What Types of Collaborations Can Defeat Fascists?
Episode Description
Isaac Ontiveros joins the Fascism Barometer to break down the types of organizational collaborations that are needed in the US to defeat fascism. Isaac and Ejeris discuss coalitions, broad fronts, and united fronts, and what it takes to build and maintain them. Ejeris and Isaac also discuss strategies folks have used to defeat fascist movements and the unlikely partnerships that can happen.
About Isaac
Isaac Ontiveros has worked in racial, social, and economic justice movements for twenty years. He was formerly the National Communications Director at Critical Resistance, a researcher for UNITE HERE, co-director of the Center for Political Education, and Assistant Director of Strategic Campaigns at National Nurses United. Currently, Isaac is director of Political Strategy at the Right to the City Alliance.
About Ejeris
Ejeris is a political strategist passionate about strengthening liberation movements and building community safety. Ejeris serves as the Fascism Barometer's "movement meteorologist," exploring the impact of fascist movements on communities of color, queer and trans communities, and all marginalized people. Having worked for the past twenty-five years at the intersections of racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, anti-violence, transformative justice, and economic justice movements, Ejeris focuses on creating political and strategic experiments to strengthen social justice movements through the organization Ejerie Labs.
Resources
"...Something has fundamentally changed. And you can see it. What? Before, everyone wanted to be a ploughman in history, to have an active part. No one wanted to be the ‘manure’ of history. But can one plough without first fertilising the earth? So there must be the ploughman and the ‘manure’. Abstractly, everyone accepted this. But practically?…"
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1932 (more info)
Reading
Convergence Mag, “Block and Build: Left Stratefy in the MAGA Era”
Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century”
Liberation Road, “Block, Broaden, Build: The 2024 Elections and the Threefold Tasks of the Left”
Dissent, Gabriel Winant, “Exit Right”
John Munro, The Anticolonial Front: The African American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonisation, 1945–1960
South African History Online, United Democratic Front (UDF) Collection
Robert Reich, “Trump’s Testosterone-Poisoned Picks”
About HR 9495:
Nonprofit Quarterly, “HR 9495: Bill Threatening Nonprofits Passes House”
Video
Action
Take Action with Isaac’s Organization Right to the City
Check out the resource hub!