Power Station

When you live with racial injustice as a child and have parents who encourage your intellectual curiosity and impulse to advocate and serve you know what it means to live your values. In this episode of Power Station, Ty Hobson Powell describes a childhood in Washington DC marked by the loss of close friends to gun violence, limited access to resources, from grocery stores and parks, and resilient...

The roots of racism in America run so deep they even determine who benefits from life extending clinical trials. This truth guides Dana Dornsife in advocating for equitable access to medical treatment, which should be but is not, a standard of care in our medical system. When Dana's brother-in-law Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she immersed herself in enrolling him in a clinical trial....

If you are a nonprofit leader who thinks about fundraising with the same intensity that you bring to tackling your mission, this is your episode. Chances are you have been denied the level of funding needed to scale your most impactful strategies or turned down for general operating support, which enables you to deploy resources as needed. In this episode of Power Station, we explore what happens...

  The acrimony in Congress and across the country reflects competing visions for America's future. This is less a policy debate than a heated referendum on who is entitled to hold power in America. State legislatures are on a fast track to curtailing the rights of communities of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people. Asian American Pacific Islanders, representing 50 ethnic groups, and speakin...

As a child born at the end of the 1960s, inspired by The Jetsons, Keith Jones dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer and taking vacations on the moon. He was part of the first generation to come up after the most powerful mass movement in American history led to passage of Civil Rights Acts prohibiting discrimination in voting, housing, education, and employment based on race, disability, re...

What happens when a well-resourced Community Development Financial Institution with a track record of $3B dollars in investments takes steps to become a measurably more racially equitable and power building nonprofit in the Black and Brown communities it serves? In Power Station's first episode of 2023 I explore that question with Lucy Arellano Baglieri, one of the community development sector's m...

How do you look back on 2022? It's been a year in which political, digital, and sometimes physical assaults on the civil and human rights of Americans by their fellow citizens have become commonplace. From book banning and public demonization of LGBTQ youth to partisan campaigns to undo voting rights in Black and Brown communities to criminalizing homelessness and protecting assault weapons over p...

Every civil rights law enacted in America is preceded by a past we have not fully reckoned with. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, was an antidote to the racism embedded in state and national policy making, from segregationist zoning laws to bank and insurance redlining. Known as the Fair Housing Act, it prohibits discrimination in housing bas...

If you have lived through the harrowing experience of eviction and the long slide or quick jolt into homelessness or advocated for those who have, this conversation with Marisol Bello is a tribute to you. It is critical listening for journalists who report on homelessness without fully grasping the nuances of the insurmountable gaps between low wages and spiraling rents. It is for politicians with...

What will you do when your community is under assault? In our increasingly fractured society, in which elected officials demonize marginalized people and threaten violence when elections don't go their way, this is a question based in reason, not hyperbole. Hate crimes in the form of mass shootings have become a regular feature of American life. For Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colora...

It takes a powerful amalgam of dynamics to produce a groundbreaking book. This is what Brandi Collins Dexter, lawyer, researcher, activist, and stand-out nonprofit advocate has achieved with the publication of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. She takes on, with curiosity, deep personal investment, and an openness to views she may not share, the reasons for and con...

How is your mental health? Schroeder Stribling, President and CEO of Mental Health America, believes we should all live in the open about our stories and support one another when we are challenged. She is inspired by Clifford Beers who founded Mental Health America in 1909 to dismantle the system of institutionalization of those, like him, who suffered from mental illness. MHA embraced Clifford's...

  When Cleofas Rodriguez says that leading the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association is his dream job, believe him. He knows first-hand the risks that farmworkers face because of their immigration status and exposure to dangers in the fields. As executive director of NMSHSA, Cleo honors farmworkers by ensuring that their children are educated. He does this by supporting Head Start a...

White House staffer and public health advocate Natalie Davis was all-in when President Barack Obama signed on to expand and transform our nation's ailing health care system. And she was instrumental in navigating the choppy waters of its implementation after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010. As an advisor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavit...

At a moment of profound national and global upheaval it is important to consider what makes bold, transformational change possible. How can illicit conduct in industries ranging from banking to pharmaceuticals to technology and nuclear energy be exposed and repaired? Calling out corruption, waste and fraud may involve politicians and pundits, but it starts with brave individuals, employees of gove...

We are living in extraordinary times. The racism, misogyny and anti-immigrant vitriol unleashed by the Trump presidency has generated tremendous social discord in America. Decades of public policies crafted to bridge a cavernous racial wealth gap imploded under this administration. Even the most vigilant news consumers are hard pressed to keep up with right wing attacks on voting rights, bodily au...

In 1984, Billy and Debby Shore founded Share our Strength in response to famine in Ethiopia, a mission that soon expanded to ending hunger in America. Their singular focus on hunger deepened our collective consciousness and involved elected officials, the culinary industry, advocates, and low-income communities in securing solutions. They launched No Kid Hungry, a campaign that connects families,...

A conversation with Maritza Silva Farrell, executive director of ALIGN NY, is a master class in organizing for systemic and transformational change. She starts by listening to people, primarily low-wage workers from communities of color who are disproportionately harmed by unjust and economically extractive public policies and corporate practices. ALIGN NY was founded to unite the labor and enviro...

An organization's origin story reveals the values of its founders. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans was launched in 1990 by Vietnam-era veterans who met while attending conferences focused on expanding after-service employment opportunities. They volunteered in communities across the country, helping fellow vets to find needed resources. And they heard over and over that their peers we...

The shockwave that rocked this nation after the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision, holding that the U.S. Constitution does not confer the right to an abortion, continues to reverberate across the nation. An ensuing onslaught of bills passed in state legislatures has restricted or banned abortions in many states. The implications are particularly devastating in marginalized communities where...

When three urban planning students launched the news magazine Next City in 2003, they were pushing against the prevailing cultural tide. As their peers were building careers in emerging technologies, they were hyper focused on urban communities beset with deteriorated housing, broken transit systems and environmental hazards.  Politicians and the media often characterized urban areas as places to...

Since its founding 10 years ago, Alliance for Youth Action has transformed how nonprofits build power and strengthen democracy in America. It was launched by young people who had seen first-hand what is possible when people in low-income and communities of color organize to access their voting rights, stop the separation of children from their immigrant parents and repair environmental degradation...

If the last several years have taught us anything it is that democracy is fragile. And that all of us need to engage with the systems, institutions and policy processes that determine our collective fates. It takes nonprofit organizations with community roots, technical expertise, and advocacy capacities to make that level of social progress possible. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP),...

It is shocking, but no longer surprising, that the hate and disinformation which permeates social media provokes real-life harms. Conspiracy theories promulgated by a small cadre of hatemongers persuaded thousands to reject life-saving vaccines leading to preventable deaths. Children persecuted by anti-LGBTQ groups have succumbed to suicide. White nationalist groups breached the Capitol on January...

The year was 1881 when 17 women gathered for an unprecedented meeting called by recent college graduate Margaret Talbot and her mentor, Ellen Swallow Richards. Having defied social norms by attending college and pursuing careers they were determined to increase women's access to higher education. Their persistence led to the founding of the American Association for University Women, which has cham...