Movement Memos

“We can't survive doing the work that we're asked to do, the way that we're being asked to do it, with the lack of support we're being asked to do it with,” says healthcare worker Nicole Brun-Cottan. Tens of thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers in the Kaiser Permanente health care system are poised to go on strike. In this Striketober episode, Kelly talks with three nurses who are ready to go on strike about what’s at stake in their struggle, and how the pandemic has affected frontline labor. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website.

“This crisis embodies the violence of a murderous system that is re-legitimized through reforms, any time its true character becomes too visible, like a shapeshifting monster in a horror film. It never stops consuming life,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes digs into the crisis on Rikers Island, why people are dying, and why this isn’t a story about understaffing, but rather, a story about a system that cannot be redeemed. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website. Music by Son Monarcas and Charles Hubbert

“In the coming years, we are going to have to practice our skills and our politics in ways that we probably can’t fully imagine right now, because we live in unprecedented times.” In this episode, Kelly and organizer Carlos Saavedra talk about burnout, building power and how our pandemic exhaustion could give way to an era of breakthroughs. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website.

“Texas is playing by its own rules on immigration and deputizing police from as far away as Iowa to participate in Abbott’s state-level war on migrants. The implications here are just horrifying,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly examines recent events in Del Rio, Texas, where Black asylum-seekers were brutalized and faced mass deportations, and also highlights Operation Lone Star, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s unconstitutional, state-level war on migrants. Kelly also talks with Breanne Palmer, with the UndocuBlack Network, and Kevin Herrera, with Just Futures Law, about the fight to defend refugees and asylum seekers. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website.

We have witnessed the evolution of a social and moral binary in the United States: vaccinated and unvaccinated. Immersed in a culture of blame and condemnation, around the spread of COVID-19, we have also seen the rise of a brand of humor that Kelly characterizes as “recreational dehumanization.” So how should we be talking about vaccination and mass death, and how can we be constructive? In this episode, Kelly talks with activist Johnny Dangers, about overcoming vaccine hesitancy, and Shana McDavis-Conway, with the Center for Story-Based Strategy, about how we can constructively frame the moment. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check out our website.

“Fascist ideologies really rely on systems of bordering and ordering, of deciding who has the right to life and under what conditions,” says Harsha Walia. In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes examines the state of right-wing power in the United States, and engages with commentary from authors Shane Burley and Sarah Kendzior, writer and organizer Harsha Walia, and President of the Texas  Civil Rights Project, Mimi Marziani. For a transcript, audio and show notes, please check out our website.

Ten years after Occupy Wall Street embodied the hopes and outrage of people across the country, Kelly and labor journalist Sarah Jaffe talk about what we can learn from a movement that launched a new and unruly era of protest. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website.

“We're talking about a heavily armed populace that's radicalizing itself [and] self traumatizing through its own mythology.” In this episode, Kelly talks with author Shane Burley about the state of fascism in the Biden era, mutual aid, and building movements during apocalyptic times. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check out our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/

“People end up in prison for a reason, but it's not the reason that we're fed by all of these cop shows." In this episode of Movement Memos, Kelly Hayes talks with journalist Victoria Law about prisons, why they don’t work, and what even well-meaning people tend to get wrong about incarceration. You can find a transcript, audio and show notes on our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/

"The goal of a supremacist state is to have a monopoly on the legitimacy of violence," says Palestinian writer and organizer Lea Kayali. In this episode, Kelly and Lea Kayali explore the history of Israeli violence against Palestinians – and the colonial dynamics that enable it – and discuss what you can do about it. For a transcript, audio and show notes, you can check our website: https://truthout.org/series/movement-memos/