The Joe Rogan Experience. Modern Family. The Daily Show. Needless to say, the audiences of these types of content are usually on different political wavelengths. A new project from The Radical Communicators Network (or RadComms) and Rising Majority says that in order to build a stronger force willing to fight back against authoritarianism, we need to understand how different kinds of stories and content affect how people perceive issues and digest meaning. Starting there, we can then be strategic about how we build narratives about organizing and activism tailored to specific audiences to better form a movement base; issue by issue.

The report distinguishes four different kinds of groups of audiences, from the Fox News crowd, to the types of people eager to watch the latest episode of HBOs “The Pitt.” Analyzing these differences in audience taste and values can help organizers build narrative strategies that bridge divides with the power of storytelling. The full, easily digestible report is linked in the show notes and we strongly suggest those who are interested in any form of movement comms work check it out.

Today's guests are two of the authors behind the report, called Rising Narratives for Radical Futures: Talking Across Difference for a Multi-Racial Democracy. Shanelle Matthews is the founder of Radical Communicators Network, which organizes movement communications workers across the US and internationally. And Yewande Addie is a communications scholar and narrative strategist with the BLIS Collective.

When people outside the state think of Florida politics, they often think of the de-facto MAGA headquarters that is Mar-a-Lago or the reactionary policies of Ron DeSantis – things like book bans, LGBTQ discrimination, climate change denial, and more. In other words? A lost cause for any sort of progressive movement. But in reality, Floridians have long been part of a powerful and unique fascism-fighting force that has united communities across difference to fight for labor rights, racial justice, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and more, standing up powerful organizations and supporting champions from local government to Washington DC.

Following up on our recent Insights From Florida series–available now–Cayden talks to three Floridians who are part of this continuing fight and contributors to that series.

In this conversation they had the opportunity to go deeper on some of the work proposed in those articles and build towards what’s next for movement work in Florida and beyond.

On the panel is Florida State House representative and current US Senate candidate, Angie Nixon; non-profit and climate justice leader, Andrea Cristina Mercado; and veteran labor organizer Eric Brakken. They discuss how the progressive movement in Florida has been fighting back, and what they think can get the state, and other states that get written off in the national political calculus, out of the grips of MAGA.

On June 11th, staff members of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative watched as over one hundred FBI agents entered and raided their offices, questioning workers, and seizing computer files and documents. Agents also reportedly fanned out to homes of volunteers, board members, and staff–fishing for information and electronic devices. The agents were said to have been investigating voter fraud allegations, but a month later, the FBI has released no official statement on or probable cause for these actions.

The FBI raids follow similar attacks from the Trump administration, including seizing ballots and records in Fulton County in Georgia, Maricopa County in Arizona, and Wayne County in Michigan. All three of these are in crucial presidential battleground states.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative works to boost voter rights and participation by helping Ohioans register to vote and defending minority groups in court against redistricting efforts as well as other assaults on voter freedoms. 

Joining this episode to discuss is former staff member of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and current Senior Communications Director at Innovation Ohio, Caitlin Johnson to talk about what exactly happened, how communities in Ohio are responding, and what other groups can do to protect themselves against other attacks.

Visit handsoffohio.org for more info on how you can support OOC and other impacted organizers.

This week we are building July's Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume.

Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time is comedian and host of The Bitchuation Room, Francesca Fiorentini.

We are also joined this week by Convergence's Senior Multimedia Producer, Josh Elstro.

You can also read the article version on the Convergence website, or watch the panel plot these stories in real time on YouTube.

This episode’s guests found themselves in a position many long-time political organizers and activists were in back in 2016 following the first election of Donald Trump–family, friends, comrades and more all coming to them and asking “what do we do?”

This familiar experience was the catalyst which resulted ten years later in the publication of their book Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want. Co-authors Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams took on the task of putting their multiple decades of experience in movement organizing–dating back to the WTO protests of the late 90s–to work for others looking to organize and take on the contradictions of capitalism which must be resolved to make true, multiracial democracy. 

The end result is a book full of resources for movement organizers and allies to work through the authors’ theory of progress, referred throughout the book as the “spiral of change.” Remaking Democracy flows in and out of personal stories, practical resources, and accessible theory informed by the authors’ experience as organizers, artists, and teachers. It is available now from Common Notions Press.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Convergence’s Bookshop. Ten percent of purchases made through our bookshop directly support our movement media work.

This week on the show, we’re sharing the recording of the plenary panel Cayden presented on at MediaJustice and Mijente’s Take Back Tech III. Moderated by Tech Policy Press’s Justin Hendrix, Cayden is joined by Associate Professor of Black Digital Media at Georgia Tech, Andre Brock, and independent tech journalist Ariella Steinhorn, who has worked with whistleblowers across the tech industry. The panel discusses the intersection of Big Tech and narrative power. They look at the ways that Big Tech has sold us a vision of the future, and the ways that our communities are in the midst of creating an alternative future, one act of resistance at a time.

This week we are building June's Attention Economy Navigator, our guide to what you should be paying more attention to, and what you can probably pay less attention to. And why those stories might not be what you’d assume.

Joining to help build this month's Attention Economy Navigator in real time is cofounder, CEO, and writer at techpolicy.press, Justin Hendrix.

We are also joined this week by Convergence's Senior Multimedia Producer, Josh Elstro.

You can also read the article version on the Convergence website, or watch the panel plot these stories in real time on YouTube.

While we hear plenty of gloomy predictions about how the adoption of AI technologies will take away millions of jobs in the future, it’s already gutting labor rights and alienating workers right now.

Alexandra Mateescu and Aiha Nguyen are two of the researchers behind a new report on this matter, “Last Place in the AI-First Economy: How the AI Industry Relies on Worker Disempowerment.” The report shows that workers are facing an increasingly hostile environment as AI not only risks taking away jobs directly, but also corresponds with an erosion in worker’s rights and protections.

Alexandra Mateescu is a researcher at the Labor Futures initiative at the Data and Society Research Institute, publishing work that focuses on issues like digital worker surveillance, algorithmic inequality, and harmful practices from the tech industry. 

Aiha Nguyen is Alexandra’s colleague at the Labor Futures initiative and director of the program, piloting research on the relationship between technology and labor.

This episode is brought to you by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a Convergence Headwaters member. Their podcast, Direct Democracy Diaries, is available now wherever you get podcasts.

It was a chilly day in Minneapolis in 2013 when Yotam Marom was first told he was “invisible.” He was told this by a team member and close colleague, while working with a tenant organizing group which had emerged from the recent Occupy Movement. His role that week was to facilitate and train leaders in the organization. While Yotam was doing his job well enough – participating and planning activities – they felt he was holding back, shying away from the bold opinions and critical feedback he was known for…and the rest of the team knew it.

In this episode we are joined by author Yotam Marom to discuss the book. At the core of For Louder Days is an argument about what Yotam calls “the politics of powerlessness.” The book is a call to action for movement organizers, but also as a personal memoir, reflecting on decades of activism and movement work.

Catch Yotam live on tour for the book!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Convergence’s Bookshop. Ten percent of purchases made through our bookshop directly support our movement media work.

We are joined by New York City tenant organizer and communications expert, Ritti Singh, who recently published an article with Convergence, covering a strategy – which has been implemented in NYC tenant organizing – she calls “surround sound” communications.

Then, in early 2025, a group of tenant organizers in New York City began a campaign to Freeze the Rent. The language and values of this campaign were adopted by then mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Now as acting mayor for five months, Mamdani has yet to fully implement a rent freeze or meet other housing goals laid out by his coalition on the campaign trail. 

But the roots of progress are beginning to show. Mamdani has replaced six out of nine seats on the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which determines city policy on rent control and more. Housing affordability was a major part of Mamdani’s platform and the project of co-governing with his coalitions to deliver on those goals is now under way.

We host a panel of tenant organizers who have been a part of this work throughout the whole process and beyond.

In today’s episode we’ll explore how “freeze the rent” was part of the narrative infrastructure for Mamdani’s win, and how it has become a center of gravity for developing the practice of movement-driven co-governance in New York.