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Bloc Party is a show about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, featuring progressive champions challenging the status quo from inside the halls of power and the...
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Bloc Party is a show about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, featuring progressive champions challenging the status quo from inside the halls of power and the organizers transforming the party’s agenda from the outside.
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Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
18 AUG 2021 · Putting the bloc back in Bloc Party.
Freedom Caucus. Progressive Caucus. Blue Dogs. Why do we care?
Justice Dems spokesperson and co-host Waleed Shahid sits down with Ruth Bloch Rubin, author of Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the US Congress. Ruth tells Waleed that size matters when it comes to congressional voting blocs, but bigger isn’t always better. What can we learn from Congressional ideological factions of the 20th and 21st centuries? Why and how did they succeed and fail in their own goals? Why is collective action exceptionally difficult in the U.S Congress?
Amira Hassan, JD’s political director, joins Waleed to break down why Congress is the place where solidarity goes to die.
Readings & clips:
Ruth Bloch Rubin’s book BUILDING THE BLOC.
Robert McCormick, NBC, on Hon. Lee Metcalfe and Democratic Study Group. 1960.
“Meet the Blue Dog Democrats!”
“Democrats have grown frustrated with Blue Dogs..” Chris Van Hollen on WAMU 88.5.
Washington Unplugged, 07.15.09
House progressives are building something new, exciting, and powerful
13 MAR 2021 · This is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party. But it’s not the Squad’s party either.
Today, a very special Group Chat to discuss a very large stimulus bill. Amira and Guido are joined by Mary Small, National Legislative Director for Indivisible, to react to the passage of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. What does the massive investment in stimulus checks, expanded unemployment insurance, and the child tax credit tell us about the state of the Democratic Party halfway through Biden’s first 100 days?
After a break, Mary and Amira break down progressives’ strategy during the Congressional negotiations over the American Rescue Plan. There were threats of progressives voting as a bloc! What did progressives win, what did progressives lose, how has the Congressional Progressive Caucus changed since the Obama era, and what can we learn about wielding the power of the progressive bloc in future legislative fights?
Readings & resources:
What’s in the Stimulus Bill? A Guide to Where the $1.9 Trillion Is Going
Biden’s COVID-Relief Bill Is a Big F**king Deal
Where Do We Go From Here on Tax Credits?
How Democrats miscalculated Manchin and later won him back
An Expanded Child Tax Credit Would Lift Millions of Children Out of Poverty
Analysis: Senate ‘gangs’ show Biden what’s possible, and not
‘A Racist Narrative’: Biden Warned of Welfare Moms Driving Luxury Cars
No, Joe Biden Won’t Give Us Social Democracy
Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union
Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment
23 FEB 2021 · Did the Sunrise Movement… negotiate a win?
Guido sits down with Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, to check in on her well-being after four marathon years of campaigning for a Green New Deal. More than two years after the sit-in with AOC, Guido and Varshini look at Biden’s recent climate announcements and ask themselves: are we reading this wrong or did the Green New Deal.. win the debate over Democratic climate policy? And if the answer is “yes, we did notch some wins but not enough,” how did the climate movement achieve that and what’s next — for the movement and for its army of young people?
But first, Guido and Waleed debrief the right-wing attacks on the Green New Deal following blackouts in Texas, and break down how a Green New Deal would prevent such massive blackouts from ever happening again.
Additional readings & references:
BIDEN-SANDERS UNITY TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS
TACKLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS AT HOME AND ABROAD EXECUTIVE ORDER
At last, a climate policy platform that can unite the left
“End the lies-for-profit games.”
Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal
13 FEB 2021 · In 2010, the DREAM Act failed in a Senate vote when five Democrats refused to vote for the bill. Will the Biden administration learn from that defeat?
Greisa Martinez Rosas was in the Senate gallery in 2010 when the DREAM Act died. Since then, she’s organized relentlessly to prevent the next Democratic trifecta from failing to protect immigrants.
This week, Amira Hassan, Justice Democrats’ Political Director, takes the mic to speak with Greisa, executive director of United We Dream. Together they unpack the immigrant rights movement’s wins and losses from the past two decades, what has changed since those battles, and what lies ahead in the fight for immigrant and racial justice during the Biden years. Greisa also shares her evolution from a shy high schooler to a veteran organizer, and gives Senate Democrats some advice after a few of them voted with Republicans to deny stimulus checks to undocumented Americans.
Join United We Dream’s Undeniable campaign.
'The civil rights issue of our time': how Dreamers came to dominate US politics
DREAM Act dies in Senate
Progressive dems show Biden what “sweeping” reform really looks like
On Immigration, Biden Goes Big In Opening Bid To Congress
Biden Signs 3 Immigration Executive Orders. Activists Want More
Hundreds deported under Biden, including witness to massacre
5 FEB 2021 · When the slavocracy needed to quash the rising tides of emancipation and free labor, they used the filibuster. When Jim Crow segregationists needed to stymie anti-lynching laws and preserve their poll taxes, they used the filibuster. Today, when the Republican Party must cling to power by strangling the American government and suppressing the American majority, they use the filibuster.
But the filibuster is an accident of parliamentary history; an unintended consequence of minor changes to Senate rules. Now the weaponization of the filibuster against majoritarian democracy has essentially broken Congress.
This week at the Bloc Party, Waleed Shahid, spokesperson of Justice Democrats, sits down with Adam Jentleson, author of the new book KILL SWITCH: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Waleed figures out why former Harry Reid staffers like Adam end up becoming progressive crusaders, how the filibuster went from accident to shield of white supremacy, and together they assess how the Democratic Party might reform Congress, or fail and forfeit power for a generation.
Explicit
23 JAN 2021 · Group Chat returns after Senate Democrats win back the majority, the Republican Party incites a deadly coup attempt, and Joe Biden is officially sworn in as the 46th President.
President Biden delivered his inaugural address, but what does “unity” mean after Republicans abetted violence against Democratic members of Congress? What does it mean to evoke Lincoln, who was assassinated by a Confederate sympathizer, as a figure of unity? Why would Senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley ever stop aiding would-be fascists if there are no consequences for their actions? We look back at inaugural speeches from FDR and Reagan.
Just hours after his inauguration, Biden signed more than a dozen executive orders in the Oval Office, including measures to rejoin the Paris Agreement, repeal Trump's restrictions on travel from several Muslim-majority countries, stop construction of the Southern border wall and mandate the wearing of masks on federal property. Amira, Guido, and Waleed make sense of President Biden’s Day 1 agenda.
Additional reading & references:
Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem
Bayard Rustin, From Protest to Politics
Biden, Inauguration Speech
Biden Transition: How to succeed in hyperpolarized politics
Climate activists expect a lot from President Biden
League of Conservation Voters: Policy Priorities for Biden
The New Progressive Left Shows How To Deal With Sedition
Sen. Manchin calls for $4 trillion infrastructure spending
Biden unveils immigration plan
Poll: 47 percent of people blame ANTIFA for insurrection
Bloc Party is a show about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, featuring progressive champions challenging the status quo from inside the halls of power and the...
show more
Bloc Party is a show about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, featuring progressive champions challenging the status quo from inside the halls of power and the organizers transforming the party’s agenda from the outside.
show less
Information
| Author | Amy Westervelt |
| Organization | Amy Westervelt |
| Categories | Politics |
| Website | - |
| - |
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