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 people is not what DC Justice Lab envisions as public safety. In this episode of Power Station, DC Justice Lab's CEO Clinique Chapman shares how her team, a powerhouse cohort of social workers, lawyers, and policy experts invite community members to identify the changes that they believe will strengthen neighborhoods and protect families. She brings a powerful and personal lens to this mission. As a social worker who has worked with young people in the court system, brought corrections officers and incarcerated people to a common table to reimagine a system that diminishes all of them, Clinique truly is changemaking in action.

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 movement. On this episode of Power Station I speak with Rev. Zacharias about his interconnected roles as Executive Director of Interfaith Action for Human Rights, whose legislative campaigns are designed to stop the overuse of solitary confinement in prisons within DC, Maryland and Virginia and his leadership of Boycott Target DC, a coalition organized in response to Target's rejection of its DEI programs and $2.5B commitment to Black businesses after the 2025 election of Donald Trump. Momentum is building for each, and corporate and public leaders are paying attention. Rev. Zacharias invites us all to exercise our passion and purpose.

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 generation Americans who understand the language, cultural and increasingly, the political barriers that Asian Pacific Islanders, especially recent arrivals in America, face when seeking help with systems that are unfamiliar to them. The Center represents the community in multiple municipalities, each with distinct administrative and court processes. A current challenge is that clients are afraid to leave their homes to go to court and seek justice. And Naznin cannot guarantee their safety, a heartbreaking reality in these times but the Center is there for them, always. Despite the challenges there is joy in and celebration of their victories.

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 public policymaking and community education, without Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, my guest, again, on Power Station. Joseph recounts how transformative these dollars, which are earned and not charity, are for these families. We commiserate over the cruelty of the latest White House executive order, which makes receiving those benefits exponentially more difficult. Joseph shares how this administration's efforts to undermine the right of all communities to prosper informs his nonprofit consulting and role with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. As always, he is driven by a belief in family, his own and all of ours.

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. Terah brings her lived experience with incarceration, academic grounding and deep commitment to her community to the design and implementation of Ready 4 Life, an innovative campus-based reentry initiative that is proving to be transformative. It trains and places participants in substantive jobs with meaningful wages, provides secure housing and invests in each person's personal development, from taking accountability to honing leadership skills. Terah honors the nonprofits, formerly incarcerated leaders and champions like Gov. Newsom and the California State Legislature who are investing in the potential and humanity of those who are striving for a productive second chance. A story that needs to be heard.

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 the rates that families of incarcerated people could be charged for phone calls. As Steven Renderos, my exceptional guest on this episode of Power Station explains, where 25 years ago the villains dominating the field were Clear Channel and Comcast, they are now the tech oligarchy, billionaires whose influence is weakening our democracy and extracting local resources. But the public, in these harrowing times, is waking up and taking action. First-time protesters are showing up at public hearings to speak out against the economic and environmental harms of data centers. And Media Justice is powering their activism, developing leaders and connecting them across our nation.

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 disability, we face a steep learning curve and a responsibility to become advocates for ourselves and others. That is the ethos that guides Theo's leadership of the NCIL, the longest running disability-led association in the nation. Its membership is comprised of some 660 centers across the county that empower people with disabilities to thrive in their communities and Statewide Independent Living Councils that are mandated to create independent living plans. This powerful movement now faces Executive Orders that call for mass institutionalization into nursing homes and the US Department of Justice's failure to enforce the Americans with Disability Act. Theo Braddy has a different plan. Hear him!

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 structures across the United States. As Kat explains on this episode of Power Station, Community Progress partners with municipalities and community leaders who have experienced the trauma associated with deteriorated and dangerous conditions and have a vision that will serve and strengthen their neighborhoods. These successes are not often highlighted in the media, but they are happening, nonetheless. The wins include the passing of progressive housing policies, the creation of affordable rental units, increased homeownership, centers for the arts and a beautiful park where an elderly woman's home once stood. Kat brings heart, expertise and tenacity to making a more equitable America. Hear her.

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 the officers. In this first interview of Power Station in 2026, I speak with Dakarai about how his experience moved him to become an organizer, a champion for criminal justice reform and a 2026 Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Alabama. He is connecting with the families of incarcerated men in Alabama's deeply corrupt prison system and developing policies to upend business as usual, from lawless police officers to a for-profit prison system that enriches wealthy individuals and the state's coffers at the expense of uncompensated prisoners. His bravery is powerful.

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 our vast and dispersed media networks and those elected to serve and govern. So, here are my parting thoughts about 2025 and where I see us going in 2026. Many thanks to all who listen and do the work!