Block & Build

This week on the show Cayden is joined by the Principal of Ejerie Labs , Ejeris Dixon. Ejeris recently launched The Fascism Barometer , a podcast and resource hub project working to educate communities already feeling authoritarian impacts about what fascism is and how we stop it. We’ll explore the history of creeping fascist trends in our society and politics and how we all should think about our...

This week on the show we’re exploring the challenges of building a progressive media ecosystem and mainstreaming movement narratives in existing corporate media. First, Adam Johnson, co-host of the Citations Needed podcast, joins Cayden to help us understand the current state of play in media and public relations work and why it’s against us by design. Then Cayden talks with Hermelinda Cortés, Exe...

This week on the show we’re looking at how our strategies need to adapt in the coming months. First, we are joined by the Senior Political Director for United We Dream about their vital lame duck session advocacy. Then we take a bit of a longer view of what movement work needs to look like during the second Trump administration with Senior Fellow at Future Currents, LJ Amsterdam. Her soon-to-be-pu...

Cayden is joined by political strategist Waleed Shahid, to discuss the lay of the land that is the many… many hot takes and finger pointing that has been going on since last week’s election both inside and outside the Democratic party. Waleed recently laid out a really helpful typology on his Substack and we’ll discuss what we should we sit with and digest versus what should roll right off our bac...

Lots of folks are getting tugged at by the “blame game” that happens after every election cycle. Instead of looking at counterfactuals, we want to ground in reflection and self-critique, as well as where trends are going and what we need to do next. Cayden is joined today by a panel of folks we often look to when we need to think about what the hell is going on: Bill Fletcher, Jr., Convergence Mag...

We’re just a few days out from Election Day, so this episode covers a lot of ground. First we hear from Dusti Gurule, President and CEO of COLOR Latina . Dusti and COLOR are front and center in the campaign to pass Colorado's Amendment 79, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and remove a major barrier to accessing those rights by allowing public funds to pay for aborti...

This week, Cayden speaks with two people doing some deep thinking – and important organizing – that may point the way forward on how we think about the financial resources our movements need to win. First, he spoke with Vini Bhansali, the Executive Director of the Solidaire Network , a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to build political power for movements for racial, ge...

Van Jackson, a scholar of international relations and host of the Un-Diplomatic podcast, joined Cayden a few weeks ago to scope out the big picture of US foreign relations and what might or might not shift if Kamala Harris wins the White House. Check out Van's show Un-Diplomatic on YouTube and Apple Podcasts . Support this show and other like it by becoming a member at convergencemag.com/donate .

This week has been a difficult one for many of us. Looking back on the past year, it’s hard not to feel deep frustration, grief, and anguish over the way that the US has enabled Israel’s genocide in Gaza and further intensification of violence and expansion beyond Gaza to include the West Bank and Lebanon. It’s also impossible to ignore the ways that both Israel’s campaign and movement organizing...

In this episode we take a deep dive into what some folks call the “Minnesota Model,” the organizing power behind the policies that made Tim Walz’s reputation as a progressive governor. While Walz tacked to the right in his debate with JD Vance earlier this week, there’s no denying his progressive record as governor of Minnesota. He signed legislation expanding free school meals, requiring a t...

Cayden is joined first by Publisher for The Forge , Miski Noor and Senior Director of Strategy and co-founder of The Action Lab , Andrew Friedman. We’ll be discussing their recently co-published report on organizing toward progressive power titled The Power to Win Report . Then I’ll be joined by interim Executive Director of the Kairos Fellowship , Jacky Brooks to talk about the ways big tech work...

On the show this week, Cayden is joined by Sandra Tamari, Executive Director of Adalah Justice Project, and Ramah Kudaimi, who is the Director of Crescendo at the Action Center on Race and the Economy, to discuss their new research project, Genocide Gentry , which exposes the intimate links between war profiteers and many prominent educational, cultural, and other institutions across the US. Then,...

In this episode we explore how far-right extremists and neo-Nazis strategically infiltrate small communities, like Springfield, Ohio, and leverage hateful rumors in and about the community. Since JD Vance and Donald Trump brought those rumors and lies to a national stage this week, these groups have celebrated their contribution to the story's ascendance to mainstream discourse as a top GOP talkin...

Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center , Chris Melody Fields Figueredo joins to discuss the critical work our movements are undertaking this year to move ballot initiatives state-by-state, and how direct democracy can be a specific antidote to legislative gridlock. Then our print editor, Marcy Rein, recently interviewed Florida Rising ’s Campaign Director Ivanna Gonzalez, who...

On the show today, Cayden is joined by the Director of Civic Engagement and Leadership Development at the Murphy Institute at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies , Dr. Alethia Jones. Next week, Dr. Jones and her colleagues are hosting a free, one-day conference focused on the task of block & build in the current period. Convergence Magazine Board Chair Max Elbaum is a featured guest at...

As expected, this week's Democratic National Convention saw a variety of protests on the streets outside, mostly from groups demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza. Inside the convention, delegates in the Uncommitted Movement pressed their demand that a Palestinian be allowed to deliver a vetted speech from the main stage. The Democrats turned them down--so they sat in overnight on the sidewalk...

This week Cayden is joined by the Executive Director of Court Accountability , Alex Aronson ( @alexaronson ), to dive deeper into the right-wing capture of the courts and what we can do about it. Before that, Jacobin staff writer and journalist Branko Marcetic ( @BMarchetich ) joins to discuss his research for In These Times into how AIPAC spends its money. Read Branko's writings on AIPAC publishe...

This week, Kamala Harris surprised many by choosing the most progressive pick on her "veep-stakes" short list, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Excitement and momentum on the left didn't last long as many are critiquing Harris' response to protestors in the crowd at a Michigan rally in which she equated their protests to stop the genocide in Gaza as a vote for Donald Trump. Joining the show to discuss...

In another historic news week, President Joe Biden forfeited his upcoming nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for President, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. An immediate cascade of endorsements by other major Democratic Party figures followed, and Harris gathered enough delegate pledges to make her the party's presumptive nominee. Organizing energy surged; we saw a blizzard o...

After the mass-shooting, assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last Saturday, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee continued as scheduled. Truthout.org news writer Chris Walker ( @chriswalker ) was on the ground in Milwaukee this week. He shares some of his reporting on the event—especially the heavy imprint of the Heritage Foundation —and on the protests around downtow...

As finger pointing and arguing about President Joe Biden's fitness to remain the Democratic Party's presidential nominee continued all week here in the US, Great Britain and France made strides toward beating back autocratic and fascist rule in their own national elections. In this episode, Cayden is joined by Clément Petitjean ( @clement_petitj ), lecturer in English and Anglo-Saxon languages &am...

At the top of this episode, we address what may have been a historic moment last night, when President Joe Biden struggled to perform in his debate against Donald Trump. Many in mainstream media are asking today if Biden still has what it takes to be the Democratic nominee and block the return of Trump and the MAGA movement to the White House. In These Times Executive Director Alex Han joins us to...

Cayden is joined by Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party , live from the floor of this week's Rising Majority Congress , a week long gathering of over 700 organizers and activists on the left, working in diverse coalition to strategize a plan for the next 10 years while envisioning goals for 2050. In this episode, Maurice speaks to Working Families Party's role in stra...

Many of us have seen the attacks against student protestors over the last month on campuses like UCLA and others by both the police and right wing Zionists, attempting to disrupt their right to peaceful protest. This led to a wave of stand-up strikes against unfair labor practices of unionized student workers represented by UAW Local 4811 across the University of California system. As a result, le...

In spite of 34 felony convictions last week, there is still a very real chance that Donald Trump will once again be elected president of the United States in November or that he'll contest the results and attempt another coup. Few of us were truly prepared for his victory in 2016. Many of us felt helpless in the wake of his 2020 blitz to steal the election. As a result, many responses were directi...