Organizing & Civic Action
Organizing is how ordinary people build power. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport! We talk with organizers and movement leaders about how campaigns take shape, what makes them last, and how to get involved in your own community.
Featured Episode — Start Here!
We discuss the case for SWAMP audits, how we can truly build a multiracial democracy, and why we’re going to have to fight for it.
We discuss the case for SWAMP audits, how we can truly build a multiracial democracy, and why we’re going to have to fight for it.
We discuss the radical idea that dissidence belongs to all of us. Living with truth is the starting point to being a citizen changemaker and to taking impactful civic action.
We discuss the vision of an everyone-a-changemaker society. Now is the moment to step up to protect healthy civil society in America by making the mechanisms and the rituals for participation in local politics more robust and more meaningful.
We discuss the investments to foster civic participation on college campuses, voter behavior among young people, and getting ready for the midterms.
We discuss how our everyday choices to resist, organize, and act collectively can stop authoritarian takeovers. Feeling powerless does not mean that we’re actually powerless!
We discuss the building blocks of narrative power and the strategies to succeed in changing hearts and minds.
We discuss Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World—a guide for a new generation of activists seeking not just to understand power, but to build it.
We discuss the basics of organizing and the fruits of that work. Michael reminds us that “organizers organize organizations.”
We discuss the enduring power of protesting and the significance of the Ferguson uprising in the long arc of the Black liberation movement.
We discuss the importance of shifting our mindset to one that is infused with hope. Positive change comes when we choose hope. Though nobody can fix it all, we can all do something and make an impact. Sharon reminds us that if something is worth doing for everyone, it’s worth doing for one person.
We discuss "calling in" as a practice rooted in a human rights framework that can transform how we engage across our divide and potentially be the bridge that helps our democracy survive with Loretta Ross.
We discuss why joining a club or an association is the glue that binds civic society to democracy. They are the classrooms for our citizenship!
We discuss how the public interest movements in the 60s and 70s can be a source of inspiration for American democracy and why this movement was a formidable force in influencing public policy that benefits all of us, from traffic safety to the Clean Water Act.
We discuss what we can all do to say "no" to Project 2025, including getting Democrats to play hardball in local, city, and state offices, and to protect and win elections this year and in the midterms next year with Ezra Levin of Indivisible.
Elyssa Feder is the co-founder and executive director of Rising Organizers, which has trained nearly 4,000 activists and held fourteen intensive fellowship cohorts on community organizing skills.
We discuss the importance of shifting our mindset to one that is infused with hope. Positive change comes when we choose hope. Though nobody can fix it all, we can all do something and make an impact. Sharon reminds us that if something is worth doing for everyone, it’s worth doing for one person.
Rachel Vindman is the co-host of the Suburban Women Problem podcast and she has her finger on the pulse on all things politics for American women. We discuss abortion, Trump's conviction, Ukraine, and relational organizing.