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 Lena Pervez Afridi, a New York City-based writer, researcher, and organizer. Connect with Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencemag.com Subscribe to Convergence Magazine's YouTube to catch the show live: Fridays at 2:00 PM ET /...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 3 min
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 Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencemag.com Subscribe to Convergence Magazine...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 2 min
This week on the show we are featuring the recording of a panel Convergence Magazine hosted July 4th at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago titled 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 Movement for Black Lives discussing how their work is aligned with the “Block and Build” strate...
Jul 07, 2025•1 hr 28 min
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 Contesting for Power - In These Times America is Demolishing Antiracism Five Years After the George Floy...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This week's show was recorded live at the 22nd Century Conference. In this sobering discussion on the rise of political violence, Cayden is joined by Executive Director of 22nd Century Initiative and co-host of the Anti-Authoritarian Podcast (published by Convergence ), Scot Nakagawa, Principal Research Advisor for Political Research Associates, Steven Gardiner, and Co-Executive Director of TakeAction Minnesota, Amanda Otero. They explore the grief and responses to last week's attacks on lawmake...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This week on the show, Cayden is joined by Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, Hahrie Han. Her 2024 book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church is a fascinating, ground level chronicle of the years-long effort in a Midwestern evangelical church to reckon with their city’s history of racial segregation and police violence. Resources from this episode Community Safety: Practical Tips, Political Grounding We Are California: Stop Trump's Invasion Con...
Jun 16, 2025•1 hr 3 min
This week we are joined by Brittany Ramos DeBarros, Interim Organizing Director at About Face: Veterans Against the War ( @vetsaboutface ). Since 2004, About Face (f.k.a. Iraq Veterans Against the War) has provided a political home to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns who are opposed to US militarism and imperialism. We’ll discuss what her organization has been doing to respond to our current political conditions. How to Support Immigrant Communities During ICE Raids Get involved in...
Jun 09, 2025•58 min
We don’t have a full episode this week, but we wanted to drop a quick check-in for your podcast feed, because a lot is going on. We're celebrating pride and wrestling with the grief of Gaza and political violence, all while staving off the hypernormalization of creeping fascism. So...how are you holding up? Connect with Block & Build and more Contact us: mailbag@convergencemag.com Subscribe to Convergence Magazine's YouTube to catch the show live: Fridays at 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT Support ...
Jun 02, 2025•6 min
This week, Cayden is joined by Suzanne Pharr, a longtime social justice worker from the South. Suzanne is one of the most astute observers of the political project of the far Right from a movement perspective, and someone whose work has spanned issue area and geography. At age 86, her work is relentless as she has recently published a 2nd edition of her book In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation . The book constructs a progressive view of the politics of our time that is accessible...
May 26, 2025•1 hr 2 min
In April we saw the largest demonstration against the second Trump administration since it started in the Hands Off! actions across over 1,400 locations nation-wide. One of the groups responsible for coordinating these efforts is Indivisible , an organization created in response to the first Trump administration in 2016 with the goal of saving American democracy. In this episode, Cayden is joined by National Political Director of Indivisible, Dani Negrete. They discuss the work Indivisible did t...
May 19, 2025•58 min
This episode was recorded live at the Narrative Power Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 9th, 2025. In the episode, Cayden is first joined by colleagues at the summit, Program Specialist for ReFrame , Shaira Chaer and Creative and Brand Specialist at ReFrame, Ivie Osaghae. Narrative power is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to the full picture of governing power. Governing power is more than just the task of winning elections: it’s about wielding that governing power to create st...
May 12, 2025•55 min
Over the past month we’ve been co-publishing a series with our colleagues at The Forge examining “cancel culture.” The four part series entitled Because We Need Each Other is now available for free on both our sites. Today Cayden is joined by the four coauthors of the series, Erika Sasson , Celia Kutz , Shilpa Jain , and Kazu Haga , to talk about the series–and answer your questions about their efforts to address this phenomenon specifically in the context of our organizations, coalitions, and c...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 9 min
This week Cayden is joined by former President of United Teachers Los Angeles and contributor to Convergence Magazine and Jacobin , Alex Caputo-Pearl . We published an essay in his ongoing series on UTLA’s organizing efforts last December, in which he laid out strategies and guidelines of how organized labor can adopt a Block & Build framework during this second Trump administration. We discuss what he laid out in that essay and how the movement is doing three months in. Connect with Block &...
Apr 28, 2025•49 min
We take another look at some stories we’ve been following for the past few weeks, from new angles and with new insights. First, Cayden is joined by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky and co-editor of The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration . As a geographer of prisons and mass incarceration, her work specifically looks at the Gulf South and Louisiana. They discuss how and why the state uses its infrastructure of mass...
Apr 21, 2025•55 min
This week on the show we take a look at how ICE is being used to disappear outspoken voices and effective organizers from their communities; from campuses to farms. It’s also challenging to think through what we can do to fight back...but as you know, that’s what we do on this show. First, we look at how detainment and deportation is being weaponized against labor organizers. Cayden is joined by organizer with Community to Community , Liz Darrow to discuss this and the work being done to free il...
Apr 14, 2025•54 min
We’re taking a look at how organizers at the state level are defending vital services like Medicaid, Medicare, public education, and Social Security that are under attack by the Trump administration and sometimes, their own state governments. We’re starting here in my home state of California where the coalition We Are California has been demanding protection of our Medi-Cal program. Joining me to discuss this work is one of the leaders of We Are California , Vice President of Operations for Pow...
Apr 07, 2025•51 min
On Tuesday, April 1st, Wisconsin voters will be participating in a special election to fill a vacant state Supreme Court seat. Satellite groups and PACs funded and controlled by Elon Musk have invested over $17 million in the election in favor of Trump lackey, Brad Schimel. To learn more about the race and how organizers are pushing back we are joined by State Director of Wisconsin Working Families Party , Corinne Rosen, and Director of Vera Action , Insha Rahman. Get involved in the race Phone ...
Mar 31, 2025•44 min
This week we are featuring a special presentation of a panel hosted by our friends at Essie Justice Group on February 27th in Oakland, California. This intimate conversation led by Michelle Alexander, Maurice Mitchell and Gina Clayton-Johnson talk criminalization, climate change, and organizing Black and brown working class communities in this political moment. Against the backdrop of the LA wildfires which have impacted Essie Justice Group’s members and Gina personally, and the mounting threats...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 30 min
This week on the show Cayden is joined first by Executive Director of Detention Watch Network ( @detentionwatch ), Silky Shah, to help us understand the danger and implications of ICE’s illegal detention of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil earlier this week. Then author Vanessa Priya Daniel ( @vanessapriyadaniel ) joins to discuss her new book Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning . NCRP Research on Funding for Anti-Democracy Organizations Connect with Block &am...
Mar 17, 2025•58 min
This week on the show Cayden is joined by President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation , Carmen Rojas, as part of our ongoing conversation about what the role of philanthropic foundations and donors can or should be in efforts to bolster movement organizing. We recorded the interview earlier this week and had a great discussion about how Marguerite Casey is working to be in right relationship with people’s movements under current conditions. The Washington Post piece referenced in this w...
Mar 10, 2025•49 min
Marisa Franco, Executive Director of Mijente , joins Cayden to discuss the Trump administration's purposefully cruel deportation efforts and how Mijente is working to respond to these conditions while building power in immigrant communities. Also in this show, journalist and friend of the pod Sarah Lazare chats about her new piece in the Nation, How Healthcare Workers Are Defending Their Transgender Patients from Trump’s Attacks . The article covers American healthcare workers defending their tr...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr
This week on the show we explore how folks in rural communities are fighting back against the MAGA agenda. Cayden is joined by Appalachia Peoples Union Director for Standing Up for Racial Justice , Beth Howard, and organizer with West Virginia Can’t Wait , Stephen Smith. They recently published a piece with us entitled From Rural America With Love: An Invitation to Bravery . We’ll spend today’s episode going deeper into the work Beth and Stephen laid out in that article. Info on federal worker o...
Feb 24, 2025•58 min
Cayden is out this week so we're featuring an episode of The Fascism Barometer , the new podcast from friend of the show Ejeris Dixon . We hope you find it useful. If so, check out the links below to subscribe and connect with The Fascism Barometer resource hub on their website. The Fascism Barometer, Episode 5: Keeping Ourselves Safe as Fascism Rises Che Johnson-Long and Ken Montenegro, two longtime community security and safety practitioners, join The Fascism Barometer to discuss ways to incre...
Feb 17, 2025•51 min
The Process is the Punishment , a new podcast from Mainline , documents the struggle of the ATL 61 through interviews with five defendants, and attorneys connected to the case. The ATL 61 were indicted under the state of Georgia’s RICO Act in August 2023, for their protest against the controversial police training facility known as “Cop City.” In this episode we offer a preview of The Process is the Punishment , and Cayden talks with Mainline founder Aja Arnold and podcast producer Tåsi Chargual...
Feb 10, 2025•54 min
This week on the show, we are joined by Executive Director of Media Justice , Steven Renderos, to discuss the latest nefarious activities of the FCC. Then the Executive Director of Women’s March , Rachel O’Leary Carmona, joins to discuss what the impact of mass demonstrations can be for organizing in this moment; following on the heels of their recent People's March in Washington D.C. earlier this month. Resources and references from this episode: Insurers Are Abandoning Homeowners Over Wildfire...
Feb 03, 2025•59 min
On the show this week, Cayden talks first about Convergence Magazine's recent publishing collaboration with In These Times, The Forge, and The Real News Network . Together, we published a collection of writing and podcast episodes entitled Left Out: The Missing Election Narratives – available in the latest print edition of In These Times and in full and online. Then we're joined by Vice President for Institutional and Sectoral Change at Race Forward, Cathy Albisa, as well as federal workers Laur...
Jan 27, 2025•58 min
This week on the show Cayden is joined by fellow Convergence editorial board members Max Elbaum and Jon Liss. We recently published a collective editorial statement called Block & Build 2.0 . The piece lays out the many ways the Block & Build strategy has to re-orient to the seismic shifts in the political landscape that are happening as we enter a 2nd Trump term this coming week. Max and Jon walk us through some of our most important strategic adjustments as well as wrestle with some of...
Jan 20, 2025•55 min
This week on the show Cayden is joined by one of the editors of the new anthology We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition , out now from Haymarket Books, Maya Schenwar. The book brings together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, its writers highlight how abolition is essential to...
Jan 13, 2025•57 min
Cayden is joined this episode by organizer and strategist, as well as co-founder of MediaJustice and founder of the Radical Loss Project , Malkia Devich-Cyril and journalist and author of From The Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire , Sarah Jaffe. Together, they seek to grapple with the political and cultural implications of grief, both individual and collective, arising from everything that’s happened to us, collectively, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact this show: m...
Dec 20, 2024•57 min
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 relationship to state power. Before that, Cayden is joined by Ju-Hyun Park, a Movement Media collea...
Dec 13, 2024•58 min
