Image Credit: Yoann Boyer on unsplash.com As a lawyer, I wasn’t prepared to be poor, Black, and ashamed. But just three months into my career as a police misconduct attorney, I received an endless stream of debt collection calls. Agents hounded me to make student loan payments that I could not afford. For over a decade,
President Joe Biden’s recent decision to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for certain borrowers marked an important first step in acknowledging and repairing the United States’ broken higher education infrastructure. Of course, Biden’s executive order is presently stalled in court. But let’s assume that the Biden administration ultimately prevails. Even if Biden’s debt
Image Credit: congerdesign on pixabay.com This article concludes the Community Strategies for Systemic Change, a series co-produced by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NPQ. In the series, urban and rural grassroots leaders from across the United States share how their communities are developing and implementing strategies—grounded in local places, cultures, and histories—to shift power and achieve
When schools and daycares shuttered, when food and other supply chains broke, who delivered baby supplies to parents juggling virtual work and young children? Who opened emergency childcare centers for the frontline workers who didn’t have the luxury of working from home? Who brought food to housebound elders? It wasn’t for-profit companies. The nonprofit sector,
Image Credit: Jon Tyson on unsplash.com This article concludes NPQ’s series on Community-Driven Philanthropy. In this series, movement leaders explore what’s possible if philanthropy adopts a reparative model—one in which it supports the leadership of BIPOC communities, not just by writing grants, but by shifting assets and control over resources to frontline communities. The movement for
