The seeds of America’s subjugation of low income, indigenous, and people of color were planted at our founding. Ever since, public leaders have codified policies that strip these communities of wealth and power. It has taken social movements, including bold nonprofits, to demand equal rights and structural change. This divisive moment in history calls for collective action rooted in 21st century strategies. Media Justice, led by exceptional change maker Steven Renderos is laser focused on democr...
Jul 25, 2022•42 min•Ep. 228
If you are despairing about the rise of racial hatred and the anti-democratic direction this country is embracing, consider what it takes to build a more just future. For marginalized communities, nonprofit organizations are essential to becoming visible, attaining legal rights, and exercising electoral clout. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California exemplifies how organizational expertise, vision, and infrastructure make systemic change achievable. Led brilliantly by Connie Chung ...
Jul 18, 2022•38 min•Ep. 227
Since its founding in 1966, the National Organization for Women has been on the frontlines of dismantling both sexism and racism. Its founders, including Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisolm and Pauli Murray saw these systems of oppression as inextricably linked, fortified by policies enacted to marginalize women, particularly Black women, and other people of color. NOW’s president, the immensely talented Christian Nunes is leading in another tumultuous time in America. And she is taking an intersecti...
Jul 11, 2022•39 min•Ep. 226
We are reminded daily, in every scroll through social media, disputed election, tense family function and divisive school board meeting that America is a fractured nation. The polarization is so extreme that increasing numbers of our public leaders no longer identify democracy as a core value. In this episode of Power Station, we learn how the humanities (the arts, history, and philosophy) can be instrumental in creating a safe space for challenging conversations. Adam Davis, executive director ...
Jul 04, 2022•35 min•Ep. 225
Why are farmworkers, who provide our food security system, so marginalized by the nation they feed? They work in conditions that are unlawful in other sectors and have skills that American born workers lack. On this episode of Power Station, we hear from two guests who know that farmworker parents want more for their children. This aspiration is made possible by scores of migrant Head Start centers serving the educational, safety and emotional needs of farmworker children from 3 months to 5 year...
Jun 27, 2022•40 min•Ep. 224
Launched as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 War on Poverty, Head Start provides low-income children, from 3 months to 5 years old, with the educational and emotional preparation required to thrive in kindergarten and beyond. This includes the children of farmworkers who face significant hurdles to attending school at all. Head Start centers serve 14,000 migrant and seasonal children in 24 states, educating the children of farmworkers who travel from state to state to cultivate the crops ...
Jun 20, 2022•39 min•Ep. 223
Once you experience Eric Ward, a shift in your thinking and your soul is inevitable. An expert on authoritarian movements with deep roots in the United States, Eric argues that we have the power to counter them by building the most inclusive multi-racial democracy possible. As executive director of Western States Center he is pragmatic, providing training and tools for parents whose children are targeted by hate groups, preparing community organizations to operate in hostile environments and sta...
Jun 13, 2022•38 min•Ep. 222
Domestic violence is a universally horrific experience, but the path to surviving it is considerably harder for women who are immigrants and refugees. In Washington DC, a hub for African immigrants, the violence may start at home but because many victims are undocumented, the police and court systems are often unsympathetic and become abusers as well. Few social service providers speak their language or have a cultural connection. And when the abuser is the person who brought them to this countr...
Jun 06, 2022•40 min•Ep. 221
It is shocking that hunger is an everyday reality for 38 million Americans and 800 million people globally. The Alliance to End Hunger is the national nonprofit that convenes diverse sectors, from universities to health insurers, corporations and faith-based nonprofits to craft and advocate policy solutions. And with Eric Mitchell at the helm, members grapple with hunger’s root causes: Covid, climate, conflict, exacerbated by systemic racism. Members advocate on Capitol Hill for expanded Emergen...
May 30, 2022•43 min•Ep. 220
Ours is a nation obsessed with food. We expect crops to be grown free from pesticides, follow reality cooking shows, and demand access to great restaurants and bountiful produce in supermarkets, even during a global pandemic. But what connection do we feel to the men, women and, sadly, children whose labor makes it possible for fresh food to grace our tables? Ron Estrada, the former head of government relations at Univision and the new CEO of Farmworker Justice is committed to strengthening and ...
May 23, 2022•38 min•Ep. 219
Are you surprised to know that 70% of all Native American people in the United States live off-reservation and in urban settings? The reason why can be traced directly back to the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, crafted by Congress to press Native Americans to leave reservation life for the false promise of housing, jobs, health care and education across the country. The US government failed to honor the treaties they signed and used this forced migration to dilute the power of tribes and promote...
May 16, 2022•38 min•Ep. 218
Can a nonprofit achieve transformative policy change in these politically volatile times? It may feel impossible but the answer, as demonstrated by the Greenlining Institute, is a resounding yes. It was founded in 1993 to tackle the wealth-stripping impacts of redlining, the deliberate practice of discrimination and disinvestment by banks, insurance companies and government agencies against communities of color. Sectors that mapped out which communities to exclude from the possibility of owning ...
May 09, 2022•39 min•Ep. 217
What makes the Tiwahe Foundation intrinsically distinct from mainstream philanthropy is rooted in its name. In the Dakota language tiwahe means family, symbolizing the connection of Native people to all living things and their collective responsibility to family, community, and Mother Earth. Native philanthropy uses a seventh-generation mindset, based in Iroquois philosophy, to ensure that decisions made today will produce a sustainable world 7 generations into the future. For Nikki Pieratos, a ...
May 02, 2022•36 min•Ep. 216
Mark Gaston Pearce wants all workers to know their rights and understand how to assert them through collective action. He advances this mission as executive director of the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University’s Law School. It draws on his deep experience as a labor lawyer and his service, during the Obama Administration, as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. At WRI, he brings together diverse stakeholders, from law students to litigators, nonprofit and worker center l...
Apr 25, 2022•37 min•Ep. 215
Imran Ahmed wants us to feel compelled to take responsibility for the horror we see in the world around us. And we must name the harm. As founder and CEO of the Center for Digital Hate he follows his own guidance. CCDH is disrupting the misogyny, racism, antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-vaccine disinformation that has taken root, flourished, and generated spectacular profits across social media platforms. He launched CCDH in the aftermath of the 2016 murder of his close friend and colleague, B...
Apr 18, 2022•40 min•Ep. 214
Have you ever thought about the stories behind a set of statistical tables? How do political dynamics shape the questions asked on government forms and how the resulting data translates to federal resources and political representation? And how do we respond when the questions do not fully capture our identify, culture or community? Data about who we are is key to building a more inclusive and representative democracy. This month the 1950 Census was made public, marking the end of the 70-year pe...
Apr 11, 2022•41 min•Ep. 213
In 2022, we live largely online and the future looks increasingly digital. It is fundamental to how we work, communicate, consume news, and connect to banking, health care and governmental services. But access to the internet is not equal or even guaranteed. Many rural and tribal lands lack broadband and in some urban neighborhoods, internet connections are spotty, and internet plans are unaffordable. These barriers constitute digital redlining, the marginalization of low-income communities by p...
Apr 04, 2022•38 min•Ep. 212
All people deserve to be seen and heard. Those who are not often feel invisible, from their cultural heritage to their material circumstances and societal contributions. This reality led a group of young Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in 2009 to found Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC) a nonprofit dedicated to advancing social justice for Native Hawaiians, Chamorros (indigenous people of the Mariana Islands), Samoans, Tongans, Marshallese, and Fijians who call Washington, Cal...
Mar 28, 2022•44 min•Ep. 211
On a single night in January 2021, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recorded more than 580,000 people experiencing homelessness. During that same year, close to 1.45 million people were homeless at some time. These numbers have increased every year since 2015, a consequence of a severe shortage of affordable housing. Ann Oliva, Vice President for Housing Policy at The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) walks us through a plan for ending this crisis. It starts ...
Mar 21, 2022•44 min•Ep. 210
On the morning of March 8, moments before recording this episode, the Florida State Senate passed HR 1557, dubbed the Don’t Say Gay Bill. Pauline Green, executive director of the Alliance for GLBTQ Youth joined Power Station to break down the legislation and its potential impacts on students, teachers and school districts. She reported on the previous night’s hearing in which the sponsor was unable to articulate a rationale for the bill but worried that coming out is a result of social engineeri...
Mar 14, 2022•33 min•Ep. 209
Our political parties are so divided they cannot agree that basic democratic principles, from the right to vote to the freedom to read the books of our choice are sacrosanct. Given the aggressively anti-democratic stances of many state legislatures we must remind ourselves that government can be a force for good. For that to happen the electorate must be fully engaged and community-based nonprofits must require policy making developed with a racial equity lens. As Richard Raya, Mission Economic ...
Mar 07, 2022•36 min•Ep. 208
When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Pennsylvania’s republican-led state legislature went into action, creating new barriers to voting. Ginned up by Donald Trump’s baseless claim of voter fraud, the republican majority on the Commonwealth Court successfully challenged a recent law making mail-in voting more expansive. The democratic governor and secretary of state are appealing this decision and navigating furthter attempts to suppress access to the ballot box. The partisan tug of ...
Feb 28, 2022•43 min•Ep. 207
At the core of the American Library Association’s membership of 50,000 public, school, academic, specialty libraries, librarians and allies, is one unifying principle, the right to read. ALA has weathered times of war, political unrest, funding cuts, and censorship. But this moment in time poses its greatest threat, state-backed book banning. ALA President Patty Wong joins us to talk about how book banning laws and book burnings are hurting libraries, librarians, children and communities. Bills ...
Feb 21, 2022•36 min•Ep. 206
Thirty-five years ago, Nancy Sander started a conversation that has grown into a public health movement. She was struggling with her young daughter’s severe asthma and was not getting the support she needed from her doctors and insurance provider. She reached out to other parents and more enlightened medical professionals to learn ways to manage a chronic health condition that if untreated can lead to death. Nancy founded the Allergy and Asthma Network, which has grown into a collective voice fo...
Feb 14, 2022•37 min•Ep. 205
We are living in perilous times. Racism, homophobia, anti-immigrant violence and misogyny have been unleashed, normalized and embraced by elected leaders and regular citizens, from school boards to state legislatures and Capitol Hill. Organized hate groups are expanding their ranks by targeting an aggrieved citizenry and most recently children. Middle and high school students, who have been isolated and tethered to their devices throughout an ongoing pandemic are particularly susceptible to thes...
Feb 07, 2022•44 min•Ep. 204
Twenty-five years ago, a brave Anacostia High School student asked a compelling question at an assembly. She asked how she could participate in an internship, one that might help her to move on to college. That question motivated Andrew Plepler, the guest speaker and a community development banker, to launch a nonprofit dedicated to making internships, a rite of passage for upper middle-class students, accessible to young and low-income people of color. Since then, the Urban Alliance has made in...
Jan 31, 2022•38 min•Ep. 203
When Zakiyah Johnson learned there was a summer social media internship at the Community Enrichment Project, she poured her heart into her application and made the position her first choice. She says she is a different person now because of the experience, not only because CEP gives young people a seat at the table where vital issues are discussed, from civic engagement to racial justice and police violence, but because their ideas are heard and acted on. Now in college, Zakiyah uses her talents...
Jan 24, 2022•41 min•Ep. 202
What will persuade Congress to pass urgently needed legislation to correct the impacts of climate change on our planet? As with all our nation’s greatest challenges, the nonprofit sector is driving this ambitious agenda. For decades, environmental nonprofits have documented how deregulation harms our air, wildlife and oceans. And the data is crystal clear: these harms are disproportionately borne by communities of color. But the sector is made less effective by its failure to elevate people of c...
Jan 17, 2022•41 min
It is not hyperbole to say that nonprofits are essential to becoming a just democracy. The best nonprofits produce unimpeachable data and mobilize across sectors and geography to advocate for federal legislation informed by the lived experience of their members. This role has taken on greater urgency in the face of a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted the physical and economic well-being of low-income households, exacerbating our national eviction and homelessness crisis. Diane...
Jan 10, 2022•38 min
It is humbling and exhilarating to talk to Torey Carter-Conneen, CEO of the American Society for Landscape Architects. An esteemed nonprofit executive and social justice advocate he now leads a professional association whose highly skilled members create purposeful places using art, science, engineering and design. ASLA was founded in 1899 by innovators Frederick Law Olmsted and Beatrix Ferrand whose designs connected the built and natural environments, creating places of beauty and function. La...
Dec 27, 2021•39 min
