Some More News - Trump's Fantasy Perp Walk, Miner Strikes, And EVEN MORE French Protests

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Hi. Labor journalist Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) joins Katy and Cody to talk about Trump's possible legal troubles, the end of the coal miners' strike in Alabama, and what Americans can learn from the French about protesting. Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh    Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Secure your online data TODAY by visiting https://ExpressVPN.com/morenews and you can get an extra three months FREE.   Make CBD a part of reaching your full potential with NextEvo Naturals. Go to https://NextEvo.com/podcast and use promo code MORENEWS to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more.

Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. Hi, Katie Stoll. Hi. What a sing-songy intro. Hello. Welcome to me, to the show. I'm Cody. Hi. Hi, Cody. Joining us today, we're very excited to welcome labor journalist and author of the

critically acclaimed book, Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor. You guessed it, it's Kim Kelly. Hello. Hi. Glad to be here. Oh, we're happy to have you here. It's been a minute since we chatted. I think that was worst year ever, even last time we talked. I don't even know, man. I'm like, it's been a minute since I've done anything normal, I think. So this is nice. Is this normal? Is this normal now? It has become normal. Yeah normal yeah yeah talking into the computer

talking into the computer screen trying not to look at my own self-view don't do it don't do it katie don't do it oh good the propane guy's here let's see how much they'll charge me propane's very expensive don't know if you know my house is eating i'm like a 17th century whaler my house is heated by oil so every couple months i gotta call jay cardulo down in south philly to show up with a big old truck with a big hose and pump oil into the big tank in my basement and it costs all the money in the world that is a new one to me obviously it's not a new one in terms of people's energy sources but i have not heard of someone's house being heated by oil yeah oh yeah i mean that's something we should phase out yeah my my landlord's like yeah when

the boiler or whatever when the tank breaks we'll get it we'll get an electric one but that thing has been there for 30 years and it is hanging on. You gotta get a hammer, you gotta take care of it. Some steel-toed boots and kick it a bunch. Climate sabotage. You gotta blow up your pipelines. It starts at home. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay, this is fun. I have a good feeling about

this episode. We got a good vibe going. But first, we gotta celebrate some holidays! We get to celebrate holidays. We get to celebrate some holidays. March 23rd, Near Miss Day. Near Miss Day is celebrated on March 23rd each year. What would you do if a huge asteroid was about to hit planet Earth? On March 23rd, 1989, an asteroid about the size of a mountain came very close to colliding with the Earth.

Thankfully, it was a near miss happy that day to everyone who celebrates that's nice okay we survived we did we survive we did it by existing and gravity took care of the rest uh-huh i imagine the near miss was actually like hundreds and hundreds of miles, probably. Probably. Like it was like enormous, unfathomable distance. I read this and all right, here we go. I think that a near miss doesn't have to only be applied to an asteroid. I think that we all have moments in our life that were near misses and those can be good or bad maybe this can be a moment of reflection you didn't get hit by that car you didn't get that job but maybe that was

for the best maybe it was i don't know am i taking this too far no i think that's the purpose of the day right is to take some something that happened in the in like in the world and then apply it to your everyday life you take you take the metaphor and then you extend it to... It's certainly the purpose of this segment. Okay. Also, March 24th, the day that you are listening to this, probably, hopefully,

National Flatmates Day. Get that British shit out of here. No, no, no, no, no. Colonizing our holidays now? Yeah, I know. So the description of this holiday, of here yeah no no no no we don't do that jonathan you were colonizing our holidays now yeah i know so the description of this holiday they alternated between flatmate and roommate but they landed on flatmate yeah it's interchangeable in the description which really bothered me um because if you're gonna make it national flatmate day you have to go all in and assume that we know what you

mean you don't have to say it's a roommate we're talking about we're talking about a roommate no yeah dive right in like no it's just go flat mate bruv and then yeah get in your get in get in the lift go up to your flat mate bruv and the trolley i'm in the middle of i'm in the middle of divorcing a british man right now so this feels very like a targeted attack whoa we stumbled into something yeah you gotta blame march 24th not me i uh i really just picked this because i loved the sentence in the national day calendar description which read the history behind the creation of this holiday is a bit murky but its inventor is thought to be a person who wanted to appreciate their roommate this is a false flag wanted to appreciate their roommate.

It's a false flag. No one likes their roommate. I'm sorry. This is not a national American holiday. There's nothing about how this is written. It feels like you wrote that, Jonathan. You're like, yeah, I couldn't find it. I assume it's because somebody wanted to celebrate their roommate. God damn, you got me.

I waited two years to finally bust out my own holidays on this show and you got me. Near miss. Two years, wow. Almost. Time flies when you're talking about the news. Avoiding asteroids.

Exactly. Avoiding asteroids, correct. Correct answer. Okay, now's the segment where we talk to you a bit a bit not really segments i think of them as segments like how i more of a vibe shift vibe shift transition uh delaying talking about topics that i actually want to talk about today because you're a smart one anyway uh your book your book uh was released almost a year ago, Fight Like Hell.

It's received a lot of accolades. It's been really fun to see like your profile growing and people giving you the well-deserved recognition that you deserve. Too many times I've said that word. That's really nice. No, of course. So have you met anybody that has become more involved in the labor fight uh since it's been released have you seen any personal stories of how this book has affected people's lives i've heard i'm trying to think of a way to answer this without sounding like very pleased with myself but i'm so pleased with yourself i've gotten a lot of really nice emails and and talk to in person. People come to my

book events and come to talks and stuff. And like, just say this had impact on me. This inspired me to start organizing. This inspired me to read more about this history or just made me hate my boss more, which is my favorite one. I feel like my whole goal was to get this history out into the hands of people that might not otherwise come across it because they don't have access to j store or academic libraries or regular libraries depending where they're at and i think that's uh i think we pulled it off now there's a paperback version coming out so it'll be cheaper so we can get out there more and uh yeah i i feel like it's the same mission accomplished as a it's not a great thing to do in this country, but I feel like I pulled it off, we'll say.

You pulled it off. You certainly did. I'm not quite sure how to phrase this question, so bear with me. What's a book? What's a book? How? A long blog.

Oh. The longest blog I've ever written. Just many, many many many consecutive tweets honestly that's basically how i wrote it i just wrote every chapter and then i followed it to my editor and forgot about it until like a year later he's like oh i have thoughts that sounds healthy actually put it out of your mind and revisit it no this is so i'm not sure how to phrase this i moved to the mountains recently. Everyone's sick of me saying that. But I did. And I left a very liberal city to a very not liberal small town. And I was really nervous about that. I was really nervous about what conversations

would come up and how I would interact with people and the formation of friendships, but also really excited about the opportunity to talk with people that I really never did in Los Angeles and to try to understand people better, try to understand where people are coming from. And I have felt pretty, I mean, the more comfortable I get and the more very dear friends that I have developed here and found here, getting into some dicier conversations. But in general, I have been surprised by how much more there is to agree with people from the other side. All of this is to say that for a long time, when in regards to your work, I've thought about this and I was trying to find a tweet that exemplified it, but I just didn't right now. But, you know, you've talked a lot about that. Like you have to

to talk and gain respect from people that don't agree with you, but you are helping to fight their causes. A lot of times I thought I think that there's an interesting perspective that you bring to the table of like trying to understand where people are coming from. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's so I'm from a super rural, like isolated, blue collar, very white, very conservative little enclave out in the woods in Jersey. So all of the people that are now on the other side of where I ended up politically are just the people who just like the people who raised me, who I grew up with, who I was educated by. Right. So I think having that perspective and then getting out into the big wide world where there are books and people that look different from me and live differently and just kind of absorbing all that like a sponge when I got to like high school and college and all that just sort of made me realize that so much of the the division and the I feel like there's like such a liberal bent to what I'm going to say I promise I don't mean it in that way but they're most I think most people are pretty normal yeah

they just see the world a little differently because of where they're from or the education they've received the new sources they have access to you know and i think it is very possible to find common ground with most people some people like nazis fuck them like they that doesn't count but i think there's a lot of different ways that people can have different opinions right and some things are utterly inexcusable some things you can talk about some things you can kind of work out like one of my favorite people that i talk to like every day is a baptist school teacher in rural alabama and she has super progressive views on some things and there's some things we really don't agree on but we're both like you know fuck capitalism fuck the boss fuck the patriarchy let's go like we can figure out the other stuff once people are fed and have decent healthcare

and don't have to worry about survival just as much. You know, it's kind of like, it makes me think back to sort of a joke that we would have when I was super deep in the anarchy scene in New York. And we had friends who had other, part of other isms. Okay, we'll figure it out after the revolution.

That's kind of like how I feel about some things when it comes to working class liberation and about seizing worker power and doing something about the state of things. I think it is possible and it is fine to find common ground with somebody. And one of the biggest ways that I've seen and been able to do that is by focusing on work and on labor and on those issues, right? Because almost everybody in this country, in the world, but especially here, either has a job or will have a job or had a job at one point, in some parts of it probably sucked, and they probably didn't like their boss, and they probably wish it was a little bit better. And that is an incredibly nearly universal experience that you can really coalesce around. If you look at at me and you look at some of the folks that I've

interviewed and become close to and written about, it doesn't seem like we have anything in common, but that's just because the way we look or where we're at or where you, who you think we are. Right. There's so many different layers. I've spent the past two years covering a coal miner strike in rural Alabama. And when I showed up, I was like, well, let's see how this goes. And now I'm like, now i'm like now i'm like planning like okay i'm gonna go down and we gotta figure out we can go on the river and go tubing i

can hang out yeah do you find that like a lot of those uh like the disagreements in the common ground is it like very political because i know that like when you're talking about labor a lot of it you know you're talking about like workplace safety and like everybody like feeling like uh being valued and so so much so much of today the divide is like fake shit um or like just like attacking groups of people um and like obviously like it's not helpful to like paint everybody with this broad brush of like oh you're a bigot you're this you're this um do you find that like a lot of like various attitudes do shift um to be like more accepting of other types of people in the workplace because i feel like that is also sort of a labor issue where you need to be able to like you're all in this together and if you're like exclusionary to certain people, then that's going to be not, you know, not liberating.

Right. I mean, that's one of the most important functions that a union can have. It's bringing together all these different people of different experiences and identities and backgrounds who happen to work in the same place. All they have in common is working in that one spot. And they have to figure out what you know, how they see the world and what they need and what will benefit one another and what they have in common what they don't and then they build something together if if it all works out they build them together and they make things better and they realize okay women were not that different like i remember back at vice when we unionized i didn't talk to anybody before that because i was like the weird metal head in the corner that people were kind of scared of it wasn't until we started having meetings i got to know people it's like oh we have so many similar problems and there's

solutions that we all agree on like okay and now still some of my best friends are people i met during the experience like a lot of what separates people is just bullshit and a lot of it also comes down again to the news that people consume the education they received the exposure they have to other types of people like I grew up super super rural and super white and super diversity didn't exist where I'm from and so like I didn't know I didn't know anything until I got a little bit further out and I met people and I learned and then I learned a lot but there's people I grew up with who are still there and probably see the world the same

way they did when they were 14 and uh that's not great when you're from the kind of place i'm from but if they didn't have the opportunity or the ambition or the desire to leave or to expand and so they're just kind of stuck in that place like anybody can change where they're i mean i don't want to make blanket statements america's full of weirdos but yeah it is always possible to learn more to educate yourself and to get to know more people and expand your horizons whether it's at work or on the bus or in your neighborhood group or like at the library like there's always opportunities to look past your own nose and think oh okay that person is my is not just a caricature I heard about on Fox News.

That's like Jeff or that's Roxy. Yeah. Yeah. Why are they attacking them? Like, that's my friend. That shift, I think, is very important for people. And it's how you can help bring people together. You know what?

I'm so glad I found my way into that sort of question. Because, yeah, I agree with you completely. You might not know this, but I'm extremely famous in the Netherlands. That's thanks to a few low-budget films I starred in a couple years back. And as an extremely famous person there, I use ExpressVPN to protect my personal privacy from obsessive hacker fans over there. You see, ExpressVPN creates an encrypted tunnel between all of my devices that protects me every time I go online. It's not hard to be a hacker, which is why it's also not hard to use ExpressVPN. Just one push of a button and you're good to go. The Netherlands is the name of a basement cigar bar down the street from me.

Listen, your data is valuable, so you should protect it. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash more news. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n dot com slash more news, and you can get an extra three months free. Expressvpn.com slash more news, and shout out to Musky, Sal, and Vinny over in the Netherlands. Now it's time to talk about topics. Obviously, Donald Trump may or may not be indicted soon.

I can't figure out what to read to tell me if that's real. I know. And right now, as of this recording, it's not real yet. But it might be by the time we're done. It might be by tomorrow. Kind of think that maybe it would happen on Friday. But I also kind of think it won't happen. Friday news don't.

That'd be funny. According to The Onion, Trump was executed. Oh, well, that would be a different way. I mean, I trust them with the most news sources. Yeah. Twitter used to be so good for figuring out, oh, what's happening? This is what's happening. But then it got broken and now it's all just promoted tweets and people being mad about saltines.

And I don't know what's happening. And I want to know because I want to be mad or not mad. I just feel so disconnected from Twitter now. I can't find what I'm looking for. It's just nonsense. I can't find my friends. Do you ever go on the search bar? Oh, I want to find what I'm looking for. It's just nonsense. I can't find my friends. Do you ever go on the search bar like, oh, I want to find like someone I follow. It's all just a bunch of jagoffs.

And eventually when I remember someone's dumb Internet handle, they thought of 20 years ago and I find it, then I find them. Yeah. Who does that help? I don't want to see the jagoffs. You guys understand algorithms. Show me what I want. So we don't really have to talk about Donald Trump right now because we don't know what's

going to happen i will say there's a lot of different things that could happen a lot of different cases circling the man cody you looked like you had something to say oh i don't think i did um i support the arrest of the once and future president of the united states donald trump but uh i will see about that uh yeah i don't know we haven't really talked about this and there's no nothing really to say beyond like i don't know maybe and it seems like maybe he should be arrested for other things and not this one thing and maybe they're like that's my main thing more um in regards to like uniting people um i feel like maybe uh arresting him for like crimes against like democracy might be a little more a fine little more common ground amongst people than like a payoff i don't love

that we led with the story daniels one for those same reasons you know yeah i also don't like how uh so many i mean this is like a blue lib type of thing but like so many tweets about this that i've seen are always like paid off a porn star they always like underline or italicize porn stars like just say a woman for the for the thing like you don't need to it's like who are you trying like what salacious thing are you trying to do what's your like is your opinion different i know it's just like it's such a it's frustrating to see um that doesn't always try to do the the the gosh oh that we're republicans are family values but did you consider this man knows a woman whose job we don't like like right yeah yeah like suddenly a hypocrite you say is gonna be like this huge

thing that changes everything got him if he is indicted for this specific thing the the secret service would organize for it to happen without like media scrutiny they'll get like the fingerprints and he'll put in a plea without being there and then it's months before the next part of it happens so this like big news that we're waiting for is like not really do you mean they're not going to chase him down i think it was the guardian i read that he wants to make it a big spectacle like he wants to do a perp walk he wants the the cups he wants the whole thing because of course he's a drama queen he's a drama queen he loves the attention it just kind of feels like a waste like if this is the thing that old

donnie can't wriggle out of like yeah this is the one thing like a crime i don't even quite understand why it's a crime like it's not cool but like why of all the crimes it would be it would be under falsifying business records and campaign finance violations because michael cohen paying her off and then him paying her back would technically be a potentially a campaign contribution which is illegal i feel like every politician probably does something like that like i'm finding it difficult like how would you get outraged about that thing out of all of the things and you know unfortunately for me like leading with it uh i see people being very upset you know obviously they're like this is outrageous

uh this is political what you know and it feels like a waste of that energy the surprise factor like if this is one but also it hasn't happened donald trump is the one that told us it was going to happen and it hasn't happened and he raised a bunch of money off it yeah he sure did he sure did classic stuff it's just um because also if this is the kind of like you're saying like the kind of stuff that like many politicians do this exact kind of thing um and this is one of those opportunities that is so frustrating because it's and it's always the case where it's like trump did this like will other politicians do too so get them to stop stop them from doing it to arrest them too i don't

care yeah that would be sick like but obviously that's not going to happen so it like makes that conversation kind of impossible so like katie the people you're talking to like i'm frustrated because this always happens and you can say yeah go ahead but they're only going after trump for it so like they're not like they're not doing the thing that we're all okay with that would make that conversation sort of like it's not going to happen they never will but yeah you're right a crime against democracy hits different for not for everybody not for everybody but but like even the uh like the dominion stuff that's been going on not as many people as i would like or but not as many people as i expected are like i don't know if i trust fox news as much anymore like it did kind

of get through to some people that like oh yeah they lied and like admitted they lied and texted about us i know robert shared that one i just couldn't remember yeah um i don't have it off hand um yeah but uh and like you know i'm sure that'll change once like brandon says we gotta i don't know pick your m&m story but uh you know like mandate like lady m&ms for everybody in every class yeah i don't know so they'll they'll probably change their tune but it was a little it was a little like oh they kind of thought they saw that they were being lied to blatantly and didn't like that the poll that we were talking about is a maru poll that said that 21 of fox news viewers say they trust the network less following those disclosed text messages and emails from the Fox executives and on-air personalities admitting that the election was not stolen. So that's what they say right now.

Well, exactly. It's one of those things where it's like, oh, that's nice that they say that. And it's just a sign that like it can get through. It's just probably not going to be very lasting. Like there's there is at least a percentage of the audience that isn't like locked in 100 percent for everything all the time. There is a little bit of breaking through, even if it is going to sort of dissolve away. Yeah, because not all people that watch fox news are like huge fox news fans like i remember growing up fox news it hadn't gotten quite as you

know turned into what it is now but it was just what's it yeah it's just what the news was like my grandparents and my parents has always had it on because oh it's time to watch the news and i think perhaps there are people that have that sort of relationship but like oh that's just the news i watch like oh they're lying to me that sucks like it's there's like the fox news stands and then there's the people that just don't like cnn for whatever reason right it's always sort of like a thing it's on the tv like you've got like you're like you're uh taking your car in or whatever yeah fox news is on because it's the news um yeah it's like listening to metallica when they come on the radio versus following them around on their entire world tour every bar every place you go into it's got one of the tvs uh yeah because they're all the airport all the time and it's and it's also like it's framed because like you're

saying like they there's like a view that like cnn msnbc is like it's the liberal media um which in a lot of ways it is but more than anything it's like the corporate media much like fox news is also the corporate media and they've framed themselves as this like opposing force and so it just sort of becomes like oh this is the news i watch um but i don't know we'll see how it we'll see how it shakes out i'll ask my dad what he thinks i'll get the real man on the ground view. Yeah. Please update us with what your dad thinks.

Actually, I would be curious. See what's going on in the gun club. That's where he gets all his news. We are going to take a very quick break. And then we're going to be back for even more news. But specifically labor movement news. Boy, oh boy, let me tell you, geez, am I right? Can you even believe it?

I didn't think so. Wow, folks, let me tell you, it is quite something. So obviously, because, geez, I have tried stress CBD complex from Nextivo Naturals because, my goodness, Jimenys. A lot of CBD companies claim to help with stress or if you have trouble sleeping, which I do because, golly. But Nextivo is the only company to use SmartSorb CBD,

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slash podcast with code more news because you know what gee so we can talk about this too i think there's a sense of like where you have this conflict and again it's not like everybody it's a lot of it is sort of like the climate um and like the punditry and the political forces that are like you know pitting everybody against each other for a reason but like there's a sense that you know it's just a matter of meeting people where like a lot of people on the left like you know and like trans community and people sort of have to like accept that instead of the other like it doesn't go both ways we're like oh i have to sort of like oh yeah not i have to like accept this person for how they view me in order to have this conversation

but they're not doing it back and so it's a lot of like yeah there's like give and take but the give i think can be perceived as one-sided i'm not like in these conversations so i can't speak to it that makes sense that's what i worry about honestly like it just since i left like i was i think about this all the time like back when i was in new york and i spent all my time in you know anarchist world and then i moved and started doing more labor stuff and you know ended up where i am now i'm like i feel like 2015 me would want to kick my ass because i'm not as militant as i used to be about us and them. There's only two ways to be. Kim, I don't, I know, I very much relate to what you're saying. Part of what I was getting at with this question, bringing up this topic earlier,

is because I relate to that. When my 2015 version of me would be very, having a very different conversation, would be having a very different conversation, would be having a very different experience here. I have spent so many years very angry and I still am. I'm exhausted. I'm also realizing that so much is exactly what we've already been saying.

A factor of your location of a lack of access to having never had these conversations with people to not having had the question posed. What about this? You don't want your guns, want guns taken away. And you know what, like, the conversation of banning taking away rights is scary to me, just like we're seeing happen with women's reproductive rights. So when you start to make that conversation, that comparison, like you don't want your guns taken away. I don't want my rights taken away. All of a sudden, I seem to make a little bit more headway. But it's like, if you just never have these conversations, if you never try to see the humanity of people, then we're just going to get further and further apart. That's kind of where

I've landed. And I've been surprised by how lovely people are. I've been horrified at some of the things too, especially when you talk about trans issues. This is a really tricky one to navigate. It's like being at a protest when the cops are trying to shoot some black people. If you're a white person that is trying to be helpful, you stand in front because it's less likely you're going to catch that collateral collateral damage it's just using privilege for something useful instead of just hiding behind it like i think it's a good thing though i also don't want the government to take my guns but i really want them to not take my bodily autonomy away so see there's different ways they can intersect there too right anyway people are people are nuanced right no one's just one thing and that is something that really getting involved in the labor movement and getting out of just sort of

specific subcultures has just kind of showed me like everyone, we all contain multitudes. And some of them might surprise you just by looking at any of us, there's probably stuff about us that our opinions we have or experiences we had that someone would be like, Oh, I wouldn't expect that from you. Everyone has that, you know, you just have to figure out a way to talk to them about it in a way that they aren't able to cause harm and you aren't able to cause harm and you can be useful for everybody right because i think there's yeah there's just a sort of it's it's a it's a little weighted in like saying like in one direction where like what even what you're talking about like like i don't want to take my guns but also like this is my body right like there's a there's an aspect of like well we're talking

about like civil rights and like people's humanity and you're talking about this other like it it it's not like a one-to-one sort of thing and so i think for a lot of people it's hard to sort of like accept that and like like katie you're saying like you're sort of taking the place of somebody having these conversations because like it's not like so much of this is me my evolving perspective i just i relate to what you were just saying and it's interesting but i it's frustrating sometimes and other times i sometimes have leave a conversation thinking that was actually pretty productive so it's both of those things and we'll see how long that that works for me but i i really have found so many people that i respect up here even though we don't agree on everything yeah it's yeah it's i think

it's i think frustrating or like disappointing like the onus is sort of on you to do that yes it is very much like you need to bite your tongue to like not like bring things up or point out like this is actually a horrible thing you're saying or whatever whereas it's not on them and at least in some degree i feel like it should be because we're supposed to be in this together but if you're doing all the work to like you know keep it to yourself and not like rock the boat and they're not putting in that work then already that dynamic is flawed um i'm not saying like that's it's that's not true of everybody here this is not you know necessarily but yeah point taken and agreed we should talk about some labor movement stuff

kim let's start off you pitched this topic and i absolutely would love to hear about this, is the Warrior Met Cole strike and what's been going on there. Oh, man. I spent two years covering this strike, and in mid-February, it very kind of abruptly changed. It's hard to, like, say it ended, because it's still an ongoing process in that they're continuing to negotiate for a new contract. Some folks have gone back to negotiate for a new contract.

Some folks have gone back to work, some haven't. But for people who do not know about this strike, the clip notes is for the past 23 months, a thousand union coal miners in Brooklyn, Alabama have been on strike against their company, Warrington Coal. It's been a really gnarly, grueling strike. Like 80% of the people on the picket line are parents. There was a lot of violence on the picket line from scabs and company employees. The local judiciary failed them. The cops failed them, obviously.

Their state politicians failed them. The strike did not get the attention it really needed and deserved. And folks kind of felt like they were abandoned. But they kept going as long as they could. And ultimately, the union decided in mid-february okay we're gonna shift tactics we're gonna send the boys back to work we're gonna continue to negotiate this isn't over they're gonna be working under the prior contract the one they're trying to change while they try and figure it out because at this point 23 months in nobody's really being

hurt but the miners and their families because coal prices happened act of god happened to skyrocket in june 2021 a couple months after they walked out and they've held and so the company's been able to keep making like hundreds of millions in profit the whole time like the economic impact that one would hope from a large-scale strike just was not realized because of those market conditions and you can't be on strike forever so it's been a shift uh and we're just gonna have to see what happens next the story's not over but i'm not gonna be running down to alabama every month or so like i have been a little upsetting you're telling me yeah it feels like a breakup like well now what do i do with my time

like if i'm not planning to go to alabama what am i gonna do stay at home like a person you've been working on this for a very long time yeah and the stakes around this are important i mean let's talk about black lung because the truth is i like so many people have assumed that this is an antiquated uh health issue that we've solved that but we haven't at all i'd love to hear a little bit it's yeah and it's interconnected in that these are folks who work in underground coal mines but actually because alabama has such a high instance of union coal mines, the Black Long crisis hasn't really touched that part of the country as much. It's really concentrated in central Appalachia. So West Virginia, Southern Virginia, Kentucky. And this is, it's been reported

on over the past few years. Like every couple of years, someone comes out with another report like, hey, this is still happening. This is not good. i think 2018 was the last time it got a lot of attention and pr did a series on it but essentially black lung coal miners pneumoconiosis this uh progressive fatal lung disease with the has no real treatment options has been skyrocketing skyrocketing among younger coal miners like people have only spent 15 20 years in the mines which sounds like a long time but these are guys my age like i know i know guys younger than me who and i'm 35 who are dealing with this this isn't the old man's disease and this has really been happening for the past 10 years it's really been going like there's a bunch of data from nyosh um government agency associated with OSHA that monitors these things but data has shown like it's it just keeps going up keeps going up because

it comes down to silica which is a an element substance that's found in the rock that the miners are tunneling through to get to the coal a lot of the coal seams in Appalachia are mined out because they've been hacking away at them for centuries. Now they're having to go through a lot more rock to get to what they want. What's in the rock? Silica. They breathe in silica dust along with the coal dust. It settles into their lungs. It grows into hard nodules. It kills them. And it's just, it's approaching a crisis, honestly msha the mine safety health administration are trying to pass a new silica standard to lower the amount that can be found

uh or the allowable amount of respirable crystalline silica dust that miners can inhale during their shifts there's all this regulatory like washington-y stuff that's happening right now that should have happened in 1974 when they figured this out in the first place but one thing I've learned I've been reporting this big story about it for in these times I think it comes out maybe next month um one thing I've learned is just how beholden to the changing wind like the political winds of Washington any type of real progress is in this country and that probably sounds like a duh, but I mean, like very specific cases, like the Obama administration knew about this and they were trying to do deal with the rule.

Like they were trying to change the standard, but they ran out of time. But then Trump came in and he appointed a coal executive to oversee MSHA. And then he spent all of his time trying to figure out ways to get rid of the existing regulations. and then he spent all of his time trying to figure out ways to get rid of the existing regulations and now we have joe brandon and he brought in a good guy from west virginia to head the agency and now they're trying to make some progress but that was like 10 years no 12 years of time wasted because they just so i don't know just too hard i feel very passionately about this i could go on forever but i won't go into a whole thesis for you.

I've got some questions, though. Specifically, you've spent a lot of time here working. How do coal miners feel about this? What is the future of this industry? Are they accepting of the fact that this is killing them? Or is it more like this is what I do and I'm going to keep doing it? Well, it kind of depends on where they're at, right? Like I've talked to guys from Alabama and Utah and Pennsylvania and West Virginia

for the story just in general about this stuff. And first, it kind of depends on how prevalent it is in their area, right? In places like Utah and Pennsylvania and Alabama, it's not as prevalent. It's really like an Appalachian specific thing right now but black lung has been haunting them for centuries you know it's people always know about black lung but after the mine act was passed uh well passed and then modified in 1977 the cases went down because regulations came in ventilation plans there's an actual effort made to control the dust and control the toxins they were taking in. Black lung cases plummeted and they started coming up.

But now it's only impacting folks in a specific area. And I think there's just less of an understanding that it's back unless it happens to you. Like some of the folks I talked to, these young guys think they're indestructible. Like anybody who's young. Oh, that's an old man thing. You know, that's not going to happen to you. Like some of the folks I talked to really get these young guys think they're indestructible. Like anybody who's young, like, oh, that's an old man thing. You know, that's, that's not going to happen to me. That happened to my dad and my granddad, but I'm, I'm young, I'm fine. And that's, I mean, that's the mentality. A lot of younger people have about a lot of health issues, right? So it's just kind of all tied into the overall decline of coal and the state of coal. and these workers wanted to

keep their jobs and keep their lives and not necessarily being able to do both yeah um yeah the it's interesting that the yeah the black lung is very like localized and like or like focused in certain areas um but like with the like with these strikes and things does how do they uh obviously again can't paint everyone the same brush everyone's gonna have a different opinion about these sort of things but just even these few stores we've talked about you see okay um uh workers aren't getting uh treated well uh or paid well um too many hours all these sort of things so they go on strike bosses don't care uh they pay other people less to do the same job and still make profit almost two years of a strike they have to go back to work um not getting what they wanted um and like all these health issues

and then like you said like yeah like trump appointed this uh this coal baron basically um and just these were like these relationships and these events has it does it affect sort of how they view things politically when they have sort of like all these sort of steps like pointing to like actually the way things are going are is bad and like the status quo is not supportive of you regardless of like the blue or red state it's not a blue or red state, it's not a blue or red state thing. It's a boss worker thing. Does that, has that sort of like seeped in at all? For some,

it all depends on the person and why they believe what they believe. Right. But there are people, there's one dude in particular, I think about who, when I first met him, he's like, yeah,

I'm a conservative Republican, whatever, like, okay, whatever. And then now two years on, he's totally like, he met with bernie he's like tweeting eugene debs quotes like he is he's completely oh like he's like that's pretty

democratic yeah and his wife is even cooler like the it's just i think there's been less of a thought of like oh maybe the republicans were wrong it's more like so none of them care about us like the democrats didn't show up and the republicans didn't show up so like well fuck this so much of it is also like sort of like almost a messaging aspect obviously like you know uh biden frames himself as a union man despite like uh trying to stop you know his actions yeah yeah exactly um but you know as opposed to like the republican party is like pretty much just like anti-union pretty vocally and clearly um and it's sort of like a fault like a uh a problem with them because obviously this industry does sort of need to be phased out uh for a lot of reasons uh the treatment of workers and the effect in the environment all

these sort of things uh that we all know about and i feel like it would be so much easier to just sort of communicate that but also communicate like there will be jobs still we can help and like transition to other uh safer jobs um that will pay well that will have uh fewer hours that will not give you black lung and it feels like that message is such an easy one to give um and be and be received too because again like yeah two years of this and i have to go back to work um if you had any political party speaking to that and instead of like the like oh you're greening all the jobs and you're gonna take them away and you're gonna make us all like you know you're making us not eat meat anymore whatever it is just like very

clearly like no there's like there's a good way to transition to this i don't know if the democrats have thought of an actual way to do it though i think messaging is different from if i feel like a lot of the the guys i know some of them they're just their souls are full of coal dust like they're they're coal miners that's who they are that's their culture that the guys I know, some of them, they're just, their souls are full of coal dust. Like they're coal miners. That's who they are. That's their culture. That's all they want. But some of the younger guys and just some people in general, like that's the job they do because it's the best paying option.

And that's the best health insurance. Like it's all very pragmatic. If there was a better option, that was like a real option, not like all these learn to code camps that for some reason popped up or were planned years ago like if people have a better option they will take it yeah they are not dumb they are smart they just have less options how else are you going to make 90 grand a year in brookwood alabama not at walmart well then you have yeah green new deal that is gonna again take away all of our cows okay we don't have very much time left but there are lots of other labor news things happening i mean there's what's happening in france there is uh the la usd is currently protesting for three days and people are up in arms about it uh there's that and there is just you know

the rise of child labor it's back baby so there's never went anywhere it never went anywhere um of those of that tasty platter of topics which would you feel most inclined to talk about for the remaining time we have with you i mean i've always like one of my best friends lives in paris he's actually in my book he's in the uh the chapter on the prisoners he was in rikers when i was writing it and he just gives me all these updates like i am so jealous i think a lot of people are watching and seeing what the french people are doing and seeing just the amount of militancy and anger they're showing at being fucked around by their government.

And so many people are saying, Oh, why can't we do that? US labor movement? Boo. It's like, well, there's very different conditions and cultures and political scenes and

levels of police brutality happening. Well, is there anything that we could learn from them here that we could try? Like, are there what things that we could implement better them here that we could try like are there what things that we could implement better stop respecting the police yeah there you go that's the answer the sort of like the thing about this like why can't we do that wasn't there like massive like the longest like protest movement in america like two years ago and then the police beat the shit out of

everybody yeah that's true jail and then changed the law so we can't protest anymore they're trying to throw a bunch of kids in atlanta in into prison on domestic terrorism charges for trying to protect a forest like why can't we do things well well people do it's just it just doesn't go well. France has always been pretty good at protests, and there is something. Yeah, they have experience in dealing with rich ass holes. Yeah, exactly. But there's something about that that is not a part of our national identity even though you know our right to protest you know we always say that we have it but like that there's never been a thing that i grew up with seeing a bunch of you know oh maybe in the 60s sure but it was that was just that that one time

that one that one bad period yeah it was still like it's still framed as like it's always seems to be like framed as misguided or or something um no matter what it's about not everyone here has the right to protest look what happens when black folks go out and try to say hey perhaps stop killing us you know police precinct is what happens yeah great burn them all honestly and also like when you were like a typical french worker is so much better off than someone here because they have health care they have a social safety net they have they're fighting for their pension can you imagine having a pension are you kidding me when you're not like absolutely crushed under the boot heels of your boss and every other attending capitalist school

and can't pay your bills or take care of your health or your family's health and then some other bullshit thing happens maybe i'll go and protest or maybe i'll sit down because i'm tired you know oh i have thoughts on child labor too but i just want to shout out to the french for once i will shout out to the french okay we've got some announcements at the end of the show but real quick child labor go anti i am not no child labor go away go away okay right it's so funny in a in a morbid way as a person who loves history and wrote a book about labor history that i've seen so many people who are outraged at Sarah, what's her face in Arkansas and all these Republicans trying to push child

labor as this new thing we're going to do. We've always done it. There have always been carve outs for children, for minors, for kids like under 16 in our major labor laws. Yeah. Like this isn't a new thing. It's just getting more attention because there's because somebody that people don't like on the tv signed a bill about it like there have been children working in coal mines and factories and agricultural fields and wherever else you can think to put a person with a small body since the country began it never stopped so if you're gonna be mad about it now good but like learn about how insidious it's been and how widespread it's been and how immigrant children

are particularly at risk exactly like it's not necessarily kids being made to work at mcdonald's it's the kids in alabama at the hyundai and kia factories who are like 12 years old working in a factory also like yeah like if you're if you're yeah if you're mad at this be aware more but also a lot of people aren't mad about it like right we have such a fucking warped weird gnarled view of work that like even like the the raising in france two years like they're burning shit down and like you have people here being like um yeah 59 yeah you just have like people here like obviously elon musk is gonna say it but like people it's like yeah it's a little i don't know

it's a little low it's a concern is it uh and then you have like with this child labor stuff it's like yeah what you don't have a job when you were a kid like we just have like this weird obsession with it and we didn't have an overnight shift operating heavy machinery at a meat processing plant. What are you talking about? Right. Back groceries. Handling. I worked as a dishwasher and got roped by my boss.

That's what I did as my time as a child laborer. That's great. That is also awful. But again, France has a much. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I don't. Sorry. I brushed right through that.

Like, clarify. Like france has a very different relationship to all of this it's much healthier um but yeah it's that we well especially micron just like doing it like that i think that also helped that there wasn't like a legislative sort of approach to it it's just like yeah that's gonna be a problem oh yeah my chrono's just like well this is a thing i want to do so i'm gonna do it and everyone's like no and he's like we and they're like okay well fuck you yeah i do wonder because he just did that and like i know in the past like month i've noticed uh elon meeting with macron a lot like they have like a pretty decent relationship in terms of like world leaders and I just find that what are they up to

I don't like that what are those two cats up to what are they getting on about let's see okay we're almost out of time but speaking of child labor Jonathan what did you need to announce here today well my family has a

new little worker um coming into the home soon my beautiful wife is uh going to give birth soon uh i am going to be there supporting as best i can i I probably not doing enough, but hopefully contributing somewhat. So yeah, I'm going to be gone for a little bit on paternity leave. And we'll be readjusting my mindset away from podcasting and news for a little bit. I'm planning to come back in mid-may and we'll tell you all about it um we are so so very excited for you both for you three i mean the little one got all whole life ahead of two uh the cat very very excited for them oh man i'm really that's one of the things i'm stressed about the most is how these two cats are going to handle. They've never seen a baby.

Get the cats into therapy now. Yeah. Just get ahead of it. Have a safe spot where they can talk about their emotions. We are really, really going to miss you. But it's going to go by real fast for us. Maybe less fast for you. No, it'll go by very fast.

I'll be back soon and i will i will miss being here every week and maybe i will uh you know i'll send some news updates that are hopefully all good and warm and yeah not about like the horrors of trying to get health care for a new human uh in this country if you wanted to just uh make notes about how it's going we'll just do that for an episode um read your notes doc kidding we're not gonna do that you're gonna come back you're not gonna hear from us i have to do also in a couple weeks we will have uh when jonathan is gone we will have an episode of some more news written by Jonathan. So you'll feel him despite his absence.

I'm so sad that I won't be around for the shoot of that because I'm looking forward to this episode. I can't wait to watch it, perhaps at three in the morning while awake. Yeah, but we're going to be shooting that while you literally have a newborn. Yeah. Kim, it was really really really nice to have you here

today yeah we ended up all over the place i'm just dropping opinions everywhere yeah please come back anytime we can go into more depth of some of these other stuff we didn't get to but please plug your work where people can find you all the good things well like everyone i'm aggressively online still on twitter at grim kim where i i tweet all my my terrible thoughts and my decent articles um they they also live on my pet patreon patreon you know that john that you can sign up for um i said after all these years i still know how to say it right but there's that i think well yeah i have a patreon and i also wrote a book called fight like hell the american history no it's not what's it called fight like hell uh the untold history of american labor i i wrote it like

three years ago i don't even know it's in there anymore man but um there probably were a variety of titles that were workshopped i wanted to call it i wanted to call like a people's history of american labor or something i didn't want to put american in it but you know publisher is gonna publisher i didn't want to call untold history either whatever it's fine i love my giant goth child and the paperback comes out at uh on uh august 29th and i'm working on another book that i'm not announcing yet and i have the story come out in these times and i'm just uh for someone who writes about labor and does not dream of it i work a lot so i'm pretty prolific you sure do okay everybody do that

everybody say goodbye to Jonathan and we'll be back next week and what am I forgetting gosh it's oh right we love you very much much