This week, we have an episode all about the Trump administration's attack on federal workers and how people are mobilizing to fight back. We feature an interview with two prominent organizers with the Federal Unionist Network: Paul Osadebe and Chris Dols. 

Paul Osadebe is a former Civil Rights attorney from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He’s a union steward with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and an organizer with the Federal Unionist Network. Chris Dols is a former cost engineer and district value officer at the US Army Corps of Engineers. He was also the president of IFPTE Local 98 from 2021 until this year. He’s currently the executive director of the Federal Unionist Network. 

Also, we also hear an excerpt of Chenjerai’s live interview with US Representative Summer Lee from Western Pennsylvania. As she seeks reelection, she discusses why history matters in this moment of rising fascism. Listen to the full conversation on the Unruly Patreon page.   

☎️ Call our UNRULY HOTLINE: Have something you want to ask Chenjerai? Something you want us to cover on Unruly Subjects? Have a good joke? Leave us a message here:  215-436-9212

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently - support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod. Get in touch [email protected].

Buy How We Get Free at Haymarketbooks.com. Listen to Proxy created & hosted by our friend Yowei Shaw.

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

Learn more about the Federal Unionist Network 

https://www.federalunionists.net/

HUD Fires Two Whistleblowers Over Trump Admin’s Efforts to Dismantle Civil Rights Enforcement

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/30/headlines/hud_fires_two_whistleblowers_over_trump_admins_efforts_to_dismantle_civil_rights_enforcement

Virginia State Terminates 6 Professors Without Due Process 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/2026/02/25/vsu-terminates-6-professors-without-due-process

Sign the Petition to Reinstate the Fire Six at VSU

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/save-the-vsu-six/

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This week, we have an episode all about what’s happening right now in Brazil - and how we got here.  

We feature an interview with Gilberto Porcidonio, a journalist, screenwriter, and writer from Brazil. He is a reporter and fact-checker for Piauí magazine and narrator of Chumbo & Soul, an Audible podcast series produced by Rádio Novelo about the Brazilian dictatorship from the perspective of the Black population. Chenjerai and Gilberto have a wide-ranging discussion about what’s happening in Brazil right now -  from the history of Black politics and policing in Brazil, to the current situation on the ground and the corrupt paramilitary groups who control much of the country. 

Also, we also hear an excerpt of Chenjerai’s interview with Pedro Borges, a journalist and the co-founder of Alma Preta, an agency specializing in the coverage of racial issues in Brazil. Listen to the full conversation on the Unruly Patreon page. 

 ☎️ Call our UNRULY HOTLINE: Have something you want to ask Chenjerai? Something you want us to cover on Unruly Subjects? Have a good joke? Leave us a message here:  215-436-9212

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently - support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod. Get in touch [email protected].

Buy Cold War on Five Continents at Haymarketbooks.com 

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

Follow Gilberto Porcidonio on Instagram 

https://www.instagram.com/puppet_gram/

Listen to Gilberto’s podcast Chumbo & Soul

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chumbo-e-soul/id1853091993

Check out Alma Preta

https://almapreta.com.br/

Here’s How We Pressured An Airline To End Its Contract with ICE

https://truthout.org/articles/heres-how-we-pressured-an-airline-to-end-its-contract-with-ice/

Jesse Jackson Knew Better Than To Forget 

https://www.theringer.com/2026/02/18/national-affairs/jesse-jackson-obit-civil-rights-legacy-martin-luther-king-jr

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This week, we feature an interview with journalist Gillian Brockell who recently wrote a story published in Mother Jones that breaks down what’s happening onboard ICE deportation flights, the private-equity airline that’s profiting off the cruelty, and more. 

Also, Chenjerai has an update on  labor struggles happening across the country and across sectors including the health care workers in NYC, the public school teachers on strike in San Francisco, and we share an excerpt of Chenjerai’s interview with Elisabeth Fay, a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU and an elected member of Contract Faculty United-UAW's bargaining committee. They discuss the stalled contract negotiations with the university, the CFU-UAW's call for a strike authorization vote this week, and why this is an issue everyone should care about (listen to the full interview on Patreon).

Chenjerai talks with singer and musician Collette “Coco” Watson about her new album “Sanctuary”. Support her work here: https://gofund.me/bdc70e100

☎️ Call our UNRULY HOTLINE: Have something you want to ask Chenjerai? Something you want us to cover on Unruly Subjects? Have a good joke? Leave us a message here:  215-436-9212

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently - support the show on Patreon! Free and paid members get access to bonus content, discounts on merch (coming soon), & more:  https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod. Get in touch [email protected].

Buy No Neutrals There at Haymarketbooks.com 

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Crueler and Longer

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/omni-ice-deportations-charter-flight-stonepeak-private-equity/

Gillian Brockell’s Website
https://gillianbrockell.ghost.io/

Why We’re Calling a Strike Authorization Vote

https://nyucontractfacultyunion.org/2026/02/04/why-were-calling-a-strike-authorization-vote/

AAUP Statement on Oklahoma’s attack on tenure at regional universities and community colleges

https://www.aaup.org/news/elimination-tenure-oklahoma-regional-universities-and-community-colleges

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This week, Chenjerai is back on one of his favorite beats: policing in America 👮

He has a long conversation with Mac Muir, the author of Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing. Muir recently served as the Executive Director of Oakland, California’s Community Police Review Agency and before then was a Supervising Investigator at NYC’s CCRB. He shares stories from inside his work as a police investigator and discusses the changes needed to hold bad cops accountable. 

We also hear an excerpt from an interview with a nurse and negotiator on the front line of the ongoing massive Kaiser Permanente strike. You can listen to the full interview on Patreon. 

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently. Please support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod 

Get in touch [email protected].

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz. And be sure to check out A.D. Carson’s music: https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

Patients over Profits: Kaiser Permanente’s Shift in Institutional Priorities and the Dire Consequences to Health Care
https://unacuhcp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ProfitsOverPatients_2026.pdf

Cop Cop: Breaking The Fixed System of American Policing by Mac Muir and Greg Finch

https://bookshop.org/p/books/cop-cop-breaking-the-fixed-system-of-american-policing-greg-finch/80787c7f569e3db3?ean=9781638930082&next=t

And for a VERY different take on what to do about police read Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News By Alec Karakatsanis
https://bookshop.org/p/books/copaganda-how-police-and-the-media-manipulate-our-news-alec-karakatsanis/64c2d92e5fd56320?ean=9781620978535&next=t

Being Dope: AD Carson - 

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/being-dope-9780197772669

The NYPD Strategic Response Unit 

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nypd-settlement-agreement-police-violence/

The Mollen Commission Report - 

https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2017&context=nyls_law_review

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This week, we feature a conversation with veteran labor organizer and strategist Bill Fletcher Jr. all about general strikes.  What do people mean when they say general strike? What makes strike power different from other kinds of protest power? And what kind of conditions actually have to exist for this kind of action to succeed, especially in a moment when the repression is this real?

In this episode, we also hear from two workers on the ground in Minneapolis: Dr. Robert Mills III is a pediatrician and Nakia Dunbar is a school administrator. They talked about what it's been like to do their jobs while ICE is terrorizing the city, when families are scared, and when employees are scared to come in. 

And Chenjerai takes us to a Salon 50 event in NYC where he interviewed author Sequoia Patterson about her new book, talked to Dana Rachlin about the event series and learned more about the connections between childcare and public safety. 

☎️ Call our UNRULY HOTLINE question: Have you ever had a job that you would describe as a scam? Maybe it’s a role that was clearly bad for society. Or maybe work that was just alienating. Call us here if you had (or have) a job you want to tell us about:  215-436-9212

Writer and scholar Leigh Claire La Berge will join Chenjerai on an upcoming episode to discuss the hotline responses. She’s the author of Fake Work (Haymarket Books), a memoir that looks back at her stint as a management consultant in the late 90s. 

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently - support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod 

Get in touch [email protected].

Buy books at Haymarketbooks.com 

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

The Citywide General Strike has a Rich History in America

https://jacobin.com/2026/01/ice-minneapolis-general-strike-history

Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice

https://bookshop.org/p/books/solidarity-divided-the-crisis-in-organized-labor-and-a-new-path-toward-social-justice-bill-fletcher-jr/d53c76836f07a2a5?ean=9780520934740&next=t

Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amílcar Cabral

https://bookshop.org/p/books/claim-no-easy-victories-the-legacy-of-am-lcar-cabral-bill-fletcher-jr/e7c97ba41b2363da?ean=9781942173847&next=t

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This week, we feature an interview with Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis, who recently co-authored with Ari Berman the report “Your Private Data Is Building Trump’s Voter Purge Machine”. Vesoulis breaks down the Trump administration’s plans for election interference via voter suppression, the Department of Justice’s role in purging voters, and how we can try to fight back ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. 

Also, Chenjerai previews a longer interview with veteran labor organizer and strategist Bill Fletcher Jr. about the purpose and power of general strikes. They discuss this in the context of the ongoing nurses strike in New York City and the statewide walkout planned in Minnesota this Friday, January 23rd in reaction to the violent ICE escalations that are ongoing in Minneapolis. 

☎️ There’s still time to respond to our UNRULY HOTLINE question: Have you ever had a job that you would describe as a scam? Maybe it’s a role that was clearly bad for society. Or maybe work that was just alienating. Call us here if you had (or have) a job you want to tell us about:  215-436-9212

Writer and scholar Leigh Claire La Berge will join Chenjerai on an upcoming episode  to discuss the hotline responses. She’s the author of Fake Work (Haymarket Books), a memoir that looks back at her stint as a management consultant in the late 90s. 

We make Unruly Subjects 100% independently - support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod 

Get in touch [email protected].

Buy No Neutrals There at Haymarketbooks.com 

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

NYC Nurses Strike

https://www.thecity.nyc/2026/01/20/nysna-nurses-strike-mamdani-sanders/

AARP calls for accountability over DOGE sharing Social Security data 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5699159-aarp-demands-doge-accountability/

ICE out of Minnesota 

https://labornotes.org/2026/01/will-ice-ignite-mass-strike-minnesota

https://www.left-horizons.com/2026/01/17/minneapolis-trade-unions-call-general-strike-over-ice/

Register for Labor Notes Annual Conference! 

https://labornotes.org/2026

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This week, we feature an interview with George “Conscious” Lee. He’s an orator, educator, and social media influencer who uses his platform to break news and promote dynamic understandings of justice. He’s built a massive, engaged audience on Instagram and TikTok  by highlighting social and political issues that demand widespread awareness. In his interview with Chenjerai, Conscious talks about why analyzing power is the center of his work, how joining his college debate team gave him lessons that organizers, journalists and all of us need right now, how he approaches interpreting the news, and the limitations and risks of social media. 

☎️ We also introduce a new UNRULY HOTLINE question: Have you ever had a job that you would describe as a scam? Maybe it’s a role that was clearly bad for society. Or maybe work that was just alienating. Call us here if you had (or have) a job you want to tell us about:  215-436-9212

Writer and scholar Leigh Claire La Berge joins Chenjerai to set-up the hotline question. She’s the author of Fake Work (Haymarket Books), a memoir that looks back at her stint as a management consultant in the late 90s. 

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod 

Get in touch [email protected].

Buy Solidarity with Children at Haymarketbooks.com 

Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Further reading & sources from this episode

Critical Debater’s Handbook - http://www.soonerdebate.com/SoonerDebate/Critical_Debaters_Handbook%21.html

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While we're cooking up our next full episodes of Unruly Subjects, we wanted to re-share our first UNRULY HOTLINE segment that we originally published in Episode 2. In this segment, Chenjerai listens and reacts to callers that responded to the question: "How do you balance your love life with the struggle?”

If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Unruly Subjects you can always leave us a message here: 215-436-9212 

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions. 

Become a Patreon supporter here: http://patreon.com/unrulysubjects 

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As the assault on Gaza continues and the crisis deepens, our individual freedom to critique Israel’s actions has become more and more fraught. We have a deep commitment to anti-racism in all its forms on Unruly Subjects, including antisemitism. But we find ourselves in a place where condemning the actions of a country is falsely - and often frighteningly - equated with being anti-semitic.

Darryl Li is an anthropologist and lawyer teaching at the University of Chicago. He's the co-author of a new study that puts this current moment in context. The study is titled  “Discriminating Against Dissent: the Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine”, published by the AAUP and Middle East Studies Association. We discuss the history of Title VI, academic freedom, and the ways that both Democratic and Republican administrations have been implicated in the suppression of free speech. 

Also in this episode: Following last week’s conversation with Daniel Coates about resisting ICE with Hands Off NYC, Chenjerai and his wife Saadiqa attend an action in Washington Square Park in NYC. Call into the UNRULY HOTLINE: Our current question is “Do you think differences in child rearing have more to do with race/ethnicity - age/generational differences or other factors?” Call us here for a chance to be featured on the show: 215-436-9212

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/UnrulySubjects

Follow Chenjerai on Instagram @chenjerai and Bluesky @chenjerai.bsky.social and follow Unruly Subjects @unrulysubjectspod 

Get in touch [email protected].

Buy After Savagery at Haymarketbooks.com Additional Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Grizzly Beatz

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

Support the show

NEWS FIEND is a weekly segment where Chenjerai offers his commentary and reflections on some of the week's headlines. This is a feature that is offered for all Patreon members of Unruly Subjects, but we wanted to give our listener's here a taste of the UNRULY SUPPORTER perks.  We're a completely independent show! Each new supporter helps us make this project possible. 

Become a Patreon supporter here: http://patreon.com/unrulysubjects 

Included below are links to some additional articles and resources about the topics covered in this week's segment.

Afghan CIA fighters, like National Guard attack suspect, face stark reality in U.S.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/10/nx-s1-5637440/afghan-zero-unit-lakanwal-national-guard

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/08/us-data-centers

Louisiana v. Callais and voting Rights

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/section-2-voting-rights-act-supreme-court

Spotify Unwrapped campaign calls for boycott over ICE ads and AI music

https://www.nme.com/news/music/spotify-unwrapped-campaign-calls-for-boycott-over-ice-ads-and-ai-music-3915774

Unruly Subjects is created in partnership with Rowhome Productions

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