PODCAST · news
Bloc Party
by Justice Democrats
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.
Episodes
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Labor, the Left, and the Specter of a Strike at UPS
This week we’re talking about the labor movement and the political left. How can they support one another? Is the impending UPS workers strike a redux of their successful win in 1997? What are the political implications of a massive workers strike? This episode is a companion to our recent Bloc…
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Debate Me, Bro!
In this episode, six JD staffers get in touch with their inner high school debate team identity and battle it out. Are progressives too online? Should the left run for president in 2024? Is it more impactful to organize around federal or local politics? Do you eat your rice with a fork or a…
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An Inch in U.S. Politics Moves Miles On the Ground in Israel-Palestine
How does the Israeli government maintain the invisibility of Palestinian dehumanization? For progress to take place, will Israelis have to stand up to their own government, or will that pressure have to come from the outside? In Part 2 of our series about our staffers’ recent trip to...
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Don't Let Them Take Away Your Joy (w/ Diana Buttu)
Why do Americans see the Palestinian struggle as “complex?” What does it mean to live under occupation? How does the U.S. “see something, say nothing” policy affect military occupation and continued settlement expansions? In Part 1 of this two episode series, Amira & Alexandra speak with Diana...
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‘To the End’ & Finding the Floor of What Progressives Can Accomplish (w/ Rachel Lears)
How do progressives navigate holding new found power? How much power should be wielded and when? Should we interpret the IRA as a victory or a loss? Acclaimed documentary director, producer, & cinematographer Rachel Lears (Knock Down the House, 2019) (The Hand that Feeds, 2014) joins Alex on the...
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Fighting Back Against Anti-Trans Legislation (w/ Erin Reed)
When anti-trans legislation floods state legislation across the country, it affects all of us. To quote Amira, “This will sink your boat too, bitch!” Journalist Erin Reed joins Becca to break down some of the FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO (and counting) egregious bills targeting trans people and...
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The Revolution Will Be Televised (Whether We Watch It Or Not)
Can cable TV be useful for progressives? What about broadcast media makes it difficult to communicate as a progressive… or are progressives going about our approach to being on TV the wrong way? Meet your instructor, Waleed Shahid! In this episode, Waleed walks Becca, Usamah, and Pod Producer...
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5-4 x Debt Collective (Or How I Learned To Start Worrying and Hate SCOTUS)
It’s a double-crossover special with Michael from the illustrious 5-4 Podcast (a very beloved show to those of us here at JD) and Group Chat veteran Eleni Schirmer from the Debt Collective. They join Waleed to review how oral arguments went down in last month’s Supreme Court cases that could make...
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It's like I have ESG or something...
You’ve heard of the anti-CRT movement… but have you caught wind of ESG, the latest acronym that Republicans have weaponized in their anti-woke crusade? ESG investments have entered the chat in a big way - but it’s not the easiest topic to comprehend. So we brought an expert in to help us break…
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Movement School is on the Bloc
Movement School has acted as one of the core building bloc(k)s for Justice Democrats since day 1…so it’s high time we chatted with Movement School Director Ilona Duverge about its origin story, how she and her team navigate the pressures of the dusty, crusty consultant class, and why providing…
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Fed Up: Inflation and the Myth of Austerity
New year, new hosts, AND new guests on the Bloc! Amira is joined by our newest host and Gen Z rep from the JD staff, Becca Rose. Becca read too many Bloomberg articles about inflation and has some questions like, “Why do economists think that the pathway to a healthy economy is to lay off…
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We Need to Talk About Kevin
Welcome back to the Bloc! Your newly minted hosts of Bloc Party, Amira Hassan & Waleed Shahid are ready to rumble for Season 3. We’re bringing on more staff this season from Justice Democrats & Organize for Justice… aka some of the best of the best when it comes to folks fighting for the soul of...
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AIPAC, U up?
JD Staffers review the triumphs of 2022 midterms in our Bloc Party: Season 2 finale. Justice Democrats Summer Lee & Greg Casar are going to Congress! Summer Lee beat out AIPAC for a second time in her general election, overcoming $10 million in attack ads. What should we take away from the...
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2022 Midterms: Please Place Your Bets
What are the 2022 midterms actually about? A referendum on Biden? Whatever pundits say the top issues are? Or is it something else? In a two part episode, Justice Democrats staffers (ft. a guest from Left Rising) take some bets on the wins/losses the Democratic party is about to experience in...
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A Four Decade Long Debt Receipt
Americans aged 62 and older are the fastest-growing demographic of student borrowers. In July, Journalist Eleni Schirmer’s New Yorker article “The Aging Student Debtors of America,” featured the story of Betty Anne, a 91 year old woman with $330,000 in student loans – and Justice Democrats’ Lead...
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2022 Primaries: The Empire Strikes Back
It’s Sunday June 26th, 2022 – two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – and President Joe Biden knows what he needs to do. Biden needed to announce his endorsement to Rep. Danny Davis, the 25-year incumbent in Chicago’s bluest Congressional district, IL-07. Two days before polls...
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Started At The School Board, Now It's Congresswoman Lee
She can relax a little now. The PA-12 results are certified. The victory is locked in. So current State House Rep. Lee, the expected Congresswoman-elect from Pennsylvania’s 12th district, sat down with Amira Hassan to tell us the WHOLE story. How did Summer Lee get so deep in the progressive...
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Campaign Breakdown: How Summer Lee Beat the Ads
In the final weeks before Pennsylvania’s May 17th primaries, SuperPACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars in the 12th district, nearly all on TV ads attacking Summer Lee and boosting corporate lawyer Steve Irwin. Summer Lee narrowly won. How?…
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Build Back Never: What the Hell Happened to Biden's Agenda?
Group Chat is back with Guido, Amira, and returning guest Mary Small (National Legislative Director of Indivisible) to process what f*** happened with President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. When did Build Back Better die? It died when the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan...
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The Last Takes of an Ex-Campaign Director
A bonus group chat with two seasoned professionals of the political left. Two operatives who went up against the Cuellar machine in TX-28 share stories from the frontlines and pitch some provocative theories. In the DMs: Ava Benezra, the organizer who’s been driving the JD campaign machine since...
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Texas Post-Game Analysis feat. Coach Geoff
The first big Democratic primaries of the 2022 cycle are done. The voters of Texas’s 35th and 28th Congressional districts have cast their ballots. Topline results: A big win, and an excruciating close-tie. What does it all mean? Justice Democrats campaign all-stars sifted through the results…
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What's The Matter With South Texas?
It’s time. The rematch for Texas' 28th Congressional district: Cisneros vs. Cuellar. Human rights attorney Jessica Cisneros, who fell 2,700 votes short of unseating incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar in March 2020, joins us to talk about how she recovered from a tough, narrow loss and why this race may...
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Bloc Party 2: Feel Bad Better
Build Back Better is dead. The Group Chat is resurrected. Welcome to Bloc Party Season 2. New episodes dropping twice a month, starting this week. Text your friends, call your representative, subscribe & share wherever you get your podcasts: ⏯https://podlink.to/blocparty 🟪
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Why is the AFL-CIO falling in love with DSA's PRO Act campaign?
Is the AFL-CIO falling in love with the Democratic Socialists of America? Why is DSA’s PRO Act campaign drawing praise from unlikely allies in mainstream unions, the Democratic establishment, and beyond? What have these young socialists figured out about organizing towards working-class power?…
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Has President Biden really ended “the Reagan era?”
“Trickle-down economics has never worked.” In his Joint Address to Congress President Joe Biden discarded the prevailing economic consensus of post-Reagan Revolution America. What does that tell us about American politics in 2021? Is the Reagan era really over? Is neoliberalism really dead?…
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Odessa Kelly: “The South Got Something To Say”
Folks… Odessa’s running. Justice Democrats’ Executive Director Alexandra Rojas makes her debut on the Bloc alongside a very special guest. Odessa Kelly, the first Justice Democrat of the 2022 cycle is running for Congress in Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional district, challenging Representative Jim...
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Make ‘em pay. Put ‘em in debt. They’ll quiet down.
45 million Americans hold a total of $1.7 trillion in education debt. How did we get here? Guido sits down with writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor to discuss the seeds of the current crisis. How did government-backed, private loans and an anti-civil rights, anti-peace movement backlash led by…
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Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
President-elect Joe Biden ran against Medicare-for-All in the Democratic Presidential primary, and he won. Despite millions of Americans losing their medical insurance after being laid off in the midst of deadly pandemic, the crises of 2020 have not brought universal healthcare back onto the...
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What Planet Is Joe Biden On?
Because this is not the Earth of Joe Biden’s childhood. This week, we take a break from the inside-the-beltway negotiations, zoom out, and ask the important questions: Is the stable foundation of human civilization unraveling? Does anyone or anything have the power to hold the apocalypse at bay?...
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The Bloc vs. The Blob?
Guido and Amira unpack interviews with two foreign policy experts, Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy advisor, and Yasmine Taeb, human rights attorney and progressive foreign policy activist, circling one central question: What happened to the reigning foreign policy consensus in D.C…
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Déjà Vu, Obama Era Regrets, & Biden Era Fights
Will Team Biden repeat the mistakes of the Obama 2008 transition? Reed Hundt, author of A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions, sits down with Guido to figure out how and why the Obama administration made critical, Presidency-defining mistakes during the 2008 Presidential transition....
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Stay Mad Abby
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by millions of votes but Democrats in the House and Senate underperformed their polling. The Democratic majority in the House of the Representatives got smaller. People are mad, and they’re getting into fights. But what is this fight roiling the Democratic Party...
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Welcome to the Bloc Party
A new show from Justice Dems about the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, hosted by Waleed Shahid and Guido Girgenti.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Justice Democrats
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Bloc Party have?
Bloc Party currently has 39 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Bloc Party about?
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.
How often does Bloc Party release new episodes?
Bloc Party has 39 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Bloc Party?
You can listen to Bloc Party on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Bloc Party?
Bloc Party is created and hosted by Justice Democrats.
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