The Real News Podcast

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/baltimores-enoch-pratt-free-library-workers-move-to-unionize Employees of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library system have announced their intention to unionize, citing better pay, benefits for all, and greater employee input into working conditions as their chief motivations. Seeking voluntary recognition from Pratt leadership, Pratt Wo...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/cops-tried-to-confiscate-his-phone-without-a-warrant-things-turned-ugly-when-he-refused Dramatic video shows a Texas police officer brutally beating a man who refused to turn over his phone to police. The victim was not suspected of a crime and was voluntarily cooperating with police. Nevertheless, the police turned on him. The attack ra...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/brazil-on-fire-episode-5-ghosts-of-the-past Brazil’s military dictatorship was a dark time in the country’s history. Hundreds were killed. Thousands jailed and tortured. And it is an era that President Jair Bolsonaro remembers with nostalgia—It's where he got his start, and a thing he has long championed as being worthy of returning to....

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, is the latest in an arc of environmental catastrophes affecting predominantly Black communities from Flint, Michigan, to New Orleans. Often, these disasters are preceded by decades if not centuries of segregation and government neglect. Once a water crisis begins, it rapidly spirals into a comprehensive disaster with ripple effects on a community's economy...

The United States could see its first major railroad shut down in 30 years beginning this Friday, September 16. For months, unions and railroad corporations have been locked in negotiations mediated by Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board to resolve a two-year conflict over inadequate sick days. So far, many union leaders have accepted the PEB recommendations, but workers have yet to ratify them....

On Friday, September 16, the United States could see its first major rail strike and/or rail lockout since the early '90s. Railroad workers have reached the end of their rope after years of enduring dramatic staff cuts that have piled more work onto fewer workers, along with exhausting schedules and draconian attendance policies that have made it impossible to live and reasonably plan their lives....

In September 2020, Lacino Hamilton was exonerated for the murder of his foster mother, Willa B. Bias, and released after 26 years in prison. Convicted at the age of 19, the only evidence linking Hamilton to the Bias's death were a confession police forced from Hamilton, and the statement of a jailhouse informant. Through his decades in prison, Hamilton educated himself on the nature of the prison...

The rail industry is experiencing a self-induced crisis as a result of decades of cost-cutting, profit-maximizing executive decisions that have driven rail workers and the supply chain into the ground. In an attempt to mediate between the major freight rail companies and unions representing over 100,000 railroad workers, President Biden appointed a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to offer recom...

Brazil has a long and complicated history with fascism, going back to the early 20th century. Far-right and white supremacist groups have been emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro—with some members of his own cabinet openly sporting Nazi tattoos. They’ve unleashed online attacks, pushed fake news and misinformation in favor of Bolsonaro, and they’ve threatened Brazil’s Supreme Court and its just...

From 1897 to 1921, the General Jewish Labour Bund operated as a Jewish socialist party in Russia, Lithuania, and Poland. Composed primarily of Yiddish-speaking, secular Jews, the Bund struggled on two fronts: for the construction of socialism to liberate the working class, and for national cultural autonomy to protect the rights of Eastern European Jews to their own institutions. The history of th...

Jackson, Mississippi, remains gripped in an ongoing water crisis. The task of distributing water to local residents has been largely taken up by community organizations like Cooperation Jackson and Operation Good. Organizer, writer, and educator Kali Akuno joins The Marc Steiner Show to explain how the current crisis is a reflection of capitalism's failures and decades of institutional racism. T...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/canadas-freedom-convoy-has-taken-a-christian-nationalist-turn Earlier this year, Canada's 'Freedom Convoy' movement stormed the nation's capital at Ottawa and occupied the grounds of the Parliamentary building for weeks to demand an end to vaccine mandates and other protective measures against COVID-19. The movement quickly spread to ot...

Read the transcript of this podcast and see the full show notes: https://therealnews.com/amazon-fires-another-organizer-to-stop-kentucky-facilities-unionizing Matt Littrell has worked as a picker at the Amazon warehouse in Campbellsville, Kentucky, for the past year and a half. He's also been one of the lead organizers and the public face of a growing push to unionize Amazon facilities in Kentucky...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/sri-lankas-crisis-ethnonationalism-and-the-legacy-of-the-civil-war Sri Lanka's civil war ended in 2009, but ethnonationalism remains a powerful force in the country's politics. Professor Mythri Jegathesan traces the country's present crisis to its recent history in the second episode of a special TRNN two-part series on Sri Lanka. Dr....

Jair Bolsonaro could not have won the presidency without the support of one very important group: Evangelical Christians. There is, perhaps, no other group that Bolsonaro has so vocally courted, or that has been so loyal to the president—And they remain key for Bolsonaro’s hopes of recapturing the presidency this year. In this episode, we visit those spreading the gospel for Bolsonaro and look at...

The election of president Jair Bolsonaro was never a foregone conclusion. For most of that electoral season, someone else was ahead in the polls. But that opponent was jailed on supposed corruption charges by a biased judge, six months out from the election, and blocked from running. In this episode, we look at the fight to free former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from prison, the corruptio...

As candidate Jair Bolsonaro neared the presidency in 2018, violence rippled across Brazil, mostly perpetrated by Bolsonaro supporters. Hundreds of threats and attacks, including several killings, were reported in the weeks and months leading up to the election. Bolsonaro's hateful rhetoric and fake news machine spurred on the violence, painting the election as a battle for the soul of the country....

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/black-august-and-the-fight-to-free-political-prisoners Jericho Movement activists fighting for the release of freedom fighters from US prisons speak on the meaning and purpose of Black August. Jihad Abdulmumit is the Chairperson of the National Jericho Movement Paulette Dauteuil is the former Co-chair and National Secretary of the Nati...

"As blistering heat waves swept across the United States this summer, breaking temperature records and placing millions under heat advisories and warnings," Livia Albeck-Ripka writes at The New York Times, "workers... have continued to deliver America’s packages for a variety of carriers, often in trucks that have no cooling mechanisms for drivers. Some UPS workers have shared photographs that sho...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/the-federal-reserve-is-wrong-corporations-should-pay-to-stop-inflation-not-workers The Federal Reserve says wages should go down to get inflation under control. Meanwhile, corporations are treated to lax regulations and hefty subsidies. What if we just stopped corporate profiteering and the lax rules that make it possible? Studio: Dway...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/sri-lankas-crisis-the-long-shadow-of-colonialism In July, photos and videos of immense crowds of people storming Sri Lanka’s presidential palace went viral. In spite of global interest in this spectacle of political upheaval, Sri Lanka’s crisis and history remain poorly understood by most people in the outside world. From the lingering e...

To read the transcript of this podcast and see show notes, click here: https://therealnews.com/former-black-panther-mansa-musa-prison-abolition-and-the-labor-struggle-are-linked Mansa Musa is a radical freedom fighter who was imprisoned in the US for nearly 50 years. Now, at 70 years old, he is the co-host of Rattling the Bars at The Real News Network, a staunch advocate for the rights of incarce...

Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian boy from Jerusalem, was arrested by Israeli police at the age of 13. He has now been in prison for 7 years, and is currently in his seventh consecutive month of solitary confinement. Advocates say Manasra has been severely abused throughout his imprisonment, and has become suicidal and developed schizophrenia. International organizations and human rights experts are ca...

The economic fortunes of rural communities across the United States are often deeply intertwined with the prison industrial complex. This poses a real challenge to the project of ending mass incarceration. How can organizers build political opposition to prisons in areas where prisons are the lifeblood of a community? And what should be done with former prisons once they are closed? The question o...

While the Democratic leadership expends its energy squashing progressive agendas and candidates, a revitalized GOP is preparing to sweep back into full power. This time, the consequences of Republican rule could be far more devastating than anything previously seen. Political blogger and author John Nichols joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the right's 50 year march to power, the GOP's fri...