Power Station

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 leveraging that connection. It starts with elevating the stories of the 2.4 million farmworkers in the US, the majority of whom are immigrants and lack authorized work status. They often live in housing without running water or electricity and although they are skilled and work long hours, live in poverty. Increasingly they work for contractors and their pay is based on bushels and acreage. Last year, the Farm Worker Modernization Act passed the House and is before the Senate now. The political hurdle is that the bill

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 assimilation. Over the years, Native leaders stepped up to help their communities survive and thrive. Now more than 300 native-led nonprofits advocate for families in need of housing, health care and other essential services. Janeen Comenote, an enrolled member of the Quinault Native tribe, launched the National Urban Indian Family Coalition to strengthen their collective power in policymaking and civic engagement. They are educating policy makers about their native constituencies and involving community members in ce

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 a home or starting a business, based on race and ethnicity, are now at the table with Greenlining, hearing directly from impacted community members. The Greenlining Institute is reimagining California, and our nation, as a place of shared opportunity and power. Its staff of data experts and advocates are laser focused on making the economic, energy, environmental and technology sectors more just. But their direction comes from a coalition of community-based groups, from faith leaders to housing and childcare providers

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 member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa who leads the Tiwahe Foundation, these values guide every aspect of its grantmaking. It starts with investing directly in individuals and families without the proscriptive requirements of most foundations. It makes grants to urban Native people, largely Dakota and Ojibwe, displaced from their land by early relocation era policies, in the Metro Minneapolis region. As Nikki explains, Native Americans receive only 0.4% of philanthropic dollars but they are making impactful changes

  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 leaders to develop strategies for reaching and educating workers and identifying gaps in law and policy that need to be modernized. At the top of that list, according to Mark, is an updating of the National Labor Relations Act, which has not changed since its inception 86 years ago. The need for worker protections and unionization is painfully clear in a global pandemic. The workers we depend on for food, transportation and deliveries sacrifice their health for our comfort and suffer from income inequality. Recent lab

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, British Parliamentarian Jo Cox. She was killed by an attacker whose far-right views were inflamed by non-stop white nationalist digital rhetoric during the Brexit campaign. At the same time, in the run up to the presidential election, Donald Trump was energizing hate groups in America while Google, Twitter and Facebook were making billions in ad revenues from those bad actors and their deep pocketed sponsors. Research shows that as media consumers we are driven to engage by hateful messaging. We do this by sharing and a

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 period in which the individual data of its respondents is maintained confidentially. Historian Dan Bouk views the Census, created by the framers, and enshrined in the US Constitution, as flawed, messy and our best opportunity for a more representative democracy. He considers the act of sharing data on Census forms, the process for counting every person in the U.S. as a radical act. And he believes that those on the margins should count just as much as those who are quantifiable through big statistics. In his upcoming bo

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 policy makers, internet providers and telecommunication companies. The pain of exclusion magnified during the pandemic, when students with limited broadband were unable to participate in their schooling. The movement for digital equity has been growing at the local level for decades and Angela Siefer has been at its forefront. As executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance she collaborates with local champions of digital access: nonprofits, libraries, schools, and mayors to advocate for inclusivity. ND

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, California, Utah, and Arkansas home. EPICS’s executive director Tavae Samuelu leads with deep respect for the lived experience and wisdom of her elders and with an explicitly pro Black and indigenous framework. EPIC connects NHPIs with policy makers to call for data disaggregation, which has identified disproportionate gaps in access to education, health, and immigration services. It also illuminates the devastating and under-reported impacts of the pandemic on Pacific Islanders. EPIC’s community leaders begin each meetin

  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 with facing up to America’s history of racist policy making, which has created generational inequities in communities of color. And she believes in our capacity to turn this crisis around with new policies, targeted resources and well-crafted implementation of large-scale solutions. Ann regularly testifies before Congress, making data-based policy recommendations for achieving transformational change. She points to the tsunami of evictions prevented by a robust investment in rental assistance in the American Rescue P

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 BLGTQ 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 engineering. The Alliance serves middle and high school students in Miami Dade County with mental health counseling and services that affirm their sexual orientation and gender identity. It hones leadership skills and advocates for systems that support youg people. HR 1557, soon to be signed into law by Governor DeSantis, seeks to solve a problem that does not actually exist. It prohibits teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3, which is not done and allows parents to sue teachers and school district

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 Development Agency (MEDA) explains, nonprofits can generate transformative change when they are rooted in community, collaborate across sectors and issues areas and have champions in elected office. MEDA is the proof of concept. It is where Latino families connect to an array of services, develop their voice, deepen their collective clout and gain the tools needed to thrive economically. MEDA is spurring a movement for community backbone agencies to become the standard-bearer for societal change, one neighborhood at a

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 war further alienates those who do not trust either party. Civil rights champion Kadida Kenner founded the New Pennsylvania Project to reach the 1.1million Pennsylvanians who are eligible to vote but are not registered or are not casting ballots. In a state where 27% of the population are people of color and the House and Senate are 90% white, the future is in the hands of young people and communities of color. Kadida’s team is knocking on doors and listening to what matters to potential voters. And this strategy is mo

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