OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Troy N. Miller , who's long served as the Off-Kilter podcast's beloved "man behind the curtain," aka executive producer. When he's not producing Off-Kilter , the Zero Hour , Breaking Through , and other progressive podcast/radio programs, Troy serves as West Virginia organizer and special projects director at Social Security Works and at-large member...

Wealth is a word that gets thrown around a lot, especially in economic conversations and spaces. The most basic definition is what you own minus what you owe. But as Aisha Nyandoro—CEO of Springboard to Opportunity and architect of the Magnolia Mother's Trust—argues in her recent Tedx Talk , it's time to redefine wealth in the United States. In her words, "for too long, we have allowed financial i...

For this week's episode of Off-Kilter , with October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Rebecca sat down with two leaders at JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) who are at the forefront of advancing disability employment within the business and employer community: Bryan Gill, head of JP Morgan Chase's Office of Disability Inclusion and the firm's global head of neurodiversity , and Nan Gibson,...

For this week's episode of Off-Kilter , Rebecca sat down with Jen Burdick, supervising attorney of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) unit at Community Legal Services (CLS), Rebecca's legal aid alma mater. They had a far ranging conversation about how "eligibility doesn't equal access" and other lessons Jen has learned throughout her years as a public benefits lawyer; the human consequences of...

According to recently released Census data, poverty among older adults increased sharply again in 2022, after reaching an all-time low just two years before. One group of older Americans who's especially struggling is older workers in physically demanding jobs. Contrary to the popular narrative that everyone's living longer and work is getting easier, a recent task force convened by the National A...

For this week's episode of Off-Kilter , Rebecca sat back down with Emily Ladau. She's the editor of the Voices of Disability Economic Justice Project and the author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally.  She's someone who's done an immense amount throughout her career to shift narratives on disability in the United States and is a master storyteller whose ma...

For this week's episode of Off-Kilter, Rebecca sat down with longtime labor journalist Steven Greenhouse . He's someone who really needs no introduction after spending thirty-one years at the New York Times, eighteen of which he spent covering the labor beat, until 2014. He's also the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and F...

Something many of us take for granted, if we've never been without it, is how vitally important it is to have photo ID. In this day and age you can't do pretty much anything without ID—from accessing public benefits to renting an apartment to voting, and so much more. So for this week's episode, Rebecca sat back down with a dear friend who's been leading the charge when it comes to ensuring that 2...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Cara Reedy . She's a journalist and the founder of a new organization called the Disabled Journalists Association (DJA)—which she's spent the past two years setting up to identify the needs of disabled people in journalism and to amplify the voices of disabled journalists across the United States. It's just getting off the ground and just launched its...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Kate Nicholson , a dear friend and colleague and a policy advocate who's been leading the charge when it comes to fighting on behalf of people who live with chronic pain. Today she serves as the founder and executive director of the National Pain Advocacy Center. They talk about what it's like to live with chronic pain; Kate's path to founding NPAC; t...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Indi Dutta-Gupta , a dear friend and colleague who's dedicated his career to ending poverty in America and building an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. Today he serves as president and executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), one of the nation's leading organizations dedicated to advancing economic...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Kathleen Romig , a dear friend and colleague who today serves as the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one of the nation's leading organizations that focuses on economic and budget policy for low-income families. To mark the eighty-eighth anniversary of Social Security, they had a far-rang...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat back down with Zaki "The Barber" Smith , an entrepreneur, a powerhouse activist, and a criminal justice reform leader whose work focuses on ending the perpetual punishment that comes with having a criminal record in America. They had a far-ranging and emotional conversation about the historic clean slate legislation that passed the New York Assembly earlier thi...

For this week's episode, Rebecca sat down with Alejandra Vazquez-Baur, an educator-turned-policy advocate whose work focuses on expanding supports for K–12 immigrant students—especially newcomers—and multilingual students. As Alejandra describes herself: "I am a product of resilient Mexican women. A sister. A dancer. An educator. A visionary." They talk about the National Newcomer Network Alejandr...

Welcome to the summer/fall season of Off-Kilter ! We're excited to be back and up and running with the show after a break, just in time to mark Disability Pride Month. And to kick things off right, Rebecca sat back down with Mia Ives-Rublee , a long-time disability rights and justice activist who today serves as the director of the disability justice initiative at the Center for American Progress....

This week, Off-Kilter is wrapping up our ongoing series digging into why in the famous words of Audre Lorde, "self-care is political warfare. A recurring theme uplifted by several guests throughout this series has been the importance of bringing your whole self to the work —a phrase that, like so much within the topic of self-care, has become watered down enough in recent years that it's about as...

As Off-Kilter's ongoing series continues, digging into why in the famous words of Audre Lorde, "self-care is political warfare," we're zooming out for this next episode to explore the goal of ending poverty in the United States—and the broader work of economic and social liberation—as self-care for the larger collective organism of which we are all part. In this spirit, as Rebecca describes in thi...

This week Rebecca sat down with Kim Knackstedt, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where she serves as director of the Disability Economic Justice Team and director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative, both of which launched a little over one year ago in April 2022. Before coming to TCF, Kim served as the first-ever director of disability policy for the White House Domestic Po...

This week, Off-Kilter continues 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.  Our next guest in this series is Michele Evermore, a longtime leading voice fighting for America's most marginalized workers, parti...

This week,  Off - Kilter ' s taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a conversation hosted by The Century Foundation's Disability Economic Justice Collaborative, marking its one-year anniversary. Launched in April 2022, the Collaborative is a first of its kind initiative bringing together more than 40 disability rights and justice leaders and leading think tanks and re...

This week, Off-Kilter continues 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. And this week, Rebecca sat down with Julie Kashen, a friend and a colleague at The Century Foundation who's a leading voice in the m...

This week, Off-Kilter continues 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. As we've explored a good bit in recent weeks as part of this series, the disability community harbors some of the greatest wisdom wh...

This week, Off-Kilter continues 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. As we've explored a good bit in recent weeks as part of this series, the disability community harbors some of the greatest wisdom wh...

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.  As we've explored a good bit in recent weeks as part of this series, the disability community harbors some of the greatest wisdom...

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. As a lawyer and policy advocate who's also a lifelong student of the magical and mystical, Rebecca thinks a lot about social justic...