This week we’re talking about the labor movement and the political left. How can they support one another? Is the impending UPS workers strike a redux of their successful win in 1997? What are the political implications of a massive workers strike? This episode is a companion to our recent Bloc Doc video release, “ UPS Strike: Lessons from ‘97 ”. Our old friend Jeremy Flood comes back to interview Jacobin staff writer Alex Press about the UPS workers organizing this year. Jeremy is a Brooklyn ba...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 12
In this episode, six JD staffers get in touch with their inner high school debate team identity and battle it out. Are progressives too online? Should the left run for president in 2024? Is it more impactful to organize around federal or local politics? Do you eat your rice with a fork or a spoon? We’re engaging with the hard hitting topics of today’s discourse. We promised a lighter, fun episode and here it is! Do you have a debate you want us to engage with in a future episode? Email us at blo...
Jun 15, 2023•58 min•Season 3Ep. 11
How does the Israeli government maintain the invisibility of Palestinian dehumanization? For progress to take place, will Israelis have to stand up to their own government, or will that pressure have to come from the outside? In Part 2 of our series about our staffers’ recent trip to Israel-Palestine, Alex and Amira share with Waleed some of the more personal moments of witnessing occupation from their time spent with the IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding). We also hear more specific...
Jun 02, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Why do Americans see the Palestinian struggle as “complex?” What does it mean to live under occupation? How does the U.S. “see something, say nothing” policy affect military occupation and continued settlement expansions? In Part 1 of this two episode series, Amira & Alexandra speak with Diana Buttu about their recent trip to Israel-Palestine with the IMEU. Diana helps contextualize the ongoing protests in Israel, the role the U.S. has played in Israeli-Palestinian politics as well as everyd...
May 18, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 3Ep. 9
How do progressives navigate holding new found power? How much power should be wielded and when? Should we interpret the IRA as a victory or a loss? Acclaimed documentary director, producer, & cinematographer Rachel Lears ( Knock Down the House , 2019) ( The Hand that Feeds , 2014) joins Alex on the Bloc this week with some behind the scenes intel on the making of her latest feature documentary, To the End . To the End captures the emergence of a new generation of leaders and the movement be...
May 04, 2023•58 min•Season 3Ep. 8
When anti-trans legislation floods state legislation across the country, it affects all of us. To quote Amira, “This will sink your boat too, bitch!” Journalist Erin Reed joins Becca to break down some of the FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO (and counting) egregious bills targeting trans people and their families, review this latest tactic in the right’s assault on trans rights and bodily autonomy, and discuss what progressives can and should be doing to fight back. Erin is an independent journalist...
Apr 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Can cable TV be useful for progressives? What about broadcast media makes it difficult to communicate as a progressive… or are progressives going about our approach to being on TV the wrong way? Meet your instructor, Waleed Shahid! In this episode, Waleed walks Becca, Usamah, and Pod Producer Sophie through a media literacy training. You’ll hear from some voices you may recognize from your regular cable TV programming, and then the staff discusses how progressives should relate to broadcast medi...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 3Ep. 6
It’s a double-crossover special with Michael from the illustrious 5-4 Podcast (a very beloved show to those of us here at JD) and Group Chat veteran Eleni Schirmer from the Debt Collective. They join Waleed to review how oral arguments went down in last month’s Supreme Court cases that could make or break Biden’s student loan cancellation initiative. First, Michael & Waleed chat about how SCOTUS & minority rule keep getting in the way of us building a real multiracial democracy. Then Ele...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 5
You’ve heard of the anti-CRT movement… but have you caught wind of ESG, the latest acronym that Republicans have weaponized in their anti-woke crusade? ESG investments have entered the chat in a big way - but it’s not the easiest topic to comprehend. So we brought an expert in to help us break down who the players are, clarify the mess of jargon that’s being tossed around, and why any of this should matter to us on the left. Journalist & author Kate Aronoff makes a trip back to the Bloc &...
Mar 09, 2023•49 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Movement School has acted as one of the core building bloc(k)s for Justice Democrats since day 1…so it’s high time we chatted with Movement School Director Ilona Duverge about its origin story, how she and her team navigate the pressures of the dusty, crusty consultant class, and why providing the tools, networks, tips & tricks for budding multiracial working-class campaign staffers across the country not only helps candidates win; it helps communities build their own power. THEN, in part 2 ...
Feb 23, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 3
New year, new hosts, AND new guests on the Bloc! Amira is joined by our newest host and Gen Z rep from the JD staff, Becca Rose. Becca read too many Bloomberg articles about inflation and has some questions like, “Why do economists think that the pathway to a healthy economy is to lay off millions of working people?” and “Why is Bloomberg telling me the economy is great when we literally can’t afford to eat three meals a day?” and “What does the Fed mean by a ‘soft landing’ and why does it feel ...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Welcome back to the Bloc! Your newly minted hosts of Bloc Party , Amira Hassan & Waleed Shahid are ready to rumble for Season 3. We’re bringing on more staff this season from Justice Democrats & Organize for Justice… aka some of the best of the best when it comes to folks fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party. This week, we’re talking about Kevin, the never-Kevins, the I-guess-it’s-fine-we’ll-take-him-Kevins, and what we should take away from the right buckling down for 15 rounds...
Jan 26, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 1
JD Staffers review the triumphs of 2022 midterms in our Bloc Party: Season 2 finale. Justice Democrats Summer Lee & Greg Casar are going to Congress! Summer Lee beat out AIPAC for a second time in her general election, overcoming $10 million in attack ads. What should we take away from the surprising lack of a red wave? In our last episode our staffers discussed what they thought was driving the electorate to the polls. Did we get it wrong? What were the midterms actually about? And now with...
Nov 17, 2022•53 min•Season 2Ep. 10
What are the 2022 midterms actually about? A referendum on Biden? Whatever pundits say the top issues are? Or is it something else? In a two part episode, Justice Democrats staffers (ft. a guest from Left Rising) take some bets on the wins/losses the Democratic party is about to experience in November before sitting down to investigate what ads Dems are running and what ads are being run against them. What do the polls/propaganda pieces tell us about Democratic messaging? And more importantly: a...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Americans aged 62 and older are the fastest-growing demographic of student borrowers. In July, Journalist Eleni Schirmer’s New Yorker article “The Aging Student Debtors of America,” featured the story of Betty Anne, a 91 year old woman with $330,000 in student loans – and Justice Democrats’ Lead Video Producer Jeremy Flood’s grandmother. In this episode, Jeremy and Eleni unpack the impact of Eleni’s reporting and what it’s meant to Betty Anne’s family to hold this debt throughout her life. We al...
Sep 29, 2022•1 hr 5 min
It’s Sunday June 26th, 2022 – two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – and President Joe Biden knows what he needs to do. Biden needed to announce his endorsement to Rep. Danny Davis, the 25-year incumbent in Chicago’s bluest Congressional district, IL-07. Two days before polls opened in a primary contest between a quarter-century incumbent and Kina Collins, a grassroots organizer against gun violence in Rep. Davis’ district, Joe Biden needed Democrats to know: the party’s old g...
Jul 20, 2022•1 hr
She can relax a little now. The PA-12 results are certified. The victory is locked in. So current State House Rep. Lee, the expected Congresswoman-elect from Pennsylvania’s 12th district, sat down with Amira Hassan to tell us the WHOLE story. How did Summer Lee get so deep in the progressive political revolution brewing in Pittsburgh? What does it actually look like to build grassroots power by organizing at the local level, and electoralize that power up to the state house and ultimately Congre...
May 31, 2022•53 min
In the final weeks before Pennsylvania’s May 17th primaries, SuperPACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars in the 12th district, nearly all on TV ads attacking Summer Lee and boosting corporate lawyer Steve Irwin. Summer Lee narrowly won. How? And what might other progressive candidates, campaign managers, communications strategists, and organizers learn from the resilience of the Summer Lee for Congress campaign? Also, what to make of the incre...
May 24, 2022•24 min
Group Chat is back with Guido, Amira, and returning guest Mary Small (National Legislative Director of Indivisible) to process what f*** happened with President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. When did Build Back Better die? It died when the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan infrastructure package – but wasn’t it doomed before then? Could the negotiations over Biden’s domestic agenda in 2021 have gone any differently? Did progressives fail? What lessons can we learn from how the pro...
May 17, 2022•54 min
A bonus group chat with two seasoned professionals of the political left. Two operatives who went up against the Cuellar machine in TX-28 share stories from the frontlines and pitch some provocative theories. In the DMs: Ava Benezra, the organizer who’s been driving the JD campaign machine since before The Plague began. We recorded just after she'd worked her last day as the (former) JD campaigns director. Alongside Ava, a Bloc Party debut for the leftist comms professional who’s tracking the pr...
Mar 20, 2022•20 min
The first big Democratic primaries of the 2022 cycle are done. The voters of Texas’s 35th and 28th Congressional districts have cast their ballots. Topline results: A big win, and an excruciating close-tie. What does it all mean? Justice Democrats campaign all-stars sifted through the results, read the post-election hot takes, and now we’re bringing Group Chat back together to make sense of it all. Do these Texas primaries tell us anything important about the left in American elections, what wor...
Mar 15, 2022•40 min
It’s time. The rematch for Texas' 28th Congressional district: Cisneros vs. Cuellar. Human rights attorney Jessica Cisneros, who fell 2,700 votes short of unseating incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar in March 2020, joins us to talk about how she recovered from a tough, narrow loss and why this race may still come down to The Wire. But first, Waleed Shahid takes on a new role as a private investigator, reporting on shady deals and probable crimes committed by the ruling Congressman of Texas’ 28th Distr...
Feb 14, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Build Back Better is dead. The Group Chat is resurrected. Welcome to Bloc Party Season 2. New episodes dropping twice a month, starting this week. Text your friends, call your representative, subscribe & share wherever you get your podcasts: ⏯ https://podlink.to/blocparty 🟪
Feb 06, 2022•3 min
Putting the bloc back in Bloc Party. Freedom Caucus. Progressive Caucus. Blue Dogs. Why do we care? Justice Dems spokesperson and co-host Waleed Shahid sits down with Ruth Bloch Rubin, author of Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the US Congress. Ruth tells Waleed that size matters when it comes to congressional voting blocs, but bigger isn’t always better. What can we learn from Congressional ideological factions of the 20th and 21st centuries? Why and how did they succeed and fail i...
Aug 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Is the AFL-CIO falling in love with the Democratic Socialists of America? Why is DSA’s PRO Act campaign drawing praise from unlikely allies in mainstream unions, the Democratic establishment, and beyond? What have these young socialists figured out about organizing towards working-class power? And why did this campaign come from [checks notes] DSA’s Green New Deal campaign committee? Guido joins Daniel Denvir, host of The Dig Radio from Jacobin magazine, to investigate DSA’s groundbreaking organ...
May 31, 2021•1 hr 41 min
“Trickle-down economics has never worked.” In his Joint Address to Congress President Joe Biden discarded the prevailing economic consensus of post-Reagan Revolution America. What does that tell us about American politics in 2021? Is the Reagan era really over? Is neoliberalism really dead? Guido, Amira, and Waleed jumped into a Group Chat to capture their reflections and vent their fears as the Biden administration marches on past the first 100 days. After the break, Amira puts on the tinfoil h...
May 29, 2021•55 min
Folks… Odessa’s running. Justice Democrats’ Executive Director Alexandra Rojas makes her debut on the Bloc alongside a very special guest. Odessa Kelly, the first Justice Democrat of the 2022 cycle is running for Congress in Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional district, challenging Representative Jim Cooper and the Cooper dynasty. Odessa teaches Guido and Alexandra how to pronounce the name “Prentice” in the South, before telling us what led her to decide to run for Congress as a Justice Democrat. A...
May 04, 2021•43 min
45 million Americans hold a total of $1.7 trillion in education debt. How did we get here? Guido sits down with writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor to discuss the seeds of the current crisis. How did government-backed, private loans and an anti-civil rights, anti-peace movement backlash led by Ronald Reagan and neoliberal economists produce the historic debt crisis in higher education? Also, there’s a small bit of good news for student debtors in the American Rescue Plan, and AOC says: the time is...
Mar 21, 2021•1 hr 4 min
This is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party. But it’s not the Squad’s party either. Today, a very special Group Chat to discuss a very large stimulus bill. Amira and Guido are joined by Mary Small, National Legislative Director for Indivisible, to react to the passage of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. What does the massive investment in stimulus checks, expanded unemployment insurance, and the child tax credit tell us about the state of the Democratic Party halfway through Biden’s first...
Mar 13, 2021•56 min
Did the Sunrise Movement… negotiate a win? Guido sits down with Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, to check in on her well-being after four marathon years of campaigning for a Green New Deal. More than two years after the sit-in with AOC, Guido and Varshini look at Biden’s recent climate announcements and ask themselves: are we reading this wrong or did the Green New Deal.. win the debate over Democratic climate policy? And if the answer is “yes, we did notch some wins but not...
Feb 23, 2021•48 min
