This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on Feb. 4, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Big news happened Monday in East Palestine, Ohio. And dammit, we at PUP missed it. 

The day marked the two-year “anniversary” of that appalling and toxic Norfolk Southern train derailment, so Vice President JD Vance dropped in. He made his way to the village’s fire hall and gave a speech in front of several TV cameras. A clutch of local and national officials stood behind him.

A few blocks away, residents of communities still trying to recover from the train wreck stood on a street corner holding homemade signs reading, “We are still sick.” They could get no closer to the fire hall. During an earlier visit, Vance met with residents and poked a stick in one of the creeks running through town to see a sheen of chemicals rise to the surface. Apparently those days are over.

We at PUP had planned to cover all of this, but our timing was off. A few weeks ago, PUP committed to delivering donated food to Darlington, Pennsylvania, 7 miles from East Palestine, as part of an effort by residents living near the Ohio/Pennsylvania border to meet the needs of their neighbors still struggling to put their lives back together.

While Vance was speaking at the fire hall, we were at the nonprofit organization CARE412 in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, loading up our vehicles with tomatoes, cucumbers, canned vegetables, canned beans, dried beans, potatoes, onions and dozens of other food items.

Then we sped off to Darlington. When we arrived at the designated parking lot an hour later, cars were already lined up.

Nadine Luci, a Rochester resident who’d helped coordinate the food drive, quickly got us organized. We unloaded our vehicles, then helped local volunteers pass out the food to those whose lives haven’t been the same since Feb. 3, 2023. Dozens of families had requested a food pickup – we needed enough to feed 240 people, Nadine said. The line of vehicles snaked out of the parking lot, down the street, and around the Darlington Fire Department next door.

There’s a lot of need in the area, Nadine explained.

“Some of these people just can’t make it,” she said. “They’re dealing with co-pays, paying for medicine. Some people are sharing a single vehicle in their family. Everybody is just struggling, and with prices going up ….” She shook her head as she walked away, carrying two bags to a waiting vehicle.

Since we’d missed the day’s big news event, we approached some of the people who had shown up for food and asked them their thoughts about the vice president’s visit. Many had hoped Vance would announce the Trump administration was making a major disaster declaration, which would unlock federal resources and ensure health care for residents.

People over a wide area were exposed to a stew of toxic agents two years ago. Now they wonder about the long-term consequences – among them, respiratory illnesses, cancers, reproductive problems. They’re concerned about their children’s health and development. Health issues can bankrupt them.

Vance didn’t make any declaration. Instead, he said this:

“A disaster declaration may have been very helpful 18 months ago. I don’t know that it’s still helpful today.”

We asked Christa Graves about Vance’s comment while we stuffed produce into plastic bags. Earlier in the day, Graves stood with several other residents on that street corner near the fire hall while Vance gave his speech. Many were listening to a livestream of the news conference. Vance’s wavering on the disaster declaration shook the crowd.

“There was this collective sigh when we heard that,” Graves said. She’s part of the community of organizers who’ve been demanding officials acknowledge the burden residents are bearing and do something about it. Graves said one resident heard Vance’s words and broke down in tears.

Residents were clearly hoping for something more from the one-time Ohio senator. During an earlier visit, he had seemed like an understanding friend. Now he sounded like a garden-variety politician.

Lori O’Connell pulled up at the food drive as it was winding down. She got out of her vehicle and warned everyone not to come close. She held her hand over her mouth to indicate she’s ill and didn’t want to spread germs. While volunteers loaded up her van with food, she unloaded on the new administration’s response.

She said Vance’s visit was a waste of time. “I was watching and thinking, ‘How is this any different than the last administration that came here for a photo op?’” she said. 

Exactly a year ago, then-President Joe Biden arrived, met with a few local officials and residents at the Darlington fire hall next door to where O’Connell stood and then visited the crash site, but he offered no concrete help. His motorcade of black vehicles blew past residents standing on Taggart Street and holding signs pleading for help. He’d waited a year to visit. His quick departure left residents gasping.

Now O’Connell is angry. A few months after the derailment, her husband, Wayne, was diagnosed with breast cancer. The couple live in Darlington, which got a heavy dose of that black smoke sent skyward by the infamous burning of vinyl chloride three days after the derailment. Breast cancer is rare in men — it’s about 1% of breast cancer cases in the United States. Doctors found cancer in both of Wayne’s breasts. Doctors told him they can’t connect the illness to the derailment. Lori O’Connell doesn’t believe in coincidences.

People who have the power to help Lori and Wayne and so many others aren’t listening. They come to town on special occasions like the anniversary, hold a news conference and offer up vague feel-good comments like, “We will not forget you.” Then they shake the mayor’s hand and fly back to Washington, D.C. Meantime, residents continue to live in an area they’re certain is making them sick.

Many want out. They have no faith in air and water testing conducted by subsidiaries of Norfolk Southern, no faith in government agencies telling them those tests reveal their homes are safe. They want government and the billion-dollar railroad company to figure out a way to buy the homes of those wishing to leave.

But there was no such talk from Vance. Instead, he spoke about rebuilding East Palestine. Several people at the food drive used one word to describe the day: frustrating.

As the number of cars thinned out, Graves and Luci and a few other volunteers stood in the parking lot and discussed ways to keep people’s spirits up. They realize they’re in a long, long struggle.

By then, the day had begun its gradual slide into darkness. All the politicians and reporters had departed. The second “anniversary” would soon be over.

Places like East Palestine and Darlington have few resources, the residents aren’t wealthy, they don’t run Silicon Valley tech companies or sit on prominent corporate boards. They don’t get invited to presidential inaugurations. In an increasingly transactional world, where does that leave them? Who will have their backs?

By 5:15 p.m. Monday, the volunteers had cleaned up all the empty boxes and bags that had piled up in the parking lot. The food drive had ended. One by one, the volunteers drove away. Nadine would be the last one out. She was preparing to get into her vehicle when a pickup truck entered the lot.

Nadine sighed. She’d had a long and hectic day, coordinating volunteers, preparing the site, setting up tables, getting traffic cones, calling to make certain the food would arrive on time. She watched the truck pull to a stop several feet away.

“I hope they’re not here for food,” Nadine said.

A young woman in the truck got out on the passenger’s side. She smiled at Nadine and began walking in her direction.

“The food drive is over,” Nadine said to her. “I’m so sorry.”

The young woman stopped in her tracks. She and her husband are raising a young daughter during a difficult time. Since the night of the derailment, their lives have been one misfortune after another. It’s like dominoes, the younger woman would later say. One bad thing leads to another, then another, on and on, and then you find yourself living in a camper that someone donated, thank God, because you can’t go back home. And nobody is talking about how all of this is affecting people. Everybody is damaged, they’re all worried, and yet there’s so much silence surrounding the wounds.

“I sent a note,” the young woman said. She and her husband are trying to balance work and family schedules.

“Are you Amanda?” Nadine said.

The young woman nodded.

“Oh,” Nadie said. She sparked to life, remembering. “I saved you some food.”

Nadine reached into the back seat of her vehicle and brought out two bags, one filled with produce, another with canned goods. Both were placed in bed of the pickup truck.

“Come here,” Nadine said. The two women embraced.

This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on Dec. 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

They began arriving shortly before noon on a frigid day last week, each one stepping into the warmth of a Darlington, Pennsylvania, office and the embraces of friends. In all, the gathering included more than a dozen people, and they quickly got busy, unloading boxes of donated hams, produce and canned goods, and setting up a makeshift food bank for their financially strapped neighbors, some of whom were already showing up. One member of the group passed around a clipboard and a pen so those waiting for food could write down their names.

You’d think it was a church group bringing their community a bit of holiday cheer until you wandered through the room and heard the conversations. Three people standing around a small table listened while one man described the nosebleeds that continue to haunt his family. In fact, he said, he’d had a real gusher the night before — it was so bad he’d had to wash the blood out of his beard. He showed pictures of blood pouring from his daughter’s nose.

Such photographs may be too gruesome to display in most places, but not here. Pictures are proof. Later, one woman showed photographs of deep, ugly ulcers on her arms and hands. Then she raised her sleeve to show the scars, which she tries to hide with makeup. She’s kept a detailed diary of everything that’s happened to her since the night of Feb. 3, 2023.

That’s when a Norfolk Southern freight train ran off the tracks 6 miles from away, in East Palestine, Ohio. Broken rail cars filled with toxic chemicals burned all that night and into the next day. Two days after the crash, officials announced some of the cars in the tangled pile still contained their toxic loads, and those cars were heating up. They could explode, officials said, so the next day they drained the chemicals into a ditch and set them on fire. (The National Transportation Safety Board later reported that the cars in question were, in fact, cooling down.) 

The resulting pillar of black smoke looked like a special effect in a disaster movie. You’ll hear people in East Palestine describe it with one word: evil. Certainly it shocked even those who set the fire. You wonder what went through their minds as they watched the plume rise and then flatten as it hit an inversion and spread like an airborne oil spill. Did the hair on their necks stand on end? What thoughts entered the minds of Norfolk Southern executives sitting safely in their offices and homes in distant cities and, we assume, watching the video images on TV? What plans were they making? Within a few days, they had their trains running through town again. Business as usual.

Those passing out hams and canned food in Darlington last week saw the cloud and figured their community had been poisoned. Nearly two years later, they’re still angry about it. Their anger builds when they hear stories of sickness. 

And there are plenty of those. People describe rashes and sore throats, sinus infections, heart ailments, cancer, headaches, hair loss, depression, brain fog. One Pennsylvania resident says she recently lost her sense of time while driving. She arrived at her destination and wondered, “How did I get here?”

Nadine Luci has a story. Her health went haywire the day of the big burnoff. She was unlucky. Nadine lives in East Rochester, Pennsylvania, which is 16 miles from the derailment site, but on the day officials burned all those toxic chemicals she happened to be shopping in an area along Route 51 that is within a few miles of East Palestine. She went to Aldi, Walmart and a place called Tractor Supply Co., where she bought dog food. At one point, she looked through her windshield and saw that giant cloud of black smoke.

Nadine didn’t think much about it. She certainly didn’t connect the smoke to the derailment. She wasn’t following events in East Palestine very closely — TV news is just background noise to her, she says. She figured an 18-wheeler had overturned and caught fire farther west on Route 51. Big trucks roar along that road all the time.

So Nadine finished her errands and, before heading home, pulled into the drive-thru at a KFC restaurant to pick up dinner. While waiting in her car, she noticed a burning sensation on her lips. That was weird, she thought. Soon she felt the same irritation in her tongue, eyes and skin. At the drive-thru window, she asked for a cup of ice, which she rubbed on her lips as she drove home.

Back at her place in East Rochester, things got worse. Nadine’s mouth and throat felt like they were on fire. She developed a pounding headache. Her chest tightened, she had difficulty breathing. Stranger still was this: inside her body, she felt ice cold. It freaked her out.

“What’s happening?” she wondered. She called her brother Anthony in Maine. Anthony keeps an eye on the news; he knew what was happening in East Palestine. He sent her a link to a video of the chemical burnoff and suggested it had something to do with her symptoms. 

Nadine saw the video images of the fire and the roiling black cloud and thought, “Oh, my God!”

“You better get to the hospital,” Anthony told her.

The continuing health problems rising out of the East Palestine area raise a lot of questions. To a layperson, some of the issues make sense — the burning sensation in the throat, for example, and the rashes. After all, chemicals get into your airways; they settle on your skin. Lots of people have experienced irritation from solvents they use at home and work; they know how this works. But how can a toxic exposure cause gastrointestinal issues? Or brain fog? Or depression? Those who experience these things say friends and family members, and sometimes even doctors, tell them the problem is psychological. “You’re stressed out, see a therapist,” they’re told.

And stress can certainly play a role, but Texas physician Claudia Miller suggests there’s something more going on. A professor emeritus at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Miller has spent decades studying the effects of toxic exposure. She first appeared to East Palestine-area residents months ago, during a Zoom meeting organized by activists concerned about the health of those affected by the derailment. 

In his book “They’re Poisoning Us! From the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico — An Investigative Report,” author Arnold Mann describes Miller as “one of the most prominent voices in the field of environmental medicine.” Before becoming a physician specializing in allergy and immunology, she worked as an industrial hygienist for the United Steelworkers. There, in the early 1970s, she helped set standards for workers exposed to emissions in coke ovens, electronics assembly plants and lead smelters.

Miller says toxic agents unleashed by the derailment and subsequent fires altered certain immune cells in the bodies of many who were exposed. Those cells, called “mast cells,” are dispersed throughout the body, which is why residents report such a wide range of symptoms, from skin sores to bloody noses to reproductive and gastrointestinal issues.

Researchers are just beginning to understand how all of this works. In fact, it was only three years ago, in 2021, that Miller and a few of her colleagues published a paper exploring the interaction between toxic substances and mast cells. Most local physicians simply don’t yet know about it.

This lack of knowledge is a problem that needs to be resolved if patients are to be properly diagnosed and treated, Miller said. She notes that Peter Spencer, a professor of neurotoxicology at Oregon Health Sciences University, recently sent a letter to more than two dozen academic colleagues from across the U.S., urging them to incorporate toxicant-induced loss of tolerance, or TILT, into their toxicology programs. Spencer is considered a pioneering neurotoxicologist, so his recommendation could carry some weight.

So, what are mast cells?

Miller calls them the “first responders” of the body’s immune system. The Cleveland Clinic website describes them as “your body’s alarm system.” They’re white blood cells — you’re probably already familiar with these — but instead of residing in the bloodstream, they live in tissue throughout the body. You’ll find mast cells in the skin, lungs, brain, heart, the respiratory tract. Like other white blood cells, they protect your body from foreign substances such as viruses, bacteria, parasites and toxic substances — but not by destroying the invader.

Instead, when mast cells sense a threat, they release chemicals that open blood vessels and bring other immune cells into an affected area. Activated mast cells create mucus and cause contractions in muscles in the airways and gastrointestinal tract — all in an effort to push out harmful substances.

People experience activated mast cells in many ways — often as swollen itchy skin, a runny nose, a cough or sneeze. Sometimes even vomiting or diarrhea.

Problems arise if mast cells are altered to the point where they activate when they normally wouldn’t or shouldn’t. Chemical exposure can cause this alteration, Miller says, resulting in a disease process toxicant-induced loss of tolerance. That process may be well underway in East Palestine, Miller said.

Nadine needed to get to an emergency room but felt she was in no condition to get behind the wheel of a car, so she called her friend Cindy, who drove her to a health care facility in Cranberry, Pennsylvania. A doctor listened to Nadine describe her symptoms, then ordered an X-ray of Nadine’s lungs and a CAT scan to check her brain. Both revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

“All I had was high blood pressure,” Nadine recalls. “They thought I was crazy.”

Nadine returned home with no answers. The symptoms persisted. She took acetaminophen tablets and bought eye drops at a health store in hopes they would alleviate the dryness in her eyes. A week or so after the burnoff, she visited her primary care physician. By then, ulcers had developed in Nadine’s eyelids. and blood sometimes dripped from her nose. She saw an otolaryngology specialist, who used a scope to examine her throat. She remembers him telling her, “It looks like a bomb when off in there.” Nadine saw the image and saw what she describes as “scale.”

Doctors prescribed steroids and a medicinal gargle. She ate soft foods such as soups, scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes because they caused less irritation to her mouth and throat. Her tongue bled. She sucked lozenges and chewed gum to relieve the dryness in her mouth.

Her physician had recommended she see a toxicologist in Pittsburgh. It took her forever to get an appointment, she says, but during a visit in June the toxicologist recommended Nadine leave the area for a month. Nadine acted quickly. She scheduled a visit to a remote section of northern Maine where her brother lives. Of course, she’d be joined by her 6-year-old pit bull terrier, Nina, a rescue dog.

It takes 15 hours to drive to her brother’s house. Nadine didn’t think she could do it alone, so she bought a plane ticket for a friend from Maine, who flew to Pittsburgh to accompany her.

Once she was in the Pine Tree State and breathing clean air, Nadine felt better. Her symptoms disappeared. “I was jumping for joy,” she says. “I could taste spaghetti. I could taste steak.” At home in East Rochester, a lingering metallic taste had tainted every meal.

After a month, it was time to return home. Nadine bought another airline ticket so a friend could fly to Maine and accompany her and Nina on the drive back to East Rochester. Within a week, her symptoms returned. Nadine was devastated.

TILT occurs in two stages, Miller said. It starts with a person’s initial exposure to toxic chemicals. This can happen in a few different ways. There can be a big exposure event — soldiers serving in the early 1990s Gulf War, for example, were exposed to toxic smoke from oil well fires. Another example is the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings in New York on 9/11, which exposed thousands of people to smoke from burning aircraft fuel and building materials — virtually everything inside the Twin Towers and the two airliners — as well as dust from the pulverized structures. 

(Miller’s experience extends to both of these events. She was the first to document chemical intolerance in Gulf War veterans and testified at a 1996 congressional hearing into Gulf War syndrome, and she serves as an adviser to the World Trade Center Health Registry, which monitors the health of those who were exposed during and after the terrorist attacks.)

The East Palestine train derailment and burnoff fall into the “big event” category. Nadine could have entered this first stage during her shopping trip on the night of the burnoff.

But people can become exposed in more subtle ways at home and at work. Building materials, adhesives, cleaning supplies, molds — all exude toxic gases that, over time, have the same effect as a cataclysmic exposure. 

No matter how it occurs, this initial exposure to chemicals alters the body’s mast cells, which become much more sensitive and can spring into action when they perceive even the slightest threat. This is stage two: the triggering of sensitized mast cells by chemicals that previously caused no reaction.

This is a problem because we live in a country awash in chemicals — more than 86,000 are included in a 2024 EPA inventory. Products that can cause reactions surround us in our homes, cars and workplaces. Air fresheners, nail polish, household cleaners, new carpet and furniture, tobacco smoke, exhaust — all of these can trigger sensitized mast cells. 

Once triggered, those mast cells release thousands of inflammatory chemical messengers called mediators. The result: symptoms that can strike several different systems in the body. They can turn up in the stomach and intestine, throat and lungs, the skin, the brain — anywhere mast cells are found.

That’s why some people who’ve suffer from TILT experience “brain fog” — or problems thinking clearly and focusing — as well as memory difficulties, confusion and depression. Chemical intolerance can wreak havoc in the limbic system, the portion of your brain that manages anxiety, irritability, emotions, behavior, motivation and memory. “Sudden rage is another symptom,” Miller said. “Some Gulf War veterans gave away their guns because they were afraid they’d use them on their children, and this was totally out of character for them.”

Many of those veterans are still sick and have to be careful about exposing themselves to agents that “trigger” reactions. These can include foods, drugs, cleaning solutions, even barbecue smoke and barbecued meat that had absorbed triggering chemicals.

Chemically intolerant people who talk to health professionals about their symptoms are often diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and then sent to a psychiatrist, although the root cause may be chemical intolerance. 

Miller and her colleagues developed a tool designed to identify and assess people who may have become intolerant to multiple chemicals. Called the Quick Environmental Exposure and Sensitivity Inventory (QEESI), it’s a questionnaire used by researchers and clinicians around the world. Completion takes about 10 minutes — it’s an easy process, and users can even create a graph of their symptoms and how they’ve changed over time. Users can share the results with their physicians. 

Not everyone reacts the same to chemical exposure, Miller said. Those with a history of allergies, for example, may be more sensitive than others. That fits with Nadine. Respiratory illness has haunted her since she was a child growing up in Beaver, she said. “I’m a product of these mill towns, a product of the rust belt,” she said. “I was the allergy child, the asthma child.”

If Nadine experienced stage one of TILT when she was exposed to airborne contaminants on the day of the burnoff in East Palestine, then what could be causing stage two, the triggering of her mast cells? One answer may lie in the bright reddish glow she can see in the distance when she looks out her bedroom window at night.

The Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex lights up this part of Beaver County. The “cracker plant,” as people call it, covers nearly 400 acres along the Ohio River. It utilizes ethane to produce millions of tons of plastic pellets. Since production began in 2022, the plant has been fined numerous times for sending pollutants into the air and water.

Nadine reported no health issues from those contaminants before the derailment. Are they now triggering her symptoms? Something in her environment certainly seems at fault, because her health improved dramatically when she left the area to live for a month in a cleaner environment in Maine.

Once a person has experienced TILT, they can be triggered by extremely low levels of exposure — amounts that are measured in parts per billion. Miller tried to get the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences or a university to use equipment capable of detecting such small levels of contaminants in the homes of a few people experiencing health problems in the East Palestine area. She got no takers, so she funded the testing herself. She asked toxicologist George Thompson to conduct the air sampling.

So far, Thompson has tested the air in three homes. He focused his efforts on rooms where people became ill. The tests revealed low levels of cresol, an organic compound that can act as a sensitizer.

Once the affected person’s home is contaminated, it’s extremely difficult to remove all the agents causing health issues. Chemicals and toxins travel through any opening — holes in walls, for example, and electrical outlets — and work their way into a home’s drywall and wood. “It’s a nook and cranny problem,” Miller said. “These are microscopic particles, and gases and vapors, at very low levels. They will follow any avenue they can.”

Miller told the story of a Texas woman suffering from TILT after a fire inside her family’s home. She was repeatedly exposed to cleaning agents used inside as workers cleaned and restored the home. She began experiencing health problems and developed an autoimmune disease called scleroderma that disfigures the skin. Workers removed all the wallboard in the house, but it didn’t help. The combustible products from the smoke that were the source of her sensitization had even been absorbed into the wood framing.

“She just dwindled, and her health went down the drain,” Miller said. The woman died a few years ago. The case sticks in Miller’s mind.

The threat may not end with the person sensitized. Research indicates the gene alterations can be passed along to children, and even grandchildren, who could become more susceptible to diseases and other health problems. One recent study found that parents with high chemical intolerance scores had an increased likelihood of having children with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

“You have to start protecting people,” Miller said. “The next time this happens, you get people out of there. And you may have to buy out their homes if you can’t get them cleaned up.”

Nadine’s symptoms continue. A few days ago she said, “Last night it felt like somebody just stuffed my nose with chlorine tablets. That’s how much it burns.”

She figures she must leave the area in order to be healthy. She had been saving to buy a house somewhere far away from East Palestine and the cracker plant, but the trip to Maine ate up about $6,000 of that money — she’d had to buy food and gas and plane tickets and pay for several nights at an Airbnb and a hotel.

And if she did leave, where would she go? Her son lives in Wheeling, West Virginia, but he says it’s polluted there, too. She thinks Maine or Vermont would work, but she’s not sure about the cold, especially in Maine. 

Leaving is something she dreads. Her Beaver County roots run deep. She has a history here and friends and a community. The thought of saying goodbye to everything brings tears to her eyes.

“My parents are buried here, my grandparents are buried here. My little brother lives in Ellwood City. To leave everything … it would be heartbreaking.”

From the moment a Norfolk Southern ‘bomb train’ derailed in East Palestine, OH, on February 3, 2023, traumatized and chemically exposed residents became another political football to be kicked around by Republicans, Democrats, and the media. Nearly two years since the avoidable catastrophe that changed their lives forever, residents in and around East Palestine and their families have been left to live in a toxic “sacrifice zone.” Like in 2020, the majority of voters in this part of Ohio and Pennsylvania will likely vote for Donald Trump in 2024, though plenty have given up on the whole system. In this on-the-ground documentary report, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Steve Mellon from the Pittsburgh Union Progress go to East Palestine to speak with residents face to face, deep in the heart of so-called “Trump Country,” and what they find is a stark reminder that working-class communities have way more in common than corporate media and corporate politicians want us to believe.

Filmed and directed by: Mike Balonek
Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Mike Balonek, Steve Mellon
Post-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Mike Balonek, Jocelyn Dombroski, David Hebden, Kayla Rivara

Transcript

Speaker 1:  Tonight, a town meeting in East Palestine, Ohio, where worried residents are getting a chance to express their concerns after a freight train derailment caused evacuations and a fiery toxic mess.

Speaker 2:  Joy Behar knew exactly who to blame for this toxic catastrophe sparked by years of political corruption and corporate greed: the residents of the town themselves. Why? Well, because they were part of the deplorable group who voted for Donald Trump. Take a listen.

Joy Behar:  I don’t know why they would ever vote for him because of somebody, who by the way, he placed someone with deep ties to the chemical industry in charge of the EPA’s Chemical Safety Office. That’s who you voted for in that district.

Speaker 3:  Talk about the political finger pointing because you hear Buttigieg critical of former President Trump for going, and many would say, hey, Buttigieg, we’d like to see you in East Palestine, Ohio, right now addressing this.

Chris Albright:  It was a catastrophe that happened, that changed our lives, and we’re never going to get back to normal.

Since the derailment happened, I was a gas pipeline worker. I developed congestive heart failure, which ended up spiraling into severe heart failure. I’ve been unable to work since April of last year, unable to provide for my family. I’ve lost my health benefits in that time. I can’t afford my medications right now because of this, because of something that could have been and should have been prevented by the railroad, by Norfolk Southern.

Laurie Harmon:  I live about three blocks from the train derailment, was diagnosed with systemic contact dermatitis due to chemical exposure. I have now lesions in my spine. I have cysts on my kidneys. I am losing everything. I’m losing my home. I lost my relationship. I’m a foster parent, I lost my kids. This is more than one person can take.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s just like really, really sad and infuriating. Because from the moment that the Norfolk Southern train derailed here in East Palestine on Feb. 3, 2023, the people of this town were turned into just another political football to be kicked around by Democrats and Republicans in the media.

The conversation was all about who’s more to blame for this, Democrats or Republicans? Who’s going to get to town first, Trump or Biden? Senators like Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance, Democrats, Republicans made a lot of political hay about this situation and saying they were going to fix it. These people are still going through hell.

And now we’re here in 2024 talking about an election season. We’re talking about places like this as Trump country. We’re talking about people, regular people like you and me who live in places like this as if they’re not people.

So if we have to talk about the elections, and we do, because elections are still important, the outcome of elections still shape the ground upon which we live, work, and organize. So we got to talk about them, but if we have to talk about elections, let’s talk about them from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Steve Mellon:  I was talking to East Palestine resident Ashley McCollum on the phone the other day about politics and about the differences, the political differences that exist in the world today, and that everything is boiled down to who are you going to vote for in the presidential election?

She said, Steve, if you came upon a car wreck and the car was on fire and you rushed up to help people, would you ask them who they voted for? Like, of course not. You’d pull them out. What’s different between this situation and that situation?

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is Steve Mellon. Steve’s a journalist and a photographer, and over the past year, he’s done more consistent, thorough, on-the-ground reporting on the East Palestine disaster than practically anyone in the country.

Steve has also been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that whole time, and he’s been doing all that reporting without pay for the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the alternative newspaper that workers have been producing on their own while they’ve been on strike for the last two years.

Steve Mellon:  We went out on strike on Oct. 18, 2022, and for the first couple months we had difficulty learning how to strike. We had to figure out how to take care of each other’s needs, figure out different actions, how to coordinate with other organizations, supportive organizations and unions.

We were still figuring out how to publish a strike paper. Bob was editing, he was figuring things out. And then this derailment happens 30 miles from my house. And there was this yearning to go cover it, but quite honestly, we saw the cloud. We saw that mushroom cloud for the burn-off, and I thought, holy shit, this is happening to people who are living in this community. I know communities like this.

Covering a story like this, in my experience, in doing this for 40 years, if you want to cover this story accurately, you have to build relationships with people. And I’ve been able to do that on strike simply because if we think this is important enough and I need to come up here once a week and sit and talk to people for three hours at their kitchen table about what they’re dealing with and not go home and write a story because the story’s not done yet, we can do that.

If the Post-Gazette or any other news organization that’s paying me, they’re going to want a story. They can’t afford to have somebody out working on a story that’s not going to have an immediate payoff and fill that space and generate audience and revenue for the publication.

I lament the demise of those local media organizations because I do think they’re incredibly valuable just on a daily basis. But when something like this happens, when a catastrophic event occurs in the community, I think a local newspaper is one of the places people can go to feel bound to each other. We’re all dealing with this together.

Laurie Harmon:  Hi everybody. Thank you for being here. I live about three blocks from the train derailment. We were evacuated, came back on about the 10th when they said it was all clear. On the 12th, I had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled. I started getting rashes.

So May 1… This is about the time where they started digging up the pits, cleaning up. I started getting second, third, and fourth degree chemical burns. I have the burns over 80% of my body. They burrow deep down in, it’s horrible.

Maximillian Alvarez:  On March 23, dozens of people from around East Palestine and around the country gathered in the East Palestine Country Club for a conference that was called by the newly formed Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers Coalition.

Attendees included residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area, but also residents of other so-called sacrifice zones. People living near other rail lines, railroad workers, labor union representatives, environmental justice organizations, journalists, socialists, Trump voters, and so many more.

The coalition discussed how to pressure the Biden-Harris administration to issue a disaster declaration for East Palestine and secure immediate government-funded healthcare for residents whose ailments and medical bills continue to pile up.

Christina Siceloff:  So I’ve had pressure in my ears, itchy skin, migraines, headaches, brain fog, dizziness, confusion, tiredness, low-grade fever, congestion, runny nose, burning in my nose, eyes, and throat, strange smells, strange tastes, polyps in my nose, pain around my eyes, itchy eyes, extra mucus, sore and blistered throat hoarseness, a feeling in my esophagus and lungs, throat, nose, and abdomen like someone was burning me with acid and lighting me on fire from the inside.

Coughing, sore lungs, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea sometimes at the same time. Body aches, excessive thirst, loss of appetite at times, stomach pain, abnormal menstruation, cramping and tingling in my feet, twitches, tremors, anxiety and panic attacks. These are most of the symptoms I can recall. I’ve had these since the train derailment and the event and burn that happened last year.

Since then, I’ve been diagnosed with an ear infection, an upper respiratory infection, exposure to toxins that were non-occupational, and even had one doctor tell me they didn’t know what to do for us yet, including for my four-year-old son. I’ve had blood tests and urine tests only to be told everything was fine.

In January, I was diagnosed with PTSD. One of the most recent doctor visits was to have a screening done for cancer that came back as benign, but they wanted to continue monitoring every three months, but the insurance won’t pay for that.

Daren Gamble:  Obviously, steps like this are very important to get this ball rolling, to bring awareness not only to us, but the other thousands of communities in the country that are being poisoned. It’s just so eye-opening. So I’ve lived here my whole life. Before this happened, there was no such thing as environmentalists to me. I mean, that all happened somewhere else. These things happen somewhere else.

Chris Albright:  One of the biggest takeaways about this is what happened here can happen to anybody out there. They have done nothing, nothing to fix the safety issues, the maintenance problems, anything like that. This can happen at anybody’s place, anywhere in this country right now because they won’t do anything about it.

Until they hear from us. Once they hear from us and we start letting them know that we’re done, we’re not taking this anymore [applause]. We got to stand up. We got to unite. We got to get together, and we got to make this right.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I’m the socialist weirdo that Fox News keeps telling you is the enemy, right? You’re the white, working-class Trump country guy that MSNBC keeps telling me is the enemy and your neighbors are the enemy. But we’re here sitting on your porch. I don’t know what that says about how we should vote in the election, but what do you think that says about the disconnect between the way we talk about this country, as if we’re all just so divided by party? What do you think people can learn from why we’re here right now?

Chris Albright:  Well, a couple things I’d say about that is number one is don’t listen to all the mainstream media and all. Go talk to your neighbors. Go talk to your friends. Go talk to people in your community. You’ll find out that the differences that MSM is pushing down our throats and the political parties are pushing down our throats and then trying to get us to believe, to divide us, are not true. That we’re not defined and we’re not separated by those things that they’re telling us that we should be.

You just said you’re on the left side. I’m on the right side. So what? So what? It doesn’t matter. I think what it comes down to above all and anything else is be a good person. Be a good human.

Maximillian Alvarez:  What was most powerful about the gathering in East Palestine was seeing this diverse, working-class coalition of capitalism’s forgotten victims standing together in solidarity. There were no blue state people or red state people. There were just people fighting off different tentacles of the same corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires.

Jami Wallace:  This isn’t just a fight for East Palestine. This is a fight for all of the laborers across the country. We built this country with our blood, sweat, and tears. Our ancestors built this country. And now our country is in the hands of these corporations that have created a country that I don’t want to live in. We let this country get so far gone, we are the only ones that are going to be able to take this country back, and we need national action.

The government should not be let off the hook either. They had the funding to do more research on the chemicals before they even put them on the tracks. They had the power to not lift the evacuation, and some of us were never even told to leave or to stay inside. There should have been more done to protect people, and even to this day, they have done next to nothing to make changes or even monitor the changes that were made.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I first met Chris Albright and his wife Jess when Professor John Hanson and his law students brought us all out to Harvard in September of 2023 to do a live interview about the East Palestine derailment and the never ending nightmare that residents have been living through ever since.

Steve Mellon and I went to East Palestine to sit down with Chris and to talk frankly about how different our conversations about politics and the elections look when we actually have them face to face. And when we talk as fellow workers and human beings first, not as Democrats or Republicans or anything else.

What do you want folks to know out there who are only looking at you as a Trump voter in Ohio?

Chris Albright:  Well, I’m not just a Trump voter in Ohio. When it comes to the core of everything is the fact that we want safety. We want healthcare. We want safe railways. We want to be able to get over a lot of stuff that our country is telling us because you’re on this side of the fence or that side of the fence, you have to be this person or that person, and that’s not right. We want the basic human rights that anybody else wants.

And I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, Independent, it doesn’t matter to me. We have to be able to come together and work on everything that we need as a country, as people to get past this.

And yes, I’m a Republican, I’m a conservative. I have my views, I have my thoughts. You’re not, you have your views and your thoughts. But we can sit here and then talk like this because it doesn’t matter.

Hilary Flint:  What we’ve learned is talking to our elected officials doesn’t get… I sat down with the president of the United States last month. It didn’t get me anywhere. It’s another promise for another day, for another meeting, for another… No. Now the way that we show them is that we come with more people. And every meeting gets more people and more power [applause], and that’s how we move the needle. It’s not a conversation with an elected official. It’s an elected official seeing you bring the power to them.

George Waksmunski:  We need a movement, a rank and file, militant movement. Aggressive struggle. Join a coalition and fight back.

Chris Silvera:  But if we want to change things, then we have to create that change. It ain’t going to be the Democrats and it ain’t going to be the Republicans. Don’t worry about some third guy running for president. You have to start at the town council, at the city council, at the school board [applause].

When they see that change coming up the hill, that they will understand that you have changed and that’s going to make the society change. So we need to start to demand from these railroads [applause], from people that’s in Washington, pass the Safety… What do you call it?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Rail Safety Act.

Chris Silvera:  Pass the Rail Safety Act. Is it the best thing? No, but it’s better than what you got right now. So you got to move step by step in one direction, right? So everybody here gotta make that commitment. Call your senator, call your congressperson, call one of them crooked people down in Washington DC and say, pass this.

Because they’re still subject to the vote at the end of the day. Still subject to one person, one vote. We have to stand up.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yes, Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay a $600 million class action settlement with residents and businesses in and around East Palestine, with payouts varying depending on one’s proximity to the crash site, their household size, and other factors.

But the company is not admitting liability or wrongdoing, and that settlement, frankly, doesn’t begin to cover all that Norfolk Southern has stolen from this community. And residents who desperately need the money still worry about the health costs they will continue to accrue from the chemicals they and their families have been exposed to.

And yes, like in 2020, the majority of voters in Columbiana County are still going to vote for Trump in 2024, though plenty have given up on the whole system. After experiencing such a devastating tragedy, and after being lied to by government agencies and abandoned by elected officials in both parties, the mere fact that Trump visited East Palestine a full year before President Biden did was, frankly, enough to convince many residents of who supposedly cares more about them.

But what I saw and felt in East Palestine was what I’ve seen in other sacrifice zones around the country: working people who need help after more than 40 years of corporate dominance, deregulation, disinvestment, and the systematic devaluing of labor and life itself. People who yearn for something better than empty promises and partisan gimmicks, but who feel like nothing better is ever really on offer.

The common wisdom is that our country is more politically divided now than ever before. Granted, you got to put an asterisk next to that because, keep in mind, this is a country that fought a civil war against itself. But the point stands that it feels like we have nothing in common, nothing to talk about, nothing to struggle together over.

Chris Albright:  Max, me and you have talked, how many times, before I even knew that you were on the left side. I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. You’re a great human being. Steve, you’re a great human being. I don’t care what side of the fence you’re on. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, a conservative, a leftist, I don’t care. Be a good person. If you’re a good person, that stuff doesn’t matter.

Steve Mellon:  I think it’s proof that what divides us is a very surface level item, and we can all probably disagree here on who we should vote for, who we personally are going to vote for, but that’s not how I defined any of you two, because we have not had that conversation. We have gathered in East Palestine, what draws us all here are issues that affect us all. They affect you personally now, Chris, on a very visceral and real level.

They could happen to me. It could happen to you, Max. And that’s what’s drawn us together, is the understanding that we’re all vulnerable. We all lack power as individuals, but if we coalesce around issues, around the things that are important to us, the safety of your family, the safety of your community, how we should treat each other as human beings, not as Trump voters or Biden voters, but as human beings who want the same things out of life. We want a healthy family, we want a life that we feel proud of. We want to be able to live lives that give something to the community that we can feel proud of.

Maximillian Alvarez:  These are just real nuts and bolts things that it feels like it had to get to a point where we’ve lost so much of that, that what binds us is more apparent now than ever. But I do genuinely feel that, whatever path forward we have, it’s got to start there.

Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on Aug. 14, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday filed for an injunction seeking to have a federal court step in to end an almost two-year strike and put striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers back to work.

The rare filing, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, asks a judge to order the company to follow federal labor law and take striking journalists back to work, at least temporarily, under the terms of their last illegally violated contract while their union and the company negotiate a new contract.

The filing also seeks to have the company reimburse other striking workers — in unions representing advertising workers, pressmen and mailers — for health care coverage the company was legally supposed to pay for but did not, as well as for subsequent health care costs. That significant financial remedy would get those workers to end their strike, return to work, and resume bargaining for a new health care plan and new contracts.

The next step: A District Court judge will consider the injunction request and issue a ruling, a process union officials say could take from a couple of weeks to several months.

Within days of a federal judge’s ruling fully in favor of this request for an injunction to stop “irreparable harm” to the workers while the legal process drags on, a total of about 60 strikers could be back to work.

The filing is the most significant development in the strike since an administrative law judge ruled in January 2023 that the PG is breaking federal labor law in multiple ways, including not bargaining in good faith with the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. 

The injunction supports the specifics of that administrative law judge’s ruling, which the company appealed, by asking a U.S. District judge to order the company to be “enjoined and restrained from”:

• Failing and refusing to bargain in good faith with all the unions over successor collective-bargaining agreements and any interim agreements over health insurance benefits.

• Making unilateral changes to the journalists’ last contract, which expired in 2017.

• In any other manner interfering with, restraining or coercing employees in the
exercise of the rights guaranteed them under section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

The request also asks the judge to order the company to:

• Immediately bargain collectively and in good faith with the unions, upon their request, for contracts and health insurance benefits.

• Immediately rescind any or all of the unilateral changes that the company unlawfully implemented in July 2020 and “restore, honor and continue the terms” of the parties’ 2014-2017 collective-bargaining agreement. That would include the company making all prospective increased health care insurance payments required by the Western Pennsylvania Teamsters and Employers’ Welfare Fund, in accordance with the December 2019 arbitration award on this issue.

• Make whole the affected employees in the pressmen’s, typos’ and mailers’ unions
for any direct or foreseeable financial harms caused by the loss of health benefits, including prospective reimbursement for out-of-pocket medical and substitute
health insurance expenses, suffered as a result of the company’s unlawful bad-faith bargaining and unilateral changes.

• Within five days, post physical copies of the District Court’s injunction order setting forth the relief granted at the company’s Clinton and Pittsburgh facilities, as well as email and mail them to all employees.

• Within seven days of the issuance of the District Court’s injunction order, convene one or more mandatory meetings to read it to all employees.

• Within 21 days, submit to the District Court and the NLRB’s Regional Director Nancy Wilson a sworn affidavit stating in detail how the PG has complied with the injunction order.

The filing isn’t yet the end of a saga that’s been difficult to follow, even for those workers who have been living for nearly two years with what has become the longest strike ever in Pittsburgh and the longest ongoing strike in the country.

The production unions went on strike on Oct. 6, 2022, over a dispute over their health care coverage, for which the company stopped paying because of a dispute over a cost increase of $19 a week. The journalists of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh voted — 38 to 36 — to go on their own unfair labor practices strike on Oct. 18, 2022, and about 60 of its then 95 members did.

The Guild that fall had just presented its case before NLRB Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter. On Jan. 26, 2023, he ruled overwhelmingly for the journalists. But on March 23, 2023, the company, as expected, appealed that case, which continues to be pending before the five-member board in Washington. Other unfair labor practice charges and other unions’ cases vs. the PG also still are pending.

Meanwhile, the strikers have been getting by on weekly strike benefits from their unions and by applying for money available to them from donations from supporters, including the Communications Workers of America, the parent union of three of the locals. Through July 2024, according to the CWA, donations totaled more than $781,000.

In the journalists’ unfair labor practice case, Carter further ordered the company to “make its employees whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits that resulted from its unlawful unilateral changes” in 2020, such as reductions in salary and vacation. Union officials had estimated at one point that the company’s bill for all union and striker losses would be more than $4 million, but the NLRB’s request for an injunction doesn’t seem to address this directly.

Find the judge’s 2023 decision and more at https://www.nlrb.gov/case/06-CA-269346.

Wednesday’s filing in the Western District of Pennsylvania Court on Grant Street, Downtown, came more than three months after the striking workers expected the local NLRB to seek what’s called a 10(j) injunction. Such injunctions are rare — Only four have been authorized this year. The NLRB page about them notes, “These temporary injunctions are needed to protect the process of collective bargaining and employee rights under the [National Labor Relations] Act, and to ensure that Board decisions will be meaningful.”

In fact, union officials said, the local office was set to file the injunction this June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruling — in a case involving Starbucks workers — changed the standards that all such NLRB 10(j) injunction requests must meet. So over the past several weeks, the union officials said, the NLRB adjusted its 90-page brief and supporting documents for the news workers before filing it — something noted in the injunction request.

Other twists in the long road included one of the PG production union locals, the Teamsters representing transportation workers, in April secretly settling its strike by taking severance payments in exchange for dissolving their local, something the other unions consider a betrayal.

Then in June, the remaining four unions met with the company to hear its plans to close its printing facility in Findlay by August 2025 while going all in on its longtime business plan to deliver its news products digitally. The company wouldn’t need its own pressmen (eight of whom, including one woman, still are on strike with Printing Packaging & Production Workers Union or PPPWU), nor any mailers (CWA 1484 has 10 full-time employees on strike and five part-time employees on strike). But the company still will need advertising workers (nine of whom are still on strike with CWA 14827).

All this is occurring during a backdrop of lawsuits and feuding among members of the Block family that runs Block Communications Inc., which owns the PG, The Toledo Blade, and a cable company and several broadcast stations in Ohio. One point of contention is the board looking into the possibility of trying to sell the Pittsburgh newspaper, which has been created and published, online daily and in print two days a week, by workers who didn’t join the strike and workers who were hired after the strike started.

Through it all, many supporters — from longtime customers to U.S. senators — have avoided buying, reading or talking to the Post-Gazette so as not to cross the picket line and undermine the workers’ right to strike for better conditions for all workers at the company.

Union leaders stress that the Post-Gazette’s illegal behavior predates the strike by several years and that the company has spent millions more to fight the unions than it would have cost to treat them legally and fairly.

“With the money the Post-Gazette has spent on anti-union attorneys, private security firms, printing the paper at the Butler Eagle, which we estimate to be close to $12 million, they could have given every employee a raise and funded the health care instead of terminating it,” said PPPWU Local 24M/9N President Chris Lang in a news release. “This is the beginning of our eighth year in negotiations, and hopefully the 10(j) injunction will bring all of this nonsense to a close. The employees have given their lives to this company and deserve that respect.”

In terms of journalists, there are 27 strikers and about 75 who are working. Many of those have been hired since the strike began. Meanwhile, several strikers decided to take other jobs, sometimes in other cities. Only a handful of strikers went back to work at the PG. Per federal labor law, strikers who did not take similar jobs would be legally entitled to getting their former job titles back; the fate of replacement workers would be up to the company.

The majority of Newspaper Guild members who did not go on strike believe that they have resigned their union membership, but in fact they remain members of the bargaining unit, and it continues to be a condition of employment to be a member in good standing to retain their jobs. The Newspaper Guild executive committee recently voted to require those workers to catch up on all unpaid dues, dating back to 2021 in some cases, and may also levy fines some would be required to pay to return to good standing.

Zack Tanner, striking interactive designer and Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh president, said he’s happy for the workers to get their day in court. “It’s really exciting that this is coming down finally,” he said. “You can see from the size and scope of it how much the PG is breaking federal law.”

Marian Needham, executive vice president of the NewsGuild-CWA, said in a statement, “We are hopeful that the Blocks will not demonstrate the same contempt for the federal courts that they have shown their employees and this entire bargaining process. We are resolute in our intention to bargain a fair settlement for our members, and we will continue to fight until we get there.”

Should a District Court rule in the unions’ favor, the PG may request a stay from that same judge and possibly appeal to a U.S. Circuit court.

The company could comply with the administrative law judge’s 2023 order at any time, and it and the unions also could negotiate a settlement, or the outcome of the cases still could be decided by the five-member NLRB board in Washington or on appeals. There are no deadlines for that to happen.

The filing notes, “Unless injunctive relief is immediately obtained, it may fairly be anticipated that [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] will continue its unlawful conduct during the proceedings before the Board and during subsequent proceedings before a court of appeals for an enforcement decree with the result that PPG’s employees will continue to be deprived of their rights guaranteed in the [National Labor Relations] Act.”

The striking workers and unions plan to hold a news conference in response to the injunction request at 2 p.m. Thursday in front of the Post-Gazette’s newsroom at 358 North Shore Drive, Pittsburgh 15212.

The Union Progress’ Rob Joesbury contributed.

This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on March 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

Here’s the story of two men. One is a Trump-supporting blue-collar conservative from a small town in rural Ohio; the other is the son of a Mexican immigrant and describes himself as a socialist and a “lefty nut job.” They’ll be getting together later this week, and of course they’ll soon come to blows, right? Or at least hurl insults at each other?

That’s the narrative we’ve all come to expect. You see it on cable news shows, on social media. Division is hot these days.

But in the real world, the one in which trains fly off their tracks and spill toxic loads in America’s backyards, Chris Albright and Maximillian Alvarez recognize they have more in common than that which separates them.

That bond will be on display Saturday, during an event in East Palestine, Ohio, involving local residents, unionists, community activists and environmentalists from around the country. They’re getting together to demand the federal government step in and make certain those affected by the derailment are provided with health care.

The get-together will feature music and a lineup of speakers that includes residents of East Palestine and other communities affected by toxic contamination as well as union organizers and journalists. Initiated by the newly formed coalition Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers, the event runs from noon to 5 p.m. at East Palestine Country Club, 50834 Carmel Anchor Road, Negley, OH 44441 (moved from the First Church of Christ).

Albright and Alvarez met in September during a Harvard Law School “Systemic Justice Teach-In” that focused on telling the story of the Norfolk Southern derailment. Albright lives a half-mile from the derailment site, and his family tale is one of financial stress, social isolation and illness. Doctors diagnosed Albright with a heart condition in March 2023; his cardiologist believes chemicals from the derailment, or stress, likely exacerbated his condition. In May, his wife, Jessica, ended up in the emergency room with what was described as stroke-level blood pressure.

Alvarez, in his job as editor of the independent Real News Network, has covered the rail industry and the aftermath of the derailment. He’s interviewed a number of East Palestine residents.

“When I met Chris and Jess for the first time, I didn’t see Trump voters,” Alvarez said. “I didn’t see race, I saw flesh and blood human beings who were experiencing something devastating and whose needs were so apparent. I just felt connected to them on that level. Once we shook hands and talked, that’s all Chris and Jess saw as well. They didn’t see the piercings and the tattoos. We realized we were kindred spirits who believed in the basic values of kindness and neighborliness.”

Albright admits to being a bit wary when he first saw Alvarez. “He’s got an intimidating look,” Albright said. “But we’ve become friends. I know about his wife, his foster daughter, his parents, his cat. He’s a great human being, one of the great souls I’ve met.”

After that initial meeting, the two worked together in December to organize a 12-hour online video fundraiser for those affected by the derailment. Hosted by Alvarez, the event highlighted residents who discussed the difficulties of living in a contaminated community. Those stories caught the attention of union activist Steve Zeltzer, host of a labor-focused radio program in San Francisco.

 Zeltzer talked with Albright and Jeff Kurtz, a retired railroad engineer, union member and former Iowa state representative, about organizing an in-person event in East Palestine that focused on a specific topic: demanding government-funded health care for those in East Palestine and surrounding communities. This could be done by invoking a law allowing President Joe Biden to issue a major disaster declaration and unlocking federal resources for East Palestine’s recovery.

This was something a coalition of East Palestine residents have been seeking for months. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine waited until July to ask the Biden administration to make the declaration. In September, Biden took what some called “baby steps” by ordering the appointment of a dedicated coordinator for the recovery efforts and directed federal agencies to continue holding Norfolk Southern accountable. But he stopped short of making the disaster declaration.

In January, Zeltzer organized a series of Zoom meetings to discuss his idea of an East Palestine event.

“It blossomed from there,” he said. “Other residents, environmentalists, union people got involved — people who want to see the residents get health care. If we can win health care for East Palestine, that will be a real victory for all working people.”

Labor organizers in Iowa committed to bringing a busload of people to East Palestine. Food & Water Watch is chartering a bus to the village, with pickup locations in Pittsburgh and Beaver County.

“I can’t believe how quickly it has moved forward,” said Penny Logsdon, president of the Lee County Labor Chapter in Keokuk, Iowa. She was one of the first to coalesce around the idea and attended the early meetings.

“It just gives everybody confidence it was meant to be,” she said. “We are a very outgoing labor chapter and whenever something has been brought to our attention by one of our members, I’ve never heard, ‘No, we can’t do it,’ or ‘it’s too difficult.’ It’s always, ‘What can we do?’ And that’s the attitude we’ve taken towards this.”

The Iowa connection proved strong. Albright traveled to Des Moines  in late February to tell his family’s story during an Iowa Federation of Labor conference. “The people of East Palestine are still experiencing the fallout from the derailment,” he told attendees. “We’re still dealing with everything that happened. There are still people who are sick, still people not working. The media forgot about it, the nation forgot about it, but we’re still dealing with it.”

Kurtz, himself an Iowa resident, met Albright in early October, when the two were guests on a podcast hosted by Alvarez. Afterward, Kurtz’s local — he’s a 40-year member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Local 391 — collected gift cards and water for East Palestine residents. During a trip east to visit family members, Kurtz stopped by the Albright home to make a personal delivery. The family’s predicament struck Kurtz when he met the Albright’s 8-year-old daughter, Evy.

“That really hit me hard,” Kurtz said. “I’ve got two granddaughters, 8 and 10 years old, and if they were in that position, I’d do everything I could to help them.”

Albright, who describes himself as “just a guy who lives in East Palestine,” has found himself at the center of an environmental disaster that has, at times, garnered national attention. Like a number of other residents, he’s been asked to discuss the town’s predicament on national news networks such as CNN and Fox News. In August, his family’s story was detailed in a New York Times story. But it’s the appearances on the Real News Network, and the connections made there, that resulted in Saturday’s event.

“A lot of people I’ve never met from around the country are stepping up to help us,” Albright said. “It’s amazing. If there’s one positive thing I can bring out of this is the people I’ve met over the course of the past year. People are willing to help even though this hasn’t really affected them.”

Alvarez is a first-generation Mexican American; his father, Jesus, was 8 years old when he immigrated to the United States from Mexico. The Great Recession of 2008 proved devastating to the family. The recovery that followed didn’t seem to apply to them. Alvarez’s father lost the house in which he’d raised his family.

How do people react when they feel mistreated by a political system in which they feel so powerless? Alvarez sees hope in the efforts that have led to this weekend’s conference.

“Even though the circumstances that have brought us together in this fight are horrifying and unforgivable, I see in this gathering the flame we need lighting the way to the change we deserve,” he said.

“Working people — East Palestine residents and people of conscience around the country, union and non-union, young and old, Democrat, Republican, socialists and apolitical folks, labor unions, environmental organizations, community members from other sacrifice zones, journalists and activists — are done waiting for justice, aid and accountability to be handed down from on high, from the government or from Norfolk Southern, and they are banding together and using their collective power to force the issue and make change happen themselves.”

Food & Water Watch has organized a bus to take Pittsburgh- and Beaver-area participants to East Palestine and back. Learn more and sign up at  https://www.mobilize.us/fww/event/612933/.

This story originally appeared in Pittsburgh Union Progress on March 8, 2023. It is shared here with permission.

Democrats U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown are on Wednesday introducing legislation that would penalize employers who target the health care insurance of striking and locked-out workers.

The legislation, called the Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act, would create a separate unfair labor practices category for instances in which employers cut off or change the health care insurance of workers involved in a labor dispute. Employers violating the law would be subject to monetary penalties.

“Protecting the right to strike means protecting workers from unfair strike-breaking tactics,” said Deluzio, who represents Pennsylvania’s District 17. “No company should be able to hold a worker’s health — or the well-being of their family — hostage during a labor dispute.”

That’s what happened to striking workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he said. Deluzio noted that Block Communications Inc., owner of the PG, stripped away the health care of those workers shortly after the strike began in October. Health care is central to the labor dispute. BCI triggered the strike by refusing to pay an extra $19 a week per employee premium increase for the newspaper’s production, advertising and distribution workers. That move effectively ended the worker’s health care.

Deluzio said he stood in solidarity with the striking PG workers battling for better working conditions “even as they have been cut off from their healthcare by Block Communications.”

“By leveling the power dynamics between workers and companies,” he added, “this bill makes clear that stripping striking workers of health insurance is out of bounds.”

A number of other companies involved in labor disputes the past few years have cut off health care coverage for striking and locked-out workers.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram quickly moved to cancel the health care of journalists who launched a strike in November of last year.

Early in 2022, union workers who make ice cream cakes at a plant in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., lost their health care in the midst of a strike over wages, health care and working conditions. And in 2019, General Motors stopped paying health care costs for tens of thousands of workers involved in a nationwide United Auto Workers strike.

Brown pointed out that strikes are a last resort for workers wanting to reach fair labor agreements, and that strikers almost never recover the wages lost during the dispute. The legislation he and Deluzio are introducing “would give workers the peace of mind that if they’re backed into a corner, they can stand up to corporate abuse, without the fear of losing their families’ health insurance,” Brown said.

He also was co-sponsor to a similar bill with U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in March of last year.

Joining Brown and Deluzio and Casey in sponsoring this legislation is Congresswoman Susan Wild, who represents Pennsylvania’s 7th District.

Employers found in violation of the new unfair labor practice standard the bill creates would be subject to monetary penalties that reflect the company’s size, its history of violations, the scope of harm, and the public interest.

A number of labor organizations have stepped up to support the legislation. The list includes the Communications Workers of America, United Steelworkers, United Mine Workers of America and American Federation of Teachers.

Jon Schleuss, president of the NewsGuild, which represents striking newsroom workers at the Post-Gazette, announced his support for the legislation. 

“Some of our members suffer from chronic health issues,” he said, “and it’s essential they remain protected while engaging in a strike to hold their own employer to account.”

Deluzio has consistently demonstrated his support for striking PG workers. In his first speech from the House floor, he acknowledged the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s sweeping victory in a National Labor Relations Board ruling and voiced concerns about the purchase of Pittsburgh City Paper by a subsidiary of BCI.

In February, Deluzio sent a letter to President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, asking officials there to examine the acquisition. And he invited striking PG mailer James “Hutchie” VanLandingham to Washington D.C., to be his guest for Biden’s State of the Union address.