Category: More on Democracy

Insights from NationSwell and Marguerite Casey Foundation’s ‘Invisible No More’ Book Club event

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Stories of Native community-building can help us redress historic inequities, create more just societies, and cultivate a better world. But far too often, Indigenous narratives are made “invisible” — intentionally and politically co-opted and obscured in an attempt to rewrite history from a colonial perspective. 

On December 6, NationSwell and Marguerite Casey Foundation were proud to present “Invisible No More: Voices from Native America,” a book club event celebrating and centering Native American luminaries who are leading in the areas of Indigenous economics, environmental justice, and community-building.

Michael Roberts, Trisha Kehaulani Watson, and Heather Fleming — a few of the essayists who contributed their words and stories to Invisible No More — were joined by Dr. Carmen Rojas, President + CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation, for a panel on the ongoing impact of genocide and settler colonialism; the racialized upward consolidation of wealth in philanthropy and beyond; and what we can do, both through our institutions and as individuals, to help support Native communities. 

Here are some of the key learnings from the event:

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Learnings and Insights

  • The “invisibility” of native communities is intentional. Any solutions-oriented approach must necessarily acknowledge that many Americans don’t think about Native communities at all, and that that invisibility — and other pernicious narratives about Indigenous populations — is by design; it works to further political interests. Recognizing and naming the violence that has been historically perpetrated against Native Americans contradicts the idea of American exceptionalism in a way that many politicians, private sector leaders, and civilians have a hard time accommodating.
  • Social movements involving climate justice must evolve to include Indigenous voices. Having long been the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to raising awareness about the environmental issues that have put us on a path to destruction, Indigenous voices should now be centered in any movement to curb the effects of climate change. Building connections and coalitions with the underfunded grassroots organizations already doing this work on the ground will be an integral step to facilitating change and steering us towards a more environmentally-just future.
  • Silicon Valley’s startup mentality and metrics for success are often diametrically opposed to Native values. While America’s tech class is primarily concerned with definitions of wealth that are defined by finance and scalability, Navajo philosophy dictates that wealth is more closely related to the ideas of balance and harmony. The idea of success will look different depending on who’s defining it, and discussing those differences explicitly will help to drive alignment.
  • Learn the history of the land you’re standing on. Acknowledging racialized violence and painful colonial histories requires discomfort, but that sacrifice will be required if we are to truly grapple with and understand the challenges Indigenous communities are facing. Asking difficult questions about simple things — like where the water every day comes from or the indigenous name of a place — can be an accessible way to honor native communities and truly begin to grapple with America’s painful history.
  • Buy Native goods and services. Investing in Native artisans, creators, and entrepreneurs provides vital cash flow into tribal economies, and also helps to preserve Native culture and history. You can check out shops like Eighth Generation and creators like Daniel John, Marissa Mike for examples of where to buy.
  • Building coalitions will be an invaluable part of building a brighter future. Through linking arms with other marginalized groups, Indigenous advocacy orgs. are beginning to see momentum through government initiatives like Justice40, which aims to cascade investments towards disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. Strength in numbers helps to create visibility — and with American Indians and Alaska Natives making up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, that visibility can make a world of difference.
  • Write a dang check. There are so many incredible Native organizations doing amazing work on the ground — but Native populations represent such a small percentage of the U.S. population that good allies will be required in order to effect real change. One of the simplest ways to support Native Americans in having the autonomy to solve the problems facing their community is by donating money — the list of grantees listed on First Nations’ website is a great place to start.
  • BIPOC cohorts — although a necessary component of the journey toward indigenous justice — still often fall short in many ways. While it is important not to become mired in games of “who’s more marginalized,” it is still prudent to acknowledge the fundamental differences faced by those of Indigenous heritage when compared to other marginalized groups. Rather than being recognized as a purely racial identity, indigenous heritage is also a political relationship with the U.S. government that has historically meant a lack of funding for roads and infrastructure; contentious legislation; a lack of funding for businesses; and much more.

To advance its vision for a society that prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) has partnered with NationSwell on the MCF Book Club: Reading for a Liberated Future, a quarterly event series promoting authors from historically marginalized populations whose work centers radical, regenerative, and transformative approaches to community-building.

Throughout 2024, Dr. Carmen Rojas (President & CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation) will interview a series of authors in front of the organizations’ shared audience of field-builders, thought leaders, impact investors, philanthropic grantmakers, elected officials, and heads of social impact and sustainability at some of the nation’s largest private sector companies. 

NationSwell Leaders on Celebrating Juneteenth by Advancing Racial Equity and Justice

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Today marks the celebration of juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Black people at the end of the Civil War. As we head into the celebrations, NationSwell reached out to some of the leaders in our community to ask how fellow leaders can join them in their efforts to advance racial equity and justice for Black people.

Here are some of the ideas, actions, and resources they’ve shared with us.

NationSwell: As we celebrate Juneteenth, what is one action that business, philanthropic, and societal leaders can take to meet this moment in racial equity and justice? 

Thea Gay, NationSwell Fellow + Youth Activist: Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said it best in her TedTalk about the danger of a single story, warning that it “creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren’t true, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”.

For far too long, Black stories have been manipulated, mishandled, and in many cases completely erased to appease White Supremacy. As a result, widespread Black representation created without the input of Black people oftentimes reflects racist caricatures of our culture and demeans the rich diversity of our community — in turn, putting forth a one-dimensional idea of who we are into the world.

This Juneteenth, I encourage everyone to take some time to immerse themselves in Black History by supporting Black authors and creatives helping to shift the narratives about our stories and who gets to tell them.

Quardean Lewis-Allen, Founder + Executive Director, Youth Design Center: It is always a great time to support initiatives that address systemic inequalities, such as education and economic mobility. But particularly at a time when philanthropy is contracting, we need to lean into local economies and amplifying the infrastructure for self-sufficiency. Place-based investment in communities can help bridge the opportunity gap and empower individuals to thrive.

Carmita Semaan, Founder + CEO, Surge Institute: This may seem overly simplistic, but my advice to leaders and friends when asked this question is to be intentional, but start small. Take one small action to educate yourself, connect with someone whose perspective and lived experience differs from yours, and allow that education or interaction to lead to another action that may positively impact those you lead. Many leaders fail to act or meet the moment in racial equity and justice because they are both afraid to say or do the wrong thing and feel that any action taken must be grandiose to make an impact.

Here’s a bit of inside information: Most grandiose acts done without education or proximity fall flat and are received as performative and lazy by those you are most often seeking to impact. Take the time to invest in your own education, growth, and healing and I promise it will impact the way you see others, the way you see yourself, and ultimately the way you lead. 

NationSwell: What’s one idea for advancing racial equity and justice that more leaders should know about — and where can they go to find out more?

Gay: One approach to advancing racial equity and justice that I think people know of — but don’t actively integrate into their everyday lives — is practicing intersectionality. Not only is it a framework to understand social theory but a lens that can be used to think deeply about our micro and macro interactions. Being aware that everyone has a distinct lived experiences shaped by oppression and privilege is key to understanding the society’s impact on different communities.

As part of your Juneteenth celebration, get curious about your knowledge of Black history and try to go deeper or take part/listen to intersectional conversations that expand your understanding of the Black experience. And most importantly never stop seeking to understand the gaps between what Black stories are being told, how, and by who. While also considering whose stories are then missing, the impact of that exclusion, and the need to highlight the intersectionality of Black identities. 

Lewis-Allen: I love the work of BlackSpace, a Black urbanist collective that collaborates with Black organizers and thinkers to co-create urbanism-themed experiences. These bespoke experiences unite Black urbanists across disciplines to share new ways of to center Blackness in architecture, design, and urban planning. In that regard, they developed the BlackSpace Manifesto to help co-creators engaged in developing projects with Black communities do so in a purposeful, non-extractive way. I reference it often as a central part of our organization’s community revitalization work.

Semaan: There are so many so I’m going to cheat and provide a few. If you’re looking for an equity assessment, customized framework and work-plan for your organization as you seek to advance equity work within your organization, I absolutely love the work Rhonda Brousard is doing at Beloved Community.

If you’re interested in empowering the next generation of leaders to build an anti-racist economy by placing diverse youth in high growth careers, check out LeadersUp under the leadership of the brilliant Jeffery Wallace.

And finally, if you want to support efforts to educate, amplify, and elevate the next generation of leaders of color working to transform systems for students, families and communities, please check out my organization Surge Institute and consider ways to join our community or support us in any way that feels comfortable for you. 

In celebration of Black lives and justice for Black communities, NationSwell asked its leaders to share some resources to support and celebrate BIPOC people. Here are just a few they’ve shared.

The Opportunity Network’s Anti-Racism Resources and Tools
The Opportunity Network is committed to its Active Core Value to Center Social and Racial Equity Relentlessly through our pedagogical practices, engagement activities, and programming. The organization recognizes our country’s long history of structural oppression and deeply rooted racism and brutality, and have compiled the below anti-racism resources for our students, families, and fellow educators. Learn more here.

The Power of Truth and Reconciliation Processes
How can a country with a history steeped in racism and violence ever hope to redress its sins and create a more safe and equitable social landscape? What will it take for America to heal? For some, the answer lies in truth and reconciliation — the process by which persistent inequalities are addressed through careful fact-gathering and supervised dialogues that seek to establish an objective version of historical events. Proponents of truth and reconciliation processes believe that confronting and reckoning with the past is necessary in order for successful transitions from conflict and resentment to peace and connectedness to occur. Learn more here.

Black History, Black Futures
In this NationSwell Mainstage, you’ll learn from cross-sector leaders in environmental, social, and place-based justice who are advancing progress in meaningful, measurable ways. Anchored in their accomplishments and expertise, they discussed the tangible actions we can take and investments we can make to ensure an equitable and just Black Future. Watch to learn how you can build a better Black future — one where Black excellence is celebrated, Black innovation is supported, Black opportunity is accelerated, and Black lives flourish and thrive.

NationSwell Collaboratives: Making the Case for Childcare

Posted on by Anthony Smith

NationSwell Collaboratives are a vehicle for bringing together committed actors to push towards collective action on a specific issue. Anthony Smith, NationSwell V.P. of Editorial, spoke to Uyen Tieu, NationSwell President, Amy Lee, NationSwell Chief Strategy Officer, Allie Mahler, NationSwell Senior Strategy Director, and Austen Zoutewelle, NationSwell Associate Director of Strategy, about the Case for Childcare Collaborative, a cross-sector coalition working to solve our nation’s crisis of childcare and help 1.1 million women return to a better workplace than the one they left at the outset of the pandemic.

Anthony Smith, NationSwell V.P. of Editorial: Why should leaders make the case for childcare?

Uyen Tieu, NationSwell President: The moment for leaders to make the case for childcare has been such a long time coming. This isn’t a new conversation in America, but it’s one that till this point had been led largely by women, experts, and activists. It took the wide scale disruption of the pandemic to get us to where we are now, where it’s now as clear for men — especially fathers — as it has been for us. We have to take advantage of this moment.

NationSwell: How did the work begin?

Amy Lee, NationSwell Chief Strategy Officer: Our first step was to recognize the mass exodus of women that left the workplace during the pandemic. At the beginning of the Covid era, 2 million women left the workforce; 1.1 million still have not returned. Their reasons aren’t just because of the tangible realities of school shutdowns and the lack of childcare — they’re about societal norms around which parent is chiefly responsible for caregiving.

One of our Studio partners told us, “We really want to work with you to tackle the problems that working womxn* and caregiving womxn are facing,” and that’s really how our Collaborative was born — out of the idea that we didn’t just want to help these women get back to work, we want to build the structures that allow women to actually thrive at work once they return.

Allie Mahler, NationSwell Senior Strategy Director: Collaboratives are all about building coalitions of committed actors for scaled, collective action. We have an incredible group of partners that have coalesced around this Collaborative initiative: American Family Insurance, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Caring Across Generations, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Working for Women, and others. It’s a powerhouse group who each bring unique expertise, funding, programming, organizing capabilities, and community to the table. I have no doubt this group will move mountains when it comes to helping businesses support low wage workers and the caregiving economy.

NationSwell: What are some of the challenges facing working caregivers in this country?

Austen Zoutewelle, NationSwell Associate Director, Strategy: Given what we know about economic disruption, it’s unsurprising that the women who are most affected by the lack of childcare in this country are women without a college degree, women of color, and small business owners. 

But one big learning for us is that the care industry — not only for early childhood education, but also for eldercare — is predominantly run by women. So not only are working mothers being affected by this disruption, but working mothers within the industry of care are also affected — even as we expect them to be at the frontlines of this crisis. Not only does that lead to fewer workers, it leads to fewer options for daycare and childcare. 

NationSwell: What advantages does the Collaborative model provide in tackling this challenge?

Lee: Philanthropy and corporate social responsibility functions are evolving at a rapid pace. Legacy models have been focused on a personal or organization-specific mission, but the new generation of leaders in this space have embraced the idea that these issues — whether it’s climate change or childcare — are too large to be solved by one person, or one family foundation, or one organization alone. We have to work together. And at the same time, we need to provide funders with a way to see what their peers are doing so that we don’t support redundant work.  

Collaboratives allow us to do exactly that — we bring funders and committed actors together to deepen and broaden their impact. We allow them to look across the space and really identify where there are unmet needs. And it also allows them to work together with partners that may not organically be at the same table without our support. 

Tieu: One of our partners said it the best: This time can be different because the table is different. NationSwell approaches this work with the nuanced understanding that the players need to work towards something that can last.

NationSwell: How is the case for childcare personal to you?

Tieu:  I’m a mom, I’m a daughter, I’m a woman, and I’m a business leader. If we’re to compete without actually addressing the urgent need for childcare, there’s going to be a knock-on effect across every aspect of society. The problem is too urgent to rely only on federal policy change. If committed actors come together now to co-create the roadmap, we can turn the case for childcare into a reality.

Zoutewelle: I watched my mom balance raising three kids and working full-time when I was in high school. She still manages caring for my brother with Down syndrome while working full-time. I’ve seen first hand the urgency of this issue, the importance of flexible working arrangements, the necessity of public policy to support parents, and the need for collaborative, systemic strategies for making an impact. The urgency is even greater for women of color in low-wage industries. It’s important to me to elevate this work so that more women can participate in the economy and feel supported as a parent. It’s critical for our moms and the future generations.

Mahler: This work is incredibly personal to me. I just returned back to work at NationSwell as a mom of two young babies under two years old while also leading our Strategy team. I love what I get to do at work, and I love my daughters, but it is not only mentally and physically taxing on a daily basis but also financially taxing to coordinate care for my children. During my maternity leave, I thought daily about how fortunate I was to have the time to connect with my daughters, and how so many women and their families are taken too soon from their babies as they go back to work at 6 or 8 weeks post-delivery. That’s why this work inspires me and lights a fire for me.

Lee: I am a privileged white woman, but nonetheless the pandemic showed me how hard it is to be a working parent. My children were one and three years old when the pandemic started, and my husband and I were suddenly thrust into full-time childcare and a full-time job at a time of huge uncertainty and fear. We were only just able to make it work and that was with the benefit of being able to work remotely and having a flexible, empathetic employer. I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been for people working shifts, or people from single parent families.

For more information on Collaboratives, visit our site.

Editor’s Note: To exercise intersectionality and inclusion, one member of our collaborative uses the spelling “womxn” whereas other members use the traditional spelling, “women.” You can learn more about “womxn” and other forms of intentional, lexical inclusion at the Womxn’s Center for Success. 

Eboo Patel and Jonathan Greenblatt Share a Potluck Vision for America

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Proponents of a pluralistic America often use the metaphor of a “melting pot” to talk about how diversity strengthens our nation. But what if we go beyond the melting pot and think of America at its inclusive best as… more of a potluck dinner?

Potlucks are civic spaces that both embody and celebrate pluralism. They rely on the contributions of a diverse community. If people don’t bring an offering, the potluck doesn’t exist. If everyone brings the same thing, the potluck is boring. They respect diverse identities by enthusiastically welcoming the gifts of the people who gather. They facilitate relationships between people by creating a space for eating and socializing and surprise connections. And they cultivate in people the importance of not just the individual parts and the connections between them, but the health of the whole as well.

At an October NationSwell Mainstage, some of the nation’s most acclaimed social impact leaders gathered in New York City for an in-person, fireside discussion of what it takes to bring this vision of America from theory to practice. Anchored by NationSwell Council leader Eboo Patel and ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, rooted in Eboo’s new book, “We Need to Build.” Together, NationSwell’s gathered guests explored the actionable, tangible steps leaders can take to move us from melting pot to potluck, learning how leaders can build and support diverse institutions for equitable social change. 

3 Key Numbers

A 76% majority of Americans says diversity is good for America.

A 47% plurality says diversity makes it harder to solve challenges.

An 82% majority says our nation is divided in key ways.

3 Key Trends

An overall satisfaction: According to research from Pew, an overwhelming majority of Americans are satisfied with the racial mix of their local communities, and would prefer if they continued to be “about as racially mixed” as they currently are — even when their communities rank as some of the least diverse in the country.

From the melting pot to the battlefield: In 1908, the “melting pot” model for diverse society, which asked immigrants to effectively dissolve their distinctiveness into the dominant culture, could be considered a big step forward. But Patel says we’ve moved past the melting pot, and we now find ourselves in the full swing of what he calls the “battlefield” approach to acknowledging the way diverse cultures exist side-by-side — and while it does ultimately acknowledge a heterogeneous national stage, it ultimately pushes us to think about pluralism through the lens of an endless conflict between dominant and oppressed cultures and people. 

Our deepest divides are growing: Studies show that Americans feels more divided now than we felt 40 years ago; and as Greenblatt pointed out, there isn’t just one thing that we feel separates us from our neighbor. The way we identify through our religion, politics, immigration status, race and ethnicity, class, age, and geography play critical roles in the pervasive feeling of fracturing.

What’s Working

Embrace the potluck vision for celebrating and centering American diversity. The potluck society celebrates what Patel calls “the delicious and multitudinous ways that we’re choosing to host a feast of gratitude.” When you tell people to come, you don’t tell them all the reasons you assume they probably can’t bring a dish. For those willing to play a key role in co-architecting the pluralistic society that reflects us at our most aspirational, the potluck dinner provides us a beautiful metaphor that begins with the profound belief that people are all contributors: that they all have a delicious dish to bring to the table. 

Acknowledge the ways that we already build bridges across political lines every day. “The only way to have a diverse democracy is to have a difference of opinion, to be able to disagree on some things and work together and work together on others,” Patel said. But the good news is: We already engage with people who think and vote differently from how we do, and we already work in deeply important ways with people with whom we deeply disagree. “Heart surgeons don’t ask each other how they voted,” he noted. “In a diverse democracy, people can disagree and still work together.” As an exercise, he invited guests to think about ten things we did today in which we’re unsure of the politics of the person who did them for you, or with whom you did them.

The Challenges That Remain

Acknowledge the very real roadblocks to unity. As one guest pointed out, there are groups of people in the country who might be more opposed to joining in on a vision for America that celebrates diversity, and whom she warned “might be bringing guns to the potluck.” Patel acknowledged the reality of those fears, but centered the conversation on the productive power of coming into each conversation with an open mind, an open heart, and the belief that all people are capable of making a positive impact on this shared vision if you invite them to do so.

What To Do

Our successes are temporary if we don’t ask ourselves one radical question. Eboo notes that, within the last two weeks, we likely had an experience where we were cheering for or helping somebody with whom, relatively recently in our ethnic heritage, there has been a blood conflict. He notes that these moments represent massive achievements, but the cautions that we should recognize that these moments could be fleeting if we don’t actively work towards creating more of them. “What does it look like to ask, in a society of 33 million people, what’s going right, and how do we do more of what’s going right?” Eboo asked. “If we can achieve that in our civic life, cooperation around certain identities, can we use that as  a paradigm by which we spread that ethos elsewhere?”

The power of understating your case. Patel advises those pushing to change our institutions for the better to remember that causing dislocation and suffering is not our intention. In fact, one of the best metrics of success in our project of creating a healthier democracy will be our ability to create more of the functioning institutions that we want to see more of. “If the goal is generating dissatisfaction, we get an A+,” Patel said. “But can you build alternatives that are better? Defeat the things you do not love by building the things you do. If society is largely made up by its governing structures and institutions — like schools, hospitals, YMCAs, companies, and networks of housing — then we need to build better institutions.”

NationSwell is an award-winning social impact company that assists changemakers, thought leaders and purpose-driven business executives as they drive social impact at scale. Through a robust membership community and the nation’s leading social impact studio, NationSwell supports these impact leaders on a range of our world’s most pressing issues. Learn more here.

NationSwell Leaders on the Biden Administration’s Student Debt Forgiveness Plan

Posted on by NationSwell Team

On August 24, President Joe Biden’s White House announced intentions to ease student debt obligations by up to $20,000 for millions of Americans. Early details of the plan included a commitment to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt from the U.S. Department of Education for any borrower who earned less than an adjusted gross income of $125,000 ($250,000 for married couple filing jointly or head of household) in either 2020 or 2021, with Pell Grant recipients reportedly eligible to receive an additional $10,000 in relief on top of that.

While the finer points of the new debt forgiveness plan are still being hammered out, the measure is already set to have sweeping implications for those who qualify. To help make sense of the policy, NationSwell reached out to our community of experts for their reactions, and to ask if the plan goes far enough towards ensuring a more equitable playing field for millions of debt-saddled Americans.

Here are some of their responses:

NationSwell: What does the student loan forgiveness news mean in practical terms, for both workers and students? 

David Shapiro, CEO of MENTOR
Similar to the enactment, further guidance, and activation of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness over the last year, this is another opportunity for economic relief and increased stability for folks who work for non-profits and anyone looking to start a career in the sector. It is also important to note that it will affect people of all ages, not just the person who is receiving loan relief. Economic relief for parents and spouses can affect whole families and communities. Student debt burden has also often been intergenerational as well. Awareness is crucial so that folks get the full benefit of this opportunity, and that’s where community-based organizations, mentors, and others need to spread the word and help folks access this.

Mohan Sivaloganathan, CEO of Our Turn:
We need a future-facing lens with respect to student debt. President Biden’s announcement provides current day relief for past issues, but the structural issues that perpetuate racial inequity still exist — such as students of color lacking financial, college, and career planning resources in middle/high school (a stark contrast to white and/or affluent students).

Zeeshan Ali, a former Our Turn student leader who recently wrote a piece on student debt:
For both workers and students, such forgiveness provides a great opportunity for upward mobility and financial sustainability. Whether it be $10,000 or $20,000, those amounts mean the difference between eating three meals a day or going hungry, being able to pay rent or becoming homeless, buying a car or walking miles to work . For current and prospective students, I believe it generates ambition within them to continue their pursuit of higher-education, knowing that attending a college is within their reach .With hope that such a culture of affordable education is prolonged, I foresee an increase in minority enrollment in educational institutions, thus closing the wealth inequality gap. Workers will feel that relief as well: I know of many friends who are working jobs that do not interest them, however, the pay of such jobs helps with their student debt. With this forgiveness, workers can have more flexibility in their career paths, and it can enable them to work in a field they want to, vs. one that they have to.

Martin Kurzweil, Vice President of Educational Transformation at Ithaka S+R:
While there are some open questions about when it will take place (as it will likely be challenged in court) and how it will operate, once in effect, President Biden’s loan forgiveness order would completely wipe out debt for millions of borrowers, many of whom have not completed their degree, are not recognizing the value of their investment, and have been shut out of ineffective existing options for reducing or cancelling their debt. Getting out from under that burden will allow those individuals to make family, financial, and educational plans that their debt has put on hold. I do worry that the forgiveness program, as seemingly simple as its criteria are, may prove administratively complicated — the process will need to be carefully designed to ensure that it does not put bureaucratic barriers in the way of individuals who would otherwise be eligible. The more the Education Department can process the forgiveness automatically, using information it (or other branches of the federal government) already has, the better. Although debt forgiveness doesn’t address the ongoing accumulation of new debt, it does put greater pressure on the administration and Congress to address problems of college affordability, wasted individual expenditures by those who don’t complete or get a credential of value, and ongoing processes for ensuring repayment and interest accumulation aren’t overwhelming. The administration’s announcement included some indications of how it plans to address income-based repayment, public service loan forgiveness, and institutional accountability, but a lot more detail is needed on those plans.

Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO of Digital Promise:
In many countries around the world, students don’t exit formal education saddled with debt. In practical terms, students can spend more time building the foundation for economic security and not worrying about repaying a loan that often greatly exceeds their annual income. It also allows some to enter graduate school and further their education. 

NationSwell: What are some of the next steps we’ll need to take in order to advance educational and workforce equity?

David Shapiro, CEO of MENTOR:
Driving equity is about culture, structure, and systemic examination and change. We have to look at the barriers and biases that drive access, engagement, and retention. These could be economic, process driven, geographic, representative, along with other factors. And it requires deep listening, action orientation, benchmarking, communication, and marking progress and setbacks. It is a consistent pursuit and while there may be milestones, there is not an endpoint.

Dr. Noel Harmon, President and Executive Director of APIA Scholars:
We are grateful for the Biden administration’s recognition of the crippling effects of student loan debt, especially for the relief that will be directed towards the most under-represented and disadvantaged students in the educational process. While we appreciate that this is progress in providing aid to those who are most in need, we also feel that there are core problems that remain unsolved and must stay in the forefront. We need to continue to address systemic issues impacting educational equity, including financial barriers, access, and support.

Zeeshan Ali, former Our Turn student leader:
Outside of the student debt crisis that still remains, we must provide resources to marginalized communities in the form of community building, career guidance, and most of all, financial investments. I have seen it in my hometown of Palm Beach, Florida: There are mansions on one block of the street, but if you drive a block or two away, there are houses with broken windows, rundown schools, and mold-ridden recreational centers. We must allocate money towards such poverty-ridden areas to build better institutions that encourage personal development — in areas of both education and career, we need to reaffirm to the younger generation that they are not forgotten, nor do they mean any less than a student who lives in the wealthier part of town. And above everything else, we must make progressive change together, on every level. From the grassroots organizer to the President of the United States, there cannot be change if we are not unified in our efforts to make the world a better place, a place that promotes inclusion, offers opportunities of growth, and relentlessly fights for equity, for this generation and those to come. 

Mohan Sivaloganathan, CEO of Our Turn:
We need to invest in reframing the narrative around education and race. Too often, education is viewed as a critical lever for upward mobility and success — UNLESS — it is a Black, Indigenous, or Student of Color, and suddenly they are viewed as asking for a handout. The elimination of predatory higher education practices — while addressing an unjust playing field leading up to higher education — can actually forge a more prosperous, inclusive, and healthy country.

Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO of Digital Promise:
We need to make college more affordable and create better pathways from education to a meaningful career — one that puts young people on a path to economic security, well-being and personal agency. The Education Secretary’s push to greatly increase PELL is one good step in that direction. 

Martin Kurzweil, Vice President of Educational Transformation at Ithaka S+R::
There’s so much to do! Focusing on the federal and state level, the federal government and states ought to orient their spending and policies toward providing value with their investments in education — improving affordability as well as attainment of credentials that have labor market value. An important step is providing adequate resources to public institutions, especially those that serve large populations of students of color and lower-income students (which currently are less resourced than those serving wealthier, whiter student populations). An important issue that affects attainment is that the majority of students will earn college credit and other forms of validated postsecondary learning from more than one source, and we are terrible at reconciling all that evidence of learning and enabling seamless transfer — it results in a huge waste of time, money, and effort, and it disproportionately harms people of color and those from lower-income backgrounds. Streamlining transfer by aligning policies, providing better access to information and guidance, and reducing administrative barriers will benefit millions of individuals.

Expanding access to quality higher education for the incarcerated: An interview with Mount Tamalpais College’s Jody Lewen

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In January 2022, after an arduous 18-month application and review process, Mount Tamalpais College was granted Initial Accreditation by the Accrediting Commission for Junior and Community Colleges, making it the first accredited independent liberal arts college dedicated specifically to serving incarcerated students.

Operating out of San Quentin State Prison — the oldest operating correctional facility in California, tucked away on a peninsula just outside of San Francisco — the staff at Mount Tamalpais has long been dedicated to ensuring that students on the inside receive a high-quality education at least comparable to what they might receive at a quality educational institution on the outside. 

Along with providing “an intellectually rigorous, inclusive Associate of Arts degree program and College Preparatory Program, free of charge, to people at San Quentin State Prison,” Mount Tamalpais also seeks to “expand access to quality higher education for incarcerated people, and to foster the values of equity, civic engagement, independence of thought, and freedom of expression,” according to its website.

NationSwell Council member Jody Lewen, the founder and president of Mount Tamalpais College, recently sat down with us to talk about advocating for academic quality and inclusivity and the process of building Mount Tamalpais’s programs into what they are today — a process, she said, that “really strained my atheism.”

Read our full interview with Jody below:

NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about how you ended up working in prison education.

Jody Lewen, founder and president of Mount Tamalpais College: I grew up in Manhattan and went to Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut, for undergrad, and then a short time later moved to Berlin and ended up doing my Master’s in comparative literature and philosophy. I came to California in 1994 to do my doctorate at Berkeley, but while I was about halfway through working on my dissertation, I very coincidentally learned about this college program at San Quentin that was run entirely by volunteers and became very interested.

I knew nothing about prison, it was not a field I had read about or studied. I had done a lot of political work and read a lot of history and literature as an undergrad and was very aware, in a mostly abstract sense, of suffering in the world, but I really hadn’t found a way to integrate my political interests with my academic career path. But I thought the program sounded really interesting, so I ended up going into San Quentin in the spring of 1999 and teaching a public speaking class and really loving it.

NS: What were some of the early challenges or surprises you faced in doing this work?

Mount Tamalpais College’s Jody Lewen: It was a lot of my own demons about education — there were so many very humbling ironies. I had never interacted with adults who were as talented and intelligent whose basic skills in reading and writing were as poor, and it made me realize that I had a lot of ignorant assumptions about the correlation between basic skills and intellect.

When I got that first batch of papers back, I didn’t even know how to grade them, because there were so many problems. So I eventually went back and had a conversation with the students where I said look, guys, I’m realizing there’s all this stuff you haven’t been taught about college writing and I’m not sure how to handle this but I don’t really feel comfortable letting this stuff slide. They just overwhelmingly were like, ‘Please don’t patronize us, people have been underestimating us our entire lives.’ They didn’t want to be in a prison college program; they wanted to be in college, and they wanted to learn what they really needed to know to be successful in the outside academic and professional worlds. 

NationSwell: How did you go from working as a volunteer at San Quentin to becoming the founder and president of Mount Tamalpais?

Lewen: I had gotten very interested in the recruitment and training of faculty, because very early on I had become aware that they were not acquiring the basic skills they were going to need to be successful in a rigorous academic environment. It became a question of, should the standards we’re holding our students to on the inside be the same ones we’re holding our students to on the outside? And if not, why not?

I’m the most unreligious person to walk the face of the earth, and yet a series of things began happening that really strained my atheism. It was like an intervention: We started to realize that the problem was not just that they were so underprepared academically; the problem was us, it was that we didn’t have the resources or the time to build a program that really met their needs. And then the fellow who was running the program left, and the whole thing collapsed on me like a house. I began to tear out walls and floors and ceilings; our courses weren’t in compliance with the minimum number of contact hours, so I extended the semester from 10 weeks to 13 weeks, increased the class meetings to twice a week from once a week, and began to recruit teachers who knew how to teach developmental writing and math. And we basically overhauled the whole pre-college writing and math program.

NationSwell: What are some of the things you think about in trying to recruit new educators to meet these challenges?

Lewen: To be frank, most people assume that prison is a scary place to be, understandably. We’ve all been taught to imagine incarcerated people as ugly, predatory, not very bright. So getting people to overcome their physical fear of prison is huge. It helps a lot, as the program has grown, we have so many current and former faculty members who can’t stop talking about what it’s like to teach there, and they’re really our recruitment army. 

And then the other thing I’ve noticed is that the universe of people who are interested in prisons and serving the incarcerated are often relatively politically similar to each other. The Bay Area is obviously quite progressive, so cultivating intellectual diversity among the faculty can be quite challenging. I take really seriously the fact that our students are really diverse in every way — not just racially or ethnically but also culturally, ideologically, politically, they’re from all corners of the universe. So diversity is also an important value in our recruitment processes.

NationSwell: What can interested members do to help support the work that you do, or prison education more broadly?

Lewen: For the fall semester our instructors are mostly lined up already, but in general we’re always looking for volunteers. For the credit classes the lead instructor has to have at least a master’s degree in the field, but for the developmental education classes and also any tutoring roles, the requirements are a little bit more flexible. [Anyone interested in volunteering can get in touch through Mount Tamailpais’s website here.]

We’re  always looking to connect with individual and institutional funders who are excited about the idea of providing high quality educational opportunities to currently incarcerated people. Unlike traditional colleges, we charge no tuition and receive no state or federal funding. This is fantastic for preserving our autonomy and our capacity to innovate, but it’s also real work to raise $5 million a year. People can always reach out to us, or directly support our work at mttamcollege.org/donate. 

There are also other nonprofit organizations that support reentry and other ancillary fields that can always use volunteers.A number of excellent organizations in the Bay Area have been founded by our alumni, either while they were still inside or once they got out. Some of those organizations are:

  • Bonafide (bonafidelife.org), an amazing reentry organization that works with people from the moment they’re released and then stays with them throughout their lifetime helping them adjust and thrive. 
  • The San Quentin News, the prison newspaper that’s in a period of tremendous growth right now.
  • Mend Collaborative, a restorative justice organization that was recently co-founded by an alumnus of ours.
  • Veterans Healing Veterans, founded by a former student, which supports currently or formerly incarcerated veterans.
  • Ear Hustle, a podcast that was co-founded by a former MTC faculty member.

Learnings from NationSwell’s event on ‘Harnessing the Power of Media to Destigmatize Abortion’

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In July 2022, amid the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s repeal, the NationSwell Mainstage convened thought leaders, experts, and social impact practitioners to discuss an unexpected front in the movement to protect and advance abortion rights: the media.

At the event, filmmaker and NationSwell Council member Jess Jacobs moderated an expert panel featuring journalist Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Dr. Eva Lathrop, Global Health Director at PSI, sociologist Gretchen Sisson. Together, they explored media’s responsibility to women and pregnant people amid this rollback of rights, its undeniable power to normalize subjects that carry social stigma, and why it’s such a key component in the effort to affirm the rights of people with uteruses to health and bodily autonomy.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.

Television and movies give writers a chance to connect audiences with abortion stories that resonate with them on a personal level. According to Sisson, screenwriters have an opportunity to craft abortion narratives that provide viewers with a window into something that they might have experience with — exposing them to new perspectives and shifting their beliefs in the process. By using characters that audiences already have an emotional connection to, writers can tell abortion stories in ways that feel familiar, relatable, and sympathetic.

Reaching out on your side of the political aisle matters — reaching across the aisle, not so much. When it comes to trying to change hearts and minds, appealing to pro-lifers to change their stance on abortion is likely a lost cause, according to Sisson. Your energy would be better spent trying to move the needle with people who are already mostly politically aligned with you, making the effort to shift their perspective and increase their field of awareness.

“A huge opportunity in storytelling is not to talk across the aisle too much — they’re not going to listen anyway,” she said. “But you can focus on breaking down the stigma for people who are, if not on the same page, on the same chapter as you, or at least reading the same book, and then you can sort of move them further along.”

Social stigma doesn’t just affect abortion-seekers — it also affects healthcare providers. According to Dr. Eva Lathrop, an OB-GYN by trade, the stigma surrounding abortion care frequently represents a threat of violence for the healthcare workers performing the procedure in addition to the threats already facing the person undergoing the procedure.

“If I had a group of 100 providers and said, ‘how many of you have hidden or selectively eliminated some of the work you’ve done in abortion care?’ I think all of us would raise their hands, and I think that’s out of fear,” Lathrop said.

More people are engaging with news about abortion than ever before.
Reporters covering abortion tend to have a difficult time balancing their editorial interests against newsroom traffic metrics. Put simply: Abortion stories don’t “click” well, according to Mukhopadhyay, meaning that recent political movement in the abortion space has had the unexpected and unintended consequence of generating a lot of newfound interest in the subject.

“It’s exciting to see that newsrooms are finally taking the stories about reproductive rights and access to abortion seriously,” she said. “Having been an editor on these stories, when we have the pressure to get traffic and clicks, a lot of us have faced barriers n terms of elevating stories.”

Opinion journalism that supports the idea of a “pro-choice feminism” isn’t just misleading — it’s dangerous.
According to Mukhopadhyay, the slate of op-eds that have been coming out in service of normalizing a pro-choice position that supports women’s best interests aren’t factually sound and shouldn’t be printed.

“If you don’t believe in bodily autonomy, you can’t be a feminists — we can’t accept things that are factually inaccurate or that exist in an alternate reality,” she said.

We need to normalize depictions of self-managed abortion.
Within the pro-choice community, and particularly among activists, there is still a tendency to wield symbols of a pre-Roe abortion experience. “Coat hangers” and “dark alleyways” are frequently referenced as if they are tangible threats that are synonymous with the fight for reproductive justice, but in reality medication abortion options — including Mifepristone and Misoprostol — are safe, effective, and widely available. While it’s true that women will suffer when abortion is not widely accessible, there’s no reason to believe we will ever return to the “dark days” of pre-Roe — and acting like we might only serves to fuel hysteria and misinformation.

Instead of “cancelling” people for their ignorance, seek to educate them.
According to Sisson, abortion is a space where many people lack expertise and understanding — meaning there’s a large margin for error on the correct terminology, logistics, and particulars. That lack of understanding can contribute to discomfort, which is why it’s important to meet people with empathy and understanding in order to help them see things from your perspective.

“Making space for discomfort is really important in order for us to engage with issues like abortion and create more common ground, and that’s what the power of storytelling is — meeting a range of audiences where they are,” she said.

To learn more about how NationSwell supports social impact leaders, visit our hub.

Learnings from NationSwell’s event on immigration with Ali Noorani

Posted on by NationSwell Team

We often hear that the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” but this notion doesn’t reflect the realities of either our national discourse or federal immigration policy.

In his new book, “Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants,” Ali Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, explores the recent history and current landscape of U.S. immigration policy through the stories of immigrants themselves.

In a recent Council event with NationSwell, Ali joined us to discuss his book, the rise of certain anti-immigration narratives — particularly on the far-right — what can be done to change these narratives, and what steps must be taken on a federal and local policy level to truly make it possible for immigrants and refugees to flourish.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the event.

Change is most effective when it comes from within

It’s extremely difficult to change somebody’s social and political views as an outsider. This can be especially true of issues, such as immigration, that large media companies like Fox News have a vested interest in shaping. But there are groups of conservatives who have broken from the narratives around immigration that are being pushed, and they have the best chance of affecting change in their own circles.

This is not to say that liberals and progressives are powerless to move the needle. The key, however, is for them to focus their energy on smaller scale outreach, as fact checking and scolding far-right media narratives has little practical effect.

We must make an effort to understand the fears of those who hold anti-immigrant views

Those who oppose immigration typically have a common set of fears: Culture, security, and economy. However wrongheaded or inaccurate these fears may be, if an attempt isn’t made to understand them, then the work of changing the minds of those who hold them becomes exponentially more difficult. When people feel their concerns are being dismissed outright, they are much less likely to want to be part of a dialogue.

What can we take away from the situation in Ukraine?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest and fastest mass migrations since World War II. Attitudes towards Ukrainians fleeing their country are generally positive, but rather than dwell on the disparity between how they are looked upon favorably while, for example, Central and South American migrants have often been demonized, we should use this opportunity to reshape our national immigration policy. The United States can use both the war in Ukraine and the recent influx of Afghan refugees to make permanent changes to its immigration policy and restore its gutted resettlement infrastructure.

What are some steps that still need to be taken to help immigrants and their children succeed in the U.S.?

Education is a key tool in this effort. Our schools must do better at even the basics of teaching about immigration so that non-immigrant students can better understand what their classmates or possibly classmates’ parents have gone through. Educators must also be provided with access to professional development so that they can better teach immigrant students. Immigrant families must also be provided with the basic infrastructure to succeed in the U.S. economy, such as access to the naturalization process through their employers, English classes if needed, and assistance obtaining necessary licenses to open businesses.

The NationSwell Council community brings together a diverse, curated community of bold individuals and organizations leading the way in social, economic, and environmental problem-solving. Learn more about the Council here.