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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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....
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outlineStorytelling 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 of Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop, a nonprofit that creates community among currently and formerly incarcerated men and women through books and the conversations they spark. In this episode of Power Station, I speak with Deputy Director Julia Mascioli and Poet Ambassador Curtis McKnight about the unique challenges of DC residents who are incarcerated first in DC jails and then within the federal prison system. We talk about the Prison Book Club, which connects 900 incarcerated people in over 100 prisons and the looming threat of HR 5140, now headed to the Senate. Listen and share!