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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 Maximillian Alvarez joins Rattling the Bars for a discussion on the history of May Day, and how the persecution of organizers in the wake of the Haymarket Massacre highlights the importance of extending solidarity from the labor movement to the fight to abolish the prison industrial complex.
Click here to read the transcript
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
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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 faced cuts to their health insurance, threats to lose tuition remissions, and more. Nevertheless, TUGSA persevered, winning a new contract that raised wages and eliminated Temple's wage-tier system for graduate student-workers in different departments. Although the new contract doesn't meet TUGSA's maximal demands, the mettle and commitment displayed by student-worker organizers offers a bright spot with important lessons for the labor wave roiling academic institutions across the country. Vince Quiles, lead organizer of Home Depot United Philadelphia, interviews TUGSA strike captain Josh Stern to learn more about the story of the Temple University strike.
Click here to read the transcript
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
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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 Obama years, Congressional sparring over the debt ceiling was a favored Republican tactic to obstruct their opposition's agenda. Under the Trump administration, the debt ceiling was suspended, allowing federal deficits to explode by some $7.8 trillion—$2 trillion of which went to tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthiest individuals alone. Now, the GOP has returned to its selective handwringing over the debt ceiling. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's latest plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, could have disastrous consequences for average people while once again lining the pockets of the rich. Karen Dolan of the Institute for Policy Studies joins the Marc Steiner Show to explain the current debt ceiling fight and how it could impact your wallet.
Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
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On Apr. 27, 2022, Houston police officer Shane Privette shot and killed Jalen Randle within seconds of pulling him over. Body camera footage clearly shows that Jalen was shot before he had an opportunity to raise his hands in surrender. Jalen had a warrant out for his arrest at the time, but he was unarmed and made no threats to the arresting officers.
For months, city officials made no public moves regarding Jalen's case. But the Randle family was determined not to allow their son's death to be swept under the rug. After months of protests, a Grand Jury served an indictment against Officer Shane Privette. As of Apr. 26, 2023, the case is being handed over to a new Grand Jury after the previous one decided to take no action.
Jalen's parents, Warren Randle and Tiffany Rachal, speak with The Real News about their son's life and unjust death. They remember a young man whose caring spirit was evident from childhood, and reinforced in adulthood after becoming a father. This interview was recorded prior to the Apr. 26th announcement of no action from the Grand Jury.
Click here to read the transcript: https://therealnews.com/my-son-has-made-me-a-better-person-even-in-his-death-parents-of-jalen-randle-remember-their-son
Production: Nelly Cardoso, Michael Ma
Post-Production: Michael Ma
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In a special 'George Floyd Memorial Lecture' hosted by the University of Houston, historian Robin D.G. Kelley draws links between the 2020 uprisings and the 2001 rebellion in Cincinnati against the police killing of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old unarmed Black man.
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The train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio catapulted the degraded condition of the US's freight rail network into national consciousness. But workers have been sounding the alarm for years. Long hours, short staffs, poor sick leave, and dangerously extended trains have raised the risks inherent in railroad operations for workers and the public in order to fatten the profit margins of corporate rail carriers. While the Department of Transportation has called for stricter regulation in the wake of East Palestine and other recent disasters, rank-and-file workers say it's not enough. The problem is not simply one of inadequate regulation, but the power of private, profit-driven interests to shape what is ultimately public infrastructure. Thus comes the call to nationalize the railroads. But how might this be accomplished, and how effectively can it solve the problems plaguing the rail system today? Journalist and professor Kari Lyderson and former Railroad Workers United General Secretary Ron Kaminkow join TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez to discuss current issues in the US rail system, and the potential solutions nationalization could offer.
Kari Lyderson is a Chicago-based journalist, author and assistant professor at Northwestern University, where she leads the investigative specialization at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. She is the author of numerous books, including Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago's 99% and Closing the Cloud Factories: Lessons from the Fight to Shut Down Chicago’s Coal Plants.
Until recently, Ron Kaminow served as General Secretary of Railroad Workers United. Prior to hiring out as a brakeman with Conrail in 1996, he served as President of AFSCME Local 634 in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2005, Kaminkow helped to found Railroad Operating Crafts United (ROCU), an RWU predecessor. A former brakeman, conductor, and engineer for Conrail and later NS in Chicago, he formerly worked for Amtrak in Milwaukee and Chicago. He currently is working as an Amtrak engineer in Reno, Nevada, where he is the Vice President of BLET Local 51.
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Adam Coley
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Read the transcript and show notes for this episode: https://therealnews.com/umich-docks-pay-calls-cops-on-striking-grad-students
Graduate student-workers at the University of Michigan are still on strike after hitting the picket line for the second time in three years at the end of March. In the time between the Fall 2020 and Winter 2023 strikes, according to the union, the gap between graduate workers' average pay and the cost of living in Ann Arbor has tripled. Facing a cost-of-living crisis and fighting for a slate of core demands—from a living wage and affordable childcare to better protections for international students, access to gender-affirming healthcare, and the creation of an unarmed, non-police emergency response unit on campus—graduate workers are not backing down. Meanwhile, University of Michigan President Santa Ono and the upper-level administration have continued with their attempts to break the strike through the courts and even had the cops called on striking graduates when they confronted Ono about UM's handling of the strike. In this mini-cast, a follow-up to our March 31 report at the beginning of the strike, we are joined once again by Alejo Stark, a grad worker and rank-and-file member of GEO, to give listeners an update on where things currently stand and how you can help.
Disclaimer: Max is a former GEO member and earned his PhDs from the University of Michigan.
Post-Production: Jules Taylor
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Read the transcript and show notes for this episode: https://therealnews.com/kayla-denker-speaks-out-against-death-threats-transphobic-backlash
Kayla Denker is a military veteran and a trained archaeologist who has worked in the private sector and for the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. She is also a trans woman living in America, and every day she navigates the difficult and increasingly dangerous terrain of living her life as an out trans person—estrangement from unaccepting family, hostile encounters in public, and a growing right-wing political crusade hellbent on scapegoating LGBTQ+ people as the ultimate evil and the source of society's ills, stripping them of their rights, and outwardly calling for the elimination of trans people from society.
Until recently, Kayla was working for the Forest Service, doing a job she loved. On March 5, however, after conservative commentator Michael Knowles openly proclaimed at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4 that "transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely," Kayla posted a short video online featuring herself loading an assault rifle she legally owns accompanied by the following text: "While advocating just for trans people to 'arm ourselves' is not any kind of solution to the genocide we are facing, I do want to say that if you transphobes do try to come for me I'm taking a few of you with me." Then, weeks later, on March 27, Aiden Hale, who identified as a transgender man, murdered three children and three adults in a mass school shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, where Aiden had been a student. In the wake of the Nashville shooting, rightwing and tabloid media outlets and prominent social media accounts began to furiously recirculate Kayla's video, lying about the origins of the video and, instead, painting a fabricated, fear-mongering narrative that connected her and Hale to a supposed network of violent and "militant transgender activists." Immediately, Kayla's life was turned upside down—she has been flooded with death threats and, last week, she was fired from the Forest Service. In this episode, we talk with Kayla about her life and work, the events of the past two months, and the reality of being a trans person in the US today.
Post-Production: Jules Taylor
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Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/us-marshals-swat-bully-alzheimers-patient-into-warrantless-search
Lance Thornton was sitting at his home in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the morning of March 12, 2023, when US Marshals, Pennsylvania State Police, and a SWAT team appeared at his door demanding to be let in. The officers were responding to the recent shooting of two state troopers—but they had the wrong man, and moreover, didn't even have a warrant. Despite Thornton having early-onset dementia and therefore being legally unable to consent to a search, the officers raided his home anyway. Police Accountability Report delves into the case, investigating the flimsy pretext for the raid and why a judge refused to sign off on the warrant.
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