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...
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We pride ourselves in bringing technical solutions to human problems
Power Station
When Kat Guillaume-Delemar was six years old she was already an engaged community member. When a fire took the house next to her apartment building, she wondered about the elderly woman who had lived there and whether a new home would replace hers. As often happens in disinvested neighborhoods, that space became a vacant lot that remained the same for decades. Kat now leads the Center for Community Progress, a national nonprofit that brings technical solutions to human problems and failed systems, specifically bringing community-defined purpose to vacant, abandoned and/or deteriorated...
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This is inhumane and it doesn't make us safer
Power Station
What happened to Dakarai Larriett is shocking, horrifying even, and yet it is not entirely remarkable for a Black man in America. In 2024, Dakairi, an Alabama native who spent years on Fifth Avenue in NYC as a corporate executive, was unlawfully detained at a traffic stop in Michigan. What followed was hours of race baiting, an attempted planting of drugs and later, in a cell, literal torture. This is not hyperbole. It is the truth of what happened to him captured by the police officer’s own dashcam and bodycam. Video evidence notwithstanding, a judge declined to take action against...
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Let's Get Powerful
Power Station
This is my 401st episode of Power Station!! Reaching the 400 mark is a major milestone for me. because I created this unique platform and have sustained it throughout some very turbulent years. Power Station is an audio library of changemakers in America. My guests do the hard daily slog of building organizations, engaging community members in organizing and pushing for policies that that hold the power to meet material needs and generate generational wealth. The build confidence and power in communities that are so often inderestimated. I learn from my guests and others should to, including...
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Own your power and show up
Power Station
At Live Free Illinois, the nonprofit she founded, Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain advances a critical mission: ending gun violence and mass incarceration by employing a powerful trifecta of strategies: education, organizing and advocacy. It starts with mobilizing a network of over 130 congregations across the state to advocate for public safety and law enforcement accountability. And it requires standing up to recent federal threats, from the cutting of SNAP benefits to the militarization of law enforcement. Live Free Illinois partners with congregations to provide organizer training and to...
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Personnel is power
Power Station
I consider Power Station to be a living library, one that contains the stories, strategies, struggles and accomplishments of some of our nation’s most impactful social change leaders. And I have been moved, enlightened and challenged in my thinking by many of my guests. This episode, featuring Chris Torres, executive director of Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice (LDSJ), is among the most meaningful to me. That is because LDSJ is devoted to studying, practicing, supporting and elevating the craft of organizing, which, although often undervalued, is at the heart of progressive...
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Shane was my mission
Power Station
Tia Bell is a powerful, determined and impactful force for her community, city and this nation. She has taken her formative childhood experience, the shooting of her mother, who thankfully survived, and subsequent murders of other family members and friends as a blueprint for acting proactively to prevent the scourge of gun violence. Her academic grounding is at the intersection of youth development and gun violence, a public health crisis that is the consequence of historical and ongoing racism, disinvestment and under-representation. The TRIGGER Project, the nonprofit she founded and leads,...
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I was stuck in my cell for 20 hours a day
Power Station
Storytelling changes everything. It introduces us to other people’s life experiences and cracks open our capacity to care and connect. For the storyteller, it provides what may be a first in a lifetime opportunity to express oneself and be heard. Some of the most powerful stories illuminate aspects of society that we lack the will to confront. Glen McGinnis wanted the nation to know about young Black and Brown men like himself, sentenced to death row for a crime committed as a minor. He craved education, a resource the Texas prison system did not provide. His aspirations led to the launching...
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I was stuck in my cell for 20 hours a day
Power Station
Storytelling changes everything. It introduces us to other people’s life experiences and cracks open our capacity to care and connect. For the storyteller, it provides what may be a first in a lifetime opportunity to express oneself and be heard. Some of the most powerful stories illuminate aspects of society that we lack the will to confront. Glen McGinnis wanted the nation to know about young Black and Brown men like himself, sentenced to death row for a crime committed as a minor. He craved education, a resource the Texas prison system did not provide. His aspirations led to the launching...
info_outlineFacts matter but facts alone will not influence change when the truthtellers are not believed. Millions of girls and women see their doctors about debilitating symptoms only to be told that what they are experiencing is not real. Such is the case with endometriosis, a medical condition that among other harms, is a leading cause of infertility in women. As Shannon Cohn, my guest on this episode of Power Station says, it is so prevalent that either you have endometriosis, or you love someone who does. As a teenager she sought help for incapacitating menstrual pain only to be told by a doctor that she was seeking attention. It took many years and countless doctors before receiving an accurate diagnosis. Eventually, she left a successful legal career to become a women’s health champion, using filmmaking to advocate for public and institutional investments in endometriosis research and treatment. Below the Belt, Shannon’s deeply instructive and moving documentary chronicles the struggles of 4 women living with endometriosis. It is the foundation of a social impact strategy that is disrupting the status quo and breaking through decades of indifference by public policymakers and the medical establishment. As Shannon demonstrates, stories matter.