Movement Memos

“In this moment of crisis, we have to understand how the care economy functions … I think we have to ask ourselves, do we want someone to profit from our pain? Do we want our loved ones to be for sale? I think it is imperative upon all of us to push back on the system of profit from care and to find alternative ways of thinking and doing care,” says author Premila Nadasen. In this episode of “Move...

“The public domain is being purchased, and it is being purchased in order for it to be destroyed,” says journalist Sarah Kendzior. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Kendzior and host Kelly Hayes discuss the decline of journalism in the U.S. and how we can resist the erosion of our shared history, our values, and our shared reality. Music: Son Monarcas & Pulsed You can find a transcript and show...

“Every interaction between Black and Brown community members and CPD responding to a gunshot alert is dangerous. It puts people at risk of violence and harm,” says Stop ShotSpotter organizer Navi Heer. In this week’s episode, Kelly talks with two organizers from Chicago’s Stop ShotSpotter campaign, which claimed a major victory this week, and investigative journalist Jim Daley of South Side Weekly...

“The truth is, every time community groups have asked questions about policing, the police haven't had good answers. And when really pushed, they had to fold to recognize that maybe this technology wasn't worth the money, wasn't doing what it was said. And while sure, it sounded good in a soundbite, it sounded good to the city council when you said you had to do something to stop crime, in reality...

“Surviving settler colonialism isn't just about surviving its material realities, it's also about surviving how settler colonialism requires destroying cultures, and languages, and sensibilities, and values, and ways of being in the world,” says scholar and activist Nadine Naber. In this episode, Naber and host Kelly Hayes discuss the connections between the struggle for Palestinian liberation and...

“Belonging isn't about a claim of ownership, it's actually about this notion of love and longing. And so I've come to say, I don't claim that Palestine belongs to me. I just know that I belong to Palestine,” says Palestinian author Rana Barakat. In this episode, Rana and host Kelly talk about Palestinian history, Indigenous solidarity, how colonial violence disrupts ancestral and familial relation...

“We're connected to each other and these liberation fights across the globe,” says Indigenous Justice organizer Ashley Crystal Rojas. In this episode of Movement Memos, Rojas and Morning Star Gali talk with host Kelly Hayes about Native solidarity with Palestine, how Native communities have reclaimed the “Thanksgiving” holiday, tools for harm reduction, and how Native organizers are supporting Ind...

“During a genocide, there is no silent vigil. There are no pauses without action,” says organizer Nadine Naber. In this episode, Naber, Iman Abid, Mike Merryman-Lotze, Leanne Simpson, Shane Burley, Brant Rosen, and others join Kelly to hold vigil for Palestine, and to talk about what solidarity demands of us in this moment. Music: Son Monarcas and David Celeste You can find a transcript and show n...

“Our survival is at stake, and so, let's think about all the best things that can help us better understand how we can ensure the collective survival of as many of us as possible,” says author and organizer Andrea Ritchie. In this episode, Kelly and Andrea discuss organizing, solidarity with Palestine, and why activists cannot defer the work of practicing new worlds. Music: Son Monarcas and David...

“The danger now is not just in Palestine for Palestinians. It's gone well beyond that now. It's exported, the idea that you can export occupation, you can export the tools of occupation, the tools of apartheid. That is where we currently are in the early 2020s,” says The Palestine Laboratory author Antony Loewenstein. In this episode, Kelly talks with Loewenstein about how Israel has used Palestin...

“If you've never tried to organize a movement without the internet, I'm here to tell you, it's really hard. We need to seize the means of computation, because while the internet isn't the most important thing that we have to worry about right now, all the things that are more important, gender and racial justice, inequality, the climate emergency, those are struggles that we're going to win or los...

“I want the land to know me, to claim me. I want to feel at home in it in a way that's reciprocal … When we talk about land back, we're not talking about laying claim to land the way that the U.S. might say, or the way that other countries might say, of claiming ownership, it's claiming relationship, and it's claiming a relationship that's reciprocal,” says Becoming Kin author Patty Krawec. In thi...

“What are the ways we could organize people into new social forms in which new human, more humane, more liberatory capacities would emerge that we could use for our own liberation?” asks Aaron Goggans of the WildSeed Society. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Goggans and host Kelly Hayes talk about how activists can resist the trends of late capitalism, including the alienation imposed by the t...

“What we're getting from both Musk and Bezos is this classically new age-y religious drama of disaster and salvation. They preach, they tell us that the end is near, the disaster is coming, that the world is going to end, but there is another world that everybody can build together, a new world and a place that they've never seen and a place that seems totally impossible,” says professor Mary-Jane...

“How are these tools going to be used to increase the power of employers and of management once again, and to be used against workers,” asks Paris Marx. In this episode, Paris and Kelly break down the hype and potential of artificial intelligence, and what we should really be worried about. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you wo...

“It's really important for people to understand what this bundle of ideologies is, because it's become so hugely influential, and is shaping our world right now, and will continue to shape it for the foreseeable future,” says philosopher and historian Émile P. Torres. In this episode, Kelly and Émile discuss what activists should know about longtermism and TESCREAL. You can find a transcript and s...

“This is a global struggle against fascism, it's a global struggle against the militarization of the police and state violence against folks whose dissent is being oppressed,” says Jasmine, an organizer in Atlanta. In this episode, Kelly talks with authors Alex Vitale and Stuart Schrader about the frightening trajectory of policing in the United States. Kelly also talks with Chicago activist Benji...

“Whenever there is grief, there is unity, and in unity, there is strength, and we feel it.,” says Jalal Abukhater. In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Abukhater, a Palestinian writer living in Jerusalem, and Palestinian activists Jeanine Hourani and Lea Kayali, about the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, resistance in the face of Israeli aggression, and how hope sustains th...

“It's never too late to pause and reevaluate the purpose, the structure, or the norms that you're operating with as a group of people trying to make a change in the world or get something done together,” says Aarati Kasturirangan. In this episode, Kelly talks with facilitators Aarati Kasturirangan and Rebecca Subar about how organizers can transform conflict in movement spaces. You can find a tran...

“Hope for me is in the doing of things,” says Mariame Kaba. In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Mariame Kaba about their upcoming book, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the show, you can donate here: bit...

In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly talks with Camila Valle, translator of Set Fear on Fire: The Feminist Call That Set the Americas Ablaze by LASTESIS. Kelly and Camila discuss the struggle for abortion rights and access in Chile and Argentina, the need for democratic structures in movement wor, and how LASTESIS has used art and performance to bring feminist theory to the streets. You can fi...

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Kim Kelly, labor reporter and author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, about labor history and how understanding union struggles, past and present, can help us get free. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the show, you c...

In this episode, Kelly talks with Cara Page and Erica Woodland, authors of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety about collective healing, collaborative care, and surviving the onslaughts of our oppressors. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the sho...

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs about disability justice, interdependence, rejecting human disposability in the COVID era and the practice of grief as stewardship. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementme...

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes and Shane Burley, editor of No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis, discuss the state of the far right, antifascism and how we can build power and sustain empathy in these times. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the show, you can don...