“We Don’t Want To Be Studied Like Guinea Pigs. We Want To Be Helped.”

Jim Stewart at a CNN Town Hall:

I’m angry. I’m angry about this. I lived in East Palestine for 65 years. That’s my home. You took it away from me.

You seem like a sincere man. I’m not calling you names. But your company stinks. You got to do something about this. I lost a lot. I lost the value of my home.

Did you shorten my life? I want to retire and enjoy it. How are we going to enjoy it? You burned me.

Do I mow the grass? Can I plant tomatoes next summer?

What can I do? I’m afraid.

Maximillian Alvarez: It’s been three years since a Norfolk Southern bomb train that was carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine on the cold night of February 3, 2023. Three days later, Norfolk Southern led local authorities to make the disastrous and completely unnecessary decision to empty five giant carloads of vinyl chloride into a ditch and set the contents on fire. The so-called controlled burn of vinyl chloride released a massive black chemical plume into the air and exposed residents in East Palestine and the surrounding area to deadly toxins in one of the worst industrial disasters in United States history.

Three years later, residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area are still suffering the toxic fallout. They’re still getting sick. Folks are even dying off. Many are still buried in debts from costs related to the derailment. They’ve been screwed over by Norfolk Southern, by their own government, by Biden, Trump, Democrats, Republicans — I mean, even their own damn class action attorneys. They have been exploited by everyone and helped by hardly anyone.

So I am begging you guys, please don’t forget about the people affected by this disaster. And do not let their corporate poisoners go unpunished. What happened to the people in and around East Palestine is a national tragedy and a humanitarian outrage.

And it could happen to any of us, as corporations and the government turn more and more of the United States into one giant sacrifice zone. If we don’t do something to stop this now, I promise you, our toxic future will look a lot like how East Palestine looks today.

Evelyn Albright: My name is Evelyn Albright. I’m 10 years old. The train derailment affected me. It gave me a really, really bad rash. We lived in a hotel for four whole months. It was a lot, honestly. I had to do mostly online work, and we had [four] people in there, two dogs, and our cat had to go live down at our aunt’s house, and it was just like torture. I had my sister help me with my schoolwork because I didn’t understand most of it, because of not being in school. My dad got severe heart failure, and he had to be in the hospital for Christmas.

Chris Albright: My name is Chris Albright. I live half a mile from where the train derailed.

I’m very angry. I’m pissed. I’m pissed at the fact that everybody thinks we’re doing fine, and that everything in East Palestine, Ohio is good. It’s not. We are still fighting the same battle we were fighting three years ago. It’s ridiculous.

We have been through Democratic presidents. We have been through Republican presidents. And nobody is stepping up to help us. Nobody gives a shit about what happened to us in East Palestine. I’m pissed.

Anybody who is [reading] this, step up. Talk about it. Bring it up to your state representatives, your congressman — anybody. Help us. Please, help us.

Sharon: I think people might be under the impression that we’ve already gotten help, that we’ve already gotten our lawsuit money, but most people haven’t yet. There are still lawsuits going on, but I imagine those are going to go on for decades.

I’m with Ohio Valley Derailment Mutual Aid (OVDMA). We’re just trying to keep people in their homes, keep them going until they can maybe get a little bit of settlement money.

The politicians have all let us down. We have to beg them for help, and then when they finally say they’re going to help, it’s another health study. We already have six health studies going on. We don’t want to be studied like guinea pigs. We want to be helped.

Christa Graves: My home is just outside the one mile zone. This time three years ago, we didn’t know if we were supposed to evacuate, we weren’t super concerned, and here we find ourselves, three years later, minus one family member, with another one pretty sick.

We see so many community members who are sick, and more who want to pretend that it’s all all over. They don’t want to believe there’s anything wrong with their beautiful small town life.

The world’s moved on, and we’re stuck in a vacuum of time.

Hopefully, when we get on the other side of this, we can try to prevent future rail disasters and chemical disasters. And we have worked with some rail activists, former railroaders, who saw this coming and tried to stop it. I wish I could still live in a world where this didn’t happen, but I’m so thankful for the wonderful people that we’ve met on this journey. I hope there’s a fourth anniversary with the same people that we have right now, or that more have joined up, but I hope we’re not down any more. And more and more, it’s not looking that way.

I hope we’re overreacting. But nothing that I’ve read suggests that this is an overreaction, and that the uptick in serious health issues is just coincidental to a chemical bomb being blown up over top of our community.

I’m taking my mother to pulmonology appointments where they will not look me in the eyes, and they will not address the fact that she was exposed to chemicals. We’ve been waiting for two weeks for a replacement inhaler for the one that was causing drastic side effects. I’ve been told that these disasters can make people sensitive to medications. So now she can’t breathe well. 

We’re thankful for all of those who bring their skills and their talents to help us in whatever way they can. At OVDMA, we desperately need funds to help people cover medical bills or maintenance on their cars, or copays, or repairs on things that they would have had the money for if they weren’t paying it all on medical bills. Bottled water. There’s still so many needs that aren’t met. 

I hope and pray that this doesn’t happen to your community, because we never dreamed it could happen to ours. And then when it did, we were sure the right things would be done. We were sure, as we found that we were sick, that the EPA would protect us, that FEMA would do their job, that the railroad would be held accountable. Well, we have found none of that to be true. We have found no accountability. 

Edward Siceloff: My name is Edward Siceloff. I’m 7 years old. I was exposed to the train derailment badly and the second day, I had puffy cheeks because I was sick and I couldn’t stop licking my lips for some reason. 

My mom used to take me to the creek when I was a little kid, and now it’s polluted. I know the words, like vinyl chloride. 

We went up the neighbor’s driveway and we saw the smoke. And I was scared to sleep in my bed by myself that night when the train derailment happened. And I was four years old when it happened, and I was in my bed with my mom. She was putting me to sleep. She was looking at Facebook on her phone. It popped up on her phone saying, Please do not go to East Palestine, Ohio.

When I grow up, I’m going to try to be the president, and I’m going to stop all of this. 

Alvarez: What are you going to do to companies like Norfolk Southern?

Edward Siceloff: Put them out of business.

Christina Siceloff: I’m from Darlington, PA. And now it’s been three years since the derailment happened in East Palestine, and I really think that a lot of us in PA have been left out. 

There are still people from both Ohio and PA that are getting sicker. The doctors are still not sure on how to treat us. A lot of people don’t have a doctor to go to because they can’t afford it. Norfolk Southern says that everything is cleaned up. But if it is, then why are people still smelling things?

My home that I grew up in for 37 years, it’s not my home anymore. It’s Norfolk Southern’s home.

It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re coming from: nobody cared about us. Joe Biden, he wouldn’t sign a [Stafford Act] disaster declaration for us. He gave us health studies. When Trump’s administration took over, he gave us more health studies.

We’ve been so let down and our trust is so broken. Everything’s been taken from us.

We worry about the soil that our kids play in. We can’t go fishing in the creek. We can’t go forage for mushrooms out in the backyard anymore. We don’t know if the air is safe for us to breathe, and we don’t know if any cough that we get is a natural cough that everybody gets sick from, or if it’s a new symptom of the derailment.

We’ve seen [the same government neglect] in Conyers, Georgia, in Roseland, Louisiana and in Moss Landing, California. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. If you want our trust, then get us to trust you by helping us, and not just giving us false hope.

I’ve heard JD Vance has got a new one on the way. And if this happened in his town, what would he want for [his] kids?

Alvarez: I want to thank everyone in and around East Palestine for continuing to speak with me after these three horrendous years, and for continuing to fight even when they have suffered and endured so, so much.

Please share these stories with everyone that you can, and if the people you know don’t listen to podcasts, we’ve also included more video interviews that I’ve done with residents in the show notes for this episode.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Don’t forget East Palestine. Solidarity forever.

This episode of the Working People Podcast was published on Feb 6.