Hegemonicon - An Investigation Into the Workings of Power

What We’ve Learned. Where We Go Next.

William Lawrence — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:49:34 +0000

In this solo season finale, William makes his case for his approach to voting in this year's presidential election. Looking ahead, he lays out his vision for where left movements need to start building infrastructure next, regardless of the election outcomes, based on what he learned from his guests this season about international solidarity.

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Protecting Our Migrant Neighbors, with Jacinta González

William Lawrence — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:10:13 +0000

Mijente Policy Director Jacinta González joins William for this episode. Jacinta is an expert in organizing against immigration enforcement and criminalization of Latinx and immigrant communities. Their conversation explores how local, in-person community organizing is key to defending migrants threatened by increasingly violent, aggressive, and isolationist US border and immigration policy.

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Hawaiian Sovereignty and Resistance, with Ikaika Hussey

William Lawrence — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

On this episode of Hegemonicon, Will talks with Ikaika Hussey, an organizer and a candidate for Hawaii State House District 29. They delve into Hawaii's often-ignored pre-colonial history and its current struggles as a state in the American empire.

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Intermission for ‘Hegemonicon’

William Lawrence — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Hegemonicon will be taking an intermission to record a few more episodes and wrap up this present series on internationalism. We're very much looking forward to bringing you more important and necessary discussions to tie together what we're learning about internationalism, the global role of the United States, and what that means for organizers in the belly of the beast.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. William does this show on top of his daily organizing and other political work because he believes in the value of open-ended, rigorous, non-dogmatic dialogue about strategy and organizing on the Left. If you find that in this show and enjoy it, please share it with your friends and collaborators.

And while you're at it, rate the show and leave a review on your podcast app. We'll be back in October.

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Black Internationalism, with Khury Petersen-Smith

William Lawrence — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Khury Petersen-Smith joins the show to discuss internationalist organizing and ideologies among Black communities in the US.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He researches US empire, borders, and migration and strategizes with activists to work against the violence that the US carries out and supports around the world. Khury's work focuses especially on US militarism in the Middle East and in the Pacific, and movements that resist it. He is one of the co-authors and organizers of the 2023 Black Voices for Ceasefire statement, which was signed by over 6,000 Black activists, artists, and scholars, and he is the co-founder of Black 4 Palestine.

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Labor Internationalism, with Carl Rosen & Bob Master

William Lawrence — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 18:46:35 +0000

This episode features a conversation with two experienced unionists about the history of, and barriers to, solidarity between US workers and those abroad.

Carl Rosen is the General President of UE, the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. UE is a famously democratic, progressive, and independent union, and they have done arguably the best work of any US union in building mutual alliances of solidarity with labor unions abroad over the last several decades, including a long collaboration with the Mexican Frente Auténtico de Trabajo.

Bob Master recently retired after 45 years in the labor movement, the last 36 with the Communications Workers of America. He was a founding co-chair of the New York State Working Families Party, and remains a member of the WFP National Executive Committee. Bob is also a big-picture strategic thinker, strategist and writer about matters of US politics, political economy, and class struggle.

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Grassroots Internationalism, with Cindy Wiesner

William Lawrence — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Cindy Wiesner of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance joins the show to share reflections on her 35 years of internationalist organizing on the US Left—from the global justice movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, through the antiwar movement of the 2000s, to the growing international climate justice movement of the 2000s–2010s. Throughout that journey, she has been working to build power from the grassroots in the US, and with allies across the globe, especially in the Americas. She shares her perspective on that trajectory, and where we find ourselves now.

Cindy Wiesner is the Executive Director of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). She helped co-found the Climate Justice Alliance and the Rising Majority and has been a leader in many cross-border movement-building initiatives.

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Realigning Global Institutions, with David Adler

William Lawrence — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

David Adler (@davidrkadler) returns to the show to share the work of Progressive International, including its election observatory, its research portal on the "Reactionary International," its online advocacy campaigns, and, most ambitiously, its efforts to cohere ideas and people that could guide a "New" New International Economic Order. David shares his perspective on where allies are to be found in the pursuit of a just global system. David Adler is a political economist and the co-General Coordinator of Progressive International. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Colegio de México and a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. He writes regularly for The Guardian.

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Flows and Chokepoints, with Tim Sahay

William Lawrence — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Tim Sahay returns to the show provide a world tour of the flows and chokepoints of goods and finance that make up our global economy. While the US economy is supposedly doing better than ever, it's a very different story in the Global South, which is suffering from lack of investment capital and economic sovereignty. Tim helps explain why, and we speculate about potential sites of leverage for reforming the international economic order. Tim Sahay is the co-editor of "The Polycrisis" newsletter, published at Phenomenal World, and the co-director of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.

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Understanding Primacy, with Van Jackson

William Lawrence — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Van Jackson (@realvanjackson) joins the show to discuss the dangerous strategy of global primacy that drives US foreign policy. Van Jackson is a scholar of international relations specializing in East Asian and Pacific security, critical analysis of defense issues, and the intersection of working-class interests with foreign policy. He worked in the Department of Defense during the Obama administration and has since become an outspoken critic of US foreign policy. He writes the Un-Diplomatic newsletter and is the author of several books.

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The Global Conjuncture, with Tobita Chow

William Lawrence — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Will talks with Tobita Chow to set the stage for our series on internationalism. We talk about the breakdown of US global authority, the twilight of the neoliberal era, and the turn to economic nationalism in the United States and abroad. Toby helps us to see Bidenomics as a response by US capitalists to a global crisis of profitability. We try to understand the likely consequences of Bidenomics: Whether it is likely to succeed or fail on its own terms, and what either would mean for the shape of global politics to come. We speculate about the prospects for building a left internationalist power bloc from within the United States.

Tobita Chow is a writer and organizer focused on questions of international political economy and transnational solidarity. He was a co-founder of Justice Is Global, a US-based progressive internationalist organization and he is also an editorial board member at Convergence Magazine, the publisher of this podcast.

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Announcing Hegemonicon Season 2: Internationalism for 2024 and Beyond

William Lawrence — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:59:54 +0000

Hegemonicon will return Tuesday, July 30 with interviews focusing on internationalist organizing and analysis on the US Left.

Foreign policy is back on the agenda in a big way in US politics, and promises to be a top concern for the foreseeable future. Issues around Gaza, Ukraine, and China have impacted domestic politics under the Biden administration and will factor in the November election.

The US Left has taken an internationalist turn, especially given the outrage and horror of the live-streamed modern genocide in Gaza. This has created rifts among left and progressive forces, and within the Democratic Party coalition. Some new or renewed configuration of forces on the Left must be struck.

We are witnessing genocide and have cause to fear the threat of World War Three. We see the rise of authoritarians around the world and are coming to uunderstand their global linkages. This leaves us no choice but to develop a thorough internationalist analysis and program, and incorporate it into our political practice. Season 2 of Hegemonicon will bring you conversations with people who have something to teach us about these topics. We can't wait to hear what you think!

You can support this show and others like it by becoming a subscriber of Convergence Magazine at convergencemag.com/donate

Preparing the Ground For Cadre Organizations, with Milena Velis and Jayanni Webster of LeftRoots

William Lawrence — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:53:06 +0000

This episode wraps up the current season of Hegemonicon with one more look at "What We're Building." William sits down with Milena Velis and Jayanni Webster, who were both deeply engaged with LeftRoots, an organization that operated for about 10 years before intentionally sunsetting at the end of 2023.

LeftRoots's major mission was training and preparing people to become cadre. The organization's sunset has now made way for one, maybe two, successor organizations that intend to be disciplined networks of cadre moving a coherent strategy from various corners of the US institutional landscape.

Terms like "cadre" might be initially confusing to some listeners. This episode explains how LeftRoots understood the nature and importance of cadre, and what it did in its 10 years of work. Milena Velis is the former cadre training director of LeftRoots, and a communicator and media maker from Philadelphia. Jayanni Webster is a labor and community organizer from Memphis, Tennessee, and is now a founding member of North Star, one of the cadre organizations growing out of the LeftRoots process. Milena is a member of the Convergence Editorial Board, and Jayanni worked on the weekly live show Frontline Dispatches that was produced under our previous name, Organizing Upgrade.

Please be sure to subscribe to Hegemonicon wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll be alerted when new episodes publish this spring.

You can support this show and others like it by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com/convergencemag.

How the Working Families Party Is Building Progressive Governing Power, with Maurice Mitchell

William Lawrence — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:30:30 +0000

In this latest episode looking at "What We're Building," Hegemonicon host William Lawrence talks with Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party (WFP). The WFP aims to become the leading political home for US progressives. It has built a reputation for staking out strategic electoral engagements on a state-by-state basis that have yielded some major victories in the political arena.

In this conversation, William and Maurice move between big-picture strategies and the nuts and bolts of WFP's operation. They discuss the party's hybrid governance model, its process for making election endorsements, and the infrastructure it has developed to navigate disagreements within its ranks.

Moving outward, the two talk about how to navigate relationships among growing left organizations such as WFP and the Democratic Socialists of America (featured on the show's previous episode)—and they tackle the strategy needed to block the Right in the electoral arena while building stronger coalitions with progressive leadership that can anchor future work.

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Envisioning a United Socialist Future, with DSA’s National Political Committee Co-Chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer

William Lawrence — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 11:00:00 +0000

This episode continues the podcast's exploration of what we are building on today's Left by taking a look at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Most of our audience is likely to be familiar with DSA, at least by name. It's an organization that has moved from one intra-organizational controversy to the next, with the dramas often playing out in the algorithm-driven public square of Twitter (now also known as x.com). Most recently it was targeted for the stance some members took on Gaza in the early days after October 7.

However, while it's easy to focus on the internal churn, DSA is one of the most robust membership organizations on the US Left. It has thousands of smart and capable people actively invested in its success who fight tooth-and-nail over the direction of DSA. That is why there’s drama. Unlike a lot of staff-led movement NGOs, DSA has a governance structure that channels internal political struggle and makes it constructive for the organization as a whole. That’s why DSA has survived the challenging period of 2020-2023 — Bernie’s defeat, the pandemic, a new terrain under Biden and ensuing re-evaluation on the Left — with only a 20-30% membership melt, much lower than that of many progressive movement groups that peaked in the Trump era.

Hegemonicon host William Lawrence credits this resilience for his recent increased involvement as a rank-and-file member of Greater Lansing DSA. Last August he attended the DSA Convention as an alternate delegate from the chapter. Joining him this episode to discuss the process, struggles, and potential of DSA in this moment and beyond are National Political Committee Co-Chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer.

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Building Community, Fighting Poverty, Reducing Harm – Mutual Aid in Action, with Jerry Norris and Julia Miller

William Lawrence — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

There’s a long-running dialogue on the Left, which has resurfaced in a big way since the pandemic, about what direct service work has to do with building political power. Some people argue that it’s just putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. We shouldn’t be doing harm reduction: we should be seeking to stop the harm in the first place, through structural change. But others argue that direct service can be the best way of engaging people. Poor people are on the streets; they’re hungry; they’re struggling; they need help now. And so, perhaps, for those of us interested in building political power among the dispossessed, mutual aid is exactly what we need, in order to meet folks where they’re at, and then march together towards justice.

In this episode, William is joined by two purveyors of mutual aid he is very familiar with, as they work in his hometown of Lansing, Michigan. Jerry Norris is the founder of the Fledge, a truly special and one-of-a-kind community center. Julia Miller is the driving force behind Punks With Lunch, an organization providing food, personal care, warm clothes, and harm reduction resources for people struggling with homelessness and addiction, which operates out of the Fledge.

Their conversation explores the political question around direct mutual aid as a focus, as well as how to center community needs and voices in these efforts and how the guests manage their own emotional needs while engaging in their work.

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2024 Election Emergency with Waleed Shahid

William Lawrence — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:40:37 +0000

President Joe Biden, the man entrusted with our defense against Trump's MAGA fascism, is now enabling a genocide in Gaza. The situation looks bad from almost any angle. What does this mean for US progressives who prefer Biden to Trump on domestic policy, but find Biden’s current foreign policy unconscionable? Should we shut up about Palestine to shore up Biden’s popularity? Unacceptable. Is there a Democratic primary challenger who can overcome Biden? Way too late, apparently. So what is to be done?

In this episode William talks with Waleed Shahid, a progressive Democratic strategist and former national spokesperson for Justice Democrats. They discuss the recent "Vote Ceasefire" campaign in New Hampshire, an upcoming "Vote Uncommitted" campaign in Michigan, and ask if there are any other strategies available to stop a genocide, while giving ourselves the best chance to defeat Trump in November.

Reach out with your thoughts and comments on this episode: lawrence.will@gmail.com

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The Need for a New Internationalism, with Jorge Rocha and David Adler

William Lawrence — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The US Left is having an “internationalist moment” stemming from horror at the ongoing Israeli bombardment and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. While it’s encouraging to see Americans showing solidarity with people beyond our own borders, it doesn’t change the fact that bombs continue to fall on Gaza while the Biden administration continues to fund and arm Israel's genocide in the Gaza Strip. However, solidarity and ideological shift should not overshadow the reality of leftists’ utter inability to restrain US militarism or its clients.

In this episode, host William Lawrence delves into the history, meaning, and importance of internationalism on the US Left. He is joined by David Adler, General Coordinator of the Progressive International, and Jorge Rocha, Co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America International Committee.

Together they explore the landscape of US foreign policy, the influence of both military and economic policies, and their impact globally. Placing a spotlight on Latin American politics, they highlight left political parties in this region and what the US Left can learn from their experiences.

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The State of Left Ideological Infrastructure, with Johanna Bozuwa, Corinne Blalock, and Daniel Denvir

William Lawrence — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This episode continues the series on “What We’re Building” - the most relevant and necessary work happening on the US Left today. Immanuel Wallerstein, the sociologist behind World-Systems Theory, wrote: "The key problem for the Global Left is not its organization, however important that be. The key problem is lucidity."

William is joined this episode by three guests who are working to develop a more lucid understanding of reality and what to do about it. Together they explore the Left's own ideological infrastructure - the ideas we’re developing, and the means of disseminating them.

This episode's guests include:

Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project, a leading climate justice think tank doing the grunt work of building policy for a Green New Deal.
Corinne Blalock of the Law & Political Economy Project, a network of progressive legal scholars seeking to transform our understanding of the law in order to change it.
Daniel Denvir of The Dig podcast, whose famously vast archives contain many hours of content on just about any topic of relevance to the contemporary left.

In the discussion they engage the righ-wing economic foundation still leading the academic and policy-making world, the role of the law and courts in our current poly-crisis, and the strategic engagement needed for change. They explore how each guest navigates left terminology in the unique spaces and audiences they find themselves communicating with: When and where are we identifying as "the Left"? Or "Marxist"? Or "Progressive"? And why? The podcast also delves into the importance of good faith, "closed-door" conversations with comrades to develop political education and unity around challenging ideas as well as how respectful and balanced dialogues can be facilitated within those spaces.

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Empowering Debtors to Organize, with René Moya

William Lawrence — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This episode continues the series What We’re Building—a look at the most noteworthy organizations and initiatives on the US Left today.

The relationships between creditors and debtors—like those between bosses and workers and landlords and tenants—are foundational economic relationships under capitalism. All are at once sites of exploitation, and sites where class consciousness can be developed. Previous episodes this month have discussed tenants' and workers' movements. This week William talks with René Moya of the Debt Collective and LA Tenants Union, continuing the conversation about tenant organizing, digging deeper into debtor organizing, and looking at ways two intertwine.

Moya also explores the culturally constructed shame associated with all forms of debt and the work needed to politicize and end that shame. The conversation concludes with an optimistic lookto the future, envisioning a movement that fights for the decommodification of land by confronting institutions that perpetuate debt and exploitation.

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Social Movements, Political Instruments, and Governing Power, a panel hosted by Momentum

William Lawrence — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

In 2011 the Occupy movement kicked off a new generation of left-wing protest in the US. In 2016, Bernie Sanders’ campaign harnessed the energy of the insurgent movements, and directed it to the political arena. Since then, a broad current of the US Left has been practicing the “inside/outside” strategy—building powerful organizations and protest movements outside the halls of power, while also electing champions to work the inside game.

This episode features a panel on the inside/outside strategy hosted by Momentum and moderated by Hegemonicon host William Lawrence. The panel asks: What have we learned about bridging the outside and the inside? How close are we to our goal of actual governing power? How important is it to deliver material wins to communities through political action while building "political instruments"?

The four panelists each have built a somewhat different political instrument for their own contexts: Lizzy Oh of NYC-DSA; Kamau Chege of Washington Community Alliance; Asha Ransby-Sporn, Chicago organizer; and Evan Weber of Sunrise Movement and Our Hawai’i. The panel was recorded live on Nov. 30, 2023.

Additional links:

Independent Political Organizations: A Strategy in the Making

Momentum Movements and State Power by Evan Weber

Organizing Tenants for Housing Security, with John Washington

William Lawrence — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

In this episode, William continues his series on What We're Building, exploring noteworthy organizations on the US Left today. Safe and secure housing is one of the most fundamental human needs, yet housing is heavily commodified, often insecure and unaffordable. Property ownership becomes a more lofty dream for young people by the day and rent prices continue to skyrocket across the country. Meanwhile, disasters fueled by climate change have destroyed housing in some regions and threaten housing security many more. Like the relationships between bosses and workers and creditors and debtors, that between landlords and tenants is a foundational relationship under capitalism. All these relationships are sites of exploitation—and sites where class consciousness can be developed. This episode's guest, John Washington, is an expert on the landlord-tenant relationship. John brings vast experience from his work as a housing organizer with the Homes Guarantee program and as co-director of PUSH Buffalo. Together, he and William explore ways tenants are organizing for their rights across the country and the pros and cons of "affordable housing" initiatives popular amongst more center-left activists, and dig into the importance of housing guarantees for all people.

The State of the Community Organizing Model – What Needs to Evolve, with Vera Parra and Jasson Perez

William Lawrence — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

As Hegemonicon continues its exploration of what the Left is building, this conversation analyzes the model for political and community organizing that has persisted since Saul Alinsky hit the field in the mid-20th century—professionalized, nonprofit-managed, and non-ideological. The anti-ideological component of this type of organizing has been the subject of ongoing critique. But other aspects, especially the "professionalization" of organizing, also bear scrutiny, given the dramatic changes in the world over the past decades.

In this episode, William is joined by two long-time organizers to take on this analysis and critique. Jasson Perez is program lead at Just Impact Advisors and Vera Parra is a community organizer with Cosecha Movement. As they explore the strengths and weaknesses of the current state of organizational structure in activist movements, they'll bring in critique from the 2023 book Occupation: Organizer - A Critical History of Community Organizing in America by Clément Petitjean

Momentum in the Labor Movement, with Alex Han

William Lawrence — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Last week's episode with Max Elbaum marked a transition for the podcast into an exploration of two of the biggest questions facing the Left: "How do we block the continued rise of the MAGA Right?" and "What are we building in its place?" In this and following episodes, William will seek to answer those questions by looking at current movements in progressive spaces. He begins this week by assessing today's organized labor resurgence with long-time labor activist Alex Han, now executive director of In These Times magazine. (Alex is also a former editorial board member of Convergence Magazine.)

William and Alex review recent labor actions, from the UAW's successful strike under its new leadership to actions percolating among major retailers like Starbucks that have yet to secure contracts for newly organized workers. Throughout the discussion they'll acknowledge the difficulties of building greater integration and solidarity of the organizational and member interests of unions with a broader intersectional and internationalist Left movement.

Support this show and others like it by becoming a Patreon supporter at Patreon.com/convergencemag

Block and Build Against MAGA is the Priority

William Lawrence — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000

This is the first episode in our sequence that will look at "What We Are Building"—the organizations, networks and ideas that have the most currency on the Left in late 2023.

Despite his several criminal indictments, Donald Trump still leads the pack of contenders for the 2024 GOP Presidential nomination, and the Christian-nationalist MAGA movement dominates the party. Leftists in the anti-MAGA front well understand that Trump and this movement stand to be much more dangerous if they claim power in 2025. MAGA in power will not be enlivening or emboldening to the Left, nor will it advantage the Left vis-a-vis liberal and centrist Democrats. Rather, the Left and various oppressed groups will be targeted by state repression, and the cultural climate will likely grow more reactionary.

Max Elbaum is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board and co-editor of the book Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections (published by Convergence). He joins William in this episode to lay out the importance of a "block and build" strategy against the MAGA Right. They also discuss the need for the anti-MAGA Left to thoughtfully consider and strategically organize around the Biden administration's support for the Israeli government's unmitigated violence against Palestinians in Gaza.

For more from Max and tools for organizing against MAGA, we invite you to read and use the following resources:

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Making Room For Uncertainty with Katey Lauer

William Lawrence — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Up till now, the podcast has been analyzing how we got to the present moment. William and his guests have talked about the wins and losses amid the roar of movement activism in the 2010s and how they feel we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back. After the historic upheavals of 2020, many see the balance of power ticking further toward the MAGA right. Newly engaged and energized Gen-Z activists and longtime movement leaders alike experience the organized Left as basically rudderless, despite the huge flow of activity we’ve discussed on the show so far.

Our next several episodes will explore what the Left is building to fight back against the white supremacist, authoritarian Right. But first, this episode offers a moment to pause and sit with the uncertainty that many people may be feeling. With his guest Katey Lauer, of West Virginia Can't Wait and many other organizing movements, William discusses ways we can use such space to explore new ways of envisioning, defining, and working toward our goals—dreams as big as a mass leftist movement organization or as small as a community co-operative space. They also explore the importance of holding up comrades who may find themselves in their own personal valleys of uncertainty at any given time.

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From the Green New Deal to the Inflation Reduction Act

William Lawrence — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is touted by the Biden administration as "the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history." It promises a $370 billion investment to help lower energy costs for families and small business, while accelerating private investment in clean energy throughout the US economy. The IRA is a direct outcome of the movement for a Green New Deal, which was led by activist organizations like the Sunrise Movement and championed by members of Congress like Rep. Alexandria Occasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey. However, the final signed bill has been described as a "pale facsimile" of what was originally proposed in the Green New Deal. Core participants in the climate Left hold varying opinions on this result; assessing whether and how it can be seen as a victory requires considerable thought and nuance.

As a leader in the Sunrise Movement at the time, William himself played a part in the Green New Deal story. For this episode he brings in two other experts on the program's progression and evolution through Congress, Adrien Salazar and Tim Sahay. They trace the IRA's political journey from sit-in protests at Nancy Pelosi's office by young climate activists in 2018 to the legislation that reached President Joe Biden's desk in August of 2022.

Adrien is policy director at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, chairs the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity, and serves on the board of the Sustainable Economies Law Center. He convenes the Green New Deal Policy Nexus network of movement leaders and policy experts to advance climate justice policy and strategy.

Tim is a climate organizer and policy manager as well as writer of The Polycrisis newsletter with a focus on the global economy's impact on climate change.

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Bernie vs. Warren Revisited with Becca Rast and Max Berger

William Lawrence — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

If either Sen. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren had triumphed in 2020, they would have been undeniably the most left-progressive US president in history. Since their campaigns collapsed amid the chaotic tumble into the isolating COVID-19 pandemic, there has been endless—and persistent—arm-chair quarterbacking and online hand-wringing. Loyalist passions on both sides still run high more than three years later. It's a difficult moment to glean any value or level-headed lessons from.

In this episode, William steps up to the heavy task of attempting just that: assessing what we can learn for future organizing and electoral campaigns and finally putting the debate to rest. To help him do that, he enlists Becca Rast, who was national field director for Bernie 2020 and now acts as managing director for Justice Democrats, and Max Berger, who served as director of progressive outreach for the Warren 2020 Campaign and more recently worked with 2020 Bernie Campaign Director Faiz Shakir to help develop More Perfect Union, a progressive communications outlet. They'll size up the terrain of that moment and explain why they placed the bets they did, and then use what we know in hindsight to explore how we move forward in Left engagement with national electoral politics.

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Lessons Learned From Student Organizing with Akin Olla and Sean Estelle

William Lawrence — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The pre-Bernie era of the 2010s carried pros and cons for young Millennial activists building left movements. There was less organization and directed skill than these efforts carry now—but there was an exciting energy of hope and possibility some compare to the student movements of the 1960s. In this episode, William is joined by two veterans of that era's student organizing movements to discuss the importance and opportunity of progressive organizing power in the fertile, energetic landscape of campus politics. He talks with Akin Olla, national press secretary for Dream Defenders and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian and The Forge, and Sean Estelle, a longtime organizer and former elected member of the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America. They dig deep into those years, talking about—among other things—how unorthodox tactics like moving your mattress in to occupy a campus library or unlikely alliances between stoners and sororities might still build power from the bottom up.

Organizing for Immigration in the Obama Era with Carlos Rojas Rodriguez

William Lawrence — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Longtime immigrants' rights organizer and former Bernie 2020 campaign staffer Carlos Rojas Rodriguez joins "Hegemonicon" to share the history of the youth-led progressive movement of the past decade-plus through the lens of immigrant students.

Over time, Carlos' commitment to fighting for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) as a college student during the Obama administration led him into broader organizing and activism for all Latinx immigrants. This landed him a staff position in the Bernie 2020 campaign, helping to canvas and organize Spanish-speaking voters in early primary states. In this episode Carlos shares why this felt like the right organizing path for him at the time and his concerns for the future.

Support this show and others like it by becoming a Patreon supporter at Patreon.com/convergencemag

Insider vs. Outsider Political Strategy with Kaniela Ing

William Lawrence — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For William's first conversation exploring the conjuncture his own organizing work has operated inside for the past 15 years, he is joined by former Hawaii State Representative and current National Director for the Green New Deal Network Kaniela Ing. They discuss the lessons Kaniela learned operating as a left-progressive outsider on the national stage, while straining to do his best to serve his constituents at the local level. The contradictions revealed by such strategy set up the difficult questions anyone on the Left must reckon with at the current conjuncture in which progressive ideology is spreading and growing culturally, but is underrepresented in our institutions that wield power. The latter half of the conversation provides Kaniela the opportunity to reflect on how these lessons serve him now as he operates in the non-profit space to continue his fights for social and climate justice as director of the Green New Deal Network.

Support efforts to help those impacted by wildfires in Maui in August of 2023: mauirecoveryfund.org

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Designing an Investigation of Power: Series Introduction

William Lawrence — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Convergence is happy to announce the launch of our new podcast, Hegemonicon. In this first episode, host William Lawrence introduces himself with his story of working to build a youth-led climate movement as co-founder of the Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal it brought to the political forefront. Upon reminiscing the perceived successes and failures of that movement and the wilderness the past decade-plus has led Left organizers into, he lays out the foundation for the Hegemonicon’s exploration of power and how the show will go about investigating it through a series of interviews with organizers, activists, theorists, and more, in three parts:

Part 1 - The Conjuncture and the Longue Durée
- Conjunctural analysis is a power-map of the present moment, the near past, and into the near future—of the system, in motion, as it is playing out through actual lives and events. It is a necessary skill for the organizer, the campaigner, anybody looking to do politics in the here and now.
- The Longue Durée, a phrase from French meaning long duration, is the vast historical trajectory of which we are only a small part, spanning many hundreds of years and heading forward into future centuries. The longue durée reveals trends, historical limitations as well as possible opportunities, that an exclusive focus on the conjuncture does not.
Part 2 - Optionality
- A lens that analyzes the presence or absence of choices (options) within a given set of circumstances, and how we act in ways that either expand or constrain our options over time. Our present options are the result of our past investments, or bets that we made. Our present bets and investments are designed to give us options in the future. There are multiple possible futures on which we are all betting, but none of us can know which future will actually come to pass. We ought to ask ourselves which kinds of bets we are placing, and why.
Part 3 - Power
- There are five aspects of power that will be explored on the show: force, finance, production, ideology, and law. We will call these the sinews of power, because they tend to intertwine and be mutually reinforcing. If you only control one of them, you don’t really control the full mechanism of power, and you will be exposed to risks via the other sinews. Whoever has the most command of the sinews of power, has the strongest grasp on the future. This gets us to the factor called hegemony, which is when a social force is able to assume a leadership position over society, backed by a multi-faceted command of power through the five sinews.

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