The Real News Podcast

“There is no doubt that racism is real and has negative consequences for people’s lives,” Adolph Reed Jr. and Touré F. Reed note in the abstract to their article “The Evolution of ‘Race’ and Racial Justice under Neoliberalism.” “This is why we have consistently argued for the continued value of anti-discrimination policies. But race reductionism’s insistence on uncoupling disparities from politica...

With news that Democrats will likely be caving to pressure from “centrist” lawmakers like Sen. Joe Manchin, shelving President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better package, and reneging on their campaign promises to voters, the party’s electoral fortunes are looking bleak heading into 2022. If Democrats continue failing to deliver on their campaign promises, what will the repercussions be in states like...

Christmas is a time to be with the ones you love, to give gifts and give thanks, and to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (if you're so inclined). It is also a time for gaudy decorations, Griswoldian light displays, mall Santas, and a carnivalesque orgy of capitalist commercialism, formulaic Hallmark movies, and sugary crap. Does this mean, as we hear every year, that we’ve forgotten the “true s...

With election season coming up, we’re re-launching our Working People series "Working-Class Politics," where we talk to working-class people running for elected office at all levels—in their unions, in local, state, and national government, etc.—as well as candidates fighting with and for the working class. In the latest installment of this ongoing series, we talk to Paul Prescod (aka "Labor Paul"...

Hospitality workers around the country have faced some of the worst layoffs in any industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. UNITE HERE, a labor union representing over 300,000 workers, most of whom are in the hospitality, food service, and restaurant industries, reported that 98% of its members were out of work last year. At the five hotel properties in Virginia’s historic Colonial Williamsburg, how...

Depressingly relentless waves of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc around the world in 2021, which made it difficult and often impossible to regularly do the kind of on-the-ground reporting that we pride ourselves on here at TRNN. But the news didn’t stop, and neither did we. Even if we couldn’t cover them in person, our expansion of audio reporting at TRNN allowed us to intimately co...

Dr. David Fowler garnered national attention after his controversial testimony on behalf of killer cop Derek Chauvin. The former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner made headlines when he testified Floyd died in part due to exhaust from a tail pipe. The testimony raised questions about his competence and police bias, and lead nearly 400 medical pathologists to call for review of his rulings on ‘police...

Ending 26 years of "labor peace," Major League Baseball is in the midst of a national lockout. With league owners failing to address the core contract issues raised by the Major League Baseball Players Association, the previous collective bargaining agreement expired at the beginning of this month. In an open letter to baseball fans, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated, "Despite the league's best...

1,100 coal miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama have been on strike since April 1, and 1,400 Kellogg’s workers at cereal plants in Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have been on strike since Oct. 5. Facing intense financial, physical, and psychological strains from being on strike for so long, violence and hostility from scab workers on the picket line, and threats of being permanen...

After spending the past year and a half socially distancing, millions around the country will be coming together to celebrate the holidays this year with a renewed appreciation for seeing and being with loved ones. For those who are locked away in prisons and jails, however, the dehumanizing separation from family, friends, and community will continue. Having spent 44 years as a political prisoner...

2021 has been a pivotal year for the labor movement. As we have covered extensively here at TRNN, through strikes, unionization campaigns, protest actions, and record numbers of people quitting their jobs, workers across sectors are showing a level of assertiveness and increased militancy that we haven’t seen in decades. How far will this “labor awakening” go? How do we harness the rank-and-file e...

Starbucks is the world’s largest coffeehouse chain and one of the most recognizable consumer brands in existence. In the US alone, Starbucks has nearly 9,000 corporate-owned stores, and not a single one of them is unionized … until now. After leading an organizing campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic and facing tireless efforts by the company to delay, deflate, and defeat union elections with the...

In 2014, at the age of 15, Prakash Churaman was arrested at his home at 6AM without a warrant. After driving him around for a few hours, police brought Churaman to the 113th Precinct and, as Churaman and his attorney maintain, coerced a confession out of him for a crime he did not commit. As reported in the Queens Daily Eagle, “Prosecutors say Churaman was one of the gunmen in a robbery gone wrong...

Yes, we all have a certain nostalgic attachment to the Harry Potter series and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But let’s be honest: It’s a little odd that children are offered up as sacrifices in JK Rowling’s magical world, that they’re expected to save everybody, and that everyone is just kind of fine with that arrangement. However, in the first two installments of her celebrated Scho...

In 1974, the population of Hortonville, Wisconsin, was around 1,500, and yet it became the site of one of the most contentious and consequential teachers’ strikes in the state’s history. In the end, over 80 striking educational staff members in the Hortonville district were fired by an intransigent school board, and the strike itself ripped the community in two. With teachers and their supporters...

“After years of hypocrisy and bungled forecasts of doom, the budget deficit no longer provokes panic,” economist Max Sawicky recently wrote in In These Times. “The elites need a new bogeyman, otherwise Congress might actually spend us into happiness. Now, the new monster in the closet is Inflation.” With all eyes on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which would entail massive and sorel...

Back in the spring, we spoke with three graduate student workers at Columbia University who were on strike with the Student Workers of Columbia union, UAW Local 2110. After rank-and-file members rejected the tentative agreement between the university and the bargaining committee, negotiations continued. However, Columbia has still failed to meet key demands, including better wages, dental and visi...

According to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, even though they have doubts about its administration, fairness, and usefulness as a crime deterrent, most Americans today still support the death penalty. Moreover, while it may seem like a brutal relic of a bygone era, capital punishment is still legal in 24 states, for the federal government, and for the military. As John Gramlich writes, “...

People around the world watched expectantly as global leaders convened at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13. And many around the world were left angry and disillusioned when the conference seemed to culminate in a lot of sincere-sounding rhetoric, empty promises, and unenforceable measures from the world’s worst po...

In the years following the Great Recession, Republican Gov. Scott Walker led an all-out assault on unions and public sector workers in Wisconsin. In response, teachers, students, farmers, and workers of all stripes descended on the state Capitol, engaging in one of the largest sustained protest actions in US history, now known as the Wisconsin Uprising. When the dust settled, however, Walker and t...

What role does fiction have to play in the class struggle? Should the left be making a stronger case for the political importance of reading literature? In this special Working People episode, which has been months in the making, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez talks with writer and editor Sarah Lazare about her novel Testimony, which she co-authored with her late father, Peter Lazare. Te...

After spending nearly half a century in prison, leftist revolutionaries and political prisoners David Gilbert and Russell Maroon Shoatz (who also spent 22 years in solitary confinement) were released earlier this year. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Charles Hopkins, better known as Mansa Musa, about the historic occasion of Gilbert and Shoatz...

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters just held a pivotal leadership election that will set a new course for one of the most storied unions in existence. The election officially marked the end of the Hoffa era—James P. Hoffa, son of Jimmy Hoffa, retired as Teamsters General President. In a major shift that will have significant ripple effects within the Teamsters and the labor movement writ l...

Even with majorities in both the House and Senate, conservative Democrats fought and removed parts of the Build Back Better plan that were wildly popular with voters—voters who elected Democrats expecting them to deliver things like paid leave, universal pre-K, and expanded Medicare coverage. As those voters continue to face real struggles, what options do they have when their representatives won’...

In 2017, Ismail Ziada filed a civil suit at the District Court of the Hague against former Israeli military leaders Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel for their role in a 2014 strike—part of the Israeli offensive in Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge—which killed six of Ziada's family members. In 2020, the court dismissed Ziada’s civil suit, arguing that, as agents of the state, Gantz and Eshel enjoy...