Power Station

Where does dehumanization start and how is it cultivated over time to rationalize how we, individually and collectively as a nation, feel about and by extension treat others at home and across the globe? How do we recognize and interrogate the preconceptions we hold about entire populations, biases that justify their dislocation, the bombing and eradication of their schools, universities and hospi...

We use the word community a lot these days, it denotes the people and places we are connected to and those which we support and admire. To see a welcoming community in action, pay a visit to Martha's Table. As its President and CEO Tiffany Williams explains on this episode of Power Station, it is built on shared values and powered by love for community in its programming, from early childhood educ...

Eric Ward knows something about courage. He has demonstrated it for over 40 years, infiltrating alt-right groups in the rural Pacific Northwest to reveal what animates its followers, advancing American scholarship about antisemitism as a gateway to white nationalist movements globally, and speaking out about how this authoritarian moment is a reaction to 75 years of Black civil rights struggles an...

Literacy is so essential to how we live, communicate, learn, build relationships, and participate in society that we rarely consider how many people in our lives and communities have not had access to it. The numbers tell a story that demands our attention and requires a solution that is embedded into our social systems. Today, 140 million American adults cannot read beyond a 5 th or 6 th grade le...

Our origin stories all too often predict our economic futures. Those born into households without livable incomes and durable assets, lack the resources needed to meet their material needs, let alone their aspirations for home ownership. And they did not arrive there by accident. Public and corporate policymaking has intentionally excluded people of color from lending opportunities, in particular...

Why are we continuously surprised when we learn about the latest cruel, punitive and democracy-defying actions taken by a president who does not care about the rule of law and who has leveraged his own party in Congress to diminish human, civil, immigrant and voting rights in America? This question is particularly relevant for nonprofits whose missions are antithetical to this administration and w...

It is no surprise to listeners, many of whom are in the trenches of strengthening under-invested communities, that few strategies are as impactful as Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). These U.S. Department of Treasury-certified nonprofits operate in communities that banks do not serve, leaving them starved for capital and financial education. In many rural communities and in In...

Sometimes a single data point tells a story that cries out for our attention, reflection and action. In California, 35,000 people, two thirds of whom are Black and Brown, are serving life sentences in the state's prison system. Nationally, 200,000 men and women are serving life sentences, one of every 6 prisoners overall. And while the criminal justice system is long overdue for structural reform,...

Ableism favors the non-disabled at any cost. That is the powerful phrase that resonates after my conversation with India Harville, an exceptionally talented dancer, educator and disability justice advocate. It conveys that ableism is structural, embedded in government systems and in our cultural norms, which limit the access of disabled people to resources, opportunity and agency over their own li...

Shannan Herbert has watched many people walk past banks and the people-centered CDFI she leads on the same block, to take their financial business to check cashing places and liquor stores where the cost of cashing a check or taking out an emergency loan is extortionary. For years, CDFI associations, government agencies, and think tanks have reported on the millions of Americans who are unbanked a...

It is exceedingly rare, in this political season, to find members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who agree on the value of a government policy to their constituents and the economic infrastructure in the red and blue states they represent. Community Development Financial Institutions, created through the Reigel Act of 1994 have earned that distinction because they deploy capital and techni...

All parents know the heart wrenching feeling of having to work when they are worried about the safety of their children. Imagine if those parents are farmworkers who start their workday at 3:00am and use their remarkable and underpaid skills to harvest the crops that end up as food on our tables. Imagine if their only option for childcare is to bring their babies and toddlers into the fields with...

What is more American than entrepreneurship, not the faux version appropriated by heirs to affluent parents but the creation of small businesses by risk takers seeking to support their families, innovate goods and services, and invigorate their communities?  As Audrey Roofeh explains on this episode of Power Station, it was small business owners who gambled their own safety to take care of communi...

There is a sea change underway in the social change and political activism arenas, and it is led by a burgeoning network of girls and women. A major force behind this transformation is Her Rising Initiative, a nonprofit founded by Cherie Animashaun who, as a teenager, was inspired to create a space for girls with aspirations to become changemakers. Its mission, to close the opportunity gap for gir...

I love speaking with leaders whose innate capacity for engaging communities and influencing progress in politics, policy and culture comes from their character and not just their title. Rafael Collazo, executive director of the UnidosUS Action Fund, the 501c4 sister organization of UnidosUS, our nation's largest Latino civil rights organization, is that leader. UnidosUS, the organizational champio...

This moment in America is living proof that the path to a just society requires the shedding of false narratives that demonize people and communities for social currency and political gain. These narratives influence how elected officials expend fiscal resources and which policies and regulations they enact. And it takes education, organizing and relationship building by nonprofits and people with...

Charlie Birney was way ahead of the curve when he became an early adopter of podcasting in 2012. His love of listening to and telling stories through this platform made the years of explaining to friends and family how to access them on an iPhone worthwhile. He started Launch Podcasts in 2014, and its purpose was not what you might expect. He was not interested in growing the audience or monetizin...

For Sophie Miyoshi and Helen Abraha, advocating for the rights of restaurant workers reflects their values and is also highly personal. Both started working in restaurants as teens and over time they experienced the isms and injustices that define the industry, from sexism and racism to immigrant exploitation and wage theft. They found a home at the Restaurant Organizing Collective DC where Sophie...

This president and his minions in Congress are relentless in their messaging about who counts as an American and what government owes to its people. And their narrative is rationalizing the elimination of policies and programs that we once embraced as being quintessentially American, in particular the education the education of our children. U.S. Department of Education Commissioner Linda MacMahon...

Despite all efforts to whitewash our nation's history, the truth cannot be erased. Case in point: In 1906, the first generation after slavery, African Americans created an extraordinary cultural, economic and entrepreneurial hub, dubbed Black Wall Street, in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This thriving center of enterprise, where dollars spent circulated 9 to 30 times before leaving th...

When someone tells you their story, listening is an honor. It is an opportunity to connect to someone else's life experience, to recognize that we are all shaped by the inequities and privileges we are born into and that the consequences of both reverberate through families, communities and public systems. In the case of Courtney Stewart, my guest on this week's episode of Power Station, his story...

The story of Washington DC's Ward 8, Ward 7 and Anacostia specifically is often told, largely by people who don't live there, in terms of deficits, both in resources and the community itself. The truth is entirely different. It was home to the Nacotchtank's indigenous settlements in the 1700s, white Navy Yard workers in the late 1800s, when Black people were barred from living there, and became a...

Carlos Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation knows that the organization he leads, and the community it serves, are on the federal government's target list, but he will not allow the opposition to steal his joy. Instead, he stays laser focused on advancing his nonprofit's mission: providing housing, social services and a pathway to financial independence for homeless youth, pri...

The dizzying assault by this administration on our constitutional right to vote is memorialized in The Save Act, which has so-far failed in the Senate, and in state houses bent on disenfranchising Black Americans. My guest this week, Alex Ault, Senior Policy Council at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, expects to see more versions of legislation marketed by the White House and memb...

A conversation with John Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice reverberates with facts and feelings. To start, we talk about the recent Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, an outcome of President Trump's preoccupation with erasing this foundational constitutional right. As John explains on this episode of Power Station, this impulse is rooted in t...