On Tuesday, April 1st, Wisconsin voters will be participating in a special election to fill a vacant state Supreme Court seat. Satellite groups and PACs funded and controlled by Elon Musk have invested over $17 million in the election in favor of Trump lackey, Brad Schimel. To learn more about the race and how organizers are pushing back we are joined by State Director of Wisconsin Working Families Party, Corinne Rosen, and Director of Vera Action, Insha Rahman.

This week we are featuring a special presentation of a panel hosted by our friends at Essie Justice Group on February 27th in Oakland, California. This intimate conversation led by Michelle Alexander, Maurice Mitchell and Gina Clayton-Johnson talk criminalization, climate change, and organizing Black and brown working class communities in this political moment. Against the backdrop of the LA wildfires which have impacted Essie Justice Group’s members and Gina personally, and the mounting threats to democracy, this important discussion among strategic leaders delivers deep insights into today's most urgent fights.

Panelists

This week on the show Cayden is joined first by Executive Director of Detention Watch Network (@detentionwatch), Silky Shah, to help us understand the danger and implications of ICE’s illegal detention of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil earlier this week. Then author Vanessa Priya Daniel (@vanessapriyadaniel) joins to discuss her new book Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning.

NCRP Research on Funding for Anti-Democracy Organizations

This week on the show Cayden is joined by President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Carmen Rojas, as part of our ongoing conversation about what the role of philanthropic foundations and donors can or should be in efforts to bolster movement organizing. We recorded the interview earlier this week and had a great discussion about how Marguerite Casey is working to be in right relationship with people’s movements under current conditions.

The Washington Post piece referenced in this week's headlines: "Inside the White House’s new media strategy to promote Trump as ‘KING’"

Check out AOC's response to Trump's congressional address, which pitches some strategies we've been championing on this show and in our publishing for quite some time.

Marisa Franco, Executive Director of Mijente, joins Cayden to discuss the Trump administration's purposefully cruel deportation efforts and how Mijente is working to respond to these conditions while building power in immigrant communities.

Also in this show, journalist and friend of the pod Sarah Lazare chats about her new piece in the Nation, How Healthcare Workers Are Defending Their Transgender Patients from Trump’s Attacks. The article covers American healthcare workers defending their transgender patients from Trump’s executive order attacks.

This week on the show we explore how folks in rural communities are fighting back against the MAGA agenda. Cayden is joined by Appalachia Peoples Union Director for Standing Up for Racial Justice, Beth Howard, and organizer with West Virginia Can’t Wait, Stephen Smith. They recently published a piece with us entitled From Rural America With Love: An Invitation to Bravery. We’ll spend today’s episode going deeper into the work Beth and Stephen laid out in that article.

Info on federal worker organizing: federalunionists.net

Cayden is out this week so we're featuring an episode of The Fascism Barometer, the new podcast from friend of the show Ejeris Dixon. We hope you find it useful. If so, check out the links below to subscribe and connect with The Fascism Barometer resource hub on their website.

The Fascism Barometer, Episode 5: Keeping Ourselves Safe as Fascism Rises

Che Johnson-Long and Ken Montenegro, two longtime community security and safety practitioners, join The Fascism Barometer to discuss ways to increase our safety in the face of rising fascism.  Ejeris, Che, and Ken discuss safety planning tips for individuals and organizations, including resistance and survival strategies that can be combined to make us safer in the short and long term.

The Process is the Punishment, a new podcast from Mainline, documents the struggle of the ATL 61 through interviews with five defendants, and attorneys connected to the case. The ATL 61 were indicted under the state of Georgia’s RICO Act in August 2023, for their protest against the controversial police training facility known as “Cop City.”

In this episode we offer a preview of The Process is the Punishment, and Cayden talks with Mainline founder Aja Arnold and podcast producer Tåsi Chargualaf about the project, and about the movement to stop Cop City.

Episode one is available to stream now on Mainline's Patreon and Substack for their paid subscribers.

Contribute your thoughts to Mainline's Movement Media Training Survey

This week on the show, we are joined by Executive Director of Media Justice, Steven Renderos, to discuss the latest nefarious activities of the FCC. Then the Executive Director of Women’s March, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, joins to discuss what the impact of mass demonstrations can be for organizing in this moment; following on the heels of their recent People's March in Washington D.C. earlier this month.

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On the show this week, Cayden talks first about Convergence Magazine's recent publishing collaboration with In These Times, The Forge, and The Real News Network. Together, we published a collection of writing and podcast episodes entitled Left Out: The Missing Election Narratives – available in the latest print edition of In These Times and in full and online.

Then we're joined by Vice President for Institutional and Sectoral Change at Race Forward, Cathy Albisa, as well as federal workers Lauren Leib, President of NTEU Chapter 340 and Chris Dols, President of IFPTE Local 98, to talk about their efforts to protect vital state services - and our democracy - in this coming period.

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