Today's episode features an interview by Steven Pitts, the former host and creator of our longest running podcast, Black Work Talk. He sat down with Professor of Sociology and Labor at University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Cedric de Leon, to discuss Cedric’s forthcoming book contracted with University of California Press, Freedom Train.

In the book, Cedric centers the monumental contributions of Black workers to desegregating the labor movement and connecting the struggles of organized labor to those of civil society before and during the civil rights era. It excavates the era’s intra-movement conflicts as well as the way that labor leaders and rank and file workers were critical not just in organizing their workplaces but in galvanizing the government to act on crucial pieces of policy, from desegregating the defense industry under the auspices of the New Deal to creating pressure for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s.

You can find an excerpt of the interview already available in print on Convergence's website.

Find more about Cedric's work here.

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This week on the show, Cayden is joined by organizer and former Executive Director of Lavender Phoenix, Sammie Ablaza Wills, discussing outcomes from the past month's student protests. They explore some of the agreements of universities that have agreed to work and negotiate with students. The episode also dives into Sammie's recent article published by Convergence, Right Size Belonging: Six Practices for Organizers; considering how it applies to this new wave of campus organizing. Aside from a glimpse of what right sized belonging in organizations can look like, this episode also engages the importance of finding the right balance of comradely, interpersonal trust, while still maintaining vigilance for outside threats and maintaining proper security for our organizations and movements.

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This week’s show is our first Movement Media Round Table. We intend on this show to occasionally connect listeners with our fellow travelers in the independent, progressive media space to share some of the top stories from their outlets you should be following. For this round table, Cayden is joined by Editor-at-Large of Truthout.org, Maya Schenwar and Editor-in-Chief of PRISM, Lara Witt.

Each of our guests share some of the top stories of the week from their respective publications. We encourage listeners to read the full stories at their sites here:

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This week on the show, hosts of the podcast Mystery A.I. Hype Theater 3000, Emily M. Bender (Professor of Linguistics at University of Washington) and Alex Hanna (Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute), join Cayden to help make sense of the inescapable hype of all things “Artificial Intelligence.” What’s being oversold? What are the actual threats? And what exactly are we talking about when we say A.I.? Hype or not, the advancement of technology in the workplace has strong implications for workers which some unions and communities are already organizing to protect themselves against.

Also on the show, Cayden and his guests will look at the ongoing campus protests for divestment from Israel and ceasefire in Gaza.

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On the show this week, 45-year labor movement veteran Bob Master joins us to discuss the intersections of the ongoing protests for ceasefire in Gaza and a politicized labor movement. He and Cayden will take a deeper dive into his new piece, Militancy–and Beyond, co-published by Convergence and Jacobin. In the full article, Bob lays out the need for political strategy and education in the labor movement so it can build working-class governing  power from the recent wave of militant strikes.

This episode also features the second part of Highlander Research and Education Center’s Ash-Lee Henderson’s conversation with Convergence print contributorStephanie Luce and Chicago Teachers Union Vice Presiden Jackson Potter about how we fight the looming threat signaled by  Project 2025, and the MAGA presidency that would usher in its dangerous promises. The full video is available on our website now.

This week on the show we have a feature from Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, Ash-Lee Henderson on the threat of another MAGA administration to the burgeoning labor movement.

Also, Arizona is the latest state to lean into a total abortion ban in this post Dobbs world. What does that mean for us as organizers and voters?

Joining to discuss this and more is National Director of Organizing and Tech Innovation for Working Families Party, Jennifer Knox.

Find out the legal and electoral status of abortion in your state via the Rewire News guide here.

Text "WFP" to 30403 for info on how to get involved in campaigns supported by Working Families Party.

Welcome to Block & Build, a new weekly editorial podcast from Convergence Magazine. Each week, Convergence publisher Cayden Mak will take listeners on an exploration of what’s happening in politics and what we can do about it – not simply as individuals acting alone, but as people coming together into a larger movement. The show examines a political strategy we call “Block & Build” as a point of view that impacts the way we approach both politics and everyday life.

In this first episode, Cayden is joined by Rising Majority National Director Loan Tran to explore the complexities of simultaneously "blocking" the fascist MAGA movement while "building" the multiracial democracy we deserve, all within a deeply entrenched culture of over 40 years of neoliberal economic and cultural hegemony.

Connect to learn more about Rising Majority

Instagram: rising_majority 

You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Every week, Block & Build takes on the current balance of political forces in the United States from a movement perspective. Host Cayden Mak, publisher of Convergence Magazine, guides listeners in an exploration of what’s happening in politics and what we can do about it – not simply as individuals acting alone, but as people coming together into a larger movement. The show examines the political strategy we call “Block & Build” as a point of view that impacts the way we approach both politics and everyday life.

This is the flagship podcast of the progressive trend in the broad anti-fascist front. Listeners are invited to join Cayden in discovering the routes we can take to not just defeat the authoritarian far Right, but build the influence of progressive and Left political ideas that are overwhelmingly popular, so we can come out of this year’s battles stronger, instead of depleted.

Many commentators struggle to zoom out, missing the forest for the trees and leading to more conversations that merely circle the drain of status quo horse-race politics. Instead, Block & Build aims to identify the places we do have power and opportunities to shape the landscape for progress.

The show features a rotating cast of some of the best minds in organizing today as they discuss what it means to evolve strategy and thinking to advance the governing power of the Left.