Collective Power Podcast

In this episode, we discuss how parents who have been targeted by the family policing system (child protective services) experience all the systems, together, allied to the detriment of their own families. By sharing her powerful-first hand experience, Jeannette Vega inspires a life beyond fear and shame, where the experiences of parents who had their children removed are honored and become the co...

In this episode, we use  the mathematical definition of a "system" as a set of rules that preserve a certain result, to look at the ways that the System as a whole preserves itself.  Our guest, Attorney Karla Cruel, walks us through her approach to re-write the constitution--laid out in a new article she co-wrote with Rita Fierro on Medium (link below). Rewriting the constitution is a st...

In this episode we engage in conversations with three expert facilitators on their personal stories that led them to experience, understand, and value how white supremacy is stored in our bodies and how healing in community is an essential way for what's next.  By healing together, we can shift from inherited fear through being witnessed and being curious. There are ways for us to come to the...

In this episode, through storytelling and reflection, we review the somatic experience that people of color have of how the System can unleash itself against them at any time. We highlight how bodies of people of color retain memories of traumatic events and how the retriggering is unlikely for white people to understand. We offer ways to weave the gap across different experiences and pave the way...

In this episode we break down several aspects of internalized white supremacy: perfectionism, conflict as danger, defensiveness, not-good-enough story, and obsession with product over process and doing the right thing. We also highlight how the discomfort and dissonance between our perception of ourselves and the realties we are confronted with are key to healing internal white supremacy and freei...

In this show, we talk about how racism assaults the body and stores emotions and pains for decades. By walking through some key concepts of Resam Menakem's My Grandmother's  Hands, we highlight some ways that meditation, dance, exercise, expressing clean pain, and releasing grief, can help release trauma from the body providing a way to lighten up, ground, and be more fully our true selv...

In this provocative episode, we move beyond the definitions of capitalism, socialism, and communism, through the assumptions of inequality as the backbone of our system, to a vision for a new economy. Our guests have knowledge of and insights from different corners of the economic world. Wayne Armitstead having authored Capitalism  Perverted,  as a prior stockbroker, sees a system that is too unst...

In this episode, we review the basic concepts of the economic system that we mostly take for granted: money,  economy, accounting, transactions, growth. Our Guest, Gagandeep Oberoi is a global citizen, currently living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. who stands for ‘everyone winning’ with a possibility of love and happiness for all. Gagan believes that we are working from wrong assumptions about the ec...

In this episode we review many of the mechanisms that keeps the economy stuck in bubble growths and bursts. From the uncovering the fake economic boost of right now, to the dark money in politics, and the elimination of the gold reserve, we walk from what has become morn in our current economic system and what we can actually shift for the world we want. Breaking up trusts, full employment, and in...

In this episode, an old colleague of mine and I meander on the importance of Love in overcoming the restraints of racism and the economy in the USA. We discuss how knowledge won't set us free, how healing is essential, and how we can build our economic power in the face of capitalism--a very knew system in the history of humanity, despite we think of it as rigid and unchangeable. Our guest, M...

In this episode, we look at international economic and some somecreen dynamics to inequality: the GDP, disparities, and fake choices.  Our guest, Erick Ramos Murillo, is an economist and entrepreneur with wide experience serving as a strategist and consultant for a number of private companies, government and multinational organizations. Mr. Ramos was co-founder of PointSpectrum and CEO of RemesaTe...

In this episode, we explore some misperceptions of the economic system: trickle down economics, trade deficits, and managing countries like businesses. We also look at how our states are different and how the Federal and Commonwealth structures were established to maintain differences, too. Our guest, David A. Caplan, has been a sole practitioner since purchasing an accounting practice in 1992.  H...

This episode was recorded when the results of the election were clear, but not yet declared. We engage in a conversation beyond the angst of the results by discussion what the elections say about where our country is and what's next. What would it be like if we built systems that all across the country would connect people instead of separating us? Our Guest Raphael Freeman  is a political sc...

In this episode, we talk about breaking the silence by sharing our deepest fears and how transformative that can be for ourselves, but also breaking down barriers within our families and in our society establishing more authentic relationships. We also talk about the failures of the liberal/progressive movement to address the visceral fears of extinction of white men. Our guest, Dove, is my yoga t...

In this show we envision how our Juvenile (In)Justice system could be humanizing, instead of detrimental to youth and society. It's shifting a system from an approach that breaks youth's will by having them cave-in, give up, or get tough and instead align the system with what we know about youth, about learning, and about life. We have two guests: Sousan is the mom of youth in the Juveni...

In this episode, we talk with two advocates for juveniles who have been working intensely to end youth sentenced to life without parole. They also support other youth to get out of the juvenile justice system, once and for all.    John Pace is the Juvenile Life Without Parole (“JLWOP”) Reentry Coordinator with the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. In this role he coordinates efforts to garne...

In this episode, we talk with a youth worker who provides sobering insights on the importance of caring for our youth and having compassion for the ones who go astray. Michael O’Bryan is an expert practitioner and budding researcher in the fields of community development, organizational culture, and human wellbeing. Mike has spent more than a decade working directly with resilient yet underserved...

In this episode, we discover the limitations of juvenile justice reform due to the data that is reported and the data that isn't. Our guest, is Adam Serlin who currently serves as a Stoneleigh Fellow with The Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University. In this role, he is helping Philadelphia’s juvenile justice stakeholders use data to drive more efficient, responsive, and c...

Trigger warning: this episode has vivid references to physical violence. In this episode, we talk with a prior youth in the juvenile justice system about how the cycle of violence started in his own life and what it took him to break it and become a peacemaker for himself, his family, and his community.  Our guest, Iran was a foster child in the custody of DCF in his childhood who then immersed hi...

...will burn it down to feel its warmth" An African Wisdom Saying--that Sousan mentions on the show.  In this episode, we talk with a mother who has seen all three of her children in the juvenile justice system. We talk about personal power, race, and the split between how the private juvenile "injustice" facilities offer high quality services--to predominantly white children, while...

In this episode, a foster parent talks about how she was the "perfect victim" who entered the system to save children only to discover she was complicit in a brutal system that perpetuates psychological abuse against both foster parents and birth parents. Jazmin S. Banks was a “Family and Community Inclusion Specialist” at the Department of Behavioral Health (a.k.a. DBH), for 14 years. S...

In this episode, a journalist who has been covering child welfare since 1990, highlights how much about the system hasn't changed, and how it's rooted in seeds of profound bigotry against catholics, that has not been extended to people of color: racism as the backbone of the system. Richard Wexler is Executive Director of NCCPR. His interest in child welfare grew out of 19 years of work...

In this episode, by talking with a birth parent, foster parent, a journalist, and a researcher, we look at the way the different mechanism of trauma and family separation work together. We also begin to envision what it would take to overcome the denial of how racism works within these systems and what it would take for us to organize together to change them.  Resources mentioned on the show: Nati...

In this episode, we look at the law enforcement system from two different perspectives, a correctional executive and a lawyer activist provide insights into how the system is, and how it needs to change. Our guests are Louis Molina and Karla Cruel: bios below.  Louis Molina is a second generation, decorated veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, with over twenty years of experience in the public sector...

In this really phenomenal show (if I say so myself) we talk about how we can leverage our collective power to envision and create a system for liberty and justice for all. We talk about the need for a truth and reconciliation commission, legislative activism, and even a new constitution! It's an explosive episode. Let's go!  Our guests from this month come back in this show: Damon K Jone...