OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

This week, Off-Kilter returns to our ongoing series of conversations with social justice leaders digging into why, in the famous words of Audre Lorde, self-care is political warfare —and the role radical self-care plays in their own lives to sustain them in this work. Given that the disability community harbors some of the greatest wisdom when it comes to radical self-care–with disabled people as...

This week, Off-Kilter is taking a break from our ongoing series about self-care as political warfare to honor the life and legacy of Judy Heumann, an iconic civil rights leader and the godmother of the disability rights movement. Judy passed away on March 4, 2023, at age 75. It was especially important to the Off-Kilter team and to many of us at The Century Foundation to do a tribute to Judy for t...

As Off-Kilter continues our ongoing series of conversations with leaders across the economic justice movement digging into why, in the famous words of Audre Lorde, self-care is political warfare—and the role radical self-care plays in their own lives to sustain them in this work—Rebecca Vallas had a ton of fun sitting down with her next guest in the series, who's a dear friend and colleague of her...

"DEI" (a.k.a. diversity, equity, and inclusion) has become something of a buzzword in recent years, with more and more U.S. employers taking steps to incorporate DEI practices into their workplaces to better enable them to walk the walk when it comes to living their organizational values. Meanwhile, as DEI has taken hold as a north star in more and more American workplaces, it has also evolved to...

Something that gets talked about a lot in conversations about self-care is the notion of "being your authentic self." But rarely do such conversations contemplate the structural barriers and discrimination many of us face to being our authentic selves, particularly in the workplace. So when The Century Foundation ran a commentary last month (as part of TCF's Voices of Disability Economic Justice P...

As Rebecca's come to learn over the years, a key pillar of radical self-care when it comes to doing social justice work (and, really, life in general) is—to paraphrase jazz legend Thelonious Monk—finding the technique that's relevant for you, versus mirroring the status quo for the sake of fitting in. And there are few leaders in the economic justice movement who epitomize this kind of be-your-ecc...

Continuing Off-Kilter' s ongoing series of conversations with leaders across the economic justice movement delving into why, in the famous words of Audre Lorde , self-care is indeed political warfare—and the role radical self-care plays in their own lives to sustain them in this work—this week's episode zooms out to take a look at the "labor of love" ideology underpinning the notion that social ju...

With burnout spreading like wildfire throughout progressive advocacy circles even before the COVID-19 pandemic started nearly three years ago, Rebecca's been feeling called to take the podcast in something of a different direction this year (you can read more about it here ).  So, starting with this week's 2023 opener, Off-Kilter will be spending the upcoming season going behind the scenes of the...

This week, to continue the series of conversations we've been having on Off-Kilter about the limiting beliefs we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with Claire Guzdar —managing director of campaigns and partnerships at an organization called the Groundwork Collaborative —to unpack one of the most salient limiting beliefs hampering eco...

With the U.S. midterm elections just behind us, to continue Off-Kilter' s ongoing series of conversations about the limiting beliefs that we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with Nick Turner —president and director of the Vera Institute for Justice—to unpack two of the most toxic limiting beliefs in American politics that flared up...

This week, to continue Off-Kilter' s ongoing series of conversations about the limiting beliefs we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with Stefan Lallinger, executive director of an organization housed at The Century Foundation called The Next 100 . They have a far-ranging conversation about a core limiting belief constraining economi...

This week, to continue Off-Kilter' s ongoing series about the limiting beliefs we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid, two disabled podcasters who are leading a very cool new project called the Pod Access Initiative , in partnership with the Disability Visibility Project . They have a far-ranging conve...

This week, Off-Kilter' s taking a quick break from the ongoing series of conversations Rebecca's been having with leaders around the limiting beliefs we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, to bring you a discussion Rebecca had last week at a virtual event hosted by The Century Foundation and the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative to mark October...

This week, continuing Off-Kilter' s ongoing series of conversations about the limiting beliefs that we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with two dear friends and leaders within guaranteed income movement—Dorian Warren and Aisha Nyandoro—to continue the conversation we started last week about one of the most toxic limiting beliefs un...

This week, continuing Off-Kilter' s ongoing series of conversations about the limiting beliefs that we as a collective must release and replace to pave the way for economic liberation, Rebecca sat down with two dear friends and leaders within the disability rights and justice movement to talk about one of the most toxic limiting beliefs underpinning large-scale oppression in the United States toda...

Modern-day oracles are increasingly describing this moment in human history as a "battle of imaginations"—in which oppression is what happens when an individual or a whole group of people are living in someone else's dream, instead of being free to dream their own. It's in that spirit that the first episode of Off-Kilter' s fall season kicks off with the words of poet and activist Sonya Renee Tayl...

This week marked the thirty-second anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act—or ADA, as it's better known—the landmark civil rights law that promised equal opportunity and economic security for Americans with disabilities. As we've talked about a lot on this show over the years, as important as it is to celebrate how far we've come in the decades since the ADA became part of the fabric of...

July marks the thirty-second anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, as it's better known—the landmark civil rights law that promised equal opportunity and economic security for Americans with disabilities. As we've talked about a lot on this show over the years, as important as it is to celebrate how far we've come in the decades since the ADA became part of the fabric of Amer...

July marks the thirty-second anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, as it's better known—the landmark civil rights law that promised equal opportunity and economic security for Americans with disabilities. As we've talked about a lot on this show over the years, as important as it is to celebrate how far we've come in the decades since the ADA became part of the fabric of Amer...

July marks the thirty-second anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, as it's better known—the landmark civil rights law that promised equal opportunity and economic security for Americans with disabilities. As we've talked about a lot on this show over the years, as important as it is to celebrate how far we've come in the decades since the ADA became part of the fabric of Amer...

July marks the thirty-second anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, as it's better known—the landmark civil rights law that promised equal opportunity and economic security for Americans with disabilities. As we've talked about a lot on this show over the years, as important as it is to celebrate how far we've come in the decades since the ADA became part of the fabric of Amer...

The year 2021 was one for the history books in many areas of American economic policy. And one thing it will be remembered as is the year the United States finally adopted a guaranteed minimum income for families with children. Unfortunately, that policy victory was short-lived, and the expanded Child Tax Credit signed into law as part of the American Rescue Plan Act expired at the end of last yea...

Coming up on Juneteenth, which will for the second year be recognized as a federal holiday in the United States on June 20 to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States, Rebecca sat down with Trevor Smith, the director of narrative change at Liberation Ventures, an organization working to fuel the movement for Black-led racial repair, for a sneak peek at a new...

There's a lot of talk about budgets in Washington—but budget debates are rarely humanized in ways that people can understand in real life terms. And that's a problem. Because a wide array of critical agencies across the federal government have been getting systematically underfunded over the years, resulting in very real problems for American families.  A prime example is the Social Security Admin...

Following decades of failed tough-on-crime policies in the United States, between 70 million and 100 million Americans now have some type of criminal record, standing in the way of basics like jobs and housing for a huge swath of the nation's citizens. But a policy that's been gaining bipartisan steam in the states over the past five years, known as "Clean Slate," has started to chip away at that...