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Transcript

Toxic Avengers: America’s Poisoned and Abandoned Communities Must Stand Together or Die · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Ah, I got work, oh right. Welcome every one to
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Speaker 1: Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams and
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Speaker 1: struggles of the working class today. Working People is a
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Speaker 1: proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and has
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Speaker 1: brought to you in partnership within These Times magazine and
0:22
Speaker 1: the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules
0:25
Speaker 1: Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners just
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Speaker 1: like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez, and we've got
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Speaker 1: a really special episode for y'all today. What you're about
0:36
Speaker 1: to hear is a conversation that I recorded with a
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Speaker 1: truly amazing panel of folks who were all together in
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Speaker 1: person in the same place for the Railroad Workers United
0:46
Speaker 1: convention that took place in Chicago in June. And these
0:50
Speaker 1: conventions happen every two years and they always overlap with
0:54
Speaker 1: the Labor Notes conference that has always taken place at
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Speaker 1: the same hotel in Rosemont, Chicago. Many of you who
1:01
Speaker 1: listened to this were probably there this year. And this
1:03
Speaker 1: is actually the third r WU convention and Labor Notes
1:07
Speaker 1: that I've attended. The first time was back in twenty
1:10
Speaker 1: twenty two, then in twenty twenty four, and now in
1:14
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. You know, back in June of twenty
1:16
Speaker 1: twenty two, the RWU convention that I attended was pretty small.
1:21
Speaker 1: Railroad workers and I were talking excitedly then about the
1:25
Speaker 1: possibility of a national railroad strike and that would become
1:29
Speaker 1: a major news story later in the year. But since then,
1:33
Speaker 1: as we know, President Joe Biden and both parties in
1:36
Speaker 1: Congress crushed the potential rail strike in December of twenty
1:39
Speaker 1: twenty two, shoving contracts down workers' throats and basically giving
1:44
Speaker 1: the giant rail companies everything that they wanted. And then
1:48
Speaker 1: just two months later, the avoidable and unforgivable Norfolk Southern
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Speaker 1: train derailment and chemical disaster occurred in the small town
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Speaker 1: of East Palestine, Ohio. And out of these twin catastrophe
2:00
Speaker 1: it became just so horrifyingly clear how stacked the deck
2:05
Speaker 1: is in this country for corporations in their Wall Street shareholders.
2:09
Speaker 1: It became clear just how much the government today, along
2:13
Speaker 1: with our whole legal system and a lot of the media,
2:17
Speaker 1: exists to basically protect the profits of private industry at
2:21
Speaker 1: the expense of the public, our health, our lives, and
2:24
Speaker 1: our livelihoods. And it has become clearer day after day,
2:29
Speaker 1: year after year, that nothing is going to change unless
2:33
Speaker 1: poor and working class residents of different sacrifice zones, different
2:37
Speaker 1: poisoned communities, workers and unions who were on the front
2:41
Speaker 1: lines of the industries that are poisoning US. Environmental justice groups,
2:46
Speaker 1: scientific communities, and scientists, journalists, and all of the people
2:50
Speaker 1: who have a stake in this fight start coming together,
2:54
Speaker 1: start banding together, and start fighting back together. And as
2:58
Speaker 1: you'll hear in this conversation, and as I saw first
3:02
Speaker 1: hand at the railroad Workers United conference, that is exactly
3:06
Speaker 1: what is starting to happen. I'm here at the twenty
3:10
Speaker 1: twenty six railroad Workers United convention being held in Chicago, Illinois,
3:14
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting at a table full of incredible people
3:17
Speaker 1: who are all in the same place at the same time,
3:19
Speaker 1: and I'm going to explain to you who they are
3:21
Speaker 1: really quick by telling you how I got to know
3:23
Speaker 1: them so first.
3:25
Speaker 2: To my right.
3:26
Speaker 1: Real News network viewers and listeners will remember Jeff Kurtz
3:28
Speaker 1: from railroad Workers United, veteran railroad worker who was talking
3:32
Speaker 1: us through in twenty twenty two all the crises, long
3:35
Speaker 1: building crises on the freight rail system, on the labor side,
3:40
Speaker 1: on the supply chain side, the Wall Street takeover of
3:43
Speaker 1: this massive industry, creating record profits, but creating you know,
3:48
Speaker 1: like hazards everywhere for our communities and you know, like
3:51
Speaker 1: unendurable jobs for workers on the rails. Then, as we
3:55
Speaker 1: all know, in twenty twenty two, in December Biden, President
4:00
Speaker 1: Biden and both parties in Congress conspired to break the
4:03
Speaker 1: potential railroad strike, the first that we had potentially seen
4:06
Speaker 1: in decades. Two months after that, without anything fundamentally changing
4:10
Speaker 1: on the railroads, the Norfolk Southern train derailment and catastrophic
4:15
Speaker 1: chemical disaster took place in East Palestine, Ohio, affecting the
4:18
Speaker 1: areas all around there on the Ohio and Pennsylvania side.
4:22
Speaker 1: And that is how, of course I met Jamie Wallace,
4:25
Speaker 1: who is from East Palestine, lives right next to the
4:28
Speaker 1: derailment site, and here three years later, is still fighting
4:31
Speaker 1: for her community and has founded the Chemically Impacted Communities Coalition,
4:35
Speaker 1: and was out here speaking at the Railroad United Workers
4:38
Speaker 1: United conference. Then after East Palestine and reporting on that,
4:42
Speaker 1: I came to meet doctor Nicole Fabricant, whose work in
4:45
Speaker 1: South Baltimore is legendary and she has been working as
4:50
Speaker 1: a researcher on the toxic pollution of communities in Baltimore
4:54
Speaker 1: poor black, brown, white, working class communities predominantly in South
4:59
Speaker 1: Baltimore in Curtis Bay and the surrounding areas, and the
5:03
Speaker 1: main polluter in that area is a another rail company, CSX,
5:08
Speaker 1: and so doctor Fabricant and I teamed up after she
5:11
Speaker 1: learned about East Palestine and I learned about her work,
5:14
Speaker 1: and then that led us to finding out about all
5:18
Speaker 1: these other toxic disasters crashes, spills, explosions, leakages that are
5:25
Speaker 1: affecting working class communities all over this country. And then
5:28
Speaker 1: we learned about the work of the incredible Scott Smith,
5:31
Speaker 1: who goes to all of these communities and is asked
5:35
Speaker 1: to come and test the soil and water and to
5:38
Speaker 1: look for the things the EPA isn't and often he
5:41
Speaker 1: is finding things the EPA is not looking for, but
5:43
Speaker 1: they are telling residents aren't there. And Scott has told
5:46
Speaker 1: us that he would not be able to be doing
5:48
Speaker 1: all of that work without the incredible support of Leslie
5:51
Speaker 1: Pacey and all the folks at the Government Accountability Project,
5:54
Speaker 1: and she is here with us as well. So I'm
5:57
Speaker 1: going to shut up because that's as quick of an
5:59
Speaker 1: intro as I and give to this incredible table of superheroes.
6:02
Speaker 1: And I wanted to just sort of jump in and ask, like,
6:06
Speaker 1: first and foremost, what does it mean that we are
6:08
Speaker 1: all here sitting at this table together? And Jeff, I'm
6:11
Speaker 1: gonna start with you because so much of this started
6:14
Speaker 1: with the railroad struggle.
6:15
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, So take it away.
6:17
Speaker 3: What we're doing here all together is we're stronger together.
6:23
Speaker 3: You know, when I first met Nikki, we've started working
6:29
Speaker 3: on some of her projects, and I think we've made
6:32
Speaker 3: a lot of headway. I met Jamie through the derailment
6:38
Speaker 3: in East Palestine, and believe me, when I took a
6:42
Speaker 3: look at the NTSB report from what happened to them,
6:47
Speaker 3: it raised all kinds of questions in red flags, which
6:51
Speaker 3: led me to Leslie Pacey.
6:54
Speaker 2: Leslie is filed a FOYA for me.
6:57
Speaker 3: We are I think I asked eight specific questions and
7:02
Speaker 3: it will be really interesting to see how the FOYA
7:06
Speaker 3: comes out and how all these questions are answered. And
7:10
Speaker 3: then just recently I met Scott and seeing the work
7:13
Speaker 3: that Scott does is just incredible. So it really is
7:18
Speaker 3: it's just all of us together doing the work, and
7:21
Speaker 3: I think we all make each other better.
7:23
Speaker 1: And I wanted to just ask you to go a
7:25
Speaker 1: little farther when it comes to, you know, the struggle
7:29
Speaker 1: of railroad workers on the rails, Like what does it
7:32
Speaker 1: mean for railroad workers United Union members on the rails?
7:36
Speaker 1: You know, like, given everything that we talked about, you know,
7:38
Speaker 1: four years ago, and so little of the conditions on
7:42
Speaker 1: the rails has changed in a good way, Like, what
7:44
Speaker 1: does it mean for railroad workers struggles to be sitting
7:47
Speaker 1: here at this table with these other folks.
7:50
Speaker 2: Well, what it means is.
7:53
Speaker 3: One of the things that we've talked about, me and
7:56
Speaker 3: Mark Burrells from RWU is the fact that there's a
8:01
Speaker 3: mystique around railroad work, and as workers, we have not
8:05
Speaker 3: been very good about informing the public of how that
8:10
Speaker 3: work is done. And with the help of these people,
8:14
Speaker 3: it's much easier. We can get information from the government
8:18
Speaker 3: that we could never get before knowing these people, So
8:23
Speaker 3: that helps our struggle so much more. And then without
8:26
Speaker 3: lets like you, we can get to the general public
8:29
Speaker 3: and we can remove the veil of that mystique and
8:33
Speaker 3: we can let people know that this stuff is happening
8:36
Speaker 3: right under your nose.
8:37
Speaker 2: It's dangerous. It doesn't need to happen.
8:40
Speaker 1: Well, and Jamie, you know like you of course, you know,
8:43
Speaker 1: like are from East Palestine, Ohio. The trained derailment happened
8:48
Speaker 1: in February of twenty twenty three. You know, there's a
8:51
Speaker 1: sign behind me with Railroad Workers United insigny on it
8:54
Speaker 1: that says, fix the hazards, don't blame the victims. I
8:58
Speaker 1: wanted to ask, like again, what it means for you
9:00
Speaker 1: and the struggle of you and your neighbors in East
9:02
Speaker 1: Palestine to be here at this conference, but also what
9:06
Speaker 1: that message, you know, means for all of us today.
9:09
Speaker 4: I feel like the rail workers have been screaming about
9:13
Speaker 4: the issues with the safety, the precision scheduling, and even
9:17
Speaker 4: being a track side community. You know, I didn't know
9:20
Speaker 4: that that was going on. I don't know if I
9:22
Speaker 4: closed my eyes to it or you know, what the
9:25
Speaker 4: issue was. And now that my eyes have been opened,
9:28
Speaker 4: you know, I say over and over that this derailment
9:31
Speaker 4: did not start when that axle caught on fire. It
9:34
Speaker 4: started with the culture of safety at Norfolk Southern. So
9:40
Speaker 4: coming here and hearing from the railroad workers, hearing some
9:43
Speaker 4: of how things work you know, it made me be
9:48
Speaker 4: able to understand the things that happened in East Palestine.
9:51
Speaker 4: And I feel very strongly that the rail workers have
9:54
Speaker 4: the same interest as track side communities. You know, at
9:57
Speaker 4: the end of the day, if they're not safe, we're
10:01
Speaker 4: not safe. You know, these workers know what they're talking about.
10:04
Speaker 4: They're the ones that do the jobs. And if we
10:07
Speaker 4: don't all come together and fight, more East Palestines are
10:11
Speaker 4: going to happen, you know, and maybe even worse than
10:15
Speaker 4: East Palestine.
10:16
Speaker 1: And could you just say a little more for folks
10:19
Speaker 1: watching and listening, like what the state of things is
10:22
Speaker 1: in East Palestine that you continue to advocate for and
10:25
Speaker 1: lift up.
10:26
Speaker 5: For the public.
10:27
Speaker 4: Now, we're starting to see a lot of long term
10:29
Speaker 4: illness in the community. I had gone to DC and
10:32
Speaker 4: just kind of took ahead count of people that I
10:34
Speaker 4: know that had cancer, either personally that reached out to
10:38
Speaker 4: me or I saw on Facebook. We have sixty four
10:41
Speaker 4: people right now just that I know of with cancer
10:44
Speaker 4: and our small community, and of those, thirteen are brain cancer.
10:49
Speaker 4: And that's just the cancer. We're not talking about all
10:51
Speaker 4: the respiratory issues, all the neurological issues. You know, we're
10:55
Speaker 4: seeing a lot of the same symptoms that our golf
10:58
Speaker 4: war vets saw when they came back from the Gulf
11:01
Speaker 4: War after being exposed to the chemical burn pits. So,
11:05
Speaker 4: you know, people think this disaster is over, This disaster
11:09
Speaker 4: is still ongoing. We're still fighting. And I can't think
11:14
Speaker 4: journalists enough. I always say this, like you save lives,
11:18
Speaker 4: you don't know the power that you hold in your hands.
11:21
Speaker 4: Because I've always felt like creating awareness was the only
11:25
Speaker 4: way to win. I can't make myself believe that people
11:28
Speaker 4: wouldn't care if they didn't know what was happening in
11:31
Speaker 4: our community.
11:32
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that means a lot to me coming
11:36
Speaker 1: from you, and I will, you know, return the favor
11:38
Speaker 1: and say I have nothing to cover if residents like
11:41
Speaker 1: yourselves are not willing to talk. And you know, your
11:44
Speaker 1: voice is an extremely powerful one and people listen. And
11:47
Speaker 1: I think you are a dedicated fighter for your community.
11:50
Speaker 2: And it's an honor to know you and everyone at
11:52
Speaker 2: this table.
11:53
Speaker 1: Even though the most tragic, horrific and infuriating of circumstances
11:57
Speaker 1: brought us together and in that vein, you know, I
12:00
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, bring Scott and Leslie in here
12:03
Speaker 1: and ask, you know, like the kind of work you
12:06
Speaker 1: know that y'all have been doing before East Palestine, and
12:10
Speaker 1: then how East Palestine drew you into this struggle, and
12:13
Speaker 1: also if East Palestine has kind of changed the nature
12:16
Speaker 1: of the work that you've been doing.
12:18
Speaker 5: East Palestine was a defining moment.
12:21
Speaker 6: Actually, I was on the fence about going there because
12:23
Speaker 6: I was watching it from a distance, and Courtney Miller,
12:29
Speaker 6: who unfortunately passed away from the train to railment and
12:33
Speaker 6: everything she went through, reached out to me and was
12:38
Speaker 6: Twitter at the time now X.
12:40
Speaker 5: Begging me to test her water.
12:42
Speaker 6: And I go into communities, I don't solicit anybody. They
12:46
Speaker 6: reach out to me on social media. Then when I
12:47
Speaker 6: got there, she messaged me on February seventeenth, called Independent
12:53
Speaker 6: Certified Lab and had all my coolers and sampling gear
12:56
Speaker 6: there on February twenty second, got there, and that's when
12:59
Speaker 6: I realized this was unlike any other any other disaster
13:03
Speaker 6: i'd pend do because I put my gear on one
13:05
Speaker 6: in the creek and within a few minutes I had
13:09
Speaker 6: a Norfolk Southern contractor coming out of the woods.
13:11
Speaker 5: You've probably seen that video coming out of the woods.
13:14
Speaker 6: Who are you? We need to know everything about you?
13:16
Speaker 6: And in that video I have a little fun back.
13:18
Speaker 6: I say, you need to talk to my public information officer.
13:21
Speaker 5: I can't tell you who I am.
13:22
Speaker 1: Well in the gall of like them walking onto a
13:25
Speaker 1: private residence and saying, you need to tell me who
13:28
Speaker 1: you are. I'm Norfolk Southern and it's like, fuck you, buddy,
13:32
Speaker 1: who are you?
13:33
Speaker 5: Yeah? And that's what I did.
13:34
Speaker 6: And one thing led to another, and now I'm thirty
13:38
Speaker 6: four trips and thirty eight rounds of testing and still
13:42
Speaker 6: going back and East Palestine is a defining moment. Then
13:46
Speaker 6: I meet Jamie and you know, into the ground in
13:50
Speaker 6: the creeks. I have never seen such blatant choir call
13:54
Speaker 6: it corporate capture, corruption that you watched the EPA just
13:58
Speaker 6: be the absolute public relations.
14:01
Speaker 5: Arm for the billion dollar in Norfolk Southern.
14:04
Speaker 6: So I dug my heels and stood on principle and
14:07
Speaker 6: this was a fight worth having.
14:09
Speaker 1: Well again beautifully and powerfully put and like you know,
14:14
Speaker 1: we're only even scratching the surface here, right, I mean,
14:17
Speaker 1: because let's again, Leslie bring you in here and visa
14:22
Speaker 1: viva the EPA and the sort of you know, really
14:26
Speaker 1: increasingly visible tension between you know, what many people trusted
14:32
Speaker 1: as a government agency that was there to protect them
14:34
Speaker 1: and tell them whether or not it was safe to
14:36
Speaker 1: go back home, whether or not they were being exposed
14:38
Speaker 1: to anything unsafe.
14:40
Speaker 2: Was telling residents like Jamie.
14:42
Speaker 1: It's safe, and then Scott finds evidence that it's not,
14:50
Speaker 1: and then among other things, they start trying to discredit
14:52
Speaker 1: and surveill Scott for telling that. So like, talk to
14:55
Speaker 1: us about how you came into this struggle and what
14:58
Speaker 1: East Palestina sort of meant for the work that you
15:00
Speaker 1: do at Government Accountability Project.
15:02
Speaker 7: Absolutely, thank you, Max. So we got involved in East
15:06
Speaker 7: Palestine because we were kind of watching it, like Scott
15:09
Speaker 7: from Afar, and we would see where they wouldn't test
15:12
Speaker 7: for dioxin in East Palestine. EPA was resisting. There were
15:16
Speaker 7: over one hundred environmental groups that wanted it done. There
15:20
Speaker 7: was multiple lawmakers asking for this media residence, and they
15:25
Speaker 7: wouldn't do it. And simultaneously, we already had Scott in
15:30
Speaker 7: the community and he was doing the testing and he
15:32
Speaker 7: was finding high levels of dioxin in some of his
15:36
Speaker 7: testing samples. So it really peaked our interest as to well,
15:39
Speaker 7: what's going on. I actually and this is unconventional, but
15:42
Speaker 7: reached out to Scott and said, what's going on over there?
15:45
Speaker 7: Because generally, you know, with government Accountability project or a
15:49
Speaker 7: whistleblower organization, and we tend to work with civil servants
15:53
Speaker 7: or people that work for the government agencies, or contractors
15:57
Speaker 7: or corporate whistleblowers. Scott's a little bit different. He's a
16:01
Speaker 7: private citizen. But he was doing something that no one
16:04
Speaker 7: has done before, which is go into these communities and
16:07
Speaker 7: get all the receipts from the soil, the water. He
16:11
Speaker 7: was testing furnace filters and it really provided an opportunity
16:16
Speaker 7: for us for transparency, and so that's where it all started.
16:20
Speaker 7: Now we have about eight whistleblowers that have come aboard
16:24
Speaker 7: from lots of different walks of life, but generally speaking
16:28
Speaker 7: they're scientists and our work has just grown from there.
16:34
Speaker 7: So the way when I talk to people about this,
16:37
Speaker 7: I say, Okay, what is so interesting and important about
16:40
Speaker 7: East Palestine? Because we have disasters all the time and
16:43
Speaker 7: it's getting worse, but East Palestine is so important because
16:46
Speaker 7: the scope of the disaster. Here you have the EPA
16:50
Speaker 7: going against forty years of its own statutes to detonate
16:55
Speaker 7: a carcinogen and we later find out of course that
16:58
Speaker 7: they didn't need to do that, so they're basically an
17:00
Speaker 7: accomplice to the crime. And it's sort of a microcosm
17:05
Speaker 7: of these disasters everywhere, but it's on a very, very
17:08
Speaker 7: large scale. It has unprecedented federal agency involvement, and we
17:15
Speaker 7: think the cover up has been unprecedented. It's not that
17:18
Speaker 7: there's not these playbook situations where the corporations lock hands
17:22
Speaker 7: with their agencies and they make decisions together, but the
17:27
Speaker 7: scale at which the deception occurred in East Palestine and
17:31
Speaker 7: the harm that that deception has caused is really it's
17:35
Speaker 7: off the charts in terms of, like, you know, one
17:38
Speaker 7: of the worst things we've ever seen in our lifetimes. Yeah,
17:42
Speaker 7: and to answer your question, sorry about that. About the EPA,
17:46
Speaker 7: so you know they were coming out the gate pretty early.
17:50
Speaker 7: What is you were out for two days, for maybe
17:53
Speaker 7: two full days of.
17:54
Speaker 8: Less than forty eight hours.
17:55
Speaker 4: After they blew up that looked like an atomic bomb,
17:58
Speaker 4: they told us it was safe to come home.
18:00
Speaker 7: Yep, they told everybody it was safe to come home.
18:02
Speaker 7: They had not tested a single home for toxins, and
18:07
Speaker 7: so they allowed all these people to come back in
18:11
Speaker 7: and get sick. And you know, our government really has
18:15
Speaker 7: been telling why after lie, which we're starting to piece
18:17
Speaker 7: together with these whistleblowers, between Scott's testing and some of
18:21
Speaker 7: our other whistleblowers that have shown that they didn't do
18:25
Speaker 7: the things they were supposed to do with flying the
18:28
Speaker 7: chemical sensing airplane, turning chemical sensors off over contaminated creeks.
18:33
Speaker 7: It's just to have been one thing after another, the
18:36
Speaker 7: plastic bags, using plastic bags to collect diox and samples.
18:40
Speaker 7: So there's multiple ways, like I say, eight ways to
18:43
Speaker 7: Sunday in which they've gained the system with the testing
18:45
Speaker 7: and sampling, and so it's all been very interesting. We're
18:50
Speaker 7: kind of really understanding now how these lies come about,
18:54
Speaker 7: how they're able to do them.
18:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's it really is, you know, like headspinning
19:01
Speaker 1: for anyone who you know, trusted their government, like you know,
19:06
Speaker 1: many of us at this table at one point in
19:08
Speaker 1: our lives, right, and to think growing up that the
19:12
Speaker 1: EPA was there to you know, like protect us from
19:16
Speaker 1: the pollution of companies like Norfolk Southern. And then I'm
19:20
Speaker 1: watching this catastrophe unfold and it's like the EPA and
19:23
Speaker 1: the emergency response teams and everyone is answering to Norfolk
19:27
Speaker 1: Southern and like it's like they're directing everything they're They're
19:31
Speaker 1: not like doing this out of the public safety concerns,
19:35
Speaker 1: They're doing it out of like the corporate concerns. And
19:38
Speaker 1: like it was really harrowing to see, and that brings
19:41
Speaker 1: us like kind of perfectly if not, you know, like
19:44
Speaker 1: horrifically doctor fabricant to the work that you've been doing.
19:47
Speaker 1: You know, like about the just rampant decades long, centuries long,
19:52
Speaker 1: generations long, you know, corporate pollution of poor and working
19:57
Speaker 1: class communities in Baltimore and beyond.
20:00
Speaker 9: So when about four years ago CSX they had a
20:07
Speaker 9: coal silo that is part of their export peer in
20:11
Speaker 9: Curtis Bay. When it exploded, it was a wake up
20:16
Speaker 9: call to the community. And I think many youth pass
20:20
Speaker 9: a lot of these industrial facilities on their way to
20:23
Speaker 9: school and it's very naturalized, and they often say, I
20:26
Speaker 9: didn't even know that coal creates harm to respiratory health
20:32
Speaker 9: or to lungs.
20:33
Speaker 10: We had no idea. We just it's a part of
20:35
Speaker 10: our landscape. But when it exploded, it raised.
20:39
Speaker 9: A lot of questions in the community of why are
20:42
Speaker 9: there so many toxic facilities in this one area. How
20:46
Speaker 9: can they How is a coal export peer one thousand
20:50
Speaker 9: feet from a recreation center? Why should children be playing
20:53
Speaker 9: on slides that are filled with cold dust?
20:57
Speaker 10: And they wanted answers.
20:58
Speaker 9: They wanted answers from scientists, especially, It's where I've come
21:03
Speaker 9: to realize like the social science is not as useful,
21:06
Speaker 9: because they wanted data and data hard numbers that could
21:10
Speaker 9: be used to hold CSX accountable. And so a team
21:13
Speaker 9: of community based scientists came in and worked with the community.
21:18
Speaker 9: It was their questions like how far is the coal
21:20
Speaker 9: doest traveling? They wanted to know how quickly it was accumulating,
21:23
Speaker 9: where it was accumulating, And through really rigorous investigation, they
21:30
Speaker 9: were able to collect data and worked with.
21:32
Speaker 10: Our Maryland Department of the Environment. Which is interesting.
21:35
Speaker 9: Hearing the EPA, because I also don't have a lot
21:38
Speaker 9: of faith in any of these organizations to protect us,
21:41
Speaker 9: especially Maryland Department of the Environment. But they were part
21:44
Speaker 9: of an inside strategy to work with the regulatory apparatus
21:49
Speaker 9: to create a new permit that would be more stringent
21:52
Speaker 9: based upon the science. And so part of the permit
21:55
Speaker 9: was to require that they covered the coal pear, and
21:59
Speaker 9: they covered the coal trains coming in because people who
22:03
Speaker 9: live in track side communities too are experiencing all this coal.
22:07
Speaker 1: Dust, right, and just to like you know, tease out
22:10
Speaker 1: the visual and we'll use some b roll that we
22:12
Speaker 1: shot together in Curtis Bay. But like we're talking, you know,
22:15
Speaker 1: mile after mile of you know, railcars filled with coal
22:21
Speaker 1: and no covering on top, just blowing all this black,
22:24
Speaker 1: toxic dust all over these communities, and like, you know,
22:28
Speaker 1: people have it all over their homes, they're getting and
22:30
Speaker 1: their lungs. There are people walking around South Baltimore with
22:32
Speaker 1: oxygen tanks like it's just normal.
22:34
Speaker 9: And so part of our struggle was how do we
22:36
Speaker 9: build a stronger movement beyond just environmental justice and holding CSX.
22:41
Speaker 9: How do we connect with railroad workers because we wanted
22:46
Speaker 9: sort of the movement to be at the intersection of
22:51
Speaker 9: labor and these concerns about respiratory health. And that's what
22:55
Speaker 9: brought me to Railroad Workers United because CSX, many of
22:58
Speaker 9: their workers were subconscient tracked it out, many did not
23:02
Speaker 9: want to organize with us. There were questions of you know,
23:06
Speaker 9: fissures between sort of environmental justice taking jobs away from
23:11
Speaker 9: from workers, and so Railroad Workers United understood right away
23:16
Speaker 9: the questions they were asking, the kinds of safety concerns
23:20
Speaker 9: aligned with the vision we had of a worker centered
23:24
Speaker 9: kind of just transition away from coal.
23:27
Speaker 10: And that is what led me to East Palestine, was.
23:30
Speaker 9: Railroad Workers United actually and the work we were doing together.
23:34
Speaker 9: Jeff has come down multiple occasions to Curtis Bay to
23:37
Speaker 9: provide assistance, to talk to folks, to explain the ins
23:40
Speaker 9: and outs of the rail industry.
23:42
Speaker 10: How it works, precision scheduled railroading.
23:44
Speaker 11: I didn't understand it before meeting Jeff, and now really
23:49
Speaker 11: envisioning the corporatization, the cutbacks, the ways in which that
23:54
Speaker 11: has compromised the safety of workers is the very same
23:58
Speaker 11: thing compromising the safety of track side communities.
24:01
Speaker 10: And so aligning with some of.
24:04
Speaker 9: These laborers, particularly Railroad Workers United, was really essential to
24:08
Speaker 9: the movement, and Jeff Actually and others got us connected
24:15
Speaker 9: to East Palestine, and the first time we went there,
24:18
Speaker 9: I took a whole bunch of Curtis Bay organizers because
24:20
Speaker 9: it's part of like this building solidarity and having opportunities
24:25
Speaker 9: to share stories, to share struggles across regions. Earlier, Jamie
24:30
Speaker 9: talked about like our own playbook writing our own playbook,
24:33
Speaker 9: and I think that's so important because oftentimes it's the
24:36
Speaker 9: playbook of.
24:37
Speaker 10: The corporation that we're all following.
24:40
Speaker 9: Right, And when we arrived in East Palestine, I had
24:44
Speaker 9: youth organizers that were basically blown away. They were crying,
24:48
Speaker 9: you know, because they were so emotionally impacted a by
24:52
Speaker 9: what you guys had been through, but also realizing, Wow,
24:56
Speaker 9: Norfolk Southern CSX starting to put the pieces together right
25:01
Speaker 9: around just the ways in which communities health safety has
25:05
Speaker 9: been compromised for profit margins.
25:08
Speaker 1: Well, and let's let's talk about that in this sort
25:11
Speaker 1: of middle phase here, right, because I want to I
25:14
Speaker 1: want us to finish by talking about like kind of
25:16
Speaker 1: where the state of things is now, you know, across
25:20
Speaker 1: all of our respective like sides of this problem, this struggle.
25:25
Speaker 1: But before we get there, I want to focus in on, like,
25:28
Speaker 1: you know, what we have learned between February third, twenty
25:33
Speaker 1: twenty three, when the Norfolk Southern train derailed in East
25:36
Speaker 1: Palestine to now, right, what have we learned about, you know,
25:40
Speaker 1: like how the government's going to react, how you know
25:43
Speaker 1: the media is going to react, how you know the
25:45
Speaker 1: rail company is going to react, Like what residents are
25:48
Speaker 1: going to be going through. And I asked this question,
25:51
Speaker 1: you know, like not just you know, to sort of
25:54
Speaker 1: like educate, you know, folks out there who may be interested.
25:57
Speaker 1: I'm asking because, like I am living proof of the
26:00
Speaker 1: message that like this is happening everywhere, and it is
26:05
Speaker 1: going to come to your town at some point if
26:07
Speaker 1: it isn't there already. Because on Memorial Day weekend of
26:11
Speaker 1: this year, a literal nightmare that I had had before
26:15
Speaker 1: came true when after going and around and talking to
26:18
Speaker 1: residents and all these different so called sacrifice zones where
26:23
Speaker 1: industrial toxic disasters or government run sites or you know,
26:27
Speaker 1: like anything is just like leaving people abandoned to live
26:30
Speaker 1: in conditions that threaten life itself. And I kept sort
26:36
Speaker 1: of anxiously wondering if one day I was going to
26:38
Speaker 1: open the newspaper or open my phone and see my
26:41
Speaker 1: hometown there and then that's it happened in Garden Grove.
26:44
Speaker 1: My parents live, like, you know, ten minutes from the
26:46
Speaker 1: GKN Aerospace facility where the chemical tank was about to
26:52
Speaker 1: explode or threatening to explode or leak, And like that
26:56
Speaker 1: feels like such a you know, kind of full circle
26:59
Speaker 1: moment for me. If I think about who I was
27:01
Speaker 1: when I went to East Palestine, not knowing the extent
27:07
Speaker 1: of how much corporations in the government have turned so
27:12
Speaker 1: much of this country into it basically a sacrifice zone,
27:16
Speaker 1: and how many of us are being set up for
27:18
Speaker 1: sacrifice already, Like we've all got the microplastics in our blood,
27:22
Speaker 1: like you know, we've all got DuPont's chemicals running through
27:25
Speaker 1: our blood. Like I didn't know, but a lot of
27:29
Speaker 1: that started in East Palestine.
27:31
Speaker 4: I think I was like so many other people. You
27:33
Speaker 4: don't pay attention until it happens to you. I didn't
27:37
Speaker 4: even realize I lived in a sacrifice zone, because when
27:40
Speaker 4: you grow up in a sacrifice zone, you're just used
27:43
Speaker 4: to seeing it. It's part of your environment, it's part
27:45
Speaker 4: of your background.
27:46
Speaker 8: It's always been there.
27:48
Speaker 4: And I really wish I would have paid more attention
27:51
Speaker 4: when I heard of things like Flint, Michigan.
27:54
Speaker 8: EPA is there.
27:55
Speaker 4: It can't be that bad, you know, And as someone
27:57
Speaker 4: who very much trusted my government and magic woman I
28:00
Speaker 4: have a master's degree, a lot of agree I knew
28:02
Speaker 4: what the EPA did right until they said it was safe.
28:05
Speaker 4: And I put in my driveway and felt like I
28:08
Speaker 4: was going to die and saw chemicals free flowing down
28:11
Speaker 4: the creek, and it's almost taken away.
28:16
Speaker 8: My sense of reality.
28:17
Speaker 4: Like I have apologized to people that I have called
28:20
Speaker 4: conspiracy theorist, you know, because now I realize it's the truth.
28:25
Speaker 4: Maybe I was the crazy one all along.
28:28
Speaker 10: And it's not.
28:29
Speaker 4: Until you actually have to deal with one of those
28:31
Speaker 4: government agencies that you realize that if you would have
28:35
Speaker 4: talked to me about East Palestine, you know, railroad cover
28:38
Speaker 4: ups and government being owned by the railroad before the disaster,
28:43
Speaker 4: I would have been like, get this crazy guy away
28:45
Speaker 4: from me, you know. But it almost makes you feel
28:47
Speaker 4: like you've been living on a movie set your whole life,
28:49
Speaker 4: where you had this one vision of your government and
28:52
Speaker 4: this reality, you know, is completely different, and at first
28:57
Speaker 4: it really confused me. Was the granddaughter of a World
29:01
Speaker 4: War two VET marine, very proud, taught to love my country,
29:05
Speaker 4: you respect your flag, and you know, after the derailment,
29:08
Speaker 4: I looked at my flag and I'm like, how do
29:09
Speaker 4: I feel? It took me a while to separate government
29:13
Speaker 4: from my country, and I realized that I still love
29:17
Speaker 4: my country, but I hate my government.
29:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.
29:20
Speaker 6: I started twenty years ago in June June twenty eighth
29:23
Speaker 6: was my own disaster, was wiped out an oil contaminated
29:27
Speaker 6: floodwaters in a five hundred year flood in Saint John's Well,
29:30
Speaker 6: New York. Walking the streets. That's what inspired me to
29:32
Speaker 6: go in through all this, when I realized all these
29:36
Speaker 6: standards I'm relying on to declare water safe as this
29:39
Speaker 6: making the false assumption, and that water and contamination arise
29:43
Speaker 6: in equilibrium and they take something from the surface. That's
29:46
Speaker 6: when I opened my eyes and want to, you know,
29:49
Speaker 6: BP with my second disaster. That's where I met some
29:52
Speaker 6: really good scientists hit the EPA, and then I learned
29:55
Speaker 6: about and filed some patents and worked on different water
29:58
Speaker 6: testing technologies and a whole host of things.
30:00
Speaker 5: So roll forward.
30:01
Speaker 6: Seventy six is East Palestine and what has happened since
30:05
Speaker 6: East Palestine in twenty twenty three I'm now in eighty
30:07
Speaker 6: six is accelerated the rate and the pace. The way
30:12
Speaker 6: I sum it all up, though, is when I walked
30:15
Speaker 6: in and saw that sign fix the hazards. Don't blame
30:17
Speaker 6: the victims. It's the same corrupt playbook in every community
30:21
Speaker 6: with East Palestine. Blame the victims and the corporate capture
30:25
Speaker 6: EPA comes into gaslight people. It's very very clever how
30:29
Speaker 6: they do things. And for I don't know if people
30:31
Speaker 6: at the table know this. Ray Donovan. Anybody watched Ray
30:34
Speaker 6: Donovan The Fixer in Hollywood that you know the wealthy.
30:38
Speaker 6: It was a showtime series where you call Ray Donovan,
30:42
Speaker 6: you committed murder your celebrity and makes everything go away.
30:46
Speaker 5: Well.
30:47
Speaker 6: Ctch Arcadis they're the Ray Donovans of the billion dollar word.
30:51
Speaker 5: They make everything go away.
30:53
Speaker 2: Well, and say who arcadas is?
30:55
Speaker 6: Arcadis is a contractor that has been in East Palestine
31:00
Speaker 6: and has been in Dino and Florida, has been in Conyers, Georgia,
31:05
Speaker 6: and they're consistent every along with CTEH ctch is everywhere.
31:11
Speaker 6: And the first thing they do in all these communities
31:14
Speaker 6: is game the air testing. And we talked about plastic
31:18
Speaker 6: bags what I just recently uncovered and was in the
31:20
Speaker 6: news this week. Well and East Palestine, we got evidence
31:24
Speaker 6: of showing putting the plastic bags over the air detectors.
31:28
Speaker 2: So and that's the so they put plastic bags over
31:31
Speaker 2: the air detectors ziplo bags.
31:34
Speaker 1: And then the story that like you know, you ouh
31:38
Speaker 1: break this week was that they were collecting soil samples
31:41
Speaker 1: and putting them in zipp.
31:43
Speaker 3: Yeah.
31:43
Speaker 6: And the problem with that is not only do you
31:46
Speaker 6: break the chain of custody, but the semifolatile organic compounds
31:50
Speaker 6: without getting into the gory details, and the dioxids they
31:54
Speaker 6: adsorber or absorbed to the walls of the plastic. So
31:57
Speaker 6: you you you mix up the grocery store zip and
32:00
Speaker 6: then you put it in the class. You're supposed to
32:02
Speaker 6: go right into a certified glass lab.
32:05
Speaker 5: Jar from the lab.
32:07
Speaker 6: There's a reason you use glass, so you're going to
32:09
Speaker 6: get potentially a lower detection or a non detect, what
32:14
Speaker 6: I call a false non detect. But in all these communities,
32:18
Speaker 6: the first thing they do is blame the victims. They
32:21
Speaker 6: gaslight the victims. And that's what's common. It's the same
32:24
Speaker 6: playbook over and over again. But why is thesepalacing the
32:28
Speaker 6: turning point? That's where I saw the most blatant corruption
32:32
Speaker 6: and I had to stop my life and expose it
32:36
Speaker 6: and stand on principle.
32:37
Speaker 5: Hell yeah.
32:38
Speaker 1: Well, and like this question is both for Leslie and
32:44
Speaker 1: Jeff Right because it has to do with you know,
32:48
Speaker 1: those sources of whistle blowing information that we depend on.
32:52
Speaker 1: They are most often the rank and filers of government
32:54
Speaker 1: agencies of the rails who can't get the truth to
32:58
Speaker 1: the public for fear of retribution from their employer lawsuits.
33:02
Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA.
33:03
Speaker 1: Right, that is why, Jeff, you know, you were among
33:07
Speaker 1: the first railroad workers I connected with.
33:09
Speaker 2: Because I was going to say because no one else would.
33:12
Speaker 5: Talk to me.
33:15
Speaker 1: But like I learned how how afraid so many railroad
33:19
Speaker 1: workers were to even say anything on the record because
33:21
Speaker 1: of how draconian and awful their employers were, and how
33:25
Speaker 1: much they didn't want the public knowing about their greedy, awful,
33:30
Speaker 1: exploitative business practices, what that was doing to workers, and
33:35
Speaker 1: what hazards that was creating for workers and communities like ours, Like,
33:38
Speaker 1: they don't want the public knowing that stuff, but they
33:41
Speaker 1: couldn't hide it when East Palestine happened, well on the
33:45
Speaker 1: rail side.
33:46
Speaker 2: What we're doing here these these.
33:49
Speaker 3: Two days, this is this is the hope, This is
33:55
Speaker 3: what coming coming to something like this, sharing information, you know,
34:00
Speaker 3: with other railroaders, with Scott, with Leslie, with Jamie, with
34:05
Speaker 3: my good friend Nikki. I mean, this is this is
34:09
Speaker 3: how we get the word out. And this is you know,
34:11
Speaker 3: I talked about the mystique.
34:12
Speaker 2: Of railroad work. This is how we break that mystique.
34:16
Speaker 3: This is how we tell people the experts aren't the
34:21
Speaker 3: rail executives.
34:23
Speaker 2: The experts are.
34:24
Speaker 3: The people that actually operate, the locomotives that that are
34:30
Speaker 3: our maintenance of way people are signal people, the people
34:34
Speaker 3: that actually do the work out there are the experts.
34:38
Speaker 2: And this is.
34:39
Speaker 3: This is what I want to get through with with Leslie.
34:42
Speaker 3: She with her help. You know, the NTSB has been notorious.
34:48
Speaker 3: I've had my issues with the NTSB, but with her help,
34:54
Speaker 3: we can we can expose this stuff. We can finally
34:57
Speaker 3: get to the bottom of what's going on as far
35:00
Speaker 3: like operations on the railroad. And you know what they're
35:05
Speaker 3: doing with these people, they've seen the power of the railroads.
35:08
Speaker 3: This is what us workers have been dealing with. You know,
35:12
Speaker 3: I dealt with this for forty years, so you know,
35:17
Speaker 3: this is this is a great start, you know, coming
35:20
Speaker 3: here for two days and sharing stories with rail workers
35:24
Speaker 3: and non rail workers and getting together like this, I
35:28
Speaker 3: think that we're really powerful and I think we're going
35:32
Speaker 3: to scare some people.
35:33
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's very very true, and I wanted
35:37
Speaker 1: to just ask, like on the sort of the need
35:40
Speaker 1: for whistleblowers in the rail industry, Like the public doesn't
35:44
Speaker 1: know what it doesn't know, right, But I guess like
35:46
Speaker 1: another way to phrase the question to you is like,
35:49
Speaker 1: how much does the public not know about our freight
35:53
Speaker 1: rail system when it's controlled by like these mega corporations
35:57
Speaker 1: that don't have to disclose a lot because they can say, oh,
36:00
Speaker 1: it's a you know, a proprietary secret or like a
36:03
Speaker 1: competitive advantage.
36:05
Speaker 3: As far as what's on the trains, we've been the
36:11
Speaker 3: workers have been.
36:12
Speaker 2: Pretty transparent about what's on there.
36:14
Speaker 3: And the thing is when we are transparent, that's when
36:19
Speaker 3: we're in the most danger from the rail companies. And
36:24
Speaker 3: so you know, we had whistleblower laws in the two
36:28
Speaker 3: thousand and eight federal rail Safety law that came into being.
36:35
Speaker 3: But the problem with that is the corporations just ignored
36:40
Speaker 3: what they didn't what they didn't like, and there were
36:44
Speaker 3: no penalties involved. And this is one of the things
36:47
Speaker 3: that I've been trying to stress is that we need
36:51
Speaker 3: personal accountability from some of these rail execs. And I've
36:56
Speaker 3: said this to you before, but I'm going to say
36:58
Speaker 3: it again. Three were corporate death penalty. It needs to
37:03
Speaker 3: be in there. Yeah, and it needs to be in
37:07
Speaker 3: there because these people, you can see, they have no fear.
37:12
Speaker 3: They will lie, they will cheat, they will do everything.
37:15
Speaker 3: We need to put the fair God into them again.
37:19
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, I mean that's sort of the the bird's
37:26
Speaker 7: eye view. The long view of what we'd like to
37:28
Speaker 7: see change is ultimately we want to take all this
37:32
Speaker 7: information and create policy change changes in the law that
37:37
Speaker 7: will you know, impose criminal penalties jail time, because if
37:42
Speaker 7: these corporations have so much money and they know they
37:46
Speaker 7: can do whatever they want because they are working with
37:49
Speaker 7: these agencies that will give them what they want. So
37:52
Speaker 7: that's where the arrogance comes in. So if they get fined,
37:55
Speaker 7: it's nothing to them that they can recoup a lot
37:58
Speaker 7: of those losses through their insurance policies. So until people
38:02
Speaker 7: actually have to go to jail and be held actually
38:06
Speaker 7: accountable for what they're doing, Like in East Palestine, there's
38:10
Speaker 7: people have died already, People are dying. I talked to
38:14
Speaker 7: a hepco worker the other day who has stage four
38:18
Speaker 7: lung cancer. He is in hospice. And this is just
38:21
Speaker 7: one I mean, Jamie is like a clearinghouse for all
38:24
Speaker 7: the illnesses. Everybody calls Jamie and I don't know how
38:27
Speaker 7: she does it day in and day out. But he said,
38:30
Speaker 7: you know I and this is getting into the class action.
38:33
Speaker 7: But he never got any money that he was promised,
38:36
Speaker 7: and he says, I have no rights now, and so
38:38
Speaker 7: he just wants his wife to be taken care of.
38:41
Speaker 7: But because he's dying and they didn't give him any
38:45
Speaker 7: proper PPE. And that goes for the rail workers as
38:48
Speaker 7: well that have to go in and reassemble the tracks
38:50
Speaker 7: and clear all the you know, the derailed train, you know,
38:54
Speaker 7: the trains off of there. Nobody in this nobody in
38:58
Speaker 7: this disaster really was given proper PA. And that includes
39:01
Speaker 7: military people that showed up. So it is a huge
39:04
Speaker 7: crime and people are dying and anybody else. If you
39:08
Speaker 7: were in a corporation and you created a problem that
39:11
Speaker 7: killed people, you'd be in jail for that. But that's
39:15
Speaker 7: not how it works in our in our system of government.
39:18
Speaker 7: And so that's I agree with you one hundred percent.
39:20
Speaker 7: We need we also need to change the circle of laws,
39:23
Speaker 7: which you know, super fun laws, because we can't have
39:27
Speaker 7: these responsible parties. Sure they need to pay for it
39:30
Speaker 7: if they make a mess, they got to pay to
39:32
Speaker 7: clean it up. But we don't need to give them
39:34
Speaker 7: carte blanche to hire whomever they want to hire to
39:38
Speaker 7: hold all the cards, all the testing and sampling information.
39:42
Speaker 7: And the only reason they can get away with that
39:44
Speaker 7: is our laws and because the federal agencies are too
39:47
Speaker 7: afraid to go up against them.
39:50
Speaker 1: So well, and like the the the arbitrary ness of it,
39:54
Speaker 1: and like all the political football crap that gets wrapped
39:58
Speaker 1: up into it, like you know, like I said on
40:01
Speaker 1: the moment that it happened, when you know the GK
40:06
Speaker 1: and aerospace, you know, like chemical tank crisis was happening
40:09
Speaker 1: on Memorial Day weekend.
40:11
Speaker 2: Everyone thought it was going to explode or leak.
40:13
Speaker 1: And you know, Governor Gavin Newsom asked President Trump for
40:17
Speaker 1: an emergency declaration. He gives them one. We get one.
40:20
Speaker 1: Why the hell didn't East Palestine ever get one?
40:23
Speaker 2: Right?
40:23
Speaker 1: Like that makes no sense to me, And I'm from
40:25
Speaker 1: Garden Grove and I've been to East Palestine.
40:27
Speaker 2: That makes no sense. It's not right.
40:29
Speaker 1: We shouldn't accept that there shouldn't you shouldn't have to
40:31
Speaker 1: like hope that you're in the right part of the
40:33
Speaker 1: country to get you know, the minimal amount of aid
40:36
Speaker 1: that you need, and there's no even guarantee that you're
40:38
Speaker 1: going to get that. They're telling my family and people
40:41
Speaker 1: who live over there that everything's safe and fine, and
40:43
Speaker 1: they use the same goddamn air testers that they use
40:46
Speaker 1: in East Palestine.
40:46
Speaker 2: That's what Scott informed me about, the.
40:49
Speaker 7: Same inadequate testing equipment with the same elevated detection limits,
40:55
Speaker 7: so they'll miss detections, and they just tell everybody everything's okay.
40:59
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter what community you live in. It doesn't
41:01
Speaker 7: matter what the toxin toxin is, or what the chemical
41:04
Speaker 7: spill is or the fire. They're happening more and more,
41:08
Speaker 7: but they're going to tell you the same thing. I
41:10
Speaker 7: mean in East Palestine. Then they come in and just
41:12
Speaker 7: say trust your government.
41:14
Speaker 8: Yeah, basically that's what they told us.
41:16
Speaker 7: That's a red flag by the way, But I mean,
41:18
Speaker 7: they were so brazen about it.
41:19
Speaker 1: It's like out of the Simpsons. If it wasn't so horrifying,
41:23
Speaker 1: it would be hilarious. But like, this is real life.
41:26
Speaker 1: This isn't the stupid Simpsons fish with three eyes jumping around,
41:29
Speaker 1: Like this is real living people being told to go
41:32
Speaker 1: back into homes that are making them sick and it's
41:35
Speaker 1: happening everywhere, and I want to sort of take us
41:38
Speaker 1: into the like what do we do about this?
41:40
Speaker 2: And what are we doing about this?
41:43
Speaker 1: Right, because I think we have all you like said
41:45
Speaker 1: as much that like the you start going down this
41:48
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, you're going to find that.
41:49
Speaker 2: It is everywhere.
41:51
Speaker 1: You know, that these data centers are popping up, even
41:54
Speaker 1: in rural parts of the country. And like we talk
41:56
Speaker 1: about that corporate playbook, people around this country are hear
42:00
Speaker 1: and saying that firsthand when it comes to like suddenly
42:03
Speaker 1: there's a massive like development approved that they never heard
42:06
Speaker 1: about and they have no say in, and now a
42:08
Speaker 1: big old data center is like making everyone you know,
42:11
Speaker 1: like go crazy and bleed from their ears and pollutes
42:14
Speaker 1: their water and so on and so forth. So like
42:16
Speaker 1: they're coming for all of us. And when I say us,
42:20
Speaker 1: I mean like anyone who's not rich enough to like
42:22
Speaker 1: basically go try to run and hide in Lake Tahoe
42:25
Speaker 1: or some crap, right, I mean, like, but if you're
42:27
Speaker 1: a working person in this country, like you were in
42:29
Speaker 1: the line of fire, And that same goes for people
42:31
Speaker 1: who are in the line the front lines of climate change,
42:36
Speaker 1: because they're showing the exact same playbook. If you're in Asheville,
42:39
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and you get walloped by a once in
42:42
Speaker 1: a century you know, like a hurricane, you're going to
42:45
Speaker 1: be just as abandoned as East Palestine was. If you're
42:47
Speaker 1: like you know, for fires are getting bigger and bigger,
42:51
Speaker 1: wiping out more areas across my state and others, insurance
42:54
Speaker 1: companies are going to say, you know what, you know, like,
42:56
Speaker 1: we're not going to ensure you anymore, right Like, so
42:58
Speaker 1: they're they're throwing us overboard at every chance they can,
43:01
Speaker 1: and more of it's coming.
43:03
Speaker 2: So what do we do about it? And how do
43:05
Speaker 2: we fight it?
43:06
Speaker 10: Yeah?
43:06
Speaker 9: I think that actually arming youth with the tools from
43:13
Speaker 9: those communities, like when I talked about naturalizing your environment,
43:17
Speaker 9: the tools and raising consciousness is a way to begin
43:21
Speaker 9: at the very grassroots. And I saw that in South Baltimore.
43:24
Speaker 9: Immediately the youth were using science, they were using public
43:29
Speaker 9: health data, they were going out door to door informing
43:33
Speaker 9: folks in the community, and that is like an armor
43:37
Speaker 9: for them right in dealing with every day over burden
43:41
Speaker 9: and toxins.
43:43
Speaker 10: But I don't think any of the battles.
43:45
Speaker 9: I think power is at the grassroots and it's so
43:48
Speaker 9: important to start there, like relationships matter, Building trusting, loving
43:54
Speaker 9: relationships is part of movement work.
43:58
Speaker 10: But it's clear we.
44:00
Speaker 9: Aren't going to necessarily with just the data take on
44:04
Speaker 9: these corporations, that these are much bigger struggles that are global,
44:10
Speaker 9: that reach to the mountains of West Virginia where they're
44:13
Speaker 9: extracting the coal, to the railroad workers that are karting
44:18
Speaker 9: the coal to South Baltimore, and so you know, I
44:21
Speaker 9: think part of what we've been trying to.
44:23
Speaker 10: Do is not just expose the youth.
44:25
Speaker 9: It's another armor, right, is like visiting these communities and
44:29
Speaker 9: beginning to see those connections and through those connections realizing
44:35
Speaker 9: this is how we enlarge our power if we could
44:38
Speaker 9: actually share struggles from West Virginia where people are dealing.
44:43
Speaker 10: With the extraction and the coal.
44:45
Speaker 9: And it was really powerful last spring and you were there,
44:48
Speaker 9: Max to have Angie, who lives a few thousand feet
44:52
Speaker 9: from the coal pier, talk about the explosion and what
44:56
Speaker 9: it means to live in a track side community the
45:00
Speaker 9: alongside a resister activist fighting mountain top coal removal mining
45:08
Speaker 9: and he has no stomach, no liver as a result
45:12
Speaker 9: of all the heavy metals and chemicals in his water supply.
45:15
Speaker 9: And it was very powerful to see these two from
45:18
Speaker 9: extraction to export coming together on a supply chain.
45:22
Speaker 10: And to me, like organizing could move beyond.
45:28
Speaker 9: Just the grassroots and we have to like coalitions are
45:32
Speaker 9: so important, and that's why this table is really critical
45:34
Speaker 9: because Scott's information, Jamie's chemically impacted communities, you know, really thinking.
45:40
Speaker 10: About how do we tether our struggles.
45:44
Speaker 9: And I'm not so sure it's just about like changing laws,
45:47
Speaker 9: because I don't believe necessarily that the laws are ever
45:51
Speaker 9: written for the people. I don't believe that the government,
45:54
Speaker 9: you know, as it stands willever.
45:57
Speaker 10: So I don't know what the end goal is, but I.
46:01
Speaker 9: Do know that if we continue along this path of
46:03
Speaker 9: vulture capitalism, as Max said, we're all living in a
46:07
Speaker 9: sacrifice zone, no matter who you are.
46:10
Speaker 10: That's what East Palistine taught me.
46:12
Speaker 9: I have lived worked for twenty somebody years and environmental
46:17
Speaker 9: justice communities, those are overburning communities. East Palestine taught me
46:21
Speaker 9: about mobile toxicity that no matter what, you can become
46:26
Speaker 9: an overburdened area if you are living in a track side.
46:32
Speaker 2: Well, and this conference was.
46:36
Speaker 3: It's a good start you know, we have talked to
46:39
Speaker 3: people that are running as independent candidates. I think that's
46:43
Speaker 3: what we need because right now it looks like both
46:46
Speaker 3: parties have been compromised. So and I know a lot
46:50
Speaker 3: of people don't want to hear this, but a large
46:54
Speaker 3: part of the solution is going to be political. So
46:57
Speaker 3: we've got to have people in place in Congress that
47:01
Speaker 3: will not only listen to us, but will act on
47:05
Speaker 3: what they hear from us. And so that's why it's
47:08
Speaker 3: important to get a lot of these young guys that
47:12
Speaker 3: are here at this conference, get them politically active, and
47:15
Speaker 3: get them to run for office like I did when
47:18
Speaker 3: I was sixty four years young. You know this is
47:22
Speaker 3: but we we do need people that are young. We've
47:27
Speaker 3: got a guy thirty one years old right now running
47:30
Speaker 3: as an independent candidate, and I've been working with this
47:34
Speaker 3: guy and he is as sharp as attack. If we
47:38
Speaker 3: can get him in Congress, he can do a lot
47:41
Speaker 3: of good things. And just imagine if we got fifty
47:44
Speaker 3: people like him.
47:46
Speaker 2: That's what I think. That's what we have to do.
47:48
Speaker 3: And like I said, people don't want to hear that
47:51
Speaker 3: politics is going to be you know, a big part
47:55
Speaker 3: of the solution.
47:56
Speaker 2: But it is well and.
47:58
Speaker 1: Just to like kind of push a little more on
48:01
Speaker 1: the labor side, Like r WU Railroad Workers United exists
48:06
Speaker 1: because of the built in problem on the rails of
48:10
Speaker 1: all the unions being split up. But you guys got thirteen,
48:14
Speaker 1: you know, different unions taking on like four now probably gonna.
48:19
Speaker 2: Be two mega corporations.
48:21
Speaker 1: Like you know, just like East Palestine can't take on
48:24
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern alone, neither can one of the rail unions
48:27
Speaker 1: take it on alone, right, I mean, like so, like
48:30
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing on the RWU side to
48:32
Speaker 1: like get around that division that still exists within organized labor.
48:37
Speaker 3: Well, what we're doing is bringing people all together like this.
48:41
Speaker 3: And you know, you talk to a carman, you talk
48:45
Speaker 3: to an engineer, you talk to a conductor, you talk
48:49
Speaker 3: to a maintenance a way guy.
48:51
Speaker 2: We start to understand each other better when we when we.
48:54
Speaker 3: Talk to each other, and especially in the railroad industry,
48:58
Speaker 3: because I don't know everything like say a BMW ED
49:04
Speaker 3: guy does, but I've got a pretty good idea.
49:07
Speaker 2: So you know, I exchange information with him.
49:10
Speaker 3: I say this is what I'm going through when I'm
49:13
Speaker 3: operating a locomotive, and he tells me, well, while you're
49:16
Speaker 3: doing that, and I'm on the side of the track.
49:19
Speaker 2: This is what I'm watching for.
49:21
Speaker 3: You know, I'm watching the rail I'm watching a ballast,
49:25
Speaker 3: I'm watching all of this stuff. We understand each other
49:29
Speaker 3: better that way, and that way when we go to
49:31
Speaker 3: fight the rail corporations, we're more united. And you know,
49:38
Speaker 3: you know, now I've got a buddy in BMW ED
49:41
Speaker 3: and boy, I'm not going to stab him in the back.
49:43
Speaker 2: You know.
49:44
Speaker 3: I met him in an r WU convention and we
49:47
Speaker 3: got to be good friends and we had a cookout
49:51
Speaker 3: together and everything and now you know, what happens to
49:55
Speaker 3: him is important.
49:57
Speaker 2: So this is you know, and and this is another.
50:00
Speaker 3: You know, we spend so much time on the job,
50:02
Speaker 3: especially out on the railroad, that we can't develop real solidarity.
50:07
Speaker 3: You know, workers have to have more time off so
50:09
Speaker 3: they can be with their families, but they can be
50:11
Speaker 3: with their fellow workers too.
50:13
Speaker 6: You know.
50:13
Speaker 3: One of the things we used to do is have
50:16
Speaker 3: picnics together.
50:17
Speaker 2: We had softball teams and stuff.
50:19
Speaker 3: But now that we work so much and our schedules
50:22
Speaker 3: are so erratic, it's every man for himself. And now
50:26
Speaker 3: we're cutting the size of the cruise down so where
50:29
Speaker 3: I used to interact with three or four other people
50:33
Speaker 3: on one train, now maybe one, and you know, pretty
50:37
Speaker 3: soon it might not be anybody. You know, it's you're
50:40
Speaker 3: gonna be by yourself. And to tell you the truth,
50:43
Speaker 3: I think that's by design. You know, we if we
50:46
Speaker 3: split people up, and you know, all of a sudden,
50:50
Speaker 3: Scott is doing something on the other side of the
50:53
Speaker 3: railroad and I don't like what he's doing, the hell
50:56
Speaker 3: with you.
50:57
Speaker 2: You know, I'm gonna go after you union or not.
51:00
Speaker 3: But you know, if we interact together, if we socialize together,
51:05
Speaker 3: if we go to union meetings together, then.
51:08
Speaker 2: This stuff isn't gonna happen.
51:11
Speaker 3: No.
51:12
Speaker 1: I think that's there's so much wisdom in that for
51:15
Speaker 1: all of us, not just in labor, but all of
51:18
Speaker 1: us around this country. Right, I mean, like you know,
51:20
Speaker 1: we were talking about this at the conference earlier today.
51:23
Speaker 1: Like you know, we have so many kind of crises
51:26
Speaker 1: that are affecting working people and poor people across the board,
51:31
Speaker 1: including this one. Right, Like our communities are being turns
51:34
Speaker 1: into tox success pits that are killing us and no
51:37
Speaker 1: one's coming to save us, right, And like that is
51:41
Speaker 1: not a red state or a blue state.
51:43
Speaker 2: Problem. That's not a I'm on this team versus that team.
51:46
Speaker 1: It's the rich bastards who are profiting off of all this,
51:49
Speaker 1: and the politicians are getting paid by them, are getting
51:51
Speaker 1: off you know, like bandits here while we're all being
51:54
Speaker 1: stuck with the toxic bill and we're doing the work
51:57
Speaker 1: for them by fighting each other over stupid political like
52:00
Speaker 1: you know, like Democrat Republican crap. But like we can
52:03
Speaker 1: all agree that, like this is impacting all of us.
52:06
Speaker 1: And I think, to Jeff's brilliant point, like that's what
52:08
Speaker 1: brought us all together, right, I mean, I'm a socialist,
52:11
Speaker 1: you know, nutjob with tattoos and whatnot, Like you know,
52:14
Speaker 1: like I ride and I will die for the folks
52:17
Speaker 1: that I've met in East Palestine.
52:19
Speaker 2: I don't care if they voted for Trump. They don't
52:21
Speaker 2: care who I voted for.
52:22
Speaker 1: But it's like you show up for people, you get
52:24
Speaker 1: to know people on that human level. They are that first,
52:28
Speaker 1: and who we voted is not even second or third.
52:31
Speaker 1: It's like twentieth on the list, right, And so we
52:34
Speaker 1: can all learn from that that, Like if we're arguing
52:36
Speaker 1: on the internet and looking at each other through these
52:39
Speaker 1: stupid like partisan lenses. We're gonna miss what's right in
52:42
Speaker 1: front of us, and we're going to keep losing until
52:45
Speaker 1: it's too late. And so again I returned to the
52:48
Speaker 1: question of how do we make sure that doesn't happen.
52:50
Speaker 6: I have an idea picking up on where Nicole was
52:53
Speaker 6: headed and where Jeff was headed.
52:56
Speaker 5: Here's the idea unfolding. Hit me with it.
53:00
Speaker 6: The Real News Network town hall tour through the communities.
53:04
Speaker 5: And here's so there's.
53:06
Speaker 6: A guy Danilla and Florida, the guy that called me
53:08
Speaker 6: Matt the Welder. He is running for office to turn
53:11
Speaker 6: it upside down, and he's getting traction picture having town
53:14
Speaker 6: halls with him and the guy from with the guy
53:18
Speaker 6: from Iowa running No matter what happens in their races,
53:21
Speaker 6: they're going to inspire people. Add the Union to that,
53:24
Speaker 6: and I can tell you this can be one in
53:27
Speaker 6: the AI battle. That's accelerating the calls I'm getting. But
53:31
Speaker 6: this team right here, the Real News Network town hall tour,
53:36
Speaker 6: picture this coming together and roseland Louisiana, to Jamie's credit,
53:40
Speaker 6: and the people in East Palestine, roseland Louisiana, they're kicking
53:43
Speaker 6: ass there, you know. And I'm seeing the connections on
53:46
Speaker 6: social media. It's going viral. In roseland Louisiana, they took power.
53:51
Speaker 5: In their own hands.
53:52
Speaker 6: They went out and got drones documented the spread of
53:55
Speaker 6: the oil, and they learned how to start talking from
53:58
Speaker 6: the town halls and me edgeting. I go to the
54:01
Speaker 6: town halls, I educate, I bring in other experts. I
54:03
Speaker 6: talk about how they are testing, and then they're elevating.
54:06
Speaker 6: Now all of a sudden, the greatest humbling honor I
54:08
Speaker 6: do is introduce people a blue shirt Justice League face group.
54:12
Speaker 6: People start from Kanye's Georgia, but in roseland Louisiana, the
54:17
Speaker 6: Smitty's PR firm has failed. Smitty's is the big billion
54:20
Speaker 6: other company and no relation to me. There was a
54:24
Speaker 6: conspiracy theory there for a while that I was related
54:26
Speaker 6: to Ed Smith and I was gonna I was going
54:28
Speaker 6: to go in and say I.
54:29
Speaker 5: Tested and everything's fine. So much for that.
54:33
Speaker 6: But roseland Louisiana is like a combination of the BP
54:36
Speaker 6: spell and East Palestine and a lot of people doing
54:40
Speaker 6: the excellon Valdez. At eleven million gallons, Roseland's bigger than
54:43
Speaker 6: BP thirteen million gallons. But what's really great is there's
54:47
Speaker 6: residents down there that have taken actions. The community is
54:49
Speaker 6: not divided at all. And Jamie, to her credit and
54:53
Speaker 6: getting on and educating someone like Winn Klima, Arlene Bankston,
54:57
Speaker 6: all these people class action attorneys and they know who
55:01
Speaker 6: Government Accountability Project is. But you know, I have it
55:05
Speaker 6: as saying today, like I said, AI well is going
55:07
Speaker 6: to steal people's souls. I will not work with people
55:10
Speaker 6: that want to run their lives off AI. But the
55:13
Speaker 6: data center thing we can use to the advantage of
55:16
Speaker 6: getting bringing people together because all of a sudden, you're like,
55:20
Speaker 6: like I said in East Palestine, let me step back.
55:22
Speaker 6: I said, in East Palestine, whether you're fifty miles five
55:24
Speaker 6: hundred and five thousand, you need it, you could be next.
55:26
Speaker 6: Then Conyers happen, and I said it in Conyor's then
55:29
Speaker 6: Rosalind happened, then Moss landing, So that same thing. Now
55:33
Speaker 6: the AI data centers your next. You got an ongoing disaster.
55:38
Speaker 6: So those people are going to start showing up and
55:40
Speaker 6: build real, real momentum. So it all starts with the
55:43
Speaker 6: Real News Network and doing these town halls and people
55:46
Speaker 6: are watching and I will I will say it right
55:49
Speaker 6: on camera I can I have the ability to help
55:52
Speaker 6: raise funds for this.
55:53
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you know I'm down, baby, and
55:55
Speaker 1: I'm saying like that we I think it should be
55:58
Speaker 1: like what is that this table? Like it's this is real,
56:02
Speaker 1: like Lord of the Ring shit, It's like who has
56:04
Speaker 1: what to offer to this righteous fight? Everyone here has
56:08
Speaker 1: something that the rest of us don't, right, And like
56:10
Speaker 1: Nicky and I are actually like testing this concept out.
56:14
Speaker 1: We're going to try to do a conference at the
56:17
Speaker 1: Real News at the end of this year to bring
56:19
Speaker 1: sacrifice own residents together like railroad Workers United has done here.
56:23
Speaker 1: Because there's there's only so much you can do with
56:26
Speaker 1: media and through media.
56:27
Speaker 2: And I'm saying that as.
56:28
Speaker 1: The editor in chief and co executive director of a
56:30
Speaker 1: media org, that like, we got to have an on
56:32
Speaker 1: and offline strategy. Nothing there is no substitute for in
56:36
Speaker 1: person power building and off camera like info sharing and
56:40
Speaker 1: relation building and so on and so forth. And you're
56:43
Speaker 1: already doing that with your town halls. So it's like,
56:45
Speaker 1: I want to hop on the bandwagon that you're on.
56:47
Speaker 1: I want to like talk to the folks that Jamie's
56:49
Speaker 1: reaching out to through the chemically impacted communities coalition, the
56:52
Speaker 1: folks that you are connected with, that you're connected with,
56:55
Speaker 1: that you're connected with. So like as far as the
56:57
Speaker 1: media side of it, like Lord of the Ring, you
57:00
Speaker 1: got my ax, baby, Like I'm in it, and like
57:03
Speaker 1: we want to be there on the ground floor.
57:06
Speaker 2: But I think it's going to take all of us.
57:08
Speaker 5: Let me tell you why I want to.
57:10
Speaker 6: With what I've been through in life and I've you know,
57:13
Speaker 6: been kicked and stopped. I have an expression, leave ego
57:16
Speaker 6: at the door. That's what about this team. Leave ego
57:18
Speaker 6: at the door. Everyone has their role. It's only going
57:20
Speaker 6: to happen with a team. So one plus one plus
57:23
Speaker 6: one plus one plus one is a million and I'm
57:26
Speaker 6: seeing it. That's why I am so so much motivated
57:31
Speaker 6: beyond belief to see what happened in Rose, because it's
57:33
Speaker 6: the power of what has happened in East Palestine. Roseland
57:36
Speaker 6: Louisiana is kicking ass and we need to get there.
57:39
Speaker 6: And they're they're they're connecting with Danilla and Florida and
57:43
Speaker 6: they're all trading things about, oh, the air testing is gamed.
57:46
Speaker 6: So then I see somebody show up the danill In
57:48
Speaker 6: town hall and they stand up and start talking about
57:50
Speaker 6: arcadas in the air testing game. That's that's all I want.
57:53
Speaker 6: I want to I want to just teach.
57:55
Speaker 9: Those those conferences and bringing people together for roseland to
58:00
Speaker 9: share we use drillings to capture for kids in South Baltimore,
58:04
Speaker 9: to say, we put up cameras at these facilities, trail
58:07
Speaker 9: cameras to document twenty four to seven all the violations.
58:11
Speaker 10: Right, it's working.
58:13
Speaker 1: It is and working, and it's not just working in
58:16
Speaker 1: like this context. But like, I know the excitement that
58:19
Speaker 1: you're feeling, because I felt it when like workers who
58:23
Speaker 1: were trying to unionize at Home Depot started like calling
58:27
Speaker 1: out the union busters who were holding like a captive
58:30
Speaker 1: audience meeting and telling them the same stuff that you know,
58:34
Speaker 1: Amazon union.
58:35
Speaker 2: Busters had told their workers.
58:36
Speaker 1: But because the workers at Home Depot watched my reporting
58:40
Speaker 1: and heard from the Amazon workers, they were firing right
58:42
Speaker 1: back at the union busters, like how much do you make,
58:44
Speaker 1: you know, like to come here and tell us that
58:46
Speaker 1: we shouldn't, you know, like join a union, right, like
58:49
Speaker 1: how much?
58:50
Speaker 2: Or how do you explain this line?
58:51
Speaker 1: On home Depots like earnings report like they were ready
58:54
Speaker 1: and I think, like again out of tragic circumstances like
58:58
Speaker 1: we can help others be ready, and we can learn
59:02
Speaker 1: from others you know, long before us, from Times Beach
59:06
Speaker 1: to you know, uh, you know Navajo Nation, Cancer Alley, Right.
59:11
Speaker 1: I mean like there there are so many lessons to
59:14
Speaker 1: be learned from this.
59:15
Speaker 7: I really feel like we're going to have to have
59:18
Speaker 7: the grassroots like everybody's talking about, and we're going to
59:21
Speaker 7: have to work together if we're disenfranchised, if we're not
59:25
Speaker 7: speaking to each other, and you know, telling lessons learned
59:29
Speaker 7: to these other communities. They're starting out at square one
59:32
Speaker 7: and they're having to learn all, Oh I'm being deceived,
59:35
Speaker 7: Oh how am I being deceived? Right now they know
59:39
Speaker 7: because East Palestine residents have gotten so active Jamie with
59:43
Speaker 7: her chemically impacted community, She's bringing all these voices together
59:47
Speaker 7: and they realize they're all in the same boat. And
59:50
Speaker 7: so that's a huge piece to it is the residence.
59:53
Speaker 7: Another piece to it is continuing to provide support for whistleblowers.
59:58
Speaker 7: Are whistleblowers. We start with Scott in East Palestine. We
1:00:02
Speaker 7: end up with eight different whistleblowers, including an EPA whistleblower
1:00:06
Speaker 7: who was with the e PA Super Fun program for
1:00:09
Speaker 7: excuse me for four decades. So we have scientists working
1:00:15
Speaker 7: together with Scott Now, it's it's amazing. I'm so encouraged that,
1:00:21
Speaker 7: you know, this movement started and it takes it takes
1:00:24
Speaker 7: basically three elements. It takes the resonance, It takes the
1:00:28
Speaker 7: whistleblowers and giving them the support they need to get
1:00:31
Speaker 7: their message out. But four elements takes independent news media
1:00:35
Speaker 7: like you, because a lot of them this is a
1:00:37
Speaker 7: huge story and where is it It's only you know,
1:00:41
Speaker 7: news nations done a great job, but you know it's
1:00:44
Speaker 7: the independent news media that stayed with it. We have
1:00:46
Speaker 7: we we have the greatest stories that we're getting rejected on.
1:00:50
Speaker 7: You know, why why is this not happening? So that's
1:00:53
Speaker 7: another important element. So in that and just investigating, you know,
1:00:57
Speaker 7: filing the Freedom of Information Act request, appealing when they
1:01:01
Speaker 7: don't give you the stuff that they should be giving you,
1:01:04
Speaker 7: and then suing them. We've sued FEMA EPA twice and
1:01:08
Speaker 7: USDA now for holding. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's
1:01:13
Speaker 7: so great to do that because then they're like, oh, okay,
1:01:16
Speaker 7: I guess I will reive you what I was supposed
1:01:18
Speaker 7: to give you. But it's all these different things working together,
1:01:22
Speaker 7: but we have to stay connected. We have to continue
1:01:25
Speaker 7: to communicate with one another because and I will tell
1:01:29
Speaker 7: you this one other things. I got into this. When
1:01:31
Speaker 7: I say this, I got into environmental justice because my
1:01:35
Speaker 7: daughter's a cancer survivor and she was part of a
1:01:37
Speaker 7: cancer cluster in South Alabama. And so, you know, I
1:01:42
Speaker 7: didn't have access to a Scotsmith. I didn't have a Jamie,
1:01:45
Speaker 7: you know, I didn't have whistleblowers. I didn't know what
1:01:48
Speaker 7: to do, so I had to learn all this. It
1:01:50
Speaker 7: took me years to figure out how I was being duped,
1:01:53
Speaker 7: you know. And they didn't have a smoking gun, like
1:01:57
Speaker 7: a trained arailment and things like that. There's multi environmental issues.
1:02:01
Speaker 7: But I think this team that has come together around
1:02:05
Speaker 7: this to to educate one another and to develop you know,
1:02:10
Speaker 7: I don't want to say too much right now, but
1:02:12
Speaker 7: to develop technologies to provide them transparency and residents. These
1:02:17
Speaker 7: are all things that are in the works, and it's
1:02:19
Speaker 7: all grassroots and whistleblower driven, and it gives me a
1:02:22
Speaker 7: lot of hope.
1:02:24
Speaker 4: Chemically Impacted Communities Coalition, you know, I feel like we
1:02:28
Speaker 4: have to take the fighters from all these different communities
1:02:32
Speaker 4: and bring them together. Not just bring them together, but
1:02:35
Speaker 4: give them the resources that they need. I wish I
1:02:39
Speaker 4: could go into every community and fight the fight like
1:02:42
Speaker 4: I fought police Palestine. But I can't, and no one's
1:02:46
Speaker 4: coming to save these communities. They have to fight for themselves. So,
1:02:50
Speaker 4: you know, giving people the resources, you know, hooking them
1:02:54
Speaker 4: up with Blue Shirt Justice League if they need testing,
1:02:58
Speaker 4: you know, given them the resources. If you have wistile blowers,
1:03:01
Speaker 4: here's who you can go to. You can go to
1:03:02
Speaker 4: Government Accountability Project. If you want dependable news stations that
1:03:06
Speaker 4: are going to care about environmental issues. You know, we
1:03:09
Speaker 4: call them response partners. So what I would like to
1:03:13
Speaker 4: do is I'd like to go into these communities when
1:03:15
Speaker 4: something like this happens and do what no one could
1:03:18
Speaker 4: do for me. Hand me that playbook. You know, here's
1:03:22
Speaker 4: the testing you can start out with. Here's how you
1:03:24
Speaker 4: detox your body. Contact these universities, you know they do
1:03:28
Speaker 4: a lot of environmental research.
1:03:30
Speaker 8: Get a hold of Max. He report it for you,
1:03:33
Speaker 8: calls good, He'll do the testing.
1:03:35
Speaker 4: So, like I said, not fight for them, but teach
1:03:38
Speaker 4: them how to fight for themselves. And I know, for me,
1:03:41
Speaker 4: as someone who's never been in this environmental justice world
1:03:44
Speaker 4: at all the voices from the other communities where the
1:03:49
Speaker 4: best thing for me. People don't talk about the mental
1:03:53
Speaker 4: part of this, you know, getting all the phone calls
1:03:56
Speaker 4: from people that are sick, you know, from morning till night,
1:03:59
Speaker 4: learning that you can't trust your government, and being able
1:04:02
Speaker 4: to talk to other people that have been through this,
1:04:05
Speaker 4: they can relate to that, they can tell you you're
1:04:08
Speaker 4: not crazy. You know CDC came in and got sick
1:04:10
Speaker 4: and left. Yeah, it's happened in these communities. That's all,
1:04:14
Speaker 4: you know, part of what I guess shaped my experience,
1:04:17
Speaker 4: and I want communities that come after me. I wish
1:04:21
Speaker 4: it no other community after me, but to have those
1:04:25
Speaker 4: resources that I wish I would have had. And I
1:04:27
Speaker 4: do believe it takes a team. You know, we each
1:04:30
Speaker 4: have our place in this. You know, even East Palsing,
1:04:34
Speaker 4: there's no eye. You know, we worked as a team
1:04:37
Speaker 4: and we all had our parts to play. And I
1:04:40
Speaker 4: feel like that in any type of organization, you know,
1:04:44
Speaker 4: it makes everybody, uh, everyone's skills to make the world
1:04:47
Speaker 4: go round.
1:04:48
Speaker 8: So we want to share ours.
1:04:56
Speaker 1: Oh right, gang, that's gonna wrap things up for us today.
1:05:00
Speaker 1: I want to thank our guests Jeff Kertz of Railroad
1:05:04
Speaker 1: Workers United, Jamie Wallace of the Chemically Impacted Communities Coalition,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: doctor Nicole Fabricant of Towson University in the South Baltimore
1:05:12
Speaker 1: Community Land Trust, Scott Smith of the Blue Shirt Justice League,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: and Leslie Pacey of the Government Accountability Project. And I
1:05:19
Speaker 1: want to give a big thank you to everyone at
1:05:22
Speaker 1: Railroad Workers United for all of the vital work that
1:05:25
Speaker 1: they're doing and all that they did to help us
1:05:27
Speaker 1: make this panel discussion possible. Follow them on social media,
1:05:32
Speaker 1: subscribe to their newsletter, and keep up to date on
1:05:35
Speaker 1: all the important news from the rails by using the
1:05:37
Speaker 1: links that we provided in the show notes. And of
1:05:40
Speaker 1: course I want to thank you all for listening, and
1:05:42
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for caring about this. We'll
1:05:45
Speaker 1: see y'all back here next time for another episode of
1:05:48
Speaker 1: Working People, And in the meantime, please go explore all
1:05:52
Speaker 1: the great work that we're doing at the Real News Network,
1:05:54
Speaker 1: where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices
1:05:58
Speaker 1: and stories from the front lines of strung. Check us
1:06:00
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1:06:04
Speaker 1: and our different social media pages and help us do
1:06:07
Speaker 1: more work like this by going to the Realnews dot com,
1:06:11
Speaker 1: forward slash donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise
1:06:14
Speaker 1: you guys, it really makes a difference. I'm Maximilian Alvarez.
1:06:19
Speaker 1: Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
1:06:29
Speaker 12: When my fish you no longer see. I live on, Yes,
1:06:33
Speaker 12: I live on. Wherever we go. We are going to
1:06:38
Speaker 12: roll the union on a song I live on. Yes,
1:06:41
Speaker 12: I live on whereever, how longer are we? Just as
1:06:46
Speaker 12: homeless homework can be this song I live on. Yes,
1:06:51
Speaker 12: I live on. Well, mean things are happening in this
1:06:55
Speaker 12: land is read?
1:06:56
Speaker 2: A song I live on.
1:06:58
Speaker 12: Yes, I live on wherever the book mean thing what
1:07:02
Speaker 12: happening in this.
1:07:03
Speaker 11: Land is read?
1:07:04
Speaker 1: I live on.
1:07:05
Speaker 3: Yes.
1:07:06
Speaker 12: I'll live on wherever the video tape ama shown.
1:07:11
Speaker 5: I live on. Yes, I live on.
1:07:14
Speaker 12: If I have help to make this a better word
1:07:17
Speaker 12: to be here, I'll live on.
1:07:20
Speaker 3: Yes.
1:07:20
Speaker 12: I'll live on. When my body is solid and in
1:07:24
Speaker 12: some longs are grades, I'll live on.
1:07:28
Speaker 8: Yes, I live on.
1:07:30
Speaker 12: When my songs and poems are read, I'll live on. Yes,
1:07:35
Speaker 12: I live on