Tabletop games like Magic the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and many more have long been a natural community building space for those of us who have felt culturally marginalized. But as fandom has expanded, so has the ability of neoliberal capital to commodify and profit from just about any niche “nerd” interest you can think of. A massive tabletop industry has grown which requires a growing customer-facing workforce.

In the past decade both Magic and D&D have come under ownership, and begun generating massive profits for, the multi-billion dollar toy and entertainment publisher Hasbro. A cottage industry of tabletop game stores to support these games, products, and their fans has also risen. But these businesses are more than just stores; they are community spaces new and dedicated gamers depend on for play space, social support, and more. This necessitates a staff skilled in customer service, deep game knowledge, and even childcare for school students attending aftercare programs.

As this business grew, workers at a collection of game stores in New York City unionized as Tabletop Workers United in 2023. Throughout their long journey to a contract last spring, they were supported by a partner organization of volunteers known as the Tabletop Solidarity Committee; a group of dedicated customers who love the stores and their workers as community resources and want to see the employees who run the spaces supported by their employers.

Our guests this week are two members of that Tabletop Solidarity Committee out of NYC, Gabor Fu and Sam LeDoux. They’ll tell the story of how their organizing supported the workers’ journey to a contract and why these game stores are such valuable community and organizing spaces.

It is deeply unsettling how quickly mainstream media headlines and narratives moved on from Trump and DHS’s so-called "Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota. The removal of Greg Bovino and the “drawdown” was a concerted attempt to force public attention to move along, in spite of the fact that there are still a disproportionate number of agents on the ground in the state. 

This operation yielded two highly visible, extrajudicial murders of peaceful American protestors by the state. No one was held accountable. Communities are still grieving the loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the kidnapping and disappearance of thousands of their neighbors by DHS. The operation brought the country perhaps the closest it has come to civil war since the last one ended. However, the administration has tried to leverage the nature of the attention economy to force us to dust off our feet and move on like it never happened.

Internally at Convergence, we think deeply about the importance of slow media, as well as preserving historic and institutional memory, as a counterweight to the hypernormalization of dizzying MAGA brand fascism. The administration pushes to normalize the violence being visited upon communities all over the country. We continue to see stories of abuse and overreach from DHS which aren’t making it “above the fold” in the mainstream press.

So we’re going back to Minnesota as the subject of this episode, because Minnesota still has lessons for us. I was joined last week by longtime Minnesota organizer and former Executive Director of Faith In Minnesota Action PAC, Doran Schrantz. We discussed what she and her neighbors experienced and continue to experience from Trump’s DHS invasion in their state, including some crucial warnings and lessons for us all.

This week we are building February'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 are Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, bruja, Bad Bunny super-fan, and Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center; and Steven Renderos, DJ, culture critic, and Executive Director of MediaJustice.

Find the full navigator chart here. You can also watch the panel plot these stories in real time on YouTube.

Stories we referenced in this episode:

At the end of 2024, Michigan’s state-level Democratic trifecta passed a massive tax incentive for data centers to the tune of $90 million in exchange for, essentially, an IOU for future “community benefits.”

Organizers saw this as representative of a two-pronged problem: desperation on the part of local and state governments to bring in revenue, and corporate control of the functions of democracy. In the time since, Michigan has fast tracked data centers, and those community benefits have been…elusive.

As pushback against data center development has ramped up as a non-partisan community issue across the country in the time since this tax break was passed, organizers in the state have begun circulating petitions for two ballot measures which address each side of the problem.

Invest in MI Kids is a ballot measure that would repair a regressive tax and require the rich to pay their fair share into the education system and Money Out of Politics would dismantle the system of lobbying which allows corporate control of their state assembly.

Joining this episode to discuss are Co-founder and Organizing Director of 482Forward and steering committee member of the Invest in MI Kids ballot initiative, Molly Sweeney, Executive Director of Voters Not Politicians and steering committee member of the Michigan Money Out of Politics ballot initiative, Christy McGillivray, and Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment at the University of Michigan, Michelle Martinez.

Art Against Empire, hosted by textile artist Ian Danger Capstick, examines the intersection of creativity and politics through conversations with artists, craftspeople, and activists who use making as a form of resistance.

The show features interviews with dozens of artists, crafters, and theorists from around the world exploring the history of makers fighting back against capital control of their craft—including Convergence’s very own Kimmie Dearest.

Quilters, blacksmiths, weavers, embroiderers - 25 artists across four countries using craft to fight systems of power. Welcome to Art Against Empire!

This series introduction launches a 16-episode journey featuring over two dozen artists, craftspeople, and theorists across four countries. You'll hear from quilters stitching memorials to police violence victims, blacksmiths forging tools as acts of reclamation, embroiderers translating climate data into thread, and weavers who are building queer community.

Ian traces why empires from Rome to Britain built their wealth on controlling cloth, and why makers have always fought back. The history runs from the 1378 Ciompi Revolt through Gandhi's spinning wheel to the AIDS Memorial Quilt that covered America's National Mall.

On Friday, the Department of Justice released millions more documents held in cases relating to Jeffrey Epstein, AKA the "Epstein Files." The files are full of allegations and outright admissions of horrific behavior by elites of the billionaire and political class. However, at this point it seems consequences are unlikely beyond a few days of media headlines about increased "scrutiny." Amidst all the speculation, gossip, and political jockeying by both sides to score points: almost all public discourse around Epstein and his relationships with powerful elites neglects the survivors at the center of those documents.

Our guests this week published a piece last month at Truthout.org, “Sex Trafficking Prosecutions Won’t Stop the Next Epstein. Here’s What Will.” It draws on their experience in abolitionist and sex worker justice movements to explore how the Left can reclaim space long ceded to the Right’s “law and order” messaging with a block-and-build strategy rooted in economic, racial, and gender justice that centers survivors while creating the social conditions to address harm and even prevent it in the first place.

Chanelle Gallant is the co-author of Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice.

Shannon Perez-Darby is co-editor of the anthology How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action.

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

Last week, Minneapolis-based poet and activist Kyle Tran Myhre hosted a virtual workshop called What Can Artists Do? What Are We Doing? in light of the massive ICE and CBP surge in his city. His expectation was that a few dozen people might attend. Instead, over 500 people joined to discuss and wrestle with the ways artists can engage and show up to help get ICE out of Minneapolis and beyond. His follow up article is now cross-published by us and Minneapolis outlet Racket. It explores how artists can use their time, energy, and resources to support local resistance to ICE operations.

In this episode, Kyle joins us to discuss that experience as well as what he is seeing on the ground in his community as ICE continues to aggressively disrupt and terrorize Minnesota communities.

This month on the 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 are friends of the pod Shaira Chaer, Senior Strategist at ReFrame, and Jess St. Louis, an organizer and narrative strategist based in North Carolina.

Just a quick content note: this discussion includes stories about murder, gun violence, an antisemitic attack against a house of worship, revenge porn, and child sexual abuse material. It's been a rough few weeks in the headlines, please take care of yourself!

Find the full navigator chart here. You can also watch the panel plot these stories in real time on YouTube.

Stories we referenced in this episode:

We swear we wanted to talk about something lighter that still provides insight, but it’s been a rough couple weeks.

Starting this week, some student loan borrowers in default may receive notice that their wages are being garnished directly from their paychecks in order to restart repayment. This is one of many Trump era changes to student loan repayment programs negatively impacting borrowers.

Of the nearly 43 million student loan borrowers in the US, only 40% of them are current on their payments. Since changes made in 2020 to protect borrowers during the early days of the Covid pandemic, confusing rules about payment plans have come and gone between the Biden and Trump administrations. Furthermore, thanks to cuts at the Department of Education, many borrowers are completely lost on how to properly restart their payments or stay on paths they thought would lead to forgiveness of their remaining balance.

Joining us to discuss these struggles and how borrowers can organize to protect themselves and others is Press Secretary and organizer for the Debt Collective, Braxton Brewington. He helps us navigate the current state of the shifting and messy student debt landscape and what rights borrowers have.

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 off until the new calendar year. In the meantime we hope you enjoy a sampling of episodes from our network of podcasts!

Episode Description from November 14, 2024: Following last week's elections, Scot and Sue are joined by Daniel Hunter, co-founder of Choose Democracy, to discuss how we respond to authoritarians emboldened by the election results. In the episode, they take a deeper look together at Daniel's recent post-election essay 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won (first published by Waging Nonviolence and then shared by Convergence). What should we be doing to defend our democratic institutions? What can we learn from other countries fighting the rise of authoritarianism in their borders? Daniel also touches on the transformative power of trusting ourselves and making space for grieving in movement work. 

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