“This system was designed to do exactly what it is doing and has been doing: concentrating wealth and facilitating racial capitalism and colonialism and extraction,” says author and activist Dean Spade. In this episode, Kelly and Dean discuss some common traps that activists fall into when discussing repression and how we can strengthen our practic…

“If you're trying to destroy things that are as massive as the structures and the institutions that we talk about wanting to get rid of, that we talk about wanting to overthrow, you're going to have to sustain yourself,” says organizer and author William C. Anderson. In this episode, Kelly takes a trip to the Northwest Territories and talks with An…

The Luddites, who smashed machines in the 19th century, in an organized effort to resist automation, are often portrayed as uneducated opponents of technology. But according to Blood in the Machine author Brian Merchant, “The Luddites were incredibly educated as to the harms of technology. They were very skilled technologists. So they understood ex…

“If you think about all the cop shows and you think about the birthright tours and you think about all the friendship visits of U.S. officials to Israel, where it's as if there's no Palestine, and you think about Coffee With A Cop, these are all in the same school of actually deeply violent, militaristic propaganda that tries to soften something th…

“At UChicago, they were chanting, ‘40,000 people dead. You are fighting kids instead,’” says author and University of Chicago faculty member Eman Abdelhadi. “Palestine has laid open all the contradictions that are at the core of our society, and the sheer absurdity of trying to suppress this movement.” In this episode, Kelly talks with Abdelhadi an…

"When people come from outside your community or your campus, it makes you feel like you're connected to a bigger whole," says Solidarity co-author Astra Taylor. "It makes you feel like what's happening there matters. It creates a sense of a larger coalition. And that's powerful, which is exactly why the people in power don't like it." In this epis…

While Kelly is away on medical leave, we revisit a fan-favorite episode in which Kelly and Mariame Kaba talk about lessons from their book Let This Radicalize You. "I have experienced countless losses, but there have also been some magnificent wins, so I know that these are possible," says Kaba. Music: Son Monarcas & David Celeste You can find a tr…

Kelly is still on medical leave, so we are revisiting their conversation with Dorothy Roberts about the fall of Roe and the carceral nature of the family policing system. “This strategy of making fetal protection more important than the lives and freedom of women and other pregnant people began with the prosecutions of Black women, who were pregnan…

While Kelly is on medical leave, we hope you enjoy this fan favorite from the archives. In this episode, Kelly talked with Sarah Jaffe about surveillance, criminalization, and lessons from Jaffe's book, "Work Won't Love You Back." Music: Son Monarcas You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/audio/wo…

“In this moment of crisis, we have to understand how the care economy functions … I think we have to ask ourselves, do we want someone to profit from our pain? Do we want our loved ones to be for sale? I think it is imperative upon all of us to push back on the system of profit from care and to find alternative ways of thinking and doing care,” say…

“The public domain is being purchased, and it is being purchased in order for it to be destroyed,” says journalist Sarah Kendzior. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Kendzior and host Kelly Hayes discuss the decline of journalism in the U.S. and how we can resist the erosion of our shared history, our values, and our shared reality. Music: Son Mo…

“Every interaction between Black and Brown community members and CPD responding to a gunshot alert is dangerous. It puts people at risk of violence and harm,” says Stop ShotSpotter organizer Navi Heer. In this week’s episode, Kelly talks with two organizers from Chicago’s Stop ShotSpotter campaign, which claimed a major victory this week, and inves…

“The truth is, every time community groups have asked questions about policing, the police haven't had good answers. And when really pushed, they had to fold to recognize that maybe this technology wasn't worth the money, wasn't doing what it was said. And while sure, it sounded good in a soundbite, it sounded good to the city council when you said…

“Surviving settler colonialism isn't just about surviving its material realities, it's also about surviving how settler colonialism requires destroying cultures, and languages, and sensibilities, and values, and ways of being in the world,” says scholar and activist Nadine Naber. In this episode, Naber and host Kelly Hayes discuss the connections b…

“Belonging isn't about a claim of ownership, it's actually about this notion of love and longing. And so I've come to say, I don't claim that Palestine belongs to me. I just know that I belong to Palestine,” says Palestinian author Rana Barakat. In this episode, Rana and host Kelly talk about Palestinian history, Indigenous solidarity, how colonial…

“We're connected to each other and these liberation fights across the globe,” says Indigenous Justice organizer Ashley Crystal Rojas. In this episode of Movement Memos, Rojas and Morning Star Gali talk with host Kelly Hayes about Native solidarity with Palestine, how Native communities have reclaimed the “Thanksgiving” holiday, tools for harm reduc…

“Ruin someone powerful’s afternoon. Our goal is to stop a genocide. We do not have to argue with murderers or appeal to a compassion they do not have. We must make it impossible for them to carry out,” says Palestinian poet and organizer Rasha Abdulhadi. In this episode, Abdulhadi, Nadine Naber, Iman Abid, Mike Merryman-Lotze, Leanne Simpson, Shane…

“Our survival is at stake, and so, let's think about all the best things that can help us better understand how we can ensure the collective survival of as many of us as possible,” says author and organizer Andrea Ritchie. In this episode, Kelly and Andrea discuss organizing, solidarity with Palestine, and why activists cannot defer the work of pra…

“The danger now is not just in Palestine for Palestinians. It's gone well beyond that now. It's exported, the idea that you can export occupation, you can export the tools of occupation, the tools of apartheid. That is where we currently are in the early 2020s,” says The Palestine Laboratory author Antony Loewenstein. In this episode, Kelly talks w…

“If you've never tried to organize a movement without the internet, I'm here to tell you, it's really hard. We need to seize the means of computation, because while the internet isn't the most important thing that we have to worry about right now, all the things that are more important, gender and racial justice, inequality, the climate emergency, …

“I want the land to know me, to claim me. I want to feel at home in it in a way that's reciprocal … When we talk about land back, we're not talking about laying claim to land the way that the U.S. might say, or the way that other countries might say, of claiming ownership, it's claiming relationship, and it's claiming a relationship that's reciproc…

“What are the ways we could organize people into new social forms in which new human, more humane, more liberatory capacities would emerge that we could use for our own liberation?” asks Aaron Goggans of the WildSeed Society. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Goggans and host Kelly Hayes talk about how activists can resist the trends of late cap…

“What we're getting from both Musk and Bezos is this classically new age-y religious drama of disaster and salvation. They preach, they tell us that the end is near, the disaster is coming, that the world is going to end, but there is another world that everybody can build together, a new world and a place that they've never seen and a place that s…

“How are these tools going to be used to increase the power of employers and of management once again, and to be used against workers,” asks Paris Marx. In this episode, Paris and Kelly break down the hype and potential of artificial intelligence, and what we should really be worried about. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links …

“It's really important for people to understand what this bundle of ideologies is, because it's become so hugely influential, and is shaping our world right now, and will continue to shape it for the foreseeable future,” says philosopher and historian Émile P. Torres. In this episode, Kelly and Émile discuss what activists should know about longter…

“This is a global struggle against fascism, it's a global struggle against the militarization of the police and state violence against folks whose dissent is being oppressed,” says Jasmine, an organizer in Atlanta. In this episode, Kelly talks with authors Alex Vitale and Stuart Schrader about the frightening trajectory of policing in the United St…

“Whenever there is grief, there is unity, and in unity, there is strength, and we feel it.,” says Jalal Abukhater. In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Abukhater, a Palestinian writer living in Jerusalem, and Palestinian activists Jeanine Hourani and Lea Kayali, about the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, resistance in the fa…

“It's never too late to pause and reevaluate the purpose, the structure, or the norms that you're operating with as a group of people trying to make a change in the world or get something done together,” says Aarati Kasturirangan. In this episode, Kelly talks with facilitators Aarati Kasturirangan and Rebecca Subar about how organizers can transfor…

“Hope for me is in the doing of things,” says Mariame Kaba. In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Mariame Kaba about their upcoming book, Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos If you would …

In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly talks with Camila Valle, translator of Set Fear on Fire: The Feminist Call That Set the Americas Ablaze by LASTESIS. Kelly and Camila discuss the struggle for abortion rights and access in Chile and Argentina, the need for democratic structures in movement wor, and how LASTESIS has used art and performance t…

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Kim Kelly, labor reporter and author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, about labor history and how understanding union struggles, past and present, can help us get free. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movement…

In this episode, Kelly talks with Cara Page and Erica Woodland, authors of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety about collective healing, collaborative care, and surviving the onslaughts of our oppressors. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/…

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs about disability justice, interdependence, rejecting human disposability in the COVID era and the practice of grief as stewardship. You can find a transcript and show notes (inc…

In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes and Shane Burley, editor of No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis, discuss the state of the far right, antifascism and how we can build power and sustain empathy in these times. You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: bit.ly/movementmemos …

“It's all hands on deck for the forces of the prison industrial complex, the forces of capitalism … they are willing to use any and all tactics and tools available to them, whether that's literal murder, whether that's trying to deter the broader movement by slapping people with domestic terrorism charges. As environmental catastrophe is upon us, I…

“We know that capitalism, which is already racial, gendered and violent, is not inevitable. And there's nothing natural about it,” says Robyn Maynard. In this episode, host Kelly Hayes talks with Rehearsals for Living authors Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about about organizing and parenting amid catastrophe, and how organizers can …

“How do we practice deep and reciprocal relationships as resistance to our culture of transactionalism and extraction?” asks Tanuja Jagernauth. In this year-end episode of “Movement Memos,” Jagernauth and host Kelly Hayes discuss the cultivation of hope, how activists can practice reciprocal care, the importance of celebrating big and small victori…

“Liberatory Harm Reduction is concrete. It is a framework, but it is also a daily practice, and it is also a set of strategies. So what strategies do we need that prioritize self-determination and body autonomy right now? And how can we come up with whatever it is that we need collectively to get us through?” asks Shira Hassan, author of Saving Our…

“There's no doubt that we have to abolish the carceral state. And there's no doubt that policing and racial capitalism go hand in hand so that we can't be pursuing abolition in a capitalist context,” says author and organizer Andrea Ritchie. In this episode, Andrea and Kelly talk about why the Democrats will not save us, the relationship between ab…

"There's so much deference to police around everything to do with public safety. What they say is taken as gospel without question, without requiring proof of concept, without requiring any kind of accountability for when what they're saying actually doesn't line up with the facts or people's experiences," says author and organizer Andrea Ritchie. …

“Our mutual investment in one another’s survival is our greatest resource, and our greatest hope,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Hayes talks with anthropologist and survivalist instructor Chris Begley about the lessons of his book The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival, and why many of us might be preparing fo…

“We have to be politically serious about how much agreement and how much alignment we're going to require in a world of a resurging far-right fascist movement across the globe,” says philosopher and author Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. In this episode of Movement Memos, Táíwò and Kelly Hayes discuss the lessons of Táíwò’s book, Elite Capture: How the Powerful…

“I want you to fight, I want you to organize, I want you to talk to your neighbors, I want you to have a meeting, I want you to get a spreadsheet and just the same way that we can organize a barbecue, we can all figure out what it means to actually take control of some of these housing units,” says organizer Sterling Johnson. In this episode, host …

“Forces that have been awakened are not ones that can be tucked away. And it will be a struggle, perhaps, for the rest of our lives,” says Tal Lavin, author of Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy. In this episode, Lavin and host Kelly Hayes talk about how right-wingers get radicalized, liberal and left-wing complicity,…

“The stakes right now are really high when it comes to queer and trans life. I can say in terms of my own lifetime, I haven't felt like it has been this dangerous ever,” says journalist Melissa Gira Grant. In this episode, Kelly talks with Gira Grant about right-wing attacks on trans people, Republican school board takeovers, and how the right’s “g…

“Framing health as a personal responsibility doesn't work. And it's one of the greatest tricks that capitalism has ever pulled,” says author and podcaster Beatrice Adler-Bolton. In this episode, Adler-Bolton and host Kelly Hayes discuss the extractive nature of the U.S. health care system, the dominance of COVID nihilism, and why we cannot give up …

“It is about 5:30 in Alabama on the first morning of there being no legal abortion when our clinic should be open. And it's probably not an exaggeration to say that this is the point where I broke,” said Robin Marty, Director of Operations at the West Alabama Women’s Center. In this episode, Kelly talks with Marty, as well as Rafa Kidvai, the direc…

“Get with your people … and just take a second to appreciate yourself for the ways in which you are surviving a truly unprecedented time,” says organizer Tanuja Jagernauth. In this episode, Jagernauth and Kelly discuss the work of cultivating hope amid catastrophe and how activists can craft a vision for action. This episode is the second installme…

“We have to be thinking and dreaming and planning really expansively … because when Roe falls, band-aid solutions are not going to be enough,” says Meghan Daniel, a support coordinator with the Chicago Abortion Fund. In this episode of Movement Memos, Daniel and host Kelly Hayes talk about the end of Roe, abolishing police and prisons and how fundi…

“Alabama was able to pass a felony ban on healthcare, essentially, potentially punishing doctors and parents with up to 10 years in prison for providing or supporting trans people in accessing medically necessary and life-saving medical treatment [and] it barely registered on any mainstream news.” In this episode, Kelly talks with activist and atto…