For José Vasquez, leading Common Defense, a national nonprofit comprised of 200,000 veterans who share progressive values, is an extension of the oath he took as a 17 year old enlistee. He swore to and has remained steadfast in defending the Constitution and advocating for the well-being of those who serve. He and a cohort of activist vets launched Common Defense in 2016 to provide a civic engagement platform for veterans who are anti-racist, pro-democracy and anti-authoritarianism. Collectively they are advancing progressive policymaking in state legislatures, on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Common Defense organizes around the issues that resonate deeply for its members, including climate change and healthcare. A current campaign demands accountability for the president’s dismantling of the Veteran’s Administration, which is putting the health of 16.5 million veterans at risk. On this episode of Power Station, I speak with José about his life’s journey, from joining the Army, to living out his family’s dream of a college education, to his evolving views about our military and his decision to organize his fellow veterans to use their voices for the common good. Hear him and share!

How is it possible that in 2025, America is funding and operationalizing daily raids on Latinos in the form of arrests, detainments, deportations and disappearances? What can justify the vilification of Latinos, a community that includes families that have been established here for generations and newer arrivals seeking citizenship in a broken immigration system? Meanwhile, Latinos, working across sectors, contribute $4.1 trillion dollars to this country annually. While the president and congressional leadership are the architects of this cruel, and often illegal campaign targeting 20% of the nation’s population, both political parties have failed Latinos as a whole. Neither has modernized our immigration system or fully recognized their economic, cultural and social contributions. I am  honored that Sindy Benevides, founder of Aqui: The Accountability Movement, shared her organizational story on this episode of Power Station. Sindy explains that achieving a just future for Latinos in America requires a narrative shift around how Latinos are perceived, the leveraging of the their economic power, and accountability by all sectors for hiring and policies impacting Latinos and other communities of color. Sindy is a powerrful leader who is building a new path towards justice, one that we all can walk.

Organizing is a superpower. It allows us to make our voices heard, to influence the decision-makers, from corporations to landlords to the elected officials who determine clean air standards, the cost of childcare, the minimum wage and whether voting rights will expand or become more restrictive. And in a moment in which politicians are defunding healthcare and other public systems to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest in our society, organizing provides a skillset and framework that prepares nonprofit organizations, their staff and community-based volunteers to lead impactful and changemaking campaigns. In this episode of Power Station I speak with the invincible Elyssa Feder, who has trained thousands of new entries in the organizing field since launching Rising Organizers in 2016. She is positioning a new generation of organizers to save and strengthen our battered democracy and is creating the organizing infrastructure that nonprofits need to activate their communities and fulfill their mission. And Elyssa is committed to growing power, through organizing, in Washington DC where 700,000 people lack full voting representation in Congress. As she says, organizing takes many forms and there is room for all of us. Hear her and share this episode!

What makes culture change possible? Not the kind that divides people, which we are experiencing now but change that which empowers individuals, builds community and in some cases saves lives. Active Minds, a nonprofit founded by Alison Malmon after losing her brother Brian, a college student, to suicide 21 years ago demonstrates how normalizing conversations about mental health and prioritizing the well-being of youth and young adults is transforming America. Active Minds has activated student-led mental health advocacy chapters across 500 college campuses and high schools and is now expanding into middle schools. In this episode of Power Station I speak with Brandi Pretlow, Active Minds Vice President for Community Initiatives whose clinical expertise, deep empathy and strategic savvy is engaging diverse communities, from educational systems to influencers and athletes, in elevating mental health care as a shared value. Brandi speaks to the resources we all need, from housing to health, to maintain our mental health and to the imperative of meeting needs in the most marginalized communities. We talk about navigating federal budget cuts, expanding Active Mind’s advocacy voice and the promise of seeing culture change in action.

We have a long history in America of institutions and public systems that do not serve all members of the public equally. As Erin Kilmer-Neel shares on this episode of Power Station, the financial services industry, banks in particular, have routinely failed to approve loan applications for small businesses and mortgages from borrowers of color on par with their white counterparts. Perceptions of unworthiness is rooted in a well-documented history of racism in public and corporate policymaking. As executive director of the Beneficial State Foundation, the nonprofit that owns and partners with Beneficial State Bank, an equity-driven enterprise, Erin is powering a movement to unlearn the biases that undergird perceptions of risk and reimagine policies and practices that meet the capital needs of borrowers of color. Take Underwriting for Justice, an initiative that is upending racially discriminatory lending norms. It is engaging banks in signing on to methodologies that lead to systemic yeses. Erin is a bright light in the ongoing campaign to bridge the social equity and banking worlds. She credits the vision of Beneficial Bank co-founders Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor in creating an institution that builds power within, instead of extracting from, the communities it serves.

What stories have we heard, and beliefs have we internalized, to explain the crisis level numbers of Americans who are on the brink of losing their housing or are already experiencing homelessness? Do we blame the individuals? Is the problem intractable? Years of study illuminates the facts: we have a profound dual problem of affordability and supply. Our federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is responsible for a wage to rent disparity that causes extremely low income Americans to pay more than half of their income on rent. And a shortage of 7.1 million affordable housing units makes it inevitable that 77,000 Americans have no home at all. That data and more is captured in seminal reports produced by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which has been at the forefront of tenant-led policy advocacy for decades. On this episode of Power Station, Renee Willis, the Coalition’s exceptional new President and CEO shares the life experience that guides her leadership in this most challenging of times. As she says, when we talk about policy we are really talking about people. The Coalition knows the true story of housing in America and champions people who aspire for better.

If you think that young people are not informed about, paying attention to or taking action to counter the harm, in rhetoric and policy, practiced by the current administration, you will be encouraged by this episode of Power Station. My three outstanding guests, Jean Garcia, Hannia Hernandez-Mendoza and Bryan Juarez Ruiz, are college students whose academic successes and commitment to shaping a more just future led to their selection as summer interns with the National Migrant & Seasonal Head Start Association. NMSHSA is the advocate and support system for 24 migrant head start centers that provide high-quality educational services to 26,000 children of farmworkers in 34 states.  Jean, Hannia and Bryan have all experienced the extreme challenges of agricultural work first-hand. And they all credit their early childhood days in migrant head start centers as foundational to their educational development and capacity to, as their immigrant parents expect, build a life for themselves beyond the fields in which they have toiled. They are on the way, not only to personal achievement but to charting bold systems change for farmworkers, immigrants and other underserved and targeted communities. Hear them tell their stories here.

It is meaningful and instructive that the Legal Defense Fund, which has championed racial justice at the voting booth, in education, housing and in the criminal justice system since its founding by Thurgood Marshall in 1940, is on the frontlines today, winning legal victories in a perilous moment for American democracy. LDF is defending the hard-won civil rights of Black Americans against racially imposed barriers, laid out in Project 2025 and implemented by President Trump and the 119th Congress. As LDF Associate Director-Counsel Todd Cox explains on this episode of Power Station, Congress has abdicated its responsibility as a check on the executive and the U.S. Department of Justice has rejected its mandate to enforce civil rights laws, leaving the LDF and its sister organizations to carry out the fight in the courts. LDF brings the expertise and infrastructure needed to litigate, advocate in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill, organize in impacted communities and educate the public and policymakers about what is at stake. Todd, a consummate civil rights litigator, looks to his grandparents, who fled autocracy and racial violence in the south, as his inspiration and guide. Hear him and share this powerful story.

When UnidosUS convenes its annual conference this August, it will provide a safe space for the leaders of its 300 affiliates (community based nonprofits) to process and strategize over President Trump’s targeting of immigrants, assault on Medicaid and threats to their nonprofits’ tax exempt status. As Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS shares on this episode of Power Station, it is an opportunity for thousands of leaders, stakeholders, allies and partners to draw strength from each other. As this nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, UnidosUS is a powerhouse nonprofit whose expertise in organizing, research, policy advocacy, educational programming and civic engagement has advanced the rights and well-being of Latinos and other underinvested communities for 57 years. It remains a non-partisan frontline force for intergenerational wealth building, increasing opportunities for homeownership and educational opportunity through programs delivered by affiliates across America.  We talk about the impacts of actions taken by this White House and the 119th Congress, from ICE raids to the breakdown of due process and, in response, the growing pro-democracy movement. I cannot think of anyone more equipped to lead in this unprecedented moment and to make America more equitable than Janet Murguia. Hear HER!

In 1963, a time of heightened suppression of Black Americans to their civil rights, President Kennedy invited 244 lawyers to the White House, calling on them to use their expertise and influence to move the civil rights struggle from the streets into the courts. That call to action launched The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that for 63 years has tackled discrimination against people of color and championed the right to full participation in civic life. In this episode of Power Station, I am honored to feature Rob Weiner, Director of the Committee’s Voting Rights Project. which challenges efforts at the state and national levels to disenfranchise voters of color. It is notable and moving that until recently Rob was Senior Counsel at the Voting Rights Division at the US Department of Justice. He explains that under the Trump administration, the DOJ has abandoned its mission to protect the right to vote and is instead trafficking in disproven claims of voting scams and election fraud. Rob and his colleagues at the Lawyers Committee are boldly pushing back against executive orders, redistricting schemes and narratives that seek to weaken hard-won civil rights. And they are winning. Hear him!