Avsnitt
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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 based filmmaker who now works as a video producer for the United Auto Workers union.
Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, and n+1, among other places.
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Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
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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 [email protected]!
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Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
Saknas det avsnitt?
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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 specifically about how Americans can help end the occupation.
For more from the IMEU: https://imeu.org/
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Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 everyday life, and shares the ways she practices Palestinian resistance by fighting for and celebrating moments of joy in the midst of ongoing oppression.
Diana Buttu is a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a lawyer specializing in negotiations, international law and international human rights law. Diana is a prominent commentator on Palestine, with op-eds published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
Keep an eye out for Part 2 next time on Bloc Party, where Amira & Alex will sit with Waleed to tell more stories of their trip.
For more from the IMEU: https://imeu.org/
Diana’s Podcast, ‘This is Palestine’: https://pod.link/1509337661
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Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 behind the most sweeping climate change legislation in U.S. history. The film features our own fearless leader Alexandra Rojas alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, activist Varshini Prakash, and climate policy writer Rhiana Gunn-Wright.
To the End begins streaming on Hulu on May 8th. You can go to this link to host a screening in your local community now.
To find out more about the film: https://www.totheendfilm.com/
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 and activist. She diligently tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world, and both her substack and risk analysis maps have been incredible resources to us in the work we’ve done for this episode.
Erin’s substack: https://erininthemorn.substack.com/
Erin’s twitter: https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 media.
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 Eleni joins to remind us how these cases got to the Supreme Court in the first place. Listen in to cringe at Roberts’ lawnmower commentary and stay to reflect on the way Biden is (or more notably…is not) exercising his executive authority.
5-4 is a show about how much the Supreme Court sucks. Michael is one of three lawyers who host the show and together they dissect a new case every week. Follow them here.
Eleni Schirmer is a journalist, author, activist, and member of the Debt Collective. You can read her latest New Yorker article (featuring our very own Jeremy Flood!!) here.
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 & joins Amira to discuss her article “The Right Has It In for Woke Investors. The Only Problem? They Don’t Exist”.
For more from Kate, check out her most recent book, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back.
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team. -
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 of this episode you’ll hear from a star Movement School grad, Adrastos Da Silva - who takes some time with us to expand on their journey from going through our Campaign Fellows Program to getting Cori Bush re-elected as her Campaign Manager.
This year’s Campaign Fellows Program is OPEN for applications now though March 6th, 2023.
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team: https://movementschool.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=cd57dc36ce4e72af6cc433903&id=ed14106525 -
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 like it’s still really gonna hurt?”
So she called in a big shot to help us understand how the Fed wants us to think about the economy (aka Larry Summers is wrong) and what an alternative, more useful outlook for workers in the US looks like. Lindsay Owens, Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative joins Becca to help reframe, simplify, and give us some hope for 2023. We can have it all, folks.
Check out more about the Groundwork Collaborative here. Other resources Lindsay mentioned to us: https://seekingalpha.com/https://endcorporateprofiteering.org/
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series!
Questions? Answers? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
Subscribe to the Bloc Media newsletter for bi-weekly updates from the team -
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 before electing Kevin McCarthy their Speaker. Is there something for the left to learn in this tactic?
Amira also chats with two members of our video team, Emma Dessau & Jeremy Flood, to get the spicy behind-the-scenes gossip from their day of filming with Summer Lee on January 3rd in the halls of Congress. Check out their video Bloc Doc, “Summer Lee Goes to Washington”.
Follow us in your feeds for new episodes every other Thursday, and keep tabs on our Youtube page for our video team’s Bloc Doc series. -
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 more governing power than we anticipated having, how can Democrats wield this advantage moving forward? -
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: are these messages working? -
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 also get an exciting update on her loans.
Then, we invite the Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor back on the pod to celebrate the Biden administration’s cancellation of $10-$20k of student debt, and update us on the Collective’s next moves. How did organizers push the establishment towards this cancellation? And what does this mean for the future of debt cancellation in this country?
Links:
“The Aging Student Debtors of America”
(https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/the-aging-student-debtors-of-america/amp)
Previous Bloc Party x Debt Collective Episode from 2021
[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-em-pay-put-em-in-debt-theyll-quiet-down/id1540532726?i=1000513846787]
Our Bloc Doc with Astra Taylor
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvs3-CpxVo0]
Producers: Jeremy Flood, Sophie Capp, Emma Dessau
Editor: Sophie Capp
Mixing/Mastering: Rocky Russo -
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 guard deserves to stay in power.
On election day, Kina Collins lost by a 7-point margin.
And that pretty much sums up the Justice Democrats 2022 primary cycle. Almost every race came down to the wire. At the end of every nailbiter showdown, corporate money and establishment Democratic leadership pulled out all the stops (and all the money) to keep young, progressive Democrats from representing their own communities in Congress… while President Biden’s agenda was gutted in public by the anti-majoritarian Supreme Court and U.S Senate.
In this episode, Amira talks with Campaigns Director Geoff “Coach” Simpson, Candidate Communications Manager Usamah Andrabi, and Rebel Alliance Director Alexandra Rojas about what the political left has learned – or needs to learn, at the tail end of another Justice Democrats primary cycle. What’s changed since summer 2020, when Jamaal Bowman beat Engel by double digits despite the late establishment rush to save the incumbent? And Cori Bush won her rematch primary by a slim but decisive margin? Are we losing ground? Getting outspent, or just out maneuvered? Hard to know with certainty, but the Empire is Striking Back and it’s time for some Rebels to retrieve the Death Star plans.. -
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 Congress? What is it like to grind out a victory after your opponents drop $3.3 million dollars to defeat you, ALL within the last three weeks before Election Day, and all aimed at defeating your campaign?
Summer breaks it down: the early victories before she ever thought of becoming a candidate, the MVPs of well-meaning white guy political operatives, what it was like to campaign through negative ads blanketing local TV and radio, and more.
Amira roasting Steve Irwin in March: https://twitter.com/itsAmira_H/status/1507449513488777216 -
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 increasing sums of outside money spent against Justice Democrats in these competitive primaries?
To get the inside scoop on the tactics and strategies that mattered, Guido sat down with Justice Democrats campaign director and former pro basketball player Geoff Simpson for another episode of Campaign Breakdown with Coach Geoff.
For more on the May 17th primaries and the factional scoreboard, see the Washington Post story “In Tuesday’s primaries, Democrats’ left and center wings both got wins” by Perry Bacon Jr. -
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 progressive bloc strategy played out? In what moments could Biden, Schumer, or Pelosi have approached their own legislative strategy differently?
Then we take bets on whether anything at all will pass through budget reconciliation before the 2022 midterm elections. -
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 press coverage of Democratic party politics and contested primaries every day of the year: Usamah Andrabi. - Visa fler
