Building Local Power

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.

Browse past episodes

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

Complete Episode Archive