Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Cooperatives and Employee Ownership
Economic Development
Economic Justice
Land Justice
WetheCivic
Image Credit: Matt Benson on Unsplash.com In 1966, colorful quilts dotted the landscape of Gee’s Bend in Alabama and traveled far beyond the banks of the Alabama River. Sewn by Black women whose families endured generations of brutal slavery and exclusion from the economy, the cooperative enterprise, the Freedom Quilting Bee was born under the guidance of master quilters and artists Estelle Witherspoon, Aolar Carson Mosely, and Father Francis X. Walter. The quilts were sold …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Global Issues
Racial Justice
WetheCivic
Image Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration on picryl Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese-American born in San Francisco in 1873, was after a trip abroad on the grounds that he was not an American citizen. His case found its way to the Supreme Court, where the 1898 ruling affirmed that under the Citizenship Clause the 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people born on US soil. What many people forget is the organizational infrastructure …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Disability Inclusion
Disability Justice
Health Justice
WetheCivic
Before our nation was born, my ancestor Major Robert Pike stood before a court in 1692 and spoke against the hysteria of the Salem witch trials at a time when it cost everything to do so. He put his name on the line for Mary Bradbury: a woman wrongfully accused of witchcraft and sentenced to hang. Called “the moral and fearless hero of New England,” he died before the Revolution. As this nation prepares to …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
LGBTQ+ Rights
Mental Health
Social Movements
Transgender Rights
Credit: Claudia Ayuso Ramirez on iStock NPQ’s column, We Stood Up, features first-person stories from workers, builders, activists, and organizers of their work and world. From inspirational stories to strategic insights and powerful solutions, these stories may offer a moment to breathe, collective wisdom, and the community solidarity we need to keep pushing toward a just and equitable future. This installment of We Stood Up is published in the spirit of #WeTheCivic: America 250, a …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Activism
Anti-Racism
Labor
Latinx Voices
Liberation
Social Movements
Southern Organizing
Structural Racism
WetheCivic
Photo by María Fuentes on Unsplash On June 19th, 1911, fourteen-year-old Mexican American Antonio Gómez was lynched in Thorndale, Texas. There were up to 100 witnesses, and no one was ever convicted. While lynchings were common during this time, the tragedy involving a young boy was widely reported in national and local press, including Black and Spanish-language press, like the Laredo newspaper La Crónica, where teacher and education activist Jovita Idar worked as a writer. …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Health Justice
LGBTQ+ Rights
Transgender Rights
Credit: Thiago Rocha on Unsplash In February 2026, under SB 244, Kansas became the first US state to revoke gender marker corrections on official documents, invalidating thousands of driver’s licenses held by transgender people. The measure requires that all driver’s licenses, state ID cards, and birth certificates reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. Documents were retroactively voided, leaving many people without the valid requirements to drive, work, or complete basic errands or administrative procedures. …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Civil Society and Democracy
Human Rights
Nonprofit Sector
Politics
Image Credit: The 19th This story was copublished with The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy, and power, as well as #WeTheCivic: America 250, a narrative movement centering the multiracial nonprofit and civil society workers, organizations, and communities in America 250 narratives. This story was originally reported by Errin Haines of The 19th. Meet Errin and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. In the lead-up to our …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Civil Society and Democracy
Health Justice
Indigenous Communities
Reparations
Image Credit: Angel White Eyes In this column with NPQ, LandBack for the People, NDN Collective builds on their podcast of the same name, sharing stories from Turtle Island and beyond about Indigenous people organizing in community, advocating for social justice, and fighting for the return of Indigenous lands. Content warning: This article contains some stories about harms committed at Indian Boarding Schools. This spring season has brought about some hard-won victories for my Indigenous …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Anti-Racism
Black Voices
Civil Society and Democracy
Racial Justice
Structural Racism
WetheCivic
Credit: Anthony Garand on Unsplash Within the span of two weeks each year, the nation marks two declarations of freedom: Juneteenth and the Fourth of July. The Distance Between Our Freedoms series brings them into conversation to examine what they reveal, together, about the American project. Across three essays, the series traces a central tension at the heart of American democracy: its enduring promise to freedom alongside a persistent capacity for injustice. The first essay …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Anti-Racism
Black Voices
Civil Society and Democracy
Health Equity
Healthcare
Reparations
Structural Racism
WetheCivic
Photo by Jabari Timothy on Unsplash Juneteenth should be a day for truth-telling, not just celebration. It should remind us that freedom delayed is still freedom denied and that the fight for liberation did not end in 1865. For Black women, that fight continues every time policymakers and politicians treat care as invisible labor, extract from their communities, and leave them to carry the burden of holding everyone else together. With the occurrence of the …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Cooperatives and Employee Ownership
Economic Justice
Food Justice
Racial Justice
Houston County, TX, December 11, 1886. Sixteen Black men gathered on a farm and started something that would grow into one of the most ambitious economic organizing efforts in US history. They called it the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (CFNACU). Within five years, it had spread across the South and claimed 1.2 million members. Then, in 1891, it was violently destroyed. Most Americans have never heard of it. That is exactly the …
read more...
Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Climate Justice
Federal Government
Policy
Image Credit: vjolt42 on Unsplash In a cold Appalachian stream, survival of the eastern hellbender—a large aquatic salamander—is tied to water that must remain clean, cold, and oxygen-rich, and to an ecosystem that functions largely invisibly until it begins to fail. The same streams that the eastern hellbender thrives in also support fish, aquatic insects, and the broader freshwater ecosystems that communities rely on. “There are these streams out there where there are hellbenders…but they …
read more...
