Rev Left Radio - Corporate Crime & Class War: The Ohio Train Derailment

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Labor journalist Mel Buer joins Breht to discuss the recent train derailment in Ohio and the subsequent ecological disaster that ensued, the recent labor union struggles waged by rail workers, the warnings regarding safety that those workers advanced, the role of the Biden administration in all of this, the corporate dictatorship we live under, and much more.   Follow Mel here: https://twitter.com/mel_buer Contact Mel: [e-mail] The Real News Network: https://therealnews.com/      Outro music: "I Saw" by Young Fathers Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode we have on the show Labor Journalist and my friend Mel Bure operating right now out of the Real News Network but does freelance stuff or people like the nation who she just did an article for regarding the Ohio train derailment. She's really wonderful when it comes to labor journalism and covering big news events from the perspective of labor. And she's just a wonderful person and a great friend of mine. We met years and years and years ago through local organizing and to still have a

relationship with her and to see all the amazing work that she's doing. It's just really fucking cool. So this is my conversation with Mel about the Ohio train derailment, how we on the left should think about it, how not to fall into conspiracy theories, the causes for the derailment, the recent union struggle from a few months. months ago, and the very complaints that they were bringing up in their struggle about safety and cutting corners by these corporations to maximize profits, it all comes to ahead in this horrific event, and there's nobody better to talk about it than labor journalist Mel. So that's our

conversation. And if you are in that area or know anybody in that area, my heart goes out to you. You know, genuine love and solidarity for everybody affected by that derailment and others because as we know this is not a new thing and it's not going to stop happening until big changes are made in the society but it has to be an absolutely horrific event to have a family and to be exposed to this and to be hearing conflicting messages and whether or not you go back to your home or stay out or drink the water or get bottled water it's just a terrible thing that citizens in the richest country that's ever existed in human history should not have to fucking deal with, but it's precisely what happens when we hand over the basic functioning

of society to corporate raiders, to profiteers who want to soak as much money to squeeze every fucking dollar out of the industry that they possibly can, regardless of the cost to their workforce, to American citizens, and to the environment in which we all depend on and live. So here's my conversation with Mel about the toxic airborne event and the Ohio train derailment. Enjoy. My name is Mel Bewer. I'm an associate editor and labor reporter, currently working with the Real News Network. I also sometimes freelance, so you may have seen my work in the nation, most

recently um hello i am excited to be here yeah a long time listeners of rev left will be familiar with mel i'm not sure how many times you've been on in the past but we've been together through this entire ride um you've been there since the earliest days of rev left and the organizing that rev left stemmed out of so it's awesome to have you back and as i was saying before we started recording it's really cool as well to like just come across to your work randomly online um as i have several times in the past couple years. It's just really cool to see you out there doing your shit and also speaking for the working class and really, you know, never compromising on that pro-labor position while still being utterly tethered to reality and giving real useful information

to the people. So I'm really, really happy to have you on and really happy to see all the great shit you're doing. Thanks. Yeah. It's been cool to watch you too. I mean, I feel like every time we get back on this podcast together, we always end up having to take a couple of minutes at the jump to check in and, you know, deeply, deep, deep love for you, comrades. So I'm glad to be back on and to talk about this most recent disaster. Yeah, right. Unfortunately, that's what we're going to talk about today. But, yeah, I think the last time you and I saw each other is actually at my wedding.

So you're one of the few guests that, like, we're really personal friends outside of just the show. So I'm happy to have you back on. Thanks. All right. Well, let's get into it. So, you know, switching into the negative news, you know, period of this. discussion but it's really important and there's a lot of stuff that needs to be talked about and discussed and i read your recent article in the nation which was which was really good and

really sets out some obvious i mean they should be obvious unfortunately they're not so obvious in the neoliberal period but obvious solutions uh to these horrific problems but maybe the the best place to start is just kind of recapping what happened i'm sure most people um in you know in the U.S. at least, especially those that are online because the media wasn't quick to jump on it, but I think they're catching up now. But, you know, can you just remind us what exactly happened and what the current state of the situation is? Yeah. So on February 3rd, Norfolk Southern freight train was traveling through East Palestine, Ohio, which is sort of in northeast Ohio, close to the Pennsylvania border.

And it derailed in the town and sent, I think, 38 cars off the tracks. 11 of those cars were carrying hazardous chemicals, some of which had, you know, hazmat designations, but most of which did not. And it set a fire that local firefighters were struggling to put out. And what ended up happening is that they were, according to official accounts, they were afraid that five of those tanker cars containing vinyl chloride were going to fail and cause like a catastrophic explosion in the middle of this town. And so what they ended up doing is they evacuated almost the entire town and did a controlled release of the chemicals into a trench. burnt it off. And so all of the dramatic images that you've been seeing out of East Palestine for the last,

what, two weeks of the big black clouds coming out of the town is from that controlled burn. It's sent, you know, gallons and gallons of burnt off vinyl chloride into the atmosphere. It had, you know, a massive sort of dark black cloud that could be seen from. Satellite imagery, I think. And, you know, the NTSB is still doing their investigation, so there's no truly official report on what exactly happened to cause the derailment. But they have a recent statement as of the 14th that they obtained, like, home surveillance footage of the train as it was passing by one of the homes that it was passing by. And it looks like they had seen, you know, their working theory is that a wheelbaring, had failed. It wasn't caught by an inspection, and it caused the derailment. And when wheel bearings,

you know, apparently it was, you know, sparking, it was very hot and on fire. So that's likely the reason why the train just went up in flames once it, you know, those cars hit the deck. So that's kind of the sort of rundown of what's been going on. In the meantime, since then, since this controlled burn, residents have been reporting really alarming. symptoms that they are unsure of if it's coming from their exposure to the chemical fumes. A lot of folks are reporting that their skin is burning after taking a shower. The EPA has released a couple of reports that says that, you know, some of these chemicals have leached into the soil.

You can see videos online of, you know, what looks like chemical slicks in streams and creeks that are downriver from East Palestine. What else? God, Cincinnati has, you know, temporarily halted pulling water from the Ohio River in order to, you know, water people's homes. So, you know, you've got this sort of literal and, you know, figurative fallout from this chemical derailment catastrophe in East Palestine, right? And the outrage is growing louder, right? Norfolk Southern refused to show up to the town hall information sessions because they were, quote, afraid that their representatives would get beat up. Oh, my God. Which, you know, the town is rightfully angry, you know, they've tried to slap a Band-Aid on it and only offered about $25,000 in assistance to the residents who had been evacuated.

That's, you know, they're giving out $1,000 checks to folks. who are now living in a, you know, contaminated town, right? Remindered that this is a small town. There's only about 5,000 people who lived there. And literally everyone was affected, you know. The state government is, you know, dragging its ass on a lot of things. I think either today or just yesterday, Friday, the 17th, FEMA has made the decision to send teams to East Palestine to help. with coordinating sort of disaster relief efforts, which is something that they had previously

said that it was not something they could do. You know, there's a bunch of different agencies that are coming through the area trying to clean it up. And, you know, so we're kind of in this, like, gray area in terms of how the investigation for the accident is going. What sort of response these various agencies will have beyond that, right? The EPA is doing their own investigation, the Federal Railroad Administration, which runs sort of the inspections on the railroads. They are also doing an investigation.

They're all kind of working together. And then obviously the labor unions are involved. Until we get, you know, full official reports back, it's kind of difficult to get any sort of official statements from the labor unions. But rank and file workers are unfortunately not surprised that this happened, right? But yeah, so it's been an absolutely epic, in like the worst possible sense, ecological disaster in Ohio. And we are going to be seeing the consequences of this before many, many years, I would say. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the effects are going to be a long term for sure, regardless of how this ultimately shakes out.

But I did want a little bit of clarification on the EPA regarding the safety. of the drinking water. You mentioned people talking about their skin, feeling like it's burning after they get in a fire. I sure most people have seen the viral footage going around of people disturbing the bottom of these creek beds and this iridescent sheen bubbling up and covering the water that ostensibly the EPA I've heard said is safe. Can you clarify one way or the other on what the EPA has said about the safety of the water at this current time? As far as I know, they've tested the sort of municipal water and they say that it is safe to drink. They are essentially saying that if folks have private wells in their homes or on their property, then to not touch it and

just buy bottled water because they cannot guarantee that it's safe. You know, official statements have all said, yes, it's fine. You know, we're constantly testing air quality. We're constantly testing water quality, you know, and it should be safe, right? And then, you know, you have these reports from residents who are experiencing very troubling health symptoms that they didn't have prior to this derailment after interacting with or being in the community, you know, burning eyes and lungs after being in what was previously the evacuation zone, or, you know, talking. about how they get in the shower and they are experiencing their skin burning, you know, there's, as far as the EPA is concerned or these various agencies are concerned, they're saying it's safe, but, you know, it doesn't really line up with the anecdotal evidence of these residents in this town currently. So there's this gap here in like, what is true? What is not true? Is the administration helping this railroad cover its own ass is a question that I have, you know? and is what's going to happen to the surrounding communities as well as we get further into

investigating exactly what the ecological fallout is from this disaster. It's not great. Yeah. It's not great. No, it's horrific. And I really feel for the families in that area and having to weigh those decisions and getting this inadequate information and not knowing what to trust, what not to trust, having your whole family's, you know, future and health on the line.

it's brutal. I also saw the Biden administration is engaged in this attempt to protect Southern Norfolk and other companies like them from being sued in court. I'm not exactly sure how that's connected to this issue, but it certainly can't help if these corporations, which are already committing crimes that if any regular person did, they'd be in jail for a life sentence. But when you're a corporation, you can literally murder people, you can destroy entire towns. You can do any crime, literally any crime as a corporation, and the most you will face is sometimes fine. And so that disincentive to not cut corners, I mean, it's right there and it's obvious. And then the irony of the Southern Norfolk folks not showing up to this community meeting because they're afraid of their physical safety. Well, imagine how the people of that town fucking feel when their entire town and the soil and the water that they live on and around is poison.

possibly and could have generational effects on their families, but they don't want to show up because they might get yelled at or, God forbid, roughed up. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, grotesque. Um, I, yeah, go ahead. Certainly, it certainly the Biden administration, um, you know, running cover for these railroads in terms of protecting these corporations from potential lawsuits from workers, um, just sort of points to this feeling that you get when you kind of look at these regulators and you realize that they're not really doing their job as regulators. They're sort of treating, especially these multinational corporations or, you know, a billion dollar corporations like the rail carriers as sort of like clients rather than people that they

regulate and oversee, right? So instead of doing the job as regulators to ensure that these sorts of things are prevented, because these disasters can be prevented through good regulation from the government side through better staffing from the workers perspective, right? And that's kind of been what the workers have pointed to in the last, you know, as I've been talking to them over the last couple of weeks. And, you know, if you're going to be living under this system and have this government operate the way that it does, then fucking do your job, essentially, you know? Yeah.

Why play politics with the real lives of these people who suddenly have to bear the consequences of your inaction or the operations with absolute impunity you know they don't mean these real carriers just don't give a shit and it's very clear that they don't

feel any sort of mandate to public safety as they should because that costs money and they like to have all the profits in their pockets they want to go back to shareholders and say we made a billion dollars this quarter

you know instead of saying uh well we did we prevented a derailment in a town you know because we hired more inspectors right uh and we did that and we did that proactively uh it cost us money but we did it you know they don't care right don't give a shit you know it's people like warren buffett who spends all his time glad handing in fucking dc and new york and l a and all this shit and sits in our town right and makes himself out to be this this great human who pulled himself up by his straps yada yada and then he's you know he runs fucking i think what bn s f you know and he makes fucking billions of dollars off that shit and it's just uh it makes you sick it makes you sick yeah no it really does and and the profit motive the profiteering handing over these essential

aspects of our society and its ability to function to people who's only concern is soaking as much profit as fucking possible out of these industries so they can you know make it rain on their shareholders um you're exactly right and yeah when they go back to their shareholders it's not hey our trains have no derailments this year our workers are some of the best paid and taken care of in the country you know it's always profit margins how high are they what am i getting a return on my investment in this entire way of setting things up in this manner and the incentive structures and the fiduciary responsibility of these the CEOs and these corporations to you know create as much profit as possible at all costs that is the problem and obviously

there's a place for union struggles, for regulation. I would even argue for nationalization. We can get into some of those solutions a bit later on. But I also wanted to touch on, and I think you mentioned this in your nation piece, the Houston derailment, just as a quick thing, because that kind of got covered up in the rest of the hoopla around the Ohio derailment. But can you tell us really quickly what happened in Houston? Well, in Houston, this was more, this was a collision and a traffic crossing. So unfortunately, the driver of a semi-truck was on the railroad at a crossing and was unfortunately killed when there was a collision.

Half the time that the derailments happened because of, you know, lacks inspections or, you know, you don't catch something, something breaks down. Duralments can also happen because of track not being properly inspected or fixed. There can, you know, especially in places with extreme temperature changes that, can change the track, can, you know, expand the metal or contract it. It causes problems, right? Sometimes it's operator error and sometimes, unfortunately, it is something like, you know, someone in a train crossing causing a collision. All of those things can lead to derailments. The big thing about what's going on in Houston is that this is also a derailment carrying

chemicals, hazardous materials through a populated area. Right. Same thing with the derailment that happened a couple days ago in Detroit. One of those train cars was also carrying hazardous materials. It kind of underscores the fact that there are, and this is something that if you're on social media, you probably, or if you've heard Pete Buttigieg on the news in the last two days, 10 days later, thanks Pete, you know, talking about how these derailments are very frequent. they happen frequently that's not a good talking point first off you know the fact that the rail carriers who have billions and billions of dollars to throw around have you know collectively 500 derailments a year you know that's multiple derailments a day in all over the country right um really kind of points to the fact that like it doesn't have to be this way you know you can't just say oh well we're

focused on one, you know, even though we should be focused on this one, or now we're focusing on every derailment that happens, right? It's, the story there is that it happens so frequently. And according to, you know, the president of the Transportation Trade Department of the AFL CIO, they are happening with increasing frequency. The trains are longer and they're more devastating now, right? It's not just one car coming off the track that you can kind of fix somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains and it's not this catastrophic problem. No, it's like, it's like a massive, massive problem, right? And every single one that happens, again, underscores the fact that it doesn't have to be this way, right? And that this is something that is happening

in large part through this very deregulated industry, just operating with impunity and not doing what they should be doing to ensure the safety of their workers and the communities that they send their trains through. So, you know. Yeah, exactly. And Pete coming out and talking about, you know, these derailments happen a lot. You know, well, we're talking about hazardous material. There's no excuse for these derailments to happen a lot, particularly when there's obviously

humans on board and or when there's hazardous material that can destroy entire towns, entire ecosystems, et cetera. You have to get the situation under control coming out and saying, hey, this happens a lot, is not the argument you think it is. It's an indictment of this neoliberal deregulatory period that regulators not regulating the revolving door between politicians, regulators and big business. And they all just kind of swap hats every once in a while and are, you know, looking out for each other's bottom line, not the safety of the workers or the health of the environment, etc. It's really grotesque. But one of the things that also happened, and I would love to get you. Your thoughts on this is there did seem to be this mainstream coverage lag.

Now, that did a couple things, including, I think, create an opening for right-wing conspiracy theorists because one of the main jobs of the right is to always take your eyes off the corporate ball. It's never the capitalist class. It's never the incentive structures of capitalism that are at fault. It's always some obviously vulnerable or marginalized scapegoat community or the government is bad in and of itself, the very mechanism that in a functioning society would regulate and hold accountable these corporations. And then they're talking about, oh, these, all these derailments happening at once.

Now there's a fire at this big factory. You know, this is a false flag or this is a Chinese attack or whatever, anything and everything but capitalism and profiteers. And even some people on the left started talking about, oh, this balloon stuff they're talking about. They're doing it consciously to distract you from what happened in Ohio. and I'm also kind of skeptical of that. I don't think our first impulse should be to do what the right does,

which is to find a conspiracy here. On one level, it's like if this happened outside of New York City, you know, we would never stop hearing the end of it. It happened in a small town in Ohio. There is a coastal bias with the mainstream corporate media, really emphasizing things that happen in and around where they live and operate and not emphasizing things that happen in other parts of the country, especially what they call flyover country.

But there's no denying that, there was a lag in the coverage and for such a big event it is weird that um these these media outlets would not jump on it and cover it vociferously from the beginning and it seems to be like this bottom up pressure on social media where regular people are calling this shit out all the time forcing um some of these bigger companies to to address them i'm just kind of thinking what are asking what you make of all of that and and how we should think about this relatively odd lag are all sensible lag in the mainstream media coverage of this issue. Well, certainly there's, I, okay, first off, I agree with you that the tendency towards sort of conspiratorial thinking from either

side, obviously it's very transparent what the right does, right? From the left, you know, I also heard a lot of that, sort of saw that in my silo on Twitter, you know what I mean, where folks are going, you know, well, this major event is happening in Ohio. It's not getting covered by mainstream news. It should be wall-to-wall coverage. Well, the way that the mainstream news media ecosystem works and has worked since, you know, the 80s, right, is to really kind of privilege the sort of things that are happening from the coasts.

And that is, you know, direct result of shuttering newspapers across the country. It's a direct result of closing. national news bureaus like in the Midwest and the plains, like middle America does not get the coverage that it should get because these massive corporations have decided at some point in the past that it's not worth it. Right. We're kind of seeing a little bit of a change there. There are some major outlets that are reopening news bureaus in places like Chicago and St. Louis, which is great, right? But just sort of like from a historical perspective, in order for news to move across such a large country, right?

There used to be in New York news bureaus for most of the major national papers all across the country. So you would have folks in an office in Montana, for example, or in the deep south, or, you know, in Nebraska or in Chicago, right? And you would have the resources to be able to cover these kinds of stories as they happen. I don't think that it's really kind of a government conspiracy that the coverage was focused primarily on the United States shooting down what I'm sure were probably just like hobby balloons and weather balloons. I think it's the most recent statement. And that points to the geopolitical conflicts that we're currently having surrounding the ongoing war in Ukraine and the consistent saber-rattling that the United States does. against China and Russia and various other powers that they have deemed to be enemies economically or otherwise, right? So, you know, I don't know if you remember during the Trump administration

when the Chinese government closed its embassy in, like, Texas or whatever, and it was this huge story about folks burning paper in the parking garage or something. And that was wall-to-wall coverage, which can be a bunch of border policies that had been passed by the Trump administration. So, like, That isn't to say that, like, when this happens, they're not pulling the strings per se, but they certainly are reaping the benefits of, you know, getting that cover from the news media. In this case, local news had been covering it from the jump, right? So local Ohio news had been covering this pretty much consistently. Same thing with news outlets in nearby cities like Pittsburgh. They had also been covering it.

So the news coverage in the Ohio Valley was pretty consistent from the start. And I think, you know, as it became more of a story where you're seeing these very dramatic images of that burnoff, chemical burnoff, and you're learning about, you know, what's happening to the residents in the aftermath, I think the big thing that sort of really tipped people off to the severity of the incident that had been, you know, downplayed prior. was seeing that evacuation map that a local news station had tweeted out to its residents to say, you know, if you're in this evacuation area, get the fuck out. If you are going to, you know, do not stay behind because you will die if you breathe in this burnt off chemical, right? It's when vinyl chloride burns, it turns into two very, very bad gases, one of which is fosgene gas, which was used in World War II. to gas soldiers, right? You know, it's mustard gas.

It's the, you know, it's the equivalent of breathing in something that's going to liquefy your lungs and you need to get the fuck out, right? And so seeing that social media post, suddenly people were like, holy fuck, what is going on, you know? Last we heard it was just a fiery train derailment. Now we're seeing that, like, a chemical bomb is about to go off in this small town in Iowa. And, you know, I remember, you know, a couple, you know, 10 days ago or whatever, people were

like this feels like the plot of a movie, you know? And ironically enough, residents of East Palestine were in extras in a movie that had been filmed not two months ago about a train derailment. So, you know, the simulation is getting weird. Well, really quick on that point. Yeah, the movie was white noise. I saw the movie. I actually is a Don DeLillo novel that I've read many times or twice, fully twice in my life, and had a big impact on me as an angsty existentialist, something and the postmodern literature and everything and they got turned into a movie i was very excited for it turns out it was filmed in that exact location in the movie there's this train

derailment that causes this toxic airborne event and then they go uh the evacuation people it's like this postmodern ironic thing where the uh the people doing the disaster relief are people that are doing a drill so it's a real thing but they're running it as if it's a drill i don't know it's this whole fucking thing that Dondalila does. But yeah, the people, people that were actually affected by this, one guy that lives like half a mile away from the derailment, him and his father were an extra in that film about a train derailment happening in Ohio that causes this toxic chemical event. So it's neither here nor there, but it's just a fascinating sort of coincidence of nothing else. And because I liked that movie and I've read that book many

times. I even went on the podcast with my friend Frank from Brazil, his left page podcast a year or two ago and talked about white noise. I just find that, I mean, just bewildering. And yeah, if you're talking about what simulation we're in or what timeline we're in, it just makes it all very seemingly spooky. Well, you know, truth is always stranger than fiction, as they say. But, you know, you're right. That is neither here nor there. Really, what we're looking at in terms of media coverage just to kind of underscore my thoughts about this as I'm continuing to write this book that will never get done. I swear God, I swear God, it'll get done is, you know, mainstream media has a very clear

sort of focus and motivation in terms of how they treat their national coverage. New York Times or broadcast networks like CNN, right? they are their sort of editorial judgment is really kind of again this idea that if it doesn't bleed it doesn't lead right and between the two stories prior to those very dramatic images coming out of East Palestine one is a quote unquote commonplace train derailment that happens in every major city across the country all the time you know all the time right um and one is a sort of sensational sort of story about potential invasions from a country that we shake our fists at we meaning the federal government shakes their fists at right on a regular basis you know um and so in terms of viewership and who's going to read that and how that translates to, once again, money in the pockets of executives, the answer is very clear. What happens to these communities is the stories just go untold, right? So, you know, it's no surprise

that it took the media 10 days to sort of catch up. The local news stations, as I said, covered it extensively. And then you had independent outlets like the lever doing independent investigations with their resources that they have available, you know, and spending a lot of time talking to residents and trying to get to the bottom of it because, frankly, independent outlets are much better at keeping to their ethics, right? And really kind of telling these stories because they deserve to have, you know, someone looking at them. And they deserve to be told we owe it to the residents of this community to keep pressure on federal and state governments to address this disaster and you know god forbid this becomes another you know three

mile island or uh what is it love canal or um blint right exactly um so not surprised and you know the new cycle will go on and there will be another main contender for top of the top of the hour kind of thing, probably in the next 10 days. We won't hear about it, you know, unfortunately. Yeah, absolutely. I just want to say, like, that's a great answer, like, especially your whole, when you're talking about the incentive structures in corporate media, the lack of local journalism, how that's really been gutted.

And so you depend on these big corporate media outlets on the coast, their course are going to focus on certain things and not focus on other things. That's a really great answer. And it's important to do because this instinct toward conspiracy theory, you know, to immediately say they are distracting us from this and there's this thing and they're hiding us from the truth and they don't want us to know like you know aside from being not tethered to reality and just being an intuitive sort of speculative thing it's conspiracies give us no insight into what actually happened and why they happen it's always just some shadowy group

of people distracting or pulling the string somewhere and it also gives us no ways forward to actually deal with issues because of every terrible thing that happens is the result of some eye-op or some super-competent conspiracy theory of the rich and powerful to distract us and they're so above, you know, normal constraints that they can pull these things off, it really, it not only takes the eye off the ball of what actually happened in most cases like corporate profiteering, that's just a conspiracy to get as much profit as possible, but it also gives us no ways to fight because if this really is just a shadowy could ball that we can't name or see, we can't fight, we can't organize against, they're so good at orchestra.

these things. It really, it dispirits people. It turns them off. It makes them, you know, feel absolutely disengaged and completely impotent in the face of it. Whereas when we say, well, actually, here's a bunch of the reasons why this happens. You know, here's the death of local journalism. Here's what neoliberal deregulatory era has produced. Here's what happens when the Biden administration steps in and crushes, you know, union efforts and workers attempts to address these issues from the bottom up. You get this exact situation, right? This is how we as the left as Marxist, anarchist, revolutionary socialists, we have to stay super tethered to reality and be very thoughtful and insightful about understanding these things because the right doesn't do it. And when you just go to conspiracy theories, you're always taking the eye off the ball of what's really going on and you're disengaging people and you're giving them no insight and no way to press back and fight.

And so I think we should really be skeptical, even of that intuition in ourselves. I'm not saying PSYOPs don't happen. I'm not saying government conspiracies or corporate conspiracies don't happen. But it can't be your first knee-jerk reaction to every big event that ever happens or else you're just not, you're not a person that people who care about reality can take seriously, you know? Well, yeah, you know, that's kind of my point too, right? Sciop certainly happened. There's a lot of evidence about, you know, CIA involvement in humanities, for example.

Tons of books have been written about it since the 90s. as, you know, things become declassified, yad de yada, right? But oftentimes, especially in this situation and in many situations, the simple explanation is usually the one that's correct, right? What we're seeing, you know, is truly just a company who is sort of poisoned by its own runaway profits and its need for continuous extraction from its workforce, cutting corners, you know, cutting staff, firing individuals and laying off, you know, thousands of people who would be able to catch something like, you know, what is speculated to be the cause of this. Again, I'm not going to put a hard period on it because we just don't have that investigative report yet.

But, you know, you've got a workforce that's been strapped for over, you know, a decade trying to keep. this industry running you know and in service of corporate billions right and you know you also have this company who has spent a lot of time and money in Washington DC lobbying lawmakers to make it easier for them to skirt around the regulations that would require them to spend the money on more inspections for example or pay the money for the hazmat designations on cars right you know they'll pay, you know, a couple million dollars in political donations to lawmakers, get their guys in legislatures, and then those lawmakers will, you know, glad hand their way into deregulating the industry, right?

So all of these little series of, like, failures from inspections to staffing, to mismanagement of the railroads, to, you know, deregulation to all of this, right? and the sort of media involvement in really kind of choosing not to ask certain questions or skating over certain answers that they get from these, you know, ostensibly, in air quotes, please, authoritative sources, right? All of these things kind of come together in this perfect, shitty storm, right? And all it comes down to is fucking this is late stage capitalism. Capitalism, man. This is what happens when you don't invest in your infrastructure. This is what happens when you don't invest in your workforce and you run your workforce ragged, right? This is the explanation. And, you know, to me, I think that piece right there, that is more than enough. I don't need to have, you know, the knee-jerk conspiracy for me to be spurred to any sort of action as a worker under this system.

Right. That is more than enough for me to say, yeah, let's fucking figure this out. You know, what do we need to change to make this better, right? Because the real world consequences of this is that a community is devastated and, you know, a state economy is going to be feeling the effects of this for, you know, years to come, right? And that's real people. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Who will still be dealing with this long past.

you know, the national reporters leave in to go back to you know, New York and D.C. and all that shit. So good thoughts there, right? Yeah, I totally agree. And like you said, when you lay out all these various reasons and how they converge and come

together to create this shitstorm of terrible incidences like this, but understanding those causes gives us a way out. It gives us a solution. Yeah, you need to nationalize these industries. They're so essential to the functioning of our society. they need to be nationalized. Workers need to be unionized, and they need to be able to go on strike

to bring attention to issues like skipping over safety and missing inspections and cutting corners so you can generate profit. Once you say that these are the real causes, then there's real solutions. And that solution is going to be political organization, working class labor organization. That's from the bottom up, and it's going to be regulation or nationalization from the top down. okay those are real things we can push for in the real world and when you when you go to conspiracy theories you obscure the real causes and you make almost impossible those real solutions but i really want to talk about this thing because it's also a part of your amazing work as a labor journalist which is and you've alluded to it throughout this conversation so far but the rail workers in there

i think it was a couple months ago their union struggle um can you can you remind us what happened there how the Biden administration kind of brought that union struggle to an end and how what we just saw happen can be tied back to the crushing of that effort and efforts like it? Yeah. So over the last couple of years since 2020, the rail workers have been working without a contract. They had been in the midst of really fraught contract negotiations through a pandemic. You know, their contracts are usually, I think, four or five years long. maybe six, I could be wrong.

But they have to negotiate new contracts with the rail carriers on a semi-regular basis. And last year, what myself and Max Alvarez and various other labor journalists were doing was following the sort of progression to the end stages of this contract battle, truly. It was really class warfare is what had to do. up happening. These workers are, had it been hearing and seeing years and years of layoffs, the rail carriers at these major freight railroads. They're called Class 1 railroads, meaning they make, there's like they post over a certain threshold and profits per year, something to the tune of like $100 million or something like that. And so there's like six or

seven of them at this point. And they were engaged in a, a, Cross craft. So there's 13 unions that work on the railroads negotiations with these rail carriers. It was a really complex sort of situation. And at the heart of it was that 40% of the workforce in these class one railroads have been laid off, fired, had retired or left the industry entirely over the course of many years. And one thing to know is that the rail's in the rail industry in the United States is a, massive piece of what is a pretty fragile supply chain. So if the railroads aren't working properly, then it causes the sort of supply chain issues that we've been seeing that has been highlighted in the media in the last couple of years. Things slow to a halt. Prices go up. Inflation causes more problems, right? So all of these things really were sort of in the conversation about what was going on with the workers. The big thing that the media liked to focus on last year was that the workers were asking for additional sick days so that they could take days off in order to

go to the doctor or deal with personal medical emergencies. It's kind of just one piece of the whole conversation. What it comes down to is that the railroads had instituted a scheduling policy for their workforce that essentially left workers completely overwhelmed by just the magnitude of the work that they were doing. We're talking about essentially working seven days a week is really what it was, right? They don't get time off. They weren't getting paid enough, really, to even justify the amount of time that they were working.

And each train and each crew across the cross was experiencing skeleton crews. So, you know, they could get the work done in a decent amount of time if they had more people on at once. But in order to squeeze every last drop of blood from the workforce, they cut down the staffing levels. And so that was also a huge piece of this contract negotiation. They were working their workers to death, literally. People, you know, there were stories coming out about rail workers who suffered medical emergencies on the trains, you know, heart attacks and such, and died. at work, right? Because of just the sheer stress of having to work this way, right? And these are like multi-generational railroaders who have been, you know, railroaders and their families for a long,

long time, you know, this was only ever going to be the job that they wanted to do, right? And a lot of them quit, left the industry. A lot of them are, you know, sort of like becoming refugees to passenger rail to at least get time with their family. you know it's a big fucking problem at the end of the year um they hadn't gotten a contract they uh sort of hit these fail safes because the because of the critical sort of nature of the infrastructure in the rail industry it's governed by legislation um same thing with uh air travel also governed by the same legislation and that sort of sets these parameters in place because a work stoppage on the rail industry would grind this country's economy to a halt.

It would be, it's a very powerful tool, right, if these workers even took 12 hours and stopped working, right? And the government knows this, and the rail carriers know this. And so there's legislation in place that pretty much prevents a strike from happening, which is what we saw at the end of last year. the negotiations went through a series of like mediation and then a cooling off period and then it goes to it, they present, you know, they put together this like emergency board of officials who hear both sides across the table, present, you know, recommendations to try and get a contract in place, and then there's a cooling off period. And then, you know, do they put a contract together? Okay, great. Now it goes back to the workers, the workers themselves vote to ratify, or. reject the contract across all 13 unions. Some workers reject the contract. Some workers ratified the contract. And so in December, we were down to, you know, the last like 10 days or so before this

deadline that said once we hit this deadline, if these contracts are not ratified, one of two things can happen. The railroads can lock out their workers. The workers can stop working and go on strike. Both situations have, you know, extreme economic fallout consequences, but this is the workers' tool, right? This is the last resort that the workers can use as a way to push the companies to work with them at the negotiating table because, you know, that is what we have, the value of our labor. The biggest thing that we can do is withhold our labor in these

situations. The Biden administration, I think nine days before the deadline, didn't even really give the railroads, the railroad unions, the chance to use this bargaining tool to say, hey, man, clock's ticking. Let's talk. He just straight up said, I am pushing Congress to enact legislation to force this contract on these workers who have rejected their last one. It's done. and they pushed that shit through in two days. You know, so the workers didn't even really have the chance to use this bargaining tool. The rail carriers won massively, right? And now what we're seeing, and, you know, as a result of that is essentially Biden sold out the rail workers.

The rail workers have been warning that this kind of catastrophic event was happening, could happen again, will happen again, because they aren't. you know the you know from the labor perspective there's just not enough people working and there's not enough incentive for them to continue working they don't get sick days they don't get paid very well um relatively speaking right they get paid fairly okay but you know at what cost right um and you know now we have Bernie Sanders uh uh sitting on a committee who's, you know, trying to force legislation for sick days for rail workers, you know, two, three months after they got so up shit creek, you know. And it's just you got to, it sucks so bad that you kind of have to laugh a little bit

because it's just a ridiculous experience. I feel insane sometimes because the entire time last year talking to these railworkers, you know, becoming very close with a few of them, right, and really kind of hearing about their lives and the absolute maddening pressure that they were under and them really just asking for like the most basic of workplace protections and them going, here's what's going to happen if we don't get this or if we don't see, you know, more legislative movement on the various other lobbying efforts that the rail unions are attempting to do. like mandatory minimum staffing on trains, for example,

or pushing for more funding for the Federal Railroad Administration so that they can hire more inspectors, right? Or trying to mandate that these rail carriers actually participate in these sort of like preventative inspection programs, of which none of them do currently. They don't voluntarily do it. So even if you have a complaint that you escalate to an inspector and an inspector issues a recommendation,

and the rail carriers aren't being proactive about fixing those problems, right? All of these things are like lobbying efforts, right? And every single person that I've talked to over the last 10 months has been like, here's what's happening. This is a bomb waiting to go off, essentially. You know, we are not getting the support that we need. And the rail carriers are not being forced via regulations to do what they should be doing, what they are supposed to be doing.

And you're going to see a derailment that's going to look very much like, the one that happened in Montreal in, you know, 10 years ago in which 150 people died because it was a fiery enrollment full of chemicals, right? Guess what happened? East Palestine, right? It happened. And rail workers and the labor reporters and the various people who have been advocating for and with these folks for months and months and years and years have all been screaming until they're blue in the face about this and have predicted. this to the letter because they've seen it before and they knew they would see it again. And what happened, you know, an entire community is devastated by this, right? And it could have been

prevented. One labor contract wasn't going to prevent it, right? But, you know, years and years of sustained regulation could have prevented this, right? You know, being able to at least point to a less fatigued, better paid, better taken care of workforce, right, would have helped, right? It's not about failing technology or whether or not sensors didn't catch this problem. It's like, people have eyes, man, and they work on these railroads daily, and they see these problems, and when they have these issues and they escalate these issues to the people who are supposed to care about this and start a process of fixing the problem, something breaks down there too. There's no incentive on the part of folks managing these things, right, to do the work

because there's no consequences for it. What happens? The Biden administration and the Department of Transportation run cover for you, help you lobby state lawmakers in order to make it easier for you to have longer trains full of hazardous materials on smaller crews, right? Right. And there's no consequences. What do you do? You write a $25,000 check to the town and say, sorry, you know, what? What? You know, like, holy shit, man. They're not, they're going to be on a shareholder call in two months and be like, well, you know, we took a little bit of a hit, but not too much. Your dividends are up. You know, like, what the fuck? Exactly. Like, ah, it's just frustrating. It's so frustrating because these are real people's lives, you know. And it's like these CEOs make more money than I could possibly than you or I or anyone in the working class could possibly conceive of in a lifetime in a single month.

And they don't do their job, you know, well, actually, they do do their job. That's what their job is, is to make more money for the people who don't have. to, you know, who sit literally in their ivory towers, in their nice fucking penthouse apartments in cities like L.A. and fucking New York or in Europe. And they just don't have to deal with the consequences of this, right? You know, imagine if like, and I'm getting a little militant here, but I'm really upset. Imagine if like, you know, the CEO of Norfolk Southern had to sit in, you know, a hot shower in East Palestine or had to drink that water. you know as a consequence of mismanagement right like how quickly do you think when his own personal

safety is threatened by the consequences of his actions right or her actions uh is like in his face you know shit would get fixed but because they're they're so removed from this and they don't care at all because they just make so much money and this this uh you know they don't care about the people who make the money for them, right? Nothing, you know, to many, many railworkers that I've talked to, they're like, nothing's going to change. This will happen again. And it did in Detroit, you know, and it will elsewhere.

And another community is going to be left picking up the pieces, right? And, you know, like, what do you do with that point? How do you fix this? Right. For Railroad Workers United, it's nationalizing the railroads. For some other rail workers, it's tighter regulations firing Pete Buttigieg because he's not doing his job, you know? For other folks, it's like, okay, is there a way that we can assess fines and damages to maybe, maybe slap these railroad executives in the face and say, you know, you're going to lose 5% of your profit or you're going to lose 10% of the money that you make on a regular basis in fines if you don't fix this. You know, there's got to be something, right?

hopefully this is a wake-up call for regulators, for lawmakers, for the general public, who, you know, are generally through very powerful PR sort of messaging campaigns on the part of these rail carriers, when a derailment happens, right? Are they're going to think about what's going on and what had gone on in the East Palestine and go, no, no, no, we're not, we're not taking this on face value, right? And hopefully what this does is continues to sort of like create the space for conversation to fix this because this is not a problem that we can just ignore if you care about, you know, living in a country with such failing infrastructure, right? Something needs to change. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a very moving and passionate answer from you that I really appreciate. And I do think Americans across the political spectrum are fed up with this shit.

but the thing is Americans don't have any fucking say. They have no power. They have no input in what their government actually does. You pick between, you know, a handful of corporate proxies every four years, and then you're told to shut the fuck up and wait until the next four years so you can pick between one of them again. So Americans are sick of this shit. We clearly want a society that actually fucking functions

and can actually serve the people that live here and make this country fucking existent and operative in the first place. but the mechanisms that we would usually go if we had a functioning democracy to solve these problems are completely dismantled and they've been dismantled consciously by those with wealth and power so that that wealth and power cannot be stepped on abridged or threatened in any way again also capitalism is the problems you know a liberal analysis might be like these greedy CEOs you know we need better people in these positions and etc but it is the incentive structure inherent in capitalism that creates this nonsense and then people that get really wealthy through capitalism, take that wealth, and they don't invest it in their workers or in the community or anything like that. They invest it into lobbying efforts to make it easier for them to make more money in the future, skewing our political system, which has never been

democratic, but pretends to be. And that now, even that pretense, I think, is falling away for most Americans. But it's really important to understand that the incentive structure inherent in capitalism, you can replace that CEO with another CEO. They are shitty people. I mean, like to get to the top of these positions in the capitalist system you have to fucking kind of be a sociopath but you can take these CEOs and replace them with new CEOs and the same shit's going to happen because the incentive structure to maximize profits for your shareholders is still there and so I think ultimately something like nationalization is the real ultimate solution to problems like this you know with of course the democratization of the workplace and unions being able to actually run shit that

they run and not have these profiteers running shit for their interest. That's definitely the issue. But another thing I also wanted to say here, too, and I'm kind of rambling a little bit, but it's important to make these points, I think, is that this whole Biden situation with the railroad workers, it just goes to show that the state under capitalism is not a neutral mediator between interests, which is often how liberals of various sorts portray the state as the adult that can step in when there's different interests being, you know, argued for

and can be a neutral mediator, but we know that the state under capitalism is an expression of class rule. And so when it comes down to it, it's the railroad corporations and their lobbyists and their team of lawyers versus regular working people who have, you know, their unions have been gutted.

They don't really have a seat at the table anymore. The state is not neutral. It is on the side of the capitalist class against the workers. It's on the side of the economy continuing to function regardless of the human costs. etc. And I think, you know, this situation just highlights that once again. And one of the first things that the train company really focused on doing was getting the trains up and running, clearing

out the debris so they can get the trains running. I heard an interview with the father of three who lives in East Palestine and he even said when they were told that they could go back into their town, you know, driving back in, they had a stop because trains were already up and running. So you can see how that the profit motive there was so, so focused on getting that shit up and running before caring about the people there or the long-term consequences or the cleanup, just get this shit going again. You know, we'll deal with, we'll deal with the fines or whatever might come down later. But let's get this shit running because our profit depends on getting this shit up and

running again with the same lack safety standards and non-regulation that causes an accident in the first place. It's just astounding that this continues to happen. And I don't know how many, you know, Americans need to wake up. This is a wake-up call. Wake-up call. Everything in the past, you know, five, six years has been wake-up. call after wake-up call. But again, when there's no real democracy, there's no real ability

for Americans to have any impact on actual policy. And that's the situation we're in. Yeah, it's certainly the Biden administration through messaging prior to Biden getting elected was about being a pro-labor president. Grant and Joe. And you know, and you see what you see when you have such high-profile sort of labor conflicts like what was going on with the impending or potential rail strike, right? As you see the real lives of working people reduced to political theater for the individuals who are in power, right? I forget what book I was reading recently because I'm chaotic

and they read too many books at once. But there was a sentence in this book, I think it was a book on the Great Depression, where it was talking about sort of like periods of reform and conservatism and how, you know, history isn't cyclical, but you can certainly point to patterns, right? And sort of reform periods that came out of prior to the Great Depression, there was this one sentence about how potential reformers at some point

start to really like the fact that they like being in a position of power more than they like being a reformer, right? So they will, over the course of their life, decide to, you know, the sort of outlier to that rule is Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders, I think, has consistently at least stayed on messaging, has done his best as a senator over the last many decades, trying to push for these sort of reforms on a national level. But everyone else really just likes the politics and the power and the paycheck, you know. And we've talked about this many times together on this show. It's this absolute power 100% corrupts, absolutely.

And the power of money in a capitalist system is immense, you know. And unfortunately, we're the ones who suffer as a result of it, right? We have to be the ones who also kind of like don't let the lessons the last couple of years fall from our memory. You know, we get inundated constantly with information and new things happening and crazy stuff. And I found myself as well start to become a little bit more cynical over the last couple of years that I've had actively had to. sort of push back against right um because you know uh the the sort of illusory like veil of capitalism was 100% shredded during uh the first year of the pandemic um and seeing exactly how this sort of system contracted and and really sort of let um many many millions die

in service of keeping an economy running, right, which felt so brutal and still feels so brutal, right? And, you know, seeing from the point of like the uprising in 2020 through to this year and seeing how the labor movement and other social movements have really kind of created space for us to really kind of push back against our cynicism and say another world is possible. right um this is not the end all be all right um but man currently it's fucking exhausting and um you know the only way out is through but fuck man can we get a break at least see the light at the end of the tunnel yeah yeah no absolutely but you know the important thing and i think we all agree on is something that's implicit in what you're saying there is that the economy should be a means to an end The economy is the means by which citizens in a society are able to produce and reproduce the necessities of life and ideally create higher with technology and advancements of various sorts, create higher levels of quality of life for average citizens. But under capitalism and the capitalist class who rules over us, the economy is a means in and of itself.

It needs to keep functioning to keep generating the profit for the small elite at the top, regardless of what it means for the rest of us. And so we find ourselves, especially in a COVID situation, having to serve the economy that is supposed to be the thing that serves us, serves the people. No, shut the fuck up and get back to work. The economy needs you. After 9-11, what did George Bush say? Get back to shopping. You know, go out and shop. Don't let the terrorist win.

This economy should be about making the quality of lives for the citizens in this country higher and higher with the advancements it makes over time. That's not what it's about. The quality of life for the average American is rapidly deterioration. while the luxuries and opulence for the upper class continue to pile up in ways, as you said earlier, that they couldn't spend in a million lifetimes. It is a psychological disorder to be a hoarder of wealth like that. But our system allows it and incentivizes it, and it's going to continue to happen as long as this system is in place. But I also think there are real reforms. Even before we get rid of this dog shit system, radicals of various sorts should push for reforms as much as we get.

can within this system that helps working people, including union efforts, including things like universal health care, including things like really good regulation that is completely separate from the influence of money insofar as that's even possible under capitalism. So we have to always be fighting for these, you know, achievable reforms while at the same time keeping our eye on the horizon of overcoming this system altogether because the contradictions are not going to be able to be resolved until we transcend the very system that generates them. And I think that's important to note. Is there anything else you would like to say before we wrap up, Mel? No, I just, I'm glad that, you know, I get a chance to talk about this again, you know,

in terms of like my own trajectory onto the labor beat, I'm still relatively, you know, in my first couple of years here. The one thing that has really kind of, something that I've really kind of come to understand really intimately talking to workers across all industry. including the rail industry is that everyone has a very similar struggle, right? Whether you're working in a Starbucks or you're sitting on a medieval times picket line in Buena Park or, you know, you're working with the railroad workers united to try and push for nationalization of the railroads, everyone's struggle is so similar, right? It's members of the working class, people who have to, you know, exchange hours of their lives

for minuscule pay often, you know, reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet who are pushing back against that and reasserting their own humanity in the face of what is, you know, a system that incentivizes the dehumanization of the people who participate in it, right? And that struggle is universal for those of us who are members of the working class, right? And it constantly, every time I talk to someone, a worker, right, who is engaged in that sort of struggle against management or a corporation or a state government or whatever, right? Every single person benefits from being able to stand shoulder to shoulder with folks who understand that, right?

One thing that I've learned over the last year or so is, you know, spending less time picking fights on the internet and spending more time really getting to know fellow workers is really going to be kind of what underpins the success of our struggles against this system, right? And I think, I don't know, man, the media likes to sort of like walk into folks' lives at the darkest moments of their lives and refuses to spend time trying to understand understand the community, particularly in the Midwest, in rural America, you and I have both seen this happen, you know, and have experienced this. And I would urge any of your listeners to kind of view these sorts of things, these moments as moments for building solidarity with folks, you know, fellow workers that you know or don't know. And to really make that the space in which you organize, right? And to really kind of caution yourself against the sort of cynicism and the sort of alienation and atomization that this system really kind of like voice upon us. Oh, yeah.

And spend the time to kind of really push back against that and reach out. And every day we'll kind of push the needle a little bit farther, I think. And hopefully what we see as well in the future is that for these rail workers that, You know, these pleas for reform, for regulation, for respected dignity in their workplace, little by little, no longer fall on deaf ears. And that what we see in the future is hopefully improvement. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

That's about all I got, you know. Thanks for having me on, then. Absolutely, yeah. I appreciate these conversations that we have. We need to do more of them. Absolutely. Yeah, no, beautifully said. I really love your work. I love having you on. I love talking with you. I love to see all the stuff that you're doing and how things are going for you. You always have a place here at Rev Left Radio. And I really appreciate you coming on today to talk about this issue as it's unfolding. And as a lot of the coverage is not up to par. You know, you are really a shining light in the world of journalism as far as I can tell with this sort of reporting. So I really appreciate it. Is there anywhere that you can let listeners know where they can find you and support? you and your work online? Sure. Yeah. So I'm most active on Twitter. So my Twitter is

Twitter.com forward slash Mel underscore Bewer. That's B-U-E-R. My DMs are generally open. You can also send me an email at mel at the real news.com if you want to strike up a conversation. I check my messages often. If you have tips, you can also send those to that email. Otherwise, most of my work can be found right now on the real news.com. If you like the journalism that we do at the real news, there is a way to become a regular sustainer of the website or make a one-time donation. So don't feel pressured to do so. Everything is open. We don't put shit behind a paywall.

We don't believe in that. But any financial sort of help helps us keep the doors. open and keeps us able to do this work. Yeah, those are the places to find me. I have a blog, but I don't write enough on it to share it. So, yeah, you can, you know, interact with me on Twitter. I'm usually pretty open about the work that I'm doing, and I love hearing from folks who like my work or also hate my work. So, you know, say hello. Oh, yeah. And I'll link to all of that in the show notes as well so people can find and support you as easily as possible. Thank you again, Mel. Keep up the amazing work.

Thank you. Appreciate it. A bad seed A rotten apple Tickled the rubbish Buried in between justice Holyhead and Dow Sunset Gremlin With a snidey, we smile

I want to win I want to wear I saw what I saw I keep walking along I saw I saw what I saw A horse on his back A line in his blood

I'm handed away I signed to what's got And back in a school It's not what the word is A star for your race It's all for our heart I ship for a window A roof on a hell

The power of trust Heavy as late They know what they want They say what they want They bleed how they won't It's nobody's form I saw what I saw I keep on walking in line

I saw I saw I keep a walking in line I keep on walking in love I keep on walking alone I keep on walking alive I saw what I saw I keep on walking alive

I keep walking alive I keep walking up Ready six, I'm out of your own. Ready your six, I'm out of your own, ready your zone, I'm ready to zone, I'm Don't do you I love you're all How about your sex A lot of your own

I think you're all I'd like to create you all Raise your teeth What's your face Let's your face Run away Let's your tea What's your day

Let's see Let's your way I keep on race What's your face Brice your face away Brush your feet What's your face Brice

Brice your face Away I keep in away Briss a Briss a raise Brice your ways Briss a way A way

A way Brise Brissette Wraise Oh!