Rebecca talks to Dorian Warren, co-chair of the Economic Security Project, and Aisha Nyandoro, creator of the Magnolia Mother's Trust, about the growing evidence calling for guaranteed income policies in the U.S. -- and why now is the moment to finally leave the 1990s-era "work requirements" debate in the history books.

The Ever-Growing Case for Guaranteed Income -- feat. Dorian Warren and Aisha Nyandoro

Rebecca talks to Jeremie Greer--co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation--about the case for centering grassroots leaders of color within the anti-monopoly movement, and reimagining the antitrust movement’s work through a racial justice lens.

Reimagining Anti-Monopoly Activism Through Racial Justice -- feat. Jeremie Greer

Rebecca talks to Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, who served from 2001 until 2019 as the IRS’s internal watchdog known as the national taxpayer advocate, and Jen Burdick, a lawyer in the public benefits unit at Community Legal Services, about what it will take to ensure low-income individuals and families newly eligible for the new child allowance, the EITC expansion, and other income-boosting provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act can actually access those benefits—to ensure that the law's promised poverty reductions transfer from spreadsheets into real life.

Eligibility doesn’t equal access

To kick off a series of conversations with leaders in the field of reentry and criminal records reform for April as Second Chance Month, Rebecca talks to two of the leading academics behind a critical new line of research on what’s now being called the “second chance gap”—JJ Prescott, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Paper Prisons Project—whose research on who’s getting left behind by hard to navigate expungement systems has been fueling state momentum to make criminal record-clearing automatic for everyone who’s eligible, instead of just the lucky few who can afford to hire a lawyer.

The Second Chance Gap -- feat. JJ Prescott and Colleen Chien

Off-Kilter continues our Second Chance Month series with Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, best known for the visionary Amendment 4 campaign that restored the right to vote for 1.4 million people with felony convictions in Florida—and Sheena Meade, managing director of the Clean Slate Initiative, a bipartisan national movement to expand record-clearing and make it automatic to put second chances within reach for everyone, not just folks who can afford a lawyer.

Desmond Meade and Sheena Meade Talk Second Chance Month

As Off-Kilter continues #SecondChanceMonth, to mark 4/20, Rebecca sat down with Adam Vine, cofounder of Cage Free Cannabis & Cage Free Repair, and Felicia Carbajal, interim director of programming with National Expungement Week.

Cage Free Cannabis Talks #SecondChanceMonth

As Off-Kilter closes out our #SecondChanceMonth series for the month of April, we’re bringing you a conversation Rebecca had earlier this week with a group of state leaders who’ve been advancing transformative “clean slate” and fair chance licensing reforms in recent years: Michigan Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II; Sharon Dietrich, litigation director at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia; Representative Jordan Harris, Minority Whip of the Pennsylvania Assembly; Josh Hoe, policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan; Whitley Carpenter, criminal justice staff attorney at Forward Justice in North Carolina; and Jael Myrick, interim director of the Clean Slate practice at the East Bay Community Law Center in California.

State Leaders Talk #SecondChanceMonth: Fair Chance Licensing and Clean Slate

The April jobs data released by the Department of Labor last week spurred an avalanche of hysteria and conservative hand-wringing about supposedly widespread labor shortages, with many on the right pointing to pandemic jobless benefits as the bogeyman. In a particularly troubling move, on Wednesday of this week, 12 Republican governors announced they’d be ending access to pandemic unemployment benefits in their states. To help unpack the state of the labor market as the COVID-19 economic recovery continues—and the role of pandemic unemployment insurance in the recovery—Rebecca sat down with Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, for a reality check on the jobs data and what they really tell us about the kind of policies we need at this point in the ongoing recovery.

What's Really Going on in the Labor Market -- feat. Heidi Shierholz

While poverty is all too often portrayed as a personal failure, it’s actually the result of bad public policy choices. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped in poverty—not because we as a nation lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to. This is the premise of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, a new book that looks at many of the policy choices conspiring to keep people poor and offers a roadmap of solutions that would eradicate poverty in the U.S. Rebecca sat down with the authors, Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, for this week's pod.

"Broke in America"--feat. Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

This week, Off-Kilter’s bringing you a conversation Rebecca moderated at The Century Foundation earlier this week, on the historic opportunity to make long overdue improvements to Supplemental Security Income as part of #BuildBackBetter—featuring Sen Sherrod Brown, Rep. Raul Grijalva, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, as well as a panel of disability and seniors’ advocates.

Why Strengthening SSI Needs to Be Part of "Building Back Better"

This week, we are talking Baltimore and moms. Our friends at Media Matters help us cut through the conservative media narratives that blame the Baltimore unrest on welfare; Sam Seder examines conservative rhetoric versus reality; Jenée Desmond-Harris of Vox reports from Baltimore on what is happening on the ground; we take a look at how moms get blamed for basically all of our social ills; and more.  Our guests include Sam Seder, host of the Majority Report and co-host of Ring of Fire; Rebecca Lenn, Director of Outreach at Media Matters for America; Jenée Desmond-Harris, staff writer at Vox.com; Linda Blum, Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University and author of Raising Generation Rx: Mothering Kids with Disabilities in an Age of Inequality; and ​Levester Joe Green II and Bryan Bello, co-directors of the film I am Levester Joe Green II.

This episode originally aired as TalkPoverty Radio.

All Eyes on Baltimore

After months of intense protests, the US Army Corps of Engineers finally blocked construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline last week. Mary Kathryn Nagle, an attorney and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explains what this victory means and what lies ahead. Next, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, a fellow with CAP’s Legal Progress program, and Sharon Dietrich, the litigation director of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, discuss the state of access to justice for marginalized Americans. Finally, David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, fills us in on the part played by big donors in advancing agendas that don’t always benefit Americans of modest means. But first, Jeremy Slevin returns to highlight this week’s biggest stories in poverty.

This episode originally aired as TalkPoverty Radio.

Dakota, Interrupted

Literally at the same time Trump and his colleagues in Congress are working to ram gargantuan tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations through Congress without a single democratic vote, they’re making no secret of how they want to pay for them. By slashing vital programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and more. To help us unpack where they’re headed -- and what they mean when they use buzzwords like “entitlement reform” and “welfare reform” – Rebecca talks with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). Next, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig walked into Masterpiece Cakeshop five years ago, they had no idea their search for the perfect wedding cake would take them to the United States Supreme Court. Following oral arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case earlier this week Rebecca talks with Sharita Gruberg, LGBTQ policy guru at the Center for American Progress about what’s at stake. But first, Jeremy Slevin brings some holiday cheer – plus updates on the tax fight, government shutdown, and more – for another installment of In Case You Missed It.

No Cake For You

Families aren’t just being separated at the border. Every day, parents in communities across the U.S. have their children taken from them as punishment simply for being poor, under the guise of protecting children from neglect. Congresswoman Gwen Moore knows what this is like from personal experience—she battled to retain custody of her oldest daughter, while she was struggling to make ends meet as a young mother. Recently, she introduced legislation to stop other families from being separated for the crime of being poor. Rebecca speaks with the Congresswoman about her own experience being punished for her poverty—and about her new bill.

Later in the show, wage theft is often viewed as a civil issue. But the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has taken it on as a major priority for criminal prosecutions—and with a focus on construction workers, as part of a larger initiative to protect and fight for a group of workers who don’t just risk their lives in some of the most dangerous working conditions… but can also be left wondering if they’ll even get paid. To hear more about how some of New York City’s top law enforcement officials are taking the fight on behalf of the city’s construction workers to the courtroom, Rebecca speaks with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and Hilda Lin Colon, the coordinator of the Construction Fraud Task Force.

But first, what’s at stake for low-income workers and families if Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court; good news out of Kentucky (for now) on Medicaid; DC Council introduces a bill to overturn the will of the voters by repealing Initiative 77, the minimum wage increase for tipped workers that passed last month; Jeremy gets engaged (!!); and other news of the week ICYMI.

Family Poverty is Not Child Neglect

A D.C. snow day gives us the chance to revisit some of our favorite conversations, including the Times’ Emily Badger on the Elizabethan origins of the term “able-bodied”; plus in honor of President’s Day, Alex Lawson and a pre-Indivisible Ezra Levin on a Founding Father’s vision for ending poverty.

Snow Day Best Of

The rise of the “working homeless,” and why housing insecurity in the U.S. is far worse than official stats suggest—PLUS: What the fight over means testing is really about.

The New American Homeless

Formerly TalkPoverty Radio, Off-Kilter is a podcast about poverty and inequality — and everything they intersect with. Each week, host Rebecca Vallas is joined by experts, advocates, activists, and other smart people to break down the issues of the day — and how we fight back. Heavy topics… but with a hefty dose of laughter and snark. Powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Find Off-Kilter on the Progressive Voices Network, the We Act Radio network in DC, local radio stations across the U.S., and as a podcast on iTunes. 

We want to hear from you! Send ideas, pitches, and feedback to offkilter@americanprogressaction.org.

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