Power Station

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In the year of Our Lord 2023, Jackson, Mississippi still has a water crisis Jun 12, 2023

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Every person, in every city, deserves to live the healthiest possible life. You could assume this is a shared national value, but our health outcomes tell a different story about America's aspirations. Residents from the most marginalized neighborhoods in underinvested cities are subjected to living in unsound housing conditions under persistent threats of eviction, compromised by poor air quality and a lack of access to potable water. Recognizing that social determinants, factors that exist outside of a doctor's office, have an outsized role in the state of our health led the de Beaumont Foundation, a public health philanthropy, to take bold and evidence-based action by launching CityHealth. Its expert advisers and an outstanding staff advance policy solutions to health challenges based in science and validated by community leaders. They are cultivating relationships with Mayors, municipal leaders who are tasked with delivering a better quality of life and equity to their constituents even when their colleagues on Capitol Hill cannot. You will be captivated by CityHealth co-executive director Katrina Forrest, and she will make you a believer. Policy solutions, framed in equity, tracked for accountability, and memorialized in medals and maps.

A lot of climate anxiety stems from a belief that one person cannot create change Jun 05, 2023

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Annabel Collinson wants you to know that if you feel anxious and helpless about environmental conditions around the globe you are not alone. She shares the climate anxiety that is pervasive among young people whose futures are compromised by rising temperatures and their real-time harms, from warming oceans to sea level rise, economic disruption, food insecurity and the displacement, primarily of people of color, from their homes and communities. Annabel and her colleague Madeleine Ary Hahne, who have devoted years of study to environmental science, global security, human geography, and field work across multiple nations, came together to create an alternative response to environmental degradation. They co-founded, with Zoe Salt, Visions of Soon, a striking online platform designed to engage and empower a new generation in environmental learning and activism. They have coalesced a remarkably talented team of photographers, videographers, journalists and poets to profile, through a striking website and across social platforms, environmentalists and activists whose practices, from sustainable carpentry to wild swimming and elm restoration are pragmatic strategies towards a more sustainable future. These visionaries welcome all who wish to join them. Individual steps leading to powerful collective action.

Anti-Asian hate is a workplace safety issue May 29, 2023

Show notes

There are many versions of our American story. For some it is a gateway to freedom and opportunity, for others it is where only some can thrive, often at the expense of less valued communities. As always, the truth is complex and nuanced and data, when our public leaders choose to collect it, tells the true story. A global pandemic exposed and deepened America's fault lines, revealing how historical policy making decisions steeped in racism and anti-immigrant bias created strikingly disparate outcomes to the crisis. The truths are profound and unimpeachable, shocking but not truly surprising. In this episode of Power Station, Alvina Yeh, executive director of Asian Pacific Islander American Labor Alliance, explains that xenophobia and inequitable healthcare, education and workforce systems were realities well before the pandemic struck. But the story is now elevated, and it is time for new voices to inform policy makers, employers, and the labor sector about their lived experiences and how to craft policy solutions to protect and expand the rights of AAPIs, our fastest growing working population. APALA is where dynamic AAPI leaders make change and equity possible. These are stories that we all need to hear.

Come with us on this journey to becoming an anti-racist city May 22, 2023

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When George Jones talks about his mission to make Washington, DC an anti-racist city he is sometimes met with discomfort and even denial. But when he talks about the tremendous disparities in wealth and income that separate white communities in the NW portion of the city from Black families in the SE the very same business, academic and foundation leaders agree that the data is unimpeachable and the systems that perpetuate it must be upended. As CEO of Bread for the City, the highly impactful nonprofit he leads, he manages the complex organizational infrastructure needed to provide for a continuum of human needs, from food and clothing to medical attention and legal support. Bread for the City also builds community power, positioning those with lived experience in advocating for policy solutions before the City Council and Mayor. George points out how a pervasively negative narrative about Black youth in poor DC neighborhoods strips us of empathy and disconnects us from the facts. While crime is real, the perpetrators are in fact a small and known cohort. Joining this anti-racism journey is an opportunity we cannot afford to lose.

The ultimate purpose is to build local power where you are May 15, 2023

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Elyssa Feder remembers the moment she became an organizer. She was watching a debate on C-Span about the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood and government officials were spouting lies to bolster their positions. She realized that their power shielded them from consequences and that she was not satisfied being a young woman in a food court who knew better. She honed her organizing capacities in political and issue-specific campaigns and learned that having better facts, and she strongly believes that facts matter, does not guarantee a win. Winning requires an engaged citizenry, people power bolstered by community-based nonprofits with expertise and relationships. Knowing this, Elyssa set about to solve for a real and pressing problem, the huge gap in the organizing infrastructure needed to strengthen our fragile democracy. She launched Rising Organizers to train those who want to get involved with organizing skills and strategies. Young people are completing their training and taking root as change makers in organizations and communities. Funders now have an opportunity to support Elyssa's vision and build the future we all want to see.

80% of our nation supports trans kids having a fair shot at life May 08, 2023

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Some organizations really do lead with love. When Jeanne Manford joined her gay son Morty at the 1972 Christopher Street Liberation Day March her handmade sign declared, Parents of Gays Unite in Support of our Children. That message moved many young people whose families were not there for them. Jeanne went on to become the mother of a movement, PFLAFG, that unites families, their LGBTQ loved ones and allies. The fierce love of these families and allies makes PFLAG a powerful force for protecting parents and children who are increasingly under attack in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill. As Diego Manuel Sanchez, Director of Advocacy, Policy, and Partnerships explains, PFLAG's power is embedded in its grassroots infrastructure, more than 400 chapters and 250,000 members and supporters. And PFLAG creates opportunities for all of us to contribute to the change we want to see, including commenting on a new Title IX regulation that protects trans and other non-binary athletes. Diego is an extraordinary advocate and human being. Having turned to his own mother as a 5 year old to say that he was "born wrong" he demonstrates the power of claiming one's true identity.

Texas is always Texas-ing May 01, 2023

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If you want to know how to protect and advance the rights of Latinos in Texas, ask Eric Holguin. A native son of Corpus Christi and Texas State Director of UnidosUS, the nation's largest non-partisan champion of Hispanic civil rights, he starts with the facts. Without the state's 11.4 million Latinos, who are critical to the workforce and especially well-represented in the civil service, energy and small business sectors, the economy would collapse and were it not for gerrymandering, Texas would be a purple state. Making progress in a state where political leaders maintain power by demonizing Latinos takes commitment, resources, and a strategy. Eric partners with UnidosUS affiliates, on-the-ground advocates for voting, education, reproductive, healthcare, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. He cultivates the next generation of Latino political leaders and most importantly, he engages with everyday community members who are moved more by values than by policy alerts. Standard messaging by political parties often fails to connect with Latino voters and will not motivate them to get to the polls. Votes must be earned, not taken for granted. Eric offers a roadmap to making change possible. Listen and celebrate how UnidosUS moves America forward.

My mother worked behind the same sewing machine for 33 years Apr 24, 2023

Show notes

Today's headline stories about jobs and the economy focus on remote workers facing a return to offices and thousands of professional hired by tech companies to deepen their capacities for artificial intelligence and machine learning. More commonplace injustices are being challenged by a growing movement for livable wages and paid family leave, against racial discrimination and immigrant exploitation and for the right to form a union. These and even worse abuses, including the pervasive use of child labor, were born in 20th century factories and mills. A profound desire to honor the contributions of millworkers is deeply rooted within Jim Warlick whose mother, the late Mary Hamilton Warlick, worked behind the same sewing machine for 33 years at the Garrou-Morgantan Full-Fashioned Hosiery Mill in Burke County, North Carolina. The newly unveiled Dignity of Work Monument recognizes those who toiled in the furniture, textile, and hosiery industries in conditions that would be entirely unacceptable today. Jim's interviews with surviving millworkers reflect both the difficulty of the work and pride in what they accomplished. Lessons about their experience will become middle school curriculum, a triumph of truth in education that should inspire all of us.

The narrative is that Black people are not able to self-determine and self-govern Apr 17, 2023

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Niciah Mujahid wants you know that your city's budget is 100% your business. As the dynamic executive director of Fair Budget Coalition, she leads a cohort of community-based nonprofits in advocating for a budget that invests in human needs and advances racial justice. Every aspect of this complex process, from analyzing budget proposals to engaging residents in testifying at budget hearings to building relationships with and posing solutions to the mayor and city council members is rooted in a racial equity lens. As Niciah explains, the budget, a quantifiable plan for how to acquire and spend a city's resources, is also a moral document reflecting the priorities of elected decision-makers. This work is particularly consequential in Washington DC, whose residents have been denied statehood and lack full voting representation in Congress. And DC's elected leadership, who develop and negotiate the budget, cannot enact it without a sign-off from Congress. But a conversation with Niciah is the opposite of bleak. She believes deeply in the acumen of Fair Budget Coalition's talented members and ardently champions DC residents, whose fight for housing, health and safety are at the heart of the Coalition's vision and mission.

The right to vote is at the heart of what it means to be an American Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, is reframing how to think about progressive change making in politically polarizing times. She pushes back against the deeply embedded belief that those working for social justice and racial equity are in a lonely uphill battle against a fierce anti-democratic majority in her state and throughout the nation. Tram believes that the multi-racial coalition of young people, immigrants and working families New Virginia Majority brings together to restore the voting rights of returning citizens, make housing affordable and advance immigrant rights are the true majority, overshadowed by a loud and aggrieved minority. New Virginia Majority, powered by chapters and hubs across a hugely diverse state, generates policy and electoral wins that should be headline news. Hundreds of Black and Brown community leaders turn out in the state capitol each year, pressing legislative leaders, some of whom they helped elect, to enact legislation that uplifts their communities. Tram is driven by the same devotion to democracy that galvanized her family's journey from Vietnam to America 41 years ago. She is cultivating a new generation of leaders and proving that people-powered change is possible. You will want to share this conversation.

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