TO: People’s World readers
FROM: Cameron Harrison, Labor Correspondent
There’s a moment that stays with all of us who cover the labor movement. For me, it was a late January day in Minneapolis. The wind chill was 16 below zero. And there, outside the Delta terminal at the airport, a group of clergy were being zip-tied and loaded onto yellow school buses. They were singing “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live.” Behind them, a sea of union members—SEIU, Unite Here, the Teachers—were chanting “ICE OUT!” so loud it drowned out the sound of the planes landing and taking off on the runway.
People’s World was there with our notebooks and cameras, watching it happen. And we thought to ourselves: Nobody else is going to tell this story the way it needs to be told.
That’s why we write for People’s World. Not to sit in press galleries and report on what big-business politicians said to their billionaire donors or repeat the shameful excuses the capitalist class makes for laying off our fellow workers. But to stand on the picket lines next to the workers who are building a movement—and to bring you their voices, their courage, and their clarity.
As PW labor correspondents, we crisscross the country to cover working-class struggles that the mainstream media ignores. Just recently in Colorado, we covered the 3,800 meatpacking workers who walked off the job at JBS, launching the first major strike in that brutal industry in 40 years. In Detroit, we reported on 10,000 nurses who voted to authorize a strike against a healthcare monopoly that treats them like cogs in a machine, purely for profits.
And here’s what the corporate media won’t tell you: These fights are connected. The nurses in Detroit, the meatpackers in Greeley, the autoworkers in Tennessee who just won their first union contract after years of anti-union campaigns—they’re all part of the same story.
It’s the story of working people deciding they’ve had enough. Enough of speed-ups that break their bodies. Enough of executives who pile on profits while stripping away safety. Enough of the capitalist system that treats immigrant workers as disposable and tells the rest of us to look the other way.
We cover these stories because we believe labor solidarity doesn’t stop at the border. That’s why our reporting has taken us from the UAW breakthrough in Chattanooga to the international labor movement’s response to the war on Iran, and why we’ve been following the World Federation of Trade Unions’ call for a week of action in solidarity with Cuba.
The same billionaires who attack unions here are funding wars and blockades abroad. And the same working-class power that wins contracts in the South can help win peace and justice everywhere.
We’re proud of the work we do. But we can’t do it alone.
People’s World doesn’t take corporate advertising. That means we answer to you—our readers—not to the capitalist class that tries to control the narrative. But it also means we depend on you to keep us going.
If you’re already a donor, thank you. You’re the reason we could be in Minnesota, Greeley, Detroit, Chattanooga, and beyond, bringing you stories that no one else will tell. If you can give a little more—or become a monthly sustainer—you’ll help make sure we can keep showing up, wherever workers are standing up.
And if you haven’t donated yet, please consider it. Every dollar goes straight into the work.
There’s a checkbox on the “Donate” page of our website to become a sustainer; just choose “monthly.” It takes two minutes. And it makes all the difference.
We’re in this together. That’s what solidarity means. So, let’s keep showing up for each other.
In solidarity,
Cameron Harrison
Labor Correspondent
CONTRIBUTOR
