Latest / The Real News Podcast / Train Crashes Destroyed Their Towns. Will Yours Be Next?

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Train Crashes Destroyed Their Towns. Will Yours Be Next? · The Real News Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Breaking news. A trained dear relman and major fire tonight
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: about an hour from Pittsburgh in East Palestine, Ohio and Ohio.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: So when we've seen the smoke, I mean the whole
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: entire sky, we get the orange.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: The whole entire train's on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: All you can see from one end to the.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: Other end of the number five.
• 0:22
  Speaker 5: Soon as open the back door, all you could see
• 0:24
  Speaker 5: were flames.
• 0:25
  Speaker 6: It looked like our town was on fire.
• 0:28
  Speaker 5: I looked at my house and I honestly thought that
• 0:30
  Speaker 5: was going to be the last time that I would
• 0:32
  Speaker 5: ever see it again, because I just thought the town
• 0:34
  Speaker 5: was on fire still, and I said, if my house
• 0:37
  Speaker 5: catches on fire, please call me, Please let me know
• 0:39
  Speaker 5: what happened.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: What happened.
• 0:45
  Speaker 7: After a park train came loose, picked up, speed, roared
• 0:49
  Speaker 7: off the tracks, and exploded in the middle of the night.
• 0:52
  Speaker 7: Burnt rail tankers are still steaming in the heart of
• 0:56
  Speaker 7: Lecmag and tick Quebec.
• 0:58
  Speaker 8: The destruction downtown stretches several blocks, dozens of homes and
• 1:02
  Speaker 8: businesses reduced to rubble, nothing but debris where once stood
• 1:06
  Speaker 8: an apartment building, a bar in the town library.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Mavie, you have Plato Now my.
• 1:15
  Speaker 9: Life has changed.
• 1:16
  Speaker 6: She says, it's changed forever.
• 1:20
  Speaker 10: I wasn't ready to have her taken away. I still
• 1:23
  Speaker 10: need my mom, but she won't be there anymore.
• 1:27
  Speaker 7: Officials in lack Megantic gave another sad update today. Thirty
• 1:32
  Speaker 7: eight people are now confirmed dead. Twelve have been identified.
• 1:36
  Speaker 6: Does one local put it?
• 1:38
  Speaker 8: The railway helped to build Black Megon sick and now
• 1:41
  Speaker 8: it's destroyed, destroyed it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 11: Welcome everyone to Working People, the podcast about the lives, jobs,
• 1:53
  Speaker 11: dreams and struggles of the working class today. Working People
• 1:57
  Speaker 11: is a proud member of the Labor Radio podcast Network
• 2:01
  Speaker 11: and has brought to you in partnership within These Times
• 2:03
  Speaker 11: magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced
• 2:07
  Speaker 11: by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of
• 2:10
  Speaker 11: listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the
• 2:14
  Speaker 11: host of this podcast, and I'm also the editor in
• 2:17
  Speaker 11: chief and co executive director of the Real News Network.
• 2:21
  Speaker 12: And I'm doctor Nicole Fabricant. I teach anthropology at Tawson University.
• 2:26
  Speaker 12: I've been working for fifteen years in an overburdened area
• 2:29
  Speaker 12: of Baltimore, a community named Curtis Bay, where seventy plus
• 2:33
  Speaker 12: toxic polluting industries are housed in one residential area. The
• 2:37
  Speaker 12: zip code has some of the highest rates of respiratory
• 2:40
  Speaker 12: illness in the entire country. I became interested in questions
• 2:43
  Speaker 12: of rail when a CSX, a Class one rail line
• 2:47
  Speaker 12: carrying coal to Curtis Bay and export pier there silo
• 2:51
  Speaker 12: exploded in twenty twenty one, leading residents to ask why
• 2:55
  Speaker 12: a coal pier was located one thousand feet from a
• 2:58
  Speaker 12: recreational facility, and why wasn't a billion dollar rail company
• 3:03
  Speaker 12: protecting the community from fugitive cold dust.
• 3:06
  Speaker 11: NICKI and I are going to be co hosting this
• 3:08
  Speaker 11: special episode today and you'll understand why it's so special
• 3:12
  Speaker 11: in a minute. As you guys know, for the past
• 3:14
  Speaker 11: three years on this show, along with covering other essential
• 3:18
  Speaker 11: working class stories and labor issues, we've been speaking regularly
• 3:22
  Speaker 11: with working people in Ohio and Pennsylvania whose lives have
• 3:26
  Speaker 11: been forever changed by the Norfolk Southern train derailment and
• 3:29
  Speaker 11: chemical disaster in early February of.
• 3:31
  Speaker 13: Twenty twenty three.
• 3:33
  Speaker 11: I mean, we won an Izzy Award for our coverage
• 3:35
  Speaker 11: of this horrific catastrophe at the Real News and on
• 3:38
  Speaker 11: this very show. You've heard directly from sick residents, sick
• 3:42
  Speaker 11: union members and non union members, and retired union members
• 3:46
  Speaker 11: and their families about the hell that they've been going
• 3:49
  Speaker 11: through ever since. And you've heard from American railroad workers
• 3:53
  Speaker 11: about how the deregulation and Wall Street takeover of the
• 3:57
  Speaker 11: rail system made this wholly avoidable national tragedy a nightmarish inevitability.
• 4:03
  Speaker 12: But before East Palestine, there was Loch Megantik, one of
• 4:07
  Speaker 12: the deadliest rail disasters in North American history. On July six,
• 4:11
  Speaker 12: twenty thirteen, an unattended seventy four car freight train carrying
• 4:16
  Speaker 12: crude oil rolled downhill and derailed in the town center
• 4:20
  Speaker 12: of Loch Mecgantique, Quebec. The train, operated by Montreal, Maine
• 4:24
  Speaker 12: and Atlantic Railway, had been parked over night on a
• 4:28
  Speaker 12: slope in a nearby town. The lone engineer had shut
• 4:31
  Speaker 12: down the locomotive and gone to a hotel for the night.
• 4:34
  Speaker 12: A fire broke out on the lead locomotive while the
• 4:37
  Speaker 12: train was parked. Firefighters responded and in the process of
• 4:40
  Speaker 12: fighting the fire, shut down the engine, inavertedly disabling the
• 4:45
  Speaker 12: air brakes that had been keeping the train stationary. After
• 4:48
  Speaker 12: they left, the train began to roll gathering speed over
• 4:52
  Speaker 12: eleven kilometers of downhill track before derailing at a curve
• 4:57
  Speaker 12: in Lochmcgantique's downtown core around one.
• 5:00
  Speaker 9: Point fifteen am.
• 5:02
  Speaker 12: Sixty three of the seventy four tanker cars derailed, and
• 5:05
  Speaker 12: highly volatile back in crude oil they were carrying ignited immediately.
• 5:10
  Speaker 12: The resulting explosions and fire were enormous, destroying forty buildings
• 5:15
  Speaker 12: in the town center, including a popular bar that was
• 5:18
  Speaker 12: full of patrons at the time. Forty seven people were killed,
• 5:22
  Speaker 12: about two thousand residents had to be evacuated, and a
• 5:26
  Speaker 12: large portion of Lacmagantique's downtown was obliterated. It remains a
• 5:30
  Speaker 12: stark example of how these cascading institutional failures regulatory, corporate,
• 5:35
  Speaker 12: and operational can lead to catastrophic consequences.
• 5:39
  Speaker 11: As journalists and researchers, Nicky and I have spent years
• 5:43
  Speaker 11: embedded in different working class communities with people who are living, working,
• 5:48
  Speaker 11: and fighting for justice in America's sacrifice zones. Now, sacrifice
• 5:52
  Speaker 11: zones are basically areas where people have been left to
• 5:55
  Speaker 11: live in conditions that threaten life itself. Neighborhoods poison by
• 6:00
  Speaker 11: industrial pollution, communities dying from decades of economic disinvestment and
• 6:05
  Speaker 11: social decay. Towns abandoned to face the deadly effects of
• 6:09
  Speaker 11: man made climate change, from East Palestino, Ohio, to South Baltimore,
• 6:14
  Speaker 11: from coal and fracking towns in West Virginia and Pennsylvania
• 6:17
  Speaker 11: to rural communities impacted by industrial agriculture and the explosion
• 6:22
  Speaker 11: of new data center construction projects. We have done everything
• 6:26
  Speaker 11: in our capacities as journalists and researchers to document, report on,
• 6:30
  Speaker 11: and lift up the voices, stories and struggles in needs
• 6:34
  Speaker 11: of Sacrifice Zone residents. And yet, along with the residents themselves,
• 6:39
  Speaker 11: we have come to the sobering conclusion that media coverage
• 6:42
  Speaker 11: and academic study of these injustices is just not enough
• 6:46
  Speaker 11: to stop the destruction and to hold corporations in the
• 6:49
  Speaker 11: government accountable for their crimes, and to get affected residents
• 6:53
  Speaker 11: that help and justice they desperately need and deserve.
• 6:57
  Speaker 12: We've got to use whatever tools and abilities we have
• 7:00
  Speaker 12: to bring people together on and offline. That's why Max
• 7:03
  Speaker 12: and I are working together and bringing our networks together
• 7:06
  Speaker 12: here on the Real News Network, and that's exactly what
• 7:09
  Speaker 12: we're hoping to do with this podcast. With the help
• 7:12
  Speaker 12: from the incredible folks that Railroad Workers United. We've brought
• 7:15
  Speaker 12: together a truly historic panel of residents who survived the
• 7:19
  Speaker 12: Laco Megantique disaster in Canada and the East Palestine rail
• 7:23
  Speaker 12: disaster here in the United States. Please introduce yourselves.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: My name is Robert Benfleur. I am the spokesperson for
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the Coalition of citizens and organizations committed to supporting the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Lacmagantic Railway, which was created in twenty fifteen following the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: lack of Megantic tragedy.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Gilbert Jilbert Cajet, La Mecantic resident
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: and member of the Lake Mecantic Citizen Coalition for Railroad Safety.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: We started this coalition and we've been working hardly to
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: afford the safety in this style and rail stator in
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: this town. And we wound the rail out of Lake Megantic.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: We want the control length. So that's our fight now
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: for we've been fighting four years. So I introduced you
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: to my older brother, you know, from the Railroad Safety Coalition,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Jill Flew besides me that he was the first witness
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: of the tragedy. He came out from the music cafe,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: the bar that was set about fifty feet from the
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: crossing Jill well out from the bar at one o'clock
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: in the morning about that and just at the time
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: he crossed the red road crossing, you know, by about
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: three feet or four feet, the ghost train just passed
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: behind me, almost killing him. So I let him introduce
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: himself in French pete tradision.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: Demil claude.
• 8:49
  Speaker 13: My name is Jill, and I was nine witness to
• 8:54
  Speaker 13: the arrival of the ghost train in Lachmagantick. Where I
• 8:57
  Speaker 13: saw the train rushing past me. I realized it couldn't
• 9:02
  Speaker 13: make the upcoming curve and that everything was going to explode.
• 9:06
  Speaker 13: I shouted to the couples in front of me, let's run,
• 9:09
  Speaker 13: it's going to blow up. And while I was helping
• 9:12
  Speaker 13: the woman up three times she'd fallen into the street
• 9:15
  Speaker 13: as she was running away. That gave me a chance
• 9:19
  Speaker 13: to see the train start to derail and everything that
• 9:22
  Speaker 13: followed right up until it got very close to us
• 9:26
  Speaker 13: on front the next street, where the music cafe was
• 9:30
  Speaker 13: and where most of the people died.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: No matter man.
• 9:36
  Speaker 13: Normally, I'm from the Gantic, so I've known about trains
• 9:41
  Speaker 13: since I was a kid. We could predict when a
• 9:44
  Speaker 13: train was coming because we could hear the whistles train
• 9:48
  Speaker 13: whistles as they sounded when the train approached other crossings
• 9:54
  Speaker 13: before before the ones where we were. But this time
• 10:00
  Speaker 13: it was ghost train. There was no crew on board,
• 10:03
  Speaker 13: there was no shouts, and it was traveling at one
• 10:06
  Speaker 13: hundred and five dollars per hour. The morning signals at
• 10:09
  Speaker 13: the railroad crossing didn't have time to signal the train's presence.
• 10:15
  Speaker 13: There was no horn, no engine, no brakes, no cars
• 10:18
  Speaker 13: clattering together as normally they would when it train breaks.
• 10:24
  Speaker 13: It was unpredictable train.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: It was just going down there sixty five miles an hour.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: No train could do that.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: This disturb you know downtown that more than fifteen miles
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: or twenty miles an hour where the train the curb
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: was just to crop, so it was impossible for that
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: train to keep on the rail.
• 10:46
  Speaker 14: My name is Anne Marie and Serni. I'm not from
• 10:49
  Speaker 14: Lac Migantik. I've been an activist against contamination in the
• 10:54
  Speaker 14: what you call sacrifice zones, cancer clusters and stuff like
• 10:57
  Speaker 14: that for more than thirty years. I was in luck
• 11:01
  Speaker 14: Migeon take five days after the tragedies because I understood
• 11:05
  Speaker 14: the intense contamination that would have happened there, and there
• 11:10
  Speaker 14: I decided to go to the bottom of that to
• 11:13
  Speaker 14: name the people, not the system, but the people.
• 11:17
  Speaker 9: Responsible what happened.
• 11:20
  Speaker 14: And to this day I am sad to say I
• 11:22
  Speaker 14: think what I did in the essay and the book
• 11:24
  Speaker 14: followed the two books that I published on that, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 14: think that is the more in depth investigation of what
• 11:32
  Speaker 14: happened there that exists.
• 11:34
  Speaker 9: Since the authorities.
• 11:36
  Speaker 14: Didn't do any they did a cover up, they didn't
• 11:39
  Speaker 14: do any investigations.
• 11:41
  Speaker 10: My name is Jamie Wallace and I'm from East Palestine, Ohio.
• 11:45
  Speaker 10: I lived within the one mile zone when the Norfolk
• 11:48
  Speaker 10: Southern trained the rail in my community. I subsequently found
• 11:52
  Speaker 10: out that my house was contaminated and if we had
• 11:56
  Speaker 10: blindly listened to the EPA and went back into our house,
• 11:59
  Speaker 10: that great harm or death kuld of came to my family.
• 12:02
  Speaker 10: Ever since then, I've been fighting. I've been fighting for justice,
• 12:06
  Speaker 10: for accountability, and to make our railways safe for everyone
• 12:10
  Speaker 10: across America.
• 12:12
  Speaker 15: My name is Christina Seisloff and I am from Darlington,
• 12:16
  Speaker 15: Pennsylvania and live about six miles from where the train
• 12:21
  Speaker 15: derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. After the derailment, there was
• 12:26
  Speaker 15: a following vent and burn that occurred, and most of
• 12:31
  Speaker 15: the plume from that had gone over my home and
• 12:35
  Speaker 15: the surrounding areas around East Palestine, and have been dealing
• 12:40
  Speaker 15: with health issues in my family ever since, and also
• 12:44
  Speaker 15: met Jamie through this well.
• 12:47
  Speaker 11: First of all, thank you all so much for being
• 12:50
  Speaker 11: here with us, for sharing your stories with us. This
• 12:54
  Speaker 11: is truly an important and historic conversation to be having
• 12:59
  Speaker 11: with y'all. I want to go back around the table,
• 13:03
  Speaker 11: starting with our guests from Lockemagantick. I want to ask
• 13:07
  Speaker 11: if you could remind listeners now and in the future
• 13:12
  Speaker 11: what happened in your towns and two year towns. How
• 13:16
  Speaker 11: did you experience these disasters as they.
• 13:19
  Speaker 13: Were unfolding ship though continuing from the explosion in the
• 13:28
  Speaker 13: city trained your realment. I'd never been through anything like
• 13:35
  Speaker 13: that before. It was the result of that kind of stress.
• 13:38
  Speaker 13: I was in a state of shock. It took quite
• 13:41
  Speaker 13: a while, I'd say five or six months before I
• 13:47
  Speaker 13: more or less returned to my normal state. I was
• 13:50
  Speaker 13: in shock. I didn't realize what I've just been through.
• 13:53
  Speaker 13: I felt like I was in a bad dream, but
• 13:57
  Speaker 13: I was aware of everything I'd seen, everything that had happened,
• 14:01
  Speaker 13: but I kept telling myself too. It was this little
• 14:04
  Speaker 13: voice inside me saying, this can't be happening, but it
• 14:09
  Speaker 13: was reality. Unfortunately, So after the derailment, and once the
• 14:16
  Speaker 13: intense mediate pressure started to die down a bit, I
• 14:19
  Speaker 13: realized that all sorts of people were coming to Megantics. First,
• 14:23
  Speaker 13: there were crowds of onlookers who came to see what
• 14:27
  Speaker 13: was happening, People who didn't understand anything. In fact, it
• 14:30
  Speaker 13: all unbelievable. After that, they were people who were approached
• 14:36
  Speaker 13: by aneery about environmental issues and all sorts of other things,
• 14:41
  Speaker 13: including safety concerns. There were a bunch of opportunists came
• 14:46
  Speaker 13: looking for good business opportunities. We've seen that, and we're
• 14:50
  Speaker 13: still saying. I also realized later that it was frowned
• 14:56
  Speaker 13: upon to name the real culprits, if you can call
• 14:59
  Speaker 13: them that, or the potential culprits, the real potential culprits.
• 15:05
  Speaker 13: I noticed a certain amount of censorship regarding the way
• 15:09
  Speaker 13: reality is portrayed. I also realized that while we were
• 15:14
  Speaker 13: closely following the trial the defendants in Sherbrook, that we
• 15:18
  Speaker 13: seem to be disrupting in the proceedings. I don't know why,
• 15:23
  Speaker 13: but he didn't seem to be welcome. We were even
• 15:28
  Speaker 13: almost kicked out. That has left me with serious questions
• 15:31
  Speaker 13: ever since, and I continue to learn more about it
• 15:35
  Speaker 13: every day. I also realized today that the vast majority
• 15:39
  Speaker 13: of the people in lack of Megantic and the surrounding
• 15:42
  Speaker 13: area are hardly in a position to hear the true
• 15:44
  Speaker 13: story from someone who lived through it, because it still
• 15:48
  Speaker 13: hurts too much. Because I've given guided tours to some
• 15:52
  Speaker 13: people I know who wanted to understand, and most of
• 15:55
  Speaker 13: them at some point would say stop, that's enough, I
• 15:59
  Speaker 13: can't take it anymore. So there's a collective wound that's
• 16:03
  Speaker 13: still there when the most people try to downplay, sweep
• 16:07
  Speaker 13: under the rug, or forget, but it's part of their
• 16:12
  Speaker 13: lived experience, part.
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: Of their history.
• 16:16
  Speaker 13: Whether they like it or not, they have to accept
• 16:18
  Speaker 13: it sooner or later. What I take away from all
• 16:22
  Speaker 13: this is that half an hour an hour before the
• 16:25
  Speaker 13: disaster struck, there was a little er voice, call it
• 16:28
  Speaker 13: my intuition or whatever you want to call it, there
• 16:32
  Speaker 13: was something telling me I had to leave the music
• 16:34
  Speaker 13: cafe and get out of there. And I dragged my
• 16:38
  Speaker 13: feet a bit, but I left just in time because
• 16:42
  Speaker 13: if I'd left five minutes later, I would have died
• 16:46
  Speaker 13: of the music cafe. So in your intuition, when that
• 16:49
  Speaker 13: little voice speaks to you, listen to it. Otherwise cut
• 16:54
  Speaker 13: your life short.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: If I wasn't in lact Megantic on the night of
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: the disaster, I was out of town and heard the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: news around six am.
• 17:07
  Speaker 13: The next morning.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: My partner called me and said, Robert, downtown, lack Megantic
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: is on fire. A train just derail that's caused an apocalypse.
• 17:14
  Speaker 13: And lack of Megantic.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: My parents were evacuated there at the lack of Megantic
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: High School. I'm fine, honey, I'm fine, but anxiety started
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: to set in, so I rushed down. I grabbed some
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: supplies and several littles of water, canned goods, bread, knowing
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: that all the food services would be closed.
• 17:35
  Speaker 13: So uh, that's it.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And when I got within thirty kilometers of the town
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: of Black Megantic, I saw the plumes of smoke and
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I have to admit it was surreal. It was the apocalypse.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: It was as if lack Megantic had just been bombed.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: See at the time, I was employed by the Quebec
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Ministry of healthquickly assigned to help establish safety measures and
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: provide care for the population. We set up a crisis
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: center at that time where we also coordinated all community
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: services collaboration of the fire department, paramedics, and the authorities
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: in the city of Lac mcgentick.
• 18:17
  Speaker 13: So it was very busy putting together.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: An organizational plan to try to salvage the situation, because
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that's how it was. I remember going to the high
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: school serving as a shelter safety center and seeing people
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: completely distraught, searching for their loved ones because they were missing.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: At that point, we had identified more than three hundred
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: people missing and lack mcgentick, and everyone was searching for
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: one another. The question was were they among the victims
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: or not. So it really was a catastrophic situation. It
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: was truly human suffering that I was able to witness
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: field for myself.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: I was out out of town by that that night,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: you know, I was out for a funeral. But by
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: the middle of the night, you know, I received a call,
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: you know that uh mcantink.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Was in fire. You know, so we were, me and
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: my wife.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: We went rapidly back to mechantic, you know, and the
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: shock to see that much flames and black smoke all
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: of a smoke in the art of your town.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: You know, it was just like a dart going through
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: your body.
• 19:33
  Speaker 13: You know.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: It was a terrifying surprise shock, you know. And uh
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I could repeat what Robert said, you know, which was
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: my feeling too. But just like I can explain myself
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: that losing a part of you, yourself, a part of
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: your your hometown, you know, and projecting you know, the
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: future about what will be our future, you know, rebuilding
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: that and like in the next answer is in the
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: next question, you know, we'll be talking about the order
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: catastrophe that we've been true. You know, the fire by
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: itself was their first catastrophe, but what we'll lost after
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: was a second and the third catastrophe that will be
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: following in the Discus show.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I have a comment to me regarding the establishment of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the crisis center. What I observed made me a bit skeptical. Namely,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the federal and provincial authorities took control.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Of the situation.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: It was outsiders who came to manage the crisis, and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: like megantic not even the city council was involved in
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the decision making. The fact is that all decisions were
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: made from outside. Like Megantick to manage the disaster and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: reorganize the town center. We were stripped of our powers
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: as citizens and as a community to the benefit of
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the governments did everything they could to stall the situation,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: tied the real causes, and exclude us from the important
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: decisions that needed to be made. We even manipulated because
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: they brought us in for that purpose. To keep us
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: as a population from rising up in the face of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the tragedy we had just suffered at the hands of
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a railroad company, they organized music shows for us for
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: two weeks to calm us down, to stall us, to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: prevent us from clashing and reacting. They lulled us into
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: complacency as a community. They practically euthanized our desire to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: take control of the situation.
• 21:35
  Speaker 14: I got there five days after the tragedy simply because
• 21:40
  Speaker 14: on day one what was put on the media was
• 21:45
  Speaker 14: obviously lies, which we could very easily find out by ourselves.
• 21:52
  Speaker 14: The first line was that there was no contamination, only
• 21:55
  Speaker 14: one hundred thousand litters, which was each cars had that,
• 22:00
  Speaker 14: and there were a bunch of them, so there was
• 22:02
  Speaker 14: a lie. Second most important, also, I think, is the
• 22:06
  Speaker 14: fact that it was a very heavy oil which would
• 22:09
  Speaker 14: not explode. Well, there had been two huge explosions during
• 22:14
  Speaker 14: the night, and just by following the tracks you could
• 22:18
  Speaker 14: see that it was back in oil, so it was
• 22:20
  Speaker 14: very volatile oil. So within a few hours the lies
• 22:24
  Speaker 14: were out. So that's why we decided to go there.
• 22:27
  Speaker 14: For me, when I got there, I thought that Megantik
• 22:31
  Speaker 14: was the symbol of everything I've seen, which was predators,
• 22:36
  Speaker 14: governments who oiled the doors to help them, and then
• 22:41
  Speaker 14: the victims left to themselves. And this was the symbol
• 22:45
  Speaker 14: of everything. But with one extraordinary distinction was the fact
• 22:50
  Speaker 14: that there were death and nobody could deny them. No
• 22:54
  Speaker 14: authorities could deny them. Contrary for instance, to as bestas
• 22:58
  Speaker 14: or the coal mining diseases where they say, oh the
• 23:02
  Speaker 14: people smoke too much, Well, this time they couldn't deny
• 23:06
  Speaker 14: the death.
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: They were death.
• 23:08
  Speaker 14: So I thought it was an easy way to demonstrate
• 23:11
  Speaker 14: what was the whole point of these tragedies, capitalist tragedies,
• 23:15
  Speaker 14: when they override the same thing that we see everywhere
• 23:19
  Speaker 14: in the world. If I want to be more rational
• 23:23
  Speaker 14: than my friends, I spent ten years with them. They're
• 23:26
  Speaker 14: my friends, all the people in megantic And if I
• 23:30
  Speaker 14: want to sum up for a lessons purpose. There is
• 23:34
  Speaker 14: the initial shock, which they describe very well. But do
• 23:39
  Speaker 14: not think that when those things happen it stops there.
• 23:43
  Speaker 14: It lingers on for years and years to come. So
• 23:47
  Speaker 14: there'sn't The first step is the initial shock. Then very
• 23:51
  Speaker 14: quickly there comes the shock doctrin Milton Friedman's shot doctrin,
• 23:56
  Speaker 14: which I will say more it's more well said by
• 24:00
  Speaker 14: a Zuperbvern. Now go fast and break things. So within
• 24:04
  Speaker 14: a few days all those people go there and say
• 24:07
  Speaker 14: we're going to demolish everything and do what we want
• 24:10
  Speaker 14: all those predators that are there. That's the second step,
• 24:15
  Speaker 14: go fast and break things. The third step is the
• 24:19
  Speaker 14: people wanted the truth, what happened, the consequences, what were
• 24:24
  Speaker 14: the real consequences, And they were trying to find justice
• 24:29
  Speaker 14: in some ways. And there you study entire Canadian and
• 24:33
  Speaker 14: Quebec machine judicial machine, police machine. Go on three guys,
• 24:40
  Speaker 14: i'd say two guys, the conductor, the engineer and the controller.
• 24:44
  Speaker 9: The entire Canadian.
• 24:46
  Speaker 14: Justice machine went on those two guys and decided they
• 24:50
  Speaker 14: were the culprits, and they tried and this started the
• 24:54
  Speaker 14: entire cover up of the trial of the no investigation.
• 24:59
  Speaker 14: And two this day, even the Supreme Court of Canada
• 25:02
  Speaker 14: has denied the Megantic people any rights to seek any
• 25:07
  Speaker 14: justice against the CP, which was the CP at the time.
• 25:10
  Speaker 9: So this is why people like us are important.
• 25:13
  Speaker 14: And then you'd say, well, at the end of the
• 25:16
  Speaker 14: day that predators and all those people would go, Well,
• 25:19
  Speaker 14: they don't because they do after ten years, fifteen years,
• 25:24
  Speaker 14: they do still have even more support from the governments
• 25:27
  Speaker 14: to do their business. So the CP is now dictating where,
• 25:32
  Speaker 14: for instance, the new rail will go if it goes.
• 25:36
  Speaker 9: So those four steps.
• 25:38
  Speaker 14: Means that for a long, long, long time, the tragedy
• 25:42
  Speaker 14: is not a one shock. Time is a long long process.
• 25:47
  Speaker 14: So this is why it is so tragic.
• 25:51
  Speaker 11: And Jamie Christina, for our guests in Canada and for
• 25:56
  Speaker 11: folks listening to this, could you just remind them what
• 26:00
  Speaker 11: actually happened to your towns and how you experienced it firsthand.
• 26:05
  Speaker 10: On February third of twenty twenty three in Norfolk, Southern
• 26:09
  Speaker 10: train derailed an East Palestine. There were a bunch of
• 26:14
  Speaker 10: different kinds of chemicals that derailed. The biggest focus has
• 26:18
  Speaker 10: always been on the vinyl chloride. What was allegedly happening,
• 26:23
  Speaker 10: which we found out later that This was not true.
• 26:27
  Speaker 10: Is the local officials and higher level government officials were
• 26:31
  Speaker 10: saying that one of the tankers full of vinyl chloride
• 26:34
  Speaker 10: was going to explode. They were saying temperatures were rising,
• 26:38
  Speaker 10: the valve that was supposed to release pressure wasn't working,
• 26:43
  Speaker 10: and that this explosion was inevitable. What they said that
• 26:47
  Speaker 10: they needed to do was to explode the tanker themselves
• 26:52
  Speaker 10: to do a Ventinburgh. Their reasoning was that if the
• 26:55
  Speaker 10: tanker exploded on its own, it would throw a shrapnote
• 26:58
  Speaker 10: within a mile radius, kind of destroy downtown and probably
• 27:03
  Speaker 10: take lives. We later found out that this was not true.
• 27:07
  Speaker 10: At the NTSB hearings, Norfolk Southern the responsible party was
• 27:12
  Speaker 10: the one in charge in giving advice and they were
• 27:15
  Speaker 10: telling our officials this well. At the same time, the
• 27:17
  Speaker 10: owner of the vinyl chloride oxy Vinyl was in another
• 27:20
  Speaker 10: room telling Norfolk Southern it's not going to explode.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Temperatures are going down.
• 27:25
  Speaker 10: But they wanted to get the railroad back up and running,
• 27:28
  Speaker 10: so they did a vent and burn where they caught
• 27:30
  Speaker 10: these tankers of chemicals on fire. It went from one
• 27:34
  Speaker 10: tanker to five tankers of vinyl chloride that they ended
• 27:37
  Speaker 10: up exploding. The pictures are unimaginable. The mushroom cloud looked
• 27:43
  Speaker 10: like an atomic bomb was dropped. When you showed that
• 27:48
  Speaker 10: picture to anyone across the United States, that's the first
• 27:50
  Speaker 10: thing they associated with. We were told less than forty
• 27:53
  Speaker 10: eight hours that it was safe to go home, that
• 27:56
  Speaker 10: there were no high levels of chemicals, and that everything
• 27:59
  Speaker 10: was great. The air quality was great, and it was
• 28:02
  Speaker 10: kind of the same thing that was being said before.
• 28:05
  Speaker 10: As you just knew, I didn't have to be a scientist.
• 28:08
  Speaker 10: I didn't have to be smart to look at that
• 28:11
  Speaker 10: plume and know the less than forty eight hours that
• 28:14
  Speaker 10: they could tell us with certainty that it was safe
• 28:17
  Speaker 10: to go home. So I threw a fit when they
• 28:20
  Speaker 10: came to do this little They offered some indoor air
• 28:23
  Speaker 10: testing before you came home, which we have since found
• 28:26
  Speaker 10: out was insufficient. The little monitors they were using couldn't
• 28:30
  Speaker 10: test for all chemicals of concerns their chemicals. It couldn't
• 28:34
  Speaker 10: test at low enough levels to be an accurate reading.
• 28:38
  Speaker 10: And when they did that at my house, I asked them,
• 28:40
  Speaker 10: what about the creek that's running in front of my
• 28:42
  Speaker 10: door that I can see chemicals in. They're like, we
• 28:45
  Speaker 10: did water test and you know, we will check those later.
• 28:48
  Speaker 10: I ask them about the soil. Has the soil been tested,
• 28:51
  Speaker 10: and we don't need to test the soil. There's no
• 28:52
  Speaker 10: reason to test the soil. So when you talk about
• 28:55
  Speaker 10: the cover up, you know, from the beginning, we were
• 28:58
  Speaker 10: being lied to as soon as people at back home
• 29:01
  Speaker 10: the symptoms started, the nosebleeds, the rashes, the coughing and
• 29:06
  Speaker 10: respiratory issues. You could just see by the reaction of
• 29:09
  Speaker 10: the body that it wasn't safe to be there. They
• 29:13
  Speaker 10: gaslet us, tried to tell us that it was stress,
• 29:16
  Speaker 10: that it was you know, mental mass psychosis. We weren't
• 29:19
  Speaker 10: really sick, it's mass psychosis. But we knew, we knew
• 29:22
  Speaker 10: what our bodies were telling us. You know, you talk
• 29:25
  Speaker 10: about the denial by the local government. Our village still
• 29:29
  Speaker 10: doesn't talk about the people being sick. You know, we
• 29:32
  Speaker 10: have sixty four people in our community with cancer now,
• 29:36
  Speaker 10: the same things they were talking about, all the nonprofits
• 29:39
  Speaker 10: coming in. You know, we had people coming in to
• 29:42
  Speaker 10: try to do mutual aid donations. We had the media there,
• 29:46
  Speaker 10: we had you know, scientists coming in and through this disaster,
• 29:50
  Speaker 10: we learned that not all those people can be trusted,
• 29:54
  Speaker 10: So I actually see a lot of the same similarities
• 29:59
  Speaker 10: between the story in Canada and the story here. You know,
• 30:02
  Speaker 10: they immediately started buying the town big gifts to kind
• 30:06
  Speaker 10: of make people forget or to mask it. So it's
• 30:10
  Speaker 10: amazing when you hear these other stories and you hear
• 30:12
  Speaker 10: all the same things happening, and this is in a
• 30:15
  Speaker 10: different country, but it's the same playbook.
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: So out where I'm at, we like I live in
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: the middle of the woods.
• 30:25
  Speaker 15: And on February third, we saw on Facebook that there
• 30:32
  Speaker 15: was a trained derailment and my family went out onto
• 30:37
  Speaker 15: our front court to see what was going on if
• 30:40
  Speaker 15: we could see anything, and through the trees you could
• 30:45
  Speaker 15: see the fire and the smoke six miles away. We
• 30:50
  Speaker 15: just stood there, like was said, with you all in shock.
• 30:54
  Speaker 15: It was like we thought everybody in East Colestine was
• 30:58
  Speaker 15: burned to death because the fire was so huge. It
• 31:02
  Speaker 15: sort of reminded me of what you would see with
• 31:06
  Speaker 15: California wildfires. And then that weekend we didn't hear anything
• 31:13
  Speaker 15: about what was going on in town. My son and
• 31:16
  Speaker 15: I we went to a playground that was still about
• 31:19
  Speaker 15: six miles away and everything looked fine. And then Monday came,
• 31:26
  Speaker 15: and that was February sixth, whenever they did.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: The vent and burn.
• 31:32
  Speaker 15: Beforehand, we heard that there was people that were being
• 31:37
  Speaker 15: evacuated from town, but we were not given any evacuation.
• 31:42
  Speaker 6: Notice where I was at. We were not told to
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: shelter in place.
• 31:46
  Speaker 15: And then I had to take my son to preschool,
• 31:50
  Speaker 15: and the school district had sent out a notification that
• 31:55
  Speaker 15: they were evacuating the schools because they were going to
• 31:58
  Speaker 15: be doing this burn, so he did not have to
• 32:01
  Speaker 15: go to school yet that morning, so he was still
• 32:04
  Speaker 15: at home.
• 32:05
  Speaker 6: I debated before they did evacuate, I.
• 32:09
  Speaker 15: Had debated on taking him to school because they were
• 32:13
  Speaker 15: already shutting down roads going around my area, and so
• 32:18
  Speaker 15: he didn't have to go to school anyway. But then
• 32:22
  Speaker 15: when they did the burn, we were never evacuated. After that,
• 32:27
  Speaker 15: We were never told to shelter in place. We looked
• 32:31
  Speaker 15: to leave on our own, but there wasn't really anywhere
• 32:34
  Speaker 15: to go, and you didn't know where to go. Afterwards,
• 32:38
  Speaker 15: when everybody was being told that everything.
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: Was fine, the air was fine, the water was fine,
• 32:45
  Speaker 6: we were.
• 32:45
  Speaker 15: Seeing thousands of fish popping up in the creeks that
• 32:50
  Speaker 15: were dead, Frogs that were dead several of our We
• 32:56
  Speaker 15: had chickens and we have outside cats and a dog,
• 33:02
  Speaker 15: and many of them, the chickens and the cats had died,
• 33:07
  Speaker 15: and February fourteenth, I decided that I wanted to see
• 33:10
  Speaker 15: with the creeks what was true with the fish. So
• 33:15
  Speaker 15: I went to the creeks and saw the sheen that
• 33:19
  Speaker 15: was left from the chemicals that were in the water
• 33:22
  Speaker 15: that traveled down to the Ohio River. And that was
• 33:26
  Speaker 15: the start of me going to the creeks for the
• 33:30
  Speaker 15: next two and a half years to show that the
• 33:33
  Speaker 15: government was saying one thing and we were experiencing another.
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: We even had myself and two other.
• 33:41
  Speaker 15: Residents we were oftentimes going to the creek recording on
• 33:45
  Speaker 15: video and putting on YouTube what was going on. We
• 33:49
  Speaker 15: also had are now Vice President down there in the
• 33:52
  Speaker 15: creeks with us, and he saw what was going on,
• 33:58
  Speaker 15: and now to this day he still doesn't really act
• 34:02
  Speaker 15: like anything is wrong anymore.
• 34:05
  Speaker 10: I can just add something because I think Christina underplays
• 34:09
  Speaker 10: her role in this. You know, we had what we
• 34:13
  Speaker 10: called creek rangers, and Christina was one of those creek rangers.
• 34:18
  Speaker 10: She was told by the us EPA that her and
• 34:22
  Speaker 10: the couple of other residents were in the creeks more
• 34:25
  Speaker 10: than the EPA was. At one point, the EPA would
• 34:28
  Speaker 10: call Christina in these other creek rangers and say, hey,
• 34:32
  Speaker 10: we think we have it cleaned up.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Can you guys come down and check.
• 34:37
  Speaker 10: The creek rangers were reporting to the EPA where the
• 34:41
  Speaker 10: contamination was in the creeks and to come look at
• 34:44
  Speaker 10: the contamination. If it wasn't for a residence like Christina,
• 34:49
  Speaker 10: you know, being down at those creeks, they wouldn't even
• 34:51
  Speaker 10: be cleaned up as much as they are now. We
• 34:54
  Speaker 10: were told they were clean until the resident started going
• 34:58
  Speaker 10: down and showing that they weren't clean. So I don't
• 35:01
  Speaker 10: I know that Christina doesn't like to tootor her own horn,
• 35:06
  Speaker 10: but she was a huge, huge part and getting at
• 35:10
  Speaker 10: least what they cleaned up cleaned up in our community.
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: I just wanted to add real quick with that.
• 35:16
  Speaker 15: Was at one point, whenever Norfolk Southern came in to
• 35:21
  Speaker 15: set up their clean up area, they had lost containment
• 35:26
  Speaker 15: of contamination that they were supposed to be blocking from
• 35:29
  Speaker 15: further going down the creek, and another resident was there
• 35:34
  Speaker 15: to film it, and the Ohio EPA was made aware
• 35:39
  Speaker 15: by Norfolk Southern's contractors that this contamination was going down
• 35:45
  Speaker 15: the creeks and they had not.
• 35:48
  Speaker 6: Done anything about it.
• 35:50
  Speaker 15: And then the videos went up on YouTube from the
• 35:53
  Speaker 15: resident and the federal EPA found out about it and
• 35:57
  Speaker 15: called up the creek and said shut it down, and
• 36:01
  Speaker 15: they shut everything down. They had spent maybe a month
• 36:06
  Speaker 15: in redoing the plan, and then they called us and said,
• 36:10
  Speaker 15: do you both want to come down and see what
• 36:15
  Speaker 15: we are doing with this new plan, and.
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: We want to know if you approve of it.
• 36:22
  Speaker 15: So they said we could not film, we could not record,
• 36:27
  Speaker 15: but we could come down and see what they were doing.
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: And then whenever they put out the papers on the
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: report on what they had.
• 36:35
  Speaker 15: Done, they lessened the amount of time that the contamination
• 36:41
  Speaker 15: had been going down the creeks. They said it was
• 36:43
  Speaker 15: between it was like two to three hours maybe, but
• 36:47
  Speaker 15: it was really more like five or six with the
• 36:50
  Speaker 15: resident BODYCM recording the entire thing.
• 36:54
  Speaker 12: Okay, so what we're hearing from our friends in East
• 36:57
  Speaker 12: Palestine is the way the government has failed.
• 37:00
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 37:01
  Speaker 12: EPA failed, you guys. There was obvious lies that came
• 37:06
  Speaker 12: out of the EPA not doing the job that they
• 37:08
  Speaker 12: were supposed to do, and you're talking about the ways
• 37:11
  Speaker 12: communities responded, right, that kind of overburdened that many of
• 37:16
  Speaker 12: these communities have to, you know, take a lot of
• 37:19
  Speaker 12: this on themselves. So curious to hear from our friends
• 37:23
  Speaker 12: at Lac Megantique about the failures at every level of
• 37:26
  Speaker 12: government and the ways in which community had to respond
• 37:30
  Speaker 12: in the aftermath.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: The thing is inc Megantick. We felt that control was
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: coming entirely from outside. They sent us like press spokespeople
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: from the various governments to control the message, to calm
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the public, to prevent them from rebelling.
• 37:50
  Speaker 13: So we tried. We saw a.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Parade of politicians come by to trying to console us. However,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: when we asked them to set up a public inquiry
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: commission was a categorical nome. So we felt manipulated and
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: divided by the government forces that had taken control of
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: the situation, and we as citizens decided in twenty fifteen
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: to form a Citizen's Coalition for rail Safety because the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: transport of oil and hazardous materials had resumed six months
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: after the tragedy. The railroad was rebuilt just outside downtown
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Lack mcgantick for economic reasons, and when I learned about
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: this situation, I went to inspect the railroad tracks surrounding
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Black mcgantic and found that the rails were still in
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: very poor condition. Even though hazardous materials ten times more
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: dangerous than the shale oil that had set the town ablaze,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: we're now being transported on them. We're talking about propane gas,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: sulfuric acid, sodium chloride, and gasoline. So we formed a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: coalition to monitor rail transport and alert the media whenever
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: we identified a problem on the tracks, and since then,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: trains have continued to transport hazardous material Trains are now
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: twice as long, with more than two hundred cars and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: tank cars carrying twice as many hazardous materials, and they
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: still pass through the city center. That's the same spot
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: on tracks that are often in very poor condition. Every
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: year we have to speak out in the media and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to the authorities to get safety deficiencies on the railroad
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: tracks corrected. It's still happening, though, and the trains are
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: twice as dangerous, more dangerous because they're longer and they're
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: traveling on a hazardous slope. So if the brakes fail
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: yet again, will end up with a much more dangerous
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: disaster similar to the one in East Palestine, because this
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: time toxic substances will be spilled and our entire environment and.
• 39:41
  Speaker 13: Population will be a risk.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: The oil itself it burned right there, but a chlorine explosion,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: which is amplified by a propane gas explosion, contaminate the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: entire atmosphere for tens of kilometers.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Albert said, mean the I'll be talking about the second tragedy.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: You know that half the town was destroyed by the explosion,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: you know, but the other half wasn't contaminated. But without
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: the speculators that ran over mechanics, you know, like they
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: want they wanted to control take the control are of
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: our downtown. So just like they were planning to build
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: the kind of holiday resort, you know, like a Walt Disney.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: So they declared that on forty buildings left they were
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: all contaminated. But only five of these buildings, you know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: were contaminated. So they decided to clean up all what
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: was standing up, you know, so they finished it to
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: destroy the our downtown, you know, were just after the
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: destroyed our what was left up, it was just like desert.
• 41:01
  Speaker 13: You know.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: That was our second catastrophe.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: You know, really heartbreaking, you know, and I know that
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: the human things that I wanted to talk you know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: there was there were forty seven victims, you know, but
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: we can forget. You know that many suicides follow with
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: these last lives, you know, many suicides.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Megantic In reality, Black mcgantick has experienced three disasters, as
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: you'll mentioned, First the train, the rail. Following that, the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: complete demolition of the downtown area against the wishes of
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: the residents. The goal was to increase property values in
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: order to collect more municipal taxes. It is the fundamental
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: reason why the city council opted for this course of action.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And third, they succeeded in dividing the community over the
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: bypass project. They managed to create chaos and conflict, to
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: divide the community on an issue we should have in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: United The bypass project was meant to be a project
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: for social here they turned it into a project of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: social division. And their friends and families in the regions
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: who haven't spoken to each other since then.
• 42:13
  Speaker 9: Well, first I want to start on the base of
• 42:18
  Speaker 9: Nicole's question.
• 42:19
  Speaker 14: Which was where were the authorities and the authorities that
• 42:24
  Speaker 14: were in charge of safeties, environmental authorities and all that
• 42:29
  Speaker 14: they were all absent, so there was no environment in Canada.
• 42:34
  Speaker 14: There there was nobody. The real safety people were the inspectors,
• 42:41
  Speaker 14: and the investigators were linked with the company MMA at
• 42:44
  Speaker 14: the time, which was MMA, was CP which is Norfolk.
• 42:50
  Speaker 14: So there were no authorities except to gather the data
• 42:55
  Speaker 14: and keep them secret. So as an activist for thirty years,
• 42:59
  Speaker 14: but so the case of ist Pealestine and Meganzick are
• 43:03
  Speaker 14: an example. If there are no community surveillance, if there
• 43:09
  Speaker 14: are no communities implicated, there are nothing.
• 43:12
  Speaker 9: You are at risk because your authorities.
• 43:16
  Speaker 14: And we saw that for myself, I saw that for
• 43:19
  Speaker 14: the first time in Meganzick, which was the biggest massive
• 43:24
  Speaker 14: death of modern Canada. You know, you have to remember
• 43:29
  Speaker 14: that they talked about the forty seven death the twenty
• 43:32
  Speaker 14: six orphans, the suicides, and the people that died of
• 43:38
  Speaker 14: grief like my friends and our friends Jean Criuziou who
• 43:42
  Speaker 14: lost his daughter and died last year. And so there
• 43:46
  Speaker 14: were no authorities to keep the people safe. So the communities,
• 43:52
  Speaker 14: the testing and all that are essential. The surveillance of
• 43:56
  Speaker 14: what they're doing, it's essential. One of the reason for
• 44:01
  Speaker 14: that is that I don't know and I'm not sure
• 44:04
  Speaker 14: about the States, but in Canada there was this and
• 44:08
  Speaker 14: I think it's the same Unici Palestine. There's this perfect
• 44:11
  Speaker 14: effect of the contaminator is in charge of the contamination.
• 44:16
  Speaker 9: Okay, So what does it mean really is that all
• 44:20
  Speaker 9: those railroad.
• 44:21
  Speaker 14: Companies are keeping the datas for themselves and you are
• 44:26
  Speaker 14: not able to access them. To this day, we don't
• 44:31
  Speaker 14: know the official numbers of the official contamination of La Megontik.
• 44:36
  Speaker 14: It's all kept secret. The only thing we know is
• 44:41
  Speaker 14: what we ourselves did. One thing also is important is
• 44:45
  Speaker 14: that when there is such a destruction as in Megontik,
• 44:48
  Speaker 14: the community, except for some very resilient people like the
• 44:54
  Speaker 14: three guys you have on right now, is just such
• 44:58
  Speaker 14: a shock that you cannot, you know, move anymore.
• 45:02
  Speaker 9: You have to try to survive.
• 45:05
  Speaker 14: And so it is important that the people around that
• 45:08
  Speaker 14: have knowledge and expertise, and you know, we GI's and
• 45:12
  Speaker 14: all that get in not to exploit them, but to
• 45:16
  Speaker 14: help them literally. And one of the things that's lacking
• 45:20
  Speaker 14: is all the safety measures that are usually we think
• 45:24
  Speaker 14: are controlled by the authorities are not anymore. So we
• 45:28
  Speaker 14: have to get the data for that so that they
• 45:31
  Speaker 14: will know exactly what was happening. That's the only way
• 45:36
  Speaker 14: as of now, for the past fifteen years, that we
• 45:39
  Speaker 14: can I'm not sure right now that we can stop
• 45:44
  Speaker 14: those things happening, but at least we can react to
• 45:47
  Speaker 14: protect ourselves, and we have to say that.
• 45:50
  Speaker 9: We have to rely on ourselves.
• 45:53
  Speaker 10: Listening to this has given me like goosebumps, you know,
• 45:57
  Speaker 10: and exactly what Andrew said. We learned very quickly in
• 46:02
  Speaker 10: East Palestine that no one else was going to fight
• 46:04
  Speaker 10: for us if we didn't fight for ourselves.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Everything that was done.
• 46:08
  Speaker 10: In East Palestine, as far as dioxin testing, as far
• 46:12
  Speaker 10: as making them, you know, dig the tracks back up
• 46:15
  Speaker 10: and clean up the contamination, that was all led by
• 46:18
  Speaker 10: the community. They actually in the United States, who cannot
• 46:22
  Speaker 10: run trains through an evacuated town. We had a north
• 46:26
  Speaker 10: and a south track. They had our tracks rebuilt. Within
• 46:30
  Speaker 10: forty eight hours of the vent and burn, trains were
• 46:34
  Speaker 10: running again through our community before residents were back in
• 46:38
  Speaker 10: their homes. Another similarity, Norfolk Southern was put in charge
• 46:42
  Speaker 10: of everything. We did get the testing that they did,
• 46:47
  Speaker 10: but it was all flawed. It was put out in
• 46:50
  Speaker 10: a way that benefited the corporate polluted or because they
• 46:54
  Speaker 10: were the ones that hired the contractors. And an important
• 46:59
  Speaker 10: point that I want to bring up is we talk
• 47:02
  Speaker 10: about the people that we've lost, but we're not talking
• 47:06
  Speaker 10: about all the people that we.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Have yet to lose.
• 47:09
  Speaker 10: When you're exposed to these type of chemicals, we know
• 47:13
  Speaker 10: from every other chemical disaster, it can take years before
• 47:17
  Speaker 10: these things show up in our communities. Cancer is one
• 47:20
  Speaker 10: of the biggest concerns, and cancer is not a quick,
• 47:23
  Speaker 10: beautiful death. If you've ever seen someone suffer from cancer,
• 47:27
  Speaker 10: it's horrific. The other thing that I wanted to bring
• 47:30
  Speaker 10: up was about the multiple disasters. We talk about that
• 47:35
  Speaker 10: and Ease palacne too. The derailment itself was a disaster.
• 47:40
  Speaker 10: The vent and burn was a disaster. The flooding that
• 47:43
  Speaker 10: occurred in our creeks afterwards that you know, spread those
• 47:47
  Speaker 10: chemicals another disaster. Like they were talking about the cleanup,
• 47:53
  Speaker 10: you know, when they were hauling all this dirt out
• 47:55
  Speaker 10: of our community, there were points where you couldn't see
• 47:58
  Speaker 10: across the residential street because the.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Dust was so bad.
• 48:01
  Speaker 10: It looked more like a dust storm that you would
• 48:04
  Speaker 10: see out west. And then of course that whole economic recovery,
• 48:10
  Speaker 10: you know, that's another disaster. You want to talk about
• 48:13
  Speaker 10: a divide in a community, you should see what it's
• 48:16
  Speaker 10: done to our small community that I always thought was
• 48:20
  Speaker 10: tight knit.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: We always looked out for each other.
• 48:23
  Speaker 10: But the focus on the economy has overshadowed any focus
• 48:27
  Speaker 10: whatsoever on human health. Our local government cannot focus on
• 48:32
  Speaker 10: both because who would want to come here and shop
• 48:35
  Speaker 10: if they knew it was contaminated. And what they've done
• 48:38
  Speaker 10: is they've put lipstick on a pig. You know, they're
• 48:40
  Speaker 10: putting in a twenty five million dollar park and they're
• 48:43
  Speaker 10: you know, given all this money to distract us from
• 48:47
  Speaker 10: the fact that they poisoned us.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: And again, you know, I know I keep.
• 48:51
  Speaker 10: Saying this about this playbook, but just listening to these
• 48:54
  Speaker 10: stories when you hear this stuff, like I literally was
• 48:57
  Speaker 10: getting goosebumps on my arms listening to the similarities. And
• 49:02
  Speaker 10: that's where we all need to come together, because it's
• 49:06
  Speaker 10: not just about East Palestine, you know this, These disasters
• 49:11
  Speaker 10: are so much bigger than that.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: You know, you look back through the history of the United.
• 49:15
  Speaker 10: States and forty years ago, you know, Love Canal Times Beach, Missouri,
• 49:19
  Speaker 10: what's going on now in roseland Louisiana, Moss Land, in California, Conyers, Georgia.
• 49:26
  Speaker 10: They may not be trained railments, but they're still chemical
• 49:29
  Speaker 10: disasters and they're still being treated with the lack of transparency,
• 49:35
  Speaker 10: the cover ups by our government, and no win is
• 49:39
  Speaker 10: helping these people. And that's what I've been trying to
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: go into other communities and help them organize and help
• 49:45
  Speaker 10: them learn what we had to learn the hard way,
• 49:48
  Speaker 10: and going back to the very beginning, the very first
• 49:51
  Speaker 10: part of that is to teach communities they have to
• 49:54
  Speaker 10: fight for themselves. You know, we want to trust our government.
• 49:58
  Speaker 10: We learned in school what our government does. You know,
• 50:01
  Speaker 10: the EPA is supposed to protect the environment and human health,
• 50:05
  Speaker 10: and a lot of people just depended on that. They
• 50:07
  Speaker 10: trusted their government. But don't do that. Don't be led blindly.
• 50:12
  Speaker 10: Go out and do your own research.
• 50:14
  Speaker 11: You know.
• 50:14
  Speaker 10: I am, by no means an expert in chemicals, So
• 50:17
  Speaker 10: the first thing I did was surround myself with experts
• 50:20
  Speaker 10: and chemicals.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: The resources are there, you just have to find them.
• 50:26
  Speaker 15: Like the people in Lacke, Megantics say, with the like
• 50:30
  Speaker 15: mental to afterwards, there is a lot and that it
• 50:35
  Speaker 15: is a another disaster in itself. Like for a long time,
• 50:39
  Speaker 15: a lot of us here that we're recognizing the illnesses
• 50:44
  Speaker 15: we were putting aside, like our mental health, and that
• 50:49
  Speaker 15: was because the government and the other authorities were putting
• 50:54
  Speaker 15: so much on this just being health problems. Because of
• 50:59
  Speaker 15: our mental health, we have lost a person due to
• 51:03
  Speaker 15: mental health since this happened. A lot of us are
• 51:08
  Speaker 15: now in therapy and have multiple mental health diagnoses because
• 51:14
  Speaker 15: of what we've experienced. And it is something that like
• 51:19
  Speaker 15: at first, you don't realize what is really like weighing
• 51:23
  Speaker 15: on you, and it takes a long time. I think
• 51:28
  Speaker 15: it was last the beginning of last year where they
• 51:31
  Speaker 15: had finally diagnosed myself with PTSD, and a lot of
• 51:36
  Speaker 15: people around here have gotten that diagnosis as well now.
• 51:41
  Speaker 15: And just like hearing your stories as well, it brings
• 51:45
  Speaker 15: back a lot of like the emotions and the memories
• 51:48
  Speaker 15: of what we were experiencing at the beginning of this.
• 51:51
  Speaker 15: Just hearing like about the fire, and there's just so
• 51:56
  Speaker 15: much that's very similar well.
• 51:59
  Speaker 11: And the very fact that we are having this conversation
• 52:04
  Speaker 11: right now with residents from Locke, Megantic and East Palestine
• 52:10
  Speaker 11: is you know, a stark reminder that these disasters are
• 52:17
  Speaker 11: not once in a lifetime tragedies. You know, disasters like
• 52:21
  Speaker 11: these are happening more frequently all over the place, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 11: as working people who have experienced such disasters firsthand, I
• 52:31
  Speaker 11: wanted to ask if you could say, like, what have
• 52:34
  Speaker 11: these whole awful, unforgivable, life changing experiences taught you that
• 52:42
  Speaker 11: you most want to communicate to others out there who
• 52:45
  Speaker 11: are going through this now.
• 52:47
  Speaker 13: Or who may go through it one day.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to say that the only thing that
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: we want to make things changing on this planet, you know,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: is we have to fight again, and we have to
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: push governments to chance things like just like I have
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: all the rules, all the safety rules that society people
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: got to be the first on the from the subject,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: you know, and the first just like the people are
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: suffering from disasters, people should be the ones through our governments,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: you know, to build save society.
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: If we stop fighting, you know, just like Ann Mary said,
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: you know, we have.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: To go through regulation, your regulation you know, and all
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: that you know, and don't let profit going first. But
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: let's fight for safety first, not profit, you know. That's
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: the main The main word I would like to says,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: presently they could.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Who like I'd like to add that after thirteen years,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the years we've lived through, it's still appropriate in light
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: of them againtic tragedy and in the face of all
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: this silence from governments and railroad companies aimed at downplaying
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the impact on communities, for us as citizens to continue
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: defending our living environments and to remain vigil regarding all
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the shortcomings we may still observe. We as a citizen's
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: coalition have managed for thirteen years to continually alert journalists
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to unacceptable situations, and that has had an impact. I
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: remember we sent a formal notice to Canada's Minister of
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Transport at the time because a railway track was in
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: poor condition. We'd finally managed to obtain a report from
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: an inspector. Unofficial confirmed report identified more than one hundred
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and thirty seven defective rails in the lack of Megantic region.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: We sent a formal notice and a few days later,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty rail workers arrived to repair everything.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: So citizens, we can still make a difference when it
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: comes to situations that are unacceptable on the part of
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: our governments. So I encourage you in East Palestine to
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: keep fighting because we can no longer rely solely on
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the government and corporations.
• 55:10
  Speaker 13: We have to protect ourselves.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I don't splunkers. They should be.
• 55:19
  Speaker 13: There might be one small point I can bring up
• 55:22
  Speaker 13: for those who are going through a major disaster, like
• 55:25
  Speaker 13: the people in Megantic, or say it like East Palestine
• 55:29
  Speaker 13: and others who have been through similar experiences. I advise them,
• 55:33
  Speaker 13: based on my own experience, to talk about it, not
• 55:36
  Speaker 13: to keep it bottled up inside, and start talking about
• 55:38
  Speaker 13: it right away from the start, because if they try
• 55:43
  Speaker 13: to deny the situation, get you bottled up inside, catastrophic,
• 55:48
  Speaker 13: it's destructive. They'll destroy themselves, self destruct The main reason
• 55:53
  Speaker 13: to talk about it is that it's like self therapy,
• 55:57
  Speaker 13: because no matter what kind of therapy you will undergo,
• 56:01
  Speaker 13: whether with a psychologist, psychiatrist, or anyone else, the guide
• 56:07
  Speaker 13: you to talk about the situation that traumatized views. So
• 56:11
  Speaker 13: you have to start talking about it right from the start,
• 56:15
  Speaker 13: to let it out so it doesn't explode.
• 56:19
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 56:20
  Speaker 14: So these things are gonna, as you say, go on,
• 56:25
  Speaker 14: these are industrial tragedies that are gonna go on exploding
• 56:30
  Speaker 14: again and again because there are nobody to take care
• 56:35
  Speaker 14: of us anymore. The people I would like to talk
• 56:39
  Speaker 14: more as an activist, but also as what we represent here,
• 56:45
  Speaker 14: that is the non legacy media, the researchers. So I
• 56:48
  Speaker 14: would talk also as an author and as an investigator
• 56:53
  Speaker 14: with what I think. First thing is, I have no
• 56:57
  Speaker 14: more confidence in any of the authorities that are supposed
• 57:02
  Speaker 14: to keep our wellness, health, security, well being.
• 57:07
  Speaker 9: Happiness is even.
• 57:09
  Speaker 14: Further away, although I can see some signs of hope
• 57:14
  Speaker 14: in the States sometimes these days.
• 57:16
  Speaker 9: But still I have no more justice. We cannot have justice.
• 57:21
  Speaker 14: So it's gonna maybe get worse before it gets better,
• 57:26
  Speaker 14: but it's going to get better.
• 57:27
  Speaker 9: But I will say this to all of us, and
• 57:29
  Speaker 9: especially like podcasters, researchers and people like that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 14: Communities are doing their work, but all of us together
• 57:38
  Speaker 14: we have to never surrender. We have to hold the line.
• 57:41
  Speaker 14: Will how would say Michael Vanon, hold the line so
• 57:47
  Speaker 14: that even if one of us fails as a human being,
• 57:51
  Speaker 14: because we're fragile in those circums, somebody else will take
• 57:54
  Speaker 14: the flame and go the further route to go. So
• 57:58
  Speaker 14: we have to hold the line, and we outnumber them,
• 58:03
  Speaker 14: although they have now and things that have changed even
• 58:07
  Speaker 14: since East Palestine. The means the AI the media concentration
• 58:14
  Speaker 14: is something that we've never seen in the history of
• 58:16
  Speaker 14: the humanity, and so it's going to be hard. But
• 58:21
  Speaker 14: we have to alderline and we can't because we outnumber them.
• 58:25
  Speaker 9: And how do we do that? We expose the fact.
• 58:29
  Speaker 14: We go on with the help of people like you,
• 58:33
  Speaker 14: with all of us together, the real facts. And remember
• 58:37
  Speaker 14: the facts are hard headed. You may say anything about
• 58:41
  Speaker 14: the inflation and the price of gas in the States
• 58:45
  Speaker 14: and that there's no inflation and everything's going fine, but
• 58:48
  Speaker 14: when you go to the gas station, you see the
• 58:51
  Speaker 14: price of the gas. So facts will come and will
• 58:56
  Speaker 14: make themselves known, and people will eventually change.
• 59:01
  Speaker 9: So we have to stop the gas lighting.
• 59:03
  Speaker 14: This is why I did my last book on migrations
• 59:07
  Speaker 14: and the fact that the migrants and all those people
• 59:10
  Speaker 14: are the source of all our misery, which is not
• 59:14
  Speaker 14: true when you look at the facts. You know, So
• 59:17
  Speaker 14: we have to stop the gas lighting, put on the
• 59:21
  Speaker 14: counter narrative based on facts, and we have to go
• 59:24
  Speaker 14: with confidence that facts will prevail.
• 59:28
  Speaker 9: And we also have to find their acually's heal.
• 59:32
  Speaker 14: As I say, I think, tell On that she'll in friendship,
• 59:35
  Speaker 14: I'm not right, correct me.
• 59:37
  Speaker 9: Which is the weakness because we see them as.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Huge and they are.
• 59:42
  Speaker 14: They are trillionaires the first time. But they all rely
• 59:47
  Speaker 14: on such simple things like water, like data centers, water electricity,
• 59:53
  Speaker 14: things like that. Those things they steal from us to
• 59:57
  Speaker 14: get richer and more power.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 9: Through and all that.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 14: But it's ours and we can very simply sometimes get back,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 14: and we will get back those things that are owned
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 14: by the entire humanity. And I have a lot of
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 14: confidence that we will prevail in the sense that if
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 14: we would not, we would be extinct for a long
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 14: time right now, if only the predators and the powerful men,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 14: as they say now would prevail.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 9: So let's hold the line.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks, I'd like last word, I mean, thanks for
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: all your people. We're gonna organizing that great summit. And
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: the last word to say that the door is also
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: also open to meet you in Lake Mechanic and will
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: be really happy, and we hope to meet you in
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: your in your towns too, So let's will be follow
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: away to collabor rate together, you know, and don't be
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: shy enough to communicate with us. We are the door
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: will also be opens. Mac, thanks Nicole, and Thanksan and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: everybody and Marie, Jamie and Christina and who else. I'm forgetting,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: but our door is also open. Thanks great, Thanks.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 10: You know, you hear people talk about environmentalists and people
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 10: that want to protect the environment, and they're kind of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 10: out there, and you know, they're these extreme activists. But
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 10: I think what we all fail to realize is that
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 10: when we kill the environment, we're killing ourselves. We need
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 10: those resources to live, you know, just like anything else,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 10: valuable resources are going to be used, they're going to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 10: be tapped out, and we need to start protecting that environment.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 10: I don't think that our world as a whole is
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 10: ever going to ban chemicals.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's a hard fight.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 10: We've all become so dependent on the products that these chemicals,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 10: you know, produce for us, you know, the luxuries that
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 10: we get from them. But what I think is an
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 10: attainable goal is to make sure that the manufacturing, storage,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 10: and transportation of these chemicals are the safest that they
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 10: can be to protect the humans and the environments that
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 10: are close to these facilities. And that's why I started
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 10: the Chemically Impacted Communities Coalition because I feel like we
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 10: need to take all these fighters from all these different
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 10: communities and bring our voices together.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: We also need to be a resource for other communities
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: that this happened to. I know, I wasn't one of
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: those environmental activists.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 10: I had no clue where to even start finding the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 10: resources to help myself. So I formed again chemically Impacted
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 10: Communities Coalition. But it is sick for short to bring
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 10: all those people together in a coalition. You know, Nikki knows,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 10: she was there too. We spoke last week in Chicago
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 10: at the Rare Workers United conference. You know, we need
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 10: to even bring in the workers, you know, the railway workers.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 10: If they're not safe, we're not safe. And they know
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 10: what's going on firsthand. So this coalition is a lot
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 10: bigger than just you know, the communities that happened to,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 10: but the workers that impacted. It's about bringing together the resources.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 10: You know, here's a list of places you can go.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 10: Here's trusted media. You know, even the media we couldn't trust.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 10: Some of the media would want to cut your interviews
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 10: to make you say what they want to do to say.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 10: So I feel like it's so important to bring us
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 10: all together, and I'd like to invite you know, Locke
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 10: mcgenttik to join that coalition because this is not just
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 10: a problem in the United States. This is a worldwide problem.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 10: You know, one of our member communities is Beau Paul, India.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 10: You know, so the bigger our voices can be, the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 10: louder we can be, the better the chances that will
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 10: be her. And I just wanted to say real quick, Max,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 10: thank you. I've said since the beginning that journalists save lives.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 10: It's this awareness we have to keep speaking and people.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 10: We need the journalists to put out our voices. And
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 10: this was never so apparent as when our attorney was
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 10: granted the motion to intervene in the federal court case
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 10: against Norfolk Southern. The judge frankly said, I've heard all
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 10: these stories on you know, News Nation, read it in
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 10: the New York Post, and I've seen none of this evidence.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 10: Like you don't want to show us this evidence. The
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 10: attorney said, no, so our you know, our attorney intervened
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 10: and it was granted. But it was all because of journalists.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 10: So don't underplay the power that you have in your
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 10: hands and the power of keeping our stories going in
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 10: the awareness you create.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 15: As Jamie just said, with the people in Beat Paul,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 15: it's not just going to take people from the US
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 15: to stand up and say something, because it does happen
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 15: all over the world. It takes the people in Canada,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 15: takes the people in India, it takes all of us.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 15: And at the end of the day, no matter what
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 15: industry we're working in, we all are human beings and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 15: we all need to love our neighbors as ourselves.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 13: So so.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 11: All right, gang, that's going to wrap things up for
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 11: us today. I want to take a moment to thank
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 11: our incredible guests and the whole cast of amazing people
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 11: who made this production possible. Thank you to our guests
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 11: from Canada, Gilbert Carrette, Jill Fluette, Robert Bellefleur and al
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 11: Marie Sansoni. Thank you to our guests from the United
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 11: States Jamie Wallace and Christina Seislov. Thank you to the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 11: great and Legace Dawson for being our French English interpreter
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 11: for this critical panel conversation. Thank you to our wonderful
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 11: voice actors Ethan Cox and Danielle Lemieux. Thank you to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 11: Fritz Edler and Railroad Workers United for all there behind
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 11: the scenes help to make this episode happen. Thank you
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 11: to the brilliant doctor Nicole Fabricant for co hosting this
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 11: episode with me and for everything that you do. Thank
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 11: you to the whole teams at the Real News Network
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 11: and in these times for supporting this podcast and making
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 11: every single episode possible, including this one, and a special
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 11: thank you to Jules Taylor and Alena Nellick for their
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 11: remarkable work producing the episode that you just listened to,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 11: from the audio editing to the sound design. This is
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 11: one of the most important episodes that we've ever produced,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 11: in my opinion, and it would not have been possible
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 11: without Jules and Elena, nor would it have been possible
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 11: without the brilliant cast of contributors and helpers that I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 11: just named. And of course none of it means anything
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 11: without you, all of you listening to this right now.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 11: I want to personally thank you for taking the time
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 11: to listen to this special episode of our podcast, and
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 11: I want to thank you for caring about this because
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 11: you know, as the great poet doctor Seuss once said,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 11: unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 11: is going to get better.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 13: It's not listen.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 11: From loc Megantic to East Palestine and beyond, from the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 11: explosion of AI data centers to the increasing number of
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 11: toxic spills, fires, derailments, and other industrial disasters that are
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 11: happening all around us, from the forever chemicals and other
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 11: life harming toxins in our water to the deadly carcinogens
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 11: being constantly blasted into the air that we breathe. It's
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 11: clear that corporations and our governments are turning more and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 11: more of our communities into sacrifice zones, and more and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 11: more of us are being set up for sacrifice. If
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 11: you think it can't happen to you and your community,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 11: neither did the people in lock Megantic or East Palestine.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 11: Remember that this crisis did not come about suddenly. It's
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 11: been building for a long time, and frankly, things are
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 11: going to get worse before they get any better. But
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 11: they can get better. We can fight this and we
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 11: can fix this together. If you learn anything from these
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 11: episodes that we publish, it should be that no one
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 11: is coming to save us, and nothing is going to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 11: change unless carrying people and people of conscience everywhere start
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 11: banding together and making change happen themselves. Unless residents of
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 11: different sacrifice zones, different poisoned and abandoned communities, workers and
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 11: unions on the front lines of the industries that are
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 11: poisoning us environmental justice groups, community and faith organizations, scientists, journalists,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 11: and all others who have a stake in this fight
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 11: start coming together, working together, and fighting back together. All
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 11: of us have a role to play in this fight,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 11: and we here at Working People, the Real News Network,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 11: and in these times will continue our work to lift
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 11: up the voices and stories of the people like you
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 11: who are on the front lines of this fight, and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 11: to bring people together on and offline. That is why
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 11: we are going in person out to more communities affected
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 11: by this and that is why doctor Fabricant and I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 11: will be hosting a No More Sacrifice Zones conference here
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 11: at the Real News Network studio in Baltimore at the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 11: end of this year. If you or members of your
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 11: community want to attend this conference, if you want to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 11: be part of this coalition and be part of this fight,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 11: then please reach out to us using the information that
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 11: we provided in the.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 13: Show notes for this episode.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 11: We'll see y'all back here next time for another episode
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 11: of Working People, and in the meantime, please go explore
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 11: all the great work that we're doing across the Real
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 11: News Network where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 11: the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 11: Check us out across our YouTube channel, our different podcast feeds,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 11: our website, and our social media pages, and please help
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 11: us do more important work like this by going to
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 11: therealnews dot com forward slash, donate and becoming a supporter
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 11: of our work today. I promise you guys, it really
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 11: makes all the difference. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 11: Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: When my face you no longer see.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 16: I live on, Yes, I live on where Elwood we go.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 13: We're going to roll the.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: Union goal song.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 15: I live on them.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 16: Yes, I'll live on whereever I'm hunger, I'll will just
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 16: as Hongress homework and je this song I live on. Yes,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 16: I live on, well me things are happening in this land.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 16: It's read a song I live on. Yes, I live
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 16: on wherever the book Mean Things are Happening in.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: This Land is read.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 13: I live on.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 16: Yes, I'll live on wherever the video Okay of mea
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 16: shown me I be wanted.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: Yes, I live on.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 16: If I have help to make this a better world
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 16: to live in it, I'll live on. Yes, I'll live on.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 9: It when my body is solid and in some loans
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 9: and bread.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 5: I'll live on it. Yes, I live on.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 16: When my songs and corners are.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 6: Read, I'll live on.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 16: Yes, I'll live on