John’s Journal

This is where I scribble a little bit about what’s going on. Warning: may include righteous anger and typos.

Okay. This is overwhelming. I’m not going to lie. It’s also simultaneously the most exciting thing that’s happened in my work life in recent memory. And I once smashed a couple of Michelob Ultras with Elizabeth Warren in a Winnebago in the middle of Iowa. Might not be your idea of a great time, but if it isn’t, you’re a square. I said what I said.

I’m talking about East Palestine, of course. For those who are new around here, East Palestine is 20 miles away from my hometown and 60 miles away from where I live. I’ve followed this story since before it began.

I find out more and more each day, and I think it’s safe to say that this story deserves a long look. I intend to stick to it for a while. There are so many things I wish were produced right now, but I currently lack the people power to produce them rapidly… so stay tuned!

Any minute now, the NTSB will release its latest report where we’re likely to learn the official cause of this derailment. They’ve hinted that it was the wheel bearing on a train car that was captured burning gloriously on ring doorbell cameras up to 20 miles before the train derailed in East Palestine.

This will likely be deemed a simple mechanical failure, the kind of inconvenient accident that, if your luck is bad, can result in the derailment and subsequent detonation of a train full of hazardous chemicals in the middle of your town.

Our reporting would suggest that the probable origin of the mechanical failure is rooted in a constellation of reckless profiteering, affecting all sectors of railroad operation, on the part of major rail carriers. Getting struck by lightning is an accident. Dying in a fire because the landlord let the fire escape fall apart is different.

Another thing to note. Much is being made of the regulations that Trump rolled back on braking and hazardous material designations. While these regulations would have lessened the severity of this disaster, other factors are likely to be more causal. There’s a good chance that focusing on Trump’s regulatory rollbacks, as with everything Trump-related, will distract attention from important factors in this specific and… uniquely bad derailment.

More on that in my interview with The Lever below. And follow all my social accounts @heyjohnrussell as well as my collaborator @moreperfectunion.

Transcript of my interview with Frank Cappello of The Lever on Feb 21st.

Frank Cappello  44:25  

Okay, now for our bonus segment just for our paid subscribers. This week, we'll be sharing my interview with independent journalist John Russell, who has been on the ground in East Palestine for the last couple of weeks, speaking with the railroad workers and union leaders about this train derailment disaster.

John has been doing some really incredible reporting and is another great example of the importance of independent journalism. Thank you so so much for being a supporting subscriber and funding the work that we do here at the lever. Now, here's that bonus segment.

All right, I'm now joined by John Russell, an independent journalist who has been on the ground in East Palestine for the last couple of weeks. John, thank you so much for joining us on labor time today.

John Russell  45:08  

Yeah, thanks for having me, Frank. I'm really glad to be here and talk about it. 

Frank Cappello  45:11  

Alright, so as we mentioned, you've been in East Palestine on and off for the last couple of weeks. You were there only a few days after the train derailment actually happened and the ensuing chemical fire. So just for the audience, for our listeners, can you give me a little bit of the lay of the land? Like what is it looked like on the ground? What is the government response look like? What is the media response look like? And most importantly, what has been happening with the residents?

John Russell  45:38  

Yeah, I grew up in this county and I live close by, so this hits close to home. And unfortunately, this area, it's really important to know, is used to disasters by giant corporations. We're kind of under-covered in that respect.

The government response here has been bumbling at best. Immediately after the disaster, it appeared that even the highest ranking officials were not as aware of everything as the company was, you know, clearly didn't have information to work on that ended up coming out later, about what was on the train. 

In the town hall at the high school, residents were being reassured about their water, while the water fountains at the school were padlocked with, you know, red devices that had danger written all over them. Residents have been reporting all kinds of illnesses, and there are multiple reports of sick or dead livestock in the region immediately after the disaster. 

The media, there's there's every variety of media here now. But the line of questions have been mostly about how much cancer we're gonna get and when we're gonna get it, not why this disaster happened and what it could have to do with reckless profiteering by major rail carriers. I think you know, that's as important as anything around here, that's gone a little bit under covered.

Frank Cappello  47:05  

No, if anything is the one of if not the most important aspects of this story. So you were at that very, very first press conference, which was in East Palestine High School? Is that correct?

John Russell  47:19  

Yeah, not the high school, but at the elementary school. 

Frank Cappello  47:23  

So other than a few independent journalists like yourself, which other media outlets actually showed up for this first press conference?

John Russell  47:32  

Yeah, you know what I think this is a reflection of, you know, the media today that's especially been affected by consolidation.  

The notable thing at that first press conference that I went to, 10 days ago, was that the first outlets that showed up to cover this, most of them, and it's not all of them, but most of them were owned by really large conglomerates, like Sinclair or like NexStar. Sinclair and Nexstar both share similarities with Norfolk Southern in that they both have significant shares of their companies that are owned by the same large Wall Street private equity funds. That's an angle that's something to consider here, in the first response to disasters like this.

And you know, unsurprisingly, I think, that probably has to do a lot with the line of questioning focusing, you know, on how much cancer we're going to get, and when. That definitely needs to be covered, but not at the expense of corporate accountability, which I've seen less of. This sometimes falls into reporting as a freak accident. But a freak accident is being struck by lightning, which is different than dying in a fire because your landlord didn't maintain the smoke alarms.

Frank Cappello  48:45  

So you have been speaking with railroad workers, not only in the wake of this disaster, but you were also speaking with a lot of workers since the end of 2022, when the Biden administration and Congress forced a contract onto the railroad unions that they had not agreed to, which effectively broke a potential rail strike. Now you're here in East Palestine. You're speaking with rail union leaders after this derailment. So what have you been hearing? What is their take? What are the workers and the union leaders take on how and why this disaster occurred?

John Russell  49:22  

Yeah, this is kind of the incredible thing because rail workers have been warning about something like this for a very long time. I originally was reporting on the rail strike that never was. You mentioned how, you know, that was crushed by a bipartisan coalition of Congress and respective agencies that forced a contract on these workers. 

But seven weeks before this derailment I was speaking with union leaders about that strike, who warned me at the time that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. They recounted derailments in Northeast Ohio of cars carrying candle wax and were saying, you know, we got lucky in a couple of these and, unfortunately, they were right. And we really should have listened to them the first time. Because they've also, rail workers, have been pretty unanimous in laying a lot of the blame for this on the corporate profit-seeking practice of Precision Scheduled Railroading. That is an angle that really needs to be understood and reported.

Frank Cappello  50:20  

And we've talked about it here at the level of precision scheduled railroading is basically, you know, the rail companies tout it as the most efficient way to run their freight. But really what it means is that they can run way, way, way more freight, much longer trains, with much less manpower, with actually less people on the trains, which, as you've laid out, as we've been talking about, makes for the perfect storm of you know, less people being able to make sure these trains are safe, and they're moving much more freight, making it much harder for these trains to stop when these, you know, when things like this happen. So that's really, really important to point out.  

As we have also reported at The Lever, sort of the big story we, you know, first broke a few weeks ago, both the railroad industry and the chemical industries successfully lobbied to water down the safety rules regarding rail braking systems and the classification and regulation of toxic chemicals like the vinyl chloride, which was being carried by this train in East Palestine. You've also been speaking to the rail workers about this specific derailment, which they are saying was caused by a wheel bearing issue rather than the brake system. So can you go into a little bit of detail about that? Because I don't think this is something that our audience has really heard about yet.

John Russell  51:43  

I can go into a lot of detail about that. I'm very glad you asked that question. So yes, the NTSB suggested in their first update on Valentine's Day that a faulty wheel bearing that overheated catastrophically probably caused this East Palestine derailment. We won't know for sure until their investigation wraps up in a few weeks. But there's video of this wheel bearing glowing white hot for as much as 20 miles before the derailment. And this was caught by ring doorbell cameras, security footage, etc. 

Rail workers have been telling me about this wheel bearing since I arrived here. And they've also told me that PSR, precision scheduled railroad, has put pressure on every aspect of how the railroads are run, including inspection and maintenance on things like wheel bearings. 

So you did a pretty good overview on PSR. But it was adopted by most major rail carriers. And it cuts everything important. There's less staff, less training, less safety, less maintenance, and longer trains, shorter downtimes, less rest for the staff that hasn't been cut. So PSR reduced the time and the staff to inspect cars for safety. Inspection times were cut in half, the industry standard was usually three minutes per rail car, and PSR cut that down to 90 seconds per car with less staff to do it.  

Also, PSR has cut the staff that monitors problems on trains. And this is important, too. There are things called trending defect detectors, and they work like checkpoints. So as the train passes, they pick up on problems and they tell a dispatch center as the problems get worse. And when it's bad enough, the dispatch center notifies the crew on the train. But PSR has cut the staff so that there are less people monitoring more trains across a larger territory. And sometimes when the warning reaches the crew, under these conditions, it is too late. 

So the NTSB report is going to provide answers on what caused this tragedy. But putting profits above all else appears to have created critical failures of maintenance and monitoring. That may be more immediate factors in this disaster than braking systems or hazardous materials designations. Although that was excellent reporting by The Lever on those regulations that should be in effect right now. Because had these braking system has been updated and the chemicals classified accurately this disaster and the response likely would have been much less terrible.

Frank Cappello  54:21  

Alright, now let's let's dig into that a little bit more because as we've already mentioned, one of the main aspects of the story that cannot be stressed enough is the role played by Norfolk Southern, the rail company that was operating this train, as well as the Association of American Railroads, which is the rail industry's main lobbying arm. So I'm I'm curious, John, what the residents in East Palestine think in terms of, you know, I guess who they're blaming for all of this. What is their conception of how this disaster unfolded and, and whose feet to lay the blame at?

John Russell  54:56  

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of residents. I mean, I grew up here (in the county) and when I showed up to that town hall, I spent a lot of time as a kid running around this county, and at least five or six people I knew from high school pulled me out of line to do interviews. And what they told me... And you know, by the way, these are people of all different voting behaviors. But I can tell you that there is a lot of rage at the fact that this $55 billion company detonated a toxic train in the middle of town and offered not one, but several insultingly low sums of money to make up for it. The first one was like $25,000. Just $25,000. Sorry, not sorry. Then it was $1,000 handouts to people in the blast zone. And to top it all off, the Norfolk Southern... this company, they canceled last minute on the town hall that they were involved in planning. And residents, I can tell you, did not feel great about that. 

So to my knowledge, also, there was a pretty stunning lack of high-level executives here to be held accountable. They didn't show up to my knowledge in town for at least two weeks, and today is the first time that I've been aware of their CEO being here. So that doesn't make people feel good at all. And I think they deserve a measure of accountability much higher than this.

Frank Cappello  56:20  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this disaster is potentially devastated this entire town, this entire county, region, we won't know the ongoing long-term effects of what is happening for a long time, and someone needs to step up and take care of these people because they have just lost more than most of us can ever even fathom.  

Speaking of which just earlier today, you met up with former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner to speak with East Palestine residents as they were entering a new health center. So tell me first a little bit about this health center. And then also, what did you and Nina discuss, and how are residents doing now almost three weeks after this train has derailed?

John Russell  57:05  

Well, everybody's doing the best they can to get by, which is what people have been up to in this valley for years and years. I mean, the thing that stands out to me when I was interviewing residents at the at the first center that was set up was a woman, probably in her mid 50s, who was telling me about how she was doing. She was making $13.50 an hour living less than a half a mile away from this derailment and raising grandkids and, you know, you have to ask yourself what a disaster like this does to the wealth that that person worked so hard to build in their home? Who's gonna want to buy that home? Can they move out of there? Will they be compensated?

These are still questions, residents are scrambling to answer. And they're not only scrambling here, but they're also scrambling in the places that Nina Turner and I talked a lot about when she came to visit.

From Flint, Michigan, to the Mississippi Delta, to cancer alley, to East Palestine, black, white, or brown, working-class communities are regularly sacrificed for profit-seeking of the highest order from the largest corporations that operate with impunity here. And class solidarity is the way to change all of that. We need to unite as communities that are subject to these companies and unite on class lines to exercise the power of strength. This more than most national disasters like this has really brought that into focus.

Frank Cappello  58:36  

John, I want to thank you so much for all of the work you have been doing all of the on-the-ground reporting that you've been doing over the last couple of weeks, even before we knew that this story was going to become as, I mean, obviously, it's an important story rather, I should say, until we knew that this story was going to get the coverage that it deserved. You have been on the ground doing this work. So thank you so so much for all of your commitment to this community and to letting people know what has been happening. So where can our audience find you? If they'd like to find more of you and your reporting?

John Russell  59:09  

They can find me in my newsletter, I run a newsletter called The Holler, that talks about class politics for rednecks and hippies. It's free, no paywall, so go there, and then you can find social updates @heyjohnrussell across all the social platforms.

Frank Cappello  59:29  

John, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.

John Russell  59:32  

Thank you, Frank, and thanks to the lever for the excellent reporting that you've done on it.

Frank Cappello  59:37  

That's it for today's show. Thank you again for being a paid subscriber to the lever. It's true, we really could not do this work without you. If you particularly liked this episode, please pitch into our tip jar. That link is in the episode description in your podcast player or you can go to levernews.com/tipjar every little bit helps us do this kind of independent accountability journalism. Till next time I am Frank Capello. Rock the boat.

Words From John

Happy Holidays n’at.

I’ll keep it short. This episode is all about the state of American rail. I traveled to Columbus, OH last week where the SMART (Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, Transportation) Union held a rally for railroaders.

Clyde Whitaker, a 22-year fourth-generation railroader and State Legislative Director for SMART, set me straight on what it’s like to work on the railroad right now. Short version: it’s bad.

The longer version is here in three forms: a thirteen-minute embedded audio track, a two-ish minute TikTok, and the full thirteen-minute interview transcript all the way at the bottom.

Before you dig in, a reminder. Trips to do these interviews only happen because of our paid subscribers. If you’re supporting The Holler right now, I really can’t thank you enough.

As far as I know, The Holler was the only media on-site doing interviews with workers. That’s the point of independent working-class supported media. Otherwise, these stories are never made.

If you want to ascend to a higher level of human experience and become a supporter of independent pro-working-class media, then please, read the next part…

Member-supported short video

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A 22-year railroader explains the state of rail. SMART rail rally, Columbus, OH.

Video Transcript:

John Russell 0:00

We're in Columbus, Ohio. We're going to talk to rail workers about the railroad situation. So let's go do that.

Clyde Whitaker 0:04

I'm a fourth-generation railroader. I've been here for 22 years. I've never seen it as tough.

John Russell 0:09

If the railroad shuts down, the whole country shuts down. We cannot live without it. It is so important that the United States Government prevents workers from going on strike without them getting involved first. So take a guess at how these essential workers are treated.

Clyde Whitaker 0:23

There's zero quality of life. One member called me last week, he can't take off for the funeral of his own mother. Our members are on call 24/7 365 days of the year. They don't have any sick days. If one of my members calls off sick, they're usually punished even if they have a doctor's excuse.

John Russell 0:44

Yeah. If you're the worker the entire country cannot live without, you're punished for going to a doctor, you have to miss your own mother's funeral for work, and forget about sick days because those are reserved for less important jobs - like senators.

Clyde Whitaker 0:56

I really think Congress though, missed the mark, especially the Senate. I mean, they get to work 108 days of the year. Unlimited sick time. And I got guys that are sick going to work and making other people sick.

John Russell 1:09

Running workers to the bone like this has a sleek corporate nickname, because of course, PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading. They're cutting staff, making the trains longer, cutting safety, maintenance, and training, and making all the money like this while they can.

Clyde Whitaker 1:11

When I was hired on back in 2000, we had 26 weeks of training. Now you're getting six to eight weeks. They want to take the conductor off and go down to one-person crews. Canada's got a two-person crew after a train with a one-person crew wiped out an entire town. Another fell asleep at the throttle.

John Russell 1:43

Pay is going down, profits are going through the roof, and the billionaires that own rail companies are only getting richer.

Clyde Whitaker 1:48

I really think a lot of people are at their breaking point. And I've had guys from 20 years plus leave the industry.

John Russell 1:56

This is the corporate playbook. Run it fast and loose for all the short-term profit possible, forget workers, get the government to impose a contract before those workers can strike for themselves, and don't worry about a crash because if it happens, you can count on a taxpayer bailout.

Clyde Whitaker 2:11

These men and women work hard to move this country and the right thing needs to be done by them.

Transcript of the full 13-minute interview with Clyde Whitaker, State Legislative Director, SMART Transportation Division

John Russell 0:02

What's your name? What do you do? Why are we out here today?

Clyde Whitaker 0:11

My name is Clyde Whitaker. I'm with SMART Transportation Division, the Ohio state legislative board. I'm the Director and Chairman of that group.

And we push for safe working environment, and legislation to improve safety and quality of life. And today, we just settled a contract dispute that was on a national level. And we are trying to fight for a better quality of life. Our members are on call 24/7 365 days of the year, they don't have any sick days. If one of my members calls off sick, they're usually punished even if they have a doctor's excuse. This week, I've got phone calls from members that wanted to attend, but they're working. PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) cut the railroads to bare bones.

John Russell 1:04

Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and what that's been like for your members?

Clyde Whitaker 1:08

Yeah, PSR is Precision Schedule Railroading, which is anything short of that. Basically, it's a scheme to cut costs.

Right now, we have embargoes by various railroads in the country, and they can't handle the traffic, because they've ripped up all their infrastructure, and are just trying to run with bare bones.

Locomotives remain in storage. Our customers and the nation pay the price. Our citizens pay the price with higher cost of goods because we're not getting products to market. Like it should be.

John Russell 1:47

How has that made a difference in the lives of your members before that was implemented, and after?

Clyde Whitaker 1:52

PSR before, where normally a guy would have maybe one or two days off a week, you know, they're still on call. Yeah, the lifestyle is terrible, but it's made it much worse. Now I got guys working six, seven days a week.

For instance, one guy come home from a 12 hour run. He spends about an hour and a half, two hours in a taxi cab, he drives an hour home, spends about two three hours with the family sleeps for about eight hours. And he's right back to work.

John Russell 2:24

What you just told us is that the life that most railroad workers are living?

Clyde Whitaker 2:28

Right now, yes. There's zero quality of life. I've got members that can't even take time off for their family functions for anything.

When a member called me last week, he couldn't take off for a funeral for his own mother. That's not right. And the way the railroads are treating us, it's not good.

John Russell 2:49

And how are the railroads doing?

Clyde Whitaker 2:51

The railroads are making record profits. Even through the pandemic, their profits were through the roof.

John Russell 2:59

This fight has been brewing for a little bit. Can you give, you know, people watching a little bit of background of how we got to here today and what workers are really hoping... where they're hoping to go from here?

Clyde Whitaker 3:12

I think railroaders want a life. I mean, across all crafts, mostly the transportation engine guys, which are the engineers and conductors, they're the ones on call 24/7. Other crafts are too, but they normally have one or two days off and not away from home. So it's gotten a lot harder over the years. Like I said, I was expecting about 50-60 people, and I've got half that because they're all working now work and you can't get off.

Clyde Whitaker 3:45

And, you know, like, they can't even go to little Timmy's recital, you know? It's not right, what they're doing.

John Russell 3:54

Right. How do you feel about the contract, and in Congress using the 1920s era law to impose that?

Clyde Whitaker 4:07

I really can't talk much about the contract, because it's not my forte. I really think Congress, though, missed the mark, especially the Senate. They were empowered to do the right thing. I mean, who doesn't have sick days in the country? I mean, this is modern times.

John Russell 4:26

There are a lot of senators with sick days, right?

Clyde Whitaker 4:28

Yeah, I mean, they go to work 108 days of the year, unlimited sick time. And I got guys that are sick going to work making other people sick. And we wonder whether there's a manpower shortage. But the Congress and Senate, the Senate mostly, really missed the mark on this one.

John Russell 4:48

For the general public that might just be tuning in to this, what are the real issues that you want them to know about? What are the things you want them to know about what it's like to work on the railroad and to be in this fight?

Clyde Whitaker 5:01

Well, like I tell most legislators this job is one of the most dangerous jobs. I mean, we can haul upwards of 200-300 semi-trucks on one train. You know, we're hauling 20,000+ tons of Bracken crude oil. And we're making trains longer because of the PSR. It's more dangerous on engineers. It's more dangerous on the conductor because he's gotta get off and make repairs if need be. It's dangerous for the community because these long trains block road crossings in the communities, which prohibits emergency services from doing their job. And that's one big issue that PSR caused.

Clyde Whitaker 5:44

So, I would like to see the shorter train length law... block road crossings... right now, that's supposedly federal federally preempted. And right now, there's gonna be a challenge on that, because it's not right what the railroads done.

They're affecting the community in two different ways. One, the economy not shipping goods properly with these embargoes, and two, they're messing local businesses up because people can't get me on the train. Plus, you got kids that are crawling under and over the terrain, and they're getting hurt.

Plus, on top of that, it's like such a compound issue. We've got new guys coming onto the property, I got two of them out here today. Typically, when I hired on back in 2000, you had 26 weeks of training. Now you're getting six to eight weeks. That's not quality training, and conductors responsible for a life. And they want to take the conductor off and go down to one person crew. So tomorrow, we got a two person crew hearing to keep two people on.

Canada's got a two-person crew after Lac Megantic, after a train with a one-person crew wiped out an entire town. And the railroad’s argument is that there's no data to support less than two people on a train. Well, that's not right. You look at all the Amtrak incidents, and we've had was one person on the front end of the train. Chicane, New York, got derailed, killed people, he fell asleep at the throttle. And had that second person been up there, he could have kept that guy attentive. Or if he had the engineer’s license, they could have possibly swapped out. We'd still have those people alive. And like Lac Megantic. You know, fifty-something people, they'd still be alive today, had there been two people on that crew. And we don't need that here in our country, especially in the state of Ohio.

John Russell 7:50

We're outside of the Capitol today, you know, legislators here, legislators in Washington, what do you really want them to know?

Clyde Whitaker 7:58

I want them to do the right thing. We need a better quality of life for railroaders. Personally, I think the hours of service need to be adjusted. Our starts, basically you accumulate starts for each day at work. And the railroads are playing games with our guys, after you sit in a hotel for 24 hours. I mean, let's face it, you're still at work, you don't want to be in a hotel. They're restarting our guys starts, even after they're there 24 hours and five minutes. That's not right. They know what they're doing. They restart the rest. So that hurts the quality of life issue, where a guy's banking on being home for two days with his family, then going back to work for six or seven more days. So that needs work on the PSR motto, the STB really needs to step in.

John Russell 8:50

STB?

Clyde Whitaker 8:51

Yeah, Surface Transportation Board. They have the power to step in and stop this PSR madness. The customers are suffering as well.

John Russell 9:01

How much of this current situation would you say is because of PSR?

Clyde Whitaker 9:06

All of it. I mean, in the past since 2017, the lifestyle has just... it's terrible. And the customers they're not happy.

John Russell 9:16

So this has been the case since 2017?

Clyde Whitaker 9:18

Yes. It's Hunter Harrison. He came from one of the Canadian railroads, Canadian National, then NCP, then jumped to CSX. And after that, everybody hopped on board and started doing all the cutting and everything. And it's just progressively gotten worse. And right now it's at the boiling point. Guys are... enough is enough. That's where we're all at.

John Russell 9:41

Has PSR jacked up the profits of the railroads as it's cut everything else?

Clyde Whitaker 9:46

Oh, absolutely. They've made more profits in the past several years than the past 100 probably.

John Russell 9:53

When has it been this tough, looking back over decades?

Clyde Whitaker 9:58

I've been here for 22 years. I have never seen it as tough. I'm a fourth-generation railroader. I've never seen my grandparents, uncles, or any of them go through this stuff.

John Russell 10:12

And how sustainable is this? You know, how long can this really continue?

Clyde Whitaker 10:17

I really think a lot of people at their breaking point. I've been in my current position since May 1st, 2020, as State Director, and I've had guys from 20+ years leave the industry and some guys that were really great at their job. And, you know, they can't handle the lifestyle anymore, because it was just unsustainable, for a family.

John Russell 10:44

How much solidarity is there across all of the unions who are making the railroads run? I know that a couple of them, you know, voted to accept the contract more, the larger ones voted that down. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Clyde Whitaker 11:00

Well, that goes back to what I said earlier, you know, we're on call 24/7. Other crafts, they got different needs, you know, like their contract, obviously, they voted for it. Because they met everything they wanted. Most of them are on a regular schedule, right? So they can work with their managers, and get more time off. That's not across the board. For the most part, all 12 rail unions are in solidarity on the sick pay issue. And, you know, they support us, and we're gonna support them.

John Russell 11:39

If you had a chance to speak directly to the owners of the railroads, the folks who run them, what do you want them to know?

Clyde Whitaker 11:46

Well, that's a loaded question. And I'd be here all day. I just want them to do the right thing. These corporate business people, like the lady from UP got railroader of the year. Okay? I guarantee you, she's never been out on a train and followed my guy's footsteps. And the ladies out there.

These men and women, they work hard to move this country, and the right thing needs to be done by them. And that's, that's what I want. Treat us fair, treat us, right. Treat us with some dignity and respect. You know, it's not right to penalize somebody for calling off so they can go to their mother's funeral. That's not right. That's your mom. You know? I mean, stuff like that.

John Russell 12:32

Is there anything else we didn't cover today? Anything else you want to be asked about?

Clyde Whitaker 12:36

Oh, man. I'd be here all day. I really would. So mainly, you know, here in our state, we're pushing for a lot of safety issues. Next session at the beginning of the year, nationally our two-person crew is important, our sick time. And that's our main push right now. We're going to keep hammering until we get it.

John Russell 13:02

Good. Let's do your name, your title, how long you've been here, and where you're from.

Clyde Whitaker 13:07

Clyde Whitaker of Columbus, Ohio. I've been here 22 years with the rail industry. I've been a Union officer since 2002. And I was promoted to State Director from the local Chairman side back in 2020.

Full Audio Transcript

Joe Sudbay 00:01

Good afternoon. And welcome back to the Michelangelo Sinoreli show here on Sirius XM progress on this very historic day in just a couple hours, three hours from now the House Committee on the January 6, attack on the Capitol is going to hold its first public hearing. We've been talking a lot about that and we'll talk about it some more.

But right now we have a guest and you guys this is someone I have talked to on this channel before. I know he's talked to John Fugelsang on Tell Me Everything. And someone who really knows a lot about the politics of the upper Ohio Valley. Welcome back to Sirius XM, John Russell.

John Russell 00:48Well hey, Joe! Hello, everybody. I am very glad to be back and a warm welcome from that upper Ohio Valley.

Joe Sudbay 00:55You write a newsletter called The Holler that as you describe it, it's for rednecks and hippies worldwide.

John Russell 01:08

Yeah, that's an allusion to the Willie Nelson audience. I'm a massive country music fan. The newsletter is out of Bridgeport, Ohio, just a minute from Wheeling, West Virginia, this sister city to the Grand Old Opry. So we're going for those rednecks and hippies.

Joe Sudbay 01:25Well, it's interesting because you live in a congressional, it's something we've talked about before because I feel like, you know, obviously, the juxtaposition of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, we know Pennsylvania has a really important Senate race and a race for governor this year. We also know, you know, people look at West Virginia through the lens of Joe Manchin, but then I think what's happened, John, is a lot of people have just decided that Ohio is a red state. And there's not much we can do. But there's actually a very, very competitive United States Senate race in your state. And as you have told us before, and I hope you tell us again, that there are a lot of voters who actually are swinging in Ohio, talk a little bit about let's go to them in the background, and then we'll work our way into the Senate race.

John Russell 02:21

Yeah, you know, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, we're kind of our own little region, but it's politically fascinating. And that bears on what you're talking about with Ohio. You know, one thing that people might not know, is, that we have the river valley congressional district.

That's Ohio's sixth district, its spans, just south of Youngstown, all the way down to around Kentucky. But what's interesting about that, is it has had the quickest and most intense shift in the entire country of all the congressional districts from voting union working-class Democrat to one of the reddest, you know, MAGA districts in the country. Nowhere else has that shift been quicker, or more intense than in eastern Ohio.

So I look at it as a kind of lens to look through the rest of the country and understand what's shifting around. And bringing that back to the Senate race that we have... we have Tim Ryan from Youngstown, from that area just talking about going up against grifter in chief, JD Vance who I really cannot wait to talk about.

Joe Sudbay 03:40

Yeah. All right. Well, let's dive in. Because JD Vance is a rich guy, a very rich guy supported heavily funded by Peter Thiel supported by Donald Trump barely won the primary a couple of weeks ago, Republican primary, and he is extreme on many issues. I mean, and like you said, a grifter. I mean, this is a guy who wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy. And, you know, the way he writes the way he describes the, you know, the way you think of Hillbilly Elegy, it's almost like a term of derision. Well, JD Vance, is he from your part of the state, John, because he's kind of a suburban guy, isn't he?

John Russell 04:30

You know, the thing to remember about JD Vance, is that he really changed himself for a chance that money and political power. He grew up in a very similar area to mine. Although it's a lot more south towards Kentucky, but you know, about a third of Ohio is Appalachian Ohio, and the culture there is very similar. I grew up in a place that might not be, you know, very close to JD Vance about four hours, but it's very cultural, culturally similar.

And the reason you know I want to talk about him so much is we actually traded emails. Back before Donald Trump was elected before Hillbilly Elegy became such a media spectacle to kind of explain Donald Trump, I reached out to him to find out why two guys who grew up in a really culturally similar area ended up on such different sides of the political spectrum. And what I noticed back then, is that's so stark right now is that he was willing back then before there's any shot of the Senate race or any prominence or any Netflix deals before anybody knew his book was gonna blow up, he was willing to have a good-faith exchange about that conversation. And that's just not the man he is today when he's so close to power, which is unfortunate and really important for all of us to realize, in this election.

Joe Sudbay 06:06

It's really a fascinating story to show just the lengths people will go to, for power. And just yeah, he didn't even like Donald Trump. That was one of his big issues going into this Republican primary, and it was hurting him until Trump endorsed him. He spoke out against Trump back when you when you were emailing him. And now he's like, you know, the best friend. It's such a transition. So it's a disturbing transition, it seems to raise a lot of questions about the character of the man.

John Russell 06:46

Oh, that's for sure. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. Because, you know, one of the really, I think under-covered parts of his campaign, is how it is being run. It's really unlike any other campaign in that it is so reliant, I mean, all campaigns are so reliant on on Super PAC money, on billionaire money, of course, tied to Citizens United, but there's none like JD Vance's campaign.

It really was dragged out of obscurity by a single billionaire, a right wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who's $15 million super PAC is really the only reason why he (Vance) is the candidate now. And just recently, there has been an FEC complaint about the coordination between that super PAC run by a billionaire and Vance's campaign. Of course, they're not supposed to coordinate, they do it through a wink and nod. But what happened was there was 175 Page opposition research document so that JD Vance could know all of his vulnerabilities, and how they communicated that to the campaign, since they can't do it directly, they buried it in a public blog post.

So actually, one of the things we're going to cover on The Holler here, that's the newsletter, is combing through that 175-page document. But it's just full of things that paint a picture of how this person changed as they got closer and closer to power.

You mentioned how he is a Never Trump guy. Just in the first page of this thing… Let me read a couple of quotes that are from Vance himself. This was before he was running for Senate it was before there was any chance of him going into Washington. Vance said he is, "A Never Trump guy." He "will never vote for Trump." He, "loathes Trump." He said Trump's election was "terrible for the country." He said he voted of course for Evan McMullen and even teased voting for Hillary Clinton if it looked like Trump would win. And even put a tweet out there that said, "what percentage of the American population has @realDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?"

Does that sound like the man who's cozying up to Trump today? It really does not. But it shows how much this man is willing to forget where he came from, forget the voters he grew up with, and really cozy up to a dangerous political movement.

Joe Sudbay 09:22

One of the things I had, I've looked at some of that, dropping that a lot of that information came out after the primary, and a lot of folks swarmed it and pulled through it. One of the things that seemed that he was most cynical about to me, there's a lot of cynical stuff, is his SuperPAC, Our Ohio Renewal. Now the part of the state you're living in, in that whole general area is an area that has been hugely impacted by the opioid epidemic and you know, I, I spent a lot of time in Maine. Maine was another state that was hugely impacted by the opioid epidemic. And what we've learned is that Purdue pharma went to places like that, where there were mills and where they're, you know, people were in, they really pushed the drug, the Oxycontin, on the doctors, it was a really concerted effort and very profitable for them. And I read about it in a book called Dreamland by Sam Quinones. And then I read Dope Sick by Beth Macy, which is now on Hulu, in what's been interesting, John, just as an aside, I mean, I have friends working the issue, and I have had more people talk to me about the opioid epidemic and the role of Purdue Pharma because of what they saw watching that show on Hulu than it ever picked it up before. So kind of nationally, it wasn't a big issue, but locally in these areas, it was, it's been a huge issue. So he sets up a not-for-profit to help, and it does nothing. It does nothing. Talk a little bit about that. Because this to me, this is I found this completely enraging.

John Russell 11:14

I mean this, I really can't underscore this enough. It's what it's why I want to talk about his race. It's very personal. I grew up in Wellsville, Ohio, that's Columbia County. I had a public high school, my graduating class was 55 kids. More than 10 kids that I went to high school with have passed from opioid addiction. It is impossible to quantify how hard that hit this area. It's almost equally unimaginable how little accountability there has been with the things that have come to light with just how hard and intentionally companies like Purdue pushed this on everybody here.

Now, like you said, one of the things, you know, Vance styles himself a person who's going to fight this problem. He said it's the reason why he's coming back to Ohio. He started the Our Ohio Renewal nonprofit, you know, ostensibly to do that. The thing about that is it's been defunct since 2017. And records show that it's actually spent literally $0 on charitable activities and grants, but that's not even the thing that gets me the most about it.

What gets me the most is JD Vance styles himself, you know, a fighter against these companies that push pills on the region on people he grew up with. But he was an attorney at Sidley Austin LLP, that's a white-shoe law firm in Washington DC, at the same time, the lobbying arm of that law firm represented Purdue Pharma. He was there, while his employer was letting Purdue pharma and the Sacklers off of the hook for the very problem that he, you know, claims to care the most about.

It was things that you know, what else to say about it? The grift is monumental and the fact that he's willing to pose as something he's not is pretty... reprehensible in my book. I don't think he deserves anywhere close to the Senate.

Joe Sudbay 13:34

One other piece of that one of the people that he hired as a fellow for that entity was a woman named Sally Sitel. And Pro Publica wrote a piece that focused on her role as being part of Purdue Pharma's media playbook. And yeah, you know, I mean, you say you're going to help on this crisis that is gripping the community, you laid it out very clearly, John, how impactful it has been? And how you do it is to hire someone who has worked with Big Pharma? It's just like, the hypocrisy and the cravenness...

But the question I have, John is, does this resonate with voters when they hear this story? Will they hear this story? How do you think it will impact because JD Vance needs to have Republicans show up. He needs to do... he needs to win, and you're a part of Ohio. So how does the ability to tell this story about who he really impact him there?

John Russell 14:50

Yeah, you know, I think when voters hear the whole story about who JD Vance is, especially around here, they're not going to go for it. I mean, the hypocrisy on opioids is certainly enough to do it. The flip-flopping to get himself closer to power is enough to do it. I mean, even if you keep going back to how much he's changed, you know, when he was really attacking Donald Trump, you know, back before he realized that's going to help them he likened Trump's candidacy to heroin for his supporters. Right? So just that brazenness, when voters catch a whiff of that I don't think he's going to go anywhere. But it is a fair question.

When we're up against the megaphone of the right wing media network that's had billions invested into it and decades of time to hone its trade. It is a fair question of whether or not they're going to get the whole story. And that's really up to us. Everybody listening, using, you know, your own personal media network, reaching out to your friends and families making sure that you know, you know, you might know this information, but you definitely know folks who are going to be voting that might not know it. So everybody needs to be their kind of own media network there. And that's one of the things that can help help us.

But also, I think, you have to pass the smell test in politics. And I think when voters look at JD Vance, they can smell a venture capitalist, coastal elitist poser. When they see… His smell precedes him, right? I mean, this is a guy whose current living situation is a mansion that's valued at $1.4 million. It's on six parcels of land, it's got a carriage house, a pool, and a pool house. That's not how people are living in Bridgeport, Ohio, where I am.

And when you contrast that with Tim Ryan, a guy from Youngstown. You know, Tim is has been good on unions from the start. He has a normal person's net worth that might get you a modest house in Columbus, unlike a lot of people who go to DC and get very fat and happy. I think that comparison is going to be favorable. And, you know, hopefully, we send Sherrod Brown, a favorite, somebody he can work with in the Senate.

Joe Sudbay 17:27

Well, I think that's really important to remind folks, Sherrod Brown won in 2018. Democrats can win statewide in Ohio. And I mean, you don't get much more authentic than Sherrod Brown. I mean, I love the guy. And he's been on this channel a lot, too. And with Tim Ryan, like you said, he's been pro-union. And it was interesting. I saw one of his ads, it was actually a day I was hosting here, it was early May. And he ran an ad that said, if you want culture wars, I'm not your guy. And then at 8:32 that evening, Politico broke a story about the Roe case. And Tim Ryan was tweeting about abortion. He was leaning into it and pointing out it was the day before the primary, he was leaning into it, and pointing it out. And I think that's going to be important, you know, yes, you can talk on the economic issues, but you also have to rally your base, you have to rally the base statewide. And it's a complicated state. No, no doubt about it. But how, you know, at this point, we know it's still early, but we have seen a couple of polls. There was a public poll that had JD Vance up three and then I think there was another one that had Tim Ryan up too. That's like, that's a lot closer than people would have expected. So where do you think things are? And how does it play out?

John Russell 18:43

Going back to the one person who constantly wins in Ohio, despite the headwinds, and despite all the projections, or or even super PAC money, I mean, Sherrod Brown would beat all of those things.

But his formula was no secret. And Tim Ryan's a study of Sherrod Brown. You brawl for the working class, unapologetically. And you don't lie or beat around the bush on where you stand on other issues. I think if people know that you're being straight with them, and they can, and they know that they can count on you to be on their side. That's what it comes down to. I mean, most of the country has to go to work for a living if you do that you're working class. And are you going to trust JD Vance to be on your side more than a guy from Youngstown or than a guy who's you know, taking cues from Sherrod Brown?

I think that's an easy question to answer. And that's… if he sticks to it, and we really get the message out about how JD Vance has changed himself as he's gotten closer to power and about the difference between you know, probably calling himself a hillbilly and also living in a multimillion-dollar mansion, then I think it's going to go our way. But it's not a guaranteed thing by any means we ought to make sure the voters hear the right version of things because we know that there's an entire media network that's very well funded to give the wrong information out.

Joe Sudbay 20:23

Absolutely. Right. And he's well funded by a guy named Peter Thiel, you mentioned the $1.4 million mansion that Vance lives in Peter Thiel just bought a $13 million mansion in DC last year. I mean, he's a billionaire’s billionaire, Peter Thiel is, and that is, that is something you talk about. You talk about billionaires a lot on The Holler. Which is your newsletter. You did talk a little bit about that. Because I think that's important. You know, we we need to have this conversation, especially as we're seeing more and more and more of them think that they can buy up politicians.

John Russell 20:59

Yeah, you know, we're really at an inflection point in the country. I mean, folks can feel it in their bones. But yeah, we're, this statistic isn't even fresh. I mean, three men own more wealth than the bottom half of working Americans. It's just insane.

And just to put in context, in the context, of what a billionaire is, imagine spending $10,000 every day of your life. Okay, if you did that, for 274 years, you would reach a billion dollars, we have one person that's worth $250 billion. I mean, the scale of wealth inequality, which let's be honest, that came directly from the working class, nobody can earn $1 billion. That comes from power and control over hundreds of thousands of people that work for you, who clock in every day, who create the value for your company, and then the value that they create goes straight into your pockets.

We've had that for so many decades, that we, you know, we get around to ridiculous statistics that I just mentioned. I think people without hearing anything about that can feel it is true in the economy. I mean, there's a great point that Katie Porter made the other day on gas prices. We hear a lot of narratives about why they're so high but consider this.

How you know a company is price gouging is just by looking at their profits. If the cost of oil were going up, and that's why the price of gas was going up, then you wouldn't see profits of oil companies doubling, jumping exponentially, because they will be covering that increased price of oil. But what's happening is the profits of the oil companies are jumping exponentially. So we know that the cost of oil is holding steady, and they're just layering it on top and blaming everybody else so they can make an extra buck.

This, this system is what people feel. It is created by people like Peter Thiel, it is enabled by the people who Peter Thiel buys like JD Vance. They want that to continue. But it'll only continue if we let them really, and I think voters know that and we have a chance to stop it.

Joe Sudbay 23:32

Right. And it's why Republicans try and create issues to divide us. It's why they attack the queer community. It's why they attack immigrants. It's why they're making a big deal about gas right now. But it's really their buddies who are funding them in the oil industry who are giving it up. And how do we know that because the House took a vote last month on a price-gouging bill, and not one Republican voted for it. And it won't go anywhere in the Senate because Republicans would never go after their benefactors, their financial benefactors. John Russell, it is just it's really great to talk to you. Tell folks where they can find you. Online and for your newsletter.

John Russell 24:15

Yeah, you can subscribe for free to my Appalachian working-class newsletter. It's called The Holler. But The Holler is gonna come out every week. We'll talk about billionaires, and talk about unions, and class solidarity, and we'll even dig through these 175 pages of the dirty details on JD Vance. Go to theholler.co and sign up to follow along.

Joe Sudbay 24:45

It's excellent and you're on Twitter @heyjohnrussell. I subscribe to The Holler and I really get a kick out of it. And I'm glad you could come on and share some of your wisdom and yet we got to tell the story of JD Vance and you're gonna be telling it and we're gonna have to lift up the work you're doing to make sure it happens. Thanks for talking to us today, John.

John Russell 25:05Joe, you do great work. I always love the show. Thank you so much for having me on. Can't wait till the next time.

Joe Sudbay 25:11

We'll do it again. Definitely. My name is Joe Sudbay. This is the Michelangelo Sinoreli show. We're gonna take a break. We'll be back in just a few minutes is the Michelangelo Sinoreli show on Sirius XM

Hello Holler Nation.

This is the third and last installment of The Holler talking about content moderation on social platforms. For this particular story, we appeared on The Hill with Ryan Grim, Tell Me Everything on Sirius XM with John Fuselang, and now Appodlachia with Chuck Corra and John Isner. See previous shows in The Holler archives.

Stay tuned on Sunday for another Holler with regularly scheduled content. And stay *even more tuned* for a possible mid-week edition of The Holler for paid subscribers with interesting tales about life in the Ohio Valley - the kind of place where a rainbow-colored co-exist sticker can share real estate on the back of a rusted-out Dodge Durango with a collage of Insane Clown Posse stickers and a blue lives matter flag. The politics here are… complicated.

I think this column will be called Rat Tales. Like River Rats… because that’s what people who live on our slice of the river are called. But also like rat tails… because it’s a funny play on words and I had a massive rat tail when I was probably too old for that. Good name? Let me know in the comments.

Ok here’s the pod.

Full Podcast Transcript With Highlights

Chuck Corra (Appodlachia Host)

Our first interview of 2022. What a way to kick it off. We have another John first time that's ever happened. John Russell, who y'all may know of as The Holler, Ohio Valley, John's a progressive organizer, farmer, former candidate for Congress from Wellsville, Ohio, who previously worked for the Elizabeth Warren campaign, and as a Campaign Director for RuralVote.org. He's currently founder of The Holler Ohio Valley newsletter has a great TikTok following as well talking about wealth inequality and taxing the rich. We talked to him today about TikTok in fact, and censorship, and particularly of people on the left, progressive creators, even some of which are Appalachians. And what he's been doing with that he pitched a story to The Hill, it got picked up. It was a really great story. I'll put a link to it. But he talked to us about that, the kind of the stories he's been gathering, the people he's been talking to, and it's a really interesting conversation. John (Isner), I know that you joined us a little late, but look, looking forward to your thoughts on it as well.

John Isner (Appodlachia Host)

Look, I thought it was great. I mean, we luckily knock on wood. We haven't we've dealt with some weird shadow banning stuff. But we haven't really worried had to, like, see censorship as much as maybe some of these other people, which honestly is kind of surprising. But it's crazy to hear how much this is ramping up. And you'll hear from John's perspective, how he thinks that should be handled and where they can go from here.

Chuck Corra 

We get into a good conversation about censorship in general. And you know, how it relates to people on the left and the right and you know, what, what can actually be done about or what should be done about it. So, yeah, it was a good conversation. Hope you'll enjoy it.

First of all, you mentioned you're from... are you from Bridgeport, Ohio, or is that where you are right now?

John Russell (JR)

I am from Wellsville, Ohio. It is 45 minutes up the river from Bridgeport, Ohio. Wellsville, a town of 3500 people, is nobody knows where it is. But I always put it on the map with this. You know, Fiesta ware? Oh, yeah, okay. Yep. Fiesta Ware is made right across the river in West Virginia. Newell, West Virginia, but that is right across the river from where I grew up, which is Wellsville / East Liverpool.

Chuck Corra

Okay. Oh, East. Okay. East Liverpool, I believe. I know, East Liverpool because it always showed up on my TV for two-hour delays or for school closures when we got snow.

JR 

Yeah, exactly. That's kind of how you find out every other town in Ohio Valley but East Liverpool. 10, 15,000 people. Wellsville 3,500 folks. I left there 10 years ago. Came back. And I'm outside of Wheeling now but barely in Ohio.

Chuck Corra

Got it. Got it. Well, I know we have a lot to talk about. You have some really interesting reporting that you've been doing. But I did want to ask you a little bit about your background. Mostly for our audience's benefit. But also mine cuz I'm curious. What uh, you are a farmer. At one point you ran for office. Tell me a little bit about yourself first. Then we can jump into what you're working on now.

JR 

Yeah, longtime listener first-time caller to the Appodlachia show. So hi, listeners. I am John Russell. I grew up on a farm in Wellsville. That's where kind of where the farming comes in. Both my grandparents were dairy farmers. I did an ag degree and came back to Ohio but it was central Ohio. My brother bought some land there right outside of Columbus. And for about seven years, I did production agriculture on that I grew everything you can find in the grocery store produce aisle. I sold to farmers' markets, wholesale markets. Pro tip for listening public out there. If you're going to try to sell at an Amish produce auction, you will not beat them on price. So I learned that the hard way. 

Agriculture and politics have always kind of been a through-line in my life. And there's not a lot of agriculture, agriculturally based Democrats out there. And that's kind of what I fell into. So you mentioned a run for office there. I've always lived in rural areas. Nobody was gonna run for a State House seat in central Ohio that was very rural in 2016. So I bought an old Schwinn bike from the 70s and road it down dirt roads in Knox County and ended up knocking on 16,000 doors personally, and still getting crushed!

Chuck Corra

You hate it but I admire the dedication, the grit that's 16,000 doors is not an easy thing to do for anybody.

JR 

Yeah, yeah, you know, I, I'm an old soul at heart, I have always had a pair of made in America New Balances. I wore out a couple of those. But in you know, we should talk about at some point you running for those local offices, you know cuz that's even if people are doing that kind of really good work and getting crushed, I think it's really under-examined to make a good effort in those rural districts where it seems pretty hopeless, like if you're bringing out one, two, three thousand new voters that still and you know, everybody does that across the state and that's still really impactful. One of the reasons why I wanted to do that. So that was 2016, and then I kind of ended up accidentally running for Congress, if you can wrap your head around that. 

Chuck Corra

Yeah, why not just throw the hat in the ring? 

JR 

Well, what happened here was, I got a good name from working really hard for that district. Then me, and a lot of other people who really took this organization beyond what it was at the start, we started an Indivisible group after 2016. And pro trivia for any of the listening audience that remembers this. The Republicans at that time were going to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And they delegated Schlub in Chief Pat Tiberi, a Republican from Central Ohio, to do that. We started the Indivisible group, were a real pain in the ass there, we had "Flat Pat", a cardboard cutout of Pat, to take to his town halls since he wouldn't show up. But we did a number of these town halls, one of them got 1000 people out and ended up on MSNBC, and we really put pressure on this guy. And then out of nowhere, Pat stepped down. And that made one of five special elections across the country in 2018 that were going to be the first elections after the Trump years. And so at that point, I had a farm in the district, I put a lot of work for state rep, I, you know, had a role in starting and growing that Indivisible group, threw my hat in the ring into the primary, and was the was kind of the rural progressive candidate there, was endorsed by Justice Democrats, but same fate still got crushed! But you know, it's worth it to try sometimes.

Chuck Corra

You know, it's important to run in those areas, if for nothing else, and start building some infrastructure for progressives there. I only say that, because it's hard. It's hard work, and nobody wants to do it. Because the likelihood of winning is so low, but it's so important.

JR 

It is and you know, we gotta rebuild this infrastructure, these parties, and our infrastructure that's died off over the years. It really starts with that. You know, so if you're interested in that, do it. 

Chuck Corra

Yeah, let's have you back on some time when John's here because his insight on running is also really helpful. I helped run his campaign from afar, but he did all the, you know, the shoe leather leg work on that. But so I think transitioning because I know, you know, one of the reasons why you're here is because of a wonderful app that nobody seems to understand TikTok, except you understand it pretty well, you've, you've garnered a pretty good following on there. And one thing that you and I talked about offline was a recent story, I think that you pitched to a couple of outlets about censorship, particularly progressive voices. So I want to give the mic over to you to kind of explain a little bit about that. And what's happening there.

JR 

Yeah, you know, TikTok. We all love it. It's fun. It sucks up a lot of hours of your day. But it's, you know, we have progressives have this problem, we write about it, we hand wring about it all the time. We don't have a media network that's really to scale to counter what the right has been working on and investing billions on, for literally half a century. I mean, 50 years, they really recognized the power and built it. And that's what we're up against, you know, a point I want to make here is

for our part of the country, Appalachia, and for, you know, even more specific to where I am, Ohio's sixth congressional district, which is eastern Ohio, the sixth congressional was as blue 15 years ago, as it is red today. And today, it is the congressional district that has had the biggest swing to conservatives of anyone in the country. That happened over 15 years. And it happened because of the media landscape.

So what tools do we have to fight back against this? Well, what the point I made in this pitch, is, you know,

the left doesn't really have a media network. But what we do have is all these little creators that have the credibility of their own. There are people in the recovery community. There are Black Lives Matter activists, creators of color. There are straight-up rednecks like you and me out there putting out a progressive message that's much needed. There are all these little islands all over the country that are getting progressive messaging out, and a lot of that is happening on Tik Tok.

What's interesting is, the right is on TikTok as well. And you will have videos that have straight-up misinformation. You'll have videos from the far right, that are either explicitly violent or have allusions to violence. You'll have, you know, cops in official uniform wearing three percenters gear, stuff like that garnering millions of views. And then on the other side, you'll have creators of color being taken down for really light things. You'll have people laying out very factual accounts of the CIA intervening in South American countries, you'll have that taken down. You'll have people who either, whether it's just kind of funnily embarrassing a brand account of a large corporation, you know, you'll have folks doing that and they're getting taken down. You'll have critiques of our system, whether that's like, people can't afford health care without going broke, or the Sacklers are paying a fine that amounts to the cost of doing business and avoiding jail time, despite mocking everybody who they got addicted to opioids and you make content on that, and that gets taken down. So what I did was line up those examples and pitch a news outlet on it, and they took the story that ran on The Hill. That was Ryan Grim that participated.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, and I watched that it was a really good I think rundown of all these examples, which I personally like I didn't even know about I don't get on Tik Tok a lot. I mean, I post occasionally for our account. That's pretty much it. And I didn't realize that there was like, but I do get on there occasionally and I get way more right-wing stuff that I do progressive. What's been sort of the official company line reason for why some of these posts have been taken down. Has it just been like you're formulaic? You violated x terms of agreements, or what is it?

JR 

This is one of the biggest points. When you get taken down. You really don't get a good answer. TikTok, fun fact about it. It's the world's most popular web domain. It's passed Google and Facebook. 

Chuck Corra

Really? 

JR 

Yeah.

Chuck Corra 

That's wild. 

JR 

People are on Tik Tok that you wouldn't think are on TikTok. I mean, I work at a bar and live above a bar in Bridgeport that I work at. A couple of the customers are not your typical resistance liberal crowd, and I mentioned I was on TikTok and they were like, "oh, yeah, let me follow you." You know, everybody is on TikTok.

Chuck Corra

That'll be interesting. Yeah. Should be interesting.

JR 

Yeah. If I go missing, you'll know. But the point is, TikTok doesn't give you a good reason when they decide to take your videos down. And it's not really clear. The reasons why they're taken down in the first place. And an important thing that leads to is, you know, some of the creators we brought together for this piece, they have a couple 100,000 followers on Tik Tok, do political education. It leads to self-censorship. If you're trying to educate folks, on, you know, American interventionism, and your video's taken down, then you're kind of left to wonder, okay, what word was it that I said, that I can scrub out of there and repost this and have it still fly? And that leads people to do all kinds of crazy things. You know, there's, there's people misspelling words in the captions and replacing words that you don't think you can say with other silly stuff. So, but that's kind of a double whammy if Tik Tok doesn't take it down initially, then you have a lot of creators especially when they get larger and this becomes something that they can actually do and make money on. Not wanting to touch subjects that we really all could benefit from learning about.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, yeah, cuz it's when it's your sole source of livelihood is one of your biggest sources of livelihood which it is for many people that it becomes a financial and well-being liability to do that. And if you're I guess if you don't know why they're taking it down, then that that's even scarier. To me, that's very strange because Tik Tok as a platform is clouded in so much mystery from everything from the algorithm to how the for you page functions, which nobody knows, nobody except, I guess, the developers. To something like this which is very bizarre and look, I everybody I think makes jokes about, conservatives being censored on like Twitter and stuff like that which they're not really and they say this from a different platform that they're not being censored from everything. But for something like this, I mean, like, there's a lot of creators on Tik Tok that aren't present or don't have a big following on other platforms because it's so, I don't want to say easy, but there's such a great potential for somebody to really gain a following on Tik Tok versus other platforms. I mean, Daniel Kirk, who had on our show last year is a great example, which I think you had mentioned, also kind of fell victim to this sort of censorship.

JR 

Yeah, you know, I'll let Danielle talk about it. But we did reach out to her for the story. And it's kind of the same deal. You know, once you pass a certain level of followers on Tik Tok, you have a little bit of influence, and then your videos start getting taken down, you start to think, well, you know, all the good that I can do with these followers might be jeopardized if I say something that TikTok, which, by the way, is owned by a hostile foreign government…

Chuck Corra

Yeah, right. There you go. There's, there's that little thing. Yeah.

JR 

Yeah. Not to mention that. But you know, you start to ask yourself, I can educate with this platform, I can do a lot of good things with it. But am I going to jeopardize that by touching something that might run afoul of the community guidelines, which we don't even know what those are, and seem to be applied differently? You know there's all these examples, we lined up of creators kind of on the left, who are having things taken down pretty consistently. So you know, you have a population of people who could be learning about the kinds of things they're educating on, not learning about those things, because they're taken down. Yet on the other side of TikTok, far-right extremism is allowed to go very, very viral. Are there examples of the right being censored? Yes. But those fall into the larger question of how much influence do we want the world's most popular web platform to have over public debate and education? Because right now, it doesn't seem like that's a fair or good thing.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, it's, it's kind of scary to think about because at least with Google, you have to do some sort of navigating yourself in order to reach different ideas or different types of content, whereas on Tik Tok, which is equally as popular, more popular than Google now, in some instances, you're served that up through the algorithm. And so it is really troubling, especially when you think about progressive voices being minimized. And especially Appalachian ones because I think, especially with Daniel Kirk, yourself so many others, you know, like the entire Well Read trio, so much of I think, a new perception about Appalachia and about the South and about just, quote-unquote, red parts of the country in general, are now being sort of reshaped or more nuanced attitude because of voices like yours, like Danielle's, like Trae Crowder, you know, who have you. And so that, to me, is what stuck out about this story. Because so much of that, like hinges on that you mentioned earlier, that progressives, don't really, there's not really a media ecosystem infrastructure that supports that kind of voice now, it reminded me, I think you mentioned this the other day about Air America which most people listening to this probably have no idea what that was, which is telling about its success. But it was like a left-leaning radio network that you know, shit the bed, bit the dust, however you want to put it. But there isn't that and I think that this is another threat to what little voice progressives in our region have.

JR 

It's a great point. And I would say it's not even a little voice. I mean, you know, my account is just shy of 70,000 followers on there. You know Trae's is much, much bigger. Daniels's bigger.

So, Air America. I don't even know what the audience is. But you have this collection of Appalachian creators out there. There are upper other Appalachian yallidarity, yallternative crowds that have bigger platforms than mine.

But just with the 70,000 followers, that'll get between 100,000 and 150,000 views on the page every week of the kind of message that progressives need to put out there and not to mention the fact that when you, or my account, or Danielle's, or anybody else sticks their hand up and says, "Hey, you're not alone out here in the vast sea of what appears to be red." There are many of us and we are willing to educate and organize and do the things necessary to make the kind of to make Appalachia what we know it can be. There are lots of folks out there. And there is a potential, you know, I think they should all be organized and funded. I mean, certainly progressive organizations spend a lot of money on things that don't really pan out. I think they should sustain these creators who are kind of making a left media network without anybody's help. 

Chuck Corra

Yeah, it'd be nice to get some money, especially like political money diverted towards that, you know, rather than going into like Nancy Pelosi administered super PAC or some shit like that. 

JR 

Yeah, I mean, here's a great point,

we spent a billion dollars on five senate candidates in the Midwest, all of them lost. And, you know, their organizations go away when that happens, or they spawn these little PACs that that are hard to measure what they actually do. So, we should put a lot more money to the people who are actually carrying the message from Appalachia right now. 

Chuck Corra

I agree. And I think that that, that part of this problem is, you know, we're all beholden to big tech at some point. And to some extent, I'm wondering, though, like, what has been, what is there any effort to try to get a response from TikTok? Or to try to figure this out or do something about this censorship issue? I mean, because, and I guess, like, part of the problem is, it's a Chinese-owned and operated company, which means the US laws, I think, seldom touch it. So there are problems there. But I mean, is there anything people are trying to do to figure this out to try to combat this to try to solve this problem?

JR 

I'm sure there are. I don't know every instance of it. But I think putting it on the record was an important part of adding it to this discussion because it doesn't just apply to TikTok. I mean, back to our region of the country, you know, West Virginia was a union Democrat state for a long, long time. The Ohio River Valley was as blue fifteen years ago, as it is red today. All those things are influenced by what happens in the media, and how, you know, new social media is regulated is going to influence the voting behavior of those regions in the future so I think doing something about it starts with putting it on the record.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that's a really smart strategy. Because of, you know, there's limited things that people can really do about TikTok and how they run their operations there. Because something like this is happening. And look, this is happening with conservatives. It's usually about things that they're saying that are racist and should probably get them de-platformed. Let's but let's set that aside for it. Now. You mentioned something of like bringing more awareness to this and putting people on different platforms. I think that that's a good, a good idea. And I think that more progressive voices, particularly from Appalachia would be benefited from that. Has that been kind of like your goal with this? Like, what's your goal in general with what you're doing, because I know that we can kind of move into like your type of work now. With The Holler and everything that you're doing on TikTok and with your newsletter and that type of thing.

JR 

Yeah, The Holler is what I call my newsletter. And you know, that comes out weekly, it's probably gonna move to bi-weekly, but we do politics for rednecks and hippies. It's from Appalachia, it's for every part of the country that's like Appalachia, that has our kind of problems. I think that media in general has been a little too cautious. And wed to objectivity, quote, unquote, I'm doing air quotes. And when we have a political situation right now, you know, where one party kind of wants to nix the whole democracy thing? Yeah, that whole thing? Yeah, that whole thing. And the other party is having trouble tying its shoes, there need to be very pro-working-class media. And that's non-partisan. To me, if you have to work for a living, you are working-class. And that puts a lot of people with all kinds of different politics in the same boat. But one of the things that The Holler does, you know, we'll do a lot of political education about the wealth gap. We had a video that got 10 million views and was written up in the international press, weirdly. That was simply taking graph paper. Right here, I always have my tools close at hand. Graph paper, like you remember from your Appalachia math class, love graph paper, but one of our biggest videos was we just made each of those little squares on there $5 billion, and we said down here is $0. And up here is Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man. And what it showed was the 1% was not even detectable. There was no difference between where the 1% started and zero on the scale of the wealth of billionaires today. So we'll do political education like that. And then the other thing the holler does also will travel out and cover strikes, union organizing, especially in Appalachia, Special Metals, is still on strike. And your listeners have been really great, you guys have been really great about lifting that up. And, you know, we'll go out there and cover things that the working class is doing for itself, to try and elevate those and get more folks to do it. Because ultimately, to solve these problems, it's going to require a lot of people with different politics, but the same class coming together, realizing they're in the same boat organizing and doing something about it. That's the whole goal of my newsletter and The Holler. 

John Isner 

People are going to, let's say people on the right are going to kind of laugh at the idea that the left is being stopped, you know, they're being censored. What is, I guess the easy way to say it is, what's the proof behind it? What's happening in terms of, you know, what are you seeing over a lot of creators, not just yourself?

JR 

Yeah, we were able to line up a couple big accounts. One of them was a public defender, he was talking about a person that was held 10 years beyond their sentence. And that was taken down by TikTok for talking about dangerous individuals. We have, you know, with black and BIPOC creators, there are many, many examples. But if you do, if you're talking about any kind of organizing around Black Lives Matter, that is automatic ground, you're stepping close to the line, and plenty of BIPOC creators will cite the number of times they've been taken down for talking about Black Lives Matter. We had another creator this was these are just three examples that we brought forward to talk about this on the show, but they're innumerable. A lot of people reached out. We had another creator who does a series called Economics For The People. That's Jessica Burbank and also I should say, shout these creators out to Alex Claverling who posts at @loloverruled, public defender, great guy. Jessica Burbank @KaBurbank, and Erynn Chambers @Rynnstar. Jessica Burbank does Economics For The People and also talks about American intervention in South American countries. All of these things were taken down along those lines, that's just scratched the surface. And you know, to close out that point, it is true that creators on the right are being censored. Now, is there a difference between something that gets censored for far-right violence versus factual education about American intervention in South America? I think there is a difference. But the thing that unites the left and right here who are being taken down, is this question, how much power do we want the world's largest web platform to have over public debate in our country, especially with politics as they are today? And that seems like a big one.

John Isner 

That's understandable. Yeah. I mean, I think it's ridiculous that it's happening. But I always kind of go back to my thought, and this is just my personal thought. When this was happening to conservatives, the first thing I said was, you know, Twitter is a private company that can do these things. So I'm, I'm still torn. Like, it sucks. But technically, you know, are we really into a constitutional issue? Or are we just more kind of a morality issue when it comes to the overall theme of what the internet is now? So that's why I still struggle with it. Because what you're saying is true. There is a huge difference between fear-mongering and trying to educate people, right? The weird part is, you know, are we gonna be on a slippery slope, if we start to say they can't do it on the left, and then they start just bringing everybody back on the right. That sucks!

JR  

I think it's a true thought.

But I think the larger point behind that is just regulation of internet companies in general, if you know, violence that starts on Facebook or these platforms has spilled out into the real world. You know, every local up here in the Ohio Valley, every local paper has died off and it's been replaced by a Facebook group, where I watch sweet little old ladies who cut the crust off of my peanut butter and jelly is growing up being radicalized in a Facebook group of 5000 people in a town that nobody could name. That's happening all across the country. And I think more than just how many times are creators on the left being taken down versus creators on the right, I think we all have to ask, what is the regulatory burden that these companies should operate in? And since these companies have such influence over our government, I think they've been allowed to get a free pass on that. Even when we know that the YouTube algorithm is radicalizing people and putting them into a pipeline. Facebook is doing the same thing. And it ends in things like the insurrection. The regulation has to it seems like it's could be better than right now.

Chuck Corra

It's nonexistent. I would agree, I think, um, something that doesn't get talked about enough, and I think that many people are afraid to touch in some respects, is just how necessary it is to regulate tech companies in general, because they govern so much of our lives, even if we don't want to admit it, or realize that we're using their products constantly every day. They're not like other companies. And our regulatory regime is like, I want to say regime that's our regulatory framework doesn't even address that. I mean, the last time that laws and regulations were updated for the internet, my God, like how long ago was that in a comprehensive fashion? 

JR 

That's probably when AOL was coming to you in the mail on CDs. 

Chuck Corra

Yep. Dude... 

JR 

You remember that?

Chuck Corra

I saved so many of them. Yeah, absolutely.

JR

They're my coasters, now. My coffee coasters.

Chuck Corra

Those are I mean, those are a relic you could probably such a good bit of money for those.

JR 

Is that want an NFT is?  

Chuck Corra

Yes, absolutely. It but in the shape of a gorilla.

John Isner

Don't sell it though, that Microsoft case still killing the guy who sold all those CDs. 

JR 

My retirement plan is actually a closet full of Beanie Babies and AOL CDs.

Chuck Corra

Mine is just a picture of my closet of Beanie Babies because I'm going to make it into an NFT.

John Isner

As an NFT. That's pretty good. Something that you said right there, John to it kind of not calling you John number two, I just meant John. Exactly sound like a big old douche thing to say. So you mentioned there too it's interesting.

Because when you're talking about these things shutting down like newspapers, even small local news channels, you're starting to now get into the constitutionality of the freedom of the press on these types of things on TikTok on Twitter, you know, how much are we going to allow that to be stopped? I mean, it's interesting, because we already say like their private companies, you know, they technically don't have to always abide 100% by the First Amendment. But I'd be interested because, I mean, we've always held in the country that one of the most cherished things is the press. And you're right, these things are closing down. So is this going to now constitute essentially them publishing work? I think that's a great, great point.

JR 

I also think that's a great point. I mean, that's not one that I've heard made a lot, but absolutely belongs in this discussion. And, you know, kind of fits under the larger thing of the world has changed a lot. The internet's been around for what, 30 years? I don't know if I'm going to be off base here. But it's not a long time. And it's completely reshaped this landscape in ways that we haven't been able to respond to, through elected government. And part of that is because of the stranglehold that these large companies have over elected representatives. And, you know, Chuck, you were talking about a point that fits into this being a private company. One of the videos I had taken down and that still has not been restored, was a message that I made for conservative voters. And the point I was making is private companies and private wealth has become everything that they were taught to fear about government. You in your pocket right now you have a tracking device that knows everybody that you know, it knows where you go, it knows what you write it. You know, your phone is tracking you constantly if you have an Alexa sorry to say that on the podcast, and now it's going to order diapers or whatever you have your Alexa programmed to do. If you have an Alexa in your house. That's a listening device. You can see anytime you mentioned Google, this is a record that you can look up. Google listens to what you're talking about, we've all had the experience of looking at an Instagram ad. And all of a sudden, you know, I'm getting ads for incredibly manly leather wallets that are, you know, my kind of spending.

The point is like these private companies, they are everything that we've kind of feared government would be and they're unaccountable to the public, despite having the most power over our lives right now.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, it's, it is a bigger problem than I think people A. realize and B. are willing to admit.

JR 

Yes, I said all that and then got taken down. I'm surprised I haven't had a bag put over my head just saying it now.

Chuck Corra

Listen, if, if this episode ends up just disappearing out of nowhere, you'll know why. And it's not because we... look like several of our episodes have disappeared out of nowhere. But those were when we had old microphones and weren't very good at this, so a little bit different. Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated thing, and TikTok being owned by China is a whole different animal in and of itself, in addition to that, which I think complicates a lot of things. But I do think that no matter what, there has to be some sort of policy solution towards tech in general, even if it's a foreign-based company that's operating in the United States because this is, I can't stress it enough, like how much these companies control our lives and how little the government fingerprint, or footprint, or claws, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it is, is on them. And it's, it is just unbelievable. And I have a feeling that there's a lot of irreparable harm has probably been done. I don't want to go into this doom and gloom loop so I won't, but I do think it's a problem. I think what you're doing is really important, really smart.

JR 

I mean, I think when you say these things, you know, people can hear them and be like, "Okay, well then stop using TikTok, or Amazon or whatever." I don't think we have to do that. I mean, I love the convenience of Amazon. I wish they would unionize. I love cat videos on TikTok. But it shouldn't be you know, we can have our cake and eat it too here if we just act through our representatives and have some sensible regulation on it. But to date, that's kind of been avoided.

John Isner 

Also, when people say that my first thought is, "Okay, I'll stop doing it. It changes nothing." But if you hold the other side accountable, it changes everything. So the whole idea of like, just quit, you know, quit doing X literally means nothing. It's just a thing one person stops. It does nothing. It makes you feel good. It makes you morally feel good. But it doesn't do anything. But when you're out there using those platforms to essentially educate people about them. That's a bit different.

JR 

Yeah. That's also kind of a part of what these companies do. You know, they, they make it seem like... that happens with climate change all the time. You know, oil companies are like, "alright, well use less single-use plastic or single straws. Now it's on you to stop doing that", meanwhile, you know, they're accountable for nearly all the emissions. That's just the same story different tune with these tech companies. They shape the landscape we all operate in, and it needs to be a better one that's a little bit more fair and transparent.

Chuck Corra

Yeah, yeah, I think the best thing you can do is to trigger a little bit of a Streisand effect with any of these censored things where you know, you make a big enough deal about it that censoring it only causes more of that to reach more people, which hopefully is what would end up happening. Well, this has been a really interesting discussion. I really appreciate you coming on and talking with us about this. I really appreciate the work you're doing The Holler. We should definitely have you back on some time to talk about local races, local elections, running, and local races. We touched on that before John got here. But yeah, appreciate what you're doing and keep it up. And you're welcome back anytime.

JR 

Thanks, guys. Huge fan of the show. Great listeners. I know there's a lot of other Hollers out there. So shout out to them. It was kind of a naming thing. We're all doing our good work. But check it out at TheHoller.co that's in the Ohio Valley. And I'm posting @HeyJohnRussell on TikTok and I really appreciate you guys having me on. 

Chuck Corra

Hell yeah, man. Thanks so much.

Full Podcast Transcript

T-M-E, you're listening to Tell Me Everything on Siri us XM, progress 127.

John Fugelsang

And welcome back. Sirius XM. I'm John Fugelsang saying happy 25th of January. It was on this date 61 years ago, 1961 that Bob Dylan hunted down his hero, Woody Guthrie, at Howard Beach, New York. And he taught Woody's son Arlo, a few chords on the guitar. That happened on this date in 1961. 

I'm John Fugelsang. I am so pleased to welcome our next guest. He is just so brilliant every now and then as a comedian or as a political guy who hollers a lot yet, you come across someone who raises your game and you say, goddamn, I wish I'd written that.

Well, John Russell was born and raised in Wellsville, Ohio. And between then and now he picked up an agricultural science degree. He farmed produce for seven seasons ran a side business grinding tree stumps in central Ohio. He's run for State Representative and Congress. He's worked for a major presidential campaign.

And he's the force behind a terrific, terrific site, The Holler, which is Appalachian based, it's independent. And it, well as he puts it, gets people ready for big political ideas with short, funny, plain-spoken videos. This is a substack. And it really, really serves politics up to voters in the upper Ohio Valley and the rest of the country. His videos are dynamite and gaining increasing attention. And he's really got a great way of doing something high energy and conversational and bringing to the hard-working people of America, how badly they're being fucked by the politicians and media that keep suckering them. What a pleasure to welcome John Russell to Sirius XM.

JR 

Thank you so much for having me, John. Excited to be here.

John Fugelsang

Thank you so much. Let me ask the obvious. First off, how did The Holler come to be?

JR 

Yeah, well, you know, I grew up in a really interesting part of the country, the Ohio Valley is kind of close to West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, all in the same place. But the story is really interesting with our Congressional District. I know we've got some well-informed listeners here.

So this is the Ohio 6th Congressional district that tracks the river. It's right next to West Virginia. The interesting thing about it - 15 years ago, it was as blue as it is red today.

And those were all working-class union voters. Through, you know, what's been happening with media, and consolidation, and especially big tech, social media platforms, it's undergone this massive evolution in opinion to where the 6th congressional district where I grew up, where Wellsville is, is now one of the reddest congressional districts in the country and has had the biggest shift to conservative voting of any district in the country. So I wanted to start a newspaper that was kind of a political home for working-class issues and advocate for working-class voters, no matter what their politics are. And we kind of explore that weekly.

John Fugelsang

Everyone's baffled at what's happened in the last 50 years how traditional Democratic congressional districts have gone red. And really, it began huge scale under Reagan, and the very people who are hurt by his efforts to de-unionize were going forward more and more. Now, there are a lot of different culprits, people point to the Fairness Doctrine. People point to Roe v. Wade, people point to, you know, liberal causes that really fought for the marginalized, like LGBT people. I know there's no one real answer, but what to what do you attribute the folks that the voting against our own interest belt becoming so much more powerful in our lifetimes?

JR 

Yeah, it's hard to pin down but you know, I think it's a combination of things over 50 years like you said. You could walk out of high school and into a factory and have a decent middle-class life here. And no matter what your race, sexuality, or anything else was, that was true for a long time. And then we had policies like NAFTA, we had that was, you know, ushered in by both parties.

We had just that the death of that possibility happen. And whenever a trauma like that happens to a community, people are vulnerable, they're hurt, they're looking for somebody to blame, and over 50 years, I think, you know, very cynically, but very smartly, to use words that maybe the former president would use,

the conservative apparatus plowed billions of dollars into media networks that go so much further beyond Fox. It's 24/7 and on every device, you know, as the steel mills closed, the local papers closed up, they were all replaced by, you know, Facebook groups of 5000 people in towns that nobody could name.

And these are the kind of places where I watch, you know, the moms that raised me who cut the crust off of my peanut butter and jellies get radicalized. I know them to be good people. I know them to hold, you know, to have tolerance and openness and everything else. But when you're being served up a consistent media diet, which by the way, is all stuff that kind of serves the owner-class interest. And when that's the only game in town, that inspires a political change, as we've seen. And so, you know, I think it's a combination of those factors. And it'll continue until we come up with a good answer for it. It's kind of why I moved back here and am trying to make media that fights back.

John Fugelsang

Yeah, I keep trying to find the answer. I mean, I keep thinking do we need a cabinet-level position in charge of disinformation? I mean, if we the people control if we the people own these public airwaves, if we the people own the infrastructure that created the information superhighway, why can't we have a say in regulating destructive lies and you know, your story is amazing because it is true, your district had the largest swing to conservatives of anywhere in the country, going from blue to red. But you've also said quite pointedly that the left has really failed to respond to online radicalization and his push towards the red. I agree. How do you suggest Democrats and progressives and moderates and anti-evil people respond to what's happening?

JR 

Thanks for teeing that up. I have my own magic wand solution here. You know, the main outlet that I put out, media on is TikTok. Which, by the way, is now the world's most popular web domain. It's surpassed Facebook and Google. You know, everybody thinks that the kids are on TikTok, that's true, but non-traditional folks you wouldn't think are on TikTok. I live above a bar where I bartend. A guy who's definitely not part of the resistance crowd, was like, "Hey, are you on Tik Tok?" And I'm like, "oh, yeah," you know, so a lot of people are on these platforms. 

But the good thing when it comes to fighting back with left media is this.

There are 1000s of small accounts of people with compelling stories that are putting out the exact kind of media that we need, all on their own. And I look at that, and then I look at, say, Democrats spending a billion dollars on five Midwestern Senate candidates, none of whom won, and all of whom packed up and that infrastructure kind of left. If we could divert some of this money to support the homegrown organic media network that is already out there thriving without anybody's help. Maybe that's not an answer, but it's definitely a start.

But then that gets into one of the things that this story that I was kind of talking about today of what gets censored on there. And what stays up.

John Fugelsang

Well, you were just part of a really interesting piece that Ryan Grim did about different influencers who have found themselves censored on TikTok, normally, we hear our right-wing friends all the time talk about censorship on Twitter, it's censorship on Twitter, and it's like, oh, you mean, your rights were taken away because you broke the terms and service of their free platform. I mean, if I had $1, for every person who doesn't understand the First Amendment in this country, that a private corporation is allowed to just as the bar can kick you out for not wearing shoes, it's where it can take you off for spreading lies about the plague. For me, what's so meaningful is that you're giving a voice to people in Appalachia, who feel this way. I'm someone like I said, My family's from Brooklyn and the south, and I have very large conservative families with little blue pockets all around. And it can be a lonely gig. I know. But my God, you're a true believer. I mean, what is, how has your life changed in your region, since you have become this local media superstar pushing back on the lies and in my opinion, fighting a lot harder for your conservative neighbors than the media fights for them?

JR

Well, I appreciate that. You know, I don't know how much my own life has changed. But what's really interesting, what gives me a lot of hope is, you know, I will put out a lot of pieces that show exactly how big the wealth gap is, how much corporate capture has happened in everything that you interact with with in daily life. I do a lot of that. But what really gives me hope is going out and doing the other bit of what I do, which is covering union strikes covering labor organizing, specifically in Appalachia. 

Special metals is a Warren Buffett-owned company, it's in West Virginia, there're 450 steelworkers are on strike there right now. We went down to cover them and I can say, to a person. This is anecdotal, but most of those folks are hardcore Trump people, but they're also out there doing one of the most left things that you could possibly do, and they're fighting for their rights in the workplace. They're organizing against a billionaire-owned company. They're making basic demands, that would give them a better life where they live. And if we're not stepping into that space, and showing them that we're the ones to help them, that's really on us.

But what I've found every single time if you're upfront with these folks about where you stand, they'll welcome you and stand with you in a fight. And that is what gives me hope about this part of the country. It's not that long ago that West Virginia was a union state.

John Fugelsang

Yeah, not that long ago that Jay Rockefeller was an actual Democratic senator in West Virginia. I want to bring it back to and I'm sorry, I got off track to the piece with Ryan Grim about your Tik Tok video. Now, what was it specifically? Do you think that got it, that got it censored? I love the video, I've seen it but set it up for us. What what did you put up there? And what were you told?

JR

So we did the Grim piece, we brought in several other creators that have experienced the same problem. For me, there were several videos that were taken down. One of them was addressed to any conservatives that I have listening to me. And the point I made in this video that was taken down was that private wealth and private power, and private companies are now everything that we have been taught to fear about government. The little computer in your pocket knows who you know, who you're talking to where you are, where you go, what you want. If you have an Alexa, it is a listening device for one of the world's largest corporations, and it's listening to all the time. And the companies that control these are not accountable to any public institution, largely because they've captured them. I made those points in a video that was banned from the platform. 

In the Ryan Grim piece, we brought in several other creators. Black and BIPOC creators experience this all the time if you're out there talking about Black Lives Matter organizing. There are countless numbers of creators who have had that content taken down. Another interesting one was Jessica Burbank (@kaburbank), who makes a lot of educational content about American intervention in South American countries. She's had videos taken down on that. And the last person that we brought in was Alex Clavering. He posts @loloverruled, he's a public defender and had a video taken down for talking about a person that was held 10 years beyond his sentence. Just to wrap that up the first BIPOC creator that that I was talking about, there is Erynn Chambers (@Rynnstar). 

So those are several examples. There are many more beyond them. But the piece was about how factual political education on the left is being systemically taken down and throttled. While, far-right content, for example, a police officer in official uniform with 3%'er gear, making allusions to violence racked up millions of views.

John Fugelsang

Exactly, exactly. And meanwhile, the white authoritarian power structure knows that crying victim is the best way to bring more white grievance zombies to their cause. Yeah, but I mean, but you also offer solutions, what are your more recent videos addressing what we can do personally, about bad politics. For those who haven't seen it? What advice do you have for us in terms of say adopting a friend at risk?

JR 

Yeah, that video was about adopting somebody right on the edge of radicalization like, you know, to bring this back to the Facebook groups in my own hometown, I've watched people that I know, are open to a lot of ideas, be sucked in by the right-wing media network, because it's the only game in town. And the point I made is sometimes, you might not know it, but you might be the last line of defense for a family member who is getting sucked in by far-right messaging. So that video is part of a series that we'll be doing about just practical advice. And in this case, it is to, you know, not to argue or to fight or to push back but to share why you're concerned about the directions of things and to be that that one person who can step in and interrupt a slide into pretty extreme politics.

John Fugelsang

I mean, that's great, because I wanted to ask you, you know, how do you address the issue of what everyone says why the Democrats failed to reach the people whose policies they try to help we always hear this phrase flyover country I've never actually heard someone in New York or LA describe the center of the country that way. Most people I know came from flyover country. But I hear folks in the center talk about flyover country as if, you know, liberals on the coasts and a DC despise them. And I, I'm always like, despise you? Who's fighting so you're not buried under student loan debt who's fighting, so you don't have to have a GoFundMe to pay for your kid’s surgery who's fighting to have fewer pollutants in your air and water? Who's fighting to make sure that you don't get shot by a gang member who easily purchased a AR 15? I guess I'm saying where is the democratic disconnect where they have policies designed to help these people that childhood income tax credit was showing up in people's ATMs because of Biden, and yet they have failed to connect with these rural white folks whose policies they're trying to help?

JR 

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot of answers out there who's to say what is right, but you know, it's for me, I imagine, we would nail this if we did everything necessary to make it so that the face of the Democratic Party in any little hamlet that you came from, in my own village of Wellsville, if the face of the Democratic Party, it's not Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi or AOC, or any other boogeyman, but if it is, Barb, if it is your neighbor, if it is a person in a Facebook group is saying, “whoa, whoa, we don't have we don't all have horns here, we are trying to figure out what is going to move us forward.” You know, what, what can we do together to hold the people who are in DC accountable. If the face is a known, trusted source that is local, then that's going to it's going to be hard to make that a boogeyman, which is what 50-year investment and right-wing media are so good at doing. So if that's the case, we really need an institutional investment from the party from the PACs in bringing up local trusted messengers, giving them what they need to put out media. You know, stay on accurate talking points fight back against misinformation. I will say though, I haven't seen that effort come together, and we need it now more than ever.

John Fugelsang

Yeah, you say this kind of dream candidate? And I'm kind of thinking that Senator Sherrod Brown of your state of Ohio, I mean, oh, anyways, he is, he's, he's the great white hope for a decent white guy to, you know, be in the Democratic Party. I mean, is that the sort of figure you'd like to see more of on the national and local level?

JR 

Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, we need more than these national figures. It really needs to be, you know, I believe a lot in this reverse coattails effect. Yeah. We spend a lot of time money and attention on senate candidates, and presidential candidates, or showing up every four years. We really need these local candidates at state rep level, state senate level that is here in the district know it well, constantly a face. And there should be, you know, more, more of a push behind those kinds of folks, because they can help us carry the message. It's all about trust.

John Fugelsang

Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious what it is that you see in Appalachia, and in the country. That's concerning you the most right now. Besides JD Vance?

JR 

Oh, yeah. I don't know how much time you have. 

John Fugelsang

Can we talk about that fucking guy? Can we talk about that fucking guy?

JR 

The highlight reel was the announcement, where his placard fell off of the podium when he was announcing his candidacy. That was just a kind of a sweet moment for me.

John Fugelsang

That, to me, Mitt Romney at a Wu-Tang show that guy, I just I cannot believe how he's tried to gentrify his own hometown.

JR 

Yeah, you know, I actually have a personal interaction here, I read the book (Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance), and I traded emails with him before Trump was elected. And I wanted to know why two guys from different ends of the state. But fundamentally, the same culture ended up on different sides. And my hope for him back then, was that he would come and he would take over his party, and they would take it in a better direction, and be more working-class and everything else. And if we had to run against him on all the other things that are bad, I would have been fine with that. But I've been so disappointed to see him fully cede that leadership role and fold to what we really should be calling a fascist movement.

That is what it is. And he has seen the political opportunity there and chosen that side, which was really disappointing to me. But when people show you who you are, who they are, you should believe them. Yeah, so that's, that's the JD Vance end of things. 

But you know, you asked me, you asked about what's concerning. You know, to win in these places, you have to show up in these places. Of course, that's a talking point that's always been out there. But really why are we seeing such a rise in extreme politics on the right? It is directly connected to that media investment. And I think if we don't come up with a solution to that and come up with it pretty fast, and really put some money behind that, that is the most concerning thing to me. So I think if any of your listeners are down there in, in the marble hallways with some money to push around, we need a good media infrastructure to get good messages out there. And it's part of the reason why I love your show what you're doing. 

John Fugelsang

I love what you do. Your video with a piece of paper explaining how a billionaire is actually very poor, very simple graph is the sort of thing that I think could wake up all kinds of conservative brothers and sisters from the Fox network.

JR 

Yeah. And I got a lot of feedback from conservative folks on that video. And just for the listeners here, it was a simple piece of graph paper that kind of gave you nightmares in math class, whenever you are using it, and each box on the paper was $5 billion. And we went made a graph that started at zero and went all the way up to Jeff Bezos. But the shocking thing about it was that the 1% did not register above $0 when you compare wealth on the scale to how it's exploded. Not to mention the fact that the people at the very top of that graph, pay a lot less taxes than you and I, because of how they manipulate income and all the rest of it. 

That video got 10 million views that earned media everywhere. But the important thing about it is, it expands, to me, the definition of working-class, which is another thing that needs to happen for us to really see each other on the same side. Yeah, because you might have radically different politics, but you have the same class. If you have to work for a living, you got a lot more in common with a Trump voter on a picket line than you do with, you know, a billionaire who donates to Democrats like Warren Buffett. You can donate as much as you want, but really, it is about the power that you have with that level of money to exert influence on our government. So any media that we can do to put us all in the same boat, to give us a class consciousness to work together to organize and to rein in the powers of wealth that be, that's what we're trying to do.

John Fugelsang

And to remind the whole culture, there's a big difference between the 1%, the 0.1%, and the 0.01%. John Russell, I'm such a fan of what you do. I look forward to having you in the city in our studio when we have a studio in the city again. In the meantime, how can folks listening follow you and The Holler and keep up with all your work?

JR 

Well, thank you so much I post we're not a fan of paywalls. So the important political content is for free, you can see that @heyjohnrussell, across all social media. The Holler is the newsletter, you can sign up there at TheHoller.co. And we're looking for those sustaining small-dollar donors to keep pumping out the message and getting it out there. So thank you so much.

John Fugelsang

Listen, please come back and join us again this platform is open to you anytime I love what you do I find your… as someone who's you know, making more and more videos, I find your editing, inspiring. I love how you are not just the politics. I love what you're doing on a creative level as an artist. And so I just heap praise on you. Please come see us again anytime. We'd love to help put some more eyeballs on any of your work. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Russell. That's what we're here for. We got to take a really quick break! When we come back, it's gonna be open phones with all y'alls calls all the way until midnight on the East Coast. 9 pm on the west with comedian Leighann Lord joining us in the next hour. We are just getting warmed up.

I was on my fourth re-heating of Christmas leftovers when a friend emailed me just in time for the gravy to explode and varnish the inside of my microwave. 

It was an invite from Joe Sudbay, Host of State of The States on Sirius XM Progress Channel 127, and co-host of Progress Presents on the same channel asking me to come on the show.

We talked about unions in Appalachia, fighting far-right disinformation with bubble gum, shoelaces, and bootstrap punky newsletters, and what politics looks like in Ohio (and other Missouri-esque states) for the midterms. It’s cool. Press play. Also, use the comment section. It’s why I switched to Substack. 

Happy New Year ya filthy animals.

Podcast Transcript

Joe Sudbay  

This is Progress Presents on Sirius XM Progress 127.

Joe Sudbay  

This is indeed Sirius XM Progress Progress Presents, my name is Joe Sudbay. Earlier today, More Perfect Union tweeted at their account More Perfect US. They tweeted a video about 2021. And the intro was 40 million workers quit. 100,000 plus on strike. 550 plus new unions. 2021 was the year of the worker. It really has been amazing. And there's even, I've tried to follow it pretty closely, there's even been more activity around the country than I even knew. And I'm really glad right now to be joined by John Russell, who writes The Holler. It's an Appalachian-based independent media newsletter. And John has been covering some of the union activity in the Upper Ohio Valley, and I'm so glad you could talk to us today. John, welcome to the show.

John Russell  

Hey, Joe, it's a pleasure to be here. Excited to be on, and thanks for having me.

Joe Sudbay  

Well, I'm glad you could. So The Holler is, you know, one of the things I love about finding new media sources is I find like it allows people to provide coverage that we have all otherwise missed. And you are really filling, in my opinion, filling a niche right here. One of the stories that really struck me, and you wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, was the strike in Huntington, West Virginia, at a place called Special Metals. And I'm reading and thinking, how did I not know about this? But tell us about it, John, because it's really fascinating in terms of what the company does, who owns it, and what's been playing out in Huntington.

John Russell  

Yeah, this is a really interesting story. I'm glad that strike-a-lachia is a thing that is happening and even more glad to be able to cover it. Before we get into that. I do want to shout out some other independent reporters who have made these trips really possible. I think your listeners would all love to check out Mike Elk of the Payday Report out of Pittsburgh, Mike and I traveled down to Huntington. And

Joe Sudbay  

Mike's a great friend. The PayDay Report does great work. And he's been having a rough time because he has COVID. He's got pretty bad asthma. So hopefully he's gonna be okay, cuz he's a yeah, he's valuable. 

John Russell  

He is. He is. One of the beautiful things about, you know, about reader and listener, supported media, I know a lot of people have stepped up from his audience to help him out with COVID. And sounds like he's getting better. And we all wish him a good recovery.

But Mike and I went down to Huntington, where 450 steelworkers are on strike at Special Metals like you outlined. Here's the interesting thing about that. The company is owned by Warren Buffett, of course, famous billionaire, also of note, a prominent Democratic donor, and the company, Special Metals - the workers went out on October 1, and the company was really driving hardline cuts in overtime pay, seniority, vacation days. But most of all, health care. They're looking at an increase as drastic as as $700 per month for every member.

So the workers are still out. We went down, and we and we talked to a lot of them who are taking the fight into their own hands and, and asking for a basic fair shake from a company that is owned, of course by Buffett's ownership group, which, by the way has put up, you know, over the quarter that they've been on strike about $6 billion dollars in profits. So certainly affordable. But one of the things I really wanted to get into on this story was who I met on the picket lines and wonder if I can go into that a little bit.

Joe Sudbay  

Sure. Please do. Please do, John. That's exactly why I wanted you to come on. Yeah, definitely.

John Russell  

Yeah, and this is something I really want to drive home, you know, to progressive listeners because here we are in Appalachia, and you know, I've went out to places like Iowa too, to cover the John Deere strikes, but these are working-class voters in now red areas of the country. But we really need to remember that forever, you know, West Virginia has been blue longer than it has been red. We have, of course, Senator Manchin elected from West Virginia. So I'm on the picket lines down there in Huntington. And of all the lines that have been on this year, there's only one politician that I have met, actually out on the lines with the workers. That was in Huntington, West Virginia. And was it Joe Manchin? It was not. Was it Democrat? It was not.

The only politician I've met on the strike lines was a Republican state representative, who came out to the workers in Huntington, this guy owns a hotdog stand, and he shows up with 300 hot dogs in hand, right? And he starts passing them out to workers, which I can attest, a hot dog in the freezing cold when you are striking for your rights, right around Christmas, is the kind of thing that you remember, it kind of hits different, right? And so, you know, is this Republican going to go hand out hot dogs, and then turn around, go to the statehouse, and gut labor rights? Yeah, probably. But one of the angles here, when it comes to politics, and media, and covering these strikes, especially for people who vote for Democrats like me, we have got to do a much better job, because who is going to tell those workers about the violations of labor rights by a Republican that might show up and handout hotdogs?

We don't really have a media network that's talking to these folks, we don't have a good party infrastructure in these places where we used to, and we're not even showing up on these lines, where workers are trying to take a fight into their own hands after being let down by other institutions. I think that's a really important angle that has emerged here, that also copies over in interesting ways, say to the Deere strikers in Iowa.

Because Iowa is one of those states that has the highest concentration of counties that went from voting Obama twice to voting for Donald Trump. You know? So we have these pockets of workers who are fighting for all of these priorities in the exact places where we need them. And in my opinion, we as Democrats, we're missing a big opportunity to show up and to talk about it and actually deliver.

Joe Sudbay  

It's really important. And showing up is part of it again, especially as you point out, people, Democrats have stopped showing up. Yeah, I do know, you know, and that's why it was really significant. I think with the Deere strike, it was the Secretary of Labor, Marty Walsh, who showed up and walked the picket line. That was, I think, a really important point. And Biden sent out a statement. And you know, the National Labor Relations Board is taking actions that are pro-labor. But we really need to make sure that workers know who's got their back. And I do think that there has just been, and John, you've been a candidate, you've worked on campaigns, you've been on the front lines, and have seen, you know, how often we can neglect that really important work. Talk about a little bit about that.

John Russell  

Yeah, and you know, I do want to credit... you know Manchin didn't show up in West Virginia, hasn't even made a statement yet. I do know, you know, a couple of candidates out in Iowa did show up, like you were recounting, the labor secretary. I know Abby Finkenauer, and Tom Vilsack showed up there, too.

But let's just take Iowa, for example. I mean, we can't just be showing up once, or even twice. I mean, these are working-class voters in the heart of right where we need to win them back, if we're to grapple with the very hard political realities that the Senate is presenting us. It needs to be more than just one or two visits.

This also gets into the problem of, if we're showing up to these picket lines, how are we telling people that we're showing up? Because, of course, everybody's well aware, the far-right media network has had this 50-year head start, and just really racked up wins as far as, you know, a network to deliver what they need to say to their voters. I mean, it's, you know, it starts with Fox News. But it goes to Ogden-owned papers. It's 24/7, on every device. There are Facebook groups that have popped up and have 5000 people in a town that nobody could really put on the map. And those are everywhere, and of course, radio networks and all that.

So really, one of the things that I'm seeing not only do we need to do a better job at showing up when workers are on strike in a place like Iowa and consistently keep doing that. But the missing link here to me that I really want to get out there is we need to invest so much more, and in probably in every direction, in a way to deliver what we need to say to voters because it's really absent right now.

Joe Sudbay  

I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. It's, you know, and I think too many Democrats make the mistake of thinking that the traditional media is going to do the job, and it doesn't. And, and we rely, we rely on them.

And that's why, look, I mean, I consider it a gift that I get to be on Sirius XM Progress, which is one of the few I mean, remember, Doug Jones came with Mike, when he came on Doug Jones when he was a Senator came on with Mike Signorelli. And he told him, You know, I really like doing your show, because in some parts of Alabama, it's the only progressive radio we get.

And look, I think we do, you know, my colleagues here do a great job. But there should be more of us, around the country, and especially in a lot of these places to counter what we're seeing. You know, what slays me about the union fight, John, I'm a little older than some, some of the folks that I know, in politics, but this whole anti-union agenda started with Ronald Reagan in such a vicious way. It has been dogma for the GOP, and that's what gets my ass is that you know, the Republicans, they will screw over unions every chance they get, and Democrats need to show unions, they're on their side.

John Russell  

Yeah, that is, for sure. And, you know, part of the reason... I get to go in hard at Democrats because I have worked for them for so long. And I've done, you know, a lot of door-knocking, and I really want to see them succeed.

But just to go at that point, too. I mean, we've got "Scranton Joe", "Unions Built The Middle-Class Joe", as the President here. When you got workers on strike, in all of those pivot counties - move the White House there. You know? Show up more than twice. Talk about how we need the PRO Act to pass right now, and talk about the filibuster standing in its way. Call Senator Manchin out for not showing up on the Huntington strike lines when a Republican is there with hot dogs. You know?

These are things... of course, we need. We have a very slim majority, everybody knows this. And we need a little slack cut on that. But that doesn't prevent us from doing the things that are easy wins. And I think we have to spend a lot more time showing up and we could be spending a lot more time scaling up the successful progressive media projects that can help us get our story out there. There needs to be a lot more of that.

Joe Sudbay  

Right, right there. Absolutely. Right. And, and also, you know, telling the stories of these workers in a few minutes, I'm going to be talking to CJ Peterson, from Iowa, about meatpacking plants and just kind of their consolidation and The Times wrote an article about it today and actually, CJ had written a piece about it. But you know, workers, meatpacking workers get screwed. And we saw how valuable they were during the pandemic, and just how abused they were and so many workers.

That's one of the things that's been, you know, most invigorating about the past year is watching the growth of unions, watching the rebirth of many unions, watching these guys like... you talk to Chad Thompson from that from the union UAW (*USW). He said, "Just be fair. Pay the guys what they're worth a reasonable fair raise, don't mess with our insurance or vacation." You know, John Russell, that doesn't sound like a lot to ask of Warren Buffett, who just like you said, has made $6 billion since this, since this strike started.

John Russell  

Yeah, it really isn't a lot to ask. And you know what? The strikes that I've covered, I've been really heartened to see a couple of these locals pull through. We were just up in Erie with the Iron Workers, Local 851, a group of great people up there, you know. They won themselves, a 3% wage increase. They got a dental plan for the first time in company history. That's that's, you know, potentially 1000s of dollars for families.

And it's really heartening, you know when you see things failing in Washington, but then you go to the locals, the last place, maybe deep in the heart of West Virginia, the last place you would expect progressive priorities to win and you see people fighting for themselves and winning for themselves. It is really heartening.

And another, you know, political thing I see here all the time. I can't tell you the number of people that I've met on these on these strike lines in some of the reddest places. They're loud about two things on Facebook. They're loud about Donald Trump, sure, but they're loud about labor rights and union organizing, and you know, pay, health care, and quality of life right where they are. Those are the things they want to fight for. They're doing it for themselves, and we can help them out. And we can do a lot better job of that.

Joe Sudbay  

On those lines, one member of Congress who actually represents you in the United States Senate, does a really good job of showing workers he represents them. And that's Sherrod Brown. And I mean, he, you know, he's one of… he like he should be a model for a lot of members. And you've got a Senate race right now with Tim Ryan, who's another guy who strikes me as being able to have that kind of conversation with folks. Versus, on the Republican side, in your state John, the Republican primary right now is just a shit show of billionaires fighting with each other or billionaire-funded candidates. Just before we let you go, what are you looking for, what is 2022 looking like politically in Ohio?

John Russell  

You know, I'm gonna go general on this one. Of course, the Republican side is a shit show. And we really have to watch out for, unfortunately, any of their candidates.

But here's what I want to say about Ohio. You know, The Holler that I started, it's based in the 6th Congressional District. This is eastern Ohio. Far eastern. And that 6th Congressional District, it tracks the river all the way down the side of the state bordering West Virginia, and Kentucky.

And here's what's interesting about it. The 6th Congressional District was as blue 15 years ago, as it is red today. And today, it has the biggest red swing of any congressional district in the country. So the political change that we all went through, was most intense right here. And what I want to say, is that right here is where we need to fight back against the far-right, because a lot of what makes it into their national conversation starts in these places. And that's why Ohio is important politically, that's why we need to show up in these places. And that's why we really shouldn't write them off.

Because you know, what looks like such a red congressional district, not so long ago, when Obama was running, there was a 75,000 vote advantage for Obama in what is now the largest red swing congressional district. Okay, so these things might seem far gone, but they're really not, but they will be if we don't fight for them. And that's what I'm hoping to drive home in a lot of these places.

Joe Sudbay  

Well, thanks. I'm really glad you could come on our show today and talk about it. You're on Twitter at @heyjohnrussell. Check out The Holler. TheHoller.co It's, it's great stuff. It's stuff you won't find anywhere else. Unfortunately, unfortunately, like John said, because of the way the media, so much of the media covers things, but keep up the great work, John. Keep in touch with us. And thanks for talking to us today. It was really... you got me all excited. Thank you.

John Russell  

Yeah, Joe, thank you for your show. Thanks to all the listeners out there. Fight on everybody. It's worth it, and I'm excited to be there with you.

Joe Sudbay  

Alright, good to talk to you, John. We'll be back in just a few minutes here on Sirius XM Progress.