The Real News Network, with the support of Bertha Foundation, to launch a new media project amplifying the voices and struggles of working people across the world
Baltimore, Maryland — May 19, 2022. With the support of Bertha Foundation, The Real News Network (TRNN) is launching a new reporting platform for global coverage of worker-led fights for freedom, equality, justice, fairness, and dignity. Building on TRNN’s existing coverage of labor and social movements, “Workers of the World” will be a multimedia vertical for international feature journalism telling the stories of workers building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
In collaboration with a network of international contributors, “Workers of the World” will produce multiplatform labor journalism that follows struggles for economic justice across borders. In an era when supply chains and capital flows are increasingly global, we will amplify the voices of a diverse, diasporic working class, with media-making that builds solidarity between core and periphery. With reactionary pundits eager to ventriloquize the working class in the service of zero-sum nationalism, journalism grounded in an expansive, internationalist vision of the future of work and workers’ rights provides an essential counter-narrative.
For John Duda, TRNN Executive Director, this is a particularly strategic moment to invest in covering an international labor beat: “At this historical moment, labor activism is the most dynamic and promising social movement sector in the United States. We welcome this incredible opportunity to use our media platform to draw the connections between this new energy and workers’ self-activity worldwide.”
For Adrian Kawaley-Lathan, Creative Director of Bertha Foundation, this program aligns with his media portfolio objectives of storytelling for social change. “When TRNN shared this proposal we could immediately see the urgency and relevance of funding this pilot program. We have watched our global network of grantees struggle with increasingly powerful forces of injustice and aim to support their collaborative efforts to shift narrative power and representation, expose economic exploitation and create actionable solutions to confront toxic power dynamics.”
In this new project, TRNN will focus particularly on the production of journalism that weaves together the stories of workers in different geographies and industries, creating connections and the opportunities to share best-practices and strategies. As Maximillian Alvarez, TRNN Editor-in-Chief and host of the podcast Working People notes, “It’s no secret that bosses, politicians, and the ruling-class-serving media in the US have endlessly tried to divide the American working class by pitting workers of different trades, pay grades, sectors, races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities against one another, because that division makes us more exploitable—it keeps us fighting each other instead of fighting together. But even if we somehow manage to overcome those divisions in our own countries, we have so little ability to overcome the barriers that divide the global working class by national borders, by military and economic competition, by differences in appearance and custom and language. These divisions have magnified our vulnerability to exploitation by the same powerful forces that are destroying our planet and draining our societies’ resources for their own ends. We must use the tools available to us to lift up the struggles of our fellow workers around the world, to learn to see the precious human lives behind those struggles, to overcome the barriers that divide us, and to find ways to connect across distances and support one another as we collectively fight for a future worth living in. This is the noble and necessary mission of ‘Workers of the World,’ and I couldn’t be more grateful to Bertha Foundation for supporting this vital project. Let’s get to work.”
An initial grant from Bertha Foundation will allow “Workers of the World” to launch in late spring 2022 as a year-long pilot program that creates and connects a powerful international network of labor journalists. The Real News Network is actively seeking investments from funders and individuals to help scale and sustain the project.
About The Real News Network:
The Real News Network is a nonprofit newsroom connecting you to the movements, people, and perspectives that are advancing the cause of a more just, equal, and livable planet. We make media that shines a light on injustice—but that also creates pathways to action that help confront and overcome it. To that end, we seek to center the voices of those most impacted by the issues we cover, those at the frontlines demanding change. Learn more at therealnews.com.
About Bertha Foundation:
Bertha Foundation fights for a more just world. They support activists, storytellers, and lawyers who are working to bring about social and economic justice and human rights for all. www.berthafoundation.org
Contact: John Duda, Executive Director, The Real News Network, duda@therealnews.com
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