Podcast Summary:

Simplify
Episode: Nani Jansen Reventlow: How To Actually Change The World
Host: Caitlin Schiller (with Ben Schuman-Stoler)
Guest: Nani Jansen Reventlow
Release Date: April 6, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the essence of "slow revolution" and systemic change through the eyes of international human rights lawyer Nani Jansen Reventlow. Drawing from her new book, Radical Justice, and her pioneering work with the nonprofits Systemic Justice and the Digital Freedom Fund, Nani and Caitlin discuss what it really takes to create meaningful, lasting social change—why big wins are rare, why communities must drive change, and how justice movements can be both messy and beautiful.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is Community-Driven Litigation?

• Strategic Litigation Defined: Using court cases as part of broader campaigns to bring about systemic change, rather than seeking only immediate legal wins. (05:51)
• Community-Driven Approach:
  • Traditionally, lawyers lead, but Nani’s model empowers affected communities to fully own the strategy, direction, and decisions.
  • "It really all comes down to making sure that the full ownership, the full direction, the full decision making power is with the community partner and not with us just because we happen to have a law degree." (08:56)
• Process: Begins with mapping a community’s vision for change, assessing capacities, and ensuring the process is safe and collaborative.

2. Redefining Success in Justice Work

• Success Is Not Always a Win:
  • Systemic change is incremental and can look like a series of losses or small wins, which accumulate over time into lasting impact.
  • Example: The fight for same-sex marriage took decades of small steps and legal setbacks before culminating in major victories. (10:01)
  • "Systemic change just takes time. Generally we tend to only see that final push, but there's a lot of groundwork that comes before it." (11:22)
• Embracing Slow Progress:
  • Revolution is often a slow, non-linear process.
  • "Audre Lorde put it beautifully right when she said revolution is not a one time event." (13:33)
  • The need for patience and knowing results might materialize after one’s direct involvement.

3. Interconnectedness of Rights: Climate, Racial, and Social Justice

• Climate Justice as Intersectional:
  • The climate crisis disproportionately harms marginalized groups—Black, Indigenous, people of color, low-income communities, and disabled people. (17:16)
  • Policy solutions often reflect white, middle-class priorities, ignoring or harming marginalized communities.
  • "Air pollution, even though you always have this narrative right, we all breathe the same air, doesn't actually affect us equally." (17:40)
• Narrative Expansion:
  • The mainstream conversation about climate misses how underlying inequalities drive impacts and solutions.
  • Nani shares examples like Bonaire—an island at risk of sinking, a situation made relatable to Dutch listeners.

4. Freedom of Expression and Power

• Media Freedom Intertwined with Power:
  • Nani’s work spans defending freedom of expression globally, noting expressive rights are a foundation for organizing and protest.
  • Restrictions now faced in the West have long affected the marginalized—issues only get widespread attention when they impact dominant groups.
  • "For those of us who've been working on these issues for a long time, nothing new is happening right now. It's just happening to a different group of people." (26:15)
• Platform Inequality:
  • Many online and media spaces have never been safe for marginalized groups; the urgency is acknowledged only when it becomes universal.

5. Imagining and Building Radical Alternatives

• More Than Tinkering:
  • True revolution is not a tweak on the status quo; it requires the creative, collective work of imagining and building real alternatives. (30:27)
  • "The power of our imagination should really take us to something that's not just a tweak on our current failing reality."
• Strategic Unity and Pragmatism:
  • Effective change depends on operating in ‘strategic unity’—setting aside minor differences to focus on shared end goals, as conservative forces often do.
  • "Sometimes I wonder if that's rooted in our reluctance to actually hold power, which comes with a lot of complications. But I think that is something that we need to get better at." (31:56)

6. Personal Empowerment and Responsibility

• Take Action Now:
  • Every individual can contribute to change, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.
  • "Just get going. It doesn't have to be perfect." (32:46)
  • Our actions today are made possible by ancestors’ resistance, and we are ancestors for the next generation.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Redefining Lawyering:
  • "It's messy and it's beautiful and it's slow and it's worth it." — Nani Jansen Reventlow (09:25)
• On Incremental Change:
  • "We're many, right? And all those small changes that we can make, they add up together." (15:15)
• On Strategic Unity:
  • "We need to be able to imagine alternatives like true alternatives, and then we need the creativity to actually create them." (30:31)
• On Action:
  • "There's no need to wait. It doesn't have to be perfect...Just get going." (32:46)

Important Segment Timestamps

• 03:14 – Introduction to Nani Jansen Reventlow’s background
• 04:20 – The founding and function of Digital Freedom Fund and Systemic Justice
• 05:51 – Explanation of strategic and community-driven litigation
• 09:02 – Emphasizing the difference in the community-driven model
• 10:01 – How legal "losses" build to systemic wins
• 11:22 – The incremental nature of systemic change
• 13:33 – Audre Lorde's quote—revolution as a continuous process
• 17:16 – How racial and social inequalities are central to climate justice
• 25:24 – Freedom of expression as an enabling right and the dynamics of power in speech
• 28:47 – What does a revolution in justice look like?
• 30:27 – Imagination and creativity in building alternatives
• 32:46 – Nani’s final advice: act now, don’t wait for perfection

Bookend Discussion (35:00 onwards)

• Redefining Success: Echoes that legal/social change is built from small gains, not one dramatic shift (e.g., marriage equality).
• Interconnected Justice: All facets—climate, racial, economic—are tightly intertwined.
• Recommended Books:
  • How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm – On radical climate activism and the importance of incremental victories (37:51)
  • Farewell to Growth by Serge Latouche – On questioning and dismantling the foundational Western myth of perpetual economic growth (40:06)
• Exclusive: Giveaway and discount for Nani Jansen Reventlow’s book, Radical Justice.

Overall Tone and Takeaways

The tone is candid, thoughtful, and motivating—Nani speaks with both humility and urgency, emphasizing messy collaboration, creativity, and the importance of starting small in order to enact real societal change. The episode highlights the slow burn of revolution: it’s the result of communities “chipping away” at structures of injustice, often through setbacks, and always with hope and collective imagination.

Key Takeaway:
Real, lasting change is collective, slow, and often invisible at first. Everyone has a part to play—action, even imperfect action, matters. Justice is intersectional: our freedoms and struggles are all bound together.