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The People Still March

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

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This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: What’s up y’all, 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 impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

Before we get started, I would like to invite you to join our subscriber program. Thanks Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes that you’ve come to expect from us week in and week out. You can become a [email protected] slash donate.

Any amount helps either as a one-time donation or a recurring monthly or annual subscription. Also, if you don’t have the cash, another way you can help support this show is by rating and reviewing us wherever you listen. This helps boost the show and strengthens the ability of. The various podcast platforms, algorithms to surface it to other like minded listeners so that we can expand our community of practice.

This week on the show, I’m first joined by the Executive Director of Media Justice, Steven Renderos, to discuss the nefarious activities of the FCC. Then the Executive Director of Women’s March, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, joins me to talk about what the impact of mass demonstrations can be in this moment following on the heels of their recent People’s March in Washington, D.

C. But first, of course, The way that the sweeping executive order on gender is being practically implemented is really coming into focus. We’re seeing things ranging from indefinite holds on passport processing to orders about gender in schools. But I really want to bring your attention to a lawsuit that an incarcerated trans woman has brought against the federal government.

On January 21st, she was immediately transferred to solitary confinement and denied contact with other people in anticipation of further instructions from from the executive branch. Suing the president from federal prison is an immense act of courage. Incarcerated people are subject to extreme surveillance and repression in normal circumstances and face retribution for speaking out or even simply advocating for themselves.

There’s a lot at stake for the plaintiff and for all incarcerated trans people. Because this lawsuit isn’t just about injunctive relief for the plaintiff as an individual, it also really highlights the pure absurdity of this executive order and how frankly unenforceable a lot of it is. During the signing ceremony for the Lake Riley Act, Trump also announced that he’s ordering a huge detention facility to be constructed at Guantanamo Bay.

If this feels ominous to you, you are not alone. The plan doesn’t work. links Trump’s campaign against immigrants to the state crimes of the so called War on Terror. My mind immediately jumped to Guantanamo’s use as a prison, holding people, torturing them in many cases, in indefinite detention with no opportunity for due process, some of whom were determined to To be innocent of any charges after sometimes years of detention.

It also, of course, calls to mind the creation of concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, when the federal government used military resources to round up and detain tens of thousands of civilians for the supposed threat. Of their ancestry. And I’ve got to ask at this juncture, where are the Democrats on this?

Between this and this week’s short lived office of management and budget freeze of all federal funding, this should be a kick in the ass. It’s time that they start behaving like a real opposition party. And in the absence of that, I guess it’s just time for us to get better organized. Our friends at Truthout have a great story this week investigating the connections between the insurance industry and fossil fuel companies.

It’s not just that the insurance titans are insuring the operations of fossil fuel producers, it turns out there are also investors in those companies. These are the same companies who are abandoning homeowners in California and across the West, citing that insuring homes in wildfire prone areas is simply too risky.

What’s wild to me is that these companies could decide that it’s climate change that’s too risky. But they’re too busy enjoying the financial windfall of playing both sides. We’ll stick a link to the story in the show notes. Also, nearly 2 million federal employees received an email earlier this week containing a deferred resignation officer offer promising to pay their full salary and benefits through the end of September if they simply respond to the email with the word resign by February 6th.

It pains me to feel like I have to say this, but if you or anyone, you know, receive this email, which sounds like a pretty sweet deal, it literally says or suggests that employees could use the time to quote, to take a nice vacation. Exclamation point. I just want to remind you. Consider the source. There’s no congressionally approved budget to pay people to not work for months at a time, and this is an offer from Donald Trump, who built his career by refusing to pay real estate contractors time and time again, and Elon Musk, who made the exact same promise to Twitter employees, who never saw a dime and were eventually fired anyway for, quote, cause.

This isn’t the only missive from OPM that’s come out in the last two weeks. 404 Media has a great story this week about how several of these orders still had document metadata exposing their original authors. Those authors? Previously employed by the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025.

Trump tried to distance himself from Heritage on the campaign trail, but it turns out, you can’t fool Reddit. And just yesterday, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, decided it’s time to try and defund the greatest woke communist threat to our nation, Daniel Tiger. He’s requested an investigation into PBS and NPR, claiming they’re operating as for profit entities while receiving federal funding by announcing their financial sponsors on air.

It should come as no surprise that this attack on nominally publicly funded media is part of their blitz to dismantle any remaining checks and balances to their authoritarian plans. This is a politically partisan bad faith maneuver intended to shut down a free press and anything that seems like dissent.

On that note my first guest today is the executive director of Media Justice and a longtime comrade of mine, Steven Renderos. Media Justice is a national racial justice organization advancing media and technology rights of people of color. Steven it’s really good to see you today. I mean, Could be under better circumstances.

It’s really good to 

[00:06:13] Steven Renderos: see you too. No, for sure, for sure. But it’s really great to be here with you. 

[00:06:17] Cayden Mak: Obviously this, you know, spurious investigation into NPR and PBS is bad news for a free press, but last week Carr also reinstated these complaints against television stations for supposed preferential treatment in favor of Kamala Harris.

Could you tell us a little bit about what ideally the FCC should be doing and who Brendan Carr is? 

[00:06:38] Steven Renderos: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be an independent federal body that’s like really focused on ensuring that everybody in the United States has access to the communications infrastructure of our time.

Obviously, over the past decade. Last hundred or so years, that infrastructure has changed going from telephones to radio, to TV, to the internet. And it’s been, the FCC has played a strategic role in ensuring that people have access to the things that they need. However, you know, Brendan Carr there’s a lot of things to say about him.

First is, you know, he was appointed under Donald Trump as FCC commissioner back in 2017. Prior to that, he had been the general counsel for. The chair at that time or a commissioner at that time, Republican commissioner named Ajit Pai. So he comes from this kind of cloth of like Republican FCC commissioners.

He’s also famously, I think at this point, the only, the only person who had, Contributed actual writing to project 2025, who is stationed in a leadership position inside of the administration. And he wrote the section on the federal communications commission and his thing is weaponizing freedom of speech by decrying anything that doesn’t align.

with Trump or a conservative point of view as evidence of political bias, which is why he’s going after ABC and NBC, which is why he’s going after public media. And also why he’s trying to go after tech companies as well. 

[00:08:10] Cayden Mak: Sure. I mean, it’s interesting because it feels like this is Like that’s kind of a talking point that we’ve heard from like haters on the internet for a really long time, but he’s really like, let’s institutionalize this and say that like, this is the policy of the federal government that criti criticizing the Trump administration is like part of the, like, this is part of like this free speech regime that we’re, we’re trying to, like, implement.

Yeah. 

[00:08:36] Steven Renderos: I mean, he calls it, he calls. The media system, the censorship cartel alongside with like the role that social media platforms play, you know, and I’m like, in the thing is like, we see this, this is straight out of the Trump playbook of, you know of contradictions of saying like, We are free speech warriors, and yet like the actions over the last couple weeks are all indicating to us that a crackdown on free speech is the thing that he wants, you know, 

[00:09:06] Cayden Mak: right.

[00:09:06] Steven Renderos: So, so, yeah, I mean, I think that’s, that’s Brendan Carr is going to be an instrument that will weaken the independence of the Federal Communications Commission and just make it another tool in Trump’s toolbox to, to go after You know, anybody he deems as being the opposition. 

[00:09:23] Cayden Mak: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the complaints themselves.

And I know that the previous chairperson of the FCC had tossed them out as kind of spurious or like, not worth their consideration. But like, what are the complaints that he revived? And like, what does that kind of say to us about threats to both corporate and independent media? 

[00:09:45] Steven Renderos: Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things and this is kind of pulling a piece of the playbook from the civil rights movement and the way that the civil rights movement engaged with the media system that was very hostile to amplifying their stories or their perspective.

Back in the 60s and 70s many civil rights organizations very deliberately challenged the licenses of local TV stations because they’re, they’re essentially obligated in exchange for being, having access to the public airwaves. They’re obligated to do certain things. And, you know, anybody, any individual person can file a complaint against a local TV station and that’s in fact like what many civil rights leaders did, including famously Medgar Evers, who you know filed complaints against many local TV stations in Mississippi for, for only giving a one sided view of, of issues and constantly platforming, you know, KKK members and never bring things up.

From the civil rights movement to share a differing perspective that the mechanisms are still there And so what you see in this current kind of political context is you see conservatives filing complaints against local TV stations Who they say are leading to are misleading the public and so famously this isn’t part of the complaints that That car reinstated, but there was a complaint filed against the Des Moines register for publishing a poll in Iowa leading up to, to one of the debates where it showed that Kamala Harris might be up on Trump.

And you know, there were, there were complaints filed against the Des Moines register, a lawsuit now actually by a conservative law firm going after that independent, that. That newspaper that’s akin to the kinds of complaints that were filed against the local TV stations, ABC, NBC, and CBS for broadcasting.

In one case, it had to do with broadcasting an interview with Kamala Harris that was edited. In another case, it had to do with the amount of airtime that she was given during a debate. And another time it had to do with like With Kamala Harris showing up on SNL, so it’s like it’s very innocuous things but they’re being weaponized to, to, to do, to go after these local TV stations.

And the FCC, you know, is the main body that receives those complaints and they’re, they’re required to like consider them and do something about it. And the previous chair, the outgoing chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, dismissed them prior to the new administration coming in. But but did so in a way in which it just allowed an opportunity for Brendan Carr to come in and reinstate them.

So, I think what it means, I think, is that it is very likely that the existing media infrastructure that we have is likely to be, continue to be a target of the right concerted target, you know, concerted attacks against their, their ability to just do, What they do. And it’s not like they are liberal bastards.

I wish, but they’re not. But it does mean that we’re likely to see those kinds of attacks that will lead to a regression in what the, that corporate media is willing to do and not willing to do. 

[00:12:56] Cayden Mak: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, it seems like a lot of the kinds of corporate media that are going to be at the center of very high profile complaints are more likely to want to mitigate their risk than anything else.

[00:13:07] Steven Renderos: And that’s what they’ve done. You know, they They settled a lawsuit with Trump. ABC, I think, settled a lawsuit with Trump who he alleged they, you know, they were, they were discriminated against them and, and rather than see the case out through court, they, they settled and they paid, I don’t know how many millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars.

Facebook recently did the same thing, you know, to settle another lawsuit against Trump. So yeah, I mean, corporate media They’re not going to preserve democracy, they will preserve their bottom line. So that’s exactly what’s going to happen here. 

[00:13:36] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And I feel like, I feel like you know, the, the implication here too, is this sort of like imbroification of social media is also part of this, that like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, it feels like is trying to cover his own ass.

When it comes to these accusations of bias and so he’s swayed 

[00:13:54] Steven Renderos: his incel tour. Yeah. He’s still, he’s still on the incel tour for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think, and, you know, I think really what it comes down to is trying to save his behind from, from further scrutiny. Cause, you know, You know, Brendan Carr is willing to do things against the platforms, like eliminating Section 230 and making them, making them legally liable for the content that’s published on their platforms.

But it’s also a way to try to curry favor with an administration that they stand to gain a lot of money from. You know, one of the hidden figures with the FCC, is Elon Musk, as someone who has a, you know, infrastructure that he’s deployed satellite infrastructure to, to provide broadband access. He stands to gain a lot by an FCC that’s willing to, to make it easier for him to access federal funds to expand his, his broadband monopoly.

[00:14:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. The, the kleptocracy at work. Really? 

[00:14:51] Steven Renderos: For sure. 

[00:14:52] Cayden Mak: Well, I gotta ask, like, this is, this is feels like a kind of a dire picture of where we’re at. But of course, I have to ask, like, what are you all working on in this time thinking about this rapidly changing landscape? And what can fighting organizations both as like, You know, with bases like base building organizations and frankly, like fighting organizations that are media organizations, like, what can we do about?

[00:15:15] Steven Renderos: Yeah, I mean, I think first off is to see this media terrain is terrain that we have to struggle over we have to we absolutely have to make it incredibly difficult For this incoming administration to do what it wants to do. The good news is that You know, these federal agencies have mechanisms that they have to respond to the FCC in particular, constantly, anytime they want to do something has to engage the public in in asking them what they think before they take any proceed any particular action.

In the days of net neutrality, I think in the work that we did together, Katie, We prove this that like you can actually get a lot of people to engage with an independent agency like the FCC, and we got millions of comments around net neutrality. Those are comments that this agency by law has to actually read and consider.

So there are ways that we may not be fully capable. of stopping them from doing some of the worst things that they want to do, but we can slow them down. And I think that is incredibly important in this moment to buy us some time. The other thing I would say that groups like us can be doing and that we’re doing is finding ways to support the media infrastructure that really reflects the kind of world we’re trying to go to.

And so there’s two things I would say to that for folks like Get familiar with your local community media institutions, your community radio stations, your public access TV stations. Those are worthy of your support. And movement media institutions are critical listening to you at the top of the hour, be like subscribed to us.

And I was like, yeah, that’s what I need to do. I need to subscribe to convergence magazine, to Scalawag, to, to truth out to all the movement media outlets out there that are actually helping to You know, to hold the line around analysis in this moment, especially as the culture wars ramp up, especially as our educational institutions get attacked.

And so some of the histories and political context that we really need to understand to fight in this moment are not showing up in the places that we would expect. So movement media plays a very critical role in this moment. So I would say support. So slow them down, support the institutions that reflect the world that we want, and let’s fight for that.

[00:17:25] Cayden Mak: That’s right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Steven, to break, break a lot of that down and also give us some of this back, like, backstory. You know, one of the things I always love about talking to you is how much, like, historical knowledge about the way that our movements have interacted with the media.

Have how that’s looked for generations, not just this sort of like immediate moments. Always good to see you. 

[00:17:49] Steven Renderos: It’s great to see you. And you’ve been a huge inspiration for me. One quick anecdote for me. I remember at Netroose Nation many years ago when Twitter was for sale. And you very boldly said, like, we should go out there and try to buy this thing.

And it always sticks with me because that seemed like an inflection point. Obviously, like none of us, you know, independently could have. Purchased it, but there was a there was an idea there that I’ve always appreciated the boldness of your ideas I’ve always appreciated something you said about you know Stepping back from the platforms that that we are on if we do that We’re conceding space to fascists and we’re kind of living that moment now So I always think about that when I’m thinking about my choices of where to show up.

[00:18:32] Cayden Mak: Oh, thank you so much. I you know, I Stand, I stand by all those things, you know, like I wish we could have bought Twitter in like 20, whatever that was. I gosh, that was a, at this point, like a decade ago or something. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:18:47] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: Yeah. 

[00:18:48] Cayden Mak: All right. Take care. And I’m, I’m sure we’re going to talk again on the pod soon about all of the great work that y’all are doing at media justice.

[00:18:55] Steven Renderos: For sure. Thank you, Caden. 

[00:18:57] Cayden Mak: All right. As you probably remember, the 2017 Women’s March was the largest single day march in U. S. history, with over 500, 000 folks participating. As an organization, the Women’s March has continued to organize ongoing campaigns and actions for the past eight years, and most recently co led the People’s March on Washington, D.

C. on January 18th. While this year’s People’s March didn’t have the same kind of record turnout. This event was sort of a, an inflection point to coordinate the efforts of dozens of organizations trying to mobilize in this new Trump administration. Joining me to talk about that event and also what comes next and the importance of these kinds of inflection points in mass mobilization is the executive director of Women’s March, Rachel O’Leary Carmona.

Rachel, it’s great to see you. Hi, how are you? Oh, you know, hanging in there as we all are. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it does feel like just like by the skin of my teeth, but we’re doing what we can. From where you sit, I’m really interested to hear what you think are the differences between the moment now and the moment in 2017 from an organizing and mobilizing perspective, because I think that a lot of people are looking at that as like, an indicator of something, but I think there are a lot of like, important textural and contextual changes that have happened over the past eight years that are certainly part of what we’re thinking about here at Convergence and I imagine are part of your assessment as well.

[00:20:22] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: I mean, I think that the time like the difference between 2025 and 2017 is just night and day. You really can’t compare the two because we are post COVID. We are post you know, political violence. We are post George Floyd uprisings. We are post, we are two presidential inaugurations in at this point.

We are, you know, inside of an ongoing economic like, you know, record inflation, you know, all of the things that have been impacting folks all across the country. 2017, there were different internet data rules. There were, you know, there’s just a host of things that are apples to oranges.

And also I just think that part of what, when people are assessing marches or big mobilizations, I’m not sure that people quite get what they do. So the purpose of a big march is not that you walk with your Princess Leia sign past your opposition’s window and they’re like, you know, I didn’t think about it that way.

We really got to switch things up. The purpose is to have low bar activities to get people loaded into movement. And I think that when we’re thinking about movement cycles and trigger moments the 2017 election was a big one, and it loaded a lot of people into movement. We had another one in 2020. And what ends up happening is an ongoing, and there have been a number of of groups who have talked about this movement cycle, that there’s a big peak and there’s a trigger and it goes down, it goes up, and then there’s a normalization higher than what the, you know, the baseline was to begin with.

So there’s a finite amount of people that we can load into movement and marches don’t tend to be the thing that people do for their ongoing activism. So marches tend to be a first time thing. You know, most of us got involved in a march or a protest in the first right of mind. For example, I was protesting a war and I accidentally got detained, not arrested, I guess, but detained.

But it was a, it was a protest at a time, you know, and other than the ones after that, that I have been paid to, you know, as a job that I’ve organized, I haven’t really been to one since other than the first women’s march where I was not. In like on staff. You know, I just attended. So I think that as an instrument to really understand the movement, big moments of mass mobilization like that are more about radicalization, you know, like who is being brought into the movement, not who is existing inside of the movement.

And I think that people, you know, are missing a lot of the nuance of that because they want to say, Okay. And also 500, 000 was a vast undercounting of the first one. You know, the, the, the counting of the last one that we did was a vast undercounting and to the point of your previous guest there’s some real problems that we are facing inside of you know, I guess preemptive compliance around, you know, the press and censorship.

And if you’ve been online, you’ve also seen folks from abroad saying we’ve been protesting in hundreds of thousands and it won’t, it’s getting no coverage and it’s getting censored online. So there are a number of things that we have to contend with. They’re both in the, you know, the barriers to turnout, the relative strength of the movement compared to, you know, that time then in terms of how many people are involved and also just the ways that we hear about things and we learn about things now.

[00:23:32] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. That’s a really interesting point also about the sort of like, narrative and storytelling aspects of mass mobilization that like, it does feel like we’re in a moment where the way that sort of mass media pays attention to things like mass mobilization is very cynical in a lot of ways, right?

I, it, it, I mean, honestly, like, I feel like this is in some ways, like, it feels like backlash against the sort of like 2020 racial justice uprising moment, to be honest, like that would, that would be my guess is like a big piece of that. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s And it feels like it’s designed to be demobilizing, right?

But like Yes, 

[00:24:17] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: yes. And I think the question is, who does this narrative serve, right? Because, you know, my, my background, I studied, you know, social movements as my undergraduate. I’ve, you know, studied social movements from the United States. You know, and, and across the world. And the truth of the matter is, is that there has been no progressive change, you know, inside of, of you know, principled struggle that was not led by people power.

And so the idea of like, this is not the time for mass mobilization or, you know, or, or some of the critique you know, that we heard at the beginning was you shouldn’t March now because it will be so late. Smaller than the first March. And I’m like, well, if the criteria for mobilizing people who want, who, by the way, want to get active, who were, who were already mobilizing, whether we were going to plan a March or not, you know, they were like, we’re out here, whether you’re out here or not, is a little bit irrelevant at this point, you know?

So, so they, the, the question is like, if. If the criteria is we can’t do anything if it’s not larger than the biggest thing that has ever bigged in the united states and we’re just like And it’s giving and I really think I talked to I I say this in the press and I never they never pick this sound Bite up when I say it, but I really feel like it’s because it’s women who march and you know, it’s called women’s march and it’s It’s a bunch of women.

It’s a bunch of queers. It’s queer women. It’s non binary folks. And there are more men. Actually, there were significantly more men. We’ve got some demographics on the last March and there are more men. But I really believe that if it were just men and the rest of us were, you know, elsewhere, if it were just men who had this largest single day mobilization and then continue to multiple times a year for eight years, mobilize hundreds of thousands of men into the street Over, you know, over a sustained period of time, they would be like, holy shit, we have a problem to deal with here, you know, but instead it’s just like, oh, it’s these women, you know, they’re, they’re, you know, and so I think that the misogyny that drives so much of both the attacks on abortion rights.

The attacks on women’s health care, the attacks on trans people, the, and, and just the way that misogyny is one of the rocket fuels of fascism over time in general historically really colors the perception of who is going out to march in these moments. 

[00:26:33] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s really, I think, interesting.

I don’t like, it doesn’t surprise me that other outlets are not picking up that, that kind of analysis, but it makes a lot of sense. And I think that like, you know, there’s, there’s ways that we literally see that playing out, whether that was like in the sort of like 20 teens and the way that I feel like the mass media really went out of their way valorize, like, the Tea Party movement.

Right? It’s like, sometimes they’d be, like, a couple dozen people out at protests. Like, somehow this was, like, some huge thing, like, it’s really it’s really wild. Well, and I also think that, like, Mass mobilization and the work that you all have done in the last eight years is not just getting people in the streets, right?

No, no, there’s, there’s so much more to that. And I also think there’s a, there’s a profound lack of understanding in a lot of the ways that media covers social movements that they don’t understand the ways that these things interplay. And I think that like, it adds to a kind of like pop, like a kind of cynicism about the work that movement organizations do.

Yes. I’m wondering if you could tell us a story about like some of the other inflection points that you all have like turned people out and done work on over the past eight years as like, sort of like telling that deeper story of like, what is the fabric that you all are leaving? 

[00:27:54] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: I do. I have a favorite story on that.

But before we leave the point, I want to say that it’s not just media. It’s also the movement and the democratic party. Many, many of whom are operatives who have law degrees, you know, and who understand advocacy as making legislation or passing bills. And so there’s a professionalization and, and part of the reason why we lost, right.

What, what has been clear in the data that has come back is that the democratic party has become a party of elites. And so part of what our, you know, I, I say our very broadly, even though I don’t own some of these pieces, but part of what our problem has been is that we don’t trust the people and inside of movement spaces that that impulse is still there.

The, the movement, you know, the, the kind of the infrastructure of organizing you know, and, and social justice doesn’t fully trust organizations that are in the business. of getting people into movement and there’s a sense of like, we can’t be controlled. The people can’t be controlled. And so I actually think that the way that we talk about mass mobilization, the way that we talk about protests, the way that we consider the organizations that do that work is part and parcel of why we lost and the, and the gap that we absolutely need to bridge before we can win again.

So I’m like, before I, before I go to talk, You know, on this other thing. I want to start there. 

[00:29:16] Cayden Mak: No, that, I feel like that’s really important though, because I also feel like this is related to this issue also where it feels sometimes like the only tool in the toolbox is like lawsuits. And first of all, lawsuits are slow and they also rely on like an infrastructure of, and like, God bless the movement lawyers.

We love the shit out of you. But it does rely on this sort of like layer of professionalized credentialed people. Assuming that, A legal infrastructure will exist even right that like 

[00:29:47] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: trickle down organizing doesn’t work any better than trickle down economics. And like, we have to understand that we have to stop talking about people and acting on people’s behalf and acting with people.

And a lot of these lawsuits, like it’s not specific to the lawsuits. I know like, you know, the work that happened in Texas with the, with the plaintiffs was amazing and they were very much an active part of this, but it cannot, we cannot. If if Dobbs taught me anything, if these, if, if the ongoing work taught me anything is that there is a very significant danger in a single strategy and we cannot, we cannot have too many eggs in, you know, one basket.

And like, this is not a matter of my opinion. This is a matter of the fact that came back. We have not done a good enough job organizing the base. We just haven’t, we lost across all demographics. And so like, we need to just be very clear of like, if we don’t see, and I say this as an elite, I say this as a person who, you know, has spent most of my career in New York, I’ve got graduate degrees, you know, all of these things.

And so what I’m saying is, this is a self critique, but if I’m trying to be a productive member of either the movement or the Democratic Party, and I’m trying to hang, and I can’t see myself in, you know, the, the conversations about how change gets done. you know, the political imagination of what is the vision of, of ours, you know, our side then I’m not sure how other people see themselves in that too.

And I think that’s the issue also related back to the FCC question or the, or the, or the community, the question about communications and how what we’re talking about. matters to what we’re trying to do. And I think the question is, it doesn’t matter what the narrative is. And it doesn’t matter what the, what the channels are, that we advance that narrative, if we do not have a clear and compelling vision to move the people towards.

And I think that’s where we got that year. 

[00:31:42] Cayden Mak: No, I think that’s quite right. And I mean, you just see that in the way that like, the Harris campaign was just like, when they were explicitly asked how they would be different from Biden, they were like, we wouldn’t be like, yo. There’s also, you know, this is, I feel funny about interjecting this, but we just published this really great reflection from Emma Tai, who used to be the executive director of United Working Families in Chicago.

About this very question and like the way in which a lot of advocacy leaves behind this question of politics and like 

[00:32:15] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: what, 

[00:32:15] Cayden Mak: what our, what our goal and our vision is, it’s like, it’s a truly great article and like, she pulls in a number of like, larger, more substantial pieces of writing, including a couple different books.

But it really is worth the read. And I, I, I really encourage folks to go check it out on the Convergence website because I, I, this, this question is a deep and profound one and similar to there’s not one strategy that’s going to. Or like, channel of tactical action that’s going to solve this. There’s not just one solution to this question of like, how do we re inject politics, not like simply elections, but politics as like, what are our goals?

What is our policy program? How are we trying to solve for, you know, These big questions, there’s not just one way to do it. And we need to be in conversation about that right now, urgently. 

[00:33:08] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: And our people are not dumb, you know? So it’s like, we have to, it’s not just about, we, we have to talk. And you had a great article on there saying we can’t, I forget what the title was, I’m sure you’ll, your, your people will get it in there, but it was like, we have to stop talking in these ways.

We have to stop talking like McKinsey consultants inside of the justice space. And I was like, that’s absolutely right. And we have to stop talking about. things that don’t, you know, resonate with people. So it’s not just about how we talk about it, but what are we talking about? We cannot paper over the fact of, you know the, the lived experiences of people in this country.

We just, we can’t, that doesn’t work. So you, you cannot have a successful narrative strategy. Without a successful organizing strategy that undergirds it in the successful organizing strategy is rooted in the politics of that. I think that is the piece and I really do think that that’s the piece of how we continue to get people to turn out because there are continued moments of radicalization that, you know, we’re able to talk about and people are angry and to your point of like how we’ve.

Like, what does that look like? What, like, what is the lifespan of, like, somebody who, you know, comes out with their, their Princess Leia sign? I say Princess Leia, I’m, I’m telling on myself, my sign is the Princess Leia sign because I have been playing Rebel Alliance since other, you know, kids were, like, you know, playing House, I was absolutely playing Rebel Alliance, and yeah.

So there’s this, there’s this group that I love to talk about. They’re in Enid, Oklahoma, which is not very far. I’m in, I’m in Amarillo Texas. So like, you know, maybe three hours, I think north of me. I’m very red part of a very red state. Oklahoma is really trying to be what everyone thinks that Texas is right now.

They’re it go look at what they’re doing. It is awful, but they came to, they went to a March, I believe around dogs. And they organized it and eat it. They said this is the first time since the seventies they took action. They’re a group of intergenerational folks, whatever. And then they came out a month later to DC and we were doing an action that risked arrest and in that action.

They were like, we want to take on another step. And they became marshals for that group. They then went back from DC to eat at Oklahoma and they gave the boot to a city council member who was a member of the KKK and they ran him out of town on a rail. They got him recalled went and canvassed and got him kicked out when they just came to the Oklahoma city, just had a March a couple of weeks ago.

And, and they just had a presence there. And so that’s the kind of thing that I really like to draw folks attention to that. It’s like. First you have a sign and you march. Then maybe you’re a volunteer at a march, and then maybe you’re kicking a K, KK member off of the city council. Like it could get real froggy from there.

So like we just dunno, you know, that is kind of what one of the things that’s in my mind because, and I also get back to people saying, well, you know, the numbers question again. I’m in Amarillo and I will tell you I have been. at the head of a, you know, 40, 000 person march in DC. And I have been with 20 people in Amarillo and the political courage that it takes to do a march with 20 people in Amarillo or Enid or Oklahoma City.

Or Fargo, North Dakota or wherever is significantly greater than it takes to get 10, 000 people in D. C. New York, Austin, you know, what have you. And so I think that we need to understand historically that there’s a time and a space for scale, but that scale is actually not a, like a one size fits all indicator for impact.

And we have to stop being lazy about how we think about these things. 

[00:36:39] Cayden Mak: Well, I mean, I feel like this episode is like full of secret callbacks to like things that I’ve said in like previous lifetimes of, of my work. But one of the things I also used to always say at 18 million rising was that like scale doesn’t necessarily have to be about breadth.

It can also be about depth. Right? This is, this is definitely something that I learned from the late great Grace Lee Boggs, that sometimes scale is about how deep you go with people and like the, the strength of the bonds that you build with the people that you are, you are organizing with. And that like, I don’t think we live in a media environment that is set up to truly appreciate scale that is not about people.

[00:37:19] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: But also what is your goal? Right? So like, if your goal is to run an organization where you get 500, 000 people out to a march and you get them all into your mailing list. And now you want to sell canvas bags as a. As a fundraiser to move your work, then maybe you, maybe there is a theory of change there around getting as many people loaded in, you know, so that you move a lot of petitions or, you know, you do whatever, cause you’re a digital advocacy organization and that’s fine.

There’s a need that would be called like a spoken wheel model. Yeah, we are running a decentralized model. We want ours to look, I would, I’m going to say, cause I’m in a nerdy space and a nerdy safe space. We want our model to look like Jarvis from the Avengers. When he’s thinking so we want all the nodes to be connected to the other nodes and we are not super bothered if after the first March, they are not connecting through us.

Matter of fact, the more they’re connecting with each other, the better because that is actually a network that is denser. And there’s actually an equation to measure network density. that we apply. And so what we are going for, we, I mean, women’s march was born big. We don’t have a choice about that. Like we, we were born as a moment of a, in a groundswell.

And we’ve always just been big, but that doesn’t mean that like big, like, is actually the less important part. And I think dense and especially as we’re moving into this time where we’re going to have to keep each other safe, we’re going to have to think about ways that we provide for resources for ourselves that do not include the state.

And in fact may, the state may be hostile to you know, including ways that we get safe food, safe water, safe medical, you know, treatment, all of those things, the dense networks are the ones that are going to survive. And so that’s, that’s what we focus towards. And so when people are like, Oh, it’s not the biggest thing ever.

And it’s like, well, that’s not, The goal, you know? 

[00:39:14] Cayden Mak: Well, and I, I think like to that point, I’ve seen your colleague Tamika Middle to talk a lot about political homes. Yes. And that I think that like in like mainstream discourse about the work that you all do, I feel like that is like, like, Sort of this, like, context less, like, sort of, like, hanging thing that people are like, sounds good, right?

But, like, what is a political home? And, like, clearly you are, you are speaking to some of the things that are crucial about why we need to find our political homes in this moment. 

[00:39:46] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: Right. I think that, you know, You know, political homes, I mean, the idea has shifted so much, I think, over time, like, when, when I grew up you know, people used to say as both a measure of pride and a measure of insult they’re a card carrying ACLU member.

Which you could take one way or the other, you know what I mean? And and so I think it originally started as an insult. Yeah, I think it did too, but, you know. And so but then, you know, you see, you’ll see shifting, for example, and so, right after, what was really interesting is that right after the election, you know, there was pushback around.

Mobilization, like, is it the time to mobilize or not? And people were like, they’re going to say it’s smaller, which it was. And I was like, every, every, every mobilization that’s happened has been smaller, but they were like, they’re going to talk about like, Oh, you know, like one way or the other, our, our calculus was one way or the other.

They’re going to critique because before we had called for the March, they were like, where’s the pussy hats now, you 

[00:40:43] Cayden Mak: know, like you kind of can’t win against 

[00:40:46] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: the haters and so we were like, well, we’re going to catch a beating regardless. So we might as well catch it for doing action. Carrying member of the of the ACLU or you wear a pussy hat or, you know, your NPR bag or, you know, like whatever the, whatever the, you know, if you drive a Prius, there are certain, you know, signalings of like what, what kind of place you occupy in the world based on, you know, what have you.

And I think that being a card carrying member of the ACLU may have been you know, part of what, Folks felt like a political home, but in the decimation in the nineties of our third spaces, political homes have come to to mean, you know, different things and and and play in different ways. And I think that with those third spaces disappearing.

There was a period of time where inside of movement spaces, we were looking, we were, we were building vehicles. And I would say that some of those vehicles have been, you know, very successful and maybe where we overcorrected was that we were building We were building maybe a little too heavy on the home and not strong enough on the political because inside of coalition spaces, if we’re comfortable, our coalitions are probably too small.

And I think that when, when, you know, a mistake that our side tends to make is that we’re looking for people with whom, you know, to, to build with people with whom we agree. And I think that we have to begin to broaden that bigger we and really lean into pluralism. It really brings up some thorny questions about like, okay, well, where are the red lines?

You know, so, so for example, you know, for Women’s March, if someone might want to partner with us that says, well, you know, we, we are feminists and we are progressive, but we do not believe in bodily autonomy. We would say, Those two things are mutually exclusive, but you know, it really does bring up questions that we have to grab.

We talk a lot on the left about grappling with things and I’ve never actually been in a grapple in the movement, so that’s really interesting and I do like a grapple, so I’m open to it. It’s an invitation, but I do think that we have to think about like, as we need to work on, we have to win, we have to contest for the folks that we lost.

And so what does that look like and where can we. You know, when folks go to MAGA, I don’t think that most people are like, oh my god, I’m a, I’m a militia member, and I am a raging racist, and I am whatever. They probably say, listen, the eggs are too high. They’re like, great. You come on over here and guess what?

We’re going to get you to the rest of those places in a solid six months time. And so what does it look like to have the same kind of organizing commitment and mandate on the left to say, you don’t have to, we’re going to, we’re going to meet you where we found you, but we refuse to leave you there.

We’re going to bring you along, but it, but political homes necessarily mean we don’t have to be friends. In fact, we can actively dislike each other. That is, you know, Like, canon, inside of anything that you’ve read about the civil rights movement, there was active beef between these groups, you know, so it’s like, how can we get past, you know, all of the nonsense, and, and get to winning for each other and I think that is the real difference between a social club or an affinity group and a political home.

[00:43:53] Cayden Mak: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s, that is very rich, what you just said. Like, there’s a lot going on there. And I, I think that like, I’m very caffeinated. I mean, one of the things that occurs to me and what you’re saying too is just that like I think also about all the people who chose the couch over Matt, right?

And it wasn’t just that we lost people to The right in this election. It was also that we lost people to being like, was a fucking better, right? Yes. 

[00:44:23] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: And that just, that just speaks to the vision. Like if you say, if I tell you to close your eyes and I say, make America great again, what would you, you know what I mean?

Like some of us might think of like parable of the sower. Some of us might think of leave it to beaver. Some of us might think of whatever, but it’s very clear. It’s dystopian. It’s a minority rule. White supremacists. of, of the world. And, and when, when I say like, we don’t even have a slogan, like we don’t have those messages, but we also don’t have a clear vision of what it looks like.

Cause are we a world that’s for militarism or against militarism? Are we a world that is for you know, bodily autonomy? And you know, against misogyny and for you know, self determination or did we go too far with the trans thing? Or maybe we shouldn’t have focused on women. You know, where was the leftist outcry with our body, your body, our choice when misogyny went up by 4, 600 percent after the election and the left was silent.

You know, so I’m like, there are so many times when the left has not waived. Particularly, you know, when we talked about this election, saying this is about abortion, this is about education, trans, attacks on trans people, it’s, you know, it’s going to be about attacks on immigrants, it’s going to be about the economy.

But, I mean, working inside of SPA, I’ve worked in the LGBTQ space, and I’ve worked in you know, women’s, you know, gender justice and women’s rights for almost my whole career. And I will tell you that we are very uncommonly flanked by the fuller left. Very uncommonly. Like, and when we do, we have to beg and trade favors and, you know, like play tit for tat and it’s, it’s like, I think that sexism, misogyny you know, and, and all of the ways that feeds into both You know bodily autonomy issues as it pertains to both abortion and trans issues is really a bipartisan problem.

And, and I think that we have to face up to that, you know, before we can move forward. 

[00:46:21] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I mean, I think immigration is the same way right now. That, like, the fact that the Democratic Party has done so little to stand up to this, like, patently absurd shit, and, like, helping pass the Lincoln Riley Act is, like, I don’t know.

It’s, it’s an embarrassment, frankly, and I think it does, it does go to show that there, that it does, like, how little power we as, as, like, the, like, organized left has in this country, that, like, they’re so happy 

[00:46:52] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: to And even the lack of rigor, the lack of rigor, the Latino vote. There’s no such thing. I’m Mexican.

I live in Texas. You know what I mean? And everyone’s saying, Oh, well, Mexicans vote, like, you know, broke for Trump. Well, like, you don’t, you know, where do you organize? Like, what is the, what is the organizing a strategy to work with specific, you know, communities on issues? What is the outreach strategy? You know?

And again, when so much of our strategy is coming from multimillion dollar or consulting shops that are inside of the Acela corridor. Then when people, most people, and if I’m wrong about this, you could correct me, but my understanding is that most queer people live in the South. Most, you know, the, like some of the biggest voting blocks, you know, Mexicans live in the South.

So then when you’re not talking to people and other folks are organizing those people, if you’re not, the cardinal rule of organizing is if you are not organizing that person. Someone else is and we seeded way too much ground and then we’re there like surprised pikachu When the vote didn’t go our way like what did you expect?

What did you expect? It we have to lean back into you know, kind of the foundational values both of our, you know, of, of progressive or leftist, wherever you fall there, but also of just straight up how, how, how progress, how change happens, which is that you have to organize with people. You have to trust people.

You have to build relationships, big data, texting, and multimillion dollar ad buys. Is not going to get it done. And I don’t know how many times we have to get a board in the face before we figure that out. 

[00:48:31] Cayden Mak: Keep walking on that dang rake. Yeah, no. I, and I think that like what you are describing to me is also the heart of, I think what the task is for block and build in this moment, right.

That like, we need to get serious about. blocking, but we cannot abandon this build. And the build is both how do we build the infrastructure and how do we build that sort of like deep connection and thick network that we need to keep each other safe, but also how do we build a vision, a positive vision of what we’re building towards so that when the time comes for us to contend for power in a different way.

More people can get on board with that vision because they know what it means for them and their families. And their, like, livelihoods and experiences, like, human beings. 

[00:49:21] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: And as a movement, I feel like we often have invitations to the base. and demands of elected officials sometimes corporate interests, whatever.

But I think that there is a person missing there or a group of people missing there. And I would say we do are not making enough demands of ourselves. And I think that we need to approach this moment with some rigor and understanding that. For example, in the state that we are in now, the goal I think that a lot of folks were so disillusioned by, you know, the, the election more, more than just that they’re, that the candidate didn’t, didn’t, didn’t win, but because their end goal was really you know, getting their candidate elected.

And at that point, you know, they, they didn’t have a political analysis of. You know, kind of the, the rise of authoritarianism and fascism and that it’s really about like winning elections. Like winning elections is how we build governing power and that’s how we win. And obviously we, we have to do that, but the work was going to be like, our work plan did not change an iota from, from losing because we were always inside of this organizing work and our eyes have always been on a 25 year plan.

You know, strategy. And so I think that we have to get really clear here and say that, of course, we have to win in 2026. Of course, we have to build governing power. Of course, we have to try to do everything that we can to flip the house. But that alone is not enough. And we have to understand that. putting people who are on our side.

And I also have to draw our attention back to some questions about what our side means when, you know, the polling that has come out has saying like, Hey, a lot of people who did choose the couch did so because the democratic party was not representing the people’s views on things like militarism and the economy and, you know, all of those things.

And so we have to contend with what happens. And I, I don’t, you know, I. I’m clear, you know, of, of, of the realities of the situation, you know I was at a, at, at the ERA press conference when the ERA when Biden published the ERA, I was standing right next to Cory Bush. And I’m like, this is what happens when you hold to your principles and you can, you know, the, the, the, the system will, You know, spit you out because she held to her principles and she fought the good fight, but the flank was not strong enough and, and we lost.

And I hope that she comes back, but we also have to be clear. The system will fight back, like the empire strikes back, you know? And so we have to understand that it’s not enough to put more of us inside of a fundamentally terminally flawed system. We have to change the system itself. We have to you know, reach for a bolder vision that is more liberatory.

And it’s not going to be a two year strategy. It’s not even gonna be a four year strategy. It’s not even a generational strategy. And we have to think bigger and bolder, especially in this moment when our people, you know, are going to be faced with alternatives that are unacceptable. So we need to be acceptable.

We need to be popular. We need to be so attractive in our vision. And in the way that we welcome people in and in the way that we organize in our politics that we are irresistible and people choose to come over. That’s our job. 

[00:52:37] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And it’s a tall order. We’re up against a lot of things, structural things, that keep us from succeeding at that.

I’m really glad to be in the struggle with you, Rachel. 

[00:52:48] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: Me too. I love it here. 

[00:52:51] Cayden Mak: I can, I can imagine doing no other thing with my time, to be honest. 

[00:52:56] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: Whenever I’m like real crazy. Like I just can’t like, whatever I’m like, I’m going to go over to Convergence magazine and see what they’re talking about today.

And that’s why I’m always like sending all staff. If you see a whole bunch of people reading, it’s like, it’s me sending it to all the staff being like, everyone has to read this about messaging. I think you all are doing such amazing work. Because what, what I really think is that it’s really easy for a lot of us to get caught up in as, as everybody does, like I, my brother works in construction and he’ll be like, well, we were doing this OSHA thing and we had a supervised lift and we were, you know, and I mean, I don’t like, I’m just, I’m hanging on, like, I’m fighting for my life and every conversation while he’s telling me about work, you know, so it’s not specific to our.

you know, jobs, but we do get lingo y and like, and, and, and we are in one of the few places where we cannot afford to talk or think in ways that are inaccessible because that’s actually necessarily not radical. If it’s not for folks, if we can’t bring folks along who are, who don’t dwell in politics.

We’re not being radical. We’re not being, we’re not serving our goals. And really no one wants to have a conversation with the smartest, smarmiest person in the room. So I think that we just have to work to be approachable in real life in our politics while, while have to be informed by so many things, have to walk and talk with real people.

And we can’t be like, Oh, here’s this sanctimonious leftist coming in again with, you know, You know, like a, a, a metal tumbler of kombucha to talk about sustainability or whatever. You know what I mean? Like we, we need to be joyful and I don’t just mean going to parties, but in our, in our organizing strategy, Barbara Smith always tells me joy is not a political goal.

And I’m like, no, but it is a tactic. It is a tactic. And I think that if hectoring and haranguing and shaming people works. We would have one in a landslide and we didn’t, so we need to be strong enough to look within and choose another way. 

[00:54:59] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that like, you know, part of, part of the reason that we do what we do here at Convergence is also trying to have that conversation internally.

So. 

[00:55:12] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: And I love that because you all do it in a way that doesn’t, that is kind and approachable, but doesn’t lose its sharpness. And I think that’s, that’s exactly what we need, like the rigor. But yeah, we have to be a movement that people want to join. And there are some times that I get off calls and I’m like, I do not want to be on this.

I like, I don’t want to be here. I know what 

[00:55:32] Cayden Mak: you mean. I know what you mean. And like, you know, I think I, for me that like one of the, one of the. great beauties of actually this show is like having these kind of like very candid conversations with folks in ways that are like, they’re like, actually, we’re just kind of sitting in my living room.

Cause yeah, we are sitting in my living room. I appreciate you so much, Rachel. Thank you for making time. Yeah. Thanks for making time in this busy time to to yak with me a little bit about where we are and where we’re going. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon. 

[00:56:05] Rachel O’Leary Carmona: Hopefully have a good one. Thanks for having me.

[00:56:08] Cayden Mak: My thanks again to Steven Renderos of Media Justice for joining me earlier and for Rachel O’Leary Carmona of Women’s March. We will include links to plug into the work of both of their organizations in the show notes. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insight. I’m Cayden Mak and our producer is Josh Elstro.

Kimmy David is our production assistant and does our social media. If you’ve got something to say, please do drop me a line. You can send an email that we’ll consider running in an upcoming Mailbag episode at mailbag at convergencemag. com. And of course, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at convergencemag.

com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build this map for our movements. I hope this helps.

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