In the spirit of collaboration these times demand, Convergence, In These Times, The Forge, and The Real News Network have joined forces to produce “Left Out: The Missing Election Narratives.” This package brings together essays, reporting and conversations by and with organizers, writers and cultural workers across the country.
You can view the entire digital package here.
All of our outlets belong to the Movement Media Alliance and we offer this collection in the name of movement journalism, knowing that no one will tell our stories for us. No one will honor the hard work of organizing and rigorously examine our challenges and blunders, our successes and progress. Lost in the froth over the national election were major local wins and worthy efforts, the ongoing work of building alternatives for community care and giving voice to experience erased from the corporate media. Beyond the immediate result there are always lessons learned, perspectives gained, connections built, and those are the stories we’re here to tell.
We know, too, that no one else will set this movement in the long sweep of history. Today we’re contending with ecological collapse, a tech-mediated world where right-wing media feed alternative facts and fascism is embedded in the algorithms—but little else is “unprecedented.” Laws and institutions, state-sanctioned and vigilante violence have suffocated democratic participation since the founding of the country.
And since the founding there has been resistance in a multiplicity of forms. With this sampling of voices we’re hinting at the many ways there are to respond, to push back and to build. All have their place and we need them all. Our job is to understand how they relate and pick up the right tool for the moment. Tell our stories to each other and slingshot them around the world. Refuse to believe the shifts we’re seeing will ruin us.
At the People Get Ready conference in 2023 Barbara Ransby counseled that we needed to both defend against the fascist threat and build a radically democratic, anti-capitalist future. “The will to change is a material force…. We must not lose confidence in our agency,” she said.
It’s even truer today.
Convergence’s offerings for the project include:
‘’’We Care For Each Other, We Fight For Each Other’: Mutual Aid and Power Building”
a panel discussion in written and video form
“Holding Our Collective Grief”
a Block & Build episode with Malkia Devich-Cyril (Radical Loss Project) and Sarah Jaffe (journalist and author of From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire)
“How Ballot Measure Organizers Fight to Defend Their Wins”
an op-ed from Chris Melody Fields Figueredo of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
“Don’t Hold Your Breath for a ‘Joe Rogan of the Left’”
a Block & Build episode with Adam Johnson of Citations Needed and Hermelinda Cortés of ReFrame.