The Next Move
A People's Action podcast hosted by George Goehl
The Next Move is back for a second season, with eight new episodes starting May 11!
George digs in with some of the nation's best organizers to answer a simple - and sometimes complicated - question:
What is organizing?
Getting the answer right matters, especially right now. So George talks with eight master organizers about their path, defining moments in their development, and what we most need to teach and practice as organizers.
Some of these people are household names, like Alicia Garza, who well before cofounding Black Lives Matter was knocking on doors and building coalitions in the neighborhood.
Others may be new to you - all are amazing. People like Stephen Roberson, Organizing Director at Community Voices Heard in New York. Stephen is a fifty-year veteran of the craft, having started with the United Farm Workers when he was just nineteen. He's been organizing ever since.
George says he learned a lot from these conversations, and thinks you will, too. He hopes you will listen in, and join our conversation. Episodes will be available on Apple iTunes, Stitcher and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Click on the player below to listen now!
Season One Episode Guide
Episode 1: Making Meaning with Maurice Mitchell
Summary
The pandemic has merged with this incredible moment of uprising, which is opening the opportunity to win real structural change for Black lives now. There’s nowhere to hide from a conversation about racism in America, and our collective agitation is a really good thing. Maurice Mitchell, the National Director of The Working Families Party and a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, shares more about this opportunity for mass education, the multi-racial coalition against white supremacy, the fight against cynicism, and the winning math of adding rather than subtracting.
Guest bio
Maurice Mitchell (@mauricewfp) is the National Director of The Working Families Party and the co-founder of Blackbird, an anchor organization within the Movement for Black Lives.
Take Action
Learn More
- The Combahee River Collective Statement, written by Black feminist lesbians in 1977, remains vital to the work of ensuring that all Black lives matter.
- In The New Yorker, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes that “the quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police.”
- Ta-Nehisi Coates elaborates on his own hope in this moment -- and why 2020 is different from 1968.
Episode 2: The Care Economy, Employment and a Living Wage with Ai-jen Poo
Summary
Overnight essential work has become part of the global lexicon. Ai-jen Poo, founder and Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, talks to George about forging a new common sense out of this vocabulary--and the opportunity we have to re-examine how we think about work and what work we value.
Guest bio
Ai-jen is the executive director of National Domestic Workers Alliance, director of Caring Across Generations, and co-host of Sunstorm (@sunstormpod).
Take Action
- Donate to the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s Coronavirus Care Fund, which provides $400 in emergency assistance for domestic workers who are experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- It’s time to get justice, dignity, and respect for domestic workers. Sign on to help Ai-jen and her team and help us pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
Learn More
- “What will we remember about this pandemic?” asks Ai-Jen Poo in Time. “How we took care of one another.”
- Here’s the draft of the Essential Workers Bill of Rights introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
- Notes from the Storm: Black Immigrant Domestic Workers in the Time of COVID-19, a report from the Institute for Policy Studies' Black Worker Initiative in partnership with the National Domestic Workers Alliance's We Dream in Black program.
Episode 3: A Homes Guarantee with Tara Raghuveer
Summary
Rent is due and sheltering in place becomes infinitely more difficult if you can’t make rent. In this episode, George talks about our national housing crisis with Tara Raguvheer, Director of KC Tenants and the Housing Campaign Director for People’s Action–and what our world can look like if we detach profit motives from the provisioning of basic needs, like a place to call to home.
Guest bio
Tara Raguvheer is the Director of KC Tenants and the Housing Campaign Director for People’s Action.
- Twitter: @taraghuveer
- Facebook: @taraghuveer
Take Action
Join our weekly organizing call for a Homes Guarantee.
Learn More
- Read our briefing book, "A National Homes Guarantee," a vision straight from the people impacted by the nation's housing crisis.
- Watch our Homes Guarantee intro video.
- "The mismatch between housing need and costs has been a constant feature of the U.S. economy," Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in The New Yorker. "The dynamic is especially acute for African-Americans."
- Read more about Tara's work and the work of the Homes Guarantee team in The New York Times as they re-imagine organizing in an age of social distancing.
Episode 4: Merging Race and Class with Ian Haney Lopez
Summary
Dog whistle politics is a long held strategy of American politics. George talks to Ian Haney Lopez, Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley, about how the rich and powerful use racism as a weapon to sow a divide between race and class. This divide has only been made clearer during the pandemic and the weeks of uprisings around racial justice. But if we name this strategy, perhaps we can merge race and class and build the country we want. A multiracial democracy that works for all of us.
Guest bio
Ian Haney Lopez is Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley and Director of the Racial Politics Project at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. His latest book is Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America.
Learn More
- Get your copy of Merge Left, Ian's most recent book.
- Check out this recent Follow the Money video from Ian.
- Learn about the history of Dog Whistle Politics as a political strategy.
Episode 5: Government for All of Us with Heather McGhee
Summary
What role can our government play in making our lives better? And what role can we play in our government? Heather McGhee, Distinguished Senior Fellow and former President of Demos, is just the person to answer these questions. In this episode, George talks to Heather about building on our gut-level interconnectivity towards a more inclusive future. Heather McGhee digs into the work that needs doing, how we transform our government and do that in a way that creates meaningful, equitable jobs for everyone.
Guest bio
Heather McGhee is Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, the “think-and-do” tank that she ran from 2014 to 2018. She is author of the forthcoming book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.
- Twitter: @hmcghee
Learn More
- Heather C. McGhee: Racism has a cost for everyone | TED Talk
- In The Atlantic, Adam Serwer writes about how the pandemic has exposed the brokenness of America’s racial contract and the government that’s been built with it.
- Jim Tankersley, an economics and tax reporter at The New York TImes, investigates how low-income essential workers of color have been weighing the question: ”Job or Health?.”
- In an op-ed for the New York Times, researchers at the Centre for Experiment Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality ask: “What do you owe your neighbor?”
- Demos
Episode 6: Building a Coalition with Robert Kraig
Summary
Because the pandemic has intensified the unequal, dangerous structure of our healthcare system, we need to establish healthcare as a guaranteed right for everyone. Which means now is the time for bold mandates and the creation of a new common sense that centers on a coalitional government. George talks with Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, about lessons we’ve learned from the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration, and even the Great Recession, about building a healthier, more equitable future.
Guest bio
Robert Kraig is Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin and serves on the People’s Action Board of Directors.
- Twitter: @RKraig1912
- Facebook: @robert.kraig.7
Learn More
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See this story in The Nation covering the work of Robert's group, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, titled "Real Progressive Change Is Happening From the Ground Up."
- Citizen Action of Wisconsin organized a rally that called for federal action to provide financial assistance to institutions and individuals still struggling due to COVID-19. Learn more.
- "We have about 11 years to dramatically change our whole economy — that is a massive undertaking," Kraig says in this piece on how his group is pushing for a state-level Green New Deal.
Take Action
Join our Texting Tuesdays program!
Episode 7: Make a F*@&ing Play with Marisa Franco
Summary
We are becoming an America we’ve never been. The Latinx community has been hit hard by COVID 19. Marisa Franco, director and co-founder of Mijente, talks with George about organizing infrastructure to support progressive leadership in the immigrant rights and broader Latinx and Chicanx community. This brutal moment of recovering, unlearning, and remembering is teaching us that we are only as safe and healthy as the most vulnerable among us -- and that through inclusive collectivity, we can move from respectability politics to strong, multiracial alliances and people power.
Guest bio
Marisa Franco is the Phoenix-based Director and Co-founder of Mijente, a hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing and movement-building.
- Twitter:@marisa_franco
- Facebook: @marisa.franco.35
Learn More
- Mijente’s April 2020 report, “The Impact of Covid-19 on Latinos.”
- If you want a quick read that can help you go deep on immigration in the U.S., pick up a copy of Naomi Pak's "Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary."
- When the New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for federal data about Covid-19, the numbers confirmed that Blacks and Latinx people have been harmed by the disease at higher rates. Further reporting by the Associated Press reveals that in many areas nationwide, Latinx populations are experiencing a “dramatically higher percentage of positive COVID-19 tests than other racial and ethnic groups.”
- In the Washington Post, Theresa Varga writes that, “What 'Defund the Police and 'Abolish ICE’ share is an acknowledgment that bad law enforcement practices, no matter what the badge looks like, unjustly separate families.”
Take Action
Join our Texting Tuesdays program!
Episode 8: Onward with George Goehl
Summary
Guest bio
George Goehl is one of the nation’s leading progressive organizers and director of People's Action.
- Twitter: @GeorgeGoehl
Learn More
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Here’s the scoop on one way we can build through addition - deep canvassing, here’s a Medium piece about the work.
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Wanna learn more about George, check out this conversation with Chris Hayes.
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Here’s a video Billie Kirkton of People’s Action Institute created to push back against misinformation about the protests in response to the killing of George Floyd and so many Black people. AND to encourage celebration of Juneteenth in rural communities.
Take Action
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We need to keep the pressure on our U.S. Senators and make sure that they all take our relief needs seriously and advance a relief package that includes cash relief, extended unemployment insurance, an eviction moratorium and rental assistance, support for immigrants and essential workers, etc. Call, email, & tweet your US Senators demanding a People's Bailout!
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If you want to defend Black Lives, Support the BREATHE Act.
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The Black Futures Lab was created by Alicia Garza. Their work is the work. Check it out.