Building Local Power offers thought-provoking conversations and new ideas for breaking the hold of corporate monopolies and expanding the power of communities to chart their own future.
Every two weeks, we bring you interviews with trailblazing lawmakers, scholars, business leaders, and advocates, plus conversations with the Institute’s own in-house experts, who share their latest research and reporting.
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New episodes are published bi-weekly on Thursdays. Sign up to get new podcast notifications.
Recent Episodes of Building Local Power
A Food Oasis in North Tulsa
Luke Gannon
March 16, 2023
Aaron Johnson, founder and owner of Oasis Fresh Market in North Tulsa, Oklahoma, tells his journey of opening a grocery store to provide a refuge, safe place, and shelter to a community that had been a food desert for fourteen years. On the second half of the episode, Stacy Mitchell explains the policy decisions that have led to an increasingly consolidated grocery sector and the steps to take to support locally-owned, community-centric grocery models. READ MORE
Toledo Takes Dollar Stores to Church
Luke Gannon
February 28, 2023
Dr. Perryman, a life-long Toledo resident, tells his story of leading a religious, social, and political movement to empower his community and fight against dollar store proliferation. Kennedy Smith weaves Dr. Perryman's story into the national fight against dollar stores. She notes the harms that dollar stores inflict as well as the strategies communities can use to battle them. READ MORE
Shifting the Paradigm, One Community at a Time
Luke Gannon
December 29, 2022
For our final Building Local Power episode of 2022, we invited Co-Founder, David Morris, to offer a history lesson on the self-reliance framework that underpins ILSR’s work. He discusses how that framework has evolved over four-plus decades, the organization’s inherent aversion to bigness, and the successes and hardships of ILSR’s early years. READ MORE
Community Broadband’s Broad Appeal
Luke Gannon
December 15, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power, Christopher Mitchell and Sean Gonsalves talk about the work that immediately lies ahead for the broad array of communities seeking to free themselves from the unbridled power of monopolistic Internet providers. READ MORE
Small Businesses Rise Up
Luke Gannon
December 1, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power, three members of ILSR’s Independent Business team, Lauren Gellatly, Katy Milani, and Kennedy Smith, answer: What challenges are small, independent businesses facing? And what legislative solutions are on the way? READ MORE
Breaking Bad Energy
Luke Gannon
November 17, 2022
The three members from ILSR's energy team engage in a riveting conversation on the biggest energy stories from 2022, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s big funding for solar, the antimonopoly focus in the Biden administration, how utility companies are continuing to use their financial power to lobby against energy, and a new tool designed to bring distributed solar to more communities. READ MORE
Unpacking the Year in Composting
Luke Gannon
November 3, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power, members of the Composting for Community team, Brenda Platt and Clarissa Libertelli, explain how their accomplishments in 2022 have impacted communities across the U.S. and forged a more sustainable future. READ MORE
A Renewable Rural America
Luke Gannon
October 20, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power, Josh Ewing, Director of the Rural Climate Partnership, explains how we must put rural America at the forefront of the clean energy transition. READ MORE
A Short-Term Win, A Long-Term Target
Luke Gannon
October 6, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power Alejandro Roark, the Chief of Consumer and Governmental Affairs at the FCC tells a captivating journey of his career from working at the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership all the way to his current career at the Federal Communications Commission. He speaks about his LGBTQ inclusion work, racial and economic justice in the telecommunications sector, collective action, and how the ACP is filling an immediate and vital need. ILSR's Sean Gonsalves weighs in on how to strategize for longer term Internet solutions that will make our broadband economy more fair and equitable. READ MORE
A Renaissance for Black Voices and Spaces
Luke Gannon
September 22, 2022
This week on Building Local Power, we are joined by Brandi Collins-Dexter, author of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and our Political Future and Stacy Mitchell, Co-Director of ILSR. We engage in a riveting conversation on how political parties have monopolistic tendencies, how Big Tech has dominated mainstream media, and the future of Black-owned and led businesses in America. READ MORE
Rats Aren't the Problem in Cities. We Are.
Luke Gannon
September 8, 2022
On this episode of Building Local Power, Bloomberg reporter Linda Poon joins us to talk about how cities are [mis]managing rat infestations. We dive into the decline and spike in rat populations during and after the pandemic, cities' solutions to mitigating rat infestations, and how to shift the public focus from a problem with rats to a more proactive and thoughtful approach to how we discard food. READ MORE