In this special crossover edition of Working People and The Marc Steiner Show, hosts Maximillian Alvarez and Marc Steiner examine how the “artificial intelligence” (AI) boom is shaping the economy and the impact it is already having—and will continue to have—on working people’s lives, livelihoods, and jobs. Alvarez and Steiner speak with two members of a new mutual aid and advocacy group called Stop Gen AI, which formed this year out of the critical need to provide material support for creatives, knowledge workers, and anyone else impacted by generative AI.

Guests:

• Kim Crawley is a former cybersecurity professor and co-author of The Pentester Blueprint. She founded Stop Gen AI in May 2025 in response to the immense socioeconomic harm generative AI has done to her and her peers, and to the vast environmental, cultural, scientific, psychological, and economic harm it does to the world. Stop Gen AI is unique for its anticapitalist focus and commitment to raising survival funds for people who are struggling.
• Emmi is an information security expert with experience across many niches of the industry, including application security across a number of verticals, and she is a specialist in insider threat and cyber threat intelligence. She joined the efforts of Stop Gen AI in 2025 due to the overwhelming amount of friends she has seen lose their entire lives and careers due to the out-of-control AI bubble. She also has nearly two decades of experience with boots-on-the-ground union organizing, protesting, and activism.

Additional links/info:

• Stop Gen AI website and Mastodon page 
• Stop Gen AI Twitch Fest information
• Khiree Stewart, WBALTV 11, “'Just holding a Doritos bag': Student handcuffed after AI system mistook bag of chips for weapon”
• Marc Steiner & Maximillian Alvarez, The Marc Steiner Show, “Trump and Silicon Valley’s plan to rule the world with AI weapons”

Credits:
Featured Music: Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song; Stephen Frank, Marc Steiner Show Theme Song
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich



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While each period is historically unique, veterans and scholars of the civil rights movement say there are some important similarities between the era of Jim Crow and racial segregation and our current moment. One similarity, as author and professor Joshua Clark Davis notes, is the role that local law enforcement plays in enforcing regimes of racial oppression and attacking the movements opposed to them. But, as civil rights Icon Judy Richardson argues, there are also critical similarities when it comes to organizing and executing successful resistance efforts then and now. In this extended episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Richardson and Davis about the hardwon lessons from the civil rights movement that must be applied to the growing anti-authoritarianism movement today. 

Guests:

• Judy Richardson was on SNCC staff in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama (1963-66). Her experiences in SNCC continue to ground both her film and education work. She most recently produced the Frederick Douglass visitor center film for the National Park Service’s site at Cedar Hill in Washington, DC.  She is currently working on 4 museum films, including those for the civil rights museums in Memphis and Atlanta. In 1968, she was a co-founder of Drum & Spear Bookstore, once the country’s largest African-American Bookstore. She was on the production team for all 14 hours of the seminal PBS series Eyes on the Prize as its series associate producer, then its education director. With Northern Light Productions she continued to produce documentaries: for PBS, the History Channel, and museums. She co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, a compilation of the testimonies of 53 SNCC women. She co-directed two NEH teacher institutes, co-hosted by Duke University and focused on “Teaching Grassroots Movements in the South (1940-1985).” She is a member of the SNCC Legacy Project board, was a Visiting Professor at Brown University, and has an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College.  
• Joshua Clark Davis is associate professor of US history at the University of Baltimore. He’s the author of multiple books, including Police Against The Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back, a retelling of the civil rights movement through its overlooked work against police violence—and the police who attacked the movement with surveillance, undercover agents, and retaliatory prosecutions.

Additional resources:

• Joshua Clark Davis, Princeton University Press, Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back
• Judy Richardson, “SNCC changed me forever”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Intent to destroy all or part of a group is required to meet the criteria of genocide, and Israeli officials have made their intentions towards the people of Gaza explicitly clear, says Phyllis Bennis. In this discussion of her new book, Understanding Palestine & Israel, she explains how other recognized genocides have been defined, the influence of the Holocaust and its aftermath on Zionism and Jewish identity, and why the ceasefire movement indicates a change in the movement for Palestinian rights.

Guests:
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where she also serves as co-director of the New Internationalism Project. She is a founding member of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation and served for six years on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She is the author of numerous books, including Understanding Palestine & Israel.


Credits:
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Peace activists sailing to Gaza with the Global Sumud Flotilla reported Wednesday evening that Israeli naval ships had begun intercepting vessels in their fleet and arresting flotilla members. On Tuesday, just hours before the flotilla entered the “high-risk zone” near the shores of Gaza, Marc Steiner spoke with Phillip Tottenham and Jessica Coltfelter, two US Marine Corps veterans sailing with the flotilla. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Tottenham and Coltfelter discuss why they, as veterans, felt compelled to join this humanitarian mission, and what message they wanted to share with the world in the event of their capture—or worse—by Israel.

Guest:

• Philip Tottenham is a US Marine Corps veteran, a member of Veterans For Peace, and a peace and human rights activist.
• Jessica Coltfelter, is a US Marine Corps veteran (2008-2012) who served as security detail for Presidential Helicopter Squadron Marine One and, upon End of Active Service, worked as a defense contractor for Triple Canopy. Refusing to perpetuate imperialism, Coltfelter became an activist, educator, and an anti-fascist librarian serving rural and marginalized communities in pursuit of mindful liberation.

Additional resources:

• Global Sumud Flotilla website, TikTok, and Instagram
• Ephrat Livni and Liam Stack, The New York Times, “Israel intercepts boats headed to Gaza with humanitarian aid”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network,”‘If I’m killed on this mission…’: Global Sumud Flotilla sets sail for Gaza despite Israel’s threats”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Why US veterans are sailing to Gaza with the Global Sumud Flotilla”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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By pressuring broadcast giant ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show—a decision that ABC reversed this week—the Trump administration has taken its assault on the First Amendment to new heights over the past week. Kimmel’s show is back on the air for now, but the whole debacle has revealed just how vulnerable free speech in America is to political and corporate authoritarianism. This is a crisis, and both Democrats and Republicans have set the stage for it. “As corporate media accelerate their censorship of comedians and journalists,” renowned media analyst Jeff Cohen writes, “we must realize that we got to this dire situation because of old-fashioned, bipartisan corruption in Washington, DC.” In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Cohen about how the consolidation of corporate control over the media, mixed with a ravenously censorious Trump administration, has left free speech in America hanging by a thread.Guest:

• Jeff Cohen is a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College and the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. In 1986, Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR; he is also the co-founder of RootsAction.org.

Additional resources:

• Jeff Cohen, Salon, “Kimmel’s suspension shows media censorship is a structural problem”
• Bobby Allyn, NPR, “Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal ‘jawboning’”
• Paul Starr, The American Prospect, “Capture the media, control the culture?”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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In our mythological retelling of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. vanquished the racist apartheid system of Jim Crow in the American South. However, in her groundbreaking new book, historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. As the book description lays out, “King of the North follows King as he crisscrosses the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challenging school segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination. For these efforts, he was relentlessly attacked by white liberals, the media, and the federal government.” In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Professor Theoharis about the MLK Americans have deliberately forgotten, and what this recovered history tells us about how to fight against injustice today. 

For full show notes and transcript, click here.

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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The unnerving alliance between Big Tech and the second Trump administration goes much deeper than many in the public realize. What factors are motivating President Trump and Silicon Valley’s monumental investments in “artificial intelligence” infrastructure and the expanded integration of “AI” into military and governmental operating systems? What is their endgame? What will their vision of an AI future mean for the rest of us? In his new investigative series Military AI Watch, produced in partnership with Project Censored, award-winning science reporter Peter Byrne explores “how Silicon Valley, corporate media, the Department of Defense, the banking industry, and scientific institutions all intersect in the effort to militarize AI.” In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Byrne and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez about “AI” today and the techno-dystopian future on the horizon. 

For full show notes and transcript, click here. 

Credits: 

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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“Colonial racism helps explain the Trump administration’s adulation of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” Professor Aviva Chomsky writes at The Nation. In fact, colonial racism is the common thread binding the violent, eliminationist politics of Donald Trump in the US and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. In this installment of our ongoing series “Not in Our Name” on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Professor Chomsky about how Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza is the grim culmination of the settler-colonial project of Zionism, and how the repression of political dissent under the guise of “combatting antisemitism” is an extension of that violent project.

Guest:
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history and the coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She is the author of many acclaimed books, including Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration; and Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. 

Additional resources:
Aviva Chomsky, The Nation, “Colonialism is alive and kicking in the US’s obsession with Israel” Aviva Chomsky, The Nation, “This group’s definition of antisemitism is providing cover for genocide” 

Credits:
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Professor Haim Bresheeth is the son of Holocaust survivors, raised in Palestine and Israel, and a founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine. He served in the Israeli army during the Six-Day War in 1967—an event that transformed his life forever. On Nov. 1, 2024, Bresheeth was arrested in London after giving a speech at a pro-Palestine rally outside the home of Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. In this installment of our ongoing series “Not In Our Name” on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Professor Bresheeth about his path to becoming an Israeli Jewish scholar and activist fighting for Palestinian liberation and fighting against the horrors of Zionism, including Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Guest:
Haim Bresheeth is a filmmaker, photographer, and a film studies scholar, retired from the University of East London, where he worked since early 2002. He is the son of Holocaust survivors and a founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine. His books include the best-selling Introduction to the Holocaust—the first version, which was reprinted numerous times, was titled Holocaust for Beginners (1993), has been translated into multiple languages, including Turkish, Croatian and Japanese.

Additional resources:
Jewish Network for Palestine website
Derek Seidman, Truthout, “Jewish anti-Zionist activist describes his arrest under UK’s Anti-Terror Law”
Marc Steiner, The Real News Network, “Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté: Gaza genocide ‘the worst thing I’ve seen in my whole life’”
Marc Steiner, The Real News Network, “Yes, goddamnit, it’s genocide!: A conversation with Norman Solomon”

Credits:
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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“Texas Democrats who left the state to stymie Republicans over redistricting have returned to Austin,” Politico reports, “ending a two-week standoff over President Donald Trump’s plan to carve out five new GOP congressional seats.” The end of the Texas lawmaker walkout means that the Texas legislature will now be able to proceed with passing a vote on Republicans’ gerrymandered Congressional map—so what did the walkout achieve? In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with legendary populist and former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower about the significance of the political showdown in Texas, and the longer-term fight ahead for Democrats and for working people of all stripes in the face of MAGA authoritarianism and corporate tyranny.

Guest:

• Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow. From 1983-1991, Hightower served as Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. He publishes “Jim Hightower’s Lowdown” on Substack.

Additional resources:

• Liz Crampton, Politico, “Texas Democrats have returned home, ending redistricting standoff”
• Marc Steiner, The Real News Network, “'Death Star' State: The GOP's War on Democracy (DOCUMENTARY)”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Republicans are trying to rig the midterms. Will Democrats actually fight back, or cave?: A conversation with Beto O’Rourke”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Bluesky: @therealnews.com
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Twitter: @TheRealNews
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