Latest / The Real News Podcast / Working People LIVE SHOW w/ Kim Kelly, Alex Press, and Hamilton Nolan

Transcript

Working People LIVE SHOW w/ Kim Kelly, Alex Press, and Hamilton Nolan · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A I can't work all right.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Well, welcome Chicago to this live edition of Working People,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams and struggles of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the working class today, brought to you in partnership with
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the Real News Network and In These Times Magazine. Let's
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: give it up for in these Times. And we are,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: of course sitting here in the historic In These Times building,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: you know where so many incredible labor reporters have done
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: so much important work, history shaping work over the decades.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: And I have the honor of sitting next to people
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: who are doing just that now, and I want to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: ask everyone to give them a big round of applauses.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I introduced them because for everyone listening, we got here
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: to my right, the og labor journalist, the guy who
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: yells at.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: All of us when we're being too soft.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: About how hard it is today, Hamilton Nolan.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Everybody give it up for Hamilton. Go get Hamilton's book,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: The Hammer. It's incredible.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Speaking of incredible books, sister Kim Kelly has an incredible
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: book called Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: You know her, you love her, You've read her in
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Team Vogue, you've seen her on more perfect union in
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the Real News Network. Everyone give it up for Kim Kelly.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: And here at the end of our incredible panel, we
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: have the one, the only alex Press of Jacobin and
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: so much more. Or she's not only an incredible trail
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: blazing writer, labor reporter, analyst of our political moment, but
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: she is also passing like legislation and like helping to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: make sure that like change happens.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: At all levels.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Let's give it up for the alex Press. So my name,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: as some of you may know, is Maximilian Alvarez. And yeah,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: today for this show, we're gonna sort of go in
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: a different direction than we normally do on the show,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: which you know, if some of y'all are listeners, you
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: know that it can get really heavy. And you know,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I was listening to some old episodes on the twenty
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: hours of driving I did in the past, you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: like twenty nine hours long story. I'll tell you about
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: it afterwards, but like you know, I was going back
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and revisiting and thinking about what it meant to me
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: my career, these stories that in these times was one
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: of the first outlets that even like responded to an
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: email of mine. And then you know they partnered with
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: this podcast, and I'm gonna we're gonna say a little
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: more about that at the end, where we share with y'all,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: like some of our own histories with this incredible magazine.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: But before we get there, as Miles said, like it's
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: been a long week, it's been a long fucking year, and.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: It's only what June, We're only halfway through this.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Little a bitch, So like, let's have some fun over
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the next hour, right, Like let's let's sort of like
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: talk as friends, comrades, fellow movement members, but like let's
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: sort of get to know a bit more about these
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: incredible labor journalists.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: And I thought like after we.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Go around and just sort of like, you know, let
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: people know the sides that they don't see of you
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: when they just see your byline or your Twitter avatar,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: then we're gonna have a sort of like game showy
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: type thing where I'm going to toss to these incredible minds,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: you know, like okay, like some big topics, and we're
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: gonna talk about what we know about these things, what
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: we think about these things, and what the hell we
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: do about these things. So before we get there, I
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: wanted to go around and yeah, ask you guys if
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: you could just like talk a bit about how you
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: became a labor journalist and each of your own paths
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: to like sitting on these tools right now.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you Max.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: First of all, if you don't know, Max Albera is
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: like the Studs Circle of Today, but with a better
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: radio voice, you know what I'm saying. So I'll hope
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: you all are subscribers to this.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: Sam.
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: I became a labor journalist, I sort of, you know,
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: I had radical parents, but really when I when I
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: went into journalism, I didn't have any connection to labor.
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: I was just I was just like, why is America
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: fucked up? You know, I want to figure out why
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: America's fucked up? And as I wrote about and report
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: about why America's fucked up, I kept like the roads
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: kept leading back to labor stuff. You know, so if
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: you're like, why the rich get richer and the poor
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: get poor, eventually you're like, well, workers don't have any
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: power and how did that happen? And why did all
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: these used to climb blah blah? So I kept going
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: back to labor issues, and eventually I turned into a
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: full time labor reporter because not only did I see
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: how important it was, but then I looked around. I
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: was like, why isn't everybody talking about this? And so
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: you kind of feel compelled to keep writing about it?
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: Very good an answer, Yeah, I had a little bit
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: of a I don't know if there is an orthodox
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: path towards labor reporting. There's only like seven of us,
• 5:39
  Speaker 6: so I don't think there's enough to really get a
• 5:41
  Speaker 6: critical mass going. I ended up as a labor reporter,
• 5:44
  Speaker 6: not by accident, but certainly not really my intent. I
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: don't know if you can all see me there in
• 5:49
  Speaker 6: the back, but I don't look like a blazer kind
• 5:53
  Speaker 6: of gown like.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: I wasn't really set up to be speaking on.
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: Panels and give me talks and being in polite society.
• 5:59
  Speaker 6: I spent most of my life in the heavy metal
• 6:01
  Speaker 6: world as a music journalist and a roadie and you know,
• 6:04
  Speaker 6: a promoter at everything, but having any musical talent.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: So I was a writer.
• 6:11
  Speaker 6: But I ended up that doing all that ended landed
• 6:14
  Speaker 6: me at Vice Semi rip. I'm not really sure what
• 6:16
  Speaker 6: we're doing there anymore. But I had a very twenty
• 6:19
  Speaker 6: fourteen s type of job for a while. I was
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: the heavy metal editor at Vice. I know, can you imagine?
• 6:27
  Speaker 6: But and I was still I wasn't. I was like
• 6:29
  Speaker 6: interested in politics. I was starting to dabble into like
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: political organizing at that time in New York City, where
• 6:34
  Speaker 6: I was living, but I wasn't.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: Like full on into it.
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: It just so happened, though, that a couple of weeks
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: after I got hired on full time, because of course
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: I spent eight months on a contract, a couple of
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: coworkers pulled me aside and said, Hey, we're thinking about unionizing.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: What do you think about that? And I was like, oh,
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: thank god.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: Because I'm from a union family, like all steel workers, teachers,
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: construction workers, I knew what a good thing unions were
• 6:59
  Speaker 6: for workers and broke ass people like me like us.
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: But I never thought I'd get a chance to participate
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: because I was just a writer.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: I didn't think there was going to be like a
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: local six sixty six knocking on my door anytime soon.
• 7:12
  Speaker 6: But the Writers Good of America did show up, and
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: we unionized Advice. By the time I got laid off
• 7:17
  Speaker 6: in twenty nineteen. Because digital Media, I think we had
• 7:20
  Speaker 6: about five hundred people across multiple sectors of the company. Organized,
• 7:23
  Speaker 6: and through that process of organizing and learning about labor
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: from people that were doing it, from our union reps,
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: from Labor Lord, from people in like the New York
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: City labor world, I started thinking like this is pretty cool,
• 7:36
  Speaker 6: Like do people know about this? Do people know they
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: can do this? Maybe I should tell them? And I
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: started pitching more like get my little toes out there
• 7:44
  Speaker 6: is like not just the death metal guy, but like
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: what if I wrote a little bit about labor here
• 7:48
  Speaker 6: and there, here and there and in these times. It
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: was one of the first places that let me get
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: away with it, and now it look what they've done.
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: They can't get rid of me. So I kind of
• 7:57
  Speaker 6: fell into it. But I'm glad that I ended up
• 8:00
  Speaker 6: being really becoming a labor porter in this way because
• 8:02
  Speaker 6: I got exposed to labor and involved in the labor
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: the way that most people do by organizing my workplace.
• 8:08
  Speaker 6: And that's a perspective I try to bring into everything
• 8:10
  Speaker 6: I do.
• 8:11
  Speaker 7: Yeah, Hello, okay, this is on. Yes you can hear me.
• 8:21
  Speaker 7: Thank you all, Thank you all for coming.
• 8:23
  Speaker 8: By the way, it's been a very long weekend for
• 8:25
  Speaker 8: those of you who are at Labor Notes, which I
• 8:27
  Speaker 8: assume is almost everybody in the.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: Room, So I'm really so I know in these times
• 8:33
  Speaker 7: appreciated it. We all appreciate it. I just want to
• 8:35
  Speaker 7: say that.
• 8:36
  Speaker 8: So my brief, I also, yeah, there is no orthodox route,
• 8:39
  Speaker 8: because my joke about labor journalism is in America is
• 8:42
  Speaker 8: there's so few of us who do it full time
• 8:44
  Speaker 8: that we could fit all at a dinner table and
• 8:46
  Speaker 8: we wouldn't even need a reservation.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 8:50
  Speaker 8: Thank God for in these times. We'll come back to
• 8:52
  Speaker 8: that again and again. You know, my path was actually
• 8:55
  Speaker 8: not that dissimilar from Kim's, though a few twists.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 8:59
  Speaker 8: You know, I'd been waitress and a barissa since the
• 9:01
  Speaker 8: day I turned sixteen, and I finally got sick of
• 9:03
  Speaker 8: that and decided I wanted a sitting down job, as
• 9:06
  Speaker 8: I put it. So I knew I was good at school,
• 9:08
  Speaker 8: so I went into a graduate program in Boston. You know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 8: I already was very much on the activist left. I
• 9:14
  Speaker 8: was active in the anti police brutality movement, in the
• 9:16
  Speaker 8: Occupy Wall Street movement, and of course, so naturally as
• 9:19
  Speaker 8: soon as I landed at Northeastern University, I helped start
• 9:23
  Speaker 8: grad union there, which.
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: I think it took us nine.
• 9:27
  Speaker 8: It took like nine years, but they did eventually join
• 9:29
  Speaker 8: the UAW and get the vote and it.
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: Was like ninety five percent. It was crazy.
• 9:38
  Speaker 8: And as part of that, you know, I thought I
• 9:40
  Speaker 8: was being very clever. I thought, okay, so us it
• 9:43
  Speaker 8: was early early OC stage, right, there's like a handful
• 9:45
  Speaker 8: of us still meeting.
• 9:46
  Speaker 7: At like a bar.
• 9:47
  Speaker 8: And I said, do you know what our adjuncts at
• 9:49
  Speaker 8: this university are finding for a first contract and it's
• 9:51
  Speaker 8: getting nasty. They were with SCIU, the administration was not
• 9:55
  Speaker 8: budget was playing dirty.
• 9:56
  Speaker 7: So I said, I'll write an article.
• 9:58
  Speaker 8: About this fight, even though ever written an article ever,
• 10:01
  Speaker 8: because I thought I'll get to do one on ones
• 10:03
  Speaker 8: with the adjunct so I have no other reason to
• 10:05
  Speaker 8: contact and I didn't realize I could have just contacted
• 10:07
  Speaker 8: them anyway, but I didn't know, so I it was
• 10:10
  Speaker 8: my excuse to ask them every what what are we
• 10:12
  Speaker 8: gonna have to expect and what are their ways of
• 10:14
  Speaker 8: fighting dirty and all of this, And you know, at
• 10:17
  Speaker 8: the time, I just I emailed the Nation magazine's kind
• 10:21
  Speaker 8: of submissions email.
• 10:22
  Speaker 7: And they said, yeah, we'll publish it.
• 10:24
  Speaker 8: And so I wrote the article and in the process
• 10:27
  Speaker 8: I was like, huh, kid interested, This is great. I
• 10:29
  Speaker 8: can so I don't have to just think about my
• 10:31
  Speaker 8: own workplace. But there's a way to kind of talk
• 10:33
  Speaker 8: to people doing all kinds of fights. And of course,
• 10:36
  Speaker 8: through that process, I remember my PhD advisor sitting down
• 10:39
  Speaker 8: and saying, so.
• 10:40
  Speaker 7: I just want to give you a heads up.
• 10:41
  Speaker 8: You're probably not gonna stick around to academia because you
• 10:44
  Speaker 8: can't be writing about your employer in a national magazine
• 10:48
  Speaker 8: and starting a grad union and it's your first year
• 10:50
  Speaker 8: of grad schools. So so sure enough, I ended up
• 10:54
  Speaker 8: leaving and going to Jackman magazine after a few years
• 10:57
  Speaker 8: of grad school, and I never stopped.
• 10:59
  Speaker 7: He got the labor movement, and I hope I never deal.
• 11:02
  Speaker 9: Yeah, all right, so real quick, before we move on Hamilton,
• 11:15
  Speaker 9: their answers were better than yours, So I need.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: A little more to go first.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, give me, give me, give us a little more
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: of the Hamilton lore.
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: I uh, you know, I was working a place called Gawker,
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: which also r I p to Gawker, which was once
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: upon a time a popular website, and uh, I was
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: writing about labor and stuff and the you know, I'd
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: actually wrote a story about why Vice was a shitty
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: place to work, and so it was yeah, and an
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: organizer from the Writers Guild came to me and was like, hey,
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: we we want to organize vice and do you have
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: any leads that we could get in contact with Advice.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: So in the process of that conversation, I was like,
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: why don't you organize us? Man, We're better than Vice.
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: So they were like, fine, so we we Uh so
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: we organized Gawker and uh yeah, we we successfully unionized
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: Gawker and it was like the first kind of big
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: online media company to organize, followed shortly by Vice and
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: Posts and tons of other places. So that was you know.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: I also I also had the double side of perspective,
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: like Kim of like, you're writing about labor on the
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: one hand, and then you're organized your workplace on the
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: other hand. And then we got on the council of
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: our union on the other hand, and you're dealing with politics,
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: so you get the whole three sixty view.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, and like, since this is a live
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: show of working people, like I could always just refer
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: people back to the very first episode if you want
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: to know where my path to becoming a labor journalist started, right,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you know, And it's it's it tells everything about why
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: I also felt so out of my league talking to
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: actual labor journalists, you know, like because I didn't know
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: anything about unions. I didn't grow up in a union family.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't start out working people to be a union
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: guy or a labor guy or anything like that. I
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: recorded that first episode with my father, Jesus Alvarez, because
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't want him to die feeling like a failure
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: after we had lost everything in the Great Recession, including
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: the house I grew up in fifteen years ago. You know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I graduated from the University of Chicago and then was
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: working in warehouses and factories in southern California because I
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: got spat out.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: Into a recession like a lot of you.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: But I also had a useless degree in Russian literature
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: and a whole lot of debt, and so that was
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the main difference between me and the other guys in
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: those warehouses.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: But like so all of that, the labor.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Stuff, the organizing stuff, the history that you know you
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: can read about in the works of these incredible people,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: all of that I voraciously learned later in life. But
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: it all started, I think in a very similar place
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: to where we all started.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: And it starts with that sort of like.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Just raw core of human hurt and like the need
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: and want to do something about it in whatever context,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: whether it's your co workers, whether it's your father, whether it's.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: You know, like people you grew up with.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: So that's that's just a quick again like serious aside
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: to like again underscore no one else cared about that
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: when in these times cared about that, right, And I
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: got into labor journalism, I guess with this podcast. I
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: never felt comfortable calling myself a journalists for a long time,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: but because I was a writer for The Baffler at
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the time, and I kept debating with other left writers
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: about the working class after Trump won, and I was like,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: why is everyone talking about the working class? And so
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: food people are actually talking to working people, and I
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: want to hear what they have to say. And so
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: that was the simple journ that has led to now
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: eight years of this show. Okay, serious stuff done, let's
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: get to the fun stuff. So like that's again a
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: little more than like I think a lot of us
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: knew about any of you, you know it just from
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: like your online presence and all of that good stuff.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But like I want to know, like I want us
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: to get like I want us to get Caddy here
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: for a little bit, but you know, Caddie productive. But again,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: it's been a long week, so I want the unvarnished
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: sort of thoughts, like I'm gonna throw a couple of
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: big topics at this panel, and I want to just
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: sort of like, yeah, here, y'all's take on, like you know, Okay,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: here's what I know about this thing. Here's what I
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: think about this thing, and here's what I think we
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: should do about this thing.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Or But since Labor Notes just.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Finished and an ode to the great work that they do,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: overlapping with the great work that in these times does
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: and all of us, let's start with the labor question
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: and then we're gonna move on to some bigger stuff.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: But like you know, but like you know, like Hamilton
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: you wrote, he wrote a great piece last year, read
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: about how for all the shit that everyone in this
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: room could like point to and say like Biden wasn't
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: the most fucking pro union president ever, you.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Could argue that he absolutely was.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: That he was everything and more that the organized labor
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: movement has wanted out of like a democratic presidential ally
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: and union membership still fucking declined, and like, you know,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the labor movement continues to sort of you know, shrink
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: at a time when our enemies are growing, right, So
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I guess I wanted to like use that as the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: springboard for all of y'all to like talk about where
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: the organized labor movement is and also like, yeah, like,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: is is it up to this moment?
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Is it what we thought it was?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: You know five years ago when Starbucks in Alu were
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: just forming and everyone was coming out of COVID seeing
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: labor as the new hope.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: What do you think?
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: I like that you were like, let's have some funs
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: talk about union density now, all right, really get into
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: it now.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: I think that's fun.
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: No, I mean, look, yeah, And this also goes back
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: to the being a labor reporter. Like to me, there's
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: like a duality of writing about labor, which is like,
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: on the one hand, you're telling all these incredible stories, right,
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: all the stories of the people in the labor movement,
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: which are all incredible, the most moving human stories of
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: triumph and courage and everything that you'll find anywhere in America.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: And then on the other hand, there's like the big picture.
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: Is we're getting our ass kicked like constantly, and you
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: have to be honest about both those things, you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: And there's always a kind of push and pull, and
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: there's always a I would say, there's always a bit
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: of a social pressure almost when you're within the labor
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: movement to be like, let's be positive, guys, you know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: like let's put us let's smile. And you know, but
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: the big story of the labor movement for not just
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: the last five years, but the last fifty years, or
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: are you the last eighty years, is you know, decline
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: and and you know, the most interesting question to me
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: about organized labor in America is like why are we losing?
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: Why are we losing?
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: You know, because the first insight, like I said, that
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: got me into this is like, wow, unions are like
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: this skeleton key that that solve all these big problems,
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: all the biggest underlying problems in America that fuck up
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: everything else in America, you know, all the all the
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: little problems that people have come from the way that
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: capitalism operates in America, the way that worker power gets
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: marginalized in America.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: The way we're having we're having.
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: An oligarchy now, the way we're in a fifty year
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: crisis of economic inequality. Like all of that is tied
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: to the decline of organized labor power.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: You know, so what the fuck, like.
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: Why why why does undicity keep going down every year?
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: And you know, being a labor reporter over the Biden years,
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: you know, you saw the a fl CIO and all
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: the big unions being like Biden is the greatest labor guy.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: And as you said, like, you know what, he.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: Was very good for labor, and by the standards of
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: democratic presidents in the twentieth century, you know, you could
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: say he was the best president for unions in more
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: than fifty years, I mean since FDR. Probably he obviously
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: did a lot of other shitty things, you know, And
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: so the fact that the institutions of organized labor put
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: all their eggs in the basket of like politics, you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: we got to win politics, and they got their guy,
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: and over the four years of the Biden.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: Administration, unionency went down.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: You know, so like we got to be able to
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: step back and be like that shit didn't work, you know,
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: like let's reevaluate and and and you know, when I
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: look around at those same institutions and labor I'm like,
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: where's the reevaluation, where's the course correction, where's the change? Like,
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: where's the huge new investment in organizing, which is what
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: we really need, you know, Like where's the AFLCO putting
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: a billion dollars into organizing? You know, where is that?
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: Where's the vision from the top? And it's not there
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: within the LA movement. So again, like you know, the
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: closer you get to the grassroots of labor movement, the
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: more inspiring it is, and the closer.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: You get to the top, less inspiring it is. And
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: unfortunately we're still in that situation today.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: I don't know how much I have to add.
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: Did I have a different question Max, if we're gonna
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: have fun, I don't want to follow Hamilton Nolan on
• 20:23
  Speaker 6: like union density, like.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: That's the thing.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: He did it, he answered it. We're good unless you
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: want to get in there one more times.
• 20:33
  Speaker 7: Think if you want to have an argument or something.
• 20:36
  Speaker 7: I think we should have an argument.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get in here, all expressed from the top, turn
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: buffle baby, get in here.
• 20:42
  Speaker 8: Well, no, I'm not gonna argue in Hamilton, but I
• 20:44
  Speaker 8: think it's interesting. Yeah, the vision isn't at the top
• 20:48
  Speaker 8: because it never is right, It's not, that's not where
• 20:50
  Speaker 8: it happens.
• 20:51
  Speaker 7: And I think you know, we all and I think
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: many of us in the room also will cringe at this.
• 20:55
  Speaker 8: As I said, it's like the question of democratic unions
• 20:58
  Speaker 8: is still a central question to the labor movement. Right,
• 21:00
  Speaker 8: Why is it that there are such amazing people at
• 21:02
  Speaker 8: the rank and file and there doesn't seem to be
• 21:05
  Speaker 8: a way to kind of like cohere with lessons we
• 21:07
  Speaker 8: learn from the grassroots and kind of like you know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: coordinate this at the top level.
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: Right, this is a bigger question.
• 21:12
  Speaker 8: It's one that I'm sure everybody in the room attended
• 21:15
  Speaker 8: several panels this weekend about union democracy.
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: But is it actually an important question?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 21:19
  Speaker 8: And it's something that has been kind of so central
• 21:22
  Speaker 8: to the exciting things we talk about.
• 21:24
  Speaker 7: Whether it was like you know, the UAWD.
• 21:27
  Speaker 8: And Sean Faine and the reformers winning the leadership of
• 21:30
  Speaker 8: uaw through it through democratic kind of voting process. When
• 21:34
  Speaker 8: we talk about the team stirs and kind of what's
• 21:36
  Speaker 8: exciting there, much of it comes from pressure at the
• 21:38
  Speaker 8: bottom that has finally kind of been able.
• 21:39
  Speaker 7: To cohere and break through and change strategy in the union.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 21:44
  Speaker 7: I mean all weekend I was at Labor Notes.
• 21:47
  Speaker 8: You know, there are so many big questions now in
• 21:49
  Speaker 8: this moment that we really have to cohere across unions
• 21:52
  Speaker 8: and just doesn't just mean that everybody who's at the
• 21:55
  Speaker 8: aflcio all the kind of top level kind of elected
• 21:58
  Speaker 8: leadership and maybe slightly elected leadership in some of our
• 22:01
  Speaker 8: unions them getting on board. It's I think we all
• 22:04
  Speaker 8: It's why Labor Notes is so important. You know, we
• 22:06
  Speaker 8: all also need to figure out that you know, this
• 22:09
  Speaker 8: has always been true, that you know, our enemies are united,
• 22:11
  Speaker 8: and we unfortunately still often if not are divided.
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: We aren't talking to each other enough. We aren't coordinating
• 22:17
  Speaker 7: strategy enough.
• 22:18
  Speaker 8: And I think, you know, the one thing I would
• 22:21
  Speaker 8: just add, beyond the very useful kind of sense of
• 22:23
  Speaker 8: like here's what the biking kind of years look like
• 22:25
  Speaker 8: and union density is still falling, the other question is,
• 22:28
  Speaker 8: like I think a thing my takeaway from this weekend
• 22:31
  Speaker 8: or kind of sense at Labor Notes, it's like this
• 22:35
  Speaker 8: is a very sober moment for all of us because
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: all of us in this room know this that like, hey,
• 22:40
  Speaker 8: if I you know, this was one strategy that people
• 22:44
  Speaker 8: you know, thought insisted might help and it hasn't helped
• 22:47
  Speaker 8: us as in my workplace or yours. And you know,
• 22:49
  Speaker 8: I think my just the sense this weekend of like
• 22:53
  Speaker 8: you know, there's there's kind of a defensive posture in
• 22:56
  Speaker 8: the labor movement and in the American working class writ
• 22:59
  Speaker 8: large and Americans society. Whether we're talking about ICE, whether
• 23:01
  Speaker 8: we're talking about Trump and kind of actual fascist and
• 23:03
  Speaker 8: power in having their hands on the machinery of the state.
• 23:07
  Speaker 8: I think we're getting very serious, and yet I don't
• 23:10
  Speaker 8: have what we do about it, about any of this, right,
• 23:12
  Speaker 8: That's a question classic labor reporter faint where I say,
• 23:15
  Speaker 8: I want to know what you guys.
• 23:16
  Speaker 7: Have to say, but unfortunately I'm the speaker tonight.
• 23:20
  Speaker 8: But I think, like you know, one thing I would
• 23:22
  Speaker 8: look to is like the question of whether we're talking
• 23:26
  Speaker 8: about new organizing or new kind of like political questions
• 23:29
  Speaker 8: being taken up by rank and file and then moved
• 23:32
  Speaker 8: to the strategy of like kind official strategy of unions.
• 23:35
  Speaker 8: There's a lot of talk about how unions have responded
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: to ICE at this Labor Notes conference, particularly I'm thinking
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: of in Minneapolis, like sau Local twenty six did incredible
• 23:44
  Speaker 8: we're kind of building organization.
• 23:46
  Speaker 7: To fight ICE, and that is it's.
• 23:49
  Speaker 10: Unique, I think a lot of despite the fact that
• 23:57
  Speaker 10: in fact the strategy often is just like paulics from
• 24:00
  Speaker 10: the top of like let's elect a Democrat.
• 24:02
  Speaker 8: Like their politics is now confronting us in ways that
• 24:06
  Speaker 8: maybe for some of us it's always confronted us in
• 24:08
  Speaker 8: the power of like arrests and policing and violence from
• 24:11
  Speaker 8: the state, But it's now so inescapable that I think
• 24:14
  Speaker 8: union members are starting to act in quite political ways
• 24:18
  Speaker 8: and in a way that is the threat is so severe,
• 24:21
  Speaker 8: whether we're talking about ICE or whether we're talking about
• 24:23
  Speaker 8: other kind of horrible Trump policies, and kind of that
• 24:26
  Speaker 8: our unions are we can start forcing kind of our
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: unions to think politically in ways that go beyond the
• 24:33
  Speaker 8: bounds of like a presidential electoral cycle. I just think
• 24:37
  Speaker 8: that's incredibly necessary as we lose and we keep losing
• 24:41
  Speaker 8: to kind of like think through like what would politicizing
• 24:43
  Speaker 8: our unions and kind of like continuing to grow rank
• 24:46
  Speaker 8: and file power to kind of meet the moment.
• 24:48
  Speaker 7: No, I don't think we're prepared for the moment.
• 24:50
  Speaker 8: I think we are seeing incredible losses and tragedies, whether
• 24:54
  Speaker 8: it's union members being deported or working people in general
• 24:57
  Speaker 8: being killed in the streets.
• 24:59
  Speaker 7: But I know that, like many of us, would like
• 25:01
  Speaker 7: to change that and stop that.
• 25:03
  Speaker 8: And I think there's a lot you know at this
• 25:05
  Speaker 8: conference that there were incredible people.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: You'll get it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 8: Unfortunately, it is the human thing. You see, this incredible courage,
• 25:10
  Speaker 8: and how do we translate that up across the country.
• 25:12
  Speaker 8: So I just that is what I'm thinking right now.
• 25:15
  Speaker 8: It's not an answer, but I think it's part of
• 25:16
  Speaker 8: an answer.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: It's an excellent answer.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is all like you know, what we
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: can share from our perspectives, right and like Kim, I
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: know you have so much more to offer there.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: I have, I have, I have a thing now. I
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: thought to see what they had to say, but.
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: I'm really glad that Alex brought up that point about
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: the politicization as we're seeing it kind of become a
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: more common.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: Thing in our unions like this.
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: This past weekend Labor Notes, I got honor and pleasure
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: of moderating a panel called Bargaining Beyond Bread and Butter.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: This I know, Uh, when I.
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: Got to talk to folks union leaders, organizers who are
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: organizing around housing, uh, for like houseless homeless unhouse students
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: in their school districts, which is like, of course that's
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: a union issue, but would that is what we have
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: thought it was a union issue five years ago, ten
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: years ago, I got to talk to a tech worker
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: who she at Kickstarters.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: She and her co workers.
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: They won a four day work week, like that's in
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: the contract, yeah and bid Yeah right, incredible, and a
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: bunch of workers from very different industries, Like I saw
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: them line up to talk to her active the fact
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: to be like, Okay, how can we pull this off
• 26:29
  Speaker 6: because like your time is a labor issue. And I
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: was a little biased because like I already knew her.
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: But I also got to talk to Maya Ragsdale from
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: Beyond the Bars, this incredible worker center in South Florida
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: that's led by and works primarily with formerly incarcerated folks,
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: and they're doing tons of really critical organizing in the
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: temp industry, which is incredibly exploitative, poorly paid work that
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: just praise on formally incarcerated undocumented workers who like have
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: a hard time finding jobs elsewhere because they been painted
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: with this scarlet letter.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: That's bullshit.
• 27:03
  Speaker 6: So just seeing the way that they are thinking about
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: organizing outside of the sort of strictures of you know, okay,
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: maybe we're not in the AFL, say up, we don't
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: have the NRB stamp of approval.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: Like those things have only been around for like not
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: that long.
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: I mean, I'm sure we all know about the Union
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: of Southern Service Workers shut Out a value, a big purp.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: But there that is a project that gives me so
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: much hope.
• 27:26
  Speaker 6: And if you're not familiar, it's just it's again a
• 27:30
  Speaker 6: worker led effort.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: Like they're a union.
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: They're not NLRB certified, they don't have specific contracts, but
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: they essentially just like a solidarity union as a model
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: that is made up of predominantly like black and brown
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: women in the South who are doing low age work
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: in fast food and retail in these unorganizable industries.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: And they have been.
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: Going on strike, they have been bullying waffle House, they've
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: been winning. They put out incredible like social media content
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: which does matter now, just showing other folks like, yeah,
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: of course you can do this.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: You don't need something to.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: Say right now, you're a union. Now you count you
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: always counted. And just the work, the history and the
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: presence of labor. That I'm most interested in is the
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: people that have kind of been left out and what
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: they've done in spite of that. Like some of the
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: organizing I'm most excited about in this country is the
• 28:20
  Speaker 6: work that sex workers are doing, because that's a population
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: of workers that deal with, yeah, that have to deal
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: with so many other layers of bullshits on top of
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: being underpainned and exploited and left out of every major
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: law because their very job is criminalized because of like
• 28:35
  Speaker 6: some because we're in Christiane country that cares about adults
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: stew of their bodies, Like, I don't know, that's stupid.
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: They're organizing, they're unionizing, their striking like, they're making it work,
• 28:45
  Speaker 6: and they're not asking for permission from a system that
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: was not built with them in mind, that was not
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: built to give them power, and that still doesn't really
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: recognize them. Same with incarcerated workers, same with undocumented workers.
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: Workers whose labors criminalize or stimatized, or just too hard
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: to organize. I remember you mentioned the Starbucks workers and
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: all the energy they brought. A couple of years ago,
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: barisas were too hard to organize, Like everyone's too hard
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: to organize if you don't try, and you know, like
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: tell them about all this political stuff, like how much money,
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: how much of my money through my union dues has
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: gone to like democratic dickheads who have done anything for us.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: I would rather that go to a local workers.
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: Center or to that organizing campaign or literally anywhere else. Generally,
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: like you said, that hasn't really done much for us,
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: because it's not memphi us. Organizing from below is the
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: only way we're gonna get anywhere, the only way we
• 29:39
  Speaker 6: have gotten anywhere.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: I wrote a whole book about.
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: It, Like I know a little bit about this, Like
• 29:45
  Speaker 6: even our major labor laws were never passed with everyone
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: in mind. There's a reason that domestic workers and agricultural
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: workers are still left out because of racist Southern congressmen
• 29:55
  Speaker 6: or like no, no, you can't have those labor laws if
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: black people are gonna have access to it, Like that
• 29:59
  Speaker 6: is the So that is the story of labor in
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: this country. It has never been for everyone, even though
• 30:04
  Speaker 6: we've all always deserved it. And I just think it
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: is not to be like the Pollyanna, but something that
• 30:10
  Speaker 6: gives me hope. And I still feel so much energy
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: around in this movement as people who have seen the
• 30:14
  Speaker 6: ways in the current movement, especially the organized movement in
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: its current state, does not serve them, and have found
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: ways to either organize within it to make it better
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: for them, or just been like, fucking this, I'm doing
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: my own thing, and.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: IDOW DOOWE is still always there. You can always be
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: a dual carter like there.
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: I always have to plug them because people don't necessarily
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: realize that there's been a multi gender, multi racial, militantly
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: anti capitalist union in this country since nineteen oh five
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: that has always hated costs and never had it was
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: never like upset that some unions thought that we should
• 30:47
  Speaker 6: kick them out.
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: Says yeah, writer's guilty East, that was us.
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: But I could go on, but I want to hear
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: what else you want to ask us?
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, those were all such phenomenal answers, and like
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I wanted to like throw one other example that what
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: you were saying, Kim sparked in my.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Head, because yeah, I think that.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Alex is absolutely right, like when it comes to like
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: the hopes that maybe we had naivelier or naively like that,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: like the organized labor movement in the United States of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: America in twenty twenty six was going to like stand
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: up as this stalwart force against fascism, right if our
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: fucking you know, whole federal government collapsed like a house
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: of cards. You know, Like I don't have a whole
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: lot of faith in our institutions here, but I know
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of unions are doing a lot of good stuff.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: A lot of union members are doing everything that they can,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: and like that's where you know, we find our hope,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: like y'all said, and I wanted to just lift up
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: two other examples of that is like I think one
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: of the most important labor stories I reported on last
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: year was you know, not heard of in the beginning
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: because it was just a few you know, tech workers
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: at Microsoft.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, like, but they keep.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Disrupting Microsoft's like operations to protests, their contracts.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: With Israel, and now their contracts with Ice. Google workers
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: are doing it, right.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: I was there on Microsoft's campus filming as they set
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: up a gaza encampment on the center of like the
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: campus in Washington, And I was there when the cops
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: beat the shit out of them and demolished it, and
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: they kept coming back. Then they went and occupied the
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: like you know, VP's office. Like these people can't be stopped,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: not in an union. A lot of them have immigration
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: statuses that are at risk. Jobs they work their entire
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: lives for that they're putting on the line and losing
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: for what they believe in. That's heroic, right, but also
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: like to the reality of like organized labor on its own,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: like any other institution, does not have.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: The power to stop what we're facing right now.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: So I think the more of us who have that
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: sort of Lord of the Rings mentality where it's like,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: I don't need the whole afl CIO to show up,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I need some I need people who know what we're
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: fighting for to show up, right, And so like I
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: was at the Railroad Workers United conference this week shout
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: out to r WU, and I was so moved because
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: they had a panel at their conference where they brought
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: a resident of East Palaceine, Ohio, where that train derailed
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three. And I've been reporting on this
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: podcast talking to residents there who have all been poisoned
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: and it's a nightmare.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: And to see the railroad workers, not their unions, but
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: this worker group.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Of committed union members from different unions who believe in
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: the same things.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Like what.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: That's so much more powerful than like I don't know
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: an official letterhead, you know, from the Machinists. I don't
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: give a shit about that. Like it's it's so much
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: more important. I didn't mean to put the Machinists on blast.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: I love the blet.
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: I love them all.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: But like I again, the the higher up.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: You go in the hierarchy, the more I'm like, ah,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: fuck that guy, right, But you get the point. But anyway,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: like that, those types of acts, you know, they can
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: feel small in the moment, but they have like such
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: massive ripple effects, and rarely do we get to like
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: sort of see that manifest like we did in Minneapolis
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: where you were. It's like that was the ripple effect
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: made manifest of people who were probably in this in
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: this room right now, and that was incredible. But like
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: and labor got behind it. But it's like, you don't
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: need to be in a union to act like one.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: I guess it's like the takeaway from that great panel,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: you know, answer to that, So, AI, is it good
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: or bad?
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Hamilton?
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: I think it's good. I'm sorry, no, it's bad.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: Uh, I'm on the AI. Can any of the writers
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: guilds and we have decided it's bad. It's you know,
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: I mean it's funny because it's like one of those
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: things where it's like whenever they make a new technology
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: like AI or you know, any you can go back
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: through things before it crypto, and you know, there's always
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: a period of a couple of years where they're where
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: the people making.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: It are like, you just don't understand it.
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: You know, You're like, this kind of sounds bad, and
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: they're like, no, no, no, it's very complicated.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: You don't understand it, you know.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: And you watched this YouTube video on bitcoin.
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: Right, yeah, you know, and Crypto turned out to be
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: piece of shit, just like you thought, you know when
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: you first heard about it, you were right. And and AI,
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: you know, it's it's like it's they stole everything. They
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: stole everything we ever wrote, and all of you ever wrote,
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: and any movies you ever made and everything else. And
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: they're like, we're making a machine that can do your job,
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: and we'll take all the money. And it we trained
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: it on everything that you did. And you're like, it
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: sounds kind of fun, you.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Know, like and in fact it is.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: And I think the way it gets better.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: Wait till we talk about our data centers.
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: So you know, I think the longer that AI, the
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: more penetration that AI is getting throughout society, you know,
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: the more widespread the public centiment is like, oh, it
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: actually is fucked up, you know, Yes, like our instinct
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: was correct, you know, and now we're being forced to
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: use it to work, We're being forced to use it.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: You know, it is being pushed out.
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: I Mean, the scariest thing to me about AI as
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: this plan out economically is that the amount of investment
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: that is being put into AI is so large that
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: I know that they are going to push it on it.
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: I mean they are going to push it so hard
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: because there's three trillion dollars of their money in it,
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: you know, So none of us are going to get
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: out of this unscathed. Like even in the best case scenario,
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: this is going to be a brutal, brutal, brutle fight.
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: And you know, one other thing, which I think a
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: lot of us know probably, but I think as we're saying,
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: is that, like the real front line of AI regulation.
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: In America is union contracts.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: It's not like that's the reality, not even to hype
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: us up, but like the reality is that union contracts
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: probably have more meaningful AI regulation in America than all
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: legislation so far combined. So that's a little scary, but
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: it's also you know, if you're in a union, I mean,
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: that's where actual material regulation.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Of AI is happening. That's the opportunity for all of us.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: So AI, do you have any hardcore fans here? Okay?
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: So in the words of our problematic phaves, metal core
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: icons Earth Crisis, you know what I'm gonna say, destroy
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: the machines.
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: That was very niche, but I had to do it.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: I'll update it too if you do. Man.
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: I think about this so much because I'm a freelanche journalist, right,
• 38:03
  Speaker 6: So a lot of the work that I and a
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: lot of people like me could have maybe picked up
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: like a quick little summary, a quick little listical, so
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: like smaller, lower effort pieces of writing. You might get
• 38:13
  Speaker 6: a couple hundred bucks that like have you seen groceries?
• 38:16
  Speaker 6: Like I need that couple hundred bucks. That's going away.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: AI is doing that.
• 38:20
  Speaker 6: It's also coming for editor jobs. It's coming for It's
• 38:24
  Speaker 6: coming for every conceivable type of job. And I think about, like,
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: what is this going to mean for me and for
• 38:29
  Speaker 6: people like me who are trying to tell these stories
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: and trying to keep a foothold in journalism as it gets.
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: Harder and harder.
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: And I take a little bit of comfort in knowing
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: that even if they even if AI is trained on
• 38:40
  Speaker 6: every single thing I've ever written, which good luck if
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: it gets into the early two thousands, like like, it's
• 38:48
  Speaker 6: still not gonna be able to sit next to someone
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: at a bar and go tell me about what's going on,
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: tell me about what's going on with.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: Your job, how are your kids, how are you feeling,
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: what's what are your like?
• 39:01
  Speaker 6: That human connection is what makes journalism matter, you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: And hey, I's gonna take away big chunks of that,
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: but it can't take that human connection, Like same with
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: making art, making films, working with people face to face,
• 39:16
  Speaker 6: like you can't.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: A machine can't do that.
• 39:19
  Speaker 6: Even those fancy like little Japanese ones that serve you
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: drinks at the boba spot, like they can't take that away.
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: And I really hope that that means as much to
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: the rest of the world as it means to me,
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: and it means to us again shout outs in these.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: Times for giving us a place to do that.
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: But I think a lot about the early Luodite movement
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: in Yes, like shout out to General Luoduh. Look my
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: boy Brian Merchant, Well, my boy Brian Merchant, who was
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: part of the Vice Union with me. He wrote this
• 39:51
  Speaker 6: incredible book called Blood in the Machine, and it's just
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: it's like a really great it's so readable. I'm so mad,
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: it's so good. But he goes into and there's I
• 40:00
  Speaker 6: saw that calling someone a luod ape me. It's like, oh,
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: you're afraid of technology, You're afraid of change.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: No.
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: The Ludites were a labor movement of workers who saw
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: new technology power looms being introduced into their workplaces. It
• 40:12
  Speaker 6: destroyed the cottage industry of weaving, which is how for
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: generation centuries millennia, how skilled workers supported their families. They
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: didn't have to go into a factory, they didn't have
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: a boss, they didn't have to work by the clock
• 40:26
  Speaker 6: or the factory bell. They worked, they created, they sold,
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: they survived. This new technology was introduced against their will,
• 40:34
  Speaker 6: without consulting them. That killed off their jobs, destroyed the
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: appetite for labor. And they saw this happening in front
• 40:40
  Speaker 6: of their eyes, and their reaction was to set fire
• 40:43
  Speaker 6: to the power looms, and I look, eventually the power
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: looms kind of won because the Crown sent in leeds
• 40:52
  Speaker 6: of soldiers to crush them and to kill off the
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: leaders of this movement. They didn't just go like, actually,
• 40:57
  Speaker 6: you're right, And I'm not quite sure what I'm commending,
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: but and I'm not quite sure where they keep AI.
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: But I do think resistance is important and crucial and
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: it's the only way we're gonna get through lists. There
• 41:13
  Speaker 6: there's some unions who are being very smart in building,
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: in baking, in AI protections now before it takes over everything,
• 41:20
  Speaker 6: and some unions seem like they're more interested in kind
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: of like trying to make nice with it. It's like, well, like, girl,
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: they're not going to pick you like they're coming after
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: all of us. But I think we need to be
• 41:32
  Speaker 6: meaner about it and be like, no, fuck this, we
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: don't we cannot go through another We don't need more
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: power looms, we need more good union jobs.
• 41:45
  Speaker 8: So so, when I any question about technology, and this
• 41:50
  Speaker 8: has been said to some degree by both of the
• 41:53
  Speaker 8: other speakers here, is to me, at least, the question
• 41:55
  Speaker 8: of technology is always who controls it, who decides how
• 41:59
  Speaker 8: it's developed, how it's deployed right to me at least,
• 42:02
  Speaker 8: and I think for many people in you know, the
• 42:04
  Speaker 8: international labor movement's history. You know, again the blood it's
• 42:07
  Speaker 8: being one it's not for you're anti tech, but under capitalism,
• 42:11
  Speaker 8: technology from development stage through deployment stage and its use
• 42:15
  Speaker 8: will always be engineered based on what's profitable for specific
• 42:19
  Speaker 8: subset of the population.
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: It's not going to be for social good.
• 42:23
  Speaker 8: And so for me it's always the question of like,
• 42:25
  Speaker 8: the issue with with any technology is that it's being
• 42:28
  Speaker 8: developed under a system that has no interest in any
• 42:30
  Speaker 8: of us or very few of us, right, And that's
• 42:32
  Speaker 8: certainly the case with AI, right, you know, AIS and is.
• 42:36
  Speaker 7: Both totally stealing everybody's work, you know, not just creative people,
• 42:41
  Speaker 7: like blue collar people as well.
• 42:42
  Speaker 8: Like so you know, friends who are Amazon delivery drivers
• 42:46
  Speaker 8: are in the warehouses. Much of the reason there's so
• 42:48
  Speaker 8: incredibly intensely tracked, Say, delivery drivers for Amazon often are
• 42:53
  Speaker 8: given routes that don't make sense efficiency wise, but they
• 42:56
  Speaker 8: are you know, they have to follow it because this
• 42:58
  Speaker 8: is the point of it really isn't as necessarily that
• 43:01
  Speaker 8: Amazon's interest isn't necessarily just them getting the package to
• 43:04
  Speaker 8: the door, but they have immediate access in real time
• 43:06
  Speaker 8: to every driver's location and information.
• 43:09
  Speaker 7: They're using that to train AI.
• 43:10
  Speaker 8: Systems because it's incredibly max gigantic reserve of data. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 8: so this is every type of person whose kind of
• 43:17
  Speaker 8: labor is being stolen. You know, in a way we
• 43:19
  Speaker 8: all talk about how it's insane that we post on
• 43:21
  Speaker 8: social media because it's.
• 43:22
  Speaker 7: Just free data we're doing. In fact, everything we're doing
• 43:24
  Speaker 7: now is we're like doing that, right, A delivery driver
• 43:27
  Speaker 7: is doing that for a company as well.
• 43:29
  Speaker 8: You know, every action we do now is feeding AI,
• 43:32
  Speaker 8: and so I think we you know, to me, the
• 43:34
  Speaker 8: question is are they any technology?
• 43:36
  Speaker 7: And this has been true of even AI. There are
• 43:39
  Speaker 7: ways it could have.
• 43:40
  Speaker 8: Been could be developed or redeveloped that don't extract resources,
• 43:43
  Speaker 8: that don't use massive amounts of data, that don't completely
• 43:47
  Speaker 8: copyright everything. Right, those are incredibly local, us incredibly rare
• 43:51
  Speaker 8: because they're not profitable. That's not where billions are being made.
• 43:54
  Speaker 7: And so I think, to me, that's a useful way
• 43:56
  Speaker 7: to think about this.
• 43:57
  Speaker 8: So unfortunately we're all going to have to think about
• 43:59
  Speaker 8: this forever now, you know, I hate that we have
• 44:01
  Speaker 8: to talk about it about AI.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: So much.
• 44:04
  Speaker 8: The one other thing I want to say is, you know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 8: you mentioned data centers and I was really fascinating. There's
• 44:09
  Speaker 8: a panel at Labor Notes this weekend about data centers
• 44:11
  Speaker 8: and union power. You know, this is a real live
• 44:14
  Speaker 8: debate that I'm really curious about what people think in
• 44:17
  Speaker 8: the US labor movement where you know, I think it's
• 44:20
  Speaker 8: eighty five percent of non commercial or non residential real
• 44:24
  Speaker 8: estate being built in the past couple of years is
• 44:26
  Speaker 8: for data centers. So almost every construction job that's not
• 44:29
  Speaker 8: residential is to build the data center. Not every, but most,
• 44:33
  Speaker 8: and so that means for the building trades it's a
• 44:35
  Speaker 8: massive boom. Right.
• 44:36
  Speaker 7: This is saving their unions, This is providing real jobs
• 44:39
  Speaker 7: for all kinds of people. It's a big problem. I
• 44:41
  Speaker 7: will say that.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: Yes, also the.
• 44:43
  Speaker 8: Protections you know, I think union members and union contracts
• 44:46
  Speaker 8: like this. The writers and the actors especially were like
• 44:49
  Speaker 8: kind of the canary in the coal mine three years
• 44:51
  Speaker 8: ago about like how serious this is about to be, And.
• 44:55
  Speaker 7: We've seen that they've proven quite correct on that.
• 44:58
  Speaker 8: So there are you know, when we talk about say
• 45:00
  Speaker 8: it's getting provisions about no jobs can be replaced by AI.
• 45:03
  Speaker 7: Certain provisions like that absolutely important.
• 45:06
  Speaker 8: And some unions have been and members have been pushing
• 45:08
  Speaker 8: and winning on that, especially you know writers and journalists.
• 45:12
  Speaker 7: But it's flooding our work and kind of from the
• 45:15
  Speaker 7: top down.
• 45:16
  Speaker 8: Our employers are embracing it in academia constantly, universities are
• 45:19
  Speaker 8: almost mandating that people use AI. So there has to
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: be something we are doing beyond our individual union contracts.
• 45:25
  Speaker 8: I think just the timeline, it's like it's a losing
• 45:28
  Speaker 8: We're losing on this the second we get a provision,
• 45:31
  Speaker 8: it's undercut by a new use of AI. And so
• 45:33
  Speaker 8: whether there are ways to talk about getting just cause
• 45:35
  Speaker 8: at a city or some other level, Like we really
• 45:39
  Speaker 8: have to figure out. This is one of those moments
• 45:40
  Speaker 8: where I say, like we all have to do what
• 45:42
  Speaker 8: we're doing in our unions, but we also actually have
• 45:44
  Speaker 8: to think politically at this point with the speed that
• 45:45
  Speaker 8: this is being deployed and the amount of money on
• 45:47
  Speaker 8: the line for the people who need it to undercut
• 45:50
  Speaker 8: your job.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: So just some thoughts, yeah, outstanding thoughts, give it up for.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many like thought provoking points that
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: y'all all brought up, and like I would be remiss,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: especially given.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Like the work that I've done on this show beyond just.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: The organized labor movement, and I already mentioned the railroad
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: workers and then.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: East Palistine, right, that is the connection.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: That's how I went from talking about union workers on
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the railroads to you know, union workers who were poisoned
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: by a rail disaster and whose union abandoned them in
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: East Palestine.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: You know, that was the laborers.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Chris Albright, his heart grew twice as big after that derailment,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: lost his job as union fucking throw him overboard.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: That's a working class story as well.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: That's just as important, right, I mean, but it's in
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: that vein that like doing that work and seeing the
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: scale of the toxics toxic devastation, and like the whole
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: process of corporations in the government turning more and more of.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: This country into one giant sacrifice zone.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I would just ask for those union members
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: who are going to have those debates that Alex rightly
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: suggested need to be had, and I know they are happening,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: but just something to consider when we're you know, thinking
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: about just like that tough question of everyone needs a job.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: These are these are they're good union jobs. They're providing like,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: you know, good wages, and it's not really any working
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: person's like purview to think beyond I got to provide
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: for me and mine, right, But as someone who does
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: that type of reporting now on sacrifice zones and toxic
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: pollution and all that, and as someone who just drove
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: from Chicago to Baltimore and then Baltimore to Chicago in
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: the last thirty.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: Hours, I can't not see it. I see the toxic
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: husks of industries past peppered throughout this landscape.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Have you guys driven into Chicago through Gary, Indiana?
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Again, I was taking pictures as I was flying into Chicago,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: because again it's like once you see it, you can't
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: unsee it. And so whether that's the coal mines that like,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: we don't hate coal miners. We sent Kim Kelly down
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: to Alabama to talk to like red Trump voting coal
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: miners for a three year long strike, and she did
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: the best coverage out of anyone in the country because
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: she cared about them. It's not about do we care
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: about these?
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Why? Yeah, give it up her Kim one.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: But again, I have also been to West Virginia like
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Hollers and towns where people have cancers from the toxic
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: runoff of those mines. People at Black Lung, you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: in their thirties from.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Those goddamn mines.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Now you know again like I saw, you know, not
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: just the lord'stown plant driving in here, but like a
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: bunch of other smaller shuttered one you know, like and.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: You know those were jobs too once.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Now they're like, you know, either just empty shells of
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: nothing or worse, they're like super fun sites or they're
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: like they they're they're buried on top of a bunch
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: of toxic waste or all. Everyone who used to work
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: there has cancer now, right, I mean we have to
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: also think about that because I'm talking to residents living
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: near these data centers and they're describing like horrors to me,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: like you know, they're getting heart palpitations, they're bleeding from
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: their ears. It sounds like living on a runway of
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: an airport, right, imagine that twenty four to seven, you would.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: Go insane a lot to mention all the other environmental Costiyatayada.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: So it's just like.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be our job to think about all that,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: but clearly no one else is taking it into consideration.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: So if not us who because the people who are
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: making the decisions are the ones plopping those fucking things
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: down in our communities. I don't care how many jobs
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: they by, right and and frankly neither do the people
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: who own them. That's what we have to remember, is
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: like everything to what was said here, but just we
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: have to It's on us to think for the future
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: because the people in power don't think we have one,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: clearly by their actions. And like I wanted to like
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: wrap that into our final question, right, like because they
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: these you know, sister Aster Taylor and Naomi Klein rightly
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: called this end times fascism, right like this this horrific
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: symbiosis between you know, religious fanatic nut jobs and you know,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: like Project twenty twenty five ghouls, but also like this
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: fucking sociopathic world destroying pedophile ring of fucking lunatics.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: Billionaires like Jesus Christ, and and they're buying it. They're
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: destroying our planet.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: They're going to war and destroying other countries and profiting
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: from it.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: But they are all so.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Going to war on our minds and gobbling up every
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: legacy and social media platform they can and using them
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: to warp our brains and warp our sense of reality.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: And make our jobs impossible. YadA, YadA, YadA.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: You see where I'm going with this, right, So, like
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: I wanted to turn that into a spicy question, because
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: what do we do about all these fucking oligarchs gobbling
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: up all the media is a bigger is a topic
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: on its own for another panel. But yeah, but like
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: if we're talking about AI and like that's all happening
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: like the last really the last five years has exploded,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: the AI stuff, the Ellison's like fucking taking over Warner
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Brothers and like most of TikTok and dreasing, like you know,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: being the primary owner or investor in substack, must buying X.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: You know, like this a lot of this has happening
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: in a relatively short amount of time. Bezo's been the
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Washington Post, but like they're gobbling everything up, and so
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: now Barry fucking Weiss like runs everything and the like
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: incredible journalists like Kim are freelancing when they should be
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: getting like.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: Barry Weiss, oh my god, like are you kidding me?
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: Put Kim in charge of CNN for Christ's sake? I mean,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: but like, so that's the topic.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: It's like what do we do about this real like
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: hostile takeover of ownership and of ideological direction of the
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: media as it is today.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Can you repeat the question?
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: Sorry, Yeah, we're having a good time now in times fascism. Yes,
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: well we're speaking right now as the UFC fights are
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: being held on the White House lawn. So that's a
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: it's an appropriate question, and and let me well, I
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: just want to did consider broadcasting them.
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: Having it over our heads would have been appropriate?
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: And one thing I'll say about the importance of indies
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: Times Magazine is that I was asked by another publication
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: to go and cover those fights at the White House tonight,
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: and I said, no, I have to.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: Be on this panel at any Times magazine. So this
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: is more important to give, you know, to give maybe
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: a more serious answer.
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: It's like I've been covered Donald Trump since fucking twenty
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: fifteen Iowa Caucus.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Men.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: My life has been wasted since that time. My life,
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: I'm wasting my life.
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: I was at the event in Iowa in twenty fifteen
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: when there was like still sixteen Republican candidates and Donald
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: Trump got on stage and was like, they asked him
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: about John McCain.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: He was like, I don't like John McCain because he
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: got captured. I like people weren't captured.
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: And when he said that, all the beat reporters who
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: were sitting next to me got up and left the file.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: Their stories and their stories were Trump is over.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: Trump has made this gap and he's done twenty fifteen,
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: and this motherfucker is the most powerful political figure of
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: my lifetime now. And you know, I think I have
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: been thinking about this for ten years, and unfortunately, I
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: think it's a very very deep question why the worst
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: guy in America has the most power, And I have
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: not really figured out the answer. I think if you
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: think you've figured out the answer, you probably haven't thought
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: about it enough, because there's probably, you know, the dark,
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: dark heart of the United States of America lies somewhere
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: in the explanation of Donald Trump, you know.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think capitalism is probably the short answer.
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: Like everything that we are seeing, from the UFC fights
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: on the lawn to Donald Trump to East Palestine is
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: the inevitable operations of capitalism playing out according to its
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: own logic, you know, without interference in the form of
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: organized work or power, you know, or something else.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: But yeah, it's it's fucked up.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: I have to think ten more years.
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: Man.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: Well, but is that you officially not commenting on Barry Weiss?
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: So you are going on the record saying you love
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Barry White.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: And I'm not a fan of Barry Weiss, but I
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: believe she's a subpar journalist.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: Sorry if there's a lot of Barry Weiss fans here,
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh, So talking about fascism, I think about.
• 55:30
  Speaker 6: Do you guys remember in twenty seventeen, a bunch of
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: us went down to Charlottesville, Virginia because a whole bunch
• 55:38
  Speaker 6: of fucking Nazis were also going down to Charlottesville, Virginia,
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: and a bunch of people decided that was not acceptable,
• 55:45
  Speaker 6: and a lot of things happened, and a lot of
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: the people, the figureheads of what was then called the
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: alt right, that was supposed to be their big, glorious moment,
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: they were ascended. They had Richard Spencer in his little
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: fucking suit, They had like fancy ass publications that would
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: never return any of our calls profiling these motherfuckers, and
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: it seemed like a moment where it was like, oh,
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: they're pretty close to power.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: This is not good.
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: And then we showed up and they got a couple
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: of us, but the rest of us made it out.
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: And those people, those fucking fascists, they started dropping life flies.
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: Maybe they're not dead, you know, inshallah blah.
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: We'll get there.
• 56:26
  Speaker 6: But we don't hear that much about Richard Spencer. We
• 56:29
  Speaker 6: don't hear that much about David Due. We don't hear
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: that much about the hundreds of other fucking fascists who
• 56:35
  Speaker 6: showed up to intimidate and terrorize a town in Virginia.
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: Because anti fascist researchers and journalists and sometimes they're the
• 56:44
  Speaker 6: same guy docksed them, put their information out there, poured
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: bleach all over them, and showed us who they were,
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: what they were, and where they worked, and fucked up
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: their lives. And that is I don't care if you
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: think it's bad to punching out like I'm not gonna
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: argue with you. You're wrong, like we did that discourse
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: like ten fucking years ago. You can look at my
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: at testoos and tell me what side I'm on, you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: get real close. But that was a moment for journalism too.
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: The alt right as we knew it, that kind of
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: shriveled and died but now those same guys are in
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: charge of us, So like.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: We didn't win that war, but we did show that
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: there is.
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: Power in reporting, in journalism, in showing these people for
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: the snibbling, wretched worms that they are. Now perhaps there
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: aren't as many consequences for being a fucking Nazi because
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: now Steven Miller.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: Is in charge of me, So like things have shifted
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: in that way. But it is never not going to
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: matter they're agreeing with me.
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: It's never The work that journalists and researchers do, and
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: activists do, and archivists and historians do is never not
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: going to matter, because we always need to know who
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: the enemy is. That's how we their weaknesses. That's how
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: we scare them, It's how we take them down. That's
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: how we make their lives, even just a fraction as
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: unpleasant as they make ours. Like this country's around for
• 58:10
  Speaker 6: what two hundred and fifty years, all of them c
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: minus at the very best, like we were very long
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: and fucked up history here. But there have always been
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: nosy people that saw some injustice, saw something horrible, oppressive, disgusting,
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: and we're like, I'm gonna figure out what's going on.
• 58:28
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna tell some people about that. And it has
• 58:30
  Speaker 6: always mattered. It hasn't always won the war, solved the problem,
• 58:34
  Speaker 6: save people's lives, but sometimes it has. And as we
• 58:38
  Speaker 6: stare down this moment of yet another wave of American fascism,
• 58:42
  Speaker 6: in this nice building full of people that care about
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: independent journalism or making independent journalism, heck might fund independent
• 58:49
  Speaker 6: journalism like I do, think that we need to keep
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: our eyes on these people and keep keep leaking stuff,
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: keep exposing stuff, keeping bad these motherfuckers, keep showing them
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: how small they are, because the only way we're gonna
• 59:05
  Speaker 6: get out of any of this is if we don't
• 59:07
  Speaker 6: take our fucking eyes off the enemy. And as journalists,
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: that's yes, speak truth to power, find fun, cool stories.
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: I do all the fun stuff, but it's fundamentally about,
• 59:17
  Speaker 6: at least for me, it's about not letting the bastards
• 59:20
  Speaker 6: grind us down and getting them before they get us.
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: And that's the mission I'm trying to work towards.
• 59:34
  Speaker 8: I'm gonna try to keep it short because I want
• 59:36
  Speaker 8: to talk to you all off mic and I want
• 59:38
  Speaker 8: you to talk to each other.
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: I think there there is somewhat of it.
• 59:41
  Speaker 8: It's I think a lot of people have forgotten kind
• 59:43
  Speaker 8: of the baseline critique of corporate media, which is that
• 59:46
  Speaker 8: it's for profit and it's you know, geared towards an
• 59:49
  Speaker 8: affluent consumer based so not the working class.
• 59:52
  Speaker 7: And advertisers also, that's a big.
• 59:53
  Speaker 8: Part of it.
• 59:54
  Speaker 7: So I don't, you know, I've never wanted a mainstream
• 59:57
  Speaker 7: media job.
• 59:58
  Speaker 8: I don't think it's surprising that somebody like very you know,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 8: she's very good at what she does, which is sucking
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 8: up to rich people and flattering them.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 7: So I'm congratulations to her. She does excel at that. Actually,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 7: And so I think I want to build independent media.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: I do not think, you know, I think we give way.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 8: We should criticize and focus on the you know, it's
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 8: incredible that CBS News, for example, had good reporting despite
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 8: all these constraints.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: Great journalists work in mainstream media. They're now suffering and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 7: not able to do their work.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 8: I want to build institutions that can reach working class
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 8: people in America that are not kind of so subservient
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 8: to the alter rich, whether it's their funders or their advertisers,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 8: or that's their targeted audience. And in these times, it's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 8: one of those institutions. So let's let's talk about in
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 8: these times now.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: To be clear, fuck very west.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: Well and like like yeah, in the spirit of like
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: you know, fuck David Ellison, Fuck Verry Wise, fuck Jeff Bezos,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Fuck these fucking.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: People support in these times.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Like I don't want to speak for any of you,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: but I would not be here without in these times, right.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, like one of my first bylines was at
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: in these Times, and it meant so much to me
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: to see it online.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, I know the history of this place.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: I was a nobody.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: They gave me a chance, and I remember it was
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: a piece that I co authored with a UAW member
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: on strike back.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: This was before the stand.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Up strike, this was before COVID in these times worked
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: with us Me and this union member who wasn't used
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: to writing for online magazines. That struck me as incredibly special,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: And again it's what led to the organic relationship between
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: in these times partnering with working people. A lot of
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: the stuff I've mentioned tonight, the reporting I've done in
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: sacrifice zones with railroad workers, YadA, YadA, YadA, they're on
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: l in these Times website, right, I mean, like I
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: would not be here without them, and I think we would,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: our movements would be way worse off without in these times.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: And so I just wanted to ask everyone here to, yeah, like,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: you know, support the hell out of this place, right
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: for this place, tell your friends about this place, because
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: we need independent, like fearless journalism that takes working people
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: in our struggles seriously now more than ever. Hamilton, what
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: about you absolutely agree?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, you know, look, I worked at Gawker. Gawker
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: was around for about a little over ten years and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: then it disappeared. The next place I work called Splinter.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: That place around about three years before it disappeared. And
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: these times been around fifty fucking years, Like do you
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: have confright, just what it takes to keep a small
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: left winging magazine around for fifty years is incredible to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: even contemplate, you know. And the older I get, the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: more I really appreciate the importance of the institutions that
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: we have in our movements, you know, all of us
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: coming from labor Notes, you know, I think about damn man,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: labor Notes, a small, small operation, but like the importance
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: of what they put together every two years with this conference.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: Not to mention they're great magazine and all that but
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: you know, it's really important. I mean the importance is
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: national and a ripples beyond all of us, you know,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: and in these times is a very small but important
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: institution in American journalism, in the American left, in the
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: labor movement, all of those things, you know, like and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: all of us up here who are journalists or writers,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: we're like polar bears, you know, and in these times
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: like the sea ice and like we need to be
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: on that, you know. Otherwise we're just paddling out there.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: So let's support in these times. Yeah, we could not
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: agree more. We're really lucky to have a publication like this.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: I want to say. There's a lot of publications out
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: there written for most of them.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: There's reason I'm here instead of home in my bed
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: in Philadelphia, after talking at forty seven hundred people the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: past three days, getting trapped at Gate B five for
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 6: ten hours in a long.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: Year, it's fine, But this really is a special place.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: Like they do the hard hitting reporting, they do the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: in depth analysis, they do all the things you want
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: from a publication, and they also let writers like us.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: They give us space to do what we really want
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: to do. We all have our pet things. Max he's
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 6: a fan of this place called East Palestine. I'm not
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: sure if he's mentioned it. And if you've read anything
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 6: I've written in the past few years, it's probably been
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: about coal miners, because in these times keeps letting me
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: write about this very specific problem, the black one that's
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: killing young people my age, our age, and coal mines
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: and Appalachia. They're dying the same way my granddad, a
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: steel worker with mesothelioma, died. I don't want anyone to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: see someone they love struggle the way I to see
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: my grandfather struggle. And in these times, lets me keep
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 6: writing about even the wonky like emsha developments. Do you
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: know what that acrons? It took me a while, but
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: it's it's all this like red tape stuff. It's only
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: interesting to people that care, and it's my job to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: make you care. And then these times lets me do it.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: Do you know how hard it is to sell a
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: pitch to any place like, hey, I want to write
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: about this politically reviled class of people who are dying
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: from this ugly disease in an area that does not
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: subscribe to your magazine?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: Can I.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: Can I have like five hundred bucks real quick. That
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: is not a winning proposition.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: But when I asked R, He's like, Okay, what do
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: you want to go to Beckley, West Virginia to go
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: to a hearing about this black line crisis.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's on the website.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: He let me go.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: No one does that. I let he I've written it.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: He's let me.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: They in these Times, let me write about casino workers
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 6: in Jersey, where I'm from, who are trying to.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: Get smoke out of their workplace.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: Let me write about nail salon workers, let me write
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: about incarcerated workers and sex workers, and.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: Just they let me get away with a lot.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: So for me personally, like I'm asking you to help
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 6: them continue to do that because I have more tattoos
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: to pay for.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I I so.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 8: I think I think this piece is in the current
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 8: issue that I just wrote something from These Times called
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 8: the Planes Across the Tarmac, which is based around you know,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 8: for the since Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people, the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 8: latest iteration of it started after October seventh of twenty
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: twenty three. You know, I've been doing a lot of work,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 8: both in writing and in organizing as a worker, as
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 8: a person, as someone who's you know, implicated in this
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 8: genocide through the United States government been very active with
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 8: the Palestine Solidary movement.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 7: I happened since I was a teenager. I'm also very
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 7: active in the labor movement, and that's my beat.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 8: Quote unquote, and I've been writing about those two movements,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 8: trying to like help bring them together, both in the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 8: writing and in the organizing.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 7: And so, you know, I talked to a worker who
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 7: works at the Oakland Airport.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 8: She's a UPS worker and recently activists from the Palestine,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 8: from one of the Palestine Solidarity organizations in the Bay Area.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 8: They found out even the mayor of Oakland didn't know
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 8: that cargo bound for Israel that included weapons that were
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 8: being used to commit genocide. We're going through a civilian airport,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 8: the Oakland Airport, that was being shipped through that infrastructure.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 8: So these Palestinian activists, many of the Palestinian Americans who
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 8: were just on their off time doing this research into
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: the supply chain to try to figure.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 7: Out how their community was a part of being implicated.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 8: They've found out these weapons were being shipped through the
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 8: Oakland Airport. And so I remember being really interested in
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 8: this report and then I heard from you know, connections
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 8: through organizing in this movement and in the labor movement. Actually,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 8: there was a UPS worker at the airport who is
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 8: extremely pro Palestine and very active in both of these movements,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 8: and she wants to talk about times this experience. We're
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 8: trying to organize against this at the airport. One person, right,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 8: she you know, when we spoke, you know, we talked
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: about how how is she talking to her co workers
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: about this?
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: What did they think?
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 8: You know, isn't it interesting that like it's the FedEx
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: workers who are moving. It's FedEx that's operating, you know,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: moving these packages. It's a non union shop. You know,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 8: what does it look like to talk about? Like how
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 8: does it feel to see weapons bound for war? How
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 8: does it change a relationship with her own job?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 8: She says, Now every package she sees, she wonders what's
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 8: in that? She looks at the planes taking off.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 7: And thinks like is that one of them?
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 8: And you know, I think this is this is the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 8: type of story that nobody is gonna run. You know,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 8: nobody cares. Right, this is one thing, you know, it's
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 8: one person. It's a small story. I think it's really
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 8: interesting to talk about, like what does it actually look
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: like the machinery of war and what does it look
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 8: like for workers trying to organize against it. I actually
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 8: tried to place that story several places. Everyone said, you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 8: it's not really a story in these times, said yeah,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: let's run it. That sounds fantastic, that's great, And I
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 8: just want to say that, like I compare it to
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 8: a piece I end up. I wrote it for the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 8: Washington Post many years ago. It was about the UPS contract,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 8: not the one and the most recent one that almost
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 8: led to a strike, but the one before.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 7: That, so I guess like was six million years ago
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 7: at this point.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 8: And I remember pitching it to the Washington Post and
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 8: I said, you know, this is the largest private sector
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: contract in America.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 7: Three hundred and fifty thousand workers are covered on this.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: Contract and their families, and you know it affects so
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 8: many people, right, and the workers are actually organizing against
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 8: ratifying this contract. They might actually vote it down, which
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: would be like shocking and historic, and they did.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: End up doing that.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 8: It got passed anyway, undemocratically and led to the ousting
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 8: of that of that president and the Sean O'Brien becoming
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 8: the new president. I said, this is a huge story,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 8: you know, I think it's worth covering in the Washington
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 8: Post kind of like I think people in a mainstream
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 8: place actually should hear about this. I remember that editor,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: God bless his heart, because he did eventually get we
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 8: found a way to get it in. He said, I'm
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 8: not sure that people that like my boss is going
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 8: to understand why this is like relevant to our readership.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 8: Can you maybe broaden out to talk about like tears
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 8: in contract like something to make.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 7: It more relevant to more people. I was like, again,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 7: these are over a.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 8: Million people directly affected, but they are not the intended
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 8: readership of that publication nor the desired readership, right. I
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 8: think it's just like it's a world of difference to
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: have outlets that understand and actually see the working class
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: as both their readership, their contributors, and kind of the
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: community that they're in a conversation with. And I think
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 8: that metaphor is very correct that there are few and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 8: far between, and the ice is melting.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 7: And I just want to thank in these times so
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 7: much for continuing to exist.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: I know it's not easy.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: And chew it up in these times or chewing up
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: our incredible panel.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: Everybody Alex curse Hey can tell hand of the.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 11: A mess over, gotta get follow you get stole anything.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: I gotta get you get stole anything of business for
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: my changes.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 11: See, I gotta make it you and I gotta makefor me.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 11: Or sometimes it's see I'm neglecting you.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: Well, I love just been more time. I got so
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: many things.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: Whoa I got I got on, I gotta shot pass
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to past