“We're not just contending with right-wing movements. We're talking about movements that have reached one of their goals, which is to take over the government,” says organizer and grassroots strategist Ejeris Dixon. In this episode, Ejeris and Kelly discuss fascism, coalition building, and the compassion and shared knowledge we need to create safety and justice in these times.
“Our movements are pretty much just made of our relationships — whether we can move together, coordinate, collaborate, figure out disagreements [and] stay loyal to each other when the repression comes down,” says Dean Spade. In this episode Dean and Kelly discuss the lessons of Dean's new book, Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together. Music: Son Monarcas, Pulsed & David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources)...
“We need each other, and interdependence is key to survival for human beings,” says Mariame organizer Kaba. In this episode, Mariame and Kelly talk about what their book Let This Radicalize You brings to this moment. They also discuss the fight for reproductive justice, the problem with schadenfreude, and the need to build collective courage. Music: Son Monarcas and Pulsed You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/ If you wou...
“This kind of repression, part of its intention is to isolate people,” says organizer Nikki Marín Baena. In this episode, Kelly talks with Nikki about community defense organizing and how communities are fighting back against Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Music: Son Monarcas and Heath Cantu You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/ If you would like to support the show, you can donate here: bit.ly/TODonate If you would li...
“We are really good at finding what's wrong with each other,” says author and podcaster Margaret Killjoy. “We really need to challenge ourselves to be ready to let people be better.” In this episode, Kelly and Margaret talk about preparedness, collective survival, and the organizing lessons we need in these times. Music: Son Monarcas, Curved Mirror, Pulsed, and David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/ If you w...
“Our power comes from knowing who's around us, from trusting who's around us, and from strategizing with every lever that we have,” says tenant organizer and Abolish Rent co-author Tracy Rosenthal. In this episode, Rosenthal and their co-author Leonardo Vilchi talk with Kelly about what rent strikes and tenant unions can teach us about the work of collective survival in this moment. Music: Son Monarcas, Isobel O'Connor, and David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links ...
“It’s inherently a racial justice and economic justice fight,” says Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network. In this episode, Kelly talks with Silky about the threats posed by the incoming Trump administration, how organizers are preparing to defend immigrant communities, and what actions we can take to prepare and respond. Music: Son Monarcas, Curved Mirror & David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movemen...
“Our enemies are waging a war, and to many of them, it’s a holy war,” says host Kelly Hayes. In this episode, Hayes and guest Talia Lavin discuss the emotional impacts of the presidential election, the expansive agenda of the Christian right, and how everyday people can resist what Lavin calls “our nation's precipitous slide into autocracy.” Music: Son Monarcas, David Celeste & Heath Cantu You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-...
“We really have a big opportunity right now to decide, within traumatic conditions and circumstances, how we are going to show up, again and again, for ourselves and each other,” says Tanuja Jageranauth. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” host Kelly Hayes talks with radical therapist Dorian Ortega and Healing Justice practitioners Tanuja Jagernauth and Chiara Galimberti about trauma, and some of the tools and practices that can help us heal. Music: Son Monarcas, David Celeste & Peter Sandberg ...
“The capitalist system also doesn't care if we die. So insisting on the value of human life, insisting on grieving, particularly grieving publicly and collectively, is a real statement against this entire death-making system,” says author Sarah Jaffe. In this episode, Kelly talks with Sarah about the lessons of Sarah’s latest book, From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire. Music: Son Monarcas, David Celeste & Peter Sandberg You can find a transcript and show notes (including links...
“I've seen a lot of people lashing out at people horizontally, and my gut sense is that sometimes it happens because the folks who are lashing out are definitely super traumatized, in crisis, feel and are really powerless in a lot of ways,” says Disability Justice organizer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. In this episode, Kelly talks with Leah and Elliott Fukui, who develops community safety strategies for emotional wellness and safety, about why people are struggling right now, what’s keeping...
“This war is not a civil war, it's a counter-revolutionary war against civilians. It's a war of military elites against the entire civilian population,” says Sudanese organizer Nisrin Elamin. Sudan is currently experiencing the largest mass displacement event in the world today. Thousands are dead and famine is “almost everywhere” in the country. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Elamin, organizer Yusra Khogali, and host Kelly Hayes discuss the historical and political roots of the violence, ...
“This is a moment that is going to be looked back on 50 years from now, 100 years from now, and what is going to be said of us is how we came out of this moment,” says M4BL organizer M Adams. In this episode, Kelly talks with Adams and community organizer Montague Simmons about the last decade of Black-led organizing, the state of movements against police violence, and where prison and police abolitionists should go from here. Music: Son Monarcas, HATAMITSUNAMI, and Guustavv You can find a trans...
“The immediacy of the crisis that we're in demands a new society and not in some imagined future, but now,” says Rehearsals for Living co-author Robyn Maynard. In this episode, Kelly talks with Maynard and David K. Seitz, author of A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine, about the radical legacy of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and how science fiction can shape our politics. Music: Son Monarcas, Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen & Howard Harper-Barnes You can find a transcript and show ...
“We don't have a housing system, we have an unhousing system,” says author and organizer Tracy Rosenthal. In this episode, Kelly and Tracy examine the impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing municipalities to criminalize the act of sleeping outside. Tracy and Kelly also examine the larger terrain of criminalization unhoused people face, why cities are working to expel unhoused populations, and how communities can defend their unhoused neighbors. Music: Son Monarcas, Pulsed & Davi...
“When you're engaged in political work that is as embodied and vulnerable, uncharted and courageous as self-help, you're really harnessing something like a new world building power,” says Deep Care author Angela Hume. In this episode, Kelly and Angela discuss the work of abortion self-help activists who provided illegal abortions in the 1970s, as well as militant clinic defenders, who repelled right-wing efforts to blockade abortion clinics in the 80s and 90s. As Angela says, “There are deep les...
“This system was designed to do exactly what it is doing and has been doing: concentrating wealth and facilitating racial capitalism and colonialism and extraction,” says author and activist Dean Spade. In this episode, Kelly and Dean discuss some common traps that activists fall into when discussing repression and how we can strengthen our practice of solidarity. Music: Son Monarcas You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/...
“If you're trying to destroy things that are as massive as the structures and the institutions that we talk about wanting to get rid of, that we talk about wanting to overthrow, you're going to have to sustain yourself,” says organizer and author William C. Anderson. In this episode, Kelly takes a trip to the Northwest Territories and talks with Anderson, Robyn Maynard, Harsha Walia, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mahdi Sabbagh, and others about the crises of trauma, grief, and overwhelm in our co...
The Luddites, who smashed machines in the 19th century, in an organized effort to resist automation, are often portrayed as uneducated opponents of technology. But according to Blood in the Machine author Brian Merchant, “The Luddites were incredibly educated as to the harms of technology. They were very skilled technologists. So they understood exactly how new developments in machinery would affect the workplace, their industry, and their identities.” In this episode, Kelly talks with Brian abo...
“If you think about all the cop shows and you think about the birthright tours and you think about all the friendship visits of U.S. officials to Israel, where it's as if there's no Palestine, and you think about Coffee With A Cop, these are all in the same school of actually deeply violent, militaristic propaganda that tries to soften something that only exists to control vulnerable people,” says journalist Lewis Raven Wallace. In this episode, Raven Wallace talks with Kelly about the similarit...
“At UChicago, they were chanting, ‘40,000 people dead. You are fighting kids instead,’” says author and University of Chicago faculty member Eman Abdelhadi. “Palestine has laid open all the contradictions that are at the core of our society, and the sheer absurdity of trying to suppress this movement.” In this episode, Kelly talks with Abdelhadi and Alex, who participated in the Palestine solidarity encampment at Northeastern University, about what we can learn from the recent wave of student-le...
"When people come from outside your community or your campus, it makes you feel like you're connected to a bigger whole," says Solidarity co-author Astra Taylor. "It makes you feel like what's happening there matters. It creates a sense of a larger coalition. And that's powerful, which is exactly why the people in power don't like it." In this episode, Kelly talks with Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix about solidarity, divide-and-conquer tactics, and the concept of “outside agitators.” Music: Son Mo...
While Kelly is away on medical leave, we revisit a fan-favorite episode in which Kelly and Mariame Kaba talk about lessons from their book Let This Radicalize You. "I have experienced countless losses, but there have also been some magnificent wins, so I know that these are possible," says Kaba. Music: Son Monarcas & David Celeste You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/audio/let-this-conversation-with-mariame-kaba-radicalize-you/ If you would l...
Kelly is still on medical leave, so we are revisiting their conversation with Dorothy Roberts about the fall of Roe and the carceral nature of the family policing system. “This strategy of making fetal protection more important than the lives and freedom of women and other pregnant people began with the prosecutions of Black women, who were pregnant and using drugs,” said Roberts, author of Torn Apart and Killing The Black Body. Music: Son Monarcas and Pulsed You can find a transcript and show n...
While Kelly is on medical leave, we hope you enjoy this fan favorite from the archives. In this episode, Kelly talked with Sarah Jaffe about surveillance, criminalization, and lessons from Jaffe's book, "Work Won't Love You Back." Music: Son Monarcas You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/audio/work-isnt-fulfilling-because-capitalism-is-a-death-march/ If you would like to support the show, you can donate here: bit.ly/TODonate If you would like ...
“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 “Movement Memos,” Nadasen and host Kelly Hayes discuss the role of care work in the U.S. economy, the exp...
“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 notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the sh...
“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, about the interaction of Big Tech and policing in Chicago. Music: Son Monarcas & David Celeste You...
“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, it wasn't doing what it said, and may also have had real harms on those communities,” says Andrew ...
“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 U.S. movements against police and prisons, the history of Palestinian and Arab organizing in the U....
