On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama with tens of thousands of troops. It was the largest US invasion since Vietnam. The first US military action since the fall of the Berlin Wall one month before. The testing ground for the Iraq Wars. The US invading forces destroyed 20,000 homes and killed hundreds of innocent Panamanians, dumping bodies into mass graves. And the United States government and the mainstream media ignored or whitewashed the violence. The story told to the...

With Donald Trump continuing to demonize immigrants, especially immigrants from Latin America, and with Republicans calling for "Mass Deportation Now," Latinos in the US find themselves in the crosshairs of a national debate over immigration, border policy, racism, and economic justice. What can the Chicano Movement of the 20th century teach us about how to combat attacks on Latinos and other marginalized groups today? Last week, to mark the 54th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, The...

The housing and affordability crisis is getting worse, and more people around the country are facing the grim reality of homelessness. Rather than treating housing as a human right and committing to large-scale construction of accessible housing, states like California are responding with police raids of homeless encampments and imprisonment for unhoused people. On this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa discusses non-carceral solutions to the housing crisis with Zachary Murray and...

Kamala Harris has made it clear that, while a new name is now at the top of the Democratic ticket in the 2024 elections, the party policy on immigration and the border has not changed and will not change. At the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris and other speakers continued to adopt the language of Donald Trump and Republicans when speaking about immigration policy and the "crisis" on the US-Mexico border. Harris also declared her commitment to signing the Bipartisan...

From rumors that Beyonce was going to perform to Uncommitted delegates staging an all-night sit-in outside the United Center to demand that a Palestinian voice be given time to speak on the main stage, there were many storylines that emerged from the 2024 Democratic National Convention. But the DNC also showed how the ruling establishment and corporate media work together to curate a fantasy version of reality, especially when it comes to whitewashing the Biden-Harris Administration's...

The death toll in Gaza continues to climb, with conservative estimates putting the numbers of dead around 40,000, but a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates the actual death toll could be 186,000 or even higher—that’s roughly 8% of Gaza’s population. And with each passing day, the humanitarian crises unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank gets orders of magnitude worse. Seeing the dire situation in Palestine, seven major US labor unions collectively drafted, signed,...

On August 29, 1970, the Chicano Moratorium Against the Viet Nam War mobilized the largest Chicano protest and the largest anti-war protest led by a community of color at the time. Combining a critique of US imperialism abroad and racism at home, the Chicano Moratorium was the result of years of organizing and consciousness raising by Chicano liberation activists around the country. Former Brown Beret Bill Gallegos and CSU Northridge professor Theresa Montaño join The Marc Steiner Show for a...

It's a presidential election year, and a deeply divisive imperialist war has split the public. As the Democratic National Convention gathers in Chicago, anti-war organizers vow to be in the streets to protest US responsibility for a genocide overseas. No, this isn't 2024. It's 1968. And the police riot that follows in the city of Chicago has effects on US politics that will reverberate for decades to come. Former member of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers joins The Marc Steiner Show for a...

The issue of mass incarceration has been far less central to the 2024 election thus far in comparison to the 2020 presidential race. However, that doesn't make the matter any less pressing for incarcerated people, their loved ones, or the activists fighting tirelessly to free prisoners. There are a range of ways presidential candidates could commit to ending mass incarceration, but one tool stands out as a quick fix that can be implemented through presidential prerogative alone: the power of...

Since the start of the pandemic (and really, before that), frontline healthcare workers have been rightfully lauded for the tireless work that they have done to keep the healthcare system from cratering in this country. This is no easy task, as we have seen the devastation that the pandemic has wrought among our communities, and especially within the healthcare field. In Southern California, the cost of living crisis has filtered into the workplace, with many healthcare workers finding...

In 2024, Working People officially crossed the 300 episode mark! Since we published our first episode back in 2018, the show has grown in ways we never could have imagined, and the world itself has changed in radical, hopeful, terrifying ways, the labor movement has undergone incredible changes, and we’ve done our best to document that change and this moment in history through the conversations we’ve had with workers across industries, from all walks of life, about their lives, jobs, dreams,...

J.D. Vance's rise to the GOP ticket has opened up scrutiny into the junior senator's past and roots. Before he entered politics, Vance entered the public spotlight as the author of a best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. While often marketed as an authentic glimpse of Appalachian working class life, what Elegy really offers is a portrait of a man whose roots and life path have been decidedly different from those of Appalachia's working poor. Like the GOP itself, Vance's claims to represent...

On Aug. 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Police left Brown's lifeless body in the hot sun for four hours, plainly demonstrating the contempt of law enforcement for the local community. The righteous rebellion that followed in Ferguson shook the nation and the world, turning the Black Lives Matter movement that had begun following the earlier murder of Trayvon Martin into a global mass movement. Ten years later, some things have changed, but most...

In December 1823, US president James Monroe delivered his State of the Union address in which he coined what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine. It was a framework that would later be used to legitimize US intervention up and down the hemisphere. But in those early days, Monroe’s statements were applauded by Latin American leaders as supporting their independence struggles. They were even embraced at Simon Bolivar’s Panama Congress of 1826. In this episode, host Michael Fox travels to...

Next week, from Aug. 19-22, the much anticipated Democratic National Convention will kick off in Chicago, and protestors from Chicago and around the country are preparing to descend on the DNC in full force. For organizers and the over 200 organizations that comprise the Coalition to March on the DNC, Palestine is at the top of the agenda—and the city of Chicago seems determined to keep protesters from making their dissent known to the nation and the world. For months, march organizers have...

J.D. Vance has tailored his political image to suit an all-American, blue-collar model. There's just one problem. While the Yale-educated Vice Presidential candidate may be from Appalachia, his journey has also taken him under the patronage of the decidedly elite Peter Thiel, who helped launch Vance's venture capital career. Thiel has been a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, and over the years, other Silicon Valley billionaires have come around to sharing the PayPal founder's outlook. The...

Within hours of polls closing in Venezuela, the US began to circulate claims that incumbent President Maduro had stolen the election. There was just one problem—these claims emanated from outside the country before election results were even announced. The absence of evidence didn't stop corporate media outlets from running with the story. The accounts of more than 800 international election observers on the ground, however, paint a very different picture. While there is certainly political...

Today we have an urgent and important conversation with members of the NEA Staff Organization, the union of staffers at the National Education Association, who have been locked out of their workplace by NEA management for the past four weeks. The NEA, representing over 3 million members, is the largest union in the country. Staffers working for the NEA have been bargaining for higher wages and fairer treatment by the union, and have instead been locked out of their workplace after a 3-day ULP...

On Sunday, July 28th, President Nicolas Maduro won reelection there. According to the country’s national electoral council, he took 51% of votes over 44% for his rival Edmundo González Urrutia. But the opposition called fraud, claiming that they actually won the vote. Most international media have been on board with that narrative. In fact, the United States, and several other right-wing led Latin American countries have now recognized the opposition candidate as the victory. At the same...

The images of members of US Congress giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu multiple standing ovations during his recent visit to Washington DC are certain to go down in history. While Netanyahu spoke of "finishing the job" in Gaza, to raucous applause, peace activists Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon also recently addressed members of Congress—but with a message of peace and reconciliation, not genocide. Abu Sarah, who is Palestinian, and Inon, who is Israeli, share some things in...

Fadi Deeb is the only member of the Palestinian Olympic delegation from Gaza, and he is the only Paralympian athlete from Palestine to compete in the 2024 Summer Games. While he has experienced great personal tragedy due to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Deeb has come to the Paris Olympic Games to represent the people and the indomitable spirit of Palestine, and to send a message to the world: “Nothing can stop us… Palestine is not dying, we are still here.” In this exclusive interview,...

The 2024 US elections are just three months away, and with polls showing a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the outcome may come down to voter turnout—and data show that  there is a direct correlation between income level and voter turnout. As Katherine Hapgood recently wrote in an article for the Washington City Paper, "Of the roughly 35 million Americans living at or below the $50,000 threshold widely accepted as 'low income,' just about half reported participating in any...

From East Palestine, Ohio, to South Baltimore and beyond, we’ve been connecting you with residents living in the toxic wastelands left by private and government-run industry—ordinary working people who have been thrust into extraordinary fights for their lives. In the latest installment of our ongoing Sacrificed series, we go to Toledo, Ohio, a city that, in 2014, lost access to its water supply for three days straight due to a massive, toxic algal bloom caused by runoff from industrial...

Canadian journalist Nora Loreto reads the latest headlines for Thursday, August 1, 2024. TRNN has partnered with Loreto to syndicate and share her daily news digest with our audience. Tune in every morning to the TRNN podcast feed to hear the latest important news stories from Canada and worldwide. Find more headlines from Nora at Sandy & Nora Talk Politics podcast feed. Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly...