Category: Social Justice and Economic Opportunity

Pathways to Economic Opportunity: Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades

Posted on by Anthony Smith

As wealth and income inequality continue to climb in the United States, some employers are developing innovative models and catalytic partnerships designed to bring new skills, job access, and ultimately economic opportunity to financially vulnerable and historically marginalized individuals.

In a new interview series, Pathways to Economic Opportunity, NationSwell is taking a closer look at some of the solutions companies are pursuing in service of leveling the playing field and expanding their talent pipelines. In spotlighting some of these partnerships, this series hopes to uncover the “secret sauce” that makes these solutions successful for the benefit of other employers and their leaders.

For the first installment of the series, NationSwell spoke to Ruthe Farmer — founder & CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund — and Fabio Mendes, Global Citizenship Manager at Dow — about their talent pipeline partnership, the Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades. 

Here’s what they had to say:

Bird’s Eye View:

The Last Mile Education Fund works to identify students in the “last mile” of their education journeys and provide them with no-strings-attached, grants to help them overcome any financial hurdles standing in the way of the finish line. Through its partnership with Dow, Last Mile recently expanded its scope to include grants of up to $5,000 for low-income students specifically nearing completion in manufacturing and skilled trades programs at institutions in Dow communities.

Fast Stats: 

  • Launched in 2023, the Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades currently services talent populations in ten key markets: California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.
  • On average, the grants Last Mile awards are less than $4,200. Unlike traditional education grants, Last Mile’s investment model specifically incentivizes the use of the money in any area a student needs it, including groceries, gas, childcare, or anything else serving as a roadblock to completing their education.
  • Founded in 2019, Last Mile has awarded more than 5,132 grants to date. Grantees are 42% Black, 19% Hispanic or Latinx, 12% Asian, 16% White, and 1% Indigenous.
  • Last Mile awards three types of core grants, all of which manufacturing and skilled trades students are eligible for: rapid-response emergency financial assistance (mini-grants); bridge grants; and larger Last Mile grants.

1) NationSwell: What helps to differentiate Last Mile’s approach from some of the existing investment models designed to support educational attainment? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

I sometimes refer to our model as universal basic income for students. Scholarships are typically for tuition, housing, maybe some books, but there are other parts of life that require financial resources, too. I just approved a Dow grantee who has been on a long journey of trying to cross the finish line in her education, but the cost of living — medical bills, insurance, all the things that are not part of the scholarship landscape — had just become too much.

She also shared that she had an old laptop from 2017 that was barely functioning and needed a better device. Those are the kinds of gaps that Last Mile fills — the same gaps that are sometimes filled by a student’s parents. 

The other thing we do differently is that there are no deadlines; the application is rolling, and students can apply any day, all year. We’re not comparing the students against each other, we’re looking at them as individuals. 

We’re also very fast. If a student is facing a housing or a food crisis, they cannot wait months to hear back from a scholarship. Many scholarships can be really wonderful, but it takes months of process to get selected — they’re not designed to address immediate, pressing, basic human needs, which is what we’re doing. 

2) NationSwell: Adaptability, open communication — are there any other key lessons that you’d like to impart on other nonprofits or companies hoping to form a similar type of synergy? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

There’s been tremendous participation and engagement by the local Dow team members. We’re not physically on the ground in all of those communities, but they are, and they have relationships with, you know, the local colleges and institutions. They have relationships with the local chamber of commerce and the local media, and they also have relationships with the folks that are already in their apprentice pathways.

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

Like Ruthe said, we took an existing model that was initially for computer science graduates and we said, “Hey, maybe this could be a fit for skilled trade students, which are completely different.” 

When working with four-year graduates, Last Mile usually works with them on the last two years of their educational journey. So initially we were working with that same mindset for skilled trades, but along the way we realized those audiences had very different needs, so we switched to supporting students from the very beginning. That openness to adapting the program to a different set of needs in real-time — that has been one of the great successes of this partnership so far. 

3) NationSwell: What are some of the biggest roadblocks you’ve encountered?

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I think one of the things we realized early on is that a lot of times the students don’t necessarily think this program is for real.

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

We’re so different from what students understand scholarships to be that they can sometimes be very skeptical. I remember one grantee told me that she had let that application sit on her desktop for three weeks because she was ashamed to ask for help, she didn’t think we would say yes. And then when she finally did, we were like, oh, absolutely, yes, here’s the money. Four months later, she’s graduated and she’s in a full-time job.

We don’t have any kind of GPA gatekeeping, your grades are not a factor in whether or not we say yes to you. The only thing we’re interested in is, are you enrolled and are you on track to get this program finished? 

We’ve had to re-train the educators, too, because they’ve been taught to only send their select best students for these opportunities. We want every student who is striving to have the resources they need to finish; we see value in every striving student. Getting over that hump has been a really big challenge. 

4) NationSwell: What have been some of your most significant learnings or unlocks in the course of doing this work?

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I think one of our biggest learnings from Last Mile has been the perspective that a life-changing investment in a student doesn’t need to be gigantic — it can be a $200 grant that you promote to someone because they don’t have food for the day, and that alone could lead to them completing the course that they are on, completing the major that they’re in, and potentially securing a life-sustaining job in the future. 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

I would say the thesis that we’re trying to prove is that there is better ROI when we invest in what we call “striving students” versus the historically dominant model of rewarding outliers for prior success. If you only pick the students who have the best grades, the best GPA, have never missed a class, then you’re picking the ones who can afford that, and you’re not recognizing the immense value and problem-solving skills of a person who has struggled and persisted. 

I think a company that figures out how to bring that talent into their workforce is going to be building an incredibly strong, resilient workforce, which is what all innovation-based companies need.  

5) NationSwell: What are some of the ways this partnership is mutually beneficial — how do each of your organizations work together to advance a shared goal? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

Our partnership with Dow is unique in that we’re specifically targeting students that physically go to school and live in Dow communities, where Dow is one of the biggest employers in the field in which they are studying. This is very specific: Dow is helping you graduate in a Dow community, hopefully into a Dow job. 

It’s not a direct ask for the students, but we do have that expectation that they become at least an available pipeline for the company. That’s one of the reasons we’re geographically focused with this funding. 

It’s a great example of the spirit of our work: It’s local investment to solve local workforce issues, and you’re really investing in your own local economy. It’s really kind of working hand-in-hand to solve this gap in tech and skills, but then simultaneously investing in communities. 

6) NationSwell: What’s one call to action that you’d like other leaders or organizations like yours to heed as they consider their own opportunities to improve educational attainment and economic mobility? 

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I’d say to be more creative around some of these things. One of the crucial things Last Mile did was immediately ask how they could make the student support process more accessible. They could have just thought, let’s do a scholarship program for low-income students that have struggled throughout their journey. At Dow, we were creative in thinking that if this was designed for one specific audience, maybe we could apply the same mindset to a different audience. 

I also want to say you don’t have to start big, you can just start with a pilot. We started with a small fund in select communities with very different perspectives and contexts, and we said, let’s see if this works out, then we expanded it. 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

I think my call to action is simply for everyone to please take an abundance viewpoint as to who has the potential to be successful in your organization, and in the field broadly, whatever your field is.

•

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. 

Marguerite Casey Foundation Partners With NationSwell for Author Series Centering Radical, Transformative Luminaries

Posted on by NationSwell Team

To advance its vision for a society that prioritizes the needs of excluded and underrepresented people, Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) has partnered with NationSwell, an executive membership and advisory firm, 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.

“Stories are the foundation for a liberated future,” Dr. Carmen Rojas, President & CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation, said. “They have the power to redress historic failings, lift and illuminate the marginalized, and show us all that the path to a more just world can only be found if we expand our search past our backyards and our board rooms. We’re honored to partner with NationSwell and showcase these dynamic writers and the profound stories they’re telling.”

In fireside chats curated by MCF Book Club and organized by NationSwell, Dr. Rojas will interview each author 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. 

The series partnership will kick off in early December with “Invisible No More: Voices from Native America,” a book talk celebrating and centering Native American luminaries who are leading through cultural-grounding and nation-building in community, environmental, and economic justice. 

“It’s with deep gratitude that we have the opportunity to partner with Dr. Rojas and Marguerite Casey Foundation on this author series,” Chloe Lew, SVP of Strategic Partnerships & Innovation at NationSwell, said of the partnership. “Their standard-bearing work on funding organizing movements has been a rising tide that has lifted not just philanthropy, but all social impact and sustainability work that has historically decentered the needs and voices of the communities they’re actually trying to reach, and the authors they’ve curated for these talks represent some of our favorite books in the NationSwell Library.” Learn more about the series partnership and how you can attend these conversations here.

Marguerite Casey Foundation is an institutional member of NationSwell. Learn more about MCF here, and NationSwell institutional membership here. RSVP here.

Place-Based Impact in Practice: 36 hours in Tulsa with NationSwell and George Kaiser Family Foundation

Posted on by Anthony Smith

On the evening of October 18th, black clouds of starlings wheeled overhead as the NationSwell team made its way to meet a group of partners and leaders in downtown Tulsa. The group had gathered as part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative for an immersive, 1.5-day experience designed to explore how community-centered investment and strategic partnerships are working in concert to give new strength to Tulsa. 

The insights and best practices we gathered from GKFF’s approach — and from the experts in attendance — were many, and can better enable communities nationwide to thrive. Although it’s impossible to accurately capture and convey the profound experience of being on the ground in Tulsa, our hope is that this piece can shed some light on what it was like to come together and learn with an incredible group of leaders and inspire you as you strengthen your own community-centered, place-based work.

Day One

The day began with a tour at Greenwood Rising to hear the vital stories at the core of Tulsa’s history and identity: the impact the Trail of Tears, the systems of anti-Blackness that fomented the Race Massacre of 1921, and the cultural reverberations of both eras that are still being felt throughout the city. Despite the violence dotting its past, Tulsa and its residents have persisted — deepening their sense of community and establishing a rich sense of place and culture that makes the city vibrant and unique.

That night, we joined our hosts from George Kaiser Family Foundation for a welcome reception at a speakeasy in the city’s Deco District. After an evening of warm conversation, introductions, and getting to know one another better as we prepared for the next day, Aaron Miller — head of partnerships at inTulsa — announced that he would lead a group by bus to celebrate the city’s popular Oktoberfest, currently in its 44th year. Jonathan Pride, executive director at NPower, announced that he planned to lead a competing group to the same location via the city’s widely-available Lime scooters.

Day Two

East Tulsa


After a quick pit stop for breakfast on Thursday morning, our group set out by bus for East Tulsa, where white flight and the attendant infrastructural divestment have created unlikely opportunities for the city’s growing immigrant population. 

Cynthia Jasso — a program officer on the Vibrant and Inclusive Tulsa team — explained that East Tulsa has become a community hub, learning center, and worker community for newly-arrived immigrants, more than 1,100 of whom arrive at the Plaza Santa Cecilia from Mexico by bus each week. While organizations like Growing Together have done grassroots outreach to meet residents where they are — helping to expand access to vaccines and make PPP loan applications easier for local businesses owners — they ultimately found that there was an overwhelming need for a centralized community hub where people could get the help that they needed. Plaza Santa Cecilia has become that epicenter — a place for the community to gather, relax, take classes, shop, or even acquire permits.


The plaza features beautiful murals, restaurants, and a nightclub, and has become a major source of community pride and belonging — a critical metric of success for place-based investment. 

North Tulsa


Our next stop was in North Tulsa, where attendees heard from Pastor Philip Abode of Crossover Community Impact and Crossover Bible Church. A former University of Tulsa football player and current high school football coach, Abode’s passion for coaching youth eventually catalyzed an even deeper relationship to mentorship in the city: he now serves as executive director of Crossover Preparatory Academy, which oversees several private middle schools throughout the city.

A majority-Black neighborhood, Tulsa’s north corridor is currently the site of major community development efforts, including a planned 500-unit, mixed-income housing project and new contracts with high-quality, high-paying manufacturing jobs at companies that agree to recruit from within the neighborhood (and nearby Tulsa Technology Center). 

Kendall Whittier


As the bright sun continued to warm up the day, we visited Kendall Whittier Park — located in Tulsa’s historic Kendall Whittier neighborhood — where we learned more about how a mixed-income neighborhood trust has helped  provide stable, affordable housing, and how partners like Growing Together and Tulsa Educare have created educational opportunities and green spaces where children and families can grow and thrive. 

We also had the opportunity to tour The Gathering Place, which words alone don’t really do justice. A sprawling 66.5-acre green space nestled against the Arkansas River, The Gathering Place’s pathways were dotted with pumpkins and its playgrounds had names like “Land of the River Giants,” “Fairyland Forest,” and “Volcanoville.” All park activities are free, and guests can help themselves to kayaks and paddle boats, attend concerts on the lawn, and engage with the park’s many educational programs. 


After lunch, we reconvened at Greenwood Cultural Center for a series of panel discussions — first on how to leverage the power of storytelling, and then on how new models of collaboration across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors can help to foster opportunity from the ground up.

During the first panel, Jasmine Dellafosse — Director of Organizing and Community Engagement at EPIC — spoke about the value of telling the stories that run counter to our assumptions. 

“What are the stories we don’t know, and in whose interest is it that we don’t know them?” she asked. 

Panelist Vanessa Garrison — Co-founder and COO of GirlTrek — further emphasized the power storytelling holds in developing a community: deconstructing myths, challenging assumptions and enabling community members to lead change. 

In the second panel, a key insight that surfaced was the recognition that change doesn’t just take a longer grant cycle but can take generations to actualize. The question that emerges, then, is how do we integrate intergenerational change as a metric when measuring impact? 

At the intersection of both of these panels is the emerging understanding that how we measure impact in place-based philanthropy needs to evolve to incorporate more qualitative data, compelling us to reimagine what a thriving community really means.


After a visit to Archer Studios to learn about the Tulsa Artist Fellowship — and a ceramics activity with fellow Raphael Corzo — participants had a few minutes to rest and recharge before coming together for a NationSwell Signature Dinner to reflect on the events and learnings of the day. 

Hosting us for the evening was the team at et al., a collective of chefs working collaboratively to “build a more delicious and equitable future for the food and beverage industry in Tulsa.” Aptly named to reflect the important but often overlooked or unknown people who help to make an ambitious vision into a reality, the symbolism behind et al.’s name and mission had a beautiful symmetry with the focus of our visit to Tulsa — and the patchwork of organizations and solutions we’d witnessed firsthand on the ground there. 


Attendees dove deep into what had inspired and moved them during the course of the meal, which was themed around the idea of breaking bread (as chef Colin Sato explained, “You have now broken bread with Tulsa, and now it’s a part of you”). There was a discussion of some of the central challenges to their own place-based work, with members laying out the approaches, tools, and new opportunities for partnership they were excited to bring back to their own communities. 

Like the chefs in et al.’s culinary collective, our time in Tulsa was distinguished by the patchwork of seemingly disparate, often undersung voices we heard from joining together to create a beautiful and undeniable chorus of solutions. While partners on the ground maintain different focuses in the work that they do and the neighborhoods they serve, everything in Tulsa has a certain harmony to it; the work comes together to hum like a well-oiled machine. As we packed up to leave on Friday, we couldn’t help but think about how this model of community impact — where every voice, program, and initiative happening on the ground is truly greater than the sum of its parts — has the potential to transform not only communities, but the world.

We’re so excited to have plans for more in-person, immersive experiences in the works for the near future. This incredible experience was part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative. Our Collaborative model is based on the idea that the challenges we face call for collaboration and shared action to achieve the impact we seek on a variety of issue areas. Together, with cross-sector leaders, we illuminate challenges and opportunities in the space and align on action to advance each other’s work, and the field as a whole.

We encourage you to read more about our different Collaboratives and to contact us to get involved if you see one that resonates with you and your work. 

NationSwell Collaboratives are a new initiative convening cross-sector leaders to work in new ways on major issues affecting our lives, our nation, and our world. Learn more about our current offerings here.

What we can learn from George Kaiser Family Foundation’s place-based work in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Posted on by NationSwell Team

This fall, NationSwell launches its first immersive experience on October 18 and 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma for Place-Based Impact in Practice: An Immersive Experience to Explore Community-Centered Funding and Action. Hosted by George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) as part of our recently launched Place-Based Impact Collaborative, this hands-on event will take place over the course of one and a half days and will allow attendees to explore on-the-ground examples and innovative strategies to foster thriving and inclusive communities, particularly in fast-growing cities and rural areas. We’d love for you to join us.

But, you may be thinking, why Tulsa?

Since its establishment in 1999, George Kaiser Family Foundation has held, as its primary philanthropic goal, cementing Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a vibrant, inclusive, and prosperous environment where children and families can flourish. 

As the primary supporting organization of the Tulsa Community Foundation, GKFF funds organizations and efforts that directly service the greater Tulsa area, all while adhering to its guiding principle, “no child is responsible for the circumstances of [their] own birth.” Foundation investments include robust early childhood education initiatives that serve approximately 2,000 children in year-round education and care; over $100 million earmarked for the arts; economic development initiatives to attract and retain local businesses and talent as well as transform 100 acres of Tulsa’s iconic riverfront into a dynamic and world-class centralized park; neighborhood programs to foster a strong sense of community; and a work stipend program that has welcomed more than 2,500 diverse professionals to the city. 

GKFF harnesses a nimble, entrepreneurial spirit, which has helped to adeptly address community needs. Their approach is holistic and community-centered and driven–designed to lead with the community’s needs so that children and families in Tulsa can thrive. What sets their investment strategy apart from other philanthropic models is that it’s not only nuanced, but multi-pronged–touching almost every part of the Tulsa ecosystem. Parent engagement and early childhood education, health and family well-being, civic enhancement, and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty are all vital pillars of community prosperity.

George Kaiser Family Foundation’s holistic approach

In order to create and maintain the conditions for a thriving local community, GKFF has taken a holistic, all-encompassing approach to funding that sees early childhood education; health and wellbeing; neighborhood development; thriving public spaces; criminal justice; housing; and arts & culture as vital pillars of economic prosperity. During an onsite visit in March 2023, NationSwell got a firsthand look at how these key initiatives operate on the ground in Tulsa; below are some of the highlights we observed.

  • Parent Engagement and Early Childhood Education

GKFF provides support and resources to young Tulsa families to encourage parent‐child engagement and interaction. Through initiatives like Tulsa Educare and Early Learning Works, families and children are encouraged to pursue skill-building opportunities and early learning workshops, and are given the chance to connect with community and faith-based organizations that help to promote literacy and learning.

  • Civic Enhancement

Robust public spaces provide abundant natural spaces for residents to relax, convene and unplug. Tulsa’s 100-acre riverfront park, Gathering Place, now boasts a skate park, a picnic grove, cultural events and festivals for all ages, and free educational programming to support early childhood development. A $465 million transformation of more than 66 acres in central Tulsa, the park is one of the largest and most ambitious public parks ever created with private funds. The Foundation undertook a similarly ambitious project with Guthrie Green — a former truck loading facility that has now been converted into a 2.6-acre urban park, located in the heart of the Tulsa Arts District and a true living room for cultural programming in downtown Tulsa. 

Investments in a thriving arts scene and strong cultural values are integral to GKFF’s community approach. Both the Bob Dylan Center and the Woody Guthrie Center operate under auspices of the American Song Archives, a project of George Kaiser Family Foundation, and dedicated artist residencies, fellowships, and programming helps to further stimulate Tulsa’s growing arts community. 

In the same Tulsa Arts District as Guthrie Green sits the GKFF-funded Holberton School–a credentialing school for software developers. In addition to training career-ready developers, Holberton provides living stipends to students and tuition incentives to stay in Tulsa both pre- and post-graduation. 

Partnership is at GKFF’s core. GKFF takes a program-forward approach — meaning the Foundation serves as co- or sole owner of many of the LLCs that operate the aforementioned initiatives in Tulsa. When visiting the city, you can explore parks, cafes, bakeries, restaurants, food trucks, and programming initiatives that provide Tulsa residents with meaningful ways to stay engaged in their communities. 

  • Workforce Development

GKFF’s dedication to developing Tulsa’s tech-led inclusive economy is something to aspire to. Tulsa Innovation Labs (TIL) was founded with support from GKFF to establish a city-wide strategy for inclusive, tech-led growth. TIL designs and launches economic and workforce development initiatives in Tulsa’s four emerging tech clusters: virtual health, energy tech, advanced air mobility and cyber, and aims to support the growth of startups, train diverse talent, expand job opportunities, and spur academic innovation. And through the network of local workforce programs in Tulsa, businesses can more easily connect with key hires and launch operations in Tulsa via inTulsa’s talent, relocation, and growth solutions.

36 Degrees North — Tulsa’s basecamp for entrepreneurs, innovators, and startups — works to provide the high-quality workspace, resources, and spirited community that entrepreneurs need to build growing companies and drive economic impact in Tulsa. Workforce development programs like Tulsa Remote — which offers participants a $10,000 grant in addition to a membership at a local co-working space, support in identifying housing, and regular community-building opportunities — have helped draw new workers into Tulsa and boost retention rates for local populations.

  • Health and Family Well-Being

To address the longstanding problem of high recidivism rates in Tulsa County, GKFF has partnered with the Justice and Mobility Fund to launch JusticeLink — a compendium of resources designed to help those navigating the criminal legal system in Tulsa to access a full spectrum of community-based services. JusticeLink primarily focuses on providing court and resource navigation, while also helping individuals to access wraparound supports like phones, IDs, or benefits enrollment services.

And through neighborhood development initiatives like ElevateEast — which works collaboratively with residents, community-based organizations, and public and private entities to invest and support immigrant families living in East Tulsa — residents can further access the wraparound support they need to thrive.

Affordable housing also has a huge role to play in ensuring family wellbeing, and neighborhood development initiatives like Growing Together and Kendall Whittier West Park have been intentionally designed to create vibrant, mixed-income communities and an intense focus on the birth-to-college-to-career pipeline.

  • The Tulsa Artist Fellowship
    Dedicated artist residencies, fellowships, and programming helps to further stimulate Tulsa’s growing arts community. Established in 2015, Tulsa Artist Fellowship was created to address and mitigate the challenges facing artists and arts workers living in and joining the city. Through intentionally crafted programming, the Fellowship celebrates and supports artists across all mediums by providing them with $150,000 over three years in addition to a $12,000 yearly housing stipend. 

Stronger together

GKFF’s approach has necessitated a rethinking of scale and impact as being simultaneously micro and macro. Seemingly hyperlocal initiatives — like the neighborhood development in Kendall Whittier, or the transformation of public spaces into vibrant parks — can scale to an overall transformation that impacts community members’ wellbeing and livelihood. For GKFF, scale is ultimately not about reaching hundreds of millions of people to solve for one issue; it’s about making meaningful and impactful investments that tackle root causes, identify and address social determinants, and take into account the specific moments that come together to make up a well-lived life.

All of us invested in place-based work can learn from GKFF’s approach, bring insights back to our communities, and integrate them into our own strategies — all uniquely tailored to each place. Place-based strategies are inherently collaborative and rely on strong partnerships: together, we can learn from each other, lean on each other’s strengths, and propel strategies that have a community’s best interest at its core.  

This is why we can’t wait to share in the Tulsa experience and the work of GKFF with the broader NationSwell Community this Fall! If you are interested in joining us you can register here or learn more about GKFF’s work or the Immersive Experience on October 18-19 by emailing Joy Gregory at [email protected].

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. 

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

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

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.

Madeline Kerner, CEO and Co-Founder of Matriculate, On the Promise of Equitable College Access

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In the United States, less than half of high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds who graduate from high school apply to colleges that scan as a good academic fit for them.

While structural issues, including a lack of resources or institutional knowledge, can play a huge role in perpetuating this inequity, for many students, applying to the nation’s top universities can pose a crisis of confidence. Although attending a leading college or university can be a critical step in charting a path towards a brighter future — and despite the fact that generous financial aid packages can, counterintuitively, often mean that highly selective schools are a cheaper alternative than less competitive options — many students lack exposure to peers or teachers who have themselves applied to top colleges.

In the fall of 2014, Madeline Kerner founded the national nonprofit Matriculate in the hopes of giving students the hope, support, and models for success they need to thrive in and beyond their education careers. The organization began working to train college students from top universities like Columbia, Princeton, and Yale as Advising Fellows, who would then in turn work with high-achieving, low-income high school students in order to create pipelines to excellence. Today, Matriculate partners with Advising Fellows across 16 partner colleges and universities in an effort to guide students through their applications process and provide a model for the success they can achieve.

NationSwell spoke with Madeline about Matriculate’s impact and how creating new educational opportunities can have a transformative impact on talented students across the U.S.

NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind your work — what was the impetus for founding Matriculate? How would you explain your mission statement?

Every year, thousands of students from low-income families and diverse communities have done everything we could expect of a high school student and excelled, yet too few of these students land at a college commensurate with their track record and with enough funding to make it through. As a result, talented students across the country are not able to access the opportunities they deserve and have earned. My interest in co-founding Matriculate came in part from my own values — I was in college at the same time my 85 year-old grandparents were working on getting their degrees. Education unlocked opportunity for me and my family. But more than that, I believe all students should have the support they need to thrive. At Matriculate, we serve as allies to talented students from rural, suburban, and urban communities from coast to coast as they navigate the college application and decision-making process and encourage students to attend colleges where they will have the support they need to succeed and pursue their dreams. We hope our work can contribute to forging a higher ed system that is truly representative of the talent in our country.

NationSwell: For a lot of reasons, it must be a tough time to be working in the education space. Is there anything about these last two years of pandemic that has informed or influenced your work in a way that’s surprised you?

It really has been tough. On the one hand, I am so ready for human connection in person. At the same time, we’ve learned how powerful, flexible, and effective virtual connection can be. Matriculate provides (and always has provided) virtual advising to support talented high school students from low-income families, which enables us to support students in hard-to-reach communities. Matriculate recently received the results of a gold-standard, randomized control trial in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and CollegePoint and we’ve learned that the model is highly effective. Through virtual relationships, student are building meaningful, empathic connections with advisors. Matriculate students are going on to attend the top 80 colleges at a rate 24% higher than a pure control group. Our students also persist at statistically significant higher rates. So I am persuaded that while we all need in person human connection to break out of the challenges of the past two years, virtual connection can be very powerful.

NationSwell: Are there any initiatives coming up that you’re particularly excited about?

Yes! We’re exploring social capital—how deep connections formed between highly trained undergraduate advisors and high school students can prepare students for the college experience, help them know they belong, and help them anticipate the challenges they may face and how to navigate those issues. We are also developing new strategies to identify and connect with rural, first gen, and underrepresented students of color across the country, in part by leveraging our networks of thousands of students and advisors.

NationSwell: Do you have any helpful advice for people trying to understand how to lead or do impactful work in these uncertain times?

It has been very meaningful to be able to make a contribution during a time of great stress and uncertainty for young people and, at the same time, I have found it to be a very challenging time to lead. I have, not surprisingly, learned to hold plans very loosely and be more firmly guided by values and to reach out to connect and listen for what I don’t know.

Council member Lauren Baer on stepping into the ‘Arena’ to protect abortion rights

Posted on by NationSwell Team

In 2018, NationSwell inspired Council member Lauren Baer, a former senior policy advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to run for U.S. Congress in her home state of Florida. Her victory would have made history: Baer would’ve served as the first openly queer person to represent Florida in Washington. Following a narrow defeat, she’s now Managing Partner for Arena, focusing on supporting the next generation of women, BIPOC, and queer politicians on how to organize across the political spectrum and win seats on the federal and state level.

Following the news that the Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade’s decades-spanning federal abortion rights protections in June, and that other civil liberties like same-sex marriage might be in jeopardy, I spoke with Baer to get her unique perspective on this unprecedented moment in our nation’s history.

This is what she had to say.

NationSwell: Thank you so much for speaking with us, Lauren. Please tell us about your professional journey.

Lauren Baer: My personal journey over the last five years is one of political activation and civic engagement. Earlier in my career, I had been a practicing lawyer, and then a foreign policy official in the Obama administration for six years. But in October of 2016, I gave birth to a baby girl, and two weeks later, Donald Trump was elected president. For me, that led to a very deep questioning of how I could have the most impact in our world — how I could create the kind of world I wanted my daughter to live in at a time where I saw our own democracy in the United States very much under threat.

And so what grew out of that for me was a move from the world of policy to politics. I returned to my home state of Florida and ran for office there — in 2018, I was the democratic nominee for US Congress in Florida’s 18th District. And although I narrowly lost that race, I knew afterwards that I needed to stay on the front lines in the fight to preserve and protect our democracy and all of the rights that we hold so dear.

So for the last 14 months, I have been managing partner at an organization called Arena. Our mission is to convene, train, and support the next generation of Democratic candidates and campaign staff. And what we see our job as is essentially building and diversifying the talent pipeline into politics, so that it is more representative of our party as a whole, more representative of the country as a whole, and therefore more effective at waging these battles that we’re fighting today — not only on the federal level, but in all 50 states.

NationSwell: How does Arena do that?

Baer: There are four key components of our work, and the first component is training. Our flagship program is called Arena Academy and we’ve trained more than 6,200 campaign staffers and volunteers since 2019 — the majority of them women, the majority of them people of color, and more than 30% LGBTQ+.

We train these individuals on all of the different types of work that are necessary to run Democratic campaigns and work in movement organizations. But we don’t stop there. We have a team, our Arena Careers team, that works to place these individuals on Democratic campaigns and with Democratic and progressive organizations so that they can be carrying on the fight in all 50 states. 

We also have a suite of free downloadable campaign tools that can be accessed by campaign staff and candidates alike in order to help them build effective operations. Those tools have been downloaded more than 40,000 times at this point.

Lastly, we support the next generation of new and diverse candidates running for office by taking individuals we’ve trained, placing them on what we consider to be the most critical races around the country, and fully funding their salaries and healthcare. This ensures that these individuals who are running for office have the capacity that they need in order to run good races and win.

And here I want to emphasize that our focus since the 2020 election cycle has been on state legislative races because we recognize that state legislatures control some of the most important things that touch individuals’ day to day lives. You look across the country at legislation from Florida’s, “Don’t Say Gay” bill, to SB-8 restricting abortion in Texas, to the dozens upon dozens of laws that have been proposed and enacted limiting voting rights. We know that control of state legislatures is absolutely critical to preserving our democratic freedoms. And so we’re placing a real emphasis on supporting those down ballot candidates who are ultimately going to determine who has control at the state level and therefore the rights that most Americans enjoy.

NationSwell: As you train organizers, what messaging have you found works in building bridges to talk about abortion rights? How do you bring more conservative voices to the table here?

On abortion rights, we actually know from polling that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that abortion is a constitutional right and that individuals should have safe and legal access to abortion. So that does not need to be a partisan issue. In fact, there is overwhelming bipartisan support. And so what I find effective to do there is actually to point out ways in which the Supreme Court and the Republican party are being anti-democratic in their actions. Even in so-called red states, there is support for abortion rights from both Democrats and Republicans.

More broadly, on issues where Americans do agree, we need to put aside the partisan labels and talk about these issues as issues. And we need to question our leaders as to why, when there’s such agreement, there isn’t action in the direction that the majority of Americans want.

NationSwell: The Supreme Court confirmed yesterday that the document was authentic. If the draft opinion holds, what does this mean for women? What does this mean for queer people? And what does this mean for people of color in this country?

Baer: So this is nothing less than an all-out assault on fundamental reproductive freedoms that are enshrined in the United States constitution. If that draft opinion holds, or if anything close to that draft opinion holds, what we know is that tens of millions of individuals in our country will be denied access to abortions, that this will disproportionately affect women of color, and that our daughters will be growing up with fewer rights than we were raised with. It’s a very scary time.

What we also know is that the writing was on the wall for this. Arena recognized prior to when Texas passed the SB-8 law, which at the time was the most restrictive abortion ban in the country, that this was going to be a huge issue this election year, and that even if the Supreme Court didn’t take action, that in states around the country, there was going to be an emphasis on trying to restrict reproductive freedoms.

This is precisely the reason that we are so heavily invested in Texas this cycle, including our upcoming Arena Summit in Austin, Texas, which is taking place June 11th and 12th. There, we will be convening reproductive rights leaders from across the state, along with other activists, elected officials, and change-makers to strategize about the path forward.

Our work we see as absolutely integral to protecting civil liberties because we know that they can be restricted in so many ways by state legislatures. And so our work to ensure that we have Democratic and progressive majorities at the state level is at its core work to ensure that we are protecting reproductive freedoms, that we are protecting voting rights, that we are protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals, that we’re paying actual attention to climate change and gun safety and the like. Because we know as we’ve seen in the legislative record this year, that when Republicans have the majority, they have no qualms about taking these things away.

So the first component of our work, working to elect the right people in the right places, is our number one safeguard in terms of protecting rights. But beyond that, Arena organizes large convenings like the Arena Summit in Austin, Texas, that I mentioned, to provide a space for individuals who are working on the front lines to protect our civil liberties to gather together, to share ideas, to strategize, to chart a path forward. Because we know that if we are going to win these battles, if we are going to effectively fight back, we have to be working effectively together. And we need spaces where people can come together and do that work.

NationSwell: As a queer person, did Alito’s draft opinion trouble you about what other civil liberties might be in peril?

Baer: I think the draft opinion is an incredibly troubling harbinger of numerous negative decisions that could be handed down by the Supreme Court. We are fooling ourselves if we do not think right now that LGBTQ+ rights are on the line, that our right to contraception, our right to privacy, our right to consensual sexual relations are all on the line.

Justice Alito made very clear that he had in his sight decisions like Obergefell, which guaranteed a constitutional right to same sex marriage decisions; like Lawrence v. Texas, which protected same-sex relationships; decisions like Griswold — going back decades — which ensured access to contraception. So this is no longer hypothetical. This is about a very clear path that the court is charting to roll back constitutional rights that have been taken as sacrosanct for decades. And we therefore, as a country, have to treat this moment with the urgency that it requires. At Arena, we are not sitting back. We know that this is a moment to train people, to organize, to fight all over this country, because it is not a given at this point that our rights will endure or that our democracy will endure. So we all have to be in it together.

The NationSwell Council is a non-partisan community bringing 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.

Learnings from NationSwell’s ‘Unexpected Alliances in the Fight for Abortion’ event

Posted on by NationSwell Team

The national discourse over abortion access is often polarized along partisan or religious lines — but the diversity of people at the heart of the movement to protect reproductive rights tells a different story.

Despite the politicization of abortion access in mainstream discourse, studies have shown that a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In fact, although we might expect opinions about reproductive rights to fall along partisan lines, the truth is that there are allies working on both sides of the aisle to support a pregnant person’s right to determine their own future without being hindered by the U.S. government. 

During a NationSwell Council event, the Reverend Jacqui Lewis, a prominent faith leader and pro-choice advocate, Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, JaTaune Bosby, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, and Charlie Dent, and Charlie Dent, a Republican former member of the United States House of Representatives for Pennsylvania, took a look at how the movement for reproductive rights is a wider tent than many imagine it to be, and how unification across perceived divides is central to the work ahead. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the event:

We’re at the edge of a precipice that underscores the dire need to protect abortion from state to state

Recent abortion restrictions enacted at the state level in Texas and Mississippi have purposefully escalated the threat to abortion access up to the Supreme Court. As we await the Court’s decision, it’s important to remember the possibility that Roe vs. Wade — the decision that upholds a pregnant person’s right to abortion — could be overturned at any moment. 

Love is at the center of most religious doctrines 

Most religions advocate for a kind of “fierce community love,” as Rev. Lewis puts it — a mandate to love one’s neighbor as one loves themselves. Although those who traffic in splitting humankind around economic justice, race, gender, education, and so on have thought to use religion as the cudgel to froth up an anti-abortion community, there is no official religious teaching that condemns reproductive freedom.

“To me as a theologian, the very best way to love our neighbor is to acknowledge their autonomy and freedoms,” Rev. Lewis said.

Abortion access is more broadly supported than its detractors would have you believe

Many people, politicians in particular, frequently use abortion as a wedge issue to advocate for organizations like Planned Parenthood to be stripped of resources of federal funding. But while reproductive rights have been heavily politicized, there are voices on both sides of the aisle who support a woman’s right to choose. 

“While many Americans are conflicted on abortion… most want abortion to remain legal under most circumstances,” Dent said.

Use your voice to advocate for reproductive rights

One of the most powerful ways to lend your support to the fight for reproductive justice is to make your support visible in your spheres of influence. A whopping 70% of Americans support abortion access, and the more visible that support is, the better. Whether you’re advocating for abortion access amongst your family members, in your workplace, or at your place of worship, you may be able to have a transformative impact just by sharing your abortion story (if you’ve had one) or cementing your support.

Educate, collaborate, and advocate

If we can do those three things effectively as a collective, we’ll really be able to move forward with imagining a country that’s more inclusive and safe for all. You are a citizen and neighbor, and your neighbor’s life affects your own. Try to do the research necessary to have a well-informed position on abortion, and work to identify and elect politicians who might be sympathetic to your cause.

We don’t live in a Christian nation — we live in a nation

The democracy we want to enjoy is made up of a cacophony of diverse voices. Although Christian activists have become one of the loudest factions advocating against abortion access, there are still some who believe that we can rally around what unites us, including a shared desire for a healthy planet, having enough food on the table, racial equity, and more… striving to be a “world that delights in difference,” rather than a world divided. 

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.