Power Station

Larry Curley has felt the destructive force of US government policy on Native Americans first-hand. A member of the Navajo Nation he lives with the legacy of dislocation and stripping of identity caused by the Removal Act of 1830 and the Assimilation Act of 1887. He has directly experienced the Termination Act of 1953 and Relocation Act of 1956 as blunt instruments of a federal power grab. As a yo...

How would you undertake the bold, ambitious and critical mission of building a path to citizenship for the over 775,000 undocumented African, Jamaican, Latinx, Haitian and Asian immigrants who raise families, bolster the workforce and create communities throughout the state of Florida? This is the charge that Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, embraces. She is...

Those of us fortunate enough to have survived the Trump era, police violence against Black and Brown communities, a global pandemic and a punishing economic fallout, bear responsibility for what comes next. Organized resistance by impacted communities has forced the beginnings of a power shift but that alone will not ensure a more equitable future. Transformation requires going bone-deep to the tr...

In 2021, our nation's deep political divide is reflected in a flood of legislation targeting LGBTQ people. The 1,100 bills now pending in state legislatures are in part the handiwork of GOP leaders  threatened by changing cultural norms. They are particularly fixated on demonizing transgender children and criminalizing doctors who care for their needs. But there is also a surge of pro-LGBTQ bills,...

As a society we claim to value our public systems. We view parks, education and the arts as being in service to the common good. But the narrative about public housing is persistently negative and steeped in racism. Public housing was created in the 1930s, leading to slum clearance, the displacement of Black families and sanctioning of segregated neighborhoods. Nationally, over 3,300 local authori...

We think we are a youth-oriented culture but young people will point out that perception is not reality. While those under the age of 18 make up more than ¼ of the U.S. population youth are not consulted when elected officials craft legislation on issues that will determine the quality of their futures, from health care to education. And youth of color whose direct experiences with racial inequity...

It is impossible to overstate the depth of transformation that is taking place right now in Virginia. Once the cradle of the confederacy, and for decades a bastion of hard-edged Republican leadership, Virginia's future is being rewritten by shifting demographics and community organizations centered on equity. In the 1980s, only 1% of Virginians were foreign born; today 1 in 7 are immigrants. These...

When Georgia's state legislature enacted Senate Bill 2020, an unabashedly regressive voter suppression law, it revealed more than an assault on Black and low-income voters. Governor Brian Kemp was making a direct attack on Black Voters Matters, the nonprofit that partners with Black voters to make real change happen, particularly in rural southern states. This legislation is retaliation against BV...

Did you know that Salvadorians are the third largest Latino population in America? If not, consider that their relative invisibility is no accident. The migration of El Salvadorans into the US began at the onset of a civil war that started in 1980 and continued for more than a decade, displacing families from first urban and then rural communities. They were denied refugee status by President Rona...

It is not hyperbole to state that America is under siege. Yes, the 2020 election ousted Donald Trump after a 4-year reign of racist policies, the undermining of institutions and bungling of a global pandemic. And the brilliant organizing of Stacey Abrams and LaTosha Brown produced the historic ascension of Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate, flipping Georgia from red to blue. The fear of...

When Carlos Mark Vera started out at American University he imagined a life in politics. It happened but in a very different way then he expected. He won an internship on Capitol Hill, experience that employers in the political ecosystem deem essential. But when he walked the halls of Congress, he did not see himself, a young person color, among his fellow interns. Most wore nicer clothes than eve...

There are many moments that resonate in a conversation with Vimala Phongsavahn, Board President of the Laotian American National Alliance. They include the story of her parents, Laotian refugees who fled a repressive government and the aftermath of America's covert bombing during the Vietnam War. Vimala describes their resettlement in Rhode Island in 1981 where they started jobs, her mother in a f...

A sea change is underway in the nonprofit sector and it is long past due. For decades, white-led organizations have been privileged by levels of funding and political access denied to nonprofits led by people of color. This is not news. But in environmental organizations, those brand name groups have become synonymous with preservation, conservation and climate change. Far less visible are the Lat...

How many of us can look back on a single foundational experience that shaped how we see ourselves? Lupi Quinteros-Grady can. She was 14 years old and an immigrant when she attended a program at Latin American Youth Center. She connected to a diverse group of young people and over time honed the confidence and skills needed to advocate on issues, including HIV, that directly affected the community....

What I love most about DC PAVE-Parents Amplifying Voices in Education-is that it reinvents an outdated model for building parent leadership. In the conventional model parents meet with teachers to assess their children's progress and attend school-wide events largely to affirm decisions that have already been made. PAVE wants parents to be in the room where the real decision making is made and pre...

Ted Piccolo refers to himself as an accidental advocate. It all started when he helped a fellow member of the Colville Indian Reservation craft a business plan for a promising new venture. The plan was sound, but her application for a bank loan was rejected. The bank required her to have $2,500 in equity to make the loan. Like many others on the reservation in rural northwest Washington state, she...

The world needs to catch up to Indira Henard, executive director of the DC Rape Crisis Center. She champions survivors of sexual violence, which she views as inextricably linked to other forms of oppression, including discrimination based on race and gender. And she applies this intersectional lens to all areas of the Center's work, from clinical therapy to advocacy for public policies that suppor...

What if your job was to ensure that Latino leaders have a seat at decision making tables in the public and private sectors? This is the work that Marco Davis leads as President & CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Its fellowships place talented young Latinos with members of Congress who are themselves Latino change makers. This experience, coupled with real-time training, prepares...

If you worry about our nation's capacity to recover from Covid19, this episode may change your perception of what is possible. Melissa Jones is executive director of BARHII- Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative- a collaborative that is charting a course for recovery in 9 hard-hit counties. This partnership between public health agencies, municipalities and community organizations was lau...

Here it is, my 150th episode, a milestone in the lifecycle of a podcast. It has been a journey, creating a platform for progressive nonprofit change making. To mark the moment, I reconnected with Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, CEO and executive director of CAAB-Capital Area Asset Builders-one of the most tenacious seekers of justice that I know. CAAB connects underinvested Black and Brown communities...

This episode tells the story of LEDC- the Latino Economic Development Corporation-a nonprofit at the epicenter of our nation's multiple crises, from COVID19 to the loss of businesses, jobs and housing to the assault on Latinos by the outgoing President and his congressional allies. Marla Bilonick, LEDC's executive director, credits her staff and the indispensable partnerships she has built with mu...

I was deliberate in choosing John Holdsclaw as my first guest of 2021. It is not only because he is a friend and EVP of Strategic Initiatives for National Cooperative Bank, whose investments yield resources ranging from rural electric co-ops to grocery stores in urban food deserts. Or because he is Board president of the CDFI Coalition, the voice for over 1100 lenders in underinvested communities....

In this episode I have a great time with super-producer Rob Ford, talking about Power Station's beginnings, aspirations and lessons learned. I don't love talking about myself but I do love talking about nonprofit advocacy and how it is being amplified through this platform. I talk about how I got involved in community organizing and policy advocacy, which shapes how I think about what is effective...

Here is a staggering statistic. Right now, 45 million Americans are struggling under the weight of $1.7 trillion in student debt. The college education that was supposed to create economic opportunity has far too often, particularly in communities of color, created deep generational harm. Parents have financed their kids' educations while still paying off their own college loans. And while student...

We will look back on 2020 as the moment when our nation's longstanding systemic inequities became impossible to ignore. Just look at our digital divide. Right now, over 17 million children lack the requisite connectivity plans or devices needed to participate in a remote learning mandate. It is not only a problem of broadband access. It is also a challenge of adoption, the ability of families to a...