Block & Build

Last fall, Managing Editor Akin Olla began piloting a concept for how Convergence can grow as a space which can develop the voice of organizers trying to communicate big strategic ideas. The result was the Max Elbaum Resident Writers Program (named after our longtime board chair). We received an amazing batch of applications from over 60 organizers from all over the country and chose two to join u...

This is our 100th episode of Block & Build ! We wanted to do something unique to mark this milestone. We jokingly discussed doing a musical episode. While we don’t have the time or the money to write 55 minutes of original songs about the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act once and for all and what we’re going to do about it, we thought we’d take some time to share some of our favorit...

In the fall of 2023 a woman entered a bar and asked if they could put on the final regular season game of the WNBA’s New York Liberty. The bartender told her “ I don’t think anyone here wants to see that.” She used that frustration to start organizing. Three years later, it feels like women’s sports are everywhere, especially (but certainly not exclusively) women’s basketball. The WNBA has grown b...

This week we are building April's Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume. Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time are host of There are No Girls on the Internet , Bridget Todd (her new audiobook Love at First Promp...

Over the past few years, a series of popular uprisings across the world have been described by mainstream media as “Gen-Z Uprisings” – movements led by young people and described in western media as generally being against government corruption. These movements have been most notably visible in our own media due to their use of technology, including platforms like Discord and TikTok, and internati...

On March 28th, Indivisible Project, one of the two primary organizations behind the No Kings protests, held its third such event. Along with their partners, the 50501 Movement , an estimated 8 million people were mobilized and took to the streets across the country at over 3,300 different sites. Last month's event is now the largest single day political protest in American history. Last week Cayde...

Examples like Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City Mayoral race last year or Brandon Johnson becoming mayor of Chicago a few years earlier, are some of the highest profile examples of progressive movement candidates winning local office. They’ve demonstrated that movements can win as well as how challenges can arise when working to place a single elected official into a local seat amidst a se...

This week we are building March's Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume. Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time are founder of Creator Congress , Rynn Reed and National Press Secretary for the Working Families Pa...

Social movements are often centered around the law: who it protects and who it does not. And as you heard in this week's headlines, we also find ourselves in an era of increasing weaponized “lawfare” by MAGA and its allies. On top of the "antifa" domestic terror case in Texas , there have been other recent attempts by the federal government to criminalize dissent, from the RICO cases against Atlan...

Tabletop games like Magic the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons , and many more have long been a natural community building space for those of us who have felt culturally marginalized. But as fandom has expanded, so has the ability of neoliberal capital to commodify and profit from just about any niche “nerd” interest you can think of. A massive tabletop industry has grown which requires a growing...

It is deeply unsettling how quickly mainstream media headlines and narratives moved on from Trump and DHS’s so-called "Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota. The removal of Greg Bovino and the “drawdown” was a concerted attempt to force public attention to move along, in spite of the fact that there are still a disproportionate number of agents on the ground in the state.  This operation yielde...

This week we are building February's Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume. Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time are Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, bruja, Bad Bunny super-fan, and Executive Director of the Ball...

At the end of 2024, Michigan’s state-level Democratic trifecta passed a massive tax incentive for data centers to the tune of $90 million in exchange for, essentially, an IOU for future “community benefits.” Organizers saw this as representative of a two-pronged problem: desperation on the part of local and state governments to bring in revenue, and corporate control of the functions of democracy....

Art Against Empire , hosted by textile artist Ian Danger Capstick, examines the intersection of creativity and politics through conversations with artists, craftspeople, and activists who use making as a form of resistance. The show features interviews with dozens of artists, crafters, and theorists from around the world exploring the history of makers fighting back against capital control of thei...

On Friday, the Department of Justice released millions more documents held in cases relating to Jeffrey Epstein, AKA the "Epstein Files." The files are full of allegations and outright admissions of horrific behavior by elites of the billionaire and political class. However, at this point it seems consequences are unlikely beyond a few days of media headlines about increased "scrutiny." Amidst all...

Last week, Minneapolis-based poet and activist Kyle Tran Myhre hosted a virtual workshop called What Can Artists Do? What Are We Doing? in light of the massive ICE and CBP surge in his city. His expectation was that a few dozen people might attend. Instead, over 500 people joined to discuss and wrestle with the ways artists can engage and show up to help get ICE out of Minneapolis and beyond. His...

This month on the Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume. Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time are friends of the pod Shaira Chaer, Senior Strategist at ReFrame, and Jess St. Louis, an organizer and narrative st...

Starting this week, some student loan borrowers in default may receive notice that their wages are being garnished directly from their paychecks in order to restart repayment. This is one of many Trump era changes to student loan repayment programs negatively impacting borrowers. Of the nearly 43 million student loan borrowers in the US, only 40% of them are current on their payments. Since change...

We are off until the new calendar year. In the meantime we hope you enjoy a sampling of episodes from our network of podcasts! Episode Description from November 14, 2024: Following last week's elections, Scot and Sue are joined by Daniel Hunter, co-founder of Choose Democracy , to discuss how we respond to authoritarians emboldened by the election results. In the episode, they take a deeper look t...

We are off until the new calendar year. In the meantime we hope you enjoy a sampling of episodes from our network of podcasts! In this episode, Sha Grogan-Brown talks with guest Le Tim Ly, Chief Operating Officer of Center for Empowered Politics, about how multi-entity infrastructure can improve the resilience of organizations. Subscribe to the Rad Ops Podcast for more. Support our end-of-year fun...

This week we are joined by the editors of the new anthology We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope . The book champions realistic, progressive social change using the speculative stories of writers from around the world. To assemble the book, editors Karen Lord , Annalee Newitz (@ ghidorahnotweak ), and Malka Older put writers, organizers, scholars, and...

Producer and director Chris Landry's new film series Reimagining Philanthropy critically examines the issue of philanthropy as the financial driver of movement and social justice work, and how movement leaders believe it can be fixed. Joining Chris is historian of US philanthropy and the author of White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation's “An American Dilemma” and the Making of a White World , Dr...

This week on the show we are debuting a new format we’re calling the Attention Economy Navigator . The goal of Block & Build has always been to help organizers figure out what’s happening, how people are responding, and get a sense for what’s working out there in the world. The Attention Economy Navigator came out of a conversation Cayden had at the Narrative Power Summit about Naomi Klein’s 2...

This week on the show, we will first talk about how on the ground organizing was a factor in Zohran Mamdani’s historic 10-point victory in the New York City Mayoral election last week. We are joined by a panel of leaders from different local organizations who worked on the campaign to learn more about their work and strategies. Guests Include Organizing Director of CAAAV Voice (Coalition Against A...

In this episode, we are joined by Co-Founder and Organizing Director of Kentucky Tenants Union , Josh Poe to discuss how their organizing strategy successfully brings people together to fight and win against landlords in a red state. Resources from this episode Kentucky Tenants Union Linktree Tenant Union Federation " NYC-DSA Strategy in Zohran's Race Shows the Path to Mass Municipal Governance "...