Power Station

Did you know that the Lower Ninth Ward had the highest rate of homeownership in New Orleans, pre-Hurricane Katrina? And that the devastation of those homes and displacement of their African American owners was caused by breeches in levees that are still in disrepair 15 years later? Or that tens of thousands of those owners remain displaced from their own city? Unlike most cities grappling with a h...

As we navigate extraordinary challenges, from COVID19 to the implosion of our economy, we can see which of us are truly essential workers. We rely on doctors, nurses, mail carriers and grocery store workers, but do we recognize those whose labor literally sustains us? Farmworkers, working 12-14 hours a day, often in unsafe conditions, harvest the strawberries, blueberries, lettuce and other crops...

As the saying goes, when you need something done, ask a busy person. This is definitely the case with Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who represents Orangeburg County in the South Carolina State Legislature. She also directs a nonprofit serving victims of family violence. And she is president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislatures, which creates community among policy makers of color. Now she is ad...

Food insecurity is our government's somewhat clinical term for hunger, or in bureaucratese, a lack of access to the food needed for a full and active life. Hunger is an everyday reality for poor and working families in the nation's capital and its surrounding suburbs, one of the wealthiest regions in the country. And in the shadows of COVID19 and a staggering loss of jobs and income, hunger is gro...

Eddy Morales has an amazing story to tell and he wants it to be your call to action. The last of 9 children and the first born in the United States to a single mother from Mexico, he has faced hardship first hand. He was influenced by his mother's fearlessness and compassion, values that guide him now. In college, he made the connection between his childhood and systemic injustices that oppress pe...

It should not take a pandemic and an uprising spurred by police violence against Black men and women to generate a national reckoning with racism, but here we are. If we want this moment to spark transformation, we need to crack open the full body of evidence about how non-White people are perceived and treated in America. And we need organizations like the National Asian Pacific American Women's...

In this moment of national reckoning with racism, important truths are unfolding. For those who resist the reckoning, the truth starts with recognizing that since America's founding, our leaders, from the White House to Congress, have passed laws to benefit them at the expense of African Americans and other people of color. By enacting segregationist housing policies, excluding Black veterans from...

Ten years ago, a group of friends, young professionals of color, began to incubate ideas to improve the lives of low-income people in Los Angeles. As the children of immigrant parents who worked hard only to subsist on the economic margins, they knew that systemic barriers to opportunity had to be dismantled. From the criminalization of being undocumented to the lack of access to bank loans, the p...

I like to think that I choose my words carefully. I use terms like community organizing and movement building to describe a set of actions taken to meet social goals. But I realize that language that speaks to my own experience may ring hollow for others. Enter Mark Winston Griffith, who embraces the challenges of language and the hard, nuanced and unrelenting work of organizing and movement build...

A conversation with Steve Choi begins with his upending of assumptions about which immigrants and refugees live in New York State and where. It provides a view into how the New York Immigration Coalition, the nonprofit he leads, mobilizes 200 member organizations to influence local and state policy making. And it includes a review of the toll these tumultuous times are taking on immigrant communit...

The best nonprofits tackle what lies beneath the economic and social wrongs that rock= our nation. They organize, litigate and advocate to undo discriminatory policies based on race, immigration status and sexual orientation. More recently, nonprofits, including The National LGBTQ Task Force, are using an intersectional prism to guide their advocacy. Intersectionality, a concept developed by schol...

How are young people processing the chaos of the current moment and how can we support them? We are all confronted by circumstances we did not foresee and cannot control. COVID19 has pummeled this nation, robbing low-wage workers of their jobs and far too many, of their lives. And the killing of George Floyd, a Black man at the hands of police officers, catapulted us into protests that continue to...

It took years of activism by community leaders before Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977. This legislation was meant to undo decades of discrimination by banks against African Americans, Latinx and other non-white people seeking mortgages and small business loans. It required banks to lend and made them accountable to community interests. As Paulina Gonzalez-Brito explains, re...

Self-determination is a deeply embedded value within the National American Indian Housing Council. It is the driving force for its members, leaders from 570 tribes who advocate for the housing needs of American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians in 32 states. The shortage of affordable housing is a national crisis and is even more nuanced in native communities. Tribes own and manage thei...

Our democracy is imploding and that is not hyperbole. Across the nation, communities are protesting the murder of an African American man by a White police officer who carried out this execution under the watchful eyes of devastated onlookers, including a young woman who captured the images on her phone. And the pandemic that is ravaging communities of color is by no means over. How can ambitious...

If you want to understand why the United States has the most expensive and worst performing health care system among developed countries, in terms of access, equity, efficiency, and outcomes, you have a unique and vital resource in Families USA. For forty years, this national nonprofit has investigated every aspect of our broken bureaucracy, from the cost of prescription drugs to the politicizatio...

While we worry about how to restore our democracy, Jonathan Mehta Stein knows that in disenfranchised communities, many people feel that democracy has never worked for them. This is the starting point that Jonathan, the newly appointed executive director of Common Cause California, embraces. He is a civil rights attorney who believes that at this moment in time, relying on litigation and legislati...

Small businesses have been devastated by COVID19, and by extension, so have their owners, workers and communities. We are talking about true small businesses, not Shake Shack or Ruth's Christ Steak House. Their role in our economy is so significant that Congress appropriated federal funding for them through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) within the CARES Act. This moment underscores the imp...

Can we ensure that the Decennial Census, our most inclusive civic enterprise, will not become a casualty of the COVID19 pandemic? The answer is unfolding in real time. Nonprofits have spent years mounting campaigns to combat an historical undercount in communities of color, of children, immigrants and LGBTQ people. Fortunately, some people and organizations, thrive in challenging times and that is...

Gallup polls indicate that Americans have lost confidence in Congress, the courts and the media but one institution, the library, remains a trusted resource. Libraries provide access to books, computers, literacy classes, and social services, often in partnership with nonprofits. And while we may perceive libraries as static, they are evolving organizations. In fact, the American Library Associati...

We are all uncertain about life in an ongoing global pandemic. We know that conditions are most dire for those who have lost family members, jobs, and housing. And this time is dizzying for nonprofits and think tanks whose mission is to improve the quality of life for the most impacted communities. The issues they have worked on for decades are suddenly leading the national conversation. As Co-Exe...

In 110 Power Station episodes, one consistent theme resonates: The ability to advance progressive change is based in intentionality. It starts with documenting inequities, analyzing who is impacted, building a constituency of impacted people, and advocating for the policies and resources required to achieve systemic change. Rebecca Sive is a change maker. She champions women's leadership in politi...

As a nation, we are learning, in real time, how to function and survive in a pandemic. We look for national leadership rooted in integrity and competence. And we are finding that, not in our president, but from governors, mayors, medical professionals and, while less recognized, nonprofit leaders. Nonprofits continue to serve communities, even in a lock-down. Housing groups are organizing online f...

Think about this: messaging campaigns about complex issues, from climate change to drug pricing, have 280 characters in a tweet (up from 140) and less then 20 seconds of audio, to inform and persuade. Celinda Lake, renowned pollster and political strategist, helps labor unions, nonprofit advocates and political hopefuls to craft messages based on feedback from focus groups, surveys and message tes...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our nation's broken systems but has also revealed what works. As our president equivocates about what can be done, mayors and governors are stepping up to fill the void. They are setting up testing sites, procuring ventilators, and building hospital units. And nonprofit leaders are using their resources to keep families and communities whole. Carla Decker, Preside...