just because of shortages in medical supplies overall.

So it’s not just people, us not being able to get it. It has to do with what They’re not available in some cases, but we have shortages in those kinds of staff and so it does affect our patients, but what we have is that nurse anesthetist who knew what they were looking for, who knew what they needed and was able to go find it and go get it, they went and did it. Right? So that’s what you have for our nurses, what charter was saying, us as the union, we stand with our nurses. We are going to be standing with our nurses and they’re going to be standing with us and our veterans so that we know what they need so we can stand up and say, this is not right. This shortage shouldn’t have happened, this incident should not have occurred. So that our nurses don’t feel afraid to stand up and speak out for their veterans and speak out for our patients and their working conditions. And that’s really important to us as a union to make sure that these nurses have the way to do that and have a way to feel good about doing it so they know they’re not retaliated against when they do that.

Sharda Fornnarino:

I mean, the day-to-day work has been affected for the nurse between what Irma mentioned before of answering the phone. They need to grab a tray for their patient. Now their patient can eat again. They may been not been able to eat because of an impending procedure, but now they said, okay, well no, now you can eat. So now they have to run down to the kitchen and get their tray. Sometimes we are going down to the supply area to get supplies because they don’t have a supply tech to come up and bring up the supplies that we need, things like that. It takes away from the bedside care that we could be doing going in and checking on our patient. Those are the things that we need.

All these jobs are important to help support taking care of this patient that’s sitting on that bed, laying in that bed. So all these different jobs that people are saying that, well, maybe that’s okay, or maybe we can cut that or, oh, it’s only whatever. It’s never an only, it’s we all work together as a team. Whenever we take care of a patient, it is a team dynamic. Whenever there is a wheel, a cog in the wheel that’s missing, it’s a problem. So having these people leave because maybe they’ve decided to take the deferred resignation program or doing an early retirement or having an opening for more than a year and that position get cut because they can’t recruit. Having all these things are kind of leading to the demise and we have to fight back against this. We have to fight back against the privatization. We can’t do this anymore. We really need to make sure that we have all the people in the right places doing all the things that we need to take care of that veteran in the bed.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now, Sharda, Irma, with the last kind of 10 minutes that I’ve got you both here, I want to focus in on the union itself and talk about where NNU fits into the current attacks on federal workers across the board and the unions fighting back against it. We’ve interviewed folks here on this show and at the Real news, people working at the CFPB folks working for the National Park Service. I mean, cannot stress enough how broad these cuts have been to the federal workforce, but also how much of an impact it’s going to have if Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all these federal workers. What that is going to mean for federal unions, federal workers, and all of us who depend on their labor. So I wanted to kind of ask if you could talk about the attacks on Federal Union collective bargaining rights and how that connects to everything we’ve been talking about here. Why should folks listening to this, I guess care, it’s a blunt question, but why should folks care about the administration attacking your union’s ability to collectively bargain at places like the va?

Irma Westmoreland:

Well, let me just tell you right up front that President Trump’s order, if it’s enacted, will take away the federal bargaining rights for over a million federal workers. And he said from his own lips that the reason he’s doing it is because those are the people that stand up and fight against him. And so the Federal Union in itself or any union, us especially, we are standing up enforcing our contracts, enforcing our nurses’ rights to stand for their patient and to talk about issues that are going on and to make sure that our nurses are treated fairly and that we have adequate support to provide the care that we need for our veterans. And that’s our main job. Nurses, nurses, working conditions and our patients. Those are the two things that we stand for. And if I have told people over and over again that the federal workforce is a federal union, right?

If they decide to take it to say that we no longer are exclusively the nurses in the VA because they can never tell me I’m not a union member, they can never tell me that I’m not a union member. What we want folks to know is that the nurses are the union. I am the nurse, I am the union. It is not the contract. It is not the building. It is not where we’re at. It’s because us as workers are going to continue to ban together. We have joined the other five national unions in the VA to file a national, two national cases in the court against this cuts to try to stop the federal work. But what it is is just it’s union busting at its finest, right? That’s all it is. Union busting at its finest, but we are not giving up. We will always be here.

We will always be helping our nurses. We will always be doing it. Whether I have to do it at my lunchtime, whether I have to do it after hours, I’m going to still be doing it. And so are all our other nurse leaders. We are going to be assisting our nurses and helping them to navigate through the system so that they can still stand up for their patients because it will be harder. It won’t be as easy. It will be harder because you won’t have the same protections that you have with a contract right now of doing that. But let me tell you what you will have. You will have nurses and a union who will stand behind our nurses and we will be helping them every single day, every single minute of the day. We’re not going anywhere.

Sharda Fornnarino:

That’s right. Max Irma said, it’s so eloquently we are not going anywhere. But ultimately with nurses and the union, we’re representing and trying to fight for not just the nurses and the patients, it’s for their safety, their safety in working conditions. We talk about the working condition. We got to make sure that things are getting cleaned up, that our patients are safe, but not just the patients. The nurses are safe. We deserve to be able to go into work and not have to worry about will there be enough police officers to help me in the emergency room if a patient started to act out. We need to know that we are going to always be safe and be treated fairly and not allow people to step on us as we go along about our day. We did lobby recently for the VA and Play Fairness Act during Federal Lobby Day. And right now we’re continue to speak up. We’re supporting the United for Veterans Rally on Friday just to stand along the veteran and the VA nurse standing along. We’re speaking up, we’re doing our part. And the nurses all know that the nurses are all standing together and making sure they show that we’re a united front.

Irma Westmoreland:

And I would like to just say as related to that, the Unite for Veterans and Unite for America rally that’s happening at the National Mall on July the sixth. If you’re anywhere around that area, come out, join us. We’re going to be there with veterans groups and other labor groups that are going to be there rallying to bring issue to this. This is Friday, June the sixth. Did I say July? Sorry, June the sixth. It’s June the sixth. Friday two o’clock. We’re going to be there. I’m going to be speaking and lots of other people are as well. We have done congressional briefings, rallies all around the country talking about these issues, bringing them forward with our veterans groups, with our congressmen. We need the people who are listening to this podcast to call their congressmen, to call their senators and tell them to stop these cuts to the va.

They need to stop it. They need to pass the Employee Fairness Act to give us full bargaining rights, but they need to stop these cuts. They need to enact a law that will make sure that we have bargaining rights in the federal government for all federal workers, the whole million that they’re trying to take away, not just the ones for the va, but all of us. We need people to call their congressmen, call their senators, tell them this is not right, fully fund the va, whether it’s for internal resources, external resources, what we need to make sure we can care for our veterans every single day. Those veterans stood on the line for us and it’s time for us to stand on the line for them, come join us. And

Sharda Fornnarino:

We as nurses, we will not abandon our patients, we will not abandon our veterans.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And we will include information about that rally in the show notes for this episode. And I myself will try to get down there on Friday so that we can do an on the ground follow-up to this podcast. So stay tuned for that. And with the last kind of minute or two that I have you both here, I wanted to just sort of ask if you had any more notes about what folks listening to this can do to help and why they should get involved here. I mean, I think one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the national consciousness around unions and union workers since the time I started this show is that more and more people have learned to understand unions not as a special class of workers who have something that we don’t, but workers who have more power in key industries that we all depend on.

And people have learned to see the struggle of their fellow workers and union workers, especially as fights that involve their interests, right? So folks who don’t want to fly on janky Boeing jets that are going to fall out of the sky have learned to support the machinists who build those planes who are fighting against the company and all of its cost cutting corner, cutting crap. Same thing for the railroad workers. If you don’t want to train to derail in your backyard, like in east Palestinian, Ohio where we’ve been interviewing residents there, then folks have learned to support the railroad worker unions who are actually fighting against the companies that are putting all of us at danger with their cost cutting their corner, cutting to serve their Wall Street shareholders, so on and so forth. People have learned to see healthcare worker unions as important because our quality of care across the country has been going downhill over my lifetime.

And so if you want that care to improve, and you don’t want insurance companies just telling you that you don’t need this operation or that you got to support the workers who are actually fighting for that quality of care. And so I think there’s something really going on here where folks are identifying their common interests with the struggles that workers and unions are waging. But I wanted to ask in that vein for folks out here listening who maybe they’re not in a union, maybe they don’t have a connection to the va, but they are a working person just like you and me. Why is this important for them to care about what’s happening to the VA and what can supporting the union do to address the issues that all of us care about in this country right now? So any final notes you had on that and then we’ll wrap.

Irma Westmoreland:

Okay, max, I’ll give you a 32nd thing. And what I want to tell you is that workers need to realize that all of the things that they value right now, paid vacation, social security, sick leave, any of those things all came from workers uniting together with the public and fighting for those things. And right now, this fight that the federal workers are going through is just the tip of the iceberg. If the federal worker, this goes through and it happens and the federal workers lose their union, they’re going to come for the private unions next. And then what’s next? Your rights. We need to stand together with workers and healthcare workers and the federal unions because they are the people that are on the line right now fighting to make sure that you have healthcare, that you need adequate healthcare for our veterans, our teachers unions are out there. They’re fighting for you to make sure that your students are educated adequately. We need safe patient staffing ratios like they have in California, federal standards of staffing so that it isn’t related to the insurance company, that we need Medicare for all, for every person to have healthcare available to them as a human right in this country. And those are the righteous fights the unions are doing for you right now, every day, day in and day out that you may not see.

Sharda Fornnarino:

What we want people to do right now is, yeah, we need them to call their congressmen and tell them they do not want these cuts to happen. Last week I spoke to a veteran who was a little displeased with the fact that he had to wait so long to go see a provider on the outside and they had some issues connecting, getting records and all these things, and he wanted to voice me all his concerns that was happening, that he’s actually seeing right now the effects of some of these cuts. And I did explain to him, well, sir, this is what’s happening. This department has reduced in size. And so of course this was going on. And what can you do is contact your local congressman, contact your senators, let them know you don’t want this to happen. And unfortunately at that time, he said, well, if I felt like it would work, then I would do something. And what I told him is that if you don’t do something now, then when will you have a voice to do it? I encouraged him to use his voice now and stop what’s going on and to let his congressional people know what his best interests are and to help support him. And at the end of the conversation, he understood because if we lose his fight now, then where does it stop?

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Sharda Fornnarino and Irma Westmoreland of National Nurses United. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletters so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Growing up in the ’90s in New Jersey, my relationship with it is complicated. I think not just because of the music, but also the drug culture that seems to surround some of the scenes that perpetuate it. I’m not anti-drug. That’s a whole other conversation. But I saw, at a very young age, pros and cons of it all. I won’t name names. I won’t point fingers. I’m one of five kids. I’m the only one that didn’t really sign on to the parking lot culture that I think you know what I’m talking about.

I came into being a musician later in life. I was a choir kid, I was in theater, I played guitar, but I wasn’t trying to be in a band. I didn’t have the confidence to say, “I’m an artist” or anything like that in my teenage years. But I enjoyed it. I loved Ween and wrote silly songs about what I saw, not knowing anything about the future, of course—who knows that? I loved to sing and I had a couple friends who I would play guitar with, never thinking that it would be a career. I didn’t even really have a band until my 30s; I was solo up until then. My idea of a jam was a never-ending jam and being the last person in the corner with a guitar. But now, having had a deeper relationship with music and other musicians, that feeling has evolved for me.

How did it feel to settle in with the band? Was there an element of letting go?

Letting go is definitely a huge part of it. It was empowering to learn how to not feel like I had to steer the ship and to lean into each other’s ideas. I know this is not a new idea to anyone who has ever had a band; I’m having this connection and realization later in life. There’s a part of it that I’m a little embarrassed about. In my late teens, early 20s, I came out of a pretty traumatic relationship with someone who told me that anyone that would want to play with me just wanted to get into my pants. He was also very abusive, so I’ve carried those co-existingly throughout my life. My writing has stemmed from a place of healing and getting over that period of my life. It’s been a series of different ways of letting other people in, to support me and help me convey my ideas [that come] from a place I was trying to protect for so long. Having a band represents my healing process: trusting people and letting go in this way, and feeling seen by everyone I’m in the room with and letting them see me.

What did you hear in early demos that made you think, “This is working, let’s keep going”?

Everyone had their own space. I’m used to playing guitar or keys, and singing and building the demo up myself before I share it with anyone. Starting from the ground up, it’s a matter of listening and patience and knowing when to lean in and hang back. Before I knew we were writing songs, I loved it as this sonic trust fall… I’m curious what happens without forcing it to be something. There’s a lot of patience and support without the stacking of ideas… I had a lot more freedom to sing because I didn’t have to play the whole time. Everyone got to develop parts and have more movements, in a way.

You also chose to get everyone together in a communal space as opposed to a formal rehearsal studio.

I thought it would be enlightening for everyone to come and reconnect as people after Covid. To meet each other, have discourse, and have a bit of a literal band camp—to have breakfast, lunch, dinner together. The house and studio were separate. This studio, Gatos Trail in Yucca Valley, was amazing, and we were able to get to know each other in this very real way, and then go to a space where we could be in the room together and hash out songs without it feeling like we’re on the clock. After a week of going through all the songs, we had an extra two hours at the end. I was tired of hearing my own voice and was very inspired by the palette we had been honing, and I asked if we could just jam. We wrote two songs right away in that environment.

It’s so important to carve out space for the people that are choosing to be a part of your universe.

They’re giving up their life for you. I know it sounds dramatic, but it’s real. That’s why I called the band The Attachment Theory. You leave friends and your family behind and you become each other’s chosen family. You’re basically saying, “If there’s anything I’d rather do than be home and feel safe, it’s be with you.” We’re artists, and this is part of the deal. Home is everywhere, your community is everywhere, and you’re nurturing this thing. But I still feel like there’s an element of being a traveling shoe salesman. I mean that in a positive way. We believe in this and we’re nurturing a community, but it’s not like it’s getting any easier. I don’t have to tell you that.

You have an extensive backlog of ideas. How do you know when to revisit one of them?

I tend to write in my writing space, where I’m able to record enough. If I’m traveling and I have an instrument or a melodic idea, I try to get it down enough, or I’m like, “Okay, I want to pursue this when I get to a place where I can pursue this.” Most of the time, I’m feeling something deeply and I hit record, and I write a stream of consciousness to get the feeling out. Depending on the situation—if it’s days, weeks, months later—I’ll try to listen back to it with some perspective, to try to analyze what it was I was feeling. I’ll write anywhere from one to ten fragments that can be from 2 to 15 minutes long, just to get an overall feeling out… One thing I want to be better at is having more of a narrative in my writing. It’s rarely where my inspiration comes from. I’ve had writing exercises where I learned how to do that better, but most of my songs are more feelings and unfinished thoughts, ideas.

Do you feel internal or external pressure to stay creative?

I feel lucky that I don’t feel the pressure from my orbit. In my 40s, as a mom pursuing music, my concern has never been my relevance. I was a late bloomer from the get-go. My first album came out in 2009. I was late to everything. So I’ve always been behind the curve, as far as the industry is concerned. I have an understanding of that, but it hasn’t been a concern of mine.

My husband is a manager and he works with younger artists, and I understand the pressures of singles and the streaming platforms, and he helps me try to stay engaged on social media in a way that I probably wouldn’t… I feel grateful that I work with a label that is album-centric and we can focus on the record and focus on a campaign. I’m not pressured. It’s, “You tell us when you’re ready and let’s figure out the best timing for that.” [My label] Jagjaguwar has been supportive whenever I want to do something. I like to write with other people and sharpen a different tool in my belt; I think it’s always a good thing to experiment with other people and try new things. You make things according to who you’re surrounded with. Then I find the right time to put things out. But I don’t like putting too much out or putting too much on my calendar. I have an 8-year-old kid and I’m 44, and it’s just more complicated. I’d rather feel more invested when I’m ready.

Have you found your stride with balancing motherhood and your career?

I definitely haven’t figured it out, and I’m also learning that you can’t separate those things. I do feel like a crazy person going from having this performance on a theater stage and then going and chaperoning a class trip. But I know those things coincide. This is going to sound funny, but my kid is so supportive of me. Every time he’s come to the studio, we have talks about, “You know when I make a record, what happens,” and he’s like, “Oh, well, you go on tour.” “Yeah, but what’s that mean?” He’s like, “That means you’re gone.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but now you’re in real school.” The last two tours I did, it was COVID or just past COVID, where it was easier to take him. With this album, I’m more invested. I want to show the band I’m going to work this one harder for all of us, but that means more touring. My kid was so sweet, he just said, “Mom, you can’t stop singing.”

Oh my god.

Yeah. Talk about making me cry and fall on my knees. We’re going to be touring this year and next year. It’s going to be the most I’ve been gone. He understands time and space in a way where he didn’t before and you just can’t separate those things.

Years ago you got some important advice from Nick Cave about live performance and looking people in the eye. What impact has this had for you on stage?

When I walk out on stage, it takes the first three songs to shake my nerves, and usually my nerves make me teary. So the first one to three songs, I’m mostly closing my eyes and getting past the tears to the point where I can open my eyes. I try to focus on an audience member. If I can find that, great; if not, I can turn to my band and reconnect with my band. That settles me in this other way, and then I can turn back to the audience and have moments where I feel like I’m having conversations directly with them. You can’t control chemistry. You can’t control the energy of a room. You have to perform no matter what. I still believe in that part of it. Some of it can be acting. But some of it is, “How do I wield this energy to all of our benefits, and get through it to be able to do my job?” Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jeffrey Silverstein.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36

Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

Making life unbearable
The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

World must force Israel to stop
Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

Show our preparedness to uphold values
In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

Protest is not enough. We need to act.

Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper’s management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1 of that year. After more than 2.5 years on strike, with other unions reaching contracts or taking buyouts and dissolving their units, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are the last remaining strikers holding the line. We speak with a panel of union officers for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about how they’ve managed to stay on strike so long and about recent legal updates that have given them hope that an acceptable end to the strike may be on the horizon.

Panelists include: Ed Blazina, striking transportation writer at the PPG and one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Erin Hebert, also one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and a striking copy-editor and page designer at PPG; Emily Matthews, photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post-Gazette Unit of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

Additional links/info:

• Pittsburgh Union Progress website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Donate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers
• Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Union Progress, “The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists’ strike continues”
• Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, “The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over”
• Mel Buer, Working People / The Real News Network, “Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren’t ready to give up”
• Bob Batz Jr. & Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work”
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, “‘AI will not scab us’: Post-Gazette newsroom decries use of artificial intelligence”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) After months of striking, media workers aren’t backing down”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s half-year strike”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are going back to the picket line to get an update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October of 2022, over a hundred workers represented by five labor unions including production, distribution, advertising and accounts receivable staff walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the storied publication the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The strike began after the newspaper’s management block Communications, which is owned by the block family cut off health insurance for employees on October 1st of that year.

As Ian Karbal wrote in December for the Pennsylvania Capital Star. Since 2017 Post Gazette journalists have worked without a union contract. The papers owners appeared to show little interest in negotiating a new one, but in 2020 they imposed new terms on employees. Workers learned during the pandemic that the cost of their healthcare plan would increase for many and some would lose banked sick days. Among other unfavorable changes, some newsroom staff were also fed up with the blocks who had drawn increased scrutiny to the paper through a series of widely criticized editorial and personnel decisions. For years, the Post Gazette had refused to cover annual premium increases for the production workers healthcare plan. According to Joe Pass, the lawyer for the three production unions and the Newsroom Guild, when the company imposed a $19 per week increase to employees in 2022 while pushing them into a high deductible plan pass said that that was a breaking point.

The ultimate tally was 38 to 36 in favor of the strike. The day after the vote, less than 60% of the newsroom walked out. According to Zach Tanner, president of the newspaper Guild. Though over a short time, the number of strikers grew with 60 on the picket line and 35 remaining at work. This is Max speaking. We call those scabs. Augh continues, but the paper was able to continue publishing online strike leaders say that documents shared with them by the paper a standard practice show. The company has given new hires and workers who remained at the paper unprecedented bonuses and ahead of schedule raises since the strike began. Their documents show that in total over 260 $900,000 has been awarded this way since October of 2022. An administrative law judge has ruled that the Post Gazette failed to bargain in good faith and the National Labor Relations Board took the rare step of issuing an injunction request to resume bargaining that could effectively end the strike.

The post gazettes owners have appealed that move now for two and a half years, strikers have held the line while putting their professional skills to work and producing without pay. Mind you, the Pittsburgh Union progress, an award-winning newspaper that we at the Real News have proudly taken out ads in and collaborated with striking journalist Steve Mellon and I actually just won a prestigious Izzy Award together for our collaborative reporting on the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. It’s absolutely remarkable what Steve and his colleagues have done with this strike paper and in my personal opinion, it is one of the single most impressive and inspiring feats of journalism and solidarity in the 21st century. And in a March update on the strike posted in the Pittsburgh Union progress editor Bob Batz Jr. Writes workers in three news production and advertising unions that have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for two years and five months over a dispute about their healthcare coverage have voted to accept settlements that end their strike, their jobs and their union locals or unit, but it’s over for the production and advertising workers.

They are members of the typographical or advertising union and the Mailers Union, both locals of the communication workers of America as well as the Pressman’s Union unit. There are 31 workers who are losing their jobs as well as their unions or unit as their buyout stipulate that their locals or unit drop all pending unfair labor practice charges and then dissolve. Now, we’ve been covering this strike and talking to striking workers over the past two years here on this show and at the Real News Network and today we’re going to dive back in to get an update on how folks are doing, where things stand now with the strike and what folks like you out there can do to help. And I’m honored to be joined on the show today. First by Ed Blaina, a striking transportation writer at the Post Gazette and one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

We are also joined by Aaron Abert, also one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and a striking copy editor and page designer at the Post Gazette. And we are joined as well by Emily Matthews, a photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Ed Aaron. Emily, thank you all so much for joining us today and I wish we were convening under better circumstances, but I just wanted to say up top to reaffirm that we here at The Real News, all of us here and our listeners at Working people continue to stand in solidarity with y’all as colleagues and fellow workers. And I know that our listeners are deeply invested in this struggle even though so many folks around the country have forgotten it, have not given it and y’all the support that you need over these past two and a half years. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But since this will be the first time in this strike that our listeners are hearing some of your voices, I wanted to just start by asking if we could go around and you could introduce yourself and just tell us a little more about who you are, the work that you did at the Post Gazette and the work that you’ve been doing for the strike and while on strike over the past two and a half years.

Ed Blazina:

Thanks, max. I’ll start. My name’s Ed Blazina. I am striking transportation writer. I’ve been a journalist for, I forget how old I am, sometimes 45 years, been at the Pittsburgh papers. We had the Pittsburgh press and then when it went out of business, the Post Gazette was there as well. I’ve worked for both of those papers since 1983. For the last 10 years I’ve been the transportation writer at the Post Gazette. I’ve been a union officer for 25 years and now we’ve been on strike for two and a half years. I’m eligible to retire. I’m old enough to retire and retire with full benefits. I refuse to let the blocks in my career this way. I’m not going to go down while we’re on strike. We’re going to fight this thing through to the end. What we’re doing now is raising as much money as we can to keep this going. As you mentioned, it’s gone on so long. Among the almost distressing things we hear is that people don’t remember that we’re still on strike. That’s particularly painful to me because the Pittsburgh press went out of business because of a strike back in 1991, and at that time it was a public tragedy that the newspaper was on strike. TV stations read the comics on television, they read obits. It was a calamity.

The Pittsburgh Press tried to print a edition, not scab. We were not unionized in the newsroom at the Pittsburgh Press, but they tried to print and distribute a paper while the other unions were on strike and there were 5,000 people in front of the building. I’m not sure. In two and a half years we’ve had 5,000 people show up total at the rallies we’ve had. It’s a different time now, so it makes striking much more difficult. Right now I’m doing two jobs. I’m covering transportation as well as I can for the union progress. Not everything I did before, but the major things keeps me sane, if you want to call it two and a half years on strike being sane. And the other aspect is we’re running a strike. I’m a vice president for the union. We’ve raised well over a million dollars to help people be able to stay on strike. We run speakers bureaus, we do all kinds of things to try to keep our name out there and let people know we’re on strike.

But it’s two and a half years now, so it’s difficult. You mentioned the numbers, it was sad hearing you recount what’s happened since the strike began. We probably have half the people that we had before because lots of people aren’t like me. I’ve had a career, I’m at the end of my career. We have folks here today with us who are younger who are still trying to build a career. It’s hard to tell somebody who’s 25, oh, stay on strike for two years, your career will come back. Don’t worry about it. That has to be extremely tough to do. I’m glad I don’t have to do that. I’m at the end of my career. I can afford to fight to strike through to the end, so it’s tough, but we’re still at it and we’re still going to be here. We’re not going anywhere.

Erin Hebert:

Yeah. My name is Erin Hebert. I actually graduated from journalism school 10 years ago this month. I got the reminders of that on my Facebook and I’ve been at the Post is that since 2016, vast majority of my professional career as a journalist. I started there as a copy editor as what was called a two year associate position, which does not exist anymore. But essentially when I was hired, I was making less than half of what top salary union hires make now at the post edge. So I was making about $25,000 working a full-time schedule, working a copy desk schedule. I had benefits. I was happy to have the opportunity, but the first couple of years for me, there were a struggle. And my experience at that point in my career as a really young person are a big part of why I think I’ve stayed out for so long and why I feel so committed to seeing this through.

Because I haven’t had a contract since March, 2017, which was it five months after I started. So I haven’t had a contract that entire time and the contract is the only reason that I was able to be hired as a 23-year-old. And then by the time I hit 25, after my two years of service were up as an associate, my salary jumped to $60,000, which is our top line salary. So it was a dream of mine to, especially when I was coming out of journalism school, hearing that newspapers were dying when I was so dedicated to this craft that I had studied, I was like, oh, cool, I can come here. I can tough it out for two years on a lower salary, be in a cool city as a young person, be in a newsroom and eventually make a good living in an affordable city.

And I really fell in love with Pittsburgh too. And that’s, I think a big part of why a lot of us are out here is because we care about the city and we care about making the journalism field here accessible and welcoming for new talent. I don’t know, I’m from Louisiana and I didn’t know anything about unions before I came here. So I show up on my first day and an officer comes up to me and tells me the spiel, Hey, there’s a union meeting. I didn’t know what I knew nothing. I didn’t know anything about it. And the education that I’ve gotten, the life education that I’ve gotten, being in Pittsburgh and being with this local and at this newspaper are really just completely, I can’t even begin to describe how much my life has changed over the past 10 years. And a couple of years into my time at the post gisette I started, it was when issues with the publisher started to prop up more and more.

He was interfering more. And I was seeing the frontline of that as a copy editor because I was on the night desk. I was getting the calls from John Block saying, we need to change this different things that have been well addressed in the media before Everyone knows that these have been issues at the paper. So I kind of started looking for a way out and thinking that maybe journalism in the age of Trump was not for me, that if this was the direction that it was headed in, that was not going to be that not going to work for me. So I started exploring social work as a career and ended up going down to part-time as a copy editor while I was in grad school for social work at the Post Gazette. And while I was studying all of the strike talk has started happening and I said, okay, well part of I want to do organizing work.

I was more involved with the union by then, and I just felt really passionate about the social welfare portion of striking and how people take care of each other in crisis because that’s what I was studying. So they wanted the strike. I did a call from Steve Mellon, or sorry, the night before, and he says, Hey, you want to be head of the health and welfare committee with me? And I said, yeah, of course I would do anything with Steve. He’s the best. And it’s been a real rollercoaster since then. But I’m really proud of the work that we put in at the beginning of the strike to keep this going because I don’t think we would’ve made it this long had we not actually spent time making the systems that have allowed us to take care of each other and to raise money. And that have allowed us to get closer to each other personally.

It is very much like a family at this point, and that’s not something that is ever going to go away even when we go back to work. So it’s really just completely changed my perspective on a lot of things, but especially the value of my labor and also the importance of rest because I think the strike was the first time that a lot of us were forced to stop our work that we had been doing for so long and kind of think about what our lives were looking like without work. And that’s kind of the stuff that I’m focused on right now is how do we continue to take care of each other and finish this out and raise money because you’re right, we haven’t had the amount of attention on this strike that we should have.

Emily Matthews:

Hi, I’m Emily Matthews. I’m a photographer on strike, and I’m also the treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. I started at the Post Gazette in February of 2020, so I’ve almost been on strike for as long as I had worked at the Post Gazette, which is kind of crazy to think about and kind of crazy to think about how much can change in two and a half years. I got engaged, got married, adopted a cat, and yet we were still on strike. Some things don’t change at the Post Gazette. When I was working at the Post Gazette, Aaron and I started off as a two year associate and it was described to me as in between an internship and full-time. But really I was just treated as a regular employee just making minimum wage. When my two years were almost up, the union actually had to get involved to see if I was staying or not because they just wouldn’t tell me.

I think about two weeks before my two years were up, they finally let me know that I was staying and my manager was like, well, at least we got you on a few months before your two years were up. I was like, no, it’s not a few months. It was a couple weeks. So just that experience and knowing that the company didn’t really seem to care got us as individuals and how much the union did help kind of made me realize that, oh, I should get involved with the union. I care about the people that I work with. I want to make sure that they can have a job that lasts for as long as they would like. And at the Post Gazette, I was taking photos of anything that came up depending on the day from events to sports to whatever portraits and on the union progress.

I mostly focus on high school sports. I take photos of, right now it’s baseball and softball. We’re getting into the championship season, so we’re in the quarterfinals and semifinals right now. I think working on the Pittsburgh Union progress has really helped me because when we first started out, like Aaron said, it was kind of a shock not to have that amount of work every day that I was used to not going to multiple assignments every day. And I think as journalists, we do kind of have our identity tied up in what we do for better or for worse. So I remember just sitting in my apartment thinking, what am I doing? Who am I without taking photos? And the union progress did really help with that too. It gives me a reprieve from doing all the strike related activity, even though it is strike related, it feels more like a day-to-day at a regular job almost while also doing our strike work, which includes raising money.

We have a Stewards network where we call each other and check in to make sure everyone’s feeling okay, see what people need, let people know what’s going on, what fundraising events or other things that we have going on that we want people to show up to and attend. And I think doing all this has just really shown me how much everyone cares about each other. Before the strike, I didn’t really go into the newsroom as much because I’m a photographer, so I would just go out on assignments and usually edit in my car or edit there. So I didn’t spend a lot of time in the newsroom talking to my coworkers. It wasn’t until we walked out on strike that I really started to get to talk to people and get to know people. And now I’ve come to realize that I really care about everyone that I’m on strike with and hope that strike comes to an end soon and you can get back to work. I’m from Pittsburgh, I grew up here. I grew up with the Post Gazette, so I always wanted to work at the Post Gazette and I would like to work there for as long as possible, but I don’t feel confident that I can do that without a contract. That’s where I’m at right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask before we sort of dig into the nitty gritty of strike updates, because I tried to jam in as many as I could in the intro, but I know there’s a lot more stuff that’s been going on from people crossing the picket line to people taking buyouts and union units essentially becoming non-existent to injunctions being issued against the Post Gazette. So I want to ask if you can kind of walk us and our listeners through that in a minute, but hearing you guys kind of talk in the first round, it was really making me think that our listeners and folks out there who maybe haven’t been following this strike the whole way through, really need to sit and think about what it actually takes to go out on strike in the middle of a pandemic and stay on strike for two and a half years along with everything else that’s going on in the goddamn world today. Can we just go back around and could you guys say a little more about what that was like personally for you? What it’s been like personally for you to hold the line this long

Ed Blazina:

Again, for me, it’s been a little bit different because I’m older. By dumb luck, I put in for full social security a month before the strike happened. We didn’t know we were going on strike. So financially the strike hasn’t been as big a deficit as it has been for other people. And my plan was because newspapers have been in bad shape for a long time. We’ve had our pension frozen for 15 years and I have a pension, but it hasn’t been growing. So my plan was to work two years after I went on Social security and bank that money put away some more for retirement. Well, right now, fortunately I’m living off of that money, so my experience isn’t quite the same as everybody else, but it’s been enlightening to see other people, how dedicated they have been. It’s humbling to see how people react when you tell ’em you’re on strike. For started out with nine months and then a year and a half now, two and a half years, I went to the CWA convention as part of our delegation.

My job there was to raise money. I wasn’t there as a delegate to the convention. And after three days I felt like a drug dealer. I hit $11,000 on the spread of my bed in the hotel room from people giving us money to support the strike that is humbling beyond belief. A couple of quick stories I to a democratic meeting up in Butler County, a small county north of Pittsburgh to speak at one of their candidate events, and they allowed us to put out a candidate to collect some money. At the end of the event, this woman who’s older than I am, came waddling up to me and handed me a $10 bill and said, my husband died six weeks ago, but I know he’d want me to give this to you. We had miners come up from Southern West Virginia out to the production plant out in Clinton by the Greater Pittsburgh airport, and big group of cuff guys and a few women.

And again, after they were done ka biting with us on the picket line, woman came up and handed us $20 and said, this is all I have, but you should have it. I think it’s important that you have it. That kind of stuff is amazing and it gives me hope every day that we know we’re on the right side and we know we can make it through this, through things like that. The help of other people, gifts, big and small, that’s how we get through this kind of thing, supporting each other, the support we get from other people. Even a show like this where you welcome us in to come in and tell our story, that’s amazing support.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and it just makes me think of another working person that I interviewed on this show the month after y’all went on strike. If I recall correctly, Marcus Darby, he was on strike at CNH industrial in November of 2022. And I remember talking to Marcus and he said something that really stuck with me when he was communicating to our listeners that he said, look, when you guys turn this episode off, you go back to your life. I’m still on strike. I can’t turn this off. So please just don’t forget that, right? And I think just having that appreciation for the time that this takes, the strength that it takes to endure for such a long period of time, I hope everyone listening out there understands how much your solidarity, your support, your refusal to forget struggles like these can keep them going in the darkest of times. Erin, Emily, I wanted to bring y’all back in here if you had anything else you wanted to add on, just what it’s been like for you personally to go out on strike and what it’s taken to stay on strike.

Erin Hebert:

I think one of the interesting things about, I guess strikes in general, but this strike from my perspective is that we obviously have this one common experience, but we also have vastly different experiences among individual people in this union. Age-wise, it’s a big variety, marital status, single childless children, whatever. And for me, I’m really good at the beginning of things. When something’s first going, I’m very gung ho. And then I found during the middle it got really, really hard for me, and part of it was just personal burnout from grad school and the pandemic and everything that comes with being a person in the world these days. So I did have to take a pretty significant chunk of time off from the strike. However, I also had to earn money outside of the strike because I don’t have retirement. I’ll be 32 in a couple of months.

I’m at a point in my career. I’m not married, I don’t have family who can help me, so I had to look for other work. And I was doing housing casework for a HUD funded program for unhoused people with disabilities in Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. So I was doing that for 10 months last year. And during that time I was, I wasn’t as active in the strike because I had to earn money and that job was so stressful and I ended up experiencing burnout from that as well. Had to take the winter off to rest and recover. I was having a lot of chronic health issues pop up. And since I would say March, I’ve been back at it and back working. And now that we got the 10 E, the 10 E decision that we got has been a big momentum push for me for sure, because it kind of showed, oh, there’s a light, we can see the end.

There’s this actionable thing that has come down that we hopefully will be able to rely on. At least it’s the biggest piece of leverage that we’ve ever had. So now that we have this, and like Emily said, she’s not ready to go back without a contract, I’m not ready either because I, over my almost nine years working or being aware of blocked communications existence, I’ll leave it that way. As a company, I have seen, and Ed has seen it too, just from different perspective, everything that a manager could do would do on any level. The ways that even a manager not sticking up for you can completely, even if your manager or a manager in general isn’t actively harmful to you, if you know that they’re not going to have your back because they’re afraid of what upper management will do, that’s not a good working environment.

So I’ve seen an experienced that side of the post A and the union that was 91, it’ll be 91 this year, newspaper deal A, yeah, 91 years old. That’s the only reason that the paper has persisted for so long because without it, who knows what would’ve happened. So I think reminding myself of that has been really important. Resting, listening to my body when it tells me to rest, to take time off, which is the case in any organizing space, is rest and recovery. And also making sure to save time for happy moments. And a lot of those happy moments come from interacting with the community and being out there and just having conversations with people who you never would’ve necessarily connected with otherwise, who tell you, oh, this family member of mine was in a union. I know the struggle my dad was on strike, whatever.

Hearing people’s personal stories when you know that they get it and they get what it’s like to, I mean, not have a steady income and not have enough to pay your bills. And I’m really proud of, like I said earlier, the work that we did to build up our strike fund and to get all the systems in place because that’s a lot of people we’ve had. We have such a variety of experiences on this strike, and it’s the only way that we’ve been keeping it going is through talking to people in our community and each other and raising money.

Emily Matthews:

I think being on strike, it’s easy to get in my own head, thinking journalism all across the country. Is it a bad place? Why am I doing this? Is it even worth it? Are we even going to have jobs in a couple years? Why am I losing all this money if it’s just going to go away anyways? And like Erin said, I think going out in the community and talking to people really helps with that because just the other day I was taking photos at a high school track meet and this one coach came up to me and he said, oh, you’re with the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Brad Everett, who’s one of our sports reporters, he’s amazing. He puts his whole heart into every story that he does. And I was like, oh yeah, I know Brad, I work with him. He’s great. And he was like, oh yeah, he’s the best. He deserves everything. He’s the best source reporter that I know. And so just hearing how much praise that my coworkers get and fellow strikers get just lights a fire in me to keep going and like, yeah, Brad does deserve everything and he works hard and he’s good at what he does and he deserves to have a job that he can go to.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now. Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask if y’all could sort of give our listeners an update since we last had post Gazette strikers on the show. We’ve had folks like Steve Mellon, Bob Bats, like so many incredible folks from the Pittsburgh Union, progress from your union, kind of helping to educate our listeners over the years on what this strike is about, why it’s important and what critical updates are coming. And I know there’s a lot there to unpack. So I wanted to ask if we could just spend the next 10 minutes here, really sort of given folks the key updates in the strike over the past year or so, particularly the past six months, because I think listeners know that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Post Gazette was bargaining in bad faith. Again, it feels like all these rulings have come down explicitly saying that the Post Gazette is being shitty, breaking the law, not fulfilling their legal obligations to bargain in good faith, yada, yada, yada, and then nothing happened or that’s what it feels like over here. So can you help walk us through what the back and forth has been like, what the key updates have been in the strike, especially over the past 6, 8, 10 months here? So Ed, let’s go back to you and please, all of y’all give us whatever updates you can.

Ed Blazina:

You think it sounds that way to you, try living through it. It was almost two. It was more than two years ago that we won the administrative law judge ruling from the NLRB, but the system is slow. It’s rigged per management. It’s not set up to help workers as much as it should. The company appealed that original decision from January of, I’m getting my years wrong. In 2023, they appealed. It took over a year for the full board of the NLRB to throw out their appeal, and the only thing we could find out along the way is it’s in process. In conjunction with that and running parallel to that was our attempt to get a court order to put us back to work. It’s an unfair labor strike. There’s ridiculous amounts of damage that’s been done to people’s lives because the company has repeatedly violated federal labor law.

So we went to court to get a 10 J injunction, sorry, this is going to be a little bit of alphabet soup here. A 10 J injunction is while something is going on, once the appeal was decided, then it moved over to what’s called a 10 E for enforcement. So there are no more appeals for the company at the NLRB level. So now the Labor Board goes to court to enforce its own order because the Labor Board has no power to do anything on its own. It has to go get a judge to order that what they have determined is in fact the case and decide what should happen from there. So back in February, we had a hearing before the third Circuit Court of appeals to argue whether there should be an injunction or not. It took another month for them to decide that yes, there should be an injunction.

It’s extremely rare for a union for the NLRB to get a 10 E injunction. There were, I think three or four filed in the previous year, and not all of them were approved by the courts. Ours was approved by the courts. What’s the first thing the company did? They appealed. They asked the same judges to go back and reconsider what they had ruled previously. No more evidence, nothing to change their opinion, just we think you were wrong. You should look at that again. Oh, and also your order was to restore the healthcare. Should that be just for the people who are on strike or should that be for everybody who should be in the unit that’s still working? As you said before, the scs, anything to delay they have done now, two weeks ago we court threw out that appeal. So there are no more appeals.

They are done appealing. There’s nowhere else they can go. So there’s an order that they restore the healthcare. They’ve missed now two deadlines for even taking any step towards doing that. There’s paperwork that has to be filled out by those still in the office. The union members, the strikers have filled out their paperwork and sent it in. The company hasn’t even, we know from people on the inside hasn’t even asked for the information from the employees. So the NLRB is preparing to file for fines against the company for refusing to follow a court order. And we don’t know what those fines will be, but we know that in previous cases, those fines are hefty and they usually double every day. They’re putting themselves at more financial risk to keep fighting for. We don’t know what that’s what’s most perplexing about this whole thing is what is their end game.

We have no idea what their end game is. They’ve now lost at every level of court that they’ve gone to. The other unions have been put out of business because they reached a point where I mentioned the 10 J injunction. They filed for a 10 J injunction and the US District court judge in Pittsburgh turned down their request. Basically her attitude was industries change and if that’s the conditions that you have to work under and you don’t want to, oh, well that’s too bad. So they were left without any recourse. So they took not very good buyouts, frankly. I’m sure they would say the same thing. They did the best they could, but they had nowhere else to turn. So they took buyouts and dissolved their units. So now the newspaper Guild is the only unit left on strike, and we’re waiting now for that enforcement procedure.

Emily Matthews:

I feel like one of the most frustrating things about all of this is just the long timelines and not having many answers to anything. And one of, well, the publisher for the post is that John Robinson block, he lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, and he seems like one of the people in the company who is actually willing to talk to us. He actually, when we knock on his door, he seems excited to talk to us. So we’ll go to his house every so often, especially when something comes up, something in the courts or just something that we hear through our sister unions in Toledo or whatever, and we’ll knock on his door and talk to him and he likes to talk. He’s a talker. It’s sometimes difficult to piece out some useful information from what he’s giving us, but it’s better than nothing. And his willingness to talk to us is beneficial too. It seems like from him, from his perspective, the other board members and his brother Alan, who also is the head of the BCI company, no one really talks to John. It seems like from what he tells us, even though he should have this power in the company to have an impact and make a difference, he claims that he doesn’t. It’s all his brother. He doesn’t have a say in anything. He doesn’t talk to their lawyer, he can’t do anything. I think that also makes them kind of angry and I think that also fuels his willingness to talk to us like, well, no one else is talking to me, so I might as well talk to my workers because they’ll actually provide an ear and listen to me.

Ed Blazina:

He is such a different individual. This is a dysfunctional family, unfortunately, that runs the paper. And if I had to guess, the reason they still have a paper in Pittsburgh is so that John has something to do and leaves Alan and the rest of them alone, and they just want to give enough money to keep the doors open, but not enough to treat people in a civil and humane fashion by giving them a raise. Oh, maybe once every 10 years. I don’t think it’s as important to the rest of the group as it is to John, and he’ll leave their other profitable businesses alone if they let him run the newspaper. So it’s a tough situation to deal with.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I want to ask in the last kind of 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what a realistic and good resolution to this strike looks like at this point. Like you guys said, you were the last ones standing. The newspaper guild strikers are the ones holding the line now after other unions that you walked out on strike with back in October of 2022, some signed deals, some got buyouts and their unions effectively dissolved, and you guys are still holding the line, fighting it out in the courts and waiting these agonizingly long periods for more updates on the decisions that have already been made that the block family is challenging, so on and so forth. So I think we gave listeners a good update there on where things stand now. But I guess in the final 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what should folks listening to this be looking for?

What can we expect? What kind of resolution are y’all hoping for right now? And frankly, what messages do you have for folks listening to this about what they can do to help what people out there have done to help that you want to lift up? What can folks listening to this who genuinely want to support their fellow workers, maybe they didn’t know that their fellow workers have been on strike for two and a half years over in Pittsburgh, but they know now and they want to know what they can do to help and they want to know why this is important. Any final messages that you have in that vein that you want to share with our listeners? I just wanted to kind of turn things over to you guys in the final minutes here to offer any closing thoughts you’ve got there.

Ed Blazina:

I think the important thing here is, and not to make it sound like we’re way more important than we are, but the fight we’re fighting could have happened anywhere. It happened to happen here, but it’s extremely important that companies can’t do what the post Gazette they’re trying to do. Employers are very much monkey see, monkey do. If they see an employer getting away with eliminating healthcare, bullying their employees, stretching out a strike for as long as possible, hoping people will just walk away and then they win. That’s what happens. Other companies will try to do the same thing. We can’t let that happen. It’s too important for all of us to be able to feed our families to have good jobs, good union paying jobs where we have rights in the workplace and a say in how things are run. So sticking it out for two and a half years, yes, that’s been tough, but we’re there because of everybody else and the people that have supported us, the people who will come up behind us and need a job and need the protections that we’re fighting for. It’s extremely important that the nlrbs power be upheld. There have been cases in Texas where they’ve tried to rule that the NLRB is unconstitutional. That’s just ridiculous, but it got through a court there. We can’t let that happen. And if we have to be the last people in line to draw that line in the sand and enforce that, so be it. We’ve been here this long, there’s no reason to go away now.

Erin Hebert:

For me, this strike has always been existential. It’s been about the contract and we’ve known that the blocks and Allen block especially has always wanted to get rid of the union in the newsroom. And for me, experiencing the difference between a union job as I have had at the post gisette and my first job out of college and also all the jobs that my family has had in right to work states where I’ve lived. I was in Louisiana then I moved to Florida immediately after, before I came to Pennsylvania. So I know the difference between a union job and a non-union job, especially in journalism. And I cannot fathom giving in to a company who is so flagrantly violating labor law and just for years has treated its employees with such disdain, I mean literal disdain that, I mean, I went to journalism school and was told that you comfort the afflicted and you afflict the comfortable.

So this is kind of the ultimate iteration of that. And I think moving forward, we just want people to know that we are fighting for good journalism in Pittsburgh and for a strong newspaper in the city that we really, really love and care about and that it’s Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I love the city and I want us to have a strong daily newspaper. I don’t want it to go under because of bosses who can’t treat their employees fairly or well at all. And being treated well is more about more than about, more than just pay. I want to make it clearer. So moving forward, I think we’re trying to make ourselves more seen in the community This summer, it was really hard starting the strike in October of 2022 and then going right into winter where in Pittsburgh, everyone hibernates and goes inside. So every time the spring rolling around, it’s a good chance for us to get out and about.

And I guess I would just say that if you’re a person who’s in Pittsburgh or you see any of us out, if we’re ever in DC doing an action with the News Guild, people come and talk to us and ask us what we’ve been through. We always have our QR codes when we’re out for you to donate for people to donate. We’re working on new merch and new projects for things to put out into the community like artwork and music and just different community-based projects that’ll help us raise money but also shine a light on our supporters in Pittsburgh and around the country.

Emily Matthews:

Also, if you’re not in Pittsburgh, but would also like to help, we have a link. I know it’s on the Union Progress website through the Action Network where you can donate, you can also buy t-shirts. We have two really cool designs designed by our own striker, Jen Kundra. So check out the Pittsburgh Union progress. We have updates all the time on strike related things as well as Pittsburgh things. And we do have a bargaining date coming up on June 5th, so hopefully, fingers crossed, something will come of that. Even if it doesn’t, we always update on the union progress. So make sure to check it out after that to see what’s going on. And in the meantime, we always appreciate just messages of support too. If you can’t donate money, send us a message. It’s always uplifting to hear from the community.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just with the last one to two minutes that we got here, I wanted to ask if any of y’all have direct messages to our fellow colleagues in the journalism industry. I’m doing my best here to still, I mean, on episodes like this, I try to be somewhat objective. I don’t have, objectivity is a myth, but I’m trying to be at least fair, transparent, get people the truthful factual information, firsthand information from y’all that they need. But all the while I’m sitting over here just boiling because I want to scream at every one of our fellow workers in the journalism industry, what the fuck are you guys doing? How have you not been, pardon my French, but how have you not been raising hell over this from the day this strike started? Like Ed said, if the blocks get away with this, what makes you think that you’re going to be safe when you’re employer looks over and says, Hey, why don’t we do what the Post Gazette did?

And think of all that we lose in the industry when we lose journalism as a good paying career, a career that people want to invest in and stay in and make their career lives out of. I’ve talked to Steve Mellon and Bob Batson and other colleagues of yours at Pittsburgh Union progress about the meaning of this strike for all of us who depend on journalism, local and national, and it makes my blood boil that so many in our industry have forsaken y’all and forgotten y’all and in my opinion, have frankly slit their own throats in our collective throat because this is going to impact all of us. So anyway, I’m getting hot here. So in the last minute, do any of you have any direct messages to folks out there in journalism that you want to share before we close?

Ed Blazina:

Just exactly what you said. It absolutely can happen to you. Don’t let it happen. Get involved in journalists have this thing, and it’s something I’ve had to learn. Even though I’ve been a union officer for 25 years, we always wanted to be neutral. We can’t take a stand on things. Well, I’m sorry. My job, I can take a stand over and absolutely I’m going to, but it’s something you have to learn. We are reticent to go to politicians to give us help. Well, heck, we have a bunch of politicians in the Pittsburgh area who have refused to talk to the Post Gazette because we’ve told them, don’t cross our picket line. It was hard for us to do, but you have to do it. There’s lots of things you don’t like to do, but you have to, and this is one where you have to

Emily Matthews:

Working in journalism too, it’s easy just to appreciate that you have a job in journalism and just to accept your working conditions for what they are. But you never know when your conditions can change for the worst and when you’re in a really bad spot and at that point it’s too late. So you need to unionize early, unionize ahead of the company’s, whatever they’re planning on doing, get one step ahead of them, unionize, organize, talk to your coworkers, make sure everyone’s doing okay. There could be things going on with different people that you just don’t know about because people are afraid to speak up and talk about it. I think that’s another important thing to do is to, even if you’re not in a union, start talking to your coworkers. See what issues arise, see what problems they’re having, try to organize and figure out how to unionize. There’s lots of resources out there to do that.

Erin Hebert:

I would say to also remember that not everyone in journalism, even at Legacy outlets, so to speak, come from a background where they have financial support. A lot of people working at big national outlets, I mean, there’s that whole, the scandal over the New York Times preferring to higher Ivy League graduates. There’s definitely a very stark class disparity in journalism that I’ve found and that I’ve discussed with other people on strike who also come from lower middle class backgrounds, I guess you would say socioeconomically, and just remember, not everybody has the freedom. Some of us need union protections to be able to earn a living in our field. Not all of us grew up with family connections to the industry. Not all of us can make the switch to pr. Like everyone says, oh, you can’t make it work in journalism, go to pr. We shouldn’t have to do that.

We should be guaranteed good jobs that allow us to do the work of covering our communities, and which over two and a half years of this strike, the city has been, I mean, the social circles that I’m in, it’s just everybody’s talking about this stuff and everybody has a different opinion on it, but nobody seems to really care to ask us directly. It’s kind of just talking, and I just think it’s important to remember that, as Emily said, this can happen to you at any time. You cannot trust the boss to have your back or anybody who is okay cowering to the boss and not standing up to the boss, and that you can only get past that by talking to your fellow workers and talking about your experiences. Honestly, even when it’s hard or it’s embarrassing or you think you’re not going to be believed based on what you’ve experienced,

Ed Blazina:

And even if you’re in a union, you have to pay it forward too. One good example of that is the New York Times tech workers had a short strike back at the beginning of the year. Actually it was before that. It was just before the election. They struck during election week, brilliant move because a lot of what the New York Times does on election night is based on what those folks do technically in their computer systems. They had a strike. Their strike fortunately lasted I think less than two weeks, but in that time, they raised so much money that after their strike, they had $114,000 left over that they donated to us. We end our strike. I’m sure there’s somebody we’ll pay it forward too, because that’s what you have to do. We’re all in this together whether we like it or not.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, ed Blaina, Aaron Abert and Emily Matthews, three union officers for the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh who have all been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for over two and a half years. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Speaker 6:

When my fish you no longer see, I live on, yes, I live on wherever we go. We are going to roll the union on the Some I live on. Yes, I live on wherever Hungry, hungry. Are we just as hungry as hungry can be? The some I live on, yes. I live on where mean things are happening in this land. It’s red or sung. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the book mean things are happening. In this land is read. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the video tape of me showing I live on. Yes, I live on. If I have help to make this a better world to live in, I’ll live on. Yes, I live on when my body is silent and in some lonesome grave I’ll live on. Yes I on when my songs are on, I.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Chris Parker is 234. He is tall and thin and wears Garneau cycling gloves and a baseball cap from the power tools company DeWalt. “Are you kidding me?” he says, happy and shocked. Across the room, one of the other selectees — number 237 — does a kind of end-zone victory dance, shimmying with arms above his head.

The lottery determines who will participate in that day’s waste collection program from Ground Score Association, a Portland-based collective for people who “create and fill low-barrier waste materials management jobs.” Through this particular program, called GLITTER — short for Ground Score Leading Inclusively Together Through Environmental Recovery — Parker will join a group of Ground Score employees on a four-hour walk around Portland, clearing the city’s sidewalks of plastic and other trash. At the end of the shift, he’ll get $80 in cash — $4.55 more per hour than the Portland metro area minimum wage.

Participating in the lottery doesn’t require passing a drug or sobriety test or providing a social security number. It’s meant to provide low-barrier employment to people who might otherwise struggle to find or keep a job.

Parker, for example, told me he totaled his car last summer — the latest in a string of misfortunes. He said he used to work at a rail yard on the Columbia River, but he was laid off when he got COVID. It’s been difficult to find a stable job, he said, especially one that pays enough for the “affordable” apartments he sees advertised at $1,300 a month. For now he’s living in a small apartment near Ground Score’s headquarters.

Most people are homeless when they start working with Ground Score. But after a year on payroll, there’s an 80 percent chance they will have secured housing, according to the organization.

Terrance Freeman, one of the employees leading a GLITTER group on Thursday, wears wraparound sports sunglasses and a yellow scarf. He’s been working at Ground Score for six months. Previously, he worked at a nearby Chevron gas station and struggled with alcohol. Another member of his group, Dana Detten — aka Peanut — was homeless for eight years and worked various jobs at Dollar Tree and FedEx before joining the GLITTER program. Kevin Grigsby, the lankiest of the team, says he came to the organization while trying to overcome mental health issues and a “huge cocaine problem.” Now he’s splitting a $630-a-month garage apartment on Portland’s outskirts with his girlfriend. 

“If Ground Score didn’t hire me I would be on a different path,” Grigsby says, using a long grabber tool to pinch up an Oreo wrapper.  

Grigsby and the other people employed by Ground Score are “waste pickers,” a catch-all term for the 20 million people worldwide who make a living collecting, sorting, recycling, and selling discarded materials. In recent years, waste pickers have fought for their work to be recognized and formalized in the global plastics treaty being negotiated by the United Nations. 

Ground Score, which sees its mission as building community while also “changing society’s perceptions of what and who is considered valuable,” shows what that recognition and formalization look like on a local level. It’s a model with huge potential, given the urgent global need to create stronger social safety nets and combat the growing plastic waste crisis. Could it work in other cities, too?

Waste pickers tend to work outside of governments’ formal waste management programs, meaning the services they provide — keeping streets clean, ensuring high recycling rates, sifting hazardous e-waste out of landfills — are underappreciated and poorly remunerated. 

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers, or IAWP, which represents unions, collectives, and organizations across 34 countries, says waste pickers manage as much as 80 percent of some cities’ municipal waste, with the highest percentages in developing countries that lack extensive waste management infrastructure. One study from 2020 estimated that waste pickers collect 58 percent of all the plastic that ever gets recycled. They boost recovery rates for cardboard, aluminum, and other metals too. 

Waste pickers also recover e-waste — often so they can sell the metals inside of them — as well as textiles that can still be worn, repaired, or refashioned into new goods. 

In some jurisdictions, including Oregon, waste pickers collect aluminum cans and plastic bottles in order to claim a rebate determined by a so-called “bottle bill” — a law that tacks an extra 5 to 15 cent deposit onto the containers’ purchase price. But these policies are a relative rarity.  Within the U.S., only nine other states and Guam have one, and the majority of similar laws internationally are concentrated in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Waste pickers in poorer countries often have to buy or sell their wares directly to recycling companies or brokers, and they can’t rely on a government-mandated return rate per item collected.

These activities not only provide waste pickers with a living, they also help to address climate change. According to one study published in March, a subset of waste pickers in just one city — Salvador, Brazil — helped avoid more than 27,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2022, mostly by enabling recycling that displaced the need for raw materials like aluminum and PET, the kind of plastic used in water bottles. (For context, 27,000 metric tons of emissions is about as much as what’s emitted by 6,300 gasoline-powered cars in a year.) Removing paper and cardboard from landfills also reduces emissions, because these materials would otherwise release methane — a potent greenhouse gas — as they decompose.

Read Next

How waste pickers are fighting for recognition in the UN global plastics treaty

Erin X. Wong

Waste pickers’ services have recently gained attention thanks to negotiations for a binding United Nations treaty to “end plastic pollution,” which began in early 2022 and are ongoing. One paper published last year, quoting an unnamed negotiator, described waste pickers as “the human face” of the treaty, since they’re on the front lines of plastic pollution.

In the negotiations, the IAWP has allied with many countries and environmental groups that want to put limits on global plastic production. But it’s also calling for the treaty to include a distinct article ensuring a “just transition” for waste pickers whose livelihoods could be at risk from greater formalization of the waste management sector. Broadly, IAWP wants countries to build better waste management systems around the work waste pickers are already doing, instead of bringing in private companies that would take their place. 

Ground Score is showing how to implement that goal on a small scale — in part through partnerships with city, county, and state government, but also through a participatory organizational structure that gives waste pickers a sense of ownership over Ground Score’s activities. Workers in the program “feel like it’s a privilege that they can actually help their own community rather than just perpetuating this culture of, you know, giving and taking ‘handouts,’” said Taylor Cass Talbott, Ground Score’s co-executive director, who is also the advocacy director for the IAWP. 

Cass Talbott, Laura Tokarski, and Barbra Weber co-founded Ground Score in 2019 as a “peer-led initiative,” meaning it would be organized by and for the city’s waste pickers. Weber had been collecting cans in Portland since 2015 — she had previously worked in marketing, but a brain lesion affected her ability to speak and put her on the street. Tokarski had already founded the Portland-based Trash for Peace, a nonprofit that engagess with communities to reduce and reuse waste. Ground Score is now fiscally sponsored by Trash for Peace.

In contrast to most waste pickers’ activities, Ground Score’s GLITTER program doesn’t focus on recovering and selling recyclable material. According to one of the organization’s co-directors, Nic Boehm, 26 percent of what participants collect is nonrecyclable “microtrash,” like cigarette butts. Much of the rest is food wrappers, containers, plastic bags, needles — things that can’t be recycled and are instead destined for landfills or incinerators. 

GLITTER’s workers are compensated thanks to funding from the City of Portland’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, as well as contracts with local businesses associations. The Homeless Services Department, a partnership between Portland and overlapping Multnomah County, has also supported the program through funds raised by a 2020 “supportive housing services” tax, though a department spokesperson told Grist that funding for “employment programs” like GLITTER may be reduced in the 2026 budget. 

GLITTER highlights the value that waste pickers provide outside the recycling value chain, by keeping city streets clean. “Trash attracts other trash,” Boehm told me as his group swept up fast food containers and wrappers around an overflowing garbage can. The goal was to keep the buildup at bay.

Ground Score also has another program that more closely resembles the type of waste picking that is common in other jurisdictions. It’s called The People’s Depot, and it serves as a dropoff point for those who collect and sell used cans and bottles, who are sometimes called “canners.” The people who visit the depot gather empty water bottles and aluminum cans, whether from the side of the road or from unsorted residential recycling bins, and then lug them to a small lot underneath the Morrison Bridge, in Portland’s Central Eastside neighborhood. 

At the depot, canners sell their goods for 10 cents a pop — a value assigned to them by the current version of Oregon’s 54-year-old bottle bill. Ground Score’s payroll employees, some of whom are current or former canners, dole out more than $4,000 in cash each day. The money comes from beverage companies that pay into the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, a nonprofit that manages implementation of the bottle bill. Deposited bottles are hauled off at the end of each day to an Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative warehouse, where they’re weighed so that Ground Score can be reimbursed for their value.

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Kris Brown is the operational manager at The People’s Depot. He’s worked there since 2021, but before that, starting in 2016, he made a living collecting cans — one night a week in Portland’s Southeast quadrant, a couple nights a week near Willamette Park in Southwest. Apartment complex dumpsters were hotspots, he says, because many apartment buildings lacked a separate recycling bin, meaning there would be lots of cans and bottles to pull out. Brown lived in tent camps around town, and under Portland’s Tilikum Crossing bridge during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s this stigma that if you’re homeless, then you’re useless. Like, ‘Why don’t you get a real job?’” he says. “But collecting bottles and cans — it is work. It wasn’t enough money to get a house or an apartment, but it was enough for me that I didn’t have to go begging or steal anything. I could be me and feel good about it.”

Where deposit return systems do exist, the data suggests that they play a big part in boosting the number of containers that get reclaimed and recycled. According to an industry estimate, cans covered by deposit systems are recycled in the U.S. at a rate of 74 percent, compared to the national average of 43 percent. Plastic bottles eligible for a deposit are returned at rates of up to 81 percent, compared to a national average of under 30 percent (although not all of what’s collected is ultimately recycled due to technological and economic limitations on plastic recycling).  

In Portland, The People’s Depot offers an alternative to deposit locations attached to supermarkets and convenience stores, where waste pickers say they’re treated with disdain by shoppers and passersby. Last year, hundreds of Portlanders blocked a new bottle dropoff location proposed in the neighborhood of St. Johns. They cited “safety” concerns and a “potential increase in crime or vandalism.”

Brown, who regularly invites mutual aid groups and a mobile library to visit The People’s Depot so its patrons can benefit from free books and food, calls the program a “more humanizing experience.” He suggests it could be a model for scaling up waste picker-led recycling programs in other cities. “It becomes more of a community space for [canners] to show up to,” he says. “And the community shows that respect back to us.”

Ground Score has had a presence at all five negotiating sessions for the global plastics treaty so far. Weber and Cass Talbott helped draft the IAWP’s 2023 report, “Vision for a Just Transition for Waste Pickers under the UN Plastics Treaty,” which describes the environmental importance of waste pickers’ work.

The report calls for, among other things, the direct involvement of waste pickers in plastics-related policymaking, as well as “universal registration” of waste pickers in local and national databases, so they can be enrolled in social benefits programs and more formally included in the plastics recycling value chain. 

In order to create more programs like Ground Score, Cass Talbott said waste picker collectives around the world should cultivate relationships with policymakers inside local and regional governments, who can help educate their peers on the benefits waste pickers provide. Ground Score has one particularly strong connection within Portland’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program, which has helped Ground Score negotiate nearly all of its contracts with the city, according to Cass Talbott.

Waste pickers and their allies often talk about a “just transition” for the waste sector, a concept that seeks to resolve the apparent tension between reducing plastic production and protecting waste pickers’ livelihoods: If oil and gas companies stop making so much plastic, waste pickers could have less work to do. 

For their part, Ground Score’s employees and day workers are aware of that tension. Brown, at The People’s Depot, stressed that plastic production should be reduced and that companies should be “held accountable” for the waste they create. Detten, the GLITTER group member, says she wishes we could send a big laser up into space to “zap” away the world’s plastic pollution.

Christine Alix is more reserved than some of her co-workers. She has dark blue hair peeking out from under her baseball cap, and wears bright yellow sunglasses despite the overcast day. She says that, before she started waste picking, she would get angry with people for throwing plastic onto the street. Her feelings are more complicated now: “Thanks for giving me a job,” she jokes.

Alix says her bigger priority is trying to keep streets looking clean in order to “reduce the impacts of sweeps,” referring to the police clearing of tents and other shelters from parks, sidewalks, and other places. 

Most of the team is effusive about Ground Score’s social mission and the way a simple, low-barrier job can change people’s trajectory. At least three people tell me Ground Score saved their life. Others say their work with the organization has given them a renewed sense of purpose and self-respect. “I love my job,” Detten says. “It’s fulfilling in a way that just expands my humanity.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Portland collective keeps the city clean — and helps unhoused people find stability on May 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When a homeless man questioned the Phoenix police’s authority to stop him in February 2020, an officer grabbed him and knelt on his neck while another officer shocked him with a Taser. Another unhoused man said officers threw away his belongings, telling him, “You guys are trash and this is trash.” Other people experiencing homelessness were regularly cited and arrested by the city’s officers during early morning hours for “conduct that is plainly not a crime.”

Those were among the abuses alleged by the Department of Justice last June, following a nearly three-year investigation into the city of Phoenix and its police department. The investigation marked the first time the DOJ had found a pattern of violations against homeless people, including that officers and other city employees illegally threw away their belongings.

In addition, DOJ investigators found that officers disproportionately cited and arrested people experiencing homelessness. They comprised 37% of all Phoenix Police Department arrests from 2016 to 2022, though homeless people account for less than 1% of the population. Investigators said many of those stops, citations and arrests were unconstitutional.

The wide-ranging probe also found officers used excessive force, discriminated against people of color, retaliated against protesters and violated the rights of people with behavioral health disabilities — similar issues to those the DOJ has documented in troubled law enforcement agencies in other cities.

But federal officials announced Wednesday that they had abandoned efforts to compel the city and police to address those issues. The DOJ closed its investigations and retracted findings of constitutional violations in Phoenix and five other jurisdictions, including Trenton, New Jersey. Beyond that, the Department of Justice said it was dismissing Biden-era lawsuits against several other police departments, including in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by police five years ago.

The DOJ said requiring the cities to enter consent decrees, which are intended to ensure reforms are enacted, would have “imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.”

The city of Phoenix said in a statement that it has “tirelessly focused on enhancing policy, training and accountability measures to ensure the best public safety for everyone who lives, works and plays in Phoenix.” In recent years, the city has enacted policy changes including employee training and the implementation of body-worn cameras.

Legal experts told ProPublica the wrongdoing the DOJ uncovered in Phoenix should be corrected — even though city officials will be under less pressure to act.

“It is a very real shame and a disservice to the residents of these communities to end the work, to stand down and unwind the investigations and to purport to retract the findings,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

The report’s retraction, along with last year’s Supreme Court decision allowing cities to arrest and cite people for sleeping outside even when they have nowhere else to go, could further embolden cities and police departments to marginalize homeless people, said Brook Hill, senior counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that focuses on racial justice issues. “They will feel like they have a license to do the sweeps and to otherwise make life in public view uncomfortable for unhoused people,” he said.

Indeed, just last week California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged all local governments in that state to “use their authority affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court” to address encampments.

After the DOJ began the Phoenix investigation in August 2021, Fund for Empowerment, an Arizona advocacy group for homeless people, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sued the city and police department to stop what attorneys called “unconstitutional raids” on unsheltered people. Its lawsuit accused the city of failing to provide housing and instead turning to encampment removals to clear sidewalks and other areas. “The City has made its message to unhoused individuals clear: engaging in sleep and other essential life activities on the city’s public grounds will lead to detention, arrest, displacement, and the loss of the individual’s personal effects,” the Fund for Empowerment alleged in court documents.

Nearly a month later, a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from enforcing its camping ban against people who can’t find shelter, as well as from seizing and throwing away people’s belongings. The lawsuit is ongoing.

The DOJ’s June 2024 report stated that even after the injunction and new city policies were in place, city officials continued to arrest people for camping and to destroy people’s belongings without notice or the opportunity to reclaim them.

ProPublica, as part of its investigation into cities’ handling of homeless people’s possessions, found that Phoenix rarely stored property seized from encampments. From May 2023 to 2024, the city responded to 4,900 reports from the public involving encampments, according to its records. The city said workers, trained to assess which items are property and which are trash, found items that could be stored at only 405 of the locations it visited. Not all of those belongings required storage because people may have removed them between a report of an encampment and the city’s arrival. The city stored belongings 69 times.

In January 2024, the city issued its own report in anticipation of the DOJ’s allegations. The city said it found nothing to support accusations that police “interfered with the possessions of people experiencing homelessness.” Phoenix officials also said in the report that although the city and police department “welcome additional insights” from the DOJ, they were unwilling to be subjected to a consent decree, a binding plan in which an appointed monitor oversees implementation of reforms.

Attorneys and advocates said that the DOJ’s decision has no bearing on lawsuits filed by private attorneys alleging civil rights violations, including against people who are homeless. The ACLU this week also launched a seven-state effort to file records requests to hold police departments accountable, it said.

Elizabeth Venable, lead community organizer with the Fund for Empowerment, who also helped the DOJ connect with the unhoused community in Phoenix, said she viewed the federal findings as a victory for unhoused people. Despite the retraction by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Venable said, the report still has weight.

“No matter what Pam Bondi says, people are not going to forget it, especially people who learned about something that they were horrified by,” she said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Nicole Santa Cruz.

At this very moment, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have managed to survive Israel’s scorched-earth siege and bombing are being deliberately starved to death as a result of Israel’s 11-week blockade preventing food and aid from entering Gaza. As Jem Bartholemew writes at The Guardian, “The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC [Tuesday] morning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time. Five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday but Fletcher described this as a “drop in the ocean” and totally inadequate for the population’s needs.” In response to this dire humanitarian crisis, students at multiple university campuses in the US have launched hunger strikes in solidarity with the starving people of Gaza. In this urgent episode, we speak with four hunger strikers at the University of Oregon (UO), including: Cole, Sadie, and Efron, three undergraduate students who are all members of Jewish Voice for Peace – UO and who just completed a 60-hour solidarity hunger strike; and Phia, a Palestinian-American undergraduate student who has organized with JVP-UO on the hunger strike and who currently remains on hunger strike herself.

Additional links/info:

• UO Gaza Hunger Strike Instagram and TikTok
• UO Gaza Hunger Strike: Community Calls to Action!
• Press Release: University of Oregon Students, Faculty, and Staff Launch “UO Gaza Hunger Strike” Campaign Protesting Mass Starvation and Genocide
• Jewish Voice for Peace – UO Instagram
• Nathan Wilk, KLCC, “University of Oregon protesters begin hunger strike for Gaza”
• Michael Arria, Mondoweiss, “Students across the U.S. are going on hunger strike as Israeli-engineered famine takes hold in Gaza”
• Syma Mohammed, Middle East Eye, “US: UCLA student hospitalised during hunger strike for Gaza”
• Jem Bartholemew, The Guardian, “First Thing: UN says 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in next 48 hours under Israeli aid blockade”
• Ronen Bergman & Natan Odenheimer, The New York Times, “In private, some Israeli officers admit that Gaza is on the brink of starvation”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘The raids happened Wednesday, finals started Thursday’: FBI agents raid homes of pro-Palestine students at University of Michigan”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities” 
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘Worse’ than McCarthyism: Trump’s war on higher education, free speech, and political dissent”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got an urgent episode for y’all today. As you guys know, we’ve been covering the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education and the people who live, learn, and work there. We’ve been speaking with faculty members and graduate students on this show as this new terrifying McCarthy’s crackdown has been unfolding in real time. But today’s episode is a pointed reminder that this climate of intense fear and repression is not achieving its primary goal of forcing people to retreat, hide, and silence themselves on campuses around the country.

People continue to stand up, fight back, and speak out. As Michael Aria reports at Mondoweiss, “In recent weeks, students across multiple university campuses in the United States have launched hunger strikes in solidarity with the people of Gaza enduring famine. The protestors are also calling on their schools to cut ties with weapons manufacturers and other companies connected to Israel. More than two dozen California students began a fast on May 5th with more schools joining in the proceeding days. San Francisco State University students recently ended their strike after obtaining several commitments from their school. The administration said it would expand the implementation of the divestment policy and work toward a partnership with Palestinian universities. Six students at Sacramento State, which also previously adopted a divestment policy also recently ended their hunger strike at UCLA. Student activists Maya Abdullah was hospitalized on the ninth day of her hunger strike.

Students with the group Yalies4Palestine recently met with Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis amid an ongoing hunger strike at the school. The demonstrators are demanding that Yale divest from weapons manufacturers adopt a human rights based investment strategy and end its academic partnerships with Israel and grant amnesty for student protestors.” At the University of Oregon. Students also initiated a hunger strike this week as Nathan Wilk writes for KLCC, which is Oregon’s NPR affiliate, “Protestors at the University of Oregon began a hunger strike Monday in an effort to bring attention to starvation in Gaza. Around 470,000 people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger. According to a Unbacked report released last week in Eugene, some WO students and employees announced that they would stop eating starting Monday morning in order to pressure local leaders to respond to the crisis the protesters want you owe to divest from companies with ties to Israel and provide more protections for pro-Palestinian activists on campus.

Protesters are also asking the public to call Oregon’s elected leaders in congressional delegation demanding they speak out against Israel’s blockades. In an email to KLCC Monday, UO representative Eric Howald said The university respects students’ right to express their views, but advise caution about their methods. “We urge them to choose forms of expression that prioritize their health, safety, and overall wellbeing,” said Howald, “while adhering to UO freedom of speech guidelines.” Now as we speak, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have somehow managed to survive Israel’s scorched earth siege and bombing are being deliberately starved to death. As Jem Bartholomew wrote on Tuesday at The Guardian, “The UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC this morning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time. Five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday, but Fletcher described this as a quote, drop in the ocean and totally inadequate for the population’s needs.”

It followed the director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying yesterday that 2 million people were starving in the Gaza Strip while tons of food is blocked at the border by Israel. This is all happening now. As I read this, this is urgent, dire, unbearable and unconscionable, and that is why we are seeing students escalating their protest tactics and engaging in these hunger strikes. And on Wednesday night, May 21st, I spoke with four hunger strikers at the University of Oregon, including Cole, Sadie and Efron, all undergraduate students at the University of Oregon and members of Jewish Voice for Peace-UO and Phia, a Palestinian American undergraduate student at the University of Oregon who is organized with JVP on the hunger strike and is currently on hunger strike herself. Cole, Sadie, and Efron had just completed a two day solidarity hunger strike before we recorded our episode. Here’s my conversation with Phia, Cole, Sadie, and Efron recorded on May 21st.

Well, Phia, Cole, Sadie, Efron, thank you all so much for joining us today, especially with everything that you’ve got going on over there, everything that is going on in the world right now. It’s a crazy time, but y’all are out there putting yourselves and your bodies on the line standing up for what’s right, and our listeners want to know more about this, who you are, why you’re doing this, what it feels like and what they can do to help. So I want to just jump right in and ask if we could go around the table here and just introduce yourselves to folks listening to this right now. Can you tell us a bit more about who you are and why you’re doing this and what exactly it is that y’all are doing right now?

Phia:

Yeah, for sure. I’m Phia. I’m a Palestinian American student, as was mentioned, and it is the third day of my hunger strike where I’m just drinking water and taking electrolytes. So haven’t had food since 9:00 AM on Monday morning. And this is all to raise awareness around the blockade currently happening on the border of Gaza with Israel, refusing to let any aid in. So the motivation, the goal, all of it is to raise awareness for Gaza’s for the situation in Palestine and to stand in solidarity with students who are speaking up for the right thing.

Cole:

I’m Cole. I am a Jewish student here at UO and I just completed the first segment of our hunger strike and we’ll resume next week. Yeah, I mean, we’re doing this because our school is sending funds through their investments to the Israeli war machine, and that’s not acceptable how they’re using our money. So we have tried various tactics throughout the year. We’ve tried protests, we’ve tried showing up at board meetings, we’ve tried an encampment, we’ve tried a massive petition, and they won’t listen. So this is the next step and we just have to keep trying tactics until they listen. We did a 60 hour hunger strike and next week we will do an indefinite one if they haven’t listened by then and we just have to keep going.

Sadie:

Yeah, my name is Sadie. I’m also a Jewish student at the University of Oregon. Like Cole and Phia said, the seige on Gaza has continued, and right now it’s more crucial than ever that we do everything that we can to stop what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza. Also, as a Jewish person, it’s really important to leverage our identities since a lot of this is being committed in our name. And yeah, I think our university is continuously complicit and refuses to listen to us or to meet our demands, which is why we’re continuing to do this hunger strike.

Efron:

My name is Efron again. I’m also Jewish student. Why we’re doing this is once again, our university is complicit in this genocide. They specifically refuse to disclose and refuse to divest, yet they’re a public university and they have to uphold that. According to Oregon law, this is not us as organizers speaking, this is us speaking on behalf of we would like them to divest from this genocide, this ethnic cleansing and the continued starvation. And it is being done in our name. Why don’t we stand up for what’s right and stand in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and as I read in the introduction to this episode, right, I mean the United Nations has warned that nearly 500,000 people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger right now. And the latest report from yesterday was that the UN was warning that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in the next 48 hours without aid let into Gaza, which Israel has had a total blockade on for months at this point. So I wanted to kind of connect that to what y’all are feeling right this second, fia, of course, the hunger strike that y’all have all engaged in and that FIA continues to engage in at this very moment. We’re recording this on Wednesday night, May 21st. As you guys said, you were doing this both in protest and in solidarity with our fellow human beings who are being starved to death, if not bombed to death among so many other catastrophic horrors. Could you just tell listeners a bit more about what it feels like, the hunger? I mean, what does your body go through and what is that, I guess, what do you want to communicate about that that is helping you at least understand a bit more what so many are going through in Gaza right now as we speak?

Phia:

Yeah, it’s been interesting. We’re only three days in which, or I’m only three days in, which is the average amount of time that people in Gaza go between meals, meals, so meals. What I am experiencing, I’ve been putting it in the context of this, has been people’s every day for months and it’s really unimaginable in the West. We don’t really have to contend with this type of hunger and starvation, especially used as a weapon in a lot of cases. We have the privilege to not have to experience that, but that doesn’t mean that the symptoms of hunger don’t exist. And I think that that’s what the purpose of this type of action is. I feel it in my body. I wake up and I’m tired every single mealtime because it’s ground into us or it’s drilled into us since we’re young, that morning is breakfast, afternoon is lunch, and nighttime is dinner, and something feels immensely off when there’s not that consistency.

And on top of that, out of culture has a very specific connection to food as it relates to hospitality. And I think that Israel’s starvation of Gaza is not only harming them physically, but it’s starving their souls in a way that is cultural erasure, not allowing them to participate in their food practices and culture while also just starving them to death. It is an erasure of people and an erasure of culture, but sorry, a little bit of a tangent on that, but physically, yeah, I have been experiencing headaches. I’ve noticed when I brush my hair, more of my hair falls out. I’ve noticed my voice is going a little bit. My whole body is responding to the lack of nutrients and yeah, I can’t imagine being in this state also under the constant home of drones, under the constant threat of bombing, with occupying soldiers constantly threatening to murder you in the streets. It’s truly just unimaginable.

Cole:

Yeah, I had an experience last night that I’d been thinking about where I was moving a trash can and I hit my ankle on it, not particularly hard, and it hurt so badly, not eating changed how I felt, the physical sensation. And I cannot imagine that pain from a trash can hitting your ankle. I cannot imagine being in an actual war zone with bombs flying and buildings crumbling and bullets flying. It’s genuinely unimaginable. So that’s been something I was thinking about. And then just functioning gets difficult. Thinking about things in detail. Making plans is hard. The brain fog sets in headaches were probably the most common thing all day headache and your muscles ache walking around. Your muscles hurt as if you had worked them out even though you’re just walking. And I mean, yeah, imagining running from something like that is just unbearable.

Sadie:

Yeah. There was another person who was organizing with us who was talking about a moment that they had while we were organizing the hunger strike and before we started about putting their groceries away and thinking about how food is so expensive and it’s so scarce. And I had a similar moment last night where I was feeding my cat and I got her food out of the fridge and I was looking at the groceries that I have, and I just got this kind of overwhelming wave of, I just felt very emotional, honestly, because I feel so lucky to have access to fresh food and nutrients and everything to keep me healthy. And I feel like that’s something that a lot of people take for granted and I don’t think we should because I think food also, it shouldn’t be a privilege. I think everybody should have access to fresh food and vegetables and anything. So yeah, I don’t know. That was just very emotional for me. And I think physically as well, I just felt a lot more sensitive in a lot of different ways physically and emotionally. Like Cole said, headaches were very consistent for me. And also sleeping too, going to sleep, it was really difficult, especially last night, which was the second night or third night? Second night, yeah, I was laying in my bed and my stomach hurt and I just was thinking, I also couldn’t imagine if there were bombs being dropped right now or if I was sleeping on rubble and things. So yeah, it was very eyeopening for me, for sure.

Efron:

For me, I have a specific moment of I was walking to school and I could feel it. I had a 20 minute walk from my house and every step I had super low energy, so my calves, specifically my calves, I’d feel it a lot and it felt super painful. And all I could think when I was walking was, oh my God, what would it feel like to be running to pick up the martyrs or transport them to the hospital or just trying to get food and flour? I could not imagine that pain. And then another time that was super transformative for me was sitting in my classes and everybody was super normal and talking, and my brain was completely out of it. I was like, I cannot sit and read for two minutes. It hurts. And psychologically speaking, not physically. And that was a defining moment for me, and I just was like, we got to do more. That is what I came to the conclusions of.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, I mean you don’t want to trivialize it, but your brain, it reaches for the experiences that it can find that can help us understand and empathize with what our fellow human beings are going through. And everyone listening to this knows what it’s like to be hangry, right? I mean, yeah, you’ve missed a meal or here and there, or maybe there’s one day where you were just really burning a lot of calories and not eating many, and by the end of the day, your head’s pounding. You’re short with people. That is a drop in the goddamn bucket. Pardon my French. And we all understand that, but as you guys are all pointing out, we don’t know what it’s like for that to be our normal state and for that to be an imposed violently imposed state on us and everyone around us effectively trying to kill us.

I mean, I don’t know what that’s like. I do know what it’s like to not know where my next meal’s coming from and how I’m going to pay for it. And I think people listening to this show can also understand that because there’s a real psychological component with that as well. The feeling of fear, terror, anger, shame, all the things wrapped up in once when you don’t know how you’re going to get your next meal, let alone have you got children or other family members to try to provide for the mental load that puts on you compounds the physical exhaustion, and your body’s literally starting to eat itself after a while because that’s the only way it’s going to get energy. And I’m feeling so many things and thinking so many things, talking to y’all because what you’re saying is so powerful. What you’re doing is brave and dangerous.

I mean, it was just earlier this week that, what was it at UCLA, Maya Abdullah, one of the hunger strikers was hospitalized after nine days of hunger striking. And so Sophia and all of y’all, I got to imagine that’s also on your minds. This is not just a protest. This is putting your body on the line until something happens and really trying to force others to make something happen. I wanted to just ask in that vein where this goes, and if you could just say a little more about the demands, the hope that of what you can get the university to do by taking this drastic action and what you see happening here with hunger strikes occurring, not just on your campus, but on campuses increasingly around the country.

Phia:

Yeah, seeing other students go on hunger strike across the country has been absolutely inspiring, especially as it relates to food as a human right. And Palestine specifically has a long history of hunker striking prisoners. And Israeli prisons used to be called salt and water in Arabic because that’s what they would sustain on. So it’s been incredible to see this tactic specifically just take off among the student movement. And I think it also is for the reason of tactical, logistically, it is a good move because it allows us not only to talk to admin and negotiate with them on some of the things, at least on our campus, we’ve already achieved like scholarships, but it also allows us to leverage this power to connect our struggle and our movement and this action to our state representatives. So right now, one of our biggest demands is that we really, really want to meet with Val Hoyle, Merkley and Wyden, all Oregon State, sorry, state of Oregon representatives who do have the political power to put pressure in the right places to get an arms embargo and to get the blockade ended. So we are encouraging every single person that is in support of what we’re doing to reach out to Oregon representatives, your state representatives, any of your elected officials, and urge them to take action and use their political power.

Cole:

Yeah, I mean the interesting thing about this tactic in addition to its long, specifically Palestinian history, is I think sometimes it comes off as an emotional appeal. This is not an emotional appeal to administrators. They do not care if their students are hungry. They do not care if they call the police in riot deer on their students. What they care about is their bottom line and the publicity that the hunger strikes brings is what’s so essential to hurting that bottom line. And so that’s why this tactic now we hope will work. So far, they’ve agreed to meet, but only with administrators who do not have the power to meet our demands. So we’re in the process of forcing those upper level admin to come down from the ivory tower to meet with their students who they supposedly represent, supposedly care about and supposedly care about. And yeah, I mean it’s truly not an emotional appeal to them. It is a publicity and bottom line strategy, and that’s necessary because we’re asking them to change their finances, which is what they care about the most. We’re asking them to disclose their investments and to divest from the Israeli war machine, from these companies that are making and sending these bombs from these companies that are supporting the settlements. And they will not divest from that unless we can provide some counter pressure that hurts them more.

Sadie:

Yeah, definitely. Agreed. I think publicity is a big thing that they have made it clear that they don’t want on this, and I think it’s very telling how they’re responding to this and where in what ways they truly care about their students. In response to a lot of previous actions we’ve done, including the encampment or rallies and protests just in general, they often respond and say that they’re only in disagreement because they support students’ rights of free speech, but in the name of Jewish safety, this shouldn’t be something that we should allow on campus. And I feel like by using this tactic, it’s a good way to show them that this isn’t about Jewish safety. This is about them investing in the fact that, or investing in the genocide of so many Palestinians and also the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And yeah, I think they really just care about their finances and publicity, and I think that’s a big reason why they were quick to respond to meet with us, but not with the right people. So

Efron:

Yeah, to bounce off of that, they say it’s in the name of Jewish safety. It’s not even a little bit, it’s the name of antisemitism. It’s not. So the board of trustees, they’re like the head of the ivory tower, I like to call them. They can continue to make their money, they can continue to profit off genocide. They can continue to profit off ethnic cleansing. I want to bring up a new target. We have, it’s called DUO Mobile. It’s directly connected to the apartheid system in Israel. The Cisco mobile helps, it uses ai, other things to promote settlements and under international law, this has been declared by the ICJ that is illegal, but our university continues to invest in that. They’ve already shown that we use Duo Mobile, this app every single day, all 20,000 students use this app. They have made their priorities very clear. So as a Jewish student, I say, this is not in the name of Jewish Safety. This is in the name for you to continue to profit off genocide, colonialism, imperialism.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I wanted to ask if we could maybe go back around the table, but in reverse order, let’s stick with Sadie Colon nephron for a second, and then Sophia, we’ll go back to you. But as we mentioned at the top, y’all are members of Jewish Voice for Peace. You were just touching on how you are doing this in opposition of the narrative that is coming all the way from the White House and beyond down that campuses are rife with antisemitism. I mean, we’ve been on this very show. I’ve been interviewing graduate students at Columbia where Mahmoud, Khalil and others were abducted by ICE under that premise where encampments were squashed and people beaten by tons of police under that premise to protect Jewish students and preserve Jewish safety and to stop antisemitism, right? I mean, there is a draconian McCarthyist crackdown on free speech across higher education and beyond right now, ostensibly in the name of fighting antisemitism and protecting the safety of Jewish students.

I interviewed one of the, if not the foremost scholar on McCarthyism, Ellen Schreker on the Real News podcast earlier this month, and I asked her, how does this compare to McCarthyism? She said, it’s worse, it’s way worse. It’s much broader than what McCarthyism was in the early fifties. And this is a top down effort coming from, like we said, the White House coming from university administrations themselves coming from lobbying groups like apac, I mean media that are facilitating this narrative and amplifying this narrative while suppressing coverage of protests like yours and voices like yours. I know we only got about 10 minutes here, but I really wanted to ask if we could address that question, and if you guys could speak to listeners out there who are hearing this stuff, who are being told this narrative about what’s going on on campuses, what would you as three Jewish undergraduates, members of Jewish Voice for Peace who just engaged in the solidarity hunger strike for Gaza, what would you want folks to know about what’s really happening on campus and what else they need to correct their thinking on here?

Cole:

Yeah, I mean, I get Unspeakably disgusted thinking about this and angry because this administration is the same administration that works with Elon Musk who did a Nazi salute on tv, and they want to use antisemitism as an excuse to crack down on protests that are fighting to end an ongoing genocide. They want to use antisemitism as an excuse to deport immigrants when Jewish Holocaust refugees were turned around at the US border. It’s disgusting. It has nothing to do with protecting Jews. It has everything to do with enshrining power and preventing protest and preventing free speech.

Sadie:

Completely agreed. I also find it really disgusting, and it’s also not reflective of all Jewish students on campus. They don’t listen to all Jewish students on campus. They pick and choose. They pick and choose. There are multiple Jewish organizations on campus, including Halel and Habad and Jewish Voice for Peace and Halel in particular, at least the University of Oregon. Halel often, I guess kind of works in tandem with the university and they, that’s where the university sources their reports from. But they don’t consider the fact that there is an organization on campus that is an anti-Zionist Jewish organization and they don’t listen from us or ask us or consider the fact that maybe not all Jewish people think that this protesting on campus in solidarity with Palestine is antisemitic.

Cole:

Can we add J Street there?

Sadie:

Oh, yeah.

Efron:

And J-Street, yes. I’m just going to repeat myself what they just said. I also find it disgusting because all Trump and this administration, and this includes Biden too. Biden has facilitated this genocide. He is not guilty. He is just as guilty as Trump. They use the guise of antisemitism to further their own power to further Christian Zionism, to further their idea that Jews must immigrate to Israel so the rapture can happen. These politicians genuinely believe this. This is factual also to continue on that Trump just wants to inherent power. He’s more than okay to use Jews as a ploy to use this to continue his fascism and white supremacy. This isn’t new. We saw this in his previous administration. He’s just using this as a way to continue. In my mind, I wish I was surprised by what I’m seeing, but I’m not. They’re obviously showing who they are. We should respond back to show who we are as Jews. I will not stand for this, and I have to put my body on the line. The rest of my fellow friends here, I will do that. If that’s what it takes for our universities to listen, then we’ll do that.

Sadie:

I think they also just weaponize any identity that seems to serve them in that moment. And that’s kind of, Trump is antisemitic. We’ve seen that multiple times. And Elon Musk and everybody who he works with, most of them have had very clear situations where they have been antisemitic openly, like the Nazi salute that Cole mentioned. So yeah, I think it’s just like whatever works to their advantage in that moment to uplift themselves.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Phia, I want to also give you a chance to hop in here as well. I mean, we’re literally all sitting here on a call with you, a Palestinian American, and with your three fellow students from Jewish Voice for Peace, all y’all engaging in a hunger strike. You guys have mentioned the student encampment, the organizing that you’ve been doing on campus together. What do you think that says, or what do you want that to say to folks out there who are pushing this narrative, that this movement in solidarity with Palestinians in opposition to the ongoing genocide and the violent occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, what do you want people to take away from this to counter that narrative? That this movement represents a threat to Jewish safety and identity and all the things that we’re hearing in the media right now?

Phia:

Yeah, I think I truly can’t say it better than my fellow students did, but I think that there’s a real danger in the conflation that we see right now between Zionism and Judaism, and it’s important to remember that Judaism has always been a part of Palestinian land as much as Islam, as much as Christianity. Jerusalem has always been a hub for all three of the Abrahamic religions. That was never an issue until Zionism. Zionism was the thing that fractured the diversity of religion that was working for generations. And I think that isolating Zionism as the root cause and identifying the ways that we can criticize Zionism for its use or its weaponization of Judaism as a shield and a weapon, the ways that we can criticize it for that are important for protecting our Jewish students sincerely.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And in that vein, with the last few minutes that I have you guys here, I wanted to just ask if we could zoom out here and again, put these hunger strikes, both the one that Phia continues to be involved in right now, the one that Sadie, Cole, and Ephron, unless the university makes some movement, are going to be engaging indefinitely in next week. Students around the country are engaging in hunger strikes as we speak. I wanted to ask with the last few minutes, if we could just again, place this in the context of the broader student movement that we’ve seen over the past year or two years, and if you had any final messages for folks out there, folks on your campus and beyond, what do you want to communicate to them about what they can do to help?

Sadie:

Yeah, I think in the broader picture, our primary goal by doing this hunger strike, yes, we do want the administration to meet with us, and we do want them to meet our demands, but our primary goal is that all who bear witness to our hunger strike also bear witness to the humanity of Palestinians who are being starved to death in Gaza, because that is something that has continued. And last year we had, after, during our encampment, there was so much energy and there were so many people, and I think one big problem over the past year is that people just stopped paying attention. And I think by doing this, it’s bringing that reality, not that it will ever match up to what is really happening and what Israel is doing to Palestinians, but bringing that into our own community so everybody can see how horrible it is, what Israel is doing, they’re intentionally starving people in Gaza, and they don’t seem to intend on stopping anytime soon, which I think is why it’s so important that people continue to pay attention. And if we have to sit at a table on our campus and not eat for multiple days up to weeks, then that’s what we’ll have to do. Because in the broader picture, this is all about Casa and our university is complicit in it, but we also have to continue to pay attention to what is happening.

Cole:

Yeah, I think nationally this shows the terrain of struggle has changed, and we need to continue to adapt our tactics to what works. And I think the effectiveness of the hunger strikes speaks to the success that Israel’s had with dehumanizing Palestinians because the outrage about college students not eating for a week is much larger than the outrage about hundreds of thousands of Palestinians not eating for days for over a year. And we need to, I mean, that’s just how it is, and we need to draw attention to that however we can. And if that’s by utilizing the fact that people care about college students here more, then that’s what we have to do. And people hopefully will take that and use it as a sign to keep going to join whatever group is near them. If it’s an SJP or a JVP, Palestinian Youth Movement, PYN, anything that is doing something about Palestine, then that’s what we need right now.

Efron:

Honestly, when I think about the national student movement and how these hunger strikes have occurred, the amount of cross student solidarity that I’ve seen is insane. People are reaching out to us. I never expected this, but then I thought, okay, this solidarity between us is amazing, but how can we create solidarity among people in the west because clearly they’re not paying attention and we need to bring it back to Palestine. I mean, as we’re speaking, the occupied West Bank is being annexed. It’s about Palestine and Gaza, and we really need to bring that back to the people of the west because clearly they’ve shut their ears and are like, I don’t want to hear about this. I don’t want to listen about this. They need to listen, and they need to act. And like my friends just said here, I think they should follow through and I cannot wait to hear what VS says.

Phia:

Yeah. Gosh, that’s hard to follow. I think I would finish with the reminder that we will never understand what it feels like to be under constant bombing, under constant threat of displacement and murder, but we can understand a fraction of what the hunger feels like, and we can echo the emptiness of their stomachs and use that as our power and our advocacy. And I’d also just encourage people not to look away. It is really, really difficult to be completely conscious and aware of what we are responsible for as Americans and what the United States of America is culpable for, especially in Gaza. But to look away is complicity, point blank. And yeah, it is our moral imperative to make sure that we are not abandoning our fellow humans while they are undergoing the crime of all crimes. I’d also say that Israel isn’t only the most dangerous state for Palestinians. It is also the most dangerous thing for Jewish safety. It is the most dangerous thing for Judaism is the most dangerous thing for international order, for international law, for humanitarian law. So Israel is culpable of atrocities no matter how you look at it. And I encourage people to advocate against it in every single way. So thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just last question, I know you guys got to go, but just in case any of y’all had a final message here, I want to ask for folks listening to this who are still afraid to do what you’re saying to people who are scrubbing their social media right now, people who are giving into the understandable fear that engaging in this kind of protest is going to put them in danger as young people who are taking that step and continuing to speak up for what you believe in and for what you know and believe to be right. Do you have any final messages for folks out there listening who are afraid right now?

Phia:

Yeah, I had the exact experience that you were referring to. I was like, should I scrub my social medias? Should I be more quiet? Am I making too much noise? And I consulted one of my icons in the community space that I really look up to, and they reminded me this is exactly what the administration, the Trump administration, what our government wants. They want us to be paralyzed. They want us to be afraid to want to step back and be like, maybe I shouldn’t take this risk. That is their goal. And I think that even just saying, no, I’m going to stand firmly in what I believe, even if it’s becoming more dangerous, that’s a powerful act of resistance in itself. And I think that if you’re struggling to find ways to show your solidarity and get involved, your voice is one of the most important things that you have. And we underestimate what silencing ourselves really does. So keep speaking up is what I would say.

Cole:

What I would say is if you feel like you need to scrub your social media, scrub your social media, but then go to a median, do what you need to do to protect yourself, but don’t let that be the end. You need to be proactive while being safe. Use signal, use these platforms that are safer. Do the most that you can to protect yourself while still doing something.

Sadie:

Yeah, I think there are a lot of different levels you can engage yourself into. If you’re kind of in one of those moments where you feel nervous or scared and you don’t really, I don’t know, you’re nervous for your own, I want to say the word safety, but I feel like that’s not the right word. I just continue to remind myself that this is like I have to keep doing this. I am in a position of privilege where I can use my identity especially, but also just the things I’ve access to the university. And that might not be true for everybody, but there are still ways to access getting involved, and that could be community based. But yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s, I don’t know. I get those moments a lot where I get nervous and I feel like I need to censor myself or my social media and things, but then I don’t know. That kind of brings me back to thinking about what is happening and how urgent it is. And I don’t know if that has to stop for any reason. I don’t know. I just couldn’t see myself doing that because it’s very just deeply important and necessary that I continue doing it.

Efron:

I would say, I mean, what all my people have said here is very good. I would say for me, I’ve had some moments where I’m like, oh God, I’m a little freaked out because some people will docs and we’ll do these things, but in retrospect, they’re doing that out of hate. They have so much hate. I’d rather do what I’m doing out of love and had rather look at this fucking fascist government and Israel and be like, no, I’m going to stand up to you. And I also think people can do that in different ways. If people are really good at art, please do art. We need art. Or if you’re really good at writing, we need journalism out there, guys, or I don’t know, whatever skill you have, it could be used in the movement and it could be as small as like, oh, I want to make a poster that changes so much.

You have no idea. Or, oh, I want to do a press release can change so much. So I think acts of resistance can be as small as I want to make a banner for this marcher rally that is still standing against this administration and Israel, even if it is really small, it is still something. And I think people should understand that, okay, this isn’t enough. It is enough. And as long as you continue, the administration will continue to have problems. And that’s okay with us because we’re going to keep going and going and going. So that’s what I would say. Whatever you can do is amazing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Phia, Cole, Sadie and Efron from the University of Oregon. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Hurricane Helene plowed over the Southeast last September, it caused more inland deaths than any hurricane in recorded history. The highest per capita death toll occurred in Yancey County, a rural expanse in the rugged Black Mountains of North Carolina devastated by flash flooding and landslides.

On Monday, we published a story recounting what happened in Yancey. Our intent was to show, through those horrific events, how highly accurate weather warnings did not reach many of those most in harm’s way — and that inland communities are not nearly as prepared for catastrophic storms as coastal ones. No one in Yancey received evacuation orders — and many, including those living in high-risk areas and caring for young children and frail older people, didn’t flee because they didn’t see clearer signs of urgency from the county.

Much has been written about Helene, but very little focused on evacuation orders. During four months of reporting, we found that the responses of local officials across western North Carolina’s mountain counties differed a great deal. We also found that the state lags behind others in terms of what it requires of its county-level emergency managers and that legislators paused for almost a decade an effort to map landslide hazards in the counties that were hardest hit by Helene.

Here are five key discoveries from our reporting:

To determine which cities and counties communicated evacuation orders, we reviewed more than 500 social media posts and other types of messaging that more than three dozen North Carolina jurisdictions shared with their residents in the lead-up to the storm. We compared that with a letter Gov. Roy Cooper sent to then-President Joe Biden seeking expedited disaster relief.

We found that by nightfall on Sept. 26, the day before Helene hit, three counties near Yancey issued mandatory evacuations, targeted toward people living close to specific dams and rivers, and at least five counties issued voluntary evacuation orders.

McDowell County, just southeast of Yancey, took particularly robust actions to warn residents about the storm, including issuing both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders in enough time for people to leave. Henderson County, southwest of Yancey, targeted a voluntary evacuation order at residents living in floodplains that have a 1 in 500 chance of flooding annually, and its directions were clear: “The time is now for residents to self-evacuate.”

We are continuing to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, and we want to know: Is there one thing the storm destroyed that you would have saved had you evacuated? To share, leave us a voicemail at 828-201-2738.

Yancey and at least four other nearby counties also did not issue evacuation orders. Yancey’s emergency manager, Jeff Howell, told us he doubted the county commissioners would support issuing orders or that local residents would heed them given the area’s culture of self-reliance and disdain for government mandates, especially regarding property rights. But some Yancey residents said they would have left or at least prepared better.

Although local officials received repeated warnings — including one that said the storm would be among the worst weather events “in the modern era” — some argued that they couldn’t have done more to prepare because the storm’s ferocity was so unprecedented.

We found that inland mountain communities too often lack the infrastructure or planning to use evacuations to get residents out of harm’s way in advance of a destructive storm like Helene. Some officials in Yancey, for instance, said that they weren’t sure where they would have directed people to go in the face of such an unprecedented onslaught of rain and wind.

In recent years, far more people died in the continental U.S. from hurricanes’ freshwater flooding than from their coastal storm surges — a dramatic reversal from a decade earlier. That’s largely due to improved evacuations along the coasts.

Several Eastern states — including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — have adopted plans called Know Your Zone to execute targeted evacuations when storms approach. But these plans don’t often extend very far inland, even though warming ocean temperatures create stronger storms. Powerful storms that are not hurricanes can also turn deadly. In February, storms killed at least 24 people in Kentucky. More have died since in other storms.

To understand how local officials communicated disaster warnings to their residents, we compiled a timeline of alerts and warnings sent out by the National Weather Service and then scoured contemporaneous social media posts that more than three dozen jurisdictions were sharing with their residents. We found big disparities.

For instance, in addition to issuing evacuation orders, McDowell County put out flyers in English and Spanish that warned of life-threatening flash floods and urged all people in vulnerable areas to “evacuate as soon as possible.” Many did.

And about 36 hours before Helene hit, Haywood County’s sheriff warned in a brief video message that a “catastrophic, life-threatening event is about to befall” the county, which has one of the larger populations in western North Carolina. The emergency services director, standing beside him, emphasized: “This message is urgent.” The sheriff then asked residents, starting that night, to “make plans or preparations to leave low-lying areas or areas that are threatened by flooding.” He ended with: “Please, seek safety — and do so now.”

Almost an entire day later, with Helene closing in, officials in rural Yancey were among those who used less-direct wording. In Facebook posts, they asked residents to “please prepare to move to higher ground as soon as you are able” and advised “now is the time to make plans” to go elsewhere as the final hours to leave before nightfall wound down. In one post, they softened the message, adding, “This information is not to frighten anyone.”

ProPublica interviewed dozens of survivors in Yancey, including many who told us that in retrospect they were looking for clearer directives from their leaders.

At the heart of evacuations are emergency managers, the often little-known public officials tasked with preparing their areas for potential disasters. Yet, education and training requirements for these posts vary considerably by state and community.

We plan to continue reporting on Helene’s aftermath to understand what lessons could better prepare communities and local emergency managers for future storms, as well as how the rebuilding effort is unfolding. If you are a Helene survivor or a North Carolina emergency responder and would like to share tips with us, please email helenetips@propublica.org.

Yancey’s emergency manager had taken the job seven years before Helene hit after a long and robust Army career. He had no emergency management experience, however. In the years before Helene, he had been asking the county for more help — but by the time the storm arrived, it was still only him and a part-time employee.

Florida recently enacted a law mandating minimum training, experience and education for its counties’ emergency managers starting in 2026. Georgia requires its emergency managers to get the state’s emergency management certification within six months. But North Carolina doesn’t require any specific training for its local emergency managers.

More than 20 years ago, North Carolina legislators passed a law requiring that landslide hazards be mapped across 19 mountain counties. They did so after two hurricanes drenched the mountains, dumping more than 27 inches of rain that caused at least 85 landslides and multiple deaths.

But a few years later, after only four of those counties were mapped, a majority of largely Republican lawmakers gave in to real estate agents and developers who said the work could harm property values and curb growth. They halted the program, cutting the funding and laying off the six geologists at work on it.

Almost a decade later, in 2018, lawmakers jump-started the program after still more landslide deaths. But it takes at least a year to map one county, so by the time Helene hit, Yancey and four others in the storm’s path of destruction weren’t yet mapped.

Without this detailed hazard mapping, emergency managers and residents in those areas lacked the detailed assessment of risk to specific areas to make plans before landslides clawed down the mountains, killing far more people. The U.S. Geological Survey has so far identified 2,015 Helene-induced landslides across western North Carolina.

The geologists back at work on the project are almost done mapping McDowell County. They would have finished it last year, but Helene derailed their work for a time.

Helene left many lessons to be learned among inland communities in the paths of increasingly virulent storms. But as North Carolina figures out how to direct millions of dollars in rebuilding aid, there has so far been no state inquiry into the preparedness of local areas — or what could better equip them for the next unprecedented storm.

Yancey County’s board chair said that he expects the county will do so later, but for now its officials are focused on rebuilding efforts.

A review commissioned by North Carolina Emergency Management examined its own actions and how its staff interacted with local officials. It found the agency severely understaffed. But it didn’t examine such preparedness issues as planning for evacuations or the training requirements for local emergency managers.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Over two dozen disability rights activists were arrested on Capitol Hill last week when they protested the Trump-backed Republican budget bill and its cuts to Medicaid, affordable housing and more. “We’re putting our bodies on the line [because] our bodies are on the line,” says Julie Farrar, an activist with ADAPT, which organized the protest. “It is blood on the hands of the GOP and the president and the administration, that they want this big, beautiful bill for billionaires that will kill poor people [and] disabled people.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Republicans are stealing health care from 13.7 million Americans to give trillions in tax handouts to billionaires.

House Budget Committee Republicans only voted against this plan because they want to make it even crueler. Make no mistake, Republicans still plan to bring it to the House floor next week.

Their plan will kill people. It will close hospitals, especially those in rural areas and inner cities, across the country. It will also close nursing homes, since Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of nursing home care.

The ripple effect of these cuts will hit every single person in this country. The hospital closest to you may close. If not, it will become more overburdened as uninsured people are forced to use the emergency room for care.

Unless you are a billionaire, your standard of living and your health care will get worse if this despicable plan becomes law.”

Further reading: Republicans Plan to Rip Medicaid Away from Millions of Seniors — All to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Labor’s decline over the past half century has devastated working-class communities, undermined democracy, and deepened the grip of big business over our work lives, our political system, and our planet,” Eric Blanc writes in his new book, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. “To turn this around, we need tens of millions more people forming, joining, and transforming unions”; however, to achieve that level of growth, “a new unionization model is necessary because the only way to build power at scale is by relying less on paid full-timers and more on workers.” In this episode of Working People, recorded at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore in Baltimore on March 27, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Blanc about his book and how worker-to-worker organizing campaigns at companies like Starbucks and Amazon are breathing life back into the labor movement.

Eric Blanc is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, and director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative.

Additional links/info:

• Eric Blanc website, Facebook page, and X page
• Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) website
• Red Emma’s website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Eric Blanc, University of California Press, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big
• Eric Blanc, Jacobin, “Bet on Worker-to-Worker Organizing”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “Want to unionize your workplace? These worker-organizers have some advice”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, thank you so much, Analysis. Thank you as always to the great Red Emma’s cooperative bookstore cafe gathering space. Please, please, please support Red Emma’s however you can. We need spaces like this and many more now more than ever. And thank you all for coming out tonight. It’s a real shot to the heart to see your faces in these dark times. And we are here to talk about fighting the bosses, fighting the oligarchs, building worker power, and taking our world back. Does that sound all right to you guys? Oh, come on. I said who wants to talk about building worker power? Hell yeah. And we are here to jump into that discussion with a really, really vital new book by brother Eric Blanc. It is called We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, which you can buy right over there.

Our goal here is not to try to condense this book into a 30 minute talk. Our goal is to try to get you to read it, to think about it, to let Eric know what you think about it, use what’s usable in it, build on it. Alright, so Eric, I’m going to shut up and I want to toss things to you. There’s so much that I could ask you about here, but I wanted to start, since both of our books grew out of Covid—and the book that I’ve got over there, that Analysis mentioned, was interviews with 10 workers during the first year of Covid. And you have a really, I think, touching part in this book where you talk about the first call that you took as a member of what would become EWOC (Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee). And you talk about Enrique. I wanted to first ask if you could just tell us a little bit about that call, and you have a line here where you said, “without the resistance of workers like Enrique,” and I’ll let you tell what that resistance was, “many thousands more people would likely have died across the US.” I wanted to ask if you could take us to that moment: what was happening with Enrique, your involvement with it, and how this book grew out of it, but also, in that telling, can you say a little bit about how the story of Covid—when we’re not talking about government policy and total death tolls… What does that story look like when we look at it from the ground, through the stories of working people like the ones you spoke to in the book?

Eric Blanc:

Yeah, thanks. That’s a great question and thanks to all you for being here. Thanks Maximillian for discussing, thanks to Red Emma’s. And yeah, going back, it’s interesting going back to that moment of crisis, I felt like the last few months I’ve had this visceral sense of almost deja vu of this very intense crisis. And trying to think what that looked like in early 2020, I had been labor organizer for the Bernie campaign. And what ended up happening is once Covid hit, we started getting inundated with workers reaching out from all over the country just saying, my boss is making me go in. Nobody has masks. My coworkers are being forced to come in because, so just give a concrete example. So Enrique is a meat packing worker in Pennsylvania and reached out because he knew that his coworker had covid had to keep on coming in because at that factory, if they had missed more than three days total, they would just get the boot.

There was no job protection. And so there was just a level of fear for people’s lives. That was a crisis for all of them. There’s hundreds of workers at this meat packing plant. And so they reached out to the Bernie campaign. And because I spoke Spanish, I ended up talking to Enrique and helping him for weeks and eventually months and trying to build a fight back campaign. And they ended up doing some really brave actions, including not showing up to work. They wrote an open letter and got over WhatsApp chat and got a huge number of their workers not to show up until basic safety demands were met. They won many of those through this struggle. So yeah, exactly that courage, that heroism because it was terrifying for them. A lot of were undocumented and they had no idea what was going to happen to them.

And so I just think about so many stories. You got no press, nobody ever heard about it. And we don’t even know the numbers of workers that did that basic level of collective action and militancy all over the country and frankly just saved so many people’s lives. And it’s exactly what you said. And it seems to me, again, just to bring it back to this moment, that there is a similar thing going on right now where people, the labor movement, we talk about it in general, but it does ultimately come down to these initial acts, the first people who are willing to speak out when other people aren’t. And it’s risky and it’s something I think is worth celebrating though in the hindsight when things seem impossible and things seem like everything is against us, you can see that those actions did make a real difference.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So I know that obviously this story goes back before Covid and your first book, and you talk about this in your current book, you talk about the sort of lineage going to the red bread teacher strikes. You can trace that lineage even further back with the sort of revitalization of the Chicago Teachers Union. It depends on where you want to start the clock. But sticking with Covid for a moment, I wanted to ask if you could just condense a little bit, I don’t think we fully reckoned as a society with how much Covid fucked our brains and our society. Pardon my friends. But there are parts of that story that can get lost easily if we’re not looking at the shop floor struggles that emerged in response to it. So I wanted to ask first, since you talked about some of the major struggles that working people were facing in the midst of a deadly pandemic, so what was the organizing response to that that sort of led to this book in this argument that you make in it? And how was that sort of changing what had been the dominant trends in organized labor up until Covid?

Eric Blanc:

Yeah, it’s a good question. And you’re right that the thrust of worker to worker organizing in some ways predates the pandemic. I would really would say this sort of wide scale worker led organizing. The first really big instance of it in recent memory we have was the 2018 teacher strikes that were initiated over these viral Facebook groups. And a lot of the dynamics we’ve seen in recent years were presaged there. But the pandemic sort of supercharged this all over the country because it showed overnight that the bosses didn’t care whether you died. And the organizing and the questions that led to this book, frankly as you mentioned, came out of that the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee emerged literally as a Google form that we had to set up because we were getting so many workers reaching out like Enrique who were just saying, give us any help.

Well, how can we fight back? And so we set up a Google form and connected these workers reaching out with volunteer organizers, a lot of people coming out of Bernie World, out of Democratic Socialists of America, out of United Electrical Left Union. And we were able to start building a really interesting project to help workers start. And the book in many ways comes out of this direct organizing experience. We’re just trying to figure out, well, how do you organize and help support large numbers of workers when you have very few staff? We were just volunteers, right? We didn’t have any staff at first. And then the question becomes, well, what kind of organizing matters are possible when you’re giving workers the tools to start self-organizing in a way that doesn’t require the traditional model where you have a full-time staff organizer, very intensely coaching every worker because that actually can be very effective, but we just didn’t have the staff to do it.

And I think we’ve seen that similar dynamic with a lot of the other early covid sparks. So Starbucks would be a classic example. Late 2021, they win one union election in Buffalo, New York to their great surprise, because this wasn’t a plan to organize Starbucks nationally. They had no plan on doing that. They were just trying to organize very modestly upstate New York, see if you could get some Starbucks, get other coffee shops at upstate New York. Well, to their great surprise, hundreds and then thousands of workers start reaching out nationally and saying, we want to do what you did. And if they had tried to do a staff intensive model, they just literally wouldn’t have had the ability to talk to so many workers. There weren’t enough staff, they had a couple staff barely. And so they had to have workers jump on Zoom to talk to all of their coworkers nationally. So you do get a sense then of the question of scale. How do you get enough workers? Organizing is not possible. These moments of crisis of urg through a very staff intensive way.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s unpack that just a little bit more, right? You have a great line, many great lines, and I think one of the real strengths of this book is your ability to articulate very clearly. I mean these three points of analysis that help us, I think move past what have been very slow moving debates. And you succinctly put that Labor’s powerful approaches haven’t been scalable and labor’s scalable approaches haven’t been very powerful. So I wanted ask if you could unpack that statement a little more and then give us some sort of more of the concrete details about what a worker to worker organizing camp, what makes it different from say a staff model. I mean, you give the example of Bessemer, Alabama that was workers at Amazon leading a campaign, but with the help of an established union didn’t win. Then Amazon workers in Staten Island do a more work of the worker model and they win. So maybe we could use that as sort of the concrete example to show people what we’re talking about.

Eric Blanc:

Sure. So yeah, the argument is that both for labor and frankly for social movements more generally, I try to say that we’re in this impasse where the most powerful methods we have are too small scale. And so you have real, very strong unions that have been able to win very important gains for their members across the country. And so I actually don’t try to diminish the importance of staff or the importance of this model. The problem is that there hasn’t been a way to generalize that for reasons essentially of costs too expensive and takes too much time through staff intensive ways to organize tens of millions of workers that way. It’s true frankly for community organizing as well. You have a lot of really smart, deep base building organizations that haven’t had the mechanisms to build that power widely. On the other hand, you’ve had had then as a response to that scale issue attempts to go really big.

So you have things like our Walmart or Fight for 15, which in the labor world did make, they made some differences. They were able to get wage increases for a large number of workers, but they weren’t trying to do the traditional power building of deep organizing in which the ideas, the union is built from the workers from below by talking to your coworkers, building solidarity, having an organized committee. These basic building blocks of worker organizing were sort of dropped because the assumption is you couldn’t do that on a nationwide level. And so what you see in the recent period is the merging of this national scalable meeting, the moment using digital tools type ethos and structure, but combining that with really classic structures and tactics of deep labor organizing. And that’s really exciting. And I think the example I would give is maybe not Bessemer and Amazon because a little messy, all these are a little bit messy.

But just to give one other example of a worker to worker drive that I think is really, really sort of emblematic beyond Starbucks is the news. So not everybody follows the news guild, but this is one of the main unions that organizes in media and there’s been massive wins against really evil hedge funds that have taken over media companies. And the News Guild over the last five years has organized hundreds of newspapers in very intense battles. These are not easy fights by any means. You have people who’ve been striking for over a year in some cases currently as we speak. And they won through a thing called the Member Organizing program in which their ethos is every worker leader should be trained to do anything a staff person normally does. And so this is in some ways the thesis of the book is that it turns out worker leaders can do many of these things that traditionally we assume that only full-time staff could do.

So that’s concretely initiating campaigns. Crucially, it’s coaching other workers. Normally it’ll be a staff person has to coach another worker and how to build power. We hear workers are coaching other workers and there’s some staff in the background, staff and resources play a big role, but really it’s workers talking to other workers and then strategizing who’s making the big decisions over the campaign. Well, staff can be in there, but are workers going to have a decisive say? And that turns out it makes a big difference for workers’ ownership over their drives for their ability to not get burnt out. They feel it truly, the union is us. We are the union unions always say this. This is a classic thing that unions say. The question is actually how do you do it and how do you make it feel real and how do you make it be real? And I think that the recent worker to worker drives have put the meat on that in a way that traditional organizing hasn’t to the same extent.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and that creates sort of opportunities for success that maybe we didn’t anticipate ourselves three years ago. I think a lot of what’s happened in that time has been surprising even to folks in the neighborhood world or I know so, but you are also very careful in this book to sort of make it clear. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Don’t take away the wrong lesson here that union staffers are evil, bad, stupid people. Just flip the ways that we’re looking at this, understanding it. And in that vein, I wanted to sort of ask about the particular challenges that come with a worker to worker organizing model, what that lack of institutional support along with a labor law that’s stacked so heavily in favor of the bosses and anemic NLRB that now is I’m dysfunctional at the current moment. So what are some of the real drawbacks to a work of the worker model or what have we learned from the past couple of years about those?

Eric Blanc:

Yeah, it’s a really good question. And I would say that the first thing is there’s really different varieties of worker, worker unions going as much to completely independent unions like in the Amazon JFK eight where they had no institutional backing or very little to worker to worker drives like Starbucks or the News Guild in which you have really driving things and having this worker to worker approach but with serious resources. And I think that one of the lessons of the book and the research and recent experience is that if you’re going up against the biggest companies, you do need actually this sweet spot of combined resources with the worker leadership that it’s very hard to win and to sustain your organizing without some level of institutional backend for basic reasons that you can imagine organizing is so hard. It’s so labor intensive that it’s easy to get burnt out.

It frankly is easy to get burnt out. And so I would say that this is both the power of the new model is that it depends on workers’ leadership, but then people have jobs, people have families. And so you have to have a realistic assessment of how far you can ask people to go. And it turns out they can go very far, but there’s still limits. There’s still limits to what you can do without any staff and union backing. So I think that’s one big lesson. And then I would say that one of the things we’re seeing right now is it’s a very open question about what new organizing in the private sector looks like under Trump. And I’m actually very optimistic about that labor can keep up its momentum. It might be through fighting defensive battles, you can win and defeat Musk and Trump.

That would be a historic victory, whether that will mean we’re going to get tens of millions of new workers in unions under the next four years. Those are separate questions. So I do think that we need to be sober about the ability to organize tens of millions of workers, doesn’t just depend on having the right models. There has to be some combination of right strategy, good organizing, and frankly favorable conditions, whether it’s in the political sphere or things like the covid crisis that can galvanize people. And so it’s not just a question of putting out the right ideas and then inevitably you’ll win. You have to have the meeting of the various conditions, and that’s not always clear how far you can go at a given moment. It’s an open question. Right now

Maximillian Alvarez:

We got about, let’s say 10 more minutes and then we want to open it up to q and a, but I thought it was really eyeopening for me and helpful for me to read in this book how you’re showing how this applies beyond later, and these are lessons that can be learned and implemented and built on in other social movements. I wanted to ask if you could unpack that a little more. What does Worker to worker organizing teach us about how we can improve on our existing social movements and build the ones that we don’t have, but also you give Sunrise movement as also another example of a different kind of model that doesn’t have the worker to worker ethos and actually suffered from that. So I was wondering if you could touch on that as well.

Eric Blanc:

Yeah. This goes to the earlier question of wide but shallow or a small, but deep, right? You have this impasse. The really big things aren’t powerful enough. And we’ve seen that in social movements in part because the big national campaigns we’ve had are still for the most part, imbued with kind of a nonprofit top down type structure in which you’re not building membership organizations. There’s not really a truly democratic structure to which people can sustain themselves. And it doesn’t mean that these aren’t effective. In some ways, the Bernie campaign was tremendously effective, but then Bernie closed up shop and the organizing went home. And similar with the Sunrise and some of these other distributed campaigns, it’s not to say what they did was unimportant, but if you’re not building membership democratic organizations in the process of these national campaigns, you’re really limiting your ability to build sustained power because people don’t keep on dedicating themselves.

They don’t keep on showing up unless they feel real ownership and have real ownership over the organizing. And so just to give a concrete example, as we speak, as we speak, you might be aware that there’s an authoritarian coup in our country and they’re trying to destroy all public services and they are rounding up people off the street. Did you see this at Tufts yesterday just for speaking out on Palestine? So it’s a pretty intense moment we’re in, and it’s worth thinking through. Well concretely, what does this mean for that? Because frankly, if we’re not talking about this moment, then I am not sure why we’re here. So I just want to be really specific about naming that. And to me, one of the limitations we’ve seen right now is that there’s so many people who are angry about what’s going on but don’t know how to get plugged in.

There’s not a clear onboarding mechanism to get literally the millions of people right now who are up in arms against what’s happening with social security or around democracy or free speech, any of these things. You need to have a mechanism to train up hundreds of thousands of new organizers. So to be really concrete, for instance, I love Bernie and AOCs rallies, they’ve been amazing. They show that people want to fight back. But the thing that was missing there, and this goes to your question, is a direct ask of people to get involved and organized. And that’s different than just showing up for another action. You basically need to give all the people who went to that rally to know that they need to get their coworkers and their friends and their family members to go to the next action. In other words, they need to become an organizer.

And you need to have a structure for those organizers to keep on organizing. That is the missing thing we have. We just tell people to go from one action to another, and then people go home and they don’t know how to develop themselves, and we’re not building sustained power. So one of the things that I’m working on now, there’s other people in this room who are even more involved, is the Federal Unionist Network, which is building this type of bottom up worker to Warrior Shout out to fund, which is building this kind of worker to worker network and the federal unionist to overcome these divisions and to really train up workers to fight back in conjunction with the community. And so that I think is a type of model that hopefully we can see replicated more widely. And one shout out is if you want to get involved, you should go to save public services.com. And I’m getting into it. And in Baltimore specifically, there’s a signup sheet there that everyone should sign up for it because the organizing starts now, if you’re not already involved, now is the moment. So please sign up. There’s an upcoming action that will get announced in the q and a.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah, you anticipated me, brother. That was going to be my last question. But I’m really, you’re absolutely right. If we’re not talking about what we can do right now to stop what’s happening and what alternative future we’re fighting for that we’re not having the right conversation, we’re not in the game, and we need to get our heads in the game yesterday. And with the final sort of minutes that we’ve got, before we open up the q and a, I wanted to kind of hook that urgency to the other urgent question you’re addressing here, which is before the technical fascist takeover really got supercharged in this new administration, we were already facing the crisis that produced this monstrous administration and our monster politics, which is decades of neoliberal rot, corporate consolidation, mass inequality, climate destroying economics and politics, collapse in popular faith in the institutions of government to represent the people.

I could go on and on and on. And with that, a corresponding and even causative decline in organized labor power. So the less unions we have, the less organized workers are, the more the bosses win and the more the bosses start taking over society and making it such. And we’ve ended up here. So the urgency in your book, which you couldn’t fully anticipate the urgency that we’re feeling right this second, was like we are in a society destroying crisis that needs to be fixed by workers getting organized and in the millions, the tens of millions. And this is the model that can actually help us scale to that number. So I wanted to ask if you could drive home that point, why do we need to organize so many workers? Why does this model help us, and what does an organized working class mean for saving democracy and society?

Eric Blanc:

Yeah, that’s a great question slash maybe you also gave the answer in the question, but it’s the question. And I would say that the graph that is the graph to understand this is the relationship between income inequality and union density. The income inequality goes up when union density goes down. And that’s one reflection of the basic question of power. Do working people have power? Do corporations have power? And what is the relationship between these two? How much power do workers have? And we frankly had our power decline, decline and decline for decade. And that is why we’re in the crisis we’re in across the board. It’s why Trump was able to get elected. It’s why we’re in climate catastrophes, why we don’t have the power yet to stop the genocide and Gaza and Palestine. And so the urgency of this is no matter what question you feel most strongly about, no matter what issue it is, that is deeply rooted in the power imbalance between working people and the bosses.

And our best way to turn that around is through organizing ourselves as working people by the millions. And so that is a scale question. It’s a question of how you get to power that can actually defeat the fascists and the millionaires. And I think that one of the things I didn’t fully even anticipate in the book, and we was just talking about this earlier over dinner, is the extent to which this model turns out to be extremely important, even for the defensive battles. So if you just think about what is going to stop, what is it going to take to stop Musk in Trump’s coup, essentially, right? Well, it turns out there’s not enough staff in the labor movement to organize tens of millions of federal workers, right? If you’re going to organize tens of millions of workers generally, and millions of workers to fight back, the only mechanism to do that is workers start organizing each other.

Obviously you need to support the unions. We need the labor movement to be doing a lot more. So again, this isn’t to say we don’t need the unions, we need ’em doing a lot more. But I think the model to how we win in this moment, it’s going to look a lot more like the 2018 teacher strikes where when the workers lead from below, then the leaders in quotes of the official unions will follow if we do our organizing and we have to get to that kind of scale. And I’m personally optimistic. I was saying just before I’m actually, this is the least depressed I’ve been for a couple months because A, I’ve just been too busy organizing to doom scroll. But then there is actually, I think something about the moment we’re in where Musk and Trump are overreaching, what they’re doing is extremely unpopular.

It’s not a popular thing. It turns out to destroy people’s social security to take away their Medicaid. These, they’re playing with fire, they’re frankly playing with fire, and it’s up to us to make them pay and not just pay in the short term. They make it so that this movement that they have goes away for good. And I think that we can do that, but it’s going to require, at this moment, a leap of faith for everybody out there to go all in on organizing. Because the major obstacle we still have at this moment is so many people feel a sense of resignation and a sense of despair. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think nothing can be done, if you think Trump is all powerful, then you don’t go out and you don’t spend all your time organizing. And so you just have to, I think, believe that it’s possible. It is go all in and then history will would be made. And I think actually we in a very good position to defeat these bastards, but it’s going to take a lot of organizing and I hope that we do it all together.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Give it up, give it up for Eric.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

“People are starving to death, and this is a fact that we are witnessing and experiencing nowadays,” says Oxfam’s food security coordinator in Gaza, Mahmoud Alsaqqa. More than 10 weeks after Israel instituted a total siege on Gaza, blocking all food and other aid from entering, hunger has reached catastrophic levels in the Palestinian territory. This comes as a new United Nations report warns one in every five people in Gaza is facing starvation, while Save the Children says every child is now at risk of famine. The World Food Programme and charities working in Gaza say they have completely run out of supplies and can no longer feed people.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

She’s a member of the Asheville Sinkhole Group, an online watering hole of more than 3,400  people in and around this North Carolina city who eagerly discuss the chasms that mysteriously emerge from time to time. She even owns a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “For the love of all things holey.” Bacchus concedes sinkholes are an odd thing to be passionate about, but they speak to the impermanence of things made by human hands. 

“I don’t want to discredit that sinkholes can cause a lot of damage and hurt people, but they do evoke this feeling of excitement and curiosity and mystery,” she said. “It’s a void that opens up where you thought something was solid. That’s the reality of the ground we walk on all the time.”

The Facebook group recently enjoyed renewed interest when a small pit appeared at an intersection near a storm-damaged area on the outskirts of town late last month. “Oh, we’re so back,” one user wrote.

Given the flooding and busted pipes that followed Hurricane Helene, sinkholes have become a pressing problem for a vast swath of the region. Roads already battered by record flooding are pocked by the blemishes, which can be anywhere from a few inches to several feet in diameter — though particularly monstrous ones can reach hundreds of feet wide and hundreds of feet deep. A marked increase in their numbers has been keeping road crews busy In Asheville, according to spokesperson Kim Miller. 

“The uptick has impacted staff workload,” she said.

Such dints can appear quickly, or over long periods of time. They also can occur naturally, or as the result of humans altering the landscape. Whatever their speed and cause, they are almost always the result of something or someone altering the natural flow of water underground — a problem exacerbated by the extreme rain often brought on by climate change. Over time, these anomalies grow and grow, unseen, until reaching the surface and causing an abrupt cave-in.

The country’s biggest open sinkhole, Golly Hole, opened 52 years ago in Alabama, creating a rift 350 feet wide and 100 feet deep. But even small ones can be horrendously expensive; all told, sinkholes may have cost the country over $300 million annually during the past 15 years. No one maintains a master list of them, and the U.S. Geological Survey says most are probably never reported. Still, there’s enough data to know the majority occur in states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, and Pennsylvania, where soft, porous bedrock is liable to dissolve.

The “sinkhole capital” award might go to Florida, which has seen these craters proliferate after large storms like Tropical Storm Debby in August and Hurricane Milton in October, devouring backyards and chunks of road. Some experts on the matter say that  “sinkhole season” takes over as hurricane season winds down. 

Sinkholes are also complicated to resolve: Many states don’t requireask homeowners’ insurance to cover them, leaving many people to deal with a big problem on their own. Florida and Tennessee are among the few states that require disclosing past occurrences to anyone buying a house, though those laws are antiquated and lawmakers have been pushing for updates.

Regardless of the annoyance, sinkholes have seen a lot of love in Asheville.

Bacchus joined the sinkhole group just after its founding in 2019, when a particularly monstrous example swallowed a parking lot in a cavity 36 feet wide and 30 feet deep. That story made national headlines. The owners of the land tried, without success, to fill it with concrete before the city declared that the building on the site was too dangerous to occupy. It remained vacant for years while the corroded piping that caused the sinkhole was repaired. 

Late last year, a Waffle House in the nearby Mars Hill suffered a similar fate. The day before Helene brought record flooding, a sinkhole took out much of the diner’s parking lot, ultimately leading the owners to shut down. 

Much of Appalachia sits on porous limestone, made of the compressed shells of sea creatures that, millions of years ago, swam and scuttled in shallow seas. This topography, called karst, is full of tunnels and caves. USGS maps paint much of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia in a bright-red high-risk sinkhole zone. The nuisances have threatened, among other things, a Corvette museum in Kentucky, a police station in West Virginia, and a shopping mall in East Tennessee. For years, a sinkhole at the bottom of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Boone Dam drained it like a bathtub. These geologic formations are an expensive nuisance, and occasionally tragic. A Pennsylvania grandmother died late last year after falling into one while looking for her missing cat.

In Western North Carolina, and other areas with notably no limestone, sinkholes are mainly the result of human intervention – construction fill, bad plumbing, and choices made by developers and builders that result in water going places it shouldn’t. 

However they arise, sinkholes have an insatiable quality to them, often expanding in ways that make them difficult and sometimes impossible to repair. But they also create a sense of wonder and fascination – the feeling of peering into another time. By opening a window into a subterranean world of water, fossils, and caves, they offer a glimpse of what came before.

And, experts say, we might see more of them as a warming world makes big storms more common. Ernst Kastning, a retired geology professor who taught at Radford University in Virginia, said sinkholes are often a natural reaction to a sudden change, like torrential rain. They can form as all that precipitation flows downhill, such as via an underground cave system. “​​The water has to come out somewhere,” Kastning said. 

After an intense downpour or sudden inundation, the land attempts to restore equilibrium, which often means water and soil move into inconvenient places. Geologists colloquially call this the earth’s “plumbing system” — the complex network of underground drainage pathways that are a part of the water cycle. Human-caused sinkholes can force a similar reaction through artificially creating what scientists call “void space” in the ground. This affects how much water the soil can hold and can cause it to collapse.

“If you come in there and dig something or put in something or build something or modify the water flow … you’re likely to have nature react to that,” Kastning said. In particular, pumping water out of aquifers and pouring concrete or asphalt, for foundations or roads, for example, causes depressions and allows sinkholes to form.

While these depressions can be caused by a variety of factors, the main culprit is rain. Warm temperatures can also make the ground and the rock within it softer. Sinkholes after a storm like Helene, Kastning said, are part of nature’s way of righting itself. But if big storms happen more often, so will sinkholes. “The frequency of these things is increasing,” he said. 

But so too are the unique opportunities they present. 

On a sunny April afternoon, three scientists walked across an ancient sinkhole, long since filled in and covered in grass, on the Gray Fossil Site in Gray, Tennessee. Active archaeological digs are currently covered with black plastic and protected by fences.

The 4.5-acre, 144-foot deep pit and surrounding forest once provided water to prehistoric animals and, when they died, served as their grave. As museum collections manager Matthew Inabinett put it, “When a place is a good place to live, it’s also a good place to die!”

Gray Fossil allows scientists to peer 4.5 million years into the past. Of course, they’ve only (literally) scraped the surface. “We’ve estimated a few tens of thousands of years at current rates to excavate to the bottom,” said fossil site Americorps member Shay Maden. “So we’ve got job security on that front for sure.”

They’ve found fossils of exciting species like giant flying squirrels and mastodons, but also have seen more familiar faces, including rhinos (one of which the team named Papaw, since he died at an advanced age) and tropical reptiles. The site, Inabinett said, has become a scrying glass to understand climate conditions of the past. It can also suggest what things might look like in a world a few degrees warmer than today.

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Why are all of America’s biggest cities sinking?

Matt Simon

Many of the fossils found so far are from the Pliocene epoch, which ended about 2.6 million years ago and was about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than now. That’s also about how much warmer Earth is projected to grow by 2100. Oceans were about 25 feet higher back then, and alligators lived in Appalachia. The region’s biodiversity, once among the greatest in the world, survived multiple periods of extreme heat and cold. Later, the humid climate of the Pliocene  quickly succumbed to the Ice Age.

Because silt flows toward the ocean, the Appalachian region has few easily accessible fossils, making Gray Fossil a primary window into the ancient past. “The Southern Appalachians are one of the most biodiverse regions in North America,” Inabinett said. “To study this time period, the early Pliocene, is really useful for understanding how that diversity originated.”

While not every sinkhole opens a prehistoric portal, even the most mundane of them taps into something primal. For Bacchus, who goes on regular walks to check new and growing sinkholes, they represent the concept of “the void,” and bring an opportunity for people to reflect on concepts bigger than themselves. 

“I am attracted to sinkholes because of the humbling feeling they evoke,” she said. “I am reminded I am a small animal on this planet, and there’s more going on below the surface than we may realize.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Sinkholes and the people who love them on May 12, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

Mehfuza Khatun shared the Facebook post on April 24, two days after the Pahalgam attack in which 26 people were killed. She alleged that gynaecologist Dr C K Sarkar had “refused” to treat her pregnant sister-in-law on account of the latter’s faith. A call recording was also released by the patient’s family, where one voice is heard confronting the other about some remarks made earlier.

This was a time when reports of retributive hate crimes against minorities started pouring in from various parts of the country in response to the Pahalgam massacre. According to survivors’ accounts, the terrorists had tried to single out non-Muslims from the tourists.

Alt News spoke with the patient and her husband and examined the phone from which calls were made to the doctor and her messages were received. Our investigation independently established that the doctor had indeed made Islamophobic comments and asked the patient to never go back to her since “people from her religion killed others.”

What Exactly Happened at Dr C K Sarkar’s Clinic on April 24

According to the aggrieved patient’s testimony given in the presence of her husband, she called up Dr Sarkar around 1:30 in the afternoon on April 24 and asked whether Dr Sarkar would be available at her home clinic in Maheshtala which is in the same apartment complex where the patient lived. Dr Sarkar agreed to see her between 3 and 4 pm. This was the fifth time she was visiting Dr Sarkar.

When the patient visited the clinic with her three-year-old daughter, and stated her full name, the doctor appeared offended. She then said, “I have decided not to see Mohammedan patients henceforth.”

When asked why, the doctor responded, “You’re killing people in Kashmir.” The patient replied, “What do I have to do with that?” The doctor then said, “People from your religion are killing people from my religion… how do I treat Mohammedan patients after that?”

The patient told us that she could only respond by saying, “The ones who are doing it are ignorant and uneducated.” The doctor allegedly then went on a communal rant in front of the three-year-old child, which lasted about 15 minutes. The patient could not recall everything that was said to her, as she “went blank”. Some of the remarks she remembered included, “You go to mosques and madrassas, and that is where terrorists are made”; and, “If you were on your honeymoon and your husband had been killed by people from my religion, then you would realise how painful it is.”

After her communal rant, the doctor clinically examined the patient and wrote out a prescription. The consultation fee was paid via UPI. As the patient was leaving the clinic, the doctor told her not to return, stating that she would no longer be seeing Muslim patients. However, she wrote ‘Review after 3 weeks’ in the prescription. Alt News has seen the prescription.

Once the patient left the clinic, she called up her husband immediately and recounted her ordeal. Some time later, at 4:26 pm, she gathered courage to call up Dr Sarkar again and confront her about the incident. This call had been recorded on the patient’s phone.

The Phone Call: “I won’t see any Mohammedan patients anymore… Don’t ever come to me again. You kill others.”

Here is a transcript of the conversation that took place:

Patient: *address* theke bolchi
I’m speaking from *address*.

Doctor: Hain bolo bolo
Yes, go ahead, speak.

Patient: Apni amake jei kotha gulo shonalen na ma’am, amar khub kharap legeche.
Ma’am, the things you said to me really hurt me.

Doctor: Keno? Ki kharap legeche?
Why? What hurt you?

Patient: Apni amake je bollen Mohammedan aar dekhbona.
You told me you won’t treat Mohammedans anymore.

Doctor: Dekhbona toh, ami ekhon theke promise korchi.
I won’t, I’m promising from now on.

Patient: Amar uchit chhilo apnake oi muhurte oshomman kore beriye chole asha.
I should have humiliated you and walked out at that very moment.

Doctor: (Unclear) Amar ki boye geche, ami aar dekhbona ekhon theke.
(Unclear) What do I have to lose? I won’t treat (Muslims) anymore from now on.

Patient: Na na, ami jabo o na apnar kache dekhate. But apnara skhikkhito… (unclear)
No, no, I won’t come to you for treatment either. But you are educated…

Overlapping voices…

Doctor: Tomra khun korbe… manush ke… (unclear) j dhormo bole khushir Eid.. Pabitra Eid.. (unclear)… manush ke khun kora ta ki pabitra Eid?
You people will kill… people… (unclear) the religion which celebrates Happy Eid, auspicious Eid… Killing people is auspicious Eid?

Patient: Accha ma’am, onekshomoy toh ache jara Hindu ra Muslim ke maarche… Amra ki kichu jani je ke maaarche, ke korche?
Ma’am, there are also times when Hindus kill Muslims… Do we even know who is killing whom?

(Doctor’s words are unclear for some time)

Doctor: Tomra shob jeneo chup kore thaako…(unclear)
You all stay silent even after knowing everything…(unclear)

Patient: Apni amake bokchen. Ami ki jani je ami ki korchi? Apni ekta shikkhito manush hoye erom byabohaar koren…
You’re scolding me..  You’re an educated person behaving in this way with me…

(Doctor’s words are unclear for some time)

Doctor: Tomader (unclear) shekhano hoy.
You people are taught (unclear).

Patient: Apni ekta shikkhito daktar hoye amar shonge… apni patient dekhben. Apni patient er shaathe orokom byabohaar korun.. koren tahole…
You, being an educated doctor, should be treating patients. If you treat patients like this then…

Doctor: Na ami dekhbo na, keno dekhbo, je dhormer lokera amar dhormo ke ebhabe maare?
No, why should I treat them? Why would I treat people of a religion who attack my religion like this?

Patient: Keu kauke marchena… (unclear)
No one is killing anyone… (unclear)

Patient: Ami apnake patient dekhate gechi, ami toh maarte jaini ghore.
I came to you as a patient, not to kill anyone in your house.

Doctor: Hain oitoh bari giyei tomar mathar modhhye shob dhukiye diyeche oigulo, jani toh.
Of course, those things have been stuffed into your head at home, I know that.

Patient: Barite keu dhokayeni madam… apni amake bollen… khub kharap lagchilo.
No one has brainwashed me at home, madam… Whatever you said to me… I felt very bad.

Doctor: Kharap lagar kichu nei, tumi jeta kharap (unclear) jara terrorist taader ke mere dite hobe.
There’s nothing to feel bad about. What is wrong… (unclear)… the terrorists must be killed.

Patient: Apnake osomman korbona bole apnake dekhiye ami elam. Apni khub kharap byabohaar korechen amar shaathe.
I did not want to humiliate you, hence I sat through the consultation. You misbehaved with me.

Doctor: Na ekdom kharap korini. Ami aar ekdom e dekhbona, ami aar kono Mohammedan patient dekhbona.
No, I didn’t behave badly at all. I just won’t treat… I won’t treat any Mohammedan patients anymore.

Patient: Apni dekhben na, apni bhaar mein jaan apni dekhben ki dekhben na, apnar byapar.
Whether you treat or not, you go to hell.. whether you treat or not, that’s your business.

Doctor: Asho keno amar kache? Lojja korena ashte?
Then why do you come to me? Don’t you feel ashamed to come here?

Patient: Ami jaani apni ekta boro terrorist?
I know you’re a big terrorist, right?

Doctor: Aar konodin ashbena amar kache. Tumi khun koro manush.
Don’t ever come to me again. You kill others.

Patient: Apnio khun kora manush.
You also kill people.

It is clear from the above conversation that when Dr Sarkar was confronted about her remarks, she remained defiant and repeated that she would not be treating Muslim patients in future.

After the Facebook post describing the patient’s ordeal had gone viral, Dr Sarkar sent an apology text to the patient.  In her messages sent through WhatsApp, she said she was sorry if she had ‘disheartened’ the patient. She says that she was sick “due to loss of my close family members relatives.” (sic) “Don’t take it otherwise and don’t harrass me unnecessarily”. Dr Sarkar, in a third message, said that a few patients had been cruel towards her in the last few days. She was upset and thinking of closing her practice in the area, and so she said that. “U r my good patient I will always take care of u if u feel so ,” (sic) she wrote. Alt News is in possession of a screenshot and a screen recording of the WhatsApp chat, but we are not making it public.

“If she is trying to justify why she said something, she must have said something reprehensible”, the patient’s husband observed, while showing us the WhatsApp messages.

After the patient’s ordeal was reported by some media outlets, Dr Sarkar went on to issue a video statement saying, “I am Dr C K Sarkar. I have been a medical practitioner for the last 30 years in Behala, South 24 Parganas. I believe in medical ethics. All patients are equal to me, I prioritize all my patients equally. I see no value in caste, religion and race. I try to treat my patients properly and ethically. If some people had a problem with me… please do not listen to the rumours. I know there have been attempts to sabotage my career on social media and in news reports. These kinds of rumours are spread during a time of crisis. I hope you will not fall for it.” The statement was uploaded on Facebook by an anesthesiologist named Promod Ranjan Roy.

The ‘Domestic Help’ Theory

When The Quint contacted Dr. Sarkar, she denied the allegations and stated that she had many Muslim patients and thus had no reason to discriminate. “I was talking to my maid about what had happened in Pahalgam when she (the patient) visited me. I never made such communal remarks, why would I?” She also stated that she had sent an apology to the patient. When asked about the call recording, Dr Sarkar alleged that the call recording had been tampered with.

She made the same allegation in a chat with a journalist named Anindya Chowdhury. “I never said that I would not see Mohammedan (Muslim) patients. She wrongly interpreted my words,” she said in a telephonic interview. Throughout the interview, Dr Sarkar reiterated that the phone call recording had been tampered with.

The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum (WBDF) said in a statement, “It appears that some discussions unrelated to the patient, involving members of the doctor’s household, may have inadvertently been overheard. If any such conversation was not to the patient’s liking, it is beyond the professional purview of the doctor to address private matters of household conversations.”

Responding to these claims, the patient told Alt News that at no point did the doctor address her house-help while making those remarks. The house-help’s working hours coincided with the patient’s appointment, and she was present around the house. She had left a few minutes before the patient’s departure. The patient also categorically stated that when Dr. Sarkar asked her not to go back to her ever again, the domestic help had left by then.

WBDF also asked for “an independent investigation involving the doctor and the aggrieved person to unearth the truth in a neutral way.”

Propaganda Outlets Question Veracity of Call Recording

Taking a dig at The Quint for reporting on the incident, propaganda website OpIndia published a ‘fact-check’ of the incident. OpIndia called the patient’s ordeal a “fake story” and proceeded to provide what they called ‘evidences’ to invalidate it. While refuting the patient’s allegations, OpIndia has claimed that the phone call recording is ‘unverified’. The outlet emphasized the need for a forensic investigation of the purported audio clip.

OpIndia posted a thread of their ‘fact-check’. Here are the archive links of each tweet of the thread: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

#Exclusive

Do you remember the story of a Kolkata-based doctor who ‘denied’ treatment to a Muslim patient over the Pahalgam terror attack?

Turns out it was fake news.

It was peddled by The Quint, Maktoob Media & others to create the narrative of ‘Muslim victimhood’

(1/n) pic.twitter.com/tWIxxbo1su

— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) April 30, 2025

Only Fact, run by Vijay Patel who identifies himself as an investigative reporter, published a fact-check as well. Quoting Dr Sarkar, they also claimed that the recording was fake and edited. Here is an archive of the ‘fact-check’.

No, Dr. Champakali Sarkar Did Not Refuse Treatment to a Muslim Patient After Pahalgam Attackhttps://t.co/0ag5l5yBDJ

— Only Fact (@OnlyFactIndia) April 30, 2025

When this correspondent visited the patient’s house on May 1, Alt News received access to the phone from which the call to Dr Sarkar was made. We examined it by going to the Phone app (inbuilt app), from which the call was made, and played the recording. The call was made at 4:26 pm on April 24.

A screen-recording of the whole process can be seen below. The dialed number (that of the doctor) has been purposely hidden. Alt News tried to reach out to Dr Sarkar on the same number. The person who answered the call identified herself as Dr Sarkar, but refused to comment.

From the video of the call recording and the metadata of the video, we can conclusively say that the call recording released by the victim’s family has not been tampered with. Consequently, it can also be ascertained that Dr Sarkar admitted to making communal remarks while defending herself, where she generalized Muslims as people who kill others.

“I don’t have a problem with the doctor refusing to treat my wife in future. Though it is perhaps unethical, it is her call. What I strongly object to is the communal discrimination. What she told my wife is an expression of a mindset that has the potential to disrupt communal harmony in a society. That is what bothers me so much,” the husband of the patient, who is an optometrist by profession, said.

The post ‘People from your faith kill others. Don’t come to me again,’ Kolkata doctor told pregnant Muslim woman appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Israel: after 19 months of non-stop genocide where do you stand Mr Cooper?

ku.tnemailrapnull@pm.repooc.nhoj

Dear Mr Cooper,

In your communications to me in February and October last year some remarks were misleading and sounded as if penned by Israel’s propaganda scribblers in Tel Aviv. Given your journalistic background it was hoped you would sniff out and reject such disinformation. With the situation in Gaza now so horrific a more considered reply would be welcome, please, from our representative at Westminster.

• You said: “Israel has suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas.”

But you omitted the context. In the 23 years prior to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Why overlook this? 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, were held in Israeli jails on that fateful day. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’ (B’Tselem figures). October 7 was therefore a retaliation against extreme provocation. Or were we expecting the Palestinians to take all that lying down?

Evidence is now emerging that the IDF inflicted many of the casualties on their own people that day in order to provide a pretext for their long-planned genocidal assault.

Early in the genocide JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, described the situation leading up to October 7 rather well:

The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence…. For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation….

For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.

For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.

The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.

• You said: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law.”

The UN itself has made it clear that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”, and many law experts have said the same.

On the other hand the Palestinians’ right to resist is confirmed in UN Resolution 3246 which calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, and to assist them in their struggle, and reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to use “all available means, including armed struggle” in their fight for freedom.

Furthermore UN Resolution 37/43 gives them an unquestionable right, in their struggle for liberation, to “eliminate the threat posed by Israel by all available means including armed struggle”. And as China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

• You said “There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

How right you are! Under international law Palestinians have an inalienable right to self-determination. They properly elected Hamas under international scrutiny in 2006, at the last permitted election. Hamas are the lawful and legitimate rulers in Gaza.

Israel is not the Western-style democracy it pretends to be. It is a deeply unpleasant ethnocracy with recently enacted discriminatory nation-state laws to emphasise its apartheid ‘bottom line’. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.”

• You said: “Leaving Hamas in power in Gaza would be a permanent roadblock to a two-state solution…..A sustainable ceasefire must mean that Hamas is no longer there, able to threaten Israel.”

The US and UK have no right to attempt coercive regime change. Besides, Israel has been a fatal threat to Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) since well before Hamas was even founded.

Sections 16 and 20 of Hamas’s 2017 Charter are in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.

(s.16) “Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

(s.20) “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

The correct and lawful way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, theft of Palestinian resources, and destruction of Palestinian heritage.

• You said: “I support all steps to bring about a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders.”

Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination. Under international law it’s their basic right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The UK disrespects that, otherwise we would long ago have recognised Palestinian statehood along with the vast majority of nations that have already done so. And why is only Israel allowed to be “safe and secure”?

Britain’s refusal to recognise Palestine is disgraceful. We promised the Palestinian Arabs independence in 1915 in return for their help in defeating the Turks but reneged in 1917 (in favour of the shameful Balfour Declaration). We should have granted Palestine provisional independence in 1923 in accordance with our responsibilities under the League of Nations Mandate Agreement, but didn’t. In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Palestinians a measly portion of their own homeland and, without consulting them, handed the lion’s share to incomer Jews with no ancestral connection to it… thanks in large part to the Balfour betrayal.

The following year Britain walked away from its mandate responsibilities leaving Palestinians at the mercy of Israel’s vicious plan for annexing the Holy Land by military force – “from the river to the sea” – which they’ve pursued relentlessly ever since in defiance of international and humanitarian law, bringing terror, misery, wholesale destruction and ruination to the Palestinians. And now genocide.

Today Britain still refuses to recognise Palestinian independence although 138 other UN member states do.

• You said: “Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

The Israeli regime has long ignored representations on such issues, so where is the “robust action” you speak of?

According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, “The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence…. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.”

Law expert Ralph Wilde provides this opinion:

There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force….

• You said: “The UK is doing everything it can to get more aid in and open more crossings, and we played a leading role in securing the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2720, which made clear the urgent demand for expanded humanitarian access.”

That went well, didn’t it? It’s sickening how Westminster still won’t accept the truth – that Israel is a depraved and repulsive regime, devoid of humanity, and we should not be supporting it in any way, shape or form.

For decades before October 7 Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza and military aggression, ethnic cleansing, restrictions on movement of goods and people, dispossession of prime lands, theft of Palestine’s key resources and destruction of its economy have bordered on slow-motion genocide.

And now the International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent, it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.

The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – which it readily applies to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favoured-nation privileges, trade deals, scientific/security collaboration, and cessation of arms supplies. In Israel’s case the British Government, far from using its available deterrent means, has militarily assisted Israel in its genocide.

So let’s remind ourselves of the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023 which arrived at the UK Government with important warnings regarding breaches of international law — for example:

⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.

⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.

The Department for Business and Trade (whose committee I believe you now sit on) dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse was that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (or SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”

But they didn’t explain how Israel managed to satisfy those “strict assessment criteria” and survive such a “rigorous” process. Were we supposed to take it all on trust? There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, any reasonably informed person might conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5.

• You said: “In the longer term, I will continue to support the UK’s long held-position, that there should be a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security for both nations and the wider region.”

Why the longer term? Why not now? If Palestinian statehood had been recognised at the proper time (in 1923, or at least by 1948 when Israeli statehood was ‘accepted’) these unspeakable atrocities would never have happened.

QME and Plan Dalet

These are the never-mentioned driving forces behind the evil that poisons the Holy Land.

In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). It ensures the apartheid regime always has the upper hand over it neighbours. This is central to US Middle East policy and guarantees the region is kept at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

Sadly the UK has superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for ‘security’ and other dubious reasons.

Plan D, or Plan Dalet, is the Zionist terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland written 77 years ago. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency and later to become the first president of ‘New Israel’. .

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there to prevent it. As Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) has always been a key part of the Zionists’ scheme, and Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The Deir Yassin massacre signalled the beginning of a deliberate programme to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews. In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. They massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. Israel’s great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible.

By 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash we still see today. The knock-on effects have created around 6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN plus an estimated 1 million others worldwide.

Israel Lobby

Considering Britain’s obligations towards the Holy Land since WW1, would you please let me know what you and your colleagues are now doing to stop this appalling extermination of the Palestinian people? And I do mean action not empty words. And would you please explain why Conservative Friends of Israel, which works to promote and support Israel in Parliament and at every level of the Party and claims 80% of Conservative MPs as signed-up members, are allowed to flourish at Westminster?.

MPs who put themselves under the influence of an aggressive foreign military power are surely in flagrant breach of the principles of public life (aka the Nolan Principles) which are written into MPs’ code of conduct and the ministerial code.

Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the oppression of the powerless, and applauding the discriminatory laws against non-Jews who resisted being ejected and inconveniently remain in their homeland.

It means aligning oneself with the vile mindset that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial, imposes hundreds of military checkpoints, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, and interferes with Palestinian life at every level.

And it means giving the thumbs-up to Israeli gunboats shooting up Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 19-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. Also the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.

I prefer to think that you know all this but must be mindful that the Israel lobby have Conservative Central Office in their pocket.

Stuart Littlewood

8 May 2025

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

While state officials and legislators have positioned Texas to be “the bitcoin mining capital of the world,” in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant, loud, environmentally destructive data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom. “None of us are sleeping,” Cheryl Shadden, a Granbury resident who lives across the street from a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining data center owned by Marathon Digital, tells TRNN. “We can’t get rid of this alien invasion in our homes…This is like being a prisoner of war. It’s like being tortured with loud sounds and bright lights and being sleep deprived.”

In this episode of Working People, we dive deeper into the reality of living next to crypto mining data centers like the one in Granbury, the unseen threats they pose to human and nonhuman life, and what residents in Granbury are doing to fight back. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with: Cheryl Shadden, a registered nurse anesthetist and resident of Granbury, who lives right next to the site of the Marathon bitcoin mining operation; Dr. Shannon Wolf, Precinct Chair in Hood County, who lives about 3 miles from the bitcoin mine; and Nannette Samuelson, County Commissioner for Precinct 2 in Hood County.

Additional links/info:

• Protect Hood County website
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “A bitcoin mine in Texas is “killing us slowly,” local residents say”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “‘We’re living in a nightmare:’ Inside the health crisis of a Texas bitcoin town”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “Noisy neighbor: Bitcoin’s hidden health cost” (Video Report)
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Keaton Peters, Inside Climate News, “Texas leaders worry that bitcoin mines threaten to crash the state power grid”
• NBC News, “Inside the Texas bitcoin mine reportedly making residents sick”
• James Pollard, The Texas Tribune, “Texas Republicans want to make the state the center of the cryptocurrency universe”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are diving back into a new sacrifice zone investigation that we began two weeks ago, and we’re returning to the small rural town of Granbury, Texas, which is about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. In the first episode that we did on this, I spoke with Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson, and Karen’s parents, Nick and Virginia Browning, four residents of Granbury who all lived near the site of a giant 300 megawatt Bitcoin mining operation.

I mean, Danny, Nick, and Virginia literally live right across the street from that thing. And the Bitcoin mine itself, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida based cryptocurrency company uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent the over 20,000 computers there from overheating on a daily basis. And many residents say that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their town, that they are developing negative health effects like hypertension, heart palpitations, tinnitus, migraines and more. And they say that their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. And speaking of government officials, let’s not forget that Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz said in 2021, I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto and quote, and it was Republican governor Greg Abbott who said in 2024 that Texas wears the crown as the Bitcoin mining capital of the world.

But in small towns like Granbury residents are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom. In today’s episode, we dive deeper into the reality of living next door to crypto mining data centers like the one in Granbury, Texas, and the unseen but not unheard threats that they pose to human and non-human life and what residents in Granbury are doing to fight back. I was extremely grateful to get a chance to sit down and talk with Cheryl Shadden, a registered nurse anesthetist and resident of Granbury who lives right next to the site of the Marathon Bitcoin Mining operation, Dr. Shannon Wolf, precinct chair in Hood County, who lives about three miles from the Bitcoin mine and Nannette Samuelson County Commissioner for Precinct two in Hood County. Here’s our conversation recorded on April 27th, 2025.

Well, Cheryl, Dr. Wolf, Nannette, thank you all so much for joining us today. And as I told your neighbors in our last episode, it’s really great to connect with you, but I really truly wish we were connecting under les horrifying circumstances, but I’m really grateful to y’all for joining us today to help us and our listeners understand this situation on a deeper level and to show how it’s not even just the marathon Bitcoin mine that we’re talking about here. So we’ve got a lot to dig into here. And Cheryl, I wanted to start by asking if we could first get just a little introduction to you. You live right across the street from this Bitcoin mine, like the folks we talked to in the last episode. So could you tell us just a little more about yourself, where you live, what you do, and how your life has changed since this Bitcoin mining operation moved in right next door to you?

Cheryl Shadden:

Absolutely. Thank you, max. We really appreciate this opportunity. My name is Cheryl Shadden. I’m a certified registered nurse anesthetist. So I work in healthcare when I’ve been here for over 30 years. My home was here long before crypto. Mine came in long before the power plants that they’re plugged into came in. So I’m living out here in the country with my horses and my dogs, and I just want a peaceful life. I want to be able to do my job, take care of patients, have my horses, ride them around and have a peaceful country life. In the fall of 23, I hear all of this noise. This isn’t just a little bit of the power plant noise. This is standing on the edge of Niagara Falls. This is sleeping with a vacuum cleaner. This is laying on a flight deck where jets are taking off, but the jets don’t take off.

They stay there and they keep running. And so when we first started hearing this noise, we thought, well, they’re just building onto the power plant here. That’s what all of this humming is. And it was just a slight hum in the background. And then the hum got worse and worse and worse. It felt like an airline invasion. None of us in this area knew what a crypto mine is. Nobody knew what a data center was. Nobody had any idea. And then as the initial owners sold out to somebody else and then sold out to somebody else, the noise got worse and worse and worse. Finally, by the fall of 23, we didn’t know what this was. Now the sound is invading our homes. It’s inside of my house with ceiling fans on and TVs on. You can’t think you’re motion’s sick, nauseated, you’re dizzy. You have a hard time getting out of bed.

You feel like you’ve got a concussion. And so then we realized that this is a crypto mine. Well, we didn’t know what that was, so we started looking it up and the process of all of that, I had family come to visit and they asked me their mom, what is this? And I said, well, it’s a crypto mine. They’re like, why are you living like this? What’s going on? How can you live this way? And I thought, well, how can my family come and see me from out of state and be appalled? Why am I not more appalled? Why am I not doing anything about this? So I started calling my commissioner and I talked to my constable and I said, what can I do? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what this is. What do we do? And so my constable said, you’re going to have to get community involvement.

If you want anybody to be aware of this, you’re going to have to get the community involved. I thought, well, I have no idea how to do that. So I started reaching out on social media and I was telling everybody what’s going on and posting videos and asking if everybody was sick or if anybody was ill. Next thing you know, neighbor, after neighbor, after neighbor in our county and the county south of it is telling me the same things that are going on with me and some are sicker and some are less sick and children are sick. And I thought, oh my God, it’s not just me. It’s so many people in this area. So I started reaching out and collecting health information on everybody. And when this happened in the fall, commissioner Samuelson said Yes, she’d already started getting complaints about all of this.

She was planning on having a town hall in January. And so I thought, well, I dunno how many people in this area are on social media. So I started driving house to house, house to house and knocking on doors and telling people, this is what’s going on. We have to do something. We’re having a town hall. Please come. I’m Cheryl. I’m standing up. I’m here. We have to do something. Oh my God. And so then Commissioner Samuelson had a town hall. It was well attended. There was standing room only and story after story of community member after community member after community member of the horrific things that they’re having to live with on a daily basis. Wildlife that’s gone, dogs that are having seizures, people that can’t sleep. One person said he lives near Shannon and the noise was so bad in his driveway at night, he said it would drop him to his knees.

None of us are sleeping. We have sleep disturbances. We can’t get rid of this alien invasion in our homes. We didn’t know what to do about it. And so it was a pretty heated town hall meeting. We had media there and we started reaching and from connection to connection to connection, I got in touch with Texas Coalition Against Crypto Mining and they got me in touch with Andrew Chow with Time Magazine. He did the first article we had here and got us some national interest and people are shocked that we’re living this way. And then with all of the media coming out and doing videos and interviews, it was horrific what we’re living through. This is like being a prisoner of war. It’s like being tortured with loud sounds and bright lights and being sleep deprived until you crack and you talk. It feels like being a prisoner of war, but I get the feeling that prisoners of war are treated better than we are here. This is not Okay.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and Commissioner Samuelson, I’d love to bring you in here and ask like what the hell this was all looking like from your side, both as a resident and elected official. Could you help our audience understand a bit more where this crypto came from and I guess what the regulation situation is over there that has allowed such loud operation to operate so close to residents homes?

Nannette Samuelson:

Right. Thank you again for getting us all together. And again, I’m Nannette Samuelson. I’m the commissioner for Precinct two, which includes the unincorporated area that Shannon, Dr. Wolf and Cheryl and all the people that you’ve mentioned live in as well as the cryptocurrency data center. So I took office in January of 23 and almost immediately started getting phone calls about what is this noise I’m hearing out here? And I asked the person, well, tell me more about it. Do you have a decibel meter? What are the decibels? And so we just started collecting information. I started researching what the noise regulations were in the state of Texas and what we could do about it. And so the state of Texas does not give counties very much regulatory authority at all. If you live in a city, you can have a noise ordinance, you can have zoning for residential or commercial.

But in unincorporated parts of the counties in Texas, you have very little, we don’t regulate zoning. We don’t regulate noise. So all we have is to rely on is what the state calls a noise nuisance, which is 85 decibels or higher. That is industrial level noise. That’s not something that someone should be subjected to 24 hours a day, seven days a week without hearing protection. And that’s what I tell people that ask about this. I said, it’s like putting a leaf blower next to your bed and never turning it off and trying to live with that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, people go, if you go to NASCAR or something loud, you wear hearing protection and you know that in a little while you’re going to leave and go home to peace and quiet. These people cannot do that. They are subjected to this 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So I started looking into it. So back to the history, and Constable Shirley and I, he bought a what I’d call an industrial grade decibel meter because there are decibel meters that you can download on your phone with an app, but those aren’t necessarily that scientific. So we bought an industrial grade commercial decibel meter and started taking readings all over this area all the way six miles away to right across the street right next door, Cheryl’s house, the neighborhood that’s right next door. And we contacted the owners at that time was generate capital, and then it was operated by us Bitcoin, so we started contacting them. So maybe I should back up and talk to you about how it started. You asked me that. That was before I took office, but let me go back to that. So as I mentioned, the county does have platting authority, but unless something is infringing on us, I’m sorry, a TDOT road, not us, but a TDOT road or it’s in a floodplain, there’s really not anything that the county can do to deny it as long as they have proper sewage and water.

So if you’re going to build a housing addition, you have to provide sewage and water, but this isn’t a housing. So as long as they have enough water for the two or three workers that are there and sewage for the two or three workers that are there, and it’s not in a floodplain, there was nothing that the county could do to deny it from being built. That’s how it got there. But when it came it, I was sitting in court, not a member of the court, but I was there as an audience member. And when they brought that to court, it was just Compute North, which is out of North Dakota where the original owners, and it was just called a data center and it was just going to have nine containers. And then they brought back the second development and it had more containers, but it was still called a data center.

The commissioners at the time didn’t really know what a data center was or cryptocurrency. What they said was they were going to harvest unused power to power a data center is what they were telling the court. So when I got there, it had already been well on the way actually Compute North went bankrupt in 2022, I believe, early 2022, and then generate capital, bought it out of bankruptcy, hired us Bitcoin to operate it and complete the development of it. And they went live in either late 2022 or early 2023, but it wasn’t totally built out. But that’s when I started getting the complaints. So we started working with US Bitcoin and they were actually very wanting to be good neighbors. They met with us. They came down here several times. Constable Shirley and I drove them around with our decibel meter and said, look how we’re six miles away and look at the readings that we’re getting.

And they were very open to whatever it is that we have to do to be good neighbors, we want to do it. They did build a wall, but as Cheryl knows, that wall ended up, it wasn’t a wall all the way around. It was a partial wall on the southeast side of the building of the plant right next to the neighborhood there. But all it did was cause the sound to ricochet off that wall and head straight to Cheryl’s house, and it just really amplified it. So I called, this is still US Bitcoin. I emailed or called him back and I said, did you get a performance bond on that or a performance requirement on that wall? Because if whatever they told you it was going to do to the sound, it’s not working, you need to get your money back because I’m getting more complaints now than I did before you built the wall.

And so they actually came back out, we drove around again, and then they said, okay, we’re committed to getting a new sound study. We’re going to do whatever it is we need to do. About two weeks later, he emailed me back and said, well, this was December of 23. We just found out we’re being put up for sale. So I really can’t do anything until I know who the new owners are. So it kind of just drug out until January. The sale closed, really kind of coincidentally, right before I had that town hall. So the new owners marathon, a couple of the people from Marathon actually came to our town hall and listened to heart wrenching Heart, heart-wrenching stories from all of these residents about what it’s like to live with this noise and the illness that they’re going. I don’t know if anyone’s brought up from the previous discussions that you had, but the doctor out of Portugal, Dr. Marina Alvez. Have you heard that name yet?

I have not. Okay. She is an expert in infrasound, which is sound waves that your ear can’t hear, but your body can. Your body is absorbing these sound waves, but your ear cannot detect them. So when you think about the 85 decibels, the 85 decibels is what your ear can hear. It’s not taking any measurement about what your body is absorbing that your ear can’t hear. So we started listening to getting more information from her studies and marathon after that town hall pretty much. That’s really the last conversations that I’ve had with them. They pretty much went radio silent. They did hire PR person. They said, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to first hire a PR person, then we’re going to put all these containers in dielectric fluid, which should decrease the noise and two or three other things. Well, they hired the PR person and that person has never called me, has never emailed me, has never even tried to get in touch with me, and they had an open house last Good Friday.

So that’s another story is they decided to have a town hall in April and they last year they announced it on Wednesday on social media for Friday, which was Good Friday, which didn’t give people very much notice. Plus it’s on Good Friday. So we all went because we were not going to miss an opportunity to speak to the marathon people. And I met the PR person and I asked her, I said, I’m the commissioner for precinct too. I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t tried to call me or contact me. And she said, well, no one told me I was supposed to, and she still hasn’t since then. My phone number’s on the county website, I don’t remember for sure, but I’m sure I gave her my card. I always do when I introduce myself, but still nothing. But so that’s been kind of the history of what’s happened.

And we tried. So one of the things that we did, because the counties don’t have regulatory authority, we started working with our two legislators, our Senator Birdwell and Shelby Slawson about getting something changed in the Texas law that would allow us more ability to put sound, noise, regulation, noise wouldn’t be called an ordinance because that’s what cities do. Counties don’t have ordinances in Texas. But some ability to allow our constable or our sheriff’s department to do something to monitor this noise level for the people that live there. Even if it was like at airports where it’s after eight o’clock at night and before eight o’clock morning, which doesn’t help Cheryl that much. She gets up at like three in the morning. But something that we could do, and we started last summer, we drafted a resolution at Commissioner’s Court, passed five zero. I took it down to a hearing last summer about the grid because the other thing that these cryptocurrency, as you probably know, the cryptocurrency data centers are a huge draw on the grid.

And so that was what the hearing was about. But I used that opportunity to say, in addition to the draw on the grid, this is what it’s doing to people’s lives. And I talked about the illnesses, but I said, which I don’t know if anybody’s mentioned yet, but I said, the people that live around here, their property is not just worth less. It’s worthless. They cannot sell their property even if they wanted to because nobody wants to live next to this constant noise. So we started working with our legislatures. I was on the phone with other senators, Senator Cole Kirst, who’s on the Health and Human Services Committee, Senator May Middleton, again, Brian Birdwell, they are just now here. We are almost at the end of the legislative session and nothing has been changed. So all of our efforts to work with the senator and the legislature and our representative, I don’t think that any bill is going to see the light of day that’s going to give us any more ability to help the people that live here live around this cryptocurrency data center. I don’t have a good feeling for it at all.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Well, I want to pick up on the Good Friday meeting. As Nanette said, we were all there and the first thing that happened was they demanded that we all sign in, give our email addresses and our phone number. So they were gathering information from all of us, and I refused to sign. And I was telling people, you don’t have to do that. And the marathon folks were saying, oh, yes you do. And I just walked in without signing. And a couple of other people did. But the other thing they did was they had plants that were standing in line as people were kind of waiting for others to sign in to get into the town hall. So they had planted attorneys and other that were officials at Marathon were all in line without telling us that that’s who they were. I just happened to recognize an attorney that I knew represented Marathon in line, and then they demanded that we sit at tables where one of their representatives was at.

And so they were wanting to gain information without telling us that they were trying to gain information from us. They wanted to know what the symptoms were. They wanted us to tell them what exactly our grievances were, but not for the purpose of helping us. It was for the purpose of just gaining information, probably to try to lessen the impact of the community’s outcry. That’s my belief from that town hall. They have done nothing. They presented information that could have been pulled, and actually I think it was pulled right off the internet. It was nothing that was thought out, but they made all these promises, this is what we’re doing. We’re in the process of doing this. Fill in the blank, whatever that was. And I don’t think they have done any of that. I might be wrong, Nanette and Cheryl, correct me if I’m wrong on that one, but it did not foster goodwill.

It actually made the majority of us highly suspicious of them. And remember, this is a multi-billion dollar company, and the folks that live out here in this precinct, they are good people, but they are really normal working class kinds of people. So we cannot fight in the court system, these kinds of these problems because they’re drowning us in all kinds of paperwork, all kinds of demands, and they refuse to give information, but they demand it from us. It is just a mess out here. But I have walked with Cheryl and Annette and others that are living out here since what, January of 23? Is that right? Cheryl? January of 24 was when I first became aware of what was going on out there. And I just remember standing outside. My husband and I drove out there and I stood across the street and it gave me an immediate headache.

My head was just pounding. And I had been out there maybe just a few seconds. I stood outside my car. My husband was also feeling it. He said that it was pounding on his chest, he said, and so we ended up leaving and my thought was, surely if somebody knew about this, they would be able to correct it, whoever this somebody was. And as I talked to people, our Constable, Shirley, Nanette, other people, Nanette, and I sat down in a meeting with our representative, Shelby Slauson, and I thought, okay, yes, now, now something’s going to happen. And nothing did, nothing did. And I think for people to understand Texas, Texas is really a live and let live kind of a place. We’re not going to tell somebody else how to live their lives. We just don’t want them to tell us how to live ours.

And so people really like to live in rural areas so that if we want to raise chickens or if we want to ride horses, or if we want to do whatever we want to do, it’s an okay thing as long as we’re not bothering other people. So I understand why people move into the rural areas. It’s a beautiful place out here. I also saw, just skipping a little bit, I also saw an interview, I think it was a B, C news where Marathon said, this is a well-established industrial zone. And that is a lie. That is a lie. This is not an industrial zone. This area out here, we’ve got all kinds of wildlife. We have bald eagles, we have golden eagles, we have endangered species out here. We’ve got horses and cows and farms and orchards and all kinds of stuff. It is a wonderful place to be out here. And as Cheryl said, they moved in on top of us. This is not an industrial zone, but they’re lying to people to justify them being out here. The other thing that I would say that your listeners probably would find interesting, the energy plant that owns the property that Marathon sits on was not running at full capacity when Marathon moved in. Cheryl, correct me if I’m wrong, they were running at two thirds capacity. Is that right?

Cheryl Shadden:

Correct. 66% capacity,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

66% capacity. And when Marathon moved in, all of a sudden they are running at full capacity. And so Constellation Energy has petitioned our state to build a new energy plant out here. So yet again, they are wanting to buy up ranches and other places in order to build more industry that the community does not want. And quite frankly, it’s making us sicker.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Cheryl Nanette, Dr. Wolf, I wanted to ask about, this is something that high up politicians in Texas have been championing for years. I mean, Ted Cruz said in 2021 that he wanted to see Texas become the center of the universe for Bitcoin and crypto, and Governor Abbott said that wears the crown as the Bitcoin mining capital of the world last year. I wanted to ask y’all, when they were saying stuff like that, were regular working folks around the state, you all, did they give you any sense of what that was going to look like? Did they tell you that this is going to be the reality of making Texas a Bitcoin mining capital of the world, the things that you and your neighbors are going through? Is that something people want? I mean, this isn’t like it’s a manufacturing operation providing jobs. This is a massive data center like creating massive amounts of noise and using massive amounts of water for something that’s harder to grab your hands around than a bigger industrial operation. So I just wanted to ask if you could just say a little bit more from your vantage points about the promise versus the reality of making Texas this crypto capital of the world.

Cheryl Shadden:

For me personally, living this life and living with this barrage of problems here, I feel like I’ve been sold out. So I notice that these crypto mines aren’t next door to probably Ted Cruz’s home or next door to Governor Abbott’s home. And when we started this initial battle and we’re emailing all of the regulatory agencies here in the Texas legislature and state, they’re like, well, nobody could help us. Nobody cared. Nobody wanted to listen. And so when you stop and think about it, technically we’re subsidizing this. Taxpayers are subsidizing this. The infrastructure that it takes to build electric lines to all of these crypto mines that’s subsidized by taxpayers and by you paying your electric bill, all of our electricity out here has gone up.

Now here in the state of Texas, crypto Mars don’t have to rate back when we’re struggling with excessive heat or excessive cold, or when a hurricane comes up through the Gulf of Mexico, they don’t have to regulate back. They don’t have to ramp back. But if they do, they buy their electricity on the cheap bargain, basement, bulk pricing, not what I pay, not what Commissioner Samuelson pays or Shannon or anybody in this area. So they buy their electricity on the cheap. Now if they sell it back to the grid by their own choosing, they don’t have to. This mine here is behind the meter so they can do whatever they want. They sell it back to the grid at inflated prices. And so who takes that in? The fanny is me, taxpayers and people that are paying their electric bills every day, consumers. So we’re actually paying the state of Texas to torture us.

That’s not okay. That’s not remotely, okay, come out here, stay the night at my house, sleep in my house, listen to this noise through shut doors and windows camp out in my backyard. I’d love to have you come stay with me and see what it’s like. It’s not just me, it’s everybody in this area. So you can tell us that this is going to be the crypto mine capital mecca of the United States, but the reality is they don’t care. This is big business in Texas. So that’s all they care about. And reality here, they’re taking a third of the power from this 1200 megawatt power plant, which is Constellation Energy’s Willo two, it’s a gas steam plant constellation doesn’t own the other power plant, which is Willo one, which is a gas turbine plant. So now that they’re drawing all of this power off of Constellation energies, Willo two, now they’re running at 99 6% capacity.

So since this has happened, now we experience valve blows on a regular basis. We had a valve blow that happened last week that went on for three days. And it’s not just extreme noise, honest to God makes you feel like you’ve lost their mind. So everybody in this area has hearing loss. One family had a child that was having seizures. They took a second mortgage and moved out. And so they’re struggling. People here have cardiovascular disease. One of my neighbors, the electrical system in his ventricle shorted out. He had to be resuscitated multiple times. Now he’s in the hospital right now having had a stroke. So it’s not just the noise, it’s the damage to our soft tissues, the damage to our blood vessels. Like Dr. Alvarez says, there’s so much damage here. And Governor Abbott doesn’t care. Ted Cruz doesn’t care. It’s big business in Texas.

Who cares if working class people like me get mowed over? It’s not next to their home. And so the reality is how do we fight that? So we’ve tried everything. We have a lawsuit with Earth Justice right now. That’s an injunctive lawsuit. Some of the people in this area have hired personal attorneys to fight for all of the detriment that’s occurred. My property values have decreased. So going through the checklist, I’ve gone to the Hood County Appraisal District and I’m contesting my property taxes again this year. So my property taxes were dropped 25% and a previous year they were dropped 25%. You’re going, wow, that’s great. Your property taxes have dropped 50%. The reality is that’s drop in the bucket of my property. I have absolutely no value at all. So people say, go ahead and move. You can move. How can I move? I’ve been here for 30 years. My home and my property are paid off. Nobody would buy this property. Nobody.

Nannette Samuelson:

And that just puts an exclamation point on what I told the Senate committee last summer is their property is not just worth less. It’s worthless. So one of the things that the reason that Senate committee had a meeting in summer, so in Texas, the legislature only once every two years. So they went into session in January of 25, and they’re about to be finished unless they call special sessions, they’ll be finished at end of May. But to get prepare for the legislative session, they had hearings last summer. And the hearing that this one was regarding was the grid because the head of the PUC had made a statement last June saying that the demand for electricity in Texas is going to double by 2030 due to data centers and Bitcoin. And so they started having meetings with the legislature to figure out, okay, how do we address this?

So yes, you want all this business to come here, but your infrastructure isn’t able to do that. Hold on, my husband is joining us. So the Texas legislature started trying to figure out how to address the impact to the grid from the Bitcoin and the data centers. One of the things that the legislature needs to do is, and I hope that some legislation will pass this legislative session that will put some type of, it’s called bring your own power kind of thing. But what that’s going to do is require battery energy storage systems to be installed with data centers and cryptocurrency, which those bring their own risks. Battery energy storage systems are at this point in time, lithium ion batteries. And just like with a Tesla or some other electric vehicle, if they start on fire, they cannot be put out with water. They have to just burn out.

And if you have acres and acres and acres of battery energy storage systems with lithium ion batteries, if a fire starts, it’s called a thermal runaway and it just heats up and heats up and while it’s heating up, it’s putting off all kinds of toxins into the air. So one, as Cheryl said, they’re currently drawing from gas powered power plants energy, but the legislature possibly if this bill passes, is going to require crypto and data centers to bring their own power, which means battery energy storage systems, or they can have small gas powered power plants on property. One of the things that is unique, sadly unique about our little precinct is that we have gas pipelines running through our precinct and we have access to the grid very close together. So that is why these projects are coming to our little part of Hood County is because of the gas pipelines and the grid, and so they can get the energy and they can dispatch the energy very quickly. I think that when Governor Abbott and Ted Cruz and all of the legislators that are talking about Texas becoming the crypto and the data center capital of the United States, I don’t think they realize the impact to people’s lives. And if this data center was out surrounded by 500 acres of industrial area or non-residential area, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But that’s not what’s happening. Texas in enjoys businesses. We are a pro business state, but not at the expense of people’s lives or their property. And that’s what is happening in this little community here.

Cheryl Shadden:

So here across the street from where I live, if you think about being on the streets south Baltimore, so Constellation Energy owns this property across the street. They’re the slumlord, the drug dealer on the street corners, marathon Digital. They own all that property there. They’re leasing their property to Marathon Digital, marathon Digital doesn’t own the property that they’re sitting on. So now you have Marathon Digital causing problems with the community, making us sick, dropped our property values, not allowing us to sleep at night. You have Constellation Energy who holds the lease, who is leasing this property. They don’t care that they have a harmful renter on their property. They don’t care. They haven’t done anything to mitigate the noise that it’s there. Now you have Constellation Energy wanting to put in eight turbine gas power plant right in the middle of all of this to cause more problems. So you start looking at all of the air pollution, sulfuric acid, sulfur, hexa, fluoride, ozone, greenhouse gases, and then you have the first power plant here, Wolf Hollow one wanting to extend their air permit and drop some more acid rain on us. So this is a huge problem here. This isn’t just a little bit of a noise problem. This is a huge industrial pollution problem that’s ruining people’s lives here.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

I would also add to this, that regulation usually follows a problem. So regulation’s going to have to catch up with what’s going on out here. Now, as far as Bitcoin goes, I am pro-business as long as they’re not hurting people. I don’t really care if they have a Bitcoin plant, but they’re hurting people. So I’m not angry at Bitcoin itself. It could be any industry that’s doing this, and I would have a problem with ’em, Ted Cruz and Abbott. I’m with Cheryl. I’m frustrated with them, but I also agree with Nanette. I really want to believe that they have no clue the damage that they are encouraging out here. Now, perhaps they are aware, and if that’s the truth of that, then I have lost all respect for them. I do think that they need to hear people because we’re not quiet about this. They have to know that something’s going on out here, and I think that they need to come out here and talk to us.

I think this is a big enough deal that they need to come out here. I want to talk about the valves that are blowing and explain for some of your listeners that may be unaware, and Cheryl, you jump into because you understand this really well. Those valves are a safety mechanism that takes a lot of the pollutants, those really dangerous kinds of things from getting into the air. So when that valve blows, that means that safety measure that is in that particular place is not working. So when a series of valves blow, that means that we are getting contaminants into our air and we’re breathing them. Our animals are breathing them, they’re in the ground. These things are really important to understand. It’s not just the sound, it’s what is being released and we’re breathing it and it’s on our skin. And this is dangerous. I also want to talk about,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can I ask really quick, is that from the cooling operation that’s at the Bitcoin mine or is this from,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

This is the plant power plant. Its the power plant. So as Marathon is demanding more and more power, in order for them to do whatever it is that they do, the power plant right next door to it cannot keep up with it. And so it’s blowing their valves, which is the safety mechanism that keeps the pollutants from reaching the air and the people around us. So we are having this more and more and more, and now they want to build Constellation Energy, wants to build another bigger power plant. And we’re talking about an area that, goodness, I don’t even think it’s a mile around this. So we’re going to have three power plants and a Bitcoin mine. And there is talk about moving in another data center within a mile. So I cannot even imagine what this area is going to look like if they are successful.

Nannette Samuelson:

Dr. Wolf, what is the name of the California Battery Energy storage system that

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Was on fire? I looked that up today. And I want to say it was the one out of Monterey, but I don’t remember the actual name of it, but I think it was in Monterey, California, the one that caught on fire back in January of this year. Yes, hit that.

Nannette Samuelson:

Just look up battery energy storage system, fire California. And you’ll be able to see how the toxins that were in the air, the toxins that then were into the soil, the radius of the people that had to evacuate because of that. And that’s one thing, as I was saying, is snowballing into the other. The cryptocurrency is pulling and data centers are pulling so much power from the grid. One of the answers that the Texas legislature may do, or they may, the data centers themselves, may do it on their own. If their business model says this is cheaper or more cost effective is to bring those battery energy storage systems on their own property to how electricity markets work. When the demand goes up, the price goes up, demand goes down, the price goes down. So if I have a business that uses a lot of energy, then one of the things I can do to hedge that is to store my own power in these battery cells.

And then when the demand goes up, when Wolf Hollow can make more money selling their energy to the grid than selling it to me cryptocurrency marathon, I can offset that by storing my own power on my own property. And now I can keep running at full capacity because I’ve stored my own power in batteries. So then we have the add onto that, the risk of the fires with the battery energy storage system. So one of the things we’re looking into as a county is implementing some national fire safety protocols called NFPA 8 85 or 8 55. I’m sorry, I have to look that up to be sure exactly which one it is. But our fire marshal is in the process of working on that because we see this coming next. First, we have the regulation really lack of any regulation to do with noise. And now we have really lack of any regulation to do with fighting the dangers of fires or other situations that are caused by the batteries that are going to start being used to store the energy

Cheryl Shadden:

Well. And then let’s put these battery systems right next to a gas power plant, really make the explosion great,

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Right? Right. Talk about dangerous and then add that we have a volunteer fire department out here, the closest volunteer fire department to the existing best system that’s out here, battery energy storage system that’s already here. The closest fire department is 14 miles away. Their backup is 23 miles away. So imagine putting one of these right next to a gas powered electrical system or energy plant. Imagine what this is going to do to the community. This would be catastrophic. This is inhumane.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is. I mean there’s so many other words that I have for it, but at base it is inhumane, it’s cruel. It is absurd. And the thing that is really just pummeling my heart right now is how often I hear stories like these around the country, and this should be an exception. This should be the kind of thing we write about in history books as a really awful accident that happened one time and we learned our lesson.

Nannette Samuelson:

Like Aaron Brockovich comes, right,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Right. Yeah. It should not be the kind of thing that I’m interviewing people about every week from all over the country, from Red Hill in Hawaii to Cancer Alley in Louisiana to South Baltimore, 20 minutes from where I am to East Palestinian, Ohio to Granbury, Texas. This crap is everywhere. And that goes to, I wanted to, we only have a few minutes left here with each other and we’re going to have to do more follows. There’s so much more to talk about here. But I wanted to, in the last 10 minutes that we have here, talk about a few of these larger connecting points. And we’re talking directly to the audience here and to people who may hear this because I hear the same refrain that y’all have heard all the time. People say, why don’t they just move first and foremost, most people can’t do that.

You listening to this, do you have the money to just pick up and move somewhere? What if the house that you live in, you couldn’t sell? Like the people in East Palestine not only have their property values plummeted, they don’t want to sell them because they can’t in good conscience pass off a toxic home to another family. So what are they supposed to do? How could Cheryl pass off her home to someone who’s going to have to live across from this massive power plant and data center? So that’s the kind of situation that folks are in in terms of why don’t people just move? First of all, it’s a real huge burden that most working people can’t take on, but if they have to flee and become refugees from their own hometowns to save their lives, like the people we’ve talked to in Conyers, Georgia who had to flee the Biolab fire in September, that’s what they’re going to have to do.

But also as we’re pointing out here, where are you going to go? Because this stuff is everywhere. And if you’re fleeing one sacrifice zone, you may find yourself living next to a toxic landfill. You may find yourself living underneath the side of a mountaintop removal operation. And so when heavy rains come, you’re going to be getting flooded. Like the folks in Asheville, North Carolina we spoke to during Hurricane Helene. So there’s almost nowhere to escape to because we’ve let this stuff pervade our homes all around this country. But the other thing that I always hear that I wanted to give you all a chance to respond to, but I don’t want to make you responsible for it, so I want to really clarify that because it’s something that drives me nuts. As an admittedly, I am a lefty nut job. I grew up very conservative and it’s been a long road to the socialist that you see before you.

But I don’t care about any of that. When I go to towns and talk to people who are suffering through things that they did not cause, they did not ask for whether they’re Trump voters, non voters, Biden voters, anybody and people on the internet will say, well, they deserved it. They voted for this. Or their Republicans, who cares. Or when the fires in my home of Southern California burn whole neighborhoods, people say, well, they’re Democrats. Who cares? We got to stop thinking like this or we’re going to keep dying and our communities are going to keep getting destroyed while the rich assholes, pardon my French, who are causing all this pain are getting off. So that’s my little tirade here. I wanted to ask y’all if you just had any thoughts on that or on how to correct the thinking for people listening to this, knowing that these are the times that we’re in, people are going to say stuff like this and we here are trying to get people to cut through that noise and just care about the fact that flesh and blood, fellow working people, red state, blue state, whatever it is, our people, our neighbors, our fellow workers are hurting and we are being hurt as well.

That is what we should care about. If a car is on fire and someone’s inside you don’t go and ask who they voted for before you pull ’em out. If you guys could just talk to people out there who should be listening to what you’re saying, but are letting stuff like this get in the way, what would you say to them?

Cheryl Shadden:

Where is your humanity? If your family is hurt? Wouldn’t you want me to help take care of them? If you were broken down on the side of the road and you needed a hand, do you care who I vote for when I stopped to help you? When I’m doing your anesthesia and we’re taking your gallbladder out or your kid’s going to emergency surgery, I don’t check your voting status before I take care of you. We take care of people because we, that’s who we all are Now. I don’t care if my neighbors are pink with purple polka dots, I don’t care who they voted for. My community is suffering. I will do anything that I can to help the people in this area that are suffering. Some of these people can’t stand up. They are so sick. And you know what? Step up. Put your money where your mouth is, step up and be a human.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Yeah, I think for me it’s that you look at another human being and you have compassion for another human being. I don’t care where you go to church or if you go to church, you’re a human being. And I think that we need to be more mindful. I think the United States used to be like that some time ago. We just cared about people. And I think that we need to get back to that place where people are more important than industry. People are more important than your thoughts. People are just important and we need to stand up for each other, especially those who cannot stand up for themselves.

Nannette Samuelson:

Yeah, very well said. Both of you. There’s, I think Cheryl or Dr. Wolf said this early on is that the peaceful enjoyment of one’s property is a right that we have and that is not happening in this. They’re not able to peacefully enjoy their property and the respect business needs to respect individual’s rights as well as both of them said so. Well, we are humans. We all care about protecting each other and making sure that each other is safe. And when I became the commissioner, I had no idea that this was going to be part of what I was doing. I thought it was budget and making sure that the county offices are running smoothly and figuring ways to cut taxes and those types of things. And this became front and center right away. And like I said earlier, the stories that people told at that first town hall, what they’re dealing with, it’s just not right. I mean, industries should not be able to impact people’s health and their property without any consequences. Agreed.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Again, we’re going to have to have y’all back on. And to our listeners, we are going to continue our investigation into not just the Bitcoin mine in Granbury, Texas, but looking at the larger surrounds that includes other toxic polluters that folks are also dealing with. Just like here in South Baltimore, as you guys have heard listening to this show, it’s not just the CSX rail terminal that’s getting coal dust over everyone’s houses and in their lungs, they’re also breathing in the toxic pollutants from the medical waste incinerator and all the other toxic polluters concentrated in that part of the city. So we are going to do more follow-ups on and with folks from Granbury, but with the last minute or two that I have y’all, I just wanted to do a quick round around the table and ask if y’all could say, in terms of the struggle to hold marathon accountable and to protect people in Hood County, where do things stand now and what can folks listening do to help?

Cheryl Shadden:

For me personally, we thought we were battling. And so we have more and more battles every day. We thought we were fighting one arm of this octopus. No, there’s eight arms on this octopus that we’re fighting. Stand up for your next door neighbor, knock on their door, see how they’re doing. If you’re suffering from problems, your neighbors all are suffering as well. Stand up, take a stand. Tell them. No, it’s a shame you should have to fight for your life. But when I first started this, it was just a few of us standing here. Now I’m standing with a mighty, mighty group of warriors that actually care about one another. And so it’s not ideal. No, but now I’m not standing by myself.

Nannette Samuelson:

And Cheryl, did you talk about the incorporation already?

Cheryl Shadden:

I started off doing that. So one of the things that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to incorporate this area, this community, into a township so that we can develop statutes and taxation and environmental impact fees. So we’re giving this a really good, hard, strong try, trying to get control over our area. We need some control of our lives and what’s happening to all the people here.

Nannette Samuelson:

So what that will do, as I mentioned at the beginning, because cities have regulatory authority, zoning, ordinance, authority that counties don’t have, so that if they’re successful incorporating, they will be able to have ordinances and regulations, zoning because they will be a municipality inside of the county. So then that will take precedence over the lack of authority or ability that the county, we don’t have what, like I was saying earlier, it’s pretty much water, sewer, and that’s about it.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

I think with the incorporation, just know that it’s not a done deal. I wish it was an easy thing, but we have a couple of hurdles and we have a person that can say no to us. So we’re a little nervous about that. That’s going to happen this coming week. And yeah, we could use prayer if you pray we could use your good thoughts. If you don’t, that’s okay. But one of the things that I do want to encourage everyone is if you see something coming in your neighborhood, tackle it early. Don’t let it get a foothold because then you’ve got a battle on your hands.

Nannette Samuelson:

And if you live in Texas, call your senator, your state senator, call your state representative, send them emails, call ours, call Senator Birdwell, call Representative Slauson and tell ’em you heard about this that’s happening in their area of responsibility and that their constituents are suffering and that they would support any change to the noise ordinance, regulation or setback requirements, things that would help the residents that live there. That’s what I would say. Call your state rep and your state senator. Call Shelby Slauson. Call Senator Birdwell. Tell him you heard about it. Here’s an ironic thing as Granberry just for what the third or fourth year in a row was, just voted the best historic small town in the United States we’re also the celebration capital of Texas.

Cheryl Shadden:

We’re celebrating air pollution.

Nannette Samuelson:

So that happened and here we are, this whole community of people that live around don’t live in the city limits of Granbury but live very close to in Hood County that are going through this struggle. And because like I said earlier, the proximity of gas lines, the proximity of the access to the grid, low property values, it’s coming. This isn’t the last project that we have in our little precinct.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests from Granbury, Texas. Cheryl Shedden, hood County Precinct Chair, Dr. Shannon Wolf and Hood County Commissioner Nanette Samuelson. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

It is no surprise to the Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) that aggression is stepping up against the countries in the anti-imperialist Alliance of Sahel States. This was reflected in the flagrantly baseless accusations against Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traoré. On April 3, 2025, U.S. AFRICOM Commander Michael Langley testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee and claimed without evidence that interim President Traoré is misusing the country’s gold mineral wealth in exchange for protection. Langley provided no details on how these supposed exchanges are carried out or from what Traoré needs protection.

The imperialist modus operandi is at play here and starts with demonizing and criminalizing the leader of a country as the war propaganda pretext for more direct intervention. We have seen this script before. Commander-In-Chief of Economic Fighters League of Ghana and Steering Committee member of the USOAN,  Ernesto Yeboah refutes the liberal framing meant to arrest dissent against what is at stake:

This is not about military vs. civilian rule. This is about imperialism vs. liberation. This is about Africans standing up — finally — and saying: Hands off Africa.

The BAP Africa Team and USOAN are heeding the call emanating across Africa to unite in defense of Burkina Faso. And we further call on all anti-imperialist forces around the world, especially Black forces, to sound the alarm and publicly denounce these designs before this all too familiar strategy takes root. In 2011, Black anti-imperialist forces were unable to effectively counter the heinous plan of the U.S.-EU-NATO Axis of Domination to destroy the revolutionary Pan-Africanist nation of Libya. BAP’s USOAN refuses to allow this fatal mistake to be repeated.

This time the complicity of silence by ECOWAS, the African Union, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the African (Black) comprador class around the world must be exposed.

This is a pivotal time for the struggle against imperialism in Africa. The emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and the revolutionary example of self-determination being set by the people of Burkina Faso represents a historic breakthrough for Pan-Africanism that the U.S. and NATO have been eager to eliminate. The U.S.-EU-NATO axis is desperate to re-colonize Burkina Faso and to halt any further influence across Africa set by the example of the Alliance of Sahel States. What the U.S is angling to undermine is a popular process of decolonization.

Under President Traoré’s leadership, Burkina Faso has advanced toward food sovereignty, established a national gold refinery, and taken critical steps to reclaim its resources for the benefit of its people. The vague and opportunistic accusations issued by AFRICOM are designed to undermine these gains and set the stage for imperialist subversion. When U.S. officials speak of “strategic interests,” they mean the unfettered right to plunder Africa’s mineral wealth, dominate markets, and exploit African labor, all without the consent of African peoples. We must not allow the absurdity of the U.S. and NATO, currently complicit in the genocide of Palestinians, to pose as moral arbiters in Africa.

BAP and USOAN call on all anti-imperialist forces to join in active defense of Burkina Faso, demand the expulsion of AFRICOM from the continent, and ensure that no African nation suffers the fate that befell Libya in 2011.

The time to act is now!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Just one year ago, JD Vance was a leading advocate of the Great Lakes and the efforts to restore the largest system of freshwater on the face of the planet.

As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance called the lakes “an invaluable asset” for his home state. He supported more funding for a program that delivers “the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem” so that the Great Lakes would be protected “for generations to come.”

But times have changed.

This spring, Vance is vice president, and President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people.

Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.

In addition to a delayed launch, problems with personnel, supplies, vessel support and real-time data sharing have created doubts about the team’s ability to operate the buoys, said Gregory Dick, director of the NOAA cooperative institute at the University of Michigan that partners with the lab. Both the lab and institute operate out of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was custom built as NOAA’s hub in the Great Lakes region, and both provide staff to the algal blooms team.

“This has massive impacts on coastal communities,” Dick said.

Multiple people who have worked with the lab also told ProPublica that there are serious gaps in this year’s monitoring of algal blooms, which are often caused by excess nutrient runoff from farms. Data generated by the lab’s boats and buoys, and publicly shared, could be limited or interrupted, they said.

That data has helped to successfully avoid a repeat of a 2014 crisis in Toledo, Ohio, when nearly half a million people were warned to not drink the water or even touch it.

If the streams of information are cut off, “stakeholders will be very unhappy,” said Bret Collier, a branch chief at the lab who oversaw the federal scientists that run the harmful algal bloom program for the Great Lakes. He was fired in the purge of federal probationary workers in February.

The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February, according to the president of the lab’s union, and it was not allowed to fill several open positions. The White House released preliminary budget recommendations last week that would make significant cuts to NOAA. The budget didn’t provide details, but indicated the termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy” of ending “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”

An earlier document obtained by ProPublica and reported widely proposed a 74% funding cut to NOAA’s research office, home of the Great Lakes lab.

Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about how federal cuts have affected Great Lakes research. The White House also didn’t respond to messages.

Municipal water leaders in Cleveland and Toledo have written public letters of support on behalf of the lab, advocating for the continuation of its work because of how important its tools and resources are for drinking water management.

In a statement to ProPublica, staffers from Toledo’s water system credited the Great Lakes lab and NOAA for alerting it to potential blooms near its intake days ahead of time. This has saved the system significant costs, they said, and helped it avoid feeding excess chemicals into the water.

“The likelihood of another 2014 ‘don’t drink the water’ advisory has been minimized to almost nothing by additional vigilance” from both the lab and local officials, they said.

Remaining staff have had to contend with not only a lack of capacity but also tight limits on spending and travel.

Several people who have worked in or with the lab said that the staff was hampered by strict credit card limits imposed on government employees as part of the effort to reduce spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheaded by presidential adviser Elon Musk.

“The basic scientific supplies that we use to provide the local communities with information on algal bloom toxicity — our purchasing of them is being restricted based on the limitations currently being put in by the administration,” Collier said.

NOAA and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, didn’t respond to messages from ProPublica. Neither did a DOGE official. Eight U.S. senators, including the minority leader, sent a letter in March to a top NOAA leader inquiring about many of the changes, but they never received a response.

The department described its approach to some of its cuts when it eliminated nearly $4 million in funding for the NOAA cooperative institute at Princeton University and emphasized the importance of avoiding wasteful government spending. ProPublica has reported on how the loss of research grants at Princeton and the more significant defunding of the NOAA lab it works with would be a serious setback for weather and climate preparedness.

A number of the staffing losses at the Great Lakes lab came when employees accepted offers of early retirement or voluntary separation; others were fired probationary workers targeted by DOGE across the government. That includes Collier, who had 24 years of professional experience, largely as a research professor, before he was hired last year into a position that, according to the lab’s former director, had been difficult to fill.

A scientist specializing in the toxic algal blooms was also fired. She worked on the team for 14 years through the cooperative institute before accepting a federal position last year, which made her probationary, too.

A computer scientist who got real-time data onto the lab’s website — and the only person who knew how to push out the weekly sampling data on harmful algal blooms — was also fired. She was probationary because she too was hired for a federal position after working with the institute.

And because of a planned retirement, no one holds the permanent position of lab director, though there is an acting director. The lab isn’t allowed to fill any positions due to a federal hiring freeze.

At the same time, expected funds for the lab's cooperative institute are delayed, which means, Dick said, it may soon lay off staff, including people on the algal blooms team.

In March, Cleveland’s water commissioner wrote a letter calling for continued support for the Great Lakes lab and other NOAA-funded operations in the region, saying that access to real-time forecasts for Lake Erie are “critically important in making water treatment decisions” for more than 1.3 million citizens.

In 2006, there was a major outbreak of hypoxia, an issue worsened by algal blooms where oxygen-depleted water can become corrosive, discolored and full of excess manganese, which is a neurotoxin at high levels. Cleveland Water collaborated with the lab on developing a “groundbreaking” hypoxia forecast model, said Scott Moegling, who worked for both the Cleveland utility and Ohio’s drinking water regulatory agency.

“I knew which plants were going to get hit,” Moegling said. “I knew about when, and I knew what the treatment we would need would be, and we could staff accordingly.”

The American Meteorological Society, in partnership with the National Weather Association, spotlighted this warning system in its statement in support of NOAA research, saying that it helps “keep drinking water potable in the Great Lakes region.”

Collier, the former branch chief, said that quality data may be lacking this year, not just for drinking water suppliers, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, fisheries, shipping companies, recreational businesses and shoreline communities that rely on it to navigate risk. In response to a recent survey of stakeholders, the president of a trade organization serving Great Lakes cargo vessels said that access to NOAA’s real-time data “is critically important to the commercial shipping fleet when making navigation decisions.”

Because federal law requires NOAA to monitor harmful algal blooms, the cuts may run against legal obligations, several current and former workers told ProPublica. The blooms program was “federally mandated to be active every single day, without exception,” Collier said.

The 2024 bloom in Lake Erie was the earliest on record. At its peak, it covered 550 square miles. Warming temperatures worsen the size and frequency of algal blooms. While the field season was historically only about 90 days, Collier said, last year the team was deployed for 211 days.

As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is typically first to show signs of problems. But it’s also an emblem of environmental stewardship, thanks to its striking recovery from unchecked industrial pollution. The lake was once popularly declared “dead.” A highly publicized fire inflamed a river that feeds into it. Even Dr. Seuss knocked it in the 1971 version of “The Lorax.” The book described fish leaving a polluted pond “in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”

But the rise of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA, and labs like the one protecting the Great Lakes, along with legislation that protected water from pollution, led to noticeable changes. By 1986, two Ohio graduate students had succeeded in persuading Theodor Geisel, the author behind Dr. Seuss, to revise future editions of his classic book.

“I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish,” Geisel wrote to them.

Early this year, headlines out of the Midwest suggested that “Vance could be a game-changing Great Lakes advocate” and that he might “save the Great Lakes from Trump.”

A 2023 report to Congress about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a popular funding mechanism for projects that protect the lakes, including the research lab’s, described the lab’s work on harmful algal blooms as one of its “success stories.” Last year, with Vance as a co-sponsor, an act to extend support for the funding program passed the Senate, but stalled in the House. Another bipartisan effort to reauthorize it launched in January.

Project 2025, the plan produced by the Heritage Foundation for Trump’s second term, recommended that the president consider whether NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

NOAA is “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the plan said, and this industry’s mission “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

“That is not to say NOAA is useless,” it added, “but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”

When asked at his confirmation hearing in January if he agreed with Project 2025’s recommendation of dismantling NOAA, Howard Lutnick, head of the commerce department, said no.

One month later, the Great Lakes lab’s probationary staff got termination notices. That includes Nicole Rice, who spent a decade with NOAA. A promotion made her communications job vulnerable to the widespread firings of federal probationary workers.

In recent testimony to a Michigan Senate committee, Rice expressed deep concern about the future of the Great Lakes.

“It has taken over a century of bipartisan cooperation, investment and science to bring the Great Lakes back from the brink of ecological collapse,” Rice said. “But these reckless cuts could undo the progress in just a few short years, endangering the largest surface freshwater system in the world.”

Vernal Coleman contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anna Clark.

In mid-April, the Trump administration cleared the way for a controversial copper mine proposed for western Arizona. The mine would destroy parts of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel — known as “Oak Flat” in English — over the objections of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and at least 21 other tribal nations. The administration then fast-tracked the project to fulfill President Donald Trump’s goal of more aggressively developing domestic minerals such as copper and gold, which are essential for renewable energy technologies. Nine other mining projects were also fast-tracked, seven of them located in the Western U.S.

The mine, which is operated by Resolution Copper, is a joint venture between the Australia-based mining company BHP and Rio Tinto, a British-Australian multinational. Both companies have previously destroyed or threatened Aboriginal cultural sites in Australia, and both belong to the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), a pro-mining organization. (Rio Tinto and BHP did not respond to requests for comment.) 

The ICMM made an appearance last week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City, the world’s largest annual gathering of Indigenous peoples, to stress their commitment to respecting Indigenous rights and obtaining the consent of Indigenous communities before mining.

An estimated 50% to 80% of the minerals that are critical to the renewable energy transition are located on or near Indigenous lands globally. “This does not give the industry license to mine at any cost,” said Haajarah Ahmed, senior manager at ICMM, which represents a third of global mining companies, on April 23.

Ahmed highlighted ICMM’s recently updated guidelines, which advise member companies such as Rio Tinto and BHP to engage with Indigenous people at the beginning of a project and to respect their rights and emphasize “the importance of reaching an agreement through a process that recognizes free, prior and informed consent.”

But the guidelines contrast bleakly with the reality on the ground. In the U.S., current laws and policies remain weak when it comes to tribal nations’ efforts to protect their ancestral lands and sacred sites off-reservation, far from international standards regarding how corporations and governments should address Indigenous concerns about projects that affect them.

In Canada, the courts have affirmed that the government has a duty to consult Indigenous communities on projects that might adversely impact their treaty rights. Nonetheless, many projects continue to move forward, including developments in Ontario’s Ring of Fire region and in Secwépemc territories in British Columbia.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., a case challenging the legality of the Resolution Copper mine is pending in the Supreme Court, which will consider whether the destruction of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel would violate Apache religious rights. The decision could impact other tribes’ efforts to preserve sacred sites outside their reservation borders.

“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it’s rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold, the organization behind the lawsuit, which is made up of Apache and other Indigenous people and their allies. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries.”

Other mining projects fast-tracked by the administration last week have generated opposition from tribal nations. The Nez Perce Tribe is concerned that the proposed Stibnite Mine in Idaho could harm fishing and hunting rights, and the Fort McDermitt Tribe has long fought a proposed lithium mine on Thacker Pass in Nevada which would be built on a sacred site where U.S. cavalry troops massacred Indigenous people in 1865. All these concerns are matters that the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has said must be addressed. 

According to a study published in February by the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,  “the absence or weakness of legal frameworks that protect the particular rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of a global energy transition” is a “major concern.” This lack of legal protection, they wrote, means that the mining companies have the responsibility to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous people, regardless of legal gaps.

A shift in corporate and industry policy towards consent could push governments to adopt consent in their own law and policy, said Kristen Carpenter, a law professor at CU Boulder. “It’s promising to see companies and industry groups adopt FPIC-based policies and guidelines,” said Carpenter, a past appointee to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which helps governments implement UNDRIP. “Increasingly it seems that private actors have come to see FPIC as a risk mitigation tool, realizing that working toward agreement with Indigenous Peoples is likely to avoid objections, lawsuits, and protests that arise when projects violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”

While voluntary guidelines advocated for by organizations like the ICMM have the potential to move faster than law and policy, they aren’t legally enforceable and can be created, or ignored, by industry, meaning they can’t be a stand-alone substitute.

“We do not seek to replace state obligations, but we can help fill accountability gaps when states fall short,” said Scott Sellwood, who represented the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, or IRMA, at the forum. IRMA — which includes nonprofits, organized labor, mining companies and “affected communities” —  also has voluntary mining standards, but its members are audited by a third party and the reports are published publicly to ensure that they are following the standards. “To do this effectively, voluntary mining standards should at minimum require mines to demonstrate that they have obtained (free, prior, and informed consent) from all affected Indigenous peoples.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At UN, mining groups tout protections for Indigenous people on May 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anna V. Smith, High Country News.

In mid-April, the Trump administration cleared the way for a controversial copper mine proposed for western Arizona. The mine would destroy parts of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel — known as “Oak Flat” in English — over the objections of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and at least 21 other tribal nations. The administration then fast-tracked the project to fulfill President Donald Trump’s goal of more aggressively developing domestic minerals such as copper and gold, which are essential for renewable energy technologies. Nine other mining projects were also fast-tracked, seven of them located in the Western U.S.

The mine, which is operated by Resolution Copper, is a joint venture between the Australia-based mining company BHP and Rio Tinto, a British-Australian multinational. Both companies have previously destroyed or threatened Aboriginal cultural sites in Australia, and both belong to the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), a pro-mining organization. (Rio Tinto and BHP did not respond to requests for comment.) 

The ICMM made an appearance last week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City, the world’s largest annual gathering of Indigenous peoples, to stress their commitment to respecting Indigenous rights and obtaining the consent of Indigenous communities before mining.

An estimated 50% to 80% of the minerals that are critical to the renewable energy transition are located on or near Indigenous lands globally. “This does not give the industry license to mine at any cost,” said Haajarah Ahmed, senior manager at ICMM, which represents a third of global mining companies, on April 23.

Ahmed highlighted ICMM’s recently updated guidelines, which advise member companies such as Rio Tinto and BHP to engage with Indigenous people at the beginning of a project and to respect their rights and emphasize “the importance of reaching an agreement through a process that recognizes free, prior and informed consent.”

But the guidelines contrast bleakly with the reality on the ground. In the U.S., current laws and policies remain weak when it comes to tribal nations’ efforts to protect their ancestral lands and sacred sites off-reservation, far from international standards regarding how corporations and governments should address Indigenous concerns about projects that affect them.

In Canada, the courts have affirmed that the government has a duty to consult Indigenous communities on projects that might adversely impact their treaty rights. Nonetheless, many projects continue to move forward, including developments in Ontario’s Ring of Fire region and in Secwépemc territories in British Columbia.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., a case challenging the legality of the Resolution Copper mine is pending in the Supreme Court, which will consider whether the destruction of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel would violate Apache religious rights. The decision could impact other tribes’ efforts to preserve sacred sites outside their reservation borders.

“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it’s rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold, the organization behind the lawsuit, which is made up of Apache and other Indigenous people and their allies. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries.”

Other mining projects fast-tracked by the administration last week have generated opposition from tribal nations. The Nez Perce Tribe is concerned that the proposed Stibnite Mine in Idaho could harm fishing and hunting rights, and the Fort McDermitt Tribe has long fought a proposed lithium mine on Thacker Pass in Nevada which would be built on a sacred site where U.S. cavalry troops massacred Indigenous people in 1865. All these concerns are matters that the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has said must be addressed. 

According to a study published in February by the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,  “the absence or weakness of legal frameworks that protect the particular rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of a global energy transition” is a “major concern.” This lack of legal protection, they wrote, means that the mining companies have the responsibility to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous people, regardless of legal gaps.

A shift in corporate and industry policy towards consent could push governments to adopt consent in their own law and policy, said Kristen Carpenter, a law professor at CU Boulder. “It’s promising to see companies and industry groups adopt FPIC-based policies and guidelines,” said Carpenter, a past appointee to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which helps governments implement UNDRIP. “Increasingly it seems that private actors have come to see FPIC as a risk mitigation tool, realizing that working toward agreement with Indigenous Peoples is likely to avoid objections, lawsuits, and protests that arise when projects violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”

While voluntary guidelines advocated for by organizations like the ICMM have the potential to move faster than law and policy, they aren’t legally enforceable and can be created, or ignored, by industry, meaning they can’t be a stand-alone substitute.

“We do not seek to replace state obligations, but we can help fill accountability gaps when states fall short,” said Scott Sellwood, who represented the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, or IRMA, at the forum. IRMA — which includes nonprofits, organized labor, mining companies and “affected communities” —  also has voluntary mining standards, but its members are audited by a third party and the reports are published publicly to ensure that they are following the standards. “To do this effectively, voluntary mining standards should at minimum require mines to demonstrate that they have obtained (free, prior, and informed consent) from all affected Indigenous peoples.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At UN, mining groups tout protections for Indigenous people on May 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anna V. Smith, High Country News.

Trump’s budget reinforces the Republican plan to reimagine government for the ultra-wealthy and special interests, as Republican lawmakers clear a path for tax cuts for themselves, their wealthy donors, and giant corporations.

“President Trump is again betraying the millions of Americans who believed him when he promised to lower costs. This time, he’s taking aim at anyone who attends a public school, relies on rental assistance to keep a roof over their heads, or accesses healthcare through Medicaid or Medicare. Instead of standing up for everyday Americans, Trump is prioritizing his own wallet and the tax benefits of his wealthy donors—leaving local communities and small towns to bear the brunt of his cuts.” —Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

A U.S. military strike on a migrant detention center in the north of Yemen has killed at least 68 people, largely migrants from African nations, bringing the death toll from U.S. attacks on the country to over 250 since mid-March. Middle East researcher Helen Lackner says the number of deaths is likely twice the officially recorded number, as the United States has now conducted more than 1,000 strikes on Yemen “on an absolutely nightly basis.” Lackner says the humanitarian crisis in Yemen has also been exacerbated by the end of U.S. aid and the U.S.'s designation of the country's Houthi movement as a “foreign terrorist organization.” “People who are living in the country are suffering on a daily basis from basically terror and fright or from being attacked and possibly being bombed and killed [at] any time.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Trump administration continues to escalate its authoritarian assault on higher education, free speech, and political dissent—and university administrators and state government officials are willingly aiding that assault. On the morning of April 23, at the direction of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the homes of multiple student organizers connected to Palestine solidarity protests at the University of Michigan. “According to the group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), agents seized the students’ electronics and a number of personal items,” Michael Arria reports at Mondoweiss. “Four individuals were detained, but eventually released.” In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of graduate student workers from the University of Michigan and Columbia University about how they and their unions are fighting back against ICE abductions, FBI raids, and top-down political repression, all while trying to carry on with their day-to-day work.

Panelists include: Lavinia, a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information and an officer in the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO); Ember McCoy, a PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and a rank-and-file member of GEO and the TAHRIR Coalition; Jessie Rubin, a PhD student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and a rank-and-file member of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC); and Conlan Olson, a PhD student in Computer Science at Columbia and a member of the SWC bargaining committee.

Additional links/info:

• Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), University of Michigan website, Instagram, Facebook page, and X page
• Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website, Instagram, Facebook page, and X page
• TAHRIR Coalition UMich X page
• Legal Fund of Michigan Students for Palestine
• GEO Worker Solidarity Fund
• GEO Press Release: FBI and police raid homes of pro-Palestine activists, including a GEO member
• Mahmoud Khalil statement from ICE detention: “My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner”
• Allie Wong, The Intercept, “This is not about antisemitism, Palestine, or Columbia. It’s Trump dismantling the American dream“
• Grant Miner, The Nation, “Columbia expelled me for my palestine activism, but I won’t be silenced”
• Michael Arria, Mondoweiss, “FBI and police raid homes of Palestine activists in Michigan”
• Alvin Powell, The Harvard Gazette, “Harvard files lawsuit against Trump administration”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘Worse’ than McCarthyism: Trump’s war on higher education, free speech, and political dissent”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our ongoing coverage of the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education and the people who live, learn, and work there. Things have continued to escalate since we published our episodes earlier in April where I first interviewed Todd Wolfson in Chen Akua of the American Association of University Professors, and then interviewed graduate student workers at Columbia University, Ali Wong and Caitlyn Liss. Now many since then have praised the development of Harvard University standing up and challenging Trump’s attacks in a public statement titled, upholding Our Values, defending Our University.

Harvard’s president Alan m Garber wrote Dear members of the Harvard Community. Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands. Although some members of the administration have said their April 11th letter was sent by mistake. Other statements and their actions suggest otherwise doubling down on the letters, sweeping and intrusive demands which would impose unprecedented and improper control over the university. The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 5 0 1 C3 tax exempt status. These actions have stark real life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world. Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.

Now at the same time at the University of Michigan, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies raided multiple homes of student activists connected to Gaza solidarity protests as Michael Aria reports at Monde Weiss. On the morning of April 23rd, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies executed search warrants at multiple homes in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Canton Township, Michigan. The raids reportedly targeted a number of student organizers who were connected to Gaza protests at the University of Michigan. According to the group, students allied for Freedom and Equality or safe agents seized the students’ electronics and a number of personal items. Four individuals were detained but eventually released to rear coalition. A student led movement calling for divestment from Israel said that officers initially refused to present warrants at the Ypsilanti raid. They were unable to confirm whether ICE was present at the raid. A Detroit FBI office spokesman declined to explain why the warrants were executed, but confirmed that the matter was being handled by the Office of Michigan.

Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel has refused to confirm whether the raids were connected to Palestine activism thus far, but her office has aggressively targeted the movement. Last fall, Nestle introduced criminal charges against at least 11 protestors involved in the University of Michigan Gaza encampment. An investigation by the Guardian revealed that members of University of Michigan’s governing board had pressed Nestle to bring charges against the students. The report notes that six of eight Regents donated more than $33,000 combined to Nestle’s campaigns after the regents called for action. Nestle took the cases over from local district attorney Ellie Savitt, an extremely rare move as local prosecutors typically handle such cases. Listen, as we’ve been saying repeatedly on this show and across the Real news, the battle on and over are institutions of higher education have been and will continue to be a critical front where the future of democracy and the Trump Administration’s agenda will be decided.

And it will be decided not just by what Trump does and how university administrators and boards of regents respond, but by how faculty respond students, grad students, staff, campus communities, and the public writ large. And today we are very grateful to be joined by four guests who are on the front lines of that fight. We’re joined today by Lavinia, a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information and an officer in the Graduate Employees organization or GEO, which full disclosure is my old union. Ember McCoy is also joining us. Ember is a PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and a rank and file member of GEO and the Tare Coalition. And we are also joined today by Jesse Rubin, a PhD student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and a rank and file member of Student Workers of Columbia.

We are also joined by Conlin Olson, a PhD student in computer science at Columbia, and a member of the Bargaining Committee for Student Workers of Columbia, Lavinia Ember, Jesse Conlin. Thank you all so much for joining us today, especially amidst this terrifying reality that we all find ourselves in. I wanted to just jump right in and start there because since we have y’all and you are new voices in this ongoing coverage that we’re trying to do of these authoritarian attacks on higher ed, I wanted to start by just going around the table and asking if y’all could briefly introduce yourselves and tell us about what your life and work have been like these past few weeks and months as all of this Orwellian nightmare has been unfolding.

Lavinia:

Yeah. Hi everyone. Thank you so much, max for putting this together. So by and large, my life just continues to revolve around research. I’m actually on an NSF fellowship and that means that I basically spend all of my time in the office doing research. That being said, over the past couple of months, especially sort of in the context of organizing, a lot of what I and other grad workers at the University of Michigan have been working on is safety planning and mutual aid efforts related to immigration. And then of course in the past couple of weeks there’s been sort of this really alarming, as you said, escalation in repression by the state government of pro-Palestine protestors. So recently a lot of organizing work has also been related to that, but just to personalize it, the people who are affected by this repression, our friends, they’re coworkers and it’s just been extremely scary recently even just sort of trying to navigate being on campus in this really kind of tense political environment.

Ember McCoy:

So for me, this is kind a continuation of the organizing that I’ve been doing throughout the PhD and before I was vice president of the grad union during our 2023 strike, and there was a lot of infrastructure that we built and organizing models that we’ve changed, that we’ve talked about. Even I think on this podcast leading into the strike, which I think then we got a contract in September of 2023 and then pretty much right away ended up transitioning our work to be very focused on Palestine Pro Palestine organizing in collaboration with undergrad students after October 7th, which I think is really important for some of the infrastructure we built and organizing models we built, thinking about how we’ve been able to transition from labor organizing to pro-Palestine organizing to ICE organizing and all the way back around and in between. On a personal level, this week, Monday morning, I had a meeting with my advisor.

I told him, I promised him I was going to lock in. I was like, I’m going to do it. I need to finish. By August, two hours later, I found out my NSF grant was terminated. I study environmental justice, I have a doctoral dissertation research grant, and then I spent Tuesday trying to do paperwork around that. And Monday morning I woke up to my friend’s houses being rated by the FBI and safe to say, I’ve not worked on my dissertation the rest of the week. So yeah, I think it’s just important like Lavinia said, to think about how, I don’t know, we’re all operating in this space of navigating, trying to continue thinking about our work and the obligations we have as workers for students at the University of Michigan. It is finals week, so the raids happen Wednesdays finals started Thursday. And also not only continuing the fight for pre Palestine, but also making sure our comrades are okay and that they’re safe.

Jessie Rubin:

Hi everyone. It’s really nice to meet you Lavinia and Ember, and thank you so much Max for inviting us to be a part of this. My name is Jessie and I’m a PhD candidate at Columbia in the music department and also a rank and file member of Student Workers of Columbia. I guess to start off with the more personal side with my own research, I guess I’m lucky in that my research has not been threatened with funding cuts the same way that embers has been, and I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. Ember much love and solidarity to you, but my research does engage Palestine. I researched the Palestine Solidarity movement in Ireland and this past year has definitely been a whirlwind of being scared that I could get in trouble even for just talking about my own research on campus, scared that if I share my research with my students, that might be grounds for discipline.

So it’s definitely been this large existential fight of trying to write my dissertation and write it well while also feeling like Columbia doesn’t want me to be doing the dissertation that I am doing. At the same time, I’ve been really invigorated and motivated through working with my fellow union members. I’m a member of our communications committee, which has obviously taken off a ton in the past few months with social media, internal communications and press, and figuring out how we as a union can sort of express our demands to a broader audience in America and around the globe. I’m also a member of our political education and solidarity committee, and that has been really moving, I mean really exciting to see how different members of our community and also the broader union work with other groups on campus through mutual aid efforts, through actions, through all sorts of activity to fight against this attack on higher ed. And lastly, I also joined our Palestine working group last year. Our union passed a BDS resolution, which then sort of necessitated the formation of our working group. And our working group has been working to think about what Palestine might look like in our upcoming bargaining. We are just entering bargaining and Conlin who’s here with us today can probably talk more about what that’s been looking like as they’re a member of our bargaining team.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it should also be remembered from listeners from our previous episode with members of Student workers of Columbia. Don’t forget that the university expelled and functionally fired Grant Minor, the former president of Student Workers of Columbia, right before bargaining sessions opened with the university.

Conlan Olson:

Yeah, that’s right. This is Conlin. Like Jesse said, I’m a member of the bargaining committee at Student Workers of Columbia. I’m also a PhD student in computer science. I study algorithmic fairness and data privacy, which are sort of terrifyingly relevant right now. And in addition to our current contract campaign, just on a day-to-day organizing level, and we’re all really trying hard to build the left and build the labor movement among tech workers and STEM workers, which is an uphill battle, but I think is really important work. And I think there is a lot of potential for solidarity and labor power in those areas, even if at Columbia right now they feel under organized.

And in our contract campaign, we are currently, we have contract articles ready. We have a comprehensive health and safety article that includes protections for international students. We have articles about keeping federal law enforcement off our campus. And of course we have all the usual articles that you would see in a union contract. We have a non-discrimination and harassment article that provides real recourse in a way that we don’t have right now. And so we are ready to bargain and we have our unit standing behind us and the university really has refused to meet us in good faith. As Max said, they’ve fired our president and then we still brought our president because he’s still our president to bargaining. And the next time we went to schedule a bargaining session, they declared him persona non grata from campus. And so we said, well, we can’t meet you on campus because we need our president. Here’s a zoom link. And Columbia, of course refused to show up on Zoom. So we are frustrated. We are ready to bargain. We have the power, we have the contract articles and the universities refusing to meet us. So we are building a powerful campaign to ask them to meet us and to try to get them to the table and work on reaching a fair contract for all of our workers. Yeah, I think that’s most of my day-to-day these days is working on our contract campaign.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I just want to say speaking only for myself and full disclosure, I am a former GEO member at the University of Michigan. I got my PhDs there as well, and I remember after already leaving the university to come work at the Chronicle of Higher Education, but I was still a BD, meaning I hadn’t fully finished my dissertation and defended it. Then COD hit in 2020 and our university was doing the same thing of amidst this chaotic nightmare that we were all living through. My professors and administrators were saying, Hey, finish that dissertation. And I think I rightly said, I rightly expressed what many of us were feeling, which was, Hey man, I’ve earned that goddamn thing at this point. Just give me the degree. I can’t imagine how y’all are still trying to write and defend your dissertations amidst these funding cuts amidst when the future of higher education itself is in doubt. So I would just say for myself and for no one else, just give PhD candidates their goddamn doctorates at this point, man, what are you doing? But anyway, ember Lavinia, I want to go to y’all and ask if you could help us break down the FBI and police raids out there in Ann Arbor Ypsilanti all around the University of Michigan. Can you tell us more about what happened, how the people who were detained are doing, how folks on campus are responding and just where the hell things stand now?

Ember McCoy:

And you did a really thorough job covering the timeline of what happened on Wednesday morning. So on Wednesday between six and 9:00 AM the FBI, along with Michigan State police and local police officers in the three different cities and University of Michigan police conducted a coordinated raid in unmarked vehicles at the home of homes of multiple University of Michigan pro-Palestine activists. And I think that’s very important to name because the attorney general who a democrat who signed these warrants that have no probable cause is saying that in their press release that the raids don’t have anything to do with University of Michigan campus activism, and they don’t have anything to do with the encampments, but the people whose home berated are prominent pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan. So trying to say those things aren’t connected is not at all, and there’s no charges, right? There’s no charges that has happened for these folks whose homes have been rated. And so it’s just a crazy situation to say the least. I would say people are doing as well as they can be. Some of their immediate thoughts were like, I need to figure out my finals and I no longer have my devices or access to my university meme Michigan accounts because of duo two factor authentication.

Yeah. So I mean, I think the organizing of course is still continuing. Another big thing that’s happened. I guess to scale out a little bit, what happened Wednesday is just another thing that has happened in this year long campaign where the Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, is really targeting University of Michigan activists Ann Arbor activists for pro-Palestine free speech. So as you alluded to, there are 11 people facing felony charges from the Attorney general related to the encampment raid. There’s another four people facing charges as a result of a die-in that we did in the fall. And so that is also all still ongoing and very much a part of this. So there’s almost 40 different activists that they’re targeting across these different attacks. And we actually had Thursday, we had a court date coincidentally for the encampment 11, and it was the intention of it was to file a motion to ask the judge to recuse Dana Nessel, the Attorney General.

She has already had to recuse herself from a different case due to perceived Islamic Islamic phobic bias. And she’s a prominent Zionist in the state. And so our argument is kind of like if she’s had to recuse herself from that case, she should also have to recuse herself from this case. They would fall under similar intent. However, when we were at that court case, one of the encampment 11 also was accused of violating his bond. So as a part of their bond, they’re not allowed to be on campus unless for class or for work, though most of them have been fired from their jobs at this point. And he was accused of being, he was surveilled on campus 20 minutes after his class ended and he was walking through and stopped allegedly to say hi to friends. So he was sent to jail for four days right then and there.

The judge and the prosecutor originally said they were trying to put him in jail for 10 days, but they didn’t want him to miss his graduation and wax poetic about how they didn’t want his parents to have to miss his graduation. So instead, they sent him to jail for four days and he got out Sunday morning. And so yeah, it’s been a lot, right? There’s all these different things that are happening, but I think the organizing still continues. People are very mobilized. People are probably more agitated than they were before. And after this, a bunch of us are heading to a rally at Dana Nestle’s office in Lansing. So I would say that it definitely hasn’t curtailed the movement for a free Palestine and the movement for free speech broadly in the state of Michigan. That was long-winded, but lots going on.

Lavinia:

That was such a great summary, Amber. Great. Yeah. I also just want to add that there has been a lot of repression on campus that doesn’t rise to the level of criminal charges or legal actions. Instead, it’s stuff like, for instance, one of my friends was pulled into a disciplinary meeting because he sent a mass email about Palestine or there have been many instances of police deploying pepper spray on campus against protesters. So there’s also just kind of this general climate of fear, which is reinforced in many different contexts on campus, specifically surrounding Palestine.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and Conlin. Jesse, I wanted to bring you in here because as we discussed in the recent episode with two other members of your union, Trump’s administration really set the template for this broader assault on higher ed by first going after Columbia. So what is your message to workers and students on other campuses like Michigan who are facing similar attacks? What can we learn from Columbia that may help people at other universities be better prepared for what’s coming?

Jessie Rubin:

Great question. First and foremost, I would say the biggest takeaway is that we help us. It’s us who take care of each other. We can’t expect the university or the administration to protect the most vulnerable among us to protect our international students, to protect our research. It’s us who has to create the infrastructure to keep us safe. For example, it was the union that provided the most robust know your rights trainings and detailed information to support international students on our campus. While the university has pretty much stayed silent and offered completely hollow support, I mean, we saw this with our fellow union member, Ron Boston, who had her visa revoked for totally no reason at all, and the university immediately dis-enrolled her from her program and from her housing. So it’s really clear that the university does not have our safety as a top priority. And if anything, I mean the university’s response to the Trump administration has made it clear that they’re not just capitulating, but they are active collaborators. And I would say that we can expect the same from other universities. And through their collaboration with the Trump administration, through their appeasement, we haven’t gotten anything. Columbia has gone above and beyond here, and even still our programs are getting hit with funding cuts and this continued federal overreach.

Conlan Olson:

And I think this lesson that appeasement gets us, nothing also has a parallel lesson for activists. So as a union, as activists, we can’t just sit this tight or wait this out, we can’t stay quiet in order to survive. And I really feel that if we start appeasing or hedging our bets, we’re going to lose our values and just get beat one step at a time. And this is why our union has really not backed down from fighting for Ranjani, why we’ve not backed down from fighting for a grant minor. And it’s why we’re fighting for such a strong contract with really unprecedented articles to protect non-citizens, to keep cops off our campus, to provide for parents to ensure financial transparency and justice in Columbia’s financial investments. And of course, to get paid a living wage. I think as a union, we could have backed down or softened our position, but I really think this would’ve meant losing before we even start.

We are labor unionists. We are people fighting for justice. If we start backing off, we’re just going to get beat one step at a time. And I do think that our activism is starting to work. So yesterday, Columbia, for the first time named Mah Halil and most of madi for the first time in public communications, and they offered slightly more support for non-citizens. And so to be clear, it’s still absolutely ridiculous that they’re not doing more and really despicable that they’re only now naming those people by name. But we are starting to see the needle moved because of activist campaigns by our union, both to pressure the university and to just provide, as Jesse said, know your rights training and outreach to students on our campus.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Ember, Lavinia, I wanted to bring you all back in as well and ask if you had any kind of thoughts or messages to folks at Columbia or people on other campuses right now. I mean, of course this looks differently depending on what state people are in and what university they’re at. But I guess for folks out there who are listening to this and preparing for what may happen on their campuses, did you have any sort of messages you wanted to let folks know?

Lavinia:

Yeah, so I kind of want to echo Jesse’s point that really we keep us safe. Many of these university administrations I think historically are intransigent in their negotiations with students. So for instance, with go, we had a 2022 to 2023 bargaining cycle where the university didn’t really budget all. And I think that in some way sort of set the precedent for what’s happening now, but I think we know in general, sort of the incentive structures for these academic institutions are really not set up to support what protects grad workers or students or really people who are just in the community. So that’s why things like safety planning or for instance within NGEO, we have an immigration hotline, those sort of community infrastructures are so important. So I just really want to advocate for thinking about how you as a community can support each other, especially in the face of new or more exaggerated threats from the government and the university.

Ember McCoy:

And if I could just add quickly too, I think one, I want to name that part of the reason we were so prepared this week is because we are following the footsteps of Columbia and our Columbia comrades. We’ve been able to do similar safety planning and set up these hotlines because we witnessed first the horrors that happened to you all. And I think that’s really important to be able to directly connect with you all which we had been previously, and to help other people do the same. And as Livinia mentioned, the reason we knew the raids were happening at 6:00 AM on Wednesday is because one of the people called our hotline called our ice hotline and our ICE hotline as Jail support hotline and we’re able to get people out because that’s an infrastructure that they knew about to try to suddenly get people’s attention.

And another one of the homes we knew they were being rated because we have a group in collaboration with community partners where there’s an ice watch group and people put in the group chat that there was FBI staging nearby, and then they watched people raid someone’s homes. And that brought out tons of people immediately to the scene. And so those infrastructures, many of them were actually for ice, and there was not ice in collaboration in the FBI raid. But I think it’s really important how those infrastructures which build off each other originally were able to protect us and us safe on Wednesday.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Gang, I wanted to sort of talk about the signs of life that we’re seeing. And y’all mentioned some on your campuses, like amidst all of this darkness and repression, and as I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of folks around the country, a lot of folks that I’ve talked to in higher ed have been really galvanized by seeing the news that Harvard of all places is fighting Donald Trump’s attacks. It may not be perfect, but it’s something right. And I wanted to ask if there are more efforts that you’re seeing on your campus or other campuses that are giving you hope right now?

Conlan Olson:

I just want to say, so I happen to be a Harvard alum also, and I don’t want to be too down here, but I think that the way that we should think about Harvard’s efforts are really what Max called them, which is just a sign of life. I don’t have that much faith in our institutions. I appreciate the Big 10 movement and that we need a diversity of tactics here. But we should also keep in mind that yesterday Harvard renamed its diversity office and cut all of its affinity graduation celebrations in response to pressure from the federal government. Harvard remains invested in Israeli genocide and continues to suppress student protest. They fired the leadership of the Center for Middle East Studies last month. And so while I appreciate this sort of sign of life, I really feel that our institutions are not going to save us.

And so these days looking for inspiration, I’m far more inspired by activist movements by students, staff, professors, community members. So for example, yesterday just the same day that Harvard canceled these affinity graduation celebrations, students responded committing to holding their own, and we’re still seeing student protests, we’re seeing increasing faculty support for student protests, which is really important to me. We’re seeing mutual aid projects. We’re seeing legal movements to fight against visa ramifications. And so I think these places really from the ground up and from activism by the people at these universities are much more the things that are inspiring me these days.

Jessie Rubin:

I completely agree with Conland that it’s been so heartwarming to see the power of student movements, the power of working people movements on our campuses. It’s been heartwarming to see encampments starting to pop up again around the country even though the stakes are much higher than they’ve been than ever. Students are putting their bodies on the line, they’re risking expulsion, they’re risking arrest, they’re risking physical injury. And it’s really clear that no matter how hard our administrations try to stamp out dissent, including by expelling core organizers, that students keep coming out in and greater force and developing new tools to keep each other safe. And we see that this student pressure works. Just a few days ago, MIT was forced to cut ties with Elbit systems after a targeted campaign by a BDS group on campus. EL I is an Israeli arms company and has been a target in many BDS campaigns across the globe.

Ember McCoy:

Yeah, one thing I similarly, I similarly don’t want to be a downer, but one thing I think for us that’s been really present on my mind at least this week is the importance of also making connections between not just what the Trump administration is doing to facilitate the targeting of pro-Palestine activists, but what Democrat elected officials are doing in the state of Michigan to help support that. Dana Nessel, who is our attorney general is there’s all these articles and things and she’s coming out being like, oh, she’s a big anti-Trump democrat. She’s taking an aggressive approach to these ICE and these lawsuits. But at the same time, she sent Trump’s FBI to our houses on Wednesday, and she’s continuing to prosecute our free speech in a way that is really important to connect the criminalization of international students or international community members who are then that platform is then going to be able to be used, potentially could be used to by Trump’s administration.

And so there’s all these really important connections that I think need to be made. And for me, obviously what the Trump administration is doing is horrible, but it’s also really, really important that to name that this did not start or end with the Trump administration and it’s being actively facilitated by democratic elected officials across the United States. But I think one thing that’s a bright spot is I do think that activists at the University of Michigan and in our community are doing a really good job of trying to name that and to have really concrete political education for our community members. And I’m really inspired by the ways in which our community showed up for us on Wednesday and the rest of the week and the ways in which people were able to galvanize around us and act quickly and kind of test our infrastructures as successful in that way.

Lavinia:

Yeah, I think the threats to academic freedom through things like grant withholding or threatening DEI offices or what have you, are I think waking up faculty in particular to sort the broader power structures which govern universities. And those power structures frequently don’t include faculty. So a lot of them are, I think being, I wouldn’t say radicalized, but awakened to the kind of undemocratic nature of these institutions and specifically how they can threaten their students. I mean, I know especially as PhD students, we do tend to work closely with a lot of faculty. And I think there is sort of an inspiring change happening there as well.

Ember McCoy:

One additional thing about Harvard is I would say I agree with everything Conlin said, and the University of Michigan has the largest public endowment in the country. We now have a 20 billion endowment. It’s $3 billion more than it was in 2023 when we were doing our strike. And part of I think why Harvard is able to make the statement so that they can around resisting Trump’s funding is because they have the resources to do so, and a lot of institutions do not. University of Michigan is one that absolutely does. And so I do think it helps us try to leverage that argument that what is the 20 billion endowment for if it’s not for right now, why are we just immediately bending the knee to the Trump administration, especially on a campus that is known to have a long legacy of anti-war divestment and all of these other really important things.

And two weeks ago, I think it was time is nothing right now, but we got an email from President Ono saying that the NIH is requiring that institutions who get grants from the NIH certify that they don’t have diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And this was a new thing, do not have BDS campaigns, that they’re not divesting from Israel, which is not only obviously one of the main demands of the TER Coalition, but has also been a demand that students on campus that geo has taken stand for decades for over 20 years at the University of Michigan. And so seeing that all being facilitated is really, really scary, and I think it’s really frustrating that the University of Michigan administration is doing what they’re doing. So I think for me, there’s just a little teeny glimmer of hope to be able to use that as leverage more than anything.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and as we’ve mentioned on this call and in previous episodes, I mean the Trump administration is using multiple things to justify these attacks, including the notion that universities are just overrun with woke ideology embodied in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, trans student athletes participating in sports. But really the tip of this authoritarian spear has been the charge that this administration is protecting campuses from a scourge of antisemitism that is rampant across institutions of higher education around the country. And of course, like plenty of university administrations have gone along with that framing and have even adopted policies that accept the premise that criticism of the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, including Harvard. And so I wanted to just ask y’all, if you had a chance to talk to people out there who are buying this, what is the reality on campuses? Are they overrun with antisemitism and wokeness the way people are being told? What do you want people to know about the reality on campus versus what they’re hearing from the White House and on Fox News and stuff?

Jessie Rubin:

Yeah, I mean, I can start by answering as an anti-Zionist Jew, I would say that the schools are of course not overrun by antisemitism, but instead we’re seeing growing mass movements that are anti genocide movements, that are Palestine liberation movements, and that is by no means antisemitic. And on top of that, these new definitions of antisemitism that are getting adopted on campuses actually make me feel less safe. They completely invalidate my identity as an anti-Zionist Jew and say that my religion or my culture is somehow at odds with my politics.

Ember McCoy:

I mean, I would just echo what Jesse said. I think that’s something we’re definitely being accused of, right at the University of Michigan, like you said, the elected officials are Zionists, right? And so they’re weaponizing this argument of antisemitism on campus and while also persecuting and charging anti-Zionist Jews with felony charges for speaking out for pro-Palestine. I think for those listening really all, it seems so simple, but I feel like it’s just you have to really listen to the people who are part of these movements and look as who’s a part of it. Because I think, as Jesse said, it’s really an intergenerational interfaith group that have shared politics. And it’s really important to understand that distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism that is being inflated in really, really terrifying ways.

Conlan Olson:

And I would just say the encampments, especially last spring and now again this spring and student movements really community spaces and spaces where people are taking care of each other, and that is what it feels like being in campus activism these days. I feel cared for by my comrades and the people I organize with. And I think that when we say solidarity, it’s not just a political statement, it’s also something that we really feel. And so yeah, I would invite people worried about antisemitism or other divisive ideologies on college campuses to just listen to the students who feel cared for and who are doing the work to care for each other.

Lavinia:

Yeah, I think one thing that was really wonderful, at least about the encampment at U of M is that there were lots of people who I think did have this misconception that there was some relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and then upon visiting the encampment and seeing the kind of solidarity that was being displayed there, they sort of potentially were a bit disabused of that notion. Unfortunately, I think that’s part of why the encampments in particular were so threatening to university administrations and Zionist officials, et cetera.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now, Lavinia, Ember, Jesse Conlin, there’s so much more that we could talk about here. But with the final minutes that I have, I wanted to focus in on the fact that y’all are unions and union members, and this is a show about and for workers. And I wanted to round things off by sort of talking about what role unions and collective labor power have to play in this terrifying moment. How can graduate student unions like yours and other unions like faculty unions and unions representing staff workers on campuses, what can labor organizations do to work together to fight this?

Jessie Rubin:

Sure. Thank you for your question. The first thing that I want to say is as workers, the most powerful tool that we have is our labor, and we have the power to withhold labor. We have to remember that we’re not just bystanders who the Trump administration can cross with no consequences. Graduate students, we produce their research that saves lives in human health. We write books that shape American life and we invent the things that America is so proud of. We also teach undergraduates, the university would just simply not run without its graduate students. So a strike poses a threat that simply cannot be ignored.

Conlan Olson:

And in addition to our work in higher education, the whole point is that we believe in solidarity, and that includes solidarity across sectors and across borders. And of course, mobilizing in this way is a huge task, but we’re seeing really inspiring work. For example, UIW Labor for Palestine is a coalition of workers in manufacturing to legal services to higher education, all fighting together against investment in Israeli genocide. And so I think that cross sectoral organizing both between grad students and other unions on campuses, but even unions, not on campuses at all, is really important. And I think working to connect people is a huge part of the work that needs to be done now.

Ember McCoy:

So I think we already little mentioned a little bit at the University of Michigan, what we built during our strike and the organizing model and the networks and community that we built at that time has directly supported our pro-Palestine activism and our ICE organizing and the combination of the two through things like safety planning department meetings, and then literally being the institutions that have resources to do things like set up a hotline or to have bodies that are mobilized and already connected to each other. And so a lot of it is, I don’t feel that we’re even reinventing the real wheel right now, right? It’s like unions are this space where this collective organizing and this solidarity and financial and physical and legal resources already exist. And so we should absolutely be leveraging those to protect ourselves and our comrades. And at the University of Michigan, I know this is not the case everywhere, including Columbia, but until two weeks ago anyways, there hadn’t been a unionized staff member who was fired. So while undergrad research assistants were getting hiring bands and being fired from their jobs, they’re not unionized, grad workers were not being fired. And I think a lot of that is in part because we have an incredibly strong contract. And it would’ve been really hard to fire someone who was a graduate teaching instructor last two weeks ago. There was a full-time staff member who was fired for something or for allegedly participating in a protest that happened before she was even hired or applied to the job.

She is a part of our new United Staff University staff United Union. Is that right? Vidia? Did I? Yeah, I think it’s university. Okay. Yeah. So she’s a part of our university staff, United Union. They don’t have a contract yet though. So she is in a position where she has people that can start to try to fight for her, but then they don’t have a contract. And so I think also for workers who are not yet unionized, this is a really critical time to be able to use that type of institution to protect workers because we are seeing it work in many places.

Conlan Olson:

And just to build on that, I think one troubling pattern that we’ve seen recently is people who are nervous to sign a union card because they’re worried about retaliation for being involved with labor organizing. And just to start, I think that fear is totally understandable, and I don’t think it’s silly or invalid, but I also think that we need to remember that people are far safer in a union than they are without a union. And so in addition to our power to withhold labor, we’re also just a group of people who keep each other safe. So we have mutual aid collectives, we run campaigns to defend each other, like the one that we’re running for Rani. And so lying low is just not going to work, especially in this political moment. And so yeah, I really want people to remember that unions keep you safe.

Lavinia:

I think empirically there has been sort of a duality in the organizing conversations that we’re having for GEO as well where people both see how dangerous the situation is right now and want to be involved, but at the same time, especially if they’re not a citizen, they don’t necessarily feel comfortable exposing themselves, I guess. So I think one thing that’s just important in general for unions right now is providing avenues for people who are in that situation to get involved and contribute, even if that’s not necessarily going to the media or speaking out in a very public way.

Maximillian Alvarez:

With the last couple minutes that we have here, I wanted to end on that note and just acknowledge the reality that this podcast is going to be listened to by students, grad students, faculty, non university affiliated folks who are terrified right now, people who are self-censoring, people who are going back in their Facebook feeds and Instagram feeds and deleting past posts because they’re terrified of the government surveilling them and scrubbing them. And people are worried about getting abducted on the street by agents of the state losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their research. This is a very terrifying moment, and the more filled with terror we are, the more immobilized we are and the easier we are to control. So I wanted to ask y’all if you just had any final messages to folks out there on your campus or beyond your campus who are feeling this way, what would you say to them about ways they could get involved in this effort to fight back or any sort of parting messages that you wanted to leave listeners with before we break?

Lavinia:

I think doubt is a wonderful time to plug in. So for people who maybe previously hadn’t been thinking about unions especially as sort of an important part of their lives or thought, oh, the union on my campus is just doing whatever it needs to do, but I don’t necessarily need to have any personal involvement in their activities, I think right now is when we need all hands on deck given the level of political repression that’s happening. And also just to maybe bring in that old Martin Eller quote about first they came for the communist and I did not speak up because I was not a communist, et cetera. I think it’s also just really important to emphasize that I don’t think any of this is going to stop here. And even within the context of pro-Palestine organizing at the university, it is basically escalated in terms of the severity of the legal charges that are being brought. Obviously bringing in the FB is kind of really crazy, et cetera. So I don’t think that this is going to stop here or there’s any reason to assume that if you are not taking action right now, that means that you’re going to be safe ultimately. Yeah,

Ember McCoy:

And I think I would add, like many of us had said in the call, I think it’s very clear that we keep each other safe. The institutions that we’ve built, the organizing communities that we’ve built are very much actively keeping each other safe. And I think we’re seeing that in many different ways. And it’s important to acknowledge that and see that we’re much stronger fighting together as a part of these networks than that we are alone.

Conlan Olson:

I think as a closing thought, I also just want to say I think it’s really essential that we expand our view beyond just higher education. And so let me say why I think that’s true. So people know about Mahmud and Mosen and Ru Mesa, but I also want people to know about Alfredo Juarez, also known as Lelo, who’s a worker and labor organizer with the Independent Farm Workers Union in Washington state. And Lelo was kidnapped by ice from his car on his way to work in the tulip fields about a month ago. He’s an incredibly powerful labor organizer. He’s known especially for his ability to organize his fellow indigenous mixed deco speaking workers, and he was targeted by the state for this organizing. I think it’s important to keep this in mind and to learn from campaigns that are going on elsewhere and also to contribute to them.

And also I want people to remember that it’s not all dark. And so one story that was really inspiring to me recently was that in early April, a mother and her three young children living in a small town on the shore of Lake Ontario and upstate New York were taken by ice. And in response, the town, which keep in mind is a predominantly Republican voting town, turned out a thousand out of 1300 people in the town to a rally, and the family’s free now. And so we’re all labor organizers. Turning out a thousand out of 1300 people is some seriously impressive organizing. And I think learning from these lessons and keeping these victories in mind is really important. Not only as just an intellectual exercise, but also solidarity is something that we do every day. So it’s for example, why we fight for divestment from genocide. It’s why we do mutual aid. It’s why we engage with the neighborhoods that our universities are in. It’s why we don’t just defend our comrades who are highly educated, who have high earning potential, but we also defend our comrades who are taken, whose names we don’t even know yet. And so I just think expanding our view beyond just higher education is both a source of wisdom and something that we can learn from and also a source of hope for me

Jessie Rubin:

Really beautifully said Conlin. And I just want to add that expanding our view beyond higher education also includes the communities that our campuses reside on. I mean, I’m coming from a Columbia perspective where my university is consistently displacing people in Harlem who have been there for decades in this project of expanding Columbia’s campus continues to this day, and it’s something that we must fight back against. It’s really important that we protect our neighbors, not just on campus but also off campus. It’s important that we get to know our neighbors, that we are truly fully members of our greater community.

Ember McCoy:

If folks listening are interested in supporting us here at the University of Michigan, and I hope our Columbia colleagues can do the same, we have a legal slash mutual aid fund for our comrades who are facing charges and who are rated by the FBI. It is Bitly, BIT ly slash legal fund, and that is all lowercase, which matters. And we’re also happy to take solidarity statements and Columbia SWC did a great one for us and we’re happy to do the same. Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Ember McCoy and Lavinia from the University of Michigan Graduate Employees Organization and Jessie Rubin and Conlan Olson from Student Workers of Columbia University. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The International Court of Justice began hearings today into Israel’s obligations towards the presence and activities of the UN, other international organisations and third states in occupied Palestine.

The case was prompted by Israeli bills outlawing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in October 2024, an event that sparked global outrage and calls for unseating Israel from the UN due to accusations that it violated the founding UN charter, particularly the privileges and immunities enjoyed by UN agencies.

The ICJ hearings coincide with Israel’s continued ban on humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip since March 2 — more than 50 days — and the intensification of military attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians since the collapse of ceasefire on March 18.

• READ MORE: Israel using aid as ‘weapons of war’, Palestinian envoy tells ICJ
• Other Israeli war on Palestine reports

It will be the third advisory opinion case since 2004 to be heard before the World Court in relation to Israel’s violations of international law.

About 40 states, including Palestine, are presenting evidence before the court between April 28 and May 2. Israel’s main ally, the United States, is due to speak at the Peace Palace on Wednesday, April 30.

However, Israel is not presenting oral submissions, only a written presentation, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denounced the hearings as “anti-Israel’ and “shameful”.

The hearings follow the resolution of the UN General Assembly on 29 December 2024 (A/RES/79/232), mainly lobbied for by Norway, requesting the court to give an advisory opinion on the following questions:

“What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organisations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?”

Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the ICJ hearings.

The UNGA’s request invited the court to rule on the above question in relation to a number of legal sources, including: the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, privileges and immunities of international organisations and states under international law, relevant resolutions of the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, as well as the previous advisory opinions of the court:

• the opinion of 9 July 2004 which declared Israel’s separation wall in occupied Palestine illegal; and
• the 19 July 2024 advisory opinion, which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel’s obligation as an occupying power to uphold the rights of Palestinians.

‘Nowhere and no one is safe’
Swedish lawyer and diplomat Elinor Hammarskjold, who has served as the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and its Legal Counsel since 2025, opened the proceedings.

“Under international law, states are prohibited from acquiring territory by force,” Hammarskjold said in her opening comments.

She explained that Israel was not entitled to sovereignty over the occupied territories, and that the Knesset rules and judgments against UNRWA “constitute an extension of sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories”.

“Measures taken on basis of these laws, and other applicable Israeli law in occupied territories is inconsistent with Israel’s obligations under international law,” she concluded.

She further outlined Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law as an occupying power and obligations under the UN Charter, emphasising that it has a duty to ensure the safety of both the Palestinian people and UN personnel.

Palestine’s ambassador to the UN, Ammar Hijaz  accused Israel  of using humanitarian aid as “weapons of war”.

He told the court that Israel’s efforts to starve, kill and displace Palestinians and its targeting of the organisations trying to save their lives “are aimed at the forcible transfer and destruction of Palestinian people in the immediate term”.

‘Children will suffer irreparable damage’
In the long term, he said, “they will also ensure that our children will suffer irreparable damage and harm, placing an entire generation at great risk”.

Irish lawyer, Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, who is representing Palestine, outlined Israel’s obligations as a UN member, including its obligations to cooperate with the UN and to protect its staff and property, as well as to ensure the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, and to abide by UN resolutions and court orders.

“Israel’s violations of these obligations are egregious and ongoing,” Ghralaigh told the court.

• The hearings are ongoing until Friday.

Sondos Asem reports for the Middle East Eye. Republished under Creative Commons.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Photograph Source: Cunhal94 – CC BY-SA 4.0

[I] was quite content…to let everything about me go on, unquestioned, like a great machine – that was its habit and mine – to take it all for granted and consider it all right…there was nothing wrong in my world – or, if anything, not much – or, little or much, it was no affair of mine.

–Mr. Morfin, dutiful employee-turned-whistle-blower at Dombey & Son in Dicken’s Dombey and Son (1848)

We perform in rituals, and doing becomes believing.

–Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days

The April speaker at The Other Side’s Hamilton speaker series, a retired professor of music, a musician and a black man, played videos for us of several tunes to illustrate his topic: Why Do Songs Matter?  In the video of gospel singer Hezekiah Walker’s It Will Get Better, we watched groups of people located in different places all over the country and the globe, singing and clapping and repeating the word “Better!” Is it mindless optimism thus to sing, clap your hands and move until you feel it?  Not, as “Doc” Woods pointed out,  if your life circumstances give you little-to-no reason for hope but still one must get up, go to work, live with some kind of spirit. But – and I ask this despite the video, which, like a beer commercial, included all races and colors, and many nationalities,  can white people experience the benefit of such resurrection optimism?  Might it be good for us? Kind of like the beer commercial, it looks good, especially now in Trump’s America, but isn’t there something one must be suspicious of? How does one leave the known surety of secular liberal skepticism for the unknown of joyful noise-making?

Supposing there’s a key here to defeating (not all at once, but over an unquantifiable period of time) fascism and white supremacy?  Would you take it? What if there’s something to this kind of earned optimism, to transformation, a gift of the spirit? D.H. Lawrence told us, “As long as there have been men,” “too little joy” has been felt. And this is our “original sin.” William Blake, another prophet of the heart, told us “Exuberance is beauty.” But here, surely, is a wide river to cross for those of us raised in virtuous, puritanist, delayed gratification. And not for us heirs of protestantism only.  Many who are quick to grab feel-good joy, sinless and free, also miss its deeper, sorrow-drenched significance.

There’s a connection, I think, between liberal mistrust of joy, and the puzzlement, even embarrassment, many white people – churchgoers and unchurched as well –  feel about Easter.  Still a holiday on our calendars, still inaugurating the spring vacation for schoolkids, with Good Friday, no less! – so one has to make the attempt. Some of us suspect, a little uneasily, it must be about more than insipid bunny and pastel egg-and-chick decorations, or even the coming of spring, since most of us aren’t pagans.   But we’re unable to do anything about it.  Is this a mystery worth looking into?  

What I’m calling resurrection optimism comes, I venture, with paying the cost, which is “undeserved suffering,” the suffering of the powerless. Of a certain kind of suffering, white people, being higher caste, remain innocent.  By that I mean not that we don’t experience pain and loss, but not as the shared experience of oppression, never the kind that would point to the need to supplant, or subvert our world. Irreducibly hierarchical,  triumphantly best, the world of white liberal reality in which we’re contained and privileged, optimistic that“what’s broken can be fixed,” keeps us both separate and in our separateness,  innocent about suffering.  This reassuring innocence can never be uprooted except by the individual’s experience of powerlessness; coincidentally, as I write on Easter morning this is the Easter message.   

How innocence is maintained is simple: Death, the universal teacher and keeper of the truth of powerlessness, has been long overruled in liberal reality. Not that anybody disbelieves in the fact of death, but its reality cannot touch us in the sense of allowing one to grasp one’s life in its true finiteness.  Without that grasp, white liberal innocence cannot be escaped. There’s nothing to force one into imagination. The denial of death is foundational to liberal optimism and to its discounting of the personal soul.  This is what makes liberal reality a danger to those not privileged in it.  It is a formula for the passivity that innocently deals out undeserved suffering, letting it flourish in someone else’s back yard.  Most of us, understandably, would prefer not to have revealed that which is denied; we prefer not to turn inward and encounter that forboding dark malice at the edges of consciousness, to see what it wants;  liberal reality conveniently gives us a pass on such honest self-reflection.   It provides the way for white people, unaware their truth is partial, to turn “whistling past the graveyard” into colonialism and empire building. And shopping.

Black people who’ve gained spiritual power through powerlessness, gained it through the death of hope, under centuries of oppression.  Jesus learned it on the cross.  Alcoholics gain spiritual power by confessing they cannot stop drinking by an act of will.  From what or whom can we learn what appears to be a necessary truth about transformation, about changing what can be changed, when Death is denied?   It seems now the answer to that question may have arrived in the form of Donald Trump.  He’s working away at destroying liberal optimism; its possible we can make this defeat, like a martial arts move,  work in our  favor,  if each of us can absorb the fearful message:  nothing can save us.

+++

The lessons of finality, the baby thrown out with the bathwater of religion, need to be relearned. Fortunately for us, even though liberal reality is a blanket over all unpleasantness except what sells insurance or news, a few (poetic, wholer) truths make it past its obliterating power and provide affirmation for the heart.  Besides in poetry, this truth exists also in fairytales, stories originally told commonly among common people who suffered. Unabridged (even allowing for the fact that no extant fairytale is the “original”), they are remnants from a time when consciousness included death.  I mean the tales many people find too dark to read their children, like discovering the hamburger was made from a large cud-chewing animal with kind eyes that was first stunned with an electric shock and then slaughtered.  If, as a parent, one were respecting the whole truth, the truthful response to a young child declaring herself a vegetarian would be, “Eat the chili con carne I made for you.” For, unless the parents are vegetarian, this is the moment to teach the child something she needs to know about finality.  But it would not be the liberal way.

Fairy tales take finality for granted. What they offer to children, the grittiness sparing the child nothing, possibly inducing nightmares, is a deeply knowing perspective that provides room – and invitation – for the child to trust her survival instincts and enlarge her imagination. They tell us that to take the irremediable darkness out of the story – “Disneyizing” –  is a bad idea.  It’s not the story that has to change, but ourselves. That some animal – or plant –  had to die in order for me to live is not just about me, but this is how organic life works.  Reality is larger than the self and one’s self-limiting, ego-supremacist-supportive neuroses.  This is a fact of grace.  It gives us some metaphysical headroom.

Such tales are important counter to liberalism’s compulsive smiley-face messaging: i.e., “things are a little rough right now but we’ll all be okay” (words spoken by President Obama at nearby Hamilton College in his recent visit). The reassurance works, but not to truly convince people.  It keeps them absorbed in shopping, messaging, and performing their jobs, instead of speaking truth that is whole.  

+++

One of the consequences of liberal innocence is that some of us – including myself –  learn to hold onto the benefit of the doubt no matter what, to disbelieve what our eyes see, ears hear, and to ignore the acute discomfort that comes from repressing anger in our prophetic, truth-craving soul. We can, like Mr. Morfin, “let everything go on, like a big machine.” Sunk in the relativism that comes with the denial of death, how can we tear away the veils of bamboozlement? How may we know who are our true heroes and saints? Who may give us heart? This is important, for the saints are the ones that remain faithful to the truth our souls know. Corporate mass media and corporate-dominated politics will never confirm whistleblowers Reality Winner (a documentary about whom we watched recently)  or Edward Snowden as heroes, nor will Vatican politics and mass media allow us to call Pope Francis a saint, as surely he was.  Must we wait one hundred years to celebrate them as  truthtellers?  

Fairy tales, which I refer to here because of their familiarity to everyone, can teach the child something liberal reality cannot teach – i.e., that there can be just  anger.  Reading children stories in which the animal protagonist is eaten by the wolf, or Jack faces the threat of becoming food for the ogre, or the horrific Baba Yaga nabs hapless children to cook them in her soup confirms truth the child’s soul already knows.  I have no PhD to credential my saying this (and few reputable PhD’s would say it anyway),  the unconscious, the soul, the organism, carries this awareness of nature’s rule – life feeds on life; it is ancestral and not escapable.  This is why, however terrifying may be the harshness portrayed in the fairytale,  the refusal of it is worse.  Denied, as it is in every corner of media-saturated liberal reality, we live under various threats of human-caused catastrophe that have grown “hidden in plain sight.”  We have lived to see the return of fascistic barbarity, the horror many of us – whistling in the dark –  believed was buried forever in a Berlin bunker in 1945.  Liberal reality, denying soul’s truth and its anger, by its bracketing of religious consciousness, poses no challenge to moral relativity.  

That is, unfaced, kept in the dark, refused, thanatos, Freudianism‘s death instinct, drives everything.  People feel helpless to make any choices other than those offered in ever-optimistic liberal totality, whether the choices bring misery or (material )abundance.  Spiritual abundance, the (Easter) joy of resurrection,  is not available in the world without limits, that, secretly, lives off the limitations (oppression) it imposes on others.  Kept “in the dark” about limitation, undetermined, white, liberal, good people are left with an insatiable spiritually-driven hunger,  vulnerable to addictions and compulsions that rob us of our freedom. The spiritual hole gets filled with conditions keeping us unconscious: neuroses, phobias, obsessions and depression, the new normal. They work – and work well – to keep the imaginative soul from nourishing us with the larger reality – love –  we might gladly serve.

 +++

Fairy tales, which recollect the truth of instinct and intuition, are reminders the soul, given in nature, is nature; it is our guide to life conscious of its own vulnerability, of our helplessness against the fact of death, but not helpless.   Help cometh from the soul; over centuries of institutionalized religion, hierarchy, racism, wealth-seeking heedlessness and bourgeois self-satisfaction, the personal relation to the soul has been severed.   Without it, we pretend contentment,  believe personal troubles are the sum total of what we must contend with, success or failure the only serious categories by which to measure a life. But it is in one’s power to restore it, by making strange life choices, by making the soul’s pain conscious. The soul caries the wounds of trauma,  but is also the means for transcendence (Easter!)  Fortunate for us, the means are not really objectionable.  The soul only asks that she be given her voice, through the transcendence of making art. 

Many times I’ve told people The Other Side, a non-profit arts space and adjunct to our Cafe, and still existing since the Cafe’s sale, shared the Cafe’s origin in Orin’s and my utopian idealism, what today I’ll call our  “resurrection optimism.” Earlier in April,  a young woman friend who’s on our Board scheduled a session of Ukrainian egg decorating to take place there.  I planned to go,  bringing granddaughter Cora, who loves arts and crafts.  Word about it had gotten out late; privately I thought it might be just the 3 of us.  In fact, over 20 came, ages from under 1 to mid-70’s, making it necessary to add on tables and chairs until the room was fairly full of people contentedly sitting, talking quietly, learning the somewhat complicated procedure.  It was not just another sip ‘n paint-type craft workshop, but felt, to my soul, like peace. Something new is unfolding after the loss from which, for many months,  I could not imagine myself recovering. 

This ritual of decorating eggs is not something I could have led.  Coming from this young woman, who mourns the loss of the Cafe as much as I do, I’m beginning to allow myself to feel its inspiration is from the same vision, in a different form.  Thus for those couple of hours, the space was filled with quiet joy.  Something died, something new so gently and reverently taking its place.

The post A Backward Look at Easter: The Possibility for White People to Lose Supremacy and Find Something Better appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kim C. Domenico.

“I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for bitcoin and crypto,” US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in 2021. In 2024, Republican Governor Greg Abbott said Texas “wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world.” But in small towns like Granbury, TX, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, residents are the ones paying the price for Texas’ crypto boom. Granbury’s 300-megawatt bitcoin mine, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida-based cryptocurrency company, uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent over 20,000 computers from overheating. Many residents say that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their small town—and that their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. In this episode of Working People, we speak with four residents of Granbury living near the Marathon bitcoin mine: Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson, Nick Browning, and Virginia Browning.

Additional links/info:

• Protect Hood County website
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “‘We’re living in a nightmare:’ Inside the health crisis of a Texas bitcoin town”
• Andrew R. Chow, TIME, “Noisy neighbor: Bitcoin’s hidden health cost” (Video Report)
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘I had to move away from everything that I ever had’: Chemically exposed residents of East Palestine, OH, and Conyers, GA, have been left behind”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘This is murder!’: Industrially poisoned South Baltimore residents march on state capitol, demand help from Gov. Moore”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Steve Mellon, & Mike Balonek, The Real News Network, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH (DOCUMENTARY)”
• Keaton Peters, Inside Climate News, “Texas leaders worry that bitcoin mines threaten to crash the state power grid”
• NBC News, “Inside the Texas bitcoin mine reportedly making residents sick”
• James Pollard, The Texas Tribune, “Texas Republicans want to make the state the center of the cryptocurrency universe”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are beginning a new investigation in our ongoing series where we speak with working class people, living, working, and fighting for justice in America’s sacrifice zones. As you know from listening to the voices and stories in this series, sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that harm and even threaten life itself in sacrifice zones as ghoulish of a term as that is. They can look a lot of different ways and the sources of toxic pollution or environmental devastation don’t all look the same either.

It can look like the mushroom cloud that exploded from the derailed Norfolk southern bomb train in the sleepy rust belt town of East Palestinian, Ohio. It can look like the black coal dust covering the windows and porches and the wheezing lungs of urban residents like here in South Baltimore. It can also sound different and as we’ll discuss in today’s episode, sound itself and the entity producing it intense, relentless torturous noise can be the main thing that’s actually hurting people. And that’s what Andrew R. Chow, a technology correspondent for TIME Magazine, found in the town of Granbury, Texas, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “On an evening in December, 2023,” Chow writes, “43-year-old small business owners, Sarah Rosenkrantz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas, and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute. Her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis.

Her skull throbbed, it felt like my head was in a pressure vice being crushed. She says that pain was worse than childbirth. Rosecrans migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain. She says this was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosecranz’s five-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a ‘red beam behind her eardrums.’ It didn’t occur to Sarah that symptoms could be linked, but in January of 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange debilitating illnesses. None of them knew what exactly was causing their symptoms, but they all shared a singular grievance. A dull oral hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep.

The hum local law enforcement had learned was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis. The development of large scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one, but there’s an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor, ears, nose and throat specialist Celine Baha says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine’s noise on an almost weekly basis. So you guys should definitely read this excellent piece by Andrew Chow in TIME, and you should watch the companion video report, both of which we’ve linked to in the show notes. And I want to thank Brother Andrew for helping me to connect with our guests today who are all residents of Granbury themselves and who have all been affected by the massive 300 megawatt Bitcoin mining operation near their homes.

Now, the mine, which is owned by Marathon Digital, a Florida based cryptocurrency company uses a mix of liquid immersion and industrial fans to prevent the over 20,000 computers from overheating there. And many residents have said that it’s the constant sound from those fans that has made life increasingly unbearable in their small town.

In a statement to NBC News for a report they did 6 months ago on the bitcoin mine, Marathon said what companies always say when I’m investigating stories like these: that they are doing nothing wrong, they’re the best of corporate neighbors, they’re abiding by existing laws, and there’s no proof they’re the ones causing harm to the community. “Since [Marathon] took operational control of the data center in April 2024,” the company said, “we have gone above and beyond what is required in a well-established industrial zone ton ensure our facility is best in industry, including engaging third-party experts to evaluate sound levels and investing millions of dollars to reduce the perceived loudness of the facility. As a result, all levels measured around the facility are well below state and county law sound limits. There is no established link, medical or otherwise, between [Marathon’s] operations and the ailments that are being alleged.” 

So with all of that upfront, let’s do what we do best and take you right to the front lines of the struggle and get the story firsthand from the people who are living it. I am so grateful to be joined today by our four guests. Danny Lakey is a resident of Granberry and he joins us today along with Karen Pearson and her parents, Nick and Virginia Browning, all longtime residents of Granbury. Danny, Karen, Nick, Virginia, thank you all so much for joining us today. I really wish we were connecting under better circumstances, but I’m really, really grateful to all of you for joining us and sharing your stories with us. And I wanted to start by just asking if we could go around the table and have y’all tell us a bit more about who you are and what you do and what your life was like before this Bitcoin mine came to your town.

Danny Lakey:

So I’m Danny Lakey. I’m originally from Arlington, which is east of Fort Worth, and it’s about an hour and 10 minutes from where I live now. I am the newest Granbury residence. My wife and I four years ago, sold everything we had, wanted to move out to the country, get someplace where it was quiet and get away from the big city. Little did I know that it would be louder where I live now than where I came from. So in the middle of 8 million people in the DFW metroplex, I had about a third. The noise that I have in an area where I don’t have, I’ve got 30 people within 200 acres. 300 acres. I mean, you can’t imagine what it is I will admit, because they want to say that they’re not violating any state laws. That’s a lie. Texas has a nuisance law that says if somebody does anything that hinders you from using your property as you intended to use it, which in my case was a retirement place for me and my wife to enjoy life, they’ve taken that from us.

That is a violation of state law. So when they say that they’re not in violation of any laws, they’re not, but that’s a civil law. They are not currently in violation of any state laws, but the state laws are, they’re inefficient in Texas, anything under 85 decibels and most cities limited to about 40 decibels. To put it in that perspective, airports are regulated to 65 decibels during the day. If you want to know how high the threshold is for us on the noise violations. And they’ve gotten very, very close and we have readings where they’ve exceeded it, but we’ve not been able to prove it in court so they can say they’re not in violation of criminal law when they say they’re not in violation of state law, they are misleading people.

Nick Browning:

Well, when we came here, that’s kind of what we wanted to do. We sold our place in Santa Fe, Texas right out of Galveston because this was nice and quiet out here. They moved in on top of us. We didn’t move in on them and they moved. That thing is right across the Bitcoin. Mine is right across the street from my property and I’ve had decimals 83 on my front porch and sometime at night I’ve had more than 83 and a vacuum cleaner’s only 55 and who in the world is going to go to sleep with a vacuum cleaner running all night long in their house? And that’s what it’s like. I’ve been in out of the hospital with all kinds of problems. I never had a problem before and they think I’m old, but I’m kind of seasoned. We’re not old. And my wife has been in out of the hospital.

They said it was a brain tumor, but as it turned out it was not a tumor. All the stuff was sent to the University of Michigan and they still don’t know what it is. It’s not a tumor, it’s not cancer. And a month or so after I had her there the first time, we had to go back again and stay another five days. So they are lying. They put a wall up, but that sound goes right over top of that wall. And a sound expert said, if you live right beside that wall, it wouldn’t bother you as bad. Well, we don’t live beside that wall. So they’re trying to get in good with grandberry. They furnished money for the 4th of July fireworks and they furnished money for the parades and this and that. And they give the sheriff department a big barbecue, but they’re trash. They’re not good neighbors at all. And constellation of fire plans is not either

Virginia Browning:

Out here where we are. We’re in the middle of the country. We have wild animals every place and we enjoy every one of them. Even the coyotes we don’t mind because we know where we live, but they have ran away the birds, all the animals, we don’t even have snakes. So you can see how the sound is destroying the environment out here with the little animals. Besides our health, our health is terrible right now, but it is what it is at the moment. We can’t do too much about it. We’re fighting it. Everybody out here is fighting it, but big corporation, they seem to be able to just get their way. And we are left behind in the rubble of everything, but we don’t like it. We came out here, our children lived here. We wanted to be here with our children, our grandchildren and grandchildren, but we don’t get that peace anymore. So it’s miserable. It’s absolutely miserable. And when have to go in and out of the hospital all the time, doctors all the time, that’s an invasion on us too.

Nick Browning:

There’s a big water line that comes from Lake Granbury all the way to constellation power plant. And that steam, they take that water and they make steam to turn those turbines. Well, when they put some of that steam up in the air, it has all kinds of chemical in it. It has lead, mercury, carbon monoxide amidst the acid and everything. Well, some of the water that they send over the top and to go back through their thin fans and stuff, they condense that steam back to water and they have a holding pond. That water goes in that holding pond. And then from there when they get so much, it’s dumped into Brazos River. Well, that brass River comes right around. It comes right back to Lake Granbury again where there’s already been a content of content. They did a sample and there was a lead content in there, but they don’t want that to get out. So eventually, if they keep on doing what they’re doing now, lake Granbury won’t be a good lake at all to fish in. You won’t be able to eat the fish because they’ll have a lead content in it and they’ll have a mercury content in it, but they don’t want nobody to know any of that. They kind of keep all that hush.

Karen Pearson:

So just to dovetail a little bit off of what mom and dad have said, being out here for me and to have to watch what they go through is extremely stressful too. I know that oftentimes at night they don’t sleep. Their bedroom is upstairs, and so that noise just penetrates their bedroom at night. So that makes their days rough. Cognitively, it causes issues, just the stress of every day, day in and day out task when you’re tired and you don’t have sleep and then it’s so fragmented or interrupted throughout many days, it just causes a lot of stress and wear and tear on them emotionally and also in their physical health. Part of what I wanted to do and their last part of their life that they’ll say they’re seasoned and they are. They’re very seasoned and very independent as much as they can be.

But over the last two and a half years, their independence has definitely declined. And so then I come in as some of their being their caregiver for different things. It makes it very difficult to watch what they go through because this is not what they intended for the second part of their life. And I was given a great part in the first part of my life by my parents and part of my goal was to give them the best quality of life. And their second part that’s not happening out here. Like mom said, a lot of the wildlife has gone away. That’s something that they enjoy every day is to feed the birds and the deer and different things out here, take off on the golf cart and go feed. But that’s becoming less and less. So many other things as far as their health dad with respiratory issues kind going back to mom’s, the complications of the brain issue.

It is true there’s not a lot of data, not a lot of research out there. And so they fall back on that. But kind of the odd thing is that while they say we might not can prove that they’re causing this harm, there’s so many people in the area that are having many of the same similar things going on. And here’s my question back is while we might not can prove it, but you can’t prove that it’s not either. And to mom’s issue, that biopsy, I saw a 1.3 centimeter creature in her brain. It was there and they did a brain biopsy and the University of Michigan could not, it wasn’t cancer, thank God it doesn’t have the cell tissue of a tumor. It didn’t have the cell tissue of a mass and then one back in December, that was in July of this last year, December of this year, she had another episode.

And the tumors, that creature, whatever it was, it’s gone. So it’s not there. But now the doctor is saying, but there was seizure activity in her brain. We don’t have seizures in our family and my mom has never had a seizure in her life. And then in our community, we have had a little child that started having just unexpected seizures and they had to move out of the area. So there’s just so many, they’re not coincidences. There’s so many things that are going on around here that is impacting our community and we are trying to stand up and fight again big companies as best we can with what we have.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Danny, Karen, Nick, Virginia. I wanted to go back around the table and ask if you could just tell that story a bit more about how things have unfolded in your lives from the time that you first heard about this Bitcoin mine to now. When did you start sensing that something was deeply wrong here?

Danny Lakey:

Well, I think for me, and probably for most of us, we started hearing some things late 20, 23, November, December, and it was getting louder. It was intermittent and everybody was, we saw what was going up over at the plant. Everybody was debating on, is it batteries? Nobody really knew what it was. And then somebody finally took a picture and said it’s Bitcoin, and then showed another mine from another area of the same type of machine. So then we knew what it was and we started paying a little more direct attention to where the noise was coming from because up until then, we just thought that the electric plant that had never had a noise problem was having these crazy fluctuations and didn’t know what to think about it. It continued to get worse when the Brownings say that they registered 82 on their property or 80, higher than 82 on their property.

The highest I’ve ever gotten is 82. The day it was 82, I was walking in my backyard and I just looked at the plant and I’m like, what in the heck is that? And then I felt like I got punched in the chest for the next two days. I had a heart arrhythmia and I was having some issues with my heart. I worked in the medical field, and so I have doctors that I can call at a whim and I called my PCP and he said no, because my wife was like, he needs to go to the hospital. And my PCP said, you need to. He said, no, I think this is sound related. Basically, judging from my history, I’d only had that once before I got a steroid injection and found out that I’m allergic to steroids. And so an allergic reaction to a steroid caused that heart palpitations.

But when I had my heart checked out, then my heart is in perfect condition. So this was way out of the ordinary and it was completely from the sound. And that day I registered 82 decibels on my property and you could actually feel the ground shake. My wife started having blackouts. She wrecked her car six times in four months, lost her job, wasn’t able to work. She’s still not working, which has been about seven months now just because of all the issues that it’s caused her within her body. The strangest thing for me is on any given day, if you just want to see something funny, just take me to any public place or whatever. Let me sit for about 10 minutes and I’ll fall asleep. And it doesn’t matter if I just woke up or it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, when it is, I can fall asleep within 10 minutes because I don’t ever sleep.

I used to sleep through the night through trains, dogs, it didn’t matter. Nothing was waking me up and now I’m up two, three times a night. I don’t sleep well at all. It really, you don’t understand what kind of an impact that has on you, the constant barrage of noise. But if you look at work rules from any osha, if you’re exposed to certain amount of noise levels, the louder it is, the shorter time of exposure and the longer time of exposure, the longer you have to be away from it. Well, we exceed all of that on a daily basis 24 7. And unfortunately we can’t get away from it. And because of what’s going on, they’ve plummeted our property value so much I can no longer get from our property what I put in it. And that’s just ridiculous.

Nick Browning:

We noticed it in 2022 and 2023 and right on up till today, I’ve never in my life had any heart trouble and I started having high blood pressure. So I went to her doctor because she has a pacemaker and her doctor told me there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with my heart, but I take high blood pressure medicine every night that he gave me. And a lot of the doctors around here, they don’t want to get involved in none of this stuff. But it is done a number on us and not only us, all of our neighbors, the same way we got neighbors around here that people you wouldn’t believe that had a heart trouble. And I’ve been in a hospital, I had to go to emergency room one time with my ears, give me a ear infection. I’ve been in a hospital twice for flu. They said flu and pneumonia. So man, it’s been something else. And we’re not the only ones around here. There’s people all around it. Us in this area. And they even had some as a school about three or four miles over from us. And even they’ve had kids in school. It affects their hearings and art and everything else. And it is really done a number on us. They say they’re not doing anything but they’re lying. It is

Karen Pearson:

Like what Danny said, we heard noises just couldn’t identify exactly what it was. And at first too, when you hear something like that and you think it might be the gas plant, that’s a bit alarming too because we weren’t sure if something was about to blow up, take off or what. So then as time continues to progress and if the wind changes, it blows from the south or the different types of nighttime, it’s louder than daytime. There’s so many different factors that cause the noise to ramp up more than others. And really depending on where you’re sitting in reference to the facility too and what portion of the mines that they have going at the time. But once we started realizing that it was actually coming from the mine, we were a bit surprised that they were allowed to even come into the area without us even know what was going on. None of us had been notified publicly that anything was going to take place or they were going to be expanding to a Bitcoin mine company. We had no idea. All of a sudden it’s just upon us

And then we are having to deal with what’s happening. And then at that point, it was more about we started noticing people getting sick, and then we started getting sick in our own homes. And I work from home. So I’m here 24 7 and over the last year and a half, I’ve seen decline in my dad’s hearing. Again, just all these things that have started to come about. And then when you start hearing about your neighbor having some of the same stuff that you’re having, again, it’s not a coincidence. There’s too many people out here just within a couple of mile radius that’s all experiencing some of the same stuff. You know, the best thing about all this, we didn’t know a lot of our neighbors. I didn’t know Danny, I didn’t know Cheryl, I didn’t know a lot of our neighbors. Man. This has brought the community together very rapidly for us to join together.

Because I shared this earlier with you. It’s like environmental euthanasia. We’re all out here in this together, man. We hear when one person, one of our friends had a pulmonary embolism and he was fine. When things like that start happening or if we don’t hear from somebody in a few days, we’re like, okay, is everybody okay? We hear ambulance come down the road, we’re texting each other. Hey, is that going to your house? We never had to do that before. We are now on such hypervigilant alerts about things firetruck go by. Is there anything going on out at the plant? I mean, again, we can’t live peacefully anymore. They’ve invaded that piece and we all stay just hypervigilant all the time. And like Danny said, you don’t sleep. So the community out here is like a war zone is kind of what I also equate it to. And you never know what bomb’s going to go off next.

Virginia Browning:

I was just going to say when she said, you don’t know what bomb’s going to go off next, and we know it’s going to go off and it’s going to hit one of our friends, even though the ones we don’t know personally. But the thing of it is when we speak, when we’re talking to you, we’re talking for all of us out here. Our voice is what you hear, but we’re speaking for them too. So it’s not just a few of us. It’s all of us. And we don’t know how to get out of this. It is just like she said, it’s a war zone and we don’t have any kind of backup, and that’s what we want. We want backup and then we want it cleared out.

Nick Browning:

Another thing we have is she and I are retired. We lived on a fixed income and we’re not the only one. There’s a lot of retired people out here. They try to say that this is an industrial area, it’s not an industrial area, it’s home sites. That’s it. There’s no industrial area out here. But they moved in on top of us anyway, and when they got people coming out here to work on that plant, they shut that plant down. They’re not even running with those people working inside there. And another thing, when they find out if there’s a reporter or something coming, I don’t know where they get their information, but they’ll shut down. They won’t be running, but it’s extremely loud over at Danny’s house. It’s louder at this house than it is at our house. I don’t know if they kind of live down in the valley.

And then we also have a whole bunch of Spanish people that live across the road from it. They live right next to that thing. And some of them have been getting sick, but they won’t say anything because they scared they’ll get in trouble because I don’t know if they’re illegal or illegal, but they’ve been here for 30 something years. So they’re my neighbors. And when we first started feeding all the, I feed the deer, the squirrel, the animals starting off, I had anywhere from eight to 10 squirrels. Well, I had one squirrel left today. I don’t have any squirrels and only just a few deer and just about everything else is gone. There’s just very few animals around here. But when they find out a news reporter or somebody’s coming shut down for two or three days and some of the animals have come back, but still no snakes, no, the bird population is way down. And I’ve been feeding them every day for the last 25 years out of here. And it’s just not happening. They’re just, they’re running everything,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Guys. I cannot help. But here the echoes of other sacrifice zones and other working class residents who have been poisoned, polluted, abandoned, and are dealing with different circumstances, but very similar situations to what you guys are dealing with. It’s harrowing how similar these stories sound. And it’s so mind blowing how different the causes can be. But I’ve heard from so many residents who live near concentrated animal feeding operations, chickens, cows. And they look at that and they know that the waste that these animals are producing and being housed in these massive lagoons and being sprayed over their neighbor’s farmlands, they can see that that’s all getting into their water. The folks here in South Baltimore, I’ve seen the uncovered coal cars car after car after car for miles on these CSX trains not covered. And the wind is just blowing this toxic cold dust all over the place.

And I’ve seen residents wipe it off their windows and yet all the while they’re being told, oh, how do you know it’s cold? Not us. That could be any kind of black dust. Oh, you have respiratory problems. It’s probably because you smoked a cigarette two decades ago. Right? The burden is always put on the residents and it’s never put on the big fat obvious polluters at the center of these stories. And it’s just maddening to hear another community going through something like this. But I think one thing I wanted to ask about is when I’m talking to folks in these other areas and the industries involved, there’s always something that they can at least grasp about those industries. Like, okay, coal, yeah, it’s dirty, but we need it for energy and metallurgical processes. The chicken cafo down the street. Yeah, it’s gross and dirty, but people got to eat chickens. Right? I’ve heard these kinds of things. I just wanted to ask, as you and your other neighbors started realizing what was happening in your town, what did you think all of this was for? What did you know anything about Bitcoin? What is it like to know that you’re going through all this for something like Bitcoin mining?

Danny Lakey:

I don’t know. That was a pretty hard pill for me to swallow at the beginning. It’s really rough because all it is is it’s profiting a corporation and obviously the people are in Bitcoin, but the bitcoin mining people, they’re processing transactions. They’re doing data calculations at phenomenal rates and encoding and uncoding and encrypting. I mean, it’s crazy, but that’s how they’re making their money. So it is just to enrich. A corporation has no play on anything else. It was more disheartening in Texas, obviously Texas is, we like to be the wild wild west and we don’t want anybody bothering with our land and let us do our thing, but that’s if it doesn’t encroach on other people. And this does. And then the Bitcoin mining is part of Greg Abbott’s grand plan to get enough power to cover the state anytime we have peak issues, so we don’t have one of the snow issues like we had a few years back, that’s part of his plan.

If they bring in the Bitcoin mines that drive the power, then they build more power plants that get to sell their power on a regular basis, but then they have more power on the grid for when there’s an emergency. So I understand the process, but to do that, you have opened up a state that doesn’t have any regulations on this. So now they can move. In Texas, if you are not in an incorporated city of some kind, there are no regulations. And so they don’t have any regulations. They don’t have to ask for remission. It’s why they say that they are in an industrial zone. They’re not in an industrial zone. They’re on a piece of property owned by the electric plant. And every square inch that borders that electric plant is either residential, farmland, agricultural, or used for cows or goats. I mean it is an agricultural or a residential piece of property, every inch of it.

And then they want to say, oh, it’s in a well-known industrial area. No, it’s on the grounds of an electric plant and you’re there so you don’t have to pay distribution fees to power running through somebody’s power lines to get to you and you can buy it by the gigawatt on the open market in Texas. So I mean it was very disheartening because you’re no longer fighting the Bitcoin company. You’re fighting Greg Abbott’s master plan. And then we found out it was data centers now, which does ai, and they’re tying AI into our national defense. So now we’re fighting the federal government, the state government, and the stupid mining companies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Do they say it’s going to bring jobs and economic stimulus or what? I mean, what is it that they’re actually, what are they doing besides using a shit ton of water, pardon my French, and creating a shit ton of sound pollution right next to your homes and generating a shit ton of money for people who are not you?

Danny Lakey:

Well, and now with the more power, they’re about to build a third power plant, which is going to generate more air pollution. So we have water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, so we got the good trifecta going on. They also recently built a solar farm and as great as good energy is, that heats the air up around it. It’s killing all the birds. So we’ve got increased temperature, increased air pollution, increased noise pollution, and increased water pollution. And what we’re getting out of it is about $8 million a year to the Granbury school districts. And when we appeal to Granbury and ask them to do it because we’re in the county, they have made it very clear we are not part of Granbury.

Virginia Browning:

The day that we read in the newspaper that all of this out here didn’t concern Granbury because we were not in the Granbury city limits. That was a slap in the face. They let us know we’re out here by ourselves and they really don’t care about Granberry doesn’t care about the country around the city. They don’t care about the part of Hood County that doesn’t say Granberry city limits. They just don’t care. And that’s where we are. We are out here floundering by ourselves. It’s like you’re in the boat in the middle of the ocean with no oars. That’s what we feel like.

Karen Pearson:

Danny says it a little more elegant than what we can as far as I guess some of the staff that I think that the people in Texas are not really realizing. And even we have had so much ridicule and people saying that we’re just doing this because we want money and this and that. We’re doing this. We want our peace, but we’re also doing this because for future generations and also in Texas, like what he mentioned, the Bitcoin plants are buying kilowatts at very, very low cost per kilowatt, saving it up. And then when the grid starts weakening and there needs to be more, they then go to the Bitcoin companies and buy it back from them at the consumer’s expense. We are the ones that have to pay for that extra kilowatts or whatever that they’re selling back. And why is it that these companies who, and again, they’re not contributing to jobs in the area, they’re not contributing to the local economy out here where they’re located.

I beg to differ that even I don’t even, I bet not even five of their employees even live here in Granbury or Hood County. So all at our expense, they’re making money. The people in Texas are buying the electricity back at probably double or better rates whenever the grid goes down. And that’s what I don’t think people understand. It’s almost like the great Ponzi scheme is what it seems like and it’s people like you that get the word out. For us, that’s been what has helped us tremendously in this fight. Like mom said, we’re kind of out here floundering all on our own all together, sick as some of us are trying to just be heard and give us our peace back.

Nick Browning:

They’re not allowed in China. They were run out of China, and so why did they come to Texas? It’s just a scheme is all it is and we’re kind of sick and tired of it. I don’t know what we can do about it, but they keep saying that they’re not karma us, but they are. Every one of them, I think that people in town, their palms were padded and that’s why they said we’re not part of Granbury. We’re out here in Hoods County, out in the country, out on our own. It is a scheme. It’s just a scheme. That’s it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now I wanted to ask you guys with just the last few minutes that we have together, and again, this will not be the only time we cover this story, I promise y’all, we are going to do follow-ups and I want to get y’all on panels with folks that we’ve spoken to from other areas of the country where they’re dealing with industrial pollution or other awful things that have upended their lives. So we promised everyone listening that we are going to stay on this story, but with the time we have left in this episode, I wanted to just ask if you guys could bring us up to speed on where things stand now and what if anything is being done to address your concerns. Have you gotten any help from local officials? Is that help coming from local organizations, community led groups, what is being done and what needs to be done to help you guys get out of this hell that you’re living in?

Danny Lakey:

Well, we’ve had some help. We have a couple of county commissioners that are on our side that have helped us out. They helped get a study, but all we could get was about $6,000. So it was a very small study. We were glad to have it, but you need a bigger sound study in a bigger area than what you can do with six grand and we wouldn’t have been able to get any more out of it. So we were glad to get that. We’ve gotten a lot of help from national media, some international media, and anybody that wants to come out and talk to us, we really, really, really appreciate just people putting eyes on it because that’s about the only place we’re going to get some help. We’re not going to get it from our county. Judge kind of holds all the cards. He gets his little party paid for by people.

Senator Birdwell who is our state senator, he’s of no help. I had a 45 minute conversation trying to get them to not give a grant to the electric plant to expand the electric planning larger and I thought he was on our side and then 45 minutes later he voted against us. So he is not help our local congresswoman. She is not of any help. We are getting some help out of Somerville County, which is our neighboring county because they are impacted too. And everybody down in Somerville has been very, very helpful. So we want to put that out. There’s a lady by the name of Cheryl Shedden who is the driver of our bus. She lives a little bit closer to the plant than I do, so she gets it even worse than I do. And she’s been here quite a while. She is the leader of our ring. She keeps everybody motivated. So you got to give a shout out to Cheryl for all the work she’s done. We’ve got some good news.

We’ve been enough contact with people for litigation about various different things. One, we were fighting to get an injunction to try to get the marathon to stop the noise, bury it, put a building over it, move it out. I don’t care, but just stop the noise. You can do all the Bitcoin mining you want over there. I don’t care, but stop killing me with the noise. Earth Justice came on board to help us with that suit and that is in progress right now and we’re very grateful to them because they’re doing that free of charge. And so they heard about us and offered us our services. We started a nonprofit called Protected County. We had to do that because of litigation. They needed a leadership group. They needed a name. And so we got a 5 0 1 C3 status. We are currently trying to raise $5,000 to fight building a third power plant.

Like I said, the state granted them money to build it. We were able to get enough people and enough written documents to where it’s the first time in the state of Texas that an air permit was not issued to a gas power plant. So they held off on issuing the permit, which made them forfeit their grant. Now they’re going to reapply and the permit has not been diluted. It’s just going through a hearing process. We’ve got a meeting coming up with the state and if we survive that, then we have to go in front of a judge and plead our case for a final ruling on it. And that’s really where we’ve got, we’ve had quotes from 25 to $75,000 when we finally found an attorney that says, if you get there, I’ll take it for five grand and get you in there. But none of us are independently wealthy.

I mean, we may have some land, but land in Texas is not expensive. And these are our retirement homes. We’re not sitting on millions and millions of dollars. I think the Bitcoin mine’s worth about five or 6 billion and the electric company’s worth about 60 or 70 billion. So they’ve got some deep pockets and we’re having to fight ’em. But we did get that injunction to hold off on the air permit, which was a huge win. And we’re hoping that we have a meeting with Marathon and we’re hoping we can have a little bit of a win before the end of the month. But anything anybody can do, if you just want to read about it, you can go to protect hood county.com. There’s a lot of information on it. Like I said, we have a 5 0 1 C3 status that if anybody wants to help donate, we can’t thank you enough.

Again, other communities, other states, other areas are going to be fighting this because it’s no longer Bitcoin. It’s now data centers and the federal government is leaking the power of AI as to how we’re going to fight China in the future and they want to stay ahead of ’em and we have to have power to do it. We’ve got to have it all over the country. So these things are not going away and we need some fight to get some regulation on it. Let’s find a happy way to do it. It was mentioned before that China kicked them out their data centers, they’re bearing in the south seat because it cools ’em. And of course there’s no noise down there. So they’re bury him down in the ocean and then running the power to it to their AI centers are coming back. I’m not saying we go that extreme, but there’s got to be a compromise in ruining all of our lives and killing us slowly is not the answer.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think that was powerfully put. And Karen, Nick, Virginia, I kind of wanted to just toss it to you to round us out. I think Danny really underlined the most important point here. When I talked to people about why we do this coverage on this show, because for years and even still, we talk to union workers. We talk to people organizing their workplaces. We talk to people in non-union shops about their lives and their jobs. It’s a show buy and for working class people. And so some people will ask, well, why are you talking about a Bitcoin mine in rural Texas? And I’m like, well, who do you think are the people living around this place? They are our fellow workers. They are the people whose lives and ability to make a living are being upended by this. We haven’t even talked about what this is doing to the farmers who live around there or to anyone who’s trying to kind of work the land around this Bitcoin mine and the way it’s impacting them.

But we’ve talked about how you all as flesh and blood people working people, retirees, how this is impacting you and your daily lives. So for everyone listening, just think about what it’s like to try to get through your day-to-day life, make a living while enduring this level of sound, pollutions, stress, and all the gaslighting that comes with it. That’s why we’re talking about it because this is wrong and working people standing together is the only way that we’re going to get out of it. And I wanted to kind of let you guys have the last word and ask if you had any final messages to the working people who listen to this show, the folks in other sacrifice zones who listen to this show, any final messages you wanted to send from out there in Granbury to the folks listening,

Karen Pearson:

We’re out here fighting for everyone, and there is a handful of us that are not giving up. We have big voices and we have a lot of spunk in us. And like he said, Cheryl Shedden, she’s our rockstar team leader in all of this, and we’re motivated to stand toe to toe with them. We might not have the money for attorneys or whatever we would like to. It’s kind of funny, those of us who, like Danny said, we own property and stuff, but they’re on a fixed income. I work 40 hours a week to make ends meet myself. And even when we are needing funds for small projects that we have to keep going with, I come to mom and dad and ask them, do you have $10? Mom will usually give me 20. I’m like, well, just give me 10. That’s all I need.

She’s like, no, you just take this. Even on their fixed income, they still find it necessary to give into this because again, mom’s been in the hospital several times and she still worries about her neighbor. She thinks there’s somebody else that’s worse off than what she is. So the sacrifices that we are all making to try to take care of each other is huge. Like Danny said, go to the website, read on there, join, get on the mailing list. You can keep up with things there. We’re not attorneys, but you know what? We’re fighting this as if we are, there’s five of us that are going toe to toe up against this air permit and to try to, if we can’t block it, then we want to come in with some mediation and we want to put up some safeguards. We’re not stopping and we’re not giving up.

And you can intimidate us as big as you want with your money or your corporation, but we’re not going to go away. And I would say that to any community that’s fighting like we are just what? Stand up for your life because no one else is going to do it for you. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re standing up for our lives, the quality of our lives that we wanted and laid out for ourselves and then also for the others who can’t fight for themselves. We’re not quitting and we’re not going away. So one way another, we’re going to keep plugging.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests from Granbury, Texas, Danny Lakey, Karen Pearson and her parents, Nick and Virginia Browning. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

In response, Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

“Trump continues to con American workers, claiming that he’s upending our unfair trading system, while actually doubling down on secretive and rushed ‘negotiations’ that will only lead to more of the same corporate-dominated trade deals at the expense of working people.

“He’s not using trade and tariff policy to protect workers – he’s wielding reckless and unstrategic tariff threats as a cudgel to push more antidemocratic deals that benefit his corporate cronies. Look no further than Big Tech’s hit list of other countries’ privacy, anti-monopoly and online safety laws that he waved around when he announced so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’.

“Without transparency and public and Congressional participation in the content of these trade negotiations, it is virtually certain that these ‘deals’ will be nothing more than another authoritarian power grab, as other countries and corporations bend the knee to Trump, benefiting billionaires at the expense of the rest of us.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Pope Francis has died after using his Easter Sunday address to call for peace in Gaza. I don’t know who the cardinals will pick to replace him, but I do know with absolute certainty that there are transnational intelligence operations in the works to make sure they select a more reliable supporter of Israel. They’ve probably been working on it since his health started failing.

Anyone who’s been reading me for a while knows my attitude toward Roman Catholicism can be described as openly hostile because of my family history with the Church’s sexual abuses under Cardinal Pell, but as far as popes go this one was decent. Francis had been an influential critic of Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza, calling for investigation of genocide allegations and denouncing the bombing of hospitals and the murder of humanitarian workers and civilians. He’d been personally calling the only Catholic parish in Gaza by phone every night during the Israeli onslaught, even as his health deteriorated.

In other words, he was a PR problem for Israel.

I hope another compassionate human being is announced as the next leader of the Church, but there are definitely forces pushing for a different outcome right now. There is no shortage terrible men who could be chosen for the position.

*****

*****

Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Omer Dostri told Israel’s Channel 12 News on Saturday that a deal with Hamas to release all hostages was a non-starter for the Israeli government, because it would require a commitment to lasting peace.

“At the moment, there can’t be one deal since Hamas isn’t saying: ‘Come get your hostages and that’s that,’ it’s demanding an end to the war,” Dostri said in the interview.

This comes as Hamas offers to return all hostages, stop digging tunnels, and put away its weapons in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. This is what Israel is dismissing as unacceptable.

The Gaza holocaust was never about freeing the hostages. This has been clear ever since Israel began aggressively bombing the place where the hostages are living, and it’s gotten clearer and clearer ever since. Last month Netanyahu made it clear that Israel intends to carry out Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans for the enclave even if Hamas fully surrenders.

When Washington’s podium people say the “war” in Gaza can end if Hamas releases the hostages and lays down their arms, they are lying. They are lying to ensure that the genocide continues.

When Israel apologists say “Release the hostages!” in response to criticisms of Israeli atrocities, they are lying. They know this has never had anything to do with hostages. They are lying to help Israel commit more atrocities.

It was never about the hostages. It was never about Hamas. What it’s really about was obvious from day one: purging Palestinians from Palestinian land. That’s all this has ever been.

*****

After executing 15 medical workers in Gaza and getting caught lying about it, the IDF has investigated itself and attributed the massacre to “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”, finding no evidence of any violation of its code of ethics.

It’s crazy to think about how much investigative journalism went into exposing this atrocity only to have Israel go “Yeah turns out we did an oopsie, no further action required, thank you to our allies for the latest shipment of bombs.”

*****

The death toll from Trump’s terrorist attack on a Yemen fuel port is now up to 80, with 150 wounded. Again, the US has not even tried to claim this was a military target. They said they targeted this critical civilian infrastructure to hurt the economic interests of the Houthis.

Those who are truly anti-war don’t support Trump. Those who support Trump aren’t truly anti-war.

I still get people telling me I need to be nicer to Trump supporters because they’re potential allies in resisting war, which to me is just so silly. What are they even talking about? Trump supporters, per definition, currently support the one person who is most singularly responsible for the horrific acts of war we are seeing in the middle east right now. Telling me they’re my allies is exactly as absurd as telling me Biden supporters were my allies last year would have been, except nobody was ever dumb enough to try to make that argument.

If you still support Trump in April 2025 after seeing all his monstrous behavior in Gaza and Yemen, then we are on completely opposite sides. You might think you’re on the same side as me because you oppose war in theory, but when the rubber meets the road it turns out you’ll go along with any acts of mass military slaughter no matter how evil so long as they are done by a Republican. We are not allies, we are enemies. You side with the most egregious warmonger in the world right now, and I want your side to fail.

*****

People say “It’s the Muslims!” or “It’s the Jews!”

No, it’s the Americans. The US-centralized empire is responsible for most of our world’s problems.

It says so much about the strength of the imperial propaganda machine that this isn’t more obvious to more people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caitlin Johnstone.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In 2022, after living as a boy and going by a new name for several years, a 15-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, wanted to make it official. Like most teenagers, he dreamed of getting his driver’s license, and his family wanted his government identification to reflect who he really was.

But Wisconsin law has a caveat: He would have to publish his old, feminine name and new name in the local newspaper for three weeks — essentially announcing to the world that he is transgender.

In many instances, if he had committed a crime, the law would afford him privacy as a minor. But not as a transgender teenager changing his name.

His parents worry the public notice now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights, asserted that U.S. policy recognizes only two sexes and described efforts to support transgender people as “child abuse.” The publication requirements endanger the community, lawyers working with trans people say, by creating a de facto dataset of likely transgender people that vigilantes and even the government could use for firing, harassment or violence.

Transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence, research shows. Most transgender people and their families agreed to be interviewed for this story only if they weren’t named, citing safety concerns.

“Publication requirements really leave folks open and vulnerable to discrimination and to harassment more than they already are,” said Arli Christian, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are.”

Wisconsin’s legal process stems from a 167-year-old law, one of many statutes across the country that Christian said were intended to keep people from escaping debts or criminal records. Changing one’s name through marriage is a separate process that does not require publication in a paper.

Although the right to change one’s legal name exists in every state, the effort and risk required to exercise it vary. Less than half of states require people to publicize their name changes in some or all cases, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks voting and LGBTQ+ rights.

Wisconsin law grants confidentiality only if a person can prove it’s more likely than not that publication “could endanger” them. But the statute does not define what that means. For years, some judges interpreted that to include psychological abuse or bullying, or they accepted statistics documenting discrimination and violence against transgender people nationwide.

In 2023, however, a state appeals court set a stricter standard after a trans teenager was denied a confidential name change in Brown County, home to Green Bay. The teen said he had endured years of bullying, in which peers called him slurs and beat him up. Court records show the Brown County judge asserted that publishing the teen’s name wouldn’t expose him to further harm because his harassers already knew he was transgender.

The teen argued that a public process would create a record available to people he met in the future. While the appeals court conceded a “reasonable judge” could agree, it found the Brown County judge had not improperly exercised her discretion in denying the request. Crucially, the appeals court determined that “endanger” meant only physical harm. The case wasn’t appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The combination of Wisconsin’s public requirement, the restrictive ruling and the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies has dissuaded at least one person from going through with a name change.

J.J Koechell, a 20-year-old LGBTQ+ advocate from suburban Milwaukee, tried to change his name in November but decided against it after a judge denied his request for confidentiality, ordering him to publish his change in the local paper and create a public court record if he wanted to proceed.

“That’s already dangerous,” Koechell said of a public process, “given our political atmosphere, with an administration that’s trying to erase trans people from existence completely, or saying that they don’t exist, or that there’s something wrong with them.”

At the end of March, Wisconsin Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record. Republicans, who control the Legislature, will decide whether it will receive a hearing or vote.

There has been a push in some states to make it easier and safer for transgender people to update their legal documents. Michigan and Illinois laws removing publication requirements took effect earlier this year. And a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would retroactively seal all transition-related court records.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to emails and a phone call to his office seeking comment. Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica sought comment from four other Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate. Of the two whose offices responded, a staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, said, “It doesn’t look like something we’d consider a priority,” and a staffer for Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said he was not available for comment.

Asked about the safety concerns people raised, a White House spokesperson said, “President Trump has vowed to defend women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the Federal government.”

Wisconsin’s law requires a transgender person to publish the details of their identity to change their name whether they are an adult or a child. The notice requirement makes no distinction based on age.

This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime.

“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.

A mom living near the Wisconsin-Illinois border whose 11-year-old daughter recently went through the name-change process said these proceedings should automatically be private for children.

“The fact that we still have to fight to get something as simple as a confidential name change for a minor who is obviously not running away from criminal or debt charges is just so frustrating and overwhelming,” she said.

The judge deciding their case seemed reluctant to grant confidentiality at first, questioning whether her daughter was being threatened physically, she said. The judge granted the confidential change. But the family remains shaken.

“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child,” she said. “All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.”

Right before the pandemic, a teenager told her parents she was transgender. She spent much of that first year of her transition at home, attending virtual school like the rest of her peers in the Madison school district. She came out to only a few friends and wanted to keep her gender identity private, so she kept her camera off and skipped her high school graduation.

When she decided to legally change her name, the prospect of publicizing her transition terrified her, according to her mom.

“I explained to her that it’s in tiny, tiny print, and it’s in some page of the paper that no one is going to read,” her mom said. “But it felt to her like she was just standing out there in public with a ‘TRANS’ sign on her.”

While fewer people read physical newspapers these days, much of their content gets published online and is easily searchable. The court case, too, becomes a public record that is stored online and sometimes aggregated by other websites that show up at the top of search results.

The parents of the then-15-year-old boy who changed his name before getting his driver’s license discovered that happened to their son. When anyone — say, a prospective employer — searches the young man’s name, one of the first results shows his old name and outs him as trans.

“This is what somebody would use as their first judgment of him,” his mom said. “We certainly don’t want that to be something that people would use to rule him out for a job, or whatever it is he might be doing.”

Like many other states, Wisconsin does not have laws that ban discrimination against transgender people in credit and lending practices or in public spaces like stores, restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices and hotels. However, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 banning transgender discrimination in state employment, contracting and public services.

After Trump took office again and began issuing executive orders attacking trans rights, the boy’s family started to investigate how they could retroactively seal the court records related to the name change. It wouldn’t change what was in the newspaper, but it could help them remove the online records. The court records also contain sensitive information like their home address that someone could use to harass them.

A friend who was a retired attorney helped their son craft an affidavit describing his experiences. His mom read from it during an interview. “‘Because of recent political events, I fear violence —’” she said before breaking off. “Oh God, I hate even reading this. ‘I fear violence, harassment, retribution because of my status as a transgender person.’”

Her son, who is now 18, shared a statement over email.

“At this moment in time I’m probably more scared about being a trans person than I ever have been before, with the public record if you have my first and last name you can easily find my deadname and therefore find out I’m trans,” he said. “I would love to say that I feel safe and valued in our society but unfortunately I can’t, at times I feel that my personhood is being stripped away under this government.”

Anne Daugherty-Leiter, who has guided transgender clients and their families through the name-change process as board president of Trans Law Help Wisconsin, said where a person lives in Wisconsin, and therefore what court they must petition, affects their likelihood of getting a confidential change.

Confidentiality is important, she said, because of how the state handles changes to birth certificates. Wisconsin birth certificates that are issued through a confidential name change show only the new name. But if a person has to announce their name change publicly, birth certificates are amended to list both the person’s old and new names. Any time the person has to use that document, at the DMV or while getting a loan, it outs them, she said.

Koechell, a trans man and LGBTQ+ activist, was unwilling to go through with the name-change process after being denied confidentiality by a judge late last year.

Koechell lives in Waukesha County, a Republican stronghold where multiple schools have enacted policies critics have called anti-LGBTQ+.

In a letter to the judge, Koechell wrote that people had sent him multiple threats and posted his family members’ addresses online, all for “being an advocate and being transgender openly in my community.”

“I do not want to publish my deadname for people to use against me,” he said in an interview, using a term common among transgender people to refer to their birth names. “I don’t see a reason why people who are not particularly fond of me wouldn’t show up at a hearing like that and try and cause trouble.”

Court records show the judge denied Koechell’s confidentiality request and his request to reconsider. The judge’s order referred to Koechell, a trans man with a masculine voice and beard, as “she” and “her.”

Koechell decided the public process wasn’t worth the risk. But it’s hard, he said, to move through life with his old identification.

“When I go to a new doctor or new appointment or something, then that’s the name on my chart, and then I get called that in a waiting room full of people, and it’s super uncomfortable. I just want to disappear,” Koechell said. “Then eventually, I have to correct the doctors, and I’m like, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I don’t go by that name. This is not who I am.’”

Data from the latest U.S. Transgender Survey found that 22% of people who had to show an ID that did not match their identity experienced some form of negative consequence, including verbal harassment, discrimination or physical violence.

If the U.S. Senate passes the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, those consequences could include disenfranchisement. Transgender people who can’t change the name on their birth certificate or passport would be ineligible to vote, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and chief sponsor of the bill, has said the legislation directs states to create a process for citizens with a “name discrepancy” to register. “No one will be unable to vote because of a name change,” he said.

After Trump won in November, Trace Schlax, a 40-year-old IT project manager, decided to expedite changing his gender marker on his passport, figuring he could update his name later in state court.

“It matters,” Schlax said. He loves to travel but has encountered extra scrutiny from airport security with outdated documents. “I get comments from TSA when I go through to travel domestically, about my hair, about how I look. I get extra pat-downs."

He sent his application in early December and crossed his fingers. He received it back in February, rejected. By that time, Trump had issued an executive order banning trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports.

Schlax decided to continue updating what records he could, like his birth certificate and driver’s license. He worries about having conflicting documents. Will he get accused of fraud? Will he have trouble flying?

But in the end, he decided it was still important to change his name and update his license to improve his day-to-day experience.

And he decided to go about it publicly. It felt less painful, he said, to accept the risks rather than detail his personal, traumatic experiences to a judge only to have them decide he hadn’t endured sufficient danger.

“Me changing my name and my gender marker affects absolutely no one but me,” said Schlax, who has a court date to change his name in late April. “Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to prove myself so hard?”

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch.

One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.

Additional links/info:

• Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website
• April 17: Day of Action to Defend Higher Ed website
• Mahmoud Khalil statement from ICE detention: “My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner”
• Allie Wong, The Intercept, “This is not about antisemitism, Palestine, or Columbia. It’s Trump dismantling the American dream“
• Grant Miner, The Nation, “Columbia expelled me for my palestine activism, but I won’t be silenced”
• Jonah E. Bromwich & Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times, “Columbia student hunted by ICE sues to prevent deportation”
• AAUP letter to college and university legal offices: “Institutions Should Not Provide Student and Faculty Info To Enable Deportations”
• Alan Blinder, The New York Times, “Trump Has Targeted These Universities. Why?”
• Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, “‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish”
• Alice Speri, The Guardian, “‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors”
• Annie Ma, Makiya Seminera, & Christopher L. Keller, Associated Press, “Visa cancellations sow panic for international students, with hundreds fearing deportation”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘Kill these cuts before they kill us’: Federally funded researchers warn DOGE cuts will be fatal”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our urgent coverage of the Trump Administration’s all out assault on our institutions of higher education and the people who live, learn and work there. Today we are going deeper into the heart of authoritarian darkness that has gripped colleges and universities across the country and we’re talking with two graduate student workers at Columbia University. Columbia has become ground zero for the administration’s gangster government style moves to hold billions of dollars of federal funding hostage in order to bend universities to Donald Trump’s will to reshape the curricula culture and research infrastructure of American higher ed as such and to squash our constitutionally protected rights to free speech and free assembly, all under the McCarthy’s guise of rooting out supposed antisemitism, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism of an opposition to the state of Israel.

The political ideology of Zionism and Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians just one year ago. Columbia University was also ground zero for the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments that spread to campuses across the country and even around the world. It was exactly one year ago that the first Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia on April 17th, 2024 and that same month on more than one occasion, Columbia’s own president at the time minutia authorized the NYPD to descend on campus like an occupying force, beat an arrest protestors and dismantle the camps. Now fast forward to March of this year. On Friday, March 7th, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia claiming that the move was due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. The very next day, March 8th Mahmud, Khalil was abducted by ICE agents at his New York City apartment building in front of his pregnant wife and disappeared to a Louisiana immigration jail.

Khalil, a Palestinian born legal resident with a green card had just completed his master’s program and was set to graduate in May. He had served as a key negotiator with the university administration and spokesperson for the student encampment last year. He’s not accused of breaking any laws during that time, but the Trump administration has weaponized a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, invoking the Secretary of States power to deport non-citizens if they supposedly believed their presence in the country could negatively affect US foreign policy. Just days after Khalil’s abduction, the university also expelled grant minor president of the Student Workers of Columbia Union, a local of the United Auto Workers, and that was just one day before contract negotiations were set to open between the union and the university. On March 13th, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, minor rights in an op-ed for the nation.

I was not the only one. He continues, 22 students, all of whom like me had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years or had their hard earned degrees revoked on the same day all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. And then there’s Y Sao Chung, a 21-year-old undergraduate and legal permanent resident who is suing the government after ICE moved to deport her, following her arrest on March 5th while protesting Columbia’s disciplinary actions against student protestors. I mean, this is just a small, terrifying snapshot of the broader Orwellian nightmare that has become all too real, all too quickly at Columbia University and it is increasingly becoming reality around the country and things got even darker last week with the latest development in Mahmood Khalil’s case as the American Civil Liberties Union stated on Friday in a decision that appeared to be pre-written, an immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmud Khalil is removable under US immigration law. This comes less than 48 hours after the US government handed over the evidence they have on Mr. Khalil, which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr. Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech. He’s not yet scheduled for deportation.

Listen, this isn’t just a redux of McCarthyism and the red scare. It has elements of that absolutely, but it is also monstrously terrifyingly new. I don’t know how far down this road we’re going to go. All I know is that whatever comes next will depend on what people of conscience do now or what they don’t do. Will other universities cave and capitulate to Trump as quickly as Columbia has? Will we see instead faculty, staff, students, grad students, parents, community members and others coming together on campuses across the country to fight this or will fear submission silence and self-censorship went out? What is it even like to be living, working and studying at Columbia University right now? Well, today you’ll hear all about that firsthand from our two guests. With all of this going on, I got to speak with Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student workers of Columbia, and I also spoke with Alie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School, and a student workers of Columbia member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30th, 2024.

Here’s my conversation with Caitlin and Allie recorded on Saturday April 12th. Well, Caitlin, Allie, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it, especially in the midst of everything going on right now. And I basically wanted to start there and ask if you could tell us from your own firsthand experience as student workers at Columbia, like what is the mood on campus and in your life right now, especially in light of the latest ruling on Mahmud Khalil’s case?

Caitlin Liss:

Okay. Yeah, so thank you for having us. I’m happy to be here. The mood on campus has been, you probably won’t be surprised to hear pretty bleak, pretty bad. We found out yesterday that Mahmood Kalila is not going to be released from jail in Louisiana. I think a lot of us were hoping that this ruling that was coming up was going to be in his favor and he would be released and be back home in time to be there for the birth of his baby. And it didn’t happen. And I think it’s just another horrible thing that has happened in a month, two months of just unrelenting bad news on campus. So stuff is feeling pretty bad. People are afraid, especially international students are afraid to leave their house. They’re afraid to speak up in class. I hear from people who are afraid to go to a union meeting and even those of us who are citizens feel afraid as well.

I mean, I wake up every day and I look at my phone to see if I’ve gotten a text message telling me that one of my friends has been abducted. It’s really scary. And on top of the sort of personal relationships with our friends and comrades who are at risk, there’s the sense that also our careers are industry are at risk. So, and many other members of student workers of Columbia have spent many years dedicated to getting a PhD and being in academia and it’s increasingly starting to feel like academia might not exist for that much longer. So it’s feeling pretty bleak.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I would definitely agree. And again, thank you so much Max for having us here. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share our stories and have a platform to do that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there is a tremendous chilling effect that’s sunk in across the campus. And on one hand it’s not terribly surprising considering that’s the strategy of the Trump administration on the other. It is really a defeating feeling to see the momentum that we had last year, the ways that we were not only telling the story but telling it across the world that all eyes were on Columbia and we had this really incredible momentum. And so to see not just that lack of momentum, but the actual fear that has saturated the entire campus that has indiscriminately permeated people’s attitudes, whether you’re an American citizen or not, whether you’re light-skinned or not, has been something that’s been incredibly harrowing.

I know that after Mahmood, I at least had the anticipation of quite a bit of activity, but between that ranjani the other students and Columbia’s capitulation, it actually has gone the opposite way in that while I expected there to be tons of masks on campus after Columbia agreed to have a total mask ban, there was no one when I expected to see different vigils or protests or the breakdown of silos that have emerged across the campus of different groups, whether they’re student groups or faculty groups, I’m just hoping to see some kind of solidarity there. It hasn’t, and I think it’s largely because of the chilling effect because that this is the strategy of the Trump administration and unfortunately it’s such a dire situation that I think it’s really squashed a lot of the fervor and a lot of the fearlessness that many of us had prior to this moment.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It feels like a ice pick to the heart to hear that, especially knowing not just what we saw on campuses across the country just a year ago, but also the long tradition of campus protests and universities and higher education being a place of free speech, free thought free debate and the right to protest and lead with a moral consciousness like movements that help direct the whole of society to see that this is what is happening here now in front of all of us. And since I have so much more, I want to ask about the past month for you both on campus, but while we’re on that subject that Allie just brought up about the expectation right now, which I have heard echoed a lot of places online and offline of why aren’t there mass protests across higher ed in every state in the country right now, you would think that the generation of the sixties would do just that if Nixon had tried such a thing. And a lot of folks have been asking us why aren’t we seeing that right now? And so I wanted to ask if y’all had any thoughts on that and also if that would in your mind change things like if you saw other campuses that weren’t being targeted as intently as Columbia is, if you saw students and faculty and others protesting on behalf of what’s happening to you, would that change the mood on campus you think?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean that there’s a few things going on. Part of it is, like Allie said, the chilling effect of what’s been happening is making a really large percentage of our members and people in our community afraid to publicly take action. International student workers make up a really big percentage of our membership, and a lot of those people are afraid to even sign their name to a petition. In my departments. We sent a joint letter to the departments about what was going on, and a bunch of students didn’t want their names appearing on this letter that was just being sent the chair of the departments. So the chilling effect is real and very strong, and I think that that’s preventing a lot of people from showing up in ways that they might have done otherwise. I think that another part of it is just the kind of unrelenting nature of what’s been happening.

It has been one horrible thing after another and trying to react to everything as it comes in is difficult, but I don’t think it’s the case that we’re not doing anything. We are doing quite a bit and really trying through many different avenues to use our power as a union to fight back against what’s happening. We are talking with other unions on campus, we talk to other higher ed unions across the country, and so I think that there is quite a lot going on, but it does sometimes feel like we can’t keep up with the pace of the things that are happening just because they are happening so quickly and accumulating so fast.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree. I think that it’s the fire hose strategy, which has proven to be effective not just on Columbia but across the nation with the dismantling of the federal government attack on institutions, the arts, the legal processes and legal entities. And so I think that again, that that’s part of the strategy is to just overwhelm people with the number of issues that would require attention. And I think that’s happening on Columbia’s campus as well. If we take even divestment as an example where it was a pretty straightforward ask last year, but now we’re seeing an issue on campus where it’s no longer about Palestine, Israel divestment, it’s about immigration reform and law enforcement. It’s about the American dream class consciousness. So many of these different things that are happening not just to the student body, but to faculty and the administration.

And so I think that in terms of trying to galvanize people, it’s a really difficult ask when you have so many different things that are coming apart at the seams. And that’s not to say it’s an insurmountable task. As Caitlin mentioned, we are moving forward, we are putting infrastructure in place and asks in place, but I think it’s difficult to mobilize people around so many different issues when everyone already feels not only powerless but cynical about the ability to change things when again, that momentum that we had last year has waned and the issues have broadened.

Caitlin Liss:

Just in terms of your question about support or solidarity from other campuses, I think that one of the things that has been most dispiriting about being at Columbia right now is that it’s clear that Columbia is essentially a test case for the Trump administration. We were the first school to be and are still in many ways kind of the center of attention, but it’s not just us, but it feels like the way that Columbia is reacting is kind of setting the tone for what other universities and colleges can do across the country. And what Columbia is doing is folding, so they are setting an example that is just rolling over and giving up in terms of what other colleges can do. I think we’re seeing other universities are reacting to these kinds of attacks in ways that are much better than Columbia has done. We just saw that Tufts, I think filed some legal documents in support of Ru Mesa Ozturk because she is a student there.

Columbia has done no such thing for Ranjani, for Uno, for Mahmood. They haven’t even mentioned them. And so we can see other universities are reacting in ways that are better. And I think that that gives us hope and not only gives us hope, but it gives us also something to point to when people at Columbia say, well, Columbia can’t do things any differently. It’s like, well, clearly it can because these other universities are doing something. Columbia doesn’t have to be doing this. It is making a choice to completely give in to everything that Trump is demanding.

Allie Wong:

And I would also add to that point, and going back to your question about Mahmood and sort of how either us individually or collectively are feeling about that, to Caitlin’s point, I think there’s so much that’s symbolic about Columbia, whether it has to do with Trump’s personal pettiness or the fact that it was kind of the epicenter of the encampments list last year. I think what happened with Mahmood is incredibly symbolic. If you look at particularly him and Ranjani, the first two that were targeted by the university, so much of their situations are almost comical in how they planned the ambiguity of policy and antisemitism where you look at Mahmud and he, it’s almost funny that he was the person who was targeted because he’s an incredibly calm, gentle person. He provided a sense of peace during the chaos of last year. He’s unequivocally condemned, Hamas, very publicly condemned terrorism, condemned antisemitism.

So if you were looking for someone who would be a great example, he’s not really one considering they don’t have any evidence on him. And the same thing for Ranjani who literally wasn’t even in the country when October 7th happened in that entire year, had never participated in the protests at most, had kind of engaged with social media by liking things, but two really good examples of people who don’t actually quite fit the bill in terms of trying to root out antisemitism. But in my mind it’s really strategic because it really communicates that nobody is safe. Whether you’ve participated in protests or not, you’re not safe, whether you’ve condemned antisemitism or not, you’re not safe. And I think that plays into the symbolic nature of Columbia as well, where Trump is trying to make an example out of Columbia and out of Columbia students. And we see that very clearly in the ruling yesterday with Mahmud.

Again, that’s not to say that it’s not an insurmountable thing, but it’s disappointing and it’s frankly embarrassing to be a part of an institution that brags about its long history of protests, its long history of social change through student movements. When you look at 1968 and Columbia called the NYPD on students arrested 700 students, and yet it kind of enshrines that moment in history as a place of pride, and I see that happening right now as well where 20, 30, 50 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and Columbia will be proud of it when really they’re the perpetrators of violence and hatred and bigotry and kind of turning the gun on their own students. So yeah, it’s a really precarious time to be a Columbia student and to be advocating for ourselves and our friends, our brothers and sisters who are experiencing this kind of oppression and persecution from our own country.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Allie, Caitlin, I want to ask if we could again take that step back to the beginning of March where things were this terrifying new reality was really ramping up with the Trump administration’s freezing and threatening of completely withholding $400 million in federal funds and grants to Columbia just one day before Mahmood Khalil was abducted by ice agents and disappeared to a jail in Louisiana thousands of miles away. So from that point to now, I wanted to ask, as self-identified student workers at Columbia University, how have you and others been feeling throughout all of this as it’s been unfolding and trying to get through your day-to-day work? What does that even look like? Teaching and researching under these terrifying circumstances?

Allie Wong:

For me, it has been incredibly scary. As you mentioned, I was someone who was arrested and beaten last year after the second Gaza solidarity encampment raid and have spoken quite publicly about it. I authored a number of pieces around that time and since then and have been pretty open about my involvement being okay serving as a lightning rod for a lot of that PR stuff. And so for me, coming into this iteration of students battles with the university, it’s been really scary to kind see how many of the students that I was arrested with, many of my friends and colleagues are now either being targeted because of their involvement or living in the fear of being targeted because there is an opacity around what those policies are and how they’re being enforced and implemented. So it really does feel quite McCarthys in the sense that you don’t really know what the dangers are, but you know that they’re there, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.

I don’t leave my house without wearing a mask just because through this whole process, many students have been doxed. Both Caitlin and myself have been doxed quite heavily through Canary mission and other groups online, and many folks have experienced offline behavior that has been threatening or scary to their own physical emotional security. And so that’s been a big piece for me is just being aware of my surroundings, being mindful of when I leave the house. In many respects, it does feel like I am growing in paranoia, but at the same time I consider it a moral obligation to be on the front lines as a light-skinned US citizen to be serving as a literal and figurative shield for my international brothers and sisters. And so it’s an interesting place as particularly a US citizen to say, what is my responsibility to the people around me?

What’s my responsibility to myself and keeping myself and my home safe? What’s my responsibility for sticking up for those who are targeted as someone who has the privilege of being able to be a citizen? And so I think it’s kind of a confusing time for those of us on the ground wanting to do more, wanting to help, wanting to offer our assistance with the privileges that we have and everyone’s level of comfort is different, and so my expectation is not that other people would take the kinds of risks I’m taking, but everyone has a part to play and whether that’s a visual part or a non-visual part, being in the public, it doesn’t really matter. We all have a part to play. And so given what we talked about just about the strategy of the Trump administration and the objectives to make us fearful and make us not speak out, I think it’s more important now than ever for those of us who are able to have the covering of US citizenship, to be doing everything in our power with the resources we’ve been given to take those risks because it’s much more important now in this administration than it’s ever been.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on top of the stuff allie’s talking about, we do still have to continue doing our jobs. So for me, that is teaching. I’m teaching a class this semester and that has been very challenging to do, having to continue going in and talking about the subject matter, which is stuff that is very interesting to me personally and that I’m very excited to be teaching about in the classroom, but at the same time, there’s so much going on campus, it just feels impossible to be turning our attention to Ana and I hear from my students are scared, so part of my job has become having to help my students through that. I have heard lots of people who are trying to move their classes off campus because students don’t want to be on campus right now.

ICE is crawling all over campus. The NYPD is all over the place. I don’t know if you saw this, but Columbia has agreed to hire these 36 quote peace officers who are going to be on campus and have arresting power. So now essentially we have cops on campus full time and then on top of all of that, you have to wait in these horrible security lines to even get onto campus so the environment on campus doesn’t feel safe, so my students don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s students feel safe right now. My colleagues who are international students don’t feel safe. I had a friend ask me what to do because she was TAing for a class and she wasn’t allowed to move it off campus or onto Zoom, and she said, I don’t feel safe on campus because I’m an international student and what am I going to do if ice comes to the door?

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation. And so the students are scared, my colleagues are scared. I’ve even heard from a lot of professors who are feeling like they have to watch their words in the classroom because they don’t want to end up on Canary mission for having said something. So that’s quite difficult. Teaching in this environment is very difficult and I think that the students are having a really hard time. And then on top of that, I am in the sixth year of my PhD, so I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation right now, and that is also quite difficult to be keeping up with my research, which is supposed to be a big part of the PhD is producing research and it’s really hard to do right now because it feels like we have, my friends and my colleagues are at risk right now, so that’s quite difficult to maintain your attention in all those different places.

Allie Wong:

Just one more piece to add because I know that we’ve been pretty negative and it is a pretty negative situation, so I don’t want to silver line things. That being said, I do feel as though it’s been really beautiful to see people step up and really beautiful to see this kind of symbiotic relationship happening between US students and international students. I’m at the journalism school, which is overwhelmingly international, and I was really discouraged when there was a report that came out from the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a closed town hall that we had where our dean, Jelani Cobb more or less said to students, we can’t protect you as much as I would love to be able to say here are the processes and protocols and the ways to keep yourself safe and the ways that we’re here to support you, but he just said we can’t.

And he got a lot of flack for that because that’s a pretty horrible thing for a dean to say. But I actually really appreciated it because it was the most honest and direct thing he could have said to students when the university itself was just sending us barrages of emails with these empty platitudes about values and a 270 year history of freethinking and all this nonsense. That being said, I think that it was a really difficult story to read, but at the same time it’s been really beautiful to see community gather around and clinging together when there are unknowns, people taking notes for each other when students don’t feel comfortable going to campus, students starting to host off campus happy hour groups and sit-ins together and things of that nature that have been really, again, amazing to see happen under such terrible circumstances and people just wanting to help each other out in the ways that they can.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlyn, Allie, you were just giving us a pretty harrowing view of your day-to-day reality there as student workers of Columbia PhD working on your PhDs and dealing with all of this Orwellian madness that we’ve been talking about today. When I was listening to you both, I was hearing so many kind of resonances from my own experience, just one sort of decade back, right? I mean, because I remember being a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan during the first Trump administration and co-founding for full disclosure, I was a member of the grad union there. I was a co-founder of the campus anti-fascist network. I was doing a lot of public writing. I started this podcast in that sort of era, and there were so many things that y’all were talking about that sounded similar from the fear of websites like Canary Mission, putting people’s names out there and encouraging them to be doxed and disciplined and even deported.

That resonated with me because it just ate nine years ago. That was groups like Turning Point USA, they were the ones trying to film professors in class and then send it to Breitbart and hopefully get it into the Fox News outrage cycle. And I experienced some of that. But what I’m hearing also is just that the things we were dealing with during the first Trump administration are not what y’all are dealing with now. There is first and foremost a fully, the state is now part of it. The state is now sort of leading that. It’s not just the sort of far right groups and people online and that kind of thing, but also it feels like the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment are entirely different as well. I wanted to ask if y’all could speak a little more to that side of things. It’s not just the university administration that you’re contending with, you’re contending with a lot of different forces here that are converging on you and your rights at this very moment.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean I think the one thing that has been coming up a lot for us, we’re used to fighting Columbia, the institution for our rights in the workplace for fair pay. And Columbia has always been a very stubborn adversary, very difficult to get anything out of them. Our first contract fight lasted for years, and now we’re looking at not just Columbia as someone to be fighting with, but at the federal government as a whole. And it’s quite scary. I think we talked about this a little bit, about international students being afraid to participate in protests, being afraid to go to union meetings. We’re hearing a lot of fear from people who aren’t citizens about to what extent participating in the union is safe for them right now. And on the one hand you want to say participating in a union is a protected activity.

There’s nothing illegal about it. You can’t get in trouble. In fact, it’s illegal to retaliate against you for being in a union. But on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the law is being that protective right now. So it’s a very scary place to be in. And I think that from our point of view, the main tool we have in this moment is just our solidarity with one another and labor power as a union because the federal governments does not seem that interested in protecting our rights as a union. And so we have to rely on each other in order to fight for what we need and what will make our workplace safe.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I was wondering, Allie, if I could also toss it to you there, because this makes me think of something you said earlier about how the conditions at Columbia, the structure of Columbia, how Columbia’s run, have sort of made it vulnerable to what’s happening now or the ways that Columbia talks about itself versus what Columbia actually is, are quite stark here. And connecting that to what Caitlin just said, I think it should also be understood as someone who has covered grad student campaigns, contract campaigns at Columbia and elsewhere, that when these sorts of strikes are happening when graduate student workers are taking action against the administration, the first ones that are threatened by the administration with punitive measures including potentially the revocation of their visas are international students. They have always been the most vulnerable members of grad student unions that administrations have actually used as leverage to compel unions to bend to their demand. So I make that point speaking only for myself here as a journalist who has observed this in many other times, that this precedent of going after international students in the way the Trump administration is like didn’t just come out of nowhere.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. Yeah. So I mean I think if you even look at how Trump campaigned, he really doubled down on immigration policy. I mean, it’s the most obvious statement I can say, but the high hyperbole, the hatred, the racism, you see that as a direct map onto what’s happening right now. And I think that’s part of what maybe isn’t unique about Columbia, but as we’re starting to see other universities take a stand, Caitlin mentioned Tufts. I know Princeton also recently kind said that they would not capitulate. So there is precedent for something different from how Columbia has behaved, and I think you see them just playing exactly into Trump’s hands folding to his kind of proxy policy of wanting to make Colombian example. And it’s a really disappointing thing from a university that prides itself on its liberal values, prides itself on its diversity on protecting students.

When you actually see quite the opposite, not only is Columbia not just doing anything, it’s actively participating in what’s happening on campus, the fact that they have yet to even name the students who have very publicly been abducted or chased out of the country because of their complicity, the fact that they will send emails or make these statements about values, but actually not tell us anything that’s going to be helpful, like how policies will be implemented when they’re going to be implemented, what these ice agents look like, things of that nature that could be done to protect students. And also obviously not negotiating in good faith. The fact that Grant was expelled and fired the day before we had a collective bargaining meeting right before we were about to talk about protections for international students, just communicates that the university is not operating in good faith, they’re not interested in the wellbeing of their students or doing anything within their power, which is quite a tremendous power to say to the Trump administration, our students come first. Our students are an entity of us and we’re going to do whatever we can in our power to block you from demonizing and targeting international students who, as you said, are the most vulnerable people on our campus, but also those who bring so much diversity and brilliance and life to our university and our country.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on the subject of international students, you, you’re right that they have always been in a more precarious position in higher ed unions. But on the other hand, I think that that shows us what power we do have as a union. I’m thinking. So we’ve been talking a lot about to what extent it’s safe for international workers to stay involved in the union, and our contract is expiring in June, which is why we’re having these bargaining sessions and we’re talking about going on strike next fall potentially. And there’s a lot of questions about to what extent can international students participate now because who knows what kind of protections they’re going to have? And I’ve been thinking about the last time we went on strike, it was a 10 week strike and we were striking through the end of the semester. It was the fall semester and we were still on strike when the semester ended.

And Columbia said that if we didn’t come off strike that they weren’t going to rehire the workers who were striking for the next semester. So anyone who was on strike wouldn’t get hired for a position in the spring semester and for international students that was going to affect their visa status. So it was very scary for them. And we of course said, that’s illegal. You can, that’s retaliation for us for going on strike. You can’t do that. And they said, it’s not illegal because we’re just not rehiring you. And it was this real moment of risk even though we felt much more confident in the legal protection because it felt like they could still do it and our recourse would have to be going to court and winning the case that this was illegal. So it was still very scary for international students, but we voted together to stay on strike and we held the line and Columbia did not in fact want to fire all of us who were on strike, and we won a contract anyway, even though there was this scary moment for international students even back then. And I have been telling people this story when we are thinking about protections for international students now, because I think that the moral of the story is that even under a situation where there’s a lot more legal security and legal protection, it’s still scary. And the way that you get over it being scary is by trusting that everyone coming together and standing together is what’s going to win and rather than whatever the legal protection might be.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlin and Allie, I have so many more thoughts and questions, but I know that we only have about 10 minutes left here and I want to use the time that we have left with y’all to sort of tug on the thread that you were just pulling there. Caitlin, looking at this through the union’s perspective or through a labor perspective, can you frame these attacks on higher ed and the people who live, learn and work there through a labor and working workers’ rights perspective, and talk about what your message is to other union members and other people who listen to this show who are working people, union and non-union, why this is important, why they need to care and what people can do about it.

Caitlin Liss:

It’s very clear why it’s important and why other workers should care. The funding cuts to Columbia University and other universities really threaten not just the university, but the whole ecosystem of research. So these are people’s careers that are at risk and careers that not only they have an interest in having, but careers that benefit everyone in our society, people who do public health research, people who do medical research, people who do research about climate change. These are really important jobs that the opportunities to pursue them are vanishing. And so that obviously is important. And then when we’re looking at the attacks on international students, if m kil can be abducted for speaking out in support of Palestine and against the genocide and Gaza, then none of us are safe. No worker is safe if the governments can just abduct you and deport you for something like that.

On the one hand, even people who aren’t citizens are protected by the first amendments, but also it’s not clear that that’s where they’re going to stop. I think that this is a moment that we should all take very seriously. I mean, it’s very serious for the future of higher education as a whole. I feel like we are in sort of an existential fight here. And at the moment, Columbia is just completely welcoming this fascist takeover with open arms and it threatens higher ed as an institution. What kind of university is this? If the Middle Eastern studies department is being controlled by some outside force who says what they can and can’t teach, and now Trump is threatening to put all of Columbia under some consent decree, so we’re going to have to be beholden to whatever the Trump administration says we’re allowed to do on campus. So it is a major threat to higher education, but it’s also a threat I think, in a much larger sense to workers all over the country because it is sending the message that none of us are safe. No one is safe to express ourselves. We can’t expect to be safe in the workplace. And it’s really important that as a labor union that we take a stand here because it is not just destroying our workplaces, but sort of it’s threatening everyone’s workplace.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I know it’s such an overused word at this point, but I think a huge aspect of this has to do with precedent and how, as we were mentioning, Columbia is so symbolic for a lot of reasons, including the fact that all eyes are on Columbia. And so when Columbia sets a precedent for what can and cannot not be done by University of Administration in caving to the federal government, I think that sets a precedent for not just academic institutions, but institutions writ large and the workers that work in those institutions. Because what happens here is happening across the federal government and will happen to institutions everywhere. And so I think it’s really critical that we bake trust back into our systems, both trust in administrations by having them prove that they do have our backs and they do care about student workers, but also that they trust student workers.

They trust us to do the really important research that keeps the heartbeat of this university alive. And I think that it’s going to crumble not just Columbia, but other academic institutions if really critical research gets defunded. Research that doesn’t just affect right now, but affects our country in perpetuity, in the kinds of opportunities that will be presented later in the future, the kinds of research that will be instrumental in making our society healthier and more equitable place in the future. And so this isn’t just a moment in time, but it’s one that absolutely will ripple out into history.

Caitlin Liss:

And we happen right now to be sort of fortunately bargaining a new contract as we speak. So like I said before, our contract is expiring in June. And so for us, obviously these kinds of issues are the top of mind when we’re thinking about what we can get in the contract. So in what way is this contract that we’re bargaining for going to be able to help us? So we’re fighting for Columbia to restore the funding cuts we’re fighting for them to instate a sanctuary campus and to reinstate grant minor, our president who was expelled, and Ronan who was enrolled, and everyone else who has been expelled or experienced sanctions because of their protests for Palestine. And so in a lot of ways, I think that the contract fight is a big part of what we’re concentrating on right now. But there’s also, there’s many unions on Columbia’s campus.

There’s the postdoc union, UAW 4,100, there’s the support staff and the Barnard contingent faculty who are UAW 2110. There’s building service employees, I think they’re 32 BJ and the maintenance staff is TW. So there’s many unions on campus. And I think about this a lot because I think what we’re seeing is we haven’t mentioned the trustees yet, I don’t think, but recently our interim president, Katrina Armstrong stepped down and was replaced by an acting president, was the former co-chair of the board of trustees Claire Shipman. And in many ways, I think what we’ve been seeing happening at Columbia is the result of the board of trustees not caving, but welcoming the things that Trump is demanding. I think that they’re complicit in this, but the board of trustees is like 21 people. There’s not very many of them. And there’s thousands of us at Columbia who actually are the people who make the university work, the students, the faculty, the staff, thousands of people in unions, thousands of non-unionized students and workers on campus as well.

And we outnumber the trustees by such a huge amount. And I think that thinking about the power we have when we all come together as the thousands of people who do the actual work of the university as opposed to these 21 people who are making decisions for us without consulting us that we don’t want, and that’s the way we have to think about reclaiming the university. I think we have to try and take back the power as workers, as students, as faculty from the board of trustees and start thinking about how we can make decisions that are in our interests.

Allie Wong:

One more thing that I wanted to call out, I’m not sure where this fits in. I think Caitlin talking about the board of trustees made me think of it is just the fact that I think that another big issue is the fact that there’s this very amorphous idea of antisemitism that all of this is being done under the banner of, and I think that it’s incredibly problematic because first of all, what is antisemitism? It’s this catchall phrase that is used to weaponize against dissent. And I think that when you look at the track record of these now three presidents that we’ve had in the past year, each of them has condemned antisemitism but has not condemned other forms of racism, including an especially Islamophobia that has permeated our campus. And because everything is done under the banner of antisemitism and you have folks like Claire Shipman who have been aligned with Zionist organizations, it also erodes the trust in of the student body, but then especially student workers, many of whom are Jewish and many of whom are having their research be threatened under the banner of antisemitism being done in their name. And yet it’s the thing that is stunting their ability to thrive at this university. And so I think that as we talk about the administration and board of trustees, just calling out the hypocrisy there of how they are behaving on campus, the ways that they’re capitulating and doing it under the guise of protecting Jewish students, but in the process of actually made Jewish students and faculty a target by not only withholding their funding but also saying that this is all to protect Jewish students but have created a more threatening environment than existed before.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean, as a Jewish student personally, I’m about to go to my family’s Seder to talk about celebrating liberation from oppression while our friends and colleagues are sitting in jail. It’s quite depressing and quite horrific to see people saying that they’re doing this to protect Jews when it’s so clearly not the case.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I wanted to ask in just this final two minutes that we got here, I want to bring it back down to that level to again remind folks listening that you both are student workers, you are working people just like everyone else that we talk to on this show. And I as a former graduate student worker can’t help but identify with the situation that y’all are in. But it makes me think about the conversations I had with my family when I was on the job market and I was trying to go from being a PhD student to a faculty member somewhere and hearing that maybe my political activism or my public writing would be like a mark against me in my quest to get that career that I had worked so many years for and just having that in the back of my mind. But that still seems so far away and so minuscule in comparison to what y’all are dealing with. And I just wanted to ask as act scholars, as people working on your careers as well, how are you talking to your families about this and what future in or outside of academia do you feel is still open to you and people, graduate student workers like yourselves in today’s higher ed?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean the job market for history, PhDs has been quite bad for a long time even before this. So I mean, when I started the PhD program, I think I knew that I might not get a job in academia. And it’s sad because I really love it. I love teaching especially, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s a choice to stop speaking up about what’s happening, to stop condemning what’s happening in Gaza, to stop condemning the fascist takeover of our government and the attacks on our colleagues. It’s just I can’t not say something about it. I can’t do nothing, and if it means I can’t get a job after this, that will be very sad. But I don’t think that that is a choice that I can or should make to do nothing or say nothing so that I can try and preserve my career if I have to. I’ll get another kind of job.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I completely agree. How dare I try to protect some nice job that I could potentially have in the future when there are friends and students on campus who are running for their lives. It just is not something that’s even comparable. And so I just feel like it’s an argument a lot of folks have made that if in the future there’s a job that decides not to hire me based off of my advocacy, I don’t want that job. I want a job based off of my skills and qualifications and experience, not my opinions about a genocide that’s happening halfway across the world, that any person should feel strongly against the slaughtering of tens of thousands of children and innocent folks. If that’s an inhibitor of a potential job, then that’s not the kind of environment I want to work in anyway. And that’s a really privileged position to have. I recognize that. But I think it’s incredibly crucial to be able to couch that issue in the broader perspective of not just this horrific genocide that’s happening, but also the future of our democracy and how critical it is to be someone who is willing to take a risk for the future of this country and the future of our basic civil liberties and freedoms.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Caitlin Liss and Allie Wong of Student Workers of Columbia, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you Allall back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Janine Jackson interviewed the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind about the criminalization of immigrants for the April 11, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

ABC (4/6/25)

Janine Jackson: US legal resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was swept up by ICE and sent to an infamously harsh prison in El Salvador. A judge declared that unlawful, and, we are to understand, the White House said, “Yes, actually, that was an administrative error, but we won’t return him to his family in Maryland because, well, he’s there now, and besides, they paid for him.” And in the latest, as we record on April 9, the Supreme Court says, “You know what? Let’s sit on that for a minute.”

What in the name of humanity is happening? Is it legal? Illegal? Does that matter? What can thinking, feeling human beings do now to protect fellow humans who are immigrants in this country?

Dara Lind is senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, and has been reporting on issues around immigrants’ rights for years now. She joins us now by phone from DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Dara Lind.

Dara Lind: Thank you for having me on. Let’s try to figure this out.

Immigration Impact (3/20/25)

JJ: Yeah. Well, let’s start, if we could, with what some are calling “renditions,” because “deportation” doesn’t really seem to fit. The White House has invoked the Alien Enemies Act as justification for sending, in this case, Venezuelan people it has deemed to be members of a gang, Tren de Aragua, to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.

They are no contact. We don’t know what’s happening to them, exactly. They haven’t been convicted of any crime. They’ve had no chance to challenge charges against them.

You’ve written recently about this rubric that’s being wafted over this, and that folks will have heard about: the Alien Enemies Act. Talk us through, if you would, what that is, and what we should make of this employment of it.

DL: Sure. So the Alien Enemies Act was enacted in 1798. It was part of a suite of laws, where every of the other laws that were passed around those issues—as America was very worried about war between Britain and France—all of the other acts passed around that were eventually rescinded, because everybody kind of looked at that moment and went: “Ooh, that was a little bit tyrannical. We may have gone too far there.” But the Alien Enemies Act stayed on the books, and has been used very infrequently since then, most recently in World War II, to remove Japanese and German nationals.

What the Trump administration has done is say, “One, we’re using it again. Two, we’re using it not against a government, but against a criminal group, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua,” which they argue is so enmeshed with the government of Venezuela that it constitutes a hybrid criminal state. And three, saying that any Venezuelan man over the age of 14 who they deem to be a member of Tren de Aragua can be removed under the Alien Enemies Act, without any of the process that is set out in actual immigration law.

New Republic (4/11/25)

Under immigration law, you have the ability to make your case before a judge, to demonstrate that you qualify for some form of relief, such as asylum if that applies to you, and the government has to prove that you can be removed. They say, “No, no, no, no, no, because this law existed before any of that, we don’t have to go through any of that process.” That is their interpretation of the law, under which they put people on planes and sent them to El Salvador.

What has been litigated, and with a Supreme Court order on Monday night, where we are right now, is that the courts have said, “No, it is illegal to use the Alien Enemies Act to remove people with no process whatsoever.” But the Supreme Court says, if people want to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act, they need to do it through what are called habeas claims, which is not the way that the initial court case was brought.

So in theory right now, we’re in a world where someone hypothetically could be removed under the Alien Enemies Act, but how that’s going to work in practice is a little bit unclear, because it would have to be a different process than the one the Trump administration used in mid-March. And what we’re actually seeing is, even in the hours before you and I are speaking, that judges have started to receive lawsuits filed under these habeas claims, and have started saying, “Yeah, you can’t remove people under this act through this either.” So it’s really changing very quickly on the ground, and part of that’s the result of this 200+-year-old law being used in a manner in which it’s never been used before, and with very little transparency as to what the administration wants to do with it.

JJ: It seems important to say, as you do in the piece that you wrote, that the Alien Enemies Act sidesteps immigration law, because it’s being presented as kind of part of immigration law, but one of the key things about it is that it takes us outside of laws that have been instituted to deal with immigration, yeah?

CounterSpin (1/6/23)

DL: I compare this to when the Trump administration, after the beginning of the Covid pandemic, used Title 42, which is a public health law, to essentially seal the US/Mexico border from asylum seekers. In that case, they were taking a law from outside of immigration, that had been enacted before the modern immigration system, and saying, because this law doesn’t explicitly say immigration law is in effect, we can create this separate pathway that we can use, that we can treat immigrants under this law without having to give them any of the rights guaranteed under immigration law.

They’re doing the same thing with this, saying, because this law that is on the books doesn’t refer to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was passed a century and a half later, we don’t need to adhere to anything that was since put in to, say, comply with the Refugee Convention, to comply with the International Convention Against Torture, all of these structures that have come into place as people have started to care about human rights, and not sending people to torture or persecution—they’re now saying they don’t have to bother with, because they weren’t thinking about them in 1798.

JJ: Right. And it brings us to, folks for many years on many issues have been saying, Well, it’s not legal, so it’s all going to be fixed, because the law’s going to step in and fix it, because it’s not legal. And I think you’re referring to the fluidity and the importance of the invocation of law. It’s not like it just exists, and you bring it down to bear. It’s fought terrain.

DL: Right. Yes, exactly. It’s contested, and when we say “contested,” it really is being fought out in the courts as we speak. Because the administration is using its authority, the fact that it is the federal government, and litigators are saying, “Please point to us in the law where you can do that, or demonstrate to us that you are adhering at all to what we think of as fairly basic constitutional protections, like due process, like the right to know what you’re being detained for.”

What is legal is ultimately what the courts decide, but how they rule on this is very unclear, and, to be fully honest, the government’s insistence on giving very little information, and in conceding very little—even in cases like Mr. Abrego Garcia’s, where, as you say, they’ve said there was a mistake made—makes it a little bit harder to understand what it would even look like to say a government that’s been so truculent and so resistant is in fact operating under the law.

JJ: Let me just pivot a little bit. The talking point of, If they just come here the right way, like my grandparents did—that’s ahistorical garbage, we understand, but it’s still potent. And we have seen for years an effort to cleave “bad immigrants” from “good immigrants,” and to suggest, even now, that the good ones have nothing to fear.

Your work places this “bad hombre” rhetoric within a broader context of immigration policy and enforcement, because you don’t have to throw people in the back of a van to stir up enough fear and uncertainty to upend lives. You can do it with a quietly announced rule change.

And so I just want to ask you to talk about some of the maybe less visible fronts—you know, the ending of the CHNV program, the demand for registration. Talk about some other things that are going on that are still, in their own way, violent and disruptive.

Dara Lind: “They’re taking far more sweeping, categorical actions toward people with fewer protections under current law, and it’s harder to talk about those.”

DL: I love this question so much, because something that I personally have been thinking about a lot over the last several weeks is that the administration has gotten a lot of attention for the unprecedented ways in which it’s treated people with legal permission to be here, especially student visas.

But we’re hearing about those in terms of individual cases of visas being stripped. And meanwhile, they’re taking far more sweeping, categorical actions toward people with fewer protections under current law, and it’s harder to talk about those, because they don’t look like individual cases. They look like policy changes.

So, for example, thousands of people have gotten letters over the last couple of weeks, saying that their permission to live in the United States and work, which was extended under a presidential authority known as humanitarian parole, has been revoked, or will be revoked as of later this month, and that they’re supposed to return to their home countries as soon as possible.

Now, some of those people received those letters in error. Some of them were Ukrainians who were let in under the United for Ukraine program, and the government said later, the day that it sent them, “Oops, you guys, we didn’t mean to send that to you guys, so hopefully you didn’t see that and pack up and leave already.”

Immigration Impact (4/8/25)

But many of them are being told they need to leave immediately, or within seven days, and it’s absolutely upending their lives, because they were told they had two years, or that they didn’t have to think about this until the next time their parole was up for renewal.

What you’re alluding to with registration is this bind that they’re trying to place immigrants in. People may very well not know that while we talk about “unauthorized” or “illegal” immigrants in the US, millions of those, at this point, are known to the government in some form or another: They have pending immigration court hearings, or they have some form of temporary permission to be in the United States.

While the Trump administration is, on the one hand, talking about this “invasion” of people who we don’t know who they are, on the other hand, they’re trying to use yet another obscure pre-1960s law to force anyone who isn’t already on the books with the federal government to register.

Now, are they going to be protected by registering? Are they being given legal status? Are they being given the right to work? No, not at all. And, in fact, the government has said nothing—the implication is that they’re using that information to go find people and deport them. But if you don’t register, then you risk being prosecuted as a federal criminal.

So they’re doing their best to, instead of actually going after the criminals who they promised were lurking around every corner on the campaign trail, to turn people who have not committed any crime into criminals, simply by engaging in what previously was a civil violation of immigration law.

JJ: To put the pin on it, this would make the United States a place where you can be stopped and told to show your papers.

DL: Yeah, this law that was passed in 1940 says that if you do not produce evidence that you’ve registered if asked by an immigration official, then that also constitutes a federal crime. It’s absolutely one of those where, we say all the time, we’re not a country that asks people to show their papers, and actually, according to this obscure law, that is a thing we can do.

But as with so many things in immigration law, there are powers the federal government in theory has but doesn’t use. And the Trump administration is trying to use them for the first time, and reminding a lot of people just how much power we’ve given the government and trusted them to use correctly.

JJ: Absolutely. Well, we understand, if we’re paying attention, that the Trump administration is not just interested in so-called criminals when we read that they are tracking anyone—immigrant, citizen, no matter—who expresses criticism of the deportation agenda on social media. So it seems clear that this is ideologically based on its face, or at least pieces of it is. Is that not a legal front to fight on?

Just Security (3/12/25)

DL: A lot of things that would be entirely illegal, if the government went after a US citizen for them, are in fact historically considered OK for the government to do in the context of immigration law. For example, the grounds that are being used for many of these student visa revocations are this obscure regulation that the State Department can revoke the visa of anyone it deems to be a foreign policy problem for the United States, which does open itself up to deporting people for speech, for protected political activity, for, again, the sort of thing that would be a core constitutional right for US citizens, but that, in the context in which US immigration law has developed, which was a lot of people being very concerned about Communist infiltration, immigrants have been carved out.

I think in general, it’s really important for people to understand that while the Trump administration loves to imply that it’s going to use all of its powers maximally, that no one is safe and that everyone should be afraid, in fact citizens do have more protections than Green Card holders, Green Card holders do have more protections than others.

For example, the one Green Card holder who they’ve tried to use this State Department thing on, the judge in that case, as of when we’re talking, has told the government, give me some evidence in 24 hours or I’m ordering this guy released. Because it does take more to deport somebody on a Green Card.

So how scared people should be, this isn’t just a function of what the government is saying—although what it’s doing is more relevant—but it should also be a function of how many layers of protection the government would have to cut through in order to subject you to its will.

Washington Post (4/10/25)

JJ: And that gives us points of intervention, and I appreciate the idea that while we absolutely have to be concerned about what’s being said, it’s helpful to keep a clear eye on what is actually happening, so that we see where the fronts of the fight are. But I then have to ask you, when you hear analysts say, well, this person had a disputed status, this person had a Green Card, and make those distinctions, but then you hear Trump say,  well, heck yeah, I’d love to send US citizens to prison in El Salvador.

He’s making clear he doesn’t think it’s about immigration status. He says, if I decide you’re a criminal, and you bop people on the head, or whatever the hell he said, you’re a dangerous person. “Well, I would love the law to let me send US citizens to El Salvador also.” So you can understand why folks feel the slipperiness of it, even as we know that laws have different layers of protection.

DL: I do. The thing that strikes me about these US citizens–to–El Salvador comments is that I was reporting on Trump back when the first time he was a presidential candidate, so I’ve been following what he says for a minute. It’s really, really rare for Donald Trump to say “if it’s legal,” “we’re not sure it’s legal.”

But he said that about this, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt has also said that about this, and that caveat is just so rare that it does make me think that this is different from some of the other things where Trump says it and then the government tries to make it happen, that they are a little bit aware that there’s a bright line, and even they are a little bit wary of stepping over it.

And I’m kind of insistent about that, mostly because I worry a lot about people being afraid to stand up for more vulnerable people in their communities, because they’re focused on the ways in which they’re vulnerable. And so what I don’t want to see is a world where noncitizens can be arrested and detained with no due process, and citizens are afraid to speak out because they heard something about citizens being sent to El Salvador, and they worry they will be next.

New York Times (11/21/24)

JJ: I hear that. And following from that, I want to just quote from the piece that you wrote for the New York Times last November, about focusing on what is actually really happening, and you said:

The details matter not only because every deportation represents a life disrupted (and usually more than one, since no immigrant is an island). They matter precisely because the Trump administration will not round up millions of immigrants on January 20. Millions of people will wake up on January 21 not knowing exactly what comes next for them—and the more accurate the press and the public can be about the scope and scale of deportation efforts, the better able immigrants and their communities will be to prepare for what might be coming and try to find ways to throw sand in the gears.

What I hear in that is that there is a real history-making moment for a press corps that’s worth its salt.

DL: Absolutely, and to be honest, in the weeks since the flights were sent to El Salvador, we’ve seen some tremendous reporting from national and local reporters about the human lives that were on those planes. We know so much more about these people than we would have. But what that means is that these people who, arguably, the administration would love to see disappear, Nayib Bukele would love to see disappear, they’re very, very visible to us.

And that’s so important in making it clear that things like due process aren’t just a hypothetical “nice to have.” Due process is the protection that prevents, in general, gay makeup artists from getting sent to a country that they’ve never been to because of their tattoos, that it’s an essential way to make sure that we’re not visiting harm on people who have done nothing to deserve it.

JJ: Finally, I do understand that we have to fight wherever there’s a fight, but I do have a fear of small amendments or reforms as a big-picture response. We can amend this here or we can return that person. It feels a little bit like a restraining wall against a flood.

And I just feel that it helps to show that we are for something. We’re not just against hatefulness and bigotry and the law being used to arbitrarily throw people out. We have a vision of a shared future that doesn’t involve deputizing people to snitch on their neighbors who they think look different. We have a vision about immigration that is a positive vision that we’ve had in this country, and I guess I wish I’d see more of that right now, in media and elsewhere.

DL: What makes it particularly hard, from my perspective, is that most Americans know very little about immigration law. It’s extremely complicated, and most people have never had firsthand experience with it. So in order to get people to even understand what is going on now, you need to do more work than you do for areas where people are more intuitively familiar with what the government does, and that takes up space that otherwise could go to imagining different futures.

The other problem here is that, frankly, it’s not that new and radical ideas on immigration are needed. It’s a matter of political will, to a certain extent, right?

FAIR.org (5/24/21)

The reason that the Trump administration’s use of this registration provision is such a sick irony to some of us is that there was a way, that Congress proposed, to allow people to register with the US government. It was called comprehensive immigration reform. There have been proposals to regularize people, to put people on the books, to bring people out of the shadows.

And the absence of that, and the absence of a federal government that was in any way equipped to actually process people, rather than figuring out the most draconian crackdown and hoping that everybody got the message, is where we’ve gotten to a point where everyone agrees that the system is broken, and the only solutions appear to be these radical crackdowns on basic rights.

JJ: Yeah. We’ve established that the ground is shifting under our feet, but anything you’d like reporters to do more of or less of, or things to keep in mind?

DL: I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention, and duration of attention, on the Salvadoran removals. It’s been something where I could easily have seen things falling out of the headlines, just because there weren’t any new facts being developed.

I do worry a little bit that now that the court cases—with a couple of exceptions, we’re unlikely to see really big developments in the next several days—that that’s going to maybe quiet the drumbeat. And I’m hoping that people are continuing to push, continuing to try to find new information, to hold the government accountable to the things that it’s already said, especially if they’re going to start removals back up again.

Because it’s often the case that in the absence of new facts, important things don’t get treated as news stories anymore, and it would be really a shame if that were to happen for this, when our only recourse, unless the courts are going to end up ruling that the Trump administration has to send the plane back and put everybody on them and bring them back to the US, is going to be some measure of public pressure on the administration—on the government of El Salvador, even—to do the right thing.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dara Lind. She’s senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. Thank you so much, Dara Lind, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DL: Thank you.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.