As Brazil prepares to host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP30, the Brazilian government is sending a powerful message about its commitment to environmental conservation and sustainable development. Central to this message is the protection of the Amazon rainforest, vital to the planet’s ecological balance. Yet, a controversial project hangs over these declarations: the planned Amazon’s BR-319 highway, a proposal that has sparked intense debate over its potential to disrupt one of Earth’s most critical ecosystems.
BR-319 highway: a climate crisis chain reaction
The reconstruction of the Amazon BR-319 highway in Brazil, connecting Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, to Porto Velho, on the southern edge of the forest, cutting through one of the most preserved blocks of the rainforest, could trigger a climate crisis chain reaction with severe irreversible impacts on the Amazon, Brazil and the entire planet.
Although the Brazilian government promotes the BR-319 project as essential for regional economic development, it represents one of the most significant threats to the Amazon’s survival. This project endangers at least half of Brazil’s remaining rainforest, putting 69 Indigenous communities, 64 Indigenous territories, and over 18,000 Indigenous people at risk.
During a visit to Amazonas in September, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, showed his commitment and full support for the reconstruction of the BR-319 highway by saying:
BR-319 is a necessity for the state of Amazonas, it is a necessity for Roraima, and a necessity for Brazil.
Lula’s ambition to lead on the climate agenda appears to conflict with his own policies and actions.
Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), and Nobel peace prize winner, mentioned:
In Manaus, every politician supports the reconstruction of the BR-319 highway – on the condition that the federal government, and by extension, the 99% of taxpayers who live outside Manaus, foots the bill. After more than two decades of consistent misinformation about the project, nearly the entire local population now favours it, and questioning the initiative would be political suicide for any candidate.
He added that:
Repaving the BR-319 highway would link the relatively undisturbed central Amazon to the AMACRO region – a deforestation hotspot named after the states of Amazonas, Acre, and Rondônia. Although AMACRO is promoted as a sustainable development zone (ZDS), it has become a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
The BR-319, an 885-km highway, was inaugurated in 1976 during Brazil’s military dictatorship, but was abandoned in 1988. In 2015, under Dilma Rousseff’s government, a maintenance program was launched to revive the highway. Since then, various governments have made multiple attempts to reconstruct a 406-km section of the highway.
Catastrophic and Irreversible Consequences
The fishbone effect results from the opening of illegal branches on both sides of the BR-319 highway, created by land grabbers. This phenomenon is already unfolding around the highway, with over 6,000 km of illegal extensions, which is more than six times the length of BR-319. Furthermore, proposed roads along BR-319, such as the AM-366, would provide deforesters with access to a vast area of rainforest in the Trans-Purus region, west of BR-319.
Brazilian Amazonia and Highway BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho). Map produced by researcher Lucas Ferrante in the ArcGIS software, deforestation data from INPE 2021.
The reconstruction of the BR-319 highway could lead to catastrophic and irreversible consequences, including widespread deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and environmental degradation. It may also fuel an increase in illicit activities such as organised crime, illegal logging, mining, and encroachment on Indigenous lands. Furthermore, the risk of zoonotic leaps and the emergence of new pandemics could rise. These impacts could push the rainforest beyond its ability to survive, causing it to cease functioning as a carbon sink and disrupting its role as a regional and global climate regulator.
Lucas Ferrante, researcher at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), discussed the critical role of flying rivers in climate regulation:
In this forest region, a crucial environmental ecosystem service occurs, known as flying rivers, plays a crucial role in regulating Brazil’s climate. Moisture from the Atlantic Ocean is carried into the continent through the North region, where it enters the Amazon. Evapotranspiration from the preserved forest generates high-pressure systems that produce rainfall, which then travels southward, supplying water to the southeast, central-west, and southern regions of Brazil.
For instance, 70% of the rainfall that supplies the Cantareira system – responsible for providing water to São Paulo, the most densely populated area in South America – originates from this forested region. However, deforestation along BR-319 poses a serious threat to these flying rivers, and continued destruction could lead to devastating consequences for the entire country.
Ferrante warned that:
We will face severe water shortages in densely populated regions, leading to the death of the most vulnerable populations, industrial disruptions, and devastating impacts on agriculture, rendering these areas uninhabitable. Essentially, the collapse of the flying rivers will trigger the breakdown of the country’s economic sectors, potentially causing annual losses of up to $ 500 billion (R$3 trillion).
Wildfires, drought, and disease
A survey by MapBiomas’ Fire Monitor reveals that from January to September this year, Brazil saw 22.38 million hectares burn, marking an increase of 13.4 million hectares compared to 2023. This represents a 150% rise from the previous year. Over half of the burned area (51%, or 11.3 million hectares) occurred in the Amazon.
Commenting on the fires in the Amazon and across Brazil, Ferrante stated:
It’s crucial to recognise that Brazil has surpassed its greenhouse gas emissions targets, with the highest levels originating from the Amazon due to widespread fires in the biome.
The fires and drought in the Amazon are expected to worsen due to climate change and other factors, including the rampant expansion of agribusiness, particularly cattle farming, both legal and illegal mining, logging, and large-scale biofuel production – especially with the recent biofuel mandate increase announced by Lula. This is further intensified by Lula’s push to extract “every last drop” of oil. The BR-319 highway plays a central role in facilitating these developments in the region.
The Amazon rainforest is recognised as one of the largest reservoirs of zoonotic diseases. Scientists consistently warn that reconstructing the BR-319 highway, in conjunction with climate change, will accelerate forest degradation driven by agribusiness expansion, mining, oil and gas exploration, illicit activities, and infrastructure projects. This would lead to increased human mobility and urbanisation, heightening the risk of zoonotic spillovers -diseases stored in the forest potentially jumping to humans, which could trigger a global pandemic or a series of them.
A petri dish for the next pandemic
Deforestation along the BR-319 has already resulted in a 400% increase in malaria cases in the region, highlighting the potential environmental damage caused by this project and its role in the emergence of a new global pandemic.
An article in Naturereported that the western Brazilian Amazon is facing its largest confirmed outbreak of the Oropouche virus (OROV), with over 6,300 cases recorded between 2022 and 2024. Researchers identified a novel genetic variant of the virus and highlighted fragmented forest landscapes and vegetation loss caused by deforestation and expanding agricultural activities as significant factors driving its transmission. Most OROV-positive cases in 2022–2023 were concentrated in the AMACRO region, a hotspot for deforestation.
Fearnside explained:
Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and other tropical regions increase the risk of emergence of new human diseases by increasing contact between rainforest wildlife and the human population and its domestic animals. It also contributes to climate change, which can create conditions favouring the emergence of parasitic, fungal, viral, and bacterial infections.
BR-319 highway: profit-driven
The BR-319 highway will serve an expanding range of national and international industries, particularly those focused on the significant profits that a ‘bioeconomy’ can generate. Additionally, it will play a crucial role in facilitating oil and gas exploration in the region, including Petrobras’ operations along the equatorial margin, a project that has the full backing of Lula.
Russian oil and gas company Rosneft will also benefit from the BR-319 project, as it holds drilling rights to 14 oil and gas blocks situated west of the highway, around 35 km from the Purus River, within the Solimões Sedimentary Basin. This pristine area is larger than the state of California.
Other sectors would also gain from the BR-319 project, such as the expansion of agribusiness, cattle farming, both legal and illegal mining, logging, and organised crime.
Ferrante elaborated on how BR-319 is facilitating the expansion of agribusiness, cattle farming, and mining:
BR-319 is accelerating the growth of agribusiness in the region, especially on unallocated public lands (‘terras devolutas’). Soybean farmers from Mato Grosso do Sul are migrating to Rondônia, purchasing land from livestock farmers who, in turn, are moving south of Amazonas within the BR-319 corridor. These lands are often occupied illegally, either through land grabbing, illegal deforestation, or violent eviction of traditional communities.
Since 2023, Manaus has experienced a rise in smoke levels during the dry season, primarily due to forest fires spreading along the newly paved sections of BR-319, where cattle farming is rapidly expanding. The presence of asphalt accelerates deforestation, and fires are commonly used to clear land for pasture.
Moreover, there is a well-documented connection between land grabbers and organized crime along BR-319. Criminal groups seize land, expelling legitimate owners and traditional communities, and often use the profits to force these displaced communities into labour in illegal mining operations.
Smokescreen
Supporters of the BR-319 project, including politicians, corporations, and individuals, have presented various justifications for the highway’s reconstruction, citing the ongoing drought in the region. However, Ferrante points out that despite the drought, the Madeira River remains navigable. Furthermore, the BR-319 does not connect to any of the municipalities impacted by the drought, as they are located across the Rio Negro.
The Madeira River has long been the primary transportation route in the region, running parallel to the BR-319 highway, and offering a safer, cleaner, and more cost-effective means of transporting goods.
Rodrigo Agostinho, president of Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, toldAmazoniaReal on 14 November that without good governance, the BR-319 project could become a “major deforestation front.” He further noted that those who construct a road do not take on responsibility for managing the surrounding area, which remains a highly contentious issue.
(A) Deforestation along BR-319 highway from 1988 to 2020 (PRODES data). Deforestation in red represents cumulative deforestation from 1988 to 2014 before the highway “maintenance” program began. Deforestation in purple represents cumulative deforestation from 2015 to 2020 (i.e., during the “maintenance” program). (B) Points with land grabbing, illegal logging, illegal mineral prospecting and illegal land sales observed on BR-319 highway. The inset map of South America shows Brazil’s “Amazon Biome” region in green, Highway BR319 as a black line, and the area of the larger map as a red rectangle. Image provided by researcher Lucas Ferrante.
The Brazilian government continues to advocate for governance along the BR-319, with support from a few NGOs backed by an international philanthropic organisation. These groups, however, refuse to oppose the BR-319 project.
Failure to consult Indigenous communities
Meanwhile, members of the Brazilian federal police and army have made it clear that any future governance scenario is unrealistic, as the inspection bodies would lack the necessary resources to monitor the area due to its vast size, complexity, and danger. Organised crime already controls land grabbing and mining in the region, which has had a devastating impact on traditional communities.
Who stands to benefit from the BR-319 project? The primary beneficiaries are those financing illicit activities, such as illegal mining and organised crime, as well as the expansion of agribusiness, large-scale biofuel production, cattle farming, oil and gas exploration, and the development of a “bioeconomy.” These highly profitable ventures are financed by both national and international stakeholders.
Fearnside mentioned that:
The 2009 environmental impact assessment (EIA) indicated that business leaders did not view this project as a priority for Manaus’s industrial hub. In the years following, the unanimous political support for the project naturally prompted businesspeople to adopt the same position, given their reliance on political backing. However, academic studies assessing the project’s feasibility have found it to be economically unjustifiable. Notably, it remains the only major project in Brazil without an official economic feasibility study (EVTEA), which is unlikely to be a coincidence.
Following Ferrante’s presentation at the ministry of the environment on October 29 highlighting the negative impacts of the BR-319 project, he is calling the suspension of all licenses and tenders until consultations are held with all affected Indigenous communities.
Additionally, he urges the suspension of the maintenance license for the entire highway due to significant environmental harm already inflicted by the national department of transport infrastructure (DNIT) on ecosystems, streams, and traditional communities. He further requests the removal of the illegal branches, and the expropriation of all areas occupied along the BR-319 highway since 2008.
On Saturday 16 November, activists from Scientist Rebellion and Growth Kills took part in civil disobedience actions in several cities around the world. They were out to highlight how politicians, businesses, and leaders obsession with growth and GDP as measures of human success was killing us all. In doing so, the groups were calling on people to start to consider so-called ‘degrowth’ as a viable and crucial option to stop, and reverse, the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis – but also so much more than these.
Degrowth: essential to save the planet
In Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, and Panama, activists employed a variety of actions, including building projections, banner drops, street mobilisations, and more. This was Mexico:
Mexico
In France, the Netherlands, Norway and Germany, they replaced advertising posters with ones featuring citizen quotes and plastered additional posters across public spaces:
France
NetherlandsNorway
In Brussels, Belgium, in broad daylight, activists replaced advertising posters in bus shelters in a crowded square, then interacted with the public, interviewing them, amplifying their words over a loudspeaker, until the police stopped them:
Belgium
Economic growth doesn’t bring happiness
A single core message unites all these actions: only a shift towards degrowth can lead us out of our social and ecological deadlock.
The ecological crisis poses an existential threat to life on Earth. The IPCC estimates that on our current trajectory it is very likely that we will exceed even the 2 degree limit, and that several tipping points will be crossed, beyond which global warming will accelerate uncontrollably and extreme weather events will become the norm.
Around 50 to 80% of the world population could be exposed to one month per year of deadly heat by 2100. A recent review article predicts 1 billion premature deaths in the coming century. Global warming will dramatically increase the ongoing mass extinction, while we have lost 75% of the insects and ⅔ of vertebrates already.
Climate change isn’t even the most worrying environmental crisis. With the collapse of biodiversity and pollution of all kinds, humanity has crossed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries, causing irreversible damage to life on Earth, and threatening food and water security. The UN’s Global Resources Outlook report shows that global resource consumption, which has quadrupled since 1970, is set to increase by a further 60% by 2060.
Our politicians claim that the environmental transition is compatible with infinite GDP growth through massive investment in ‘green technologies’, the so-called ‘green growth’. However, there is noempiricalbasis to suggest that it is possible to decouple GDP from environmental pressures on a global scale. As stated by the European Environmental Agency:
it is unlikely that a long-lasting, absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures and impacts can be achieved at the global scale.
The EEA concludes that:
societies need to rethink what is meant by growth and progress and their meaning for global sustainability.
GDP is not a measure of anyone’s wellbeing – not least the planet’s
So, in a statement, the activists declare:
The belief that economic growth is essential for our well-being is a myth that mainly serves the interests of a wealthy few. Instead of endlessly increasing production, we should focus on producing what is truly essential for everyone’s well-being and ensuring fair distribution.
The belief that economic growth can align with environmental respect is equally misleading, as climate disasters multiply, pollution worsens, and biodiversity continues to decline without signs of improvement. Economic growth is inherently tied to overconsumption, driving the relentless extraction of resources at the planet’s expense.
We must urgently rethink the economy to reduce resource consumption while ensuring everyone’s well-being, regardless of economic growth. Our campaign, rooted in collective ecological restoration, aims to inspire a global grassroots movement that empowers individuals to restore balance and biodiversity through shared responsibility. Connected with one another, we can rediscover our power to act and restore life.
These concerns and the call for degrowth align with numerous systemic scientific studies linking ecology and economy, as well as a report from the European Environment Agency and an open letter signed by leading experts and over 100 civil society organisations.
Following this evidence, the activists are calling on everyone to help envision a livable world and fight for:
A drastic reduction in resource consumption to stay within planetary boundaries.
An economy focused on the well-being of all, prioritising people and the planet over unchecked growth for the benefit of a few.
The creation of citizen assemblies selected by lottery to determine concrete steps for a transformative socio-economic shift.
A campaign rooted in collective energy
This global initiative is part of a campaign launched last June in Brussels by the Growth Kills and Scientist Rebellion collectives, kicking off with a week of bold actions, including a blockade of the European Commission on the eve of the European elections.
Following this week of action, since September activists from both movements have taken to the streets to engage directly with the public, igniting conversations around shared concerns, hopes, and visions for a sustainable future. Through these interactions, they gather quotes from the people they meet, showcasing these reflections on posters that replace commercial advertising in their current actions. Initially piloted in Brussels, this campaign has since been replicated globally.
The groups said:
By claiming the shopping streets as our stage, we take back spaces overwhelmed by the noise of consumerism and advertising. Through gathering quotes from those we meet and showcasing them on posters and public projections, we amplify the voices of the street, connecting their reflections to the vision of degrowth.
Reimagining activism and degrowth
Through this approach, the activists put forward a holistic vision of activism, aiming to build a grassroots movement that strengthens the social fabric as a basis for preventing future disruption and instability in our lives.
They said:
Our mission is to reawaken the creative spark within each of us, pouring this energy, with love, into public spaces. To reclaim the imagination of these spaces, we must come together as a collective whole, united by purpose and possibility.
We believe this shared reflection can reawaken the strength within us all, restoring confidence and grounding us in a community poised for action. Our commitment to public engagement embodies our conviction: only a genuine grassroots movement can ignite the societal shift essential for true sustainability.
Through collective action, we work to rekindle life and restore harmony in our fractured world. Together, we reclaim, we restore, and we create anew.
You can read more about this in the groups’ manifesto here.
As COP29 enters its second week – what exactly did the first deliver? Well, the verdict from some groups is not a lot. In fact, looking at the detail it seems that actually, the meeting of parties was little more than greenwashing for carbon markets while the climate crisis rages on.
COP29: only delivering on greenwashing?
In the weeks leading up to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the presidency signaled its strong commitment to finalise negotiations on Article 6 international carbon markets, which had previously collapsed at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022 and at COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
At its meeting in October, the Supervisory Body (SBM) mandated to create the rules for the new Article 6.4 carbon market mechanism, finalised its standards on methodologies and on activities related to removals and, in an unprecedented move, claimed that the standards immediately took effect and went into force.
Rumors that the COP Presidency would rush through those new rules immediately proved true when on the very first day of COP29, the CMA, the UN body that takes decisions under the Paris Agreement, rubber-stamped the SBM’s standards.
Markets moving forward while other negotiating areas remain stuck, plus a reference to voluntary markets in the current NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) text, raises the specter of a COP that only delivers on greenwashing.
Kelly Stone, CLARA Network Coordinator and Senior Policy Analyst for ActionAid USA, said:
This was an unprecedented abdication of authority and responsibility. Allowing the Supervisory Body to move their standards forward with a procedural trick is an unacceptable giveaway of power and responsibility to an unelected and unaccountable entity.
Governments must reassert their authority and protect front-line communities.
SBSTA Article 6.2 and 6.4 negotiations deadlocked; moved to this week
Despite the COP Presidency’s success in approving the standards set by the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, negotiations on Article 6.2 and 6.4 under the SBSTA deadlocked last week and will be taken up again in week two.
6.2
6.2 negotiations under the SBSTA proved to be fairly stuck in the first week. While the text produced at week’s end will be the basis for further negotiation, it was sent forward with no consensus.
The key sticking points are the registry (the entity where trades are registered) and a collection of points that could tighten the extremely loose 6.2 trading framework.
The US and some other countries insist that the 6.2 registry can only reflect data instead of hold units, meaning that countries must either develop their own functioning registry or use those from the voluntary carbon markets. This significantly disadvantages those countries without the means to set up their own registry.
Several countries wanting to improve 6.2 guidance have proposed text options to obtain upfront information and detailed reporting and consequences for non-compliance. But these options have been watered down or have disappeared completely. Still some countries push back at even the most marginal requests for transparency or accountability.
Information about countries’ actions under 6.2 could come years after it has set up its activity. Moreover, when that information is reviewed and shortcomings or omissions are found, nothing can stop a country from trading the flawed units it has issued.
6.4
In 6.4 negotiations under the SBSTA, the issues to be ironed out on authorisations and transfers from the registry were mostly technical and did not cause major controversy. Still, consensus was not reached.
In 6.4 negotiations under the CMA, a contact group met only once and will continue this week to discuss further guidance on some of the methodologies and removals standards adopted by the Supervisory Body. It is essential that major loopholes in the 6.4 mechanism are closed but the first draft of this guidance looks too weak to do so.
Isa Mulder, Policy Expert, Carbon Market Watch, said of 6.2 and 6.4:
Week two is setting up to be difficult for Article 6 carbon markets. While a large number of countries ask for more ambition, the window of opportunity to get this done is narrowing. It is essential that the involvement of ministers and high-level negotiators does not result in significant quality compromises for the sake of a deal.
Article 6.8 Work programme for non-market approaches moves into second phase
While some standards for carbon markets advanced last week, Parties on Friday agreed to a set of activities for the second phase of the Article 6.8 work programme for non-market approaches to assist countries in implementing their national determined contributions (NDCs).
Article 6.8 can support a broad scope of initiatives for climate finance, mitigation, ambition, and ecological integrity, none of which will involve the transfer of mitigation outcomes through offsetting and the generation of carbon credits for trading.
Although finance to support Article 6.8 non-market approaches is still nowhere to be found, a proposal from the Like-Minded Developing Countries and Bolivia will go forward that “recognises the importance of integrated, holistic and balanced non-market approaches… including ‘Mother Earth Centric Actions’” such as:
Ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems and the conservation of biodiversity when addressing climate change.
Enhancing different value systems, including for living in balance and harmony with Mother Earth, as recognised by some cultures, in the context of addressing climate change.
Souparna Lahiri, Senior Climate and Biodiversity Policy Advisor at the Global Forest Coalition, said:
The text decided confirms what CLARA has been advocating for years: there are genuine barriers to rapid implementation of non-market approaches, but unlocking the full potential of Article 6.8 will help Parties raise ambition in their NDCs, which carbon markets cannot. The true potential of Article 6.8 cannot be achieved without global south countries uniting against the cabal of rich countries blocking progress.
Overarching risk assessment on carbon markets is needed now that rules are in place
Members of the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA) are concerned that rules are being created without regard for the risks and impacts of carbon markets and other Article 6 activities.
According to research published last week in the journalNature which analysed one-fifth of the carbon credit volume issued to date (almost one billion tons of CO2e), less than 16% of the carbon credits issued to the investigated projects constitute real emission reductions.
The aim of Article 6 activities is to improve international cooperation to enhance global mitigation efforts, yet, to date, no holistic, scientific risk and impact assessment has been done on planned Article 6 activities under the rules that have been constructed. CLARA members are strongly urging governments to undertake social, environmental and legal risk and impact assessments across entire portfolios where these rules are in place.
COP29: the time for offsets for carbon markets is over
Jannes Stoppel, Political Advisor for Biodiversity and Climate Policy at Greenpeace, said of the carbon markets furore:
Expanding the potential to compensate for climate destroying emissions here at COP29 is a slap in the face to those who have survived extreme weather events around the world. Leaders can’t offset themselves out of the climate crisis.
It’s their responsibility to reduce emissions now, in all sectors, to mitigate breakdown of climate tipping points. Nobody knows what the weak rules being developed here, under the influence of thousands of fossil fuel and abatement technology lobbyists, will mean.
Trading carbon budgets instead of reducing emissions is a dangerous gamble against time we don’t have. Really, the time for offsets is over.
Though the election of Donald Trump has loomed over this month’s United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, Biden administration officials and prominent Democrats have given speech after speech pledging that the nation’s transition to renewable energy will continue. White House representatives have touted the economic benefits of the billions of dollars in climate-related subsidies in Biden’…
In a move that alarmed green groups, Republican President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday tapped Chris Wright — the CEO of a fracking company who denies the climate emergency — as his energy secretary. Wright, who leads the Denver-based oil services company Liberty Energy, is a Republican donor whose nomination to head the Department of Energy is backed by powerful fossil fuel boosters…
In a campaign plan released last year, President-elect Trump pledged that his administration would “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.” That’s a reference to the dozens of state and local governments fighting to put Exxon and other oil companies on trial for spreading disinformation about their products’ harm to the climate. The first of those lawsuits were…
Youth Demand supporters shut down London, Leeds, Manchester, Cambridge, and Exeter in a co-ordinated mass action on Saturday 16 November – closing 13 roads. It was the sixth day of the group’s ‘swarm’ action – that’s seen disruption across England over the climate crisis and the UK government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Youth Demand: day six of the swarm
At 11:00 am Saturday, in a coordinated set of actions spanning London, Manchester, Exeter, Leeds and Cambridge, groups of supporters stepped into city roads holding banners reading ‘YOUTH DEMAND’, ‘YOUTH DEMAND AN END TO GENOCIDE’, ‘STOP ARMING ISRAEL’, ‘YOUTH DEMAND LIBERATION NOW!’, along with Palestinian flags:
Action taker Bailey, a disabled supporter from Cambridge said:
We look back in history at atrocities committed by governments and countries and we say “never again”. We praise those who took action for change and liberation. Currently we are living through a historic moment where there are genocides happening and it is up to us to fight back so if it never happens again. I want to be on the right side of history.
In London, roadblocks lasted for several hours across the West End, starting at Queen Victoria Street.
Norfolk Road was the first to be blocked in Cambridge, causing traffic tailbacks:
Manchester saw Deangate disrupted, while in Leeds Woodhouse Lane was the first to be affected by the action. In Exeter, action takers first blocked Iron Bridge and continued to block roads in the city:
Direct action works
Jazz Dean, 23, a care worker from Manchester is another who took action. They said:
Direct action works, this is why we’re doing it. We don’t want to be disrupting people’s day but when there is a genocide happening and innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon are losing their lives day after day we cannot stand by. Our government is complicit in this genocide. They continue to buy and sell weapons with Israel. We know what those weapons are used for and that is why we need to resist.
Henri, 20, an architecture student from Falmouth taking action in Exeter said:
We must act, not only for our own future but for that of future generations, our children, our friends and ultimately our world as we know it. Why shouldn’t we stand up for what is morally right regardless of consequences and opinions? We know our actions are ridiculed through the media, but we are left with no choice; the system doesn’t represent us. We must resist.
Saturday’s action came after a full week of resistance from Youth Demand.
A week of resistance
As the Canary has been documenting, the group first took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read ‘Never Again for Anyone’ and ‘Over 186,000 Dead’.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester. Then, on Tuesday 12 November the group did similar in Leeds – blocking multiple roads and being threatened with arrest. The group then returned to Manchester on Wednesday 13 November, blocking multiple locations.
On Thursday 14 November, the group targeted roads in both Leeds and Cambridge – returning to the former for the second time this week. Then on Friday 15 November, London was blocked in multiple locations again – with the group also targeting Exeter.
Youth Demand said that “Young people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country”
Thousands took to the streets of London on Saturday 16 November, joining a major alliance of climate justice organisations demanding the UK government end its reliance on fossil fuels, commit to paying climate reparations, and end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. This was for the March for Global Climate Justice. There was a small counter demo of pro-Israel Zionists who carried banners saying ‘stop lying, there is no genocide in Gaza’.
March for Global Climate Justice
The March for Global Climate Justice brought together more than 60 organisations, including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International UK, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, and Just Stop Oil:
Demonstrators gathered outside the British Museum and marched to 10 Downing Street via SOCAR. Organisers claim the route exposed corporate and governmental ‘complicity’ in both the climate crisis and the genocide in Gaza.
Deputy Green Party leader Zack Polanski was one of the politicians supporting the march:
He said:
The first thing is, it’s about crisis with humanity. There’s a very obvious link where, if you have fossil fuel companies that don’t care about trashing the planet, then of course they don’t care about funding weapons and funding the military, which are enabling a genocide and killing people.
And if we’re going to divest away from fossil fuels, oil and gas, as we absolutely should, we should also be divesting away from weapons and the military.
People were also calling out some countries’ refusal to address Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Specifically, the march focused on those leaders who condemn Israel’s action – but are still supplying it with the energy to fuel its army:
Predictably, pro-Israeli Zionist showed up to cause trouble:
Across Great Britain and Ireland, 25 actions were organised in towns and cities from Manchester to Edinburgh, Dublin to Sheffield under the same demands.
Angus O’Brien, National Coordinator at the Climate Justice Coalition, said:
Thousands of us united today in a historic mobilisation on the streets of London, across Great Britain and worldwide to demand an end to the era of fossil fuels and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The issues we face are global, and so is our response. We won’t stop until political leaders divest from war and destruction – and invest in a just, ecological and equitable transition.
Driven to the brink of collapse
Tyrone Scott, Senior Movement Building and Activism Officer at War on Want, said:
Right now, millions of people are facing the worst effects of climate breakdown, predominantly in countries across the Global South. Our global reliance on fossil fuels have driven our climate and ecosystems to the brink of collapse whilst earning trillions for the fossil fuel industry.
At the same time, these same fossil fuel companies that are profiting from extracting and polluting – driving climate breakdown – are also profiting from funnelling oil to Israel; oil that Israel is then using in its genocide of the Palestinian people. We must end our reliance on fossil fuels, ensure the UK pays its fair share in finance and demand an end to the genocide. There is no climate justice without human rights.
This woman has been a well-known face at climate and democracy protests for many years:
Dr Charlie Gardner, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, said:
Whether it’s the floods that have devastated Spain and dozens of other countries, the record rainfall affecting British farmers, or the fires, droughts and storms ravaging other parts of the world, climate breakdown is here and it’s always the poorest and most vulnerable communities who are hit first and worst. We need to throw everything at ending the fossil fuel age as quickly as possible, and pay our climate debt to poorer nations. As a global community we have to adapt to what’s coming, and take care of each other as we do.
The only way forward is to tackle this emergency collectively and cooperatively. So it is shocking that, in the short period between their election and COP29, Keir Starmer’s government has already promoted airport expansion, succumbed to the Carbon Capture and Storage snake oil promoted by the oil and gas industry, and continued to support Israel’s war crimes.
Across the UK and Ireland, there were other protests too:
Lauren MacDonald, Lead Campaigner at Stop Rosebank commented:
Everyday we are witnessing the worsening effects of climate change as they creep closer and closer to home. All this while governments insist on pandering to the demands of mega-polluters in an endless cycle of ignorance that endangers us all.
Oil money has been linked to violence throughout history – and this is no different now. Even the Rosebank oil field here in the UK will see £253 million in revenue flow towards a company that has been flagged by the UN for human rights violations in Palestine.
If we want to maintain a liveable climate, and sever the toxic links between fossil fuels and atrocities across the globe, we must do everything we can to make a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas.
Joanna Warrington, Campaigner at Fossil Free London, said:
In gleaming London offices, fossil fuel giants like BP line their pockets while our planet burns and millions suffer. Every day, they stop at nothing to maximize their profits, fueling genocide, corrupting politics and pushing our climate closer to collapse.
We are marching today to demand that the UK Government breaks free from the grip of mega polluters, stands up to their relentless greed, and stops enabling the violence and destruction they profit from.
Another world is not just possible – it’s essential, and it starts with holding fossil fuel corporations accountable.
Around the world, the March for Global Climate Justice took place in multiple cities, too.
Featured image and additional images via Denise Baker
It took Samoan activist Tunaimati’a Jacob Netzler three flights and a bus ride over the course of 24 hours to reach the big climate conference. The plan was to join nearly 200 other campaigners from around 40 countries to discuss the fate of the planet. But Netzler wasn’t traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29. Instead, he headed to Oaxaca, Mexico, for the Global Meeting for Climate and…
A West Papuan advocacy group for self-determination for the colonised Melanesians has appealed to the United Kingdom government to cancel its planned reception for new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
“Prabowo is a blood-stained war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua,” claimed an exiled leader of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda.
He said he hoped the government would stand up for human rights and a “habitable planet” by cancelling its reception for Prabowo.
“Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land. He wants to destroy West Papua,” the UK-based Wenda said in a statement.
‘Ghost of Suharto’ returns
“For West Papuans, the ghost of Suharto has returned — the New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.
“It is gravely disappointing that the UK government has signed a ‘critical minerals’ deal with Indonesia, which will likely cover West Papua’s nickel reserves in Tabi and Raja Ampat.
“The UK must understand that there can be no real ‘green deal’ with Indonesia while they are destroying the third largest rainforest on earth.”
Wenda said he was glad to see five members of the House of Lords — Lords Harries, Purvis, Gold, Lexden, and Baroness Bennett — hold the government to account on the issues of self-determination, ecocide, and a long-delayed UN fact-finding visit.
“We need this kind of scrutiny from our parliamentary supporters more than ever now,” he said.
Prabowo is due to visit Oxford Library as part of his diplomatic visit.
“Why Oxford? The answer is clearly because the peaceful Free West Papua Campaign is based here; because the Town Hall flies our national flag every December 1st; and because I have been given Freedom of the City, along with other independence leaders like Nelson Mandela,” Wenda said.
This visit was not an isolated incident, he said. A recent cultural promotion had been held in Oxford Town Centre, addressed by the Indonesian ambassador in an Oxford United scarf.
The people of West Papua have spoken.
Just today (15/11/24), rallies against Indonesia’s settler-colonial Transmigration plan were held in:
Takeover of Oxford United
“There was the takeover of Oxford United by Anindya Bakrie, one of Indonesia’s richest men, and Erick Thohir, an Indonesian government minister.
“This is not about business — it is a targeted campaign to undermine West Papua’s international connections. The Indonesian Embassy has sponsored the Cowley Road Carnival and attempted to ban displays of the Morning Star, our national flag.
“They have called a bomb threat in on our office and lobbied to have my Freedom of the City award revoked. Indonesia is using every dirty trick they have in order to destroy my connection with this city.”
Wenda said Indonesia was a poor country, and he blamed the fact that West Papua was its poorest province on six decades of colonialism.
“There are giant slums in Jakarta, with homeless people sleeping under bridges. So why are they pouring money into Oxford, one of the wealthiest cities in Europe?” Wenda said.
“The UK has been my home ever since I escaped an Indonesian prison in the early 2000s. My family and I have been welcomed here, and it will continue to be our home until my country is free and we can return to West Papua.”
15/11/24 Jayapura, West Papua
Another angle showing that the rally against Transmigration was peaceful, but the police forcibly dispersed it.
Sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that threaten life itself, from toxic industrial pollution to the deadly, intensifying effects of man-made climate change. In a more just and less cruel society, the very concept of a “sacrifice zone” wouldn’t exist. And yet, in America, after decades of deregulation and public disinvestment, more working-class communities are becoming sacrifice zones, and more of us are being set up for sacrifice at the altars of corporate greed and government abandonment.
America’s sacrifice zones are no longer extreme outliers; they are, in fact, a harrowing model of the future that lies in store for most of us if the corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires destroying our communities aren’t stopped. And residents of different sacrifice zones across the country, fellow workers on the frontlines of all this reckless and preventable destruction, are connecting with each other, learning from one another, and working together to fight back. In this Working People liveshow, recorded on Oct. 19 at Red Emma’s worker cooperative bookstore, cafe, and community events space in Baltimore, we speak with a special panel of residents from four different sacrifice zones in the US about how the situations they’re facing in their own communities and their struggles for justice and accountability are connected.
Panelists include: Hilary Flint, communications director of Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community and a former resident of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a few miles from the site of the Feb 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio; Melanie Meade, a community organizer, educator, and life-long resident of Clairton, Pennsylvania, the site of US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, which was named the most toxic air polluter in Allegheny County in a 2021 report by PennEnvironment; Elise Keaton Wade, a real estate attorney by trade, longtime environmental justice activist, and a native of Southern West Virginia; Angela “Angie” Shaneyfelt, a resident of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore, who lives just blocks away from an open air coal terminal owned and operated by rail giant CSX Transportation, which has been polluting her community for generations.
Special thanks to Dr. Nicole Fabricant and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust for organizing this live show.
Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Hilary Flint:
Hi everyone. My name is Hilary Flint. My pronouns are she her. I am from Enon Valley, Pennsylvania that is a town of less than 300 people that borders East Palestinian, Ohio. I have a background of chronic health issues and I’m a young adult cancer survivor, and I’d always been very conscious of the environment and very conscious of health issues, but it wasn’t until the East Palestine trained derailment and chemical disaster did I start organizing full-time in this work. So I’m director of Communications and community Engagement at Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community. And we really work around fracking and the Shell Plastics plant in Beaver County and also around the East Palestine trained real as well. And then I also work with Clean Air Action Fund. It’s a C four. And the reason I do that is so I can put on a different hat and do things like lobby and help write bills that would prevent these types of things from happening.
And then I also just started working for Center for Oil and Gas organizing around the issue of LNG, which is kind of the next big thing that we need to be working on. But a lot of the work I do is through a lens of disability justice, solidarity building and trying to change the way nonprofits work. So getting more mutual aid, getting money directly to grassroots instead of big green except food and water watch, they can have all the money. So yeah, just figuring out a different way to do the work because I’ve seen that the system currently just does not work.
Melanie Meade:
Hi everyone. My name is Melanie Meade. I’m from Clairton, PA, and I came into this work in 2013 when I was burying my father, when six months later I buried my mother. And from the span of 2011 to 2020, I buried all of my immediate family. I live next to one of the largest plants, USX coing plants in Clairton pa, and I’m so thankful to have sisters like Hilary and everyone on the panel to stand in solidarity with.
Elise Keaton Wade:
Hello, my name is Elise Keaton Wade. I am from Southern West Virginia. I am a real estate attorney by trade, but I got started in my activism 25 years ago on Payford Mountain with Larry Gibson, looking at mountains being blown up for tiny seams of coal through the process of mountaintop removal, strip mining. And that is how I came to my environmentalism. It’s how I became a lawyer trying to find out why it was legal to blow the tops off mountains to get coal. Turns out it’s legal because we made a law allowing it. So it’s a policy issue, right? So I lived in Colorado for a little while. I was licensed to practice out there, and I came back to West Virginia in 2011, reconnected with Larry Gibson in 2012. He passed away shortly thereafter, but I was involved with the organization where I met Dr. Fabricant. And so she and I, 13 years ago sat on Payford Mountain and dreamed of a regional coordination of efforts. And here we are today with multiple states in this room, and we’ve spent two days together talking about how we’re all interconnected. So I’m honored and pleased, and I’m so grateful for each of you being here.
Angela Shaneyfelt:
And I’m Angela Shaneyfelt and I am a community member of Curtis Bay here in Baltimore. And I got started in this in December 30th, 2021 when the CSX Coal terminal had their explosion. And the reason why I am here is just when you look into your child’s eyes and they’re mentally checked out and you don’t know why. So that’s why I am here.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, welcome everyone to this special live show of working people, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership within in these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and I cannot overstate how much of an honor it is to be sitting here with all of you here in this room here at this table. As those of you listening just heard, we have a really special installment of our ongoing series sacrificed where we have been talking with working class folks, living, working and fighting for justice in different, so-called Sacrifice Zones around the US and even beyond. And we are sitting here in the great red Emma’s cooperative bookstore and cafe and organizing space here in Baltimore. Shout out to Red Emmas, thank you for hosting us.
And I also wanted to shout out and thank the great Dr. Nicole Fabrican for bringing us altogether, everyone at the South Baltimore Community Land Trust for bringing us together. And thank you for all the incredible work that y’all do, and thank you all for being here. And yeah, as listeners of this show, no, I didn’t expect to be doing this kind of work. I’ve been doing this show for years, mainly talking to working people about their lives, jobs, dreams and struggles, but within the context of their workaday lives and labor shop floor struggles. And that’s why I was interviewing railroad workers a few years ago, nonstop, all of whom were telling me that there was a crisis on the freight rail system. I talked to engineers, I talked to dispatchers, I talked to the folks who maintain the track, right? And all of them were saying some version of the same thing, which is that corporate greed has destroyed this vital element of our supply chain, and it is putting all of us workers, residents, and our planet at Hazard, and they were screaming for someone to listen to them, and they were demanding of those companies and of their government and of the public that we support them.
And instead, as we all know, a little over two years ago, Joe Biden and both parties in Congress worked together to block railroad workers from going on strike, forced a contract down their throats and basically told them to shut up and go away. Two months later, east Palestine happened, a Norfolk southern bomb train derailed in Hilary’s backyard, and then three days later, the Norfolk Southern pressured local authorities to make the disastrous and unnecessary decision to vent and burn five cars worth of toxic vinyl chloride, spewing a massive black death plume into the air that we all remember seeing Hilary and her neighbors lived it, and they are still living in it. I mean, I think one thing that we want to emphasize here and that’s going to come out in the stories of our incredible panelists is that maybe you heard about the issues that they’re dealing with in the past, and then it faded from the headlines.
That does not mean the issue has gone away. In fact, quite the opposite is true in most cases. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been wins and struggle, and we want to make space to talk about that as well. But I really want to emphasize first and foremost that when communities are sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits or government negligence or what have you, I mean, these are people’s lives. These are communities that are destroyed and then forgotten. And as a journalist investigating and talking to folks living in these areas, what I’m realizing is we’re going to run out of places to forget. And so it breaks my heart going from East Palestine to South Baltimore to communities around the country talking to folks who feel so forgotten yet who are dealing so many of the same problems caused by the same villains. And so really, we’re here to talk about what we as fellow workers, as neighbors can do to band together to put a stop to this, to get justice and to build a world in which this kind of thing is not only unthinkable, but it sure as hell isn’t as normalized as it is today.
And so with all that upfront, I want to shut up and really just have you all listen more to the incredible women I’m sitting next to. I want us in the first half of this to just sort of talk a bit more for listeners and folks here about your story, about where you come from, about the kind of issues that you all are dealing with in your own respective communities. Because each has its own specificities. Every community is different. And then in the second half, I want us to talk about the significance of all of us being here together, of what y’all have seen in Baltimore, what discussions you’re getting into and what we can do to fight these corporate villains, wall Street monsters and corporate politicians who are destroying the planet upon which we all depend. So with all that upfront, Angie, I wanted to turn it back over to you since you are home based here in Baltimore. Tell us a bit more about yourself and about the struggle going on in Curtis Bay for folks who maybe haven’t heard about it yet.
Angela Shaneyfelt:
I grew up not in Curtis Bay or Brooklyn, I grew up just a little bit south of there in Anne Arundel County in Pasadena, a suburb of Baltimore City. And honestly, when I was younger, I said I would never live in the city, ever. And here I am 16 years later in the city that I said I would never live in. When I first moved to Curtis Bay, I never even thought about the coal other than it’s getting in my house. And I opened my windows the first year I lived there. And then after that first year, I was like, what is this black dust in my house and where is it coming from? And so we figured out that it was from the coal pile that’s two blocks, three blocks, city blocks down from where I live, just wafting into my house any way it could get in.
And so that’s when I just didn’t for 15 now years that I’ve not opened my windows at all. And then never, still didn’t pay attention to it honestly. And then December 30th happened, 2021, and literally I felt the sonic didn’t know what it was, did the mental checks looking around, and my kids were in the living room with me. My husband was on his way to Dunking Donuts. I had Covid, my daughter had covid, so we couldn’t go outside. He was going for coffee and we felt the pressure from the boom, didn’t hear anything yet. And I’m just looking around, what is it? My kids are looking at me for direction they didn’t know. And then we heard it and it shook our house. There’s neighbors that had windows blown out from this explosion. And then I looked at my daughter and she, one doesn’t, even before this, never really dealt well with loud noises or balloons.
And I’m looking at her and she literally wasn’t there. And my kids were around seven or eight at the time, so I had to tap on her chin three times to get her to come back to normal. And in that couple minutes time, I had to do the checks. The electricity’s still on. My windows are intact, and I live in Baltimore, so there’s nobody shooting outside my house. So we’re okay, but I don’t know what happened. And so then after the explosion, initial explosion happened, I go outside what we do here in Baltimore, go outside and talk to neighbors.
We didn’t get any alerts at all from any government agency, but word on the street what we go by a lot of times in South Baltimore because kind of the forgotten part of Baltimore City word on the street was there’s no threat to the community. But if you go outside and we found this out hours later from news and whatever, if you go outside, wear a mask, now it’s 2021 and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, of course we’re going to wear a mask, but why are you telling me to wear a mask if I go outside if there’s no threat to the community, like one plus one equals two in my world and that doesn’t add up. So with C, I lost my sense of smell and taste, and I had a mask on anyway, I was coming back inside because it was don’t go outside.
I had the worst suer and rotten egg smell that I’ve ever smelled in my life without a sense of smell and a mask on. So I don’t know, I can only imagine what a normal person at that point would’ve been smelling in our neighborhood. And so then my husband comes back and I literally was shuffling him inside because go inside, don’t be outside. And he had no clue. He was driving up the hill when the initial blast happened to the point where he felt like the car tires were lifting up off the ground and he stopped when he made the turn off of the street right next to ours and to check the tires to make sure there was still air in the tires. And that’s just one explosion. There’s been a history of explosions from CSX and they initially didn’t know it wasn’t us.
We’ve heard different things like it’s not our coal that is in our neighborhood, that is in your neighborhood. It comes from across the water in Ock, but your coal doesn’t leave the terminal. We’re breathing in somebody else’s coal. They tried to say it wasn’t coal. Well, what is it? Black dust. And now the community with the help of some scientists from John Hopkins have done the research, which we shouldn’t have to do. Honestly, we shouldn’t have to do that. The MDE and EPA should be doing their job. That’s their job, not our job to protect us as a community and as a city.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just to clarify for folks listening, y’all heard the episodes that we’ve done in the past with Angie and her neighbors in South Baltimore, and what we’re talking about here is the massive open air like coal terminal that is owned and operated by CSX rail, multi-billion dollar rail company that these uncovered coal cars have been coming in and out of that terminal for decades over a century. So we’re talking about the explosion that happened at the cult pier that Angie was referring to, but as you’ll hear later on in the conversation, and as y’all remember from our past episodes based on South Baltimore, this is sadly only one of many polluters poisoning Angie and her community.
Elise Keaton Wade:
So my name is Elise Keaton again, Elise Keaton Wade. It’s tough when you get married later in life, confuses things and complicates things. I said in my introduction that I got started with my environmental activism in college because I had to go away to college to learn about the environmental degradation happening in my backyard. And imagine my surprise at 19 years old when I’m sitting in an Appalachian studies course in Virginia Tech and I hear the words mountaintop removal for the very first time in my life, and I’m like, what are we talking about? And that visceral reaction to something so wrong, and that journey over the last 25 years has landed me in places where really tragic things are happening. For example, I graduated law school the year that Katrina happened. I was in the evacuation from Houston, from Rita where more people died in the evacuation from Rita than died in Katrina.
And that’s a little known fact, right? The entire city of Houston tried to leave within 36 hours and we sat for 28 hours going nowhere. But my policy mind was always at work in those instances, what is the policy that got us here? What is happening? Why am I staring at a bridge? And I was naive. I don’t know who said it earlier about being a naive high school student, but I thought it was a great statement that I’m a student. Of course I’m naive. I don’t know what’s going on right in my naivete, I thought this hurricane was going to be something that’s shone the light on all of these policy issues. This hurricane was going to show that we weren’t able to evacuate in a big way very quickly from some mass event. What if it wasn’t a hurricane? What if it wasn’t explosion or a chemical plant or some trained derailment with deadly chemicals going into the air?
We are ill-equipped across the board to deal with those types of things. That was in 2005, right? What the hell have we been doing? What have we been doing? Where is our plan? Right? So now, okay, it’s 2014. No, it’s not today. You’re glad I drank the espresso, I’m telling you. So it’s 2024 and in West Virginia right now what we’re dealing with is poisoned water in Indian Creek in Wyoming County because the coal companies are going back into the coal mines for the methane, the coal bed methane that’s down there. And one way they’re trying to figure out how to get it out of there is to flush it out with water.
Well, they’ve found out pretty quickly, that’s a terrible idea, but they continued to do it and continued to pollute. It’s been about a year and a half, maybe close to two years that this community has been aware of this, and they’re just now acknowledging that they have an issue. And yesterday they withdrew their permits to continue this practice. It was because hashtag Appalachian living on TikTok, my girlfriend Lindsay Riser who’s out there beating the drum every day, calling out the hypocrisy, telling people, why are you not talking about the industry that’s poisoning us? At the same time, we have a solid candidate coming out of that district. This is my Senate district, my state Senate District nine. She is a 35 year member of Teachers union. She started teaching right out of high school. She is from our community. She’s been a teacher for decades. She is pro West Virginia. She got involved in politics because one of her children is transgender, and she had to sit in our legislature and listen to them abuse transgender individuals with their legislation. It triggered her into action. The UMWA United Mine Workers Association, the union that we wear our bandanas to remember and to support supported her candidacy in the primary. They’re supporting her Republican opponent in the general.
Now out of respect for her, I’m going to wait until after the election to address this issue, but this issue will be addressed because of East Palestine. East Palestine is the reason that I am involved again in these issues. When Nikki brought me to East Palestine and I heard what really happened and the fact that very few news outlets were actually telling us the real news about what was happening up there, I realize it’s never going to stop. They are never going to stop doing this to us. The only people who have ever shown up for our communities are the people within our communities. And unless we’re there making other people show up, they don’t come. They’re not trying to help us and find out what’s going on. It is up to us every single time I’ve been around long enough to know Katrina, Rita, name your disaster, right?
It’s not changing and it’s unacceptable. It is disastrous and unnecessary to quote our host. And so when you find yourself in these systems and these situations where you are somewhat powerless as an individual, right? I can stand up and scream all night long and it’s not going to get anything done, but I can work in regional coordination and support the people who are in these different areas because those trains roll through my community. The coal in your bay came from my mountains in West Virginia that we have stood on as activists. They’re blowing mountains apart. Those mountains filter clean water. That’s a very shortsighted plan, don’t you think? So everything that happens in Appalachia, in West Virginia, in East Palestine, in Baltimore, this is all coordinated together and us talking to each other and having in these gatherings and committing to supporting each other regionally is their biggest fear because we’re recognizing our power and we’re using it. So I don’t know, that’s exactly the question you asked, but it felt good while I was saying it, so I’m going to stick with it. All right. Alright, with
Maximillian Alvarez:
Nah, sister, preach. Everything you guys say is incredible and important. I only picked the mic back up just to note and make a very grim footnote for listeners, because we just published another installment of this series where I spoke to two folks on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina providing mutual aid and trying to repair their destroyed community, their destroyed region, and something that Byron Ballard, who’s there working at a church and doing great work, said that really stuck with me. If you’re trying to see the connections here, not only through manmade climate change and all the ways that that is making these massive hurricanes bigger, more destructive and going and destroying parts of Western North Carolina for Pete’s sake, but what she said, because we’ve seen those pictures of towns that have been wiped off the map, mudslides that have taken towns off the map that have killed families. She said mountaintop removal made those mudslides a lot worse. So just really wanted to drive that home. If you think that these are distinct issues that aren’t going to come back and combine in monstrous ways they already are. Melanie, please hop in.
Melanie Meade:
Thank you Max. In Clariton. In 2005, I was successfully working at American University in Bowie State. I was part-time adjunct professor in Spanish. I was so proud to have my job. I went home to a Clairton reunion we have during Labor Day and I woke up the next morning in the hospital being diagnosed with what is called nocturnal epilepsy. That emergency doctor did not tell me what it came from and no other doctor could find it whenever they did scans of my brain. But then in 2013, when I came home to bury my father, I met a gentleman named Dave Smith and he was working for Clean Air Council and he had taught me about the campaign leaders of 10 and he said, Melanie, get 10 friends and tell them to each get one friend and let’s start talking about our shared issues. In 2018, fires burned the size of three football fields for 17 days before the mayor and Health Department informed us little black boys because they’re typically outside and want to be outside and play outside. We’re five times more affected according to a doctor’s report. Then we came to find out months later that everyone’s health was harmed who live within 10 miles of the USX Claritin K works.
And we didn’t get the right help, nor did we know what kind of help we needed. So there were people who came in to say they were helping, but we never really found out the truth. And it disturbed me to find out that those fires burned again in 2019 total of over 100 days, and it wasn’t on the news anymore. Hilary and I are very close, so we’re not in competition, but I felt like USX was in control of the media. There was a stop and desist with USXK works to talk about the trains, and those trains come through clariton as well. I can hear them all through the night and day.
That’s where I realized we have to remain connected. We have to tell our stories, we have to have real news. We have to have real journalists that report the truth according to what we have experienced because it can’t be done any other way. And I’m just really encouraged to have you all to look, to call on and come together like this because this is helpful and it’s healing to know that our work is meaningful and it will result in something. So I just continue to thank you for real news. I continue to thank Curtis Bay for sharing your stories. I continue to thank Hilary. I continue to thank Elise, Dr. Fabricant, all of you who are here because you are the wind beneath my wings, not having my parents or siblings. It can be a lonely place, but you fill those voids for me and I’m so very grateful for you all and I’m so very grateful that we can say let’s blow stuff up.
Hilary Flint:
I just want to start off by something I feel like is not spoken about enough is that East Palestine did get a lot of media coverage, especially in the beginning, right? We were on all the news stations and it was this big plume, but I genuinely think it’s not because USX is not allowing media to do things. I think it’s because we’re a predominantly white community, and I’m going to be super frank about that. Myself and two other community members were able to meet President Biden within a year of the trained derailment. And I have to see black leaders in Louisiana and in Texas who have been doing this fight for 40 plus years, 50 years, and they do not get proximity to the White House. They get nowhere near it. So I just want to start with that because I think we talk about East Palestine a lot and it’s like, yeah, we got the media coverage because it was a white community and it was not only that, it’s a very conservative area.
So it was a flashier news story than, oh, we’ve been poisoning people for 40 years. It was different. And that’s what was different about it is that we were a white, small rural community. And I try to do the work that now we can bring people with us because one thing about your whiteness is I can’t get rid of it, but what I can do is utilize it to then make sure that now the White House is contacting other communities because it’s disgusting to me that you feel this guilt that day that myself and other community members met with President Biden, I had the most extreme guilt because it was like we did this in a year and through that year I was connecting with communities all over the United States that went through environmental disasters. And I had to think like, oh, you expect, oh wow, that’s so cool.
You did that in one year. And so part of it, you do have that little bit of pride and you’re like, yeah, that’s awesome. And then you’re like, but why could I do that? Watching these other women, and by the way, it’s usually women, it’s usually female activists. I’m watching them and I heard Melanie speak one day and I was like, that is a fierce woman. And if Melanie Mead isn’t getting the help that she needs, then there is something wrong with the system. And that’s what this solidarity building is. It’s so important. But I did want to talk about the day of the derailment and how people think it is the derailment. That’s the problem. I refer to this as the East Palestinian trained derailment and chemical disaster because the derailment is just a piece of the puzzle. And yes, there was all these chemicals and there was fires, but it really wasn’t until a couple of days later when they burned the vinyl chloride that my community was affected.
So we know this as the East Palestine trained around it, but it’s directly on the border where this happened. Pennsylvania is right there, and other communities outside of East Palestine were affected and will be affected down the line, but it would not be as bad as it will be that vinyl chloride changed the game. So that’s the mushroom cloud that everyone saw. And I remember that day very distinctly because I was convinced I was glued to the news thinking they’re going to evacuate us. Of course they are. East Palestine at that point had been under evacuation. It was a one by two mile radius, but where I lived, you could see the smoke. So I’m thinking they’re going to have to evacuate us. And so then I’m watching the TV and I see, oh, my little brother’s school, they’re sending the kids home and our school is way further away from East Palestine than our physical home.
So I’m thinking, oh, okay, they’re sending the kids home so then we can evacuate as families. He gets home and we’re waiting and we’re waiting and we’re seeing, I’m watching the press conference on the news. They’re saying, alright, at three 30 we’re going to blow this up. And the call that we were looking for never came. We were never going to be evacuated. It was just a one by two mile radius. Now we’re over a year out and there is proof that this plume traveled to 16 different states. So imagine a one by two mile radius. Us, my family chose to self evacuate. We did it very last minute. I had my go-bag prepped. My Italian grandma was like, I’m not leaving my house. So last minute we got Mimi. We got Mimi in the car. She was the last one. But as we were driving away and we had no idea where we were going by the way, it was just like, you just have to get away.
And I look in the rear view mirror and that’s when they blew it up. So it felt like I was a storm chaser running away from a tornado or something. That’s what it felt like. And you see it. And at that moment, my dog just started barking like crazy, just barking like crazy. And I think they have a more sensitive smell and things like that. And we just kept driving and I’m like, where are we going by the way? So I don’t know. I had family in another town. So we went and I was sat in my cousin’s driveway for hours. She wasn’t home. And then I was like, well, I guess we’re going to have to get a hotel. Because once we saw what it looked like, some of my neighbors that had stayed behind at the farm next door to me and took pictures, I was shocked.
People were alive. It was black. The whole area was just black smoke. I couldn’t imagine that was safe to go home to. So we did end up getting a hotel. It was the last hotel book. We are small communities. Guess what? We don’t have a lot of hotel rooms available and the National Guard there. And we were checking in kind of at the same time. And so I had asked this man in full uniform, I said, we weren’t supposed to be evacuated, but we did anyway. What would you have done in that situation? And he said, ma’am, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t even be here right now. So this is someone in full uniform who came to respond to the crisis, who understood how dangerous it was. And at that point we were like 15 miles away and he didn’t even want to be there.
And the next day they say everything’s fine, everyone can go home. And I remember I had a business trip that I had to go back, pack my bag, and then go to the airport. The minute we opened the door of our home, I knew everything had changed. It was a smell that I had never sm smelled before. I couldn’t even find the correct words to describe it except sweet bleach. It was a chemical smell, but it also smelled sugary. And within a few minutes we had health symptoms. I mean, it did not take long. So I have some preexisting health conditions. I have chronic illness, and one of the diseases that I have is called rainy odds. And in rayons it causes blood vessel constriction. So you turn purple. Now, I’ve always had rayons since I was little. My hands would turn purple, but I’d never had it go beyond that.
And all of a sudden I look down, my feet are purple, everything is turning purple. And it wasn’t until later I find out that their vinyl chloride is one of the known triggers of that particular disease. And when we’re told it’s safe to go home, my question is, who is it safe for? It’s not safe for everyone. It’s not safe for people with asthma. It’s not safe with for people with preexisting conditions, but that is what we operate off of. It’s a blanket statement of, oh, it’s safe. That’s not true. It wasn’t safe for me. And then I had to get on a plane and leave my family and say, oh, I had to go to work. And so I was on this work trip and just, I smelled, there was a smell that lingered. So I get off the plane, I was flying to California and my boss and I are meeting at the airport and I go to hug him and he goes, Ooh, why do you smell like that?
It came with me to California. And that smell traveled with me for a full year. I had to leave all my clothes behind. I had to leave mattresses. You couldn’t take anything that was a soft surface because this chemical smell lived in it. And no matter how many times you washed it, it didn’t matter. And it got to the point where it became embarrassing because you had a smell. My partner also has chronic illness, and the smell would make him sick just from me being in his home. And it got to the point where when I would go over, I would have to get completely naked at the door, get in a shower, shut my clothes in a basement. I would have to shower, I would’ve to put on different clothes that I had to buy to keep there. And it was so I didn’t feel like a human.
And I remember at one point I was crying. I was so upset, I was so tired. And I was like, I can’t believe I have to go through this whole ritual, this decontamination ritual. And I just remember him saying, it’s not you, honey, it’s the chemicals. I’m like, I don’t know that. That makes me feel that much better, right? Yeah. He would get nosebleeds just from being around my suitcase. And so about six months in, I ended up, I worked two jobs until I could afford to move. Because when they tell you to just move, it actually doesn’t work like that, especially if you were exposed to a chemical. So now all of your belongings, you can’t take them with you. And so when I did move, I finally got a place, I was on an air mattress. Me and my grandma were sharing an air mattress on the ground.
There was no furniture. I just got a couch. And I’ve been there for over a year at this point, because you are rebuilding, you were starting over again. And so I’ve had to work from the crack of dawn until it’s dark out. And that’s what I had to do to move. And that’s a privilege, right? Not everyone even has that privilege. That’s pretty shocking. I can do that as a disabled person. But I look at people with families. My family is a small, well, small business owner, but we own a lot of acreage. And my parents want to move. But when you have 10,000 acres and you have a business based on tourism, and guess what? You can’t sell it. So where are you going to go? And you can’t pull equity out of your house. So they’re stuck. I could just up and move.
I didn’t have the business. I didn’t have this and that. So now my grandma and I, we lived in the home. My great-grandmother built on the land that my family originally lived on. My parents built a house in the backyard. I had moved back home because I had cancer. And I was a young adult and I couldn’t financially recover unless I did that. My plan was I live back with my grandma and then I build a house in the backyard. Cause we have 40 acres, we have our own little commune. That can’t happen now. There’s no way we used to lease farm land. And how can we ethically do that? How can we ethically, if you have farmers who want to farm that land, is that ethical? Is it ethical to sell your home? So right now, we just have our home sitting there because we don’t feel comfortable selling it.
And I had someone who was a lawyer be like, oh, actually you can, it’s okay. And I said, I’m not actually asking about the law here. I’m talking about ethics. Can I sell this home so that some little kid someday gets angiosarcoma, which is the cancer that vinyl chloride is tied to? So in the beginning, I was kind of the person behind the scenes organizing, I don’t really like to do stuff like this. I’m the person who likes to prep people for these things. And about six months in, I realized I was going to have to do this and step up. And so we had a grassroots group that we started just like a volunteer. We weren’t a nonprofit, we weren’t anything. And people always said like, oh, why didn’t you become a nonprofit right away? And I said, oh, because we didn’t want the rules.
So we did have some civil disobedience in the beginning. That’s how I met Robin and David. They went to the Ohio State Capitol with us. And we didn’t storm the capitol, but we had people go sit in a session and stand up and say, remember he is Palestine. My kid’s nose is bleeding. And let me tell you, once you go back to your community after you do something like that, things don’t go well. Small, rural conservative communities aren’t really into that kind of thing. But it was effective. And the reason we went when we did was one thing we thought that could help us was a major disaster declaration because we didn’t even get a state of emergency. It opened up this problem that because there was a company who was the reason this happened, the liability was with that company and it wasn’t a natural disaster.
So there was just so many things behind the scenes that they couldn’t figure out how to classify the disaster essentially to give us the government services we needed. But we thought a major disaster declaration would help. In the beginning had started a petition. We had over 20,000 signatures. And then it was the next day it was, if the governor didn’t ask President Biden for that, then you could never get it. And so we went because we knew we had to put pressure on Ohio’s governor to win Pennsylvania’s governor. I found out couldn’t even call that disaster declaration because it physically didn’t happen. So where an accident happens is really important apparently. So we went and we put the pressure on, and guess what? The next day DeWine did ask for the disaster declaration. So it worked to the whole community hated us after that. And I mean, still to this day, Facebook groups terrify me like what they’re saying about us, but it’s what we had to do.
And that’s what I’ve realized. Some of these decisions I have to make in this work is like, I have to do this and I’m not going to be liked after, and I have to do this in a way that I can stay in the work too. So maybe sometimes that means not organizing as close to home. I learned that federal policy actually can help us a lot more than talking to my representatives when they tell you, oh, talk to your representatives, talk to your counsel. That is true in some cases, but in this case, that wasn’t true. So a lot of my work has been about going to the very top and figuring out what we can get from the government. And unfortunately, it doesn’t happen quick. It does not happen quick. And so by the time we are going to get the things we’re fighting for, people are going to be sick.
There’s already people sick. There’s people with rare forms of breast cancer. There’s young girls getting their period super early. There’s respiratory issues. I was hospitalized multiple times. My sibling was life-flighted multiple times. My three-year-old sister has obstructive sleep apnea, which only happened after the derailment. So the system was horrible. And that’s kind of what I’m trying to change. And we found out when we did get to meet at the White House, something I had asked later, I said to them, what got us here? What was the difference maker? And they actually said, we noticed you were working with other communities and other industries. And they talked about the fact that we were working with labor, we were working with unions, and then they found out that we’ve been working with the Gulf South and we were working in West Virginia. And that scared them. It should.
And that got us in the door. And that’s why I think what we’re doing here is more important than anything we could do because this is what scares them. People coming together and realizing it’s not left versus right. It’s not Republican versus liberal. It is us versus them. And we are the people. We’re the everyday people. It’s us versus the billionaires in the systems and that’s scaring them. So we have to keep doing this in other communities because this is what gets the attention. Sometimes it’s not the rallies or the op-eds, sometimes it’s them simply understanding your network. So anytime I go to another community, I was in Louisiana at a public meeting and someone from industry said, oh, who are you and why are you here? And I said, oh, we all work together. And they were like, oh no. So letting industry know like, oh yeah, I know Elise in West Virginia. I know Nikki in Baltimore, and that’s really scary to them.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, let’s talk about that. Let’s go back around the table before we open it up to q and a. And I want to acknowledge that as y’all had laid out, and as Hilary, you were talking through some of the gains that you made by not going away. And I know that that has happened in your respective communities. Y’all are true heroes, love warriors for justice because you refuse to go away. And in that way, you were also an inspiration to all of us. So I want to acknowledge the fact that here in South Baltimore, y’all got together high school students, folks from Johns Hopkins doing community science to provide the proof that CSX without which CSX could keep on saying, no, that black shit in your home is not us, must be something else. So that’s a victory. But yet they’re still denying culpability. Their operational permits still up for renewal in coal country, right?
It’s like, oh, well, we stopped mining coal, now we’re fracking the shit out of everything and still poisoning the water that way. So I say this by way of asking if in our final turnaround the table, if y’all could say a little bit about what the communities have been doing and achieving through struggle, but also what this week has shown us in regards to as valiant and essential as those local efforts are to take on these international corporations. We need solidarity that’s operating at the level that they are and what we can do working together, building on what Hilary kind of got us started on. So yeah, could you say a little bit about what y’all and your communities have achieved and have been working towards, but also where you’re seeing that that’s not enough and that we need to band together to take this fight to the higher level higher.
Elise Keaton Wade:
So I want to start this. Can you hear me okay? I want to start this because their fights are more current in time than mine, and I want to kind of build on what Hilary said and then hand it to them to talk about their current struggles. But now you understand why Palestine at Palestine set me back on fire right now. You understand that I got there and realized that everything I’d seen wasn’t true. They were misleading the rest of the world about what happened there. And it wasn’t until I sat in the room and heard these people talk about why the people with no marks on their skin or their hair falling out were the ones who got to go into the White House, how they divided the community. And I stood next to my friend Dustin White who is here tonight with me.
He was at that meeting and the entire time they were talking about how that community and how the officials responded in that disaster. We were looking at each other across the room. That’s exactly what they did in 2014 at the Elk River Chemical disaster in West Virginia. The leak spill, whatever, nearly verbatim responses. And then the split, you have a coalition of people and we cobbled ourselves together. And now they’re going to pick and choose who they bring into the room so that when you leave that room, there’s division within your community. They did exactly the same thing to us. And I sat there with my jaw on the floor and they’re going to keep doing it to every community. There’s their standard playbook. So yes, what scares them is that we talk to each other now that we stand in solidarity with each other, that I go and raise hell with the union in West Virginia for our railroad brothers and sisters in East Palestine who stood for two months and screamed about the safety issues on this railroad, screamed to the people in this country about what was happening and what was going to happen if they didn’t shut it down and address it.
And we told ’em to sit down and shut up because our economy needed those trains to roll. Now, if you’ve been with me for the past couple of days, I’ve been on a bit of a diatribe about the failed economic theory of capitalism. Happy to go into that more on another podcast Max. But this is a great example.
This is a great example of why it doesn’t work, because if it worked in theory, they would’ve taken as long as they needed to clean up that mess because it would’ve been what was safe and best for the community and for making sure that the altruistic idea of what happened happened. That’s not what happened in West Virginia. If they cared about the community and the long-term effects, they would’ve addressed the issues that caused that chemical spill, which are mountaintop removal and contamination of local water sources from coal mining and chemical production. If they care, they don’t care. The only people who have ever shown up for us are us. The only people who have ever shown up for us are us. And then we have to support each other. Don’t let them divide us. Don’t let them go back and forth. So I want to step back and just say that the fact that it has become more egregious, they are pushing that boundary, right?
They are pushing it constantly and they will continue. Every community in this country has a train rail through it. This could be Hinton, this could be any town that has a railway through it. And what are they going to do? They’re going to destroy your lives with their contamination and they’re going to point fingers at each other and they’re going to point fingers at you and tell you it’s really not as bad as you say it is, because how do you know it wasn’t the nail polish you were wearing that caused the toxicity in your body?
Yeah, that’s what they told me. Do you wear nail polish? Do you color your hair? Well, how do you know you didn’t poison yourself? Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you drink soda West Virginia? Maybe you’re the problem. I want to say one thing about the myth of the inbred hillbilly, because this is one of my favorite things to talk about in broad groups, and I think it goes back a long time in our history, and I know everybody’s heard about the inbred hillbilly. If you haven’t heard about the inbred hillbilly, raise your hand. This is so diffused throughout our culture, right? Well, I went into the world carrying the identity of the hillbilly that had to do better. I had to prove that we’re not all inbred, that some of us aren’t. So I let them tell me who I was. I accepted their identity of who they told me I, I carried it with me into the world espousing it.
I came back to West Virginia because I love my state. I wanted to come back and do the good things that I’d learned out there that nobody taught me here, come back here and do those good works. And when I got back here with a little bit of perspective and context and some world experience, I realize that may be the biggest hoax of the 20th century. Because what happens when you live next to unregulated pollutants? You have high instances of birth defects, cancers deadly diseases. You die young, you die sick. You have offspring that are compromised and sick and young. And 150 years ago, all of these toxins were going unchecked into the community. And what better way to marginalize that community than they say, well, don’t look at that ugliness. They inbred and they changed the narrative and they framed a region for decades. The myth of the inbred hillbilly is still carried forward.
So it is on purpose. It is deliberate. If they can tell you who you are and what you’ve done to f your life up, then they’re not responsible. So don’t let them gaslight you. Stand firm and speak your truth to power because you’re right at the end of the day. You’re right. And what did Larry Gibson teach us? Teach us while we stood on Payford Mountain? If you’re telling the truth, what are you afraid of? Speak your truth to power and stand firm. And you’ve got brothers and sisters in West Virginia standing with you and you’ve got brothers and sisters in Pennsylvania standing with you. You’ve got brothers and sisters in Curtis Bay standing with you. So thank you for standing up East Palestine, we are with you in this. Thank you.
Angela Shaneyfelt:
Thank all of you. And I’m so, so glad that we’re sitting all here in this room together tonight because Curtis Bay, we’re at a point right now. We’re pushing. We’re getting the attention that East Palestine got. And I mean, I said it two years ago at a rally. Let’s take this to Annapolis and to dc. We’re so close to DC that we can’t stop fighting the fight. And it’s not for us. It’s for my kids who are in middle school right now. And my daughter joined us today for as long as she could hang, and she got up on the steps and she said her, she was awesome. And we have the higher cancer rates in Curtis Bay, like asthma rates. I never had asthma growing up. And I found out I had asthma in 2020 in the hospital for surgery. And they’re like, this is your breathing treatment. And I’m like, breathing treatment for what? Nobody ever told me I had asthma.
And we have been fighting. We’ve been going to city council. And at one point they didn’t listen, but then we kept fighting and we kept calling the news. And Max, thank you for starting the whole podcast thing and just getting the word out. I’ve gone through times. I mean, the fight is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. And I’ve had my own thoughts. What am I doing this for? I doing it. And I just, I’m so grateful right now that I’m sitting in this room with you guys because we’ve gotten to a point where what is our next step? And I’ve even said it along the way. There’s this lull of large numbers, and I see it happening right now. I didn’t know any of you guys before today. So I knew Nikki for a few years and I never would’ve ever imagined before 2021 that I would ever be sitting in circles that I’m sitting in now. And now I’m 16 years ago, I wanted to be out of Curtis Bay as fast as possible no matter what. And then kids happen. And Curtis Bay is where I can afford to live in all honesty. And in two years, I’m like ready to, the plan is to buy a house. Is it going to be in Curtis Bay? A hundred percent, no. But I’m invested now. So even if I move out, I’m still coming back to keep the fight going and keep the story going, to make the change because that’s what I need to do.
Melanie Meade:
My father taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Thomas Vme. He passed in 2013. And the reason he stayed in Clariton is because the family land that we had called Randolph Hollow was taken over for mill housing and he felt like it was worth it to sacrifice his life and his health so that our history could not be forgotten. And so when I hear Hilary stand in solidarity, and the new friend I have in Curtis Bay stand in solidarity, Elise and Dr. Nikki standing in solidarity with me, I know that I’m on the right path. I know that I have not forgotten my history, who I am and what I’m capable of. And I think each and every one of you are fierce in your own way. And it is so wonderful that we have this opportunity because we need it. We need to check in with ourselves, check in with others, because we are the ones showing up for ourselves, as Elisa said. And I need each and every one of you for the long haul. So thank you again, and let’s keep doing the work.
Hilary Flint:
To go off of what Melanie said, it’s stuff like this that keeps me in the work. So that’s a question I ask myself a lot, and I see other activists and I think, what do they need to stay in the work? What do I need to stay in the work? And every once in a while it’s going to a community and getting inspired by their wins. I noticed how closely the communities here, the EJ conversation is happening with housing injustice and you’re talking about racial justice, and we don’t see a lot of that in our corner of Appalachia. That type of solidarity building doesn’t happen. And so I get to leave and be really inspired by that. I have been working with a group of folks from the Gulf South, and we’re talking about creating an area where climate refugees can live. So I’m looking at the passive housing and I’m thinking, oh, interesting. And I bet a funder would fund something like that. So I get to think about those different ways of doing the work. And we just don’t celebrate joy very much in Appalachia, unfortunately.
And to see the positivity and the solutions, I got to see solutions to problems instead of just problems where we are just stuck in the doom and gloom. So for me, coming to this, this is what keeps me in the work. It keeps me going, but then as most people know, I’m a homebody. So I’ll go home and you won’t see me for three weeks now because this social battery, but we all have, that’s such an important lesson. As an activist, what are your boundaries? What keeps you in the work? What are you comfortable in and what are not? What type of hate are you willing to put up with? What’s going to cross the line for you? It can get really bad. I always say being an activist is choosing to be a target, and not only to industry, but sometimes community, sometimes politicians.
So again, it’s like what’s going to keep me in the work creating solutions to some of those problems? So something we’ve been trying to do is, again, bring mutual aid into the work. Because what we found out is in East Palestine and Beaver County, they go, oh, well there’s not property damage and there’s not this and there’s not that. So no one’s coming to help you because you don’t fit in a box. And mutual aid is the answer to that, right? It’s community care. It’s, we’re not looking for a box to check off on a grant. You tell me you need a mattress, we get you a mattress. And so how do we make sure that that’s present in the nonprofit industry? So we are fighting really hard to get mutual aid funds set up at small grassroots nonprofits that are just meant for answering community need, peer support.
So something that we’re working on is building up mental health resources within the movement. And what does it look to make sure other nonprofits are trauma informed, because what I saw was a lot of groups coming in and taking advantage of people, and I was expected to tell my story of my battle with cancer, and then I turned purple and I wasn’t getting paid for any of that. So something that I’ve been doing is I call people out and I say, you can build paying community members into a grant. And so we do it with everything. We build that money into a grant. And I did a video project where I made sure we paid everyone and paid them well. And this one funder said, that’s revolutionary. We don’t do that. And I said, paying people for their work is revolutionary. I said, and we are the progressive industry.
No, we’re not. So thinking about what does care look like in every aspect, because we are not going to stay in this fight. And as we’ve seen it as a long fight, if we don’t think about those things and we’re just, I’m an action oriented person, I’m like, I got to keep going. I got to keep going. And so that gets tiring. And it’s like sometimes I need Melanie to be like, Hilary, have you checked in with yourself today? Are you doing your self care? And we don’t always get that in our own community because when you’re fighting so closely together, people want to do the work differently. And there’s just so much division going on. The minute I decided that I was going to meet the president and then continue a relationship with politicians, it was, she’s been bought off.
We can’t trust her anymore. And I had to be okay with that and say, that’s fine. I’m going to work silently. I’m going to get done what I know is going to work because I have been with all of these people now for a year. I know what the needs are and I don’t need to be liked anymore, but I do need to be liked by someone. So that’s where activists come in. They remind me, okay, Hilary, you’re loved and respected in some just not your own home right now. So, okay. So it builds that friendship. And when I get to come and be with Melanie, or even I work very closely with Robin at home, and just to have people that keep filling you up, even if it’s just a couple people in the community, a couple people in different neighborhoods, or when you go through a really heavy situation and no one in your community can relate to it, I can say, Hey Melanie, have you ever experienced this?
What does it mean? Can you just be my friend right now and talk me through it? No one else gets it in the community. So again, there’s nothing more important than the solidarity building that we’re doing right now. It’s what scares them. I heard it from the highest up mouth that I could find in the United States. This is what scares them. So the more we do it, the more we win. Especially when it comes to public hearings, public comment periods, vinyl chloride, the chemical that ruined my home on October 23rd, you have until October 23rd to submit a public comment about what you think about that chemical, should it be banned. They’ve known since the 1970s that it was a carcinogen. It was the reason the EPA started something called tosca. Yet it has yet to be banned by tosca. This is the first year it’s up to be banned.
Just letting each other know, Hey, I have a public comment period. I would really appreciate it. Because then guess what? They look and they go, oh crap. They got all these public comments from Pennsylvania. They’ve hit every state. Now we’re going to have to do something no longer. Oh no, we poisoned this one community. We poisoned this one community. And they talk to this other poison community, and they talk to this house that has these people that have been dealing with racism. And then they talk to these people that are dealing with transgender rights and they go, oh, so reminding each other, we have some group chats that’ll be like, Hey guys, public comment period here. Submit. And just finding ways to engage with each other outside of this stuff is really important. Mutual aid fundraisers, some people I meet will have a chat where we’re just like, oh, here’s a GoFundMe.
Everyone send $5. And it doesn’t ruin my day to send someone $5 at this point. So it’s like, it’s so simple. But if you keep building out these networks and someone has a crisis, and I know people all over the United States, we can get a lot of money. I think we got $3,000 and not even 24 hours. And that’s just like us being random people. It wasn’t a part of our work. It’s just like you can get it because your network is big and your relationships are the work. And if people trust you, they’re going to donate to that. They trust you. So this is how we win
Melanie Meade:
In all aspects. Relationships are the work is powerful. And hills is,
Hilary Flint:
It wasn’t me, my colleague Andrew Wooer said it the first time, and I’ll never forget it because I don’t like emotional labor. I am someone who I don’t feel often. I just want to do. I want to solve problems. I want to keep going. And so I was getting so upset that people would be crying and I didn’t know what to do. I’m like, I don’t know what this means. I’m like Googling. I’m like, why would someone cry about this? So I was getting so frustrated and it was going to take me out of the work. It was because I was so bogged down and people would want to have two hour long conversations to tell me about their feelings. And I’m like, I am not the one I truly wish I was, but I’m not. So then you have to find your person who’s the one who does
Melanie Meade:
The feeling.
And I think what I learned here in Curtis Bay is education is important and valuable, especially for our youth in Clariton right now in 2024, we do not have climate change or environmental justice spoken of, nor will they allow me to go in and volunteer to talk to the youth. Our newest superintendent, who is an African-American woman, would not allow us to prepare a lawyer clinic because there are three remaining class action lawsuits for the 2018 and 2019 Christmas fires. So our youth are disengaged. Our little league football team practices directly across the street from the industry. And the coaches say to me, who are sickly, this is not harming us. It hasn’t harmed us. We did it when we were little. And that is what must stop aligning with Hilary, aligning with Elise, Dr. Nikki and Curtis Bay gives me voices to now take back to those coaches to say, look, here it is a problem and let’s stop it.
Let’s unite. Let’s stop allowing them to divide. Because our youth in Clariton are winning football games for 40 years and dying at the age of 20, overdosing on Fentanyl or other drugs less than 30 years. And we don’t have the time. We’re 50 years behind in the conversation. So we need to pick it up. And I’m able to pick it up because I have Hills, tiktoks and Curtis Bay and you Max real-time news. So that if you don’t understand, take a moment to listen here, check in and let’s continue this work. We are not defeated because we are together. Give it up for our incredible panel.
While Democrats are looking for scapegoats to blame for their losses on election day, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet and administration appointments. When it comes to US policy on issues ranging from the climate crisis to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, from public health policy to reproductive rights and labor rights and civil rights, from trade wars to mass deportations, one thing is clear: a lot is about to change. But between Trump’s own contradictory statements and a corporate, independent, and social media ecosystem overflowing with conjecture, misinformation, propaganda, and partisan hackery, it is difficult to know what exactly is coming, how we should be preparing for it, and how we can fight it.
So what are we facing, really? How do we get ready for the fight ahead? What tools do we need to parse fact from fiction in this critical moment, when talk is everywhere but truth is in short supply? What lessons from the last Trump administration can we use to effectively navigate the very different political terrain we’re on and media ecosystem we’re in today? In this livestream, we dug into these questions (and answered yours!) with independent media makers Abby Martin of Empire Files, Francesca Fiorentini of “The Bitchuation Room” podcast, and Kat Abughazaleh of Mother Jones.
Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Donald Trump is headed back to the White House in two months, and with the news this week that the GOP has won a majority in the House of Representatives, the fully MAGAfied Republican Party will effectively control all three branches of government: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.
The election was just over a week ago, and since then, Democrats have been busy pointing fingers at each other and looking for scapegoats to blame for their losses. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet appointments and administration appointments. Trump is already sending shockwaves with jaw dropping picks, tapping Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, for instance; Thomas Holman, an Obama-era appointee to ICE, who was one of the architects of Trump’s zero tolerance policy for border czar; Florida Senator and foreign policy hawk Marco Rubio has been tapped as secretary of state. And the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, are going to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency.
Listen, when it comes to US policy on issues ranging from climate change to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, from public health and social security to reproductive rights and labor rights and civil rights, from trade wars and tax codes to mass deportations, one thing is clear: a lot is about to change.
But between Trump’s own babbling contradictory statements and a corporate, independent, and social media ecosystem that is just overflowing with conjecture, doomerism, misinformation, propaganda, and partisan hackery, it can be really difficult to know just what exactly is coming down the pike, how we should be preparing for it, and how we can fight it.
So what are we facing really? How do we get ready for what’s coming? What tools do we need to parse fact from fiction in this critical moment when talk is everywhere but truth is in short supply? There’s a lot of sound and fury out there, and it’s only going to get louder and more confusing as we rumble onward into the dark unknown of the next four years.
And we need to get our heads and hearts right for the fight ahead. We need to have a clear-eyed understanding of the political terrain that we’re actually on and the media ecosystem that we’re operating in, both of which are decidedly different today compared to what they were in 2016 when Trump was first elected.
And that is exactly why I could not be more excited for today’s livestream, where we’re going to talk to three brilliant independent media makers who have so much to teach us about how to fight and win on that terrain. I’m truly honored to have joining us on the stream today the one and only Abby Martin, independent journalist host of the Empire Files, a vital interview and documentary series which everyone should go watch. She’s the director of the 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom and the new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy.
We’ve got the one and only Francesca Fiorentini, correspondent, comedian, host of the Bituation Room podcast, the former host and head writer of the web series News Broke on AJ Plus, and host of the special Red, White, and Who on MSNBC.
And we’ve got the one and only Kat Abu, video creator and TikTok Powerhouse who started her media career at Media Matters for America monitoring dangerous narratives on Fox News, and who now produces video explainers for Mother Jones, Zeteo, and her personal accounts, which have gained tens of millions of views over multiple platforms.
Abby, Francesca, Kat, thank you so much for joining us on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it.
Kat Abu:
Thanks for having us.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, woo! There’s a lot of questions I don’t know if we can answer.
Kat Abu:
I think the three of us can solve everything. That sounds right.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, sure, sure. Give us some time.
Kat Abu:
An hour.
Maximillian Alvarez:
[Laughs] Listen, man, I got a lot of confidence in this brilliant group, so we’re not going to be able to figure everything out, but we’re going to be able to figure some shit out. And we have so much to learn from the three of you, and I’m so grateful to all of you for being on this stream with us together.
And I did want to just give a note to the audience real quick here at the top that we are going to have an audience Q&A section later in the hour. I can’t promise that we’ll be able to get to everyone, but if you’ve got questions for our guests, please put them in the live chat and we’ll get to as many of them as we can at the back end of the hour here.
So let’s get rolling. We got a lot to dig into here. Abby, I want to come to you first, but this question’s going to be for everyone. So we’ll roll into Francesca and Kat after Abby. So I want to toss you guys this opening question here. Like I said in the intro, the past week has just been a dizzying avalanche of bad news amplified by a constant doom dump of panicked reactions to that news.
So I want to ask, how are you reacting to and processing all of this, and what’s your message to folks out there watching about the reality that we are actually facing with a second Trump administration? And are there specific cabinet appointments or policy changes or political battles that you are especially focused on right now?
Abby Martin:
Thanks so much for having me, Max. It’s great to be on this panel. I’m a little less shocked than I was in 2016, let’s say. I think I was resigned to the inevitability of a Trump presidency for about two years, ever since I found out Biden was sticking it in and not giving up his seat. I think we all got tricked for the last a hundred days when Kamala was anointed that we actually thought that it wasn’t maybe an inevitability, that Kamala did have a chance at winning. So ultimately, I’m just pissed off that the Democrats failed so abysmally and paved the road for this to happen, because it really does all fall on their shoulders.
But I think that when we take a step backward and look at the playing field and Democrats and Republicans and the ruling class here, Wall Street executives and a lot of billionaires and millionaires did resign to that ultimate Trump presidency far long ago, Max, and they already said, Larry Fink from BlackRock, the CEO already said nothing will fundamentally change because at the end of the day, it’s about capital accumulation whether or not you’re a Democrat or Republican. Yes, they may differ on religious zealotry and how much that has infiltrated politics, but ultimately they would much rather have a Trump, have someone who is fascist. Because we already know that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter for them. Their pocketbooks will still be lined and the capital will still be gained. They would ultimately much rather have Trump than someone like a Bernie Sanders.
Now, that’s not to discount the fears, the very real trepidation, obviously, from minorities, from trans people, from leftists. Trump ran on a very openly fascist platform where he said he was going to deport pro-Hamas sympathizers while there’s this upswell of pro-Palestine protests against the country.Oobviously the environment is going to be completely gutted. Every last vestige of regulation and protection are going to be thrown out the window.
So it’s a very dystopian time that we’re entering into, the fact that Trump has been able to dial into this not only conservative hegemony when you’re looking at mainstream media, because even though the conservatives paint it as the liberal media dominates everything, we know the power, scope, and reach of conservative media, and then he folded in all of the alternative media as well. And so that was a very smart strategy for him. We’re in for a very tough road ahead.
And somehow the Democrats failed to such an extreme degree that they even gave Trump an opening to seize on again this populist rhetoric and anti-war rhetoric. So amidst the Gaza genocide subsidizing this on behalf of the Democrats, Trump was able to seize and capture a huge swath of the populists who are rejecting status quoism and antiestablishmentism somehow, even though we’ve already had this man as president for four years and he gave nothing but whatever the ruling class wanted. But here we are again, facing down a second Trump presidency, and it’s going to be a long fight ahead and long road ahead.
Two cabinet appointees that I’m especially concerned about, obviously Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, little Marco couldn’t have been a worst pick. When you’re looking at foreign policy, especially Latin America, this guy’s a maniac warhawk who wants to just destroy Cuba and Venezuela, he wants to destroy Iran. I mean, all of these people are China hawks. So even though they might have good rhetoric time, and again on someone like Ukraine, they all want the ultimate prize, which is war with China. And then God damn, this guy Pete, he, Pete Hegseth, sorry, his name is a doozy Secretary of Defense, this Fox News guy. I mean, this guy still supports the Iraq war in 2016. He’s still promoting the Iraq war and defending torture. So it’s a slew of the worst of the worst. Mike Huckabee, the list goes on. It’s just a nightmare.
Maximillian Alvarez:
You mean the guy with the white nationalist tattoos who’s going to be Secretary of Defense? Yeah, not worried about that at all. Jesus fucking Christ. All right, Francesca, let’s keep the good times rolling with you. How are you processing and responding to this moment? And are there specific kind of appointments, policy changes or political battles where your eyes are especially focused right now?
Francesca Fiorentini:
I just want to give it up to Abby. That was an amazing roundup and she hit somehow all of the questions, and I super agree with it. And everything she said is just on the money and especially the last part. I just want to pick up on the idea that Trump could endear himself to a very real cry for an end to the weaponizing sending weapons to Israel and end to this genocide, giving some, I mean, complete window dressing. I’ll be the candidate of peace. Oh yes, I’m going to embrace this one Muslim American group in Michigan and all of that. And then turns around and it points all these neocons who are, I mean, I think we’re going to be probably going to war with Iran, I think within a year, if not sooner. It’s incredible the amount of obviously misdirection switch around that he did.
But guess what? That’s all you had to do. All you had to do was speak to the very real pain and anger at the status quo, at the status quo of again, genocide. And look, I mean, it’s not necessarily what got him the election, but it sure as hell captivated, captured a moment and he took advantage of it. And so a certain part of the electorate did vote for Trump. Despite everything will be worse in Gaza if you ask me. And yes, there will be a wider war. So I just want to name that the Democrat’s unwillingness to even offer window dressing as to change. It is not that Kamala didn’t say the exact same thing that Biden did, but just a little bit of a hint. Here’s what I would do different. This is how we were going to change on that. That’s important to understand just how unwilling they were to even on a surface level try to appeal to what most people were saying, not just Democrats.
And then the other thing that Abby said, look, I wish I had her foresight that two years ago I saw this coming because what’s happening to me? The scene in Memento where he starts to figure out that he’s lost his memory and he’s piecing it all together. That’s what I’m doing with the Biden administration, where you’re like, oh, shit. Not raising the minimum wage. We got fucked relying on the Senate, parliamentarian, giving Joe Manchin everything he wanted, and he still tanked your build back better Bill all the ways, and then him running again. It’s like we should have seen this coming. And even though, yes, it’s eight years since 2016, not a lot has changed, not a lot has changed. And our fight against MAGA and Trumpism and the Republicans writ large should not change. And so it is about, you hear, I’m sorry, but when I hear that they got a trifecta, it actually makes me laugh.
It makes me smile because there’s a little bit of me that’s like, good for them, good for them. You know what I mean? They got a vision. It’s fascism. They took over every single court. They got what they wanted. Why? Because they had a plan. So what’s the plan? That’s what we need. What is actually the plan for Democrats to win? And again, I’m in this moment, clearly I’m mad, and I don’t know if in four years there will be a plan that actually will gain, not just gain these voters back, but I think more importantly gain voters who didn’t go out to the polls or didn’t vote for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump who feel disaffected, who are legitimately disenfranchised in various ways. And so for me, look, there’s too much awfulness to stare directly at. It’s like, don’t look at it all like Trump did at the eclipse. You got to take your own corner, your own peace and fight on that level, whether it’s locally, whether it’s in a community organization, whether it’s you getting involved in something, whether it’s a movie night, documentary month, everyone. I love a good doc. So I’m just like, however you can feel productive, generative and helpful. And hopeful rather than trying to, if you take it all on, I mean you’ll never get out of bed.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, the notification fatigue is very real, right? I mean, this is one thing hopefully that we learned from the last Trump administration is that immobilizing people in constant fear with an endless barrage of bad news is part of the strategy by which we become demobilized and easier to defeat. And like Francesca said, you got to give it up to these fascists. They are, at least we can say good planners. So there’s something to learn there. Kat, I want to bring you in here. Same sort of questions. How are you processing this and what are you focusing on right now?
Kat Abu:
When he won, I thought I expected it, or I at least knew it was a possibility, but I really thought I’d wake up and be ready to go to Mexico. My mom straight up told me, she was like, I will help you move to Mexico. We’re from Texas. So we spent a lot of time down there. She was like, I will be there. I will help you move. I will take the cat. And honestly, I woke up and I was just so energized, ridiculously energized, particularly because of what Francesca said, we need a plan. And I am someone who was as a job. I am immersed in right wing media constantly, which means a, I know Trump’s entire cabinet right now, Pete Hegseth, oh my God, don’t even get me started. But also I think it’s time. You talked about people pointing fingers when you’re pointing fingers to blame, to find someone to say, this wasn’t me, or it was your fault.
That’s not productive. But what’s really productive is being able to say, fuck y’all who didn’t listen, who didn’t listen. When I and 20 other people were sleeping outside of the DNC when we tried to play ball just to get a Palestinian American on stage, when I had a super PAC reach out to me and ask me to run an entire pro-Palestine voter initiative over the last month of the election in Michigan and Wisconsin, and my only condition was speaking to Kamala Harris on camera for 10 minutes talking to one Palestinian person, and instead she did a tour with Liz Cheney. So we know what went wrong. And the way that we fix this is we get these people out, they don’t listen, and the only way they will is if we threaten their power. There were so many districts where Democrats didn’t even run a candidate.
There were so many districts when the incumbent who had been there for 3, 5, 10 terms didn’t have anyone try to challenge them in the primary because that’s the big issue with the Democratic party, is that it fears dissent. And I think that’s healthy to have dissenters, dissenting supporters in your party. That means that there is freedom of speech. That means that you’re getting different ideas. That means if you are being corrupt, people will call you out. And so what we need to do, like Francesca also said on the local level, but also the state level, the national level is get people in communities to run for every possible office. And anyone who’s watching here and had that inkling in the back of your head and you were like, maybe I could do that. No, that’s insane. You can, especially at the local and state level, you can absolutely do that.
Even if you don’t win challenging, that will make them fucking sweat. They are terrified of losing power. But as far as what’s going to happen for the next four years, we don’t know. I find a little bit of solace in the fact that there are so many incompetent buffoons being appointed that they will definitely wreck stuff. But it takes a little bit of competence like a Dick Cheney type maniacal plotting to be able to accomplish everything they want to do. And appointing both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramas Swami to one role for efficiency. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. They’re going to hate each other. And just these egos on the right, especially in these far up positions are just too big to balance with one another. But things will get bad and we don’t know. The best time to challenge authoritarianism is at the start and at the end of that regime. And we are at the start. It’s up to us, especially during the midterms, which are going to come up way faster than you think. Two years is not that long to try to disrupt this while we can. Yeah. Sorry, I’m so pissed off.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, let the rage flow baby. That’s why we got all three of you here. We need to channel that shit because if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. And I want to, in this sort of second section, I really want to focus in on the work that y’all do in the media and what we can learn from that work. But just a sort of quick, rapid fire run around the table one more time. I want to kind of pick up where, pick up what Kat was putting down there. We should also emphasize that there are weaknesses, critical weaknesses in the MAGA movement in the Trump administration, in the way Trump operates. And I wanted to ask if y’all just kind of had any of those at the top of your mind that you wanted to remind viewers of things where all hope is not lost, all territory is not gone, the struggle needs to continue, but I think Kat hit upon a really important one.
What we do know from the first Trump administration is that it was a clown car of clowns coming in, clowns going out. People were in the administration for a week before they ran afoul of Trump and got the boot. I’m fully expecting Elon Musk to outwear his welcome with Trump in the next 10 minutes or something may go wrong there with these two massive egos clashing against each other. So there are pressure points within the MAGA movement in Trump’s administration that we can put pressure on. But I wanted to start with Abby and go back around if there are other sort of weaknesses or areas of struggle that you want to remind folks are still there. We can’t give up on everything here.
Abby Martin:
Well, it does seem to be curiously of a vehicle for Christian evangelicals, which obviously the first tenure was certainly that. I mean delivering the overturning of Roe v Wade and the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, that certainly was just giving the Christian evangelicals exactly what they wanted. This one is a little bit more, it seems like stage managed Trump is a total buffoon. He’s like Grandpa Simpson yelling at the clouds. I mean, I don’t know if anyone, I’m sure Kat, you were watching very diligently, the insanity that he was putting out there at some of his rallies. I mean, even his victory speech seemed so lackluster. He didn’t even know what the hell to say. It was like, how is this your victories speech, aren’t you? We
Kat Abu:
Are going to get some really crazy reaction made soon.
Abby Martin:
He’s so horrible and he’s lost all of his mojo. He is not the same Trump that ran in 2016, but he is still a narcissist and megalomaniac, and that is to his detriment. So like you said, max, I mean the clashing of egos, the upset that’s certainly going to come with a lot of these appointments and a lot of things are going to come to a head and he is belligerent. He’s a bull in a China shop, and that’s ultimately why the ruling class doesn’t want him as someone as opposed to someone who’s more manageable or someone who’s not as uncouth and belligerent to the rest of the world. But yeah, I think it’s going to be a big opening to just show how incoherent he is and how he doesn’t even have anything cogent to present at all. So there’s a lot of space to ram the truth through. It’s just a matter of how are we going to expose that when the entire media sphere is just locked down by right wing billionaires?
Francesca Fiorentini:
And I’ll just pick up on that and say, I mean, I think it’s a good question. I think things like subjecting ourselves to Pi Morgan panels, Abby is also, it’s for me, it’s like fun sometimes, but I only do it if I can have a little bit of fun and sort of mock the entire thing. It’s ripe for mockery. I’m a comic, so I thrive on this kind of stuff. That being said, I am so less interested in how we rake up the MAGA billionaires versus how we actually have the best defense, which is a good offense, and how we actually drive more fissure in the democratic side and the liberal side, how we use this moment. A lot of liberals are being radicalized by this moment, and I think it is specifically the left’s job to allow liberals into our fold to let them be radicalized, help them learn, dig deeper, watch some empire files documentaries, watch some news, broke videos get woke for lack of a better term because there are also people, as much as we’re so hyper-focused on who voted for maga, nah man, I’m focused on the people who are disillusioned and rightly so with the Democratic party as it exists, and they are trying to dig deeper, they’re trying to get involved.
They realize this is not going to be won by them just getting a sticker and falling out of a coconut tree or whatever it is. So there’s that. I agree that the Trump administration on its own will eat itself alive, but we have to remember that even in effective fascism does still hurt people and separate people. Maine people does give rise to vigilantism and hate crimes. We’re going to see a lot of that. And we already have seen that. I think that child separation happened under Trump’s first term. I think we can expect that and worse. So for me, here’s why I can’t care about the right and their billionaires is because this whole year, this whole year, ever since Biden started campaigning, what have we been doing? Look at how silly they are. Look at how crazy they are. Look at how dumb, look at how weird, look at how corrupt look at them drinking horse dewormer and shitting their pants on the regs.
Look at all of this stuff. How undemocratic, how stupid, none of it breaks through. None of it matters if you yourself are not offering real concrete solutions. If you’re doing a piss poor job at selling any concrete solutions or a piss poor job at selling the solutions that you actually did do some of the good things that Biden might’ve done, then I can’t help you. And so me pointing out Orange Man bad, I just brought this segment onto my show, it’s now going to just be an Orange Man bad segment. We talk about all the Trump shit and then we talk about some real stuff. What are we doing? How can we fight back? What are people doing organizing with their unions and their workplaces? That to me is where our energy needs to be.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Preach this. Kat, you want to hop back in here?
Kat Abu:
Yeah, I mean, both of y’all are absolutely right. I mean, Abby hit on the head with talking about their oversized egos and Francesca talking about offering another solution besides I think like George HW Bush. Every president who has won since Carter has been a populace whether on the right or left. And the good thing about progressive policies is if you don’t market them like a moron, pretty much every normal person likes them. People hate Obamacare, but they love the a CA. It’s the same thing. And so I think that’s when you’re bringing these people into the fold, that’s an important thing to remember. Instead of immediately attacking progressives or say that’s a pipe dream, why don’t we try to strive to do better? But I think the biggest thing that I think gives me comfort and I think to look out for in the next four years is what happened today, the onion buying Infowars, they are losing their collective minds over this.
And it’s because they desperately want to be a part of normal person culture, deeply entrenched culture. Not sure if I’ve done, I’ve watched it for the last three years, the Patriot Awards at Fox. It’s their equivalent of the Academy Awards. And there are like four awards. It’s one year. It was most valuable Patriot, Patriot of the Year, most patriotic, badass. And that was Pete Hef, by the way and the Back of the Blue Award. That’s not a real award show. No one watched that except me. They want to have comics that are lauded and everyone thinks they’re hilarious, and instead you’ve got gut filled. And sure there are a lot of radicalizing podcasts and stuff that are capturing the attention of especially young men, young white men. But as far as our identity of what’s cool, what’s fun, who you want to be around in real life and not online, they simply can’t capture that.
They can only do it through a screen or through angry taglines they say on TV that your uncle might believe, but he’ll make sure not to say his true thoughts at Thanksgiving until a couple glasses of wine. And that’s devastating. Then they’ll never get that. And I think exploiting that on top of all of this other action we can take on top of bringing people into the fold on top of running candidates, on top of just resisting complete doom and despair kind of rocks, they’re terrified of that and it makes them so mad that they can’t capture the lightning in a bottle of being a person.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Oh boy,
Kat Abu:
That’s so
Francesca Fiorentini:
True.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that’s all, I mean all three of you beautifully and powerfully put and important things to remember, and I could genuinely talk to you guys for hours and hours, but I know we have a limited time with you, and I want to make sure that in this next round we kind of zero in on the work that you’re doing as media makers, as journalists, as analysts, as powerful voices in this ecosystem. So let’s talk about the media side of things and then to everyone watching, I want to remind you that we are going to have a q and a section at the end of this hour where we want to hear your questions for our guests. So please, if you haven’t already, put your questions in the live chat. So as we’ve already addressed here, corporate media, big tech and this growing network of new media influencers have all played major roles in the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, and they’re going to continue to shape our political reality as we head into a second Trump administration from Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into a cesspit of Trump. Again to influencers like Joe Rogan endorsing Trump the day before the election. The arena of digital media and online politics has shifted over the past eight years. As Francesca said, a lot has stayed the same, but changes have happened. And Abby, you actually went on Rogan’s show again back in the summer, and I want to play that clip for our audience. Let’s roll that appearance from Abby’s on Rogan
Abby Martin:
A couple years ago. Yeah, back in 2021.
Maximillian Alvarez:
This is the 20 21 1.
Abby Martin:
Yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Okay, pause. Let’s roll that.
Speaker 5:
When you see the Iron Dome and you’re seeing these rockets being fired out of Palestine and they’re all getting detonated in the air, and then you realize like, oh, this is a kind of crazy situation. One side has this insane technology and the other side is kind of in an open air of prison camp in a way. You can’t go anywhere. You’re kind of stuck.
Abby Martin:
25% of American Jews now after the latest onslaught in Gaza believe Israel’s an apartheid state. And that shows you how dramatically the narrative has completely flipped on its head because for the last 20 years, Israel’s been losing control of dictating the narrative. I mean, that was really what they relied on for so long that we’re acting in self-defense, that we’re surrounded by people who hate us and hypothetically will commit genocide against us to basically defend the fact that they are committing defacto genocide in Gaza. That is the erasure of Gaza resident. It’s the erasure of a culture. It’s not just the extermination. That’s according to the,
Maximillian Alvarez:
The very fact that Abby fricking Martin was speaking the truth about the occupation and Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians on the most popular podcast in the world is a testament to what you were saying in that very clip, Abby. So what does that say about the media environment that we’re in today and what have you learned navigating that environment that you think folks out there may not be seeing or understanding? And how do we sort of square clips like that? The influence that shows Rogans have their openness to voices like yours and also the Trump endorsement?
Abby Martin:
My God, there’s so many levels there. I mean, first we need to look at Joe Rogan’s audience, and I think it’s a huge mistake for liberals to write it off just like they have written off Trump supporters as racist, misogynists, and just a MAGA cult entirely. Look, Joe Rogan’s audience is eclectic diverse. I’ve had thousands of people come up to me over the course of the last eight or nine years ever since I was going on his show, telling me that they learned about Palestine for the first time that they became radicalized, that they became a communist based on what I said on his show. So I think it’s a huge mistake for, again, it’s just writing off any semblance of alternative spaces and turning them into conservative pockets. And we saw exactly what happened with Bernie when he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and Joe Rogan endorsed him, and the entire liberal media sphere was up in arms.
Everyone was like, recant the endorsement, denounced it. How dare you go on his show and how dare you take this endorsement from him? I mean, it was a huge mistake. And I think that when we’re looking at someone like Kamala Harris, it was a huge mistake for her not to go on Joe Rogan’s platform. Would Joe Rogan have ultimately endorsed Trump by their way? I don’t know, probably. But I think, look, when we’re looking at these huge spaces with tens of millions of people who are captive audiences and we just silo ourselves off and we don’t engage with them, it’s to our own detriment. You look at the liberal media, the corporate media of liberal spaces and liberal dominant narratives, they were painting that the economy was actually fine, the stock market was good. They don’t ever talk about poor working class people. They talk about the middle class, the middle class.
So they’re erasing tens of millions of people. 40% of Americans are insecure economically. So yeah, when you’re looking at what was a big driving factor of this election, people’s material conditions and being gaslit and lied to from, so-called Legacy Media, or the term that conservatives have really kind of hijacked to paint what they claim is corporate media hegemony on the liberal side. We know that that’s not the case, but it’s easy to paint it that way when the corporate media by and large is defending the status quo and promoting what we’ve been seeing, the genocide, right? I mean, so it’s crazy and it feels schizophrenic, and I think people are completely detaching themselves from that space. We’re no longer in the position where we’re begging these outlets to cover our struggles fairly or to stop being so biased and one-sided when it comes to US foreign policy. We have to create our own avenues and engage with each other and uplift our voices to build this consensus that we know exists
With a large swath of Americans. Unfortunately, to the point of all of you and all of our work, I mean, it is so dominated by conservatives, and it’s so unfortunate because people are so detached from what they’re being told, the media pundits, and they’re basically being funneled into the alt-right pipeline because it’s so overly dominant. And now you see Elon Musk Musk, who’s a total joke. I mean, he bought basically Twitter to just be relevant because the Babylon Bee, I mean, they want to be funny. They want to be culturally significant and relevant, and we’ve seen what he’s done with it. I mean, he bought it under the pretense that it would be somehow because the government was too involved and he’s just become an arm an appendage of the Trump administration. So it’s getting quite scary. It’s getting quite scary. But when look at two networks that allowed someone like me to have voices that were anti-capitalist and anti empire tell AOR in Russia today, and when you have a voice on networks like that, among the only spaces that we’re allowing people like me to talk, the national security state becomes involved and ends up suppressing voices like that.
And it just erases leftists like Chris Hedges and Lee Camp and then just silos us off into oblivion. So we’re all scrambling and competing with our own brands and Patreons and podcasts to try to just make a modicum of space that the right wing has just engineered and really dialed in. And I think it’s an incredibly effective strategy, and you cannot under state or discount the effect that Joe Rogan had the effect that folding in RFK Jr and Tulsi and all of these kind of alternative media figures into this umbrella. It’s a big tent, and they pulled everyone into it, and it’s the opposite of what the liberals have done to the left.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man. Mic drop shit. So like Francesca, I want to just build on that and come to you because you are quite the influencer yourself, and you’ve got a lot of experience as Abby does, as Kat does, moving between the independent media sphere and the up echelons of corporate or legacy media from M-S-N-B-C and Nat Geo to Fox, right? You’re like a bull shark. You can swim in saltwater and freshwater, right? And perhaps most famously, I don’t know, maybe because he just masochistically loves getting dunked on Piers Morgan has frequently had you on as a guest on his show, PI Morgan Uncensored. So let’s play the next clip of Francesca blasting Morgan on his show for being a hypocrite and a division profiteer
Francesca Fiorentini:
During a Wednesday episode of Pi Morgan Uncensored. Oh, this is me. Pi Morgan found himself agreeing with a fellow guest named Kat Tim, who had recently wrote a book about why we are so divided in this country and why we need to come together left and and really just talk about the issues and not make everything so polarized. And I for Jessica Fiorentini happened to also be on that panel. And I took issue not with Kat, Tim or her book, which I actually thought was incredibly interesting and yes, much needed because so many of the issues that face this country really do cut across party lines. But I took issue with Pi Morgan who was gushing over Kat and gushing over the book and saying that he agrees that we are way too divided as a nation, and we really need to just listen to each other when this is a man whose bread and butter is made by people screaming at one another, arguing with each other, and he gets rich in the meantime. And here’s what I had to say about that. Take a look.
Piers Morgan:
I completely agree. I’m a bit like that. I don’t park myself into either the right or left camp. Go
Francesca Fiorentini:
On. You’re so dishonest, dude. You’re so dishonest though, because all you do on this show is play off social media algorithms to get people to fight. You lead with it in the cold open and you get the click, click clicks. And if you don’t hit a mill, you never ask that person back. You literally play the game. The cat is decrying, but pierce, stop pretending like you think there’s something wrong and we can’t watch
Piers Morgan:
Francesca. There’s
Francesca Fiorentini:
One central. Your whole algorithm
Piers Morgan:
Is
Francesca Fiorentini:
Based based on it. Your whole model is based on
Piers Morgan:
It. Francesca, it’s a lovely statement that will get you lots of clicks from your followers, and that’s why you’ve just delivered your little monologue. However, it’s based on I’m here, wait, I’m here on this panel free. You don’t normally get a million views for me, but I still invite you back. So that can’t be true. I do it as an act to charity. I like you.
Francesca Fiorentini:
I check the sets. I crush, I crush Pierce.
Piers Morgan:
I like having you on because you’re so annoying.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Same
Maximillian Alvarez:
Queen shit. So Francesca, we
Francesca Fiorentini:
Stand.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We stand. So what has your experience in these different sides of the media ecosystem taught you about where the power is in that ecosystem? Who and what are we fighting against in this media arena and how do we win? Or at least how do we not lose in that arena?
Francesca Fiorentini:
We’re fighting liberals. We’re always fighting liberals. I’m sorry. The reason I do peers is because it’s fun. But look at the commenters. They hate me. They think I’m crazy. They think I’m an insane person who supports trans rights, all that. And I just go on there again, as he called out for fun to show those clips to just dunk on him and move on my merry way. I don’t really, sometimes I get real. Sometimes I talk about the billionaire class versus the rest of us, the number of venture capitalists that the Trump administration has supporting it, the David Sachs, the David Horowitz, all these people, the Peter Thiels and whatnot. But for me, it’s about liberal mainstream media. And I think I want to pick up on some things that Abby said as well. I actually think that war and empire have a lot to do with why so many, especially young people don’t have faith in mainstream news.
And it’s because of the Iraq war, people like us who came up during the war on terror and completely that mainstream news was nowhere to be found. They were in lockstep with the generals and beating the drums of war. And we got a couple mea culpas here and there, but really nothing. And then since then, the media sphere has proliferated with alternative news, many of it, amazing, a lot of it also disinformation. And then Donald Trump comes in and calls everything fake news and it all, everyone’s sort of discombobulated. But the fact that the media, mainstream news has still not been able to adequately discuss the war machine, the war profiteering, the military industrial complex is just like, I mean, obviously in part because they accept money from these weapons contractors and in some cases are owned by them, but that will forever be the stain that they cannot wipe out and they’re clawing their way back from.
And so for me, it’s twofold in terms of how to get the Rogan, the Rogans of the world, and how to get big. And I agree with Abby. You’ve got to find these openings. Look, I disagree with him platforming a lot of white nationalists and spewing a lot of misinformation about trans people. I have people who are talking to me, I don’t know, but these kids are getting these sex changes, and you’re just like, I know you’re listening to Rogan all the time, man. That’s what’s happening. However, who are the people who he will let on the show? And they happen to be, and usually always are people who are anti-establishment. And that I think is the bigger rather than left, right? It’s distrust with big pharma, which can lead to awful things like the RFK, anti-vax movement, in my opinion. But it can also lead to great things like the Medicare for All movement or people who want pharmaceuticals, the drug prices to come down.
It can lead to meal mouth. Things like Medicare gets to negotiate on insulin in two years as per Joe Biden. So it’s like not capturing that anti-establishment, not vibe. Movement is how the mainstream news loses every single time to say nothing of the fact that for me, in my career, it’s like I had a special in 2019, right? M-S-N-B-C, they run it in the dead. You guys will love this the last week of December. So it’s the week between Christmas and New Year. Nobody home, nobody watching all the Be hosts were in that. It was very funny. And what happened in 2020, the pandemic Donald and the election cable news did not need deep dive journalism, an hour long report looking into the successes and failures of Obamacare. And that’s on them. And every four years they come around going, why is the electorate so misinformed? You cannot break your own 24 hour news media cycle and actually give a journalist, a real journalist an hour, give them an hour a week to explain something to the many, many millions of people that watch the program. But they can’t do that because they don’t need to. And again, it could be unsafe for their bottom line to say nothing of it would have to be a little bit of an investment. But anyway, one day I’ll be Stanley Tucci traveling Italy and eating my ass off. But until then, situation room is where I’ll be.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We have the same dream. I just want to be the Mexican version of it. So Kat, I want to bring you back in here because you are doing something that so many of us want to figure out how to do, but can’t. And you’re playing a really critical role in the short form video space on platforms like YouTube, TikTok X and more. And you’re also doing something that none of us would ever want to subject ourselves or our worst enemies to. You are watching, studying and analyzing ungodly amounts of Fox News. So let’s play the next clip from one of Kat’s recent explainer videos.
Kat Abu:
And finally, Fox News is definitely excited about running the country again through Trump’s TV habits. In fact, they’re already proposing administration officials.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I expect
Speaker 5:
Him to appoint someone really strong at the FCC like Hannity.
Kat Abu:
RFK is going to make us healthy again.
Speaker 7:
President Trump knows if he needs help securing that border. I’m standing by if he needs help running a deportation operation. I’m standing by. But no former offer has been made.
Kat Abu:
Oh, by the way, that last guy who is a Fox News contributor and project 2025 author has already been named as Trump’s Borders are cool stuff.
Speaker 7:
I’m standing by
Kat Abu:
These people feel like they’re invincible. And with Trump at the helm, they kind of are. But there is one advantage to Fox News. It’s public, which means we know it’s being pumped into Trump’s brain every morning, afternoon, and night. And a tip hand, that is exactly how we can document and call out these authoritarian goals for you, which Mother Jones has been doing well before this and will continue to do so well after. Damn, you cut off my cat. You didn’t show everyone the clip of my cat. Cat wanted high off her ass.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I wanted to save something. So that folks, I was going to say go watch the rest of that video for a special treat at the end. But yeah, it is. Spoiler alert, it is Cat’s cat. And it is adorable.
Kat Abu:
She’s so cute. She’s wearing a little watermelon hat.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh my God, I love it. So I want to ask Kat, if you could expand on first the points that you were making in that video. As an expert in this area, how do you see right Wing media, Fox News, especially shaping the politics of Trump, his base and the GOP today, and what does that mean for our fight? And then I also, if I can, I want to ask if you could talk a little bit about your process for how you’re navigating this media environment and what your process is for making and using media to kind of combat the corrupting influence of Rightwing Media.
Kat Abu:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve talked about this before, but I think the interesting thing about Fox News and my old boss at Media Matters, Andrew Lawrence also, we just say this on repeat, is Roger Ailes created Fox News to support the GOP, but now the GOP exists to support Fox News. And this was really obvious during the Trump administration and when Tucker was on. That’s honestly, personally, the point that I am most annoyed with, just from a petty perspective, is now Fox Fox host are like, oh, we have more power. Again, I want them to have a bad day every day. But now, GOP, senators and Congressmen, when Tucker was on, they used to compete with each other for a five minute slot where they would only get to speak about a minute of the time. And now it’s that again, Trump has a place to call in every morning and rant for 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time.
Hannity, his favorite fanboy is out there with a direct line to the president. I mean, when Trump lost in 2020, Hannity literally was tearing up on air at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to call the White House day or night. And as far as right-Wing Media as a whole, I think the big thing is there are all these forms of alternative media. Fox is the, they love to talk about mainstream media. You’re the most popular cable news channel in the country. You are the mainstream media, but that’s not how they see it. But it is the only, it’s the biggest establishment version of conservative media. And so even though a lot of its viewers, it gets a ton of viewers, but that’s because most of them are super old and they’re just sitting in a chair getting scared all day every day, watching from Fox and Friends till Gutfeld, and they’ll die off soon enough.
But the influence isn’t really who is watching at that point. It’s twofold. One, it shows what far right narratives are finally okay to say in the mainstream, Tucker used to do this. He was the one that would normalize them. The great replacement theory. The first time he said that on Fox, it was in 2021. And me and my colleagues at Media Matters are watching it, and it was like Red Alert, like all hands on deck. He said, replacement, this is insane. But now you can hear it all the time, not just in Fox, but in the GOP. And then additionally, it’s a place for the GOP to rally around. Once again, they are supporting Fox, not vice versa. Fox is dictating their policy. And if you want to know what’s happening or what’s going to happen in the next day, week, month, year of the Trump administration, watch Fox watch what Jesse Waters is saying. Watch what Sean Hannity is saying. Watch what Laura Ingram is saying, and then the next morning, see what’s being repeated on Fox and Friends, or you don’t have to do that. You can just watch my stuff because I do it for you.
Thank
Maximillian Alvarez:
You for your service.
Kat Abu:
Of course, of course. I mean, I do miss getting paid a full ass salary with benefits for it, but what’s that? I don’t know anymore. I’m just hoping I don’t get hit by a car. That’s a good plan.
Francesca Fiorentini:
God
Kat Abu:
Too real.
Francesca Fiorentini:
But Kat, I want to pick up something that you said, which is they’re the most mainstream as outlet, but then they say that they’re
Kat Abu:
Hitting on the anti-establishment thing.
Francesca Fiorentini:
They’re hitting on the anti-establishment thing. Exactly. It’s like the brand is good for anti-establishment, but you never hear M-S-N-B-C, so their own discredit, they could easily be like, you’re not going to hear this anywhere else, but we’re telling you, you don’t even hear a whiff of that when actually sometimes, not all the time. Sometimes they do do good show. I mean, it was, he’s
Kat Abu:
Getting people to tell Biden to step down. I mean, the shit I have gotten since October 7th, 2023, I have gotten so much more anti Palestinian, anti-Arab racism than I did growing up as a kid in Texas. But the shit that Democrats were saying to me, or supposed liberals were saying to me when I just said, Hey, Joe Biden didn’t allow primary, and this debate performance is clear that he should step down some of the most vile shit I have ever had in my dms and replies, and I monitor Nazis for a living.
Abby Martin:
Well, I mean, it’s so emblematic when you look at something like Bill Clinton, the fact that they had to hoist up Bill Clinton who was flying the Lolita Express more than Trump, and instead of putting front and center, Trump was friends with the most notorious pedophile in the country. Holy shit. Isn’t that crazy? They didn’t say one thing because they thought Bill Clinton was too important of an asset to go talk down to Palestinians in Michigan. I mean, you can’t even unpack, say the brain damage going on. A lot
Kat Abu:
Of people under 22 don’t know who Bill. They would not recognize him on the street who care, honestly, with the way that he looks now, I probably wouldn’t either. He literally looks like the suds episode of SpongeBob. But as far as
Francesca Fiorentini:
He looks like an Eli Val cartoon. You guys know what he is? Oh my God. He literally, look, he’s turning into an Eli Val cartoon.
Kat Abu:
It’s so bad
Francesca Fiorentini:
Navigating
Kat Abu:
This.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It’s like a literal visual metaphor of the debate. The Democratic Party. It’s Democratic party it. It’s like, Hey, let’s bust out a decrepit slick Willie and send them to Michigan. That’ll win. Voters over is like he Biden Pelosi, all these people are falling apart as is their ideology. They just won’t let their fingers off the wheel of power until someone like Trump and the Republicans take it from them.
Kat Abu:
No, and that was so clear at the DNCI was one of the 200 creators that was at the DNC, and they were super accommodating at first. They were like, let us know who you want to talk to. And I had a very detailed proposal of all the surrogates I’d want to talk to, and I was like, I think I’m the only Palestinian creator here with the way that I look for better. It’s shitty that wearing a hijab and having dark hair and dark eyes, even though this is obviously fake, makes people listen to you less. But I was like, if you want a Palestinian to talk to, that’ll make some dude in Iowa not shoot up a Walmart. I’m here. I am here. And they not only after a day of delusion on my part, I was like, oh, it’s clear. I am here as a token, but also so was everyone else.
They brought in all of these creators, and there were some that were like, oh, yay, democracy going to the hotties for Harris party and sitting on the JD Vance couch or whatever. But a lot of people, there are great people who do great work and we’re just trying to do their jobs. And then when the Democrats were like, you need to do this, this, and this, they were like, no. And the Democrats were like, wait, what? Even though they marketed this whole thing as the creator convention, as the creator election, and it’s because they fundamentally misunderstand what that is and what actually appeals, especially to young people. It’s icky.
Abby Martin:
Did
Kat Abu:
You get kicked out
Abby Martin:
That wasn in crisis?
Kat Abu:
No, I didn’t get kicked out, but I spent the night outside with the uncommitted movement, and you had to go to get your credentials. And I was like, well, I can’t do the credentials. You don’t get them after 11:00 AM. And I was like, well, I can’t really leave. And the only good decision they made was not sticking the cops on us or escorting people out for not having their credentials the second day. You had to get them every single day. But no, I did not get kicked out. I know his son was escorted out, but I think that that would’ve been too dicey. They’re like, oh, well, we don’t want to, you guys can stay out here, but we don’t want to put you
Francesca Fiorentini:
In cuffs or escort. Plus, the headline of Palestinian content creator gets kicked out is not one they want. And necessarily, sorry, I interrupted, but
Kat Abu:
No, no, no, that’s exactly, it’s what I was trying to say.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And there was some eyebrow raising shenanigans, to say the least, at the DNC. That was actually where I first met Kat in person was at the uncommitted. I’m there with my camera. I turned, I’m like, oh, that’s Kata boot. So I’m there. And then when I tried to go back in, suddenly the entrance to the United Center is blocked off for the next hour. So
Kat Abu:
Oh, yeah, they blocked off the front entrance, right? So no one could go out that
Maximillian Alvarez:
Way. So when the uncommitted sit-ins started, a lot of folks went out. And then curiously, we found that same entrance, which had been opened the whole day was suddenly, you can’t go through here anymore. So it felt like a trap. Anyone who’s going to go out and look at the uncommitted thing, go stay out there. You’re not getting back in, but
Francesca Fiorentini:
I see. Right,
Kat Abu:
Right, right, right. Yeah. And also, sorry, this is sort of unrelated. I’d just like to say I went to go see Charlie XCX at the United Center a month, two months ago. There is weird United Center trauma, and Max, if you go back, you’re going to heal it too.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Whenever I go back, it’ll be too soon. That’s for sure.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Because I thought this was also kind of the biggest latest breaking story before the election was the Epstein stuff and the Michael Wolf tapes revealing that Epstein was his source, and actually Epstein had regular contact with Donald Trump during his first term before he was obviously raided by the FBI and arrested and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, Trump’s FBI. But Abby’s so right on that this would’ve been the story that across the board, many people are interested in terms of, yes, the biggest sex trafficker, one of the, not only that, but also like a billionaire and everything, and all the connections that he had. And so you can imagine this alternate universe, which might not have affected anything, but where Kamala Harris goes to the Joe Rogan podcast, sits down and gets to talk about these Epstein tapes and all this information, and they get to just sort of smoke a bull and think about, did Donald Trump have Epstein killed? And you know what I’m saying that
Abby Martin:
No, imagine. Instead you have Don Jr. Talking about who’s on the P Did he tape? It’s like, dude, what about your fucking dad, bro? Right, exactly. Exactly. He’s talking about it is so fun to envision an alternate reality that would be so cool. It’s like imagine what would’ve happened.
Kat Abu:
The Democrats are so good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Exactly. Just, oh my God,
Abby Martin:
I so obvious. It’s like capitalism’s in crisis and we’re seeing this
Kat Abu:
Planet,
Abby Martin:
It throw built under the bus, not just in the us and people are voting out incumbents as a rejection of whatever their material conditions are. And I absolutely, even though a lot of people are downplaying the Gaza genocide in the Ukraine war as factors in this election, I do not think that you can uncouple the economic conditions and hardships of Americans with the periphery and backdrop of funneling tens of billions of dollars to our foreign policy. I mean to subsidize a genocide. I don’t think that that can be uncoupled for the average person to say, Hey, that doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I pay for bread or eggs at the grocery store? But we have unlimited money to kill babies. So I think that it’s a huge problem, right? And when you have the Democratic party saying Nothing will fundamentally change while the writing is on the wall. I mean, any of us could have predicted what was coming if we just kind of laid it bare and they did not care enough to stop it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that’s a really powerful point. To cap off the hour here, I want to a, not take liberties with anyone’s time and say that we did ask if you guys could be on until five if you do need to go. Totally understand. It’s been an absolute honor having this conversation with the three of you, I hope can have you back. For those of you who can stay, I wanted to just see if we could do a little overtime here to get to some of the audience questions. Y’all have touched on some of them already, but I wanted to throw up one here about the merit to the argument that the Democrats can be pushed left. I guess it really comes down to what path forward is there in the existing Democratic party. We know that that is not the end all, be all of the political struggle, but in so far as the Democratic Party is part of that struggle, I guess, what would you say to folks about how we should be approaching that strategically and how far we can actually push this party that seems hell bent on going to the right to left?
Abby Martin:
I want to touch upon that just because I do have to go. I think Kamala’s whole performance and Biden’s whole performance. I mean, we can’t forget that Biden won on a progressive platform, right? Everyone was coat tailing the Bernie Sanders movement because of how enormously popular his brand of progressive populous politics were. And so Biden over the course of his presidency, unfortunately abandoned a lot of that. And then Kamala Harris, nothing will fundamentally change, ran one of the most conservative platforms, abandoned Medicare for all, ban fracking, federal jobs guarantee. I mean, all of those things just made no sense. Why would anyone who’s remotely leaning conservative vote for Diet Coke when you can vote for the real thing? I think at this point, look, I was really energized about Bernie just because of the tens of millions of people that were in the streets mobilizing because I felt it was a revolutionary moment to catalyze the masses.
I never believed in electoral politics on a federal level, especially, I’m not saying to discount city council races and local districts, obviously referendums and city council and all those things. Absolutely we need to be investing our energy into seizing power locally. However, investing in two to four years and putting all of your political energy and enthusiasm into federal electoral politics, I think is a dead end. And I think if that’s not apparent now, it sure as hell should be let this election galvanize and radicalize us outside of electoral because the Democrats have perfectly elucidated that they will not lean left. They would rather have fascism than Bernie Sanders populism, right? That’s just social democracy. They would rather have Trump than an FDR platform. So they are going so far, right, because they have no other choice.
They have to maintain their capital and power no matter what’s at stake and what’s in the future. So it’s up to us, the tens of millions of people who have been radicalized by the Gaza Genocide, who radicalized by Bernie Sanders, who see the climate change catastrophe on the horizon. It is up to us to build the movement we know is the only thing that has ever pushed politics, left the social movements in the street, the masses that shut down business as usual. That is the only possibility that we have moving forward because the time is urgent. We don’t have the time to wait for a super majority pie in the sky. Oh, maybe. And if one of these freaks on the Supreme Court croaks, no, we don’t have time to wait and waste the time is now. We need to act accordingly and get involved locally with the struggle and with the activism because that’s how we’re going to move mountains.
Kat Abu:
Hell yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah, sister. Well, I know Abby said she has to go. I just wanted to first just, I don’t know, just have a Jesus moment that was incredible in fire and also just really, really stress to everyone watching. You need to subscribe to the Empire Files YouTube channel. You need to support Abby’s work, her current documentary, her past documentaries, share them with everybody, watch everything that she does. You can see for yourself why her voice is so vital. Abby, thank you so, so much for joining us today. It’s been
Abby Martin:
A long you guys rock. It was such an honor. I hope to do this way more frequently. She do this like a monthly thing or something. Let’s do it. So good to meet you all girls panel baby.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. Solidarity says
Abby Martin:
Bye guys. Bye bye.
Kat Abu:
Abby,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Francesca and Kat, if you guys got more, I would hate to follow that act too, but I guess if you have anything else to say,
Francesca Fiorentini:
I forgot what the question was, but
Kat Abu:
Yeah, I was entranced.
Francesca Fiorentini:
I mean, look, I really appreciate Abby’s perspective and her analysis is just spot on and always has been. I am not ready to say that electoral is not going to work. I think that we cannot just take our ball and go home because it didn’t go the way we wanted. I think we have to be players in this and I don’t think that being players means you’re not in the streets. And I don’t think being players means it is the only way. And I think I’m very much sort of let a hundred flowers bloom in, I guess in a MAOIs sense. I don’t know in a nonviolent MAOIs sense, but I do think that we need inside outside strategies. I am not someone who you’re going to hear bashing the squad for not doing enough. I think that there are many, many hurdles and layers to actually getting things over the finish line in Congress.
And I think a lot of us have sometimes maybe too simplistic of a view simply because we feel like we elected somebody. They didn’t do the change we wanted. So we’re kind of just like we’re fed up. But I do think that even though biden’s, I mean good God, I’m sure he would like a mulligan on the last year and a half of his presidency. But I do think what Abby said about Joe Biden’s election in and of itself was thanks to the progressive movement, so was Barack Obama’s thanks to a progressive anti-war movement, the absolutely capitalized on not eight years of the war on terror people sick and tired of it. We elected Barack Hussein Obama, the first black president. Are you kidding me? I was under no illusion that he would be really for the working class or actually very progressive, but it was such a radical sea change that I do think we have to be poised for.
What is the electorate willing to do when it comes to reacting to what we know will be a failed fascistic government coming from Donald Trump? So the pendulum swings, but let’s, let’s swing it farther and let’s make sure it stays there and let’s break this goddamn grandfather clock of a duopoly. So I am inside out. I’m of both minds. I just feel like you find the place and the space that you feel most effective and we stop putting so much credence into the electoral process, meaning especially on a national level. I just feel like by the time you get to the presidential election, it really is which flavor of warmonger. And yes, I really would like the diet warmonger honestly, because I feel like Kamala Harris and the Democrats were much more pushable. And I know people disagree with me on that, but I think we see that.
Look at the Zionists, Trump’s disappointing a bunch of bidens. It’s like they’re nothing but Biden’s and Biden was arguably one of the more Zionist people in his cabinet. So anyway, that’s where I stand on that. I feel like we on the left tend to say, here’s my line, this is what I believe, and if you don’t believe this, then you can go sit over there. So let’s have the same grace and understanding that sometimes we’re like, gee, how did Trump get all these voters? Let’s be kind to one another as well as we forge a path forward and figure out what to do.
Kat Abu:
Can I just jump in here real quick please.
One of the things that I just want to stress to everyone in the world all the time and not just even in the political sense is in general, there are very few consequences for your actions that will genuinely affect you. Whether it’s standing up for a server who someone is yelling at, whether it’s doing that thing that you always wanted to do or whether it’s running for office, speaking up at your town hall, meeting at your local city council meeting, whether it’s trying to mount change in any way. If you feel any inkling to do it, you should do it. I think that we’ve coming back to the anti-establishment stuff, we’ve come to this idea that you have to have all of these ins to get anywhere and that these people in power have some type of extra read, some secret read on the electorate that we don’t have or some secret factor that the rest of us don’t have, but they are just people.
They are just as fallible and dumb and weak as all of us, maybe more so, more so more. And anyone that gets into power will probably take on a little bit of that too. And that includes you, me, all of us. That’s just the human condition. But if enough of us actually acted on what we want to do, especially in an age where you can reach so many more people through alternative media, through the TikTok algorithm, through person to person connection that a lot of people are really missing. I’m hosting a women’s club at my apartment this weekend because I read it in a book and I was like, you know what? Why don’t I just do
Abby Martin:
That? And
Kat Abu:
Maybe in a different time I would’ve been like, well, probably no one would be interested or whatever. But instead I reached out to some friends and they were like, yes, that sounds like so much fun. So everyone’s bringing a friend. We’re learning how to embroider together and it’s just action. Action is what spurs us forward. And it doesn’t have to be running for office. It doesn’t have to be taking to the streets, just this is going to be a really weird four years at the very least and probably pretty dark. And if you don’t act on what you know is right and what you want yourself or others to do, nothing is going to get done.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Max is the least I’ve ever heard you speak maybe ever.
Kat Abu:
I’d also like to apologize for any, I’m not actually DM Abby after this. My wifi is laggy. I’m on my building wifi, so if I interrupt, I’m so sorry.
Maximillian Alvarez:
You’re
Kat Abu:
Great. No, you’re fine.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Y’all have been incredible. I’m sitting here in awe. I’m learning, man. I mean, yeah, I could spout a lot myself, but I mean, y’all have so much insight that we need to hear and I don’t have all the damn answers I need to learn from y’all, just like I hope our audience is learning. And in a way, y’all were already sort of picking up on another audience question that I want to just keep this ball rolling. One of the questions was about how we fight the hate, the vitriol, the trolling, the misinformation on social media that is emboldening people in the MAGA movement. And so I wanted to pose that to y’all as well, but I kind of wanted to pick up on where Kat was talking just now that the answer to that question does not solely exist on your online tactics for engaging people through a screen. I can’t stress enough how important the old meme of go touch grass, go talk to your neighbors.
It really matters. I mean, one of the things that I’ve noticed watching my own grandfather dive from Alzheimer’s over eight years since Trump was first elected to now his social world, his physical mobility, everything in his world has shrunk. And that got hyper accelerated with Covid where his social world went to going out to the golf course, meeting friends to those friends dying to his mobility being limited to now being locked to one living room, and the entire connection to the outside world is mediated through the TV in his living room that plays two channels, Fox and OAN. And so I bring that up because I know this man, I love this man. I mean, he is one of the many Trump supporters in my family who I know is not just like the diehard racist and fascist that we like to paint Trump supporters as being, but what I really want to emphasize for people that they can learn from folks like my grandfather and folks in your family, is that people don’t just go gung-ho into fascist politics saying like, yeah, let’s deport all the brown people. That comes way later because people’s politics flow downstream from their perception of the reality they believe they’re living in.
When you are being bombarded with these images of what the world looks like outside your window as your connection, your real connection to that world gets smaller and smaller and is all mediated through screens. That’s how you end up with so many Fox News viewers saying, you live in Baltimore. Do you even walk down the street? I won’t ever go to New York City or to Chicago or these places are bedlam. It’s like, that’s nuts. But that’s the reality. They believe they’re living in and Trump’s fascist politics feels like a natural response to this dark world that’s being presented to them. And so going out and countering that misinformation with reality, with real human connection seems to me to be one of the most, if not the most potent antidote to that fearmongering.
Francesca Fiorentini:
And the same thing with the media just in terms of why do we only sit in diners when it’s an election? You should sit in diners all the time, you know what I mean? You should really talk to people all the time. And this whole wheel, the mainstream news is allowed for the demonization of immigrants as much as they want to clutch their pearls over Donald Trump’s wall or mass deportations. We all watched in 2016 how Donald Trump’s single-handedly moved the Overton window and Jake Tapper helped him just refix over to the right a little bit. Jake Tapper, the whole GOP primary was just, what do you think of Donald Trump’s wall? What do you think of Donald Trump’s wall? What about the wall? How about the wall? It’s like, no, no, no. How about a serious answer to the question of immigration in this country?
How about a serious plan? What do you think about the wall? They helped every single step of the way, and they’re going to continue to help when it comes to mass deportations. How many Haitian migrants have they actually platformed on mainstream news? How many times have they talked to, have they gone to, let’s say, Portland and seen the way that decriminalization programs are working in the community? We always make fun of when Jesse Waters or some Fox News hosts will go and be like, isn’t it crazy here? And it’s funny, but who do you actually see doing it from the other side or doing it from a side that doesn’t have an agenda? Just being real with it. It’s like you got to listen. It’s like long form investigative stuff, reveal real news network. Even some Bourdain did that. It’s like people are like, wow, Bourdain is really amazing.
You know how he talks to people. You know what I mean? So that’s the other thing is how are we humanizing all of these groups, including ourselves every single day? And there’s just a consensus to not do that because fear really does sell. And so I think I’m more terrified to see what nonprofits, what different organizing left, not left, but liberal entities, which news outlets, who’s going to decide, I don’t want to resist anymore. I’m just going to join. It’s too much for me to resist this fascism. Let’s just join them because that’s easier. I need access and I need money that terrifies me. It is really
Kat Abu:
Scary. I have to hop off after this, but I think two things on that is one of the big problems at these big companies, like at M-S-N-B-C and CNN and the New York Times and all these big media companies is they have a lot of really good reporters who the leadership straight up will silence their work. It will be written, it will be edited, it will be ready to publish, and then it will just be on the chopping block and no reason will be given. And then oftentimes they’re assigned to a different beat. That is such a problem in our media right now. But also, I think, I grew up conservative in Texas, and I think a lot of people underestimate the power of conservative propaganda. Like you were talking about how people see cities. I have lived full time in New York, DC and Chicago over the last two years.
I had two major life changes. So I had to move from DC to New York, New York, to dc, DC to Chicago. Haven’t been stabbed once in any of them, but the way that conservatism was portrayed to me, and granted I wasn’t, my parents were more like the Reagan conservatives, but still, there was so much misinformation that I had to break was like, we’re the responsible party. We are being responsible. If you think our cities, even though you haven’t stepped foot in one in 15 years are being taken over by maniacs, you’re like, well, I’m being the responsible one because for some reason, my brain is now rewired to make me think that certain people love crime. That’s a position that anyone has,
But it’s a lot harder, especially older people, to get someone to admit that they’re wrong. No one likes doing that. And I know when I had to realize when I was 16 and we moved to Tucson, for whatever reason, I moved to Tucson halfway through high school. Dallas is where I grew up, was super segregated by income and by race. I had never really been around a poor person before. So many of my friends, Tucson is a very low income city, and so many of my friends at my school couldn’t afford basic things. I had never really experienced that before of someone on a daily basis, someone who I had a real relationship with, and it totally radicalized me. But I had to go through and see all of these things that I thought were truth were wrong, and that feels like shit. You feel like a moron.
You’re like, what is my moral compass? It’s not fun. And I look at people like my mom who grew, my grandmother, her mother was a major GOP operative in Texas, so she was right in the middle of it. She grew up with this as a major part of it. And she has reevaluated so many of her views, and I think it takes a lot of bravery and grit. It’s hard to do that. And if you’re looking back when you’re like 40, 50, 60, and you’re like, did I spend this much of my life being wrong, lacking empathy, where I could have given it villainizing people who didn’t deserve it? And so that’s, it’s
Francesca Fiorentini:
Never too late though. I
Kat Abu:
Mean, it’s never too late.
Francesca Fiorentini:
It’s amazing to hear when older people might make this transition. It’s like, yay, it is.
Kat Abu:
But I think that there’s a lot of people on the left who either grew up in a family that wasn’t really political or was liberal like Obama voters or whatever, and they really underestimate the power of propaganda that gets you there in the first place. And then also how hard it is to change that because you’re trying to break an entire structure of thinking and also have someone admit, I was wrong. Everyone I love was wrong, and I might’ve had some really shitty opinions about ideas. People, places, things, other nouns, and it’s
Francesca Fiorentini:
Just people, racist is, and calling folks racist or sexist, it isn’t a winning strategy. Even if some of them
Kat Abu:
Are, if you say something or sexist to me, I will say that. But if it’s just like a guy,
Francesca Fiorentini:
It doesn’t work, but it’s being able, I mean, it’s the looking past the racism and sexism, like I said, like this four years ago before the election, then you cannot shame Trump. Trump voters. You cannot shame Trump. You cannot shame the Trump administration. Shame doesn’t work for us. Making fun of them is for us. Now, we need it to stay sane because we have to tap in and be like, is this real? Are you real? And I think we’re all doing that, and this is the real news network. So there you go. But that’s for us. It’s not necessarily going to move the broad electorate. That’s just for us to be like, yeah, that was fucking crazy, right? Yeah, that was fucking crazy. Okay, we can laugh at that. Yeah. Yeah, we can fucking laugh at that. Yeah. For us,
Kat Abu:
I mean, I think I tell people all the time, say, question me if you watch my stuff and you’re like, that doesn’t sound right, question me. Am fallible. Everyone is I could be wrong, or just make sure you have an extra source or two on that. This is not the time to just think anyone is perfect, that anyone can say anything, and it’s the absolute truth. And when it comes to conservatives and on the right, where was my train of thought going on this, I had a point that I was really fired up about, but I don’t know
Maximillian Alvarez:
If it comes back to, I will just say that one of the reasons that I’ve always gravitated towards your work, Kat, is that I myself as folks in the Real News, no, I grew up deeply conservative as well in Southern California. And for me, the reality breaking thing that got me to start that long process of unlearning all the dumb shit that I believed and acted on was the recession, right? Was this sort of massive market crash. Our family lost everything 12 years ago. I was working in warehouses and factories wondering why the hell I believed in this system that just bailed out all the banks while families mine lost everything. And I was working with ex-cons undocumented folks, trying to make my own paychecks so I could buy dinner like that week. So that forces you to confront a lot of those realities. But as you both said, so well, and as you both and Abby embody so well, we need grit and grace to navigate that and to help others navigate it. And it can be done. We’re living proof of it, but we can testify as people who have made that transition that, like Francesca said, like shaming and berating, even though it may feel morally righteous and good is not going to fucking work. If your goal is to bring folks out of that darkness into the light, finding their way back to love and common humanity and working class struggle,
You need grit. Grit and grace.
Kat Abu:
My point came back to me, and it’s exactly what you’re saying. I clown on conservatives all the time because it’s fun, but I try to only punch up people on Fox who are getting millions of dollars to miss inform you. And even when I talk, I did a video about Rob Schneider’s comedy special, which was abysmal from a comedic perspective. I got to see this. It was a lot of fun. It’s on you, but he,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Wait, Francesca, can you please have Kat on your show to talk about
Kat Abu:
That? Oh, yeah, yeah. We need to break it down to sex. Please Rob Schneider’s comedy special on Fox Nation. But I did admit he had a really funny 10 minute bit where he did a Trump impression, but it wasn’t political. He was just talking about his experience with Trump as a person. It could have been about any celebrity. And it was funny. So I admitted it painting anything in a broad stroke. I did a whole thing on Trump Charlottesville comments explaining why he said that Nazis are very fine people, and by doing that, I went through literally minute by minute every single thing he said, I didn’t cut anything out. So anytime a conservative was like, you’re misquoting. I say, watch the whole thing, and you will not believe how many people on the right have come back to me being like either, damn, I still don’t agree with you, but you were right. You didn’t cut anything out or like, oh, wow, I really didn’t understand the full context, and I watched this whole 35 minute video and now I do. And so just doing that instead of straight these people villainize themselves,
Francesca Fiorentini:
Sure,
Kat Abu:
If you just give a little bit of grace, no one is right all the time. No one is wrong all the time. We need a baseline for humanity. There is a baseline that if you straight up just see me as a womb on legs, probably, you have to address that on your own. This is not us to handhold you through, but there are a lot of other people who just, they just don’t know anything else. And you can’t blame someone for ignorance if you don’t tell them where to find the knowledge.
Francesca Fiorentini:
That’s so true. That’s very real.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that is a beautiful, powerful point to end on. I apologize to everyone in the live chat if we didn’t get to your questions, but I think you’ll agree.
Kat Abu:
Shout out to the two people’s questions we answered. We hope you’re
Maximillian Alvarez:
Satisfied. Shout out to the big two. I mean, you guys did address a lot of the questions that were asked, even if we didn’t directly pose them, but I think everyone watching will agree this was a feast for the mind and heart, and I think I’m feeling better prepared to head into this darkness, and I’m feeling at least a little more emboldened, emboldened knowing that we’ve got great folks like you, folks like the people watching, folks like the folks at The Real News in the back room right now, making this all happen. Thank you, sisters.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Thanks for having us.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We’ve got each other and we can make it. And to everyone watching, I wanted to just ask you to please go support, subscribe to every channel that Kat, Francesca and Abby are on. We need their voices now more than ever. And if you don’t want independent media to go away, you got to support it. So please go support it, share it, send it to folks that you know who you think will want to watch it, anything you can do to help them out. We need that work. We need your support here at The Real News. The overall message is, is that we need you guys to keep going, so please go subscribe to their channels, follow them on any platform that you’re on, and if you can, please donate to the incredible work that they’re doing. Kat, Francesca, and Abby who had to depart 20 minutes ago, it has been a true honor being on this stream with you. Thank you so much, and solidarity from Baltimore.
Kat Abu:
Likewise. Thank you. Everyone. Go outside.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Go outside and touch grass for the Real News Network. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please donate using the button on the side of this video. Share this live stream with your friends, family members, coworkers. Please go to the real news.com/donate and support our work today. It really makes a difference. But more importantly, and most of all, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.
On Friday 15 November, supporters of Youth Demand disrupted traffic in both London and Exeter, demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel, and for the UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
London: swarmed by Youth Demand once again
In London, action takers blocked Holborn’s Southampton Row, Marble Arch, and finally Kensington High Street in front of the Israeli embassy. The team of Youth Demand supporters held placards reading ‘YOUTH DEMAND AN END TO GENOCIDE’, ‘NOT IN OUR NAME’, and ‘YOUTH DEMAND’, along with Palestinian flags. The first roadblock took place at around 10:30am, and were still ongoing at the time of writing:
Youth Demand swarmed across the capital – hammering home their messages in the Friday traffic:
BREAKING: MARBLE ARCH, HOLBORN, ISRAELI EMBASSY, MORE ROADS BLOCKED IN LONDON
On the 5th day of action, young people continue to disrupt, because the UK continues to sell weapons to Israel.
Action takers in Exeter blocked Prince of Wales Road, New North Road, and Heles Road throughout the day, beginning at 12:20pm. They faced resistance from members of the public:
Elsa from London took action. She said:
I’m taking action with Youth Demand today because there’s no time to sit and wait for the government. Every day that the UK keeps sending weapons to Israel is a day too long. Too many kid’s lives have been taken. Never again means never again for anybody.
Hannah Chick from Lewisham was also out swarming. She said:
My friends in Gaza are all under siege and have been displaced continuously. I cannot sit and allow my government to send weapons to murder my friends.
Israel openly admits to war crimes in front of the Western world, whilst the West nod in agreement and sign more bombs over. Shame on every single complacent soul.
This is now the fifth day this week that Youth Demand has taken action.
Five days of swarming
As the Canary has been documenting, the group first took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read ‘Never Again for Anyone’ and ‘Over 186,000 Dead’.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester. Then, on Tuesday 12 November the group did similar in Leeds – blocking multiple roads and being threatened with arrest. The group then returned to Manchester on Wednesday 13 November, blocking multiple locations.
Youth Demand said that “Young people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country”
On Saturday 16 November there is also the Global March for Climate Justice in London. You can read more about that here, and support Youth Demand here.
Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand
Extinction Rebellion activists ‘The Worley Three’ have been given 320 hours of community service today for causing £6,000 in “damages” for their peaceful protest at the offices of multinational corporation Worley – involved in the controversial, planet-wrecking EACOP project.
EACOP: not as bad as some fake oil and chalk spray – if you’re the judiciary
The action involved decorating Worley’s Brentford offices with washable fake oil and chalk spray to spotlight the petroengineering company’s key role in constructing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a project widely condemned for its devastating environmental and social impacts, and to demand the company sever its ties to the pipeline.
The sentencing comes on the day that senior figures in the UN climate talks publish an open letter saying that the COP process is no longer fit for purpose and two days after 15 university students in Uganda were remanded to a maximum security prison for peacefully protesting the pipeline outside the Ugandan Parliament.
Some of them were forced to appear shirtless in front of the magistrate, having lost access to their belongings. Another 20 peaceful Ugandan Stop EACOP demonstrators had their trial adjourned this week to 26 November, in what Human Rights Watch reports is an ongoing crackdown against the project’s critics by the Ugandan government. Meanwhile the beleaguered project has run into fresh funding challenges.
Sarah Hart, Tom Maidment, and Danielle McHallam were found guilty on 3 October after a chaotic jury trial at Isleworth Crown Court which left the defendants with little opportunity to properly prepare a defence.
Not fit for purpose
On the second day of the trial, Judge Hannah Duncan ruled out all defences. The judge then allowed the defendants to speak for ten minutes each before she brought back in the defence of ‘belief in consent’ the following morning.
Even before any construction has taken place EACOP has been responsible for gross human rights abuses. If it was ever built and operational it would be complicit in locking in irreversible climate change.
Marijn van de Geer, former company director from West London, and a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said:
Our legal system is clearly not fit for purpose if it thinks washable paint is more damaging than the displacement of 100,000 people and locking-in irreversible climate change.
Defendant Sarah Hart, mother of two, aged 42 of Farnborough said:
We stand in solidarity with the students who have been unjustly imprisoned this week. We undertook this action in support of the affected communities of East Africa who have suffered intimidation, arrest and police brutality for standing up for their rights to land and clean water and a liveable climate. And also because the climate change it would cause threatens us all.
The temporary damage we caused stands as nothing in comparison to the widespread and irreparable harm this project has already caused to local communities. Worley is complicit in these crimes. Why are the directors and shareholders of Worley not in the dock?
EACOP: a disaster in the making
In 2023 Human Rights Watch reported that tens of thousands of people have already lost their lands and livelihoods in preparation for the project. If the pipeline is ever completed, that number will rise to over 100,000 people across East Africa.
The European Union voted in a special resolution that condemned EACOP for its human rights abuses in Uganda and Tanzania, abuses that included death threats, intimidation and wrongful imprisonment.
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline, if completed, would increase global CO2 emissions by 379 million tonnes CO2e over its lifetime [8], making our Paris Agreement targets unachievable and making it likely we will pass critical tipping points in the climate system. As UN General Secretary, António Guterres said in 2022 “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness”.
Extinction Rebellion will continue to push back
Former government lawyer Tim Crosland of Defend Our Juries said:
Finally today there’s high level recognition of what has been obvious for years – the intergovernmental COP process, the formal mechanism for preventing climate catastrophe is failing and unfit for purpose. In the meantime people are being criminalised and penalised simply for refusing to accept death and disaster for themselves and the people they love.
How do the responsible judges feel about the abuse of the legal system to protect those causing the destruction and to repress those who resist it? Sure, they are ‘just doing their jobs’ and ‘following orders’. But at some level they must know they embody what Hannah Arendt termed ‘the banality of evil.
We salute and applaud all the brave defenders who continue to challenge those who are driving our collective destruction and the exploitation and displacement of our communities. The criminalisation of activists fighting for the rights and freedoms of oppressed people across the globe is testament to the fact that the political elite remains married to global capital and continues to serve its interests dutifully. We extend our undying solidarity to the brave StopEACOP activists unjustly sentenced today.
Widespread opposition to EACOP has caused repeated delays and investment uncertainties since the project was initially proposed in 2013. EACOP was designed to transport Uganda’s oil reserves through Tanzania for export to the world market but under pressure from campaigners, 27 commercial banks and 29 major insurance companies have ruled out involvement in the project. As of now no building work has taken place.
Earlier this month, Extinction Rebellion targeted EACOP insurers Marsh McLennan as part of its Insure Our Survival week of action.
For decades, making progress on global climate action has felt like trying to tunnel through a mountain with only a spoon and some elbow grease. When people suggest alternative tools that are perhaps better equipped for tunnel-digging, or maybe even float the idea of climbing over the mountain, they’re dismissed and demeaned as too idealistic. Other people will stare straight at the mountain and…
On Thursday 14 November, supporters of Youth Demand disrupted traffic in Leeds and Cambridge, demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel, and for the UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
Youth Demand: swarming for a fourth day
At 11:00am, a group of supporters blocked the Headrow/Briggate junction in central Leeds, holding a banner that read ‘YOUTH DEMAND’ along with a Palestine flag:
Members of the public forcibly removed action takers from the road to drive past.
SWARM DAY FOUR: MAJOR ROAD BLOCKED IN LEEDS
As Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, the UK has sent over 200 spy planes to Gaza in support of Israel. We have war criminals in government.
The action takers returned to the road, before ending the road block.
Joe Clark, a 23 year old student from Leeds, took part in the action. He said:
I’m taking action today because the UK does not value Palestinian life. You cannot pay respects to fallen soldiers whilst simultaneously sending weapons to commit a genocide. We won’t stop until our government is no longer complicit in the tragic hypocrisy.
At 12:30pm, another group of supporters blocked roads in Cambridge, holding banners that read ‘STOP ARMING ISRAEL’ and ‘YOUTH DEMAND’, as well as Lebanese and Palestinian flags. They started at Victoria Avenue, before moving onto Chesterton Road:
Will, a 23 year old PhD student from Cambridge took action today, saying:
I’m taking action because this genocide has gone on for over a year and still the government, no matter the party, is sending weapons to Israel. So long as those in power believe enable murder and occupation, everyone must resist.
Ordinary protest methods have failed. The political system allows those in power free reign to perpetrate genocide so long as it furthers their interests. The only human thing we can do is bring it to its knees.
We are blocking roads because direct action is the only realistic way to oppose this genocide. We have to put pressure on the choke points of this system, or genocide, climate collapse and extractivism will remain the status quo.
A week of action
As the Canary has been documenting, the group first took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read ‘Never Again for Anyone’ and ‘Over 186,000 Dead’.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester. Then, on Tuesday 12 November the group did similar in Leeds – blocking multiple roads and being threatened with arrest. The group then returned to Manchester on Wednesday 13 November, blocking multiple locations.
Youth Demand said that “Young people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country”
As world leaders gather for the UN’s COP29 climate negotiations, join us on the streets in London to demand the UK government ends our reliance on fossil fuels, pays up for climate finance – and ends its complicity in Israel’s escalating genocidal violence.
The climate crisis and genocide in Gaza are inextricably linked and we must put an end to both. Without human rights, there can be no climate justice.
Record heat in our atmosphere and oceans is driving climate disasters across the globe, with those who’ve done least to cause this crisis suffering most. Global North countries have far exceeded their fair share of the earth’s carrying capacity and are primarily responsible for the climate crisis.
Against this backdrop, Israel’s deadly assault has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians over the last year and displaced more than 90% of Gaza’s population. Every semblance of decency and humanity has been violated with absolute impunity, despite well-documented war crimes, crimes against humanity and what the ICJ has ruled as a plausible case of genocide.
At COP29 in November, the UK government will make claims to climate leadership. But these will ring hollow if prime minister Starmer continues to funnel public money into militarism, war and fossil fuel projects.
The same fossil fuel corporations driving the climate crisis and blocking a just transition are those funnelling Israel the oil it needs for its war machine: all to secure their profits. If we’re to have any hope of a liveable planet, we must divest from war and destruction – and invest in a just, ecological and equitable transition.
March details:
A–B march from the British Museum to 10 Downing Street, via the SOCAR office on Strand.
This demonstration will be liaised with the police and War on Want (on behalf of the Climate Justice Coalition) holds Public Liability Insurance.
Why the British Museum:
The British Museum announced a £50 million partnership deal with BP in November 2023. And amidst the ongoing genocide in Palestine, BP has been profiting of the transport and sales of oil to Israel. The British Museum is core to BP’s social licence to operate, allowing it to greenwash its climate and colonial crimes by appearing to be in service of the arts – all while drilling for new oil and gas.
Why SOCAR:
SOCAR is Azerbaijan’s national oil company and is expanding exploration and extraction projects alongside foreign oil companies like Eni and ADNOC. COP29’s President Mukhtar Babayev previously held the role of Vice-President for Ecology at SOCAR.
Who’s behind this call to action:
The demonstration is being called by an alliance of organisations within the Climate Justice Coalition and beyond, including:
Climate Justice Coalition, War on Want, Extinction Rebellion, Fossil Free London, Energy Embargo for Palestine. The full list of supporters is here.
We’re responding to a global call out for a Day of Action to demand climate justice – with actions set to take place across Great Britain and the world on this day. Find out more here.
On Wednesday 13 November, supporters of Youth Demand disrupted traffic in Manchester, demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the UK government to halt all fossil fuel licences granted since 2021.
Youth Demand day three: Manchester
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters blocked Fairfield Street in Manchester, preventing cars from passing while holding banners that read: ‘NEVER AGAIN IS NOW’ and ‘YOUTH DEMAND AN END TO GENOCIDE’, along with Palestine flags:
Shelby Murphy from Manchester took action. She said:
We are witnessing a Genocide in real time. There should be no business as usual. Disruptive action reminds people of that.
Then, at 12pm the group went on to block Sackville Street, lighting green and red coloured flares while traffic was at a standstill:
They then went ahead to block Oxford Road:
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
Every day that Governments like ours fail to act, Israel escalates the genocide they’re committing . They are attempting to close down UNRWA aid operations, not just in Gaza but the West Bank too – top officials are warning this will be devastating. This is murder.
As the Canary has been documenting, the group first took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read ‘Never Again for Anyone’ and ‘Over 186,000 Dead’.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester.
Then, on Tuesday 12 November the group did similar in Leeds – blocking multiple roads and being threatened with arrest.
Youth Demand said that “Young people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country”
Oil giant ExxonMobil has spoken out against President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to pull out of the Paris climate agreement. This is leaving many of us questioning the future of human existence:
New: Oil giant ExxonMobil opposes President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, a company spokesperson told CNN in a statement.
“A second US exit from the Paris climate agreement will have profound implications for the United States’ efforts…
On Tuesday 12 November, DeSmogpublished ‘unearthed documents’ which revealed that 70 years ago, the Air Pollution Foundation warned big oil companies that fossil fuel emissions could impact civilisation.
The new documents show how the industry – like ExxonMobil – used deceptive PR strategies they came up with in California, to deny the risk of the climate crisis. It’s hard to believe that now, 70 years later – big oil has decided to grow a conscience.
Goodbye beach front houses
Maybe oil giants like ExxonMobil are realising we are past the point of repair. More likely though, they have watched the recent hurricanes destroy Florida and realised the next one might destroy their beach front houses pretty soon. What a terrible shame that would be:
Half of me thinks this is performative.
The other half thinks they just realized their summer homes might be in flood danger.
Guaranteed climate destruction. And because of what? Americans didn’t want a woman of colour running the country?
You might regret that choice pretty soon – if you don’t already. Google searches for ‘can I change my vote’ spiked several times between 5-7 November. The highest number of these searches came from Iowa, where Trump won by 13 points.
Unsurprisingly, states with similar high search interest include Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wisconsin—all states won by Trump:
You know it’s a bad idea to pull out of a climate agreement when big oil is against it. We’re so fucked bc people couldn’t handle a woman of color running the country https://t.co/aZ5P0zVeZE
It’s pretty hypocritical that the literal criminals who have ensured the destruction of our planet are now speaking up. 20 years ago would have been nice, ExxonMobil:
it is *insane* when the literal climate felons who have sentenced us all to extinction are warning us that Trump is a climate threat https://t.co/4ThaoiKVIu
Clearly, its a performative move. Whatever the case, it’s not going to change Trump’s climate crisis denial:
This protestation feels largely performative and aimed at PR damage control, as ExxonMobil will likely have no influence over the administration on this issue. https://t.co/g5MpR6AXO0
On a more positive note – at least Trump’s place in Florida will be one of the first places to be destroyed when sea levels inevitably rise. He also won’t have to use as much fake tan as temperatures keep increasing.
Whatever ExxonMobil is up to with this public statement – performative or not, it is clear that we are on a sure path to climate destruction unless we take drastic action, immediately.
The U.N. climate summit known as COP29 is underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, where negotiators are trying to make progress on reducing emissions and preventing the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Many activists, however, have criticized the decision to hold the talks in an authoritarian petrostate. The host country is also facing accusations that it is using the climate talks for business…
Environmental defenders are raising alarm over Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, former New York Congressmember Lee Zeldin, who has a history of opposing critical environmental protections and clean energy job investments. Zeldin’s nomination comes as Trump is reportedly discussing moving the EPA headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., which could lead to an exodus…
The Labour Party government has been called upon to act over the overfishing crisis endangering ocean health around UK shores. It comes as a new report details a roadmap of how the government could do this – if it had the will to. Because while it fails to act, the biodiversity crisis in our seas will continue to get worse.
After speaking to small-scale fishers, academics, and environmentalists from around the UK, the charity developed Mission Regeneration: A roadmap to end overfishing and restore life to UK seas for a fishing sector based on the principles of science, fairness, resilience, transparency and respect.
Oceana’s roadmap principles in full are:
Science: the management of fisheries should move beyond Maximum Sustainable Yield to integrate the wider needs of healthy marine ecosystems.
Fairness: fisheries should aim to deliver long-term environmental and social equity and fairness.
Resilience: fisheries should protect the diversity of marine life and safeguard key areas for ecosystem recovery and carbon storage.
Transparency: fisheries and seafood should be fully documented from boat to plate alongside transparent ownership of quota and vessels.
Respect: all those working in fisheries should be treated with respect, be paid fairly, and be entitled to a safe, legal and abuse-free working environment.
For each of the five core principles, Oceana provides time-bound actions for government to take. By the end of 2025, the government should have set a new legally binding, science-led deadline to end overfishing, Oceana argues, along with a ban on ‘supertrawlers’ over 100 metres long, which hoover up vast quantities of ocean life.
UK seas must be made resilient
The resilience of UK seas in the face of other serious threats, such as the climate crisis and pollution, is also vital and requires measures to rejuvenate and protect ocean wildlife, such as urgently banning destructive bottom-trawl fishing in marine protected areas.
The government must also act to level the playing field, says Oceana, so that those that fish with nature, rather than against it, are rewarded with a greater share of quota and more taxpayer money goes towards sustainable practices.
Bally Philp of the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation, who was not an author of the report but was interviewed during its development, said:
I see pictures of my dad’s boat, knee deep in cod of a decent size. Cod like that would make the front page of newspapers now, and that change has happened in just one generation. Small-scale, local fishers, who rely on a healthy, productive ocean, need action now. If we ended overfishing once and for all how many more whales and dolphins could the ecosystem support? How many more fishermen?
Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK, said:
Overfishing in UK waters, and the destruction of ocean wildlife it drives, is fundamentally a political choice. Year on year, catch limits have been set too high, with no regard for those small, local boats that need healthy seas to survive. Right now, we are allowing wealthy corporations to asset-strip our seas and move on, with no regard for coastal communities or our heritage as an ocean nation. Ending overfishing would bring back the abundance of our seas, provide resilience in the face of the climate crisis, and boost coastal economies. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.
Policy changes can protect and restore ocean health
As well as the specific measures that are the building blocks of ending overfishing, the government will also need to organise itself differently, Oceana says. It must move away from siloed thinking: fishing and ocean health are not only issues for policymakers focused on environment or industry, but also climate, communities and trade.
So, the report also proposes several new policy ideas to the government, including:
Introduce a new legally-binding commitment to end overfishing and restore fishing to sustainable levels (by end of 2025).
Introduce a due diligence supply chain obligation for seafood to set legally binding minimum environmental, social and safety standards (by end of 2025).
Publish an annual audit on the health and management of all commercial fish stocks to be scrutinised by Parliament (by end of 2026).
Introduce a fully funded just transition and skills programme for the fishing sector, including a scrappage scheme to support eligible fishers to scrap or adapt bottom towed vessels for alternative uses (by end of 2026).
Strengthen visa protections and minimum salary requirements for fisheries workers and close loopholes that facilitate abuses of safety and human rights (by end of 2026).
Ban fly-shooting and supertrawlers (over 100m) throughout UK waters (by end of 2027).
Extend the remit of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities to twelve nautical miles (by end of 2027).
Improve legally binding minimum labour standards for the fishing industry (by end of 2027).
The call for action is echoed by the UK public, according to new polling data.
Overfishing: a hot button issue
Eight in ten people (82%) are concerned about the impacts of declining fish populations on ocean wildlife, and the same proportion (80%) is worried that those who work in the fishing industry would lose their livelihoods if fish populations continued to fall. A total of 78% of those asked supported the government introducing stricter, science-based limits on how many fish can be caught in UK seas.
Callum Roberts, professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Exeter, who was not involved in the report, said:
The science shows that we can restore our seas to thriving abundance and full health. What is standing in the way of this is not a lack of data, knowledge or technology. What is standing in the way of this political inaction, pure and simple. A comprehensive overhaul of the government’s strategy is needed, and Oceana’s report has started that conversation.
Will McCallum, director of Greenpeace, who was not an author of the report but was interviewed, said:
Oceana’s report shows that the UK public is rightly worried about what overfishing is doing to our seas and local livelihoods. The current approach puts big industry first; coastal communities a distant second; and the health of our ocean last of all. The UK needs a radical change in approach that is fair for all.
Lawyers and climate crisis campaigners held law firms that represent planet-wrecking companies to account on Wednesday 13 November. They targeted the headquarters of two of the most notorious firms: A&O Shearman and Akin.
Lawyers against fossil fuels target Akin and A&O Shearman
Lawyers and allies staged a protest outside the London headquarters of legal firms A&O Shearman and Akin, as their staff arrived this morning:
Representatives from a coalition of groups including Lawyers are Responsible and Fossil Free London held portraits of people across the world whose homes and lives have been devastated by floods and fires due to climate breakdown:
Both A&O Shearman and Akin make millions from climate and biodiversity catastrophe by enabling the operations of some of the world’s most polluting and destructive companies.
A&O Shearman: lawyers for fossil fuels
A&O Shearman is the result of a merger earlier in 2024 between Allen and Overy and Shearman Sterling. Prior to its merger, Allen and Ovary conducted £89 billion worth of transactional work between 2018 and 2022 according to LS4CA ‘Carbon Circle’ report. A longstanding client of A&O Shearman is Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, ADNOC, which is currently significantly expanding oil and gas production.
US law firm Akin is well known for its work with the petrochemical industry, boasting on its website that:
For more than 75 years, Akin has empowered U.S. domestic and international oil & gas leaders to fuel the world.
Akin’s commitment to the fossil fuel industry is explicit on various pages of the firm’s website. For example, it says:
Akin is an elite global energy law firm with deep roots in the oil & gas industry. We are extremely well positioned to partner with our clients in creating value and sustainable business models in volatile markets and uncertain political climates.
The firm also has a huge team of more than 75 lawyers specialising in political lobbying, including for the fossil fuel industry. Akin is a member of the International Energy Trading Association (IETA).
Akin and the IETA lobbying link
Global green coalition Kick Big Polluters Out identified the IETA as the biggest fossil fuel lobbyist at last year’s COP 28 in the UAE: the IETA brought 116 people including representatives from Big Polluters Shell, TotalEnergies and Norway’s Equinor.
Akin also attended COP 28. The IETA’s other members include: Chevron, ExxonMobil, Drax, Eni, Shell, BP, and BNP Paribas to name but a few. Groups like the IETA frustrate attempts at effective global climate action in favour of the fossil fuel industry, and make a mockery of the COP process.
Akin received $7.92m from fossil fuel lobbying for the period 2019-2023 according to Law Students for Climate Accountability Climate Scorecard 2024 report.
Joanna Warrington, campaigner at Fossil Free London said:
Standing outside London’s top legal firms, justice is nowhere to be seen. Lawyers here are raking in millions by defending the corporations wrecking our planet.
They’re not just complicit – they’re profiting from climate disaster while the world’s most vulnerable pay the price.
“Unacceptable”
Melanie Strickland from Lawyers Are Responsible said:
It is unacceptable that these firms are enabling climate and ecological breakdown whilst so many people and other living beings are experiencing the effects of this catastrophe right now.
We lawyers work in a public profession. As lawyers, we are granted professional status on behalf of the public. It is a privilege, and it entails certain responsibilities to uphold the public interest. Yet these firms, A&O Shearman and Akin, operate on the basis of commercialism rather than professionalism, and are aggressively pursuing their clients’ interest at the expense of the planet, our shared home, and everyone else, and massively lining their own pockets in doing so.
We believe that it is possible for lawyers to be part of the solution and we want our fellow professionals in these firms to be part of the solution.
Monika Sobiecki from Lawyers Are Responsible said:
The scientific consensus is clear: to avoid ongoing mass loss of life and other catastrophic harm to human health, and to avert the existential threat to our society, the essential first step is to stop any new fossil fuel projects that expand infrastructure, hence productive capacity, and start to reduce existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
As lawyers, we all value the Rule of Law in ensuring that we have a fair, stable and prosperous society. In a world devastated by climate chaos, there is a serious risk to the Rule of Law. Yet these firms, by continuing to work with fossil fuel companies, are accelerating us further along the path of climate collapse. That must change.
Featured image and additional images via Fossil Free London and Lawyers Are Responsible
The following article is a comment piece from the Peace and Justice Project
This weekend, our movement gathers to reflect on recent struggles and victories and plan the road ahead. Three events in London the Peace and Justice Project is supporting offer opportunities to come together, learn, and take action against fossil fuel giants, the far-right, and warmongers.
Stand Up To Racism
With racism and the far right on the rise, this summit brings together activists, union leaders, and political voices to build a united, anti-fascist resistance. Speakers include Peace and Justice Project founder Jeremy Corbyn MP, NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, plus a special Q&A with Diane Abbott MP about her new book A Woman Like Me.
Let’s keep the momentum from recent mobilisations alive and grow the fight against the far-right. You can book your place here.
Stand Up to Racism – International Summit Saturday, 16th November, 12-5pm TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, Holborn, WC1B 3LS
Then, a climate march is also happening.
March for climate justice
Join the march for climate justice as thousands across the UK and beyond demand an end to fossil fuels, climate debt repayment to the Global South, and justice for Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza. Starting at the BP-sponsored British Museum and ending at parliament, the Peace and Justice Project is proud to be supporting this march as it calls for divestment from polluting industries and investment in a sustainable, equitable future.
Global Day of Action for Climate Justice Saturday, 16th November, from 12 midday British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1E 7JW
Anti-war convention
Finally, as international crises deepen, this convention hosted by Peace and Justice Project friends at Stop the War Coalition will explore Western support for Israel’s genocide, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the conflict in Sudan, and growing tensions with China.
Speakers include Jeremy Corbyn MP, Palestinian author Ghada Karmi, PSC Director Ben Jamal, and others. This is a crucial chance to strengthen the anti-war movement and plan our resistance, even more timely with Donald Trump being elected as US president last week. There are a few spaces left, so book your tickets for this important event here.
Anti-War Convention – Stop the Drive to War Sunday, 17th November, 12 – 5pm The Atrium, 124-126 Cheshire Street, London E2 6EJ
Each of these events is an important step forward in building a united movement for peace, justice, and equality. Let’s use these gatherings to re-energise our movement and build for a world for the many, not the few.
For goodness’s sake. It seems the Canary has got to do it again. Yes, we’ve got to come out and defend Keir Starmer’s Labour Party against far-right drivel. This time, it’s over his pledge at COP29regarding the UK’s reduction in CO2 emissions. This is because Keir Starmer’s climate targets have sent gammon across the country wild.
Keir Starmer’s climate targets
As BBC News reported:
Keir Starmer has announced fresh climate change targets at a global summit, saying he wants the UK to lead on cutting emissions.
The UK will now aim for an 81% cut in its emissions by 2035, he told the UN conference of parties (COP29) in Azerbaijan.
This is known as a the UK’s nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) for carbon reduction. Some environmental groups welcomed the move by Starmer. Catherine Pettengell, Executive Director of Climate Action Network UK (CAN-UK) said:
This new UK government is signalling their intention to become a climate leader. While we would have liked to see even more ambition in today’s announcement, it is encouraging that the government actively sought and adopted the Climate Change Committee’s independent expert advice. This NDC is a signal of intent from a government only four months old – but more is needed to become a climate leader – particularly on the all important question of climate finance at this COP.
We need to see the full details in the NDC when it’s published, but with a robust delivery plan, an end to new fossil fuels, integration of the COP28 energy commitments, and alignment with the Global Biodiversity Framework this could be a solid first step to deliver for people, nature, and climate.
We welcome the prioritisation and whole-of-government approach demonstrated by the Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero both here at COP29 alongside the Prime Minister.
However, not everyone was happy. Or rather, far-right gammon were positively foaming at the mouth.
It’s the IllUmInAtI wOt DiD iT
Wide Awake Media (no, we’re not sure who they are, either) summed up the ‘clown’ consensus among the Trump/Farage fanboys:
Speaking at COP29, UK PM Keir Starmer announces the UK's 2035 goal of reducing all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81%.
"There is no national security, there is no economic security, there is no global security, without climate security."
It’s the ‘COP29 Illuminati wot did it’, thinks this account – not realising that both the climate crisis and capitalists wanting to use geoengineering for their own benefit can both be true at the same time:
Kevin Edger (“pub and drink lover”, apparently) thinks the ‘gotcha’ is China – a country whose emissions have peaked and who is now the world’s biggest renewables producer:
The UK has less than 1% of the world’s emissions and has already done the most to reduce it. This is yet more ridiculous talk from Labour, who will make Britain poorer and colder for nothing.
At the same time, countries like China have increased their emissions. https://t.co/yk2a1jEDs8
Oh, and the Venn Diagram for TERFS, former Olympians, and far-right conspiracy theorists got even more interesting:
I live in a listed building as many do in our beautiful old country. I always feel I’m a custodian of a tiny part of our history. Which I’m happy to do. I know I’m lucky. But..My plumbers says it would be pretty much impossible to put heat pumps into my house (replacing the gas…
So, what’s the reality away from conspiracy drivel from the far-right?
The reality of Keir Starmer’s climate targets at COP29
Well, even right-wing, Murdoch owned the Times leapt to defend Starmer:
Starmer's 81% carbon target for 2035 has some people invoking various terrors about what that means.
Here's what his independent advisers suggest he prioritise. 2 key ones are making electricity cheaper & making landlords stop renting out draughty homes pic.twitter.com/Ughkp7CY41
As Adam Vaughn pointed out, the Climate Change Committee is the one who Starmer is taking the lead off. In its report, there’s nothing remotely catastrophic. For example, it says:
Make electricity cheaper. Removing policy costs from electricity prices will support industrial electrification and ensure the lower running costs of heat pumps compared to fossil-fuel boilers are reflected in household bills.
Reverse recent policy rollbacks. Remove the exemption of 20% of households from the 2035 fossil-fuel boiler installation phase-out, address the gap left by removing obligations on landlords to improve the energy efficiency of rented homes and reinstate the 2030 phase-out of new fossil-fuel car and van sales. The damage of these rollbacks can be limited by quickly reinstating these policies.
Remove planning barriers for heat pumps, electric vehicle charge points and onshore wind.
Introduce a comprehensive programme for decarbonisation of public sector buildings.
Contrary to what conspiracy grifter James Melville tweeted, no where does the Climate Change Committee talk about 20% of us having to effectively go vegan in its current policy document Starmer is working off. It did talk about it separately last year – but as a recommendation, not some forced policy:
Keir Starmer has announced a target to cut UK emissions by 81% by 2035 whilst attending the #COP29 in Baku.
This includes…
“A 20% shift away from meat and dairy products in the next five years, and less flying.” pic.twitter.com/B6KIFdjsdV
Spoiler: if that grifter said it, it’s bound to be false.
Plus, as Dave Jones (and the BBC to be fair) pointed out – this target is hardly new. It’s just Keir Starmer’s NDC has gone a little bit further than the Tories did – which is hardly a surprise:
This is (almost) not new. It's what was put into legislation in 2008, 16 years ago. It's just the UK doing what it has always promised to do
ALSO: I'm so proud we have such ambition in UK – it's what's fair given our historical emissions Cutting 4/5ths in 45 years ispic.twitter.com/2Leg9PrQKY
So, all in all Starmer’s announcement was hardly earth-shattering – unless you’re the far-right. However, what we do have to be cautious about in this (quite correct) drive to eliminate fossil fuel use is that the poorest people do not suffer disproportionately as a result. Because under corporate capitalism – they probably will.
As the Canary only just reported, it emerged at COP29 that a load of climate finance is already being diverted away from the Global South and into the pockets of European countries. where the finance is seeping through, it’s used for land-grabbing and displacing communities.
This is the real threat from Keir Starmer’s brand of climate policy: that it will only benefit the rich, be greenwashing (like Carbon Capture and Storage), or not be equitable for the Global South.
If the gammon spent more time thinking about this, rather than listening to Trump wannabes and believing the climate crisis is a hoax, maybe the world would be a safer place all round.
Climate campaigners didn’t sugarcoat their reactions to a Dutch court decision on Tuesday that overturned a landmark 2021 ruling ordering the oil behemoth Shell to cut its planet-warming emissions nearly in half by the end of this decade. “We are shocked by today’s judgment,” said Donald Pols, director of Milieudefensie, the Netherlands-based environmental group that originally filed suit…
On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling their power to fight climate change. The amount of carbon trees suck out of the air increases dramatically with age…
On Tuesday 12 November, the legal challenges to the Rosebank oil field brought by Greenpeace and Uplift began being heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. In tandem, people protested outside the court over the Big Oil, climate-wrecking companies involved in the unlawful project. They had a clear message: Stop Rosebank!
Stop Rosebank
Stop Rosebank campaigners hosted a rally on the streets of Edinburgh from 8am:
The Stop Rosebank demo was outside Scotland’s Court of Session, which will hear legal challenges from campaign groups Uplift and Greenpeace UK seeking to stop the development of the largest untapped North Sea oil field:
Banners summed the situation up well:
There was even a choir to keep people’s spirits up in the cold Scottish weather:
The hearing is taking place over three days, from 12-15 November. As campaigner Lauren MacDonald summed up, if Uplift and Greenpeace win the case it could be massive:
You can get involved online by watching the court stream here.
Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift which coordinated the Stop Rosebank demo commented:
The previous government should have never approved the huge Rosebank oil field, knowing that this is precisely what is driving the awful changes to our climate we’re seeing around the world. The costs of continuing to drill are now vast and the benefits far too few. This is why we’re in court this week.
The costs of our changing climate are worsening and ordinary people are picking up the tab, whether that’s communities and councils cleaning up after floods, or UK farmers losing income from record rainfall. On its own, the Rosebank oil field, off the Scottish coast, would create more climate pollution than the 700 million people living in the world’s poorest countries do in a whole year.
Rosebank is a terrible deal for Britain. It’s mostly oil for export, which would do nothing to lower fuel costs or boost our energy security yet, because of huge tax breaks for new drilling, the UK public would effectively cover almost all of the costs of developing it while the oil companies walk off with the profits. It won’t provide long term security for oil and gas workers either. Even with new fields being approved, jobs supported by the industry have more than halved in the past decade. Workers need clean energy jobs that have a long-term future.
The UK has a massive opportunity today to shift to clean, homegrown energy. We hope the court rules Rosebank unlawful so that the profiteering of the oil and gas industry ceases to hold us back.
A climate-wrecking project
Rosebank, the largest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea, is 80% owned by Norwegian oil giant, Equinor, with the Israeli owned Ithaca Energy, claiming the rest.
Despite repeated warnings from climate scientists, the Rosebank oil field was approved by the previous government in 2023. Our new government, elected with more progressive climate policies under its belt, has since conceded that its approval was unlawful.
Now on their own, Equinor and Ithaca are continuing to do everything they can to drill Rosebank and lock us into dependency on climate wrecking fossil fuels so they can keep raking in profit.
Uplift and Greenpeace UK have been granted judicial reviews of the decisions made by the Energy Secretary under the previous Conservative government and by the oil and gas regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), to grant consent to the Rosebank project.
Now, the field’s fossil fuel owners – Norway’s state-backed Equinor and Ithaca Energy – have entered the case as interested parties. They will do everything they can to bring the oil field into production.
The court will hear arguments that the development of Rosebank is unlawful and consent should be quashed because:
It ignores the impact of the emissions from burning Rosebank’s oil and gas.
It failed to properly assess the marine impacts of the development.
Because of a failure by the regulator to be transparent in its reasoning.
Stop Rosebank – before it gets any further
Commenting on the Stop Rosebank campaign, Tommy Sheppard, former SNP MP for Edinburgh East said:
When I was a kid, we thought the biggest threat to our survival was that the oil and gas would run out. It’s the case today, in fact, that we can’t afford to burn it. So, unless governments are talking to oil and gas companies about how they stop drilling, they shouldn’t be talking to them at all. The biggest deceit is the way these companies can say with a straight face, ‘we agree with phasing out oil and gas, but in order to get there we need to have more of it and develop the biggest field out there. It defies logic and they need to be called out for it.
Fossil Free London is part of a national coalition of groups and individuals campaigning against the Rosebank oil field and an international coalition of groups campaigning against Equinor’s operations across the globe. Joanna Warrington from the group said:
Rosebank is a desperate, reckless attempt by oil giants to extract profits from a dying industry. It’s time for Equinor and Ithaca to face the facts that recent legal victories for the climate in UK courts make clear – the sun is setting on new oil infrastructure.
Court today is about more than just stopping Rosebank —it’s about breaking our dangerous reliance on fossil fuels and, as Spain still struggles in the aftermath of increasingly common devastation, securing a safer future for all.
Climate finance from multilateral development banks (MDBs) is funding fossil fuels and highly polluting projects, and failing to prioritise the most climate-vulnerable countries. This is according to new research by international organisation Recourse published at the UN climate summit COP29, over climate finance.
COP29 climate finance: all is not what it seems
As MDBs gear up to play a leading role in delivering the new COP29 climate finance goal due to be agreed, this report takes a closer look at the banks’ self-proclaimed “record” figure of $125 billion climate finance in 2023, specifically where the money flowed per region and what type of projects it supported.
The analysis shows that countries in Europe received the largest share, at almost half (44%). Asia-Pacific only received less than half of this amount (21%) followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (no more than 14%).
Finance went to problematic projects, including greenhouse gas-emitting and highly polluting waste-to-energy plants, large-scale hydropower, mining for critical minerals, hydrogen, and ‘captive coal’ for industry – mainly in the form of loans (70%), not grants (4%), adding to the burden of already debt-distressed countries.
Petra Kjell Wright, report author and Campaigns Manager at Recourse, said:
The development banks’ climate finance figures should be read with great caution. We found financing for projects involving fossil fuels, human rights violations, and environmental destruction. This raises serious questions about whether the MDBs’ current approach is genuinely helping to address climate change for the most vulnerable people and places.
The are numerous examples of where MDBs climate finance is, at best, being squandered – and at worst actively harming communities and failing to achieve its goals.
Actively harming the planet and communities
Greater Malé Waste-to-Energy Project in the Maldives is classed as 94-100% climate finance by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In addition to pumping out hazardous fumes and greenhouse gases, the project has caused a net increase of waste as the parliament had to legalise waste importation to feed the plant.
Antalya Airport Expansion Project in Turkey will double capacity from 40 to 80 million passengers, thus significantly increasing the airport’s carbon emissions. The project received $153m from the AIIB in 2023, classed as 48% climate finance.
Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project, the third largest of its kind in Nepal, has severely marginalised and displaced local Indigenous peoples, with the worst economic impacts on women, and failed to follow required consultation processes. Financial investment was counted as climate finance by the World Bank, the AIIB and the ADB – all of which claim to seek to boost economic opportunities for women.
But this is not all that COP29 climate finance initiatives are funding.
Water pollution and land grabbing
Unique Meghnaghat Gas Power Plant in Bangladesh, set to run for at least 22 years, was counted in part as climate finance by the AIIB despite the long-term carbon lock-in that it represents for one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries.
The ‘Climate Smart Mining for a New Climate Economy’ project in Mongolia has been flagged as highly risky by over 60 civil society organisations, for potential health impacts, local economic losses, water pollution, land grabbing and Indigenous rights violations. The ADB counted its $500,000 investment as 100% climate finance, in line with the MDBs’ method which counts any mining of transition minerals even if it causes grave harms – contrary to the UN call for a “human rights-based approach to climate finance”.
The report builds on existing evidence that the MDBs’ climate finance is poorly counted, untransparent, and actually adding to debt distress in many countries.
As the MDBs present their role “in shifting climate finance paradigms” at an event in Baku today, experts have responded with withering analysis.
COP29 climate finance: the height of MDBs greenwashing
Claims of climate leadership by the multilateral development banks smack of hypocrisy. They cannot celebrate clean energy investments while continuing to support projects that harm people and nature. The MDBs should pay the damages owed to communities harmed by their past investments, and fund the retirement of their fossil fuel projects.
Climate action isn’t only about reducing emissions and preparing for disasters, it is about tackling inequality and injustice, especially for women in regions worst hit by climate impacts. If the development banks are serious about boosting economic opportunities for women and addressing gender gaps, they should involve women and girls at every stage.
The ADB is using 100% climate finance for what it calls ‘climate smart’ mining in Mongolia which threatens our way of life and our precious nature. But the UN has said that transition minerals supply must put human rights and environmental integrity at its centre. The development banks must not greenwash our destruction.
Petra Kjell Wright concluded of COP29 climate finance via MDBs:
At COP29, the development banks are celebrating their role in climate finance, but our research tells a different story: one of fudged figures, debt distress and finance flowing to the wrong kinds of projects in the wrong places. The banks must put people’s rights and the planet at the heart of their climate finance to truly live up to their commitment to align with the Paris Agreement.
Two Insulate Britain supporters were given suspended sentences at Woolwich Crown Court on Tuesday 12 November for taking part in Insulate Britain’s 2021 campaign of nonviolent civil resistance demanding the UK government insulate Britain’s cold and leaky homes. A campaign that was later called prescient by a number of commentators.
Insulate Britain: spared jail
Biff Whipster and Andrew Worlsey, who had each previously entered two guilty pleas in respect of three different actions during the campaign were given sentences of eight months, suspended for one year and ordered to pay costs of £156.
They had both participated in a roadblock at Junction 14, M25 Poyle Interchange on 27 September 2021. Biff Whipster had also joined a roadblock at Upper Thames Street on 25 October 2021 and Andrew Worsley had joined a roadblock on the M4 near Heathrow on 1 October 2021.
During the hearing Judge Grout confirmed that he had read a letter that Biff Whipster had sent to the court explaining his reasons for changing his plea. The letter said that Biff had no regrets for taking part in the campaign and that he had viewed taking action with Insulate Britain as:
a once in a lifetime chance to do the right thing and achieve much more than I would ever be able to do as an individual in the face of this existential crisis engulfing us.
The judicial system is broken
Biff wrote that he had joined Insulate Britain:
After carefully considering the science and the life-ending chaos that will occur on the trajectory we are on; because in the run up to COP26 there was a slim chance such protests could have worked. I considered that if Insulate Britain failed to influence COP26 then I would at least get to speak in court in front of those who work for our judicial system and who therefore, I thought, maintained a critical and pivotal position as our ‘check and balance’ against perverse political leadership.
Before I set out on this journey I’d trusted that the judicial system would, in due course, turn the spotlight towards the bigger criminals: such as those in Westminster, and the lobbyists, and all those in greed-fuelled, tax dodging, boardrooms up and down the country who are complicit in putting profit ahead of a liveable planet.
I was naive… I’ve now learned first hand that the law isn’t designed to, and therefore isn’t ‘fit for purpose’ to, protect our futures in the face of this crisis
Judge Grout asked if Biff had any plans to protest again, to which Biff replied:
I can’t say in 10 years time, when we’re all fighting for food in supermarkets, what I’ll be doing. Even people in this courtroom might be fighting too… but at this point in time I’m not planning anything.
Multiple actions in 2021
52 people joined the action on 27 September 2021 on the M25:
Many of them face trial in the coming weeks at Woolwich Crown Court.
Several Insulate Britain activists have already faced trial for the M4 roadblock on 1 October 2021. Steve Pritchard was jailed for five weeks for his part in the action and his refusal to stop taking part in disruptive action, as a matter of conscience:
The actions on 25 October 2021 involved 61 activists blocking roads at three London locations – Upper Thames Street, Bishopsgate and Limehouse Causeway – and marked the resumption of the campaign after a 10 day break:
It resulted in 53 arrests.
Later that day, the then-transport secretary Grant Shapps announced that National Highways had obtained an interim court injunction to ban protest activities that obstruct traffic, under threat of imprisonment and unlimited fines. This was, of course, directed at Insulate Britain.
Insulate Britain trials continue
In the 21 Insulate Britain jury trials for public nuisance charges to date, four trials have resulted in a hung jury, two trials have resulted in acquittals, twelve have resulted in a guilty verdict and three have been deferred. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has applied for retrials in the three cases where the jury failed to reach a majority verdict.
The CPS has chosen to summon a total of 56 supporters to answer at least 201 charges of public nuisance across some 45 jury trials, with additional retrials planned up to June 2025. These trials have been heard across Inner London, Hove, Lewes, Reading, and now Woolwich Crown Courts.
Featured image and additional images via Insulate Britain
BREAKING: MARBLE ARCH, HOLBORN, ISRAELI EMBASSY, MORE ROADS BLOCKED IN LONDON
Saturday, 16th November, 12-5pm
TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, Holborn, WC1B 3LS
False Flag 
(@JamesMelville) 
(@EssexPR) 
Cutting 4/5ths in 45 years is
