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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you talk a little bit about the political background and state of the Left in the 1970s and how In These Times emerged from this political moment?

The simplified answer to this question is that in the mid-1970s—after Watergate, the Vietnam War, and other fundamental lies told to the American people—you had kind of the highest level of distrust of government and institutions. After the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, there were two different impulses on the American Left. One was the continuation of a revolutionary idea: the idea that we were in a prerevolutionary moment, and that that revolution could be sparked at any time. The other was really trying to grapple with the forces of reaction, and how to rebuild organizations that had been destroyed and damaged coming out of that era—the New American Movement, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. I think there was also a continued attempt to think about radical and revolutionary third-world struggles, but most of the work was developing what we think of as modern American democratic socialism.

During this time, a crew of writers and editors moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chicago, where organizing veterans from different political persuasions were located. It was seen as a place where there could be a linkage between the Labor movement and other coalitions. It’s not an accident, for example, that Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and the Black National Political Convention were formed in the Midwest in the 1970s. It was a very formative moment, and there was a lot of ferment and room to broaden out the definition of the Left.

I do think there are a lot of similarities today. As far as our own moment of distrust, we’re sitting here almost 20 years after the Iraq war started. It’s been a longer lead from the conditions that have seeded this moment, but there’s a lot of parallels in what’s happening inside the Left. While we’re talking, it looks like Shawn Fain is very likely to be elected president of the United Auto Workers¹ in the first contested election in almost 80 years. There is a nascent democratic movement inside the Teamsters, the UFCW, and other unions. And obviously, the global pandemic is a fulcrum that is helping to create a lot of confusion, chaos, and possibilities.

In These Times covers both the relationships between social movements and progressive electoralism as well as investigations of corporate and political power. Why are these key areas for journalism coverage today?

Historically, movements have not been able to mature or exercise power without media of their own that can help inform and challenge them, and that allows them to strategize and create analysis. Conversely, good investigative journalism does not just expose the bad actions of corporations, it can unmask existing power structures and tell a bigger story about politics. I think that these two impulses in concert represent really clear paths toward an objective for Left media. Our job is not just to inform people, we’re not trying to be an “unbiased” source of information. We’re trying to be part of a political project that creates social, economic, and political transformation. To do that, we’ve got to be able to dive deeply into some of the contradictions, to be both a trusted source of information for those engaged in movements and a source of critical analysis of the movements themselves.

Could you talk a bit about some of the key projects that In These Times has taken on or is planning? What does the publication see as its major area of intervention in the media landscape? How has it responded to recent political transformations, like the 2020 uprisings for racial justice, the pandemic, and skyrocketing inequality?

For almost 50 years, the center of In These Times has been coverage of the labor movement and worker movements in general. It has gone through different generations of engaging with the Labor movement, sometimes as a constructive critic, sometimes as a tool for expanding the reach of certain forms of organizing. Unions and organized workers are a place of enormous leverage. There’s a way to think about labor, work, and the economy not as the central issue, but as a point of intersection. The heart of it is, how do different oppressions, movements, or other forces impact people in their day-to-day, when they are making a living, taking care of their families, and doing the things that consume most of their time?

In terms of current political transformation, I don’t think that organizing can happen in the same way without the 2020 uprisings, and our challenge is to find out how to help different movements constructively engage with each other. In the years since, we did a very successful Movement for Black Lives takeover issue, and we’ve covered organizing at Amazon and the Amazon Labor Union as an extension of the energies driving the protests and racial justice organizing. I think these move us a step forward in thinking how we engage and connect these fights, whether movements for racial justice, reproductive justice, or labor rights. These are all-encompassing issues, and we must figure out how to clarify them.

Could you talk a little bit about your background in organizing? How have your experiences in labor and progressive movements led you to become the director of a media organization?

My whole organizing career has been about finding different approaches to building a majoritarian political project that can liberate people and allow them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor. A lot of the work I’ve done over the last 10 years has been, in the simplest sense, about coalition building and movement alignment. In 2001, I worked as a community organizer in New York City with the New York Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which was the first year that the Working Families Party was active in New York City, and after which there was explosive union growth and possibility. I was in the right place at the right time, and willing to learn and take in information.

I was also one of the founding members of United Working Families, which is an independent organization based here in Chicago that was started in 2014 by my former union SEIU Healthcare–Illinois and Indiana, the Chicago Teachers Union, and community-based organizations such as Grassroots Illinois Action and Action Now. The idea behind UWF was that we had to build independent political power to create transformational change. Right now, a founding member of UWF, Brandon Johnson, is in the runoff for Chicago mayor, which is not something I imagined would be possible within 10 years of the organization’s existence.²

This position is no different, in that I think the perspective I am bringing to media is thinking about it as an organizer. How are we going to expand our reach, how are we going to expand not only power for ourselves and the collective projects we serve?

Media is in a severe ownership crisis. What are the major issues in the sector as you see them, and what challenges and opportunities do independent outlets like In These Times face at the moment?

Mainstream media in the US has not recovered from its consolidation into three networks and the burst of options that have erupted in the aftermath. We can talk about the golden age of the newspaper, and various mouthpieces in metros, and the competition amongst various segments of the ruling class. The recent wave of layoffs shows that the corporate media has a weak hold on controlling the biggest ways of delivering information.

Our job is to take up the space that’s being abdicated by corporate media, which continually pivots to meet the demands of market innovations in late capitalism. Right now, it’s private-equity ownership. Ten years ago, it was something different. My entire life, media has been dying. It won’t die, and it won’t do it until we’re able to replace it with something else. That’s the task of not any one publication, but of the Left more broadly, to replace those institutions with ones that can better speak to our majorities. It won’t be Walter Cronkite on the nightly news, but it will be a new kind of hegemony.

To create a powerful media, we need to tell untold stories, interpret the status quo, and strategically popularize our own narratives of power.

What is the relationship between building strong progressive movements against right-wing authoritarianism and neoliberal capitalism and having a strong independent media sector? What do movements need from the media, and vice versa?

It’s kind of a truism that liberalism is not enough, that attempting to purely unmask hypocrisy or meet people in a reasonable middle are misled goals at a time when the center of gravity is so far to the right and has such a strong pull. Any movement that doesn’t have its own proactive program will get pulled in that direction, not because of the ill intentions of any individuals, but because the moment requires sharply staking out space.

That’s what I think movements need from media. I don’t think movements need a megaphone, but a willing partner to be both supportive and critical of what’s working and what’s missing. We don’t need to match right-wing projects like Breitbart or Fox News. But the Right has strategically found and fed ideas like critical race theory to its media, and that has paid real dividends. We need a different relationship between progressive media and the movements that it reflects and analyzes.

Progressive movements operate on a terrain that involves many struggles. What are the possibilities and challenges for representing the uneven and contradictory character of these struggles? How do we create media to meet this challenge and reach a broader audience, from grassroots organizers to legislators to everyday working people?

We are always trying to strike that balance at In These Times. In the past few months, we’ve put out some stories that have both been very popular on our site and also useful to organizers. One was about a high school in Iowa using restorative-justice practices and reducing the dependence on school police. Another was focused on horrible working conditions at a food warehouse in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Both stories reached a big audience and were used by local organizers, who used the story as succinct proof with which to lobby state legislators.

There is a real sweet spot in speaking to a broader audience while creating something that is of real utility to a smaller audience. In These Times has been very good in making these connections, but I think that’s always something that we can work on going forward. How do the people working for the magazine understand what is going on in the world? How do they translate that for a bigger audience? How does their work shape or serve political activity? One of the places where I think that balance has worked is in coverage of the official labor movement, the reform movements inside it, its shortcomings and opportunities. I think that’s a needle to thread in media.

What are you hoping to bring to the role of ED, and how are you hoping to help the institution keep thriving?

I’m taking over for Joel Bleifuss, who was the editor and publisher at In These Times for over 25 years and ran this magazine through really challenging times. The world has changed so many times in the past quarter century, and it’s remarkable to think about leading the publication from Bill Clinton’s second term, through the rising global justice movement and the formation of a new Left after 9/11 and the Iraq War, through the Obama presidency and the 2008 economic crisis, through Occupy Wall Street and the Chicago Teachers Union strike and the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Left and its movements have shifted through all of these dislocations and changes. The 1970s, when the magazine began, was also the birth of neoliberalism. We’re seeing its terrifying death now, and we’re not sure what’s going to replace it. There’s not only unrest, but a new world being born around us.

As an organizer, what I hope to bring to the leadership role at In These Times is a sense of hope. I think about some of my experiences as a union organizer, talking to workers who were so discouraged and faced with difficult circumstances. But there were little glimmers of possibility—something I used to say when training organizers was that you might be the first person to ask a worker what they did during the day and how they felt about it, and that this was a serious responsibility. We had to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other, to build something, to be open to opportunities for bigger changes. My hope is to continue to cultivate a larger audience, to be more useful to those who are trying to build and create a better world, and to put some infrastructure in place that allows us to tell the stories we need to tell.

Notes

1. As of March 26, 2023, Shawn Fain was elected as president of the United Auto Workers.
2. As of April 4, 2023, Brandon Johnson was elected as Chicago’s next mayor.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Many people working in nonprofits and philanthropy say they want to reduce poverty, and increasingly, foundations, nonprofits, and social-movement organizations are developing communications strategies and telling stories that aim to dispel the myth that the US economic system is equitable and fair.

However, the Right has long propagated narratives that shape our society’s institutions and culture—and it requires conscious effort to upend them. As such, the stories shared by nonprofits and philanthropists too often reinforce the status quo rather than change it. Inadvertently, myths that poor people are lazy or inherently bad, or that rich people earned their wealth by sheer fortitude and hard work, creep in. Mythologies of both the “undeserving poor” and the “meritorious rich” erase legacies of racial capitalism and its systemic exploitation, theft, and violence.

In 2019, our team of practitioners (Radical Communicators Network), scholars (Center for Public Interest Communications), and creatives (Milli) began to explore narratives about poverty and wealth coming from the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Having spent decades working in and studying these sectors, we found that many well-intentioned organizations uphold harmful narratives about poverty and wealth in their efforts to counter them.

What We Did 

To explore the narratives coming from philanthropy and nonprofits, we conducted an academic literature review, a content analysis of narrative work from a sample of organizations working on issues related to economic inequality, and interviews with representatives from organizations doing storytelling well.

The product of our three years of work, BROKE is a multidisciplinary toolkit that identifies pervasive narratives about poverty and wealth coming from the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors and offers guidance on how to tell better stories for economic justice. In addition to providing nonprofits and philanthropy an opportunity to examine the stories they tell about poverty and wealth, BROKE highlights ways that movements can craft new narratives rooted in social science as well as the wisdom of lived experience of poverty and economic-justice organizing. We hope that by collaborating to tell better stories about how the rich get rich and the poor stay poor, movements—including activists, communicators, storytellers, and strategists—can begin to transform an oppressive capitalist economic system and build a free, just world in which all people can live with dignity.

Digging Deeper: Behind Our Research

To develop the BROKE toolkit, we began by drafting a series of questions designed to assess narratives related to economic inequality. We then collected 27 pieces of content produced by 10 organizations, ranging from small community groups to large foundations and charities. Each piece of content served as an example of how the groups framed poverty on their websites or social media. Though our sample size was small, the content analyzed reflected common patterns in narrative practice. We chose to keep the names of the organizations anonymous. We are not pointing fingers; we simply want to learn.

The questions we drafted were based on the Center for Public Interest Communications’ work on the science of stories; Shanelle Matthews’ work on narrative power; and the work of experts on critical race theory, intersectionality, and ethical storytelling. They helped us analyze whether nonprofits and foundations were:

• Telling compelling and persuasive stories
• Telling complex stories about systems of oppression
• Telling stories that shift power to the people
• Telling stories that counter pervasive harmful narratives to build a new world

What We Learned—And What You Can Do 

How can nonprofits and philanthropy more effectively advance economic justice? By telling good stories.

A story follows a narrative arc—with a beginning, middle, and end. There is conflict and resolution, characters, and a setting. When readers experience a great story, we are transported into the characters’ worlds. Their experiences become our own, changing us. Because we do not assume that the storyteller is trying to debate or argue with us, we enter a cognitive state that opens us up to new ideas and information. To realize these cognitive benefits, we need to tell actual stories, with all their narrative elements.¹

Of the 27 pieces of content that we sampled, only 25 percent told stories. Instead, most were profiles or vignettes. While these have their place, they lack plots and so cannot do the narrative work of stories.

We also examined whether the content analyzed perpetuated common tropes, including:

• The idea that poor people need saving
• The idea that people are poor because of individual choices
• White saviorism
• Success defined as achieving the American dream

We found that nearly half of the content shared with us featured poor people in need of saving, while the narratives told by a few organizations suggested that people are poor because of their choices.

Lastly, we examined whether stories told by the sector made calls to action. Such calls are most effective when they are specific, easy to do, and are consistent with social norms. In fact, research from the Norman Lear Center found that people were more likely to take action to end homelessness after reading a news story when the call to action was framed as a social norm (such as joining the 5,000 people who had already donated to the cause). In our analysis of 27 pieces of content, only two (seven percent) included a call to action.

In short, nonprofits and philanthropy can be more effective by telling stories that follow a narrative arc and include a good call to action.

As you craft stories, ask yourself:

1. Are you using a clear narrative arc?
2. Does this story reinforce harmful narratives about poverty, wealth, and how change happens?
3. Do you include a moral or calls to action for your community?

Telling Stories about Systems of Oppression

There is a pervasive narrative in US culture—from pop culture to politics—that poverty is a result of individual choices and therefore requires individualistic solutions. These individualistic stories are easy to tell. Yet, they are inaccurate and do not match what data and research tell us: people are primarily poor because the institutions that make up our society systematically ignore and disenfranchise people of color, women, and gender-queer people, as well as working-class people of all identities.

To change the narratives surrounding poverty and wealth, we need to tell stories about systems.

We also asked whether organizations included systemic analysis in their content. Nearly 80 percent said they did. Less than half of them, however, identified the root cause of the conflict as systemic, and only a quarter of them included racism, patriarchy, or capitalism as a systemic factor. 

To tell more accurate stories, and to change the narratives surrounding poverty and wealth, we need to tell stories about systems. Plot points and conflicts should arise as characters navigate a racist healthcare system, hiring discrimination, or the criminal-legal system that over polices Black and Brown communities. Stories can illustrate the pervasiveness of rising housing costs, low-wage jobs, and inhumane working conditions. We must tell stories that reveal the workings of White supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. And always show, don’t tell.

As you craft stories, ask yourself:

1. Do you include systems in your story? Do you show through story plot points how systems oppress and privilege people?
2. Do you include details to help readers understand the historical, political, geographic, social, and economic contexts that systems develop and thrive in?
3. Is the conflict in your story between the central character and a system?
4. Did you illustrate how racism, capitalism, sexism, ableism, and so on, shape the lives of characters?

Tell Stories that Empower People

Organizations often tell stories to justify their own work. As a result, the organization makes itself the hero or protagonist. For example, the organization often portrays itself as saving deserving poor people and helping them integrate into society, providing evidence to donors and supporters that the organization plays a critical part in solving the problem. While the latter may be true, by telling such stories repeatedly, organizations perpetuate the idea that there are deserving (and by implication, undeserving) poor and that poor people lack agency.

We saw this trend in our research. About 70 percent of the content we analyzed featured organizations as having power. Only 44 percent featured characters in poverty as having power and agency, while 41 percent featured poor people who “needed saving.”

Of course, organizations need to tell stories to funders. We suggest telling stories that depict the organization as a critical part of a movement or network working for systemic change through collective action. Be thoughtful about who is the hero and villain (or root cause) in the story. The heroes should be communities (including organizations) engaging in collective action to transform systems, and the root cause of the problem should be unjust systems.

To tell such stories, partner with people who have lived experience of poverty (including staff) and let them tell their own stories. We know from research that when people who have such experience share their stories, the story is seen as more authentic—and can increase understanding of and respect for the storyteller.

As you craft stories, ask yourself:

1. Is the source of the problem a system or an individual character?
2. How have you illustrated the power and agency of people in your community without placing the cause of the problem on them?

Storytelling Ethics

As advocates support communities in sharing their stories, they must act with extreme care. It is critical not to retraumatize or tokenize anyone in order to make use of their experience. People should tell their stories on their terms.

Recently, Define American, which works to change narratives about immigration, released a report—American Dreaming: Roadmap to Resilience for Undocumented Storytellers—which addresses such issues and offers powerful, ethical storytelling practices. It offers valuable questions to ask storytellers, including:

1. Is now a good time to share your story? How have you been since we last connected?
2. What do you feel comfortable sharing now?
3. Have you shared your/this story before?

The report also recommends that advocacy groups make the following commitments to undocumented storytellers:

• We will use your answers as guides with which to establish healthy boundaries in our collaborations and will not ask for additional details or efforts.
• We will offer ways to scale down your work or provide a way for you to step away from the project if necessary.
• We will facilitate training of movement organizations and give guidance to lay a foundation for good health and wellbeing in the storytelling community.
• We will offer a scope of work, compensation, and timeline for involvement and ask if these are in line with your expectations.
• We will design ways of seeking feedback and suggestions for nurturing your mental health and wellbeing in our work.
• We will hold others we work with, particularly in the media, accountable for honoring your contributions, including the proper use of pronouns and pronunciation of names.

When partnering with storytellers, it is also vital to make sure that people are not defined solely by the injustice and inequity they have experienced. Great stories create opportunities for us to connect by including rich details. As author Jacqueline Woodson has famously said, “The more specific we are, the more universal something can become.” Be sure to share details about who storytellers are beyond their experience with your organization or poverty.

For example, a video by Invisible People, a media organization we interviewed for this project, features the story of Olivia and Alex, a mother and her son, experiencing homelessness and living in a motel. In her story, Olivia talks about her dream of becoming a lawyer, her desire to hang out with friends, and Alex’s health needs. We connect with her as she shares details about who she is. Migrant Justice, a grassroots organization of farmworkers, offers another example of exceptional storytelling: “The Cows Don’t Milk Themselves,” a talk by organizer Enrique Balcazar, exemplifies the insights listed above.

As you craft stories, ask yourself:

1. Have you partnered with people with lived experience of poverty to tell their stories with care?
2. Have you included cultural details and experiences?
3. Whose point of view is the story written from? Is it communities closest to injustice?
4. Have you illustrated the power and agency of people in your community without placing the cause of the problem on them?

Tell Stories to Imagine a New World

Storytelling is worldmaking. We can write new stories to change our future by celebrating shared movement values.

Pervasive narratives that blame poverty on poor people are old. Economic-justice advocates must tell stories that unearth the history of such narratives to avoid perpetuating their myths. This work also helps illuminate the roots of unjust systems.

Storytelling is worldmaking. We can write new stories to change our future by celebrating shared movement values. In this regard, we’re inspired by organizations like those listed above, as well as Southerners on New Ground, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Economic Security Project, and Action Center on Race and the Economy. These organizations are telling stories that center justice, equality, fairness, solidarity, and care. You can read more about what we learned from these organizations about how to tell stories in our report.

As you tell stories, ask yourself:

1. Does this story contribute to a more nuanced, systems-focused narrative?
2. Do the underlying values in the story reflect your shared values?

Principles for Storytelling Movements

Above, we shared five principles to change narratives about poverty and wealth. To review, these are:

1. Tell stories with clear calls to action
2. Tell complex stories about unjust, oppressive systems
3. Tell stories that highlight the power of individuals and communities
4. Tell stories ethically
5. Tell stories that imagine a new world

Today, many nonprofits and philanthropic organizations are ready to tell stories and commit to systems change that benefits everyone. Research, practice, and community wisdom can help these sectors craft stories that advance economic justice. Let’s build the world we want to see—together.

This article is dedicated to our colleague and coauthor Rakeem Robinson, who contributed greatly to this project and passed away last year. You can read more about Rakeem here.

Notes

1. We recognize that across cultures there are other ways to convey stories that do not fit within the logic of the Western narrative arc. We base our analysis on our research and experience.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Recently, a colleague asked me to identify my race. She was collecting diversity information and needed to fill in the field. “Asian,” I said automatically. My parents immigrated to the US from India in the 1980s, and Indian American is the identity I hold most strongly. This option, however, rarely shows up on demographic forms. Presented with the standard options for race (White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian), I’ve always selected Asian.

She paused. “Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, slightly perplexed.

“I just mean you can choose how you want to identify. We can note whatever categorization feels right to you.”

“Oh!” I shrugged. “Indian American is great, then. Thanks.”

As I left the room, I wondered why the question had caught me off guard. Having worked in numerous healthcare and health-justice spaces, I’m well aware of the importance of being able to self-identify.

And yet, I’ve rarely experienced room for nuance when it comes to Asian American and Pacific Islander—or AAPI—identity in those spaces. That’s especially true regarding data collection, which tends to flatten complex social groups into simple categories. These datasets are then used to shape health interventions that frequently miss the mark for communities with specific experiences, norms, and traditions. As such, AAPI health data approaches that buck traditional racial constructs are crucial to developing solutions that more effectively address this population’s health inequities.

Understanding the AAPI Community

AAPI is an umbrella term that includes people from more than 50 countries who speak over 100 languages. Asians and Asian Americans represent more than 20 different countries in East, South, and Southeast Asia. Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders represent dozens of countries and islands, including Polynesia, Melanesia, and more.

Currently, the AAPI community represents 5.7 percent of the American population. It is one of the fastest-growing groups in the country, estimated to reach 9.7 percent of the population, or over 40 million people, by 2050.

Despite this expanding population’s diversity, since the 1960s, AAPIs have frequently been treated as a monolith for official data collection purposes. Prior to this time, people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent tended to self-identify by nationality, language, or ethnicity.

The term Asian American emerged in 1968 out of student organizing. Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka, two graduate student activists, joined other activists of Asian descent to form the Asian American Political Alliance. Drawing on civil rights and anti-war protests of the time, the Alliance utilized the label, Asian-American, to increase their communities’ visibility and develop unified political power.

The federal government began utilizing “Asian-Pacific Islander” to indicate race in the 1980 Census. This grouping, however, overlooked a plethora of unique histories and experiences. For example, some in the AAPI community came to the United States to escape political persecution in their home countries, while others migrated for white-collar employment opportunities. Some subgroups have been a part of the country’s fabric for over a century, while others represent more recent waves of immigration.

The two “meta-groups” of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders also have different experiences of colonialism, class, and war. Many Pacific Islanders, for example, continue to fight for decolonization and land sovereignty, whereas colonialism is a historical legacy in most Asian countries. Similarly, as scholars point out, grouping these two populations together masks the fact that Pacific Islanders earn lower median incomes than most Asian Americans and are underrepresented in higher education.

Identifying the Harms of Current Data Approaches

Social and economic differences like these impact health outcomes in the AAPI community. For example, an unemployed political asylee to the United States who lacks a local support network may have very different health outcomes than a work visa-sponsored employee of a Fortune 500 company who comes from relative economic privilege.

Yet, healthcare institutions and systems rarely incorporate such details when collecting data about the AAPI community. Following the lead of the US Census and other federal agencies, they typically gather high-level racial data—if they gather any at all. Without disaggregated data for AAPIs, it is difficult to understand differences in health outcomes between subgroups.

A frequently cited example of the dangers of aggregation is a 1985 report by the US Department of Health and Human Services, which utilized composite data to claim that the “Asian/Pacific Island minority, in the aggregate, is healthier than all other racial groups in the US, including Whites.” This type of generalization is harmful in many ways.

First, it fails to account for subgroups in the AAPI community who consistently experience worse health outcomes than the aggregate. This makes it easy to overlook the structural causes of health inequities, like housing or food insecurity, that impact AAPI subgroups, along with other BIPOC communities. In turn, this analysis limits the attention paid to these groups, the research dollars invested in and resources allocated to them, and targeted public health programming to address their health inequities.

Second, such aggregate data reinforces the longstanding “model minority myth,” according to which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are “successful” because they prioritize education, professional achievement, and economic success. This myth is often used to discount the impacts of structural racism on communities of color, reinforcing White supremacy. Similarly, when healthcare institutions and professionals lean on aggregate data to stereotype AAPIs as patients who take personal responsibility for their health outcomes, they often imply that other people of color fail to do the same, leading to further discrimination against those communities. This narrative also distracts from the many challenges that AAPIs face, both to their health and when interacting with the healthcare system.

Take, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted AAPI communities, both in terms of health outcomes as well as increased anti-Asian sentiment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 cases amongst Asian Americans increased by 34 percent from 2020 to 2021. However, this data does not differentiate between different AAPI subgroups or account for factors such as occupation, income, and housing. As a result, the true impact of the pandemic on some AAPI communities may be even greater.

Improving Approaches to AAPI Data

There are several ways that healthcare practitioners and social service providers can address gaps in current approaches to AAPI health data. These include:

• Engaging AAPI advocacy groups and community members. Starting with AAPI groups’ insights on inequities in data design is crucial. AAPI Data, a clearinghouse for data and policy research, created a framework for data equity that calls for incorporation of AAPI voices into research development, collection, analysis, and dissemination. This inclusion can ensure that research objectives and data collection take place in culturally appropriate ways. It can also help to bring granularity to data assessment and the solutions that follow. Rather than health systems assuming that they have Asian patient representation on a research advisory board, for example, a local group could push for specific subgroup representation.
• Disaggregating data. Research shows that Southeast Asian Americans have higher rates of diabetes and liver cancer compared to other AAPI subgroups. Pacific Islanders often have higher rates of obesity compared to other subgroups. These statistics point to the variability of health outcomes among AAPI groups. Providing individuals with the opportunity to self-identify according to nationality, ethnicity, class, or other demographics helps pinpoint and hopefully improve these outcomes. One promising example of this can be seen with the Census, which in the early 2000s separated “Asian” and “Pacific Islander” as options for race. Healthcare institutions, however, have been slow to follow suit.
• Investing in pipelines of underrepresented AAPI health researchers and data interpreters. Some AAPI subgroups are increasingly represented in healthcare spaces, while others continue to face barriers to education and professional opportunity. Their lived experience, however, can inform data analysis in much-needed ways and help develop innovative health programs.

Bringing a more nuanced outlook to health-data collection and analysis can give us a better understanding of AAPI communities’ unique health needs and challenges. In turn, these insights can help us develop more tailored interventions and policies that move the needle in a positive direction for this multifaceted and quickly growing population. To address health disparities in AAPI communities, we must overhaul our AAPI data collection processes.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

UPROSE is a community-based organization that is bringing the first community-owned solar project to New York City. The project, Sunset Park Solar, is a 685-kilowatt solar array that will be built on top of the waterfront Brooklyn Army Terminal. It is the result of years of organizing to ensure the sustainability and resiliency of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood and is the start of growing community wealth.

How will Sunset Park Solar work?

For the past few months, UPROSE has been onboarding its solar partner, Working Power. The solar developer builds clean-energy projects that help communities acquire long-term wealth and energy assets through impact investing, technical support, and project financing. UPROSE and Working Power are developing a new model that allows both entities to co-own Sunset Park Solar and split the costs and gains down the middle.

This model will allow UPROSE to earn revenue that can be directed to a community fund to help vulnerable individuals and families in Sunset Park. In addition, the project, which should be operational by the end of the year, will provide at least a 15 percent electricity-bill discount to its subscribers.

Currently UPROSE and its partners are working to finalize agreements to build and invest in solar energy on the Brooklyn Army Terminal, explains Lovinia Reynolds, UPROSE’s energy democracy coordinator. “This type of community-owned solar will be the first of its kind in Brooklyn.” The project has been evolving as we learn and collaborate with our partners.

Over the next few months, UPROSE will engage in community outreach to enroll subscribers. Although Sunset Park residents and small businesses will be prioritized, any household or business with a Con Edison (New York City’s main energy provider) account will be eligible to subscribe.

As a subscriber, a household or business owns a small portion of the solar array. All the energy produced by the array will be sent to the Con Edison grid. Con Edison then ascribes the value of that energy, which is what gets discounted. That ascribed value will be at least 15 percent less than a standard Con Edison electricity bill. Essentially, a subscriber is paying to access energy produced by the solar array. The cost of that energy will always be lower than energy produced by Con Edison’s grid because it is localized and renewable.

“We continued to fight against the site and citing environmental burdens while also looking forward to how we bring renewable energy to the community.”

Sunset Park Solar is looking at two phases of financing. The first phase involved funding project construction—which Working Power is financing. The second phase involves ensuring the project’s long-term sustainability, which looks like attaining mission-aligned grants and loans that will help UPROSE secure sponsor equity, which brings in investors to contribute a portion of capital upfront so that the project has a jumpstart, earns more revenue over time and eventually becomes self-sufficient.

UPROSE originally stepped into the energy space around 2003, when there was a proposal to site Sunset Energy Fleet, a 520-megawatt power plant the size of three football fields, in Sunset Park. At the time, the New York Power Authority was also fast-tracking electric turbines in almost every community of color in the city, explains Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance. “Combined with that fact that we had peaker plants in our community [that] was a wake-up call.” (Nationwide, peaker power plants, which only run when there is high electricity demand, are disproportionately cited near lower-income communities and communities of color.)

Yeampierre vividly remembers that many young people in particular were concerned about the location of these power plants—many of which would have been built right across the street from where people live. UPROSE was working on transportation justice and fighting for more green space in the community, but in light of the potential burden of additional environmental injustices, it shifted its focus. “We continued to fight against the site and citing environmental burdens while also looking forward to how we bring renewable energy to the community.” says Yeampierre.

Wind energy comes to New York City

New York State is continuing to meet its renewable energy targets by issuing offshore wind energy and contracts to developers. Currently, there are five active wind development projects in the state. One of these projects, which is in Sunset Park’s South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, prompted UPROSE to step into the wind-energy space to ensure that principles of racial justice and equity are implemented by wind developers and associated corporations that have a history of extracting from communities like Sunset Park.

Indeed, UPROSE is thinking about the growth of renewable energy in Sunset Park from beginning to end. That means considering the supply chain, materials used, waste disposal, and the growing industry’s hiring practices. As the country’s transition unfolds, UPROSE wants historically marginalized communities and immigrants hired at every level, compensated well, and given decision-making powers.

Along with Rogue Climate, Taproot Earth, and the Climate Justice Alliance, UPROSE recently published “Principles for a Just Transition in Offshore Wind Energy,” which offers a framework that wind developers can use to support and prioritize climate-justice organizations as key partners and decision-makers in a Just Transition.

The framework’s principles include using energy development to enhance economic justice and human rights. That means using renewable energy to redress ecological damage caused by fossil fuels and investing in workforce development of and economic opportunity for historically marginalized communities. Other key principles include prioritizing the need for zero-waste supply chains and life cycles, circular-economy principles, and ecological mindfulness.

In addition, the framework emphasizes the importance of self-determination in the consultation process and the need for communities to be informed about and included in all stages of the process, such as permitting, leasing, and requests for proposals. These principles prioritize frontline communities at the decision-making table and consider how energy generation has impacted health.

The South Brooklyn wind site will connect much of downstate New York, which includes Long Island, Queens, and Brooklyn, where renewable energy resources are lacking. Developers also have proposals on the table to potentially retire some fossil-fuel plants and repurpose their infrastructure—one of many things UPROSE is fighting for citywide.

“Whatever we learn or whatever mistakes we make need to be properly captured so that similarly situated communities in different parts of the country can benefit from our learning,” says Yeampierre. This is an industry that UPROSE and Sunset Park neighborhood have never dealt with before, Yeampierre points out. “It has the danger of becoming just another green industry that provides jobs but doesn’t create community wealth and doesn’t address environmental justice challenges.”

“It’s important for people to recognize that this is an industry that has been meeting with each other and planning for over 10 years without us [climate justice organizations and BIPOC] at the table,” says Yeampierre.

One important consideration Yeampierre points out is language—we must be careful when referring to different communities. For too long, immigrant, Black and Brown, and low-income communities have been lumped together despite having distinct experiences. Yeampierre makes clear, however, that not every immigrant is a person of color; and that not every person of color is low-income. “The language for us has also been tremendously important as it carries the priorities of the [various] communities that are impacted,” says Yeampierre.

Wind-energy developers are responding to the work of UPROSE and its partner organizations and have been tapping them to learn more about how they can center justice in their projects, a stark contrast with past practices. “It’s important for people to recognize that this is an industry that has been meeting with each other and planning for over 10 years without us [climate justice organizations and BIPOC] at the table,” says Yeampierre.

She continues,“We’re in a moment where we’ve got agencies listening and shaping how they’re moving forward and reporting back to us and asking, how does this work for you?” This is a noticeable shift in how the government and the energy industry has historically interacted with communities. State agencies are finally taking direction on how to engage with communities and making it possible for community-based organizations like UPROSE to share input.

“Now we’ve got elected officials that are thinking outside of the box about the connection between our ability to survive and climate change,” says Yeampierre.

It also helps that UPROSE has skin in the game and has won difficult battles over the years. The organization’s track record has also helped them develop a system of co-governance with lawmakers, giving them a seat at the table and enabling them to impact legislation.

UPROSE was directly involved in the shaping and passage of the Climate Mobilization Act, also known as New York City’s Green New Deal, and the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. “Now we’ve got elected officials that are thinking outside of the box about the connection between our ability to survive and climate change,” says Yeampierre.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

“From Owing to Owning,” reads a sign at the entrance of Plaza 122, a 29,000-square-foot strip mall near the corner of SE 122nd Avenue and SE Market Street in Portland, OR. The complex is modest, but it houses an estimated 27 primarily immigrant-led small businesses and nonprofits. What makes the strip mall unique is its community ownership.

A nonprofit, the East Portland Community Investment Trust, serves as the owner and lead manager and developer of the property, and for a monthly subscription fee of $10 to $100, nearby residents can become owners themselves. As of April 2022, the property had 281 community investors. According to a report published in November 2022 and authored by Julia Duranti-Martinez of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the number of community owners now exceeds 300.

The report, titled Commercial Community Ownership as a Strategy for Just Development: Case Studies and Implementation Lessons, highlights nonprofit-led initiatives involving community ownership of commercial real estate in Portland as well as Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, Anchorage, and Los Angeles. Each initiative has its own unique features and challenges. Nonetheless, the examples speak to the potential for community organizing, when connected to land acquisition funds, to greatly improve prospects for businesses and residents in low-income communities and communities of color.

Rationales for Community Ownership  

While motivations for pursuing community ownership of land vary, there are some common elements. Often, preserving local business access to commercial land is a central concern. As Duranti-Martinez explains, in many communities, “real estate disinvestment and speculation have harmed and destabilized Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and low-income communities and sent prices out of reach, including for commercial space. Annual commercial rent increases can range from seven to 26 percent across the country” (5).

Additionally, Duranti-Martinez points out, “Community ownership also means that the people most impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustice have meaningful decision-making power over development” (7). Potential benefits include ensuring commercial rents stay affordable; providing security of tenure for local small businesses and nonprofits; promoting quality jobs; and potentially, through lease income, generating a source of non-philanthropic income for nonprofit landowners—and even individual resident-owners, as in Portland.

Each community also has its own specific reasons for seeking community ownership. For instance, the Anchorage Community Land Trust, which began in 2003 and is the oldest example reviewed in the report, acquired land in a BIPOC neighborhood that had a 25.1 percent poverty rate (as of 2001). Seeded with an initial $5 million grant from a local foundation, the land trust acquired nine parcels between 2005 and 2011. Purchasing land was, in a sense, the easiest step. Making the land usable was often harder since remediation of past pollution was frequently required.

Los Angeles, home to multi-nonprofit effort CORE (Community Owned Real Estate), provides a perhaps more classic case of using community ownership of commercial real estate as a strategy to support existing businesses and avoid displacement. As Tom De Simone described for NPQ in a recent article, a central motivation of nonprofit commercial ownership in East Los Angeles is to “provide economic security to legacy business owners and neighborhood nonprofits and preserve the neighborhood’s commercial character and culture.”

Other community-ownership initiatives fall between these two poles—resisting gentrification and encouraging community reinvestment. In New Orleans, Crescent City Community Land Trust, founded in 2011, aims to use commercial land ownership to help rebuild a Black business community that was recovering from Hurricane Katrina even as it faced gentrification pressures that made reinvestment far more difficult. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, efforts to develop Partnership in Property Commercial Land Trust began in 2017. However, support for community ownership of commercial spaces really gained ground “in the wake of historic uprisings for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, as a way to rebuild damaged commercial corridors while promoting BIPOC self-determination and preventing long-term displacement” (18).

Portland is unique among these examples in that the motivation for creating community ownership, as described by the nonprofit, Mercy Corps Northwest, is less focused on supporting local BIPOC-owned businesses and more on helping BIPOC residents invest directly in joint community-land ownership. As a 2020 concept paper details, the nonprofit organized the East Portland Community Investment Trust to provide community members with an investment option that, unlike individual development accounts, is not dependent on the nonprofit raising funds to match individual savings. Instead, earnings are generated by the trust itself. To participate, community members can purchase an ownership share in the enterprise, contingent on completing an eight-hour financial education course.

The concept paper elaborates that the trust mechanism itself is “designed to provide an on-ramp to personal savings by facilitating investment in a community asset, creating a safety net for those in asset poverty and, at the same time, spreading the value of appreciating property in a gentrifying neighborhood across the larger community” (11). Only residents of four surrounding area zip codes are eligible to become investors, although Duranti-Martinez points out that tenant businesses are also permitted to purchase community investor shares. Annually, community investors receive a dividend of at least two percent.

In April 2022, the dividend was 4.57 percent for a payout of $16,886 (an average dividend of $60 per community investor) on a total community investment of approximately $369,000. According to the East Portland Community Investment Trust, over 61 percent of that community investment came from BIPOC residents, 65 percent from women, 52 percent from renters, and 46 percent from households earning under $40,000 a year.

Building Ownership Capacity: Successes and Challenges

As Duranti-Martinez acknowledges, her report does not cover all community commercial land ownership initiatives. Some community land trusts, although better known for housing, are well-established and have become owners of significant amounts of commercial real estate. Duranti-Martinez notes, for example, that Champlain Housing Trust—based in Burlington, VT, and home to the nation’s largest community land trust—stewards 140,000 square feet of commercial space, in addition to over 3,000 residential homes. In Denver, she adds, the Urban Land Conservancy has developed 650,000 square feet of commercial property.

By contrast, other than the Anchorage Community Land Trust, most organizations profiled in the report are in the early-stage category. Anchorage’s land trust has a good deal to show for its 20 years of work. It operates one building that leases to seven nonprofit organizations. Another building it owns houses the land trust’s office and a business-development training center known as Set Up Shop. Other properties house art studios for Alaska Native and American Indian artists; a restaurant; and a credit union, which was the first financial institution to open in the community in over 20 years. The land trust also owns a small urban farm, which it leases to a refugee services nonprofit. This farm supports 20 immigrant and refugee farmers and emerging food entrepreneurs. Unlike in Portland, the Anchorage nonprofit maintains direct ownership, leasing properties to businesses and nonprofits.

The New Orleans-based Crescent City Community Land Trust may have had the hardest path to travel. The group acquired properties at a discount from the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and received a portfolio of homes from the Ford Foundation. While the trust has successfully developed 25 units of affordable housing as part of a mixed-use project, the development’s commercial end, known as The Pythian Building, which opened in 2017, was sold to private investors in 2022 as the commercial enterprises did not generate enough income to sustain operations. Crescent City’s Chief Strategist, Gregory St. Etienne, claims that “lack of capacity and experience on the nonprofit developer side” is to blame (16).

A smaller project that opened in 2019 succeeded in restoring the building that houses the Vaucresson Sausage Company, a Black-owned business in operation for 120 years. The restoration includes space for sausage production, with the Vaucresson family operating a café on the site. There are also two permanently affordable housing units above. The Crescent City nonprofit retains a 19 percent ownership share of the complex and is currently merging with larger nonprofits to preserve its work. The need for this merger also speaks, however, to the importance of partnerships and resources when it comes to real estate strategy.

As for initiatives underway in the Twin Cities and Los Angeles, both efforts are nascent, but both groups also appear to have developed a strong set of partners, making these efforts promising. About the Twin Cities, Duranti-Martinez reports that, “With support from local and county agencies, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), and cooperative partners, PIP CLT acquired its first three properties in 2021, with several more in the pipeline” (20). Duranti-Martinez highlights the “strong local ecosystems, public support, and collaboration among cooperatives” (21) that are enabling such rapid growth.

Similarly, CORE, the East Los Angeles effort, has the backing of a CDFI, Genesis LA, which was able to access $10 million in New Markets Tax Credits to help finance the acquisition of four properties. CORE partners currently manage five buildings with approximately 20 BIPOC business and nonprofit tenants. Ownership is through a limited liability company. Equity is divided among three nonprofits: 55 percent is held by the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, the lead developer; 35 percent by Inclusive Action for the City, the lead organizer; and 10 percent by Little Tokyo Service Center, which has played an advisory role in the effort. Despite the difference in equity shares, bylaws specify that in major decisions, such as selling a building, all three nonprofits have an equal say.

While money to acquire land is vitally important, community ownership of commercial property requires more than acquisition funds.

In terms of running the building that CORE now owns, the first step, Duranti-Martinez emphasizes, is to lengthen tenant leases to provide stable tenure. The vision at the end of the seven-year New Markets Tax Credit partnership period, she adds, is to transfer ownership, which will either involve adding commercial tenants as additional partners in the LLC or selling the buildings to the tenants, potentially in partnership with one of Los Angeles’s five community land trusts, or some combination of those strategies.

Looking Forward 

“We’re trying to see if we can get into city budgets, but right now, it’s been a lot of innovation grants and grants for startups and seed funding.…We’re really trying to look long-term”

Duranti-Martinez observes that “community ownership is more expansive than just having a financial stake in a building” (29). It involves, among other things, preserving businesses and maintaining community control over decision making. One key lesson in this work is that “in all cases, acquisition and rehabilitation of commercial real estate preceded community planning, engagement, and organizing.” As Rudy Espinoza of Inclusive Action tells Duranti-Martinez, “If the community needs five years to figure out governance, we’ll get them five years, but first, we’ve got to get the buildings” (30).

That said, while money to acquire land is vitally important, community ownership of commercial property requires more than acquisition funds. Other themes that Duranti-Martinez emphasizes include the following:

• Commercial real estate is risky, so money for feasibility studies is necessary.
• Community land trusts must be able to help commercial tenants “cure” defaults and work with banks to avoid foreclosure. Such assistance is as important as similar CLT deed provisions for resident mortgages used during the Great Recession. These helped keep foreclosure rates for CLT homeowners at one-eighth of those for fee-simple homeowners.
• Philanthropy can also assist by supporting field-building practices, such as peer-learning collaboratives, community organizing, and advocacy.
• A particularly useful tool would be community “opportunity to purchase” legislation, which could function like tenant “first right to purchase” laws. These laws give residents the first right to purchase multifamily residences (at market rates) whenever a property comes up for sale.

There’s also a need, as Domonique Jones, executive director of PIPCLT in Minneapolis-St. Paul, tells Duranti-Martinez, for public policy to go beyond funding community ownership “experiments.” As Jones puts it, “We’re trying to see if we can get into city budgets, but right now, it’s been a lot of innovation grants and grants for startups and seed funding.…We’re really trying to look long-term” (32).

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.