Bloc Party

Bloc Party is a show about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, featuring progressive champions challenging the status quo from inside the halls of power and the organizers transforming the party’s agenda from the outside.

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Episodes

“You’re in power. Where’s our bill?”

In 2010, the DREAM Act failed in a Senate vote when five Democrats refused to vote for the bill. Will the Biden administration learn from that defeat? Greisa Martinez Rosas was in the Senate gallery in 2010 when the DREAM Act died. Since then, she’s organized relentlessly to prevent the next Democratic trifecta from failing to protect immigrants. This week, Amira Hassan, Justice Democrats’ Political Director, takes the mic to speak with Greisa, executive director of United We Dream. Together the...

Feb 13, 2021•48 min

Going Nuclear for Majority Rule

When the slavocracy needed to quash the rising tides of emancipation and free labor, they used the filibuster. When Jim Crow segregationists needed to stymie anti-lynching laws and preserve their poll taxes, they used the filibuster. Today, when the Republican Party must cling to power by strangling the American government and suppressing the American majority, they use the filibuster. But the filibuster is an accident of parliamentary history; an unintended consequence of minor changes to Senat...

Feb 05, 2021•54 min

Unity with who? Congressional majorities for what?

Group Chat returns after Senate Democrats win back the majority, the Republican Party incites a deadly coup attempt, and Joe Biden is officially sworn in as the 46th President. President Biden delivered his inaugural address, but what does “unity” mean after Republicans abetted violence against Democratic members of Congress? What does it mean to evoke Lincoln, who was assassinated by a Confederate sympathizer, as a figure of unity? Why would Senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley ever stop aidi...

Jan 23, 2021•1 hr

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

President-elect Joe Biden ran against Medicare-for-All in the Democratic Presidential primary, and he won. Despite millions of Americans losing their medical insurance after being laid off in the midst of deadly pandemic, the crises of 2020 have not brought universal healthcare back onto the national agenda. So what do advocates for Medicare-for-All do now? And how should we think about using the leverage the Squad will wield inside a Democratic caucus that has only a slim, 222-seat majority in ...

Dec 18, 2020•57 min

What Planet Is Joe Biden On?

Because this is not the Earth of Joe Biden’s childhood. This week, we take a break from the inside-the-beltway negotiations, zoom out, and ask the important questions: Is the stable foundation of human civilization unraveling? Does anyone or anything have the power to hold the apocalypse at bay? Journalist David Wallace-Wells synthesizes climate science to deduce whether we are still living on planet Earth, and what it means for the future if we’re not. Then journalist Kate Aronoff takes us on a...

Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 15 min

The Bloc vs. The Blob?

Guido and Amira unpack interviews with two foreign policy experts, Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy advisor, and Yasmine Taeb, human rights attorney and progressive foreign policy activist, circling one central question: What happened to the reigning foreign policy consensus in D.C - also known as the Blob - when Congressman-elect Jamaal Bowman unseated the hawkish Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel this summer? Guido interviews Matt about his experience pushing t...

Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 8 min

Déjà Vu, Obama Era Regrets, & Biden Era Fights

Will Team Biden repeat the mistakes of the Obama 2008 transition? Reed Hundt, author of A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions, sits down with Guido to figure out how and why the Obama administration made critical, Presidency-defining mistakes during the 2008 Presidential transition. Obama staffers on Team Biden are experiencing déjà vu as they navigate the current Presidential transition amidst another economic crisis; Guido asks Reed whether he's optimistic about Biden’s team avoid...

Nov 26, 2020•48 min

Stay Mad Abby

Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by millions of votes but Democrats in the House and Senate underperformed their polling. The Democratic majority in the House of the Representatives got smaller. People are mad, and they’re getting into fights. But what is this fight roiling the Democratic Party about? Is it really an ideological clash between progressive and conservative Democrats, or is it a fight about campaign strategy? When conservative Democrats claim “socialism” and “Defund The Police” cost...

Nov 19, 2020•53 min

Welcome to the Bloc Party

A new show from Justice Dems about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, hosted by Waleed Shahid and Guido Girgenti.

Nov 16, 2020•3 min

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