Image credit: Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash Throughout my 10-year career in the nonprofit sector, working as a program director in youth development and later as an operations director in philanthropy, professional development has often entailed a one- to two-hour webinar on cultivating relationships or a half-day session on best practices in program management and has always felt like punishment from those in charge. Such programs remind me of required summer reading—something to keep you busy that instructors never revisit during the school year. It is difficult to ..read more

Image credit: Jeffery Erhunse on Unsplash In our workplaces, the pursuit of perfection often overshadows showing up authentically, especially for Black women. Long have we, as Black women, realized that the adage “work twice as hard to get half as far” is more than mere words: it becomes our lived reality and an unrelenting burden. In our research for the Black Women Thriving Report, we posed this question: “What were the earliest messages that you received about success?” Repeatedly, we encountered the sentiment that Black women must work doubly hard for half the pay, promotions, an ..read more

Image credit: Nick Fewings on Unsplash In America, COVID-19 is now the fourth leading cause of death. An estimated 6.8 percent of Americans—or 17.6 million people—currently have long COVID. Largely because of the virus, an increasing number of Americans now live with disabilities. Many people with disabilities…worry that the updated guidance endangers people who face an increased risk to their health and wellbeing when exposed to COVID-19. During the pandemic, it has become increasingly evident that many people with disabilities face a heightened risk of infection, long-term complica ..read more

Image credit: Liderina on istock.com As a career midwife with more than 43 years of experience caring for expectant mothers, Jennie Joseph has become an authority on maternal health by championing healthy pregnancies, healthy deliveries, and healthy babies. Her deeply human-centered approach, putting the humanity of women and babies before profits has earned her international recognition. She is the founder of the only nationally accredited, privately owned school for midwifery owned by a Black woman, the Commonsense Childbirth School of Midwifery. She also established The Birth Plac ..read more

  What are the stories that we need to tell to better understand our economy, and lay the groundwork for building a more inclusive, democratic world? Storytelling—the construction of spoken or written accounts of a series of events that we tell each other to understand our world—offers critical tools to build movements, upend myths that hold us back, and construct cultures that can sustain a democratic economy. This webinar conversation, a coproduction of NPQ and the BLIS Collective, takes a deep look at how to use storytelling to advance transformative change. Participating in the c ..read more

Image credit: Artem Maltsev on Unsplash In “an attempt to explore the sorrow and anxiety of living and parenting in a world on fire,” Jared Beloff started writing a book. Amid the raging pandemic in 2020, the writer couldn’t ignore the severe weather events happening around the world in close succession: intense wildfires in California, surging floods in Pakistan and China. “I kept a journal for a while just chronicling these things, to bear witness,” Beloff told NPQ in an interview. “Eventually that desire to witness became the centerpiece of my poems, which I wrote over the next tw ..read more

Photo by TopSphere Media on Unsplash The South is often depicted as a backward place—where reproductive and civil rights are restricted and White supremacy prevails. But this narrative erases the fact that the story of the South—the Blackest region in the country—is also a story of community, self-determination, and a people who strived to be seen even as they combated attempts to render them invisible. In recent years, Black women who understand on both personal and political levels what it feels like to be erased have worked to reclaim space in the South in public ways. In rec ..read more

  The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: A Policy Vision from the Movement for Black Lives.” View the full webinar here. Rahel Teka: When you use participatory budgeting processes as a method to directly and boldly face the legacies you’re standing on, there’s a lot of opportunity to have conversations that you’re not having otherwise. You’re not going to have these conversations during the election cycle about how a particular neighborhood was targeted [by redlining]. You’re not going to have conversations about how you use actual money ..read more

  The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: A Policy Vision from the Movement for Black Lives.” View the full webinar here. Our economic power is tied very closely to our political power. Amara Enyia: Here are some data points that people know: for every dollar of wealth that White people have, Black folks have 24 cents to the dollar. When it comes to housing affordability, people are spending about 42 percent of their household income just on housing alone. We are seeing the rates of evictions, the unhoused numbers skyrocketing, and it’s ..read more

A ..read more