Movement Memos

Oct 24 2024 135 ep. 50 mins 587

Movement Memos Podcast artwork

An ongoing call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts around the country. Kelly Hayes connects with activists, journalists and others on the front lines to break down what’s happening in various struggles and what listeners can do to help.

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From the Ashes: How Grief Shapes Our Struggles

Oct 24 2024 63 mins

“The capitalist system also doesn't care if we die. So insisting on the value of human life, insisting on grieving, particularly grieving publicly and collectively, is a real statement against this entire death-making system,” says author Sarah Jaffe. In this episode, Kelly talks with Sarah about the lessons of Sarah’s latest book, From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a Wo

Keeping Each Other Alive: Mental Health and Collective Survival

Oct 10 2024 87 mins

“I've seen a lot of people lashing out at people horizontally, and my gut sense is that sometimes it happens because the folks who are lashing out are definitely super traumatized, in crisis, feel and are really powerless in a lot of ways,” says Disability Justice organizer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. In this episode, Kelly talks with Leah and Elliott Fukui, who develops

Breaking Down Sudan’s Struggle: What the World Is Missing

Sep 26 2024 65 mins

“This war is not a civil war, it's a counter-revolutionary war against civilians. It's a war of military elites against the entire civilian population,” says Sudanese organizer Nisrin Elamin. Sudan is currently experiencing the largest mass displacement event in the world today. Thousands are dead and famine is “almost everywhere” in the country. In this episode of “Movem

"Our Power Is Where We Choose One Another”: Abolitionists Discuss Our Moment

Sep 12 2024 60 mins

“This is a moment that is going to be looked back on 50 years from now, 100 years from now, and what is going to be said of us is how we came out of this moment,” says M4BL organizer M Adams. In this episode, Kelly talks with Adams and community organizer Montague Simmons about the last decade of Black-led organizing, the state of movements against police violence, and where pr

Remembering How to Care: Lessons from Deep Space Nine

Aug 29 2024 64 mins

“The immediacy of the crisis that we're in demands a new society and not in some imagined future, but now,” says Rehearsals for Living co-author Robyn Maynard. In this episode, Kelly talks with Maynard and David K. Seitz, author of A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine, about the radical legacy of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and how science fiction can s

It's “Open Season” on the Unhoused. We Must Oppose It.

Aug 15 2024 53 mins

“We don't have a housing system, we have an unhousing system,” says author and organizer Tracy Rosenthal. In this episode, Kelly and Tracy examine the impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing municipalities to criminalize the act of sleeping outside. Tracy and Kelly also examine the larger terrain of criminalization unhoused people face, why cities are working

Radical Acts of Care: From Underground Abortions to Militant Clinic Defense

Aug 01 2024 59 mins

“When you're engaged in political work that is as embodied and vulnerable, uncharted and courageous as self-help, you're really harnessing something like a new world building power,” says Deep Care author Angela Hume. In this episode, Kelly and Angela discuss the work of abortion self-help activists who provided illegal abortions in the 1970s, as well as militant clinic defende

How Solidarity Falters Amid Repression and How We Can Do Better

Jul 18 2024 64 mins

“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 practice of solidarity. Music: Son M

To Stay in the Fight, We Must Navigate Trauma and Find the Healing We Need

Jul 05 2024 73 mins

“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 Anderson, Robyn Maynard, Harsha

What Today’s Workers Can Learn From Machine Breaking Luddites

Jun 20 2024 53 mins

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 exactly how new developments in ma