by Jaclynn Ashly | Mar 2, 2026 | Article, Economy and Inequality, Kenya, labor, Politics and Movements: International, Saudi Arabia
At 18, Boniface Murigi never imagined he would be recounting his mother’s life and death to the world.
Yet he sits on a couch in his family’s living room in Gilgil, a small town about two hours northwest of Nairobi, struggling to describe who Sylvia Waithera Karuri was to him. “She was a great mother and a hard worker,” he says.
A Sunday school teacher and mother of four, 38-year-old Sylvia owned a hardware store and was building rental houses to support her family. “I remember her carrying big bags of cement on a motorbike to the construction site herself,” Boniface recalls, a faint smile crossing his solemn face. Her church and mission work earned her the local nickname “The Preacher.”
After a divorce made it harder to provide for her children, Sylvia accepted a domestic work job in Saudi Arabia in 2021, hoping to invest the earnings into expanding her businesses. Her mother, 68-year-old Masengena, opposed the idea.
“I heard so many stories of young women ending up dead there or unspeakable things happening,” she tells TRNN. Sylvia eventually persuaded her it was necessary for the family.
For about a year, the plan seemed to work. Sylvia called home regularly and sent money to renovate her mother’s house and support the rental business. The family started to believe their fears about Saudi Arabia may have been exaggerated.
But in 2023, after a few months with a new employer, everything changed. The family received a frantic message: her employer accused her of stealing a gold chain on the way to a wedding—and he was carrying a pistol. Sylvia said she feared for her life. Then
by Mansa Musa | Feb 27, 2026 | Economy, Economy and Inequality, history, Politics and Movements: US, Racial Justice, Rattling the Bars, video
How did the promise of Black wealth become a tool for white elites? In this Black History Month special of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with UVA professor and author Justene Hill Edwards about the tragic history of the Freedman’s Bank. They dive into the economic intelligence of enslaved people and how they navigated the inherent violence of the slave economy. Professor Hill Edwards also breaks down the betrayal detailed in her book, Savings and Trust, revealing how a bank built for the formerly enslaved was redirected to fund D.C. infrastructure and white elite interests.
Resource Links:
Get the book at this link on bookshop.com
Professor Hill Edwards’ website
Follow Hill Edwards on X
Reviews of Hill Edwards’ latest book:
“This is a revealing history of banking innovation and experimentation, the financial acuity of Black men and women, corruption among powerful trustees, and the failure of Congressional oversight that feels all too familiar in our own era of bank failures, governmental dysfunction, and financial malfeasance. Justene Hill Edwards argues convincingly that the Freedman’s Bank debacle that lost millions of dollars earned and saved by hardworking, self-sacrificing, recently enslaved people is another little-known cause of the contemporary racial wealth gap.” – Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
“Savings and Trust, in beautifully written and accessible prose, is a must-read that offers crucial context for understanding the economic plight of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, racial capitalism, the racial wealth gap, and contemporary calls for reparations.” – Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in
by Brett Wilkins | Feb 20, 2026 | AI, Article, big tech, Economy and Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Feb. 19, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The New Brunswick, New Jersey City Council voted Wednesday to cancel plans to construct an artificial intelligence data center and instead build a new public park where the 27,000-square foot facility would have gone.
Artificial intelligence data centers—which house the servers and other infrastructure needed to train and power AI models—have major environmental and climate impacts, as they consume massive amounts of electricity and water, as well as rare earth metals and other resources.
According to New Brunswick Patch, hundreds of people packed into Wednesday evening’s city hall meeting to voice concerns that the proposed data center would send their electricity and water bills skyrocketing, and that the facility would harm the environment.
“Many people did not want this in their neighborhood,” New Brunswick NAACP president Bruce Morgan said during the council meeting. “We don’t want these kinds of centers that’s going to take resources from the community.”
The site of the nixed data center, 100 Jersey Avenue, is already slated for development including 600 new apartments—10% of which will be affordable housing units—and warehouses for startups and other small businesses. Now, thanks to Wednesday’s vote, a park is on the agenda too.
“This is great news, no data center,” New Brunswick resident Anne Norris told Patch.
“My kids went through the public school system; we didn’t pay for lunch because we have so many families under the poverty line,” Norris said before taking aim at what she said was the dearth of affordable housing approved for the site.
“Given the economic status of the people who live in New Brunswick, I don’t think 10% is really sufficient,” she contended.
A
by Maximillian Alvarez | Feb 18, 2026 | Economy, Economy and Inequality, labor, Podcast, Politics and Movements: US, Unions, Working People
On Nov. 24, 2025, in a major and hardwon victory, Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh members finally returned to work at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after more than three years on strike. Then, on Jan. 7, 2026, workers were notified that Block Communications Inc.—the company that owns the Post-Gazette as well as the Toledo Blade, the Buckeye Sports Network, and a number of TV stations in Ohio and Kentucky—said that it will be ceasing operations at the Post-Gazette on May 3 of this year. We speak with Steve Mellon, a veteran photographer and writer who was on strike for over three years at the Post-Gazette, about how workers are processing this devastating news, and about their push to launch a new news source by and for working people.
Additional links/info:
Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting (PAPER) website
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website, Facebook page, and Instagram
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette owners couldn’t bust the union, so they shut down the paper”
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / TRNN, “The longest-running strike in the US is over—and the workers won”
Kris B. Mamula, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Post-Gazette to publish final edition and cease operations on May 3”
Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.Maximillian Alvarez:
I got work to do. All right. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News
by Marc Steiner | Feb 17, 2026 | cuba, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, The Marc Steiner Show
The Trump administration is deliberately plunging Cuba into a national and humanitarian crisis, and the US-imposed blockade of oil imports is wreaking havoc on daily life for Cubans. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Cuban journalist and documentary filmmaker Liz Oliva Fernández about the unfolding nightmare in Cuba and what the international community can do to stop it.
Guest:
Liz Oliva Fernández is a Cuban journalist with the outlet Belly of the Beast, and she is the presenter of documentary series The War on Cuba, for which she won a Gracie Award. Apart from her journalism and filmmaking, Oliva Fernández is a dedicated anti-racist and feminist activist.
Additional links/info:
Belly of the Beast website, Facebook page, Instagram, and YouTube channel
Belly of the Beast, The War on Cuba
Al Jazeera Staff & Reuters, Al Jazeera, “Waste piles up in Cuba as US-imposed fuel blockade halts collection trucks”
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, ““Policy of aggression”: Cuba’s U.N. ambassador denounces U.S. oil blockade, push to topple government”
Credits:
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with this. One of my great passions in life is Cuba and I’ve been to Cuba numerous times and now it’s at the center of Trump attacking Cuba again and trying to isolate it and want to try to overthrow the Cuban government. All that’s taking place as we speak and we are lucky to have today our
by Brad Reed | Feb 17, 2026 | AI, Article, Climate Crisis, Economy and Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Water
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Feb. 16, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
An artificial intelligence data center development venture has signed a multimillion-dollar deal that will allow it to consume over 40% of a Pennsylvania town’s excess water supply.
PennLive reported on Monday that Carlisle Development Partners, a joint venture created by developers Pennsylvania Data Center Partners and PowerHouse Data Centers, had signed a $14.1 million agreement that will let it tap into the public water and sewer systems of Middlesex Township, Pennsylvania.
According to PennLive, the deal will formalize the 18-building data center’s right to access up to 400,000 gallons of water per day, which the publication notes is “equal to the consumption of 2,367 dwelling units.”
Middlesex Township Supervisor Phil Neiderer said during a recent planning commission meeting that the big influx of revenue to the local government would more than make up for the massive amounts of water being consumed by the data center.
“What that’s going to do is it’s going to fund a lot of projects that have already been in the books that are completely unrelated to the data center,” Neiderer said, according to PennLive.
In recent months, residents of Middlesex Township and Cumberland County have raised concerns about not only water use but also pollution and utility rates tied to the project.
AI data centers have become a major controversy throughout the US in recent months, as their massive energy needs have pushed up utility bills and put a strain on communities’ water supplies.
A study published in the journal Nature Sustainability last year found that data centers could soon consume as much water as 10 million Americans and emit as much carbon dioxide as 10 million cars, or roughly the
