Power Station

Latest Episodes:

We are touching the lives of everyone in the food ecosystem Aug 19, 2024

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The next time you visit your local farmers market take a moment to consider who produced the bounty of just-harvested fruits and vegetables and brought them with care to your urban neighborhood. As Hugo Mogollon shares on this episode of Power Station every farmer, from new entries in the sector to Black farmers carrying the toll of historical exclusion from federal resources to immigrants managing farms until they have land of their own, has a story. Their stories inform Hugo's leadership of FreshFarm, a nonprofit that is building a more equitable food system in the Mid-Atlantic region. It expands economic opportunities for the 250 farmers, ranchers and producers who sell their products in FreshFarm's 27 markets in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia and makes fresh food accessible to underserved communities through food hubs and matched public funds. And it is building a fresh food culture among children, teaching them to grow gardens and prepare recipes. This complex but seamless web of strategies is generating millions in revenue for small farmers, making food distribution more just and boosting health outcomes for families. This is how, with transparency and intention, transformational change is made.

Every 30 seconds a Latino in the United States is turning 18 Aug 12, 2024

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Sindy Benavides leads Latino Victory with strategic saavy, optimism and a deep belief in the ability of Latinos, and other communities of color, to engage in the electoral process and generate a more equitable America.

I am excited to reshare this very edifying and inspiring episode with Sindy. We learn about her own road to organizing, the communities that poured into her, the talented cohort of leaders that Latino Victory stands behind and the resources it provides to make their engagement possible. Enjoy!

They are holding up the Constitution with one hand and crushing it with the other Aug 05, 2024

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This conversation with Eric Ward remains as instructive, powerful and resonant as when it was first recorded. Eric, now a Senior Fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a nationally lauded expert on authoritarian movements in America and their corrosive impact on democractic systems and our belief in them. In this episode, Eric explains how antisemitism took root in America and provided the othering and fearmongering that are hallmarks of broader white nationalist movements.

It is particularly important listening as we head into the 2024 elections and consume, whether we wish to or not, so much hate and divisiveness on social media and ads generated by the Trump campaign.

I am so grateful to Eric for his incredible work and for sharing it with Power Station.

It is not about calling people out, we like to say we are calling people in Jul 29, 2024

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In the movies, small business owners are often depicted as avatars for what we admire: people following a dream, continuing a family legacy and serving a beloved community. But the real life version of entrepreneurship is more complex. Not everyone has a friendly banker, access to capital, or the capacity to generate a business plan. For people of color damaged by systemic racism in policymaking and banking, the barriers can seem insurmountable. These inequities led to the creation of Community Development Financial Institutions, for decades a source for capital and technical assistance in underserved communities. In this episode of Power Station, Shannan Herbert, the inspiring new CEO of Washington Areas Community Investment Fund (WACIF), shares the stories of those who have walked through WACIF's doors, become part of an educational cohort, received a loan, learned how to create a marketing plan and most importantly, joined a lifelong community of practice. WACIF's rich history of investing in Black and Brown communities in Washington DC and surrounding municipalities is now enhanced by the Racial Justice in Underwriting initiative, which is changing how the business of lending is perceived and done. Hear her!

It is so important to remember that data are people Jul 22, 2024

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Our nation is bitterly divided over its vision for democracy or whether to remain a democracy at all. Increasingly, elected leaders on school boards, state legislatures and Capitol Hill, are using their policy making powers to further marginalize vulnerable constituents.. The discord, amplified relentlessly on social media, often tells only a portion of the story. We hear less about the problems-solvers, the nonprofits that meet human needs, engage communities and generate solutions to systemic problems, from hunger to housing and homelessness. The Urban Institute, founded in 1968 to advance President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, enriches these organizations and all sectors with rigorous research and unimpeachable data about an array of societal challenges. It also convenes stakeholders, from municipal leaders to academics and people with lived experience, to share research findings and discuss strategies for advancing equity. This episode features Urban Institute Senior Fellow Samantha Batko, whose community informed research answers critical policy questions about housing and homelessness. We start with this unsettling truth, that on any given night in America some ¼ million people experience unsheltered homelessness. Sam is a tremendous champion of housing justice rooted in evidence-based data. Hear her.

There should be no institutions that put Black bodies in bondage Jul 15, 2024

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In 1990, 60 disabled men and women with disabilities put their wheelchairs and mobility aids aside and crawled up the steps of the U.S. Capital and into the Rotunda. Once inside they chained themselves together and announced that they would not leave until the House passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Dara Baldwin, consummate policy advocate and inspiring disability justice activist was not aware, until attending their 50th anniversary event, that the Black Panthers conceived of and helped implement the chaining strategy. This fact, and the contributions of many Black disabled leaders, from Rep. Barbara Jordan to Don Galloway have been expunged in movement storytelling by white nonprofit executives. Dara's new book, To Be a Problem, A Black Woman's Survival in the Racist Disability Rights Movement, brings light to the entrenchment of white privilege and racism in the sector. And it corrects the record about the historical and ongoing impacts of people of color in the disability community. The book is also hopeful, imagining a new wave of activism where Black disabled people are at the center of the movement for Black Liberation. Dara has given us a rare truth-telling narrative for our times.

If homelessness was a punishment for bad choices we would all be homeless Jul 08, 2024

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We are at war, in America, with empathy. Every day, state and national leaders introduce bills designed to stigmatize, strip resources from, and publicly target those they view as other than human: immigrants, people experiencing homelessness and LGBTQ children, to name a few. The recent Supreme Court decision upholding the right of Grants Pass, Oregon to fine homeless people for sleeping outside when no shelters are available is both cruel and ineffective. Choosing criminalization over solving for homelessness through large-scale public investments in affordable housing and raising the substandard wages of working people demonstrates an alarming lack of empathy. In this episode of Power Station, I speak with Mark Horvath, founder of Invisible People, the sole nonprofit newsroom dedicated to deepening our connections to and understanding of homelessness. Mark was a successful media executive who became homeless after losing his job. When he got back on his feet, he set a new course for his life. Invisible People's videos, documentaries and news stream are deeply impactful windows into the world of our national housing crisis. Mark's work is moving some policymakers to legislate with empathy, our underestimated superpower.

I often think that we are not really doing workforce development, we are doing human development Jul 01, 2024

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This conversation is about what is possible when a nonprofit organization engages jobseekers and employers in shaping the future of work through a North Star lens of racial equity and economic mobility. It is about reimagining workforce development, an admittedly wonky and uninspiring term, as an opportunity to prepare jobseekers, largely women of color in California, for high quality jobs. And it is about influencing the companies that hire them to do the internal work needed to retain them. In this episode of Power Station, Lisa Countryman Quiroz, CEO of Jewish Vocational Service, shares how employers are expanding their strategies for sourcing talent and making attitudinal changes that enable talented staff to manage both work and family responsibilities. Lisa describes the robust training and certification programs that position jobseekers formerly making $40,000 a year to five years later making over $100,000. She points to JVS 's advocacy for progressive legislative policies and its stand against cuts to state and national workforce funding. And she calls on philanthropy to invest in these strategies beyond the traditional markets. Lisa is an exceptional storyteller and a changemaking leader. Once you hear her, you will want to share this episode.

I come from a long line of farmworkers. My grandparents and then my mom worked in the strawberry fields Jun 24, 2024

Show notes

For many students, college internships are a rite of passage, an opportunity to experience different workplaces and enhance their resumes. They are even more meaningful when the interns are first-generation Latino college students whose immigrant parents are America's farmworkers. In this episode of Power Station, I continue a tradition that I cherish, interviewing exceptional young people whose life trajectories are flourishing through their connections to the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association. Isaac Ramon Peña and Berenice Verdugo talk about the migrant Head Start programs that impacted their lives, providing a safe space while their parents worked the fields, starting at 4am, as well as educational enrichment that made them kindergarten ready. They recognize that NMSHSA is a vital support system for Migrant Head Start Centers and a singular resource for their parents, from bringing the USDA Farmworker Relief Program to life to promoting well-being through the Vaccine Project. Isaac and Berenice are thrilled to be learning about policymaking and advocacy through their placements with the United Farm Workers and UnidosUS. And they shout out NMSHSA's incredible team, for helping them navigate their first time to Washington, DC, including, of course, the incomparable Cleofas Rodriguez. IYKYK.

How are we using our dollars to create the changes we want to see in the world? Jun 17, 2024

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It is a rare book that enlightens readers about how our capital markets work and how to invest in them to build wealth in ways that prioritize economic opportunity, environmental sustainability and racial equity. The Social Justice Investor, the first guide for anyone who wants to better understand the financial marketplace, is that book. In this episode of Power Station, I speak to its author, Andrea Longton CFA, who has raised over $1billion for social justice investment in the United States alone. The Social Justice Investor is a plain-language roadmap for engaging our financial advisor, organizational HR manager or DIY financial platform in helping us advance our values-driven investment aspirations. It connects us to remarkable leaders in the field who invest in shared ownership enterprises and reject investment in companies that profit from prison labor in their supply chains. Andrea is motivated in part by having worked in financial markets abroad and upon returning home, realizing that conditions in her grandmother's Appalachian home town were in some ways worse than in countries where she was driving capital. And yes, there is industry and political backlash to these changing expectations. Listen!

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