Block & Build

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 "...

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...