The Next Move - Season 1

Episode 6: Building a Coalition with Robert Kraig

Episode 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.

Season 1 - Episode 6

Guest Bios

Robert Kraig

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

George Goehl

Host

At age 21, George Goehl walked into a soup kitchen to eat. Over time, he became an employee – first washing dishes and eventually helping run the place. Three years later, he was struck by seeing the same people in line as when he first arrived. He began to organize.

Today, George is the director of People’s Action, a multiracial poor and working class people’s organization. He leads one of the largest race-conscious rural progressive organizing efforts in the United States.

Following the financial crisis, George and National People’s Action mobilized more people into the streets than any other organization to demand accountability, help win Financial Reform, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and secure mortgage relief.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC and others have covered George’s organizing work.

Season 1 - Episode 6

Learn More

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Season 1 - Episode 6

Learn More

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.

The Next Move - Season 1

Other Episodes

Episode 1: Making Meaning with Maurice Mitchell

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.

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Episode 2: The Care Economy, Employment and a Living Wage with Ai-jen Poo

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.

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Episode 3: A Homes Guarantee with Tara Raghuveer

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.

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Episode 4: Merging Race and Class with Ian Haney Lopez

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.

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Episode 5: Government for All of Us with Heather McGhee

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.

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Episode 7: Make a F*@&ing Play with Marisa Franco

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.

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Episode 8: Onward with George Goehl

In our final episode, George expresses his hope that we can organize the most people to create long-term, transformative change for America.

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