“I think we can reframe and re-understand the immigrant rights movement, not just as one of many movements, but something that is fundamentally connected to how we remake the world,” says Harsha Walia. In this episode, Kelly and Border & Rule author Harsha Walia talk about the plight of Black students fleeing Ukraine, borders, the climate crisis, and taking action in these times. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the...
Mar 10, 2022•38 min•Season 4Ep. 8
While officials spin false narratives blaming violent crime on bail reform, and police insist too many people are getting out of jail, conditions in U.S. jails and prisons remain nightmarish. In this episode, Kelly Hayes talks with organizer Brooke Terpstra about a hunger strike at the Santa Rita Jail in California, and about some of the complexities and political dynamics of organizing in jails and prisons. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website: bit.ly/movementmemos If you ...
Mar 03, 2022•35 min•Season 4Ep. 7
“What we cannot do is rally our compassion on the basis of whether or not we think the U.S. war machine can drop some bombs and make it better. Making things better is not what the war machine is for,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode, Kelly talks with organizer Yaira Matos from the youth anti-war group We Are Dissenters about militarism, international solidarity, and why the U.S. war machine cannot be made good. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website: bit.ly/movementmemos I...
Feb 25, 2022•52 min•Season 4Ep. 6
“What we have is a situation where our opponents are fixated on us and our allies are leaving us behind,” says trans attorney and activist Chase Strangio. Republicans have made attacks on trans youth a signature policy item at the state level. In this episode, Kelly and Chase talk about the avalanche of transphobic legislation Republicans have generated, the role of fascist politics in this onslaught and why trans students are not getting the support they need. If you need a transcript, you can ...
Feb 17, 2022•47 min•Season 4Ep. 5
“This will be an era defined by who is deemed worthy of survival, and who isn’t, who gives a damn, and who doesn’t, and how we keep each other alive during and in between catastrophes,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode, Kelly talks with Shane Burley, the author of Why We Fight and Fascism Today, about right-wing power, the apocalypse, and organizing a counterculture of care. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would like to support the show, y...
Feb 10, 2022•45 min•Season 4Ep. 4
“When you have a power that is designed to be unaccountable and has been unaccountable for so damn long, the reforms that stick to it just make it stronger and more efficient as they cover it in a veneer of legitimacy." In this episode, Kelly talks with abolitionist criminology professor and activist Brendan McQuade about how securitization has shaped popular ideas about what it means to be free, and how we can build something better. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website: b...
Feb 03, 2022•32 min•Season 4Ep. 3
From the Amazon to Hubbard County, Minnesota, corporations are funding the repression of protesters. In this episode, Kelly talks with Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing , about the history and future of corporate collaborations with the police. Kelly also talks with attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard about newly exposed documents that reveal the lead prosecutor in Hubbard County sought corporate funding for the prosecution of Line 3 protesters. If you need a transcript, you can find that ...
Jan 27, 2022•31 min•Season 4Ep. 2
“Capitalism is the unfolding catastrophe,” says activist Bree Newsome Bass. “It's this thing that has grabbed us all in its arms and it is just plummeting down.” In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly talks with activist and artist Bree about long COVID, voting rights and getting organized in these times. If you need a transcript, you can find that on our website . If you would like to support the show, you can donate here . If you would like to receive Truthout's newsletter, please sign up !...
Jan 20, 2022•42 min•Season 4Ep. 1
“At the close of 2021, the right is poised to treat the pandemic as a political portal, and the left is not. That’s a disturbing reality, but it is not a fixed condition." In this year-end episode of Movement Memos, Kelly reflects on what we’re up against and what we need to build in the new year. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website .
Dec 16, 2021•18 min•Season 3Ep. 22
“The women who were already long-timers when I was just coming in, they were the light in my tunnel. We were all in the tunnel together just making light,” says formerly incarcerated organizer Monica Cosby. In this episode of Movement Memos, Cosby and Kelly Hayes talk about the emotional support networks imprisoned people create to survive institutions that punish symptoms of emotional distress, and what we can learn from those efforts. Alan Mills from the Uptown People’s Law Center also offers ...
Dec 09, 2021•36 min•Season 3Ep. 21
“ShotSpotter manufactures the urgency of an active threat, offering situations where there is likely no risk, but where police can operate within a narrative of extreme risk.” In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly talks with Chicago organizers who are attempting to rid their city of an acoustic surveillance system that is both ineffective and dangerous. Kelly also digs into the question of why police might want a multi-million dollar gunshot detector that doesn't work. You can find a transcri...
Dec 02, 2021•37 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Right-wing myths about stolen elections and vaccine conspiracies will no doubt complicate many dinners today, as families gather to celebrate a holiday grounded in its own harmful mythology: Thanksgiving. Among liberals and leftists, there will be countless posts debunking the lies children are taught about the holiday in school. But on this day it is equally important to amplify the stories of Native people living today who, much like their ancestors, are battling world-crushing forces. In the ...
Nov 25, 2021•41 min•Season 3Ep. 19
“Apocalypse normal means we can go back to school, get on planes, and hit up restaurants and bars -- as long as we don’t think too hard about disabled people, unvaccinated children or long COVID. It means experiencing escalating heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and wildfires, and scrolling past news about ‘code red’ climate reports, and the refugees that climate catastrophes create, without retaliating or rebelling against political leaders who have once again refused to chart a different course...
Nov 18, 2021•18 min•Season 3Ep. 18
The Indian Child Welfare Act has been challenged more times in the past decade than the Affordable Care Act. In this episode of Movement Memos, Native journalists Kelly Hayes and Rebecca Nagle talk about the right-wing plot to bring down a child welfare law and why the fundamental rights of Native people, the fate of tribal lands, and “the very shape of what passes for democracy” in the U.S. are at stake. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website ....
Nov 11, 2021•54 min•Season 3Ep. 17
In place of our usual content, this week, we are revisiting A COVID Memorial Mixtape. The mixtape, which was released in October of 2020 by Ric Wilson, in collaboration with a number of grassroots organizers, was created as part of a month-long effort to memorialize people lost to COVID-19. It was also played through a loudspeaker outside the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in downtown Chicago. When the tape was created, we had lost over 200,000 people to COVID-19 in the United States. Now, w...
Nov 04, 2021•22 min•Season 3Ep. 16
“We can't survive doing the work that we're asked to do, the way that we're being asked to do it, with the lack of support we're being asked to do it with,” says healthcare worker Nicole Brun-Cottan. Tens of thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers in the Kaiser Permanente health care system are poised to go on strike. In this Striketober episode, Kelly talks with three nurses who are ready to go on strike about what’s at stake in their struggle, and how the pandemic has affected frontli...
Oct 28, 2021•32 min•Season 3Ep. 15
“This crisis embodies the violence of a murderous system that is re-legitimized through reforms, any time its true character becomes too visible, like a shapeshifting monster in a horror film. It never stops consuming life,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes digs into the crisis on Rikers Island, why people are dying, and why this isn’t a story about understaffing, but rather, a story about a system that cannot be redeemed. You can find a transcript, audio and show...
Oct 21, 2021•51 min•Season 3Ep. 14
“In the coming years, we are going to have to practice our skills and our politics in ways that we probably can’t fully imagine right now, because we live in unprecedented times.” In this episode, Kelly and organizer Carlos Saavedra talk about burnout, building power and how our pandemic exhaustion could give way to an era of breakthroughs. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website .
Oct 14, 2021•39 min•Season 3Ep. 13
“Texas is playing by its own rules on immigration and deputizing police from as far away as Iowa to participate in Abbott’s state-level war on migrants. The implications here are just horrifying,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly examines recent events in Del Rio, Texas, where Black asylum-seekers were brutalized and faced mass deportations, and also highlights Operation Lone Star, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s unconstitutional, state-level war on migrants. Kelly also ta...
Oct 06, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 12
We have witnessed the evolution of a social and moral binary in the United States: vaccinated and unvaccinated. Immersed in a culture of blame and condemnation, around the spread of COVID-19, we have also seen the rise of a brand of humor that Kelly characterizes as “recreational dehumanization.” So how should we be talking about vaccination and mass death, and how can we be constructive? In this episode, Kelly talks with activist Johnny Dangers, about overcoming vaccine hesitancy, and Shana McD...
Sep 29, 2021•42 min•Season 3Ep. 11
“ Fascist ideologies really rely on systems of bordering and ordering, of deciding who has the right to life and under what conditions,” says Harsha Walia. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes examines the state of right-wing power in the United States, and engages with commentary from authors Shane Burley and Sarah Kendzior, writer and organizer Harsha Walia, and President of the Texas Civil Rights Project, Mimi Marziani. For a transcript, audio and show notes, please check out our we...
Sep 22, 2021•40 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Ten years after Occupy Wall Street embodied the hopes and outrage of people across the country, Kelly and labor journalist Sarah Jaffe talk about what we can learn from a movement that launched a new and unruly era of protest. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website .
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 9
“We're talking about a heavily armed populace that's radicalizing itself [and] self traumatizing through its own mythology.” In this episode, Kelly talks with author Shane Burley about the state of fascism in the Biden era, mutual aid, and building movements during apocalyptic times. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check out our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
Jun 02, 2021•56 min•Season 3Ep. 8
“People end up in prison for a reason, but it's not the reason that we're fed by all of these cop shows." In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes talks with journalist Victoria Law about prisons, why they don’t work, and what even well-meaning people tend to get wrong about incarceration. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
May 26, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 7
"The goal of a supremacist state is to have a monopoly on the legitimacy of violence," says Palestinian writer and organizer Lea Kayali. In this episode, Kelly and Lea Kayali explore the history of Israeli violence against Palestinians – and the colonial dynamics that enable it – and discuss what you can do about it. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
May 19, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Republicans are waging a nationwide attack on voting rights and the right to protest. Kelly compares these efforts with the laws and conventions that ushered in the Jim Crow era, and talks with voting rights organizer Toni Watkins about how targeted communities are fighting back. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check out our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
May 05, 2021•32 min•Season 3Ep. 5
After a year of upheaval and pandemic, and the unlikely conviction of a police officer, Minneapolis organizers Jonathan Stegall and D.A. Bullock talk with Kelly about what they have built and learned in the last year, what Derek Chauvin’s conviction does not accomplish, and what they hope people will do now as the struggle against policing continues. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check out our website: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
Apr 28, 2021•54 min•Season 3Ep. 4
“There are so many ways the system robs people of life, and police are out there daily, enacting that theft.” Kelly talks about the Chauvin verdict and the murder of Adam Toledo, and discusses the history and current state of policing with Alex Vitale, author of the book, The End of Policing . You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/
Apr 21, 2021•57 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Our pre-pandemic "normal" was a deathtrap. So what should we be building instead? And how should we talk about it? In this episode, Kelly talks with artist and organizer Jayeesha Dutta about letting normalcy die and creating something new. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website .
Apr 14, 2021•43 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Capitalism is a death march, but it’s one we’re told we should find fulfilling. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly talks with author Sarah Jaffe about the manipulation, surveillance and criminalization of workers under capitalism, and what we can do about it. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website .
Apr 07, 2021•50 min•Season 3Ep. 1
