Hosts: Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht
Featuring: Karla Nicholson
(Haymarket People’s Fund) and Lucas Turner-Owens (Boston Ujima Project)

Hundreds of years of racist institutional policies have denied wealth to Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. In this current period of uprising, resistance, and crisis on racial injustice, organizational leaders are asking: what does it look like to make structural change for racial justice? Two organizations in Boston, the Haymarket People’s Fund and the Boston Ujima Project, provide a critical model for applying an anti-racist lens to operations, mission, ongoing learning, and accountability.

In the first episode of Untying Knots, recent Harvard Kennedy School MPA graduates and hosts Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht (of the IARA Project Team at the Shorenstein Center) take a closer look at the history of institutional racism in lending, and efforts locally to re-think radical redistribution of power and resources. Interviews with key staff at both organizations reveal how they translate their mission to anti-racist funding mechanisms. Haymarket’s story demonstrates a twenty year organizational journey of working towards anti-racist change, and Ujima provides a model for equitable community lending.

The Untying Knots Podcast explores how people and organizations are reimagining society and dismantling systems of oppression.

 

Notes:

Untying Knots is a collaboration between Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht. It is supported by Dr. Megan Ming Francis. Thanks to Karla Nicholson, Lucas Turner- Owens, Carolyn Chou and Alex Papali.

Learn More:

Haymarket People’s Fund: https://www.haymarket.org/

Boston Ujima Project: https://www.ujimaboston.com/

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond: https://www.pisab.org/

Asian American Resource Workshop: https://www.aarw.org/

Music:

Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/