Block & Build

This episode’s guests found themselves in a position many long-time political organizers and activists were in back in 2016 following the first election of Donald Trump–family, friends, comrades and more all coming to them and asking “what do we do?” This familiar experience was the catalyst which resulted ten years later in the publication of their book Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds...

This week on the show, we’re sharing the recording of the plenary panel Cayden presented on at MediaJustice and Mijente’s Take Back Tech III . Moderated by Tech Policy Press ’s Justin Hendrix, Cayden is joined by Associate Professor of Black Digital Media at Georgia Tech, Andre Brock , and independent tech journalist Ariella Steinhorn, who has worked with whistleblowers across the tech industry. T...

This week we are building June'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 is cofounder, CEO, and writer at techpolicy.press , Justin Hendrix. We are also joined this week by...

While we hear plenty of gloomy predictions about how the adoption of AI technologies will take away millions of jobs in the future, it’s already gutting labor rights and alienating workers right now . Alexandra Mateescu and Aiha Nguyen are two of the researchers behind a new report on this matter, “ Last Place in the AI-First Economy: How the AI Industry Relies on Worker Disempowerment .” The repo...

It was a chilly day in Minneapolis in 2013 when Yotam Marom was first told he was “invisible.” He was told this by a team member and close colleague, while working with a tenant organizing group which had emerged from the recent Occupy Movement. His role that week was to facilitate and train leaders in the organization. While Yotam was doing his job well enough – participating and planning activit...

We are joined by New York City tenant organizer and communications expert, Ritti Singh, who recently published an article with Convergence , covering a strategy – which has been implemented in NYC tenant organizing – she calls “surround sound” communications. Then, in early 2025, a group of tenant organizers in New York City began a campaign to Freeze the Rent . The language and values of this cam...

This week we are building May'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 cultural studies professor, writer, and founder of Pop Smart Media , Dr. Shannon Mancus (AKA Dr. S...

Last fall a group of gamers joined up for an event in the wildly popular online video game Fortnite . (If you’re not familiar, just ask your kids.) The purpose of the event was to train players on how to respond to real-life encounters with ICE agents, followed by role-playing encounters within the safety of the game world. This is just one of the many ways the group known as New Save Collective i...

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...