Power Station

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 have passed or are under consideration in nearly half of US states and the legislation extends beyond books. Librarians can be fined, fired, even imprisoned for keeping censored books on the shelves. What are the books that legislatures and school boards are so threatened by? They include fantasy, books celebrating children of color and virtually anything reflecting the experience of LGBTQ people. ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom tracks bills and acts of antagonism towards librarians and wants you to report (confid

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 for the 25 million Americans who suffer from asthma. And the Network is a force for change in communities, state legislatures and on Capitol Hill. It is now led by the indefatigable Tonya Winders, who is guided by what the data reveals. Asthma is a disease with both genetic and environmental roots. Black, Latino and Native American communities have been subjected to environmental degradation over decades and are disproportionately impacted by asthma and lung disease. The Network brings a racial equity lens to every aspec

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 these manipulations. The Western States Center, acclaimed for its systems-based approach to building a 21-century civil rights movement, is standing up for these young people. It created a toolkit, Confronting White Nationalism to guide impacted schools in how to intervene when students are on the receiving end of abuse or are being recruited into the fold. Adrienne van der Valk, leads the training and is growing its footprint across the nation. She talks to Power Station about engaging students without shaming them, the p

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 internships possible for 6000 students in Washington DC, Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit. And the experience goes deeper than a 10-month stint with an employer. Urban Alliance provides a 6-week bootcamp to get students job-ready and places them with a company, nonprofit or public-sector agency that provides on-the-job training and a mentor. AS CEO Elizabeth Lindsey explains, the skills employers need and how to attain them are changing and not all pathways to careers are the same. She wants all students to dream about wha

  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 in filmmaking and social media to advocate for her community, Washington DC’s Ward 7 and 8 youth. And when COVID19 made in-person convenings impossible, CEP pivoted,  hosting International Youth Dialogues, which connected young activists around the world to address United Nations sustainable development goals. All of this was made possible by Lauren Grimes, a true visionary who founded the CEP to celebrate a culturally rich, historically relevant but politically disenfranchised part of our nation’s capital. CEP’s po

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 color within their organizational ranks. Diverse leaders are crucial to crafting and advocating for solutions to climate migration, persistent health problems and a loss of housing caused by environmental degradation. Green2.0 is strengthening the movement by pushing it to become more accountable. Executive director Andrés Jimenez explains that inequities within the sector are deep rooted and require a shift in culture. Green2.0 is tracking how nonprofits and foundations are diversifying their top ranks. And the eye ope

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 Yentel, CEO of National Low Income Housing Coalition, exemplifies how intentionality makes transformational change possible. As Diane says, NLIHC is laser-focused on expanding housing resources for lowest income Americans, no matter who is in the White House or Congress. The story of how NLIHC was able to get $25 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance into the 2020 stimulus package, an extension of the eviction moratorium passed and build the internal infrastructure needed to ensure that these funds were deployed to s

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. Landscape architecture has evolved into a laboratory for solving the most pressing problems facing people and the planet. In fact, ASLA’s policy recommendations on the environment and climate change have been recognized by the Biden Administration and codified by Congress into the Infrastructure Bill. Landscape architecture connects the lines between design, environmental justice, climate change and racial equity. And these values are acted on internally as well. Torey is fixing inequities within the field, including for

What happens when a nonprofit organization reimagines how to deliver justice for victims of violent crimes? Network for Victim Recovery of DC took on this challenge when it launched in 2012, powered by Bridgette Stumpf, an exceptional advocate armed with a small seed grant. NVRDC now has a staff of 40 lawyers and advocates who operationalize a shared vision. It starts with the belief that survivors should not be left to navigate a complex system on their own and that they should be treated with dignity on their journey to justice. What makes NVRDC’s approach particularly culture shifting is its commitment to survivor defined justice. Not all victims want the same remedy, such as the incarceration of their assailant, but the data reveals that they all want to be heard by the public agencies engaged with their cases. In fact, survivors are informing and leading trainings in trauma education for pro bono attorneys assigned to them. NVRDC is pushing the parameters of legal representation of survivors, being an al

The National Coalition of Asian Pacific American Community Development is driven by a central question: how to advance the economic and social progress of members, amplify their voices, and tell their stories. Few nonprofits approach this challenge with as much rigor as National CAPACD. It starts with knowing its complex and nuanced base, 100 community-based organizations, from renowned community development corporations to start-up tenant organizations in 22 states and the Pacific Islands. And it requires dispelling a persistent model minority myth, that AAPI communities are well-off and monolithic. National CAPACD’s Communications Director Nahida Uddin shares her experience with advancing a new narrative, one that centers the reality of AAPI poverty. And she recounts how National CAPACD is leading the way in achieving important wins, from the disaggregation of public data, which tells the story of specific communities, to guiding groups navigating gentrification and displacement and training members in fina

How would you build an American workforce for the 21st century? This question was relevant before a global pandemic exposed and exacerbated deep fissures of inequity in our nation and is urgent now. Sequane Lawrence, a Chicago-based community development innovator and a cohort of social entrepreneurs are tackling this challenge head on, and their approach is generating measurable results. They founded Revolution Works, a nonprofit that provides training and career development that leads to well-paying jobs in industries that open their doors to formerly incarcerated people. And it promotes a public policy agenda that advances its primary goal, to close our pervasive racial wealth gap. Revolution Works brings its diverse stakeholders to a common table. It engages industry leaders, academics, workers and trainers in identifying the skills employers need and a strategy for developing them. And it is creating social enterprises and worker-owned cooperatives rooted in workplace democracy, shared values and shared

If we want to speak honestly about the state of our nation, we must look first at how our children are doing. For Kimberly Perry, executive director of DC Action, this requires facing the fact that 1/3 of Washington DC’s children live in poverty, data that has barely shifted since the organization’s founding 30 years ago. An expert teacher, organizer and policy advocate, Kimberly is leading a movement to challenge this unacceptable status quo with unimpeachable data, solutions shaped by children and families and the investment of local and federal policy makers. As Kimberly explains in this episode of Power Station, it is the ongoing global pandemic and a racial reckoning that has exposed and exacerbated long-lived fissures in our public health, housing, education and criminal justice systems. The racial inequities that undergird these systems are the focus of DC Action’s bold, ambitious agenda for change. And that change is happening now, through programs that touch families from birth to early childhood to

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1981, he was determined to eliminate legal aid to the poor. He pressed Congress not to reauthorize the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), established in 1974 by President Nixon to provide lowest income Americans with access to high-quality legal counsel in civil cases. Congress stopped short of eradicating LSC but drastically cut funding and restricted the use of class action suits, viewed by conservatives as the gateway to broader social impacts. Maryland Volunteer Legal Services (MVLS) was created in 1981 to represent Marylanders in cases involving evictions, child custody and loss of homes to tax liens. While MVLS is a key player in a robust statewide network, the demand remains overwhelming. As MVLS executive director Susan Francis explains, it is expensive to be poor. And public policies are not race neutral in their impacts. Black Marylanders are disproportionately hurt by payday lenders, lead poisoning and loss of homes due to flawed title transfers. MVLS recr

When the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies was launched in 1970 its founders entered the fray with a compelling vision. They were renowned public intellectuals committed to creating a hub for newly elected Black officials shifting from civil rights activism to governance. The mission was to advance the socioeconomic status and civic engagement clout of African Americans through evidence-based research and policy recommendations. And the work was rooted in a deep understanding that public policy is never race neutral. Since then, the Joint Center, known widely as America’s Black Think Tank, has become the go-to resource for the Congressional Black Caucus and rising leaders in local communities. Now led by Spencer Overton, the Joint Center remains a model for unimpeachable data and policy solutions. This episode of Power Station features Dr. Dominique Harrison who brings tremendous expertise and energy to producing original research and collaborating across sectors about the role of big tech, acce

This episode is a call to action for ending childhood poverty in America. Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, CEO and Executive Director of Capital Area Asset Builders (CAAB) wants listeners to direct limited income families to the IRS Child Tax Credit (CTC) portal to apply for a refund by the November 15 deadline. We have, as Joseph explains, a once in a lifetime opportunity to lift more than half of low-income families out of poverty and keep them out. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit are this nation’s most effective poverty alleviation policies, but many eligible households are unaware of them. And to be clear, they are not public benefits. The CTC allows families whose incomes are limited or sporadic to collect refunds due to them. The payments can be transformational, allowing parents to start a college fund, pursue home ownership or start a business. The Biden Administration strongly supports the Child Tax Credit, and it was expanded but not made permanent in the American Rescue Plan

Here is a fact that I hope we can all agree on. American is home to a vast array of public lands, from forests to beaches, wildlife refuges and national parks that require our stewardship. These natural resources are vulnerable to devastating man-made harms, from the former president’s defilement of Bears Ears in Utah to climate change caused wildfires and flooding. The consequences of these disasters are felt disproportionately by indigenous and other communities of color. American Conservation Experience (ACE) is a champion of public lands whose internships in 50 states and Puerto Rico train young people in the technical and human skills needed to preserve these resources into the future. ACE President Laura Herrin approaches the mission, to create a culture of conservation, with intentionality and savvy. She partners with public agencies and is a trusted behind-the-scenes voice on Capitol Hill. Her action plan for keeping ACE relevant and robust led her to hire Alex Tremble as Chief Culture Officer. Alex i

It is impossible to overstate the dominance of social media in our lives. We are tethered to Facebook, Google and Twitter to consume, communicate, track our followers and detractors, access news and interpret world events. Facebook is the behemoth among other highly unregulated tech platforms that cultivate, collect and capitalize on our personal data. We are the technology users, but it is advertisers who pay Facebook for our data making them the valued customers. Facebook’s algorithms, based on surveillance tracking, determines which media sources end up in our newsfeeds. And therein lies the danger. As Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of Accountability Tech says, it is harder and harder to have a conversation with neighbors, policy makers or family, because we are not using the same language or set of facts. We are in a crisis of disinformation that is highly profitable for these companies and very dangerous for democracy. Accountable Tech is demanding legislative and regulatory interventions

The origin story of MALDEF-Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund-is rooted in the vision of the late Pete Tijerina. In 1967, he represented a Latina who was seriously harmed by corporate neglect and then again by a judge’s refusal, as constitutionally required, to seat Latinos on the jury. Discrimination against Latinos, fueled by misinformation, was escalating and the need for a dedicated civil rights infrastructure was clear. In 1968, Mr. Tijerina, fellow advocates and the general counsel of the NAACP, the model for civil rights activism, collaborated to form MALDEF. It’s mission, to promote the civil rights of all Latinos in the US in education, employment, immigration and voting rights could not be more relevant now. It was a rare honor to speak with MALDEF president Thomas Saenz, an expert in civil rights law and a champion for systemic reform to our immigration system. He believes that democracy will be realized when Latinos are seen in the full scope of their humanity and service to this

Mississippi Votes starts with an awe-inspiring mission, the registration of 400,000 eligible unregistered residents, and then goes deeper. It is building a culture of civic engagement in Mississippi, where access to the ballot box is a high hurdle, from the archaic requirement to print, fill out and mail in registration forms to lifelong disenfranchisement for 23 categories of former offenders. Equally daunting is the disconnection that many Mississippians of color feel from civic life, a legacy of racism and marginalization. But the dynamic cohort of young people of color leading Mississippi Votes are reframing how voter registration, voting rights and civic engagement is done. Executive director Arekia Bennett explains that everything at Mississippi Votes starts with listening to the community and creating the infrastructure needed to support their aspirations. That includes a footprint on 17 college campuses where students are informing a policy agenda and shaping outreach strategies. Change is happening,

In recent years disinformation has become the currency of political forces seeking power over truth. But as we know, facts matter. They reveal a true picture of the state of our nation, from which communities are prospering to those that are struggling, a legacy of discriminatory public policy making. They are foundational to breaking down barriers and creating access to healthcare, education, transportation and housing for low-income, people of color and immigrants, whose exclusion has been intentional and generational. At the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, 15 super-smart professionals dig into bills proposed by Virginia’s State Assembly, analyzing their implications for diverse communities. As CEO Ashley Kenneth explains, TCI Fiscal then partners with a talented eco-system of advocacy and service organizations to generate solutions informed by affected community members. Their formula, combining facts and analysis with civic engagement and advocacy is remarkably effective. TCI Fiscal is ahead o