The Real News Network is honored to be one of the 2025 recipients of the prestigious Izzy Award for our on-the-ground documentary report, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH.” “While corporate media covered the catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, with aerial views of ruined train cars and plumes of smoke likening the horrific crash to a disaster film,” The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) states in their award announcement, “Steve Mellon of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News Network were on the ground telling the stories of people in the communities devastated by the deadly toxins released into their neighborhoods long after major media outlets left them behind.” With permission from the PCIM, we are sharing the audio recording of the award acceptance speeches delivered by Alvarez and Mellon in Ithaca, NY, on April 30, 2025.

Speakers:

• Eleanor Goldfield is an independent filmmaker and creator of the documentary Hard Road of Hope, which details the history and contemporary struggles of West Virginians living and dying in coal country. Currently, Goldfield is the co-host and associate producer of the Project Censored Show, and co-host of the podcast Common Censored along with Lee Camp.
• Maximillian Alvarez is the editor-in-chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network.
• Steve Mellon is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as co-editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress.

Additional links/info:

• Maximillian Alvarez, Steve Mellon, & Mike Balonek, The Real News Network, “Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Production: Park Center for Independent Media; Park Productions at Ithaca College
• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

On Sunday, July 20, 2025, Working People host and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. “I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything,” Alvarez told the crowd of union members. “And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?”

Additional links/info:

• NOLSW-UAW Local 2320 website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

• Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Jaz got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States in December of 2021. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry’s to Tesla.

• Jaz Brisack, One Signal Publishers, Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World
• Jaz Brisack, Teen Vogue, “Starbucks Workers United grew out of Jaz Brisack’s undercover organizing. Here’s how”
• Starbucks Workers United website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Inside Organizer School website

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor