Holistic Prosperity with Aisha Nyandoro

Aisha Nyandoro is the CEO of Springboard To Opportunities and leader in the campaign to end generational poverty through guaranteed income. She joins Prentis this week to talk about her program Magnolia Mother’s Trust. They also discuss what the true meaning of wealth is and how our institutions shape the idea of who is worthy and deserved. Aisha brings a call of radical resourcing and shares her vision for what’s possible if our communities didn’t have to live in scarcity and we actually supported our people to thrive.

Notes:

• Springboard to Opportunities
• Support Magnolia Motherhood’s Trust

Transcript

Hey y'all, welcome back to Becoming the People. I'm Prentis Hemphill, and we have another special episode for you today. I am in conversation with Aisha Nyandoro, who I was really excited to talk with on this episode. I've been in this place sometimes and lost in my own cynicism or feeling the impossibility of the moment feeling Overwhelmed by the conditions and not knowing where to start and I don't think I'm alone in that place there's a lot of people that around me that I think

are feeling that similarly and I I wanted to talk to Aisha because to me she is one of these people that is risking, daring to actually address an issue, address an issue in our community and take on a radical shift in order to see what comes from it. And I really wanted to be inspired by her work. I wanted to learn more about her work, how she does it, why she does it. So Aisha Yandoro is the CEO of Springboard Opportunities.

She's also the person that kind of created this project called Magnolia Mothers Trust, which is a a guaranteed income program specifically, specifically for black mothers who are living in poverty. She gives folks $1,000 a month. There's no strings attached. They can do whatever they need to with the money.

And it, to me, it represents the best of us, because it's asking this question, I think, of what happens when we don't have to live in scarcity? What happens when we're not struggling as much to make ends meet? What becomes possible in that space? And I wanted to talk to Aisha about everything underneath it, you know, our concepts of deservedness, like who's worthy of actually getting help and how do they have to prove their worthiness to us inside of this system that we're all in.

We also talked about, from our own lives and from the lives of the folks she worked with, the internalization of the shame around poverty and how that internalization keeps all of us from being able to actually put into proper view and perspective the systems, namely capitalism, all these systems that shape how we get resources, that shape who has resources, all that gets obscured when we take it on as a personal shame that we're experiencing poverty. We also talked about what wealth actually means, which I think is a really important question. Some folks might name wealth as having a diversified stock portfolio, whatever it might be, generational money that's getting passed down, or land, or whatever it might be.

She talks about wealth as Through these relationships with the black mothers that she works with, wealth is a much broader concept. It's not just about what I have and what I hoard, but it's about what the people around me are able to do, what I can do with my time, what's available, what kind of experiences we can have. I really feel like that's an invitation for all of us to reimagine and reconsider what wealth actually means in our lives. What would it mean for all of us to be wealthy in our lives, not just through the metric of hoarding, but through the metric of what are the experiences that we have and are available to us.

And I think the other big piece, I asked her this question that was really important to me in kind of grappling with my own sense of futility sometimes in this world. But how do we take this project, a small, somewhat small, but growing and profound project, and make it actually scalable? And not just scalable, but how does this experiment of guaranteed income actually shift the logic for us about wealth, about what it means to care for each other as a society, about how we distribute resources. How do we get the policy change, but also how do we get underneath that policy and understand what a society, what our institutions, what a government must do to care for its people.

This is one of those episodes that really inspired me and kind of put me back on a path of thinking about what's possible even in these moments when everything feels overwhelming. What are the interventions? What are the shifts that we can make? And how do we take those shifts from something that we just do and share it out?

So this is Aisha Yandoro sharing out her magic, sharing out her big experiment. And I hope that it fortifies you and all of your experiments and also inspires you to think about what your community might need and what you might do. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Aisha Yandoro. Thanks for listening.

Aisha, welcome to Becoming the People. So happy to have you here. Oh, Prentice, thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here with you.

What a joy. I want to get into so many things with you, but I really want to start with your story. Because when I was digging into your work, there's so many stories that kind of populate and give texture to what you do and how you do it. And I want to hear all of those.

But when I was just listening to you speak, I think I was struck by what actually gives someone the audacity to take on such a big question, kind of soulfulness and heartfulness of the work that you do, the care that's embedded in the work you do. And there's a precision of, you know, who you work with and why you work with those folks. I was like, I want to know what Aisha is made of in order to get to the point where she can do this work the way she does. I wonder if you could give us a little glimpse into how you got here, where you're from, who you people are.

Yeah, I love that question so much. And I love how you rooted in an audacity, because that is one of my favorite words. I don't think we use it enough. And I want people to use it more.

I'm like, we really need to be audacious and we need some radical audacity. And thank you for asking me to be grounded in who I am and who my people are and really understanding the context and layers. that lend themselves to what I hope I am becoming, which is being a good manifestation of what my ancestors and my elders dreamt for my life and the possibilities. So who I am is a granddaughter of the South.

I am homegrown goodness from Jackson, Mississippi. I have a love relationship with this place. I am a granddaughter of the Civil Rights Movement. My maternal grandmother was a veteran of the movement.

I am made up of fried catfish and fried corn in my granny's table. I am made up of my father's sermons and my mother's prayers and my twin brother's joy. and my children's delight. So there are all of these pieces that come to bring me full circle in this moment.

But when I really think about Audacity and the big work that I am so proud to lead, it really is because of the soul and the place that I'm from. Like I said, I'm from Jackson, Mississippi. I am rooted here. I understand my history.

I understand what my ancestors and elders fought for. And so how dare I not be audacious? Because I know what I'm made of. I know who I am and I know whose I am.

And so why not be audacious? It would be disrespectful to not be, in my opinion. I totally agree. I really honor that.

And, you know, I love talking to Black Southerners, too, because I I am a Black Southerner. That's where I come from. Aren't we great? And I think we're great.

And I don't think people understand how great we are. The audacity and you answering their prayers. I just feel like there's so much a part of that story that of being a Black Southerner that I just resonate with and I feel so much. Thank you for that, first of all.

Thank you for sharing that. I feel the connection to where you come from and the beauty and power of that story. And I want to talk about your work around guaranteed income. And I kind of want to come into it this way.

I think about how throughout my whole life, the way that I've understood it, social welfare has gotten a bad name, or if you call it that. Any time we give to others, it kind of gets this bad rap. And as you see this moment that we're in, there's even a more pointed erosion of even care for each other. It kind of brings me back to this question of audacity.

It's like, when did this idea come to you that it was possible to implement a guaranteed income program in Jackson? And what are some of the challenges you face in trying to implement that, both We can talk about structurally, we can get into that, but I'm really interested in like the story, the narrative stuff that you've had to wade through of just the indoctrination that we don't help each other or we have to make people bad that need from others. What kind of stuff have you had to move through and how have you done that in your work?

Yeah, so I'm gonna answer this in layers. So it's gonna be a little long, so apologies in advance. So first and foremost, the idea that we can't help each other I'm gonna push back on that. It really is who we see as deserving of needing our help.

We help folks all the time. We help. It's really about respectability politics. Who do we decide or who do we feel is worthy of being helped?

Who do we feel has done enough or showed up in a right way or that we have policed them in a way that affirms who we feel we are and thereby affirming who we feel they need to be. So it's not that we're not willing to help. It's who do we feel is deserving of our help? And so we have to begin to push back on that and understand that we are all deserving of help.

We are all deserving of humanity by virtue of our very existence. And so it's that layer of deservingness that we have to get through when we really are talking about the social safety net and our social contract. And how we got to guaranteed income. So first, let me do a little level setting for folks who are listening that may not know what guaranteed income is.

Guaranteed income is a specific amount of money given to a specific population for a set amount of time without restrictions. So in the work that I do with Magnolia Mothers Trust, we provide a guaranteed income to black mothers experiencing poverty living in federally subsidized affordable housing. $1,000 a month, 12 months, no strings attached, which changes the trajectory of their life. But how we got to this work, Prentice, quite honestly, had nothing to do with my audacity.

Quite frankly, it had to do with the audacity of the Black women that I work with. So in 2017, I lead a broader organization, Springboard to Opportunities, and we work in community, and we're always there. We have relationships. So in 2017, I spent a lot of time in community and it was a Friday night.

I was in a community and I was having a conversation with one of our moms that I've known for years at this time. Her name is Val. And I simply said to her, I was like, you know, Val, what are you doing this weekend with your kids? Are y'all getting pizza, watching a movie?

What you got going on? And she just looked at me and said, plainly, she was like, you know, Ms. Aisha, I can't afford something like a pizza. And she just kept, she doesn't even remember the conversation. She just kept going on about her business.

But in that moment, I was shook, because I was like, okay, here it is. I'm leading an organization that proclaims that we are radically resident-driven. We are rooted in community. We are showing up.

We are providing all of these programs and services. And someone that I have a relationship with, It's telling me they can't afford something as seemingly inconsequential as pizza on a Friday. I was like as an organization we are missing something. And so I went to my staff, and I said I don't know what we're doing wrong but it's our responsibility to figure it out.

And it's our responsibility to write it immediately. And we went into community and we said, okay, since we are an organization that has the benefit of having relationships and we are an organization that has the benefit of listening and listening deeply and having that benefit of folks knowing who we are and knowing that we care, we just went out and we spent six months sitting and talking to the women that we work with, sitting on couches, sitting on porches, just really trying to understand. And we didn't go out with a full buffet of questions.

We just said, we know something is happening that we're missing. What is it? And they just told us these stories, and none of the stories were asking us as an organization to do anything more. They weren't saying we were doing anything wrong.

It was the stories about the complexity of their lives. I remember one of the moms talking about how she was so excited that her daughter had made the cheerleading squad, but how she was also so stressed about that because she didn't know how she was going to pay for it. I remember another mom telling me how she felt really bad that she always had to call her mom when she needed help because she felt like she couldn't financially or emotionally support her kids. And so when we sat down and listened to all of the stories from our families, I told my team, I was like, you know, they just need more money.

And how do we figure that piece out? What does that look like? And so this was in 2017 at the time, guaranteed income, cash-based assistance, all of that was not trending in our vernacular of how we talk about supporting families. And so Prentice, when you asked me, what were the layers of complexity of doing this work?

First and foremost, we had to prove that it was possible. We had to prove that it was possible, quite frankly, for the population that we work with, Black women in poverty in Mississippi. all of those layers of isms that we have put onto this population that are not there, that they did not earn, that we have put on them. And no one was meeting me in imagination.

No one was saying what it is that you are saying, okay, I just want to give Black women money, give Black mothers specifically money to go about living their life. No one was saying with me, yes, girl, that's great. Everyone was saying now, You can't do that. Why would you do that?

What are they going to do with the money? It was all of this. It was ridiculous. It was all of this negativity.

But not only was it all of this negativity, it was all of this putting people in their place. It was sort of saying, like, how dare you want for them or how dare you give them permission to want anything more for their life than they already have. So it was all of those layers. And then it was quite frankly, the fundraising.

When you're trying to raise money to give money away, that's a complication in and of itself. So you have a Black woman in the South where less than 1% of philanthropy comes to the South. And of that 1%, less than 1% goes to organizations led by women of color. So you have a Black woman in the South saying, give me some money to get other Black women when nobody lining up to do that.

I laugh because I know. I laugh because I really believe that. Nobody was lining up. Nobody was lining up.

And so there were all of those pieces that came with the work at the time. And I will say it was some of my hardest lessons, some of the most beautiful lessons in hindsight, but some of the hardest lessons that I have had to learn about how capitalism works in this country and how we are so wed to a narrative of deservedness that we would burn it all down before we allowed individuals that we don't feel as deserving to prosper. This is such a key point to me, and I've heard you talk about deservedness before.

This is such a key point, because part of what you're describing, it's like the people who might benefit the most from support or a robust social safety net are the ones, socially, we feel less inclined to support. And the more wealthy someone is, the more free stuff they get. the more that is handed to them, the more opportunities they have to multiply their wealth and the less wealth you have, the less opportunities and the disdain almost. I mean, I think as you were talking and sharing the stories, it really hit me in my own story and the kind of like internalization of shame that comes when you grow up not having enough and you feel like it is your individual fault.

only that this is like something you did wrong. And therefore, like I can imagine the women not saying, I need you to do more. I need something else because there's such an internalization around living or living in the experience of poverty that I know has taken me years to shake off years to go. Actually, that's not just a that's not like a moral or personal failing, you know, but that's by design.

And that's the piece that people don't understand that individualism of poverty is by design to make you sit in that feeling that, oh, I am doing something wrong. And if I were better, if I worked harder, I could actually get to whatever that next piece is. And that's by design to help you to not operate in your power, because when people begin to operate in their power, they will begin overturning these systems as we're entering to that next phase. But it's by design, and we see it time and time again.

And quite frankly, that probably has been the hardest part of our work. So I talk a lot about shifting the narrative on poverty. A few years ago, I began to realize that shifting the narrative on poverty had nothing to do with the external narrative for us. It really was the internal narrative that our moms had began to tell themselves about what their lives could be, what it is that they're allowed to have.

because the noise is so loud. And if you are constantly being inundated with this idea that you only deserve this, or you can only have that, eventually you begin to learn that. You begin to feel that because nothing else is being poured into you. Perfect example, a couple of years ago, I was having a conversation with one of our moms.

She was beating herself up because she was like, I don't save enough money. And I was like, OK, well, let's unpack that. What's going on? I'm like, what do you mean you don't save enough money?

And she was like, at the end of the month, I just am always struggling. I never have enough left. And I was like, OK, well, I know you work. She worked full time at Head Start.

And I was like, all right, well, how much do you make an hour? She was like, I make $10.10 an hour. And I was like, all right, sweetie. I said, is that enough?

And she was like, well, yes, enough. I said, why is it enough? And she was like, well, it's because that's what they pay me, so it has to be enough. And I was like, oh.

I was like, dear. I was like, and this is a few years ago, so the data point hasn't even changed. I was like, dear, data shows that you need at least $15 an hour to survive. I said, and here it is that you're trying to not only survive, you're talking about thriving because you want to save.

You're not set up. to thrive in that way. And a light bulb went on and she was like, oh my God, it's the system you're always talking about. I was like, it's the system I'm always talking about.

There it is. Yeah. Yeah. There it is.

We see it. Yeah. It's it's getting doing that work, that super important work of getting us a little bit away from the shame so you can see the function of the system in your life feels like such important work. And what happens when that shame is reduced, like you're saying, like what happens when the shame isn't there?

Other things open up. I want to talk about, because you said this explicitly, and I want to get into it with you. You work with Black mothers, specifically, unapologetically. Ten toes down.

Ten toes down. 10 toes down. And I think there's a, perhaps a seduction to say, if we're going to try this guaranteed income thing, we've got to try it in this way that tries to be quote unquote, and I'm putting it in quotes, you know, neutral around racial or gender issues, want to be neutral about that in order to implement this kind of program.

But you have been 10 toes down and saying, no, this is a program for black women in Jackson, Mississippi, in this particular housing. Talk to me about that kind of commitment and why you do the work the way you do. Yeah, definitely. So when we look at the work, it really is about who has been most harmed.

And when you look at the data around Black mothers, specifically in the South, they have been the ones who are most harmed from the economic realities that we put in place, from their wages, from the lack of care, from the narrative around Black mothers, the inequity as it relates to career and mobility, the inequity as it relates to housing options. All of these pieces make them the most financially vulnerable. in the communities that we operate in.

And the work that I do, on average, the moms that I work with make $13,000 annually. And these are women working full time, making $7.25 an hour. They work in these frontline jobs that we only consider essential during COVID. And they don't have the benefit of having the support of services in place to matriculate to the next level financially.

And mothers, and mothers. Exactly. And have children. Exactly.

Showing up, the primary caregiver, the primary provider, all of those pieces, and not just showing up for themselves and their household, but the concentric care that they have to provide outside of their house as well. And so when we started doing our work in 2017, because it was, you're right, people were like, we can't be that explicit. Do you really want to say, don't you want to open it up? I was like, if we are going to challenge this ideal of our social safety net, and if we're going to challenge the ideal of why we need to have better cash-based programs, we have to name explicitly who has been most harmed with our social safety net and who

has been most harmed by capitalism in this country. And it's Black women. Mm, that just gave me a little, a little jump. I know, put your chest out.

You're like, yeah. Square back my shoulders. Let me stand up straight. Exactly.

I mean, you know, coming from Black mothers and Black grandmothers and coming from that kind of experience, too, it's like, to say that explicitly, there's something really, yeah, dignifying in that. Yeah. And also, that's one of probably one of my biggest joys in my work is my paternal grandmother. Not quite understanding all of the pieces, you know, it'd be your family.

They'd be like, okay, now what exactly do you do? Again, I don't quite understand. And that's okay. I get it.

Thank you. But my paternal grandmother, who raised seven kids by herself, sixth grade education, came to me one time. We were having a conversation. She had read, you know, my father had brought her something to read that I had been featured in, and to have her say how her life would have been different.

if she had had somebody giving her a little extra money every month. Really, it was a full circle moment. And it was like, all right, you know what? I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Wow. I bet they're so proud of you. I want to ask a follow up question because you have said explicitly as you were speaking, you said cash based program. Like this is a program where you give cash.

You're not saying, you know, you're using the funds. It's not a voucher. It's not, you know, some other service. You're offering cash to black mothers.

And I think there's a lot of people that are thinking about guaranteed income, you know, that might be their strongest objection to a program like this, that you would be offering actually cash without attaching strings, I'm assuming, to how they spend it. Basically, why do you think they're still wrong? Those who object to giving cash to folks who, without having to itemize it or control it, why do you think those objectors are still wrong about how we can actually give money to people? Yeah, so a couple of points.

We give cash to people all the time. We give cash to wealthy people. We give cash to middle class folks. We do it all the time without making them itemize or making them justify or making them prove how they're using the money.

So it goes back again to that deservingness. It goes back again to who we feel that we can control. It goes back again to who we feel is entitled to a good life and who we feel should be in power. But not only that, I now know people are wrong.

We always assumed that people were wrong, but we now have all of the data points that prove that people are wrong. When you give individuals money that live in a cash scarcity, they go about doing what it is that you and I do when we get more money. They pay off their debt. They go back to school.

They get better jobs. They take care of their kids. Their kids are more involved in extracurricular activities. But more important than that, what we see is that people show up with joy.

They are dreaming about the possibilities of their future more. And we see that time and time again where they have breathing room and when you are no longer operating, thinking about the other shoe dropping and what that is going to mean. Because when you're living in poverty, you're always thinking about the next emergency because you know when that next emergency happens, it's going to derail you, not just for a day or a week, it could derail you for months. And so you're always thinking about that.

And so when we pull back the hood and we give people the space to breathe, they now can dream. And people who have the power to dream are a dangerous people. And that's why there are so many folks who are opposed to guaranteed income. We want to keep people locked in so where they never tap into their imagination.

They never recognize that these systems are wrong and I actually have the power to change these systems and that actually have the power to change these policies. We want people constantly showing up on these hamster wheels, making our lives better. But damn it, you don't have the ability to make your life better. I don't think this point can be overstated.

There's a psychologist, Dr. Raquel Martin, and she posted something about, I think, Black people and money and resources. And I think I commented something on there of like, It wasn't until I actually made enough money to cover my bills that I was able to be creative and dream. I think I said when I stopped overdrafting, when I wasn't overdrafting every month because I didn't have enough resources, then I started to build things. But I didn't have the bandwidth, actually, to dream at all, to write at all, to think at all, because I was doing constant calculations in the grocery store.

When you're in the grocery store, like, can I buy this bag of rice and this bean? Should I buy this meat? Should I? Just constant math and fear.

And it wrecks our nervous systems. I mean, we're not even going to get into that. But what happens to a body that is constantly in that kind of fear, and it's taking risks every day just to survive, it's immense. the impact is immense on a body, on a family, and really, really can't be, I think can't be overstated.

But I would love to hear from you. What are you hearing from people that have gone through this program? Like, what are you witnessing? Yeah, so we have been doing our work specifically now for seven years with the Magnolia Mothers Trust.

I know, right? We have supported hundreds of women. We have countless stories I'm pausing because I always want to make sure that I am not oversimplifying the realities of poverty. And so when individuals ask me, okay, what are you hearing?

Share the stories. It makes it seem as if there is one singular way in which we define success. And I want to make sure that I don't do that because, you know, poverty is layered. And so I am clear that with our work, that not everyone entering Magnolia Mother's Trust will have the same outcomes.

It's not designed that they will. That whatever your outcomes are, are your outcomes. And our work is simply to plant the seed. And some seeds, you plant them and they grow immediately.

Some seeds, you plant them and it may be 20 years from now where that manifestation comes forward. So, Aisha, that's so important because, you know, this funding world, when you're, you know, doing nonprofit work, funders want to see, okay, what are the immediate results? Did everything change after you did this thing forever and ever and ever? And it's hard to do the thing that you're saying right now of like, one, is that even what this is about?

That's right. Two, Can we be in the work of planting seeds? And I just think that's such a powerful reframe on how I think philanthropy thinks about generally, broadly, mass generalization, but thinks about change. And so, yeah, I just appreciate that point.

It's not just a immediate change. No, it's not. And thank you for taking that a step further because you're right. And I do think that that's a part also, though, in changing the narrative and how we talk about poverty.

We want to act as if it's a quick fix and poverty isn't a quick fix. So what it is that we are doing with Magnolia Mothers Trust, we're providing the cash in which scarcity no longer needs to exist. And by providing that cash, it gives you space to dream whatever your dreams are and your outcomes or whatever your outcomes are. So the fact that we have now been doing this work for seven years, success, hands down.

The fact that I'm talking to you, success. The fact that guaranteed income is trending, success. But also when I think about And, you know, there are, again, individual successes. I can tell you that we've had moms buy homes, open businesses, you know, get out of debt, all of those things.

All of that is true. But that's the least sexy part of the work. To me, when I think about the success, it is the holistic successes that we are having and how we actually are interrogating our social safety net. the conversations that we are having about agency and liberation and what that looks like and who gets to control those narratives.

But when I also think about success, I think about the women when the light bulb go on and they say, oh, I actually can have that thing I actually can dream for myself, not just for my kids. And this is what that looks like. So success is layered. And I will also say success is layered, but I'll also say this too.

I, when I think about the work that I do specifically with the guaranteed income and the cash-based work that I am doing, I divorce myself of the ideal of, I divorce myself from the ideal of it being individual part or that it is this one piece that I control. Like, I'm very clear that this really is the long arc of the work. Poverty just didn't happen overnight.

We've been fighting this system for generations. And so I'm excited that I'm just one, I'm holding my root in this moment and I have to trust that the others alongside me are holding their root. And, you know, we'll get to it being alleviated if not in my lifetime, in my kids' lifetime, or in my grandkids' lifetime. And to me, that's success.

It makes me be excited about being a part of that legacy and that lineage as well. Oh, can I ask you this question then about- You can ask whatever you want to. Because I think you've done a lot of, I think, really important reframing and helping us understand, at least for me, kind of illuminating this piece around deservedness and how the giving that is happening, but the kind of stories and narratives that we put on who deserves. But I'm also interested in a reframe, maybe, if there's a reframe that you have, about wealth.

So there's a very material reality of there just isn't enough. and the stories you share, there just isn't enough with black families and black communities. But I am also interested in what you now understand through this work about what wealth is and what it is not. Because I think we've all been indoctrinated into ideas of wealth as a certain kind of opulence, flashiness, and to me, a kind of never satisfied, a disposability kind of underneath that.

but we don't really trouble that definition so much. So I think you being you and being in community and relationship with the people that you're in community and relationship with, what are you learning about what wealth really means or could be? That is one of the harms, quite frankly, that we are perpetuating as folks in the space of economic justice, leaning into this very narrow definition of wealth that is fueled by capitalism, and that is fueled by economists, and that actually doesn't sit where community is. And it doesn't sit where community is because community understands better than all of us that when we are talking about wealth and the way in which we define wealth of having more safe and having more assets than you have debt, they understand that for a lot of them,

that definition of wealth is never theirs to own. But not only is that definition of wealth never theirs to own, that definition of wealth seems limited. And so I realized a couple of years ago, and we actually started asking our moms, like, what does wealth mean? Like, what makes you wealthy?

And I was floored. No one ever said, I would like a 401k. No one ever said I would like stock. It was the simple things.

I remember one mom saying, you know, I would love to make sure that at the end of the month, all my bills were paid. I want to be able to go on vacation every year with my kids. I want to have a job in which I have flex time. And all of those, and it actually made me sit down and reframe how you were saying, how you really had to interrogate your understanding of what you think about wealth.

It made me sit down and reframe how I actually think about wealth. And the first, when I did this a couple of years ago, I started crying. I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, you know, I've been holding on to this ideal of wealth that was not mine, that doesn't align to who I am, it doesn't sit well in my body.

And yeah, for them and how I think about wealth, it's a life well lived. And it really is about holistic prosperity. It really is about how are we in alignment in our life in a way that is affirming, dignifying, allows me to show up and breathe, have joy, all of those pieces. It's not just bank accounts, but it really is having, it's not operating in scarcity in any area of their life.

That's how, you know, that's really how I am looking at wealth now. And I really do think that's the invitation, quite frankly, to all of us, because I was listening to a podcast or, you know, some research about individuals who have wealth and how unhappy they are. You know, and so I was like, why do we keep acting as if wealth is the standard? Traditional definition of wealth is the standard that we should be working towards when we have all of the data points that show that so many individuals who have wealth actually don't have joy or abundance either.

Absolutely. It's certainly not, it's certainly not a, an indicator of happiness or stability or love or anything else. And it's not a life well lived. In fact, can be a barrier.

It becomes the central reason for living. Absolutely can be a barrier. I want to ask you this question as we start to move a little bit to close. I have a question about just thinking about this program.

And you said guaranteed income is trending. There are other programs that people are launching in other places. It's happened, you know, I know of Alaska's program. I'm sure it's happening in other places, too, in the States, and I'm sure you know about those.

How do we take this from, and I'm kind of like, looking at the moment we're in, and there's no way to even say it succinctly. There's uncertainty. There's been massive layoffs and job losses. There's the looming fear of how, you know, AI will, you know, take away people's ability to make livelihood.

And I don't, you don't need to speak to all that unless you have particular insight. But my question is like, how do programs like this move from a program to the level of policy, perhaps? Or like, how do we keep guaranteed income trending, actually, given what we're facing economically? Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

And thank you for that question. And it is, you're right, in this moment after the election, I was massively depressed for a second. And my husband was like, my husband's a structural engineer. So he was like, you'll be fine.

I'm like, I don't think you understand what, you know, from a social aspect, what's happening. So this moment is much more complicated than I think a lot of people can tap into and understand as it relates to the dismantling of our, the erosion of this ideal of comfort that so many of us have had, but this moment is also vitally necessary in order to rebuild the systems that actually benefit all of us. And so when I think about the possibilities of guaranteed income in this moment, and how do we take it from the margins to where there are a few dozen or hundred pilots operating in various cities or states and various organizations.

How do we make it so where it truly is a part of the mainstream and it truly is audacious and everyone knows what it is because we have guaranteed income at the federal level. When I think about this moment, it's a value shift and it's an alignment. And that value shift and alignment won't happen overnight. Again, this is the long arc of the work.

And I think that's the part where I know me who operates in a space of radical urgency that I am having to govern myself with. And I know other colleagues as well. It's like, okay, we're holding our root. We understand we can't do it all.

Let us lead into that. And that is how we are going to make it so we're a guaranteed income gets to permanency. We saw it for a moment in time with the child tax credit that we had in 2021, 2022. And we saw what it did.

We saw how the child tax credit, we were able to cut child poverty in half in six months for the first time in 40 years. So we know it's possible, but it did not happen because of that value shift. It was still this idea of, okay, we just can't give people money. But in this moment where we are seeing where everyone is going to be made vulnerable, not just a subset, everyone is going to have to contend with this affordability crisis.

Everyone is going to have to contend with what is coming down the pipe as it relates to AI. Everyone is going to have to contend with the results that are coming down from the big beautiful build. When that happens, we are going to be forced to interrogate our values. In interrogating our values, we're going to have to get very honest, not only about who we are, but who we want our country to be, what we want for our fellow man, and what it is that we know we all deserve, and what it means to have a

life that's well-lived. So when I think about How we get guaranteed income cash based system to permanency is a values realignment. And that's not something that's going to happen in the next election cycle, but we have to continue to do the work to push back on narratives, we have to continue to do the work. to have these pilots and various iterations of the program.

And we have to do the hard work necessary of pushing back on this undated values that we have that are no longer serving us well. I know. I've been thinking about that a lot. And I'm glad you have.

I mean, that's why I wanted to talk to you in parks. I was like, I know somebody is thinking about this. And it needs to be thought about. So I'm grateful to you for the work that you're doing and how you're thinking about the mothers and the women that you work with, but, you know, in a way thinking about all of us and how we might shift the way we understand caring for each other and

resources and all of that. You talked about changing the narrative, and I mean, I think you've said so much, but I wonder if there's anything you want to leave us with here about what the story could be about who we are to each other, how we handle resources. Is there an emerging story for you? I know you're writing a book, but is there anything you want to leave us with about what this story could be?

I think that is such a great question to end with. Oh my gosh. No, seriously. Because I, so much of the story lately, and I'm sure you are hearing this and seeing this, so much of the story lately has been one of scarcity and fear.

And that doesn't, that doesn't fit, it doesn't feel right in my body and I've been trying to reject that. And so the story that I want all of us to lean into and a story that I want all of us to understand is a story of abundance and joy. I want all of us to begin to really think about what our revolution is. Like, what is the work that you are here to do in this moment?

And I had the conversation with my 15-year-old. I'm like, you know, because it was like, ooh, your work seems really tricky right now. And I'm like, baby, it is really tricky, but isn't it also exciting? Because I am caught in this moment.

I'm like, ooh, let me put some respect on my name. The ancestors were like, no, seriously. I was like, the ancestors was like, we need her right here now. And so I really have been like, if you are alive in this moment, there is work for you to do.

And so when I think about that, I think about the abundance and immense pride and responsibility. And so that's the invitation. And that's what I have been asking people to sit with. Let's not sit in fear.

Let's not sit in scarcity. Let's reject all of that. That's intentional. The over-inundating us with these stories around fear and That is on purpose.

Get off the Twitter or whatever it is. Turn it off. And really lean into what it is that you're called to do in this moment. And be excited about that thing.

Because if you are here right now, where all of this is falling apart, your ancestors think you are a bad mama-jama and busy doing what it is that they want you to do. OK. Y'all hear that? It's time to get busy.

It's time to do it. I heard that. That really hit me. And I just appreciate you kind of closing us with that, because I think we all need that encouragement right now.

And you talked about the fear. The fear is so real. And the fear has a reason. It's not ungrounded fear.

And yet, this call this call to believe in what your ancestors seem to believe in you to do, and to get on with it, to be that expression, to be that portal, to be that opening is an incredible call. And I'm just so grateful to you for the work that you're doing, with what spirit you do it, with what heart you do it, with what commitment and clarity you do it. And yeah, I think it's a model, it's an approach, it's a philosophy that I will do my best to support in spreading and I hope that continues to spread everywhere. So thank you so much.

Thank you. This has been a delight. So thank you so much for having me. Of course.

Anytime. When the book comes out. Hey! Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña, sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine.

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