The Nerve! Conversations with Movement Elders

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the National Council of Elders f eaturing intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today.  This episode features a conversation about Federal Abuse of Power: ICE Violations and Militarized Cities. We'll hear from organizers based in NYC, Arizona, and Nort...

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the National Council of Elders f eaturing intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today.  This episode features a conversation about how we can navigate climate crisis and survive on the frontlines in the immediate moment, while still moving forward with...

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the  National Council of Elders f eaturing intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today.  This episode features a conversation about cultural organizing and public art, and the importance of being able to dream together and speak to and from the most hu...

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the National Council of Elders featuring intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today.  This episode features a conversation about the history of the rise of the authoritarian right wing in the United States, attacks on our archives and schools, and how...

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the National Council of Elders featuring intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today.  This episode features a conversation about moving through division and conflict to create and model the world we desire in our nation and in our social justice organ...

Season 4 is here! And we're back, with a series of intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today, produced by the   National Council of Elders,   First up: we're digging into the work of building networks and practices of community safety, mutual aid, and transformative justice, and in resisting the construction of new prisons an...

In this episode we're exploring the role of voting in our movements through an intergenerational conversation between elder and younger organizers based in Georgia and New York. In this conversation National Council of Elders members and younger organizers dig into questions such as: Where do elections fit in our concept of real democracy? How important is our vote? How close are we to tyranny in...

In this episode we're exploring the paradoxes in nonviolence and self defense through an intergenerational conversation between elder and younger organizers based in   New Jersey, Florida, East Tennessee, and North Carolina. In this conversation, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans and younger organizers dig into the always present tension between nonviolence and self-defense...

In this episode we're exploring  creative resistance and climate change , through an intergenerational conversation between elder and younger organizers based in rural New Mexico, Puerto Rico, and southwest Virginia who have been resisting the state and advocating for climate justice in a myriad of ways. We know that colonization is the single greatest contributor to climate change and injustice o...

In this episode we're exploring why the right is so scared of gender through an intergenerational conversation between elder and younger organizers across the South: Miss Major, Suzanne Pharr, Nathalie Nia Faulk, and Lorie Bryant.  We have seen a rampant increase in organized attacks on trans people across the U.S. over the past two years. At the time of this recording, in March 2024,  over 500 an...

In Seasons 1 and 2 we brought you excerpts from oral history interviews with members of The National Council of Elders (NCOE). In our 3rd season we're bringing you a series of intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today. First up: we're digging into the transformative power of radical love! At a time of chaos and uncertainty, r...

Candie Carawan is a folk singer, educator, and cultural worker who has been based at the  Highlander Research and Education Center in east Tennessee for many years. Candie and her late husband Guy Carawan (1927-2015) worked together as cultural organizers and educators for 50 years. Their workshops and documentary projects took them throughout the South, including the South Carolina Sea Islands, a...

Elder Kathy 'Wan Povi' Sanchez is an Indigenous community activist from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. Kathy has worked on women's issues related to culture, the environment, and social change for most of her life. She was among the co-founding mothers of Tewa Women United , a group that raises awareness about issues relating to colonization. In this episode Kathy talks with Heather Bryan about...

Reverend John Fife is the co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement which protected Central American refugees from deportation in the 1980's. He is a founding volunteer with  No More Deaths , which provides humanitarian aid to migrants in the Sonoran Desert borderlands. In 1992 Fife was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He lives in Tuscon, Arizona and is a memb...

Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons , Ph. D. is Professor Emerita from the University of Florida. She is a Veteran of the Black Freedom, Peace, and Social Justice Movements from the 1960s until today. She was a student activist in the 1960s Sit-In Movement, a member of the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and she worked for the  National Council of Negro Women and the  American Friends...

Aljosie Aldrich Harding talks with young organizer Destiny Hemphill about the importance of inner heart work and healing justice, the power of great teachers, and how community is essential to organizing. Reared in segregated North Carolina, Aljosie Aldrich Harding began learning, teaching, and building social justice skills along with organizing in the 1960s as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lome, To...

Tune-in as we share highlights from a recorded intergenerational zoom chat with 4 young organizers and 4 elders from the Council.

Mandy Carter is co-founder of Southerners on New Ground and a proud Black southern lesbian. She traces the activist influences through her movement work with Chasyn, a dynamic youth organizer in North Carolina.

Catherine Meeks chats with young organizer Nautica Jenkins about her incessent desire for freedom and the inner work necessary to get there. Catherine is Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. She is the retired Clara Carter Acree Distinguished Professor of Socio-Cultural Studies from Wesleyan College and Founding Executive Director of the Lane Center for Community Enga...

  Suzanne Pharr is a queer feminist and anti-racist organizer who founded the Women's Project in Arkansas, co-founded Southerners on New Ground and was a director of the Highlander Center. Rae Garringer, host of the podcast Country Queers, asks Suzanne about the history of mutual aid in the South and the tension between rural organizers and the Left. Pharr shares stories of political organizing ex...

How do you pull, tease, nurture people to bring out the better part of their potential? Joyce Hobson Johnson and Nelson Johnson have been married and active organizers for social change in Greensboro, North Carolina for over 50 years. Alyzza May interviewed the two at the Beloved Community Center.