Changemakers

One of President Biden’s first acts was to stop the Keystone Pipeline. It was a victory that arose out of a long battle. First Nations leaders from Standing Rock, in coalition with Indigneous leaders from around the world, initiated this campaign in 2016 to protect their land and water from destruction. But for hundreds of years before this, the Sioux Nations have defended their land and fought fo...

What does it take to build powerful coalitions between different groups with different interests and passions? The idea of working together sounds nice, but what makes a coalition work when the rubber hits the road. This is an episode of two very different but equally successful coalitions. The first talks to organisers in the coalition that delivered the BREXIT deal in the United Kingdom. The sec...

Scale is a buzzword in social change circles, but what does it actually mean to scale social change? Community organiser and Deputy Director of Citizens UK Jonathan Cox unpacks the idea of scale. We discuss the importance of one to one relationships, organisation and networks as resources that help social change ideas move from the small to the big and from place to place.

Dany’s latest book Summertime documents her experience inside the 2019 Bushfires. Today we talk about her journey and how she has learnt to speak about crisis. We also discuss the power she has drawn from bearing witness. Dany identifies strategies for how change makers can walk with crisis, and harness the power of story-telling in how they make change.

Tyson Yunkaporta belongs to Apalech clan of North Queensland. He wrote Sandtalk and is an iconoclast - helping us to see things differently in a modern world of crisis and chaos. Join us on a chat that explores a different understanding of power, change and being.

Do you need a charismatic leader to make change in the world? Arnie Graf’s life’s work shows the answer is ‘no.’ He’s spent 45 years working with people like you and me to build movements that collectively lead change. This episode talks about how he got there and what he learnt. He shares how he was trained by Saul Alinsky the grandfather of community organising, and he reflects on his book Lesso...

Following the 2021 coup by the Burmese military, the Burmese community have built an extraordinary civil disobedience movement to call for the return of democracy. Today we speak to Myint Cho a long time Burmese pro-democracy activist, active in the student movement in 1988, and then based at the Thai-Burma border for 12 years. He shares the long history of the struggle and explains what is happen...

There is a sexual assault crisis in Australia right now. Today we have a special episode - a re-recorded speech that was delivered by host Amanda Tattersall to 500 year 9 and 10 female and male high school students at a public high school in Sydney’s inner West Sydney for its International Women’s Day Assembly.

What does it take for a teenager to turn into a planet defender? Jean Hinchliffe is a climate campaigner and a new author of activist handbook Lead the Way. Today she talks about her activist journey and the lessons she has learnt about making powerful change.

During the 2000s, in the mountains of central Afghanistan, a remarkable but unlikely peace movement began. How did they even define peace in a place beset by war, and how did they organise themselves to work towards this audacious goal? https://changemakerspodcast.org/

Steve Killelea is one of Australia’s most successful businessmen and a self-described peace maker! In this Chat we talk about why he combined these two passions. We explore how his peace work developed from an idea hatched while working in Africa, to creating the largest index for peace in the world!

Mike Gecan is a 45 year veteran organiser based in the United States. He is the former National Co-Director of the first, largest and oldest community organising network in the world - the Industrial Areas Foundation. He talks to us about what organising is, and what it is not. He shares stories about how he learnt about power, and explores some of the differences between social change traditions...

Samuel Chu is a long time community organiser and the founder of the Hong Kong Democracy Council in the United States. In this Chat we explore how he has connected his identities as an organiser and a Hong Konger to create a radically different form of international solidarity in the US. His approach translated the energy of protest into politics, securing bipartisan support for multiple pieces of...

The Movement for Black Lives is realigning political life in the US in 2020. Maurice Mitchell has been a leader in this movement since Ferguson. This conversation moves from his own traumatic experiences of racism that shaped his early life, to his work as an organiser and his reflections on the kinds of political strategy required to win justice. We zero in on the protests that exploded following...

Have you been enjoying Fight for Planet A - the show all about climate change? Then come and hear our ChangeMaker Chat with host Craig Reucassel where we go behind the scenes to find out about his story, and explore what he is trying to achieve in doing the show. For more on ChangeMakers head to https://changemakerspodcast.org/. Follow us on Twitter @Changemakers99, or host Amanda Tattersall @aman...

In all of Australia, Batemans Bay and the South Coast was one of the worst affected. With devastation everywhere, formal government services and charities weren’t able to cope. This is the story of the little known community initiative that saw the breach and stepped in to fill the gap.

In the summer of 2019, Australia had the worst bushfires on record. Everyone knows the story of the official fires services. This is the story of the not-so-official fire fighting squad.

One of the hardest things to do when making change is raising money to support your work. Today we host a panel to discuss the art of organising money with Colleen Loper from Way to Win (US) and Stefan Baskerville from New Economics Foundation (UK). We discuss the different ways you can raise money and the pros and cons of these strategies. We explore why it is so hard to raise money, what makes i...

What happens to the communities that suffer from toxic pollution? Too often nothing. But not if they partner with Pure Earth, the world’s only global NGO working on toxics. Today we talk with it’s founder Richard Fuller - engineer turned toxics crusader who has helped lead an intervention that has cleaned up over 120 places. We find out how he got into it, and how Pure Earth works with communities...

Social service organisations like food banks, charities, and nonprofits are being squeezed at both ends by the pandemic - their resource base has collapsed while they now have much greater demand for their services. Joan Garry talks us through these challenges based on her decades of experience as an advocate, nonprofit CEO and mentor to thousands of nonprofit leaders across North America.

What are the psychological features of the climate disaster? How does fear cause some people to step back, and others to step forward and make change. Margaret Klein Salamon is a psychoanalyst who has transitioned into a climate change warrior. Today she talks about her journey, and how we can understand emergency and fear to build a powerful movement for change.

COVID-19 has shaken the foundations of life as we know it. There is fear, but is there hope as well? This episode features three stories, about healthcare, mutual aid and green stimulus, that show people making something better out of this difficult time.

This is the long story behind one of the United Kingdom’s most high profile left wing figures. In this Chat we learn about Owen Jones’s journey into political life, how extra-parliamentary activism shaped him, but also why the British Labour Party matters.

Bonnie Honig is one of the world’s top democratic theorists and is based at Brown University.  A scholar and commentator in the United States, Bonnie is the author of numerous books, including Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair, published in 2017. She  runs us through her approach to democracy and critical thinking, showing us how it can help us interpret and respond to the crises and shocks th...

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers gives us the lowdown on what she’s learned about changemaking after more than 25 years at the chalkface of teacher’s unionism in the United States.