The Real News Podcast

Months after a catastrophic Norfolk Southern train derailment changed their lives and communities forever, residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and the surrounding area feel “numb,” lied to, and abandoned. On Tues, May 30, TRNN hosted a solidarity livestream and pledge drive to raise money and secure much-needed supplies for residents living in and around East Palestine. We spoke directly with resid...

The topic of solitary confinement was the focus of a recent episode of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO. Thanks to the hard work of activists organizing against solitary confinement for decades, awareness of the brutality of this practice has begun to enter the mainstream. Its history as a counterinsurgency tactic, however, has yet to be fully examined in the light of day. TRNN Editor-in-Chi...

The onset of the Great Depression brought devastation to Pennsylvania's coal region. Suddenly rendered unemployed, coal miners with no other way to make a living turned to 'bootleg' mining, setting up their own mines. The only problem was that legally, they were on company property—specifically, property owned by the likes of JP Morgan. What unfolded was a vicious, heroic, and almost unbelievable...

While the underlying logic of the cash bail system in the US may sound convincing on paper, in practice it has become a means of denying justice to, and destroying the lives of, people who have not even been convicted of a crime. “The US Constitution prohibits ‘excessive bail’” The Bail Project notes on their website. “Excessive bail forces people to stay in jail—even though they’ve not been convi...

Read the transcript of this episode here: https://www.therealnews.com We hosted a Working People live show at The Real News Network studio in Baltimore on May 18. In this panel discussion, co-hosted by Max and Baltimore writer and editor Rebekah Kirkman, we speak with a diverse panel of worker-organizers from around the city about their respective struggles to unionize their workplaces, what being...

Jeff Sharlet has been studying and reporting on far-right movements in the US for decades, but something feels different now. From Waco and Ruby Ridge in the ‘90s to the 2014 Bundy family standoff with the federal government in Nevada, from the rise of Donald Trump to the “martyrdom” of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed raiding the Capitol on Jan. 6, from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to COV...

Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/three-years-later-george-floyds-family-members-are-still-fighting-for-justice The name George Floyd has become a symbol across not only the US, but also the wider world. While George Floyd became known to most of us in death, he also lived a life that was deeply cherished by those closest to him. George's brother, Philonise Floyd, and...

It's been over 100 days since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying over 100,000 gallons of toxic materials occurred in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb 3. Since then, residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania have had their lives turned completely upside down. Entire families have been uprooted from their homes, with many having to live i...

Click here to read the transcript From the defeat of the coup government in Bolivia, the election of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, and the rise of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, to the historic election of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and the return of Lula in Brazil, left-leaning governments are changing the political landscape of Latin America. However, even more progressive parties and rulin...

Editor's note: At 00:56, host Mansa Musa misspeaks when quoting a report and says that 55 million people are in the system of mass incarceration; the correct number is 5.5 million. Over 1.9 million people are incarcerated in the US today, and even greater 5.5 million people are subjected to the wide-ranging system of mass punishment from parole, probation, and beyond. One organization, JustLeaders...

Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/marianne-williamson-wants-to-introduce-a-new-politics-to-dc The 2024 election season has begun, and while a second Trump vs. Biden showdown is expected by many, a number of challengers have emerged within the Democratic Party. One of them is Marianne Williamson —author of several self-help books, and former 2020 presidential candidate....

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://www.therealnews.com/ups-and-the-logistics-revolution The word "logistics'' has somewhat of an impersonal ring to it. When you hear it, you think: massive container ships, cranes, eighteen wheelers, aircrafts, conveyor belts, spreadsheets, contracts, and of course, boxes. It's almost as if all of this infrastructure that moves our goods around the world,...

Read the transcript of this podcast and see the full show notes: https://therealnews.com/a-new-generation-of-organizers-are-building-union-power-in-the-south This is a special live episode of Working People produced in collaboration with the Action Builder / Action Network team on March 21 in Atlanta, Georgia. In this panel discussion, Max speaks with local organizers about the specific challenges...

The death of Khader Adnan in Israeli detention during a hunger strike on May 2 of this year sparked mourning worldwide and a general strike in occupied Palestine. The 45-year-old Adnan was on his 87th day of hunger strike while serving a sentence for his 12th arrest by the Israeli state at the time of his death. A baker by trade and a father to nine children, Adnan was the first Palestinian to die...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://www.therealnews.com The title alone of How to Blow Up a Pipeline has raised its share of eyebrows—and drawn condemnations from right-wing critics. The film, based on a non-fiction book of the same name by Andreas Malm, depicts a fictional attempt by a group of young climate activists to take action against the fossil fuel industry. But what is the polit...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/frente-polisarios-fight-to-liberate-western-sahara The national liberation struggle of the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara has been ongoing for 50 years. Through the twists and turns of history, the people of Western Sahara have faced Spanish colonialism, the occupation of their territory by Mauritania and Morocco, and expulsion from th...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/robin-d-g-kelley-understanding-police-violence-through-racial-capitalism In 2001, Cincinnati police killed a 19-year-old Black man named Timothy Thomas, sparking an uprising that shook the city for four days. 19 years later, in the city of Minneapolis, local police officers killed George Floyd over an alleged counterfeit bill, catalyzing...

Read the transcript and full show notes for this podcast: https://www.therealnews.com Hollywood writers represented by the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Writers Guild of America, West, are on strike for the first time since 2007-08. As Alex Press writes in Jacobin, “The WGA (West and East) called the strike just before midnight on May 1, with its leadership unanimously voting for a work...

The debate on a just future to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine has often pivoted around the question of a two-state or one-state solution. In a recent article for Foreign Affairs , four longtime proponents of the two-state solution make the case for why such an approach is no longer viable. Despite whatever high-minded ideals may have once motivated the search for a two-state solution, suc...

The call for prison abolition has been popularized over the last decade of popular movements against police violence, many of which have operated under the banner of Black Lives Matter. But what does abolition mean, and who gets to define it? Thus far, much of the conversation has been steered and curated by mainstream media. A new initiative from Scalawag Magazine tentatively titled 'Project Abol...

David Michaud had just checked into a motel in Hot Springs, MT when he was approached by local police and ordered to present identification. After Michaud demanded to know why he was being questioned, a contentious exchange ensued that ended with police tasering Michaud multiple times. Michaud, who is Chamorro, was asked by officers whether he was "tribal" before being tasered and arrested. Police...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com Negotiations on the national labor contract at UPS have begun. And while CEO Carol Tomé has insisted that the company and the union are "not far apart on the issues," their behavior at the bargaining table suggests otherwise. In bargaining sessions for regional contracts across the country, UPS is sometimes just not showing up, they're d...

May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, is celebrated around the world by labor unions, socialist parties, and anarchists. May Day's origins go back to the 1886 Haymarket Affair, when hundreds of thousands of US workers walked off the job, and 40,000 went on strike in Chicago for an eight-hour workday. Despite its origins, May Day is largely unknown in the US today. TRNN Editor-in-Chief...

On Jan. 31 of this year, the Temple University Graduate Students' Association (TUGSA) launched the first strike in their 25-year history. The decision to strike came as a result of years of organizing that largely began in 2020, after Temple's decision to force in-person classes in the fall of 2020 led to a completely preventable COVID-19 outbreak . Striking for 42 days, graduate student-workers f...

The debt ceiling debate is back. On May 1, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the US government could default on its debts as soon as June 1. The debt ceiling debate has been a perennial feature of American politics over the last two decades—ever since the national deficit began to balloon as an effect of the Bush Jr. administration's War on Terror and tax cuts for the wealthy. During the...