Block & Build – But Make it Abolitionist w/ Andrea Ritchie

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

Cayden Mak: [00:00:00] What’s up for everybody and welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impact of rising authoritarianism while building the strength of the broad front that we need to win.

This week on the show, I’m joined by writer, lawyer, and co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, Andrea Richie. She’s published this free guide titled Block and Build, but Make it Abolitionist, which explores strategic frameworks for fighting right-wing authoritarianism from an abolitionist perspective, an invitation to expand our collective resistance beyond strategies that rely on the carceral state.

But first, these headlines. I’m sure that our listeners by now are fully aware of the horrific flash floods that hit Ke County, Texas last weekend, which as of this recording has resulted in 120 confirmed deaths and over 160 people are still missing. As [00:01:00] expected federal and state administration response has ranged from abysmal to the downright offensive from Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who said quote, in a moment like this, we feel just as helpless as everyone else does.

All we know to do at this moment is pray as if the government is not responsible for disaster preparedness and relief. Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Meanwhile, like in the disaster to a football game, claiming that quote, every team makes mistakes. Meanwhile, the people that are doing the work to understand and communicate about weather disasters have some thoughts.

Tom Fahey, who’s the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization offered the following. The real blame is the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the National Weather Service and FEMA that cut off coordination planning with local emergency management officials nearby San Antonio and Austin Weather Services both report being understaffed.

Kerr County itself had been warned about the potential of a flood of this magnitude, which was highly likely in the next year. [00:02:00] They’d been seeking funds for about a million dollars for an emergency flood alarm system, which never materialized. Meteorologists agree though that pinpointing hyper-local extreme rain like this it’s really challenging, but we’ve seen cuts to budgets that help research and staff analysis of weather events, as well as the federal agencies that help determine funding for this type of emergency service.

This is the complete opposite of what we should be doing in an era of accelerating climate change disaster. It’s hard to believe that I need to say this, but all people deserve access to basic emergency services that we can definitely afford to provide. And while we may not have a smoking gun that points directly to the cuts from Doge and Trump’s new budget as the cause of so much and unnecessary loss of life in this particular disaster, it is a harbinger of what we can expect as climate denial is supercharged by long-term funding cuts.

Small towns and rural communities who lack resources or enough political power to advocate for themselves stand to lose the most, creating defacto sacrifice [00:03:00] zones where people are already being left behind. ICE continues to accelerate its raids across the country in the shadow of the big ugly murder bill.

Everyday people also continue to fight. Back yesterday the Atlantic published this really wild article that describes the ways that cracks are forming within the agency, and those cracks are rapidly widening. The TLDR on the article is that ICE is feeling pressure from both above in the administration and below people in the streets.

Pressure from below looks like popular resistance both in the streets and in the media, talking about how fucked up this is works showing up to do court accompaniment works and making it hard for ice to do their jobs works. As a result, people within the agency are increasingly disgruntled with the work that they’re asked to do and the way that they’re asked to do it, and they’re acutely aware of how unpopular it’s.

In the meantime, the agency is also receiving intense scrutiny and pressure from above. Some of the terrible ghouls in the Trump administration like Steven Miller and Christie Nome are trying to [00:04:00] impose these absurd deportation quotas on their work, meaning that morale is also down. Because it turns out that imposing your wealth through brute force isn’t actually leadership and surprise Trump’s performative social media posts aren’t enough to encourage these agents who are facing public backlash and unreasonable management demands.

Leadership within the agency feels unable to push back on those demands for fear of getting sacked, which has already happened several times. So it seems like a lot of the people who are responsible for this day to day are just frankly over it. I’m not gonna shed a single tear for anyone who participates in the ghoulish work that ICE does, but it does raise some questions for me.

How does this impact the ability of the agency to rapidly hire, which is also something that we need to be worried about. How could this create defections or desertion from the agency? And what other levers can we pull in a word, what is the opportunity in this chaos? There’s certainly plenty of threats.

Of course, growing ice in the way that the murder bill does is genuinely chilling and evil. And the [00:05:00] worry that politicizing ice in this way means that only ideal ideologues who are like died in the wool extremists are gonna wanna sign up for doing this work. And we also know that the rapid expansion of police agencies, historically has led to declining standards in hiring and training, which ultimately harm the people in those agencies cross hairs more than they already have.

I have a lot more questions and answers here, but the upshot is, the cracks are showing how can we stick our levers into the cracks and turn them into canyons? Another area we can look at opportunities and openings is the fallout from the New York mayoral primary. I’m not just talking about Zora and Momani as a candidate, but the effect that his upset victory is having more broadly.

Here’s a really interesting data point run for something, which is a group that helps young first time candidates file and run campaigns for public office at all levels. Says that since the primary over 10,000 millennials and Gen Z folks have signed up to learn how to run for office, which is fantastic.

Mass participation like this is how we actually [00:06:00] build towards governing because one person by themselves, no matter how mediagenic, no matter how refreshing does not a government make Mom Donny and his own campaign, it also seems is hard at work preparing for the general election essentials since it looks like all kinds of forces are coming out to try and sink him with smears and Islamophobia.

He understands his position and is determined to play it. Finally, this all has been making me think a lot about what friend of the pod and host of our other show, the Anti-Authoritarian podcast. Scott Nawa said to me a couple weeks back that one of the great opportunities presented by the federal system in the US is that uneven, fragmented, and really hard to control.

System of government means that authoritarian consolidation is actually hard. There are opportunities in the chaos because this country is huge, both geographically and population wise. We can do these hard things not just to resist, but to win. Part of the excitement around Momani is that everyday people are actually feeling into that.[00:07:00] 

I wanna take a quick moment before we dive into this interview to ask you to support convergence during our summer fund drive. Reader and listener support is critical in a time when independent media is under frankly existential threat. So if this podcast has in fact helped consider what you can give back to make sure that we can keep making it.

Anyone who starts an annual or monthly subscription gives $25 or more, or upgrades, their subscription will receive a special thank you gift. Head on over to bitly slash Summer Fund Drive, all one word to make your contribution today. You’ll also find that link in the show notes. My guest today is writer, lawyer and co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, Andrea Richie.

She’s the author of Practicing New Worlds abolition and emergent Strategies, invisible, no more police, violent violence against black women and women of color among many other writings. Her work in prison and poli police abolition spans decades at this point. But she joins me today to discuss one of her latest [00:08:00] publications, which is called Block and Build, but Make It Abolitionist, which is a title I love.

Nice. Which explores that very concept. How do we as abolitionists strategically align ourselves in the current struggle to block the authoritarian right while building the futures that we dream of. Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having 

Andrea Ritchie: me. The rundown you just gave was a whole other reason we need to be having this conversation, so 

Cayden Mak: thanks.

I know. I was like, I know that we’re going, I’m going to go deep on this ice stuff and so much of the conversation about criminalization is, your analysis of criminalization I feel like is really essential to talking about. The block work. So could you tell me a little bit about interrupting criminalization, the work that you do and y’all’s reasons for coming together as an organization?

Andrea Ritchie: Sure. So yeah I’m just so excited to be on the podcast. I’m like a little, star Strucker something. But I I co-founded Interrupting Criminalization with Myam Kaba, who many of you I’m sure are familiar with. In 2018, also friend of the pod. Yes. And we came together to do this.

It wasn’t certainly the [00:09:00] first time we collaborate on anything. Our paths have crossed and intersected, many times over many decades. We keep trying to think back when we first met, and it keeps getting further back, but in 2018, we decided to combine forces in interrupting criminalization because.

It was during the first iteration of this regime. And both of us are very clear that criminalization is how right wing, authoritarian and fascist agendas or regimes advance their policies, advance their agendas. Actually it’s how they work. It’s literally the central and instrumental kind of tool or process through which fascism and authoritarianism and right-wing agendas happen.

And we have both always worked at the intersections of criminalization, race, gender, sexuality, reproductive gender migrant rights, disability rights, and so on, or disability justice. And so we saw the operation of criminalization at all of those intersections in really deep ways in the first [00:10:00] iteration of the Trump administration.

And so we. Wanted to create a container, kinda a movement resource hub to support organizers in interrupting criminalization. We, or maybe not as creative as we could have been in the title of the organization. We wanna be clear about what we were doing. And that’s what it says on the tip. Exactly.

Exactly. Want to support groups in doing that across those many intersections. And so that’s, we ended up supporting many organizers in the uprisings of 2020 groups across the country who were engaged in work to divest from the violence of policing and punishment and deportation and detention and exile and in community-based safety strategies that were non-police, non-coercive, non carceral, and rooted in transformative justice.

And things really took off a couple years, into our existence when we we’re doing that work. And then obviously it still feels very relevant in this moment, which is why we wanted to put out, respond to the framework and the brilliance that people like you and Scott and others have been putting [00:11:00] out about what the overall strategy is.

Jerry Labs Kelly Hayes so many folks Shane Burley, et cetera PRA just many entities thinking about what is our strategic framework for this moment? How do we, I think, initially block this regime from getting into power and build. Power towards an alternative that is actually an alternative.

And or and now post, regime consolidation what is our assignment along the lines of what you were just saying, there are cracks. It’s actually not as, it’s not a simple thing to consolidate authoritarianism at this scale and how do we get in there and bust it open.

But not to go back to where we came from, but to go. Yeah. To the liberatory future that we’re looking for. And speaking of liberation, I know Liberation Road and Critical Resistance also have put out frameworks. We got us, there’s just many groups. I just wanna rising Majority also put out a sheet that at the portal project conference in [00:12:00] the fall of 2024. That was just an inspiration for us to be like, how do we take these brilliant frameworks that are based on deep research, long kind of understanding of fascism and authoritarianism and bring in the kind of central understanding that we have around criminalization and what that means for those frameworks and expanding them.

Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I also think that the analysis around criminalization is such a useful provocation for those of us who are also thinking about like, how do we not frame the work that we’re doing right now in terms of let’s go back to some kind of honestly, frankly, imagined past because the opportunity that we have now is actually about leading in a meaningful way from the left to help people see an alternative way of being, of an alternative way that we could be together as a society.

So I think that like that analysis around criminalization and the way that criminalization is how [00:13:00] authoritarians do their ghoulish work is really well taken. Because I think that looking back at the history that you were just outlining also just of you and Maryam working together that this is about more than just Trump and Maga, right? That like criminalization has a long history in our country and has functioned in various ways at various times. So I’m wondering also to set up this conversation about the contents of the z to talk a little bit about criminalization, who it serves and like what its effects on us socially are.

Andrea Ritchie: Yeah. The zine definitely starts from the premise that, that criminalization is at the center of how fascism authoritarianism, but also colonialism, chattel, slavery and imperialism, including its most extreme forms, for instance, in the manifestation of the genocide that is happening in this moment as babies are dying from lack of formula due to forced starvation in concentration camps in Gaza right now, as we are talking that, that is [00:14:00] criminalization at its most extreme form where we decide an entire.

Nation of people on a particular area of land are from newborn to non-engineer, inherently criminalized and therefore and an inherent threat to a desired social order, and therefore destined for extermination, which of course Palestinian people and their allies have been resisting with all of their might and being and breath for 75 years and long before that.

So I, it’s not a predetermined result, but it is the desired result. So I just wanted to name that because it’s important to understand criminalization as a political process. I think sometimes we think of criminalization as just, the enactment of laws that say certain things are crimes, and then we might have some quibbling with how they’re enforced, might be discriminatory, it might be excessive.

We might think some things shouldn’t be crimes like smoking weed or. Crossing the street outside a crosswalk or, we might, people have different views about what should and shouldn’t be criminalized, but people tend to think of it as this sort of [00:15:00] impartial process of enforcing some laws that are ba based on norms we all share. And what we wanna point out is one that’s not it. It’s never an objective thing that is enforced, maybe unequally. It’s literally a political process that is designed to designate certain groups of people as inherently threats to a social order.

Who is every action is criminalized including just sometimes standing on a corner. It’s called loitering. Or breathing as a newborn might be trying to do in Gaza right now. And. The ideas to then, once we frame them as an existential threat to an existing or past or future social order.

And I really wanna pick up on what you’re saying is like we’re actually in a dual of imaginaries right now, right? Like it’s their imaginary about some sort of idyllic past of the United States, which is basically chattel slavery and colonialism and genocide. And our [00:16:00] imaginary hopefully of a future that is beyond what we are experiencing or ever have experienced.

But we need to be careful not to also be falling back into an imaginary of some past that was never idyllic in this country for black people, indigenous people, disabled people, migrants, everyone who’s more transgender, nonconforming people, et cetera. So this criminalization process is part of that imaginary construction, right?

And it is about saying that we could have something imagined or. If these people didn’t exist, if this threat didn’t exist. And therefore we create categories of people who are the them, right? There’s us and them. They are the threat. They are the outsiders. They are unworthy of public benefits sharing in public wealth, of being in public spaces, of being part of our society.

They are a threat. They are a cancer. They are an invasion of our society and and are a danger to our society and to the most [00:17:00] vulnerable people in our society. And therefore they must be under kind of normal circumstances. Surveilled, policed, contained, controlled, imprisoned, deported and that sort of regular level of criminalization.

Normalizes a kind of violence against criminalized people. Once we criminalize someone, it’s okay to separate them from their family. It’s okay to put them in a cell that is smaller than, most of the rooms we’re sitting in right now for decades. It’s okay to put them in solitary without human touch or contact for decades.

It’s okay to deny them books and hugs with their family. It’s okay to deny them food, medical care and it’s okay to deny them the right to be in a place they might have grown up their whole life or be part of a community in a particular way. And that’s just normalized. People understand that to be what we do with people once they’re criminalized.

And we also normalize that some people will be, and some [00:18:00] people won’t. And I often give the example to law students, that they’ll be like but everybody agrees murder is bad, right? Killing someone is bad. I’m like, but do we. When, Obama sends a drone to Yemen and kill somebody, nobody even that’s an eyelid.

They’re like, that’s great. It’s an act of national, security when when a cop kills someone, it’s always somehow justified in self-defense. Yet when a survivor of violence that goes on over decades, who has been told by their abuser that the next time they’re definitely gonna kill them, defends themselves, somehow that is the murder, right?

And everything else I just described is just normal. And so I just really wanna emphasize that because I think. People are starting to exceptionalize the violence that they’re seeing now. I was on a, I was on a talk the other day and I was talking about exactly what I’m talking about now.

Like criminalization. This country was founded on criminalization. Criminalization is what made colonization possible. It’s what made chattel slavery possible. It’s the how of those [00:19:00] things. It’s how they’re continuing today in kind of aftermaths or continued form. And they kept being, like, in the chat they were like, talk about ice.

Why aren’t you talking about ice? You have to talk about ice. And I was like I really, I literally am talking about ice. I don’t understand. Yeah. You’re doing it right now. I don’t understand why this is not clicking, but I think that people are exceptionalizing the violence of ice and not understanding that it’s, that it is the regular violence of ice that they just haven’t seen.

’cause they haven’t seen this volume and they haven’t been doing it this visibly at such a scale. And that’s, they’ve been doing it this visibly, just to be clear, but at this scale. And yeah. I think the first part of the project of this zine and for interrupting criminalization this moment is to help people understand that this, that criminalization has always been this political process.

It has always been something that isn’t just about unfair enforcement of laws, but literally what we understand and who we understand to be, quote unquote, crimes and criminals that is just embedded in our society from [00:20:00] 1492 and whenever they set sale in this direction. Or set sale towards the direction where my ancestors were.

The, that is a process that’s been ongoing and then it just builds over time and shifts depending on the political wins. So I think we often think of authoritarianism and criminalization as it’s how they repress their enemies. It’s how they go after dissidents. It’s how they punish dissent. But it, that’s not the only way.

And it’s not just that they then can use the existing criminal legal system and criminal punishment system to an, to, to use it as a tool of their nefarious deeds. It’s also this sort of more global process that doesn’t just operate through criminal laws. It also operates through civil laws. The DOJ just served a bunch of subpoenas, civil subpoenas on trans healthcare providers that were about, claiming that providing trans healthcare basically is fraud, is the [00:21:00] sort of basic theory of what they’re saying. It’s more complicated than that, but. That’s a civil claim. And they’re also going to use, regulatory bodies and people use policies at the library to criminalize people. They use policies at the hospital to criminalize people.

There’s many ways in which criminalization happens through many laws, regulations, policies, through every institution, society, and frankly, we all participate in it and engage in it. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. And because it’s cultural. And I think that’s an interesting intervention that, like the zine offers is this is part of our part.

It’s, and like we’re, 

Andrea Ritchie: we’re steeped in it in a lot of ways. It’s literally embedded in how we think of the world. And I think that’s part of what we need to block and break. As part of this project of resisting fascism authoritarianism is we have to uproot the parts of it in that enable it inside of us.

And we have to recognize that criminalization is how. It’s not just how [00:22:00] they do it, it’s how they manufacture consent for what they’re doing. Because because a certain level of violence has been normalized for criminalized people. They just keep naming more and more people as criminalized and heightening the way in which they’re named as criminalized.

And then somehow people are like, oh, they’re just going after those people. Or that is what we do to those people. Maybe not this harshly, but it is what we do to those people and it’s, we really suddenly find ourselves in a place where we are now. People are like, wait, how is this happening?

It’s we’ve been going along with this for some time now. You’ve been okay with this for some time now. Or at least, for some people under some circumstances, and this is the full blown addition of it. Now we have to contend with that, but we also have to contend with what made it possible and what continues to make it possible.

And that is, I think, the challenge. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. And that’s a challenge that is about. Political power, but it’s also understanding this like larger picture of what it strikes me that in what you’re describing, criminalization is almost like a [00:23:00] theory of governance, right? It’s like a theory of how we run a society in terms of who makes decisions about what, who is subject to what.

And also that is yeah. About, about how we live that out in our daily lives. And one of the things that I’m really struck by as you’re talking is I’m thinking a lot about the way that the surveillance apparatus that is being leveraged against movements right now is something that really started taking shape in the aftermath of nine 11, right?

That it was like Bush era stuff. But then that was continued by the Obama administration and that like has been part of this bipartisan consensus that now that is about, fundamentally about criminalization. That that is actually what both the Democratic and Republican parties agree on some level is that criminalization is of like certain kinds of people is like core to our like culture and our politics. And I find that to be like, I don’t know. I’ve been sitting a lot with this and I’ve been thinking a lot about, about like really the early two thousands, like when I [00:24:00] was, a teenager and I was politicized, that so much of the stuff that we’re seeing Trump be able to mobilize against communities and against movements comes directly out of that time.

And that it’s just a straight line. It’s straight line between it’s and I think that there’s a lot of ways in which the discourse around the War on Terror created the opening for as you say, the manufacturing of consent around. Mass surveillance and really like a massive rollback in rights that I feel like in the early two thousands, people were like, Ooh, like this is actually a problem.

But it wasn’t taken seriously because we really were fully we’re exporting democracy pilled or something. I’m so sorry to 

Andrea Ritchie: say that. It just goes back so much further than that. I’m just like, oh, two thousands when you were in high school. Totally. I, yeah, and obviously I came up in, in the Reagan era although I wasn’t in the United States that whole time, but it, that’s, the [00:25:00] whole criminalization, demonization of.

Low income black women is a process of criminalization, right? That sure did involve criminal law at some point, but also just involved a lot of administrative law, a lot of denial of benefits, a lot of conditioning of benefits in ways that were profoundly eugenic. And yeah, and patriarchal and, and so Reagan certainly did a lot of that, but who continued the project, right?

The author of the Violent Crime Act of 1994, Clinton, the, the author of 10 bills, including the sort baseline for the immigration regime that is now being enforced, right? And so I think that is part of why there’s so many reasons why the opposition that needs to be is not, but I do think this is a huge part of it, is that the Democrats are deeply invested in criminalization, don’t want to be seen as not as.

Invested in it as anybody else. In fact, sometimes try and show they’re more invested in it than authoritarians. [00:26:00] And so it really is literally what’s impeding an actual resistance. And I wish I could just demonize the Democrats for that, but it is also, I think more than, I would say, more than cowardice, more than just belief that if I just keep my head down, maybe somehow this will blow over like a tropical summer storm, is actually that people are caught up in this, in the logic of criminalization in a way that then has us policing our resistance, policing who we show up for, forcing people to prove their value and their absence of threat to society, like hardworking farm workers. What about your lettuce? You’re not gonna get your lettuce if they don’t stop rounding people up who’s gonna take care of your children. Like that kind of logic is still a criminalizing logic, right?

And it’s all built around this notion of an ideal citizen, which is a profoundly eugenic notion, a profoundly ableist notion. Clearly, deeply racist, anti-black, anti [00:27:00] indigenous, anti-migrant and certainly transphobic, homophobic, deeply patriarchal. But that’s, we’re building this idealized citizen, and then everyone who falls outside of that is criminalized.

And that certainly means laws, whether it’s a cross-dressing law, what they used to call ugly laws that were basically about not having disabled people in public spaces, or, the ways in which. All the ways people are policed but also we’re not gonna give you benefits. And so criminalization is also what was behind what you just appropriately called the MAGA murder bill.

Because it was literally saying people who are not ideal citizens, who are somehow lazy, who are somehow taking advantage of the system, who are somehow certainly migrants, but also trans people and also pregnant people, and also disabled people are not entitled to share in our common good, in our common wealth.

And so we’re gonna cut ’em off and we’re gonna justify it with all those criminalizing narratives and stories and feed into your idea that people who are, [00:28:00] who you know are fraudulent in some way deserve to be punished by being denied fruits and vegetables. I just, or healthcare. And I think that’s, 

Cayden Mak: yeah, 

Andrea Ritchie: again, I keep saying that it’s by.

It is criminalization is how we got here, it’s how we’re staying here, and it’s not how we’re gonna get out of here. And that actually really matters a lot. And it’s only by uprooting criminalization that we have the best chance of fighting and defeating authoritarianism of fascism in this country.

And so to the extent that we are reproducing, criminalizing narratives in our resistance, we’re actually going against our own interests. We’re fueling the project that we’re supposedly trying to fight. So that’s a huge part of why we put this out and of the work that we do at IC, is to help people understand their own complicity and their own addiction to policing and punishment and really [00:29:00] unlearn that.

And l that doesn’t mean that we don’t have accountability. That doesn’t mean we don’t have mutual responsibility and reciprocity and. Standards that we live by as a community that reflect our values and practices that reflect our values, and that we don’t have a social contract that we co-create and that we co-manage together.

I just wanna be super clear about that. But we have to be moving towards the future and the present from that place. Not like who should be punished instead, or who should be punished harder, or which person it’s okay to send to a gulag and which person we absolutely can’t tolerate it. And, which person has proven their value such that I shouldn’t be chasing them through the fields, but, and I’m, I should be chasing no one anywhere.

But, and then who, maybe, they did do these things, so maybe not that hard, but don’t go that hard on them, but something should be done. And I think we’re seeing even, I’ll just say it the Center for American Progress just put out some, [00:30:00] supposedly. Oppositional platform around migration that just reiterates exactly every single criminalizing narrative.

And basically is continuing to build the foundation for what’s happening now, while just saying but maybe not like exactly like this so many brands. Yeah. You’re just, 

Cayden Mak: it’s a red day, I look this is why we podcast to get it out. And I think that one of the things that the Zine is really useful for is guiding people through doing their own analysis of this kind of thing, which I think is in, in this time where it just feels like there’s this onslaught of things that we feel like we need to respond to.

I think that one of the interventions that. You all are making here that I find really valuable is like we do need more tools to help people slow down and think through the like internal logic of what they’re responding to in large part, because so much of this stuff [00:31:00] is so deeply ingrained in everything we’ve learned about what it means to be a participant in society, right?

That there’s some really the, it like the it feels contradictory to slow down and think carefully about this stuff. But the thing that I do think we need more of are more accessible tools like this that help people do that for themselves because people need to feel into it and like fully understand what that means for them.

And I think that’s one of the, one of the like gifts of this particular strategic framework is that it’s like. Actually think about it. What does this mean for you in your life? Where do you see it? Which is also not something that I think that we’ve it doesn’t feel like we have time for it, but it’s also like it’s an investment we do need to make now 

Andrea Ritchie: a thousand percent.

And I think it does feel like we don’t have time for it, but what we need are spaces of like collective sense making. We need as many places like this where you and I are talking and in the talking with [00:32:00] each other, understand more of the bigger picture of what’s happening. Because otherwise, yes, it’s just a million assaults a minute, oh, they just did this.

Oh, but they just did this. Oh. But they just did that, and our brains can’t process it. And we shut down and we’re like, I hope it’s not there tomorrow, but it turns out it’s gonna be there tomorrow. 10 times worse, right? Yes. It’s gonna be there, right? And so we did wanna create a tool. We literally made it for your listeners, right?

And people who are thinking about what do we do now? And it really is designed as a tool to be in a conversation with yourself and then with your group, and then with your local Indivisible chapter and your local working Family parties chapter or your local No Kings people or your local 51 50.

No, that’s a Van Halen song. With the 50 50 I there’s a group 50 51. Yes. That one. See, again, telling on myself about my generation. And it’s really to help us think through how do we take this moment to get to a different other side. I don’t wanna go back to to the world [00:33:00] that, there’s gonna be a lot of suffering.

There’s gonna be a lot, there’s already a lot of suffering just in the last six months, a tremendous amount of suffering and way more, ahead of us at, in the best of circumstances. What we wanted was to give people a moment to be like, okay what could we be doing as part of this fight that isn’t just fighting to get back to the same thing?

Because I don’t wanna go back to the same thing. I don’t want us to go through all that suffering. To go back to the same thing, I don’t wanna go through all of the people who are dying for lack of abortion care, who are being forced birth, sometimes completely unconscious for lack of abortion care.

I don’t want us to suffer in that way. And then go back to Roe, which had some of the same Yeah. Outcomes. I don’t wanna go back to that. I want to go towards a liberatory future. And so this is an invitation to be in a conversation what that is. So it’s one for folks who are already engaged in work that is about interrupting and challenging criminalization.

It’s for them to listen to your podcast and be like, oh, that’s a really important framework. But where does [00:34:00] my work fit in that be like, your work is at the center of at home, eat. It’s right there. It’s like it, it’s work, right? Yeah. You’re in the best position to do the things that we need to do right now ’cause you’ve been doing them and how to do it.

And it’s also an invitation to people who haven’t been doing interrupting criminalization work to expand their understanding of what’s possible. So yes, absolutely. We call our senators and we yell at them and we tell them, to do the right thing to block the bill, to do the this or that.

And also we need to expand our vision of what’s possible and be clear about what we could be doing that will interrupt the criminalization that’s making everything in the bill possible, or that’s manufacturing consent for it. Yeah. And then it’s also an invitation to really find your lane, to really think about what is the thing that you and your group have the most power and influence to do and do best.

Some of us are just a block. I’m just always a block. I’m just like, we’re gonna stop whatever. And it’s I’m a [00:35:00] Capricorn. I’m on every person, on every personality kind of test. It comes out the same, I’m the block. So then what am I, what do I need to block? And in order to stop the train, put throw sand in the gears, slow the roll of it, and make room for other people to build the next thing.

And obviously we gotta be in conversation doing that together. But I, it’s also to really, and then to really think through like, where do you have power? Because I think this moment, yeah. People are just like, we don’t have, we lost everything. We were out organized, shrug emoji. No.

Like you have power. You have the power of who you can be in conver, like who in your life listens to you? In my case, beyond my cat. But they, there are people that you have power and influence with. They could be your family, they could be your friend group, they could be your church group, they could be your quilting group, they could be your Comic-Con friends.

It doesn’t matter. Who can you be in conversation with about these things? And then [00:36:00] how do you expand that group? And I think there’s a lot of sort of thinking through, in the tool, there’s this graphic that Scott Naka Gawa made about power under authoritarian and rule, which looks very daunting and overwhelming, but it also reminds you that this person at the top or this class at the top can’t do everything without all of these people.

And those of us at the bottom here in the green, it’s a very thin line, but we can pick these people off and bring them to our line, right? And undermine the consent for all of this. And then we have a graphic in here from TBA about all the ways that we can do that. There’s many ways that we can hold power.

Informationally with an organized base, with our refusal, with our spiritual power, our faith power, our there’s many ways, economic power cultural power, et cetera. So we have to figure out where we have the power to do these strategies. Block break blunt, make [00:37:00] it, okay, we have this.

The Medicare and Medicaid are gonna be impacted in a particular way. How do we lessen the impact of that on our communities by advocacy at the state and local level, and then also by building communities of care for folks. Where do we need to build bridges? We’re not all gonna agree. There are people I need to build with to get out of this that I don’t agree with.

There’s no question about it. Yeah. And we’re gonna talk about criminalization and we’re gonna talk about criminalization, and then we’re gonna talk about criminalization. Like it’s gonna be, I have beloved family who are like really angry about what’s going on and in the Lock Em Up department, and I’m like, okay, but can we talk about it?

And we’ll just keep talking about it. Yeah. And the tool is really an invitation to think about criminalization at the center. What does that expand in terms of our field of vision about where we need to be fighting and what’s possible? And then which of the strategies are we best suited to, best positioned to engage in?

And where do we have the most power? To engage it and then go, but recognize that we’re doing that as part [00:38:00] of a quilt, as part of a tapestry, and that we are doing that as part of a broader anti-authoritarian movement that is also moving these strategies in different ways. Go ahead, build power for Zoran ma.

That’s what some people are doing. And we’re gonna build the thing that we’re then gonna push him to implement that is a non-police, non carceral crisis response that really is non-police, non carceral, right? We’re gonna, we build power in many ways in that way, as long as we’re doing it in coordination and concert with each other in ways that aren’t impeding and undermining each other.

And that is the real kind of trick and dance of this moment. But that again, is the invitation of this tool is to really think about how to do that. But it really is intended to be something you sit down with yourself and think through with your group, with, maybe there’s like a podcast, listener group or wor like folks who listen to this podcast together, do it together. Think through it together and then find your crew and move in concert and collaboration. [00:39:00] 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. I also think this insight about being able to pick a lane, commit to it, do it well, is like advice well taken, right?

That like part of what is I don’t know. Speaking of the people who I have influence with I play magic, the gathering on a regular basis with the same group of people. And we were just talking last night about how deeply immobilizing the way that the Trump administration is being covered is for people who are like, I’m the only person whose full-time job is movement facing.

Everybody else is like software engineers and social workers and, they’re people who make things happen in the economy, right? And. The consensus in the room is very much it’s hard to pay attention to anything when it feels like this. And that so much of, I think what is hard when you’re not in a political organization, whether that’s like at the neighborhood level or otherwise, is to like, know where to point yourself and that just, that can be immensely [00:40:00] illuminating.

And the other thing that strikes me is you do spend several pages also talking about contradictions. Oh yeah. Which I think we love talking about contradictions here at convergence. It’s a thing. But like I think that the stuff that you’re also describing about being in this broader project of dismantling fascism in this moment means that like we do have to work with people who we don’t agree with.

And we do have to interact with systems that are like. Raise some questions for us, right? That like our, and our ability, our comfort, our tolerance for those contradictions. Actually, I do think there’s a big, there’s a muscle that needs to be built there for a lot of our folks who are like committed to the movement, who share liberatory visions for the future that like, we need to get real comfy with contradictions real fast.

Because the contradictions are Yeah, manifold. 

Andrea Ritchie: Yeah. Yeah. And we have to figure out how to move through them in ways that are [00:41:00] generative and not destructive. And. But I will say about your magic crew. That’s why I’m wearing the, let this radicalize you t-shirt. And sometimes I have to wear it for myself.

Look in the mirror and because I think this moment can be demobilizing or radicalizing, right? And our job as organizers is to make it radicalizing, right? Our job as organizers is to say, take the conversation that’s happening over the coffee clutch or the, community garden about, whoa, shit is terrible.

And be like, correct. Now let’s think of the most, radical understanding of that meaning at the root of the problem. And let’s rip at that root. Yeah. Like in the community garden or at the quilting bee or whatever. And how can we do that as a group? But yes, you’re gonna run into contradictions or people are gonna be like, absolutely electoral power is the only way to go.

We can’t do anything without electoral power. Someone else will be like, we have to build power to stop climate collapse. Or all of this is irrelevant. Someone will say. Points made. And, yeah. ‘Cause criminalization is a response in part to, [00:42:00] climate collapse and the ever dwindling sort of livable areas of land and resources.

And there’s definitely the agenda is to police the borders around those more violently, more heavily criminalize more people outside of them. And, genocide is the plan. And as someone pointed out at the conference, you and I are both just at, they’re just normalizing that now so that when it’s happening as climate collapse proceeds, it’ll just be what we do. And then the goal will just not to be on one side of that equation. It’ll be on to be on the other. And so we have to radically. Shift or be like, I’m not accepting that future. I refuse that future. I refuse that future. Most people we’re in conversation with refuse that future.

How do we pull them from there into our project? And it will require listening to somebody who’s lock ’em all up and not be like, eh, be like, sure, but would that, would locking that one person up, stop these other people from doing what they’re doing? ’cause it’s not just a one person [00:43:00] project. And would it stop the social forces that led to this person having the power they have?

And could we like think about that? And yes if you really wanna build power in that way, go forth. Remember that it requires a whole, spectrum of things. I think another contradiction so how do we think about building power? But we have to be building it, right?

That’s the key. We can’t just fight about, talk about it. We actually have to be doing it. And then. If people don’t wanna do it one way, then they should definitely be doing it another way. Like they can’t just be complaining about it. And then another contradiction, is, as a lawyer, my favorite is the one about the rule of law.

Like we have abandoned the rule of law. We need to return to the rule of law. We’re a lawless country, et cetera. Yes, we have been right? Like the rule of law, as I learned in law school, is what people in power say it is. And don’t think this is just coming from me. The Supreme Court has literally written that down.

It has literally said the conquered will never find justice in the courts of the [00:44:00] conqueror period. And that case is still good law. So they’re really clear about, and certainly the Supreme Court is demonstrating that now in very clear terms, right? The rule of law is whatever people say in power say it is.

And that’s what our analysis of criminalization also leads us to. So to say we wanna return to a rule of law means we wanna return to the regular degular level of criminalization. We wanna return to a kind of, just right level of policing and a just right level of incarceration and a just right level of kidnapping off the streets of certain people, right?

And a just right level of control of trans people. And that’s the part that we need to really understand that like the rule of law is the carceral state. The rule of law is what we’re fighting. ‘Cause the rule of law was never gonna punish people in power. And it operates the same at every level.

Whether you’re going to a summons court in New York City where every black person is being asked how long [00:45:00] they need to pay the fine, which presumes that they’ve already been adjudicated guilty as they’re walking up to the bench before they’ve even opened their mouth to plead guilty or not guilty. And every white person who’s walking up before they even get there to plead guilty or not guilty is being adjourned in contemplation of dismissal.

Like I’ve watched it so many days. But that doesn’t just happen in New York City summons court about drinking in public tickets. That happens at every level. Criminalization operates the same as every level. So people who are deeply invested in the International Criminal Court could see the racial makeup of how that court operates also.

And whose flagrant gross violence is never gonna be addressed through there, despite some people’s, best efforts. Because it’s how the system is structured and it’s from summons court to ICC criminalization works the same. And so we have to really figure out how to understand what we really want.

Is a new social contract and we want people to find ways of adhering to a social contract. So I don’t want the rule of to go back to the rule of [00:46:00] law, which often also did not actually prevent the harms that we say. So for instance, anti-discrimination law didn’t stop discrimination, right? It gave people a recourse, right?

But it didn’t stop it. And certainly, quote unquote hate crimes laws did not stop homophobic, transphobic, racial gender violence, anti-Iran violence. In fact they were often used against those same groups. And but what I do want, that doesn’t mean I don’t want anything. I want an agreement in our community that we don’t discriminate against trans people.

I want a pact in our community that we are a warm and welcoming space for everyone, and we make sure that everyone gets the care they need. The affirmation they need is addressed respectfully. Whether you changed your name because you got married, whether you changed your name because you didn’t like the name your parents gave you, whether you changed your name because it’s reflective of who you are from a gender perspective or any other, right?

We welcome everyone, we will address you as you wanna be addressed because everyone deserves that. And whether, you’re no matter what. [00:47:00] And that’s where I think we need to lean instead of having debates about whether the rule of law is what we want or not. Like what, how do we wanna live our values in practice?

Yeah. And how do we wanna make agreements around that and hold each other in accountability around that, in ways that aren’t about policing and punishment, but also aren’t about. We all do whatever, and, whoever has the most power now wins in that situation too. So we have to Yeah, 

Cayden Mak: Yeah.

Yeah. There’s and there’s also a thing about this imagination piece that is the thing that I am also often finding myself talking about with people is just that going back to the rule of law means that we’re constantly gonna be fighting these like rear guard defensive fights that like the opportunity that this moment presents is if people are more ready right now, I think to hear this kind of conversation than they’ve ever been, certainly in my lifetime, that there’s an opportunity to ask questions [00:48:00] about why we make decisions, the way we make decisions about whom and to what ends.

Because I think that even if it’s not like a fully articulated politics of, we know that. Like Trump and MAGA didn’t come from nowhere. That like when we see a shift in this extreme way towards authoritarianism, we do have like responsible humans should probably ask the question, how in the hell did we get here?

And being able to hold space for that conversation and that learning. And just like the really uncomf this uncomfortable process of self-discovery, I feel like is is it’s crucial. And I think that like in a lot of ways this zine gives people permission to do that, right?

That there’s so much about I don’t know what is normalized in society that like we actually just need somebody else to be like, Hey, it’s cool to slow down, it’s cool to do less. It’s cool to think about these questions that maybe [00:49:00] have been. Like itching you in the back of your brain, but then let’s surface them.

Let’s actually process it. That I feel like is a deeply necessary intervention to keep us from doing that defensive rear guard thing where it’s yeah, I don’t, a lot of people are really worried about the like, ratchet effect of there’s this back and forth swing, right?

Where there’s these one term presidents, but then the far right is able to consolidate power and actually pull, this is like one of my, one of my rants that I’m constantly ranting about is like polar. There’s a process of polarization that’s happening and is polarization that is explicitly from the right, and it’s driven by the like think tank research media machine that manufactures consent for right-wing policies that then is normalized by a, frankly mostly just feckless democratic party that like does not.

It is unwilling to acknowledge that’s what’s happening. That like polarization is not the process of, Ooh, the left is so extreme. The right is so extreme. Polarization is the process of of 

Andrea Ritchie: having starkly competing our society. 

Cayden Mak: Becoming. [00:50:00] Yeah. And it is like that the rhetoric of polarization assumes that we’re all fighting on the same terrain, and it’s like we’re simply not the far right has invested tens of billions of dollars into this on, for, 75 years or whatever, plus let me just 

Andrea Ritchie: say also that they understand power, including the power of relationships.

Yes. And I think that’s the thing is I think sometimes yes, and I, something I write a little bit about in, in practicing new worlds is we’re really like looking at the tip of the iceberg. We’re looking at the judiciary, we’re looking at the elected officials. We’re looking at the presidency, we’re looking at the product and the media, ecosystem and the culture and all that.

But we’re looking at the product of something that was unseen. For a long time while we were doing digital organizing and mass mobilization, they were talking to their neighbors. They were babysitting their kids. Yes, they were holding church potlucks. They were. Going and praying with people when they lost someone, they were helping someone rebuild their house after a flood.

[00:51:00] They were doing all kinds of things that cemented those relationships in which people then make sense of the world and decide to take action based on the sense of they’ve made of the world together. And of course there’s more wind in their sails because their way they make sense of the world is about.

Coming after the usual suspects and targets. And also about individualizing the problem, scapegoating individuals as opposed to looking at the system. Meanwhile, on our side, we’re like, look at the big system that feels completely, you feel powerless to actually address, and we’re not really good at being like, this is who you should be mad at.

I think, Tesla take down is a really good example, right? People more oh, this is who you should be mad at. And people are mad. This is and they’re being very effective in targeting their madness, right? And we need to mad meaning rage. And we need to be similar, right?

With, you need to be just, yeah, we need to be better at directing that. But they did that through these one-on-one conversations and relationships. One revival, one, again, barn raising [00:52:00] one, come harvest your crop. You come harvest mine conversation at a time. And that’s the part that we need to be clear about.

And so I, I. I believe that we need to be looking at all parts of the iceberg. And again, this is and then how do we chip away at it, right? What, what do we need to chip away at inside ourselves, in, in each other, in the way that we understand society and then in terms of their power and how do we wanna do it?

Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. It’s big game. But I also feel like, one of the things that I was so excited to talk to you about today is just simply how like a lot of the, starting a lot of the like trailhead for this is asking these questions, talking amongst ourselves, really be and being thoughtful, right?

And like having something like this zine out there that like helps people do that work on their own, that is like a self-guided tour to developing your power analysis in your [00:53:00] community and in your place is. Is desperately needed, I think. And people are constantly asking us at convergence for more like political education tools.

So it’s yeah, it’s it brings me great joy to see so much so many people who are thinking so rigorous rigorously about this stuff, making really important contributions to this conversation. So you’re, I really appreciate it, yourself 

Andrea Ritchie: included. And I just again, wanna emphasize to your listeners we wrote this for you.

Please give it a look. And there’s also tensions about how do we, again, work with folks who who might even not only agree with us, but blame us for this moment, right? Yeah. Because, reformists are like, you, abolitionists went too far, and now what? Look what we’re doing with it.

I’m like, you didn’t let us go far enough and now look like we’re doing it right. And I know I’m right, but, I don’t need to that at this point. I can just be like. Let’s, that debate serves them like we can. Let’s talk about what right now we. [00:54:00] Need to be doing together to address the problem we both see as critical in this moment.

And in the doing of it, we’re gonna talk about, trust me, we’re gonna talk about that thing that you just said, but we’re not gonna talk about it as an entry point for us to be able to go shoulder to shoulder against the thing we both fight. And we’re gonna talk about, whatever bullshit someone just said about, trans people tried to go too far.

I’m gonna say I don’t agree with you upfront. I’m not hiding that. But I’m gonna say, let’s agree that everyone should be allowed to be called by the name and be the person they want, and have private conversations with their healthcare providers about their healthcare without. You getting involved in my private conversation about my healthcare, just like you wouldn’t want me involved in your private conversation about your healthcare.

And let’s start there and then we’ll get, we’ll come back to that other thing you said. I promise you I’m not letting it go, but it’s again, not the precondition for me to go out and fight with you against something that is gonna need all of us to fight. And so that’s how we block and build together. And hopefully get to the other [00:55:00] side that is a liberated future, not a return to the kind of low grade fever of this massive in infection.

Cayden Mak: Yeah. I think that is quite right. Thank you so much, Andrea. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks 

Andrea Ritchie: so much for having me. I’m so grateful to you for letting me rant. I’m hearing yours too. I like 

Cayden Mak: them deeply here for it. Thanks, my thanks again to Andrea Richie for joining us today. You can find a principle and digital version of Block and Build, but make an [email protected].

We will put a direct link to that in the show notes so it’s easy to find. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Cayden Mak. Our producer is Josh Stro. Kimie David designed our cover art, and Logan Gross is our intern. If you have something to say, please do drop me a line.

You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at [email protected]. And finally, of course, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to [00:56:00] strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment.

You can become a [email protected] slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a really long way to helping our independent small team continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this helps.