Block & Build

This week on the show we are joined by Chicago-based writer, organizer, and podcaster Kelly Hayes, whose new edited volume, Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis , is out November 4 from AK Press. You may also know Kelly from their excellent podcast, Movement Memos , their newsletter, “ Organizing My Thoughts ,” or their previous book, with Mariame Kaba, Let This Radical...

This week on the show we are joined by historian Gerald Horne, whose 2025 book, The Capital of Slavery: Washington DC 1800-1865 explores the early history of the capital city of the United States and the role of enslaved people in how it was built. This is explored in the book both in terms of the hands that did the labor to build its edifices and monuments, and in terms of how fear of free Black...

This week we are joined by Marzena Zukowska and Shanelle Matthews. Together they are the co-editors of the new book Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements . This anthology of essays and interviews distills successful theories, strategies, and tactics from the movement left for anyone wanting to understand and participate in modern progressive movements. Conn...

This week on the show we take a look at the Trump administration's multifaceted attacks on immigrants as testing grounds for authoritarian control, how we got to this point, and what efforts are being made to push back. Joining to discuss is Program Director at Detention Watch Network , Stacy Suh. Resources from this episode Troops in the Street: What Does an Authoritarian Takeover Look Like? with...

This week on the show we are joined by Executive Director of State Power Caucus , Margie Del Castillo. Their organization is currently focusing on work that goes beyond mobilization to build lasting governing power at the state level across the country – we talk in this episode about what that looks like in different states. State Power Caucus is a multi-state organizing project primarily focused...

This week on the show we are joined by Lina Srivastava, Founder of the Center for Transformational Change . She’s developed a framework to help communicators, creatives, and organizers think through the infrastructure we must develop to build narrative power–the power not just to tell the stories we want told, but to shift the landscape of common sense about the issues we’re struggling to win. Lin...

We take a closer look at the case of journalist Mario Guevara, who has been in ICE detention since mid-June despite being in the country legally with all criminal charges thrown out. Cayden is joined by Atlanta area freelance reporter Sam Barnes. Read Sam's full story in the Georgia Recorder . Then we take a broader look at the escalating normalization of state violence and erosion of civil libert...

We explore local organizing to stop the construction of new data centers which form the material basis for big tech to deploy computationally expensive class war technologies like AI and crypto. The data centers and resources that fuel these highly speculative tech markets often show up in already poor and marginalized communities with little say from the people impacted by their pollution and cos...

This week, Convergence's Publishing Operations Manager and resident illustrator Kimmie David interviews quilter Zak Foster and letterpress printer Nicole Manganelli about the power of craft and community as a site for cultivating radical thought and action. Resources from this episode ICE relied on sheriff’s office to fight releasing Spanish-language reporter in Georgia, records show by Sam Barnes...

We are joined in this episode by two leaders at Sheriff Accountability Action , an organization devoted to building power to curb the harms of the more than 3,000 sheriff’s offices across the country. My guests include Deputy Director Amber Walker and Director of Local Campaigns and Advocacy Amaris Leon. We’ll explore what work the organization is doing to reduce the harm of the carceral system an...

We discuss ground-level organizing in Pennsylvania against Medicaid cuts and mass hospital closure with co-founder and coordinator of Put People First! PA , Nijmie Dzurinko, and how the multi-state Nonviolent Medicaid Army is taking those efforts national. Connect with Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencemag.com Subscribe to Convergence Magazine's YouTube to catch the show li...

We are joined in this episode by the producer of the Chicago 312 newsletter, H Kapp-Klote, to discuss their case studies of how right wing media rage-baits local political narratives to influence municipal policy and escalates the discourse against progressive governance. Resources from this episode: Timeline: Reporter Mario Guevara’s arrest and ICE detention Connect with Block & Build and mor...

In this episode we discuss how the accelerating hype of the "artificial intelligence" race affects left political theory and movements. Cayden talks to co-author of the new book Why We Fear AI: On The Interpretation of Nightmares , Hagen Blix. We’ll explore how the seeming inevitability of AI is intertwined with neoliberalism as well as how we urgently need to figure out how to narrate the develop...

We discuss the ground-level organizing it took to accomplish Zohran Mamdani’s massive victory in New York City’s mayoral primary race in late June. Joining Cayden on this episode are Jasmine Gripper, co-director of New York Working Families Party ; and L Pervez Afridi, a New York City-based writer, researcher, and organizer. Connect with Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencema...

Writer, lawyer, and co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization , Andrea Ritchie joins this week. She’s published a free guide titled Block & Build – But Make it Abolitionist , which explores strategic frameworks for fighting Right-wing authoritarianism from an abolitionist perspective; an invitation to expand collective resistance beyond strategies that rely on the carceral state. Connect with...

This week on the show we feature a recording of the panel Convergence Magazine hosted on July 4th at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago: Blocking the Right, Building the Base - The Work of Building Left Unity . The panelists feature leaders from Liberation Road, North Star Socialist Organization, the Socialist Majority Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America, Rising Majority, and Move...

Writer and organizer Asha Ransby-Sporn joins to talk about building durable political power in the five years since the 2020 uprisings, what those challenges look like in her city of Chicago (which elected progressive mayor Brandon Johnson in 2023), and what comes next. Check out Asha's recently published writing discussed in this episode Two Years After Electing a Mayor, Chicago’s Left Keeps Cont...

This week's show was recorded live at the 22nd Century Conference. In this sobering discussion on the rise of political violence, Cayden is joined by Executive Director of 22nd Century Initiative and co-host of the Anti-Authoritarian Podcast (published by Convergence ), Scot Nakagawa, Principal Research Advisor for Political Research Associates, Steven Gardiner, and Co-Executive Director of TakeAc...

This week on the show, Cayden is joined by Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, Hahrie Han. Her 2024 book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church is a fascinating, ground level chronicle of the years-long effort in a Midwestern evangelical church to reckon with their city’s history of racial segregation and police violence. Resources from this episod...

This week we are joined by Brittany Ramos DeBarros, Interim Organizing Director at About Face: Veterans Against the War ( @vetsaboutface ). Since 2004, About Face (f.k.a. Iraq Veterans Against the War) has provided a political home to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns who are opposed to US militarism and imperialism. We’ll discuss what her organization has been doing to respond to our...

We don’t have a full episode this week, but we wanted to drop a quick check-in for your podcast feed, because a lot is going on. We're celebrating pride and wrestling with the grief of Gaza and political violence, all while staving off the hypernormalization of creeping fascism. So...how are you holding up? Connect with Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencemag.com Subscribe to...

This week, Cayden is joined by Suzanne Pharr, a longtime social justice worker from the South. Suzanne is one of the most astute observers of the political project of the far Right from a movement perspective, and someone whose work has spanned issue area and geography. At age 86, her work is relentless as she has recently published a 2nd edition of her book In the Time of the Right: Reflections o...

In April we saw the largest demonstration against the second Trump administration since it started in the Hands Off! actions across over 1,400 locations nation-wide. One of the groups responsible for coordinating these efforts is Indivisible , an organization created in response to the first Trump administration in 2016 with the goal of saving American democracy. In this episode, Cayden is joined...

This episode was recorded live at the Narrative Power Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 9th, 2025. In the episode, Cayden is first joined by colleagues at the summit, Program Specialist for ReFrame , Shaira Chaer and Creative and Brand Specialist at ReFrame, Ivie Osaghae. Narrative power is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to the full picture of governing power. Governing power is...

Over the past month we’ve been co-publishing a series with our colleagues at The Forge examining “cancel culture.” The four part series entitled Because We Need Each Other is now available for free on both our sites. Today Cayden is joined by the four coauthors of the series, Erika Sasson , Celia Kutz , Shilpa Jain , and Kazu Haga , to talk about the series–and answer your questions about their ef...