Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 199: Miner Threat (w/ Special Guests: Lee Bains III & The Valley Labor Report)

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Lee Bains III and Jacob Morrison + David Story of The Valley Labor Report join us to talk about why conservatives love miners until they strike, Alabama labor history, and to preview this weekend's "Alabama Strike Fest" that they've co-organized in support of striking miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama. Links: Strike Fund: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/UMWAStrikePantry Jacob's story in Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/conservatives-coal-miners-strike-alabama-unfair-labor-practices-workers

No, we like a hard, cold open here at the program. That's right. That's true. Yeah, well, so before we got David on and we start the thing real quick, Lee told me that y'all was willing to be on the stream from like 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Friday night and Saturday night. Friday night, we'll do it 48 hours straight. Yeah.

You know what they used to do in the 50s with them dances that last all night long? Yeah, he said y'all was just going to be, but y'all only wanted the night time. I don't know why he didn't want to hang out with us during the day, but he said 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Friday night and Saturday night is what y'all said you could do. That's Tom Sexton's natural habitat.

That's peak Sexton hours natural habitat that's my yeah i'm that's peak uh sexton hours right there yeah yeah so uh so i've got you down and we're already i've got the artist bill and putting that on the bill so hell yeah hell yeah let's see here no it's too bad you started the b-roll when you did because uh the way you started your story was see what had happened was and that's always the best way to start anything that comes after that's going to be a good story yeah see what had happened was yeah it's a shame we didn't get that to start us off with. David Young. Have we got a critical mass? All right.

I like that Dave's called in because I like the good hum of good, you know, get that good phone hiss in there. Oh, yeah. Keep it. That's how you know it's authentic. Nice homespun. Yes. Well, welcome, everybody. it uh how you know it's authentic nice homespun yes well uh welcome everybody uh let me make sure my yeah yeah i'm good welcome everybody to hard cold though welcome everybody to uh the uh thursday edition of uh the trill Billies. I am

from our end, I'm running a skeleton crew because it's just me today, but I called in some reinforcements here and we will not want for some backup here, but I've brought on some fellas that

I've wanted to have on for a minute and one of my old buddies here that's a veteran of I've brought on some fellows that I've wanted to have on for a minute. And one of my old buddies here, that's a veteran of the early days who graciously agreed to come on. I think, well, what episode was you on? Like seven or eight or something? It was in the early days. Early days. I mean, it was back when J.D. Vance was a common topic of discussion.

We also talked about Roy Moore. We talked about Roy Moore. We talked about youth groups. Hell yeah. Some classics. We got Mr. Jacob Morrison from the Valley Labor

Report. David, what's your last name? David. David Story. David Story from the valley labor report here and of course returning mr lee baines the third uh you know the uh the prince of birmingham among among other titles no yeah i'm just trying to get like you, dog. Shit. What's going on, baby? Well, Tom, y'all were in the paper.

Y'all saw that, I think, a few months ago. Y'all was in the Huntsville paper. Southerners who's going to make a change or something or another. Top 100 Southerners. Am I in the top 100 now? Yeah, Lee didn't make it. Y y'all did lee wasn't on there listen the day i beat out lee bates for top 100 southerners that's everything's going to pot well and i mean huntsville just i mean you know huntsville just resolved that age-old debate

of kentucky's uh border state status they just claimed y'all outright. They did. Finally. I love that debate because. You know, I'm on y'all's side. You always have supported us and Oklahoma. And Oklahoma. But what I always love about that debate is this. It's like, okay, so let me get this straight.

We had all the trappings of all the ugly things, Jim Crow, slavery, all this kind of stuff. But why we get excluded is because we didn't join the – well, we didn't join the Confederacy, I guess, you know, ultimately. Right. Declared neutrality and then said, ah, we'll stick with you. That sounds about right. But that disqualifies us somehow.

Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, to me, that's why we would want to claim y'all even more. You know, it's like, see, we weren't all on the – All bad. We had Kentucky and West Virginia holding it down, you know. Well, and then the funny thing is that both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both Kentuckians. That's right. You know, so the whole mess is kind of our fault in some way.

I did not know that. I should learn something every day. You know what I'm saying. Thanks, everybody, for coming on here. Now, before we... Let's get my little buddy out of the way there.

Before we get into uh all the uh all the good stuff y'all y'all's organizing efforts and everything around this event happening on saturday once jake have you david tell us a little bit more about uh the valley labor report folks that might not be in the know. Sure. Yeah. Everybody doesn't know about us. I'm sorry. Everybody is at the now. So we'll just go to the next one. Next. Check out. Yeah. Well, so, you know, we, we're a union talk radio show. We started, we're a little bit over a year old now.

We've been on the radio for about a year. We come on, our home station is Sean Hannity's first gig, actually, on 92.5 in Huntsville. Is Sean Hannity from Huntsville? He is from Huntsville. Is he really? I didn't know that. Don't claim that. Don't claim that.

What I'm saying is... Are you going to put him on Madison or something? Yeah, we'll put him on Madison. What we're saying is... Well, actually, the station's in Athens. There you go. But what we're saying is we're going to turn his station into a the site uh for the communist revolution here in huntsville so

um how's it going so far well you know we've got an hour and a half of the programming on saturday mornings so that's we're we're like what is that almost like a tenth of one percent of the whole station's programming. So we're, you know. Chipping away at them, baby. Yeah, chipping at them. We're chipping away. Well, start somewhere.

Yeah. The good thing is we've caused a big enough stir that everybody's called in on everybody else's shows trying to get us off the air. What do they say? We may only have an hour and a half, but they're pissed. Yeah. so what what do they say we may only have an hour and a half but they're pissed yeah yeah we was back in back last summer when when we would talk about anything about well there was one weekend in particular where me and david said that we really don't care that cop cars got burned up in minneapolis after that weekend the station manager said he had a dozen people calling trying to get us off the air and but the station manager he's just a real big real big capitalist and so he was like i think

that's awesome keep it up keep them mad and you know you keep paying us to be on the air and you can you can stay on the air so so he's he's at least got the presence of mind to say okay at least these boys are generating some attentions and yeah yeah yeah at the end of the day the only color that's important to those folks is green yeah yeah but and and but we do we try to stay away from some of the more political type stuff and we try to just keep it on unions we try to more keep it on union stuff because it is a conservative station and obviously in an hour and a half you know i mentioned it earlier it's only like how much of a percent of the station's programming we're not going to turn in turn them into in an hour and a half on saturday mornings you know socialist revolutionaries but we reckon if we can get them closer to changing

their mind on one thing and that thing being unions, we can get them to say that, you know, maybe this union thing ain't so bad. That'll not only be the best way to help them to improve their lives, because we can look at all the data around unions. Union members make higher wages, better working conditions, they're safer, they have better retirements, better healthcare. I mean, the list goes on. It's going to be better for them than voting for anybody, Democrat or Republican. But also, if we can get them in the union, their brothers and sisters are going to have a better time than we ever would about convincing them on any other number of issues, getting them to think that,

you know, gay folks deserve rights, getting them to think that immigrants deserve rights. We're not, we can't convince them in an hour and a half, but their brothers and sisters can, you know, and that's, and that's the data bears that out. We had Paul Prescott from Jacobin on last weekend to talk, or maybe weekend before to talk about packing house workers back in the 20th century. They had, the union started off, it started off separate, right? Black and white workers, and they came together. And you can find quotes at the beginning of that union, white membership, talking about the black membership, black membership, talking about the white membership. It's all disparaging. But they said, we got to come together in order

to make everything better. Five years later, that Packinghouse Union was leading sit-ins at the lunch counters for integration in like the 1930s. You know, unions change folks. And so we want to change people's mind about unions, and the union can change their mind about the other stuff. But in the meantime, they're going to have a better life, and they're going to make a better life for their coworkers and their communities. And so that's what we try to focus on at the Valley Labor Report.

Well, let me ask you this, because it's been such a rallying cry, I think, probably since Trump was elected and continues on. But there's so much energy on the left about organizing the South more broadly, but especially about, you know, you know, card signing fights like the I think it's the nissan workers down in alabama maybe a few years ago if i'm is that it was in mississippi yeah yeah yeah and others like auto workers you know across you know then the deeper south and the gulf states and so forth and i was just curious like what what's your what what would you all say to somebody that isn't necessarily persuaded of, A, the utility of unionization in the South, but B, or not necessarily the utility, but the efficacy of unionization in the South, and B, just kind of skeptical about the possibility of it because we're too far gone at this point. So are we trying to convince union workers in these places to vote for or sign a card? Not necessarily folks with proximity to that, but just like, you know. In the broader culture,

convincing people that unionization in the South is worth it. Right, right, right. Or possible, just even, you know. Like, I guess drawing on some of that history, you know, I'm reading Hammer and Hole right now about, you know like i guess drawing on some of that history you know i'm reading hammer and hoe right now about you know black alabama communists in 30s and 40s and so forth and there's there's all kinds of good uh anecdotal stuff in there from that angle but you know for for the lay person out there you know what would you say to them you know about all this kind of thing i mean you know the thing is it's everybody can look around and and make up their mind for themselves but uh you know one of my one of my biggest talking points is i've worked union all my life but i'm an electrician working

in a factory and making almost $50 an hour, plus paid health care, plus paid pension, plus paid 401k, you know, four weeks of vacation every year, plus I don't know how many holidays. And the facility's air condition is safe, and I get to go home to my family every night healthy and happy. And, you know, everybody else that I know that's an electrician in there is making $20 to $25 an hour. So, I mean, you can frame it any way you want, but at the end of the day, we're all looking to eat and buy a nice pickup truck and a decent house

and be able to retire sometime with a little bit of dignity. And so at the end of the day, either you keep fighting by yourselves and hoping that the boss will give you a few crumb times and go and sign up with us and demanded their full bill. It's up to y'all, whatever y'all want to do. But it's a whole lot easier to fight together than it is to fight by ourselves. And as far as the – They hiring, Dave?

Yeah, they're hiring every day. Hiring every day. Come on down and I'll do everything I can to help you yeah and ibew in the area is always looking there they're all the time they've got ads out for apprentices and stuff and and you know i know i know a fella that's that's in this podunk local uh non-union contractor and i tried to get him to get on with ibew and he and he just won't won't hardly do it but and and I you know he he'd start off immediately making more but but you know as far as the you know convincing people outside that aren't working that that unionization in the south is a possibility

I'd say well you know look at even though Bessemer didn't go through look at Alabama our union density rate is like it's like nine ten percent 10%. It's, it's right at the national average. It's, you know, I mean, it's, it's not much, not much below a lot of these other states. And, and, you know, folks in Alabama can do it, folks, folks anywhere else can do it. And you mentioned that history, we talked to, we talked to the author of Hammer and Hoe, and we went through some of that history. And, you know, Alabama had a really strong and vibrant labor movement, even more than anywhere else in the South. And, you know, David has been able to work in Alabama union gigs for his whole life. This is

the only union gig I've been a part of. But, but, but, you know, of course, it's possible, it's going to take a lot of work. But, you know, I think it's, it's necessary. The reason that Operation Dixie was so, was so important to the CIO, and why it was so, so bad for the labor movement, that it failed back in the 30s and 40s and 50s is because the South is part of the United States. And for the same reason that it hurts us to compete with near slave wages with in Mexico or China or Vietnam or wherever the hell, it hurts folks up north if they've got to compete with the labor in the south that isn't unionized that that labor in the south that uh have been conditioned to to say that um say that if we've got a job we're happy and we don't deserve anything else and you know just thank

the lord for the job yeah that's a common refrain especially up this way you know i know you know y'all this is a umwa thing y'all putting together and and there's not a single umwa rep minor working in kentucky and you're talking about a place that had the world's most productive coal field through most of the 80s and 90s in the world not just that's right that's right well and all the mines in alabama except for one i believe our union you know so of course like and these are and these are these miners you know they've got they've got what is it 90 percent union density rate and in a right to work state david has a 93 percent union density rate in his machinist plant the only

people in their plant that are not in the union are people that they will not allow in the union because they're scabs. They scabbed at the last strike. You know, I mean, it's possible. And these folks are not, you know, they're they're not crazy liberal socialists. I've seen I was at the rally last night, the UMWA rally, and I seen a couple Trump hats, you know, I mean, these are not, these aren't crazy people. They just, they're folks that understand that. Yeah, I mean, they're just like everybody else, except they understand that the union is good for them, good for their community and good for their families. And, and so if they can be convinced, their families. And, and so if they can be convinced, you know, that it's possible, but, but it's important because it as easy as it is for people to, to ship jobs to Mexico, it's so much easier for them to ship jobs to Alabama. And, you know, David always says

something that he's heard in the labor movement is that Alabama is the last stop to Mexico. And so we, you know, it's, it's important for everybody, you know, an injury to one is an injury to all and that's not just, you know, it's not just bullshit. Yeah. And to your point, Tom, about, you know, how weak the UNWA is in Kentucky right now and how, you know, a few union jobs are already mining up there. When Jacob and I went to the picket lines the first time,

up there when jacob and i uh went to the picket lines the first time um we talked to a couple guys who were from i forget the town but dude you remember chris and dalton jacob um but they were from just one holler over from whitesburg and uh oh yeah and they were on the um black jewel blockade yeah and so they got so they're like harlan county boys probably blockade. Yeah. And so they got. So they're like Harlan County boys probably. Yeah. Right. That's right. And so they were,

yeah, they were part of that blockade. And then they got offered these jobs in Alabama with the union and they moved down to Brookwood to work in these mines. And Chris was saying, I think that right away they were making double in the UMWA mine, what they were making up in Kentucky. And it's like, and still, you know, the contract that the UMWA miners have at Warrior Met is like the worst contract in the region.

You know, and that's why they're currently on strike. Because, you know, these mines all surrounding who were mining the same vein of coal are making a lot more money yeah yeah yeah i remember i would uh before i moved to lexington i'd go take my clothes up to this laundromat and wash up there and this woman that worked up there melanie uh was telling me that her and her she and her husband both mined mined coal in Alabama for a lot of the same reasons. They're like, why are we sticking up here working for these little wildcat operations and everything else? And we can go to Alabama and make, you know, 70, 80, $90,000 a year or whatever. And I get that in a lot of ways because my, my brother-in-law spent much of the last, I guess,

probably, you know, six or seven years sort of uh cobbling together jobs and luckily he was one of the handful of guys that never stopped working for any meaningful amount of time but in like the clinton era he was making like you know six figures to to be a boss in the mines you know and then like he would get demoted and and and you know go back to just going underground and different things and it was like you know and then like he would get demoted and and and you know go back to just going underground with different things and it was like you know at the end of it he was working for a jeff hoops operation and this sounded like bullshit to me until i interrogated it but he was like they would have a foreman come out some days it'd be wednesday some weeks it'd be wednesday

some weeks it'd be thursday some weeks it'd be Wednesday. Some weeks it'd be Thursday. Some weeks it'd be Friday and they would pay you out in cash. Wow. On the, like on the job site. And I was like, I was like, they just skipping right over the HR department, you know, and of course everybody's fine and everything was fucked up. You know, at the end of the year, everybody ended up paying a big bunch of taxes because they weren't, you know, they wouldn't cut it. Yeah. None of that. And so it paying a big bunch of taxes because they weren't you know they wouldn't cut weren't withholding and shit yeah none of that and so it became a big mess but uh good but but the only coal being mined in eastern kentucky is the same thing as is metallurgical coal which is

you know used for steel and different things like that right but uh but you know the the the bituminous and all that kind of stuff that's used in like the energy mix and a lot of play. We're not so much used anymore as, you know, natural gas and other things sort of, you know, edged it out. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting, man, how fast and how precipitous that happened without, you know, the intervention of, you know, the union, a strong UMWA and all that kind of, that kind of thing. So. Right. Yeah. And it's, and it's like, you know, go ahead, leave my,

oh, go ahead, David, my bad. I was just going to say, you know, it's, we just got done talking about three or four families that, that uprooted their lives and moved, you know, to a different area, which is basically the same thing that a lot of our kinfolks done, you know, during the auto boom, to make money up there. And that's kind of the history of the United States in general, just trying to scratch out a meager existence. But anybody that's listening to y'all, it's important to recognize that we don't have to. Most of us love our home. I was born and raised in North Alabama, and I've traveled all over the world. I've been lucky enough to see some wonderful places, but I ain't never been anywhere like home. And it's important for people listening to know that we can have these jobs in our area,

you know, if we'll come together in solidarity and make them happen. You know, we can bring unions in to areas. And one of the reasons why the South is so difficult, you hear that the South is so difficult to organize is not so much because of the mindset of the people as much as it is the lack of finances that the unions have had in the past 40-odd years. I mean, they have really killed us, the government. Not just the Republicans, but the Democrats as well, has done everything they could to gut unions as much as possible with these neoliberal political policies.

And so the organizing is not, to me, the organizing is not to me, the organizing, there's not so much of mindset is, is just, you know, we don't have the money that we had during the seventies, sixties and seventies to invest in, uh, you know, these slick advertising campaigns and, and hiring organizers to be on the ground every day. If rank and file members aren't doing it, then it ain't getting done. And that's kind of where me and Jacob are. I mean, neither one of us are paid by a union. We're not staff.

We pay dues just like everybody else. We put on our shoes every morning and go to work just like everybody else. But at the same time, we see that need to help people in our community succeed. And we ain't going to succeed unless we're organizing these unions. And to your point with these folks moving down from Kentucky and there not being any UMWA in there, I guarantee you there's not one person in the UMWA that would spend weeks, months in Kentucky doing everything they could helping those workers out if I

just pick up the phone and make a call. That's all it would take. Yeah, it's one of those situations where I feel like that now it's been so long since, you know, the unions have been busted and it's kind of been weakened down in what was, you know, traditionally more, I'm using this as like, you know, when I say skilled labor, I mean, I know y'all know what I mean. I'm not trying to say like, you know, if you're working service or whatever, that's not like a skilled job. That's not what I'm saying.

Just like in the sort of sociological sense. But I think what had happened was as more and more people were getting funneled into either, you know, professional type jobs, teacher, you know, nurse, doctor, you know, handful of doctors, lawyers, whatever in these places and a lot of other folks based on class were moving more and more into the service economy service work and that sort of lower wage work like and this is not a knock on seiu or whoever but like it's it's i think not always been politically expedient or advantageous for them to kind of organize rural areas. And much of the South is, is rural. And it's like you say, Dave,

a lot of that is you could chalk up to lack of resources and other things and not necessarily not wanting to or whatever. But you know, you see the longer that's went on, you've created a situation, at least in my corner of the world you've seen a situation where it's like you know um uh you you got you got business owners and so forth in eastern kentucky that are like very proud that they uh pay their workers you know seven eight bucks an hour or something like that and like and it's like like uh like you were saying, James, like, yeah, and you just better be happy because, you know, there's no shortage of like,

you know, people that are suffering from poverty and everything that are looking for these, these jobs, you know, whatever crumbs that they may, they may be. And yeah, I think about this. I spent a lot of time thinking about this because like, I wonder like, why is like fighting for 15, for example, not taking off in rural areas as much as in like the cities and so forth. And I don't have the answers. I mean,

I think this is an open question when you kind of get into this a little bit because I know Huntsville is not a small town but like you know it's surrounded by you know places that look like where i'm from and uh i'm just curious what y'all think is sort of the um the future sort of like the rural aspect of all this sort of organizing and so forth well real quick on the thing that you said before you posed the question, just to tack on an amen to that, you know, Cecil Roberts, international president of the UMWA was talking last night about the scabs who's making, you know, more than $30 an hour, whatever, you know, they're paying the scabs more than they pay. They paid the workers when they were there. And that's only because that's only because of the

union. They only and and so, you know, Cecil was like, look, you get the you get the union out and they're going to start paying you $20 an hour. And if you take $20 an hour, I got news for you. There's an $18 an hour crew coming up right behind you. So I was, I didn't mean to cut you off while I'm thinking about it. It's I was a part of the, uh, uh, the negotiation team for my unions, uh, uh, last contract. And I know like it's apples and oranges when you're talking about like professional managerial class workers versus, you know, like more, uh, you know, labor intensive

sort of skilled labor, you know, that kind of thing, coal miners, oil field workers, whatever it is. But I, we would send out these little surveys and it would piss me off to no end that we're putting all this time in man. And there were people that were like, and I hate to feel that way, but I was like, there were people that were going to clearly benefit from our efforts that weren't going to put anything in the kitty. You know what I mean? And it's like, it's like, man, it's like when you have strong unions, like, like everybody prospers, whether you're going to, you know,

scab or, or, or join up or whatever. That's just, I don't know, that's just infuriating. You ticked something in me there, Jake. I'm sorry. Well, I was just talking to the guy the other week about that. And, you know, the Republicans for years have been talking about a rise in tide. And it's all boats, but their rise in tide, their thought of this rising tide is kind of with the, you know, we need to funnel this money in the business hands and the corporations and the rich.

And I agree with them to an extent that the rising tide does lift all boats. But, you know, I think we need to look at it from a different perspective. And that's those corporations and the rich are just one boat, and the working class are in the tide, and all that funneling needs to be coming into the tide, not just one boat. To your point, you know, when we start as unions, negotiate better contracts and better working conditions, we raise the non-union workers in the area,

even some of the people that don't pay dues in our union. They rise with us, and that's part of it. We'll have to overlook their ignorance, but at the end of the day, it helps out all of our community as well. And I don't think they're blind to that. I think they recognize, the community recognizes that. And it's certainly shown here in the last month or six weeks since we've kind of organized this rally, the community support.

It's just been tremendous. I think they see that it ain't the companies that benefit the community. It ain't the companies that buy all these pickup trucks and going out to eat on the weekends and things like that. Putting money in other people's

pockets is all these workers. Yeah, for sure. Jake, was you going to jump in there, Jake? I decided, I mean, I shut you down when he was on a good yarn. You can tell, you can tell I don't normally host. I'm usually, you know, I just chimes in here. You're the color commentator. That's right. That's right.

You're, you're, you're the, you're the guy that drops in on the uh you know what what we keep you know what we keep calling in for that's right yeah no i have sex and charm you know yeah no you cut me off right when i was about to wrap up and and kick kick it off to somebody else to answer the question about the rural areas and the fight for 15. I just wanted to tack that amen onto there. So I was going to kick it off to Lee or David right when you stopped me. Yeah, well, I mean, the only other thing i would say on that was uh you know i just think it's a it's a it's a glaring omission to look at big swaths of the country where that's

the dominant thing now particularly in places like where we're from and just say, you know, like, oh, well, that's not, you know, they'll figure it out or, you know, whatever, you know. Right. I mean, if you go back and look at a lot of these, like Matter One and movies like that, that, I mean, yeah, they're movies, but they're based on a lot of facts. We've always needed a lesser class than us to make us feel important. The politicians and the business owners know that, and they've done everything they can to always keep us a lesser class. And I think that 5% is the lesser class than a lot of the working class people in rural areas.

the lesser class and a lot of the working class people that are in the areas, they look at it and say, hell, I don't make my $18 or $20 if these people working at the fast food restaurants or wherever they may be, if they get that, they're going to be just about the same as me. Who are they going to look down on then? You know, that whole mindset i i agree with you david i took a lot of flack and this is and when i when i said this this was strictly anecdotal based on the place i'm from i wasn't making a big sweeping generalization about teachers but i took a bunch of flags i said i know that a lot of there's a lot of teachers that

a lot of these folks working fast food and everything else would would beat for would show up to the rallies and everything for when they were going through their thing. But if you flip that on their head, I'm not persuaded that a lot of those same folks would reciprocate that sort of solidarity with their own fight. You know, so I think that's i think that's a valid point especially when you're talking about people because i've heard that old refrain too you know well well i only make 20 an hour and i've been here x amount of years but then you can just you know flip burgers right out of high school and get 15 that don't make no no sense and it's like man have you seen what one mcdonald's worker brings back to McDonald's shareholders? Like, come on.

Exactly. Right. Right. And it's saying, you know, I think it's interesting, too, like with the Amazon union vote happening, just, you know, Bessemer's probably 20 miles from Brookwood, from these mines in Brookwood, if that. So it's the same part of the you know same part of the world and um you know a lot of just kind of the anecdotal stuff i was hearing around the amazon union um you know again not from you know uh people of of uh like minds to us but just kind of hearing jibber jabber um much the same thing. It's like, well, it's just a warehouse, you know, you're just moving shit around the warehouse kind of thing. And I, you know, but the thing is like, I've worked, I've had warehouse jobs and man, they

fucking suck. I would rather, you know, they really suck. It's probably my most hated job I've had. And it's hard, you know, and, and it's like when you're getting paid, you know, 10, 11, $12 an hour, uh, to, to do that work, um, that does depress the wages of all the other jobs around you that require a similar, you know, a skillset. So, um, that, that is something that's kind of interesting is like having that union vote happening within the last year. And then the strike now in a, in an industry that has been organized in the Birmingham region for a hundred

years, you know, more than a hundred years, you know, the UMW has been in Birmingham since the late 1800s, you know more than a hundred years you know the umw has been in birmingham since the late 1800s you know yeah and and what i have noticed just going out to the picket lines is that there have been a lot of folks involved in the amazon labor drive um who have been out there on the picket lines they have definitely been going out to support the miners um and um so yeah i know that y'all two jacob and david were at a lot more of the amazon rallies than i was i was only at one that one that happened on that day it was pissing rain everybody's trying to get out there's get out as quick as possible but i don't know how much y'all saw of solidarity from the UMWA or maybe the USW, who's also, you know, pretty strong in that region for the Amazon workers.

Yeah, well, on the, you know, about the working conditions of the Amazon workers, I mean, Amazon has really been able to do a number on the propaganda campaign about logistics work. You know, the fact that there are people out there that are talking to you, Lee, that say, oh, well, it's just a warehouse. And it's like it's just a warehouse, a warehouse, like a warehouse job. Logistics work is something that that would would feed a family on one income like last century. I mean, this is supposed to be real like a job, like a career. And Amazon has been able to take the fight for 15 and been able to turn that call for $15 an hour

as a floor for fast food service work and turn that into them saying, oh, hey, look, our median wage is $15.50. Look at us, how progressive we are. We're the Bernie Sanders of corporations. I mean, it's astounding. this is something that even in the area warehouses in the area that are represented by RWDSU, they make significantly more than that. Their contracts start them out at 19, 20, 21 dollars an hour. They have better benefits, better health care, better, you know, better everything. Of course, they're represented. They're a union. And these aren't these other warehouses in the area. They aren't multibillion dollar businesses. These are local retail, you know, retail warehouses that, that, that ship groceries to, you know, the, the star market or whatever, you know, the area equivalent is, you know, and, and, and their workers make

more and their CEOs make a, make significantly less, but they still make more than the workers. And, you know, I mean, it's the, the propaganda around, you know, mean it's the the propaganda around you know oh amazon workers they they get enough is just absurd because fifteen dollars an hour like that might that is an maybe acceptable floor thirty thousand dollars a year that's not much that's really not much to certainly not to raise a family maybe if you're a single individual and that's it, maybe, you know, you can get by raise a family, $30,000 ain't anything. And, uh, and they've been able to turn $15 an hour into like, Oh, look at us how progressive we are to the solidarity that, um,

that Amazon folks saw. There was all sorts. I did a, I did a stream, um, from the RWDSU union hall, uh, for hours talking to area unions and community groups that were supporting the Amazon union campaign. Talk to the Birmingham DSA, the Birmingham PSL, um, the, uh, um, the iron workers, the IBEW, the, I saw some steel workers. I am positive. I've, I cannot recall, but I'm positive. I, I had to have seen a mine worker out there in a UMWA shirt at one of the rallies. And I know I, you know, I, they, so they got a lot of support. I feel like from, from some of the area, some of the area unions, but I wish, I wish it was more, honestly. You know, I think we can always

do more. And I think that's why it's so important for union members to encourage their locals to be a part of their area labor councils, to be active in their state federations so that union campaigns and strikes can have that so that there's's there's an outlet for communication between all the unions because if we're all isolated you know the reason that unions work is because we're you know in a workplace you're all united and fighting for the same thing and the logic holds when you start talking about communities and states and countries in the world you know the more of us stand together, whatever the issue, the more likely that that we'll be able to win. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I saw that borne out in our own unionization efforts at Sierra Club, like the big green nonprofit. And it was interesting to see that. And it's weird for me because I still kind of feel like a stranger at an outfit like that but it was kind of funny to see like you know uh teamsters and

all these other outfits that organize you know uh truck drivers and everything else you know showing up for like these non-profit workers i was like whatever you know i didn't have a question lord's wisdom so i was one of the things that was amazing to me, and I've seen a lot of solidarity over the years, but I had went back to the hotel the night that Lee was talking about when it was pouring rain and, man, it was freezing cold to get all of our gear out to that big field that they were having this rally in for Amazon. So I get up there about three hours before everybody else and i and i and this is literally a field on the side of the damn highway

and i pull up and i'm like where the fuck am i going to park there's a big ass 18 wheeler i mean full-on semi and i'm like this son of a bitch has got his damn hazards on just sitting here and i could park right there and i pull up behind him and i get out and and it's from boston and then i look on the walk around to the side and it's a it's a boston uh teamsters joint district i think it was district 15 i believe anyways they had heard about a Teamster passing out anti-union material down there. A former Teamster. Yeah, a former Teamster. And they had packed up this truck that actually is a mobile Viet thing where they've got speakers they've got the boards they got the

amplifiers they even got a stage that pops out the side door and had that thing set up within 24 hours just for that event you know so the solidarity is just beautiful uh and i walked up and talked to rick was one of the guys names he He's probably 60, 65 years old. It sounded just like him, you know, a, yeah, it was just shipped straight out from Boston.

But this is the guys you want to meet, but strange accent. He probably said the right thing about me. I'm guessing. That's right. Yeah. I love, I love their accent, man.. Yeah, it sounds like he's out of the department or something. I love their accent, man.

People hate on the Boston accent, but it's one of my favorites. Yeah, I'm into it. I really am. I love it. I'm into it. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit, too, before we really tease the event. You know, Jackie, you had a piece of Jacob this week about, you know, conservatives love coal miners

until, you know, they go on strike. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I know when we were, you know, something that if you just follow Twitter discourse or whatever is happening around organizing efforts and whatever, you know, something that people, you know, bicker about is like, well, you know, who should we be organizing with? Who shouldn't we be organizing with? And, and all this kind of stuff. And,

and, you know, and you grow up in places like Kentucky or Alabama or wherever you're from, it's like, you don't always have the luxury of, of, uh, you know, showing up for people that are just like the most perfectly principled, best politics in the world, you know? And, uh, it's like, you know, to our notion, it's like, you know, that's no reason to deny their humanity or anything else. But a lot of people like have some feelings about this. And I think that what you wrote about that kind of touches on this a little bit. But I was just thinking that maybe we could get into that a little bit.

Sure. David, I'm sure you've got good stuff to say about that. Well, I mean, you wrote that remarkable. I was hoping that you would pull this one off. No, you said, I want to chew it for a minute. Well, I can ramble and let you chew for a minute if you want. I'm like you, Dave. I host a podcast, and I like to hide as much as I can still.

Yeah, well, I'm used to hiding. Jacob normally runs the show, and I just sit over there and kind of pull an Eli Golder once in a while. Yeah, he screamed, yeah, he turned down all the problems. You're the Kenny Stabler to his Eli Gold. Exactly. You're over there getting a buzz on and just cracking a joke every once in a while. Well, he's dipping the show every Saturday.

That's probably the best thing he's doing over there. I think it's important to pull out of Copenhagen and let everybody know that, you know, we ain't no Scottish drinking, cigar smoking, three-piece suit wearing union bosses. I'm a damn redneck just like everybody else. union bosses. I'm a damn redneck just like everybody else. Well, you know, I'll, I can, I'll ramble a bit and let, let David chew on it and figure out what he wants to say for his amen.

But you know, the apps, absolutely. You can't in, if, if you want to have a powerful fighting labor movement, you can't limit it to socialists. I mean, you just you just can't. How many of us are there in the United States? How you know what? DSA has a membership of one hundred thousand. Multiply it by 10 by one hundred even. That's not even like a quarter of the US. even. That's not even like a quarter of the U.S. Yeah, that's right. I think during the Bernie era, we kind of developed an inflated sense of our own influence in some ways. And I don't say that to shit on anybody's organizing efforts or anything like that. I just think that it's

important to keep in mind we're still relatively small. Well, yeah, yeah absolutely it's important to keep in mind that we're still relatively small and this is in a historic moment in the history of the United States for socialist organizing I mean there are more socialist elected officials in the U.S. now than there have been since the 20s you know I mean this is like we're in an we're absolutely in an upscaling upswing for left politics and we're a huge minority um and so it's just you know when I see some of this stuff about you know like oh I wouldn't you know I don't know that I'd talk to this person or talk to that person or or you know you can't you can't work with somebody who has this this opinion or that opinion I mean it's just silly right it uh you know I mean especially for people like us in in Alabama and Kentucky you know I mean, it's just silly, right? It, you know, I mean, especially for people

like us in in Alabama and Kentucky, you know, I mean, we're, if we, even if we limited it to, look, even if we even said liberals can join our unions, I mean, that that doesn't even get us to 40%. You know, we, you've got to have a majority, a super majority to have good power on the job. And and and but here's the other thing. And I talked about that earlier, is that is that unions change people. We talked to at the very beginning of the show, we talked to a couple of nurses. One of them was a conservative nurse. The other one was a liberal nurse. And you could tell that the conservative one,

that he had been through his one year in the union, he had been going through some changes and some awakenings. He said that I had never realized that liberals were so human. Hey, buddy, me neither. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, you know, right. But for different reasons. But yeah, you know, and this is the kind of thing that this is a 60 year old man who's just realizing the humanity of liberals. You know, I mean, of course, he said it glibly. You know, obviously he knew in a certain sense that liberals were human, but he thought they were crazy. crazy and after talking to some of them for for a year um talking to his uh black female nurses his his white male liberal nurses his you know everybody else in in the union you know he's if he even on the issues that he doesn't agree with him yet i don't know i haven't talked to him in a year maybe i i don't know what he's doing now but um even on the issues where he doesn't agree with them yet, he understands them. And this, and, and that is, that's a big change for a 60 year old man to make, you know, a 60 year old man in

Pennsylvania is, is now like, okay, well, you know, Black Lives Matter. I understand. I, I understand where you're coming from more. That's huge. And you're not going to get that from just a stranger on the radio talking to them. That is the power of having real conversations with your brothers and sisters, you know, talking about, they were talking about going on strike and stuff, and they did go on strike. That's an important life-changing conversations that they have to have. They have to trust each other to say, I'm willing to forego my paycheck from the company for who knows how long for you and for me and for our families and for our patients. And that builds trust and that builds community. And that trust is a good foundation to start these other conversations about bringing people over

to realize, you know, to expand the bounds of their humanity and their solidarity to other people that aren't like them in their workplace, and then people beyond their workplace, and then people beyond their state and beyond their country, you know, I mean, this, it's, it's the way to start people on a road to class consciousness, political awakenings, and things like that. And, and so absolutely, I talked to, I would talk to anybody just about in, in organizing a union and in helping unions to organize. I'd be willing to talk to anybody. I'd be willing to go on. I, you know, I'd be willing to go on any program. I'd be willing to talk to anybody in any time in any closet or coffee shop or warehouse or anywhere, you know? And to your point about like folks who might come from a more conservative or traditional

like social mindset, you know what I mean? And the way that being a part of a union influences the way they think about that stuff. It's like when you look at Alabama history, you know, it bears that out, right? Like you have these moments following the Civil War and in the early 20th century where you have workers organizing together in their common interests. And as a result of that, you have them beginning to support these like really progressive left wing candidates in politics, you know what I mean? Like you have Ruben Kolb in Alabama, who's like a really fascinating guy, who was a, and the thing about him and the fact that he was a very early integrationist,

that he was a very early labor supporting politician, was that he grew out of the labor movement. You know what I'm saying? Like, organized labor is what oriented these, but, you know, and there were still some enfranchised black voters in Alabama at that time because the big mules and the segregationists hadn't completely disenfranchised everybody. And they voted for Reuben Cole. And so did the working class white folks who realized that a union was in their best interest. And same thing with the Farmers' Alliances in Alabama around the turn of the century. like the Farmers' Alliances in Alabama around the turn of the century. These were movements that didn't happen through partisan politics. They happened through work and people understanding that their economic interests were tied together. And a lot of that happened in Birmingham, in the coal fields, in the steel mills, where these white and black workers were realizing, you know, this is the boss's easiest way of keeping us from getting a decent wage is by carving us up, you know. is that the umw it used to be called just the umw in birmingham was having integrated

coal miners unions and strikes in in fucking 1908 and 1920 i mean i'm saying these these guys i mean these are you know black and white and immigrant good old boys you know who black and white and immigrant, good old boys, you know, who are down there digging out coal, and they're going against the political machine of Jim Crow, you know, just so that they can make a better wage, you know, and it's like, in the politics of Alabama reacted to that the political systems and structures reacted to that. And that's when segregation became harder and harder, right, that's when the governor, B.B. Comer, called in the damn National Guard to break up these black and white coal miners striking together, you know what I'm saying, it's like, so just like the Robin D.G. Kelly, you know, book talking about the sharecroppers union, you know, and the communist involvement

with that, even long before that, I mean, this stuff had been happening for 40 years, you know, with, with just workers in a place, you know, y'all were talking earlier about people migrating, like to Detroit or wherever for work, David was talking about, you know, his, his granddaddy going up that way, and it's like, that's what happened in Birmingham, you had people recently freed, enslaved people, you had former white tenant farmers, you know, going from the, you know, rural Alabama surrounding areas, and saying, Hey, there's a city popping up where you can go and work in a mine or work in a factory. And once they got together, they started realizing like,

hey, man, you know, we get together, we can get some shit done here, you know, we can make a decent wage. And that in a lot of ways, that has been the history of Alabama politics is these powerful, you know, white supremacist capitalist business owners realizing if we tell the white guy that he's worth five bucks an hour more than the black guy, and if we lock up the black guy and exploit his incarcerated labor to undercut the white guy, then hey man, we can get the system licked, you know, and it's only been the unions that have pushed back against that, and that have led the early, you know, movements for integration and incarcerated people's rights and children's

rights and women's rights and all that kind of stuff, you know, and that came up from the labor movement. I mean, that's just, that's just the history bears that out, you know what I'm saying? It wasn't, it wasn't a top-down thing, you know, just like David was saying earlier, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats you know it's not the trickle down shit that we're told because you know the thing is the the you know the the powerful can keep making a bigger cup you know what i'm saying so shit never gets to trickle down you know what i mean the cup just gets bigger and bigger so right yeah i i saw this i kind of saw this played out not from the the labor struggle perspective but when

we were um organizing against this federal prison they wanted to build much county there's this man mitch whittaker that was kind of uh one of the early supporters of it and the reason initially he was he was into it is because part of that land they had staked out to build the prison on was it was his daddy's land and all this stuff he didn't want to give it up and you know he go to these scoping meetings he'd say now i'm going to be buried up on that hill where y'all want to bury where y'all want to build that thing at i ain't going to sell and all this stuff wow but he was still of the opinion that like you know well you know ms-13 is going to kind of come through here and you know it's going to be like what if somebody you know breaks out of there and then there will

be and all that kind of stuff right and i've watched through that whole process particularly when we would do things like we would we would have uh you know um people's family a lot of them black folks from places like richmond and virginia and you know hampton's family, a lot of them, black folks from places like Richmond, Virginia and, you know, Hampton roads area and Norfolk, Virginia beach, that area would come here because for those that don't know, there's, there's like a, you know, you hear the word prison industrial complex floated a lot, but a lot, but like a lot of times places like where we come from,

particularly rural areas areas like the shitty choices they get are like well do you want a landfill or do you want a prison you know people just like they're so thrilled to have those because there's nothing else that like you know they'll just pine for them right and so in our area in our congressional district if they would have built this prison it would have made the ninth either state, federal, or private prison in the area. And a lot of these folks would do, you know, we would do like rides from places like Richmond and other places in

so people could see their family locked up in the mountains that they probably hadn't seen 10, 15 years in some cases. And I saw that transform people i did and i don't mean to get all mushy on a funny podcast but i saw that man i saw that in real time and he had there was a a piece that we were both quoted in and the guy that wrote it was asking Mitch about like his opinions on it. And he was like, you know, and then of course it was, he's a work in progress like any other. So he didn't have like the perfect ideological position on it, but he said, you know, when I started out with this crew,

like I just thought if you were in prison, you must've did something to warrant your ending up there. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then he would talk about, you know, meeting folks and it humanized folks for him and made it real to him, you know? And I think it's, it's, it's kind of the same thing in the labor movement, particularly where your,

your, your livelihoods tied up in, in, in, you know, your, your labor and everything. And yeah i think uh i think you're right i think it it changes people so i would just admonish anybody that's has doubts about somebody's uh you know moral credentials or whatever the case may be and that don't mean you're out here with like you know nazis or any of that kind of shit but that right but but but you know it does mean that like i think you need to be more patient with people if you know, Nazis or any of that kind of shit. But, you know, it does mean that, like, I think you need to be more patient with people if, you know, they can't quote Lenin's scripture and verse, you know.

That's right. So, anyway. Well, before we put a bow on this and sign off and everything, I want to be mindful of y'all's time. Tell us a little bit more about Saturday and how people can, you know, get, uh, get tickets or admission or whatever y'all going to do and who all's going to be there and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, man, we, uh,

I guess we're kicking it off at one of the local union halls there in Brookwood, which is about halfway between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, a little closer to Tuscaloosa. But it's kicking off at noon. It's a $20 suggested donation. It's free for UNWA minors and family. And we got Mike Cooley from the Drive- drive-by truckers is gonna play a set out there

um we're gonna play uh we got drew morgan and dj lewis coming in to do comedy i'm sure we'll have some speakers david's manning the most massive fucking barbecue rig I've ever heard of. The discourse this past two weeks is what's the top five barbecue joints. I have seen that, yeah. What's yours? What's yours? Top five are all David's story in Brooklyn. That's right.

Yeah. If I'm being honest, my favorite is Witt's. That's my, you know, as far as just straight up a barbecue sandwich goes, there ain't no better barbecue in the world. But my second favorite is my house. So y'all will get to give it a try this weekend. Witt's is my wife Dawn's family's from Decatur, and that's all their favorite. All they say is Wits.

They're like, yeah, Big Bob's is fine, but Wits is the one. That's the ticket. Yeah, yeah. And Wits has got that. Man, Wits has got that sauce. It's like a vinegar and cayenne pepper sauce. You know, they don't have a tomato-based barbecue sauce. And that vinegar and cayenne pepper are good.

Oh, man, that stuff is awesome. That's a sacred sauce. It is good. But, yeah, we're trying to work out all the details. It'll be good. It'll be out there in the parking lot. So, you know, we won't be out there in the parking lot. We won't be crammed up inside or anything. The weather's looking like it'll be nice and dry and toasty.

We're expecting a good time. It's our first show in a year and a half. We're chomping at the bit. We've also got a gospel group from the minors one of the some of the striking minors has got a gospel group and and i'm really looking forward to hearing them oh cool i didn't know i thought they dropped i got them i bullied them into it i went to the rally and was talking, you know, Larry called me up to talk about the event. And I said, you know, I heard that there was a few of y'all that played music and that y'all were going to play for us.

And then you chickened out because you're a bunch of bunch of babies and got scared. And so I don't know what's up with that, but if you change your mind and you want to be men and play for us, let me know. Oh, my God. Jacob, I'm just going to tell you, I warned you the first time y'all went down there on that picket line that you ain't seen men like you've seen until you get down there.

And as scrawny as you are, if you want to hide behind me this weekend, I'll do my best to protect you. I do. One of my favorite lines from me and Jacob went down to the picket line the first time as we walked up and this guy who I feel like he might've had a beer or maybe a beer or something like that. He just like glanced down at what Jacob was wearing. And he saw that he was wearing like like, sandals of some kind,

Tevas or something like that. And the guy's just like, I don't know about them sandals, son. That was, like, the first thing he said. It is. That was the first thing he said. I can tell you this, Lee. I told him, we had just left the radio station that morning, and I told him the day before, make sure you dress rough.

And he said, well, how did I dress? And that's the first thing I said. I said, you got the damn Jesus shoes on, man. You are going to stick out like a sore thumb down there. So I'm glad to hear that. I guess there was a little bit of – Somebody called him on it right from the jump. He caught it.

That's right. Straight away, man. Yeah, I was surprised. I mean, it ain't like I dress like I wouldn't normally dress, but I did put on some of my – you know, I had holes in my jeans. I had holes in my shirt, and I had a flannel on, and I had an America shirt like with a flag on it and and i came up to him and and i had a hat on first thing he said was i don't know something about them sandals

man man one of my favorite stories about adam our bass player who y'all get to tom knows him very well but y'all get to know him this weekend. He's one of the funniest, best one-liner guys I've ever known. I wasn't there, but it was at the Knick one night, I think, in Birmingham. This guy in town who has a bit of a tendency to be a little full of himself and a bit of a hothead. Him and Adam started getting into it i think adam probably just made a comment about his band or something and the guy you know which adam is want to do and he's usually right but it's also usually pretty scathing and uh and this guy like

kind of bows up to adam and adam just sits there and looks at him and looks down kind of like that minor did at j at Jacob that day. And he goes, motherfucker, your flip-flops is all I need to know about you. That's all I need to know about you. Oh, man. Gosh, damn. I miss the Williamson boys. I had lunch with Blake the other day,

and we were just talking about the event on saturday and he said man you know uh we're pretty outspoken band and everything you know and i said yes i mean you know lee's gonna get the holy ghost up there and say something about free palestine and he's like yeah no i think it'll be all right though and we uh had a big time man i miss him so much he uh he played me some of the the new record him and adam did he he gave me a snippet of new glory fires but he was like very mom he was like that's that's all you get for now yeah that's i've got to hear at least one Was it two that you played on the picket line? Two songs?

I played one of the new ones on the picket line, yeah. Yeah, so I've heard a whole new song from them on the picket line. What's the one he played me was the one you're singing about being afraid of women. It was beautiful, man. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah, that's the power ballad. Yeah, that's what, man. Yeah. Thanks, man. That's the – yeah, that's the power ballad.

Yeah, that's what he was saying. That's what we were – he said, man, he said, let me play you two – he gave me one that him and Adam did, and then he played that one, and that was – we're moving in a new direction. Yeah, that's going to be like, you know, when we do the video, you know, it's like going to be Adam, you know, is going to be like standing on the wing of like a Learjet, you know when we do the video you know it's like gonna be adam you know it's gonna be like standing on the wing of like a lear jet you know what i mean like playing the bass with

the wind rushing through his hair it's gonna be pretty awesome just yeah just looking like he just got out of a body of water and brushing that hair that's right so that concert is part of our um our whole fundraising drive where you know the kids these days they do these marathon streams on the youtubes and so we're to do that from Friday at 10 a.m. to Sunday at 4 p.m. And the concert is part of it. We've got a lot of we've got a lot of cool folks. I will say that I did want to try to get some of the conservative talk radio hosts like I wanted to try to. And I may still I may just do it. I may just call in during the stream during their shows and ask.

But don't fuck up my weekend, man. Do not fuck up my weekend. Well, it's like me and Jacob were texting yesterday. He was saying that I was like, man, there's one thing you can count on every conservative pundit and powerful person having in common. And that's that they love the Boston. Yeah. Well, you know, and I text her stuff common and that's that they love the boss and they think yeah well you know and i text other stuff but that's the one thing i texted the station manager and i said you know is there any conservative folks you know politicians or media folks that

would be interested in like pushing this to their audience that that you know were pro-minor here and he said not that i know not a single not a one not a single one all right well yeah man it's funny because you see the conservatives trying to co-opt the labor movement more and more it's like they know the power right that's how jd vance and american enterprise this whole thing now is just using these like coded sort of labor terms, but like for their own ends. And it's funny that, yeah, you call in and they can't find not one person. Not one. Not a one. I mean, that's kind of the foundational thing about it, you know what I mean?

Which I think is what's kind of interesting about some of these. I'm hoping that, I feel like that first time we went out there, Jacob, and, you you know we were still just trying to get past the whole sandal barrier with a couple of those guys but uh you're playing from a hole to begin with yeah you know i mean yeah yeah exactly we were starting from behind we were starting from behind yeah lee was pulling me out of the hole that i dug for myself but uh but i mean i am curious to know i mean because there was there were a couple guys who had um well one guy had on a maga t-shirt i think or a hat and there was some the guy who when we rolled up to the picket line and said you know y'all are y'all part of a socialist group and he was kind of wary of us and you know saying i'm a marine so

i don't want to fuck with and i don't want any socialists coming up here and uh but i am curious to like talk to those guys because while they um you know they vote a certain way apparently um it's like what they're doing with their time and with their money and with their labor is just in and of itself, it's a critique of capitalism. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying that they don't believe in capitalism to some extent, but they clearly aren't true believers, you know, that the market is the benevolent the, you know, the benevolent, uh, Lord, that's going to lead us all into, into what we need. There's something, you know, uh, about what, where they're at that says there, there's something about the system that isn't quite right. And, um, we need, uh, as workers to, um, challenge it, you know, and to, to, to disrupt it.

So, yeah, well, there was one interview in, in left voice, I think it was with one of the miners where he said that never in, you know, never in my life would I thought that our biggest supporters in this strike would have been folks on the left with my Marine right wing ass, you know, old, you know, I wonder if it wasn't the same guy. I wonder if it wasn't because he mentioned in that interview that he was like right wing and he was a Marine and he's been surprised by all the, and he said that the Baptist hadn't come out and supported him nary a bit, but he's got all sorts of...

Well, I will interject. I am a Baptist. So at least one. It's like when they asked us if we were part of a socialist group, we kind of looked at each other and we're like, well, we are socialists and we are in a group, but I think technically no.

Sort of the same thing. It's like, I am a Baptist and I am here. When he asked if he's a socialist, you should have said, no, I'm a Baptist. Yeah. here, but you should have said, no, I'm a Baptist, but we're talking to the person. That's like Adam. Anytime. So one time we were at a truck stop and a guy asked, he was sitting outside smoking a cigarette and a guy was like, Oh,

y'all in a band, you know? Cause people just say, you know, see a bunch of long haired shitheads walking out of the van. They're like, Hey, you know, the band And Adam just goes, no, we're just a bunch of communists. That's not missing a beat. But, yeah, we're talking to that person from Left Voice. I actually got them. They're going to be coming on the stream during that. I kidded at the beginning,

but I do think Trill Billies are going to be coming on at some point. Randy Bryce is coming on. Hamilton Nolan. I reckon we got Tom Morello. We're talking. There it is. I like the bird's lead there. Yeah, on the deal.

Yeah, we got all these shitheads. Oh, yeah, we got Tom Morello. We got Chris Hedges. We got talking to Dr. Max Alvarez, talking to Cooper Carraway. I mean, we're talking to some pretty fun folks. So by the end of it, they're going to be talking and we'll be there.

But I don't know how much talking we'll be doing, but I think it'll be- Yeah, because you don't know how much talking we'll be doing but but i i think it'll be because you're you're not sleeping the whole time right jacob well uh me and adam your your mouse already wrote the check now your ass has got to cash it that's right me and adam's gonna try to make it me and adam's gonna try to make it me and adam's gonna try to make it all 54 hours without sleeping i'm i'm literally taking my coffee maker down there so i can and and so i so i can have my coffee the whole i'm gonna have a cup in front of me all 54 hours probably um but but yeah it's gonna be a lot of it we've got a lot of good folks

and all these folks coming out and support the minors. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm real proud of what we've been able to put together and, and, um, you know, um, I'm real, uh, you know, I imagine by the end of it, we're, we're going to be a little emotional, uh, uh, you know, talking about how, how proud we are of everybody coming out to support these folks and, and, you know, hoping they feel it, you know, and I think they will. I hope they feel all the support that they're getting. And it's like we're getting support from so many different people in the community, too, from Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Opelika, Huntsville, Montgomery, people circling up. Montgomery people circling up and what's what I think's been really interesting is like since we've started um working on this event publicizing it is like how many friends of mine I have um

whose dads or uncles or you know brothers-in-law or whatever work in those minds um that I didn't even realize because it just never came up you know what what I mean? But like Bo, our buddy Bo Hicks in Tuscaloosa is helping out with a ton of stuff. And he's like, shit, man, half my family worked in those mines or works in the mines. And so, or like James Blankenship with the union who, you know, I've been talking with today about setting up logistics. I know his daughter Natalie from the music scene and had no idea her dad was involved. So it's, you know, it's like these workers and these unions are so integral to where I'm from, you know, to Birmingham, to Bessemer, to up to Jasper, down to Tuscaloosa.

It's like that's, these are the folks, um, in the, the professions that built where we're from, you know what I mean? And, uh, so it's pretty awesome to see so many people who aren't even in the union or aren't necessarily, um, part of any kind of like political movement or whatever, who just, these are their family members, or these are just their neighbors, people that care about who were, up. And I also just wanted to add that this is the events supposed to happen at such a time where people can drive from, you know, probably three or four hours, even five hours away and get back home if they wanted to you know what i'm saying because like we're going to be we're going to wrap it up well before uh nightfall you know what i'm saying so um yeah if people want to make a day trip i know i've we've got people coming from uh macon and atlanta

and um coming from mississippi from all over tennessee get met working on a couple in kentucky uh so you know so so it's like we can uh yeah it's like y'all can make it um if you want it's gonna be it's gonna be cool man it's gonna be barbecue and you know uh hanging out it's gonna be awesome and and one other thing to add to that and one of the reasons why we're on you know your show and we we i mean i can't i can't thank you enough for having us on uh but we this this thing like jacob said and but i want to drive home as fact if if you're six hours away or if you ain't been vaccinated and you don't feel comfortable or, you know, you just don't like standing out in the heat for a whole fucking day.

We're going to be streaming this, you know, all this music, all the shows and all of these folks that's going to be coming on, is going to be on our YouTube stream. And we've got links to donate. So don't think just because, well, I ain't going to try, that you can't enjoy this show. Because I promise you, what you've heard for the last, I don't know, roughly hour is what you're going to hear for 48 hours that weekend. is what you're going to hear for 48 hours that weekend,

except for by the time we're all winding up, we're going to be delirious, and it's probably going to be a lot crazier than this. But you can donate at our website at thevalleylaborreport.org. Just look for the mutual aid link. Just look for the mutual aid link. And I'm telling you, 100% of what y'all donate is going to the minors down here. The food is being paid for by the Alabama AFL-CIO, Lee. And God knows I would hate to get billed the hours that he's put in putting all this together, the same with Jacob and the same with me. Every bit of this is 100% donated time, donated food.

So everything that everybody gives is going directly to those miners. And if you're asking yourself why you should be helping out these minors, they've been on strike for two months now. Two months without a paycheck. Today is seven weeks. They can't draw unemployment. They have families. They got kids. Some of them, I'm sure, are taking care of of grandparents and parents and they don't

have any money and we need to do everything we can to keep food on their table keep them you know as healthy as possible and uh as long as they need to be because they've been taken advantage of for too long and it's time for us to come together and help some people out. Hell yeah. That's well said, Dave. You stole my thunder there. That's what I was supposed to say. You did it so much better than that. Before we wrap it up

here, why don't you fellas tell everybody where they can find y'all at. Yeah, you can find us on Twitter at Labor tell everybody where they can find y'all at? Yeah, you can, yeah, you can find us on Twitter at Labor Reporters. You can find me on Twitter at Jacob M underscore A L David's at Radical Unionist, R-A-D-I-C-L Unionist. And like he said, you can donate at our website, thevalleylaborreport.org. He said uh, of everything goes to the miners. I mean that, you know, minus the PayPal fees, I don't want somebody to come at us, you know, sue us for a

technicality, but, uh, um, but the PayPal fee, but everything else is, uh, it is a hundred percent. Um, the valley labor report.org and the dropdown menu, you'll see mutual aid. That'll be it. That'll get, get you a place to buy a ticket in advance or to donate if you're not going to be able to come. And we'll take donations at the door as well. It's a suggested donation. Obviously, it's free for the mine workers, but we don't want to turn anybody away. If you want to come out and add a body and hang out, then, you know, just let us know. And we're on YouTube at the Valley Labor Report. That's where you'll be able to find the stream. And that'll have links to donate right there in the description as well.

So, yeah, that's everywhere. And we're on Facebook at the Valley Labor Report. So that's everywhere you can find us, I reckon. And we're going to have some shit to raffle off, too. Oh, yeah! We got some good, cool, I think I ordered a bunch of shit from the Mine Wars up in

West Virginia, like some shirts, some hats, some coffee mugs, some nice red bandanas. Are those the cool ones that got Sid on there? You know what? That shirt, I tried to get one of Deb's shirts, and it was sold out.

It was like Smalls was the only thing they had left. And, you know, I mean, a fucking Smalls. That ain't going to work for the pit masters. Not many in Alabama. Well, and this is, and I'm really excited about this item that we're going to be auctioning I don't know exactly how we're going to do it if we're going to set a price or if we're going to auction it off I don't know

but we're getting you know everybody I think most people probably listen to this have seen the flyer that's been going around a fantastic local artist named Charles Hastings he goes by Solomunk256 on Twitter Churchofself on Instagram artist named Charles Hastings. He goes by Solo Monk, Solo Monk 256 on Twitter, Church of Self

on Instagram. He did up, he's always so good to do up flyers for us. He did up a flyer. We're going to get 50 of those union printed for the concert. We're getting 50 of those union printed. It's going to have a nice union bug at the bottom and we're going to get um lee and his band drew morgan mike cooley and dj lewis to sign them and we're going to auction them off and sell them and and it's on nice glossy paper you know it ain't just like computer paper it's it's going to be it uh um and union printed at a union print shop in Montgomery. We got somebody from Dixieland of the proletariat there in Montgomery picking them up for us. And so I'm really excited about those.

I'm going to have to snag me one of them. I think those will sell really well, especially once you get Lee's signature on it. I mean, no telling. Probably start the bid at $1,000. Yeah, the rest of the vagrants, whatever. so there'll be three that really elevates it no man my my credit isn't good enough for uh that plagiarizing to be worth it trust me boys i that's it's something y'all pulling off here, and I just want to commend you and salute you on the efforts here,

and thank you for coming on. It's Jacob Davis. Great meeting y'all. And LB, that's my brother, man. Hell yeah, dude. Been too long. Hopefully we'll get to hug your neck here for too long. Yeah, for too long.

For too long. So, yeah, if you're out there listening, we'll see you on Sunday on the paid feed. And if you don't have access to that, there's a way you can access that. www.patreon.com slash Trill Billy Workers Party, all one word. And for $5 a month you can get a bonus episode and

we appreciate everybody out there listening paid or otherwise but thanks again Fez it's been great thanks Tom appreciate it