We are letting people know that they need to make a plan to vote
Release Date: 10/27/2025
Shifting mindsets and winning small victories on the way to the generational project that is narrative change
Power Station
A conversation with Dr. Tiffany Manuel, is illuminating, gripping and if you are engaged in meeting material human needs and advancing social justice, it is an instructive and energizing call to action. In this episode of Power Station, Dr. T shares how the practice she founded, TheCaseMade, empowers nonprofit leaders to reimagine how to be impactful changemakers in a profoundly divided America under an administration that is aggressively dismantling civil and human rights. She brings her academic grounding in the social sciences and deep experience in the nonprofit housing and...
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Building relationships makes it possible to know what business owners are experiencing
Power Station
It speaks volumes when an urban planner, an expert in housing, community and economic development who has served in leadership positions in the federal government, national nonprofit intermediaries, and in a community-based Latino serving organization decides that his passion lies in working at the hyper-local level with communities that are often underserved and underestimated. Manuel Ochoa, my guest on this week’s episode of Power Station, launched Ochoa Urban Collaborative in 2019 to support the change making aspirations of marginalized communities in the US and globally. He shares his...
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Our communities don't need saving, they need investment, trust, and the rights tools to shape their own futures
Power Station
We are all shaped by the neighborhoods we grew up in, from the cost and conditions of our housing to the bonds we formed within them and whether we had access to parks and grocery stores. And the data bears out that zip codes are more effective predictors of our well-being than our own genetic code. Improving neighborhoods that have been battered by extractive public policies, poverty and unsound housing conditions has been the cornerstone of the community development sector for decades. The sector has progressed in its technical ability to finance projects perceived as risky and at its best...
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The Face of DC's Justice System is Black
Power Station
What does it take to generate transformative changes to a criminal justice system that targets, harms and disempowers Black people? DC Justice Lab was founded to answer this question, to generate transparency and accountably in a city, our nation’s capital, which relies on over-policing and surveillance to control its citizenry. Our Metropolitan Police Department, which is deployed at a cost of over $500,000,000 annually and for which there is very little oversight, has most recently abetted federal ICE agents in carrying out unlawful detainments. This overcriminalization of Black and Brown...
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He made a pledge of more than $2B dollars to Black businesses and the Black community
Power Station
Rev. Christopher Zacharias is a powerful example of what it means, as Walt Whitman described, to contain multitudes. It starts with his religious calling and belief in engaging across faith traditions to advance equity and justice in communities where they have been denied. He uses his voice to call out policy decisions and corporate practices that harm communities of color and identifies the action steps needed to produce solutions. Rev. Zacharias is grounded in his position as Senior Pastor of the John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church in Washington DC, an historic pillar of America’s civil rights...
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We can no longer say that the federal government won't use that against you
Power Station
How do we maintain our well-being and motivation when our government is targeting entire populations for deportation and also the nonprofits that protect their civil and human rights? For Naznin Saifi, my guest this week on Power Station, the answer is clear. Her self-care is getting up every day and going to work. As executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, Naznin leads a small cohort of attorneys in representing a diverse population speaking over 100 languages with critical housing, immigration, family law and domestic violence concerns. Staff are all first...
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A family that earned up to $69,000 in 2025 may be eligible for up to $8,000 in a tax credit
Power Station
It may seem inconceivable given all that is happening in our nation but yes, tax season is here again. And while that is stressful and complex, particularly for those who have lost their jobs, from federal employees to nonprofit professionals and journalists, for lowest income Americans, filing taxes is a singular opportunity for financial empowerment. That is because of the Earned Income Tax Credit, added to the U.S. Tax Code in 1975, our most powerful tool for lifting lowest income wage earners out of poverty. I cannot imagine a conversation about solutions to economic inequality, through...
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When I was sentenced to life and arrived at prison I couldn't help but go within
Power Station
When a small group of incarcerated men within California’s prison system decided to use their lives to uplift fellow prisoners, they launched what is known nationally as C.R.O.P., Creating Restorative Programs and Opportunities. They knew that 54% of those who are released from California prisons encounter a world they barely recognize and without adequate support and resources, will reoffend within three years. In this episode of Power Station my guest is Terah Lawyer, the extraordinary leader who, as president of CROP, is demonstrating the power of systems and culture change in real time....
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The deportation machine that has been unleashed in our communities would not be possible without tech companies like Palantir
Power Station
In 2001, in the nascent days of the internet, activists came together to wrestle with a growing challenge, the impacts of an increasingly corporatized media ecosystem on communities of color. They set out to intervene in media and tech practices that harm people of color and reimagined how these sectors could better represent the aspirations of local communities. This led to the founding, in 2009, of Media Justice, an organizing, education and field building organization that has generated significant wins, from passage of the nation’s first facial recognition ban to another first, limiting...
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They want to round up people with disabilities and put them in institutions
Power Station
We are experiencing an increasingly rapid erosion of civil and human rights in America. People with disabilities are one improbable yet frontline target. Their decades-long campaign to win protections in housing, employment and healthcare is now facing a shocking reversal of hard-won legal rights. As Theo Braddy executive director of the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) says on this episode of Power Station, discrimination against and the oppression of people with disabilities is largely invisible in our society until it happens to us. And because we are all aging into...
info_outlineIt is one year before the mid-term elections of 2026, and America faces a high stakes scenario that goes beyond who will run for public office. The conversation now is about who will be able to cast a ballot and whether all votes will be counted. The threats can be found in state legislative actions and presidential executive orders that seek to limit access to the ballot box based on disproven accounts of election fraud. In this episode of Power Station I am joined by Rebekah Caruthers, CEO of Fair Elections Center, a national nonprofit staffed by experts in organizing, public education, policy advocacy and litigation, strategies deployed to preserve and expand the voting rights of all eligible Americans. As Rebekah says, when our voting rights are undermined, democracy is at risk. Fair Elections Center also works with HBCUs, public universities and community colleges to ensure that student voting is unimpeded. Rebekah is a powerful leader whose pursuit of voting and civil rights is deeply embedded in her family’s legacy. Her leadership at Fair Elections Center and collaboration with local, state and national advocates is critical to our democracy.