Podcast
Power Station
Hosted by Anne Pasmanick · EN
Power Station is a podcast about change makers. Each episode features a nonprofit leader whose organization is leading progressive change in underinvested and overlooked communities.
32episodes
Episodes
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This is inhumane and it doesn't make us safer
Jan 500:38:11Tap to summarizeWhat happened to Dakarai Larriett is shocking, horrifying even, and yet it is not entirely remarkable for a Black man in America. In 2024, Dakairi, an Alabama native who spent years on Fifth Avenue in NYC as a corporate executive, was unlawfully detained at a traffic stop in Michigan. What followed was hours of race baiting, an attempted planting of drugs and later, in a cell, literal torture. This is not hyperbole. It is the truth of what happened to him captured by the police officer's own dashcam and bodycam. Video evidence notwithstanding, a judge declined to take action against the officers. In this first interview of Power Station in 2026, I speak with Dakarai about how his experience moved him to become an organizer, a champion for criminal justice reform and a 2026 Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Alabama. He is connecting with the families of incarcerated men in Alabama's deeply corrupt prison system and developing policies to upend business as usual, from lawless police officers to a for-profit prison system that enriches wealthy individuals and the state's coffers at the expense of uncompensated prisoners. His bravery is powerful.
Transcribe →The essential workers we clapped for every night at the start of the pandemic are the same workers who are paid less than the minimum wage
Oct 10, 2022Tap to summarizeA conversation with Maritza Silva Farrell, executive director of ALIGN NY, is a master class in organizing for systemic and transformational change. She starts by listening to people, primarily low-wage workers from communities of color who are disproportionately harmed by unjust and economically extractive public policies and corporate practices. ALIGN NY was founded to unite the labor and environmental movements and position them to tackle the most pressing challenges of our time, income inequality and climate change. It brings all stakeholders to the table, from labor and climate advocates to impacted workers, researchers, and lawyers. The approach, facilitating conversation, crafting collaboration, building powerful alliances, and creating a path that makes bold structural change possible has proven 100% effective. This model resulted in the passage of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act, the wholesale restructuring of NYC's commercial waste system and shut down Walmart's proposed entry into New York, to name a few victories. For all the gravity of the work, Maritza leads with joy, passion, and hopefulness. She demonstrates what is possible when we do the work.
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