The Dig

Alina Shen, Organizing Director at CAV, builds tenant and youth power in Chinese and Bengali neighborhoods. Fahad Ahmed, executive director of DRUM, organizes low-income South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers. They discuss building multiracial working-class power, tactical organizing for a left mayoral campaign, tensions of governing versus grassroots pressure, and strategies for housing, policing, and movement infrastructure.

Paul Heideman, historian and author of Rogue Elephant, traces how the Republican Party shifted from business discipline to chaotic factionalism. He explains clashes between corporate power and insurgent movements. He outlines how primaries, fundraising revolutions, and Trump-era dealmaking reshaped party institutions and prospects. The conversation maps cycles of insurgency, business influence, and mounting unpredictability.

Farabi Fakih, historian of decolonization and resource politics; Made Supriyatma, researcher of civil-military relations; Rianne Subijanto, scholar of left history and political communication. They trace the Japanese conquest, mass mobilization and brutality, the rise of new military actors and militias, the proclamation of independence under youth pressure, Pancasila’s compromises, and violent social revolutions and regional uprisings.

Rianne Subijanto, historian of the Indonesian left; Made Supriyatma, researcher on politics and civil‑military relations; and Farabi Fakih, Yogyakarta scholar of decolonization, trace the Awakening Period. They explore print culture, mass organizations like Sarekat Islam, the rise of socialism and PKI, debates between Islamic modernism and communism, and how repression and global revolutions reshaped nationalist strategies.

Nicholas Mulder, an economic historian of sanctions; Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a West Asia development researcher and professor; and Aslı Bâli, a public international law and human rights scholar. They discuss economic warfare in the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. Short takes cover sanctions' historical role, choke points and hybrid tactics, semiconductor controls, asymmetric strategies, and the geopolitical fallout for global finance and regional integration.

Made Supriyatma, a researcher on Indonesian politics and civil-military relations, and Rihanna Subianto, a communication professor who studies Indonesian left politics, trace centuries of Dutch corporate and territorial rule. They map VOC mercantilism, contract-based control, cultivation regimes, commodity extraction, racialized legal orders, and how colonial infrastructures and bureaucrats reshaped society.

Salar Mohandesi, teacher and writer on emancipatory politics and internationalism. Ben Mabee, organizer and strategist involved in left analysis and anti-war work. They dissect US imperial behavior, how modern war-making shields power from popular resistance, why broad anti-war movements have waned, and strategies for rebuilding durable, cross-issue anti-imperial organizing.

Geoff Simpson, PAC director at Justice Democrats who builds insurgent House slates, talks left primary politics and strategy. He outlines why 2026 feels existential. He discusses recruiting working-class candidates, confronting AIPAC and corporate money, rising Muslim donor power, and the need to build durable left infrastructure.

Peter Linebaugh, historian of commons and working-class resistance, shares vivid stories of Luddite machine-breaking and their defense of artisanal life. He traces links between enclosure, capital punishment, and state violence. He connects past commons struggles to modern tech control, gig work, and the fight to reclaim shared resources.

Peter Linebaugh, historian of the commons and enclosure, explores long histories of commoning and how shared labor sustained communities. He traces enclosure as violent dispossession tied to empire and legal change. The conversation follows commons’ customs, resistance movements like the Diggers, and links between rural expropriation and colonial conquest.