Author:
Kate Elias
Categories:
Philanthropy
Racial Justice
Social Movements
Image credit: Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash This article is republished with author permission from LinkedIn. The change in the administration’s tactics in Minneapolis is not a retreat. Instead, they are regrouping and planning another mode of attack, with the hopes that their repression might be met with resistance that is easier to control and contain. People who garner their relevancy and power through the dehumanization and oppression of others will do …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Photo by Margaret Kester on Unsplash For justice-centered leaders, there is a stubborn dichotomy between our genuine commitment to equity, inclusion, and alignment in our organizations on the one hand, and our continuing self-diagnosis of high levels of misalignment, conflict, and turnover on the other. Three years after Maurice Mitchell’s seminal piece, “Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis,” rang the alarm of “urgent concerns about the internal workings …
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Author:
Coty Poynter
Categories:
Anti-Racism
Civil Society and Democracy
Community Organizing
Democratic Practices (Economic Justice)
Race and Power
Photo by Avi Waxman on Unsplash It was a mild summer evening on a Monday when my wife and I drove past our neighborhood pool on the way to Costco. Chairs arranged in orderly rows inside the pool fencing. A black box on a white table, waiting for votes. Another homeowners association (HOA) meeting—this time to decide whether to remove the board’s secretary, accused by the three White men on the five-person board of creating …
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Author:
Kate Elias
Categories:
Activism
Civil Society and Democracy
Human Rights
Politics
Trump Administration
Image credit: Chad Davis. chaddavis.photography/sets/ice-in-minneapolis/ US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents first entered Minneapolis in December 2025, followed by a larger federal surge earlier this month, setting off a rapid escalation that now includes multiple fatal shootings, aggressive enforcement tactics, and open conflict between federal authorities and local officials. What’s happening goes beyond individual tragedies for the families involved, raising fundamental questions about constitutional protections, the lawful use of force, and whether basic accountability …
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Author:
Kate Elias
Categories:
Climate Justice
Economic Justice
Technology
A view of the Pittsburgh Skyline. Image courtesy of Data & Society. This article was originally published in Data & Society. Pennsylvania is a state of many firsts: It was the nation’s first capital, the “birthplace of oil production,” home to “America’s first superhighway,” and the state that monopolized the production of steel in the 20th century. More recently, it has been positioned as one of the leading states in “AI readiness,” a term that …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Civil Society and Democracy
Civil Society Research and Reports
Nonprofit Sector
Politics
Trump Administration
Photo by Leio McLaren on Unsplash As we face ongoing crises in our democracy both at home and abroad, almost everyone I’ve talked to feels that they’ve done good, necessary work, but the field, collectively, still isn’t meeting the moment. From our perspective, that feeling often comes from the tension between short-term urgency and long-term necessity. Even if we all do the right things for the next two to four years, the lingering sense is …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Communications
Community Organizing
Technology
Photo by Jurica Koletić on Unsplash Early in my career, I turned down a job at a union where I would have held a digital organizing role within a communications department. I already had a handful of years of on-the-ground organizing experience building a base, recruiting people into organizing committees, running campaigns. But I had no experience writing a press release, running a social media account, or coming up with a narrative strategy. I was …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Climate Justice
Economic Justice
Health Justice
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels When Liz Scott wakes up in her home in Towson, MD, one of the first things she does is check her air quality app. An orange or red ranking for the day’s pollution levels is enough to drive her exercise session indoors. “I have noticed myself [that] just being outside when the air quality is poor, it takes a little bit more to get my run in,” she said …
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Author:
Coty Poynter
Categories:
Human Rights
Philanthropy
Politics
Racial Justice
Credit: Mohamed Jamil Latrach on Unsplash In June 2025, the two of us jointly resigned from the editorial advisory committee of Alliance Magazine—a leading London-based platform that we had collectively served for many years—in protest of its position of neutrality in the face of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine. We decided to resign due to the Palestine exceptionalism embodied by the nature of Alliance’s coverage and its failure to hold philanthropy accountable for the …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Activism
Economic Justice
Immigration
Racial Justice
Photo Credit: Janelle Carlson Since the murder of Renee Macklin Good by an ICE agent on January 7, 2025, in Minneapolis, MN, more than 3,000 agents have swarmed the city. ICE has escalated violence against immigrants, activists, legal observers, and passersby in the city: threatening “obstructors,” conducting violent arrests, and arbitrarily using chemical irritants that have sent families to the hospital. The federal agency is also refusing to allow state representatives access to those in …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Health Equity
Health Justice
Healthcare
LGBTQ+ Rights
Reproductive Justice
Transgender Rights
Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash In what some feminists have called reminiscent of the book The Handmaid’s Tale, the Trump administration has made pronatalism—policies aimed at increasing the US birthrate—a central focus of his presidency. Backed by pronatalist organizations and their philanthropic supporters, the administration’s approach reflects what queer scholar Lee Edelman has called reproductive futurism, a cultural logic that ties the future to heteronormative reproduction and certain idealized visions of families and children. …
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Author:
Jan Masaoka
Categories:
Board Governance
Communications
Executive Leadership
Human Resources
Image Credit: Getty Images For Unsplash+ Welcome back to Ask a Nonprofit Expert, NPQ’s advice column for nonprofit readers, by civic leaders who have built thriving, equitable organizations. As always, this series offers Leading Edge members the opportunity to submit tough challenges anonymously and get personalized advice. In this column, we’ll publish answers to common questions to strengthen our entire community’s capacity. In today’s issue, Jan Masaoka answers a reader’s question about who should and …
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