The Real News Podcast

Over the past couple years, the Vermont State AFL-CIO and its membership have embraced a more democratic, rank-and-file strategy, building up bonds of solidarity with community organizations, and bringing much-needed energy into a labor council that was on the verge of dying. Instead of commending and encouraging these efforts, however, the AFL-CIO national and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka are monitoring, investigating, and threatening "further action" against the Vermont labor council. Why? We talk with David Van Deusen, President of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

As part of our ongoing series "Not in Our Name," we hear a poem from E. Ethelbert Miller. Host Marc Steiner also speaks with scholar and human rights defender Majed Abusalama, and civil rights activist Dorothy Zellner.This is the latest installment of the ongoing series "Not in Our Name," which highlights the diverse voices of Jewish activists, artists, intellectuals, and others who are speaking out against the Israeli occupation. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

The violence of Israeli occupation and apartheid has been happening for many years with unceasing support from the U.S. government. This is why many are rightly skeptical that anything will fundamentally change, even with the recent international outcry over Israeli forces’ attack on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, renewed airstrikes on Gaza, and the forced removal of Palestinian residents from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. However, Palestinian resistance in Israel and the occupied territories, coupled with a growing international wave of resistance to the occupation, and solidarity with the people of Palestine, is reaching unprecedented levels, prompting many to wonder if the tide may actually be turning.In this urgent episode of “The Marc Steiner Show,” we bring you on-the-ground reports from Palestine and from the U.S. and Canada, where Jewish and Palestinian-American activists are fighting to end the occupation. In the first segment, Marc speaks with Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss Yumna Patel, who’s been reporting on the ground in the West Bank for five years, about what she’s been seeing and reporting on these past two weeks. Then, we discuss the efforts of Palestinian-Americans in the U.S. to resist the occupation with Sammy Alqasem, Palestinian-American organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America, and Laura Albast, Palestinian-American journalist, translator, digital content editor, and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in North America.Lastly, we kick off our ongoing series “Not in Our Name,” which will highlight the diverse voices of Jewish activists, artists, intellectuals, and others who are speaking out against the Israeli occupation. In the first installment of this series, Marc chats with Israeli-Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former TRNN Israel/Palestine correspondent Lia Tarachansky, as well as artist, author, and author of “Drawing Blood” and "Brothers of the Gun" (co-authored with Marwan Hisham), Molly Crabapple. Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

Right now, working people in Palestine and Colombia are being crushed by a relentless onslaught of murderous violence and dispossession, economic degradation, and inhumane exploitation. They are fighting for their lives, and they are asking for international solidarity. In Palestine, against the ceaseless violence of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, Palestinians are rising up to resist their own erasure; in Colombia, millions have taken to the streets to fight against a corrupt system by which the government, the police, and the forces of international oligarchic plunder have waged class war on working people. In this special episode of Working People, spanning three continents, we talk to Irene Vélez Torres and Toufic Haddad about the world-changing struggles they are living through in Colombia and Palestine, and about what working people around the world, especially in North America, can do to join the fight.Interview with Irene Vélez Torres begins at 20:25Interview with Toufic Haddad begins at 46:51Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

The 1999 Good Friday Agreement brought to an end 30 years of strife in the North of Ireland. Now, less than 25 years after the Agreement was made, social tensions are rising again, prompting many to fear a return to “the Troubles” of the past. In the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s botched handling of Brexit, Northern Ireland is now on the precipice of either breaking its union with the UK or upending the social peace embodied in the Good Friday Agreement. TRNN contributor Radhika Desai takes a deep dive into the unfolding political situation with economist and political advisor Michael Burke.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

Appalachia is a region with a rich and complicated political history that is often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in other parts of the country. In a special “Marc Steiner Show” first, Marc and TRNN audio engineer Stephen Frank take listeners on a narrative journey through the politics and economics of Appalachia today. Guests in this segment include Marie Gunoe, director of the Mother Jones Community Foundation and longtime environmental activist and community organizer in West Virginia fighting to protect communities and the environment from the harmful effects of mountaintop removal mining; Chuck Nelson, a retired fourth-generation coal miner, member of the United Mine Workers of America, and board adviser and volunteer at the Mother Jones Community Foundation; and Hy Thurman, author of Revolutionary Hillbilly and one of the founding members of the Young Patriots and the first Rainbow Coalition.Then, in our second segment, Marc talks with Erica Payne, president and founder of the group Patriotic Millionaires, and Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires, about their new book, "Tax the Rich!: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer," and about the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways the U.S. tax code is a racket designed to benefit the rich.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Production/Postproduction: Stephen FrankBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

While wealthy countries like the United States are rushing to vaccinate their populations and “reopen” their societies, the rest of the world continues to suffer. With hospitals overrun and life-saving oxygen supplies running low, India’s government is reporting over 300,000 new COVID-19 infections every day (though evidence suggests the numbers are even higher). Meanwhile, Brazil suffered 70,000 COVID deaths in April alone, with poor and Black communities being hit the hardest, while a new, more contagious variant rips across the country. How have these preventable horrors come to pass? And what can we do to help?In this urgent episode of “The Marc Steiner Show,” spanning three continents, we bring you firsthand reports of the unfolding catastrophes in India and Brazil from guests who are living through them. Marc is joined by journalist and activist Ansab Amir, who is based in Aligarh, India, and multimedia journalist, radio reporter, documentary filmmaker, and TRNN contributor Mike Fox, who is based in Florianópolis, Brazil.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

In this special episode of “Working People,” we talk with three veterans about how the military and the class system (in the U.S. and around the world) go hand in hand. How does the military market itself to the poor and marginalized (and why is that marketing so effective)? How does our broken economy ensure a constant stream of recruits who will be sent to fight endless imperialist wars just so they can pay for college or finally be accepted as a worthy citizen? What happens to these recruits when they're serving and when (or if) they leave? Why is it that so many features of military life and America's self-perpetuating war machine translate to an accepted status quo in which women, LGBTQ folks, and non-white recruits are subjected to vicious harassment, violent assault, or worse? In this important conversation, we're joined by Triste Ordex, Marine Corps vet and national organizer for Vets for the People; Amber Mathwig, a former 10-year Navy Master-at-Arms and organizer with About Face: Veterans Against the War; and Clarke, a Navy veteran, organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America, and commercial diver.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

The “F” word has been thrown around a lot in the age of Donald Trump. From President Trump’s “Muslim ban,” to bipartisan support for migrant-filled concentration camps, to the failed insurrection at the Capitol building in January of this year, is “fascism” a useful term for understanding the political reality we’ve been living in? Are we misapplying the term in ways that drain it of its historical meaning? In the first installment of an ongoing series investigating the contours of fascism in the past and present, Jacqueline Luqman speaks with international human rights activist and National Organizer for Black Alliance for Peace Ajamu Baraka about how we must decenter twentieth-century Europe in order to gain a fuller understanding of what fascism is and where it exists.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

It’s been four months since supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building in early January in a thwarted attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. While many in the Republican and Democratic political establishment hoped to move on from the failed Trumpist insurrection by characterizing it as an unrepeatable anomaly, the fact of the matter is the widespread, coordinated efforts by the right to undermine democracy continue unabated. From the grassroots to the halls of legislative power, what will it take to beat back the anti-democracy onslaught, and how can we fight to expand democracy?In this episode of “The Marc Steiner Show,” Marc and his guests examine the state of democracy in the U.S. and the intertwined fights for expanded voting rights and police accountability. In the first segment, we’re joined by Congressman Jamie Raskin, U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th congressional district, to discuss the great political divide in the U.S. and the fight to expand our democratic rights. Then, in our recurring monthly segment where we talk with authors from Jacobin magazine, Marc talks with Jacobin staff writer Luke Savage about recently leaked audio of Republican plutocrats plotting to kill the push to expand voting rights.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!