Stepping Into Truth:
Nisha Anand Transcript
Nisha Anand 0:00
I don't want to equate all suffering and all oppression. But if you dig deep enough, we've experienced it. And it's not that far back. And where there's suffering, there's also great heroism. And I feel like that's kind of the moment we're in right now.
Omkari Williams 0:33
Hello, and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams and as a speaker and coach on activism, I have been working to make activism irresistible for over eight years. If you want to move the world towards justice, but feel like activism is loud or only for people you see in the news, you're in the right place. There are many paths of activism, including paths for introverts and highly sensitive people. And there is a path that is perfect for you. We need your contribution, no matter how small you might feel it is. The conversations you'll hear on this podcast will inform you on issues that we're confronting in our efforts to realize justice for all people, and I hope inspire you to get and stay on your own path of activism.
Omkari Williams 1:25
My guest today found herself changing her way of activism in some truly radical ways. Nisha Anand is a boundary buster, common ground creator, nonviolent culture creator, outside the box experimenter and national leader for social and racial justice. Once a grassroots activist arrested in Burma for pro democracy demonstrations, Nisha is known today as a leader in cultivating unlikely and unconventional partnerships to create change. As Dream Corps CEO Nisha guides a team of storytellers, organizers, and policy experts working on some of society's toughest problems to create a better future for all. And is my great pleasure to welcome Nisha to the podcast. Hi, Nisha, how are you?
Nisha Anand 2:13
I'm good. How are you doing?
Omkari Williams 2:15
I am doing pretty well, given the givens.
Nisha Anand 2:18
Yes.
Omkari Williams 2:19
Here we are, you know, it's 2022. It's definitely not what we were expecting. But here we are.
Nisha Anand 2:25
No, yesterday was my birthday. Actually.
Omkari Williams 2:28
Happy birthday.
Nisha Anand 2:29
Thank you. It was 45. So it feels like a moment and I asked Twitter what is, you know, your three birthday celebration supposed to be? I feel like I've done all of the other pandemic birthdays that I could do. And I got, the best thing happened is I got a video recording from a friend. Instead of just sending a text message, happy birthday, he sent just like a video message, someone I haven't seen in years because of the pandemic. And that felt really good. It wasn't pressure on me to show up on a zoom. And, you know, I can't go anywhere right now. But it was still a connection point, that felt really nice.
Omkari Williams 3:04
I really like that. And I'm going to remember that because I have a whole bunch of people who have birthdays coming up in the next few weeks. You know how somehow your friends all collect their birthdays around the same time, I'm pretty sure it's a ploy to completely impoverish you. But I am going to do that I'm going to send little videos to people because that feels nourishing. And I think we need that in these times. And actually, that sort of leads me into where I wanted to start this conversation. Because in your TEDx talk, which, by the way, has been viewed over a million times which is amazing. You tell a story of your family being hidden after the partition of India. And that story really struck me because I feel like one of the things that has happened in this moment that we're in, that's now more like two years and not a moment, is we're understanding in a different way, the importance of community, the importance of relationships. So I would love for you to just tell that story. And why you feel like that story actually points a way forward for us as a community.
Nisha Anand 4:13
Yeah, absolutely. My father was born in 1945. In India, well, what became Pakistan. My family's from North India, and he was a baby when the British left. And when the British left they just drew an arbitrary line because people were fighting over all sorts of different things at that moment in the Indian independence movement. And one of them is should there be different countries? Should we have different land? They drew an arbitrary line and left and said, here's one country, here's the next. It started the largest forced migration in human history.
Nisha Anand 4:46
People were not just migrating to be in different sides of the border. It set up a Muslim dominated country, Pakistan and a Hindu dominated country although in India it was supposed to be secular and all religions but definitely Hindu dominated. This line meant people were trapped on the wrong side of the border. And my family was one of them, a Hindu family trapped on the Pakistan side. And people were fleeing, and people were dying. People were getting murdered by, you know, government officials or vigilante officials, or even just passionate citizens feeling a certain way. It was dangerous. And they went into hiding in the neighborhood that they had lived, where they had grown up. And a Muslim family that they had grown up with hid them until we could safely get out of the country. And my dad was a baby. And the story I had been told, growing up was about that one moment, and there are eight children in the family, so they're all hiding. But this moment, when my dad started crying, and the choice was all get found out, it was a very likely outcome when you're crying when you're in hiding, found out, would they all be jailed? Or would they all be murdered? Would the family hiding them be murdered, or sacrifice my dad?
Nisha Anand 5:57
And I heard my grandfather tell the story. I've heard my brothers and my uncles and aunts tell the story. And my grandma took my father and shook him till he was quiet in just the right moment. And he hushed at just the moment because my grandfather had made the decision that he would sacrifice him to save the family. I heard that story growing up, and it always shook me because nothing like that had ever happened in my life. I was born in the States, I grew up in the States. I grew up in the South, the racism I faced in the South was nothing like having to sacrifice a family member to save everyone's life. So obviously, that story stuck with me. But what stuck with me later, and I don't know why I didn't identify it earlier. And I don't know if my parents just didn't emphasize it, was it was a Muslim family that hid them. And that Muslim family at one point, at a different time, when the military was checking their house, they swore on the Quran, on their holy book that they were not hiding any Hindus in the house.
Nisha Anand 6:54
They took great risk, because they cared enough about humanity, loved people more than politics. And were able to take the biggest risk possible for that. There's a long history of Muslims and Hindus and the fights, especially along that border that have happened. But in that moment, there are always people who are willing to do the human thing connect on our shared humanity, and risk a lot risk life. I think that it shows me a few things about this moment is that the suffering and the oppression that we have all faced is not far in our past. It is very recent history. And for me, it's just one generation. It's my father that was part of this. And not all suffering is the same. And I don't want to equate all suffering and all oppression. But if you dig deep enough, we've experienced it. And it's not that far back. And where there is suffering, there's also great heroism.
Nisha Anand 7:50
And I feel like that's kind of the moment we're in right now. If you look around, you will find people doing amazing things to take care of each other, to heal across the divides that have been created. The suffering and the loss that we're experiencing now, not just loss of life due to COVID. But learning loss for our children, some kids just went missing, didn't go to school for an entire year, the loss of things we hoped and dreamed of all those weddings that got canceled, we are grieving and not that all of our suffering is equal. But we are all suffering. And I think at this moment, being able to connect across that, it's really important. And hey, I also think we've done hard things, right? Like sometimes I see a friend who made a post on Facebook that I don't support, and I think I will never ever talk to them again. And I'm like, Okay, we've actually worked across much harder things than a mean tweet. And we've been able to come back together, humans have.
Omkari Williams 8:40
Yeah, that's a really good point. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot lately about the subject of sort of purity, politics, and how we're all in our silos. And there's pretty much no crossover to people with different points of view, and how very damaging that is to any society. I mean, and you are someone who is a self described former radical grassroots activist, and seem like the last person who would have a problem with purity politics. It seems like purity politics should absolutely be your jam. But it's not your jam, and purity politics and cancel culture really bother you. And I'd like to talk about that transformation in your thinking and why it's so important to you that we get out of those rigid patterns.
Nisha Anand 9:32
Yeah, that is such an important topic, and I have about 10 answers for it. So I think the first thing to know is that I haven't always been this way. And yet I also always have. I grew up as I mentioned, I'm a first generation kid, I had to translate between the old country and the new growing up in America. I absolutely understood American culture, you just, it seeps in because here you are in it, but I also understood Indian culture. So I had to be a translate between two things that were incongruous. That is certainly a path I've seen my whole life. But also being a radical activist I've dabbled in cancele culture, I should say. I was in high school in the 90s. And I was vegan in the 90s, which is a definitely different kind of vegan than you have now. I mean, I'm sure they're similar, but I was so righteous and so adamant about my veganness as I remember me and my friend trapping our friends into eating things that aren't vegan, just so we could shame them that they ate it. Like potato chips sitting out there, and someone took it. And we're like, you didn't read that, that had mono and triglycerides. And that might not be vegan. And, like, as bad as you could possibly be around purity politics, I did that around high school. And you asked anyone my freshman year of college, I certainly had some tests for if we could be friends. Now, this is the early 90s. So I'd like to think I think there's enough distance between it. But I certainly did act that way.
Nisha Anand 10:58
But there's also been this other piece of me, that's been the bridge builder, that's had to bring people together. And in fact, I think the reason why I became progressive was this idea of radical inclusion. I grew up in the South, where I was excluded from certain things. Atlanta, Georgia was very much Black, White, and I was an in between. And where did I fit in? How did I fit in? You know, I certainly think I have a superpower, in that I was able to go into any group and be part of any group, certainly a superpower. But it also gave me the super strength to build things that don't exclude anybody.
Nisha Anand 11:17
And to me, that's the progressive proposition. Is that when this country was created, there was only a very small founded colonialists, I don't want to get in the trappings of calling me out because I say that, but America's founding as it is now, only was America for certain people. Enslaved Africans were excluded. Women were excluded, Native Americans were murdered, massacred. It was only for a small group of people but there was also this dream. And it says it in the founding documents, we hold these truths to be self evident, all are created equal. You have things that we're forming a more perfect union. We hope to get to this place where everyone could be included, liberty and justice for all. So there's been this dream to make that circle bigger and bigger. And I believe that as a progressive that's my job, to make the circle as big as possible. To make sure no one is excluded from the opportunity that this country is supposed to have. And it hasn't been perfect. In fact, it's never been perfect. My job is to make it more perfect. So I think there's 1) a moral argument on why the purity politics don't work. I think it's against my value of radical inclusion. But I also think there's a practical reason. I told you, I had a lot to say about this.
Omkari Williams 12:46
I'm glad because this is good.
Nisha Anand 12:47
The practical reason is it doesn't work. It does not work in the history of ever saying I have an idea that will work for this group of people only. Only if you think like me, talk like me, look like me, etc. That type of solution will mean that everyone you excluded, will come back and fight you. That's the history of nation states. And it doesn't work, the most inclusive solutions, or the most durable ones, the ones that worked for the most amount of people that take into account other voices, other factors, other life experiences, more people get behind it, you'll have a better solution set. It's why as progressives, we fight for diversity in corporations, for instance. You're going to have a better product if you have a diverse set of people in it. It's also why we have to ask for diversity in the solutions that our country puts in legislation. Get the diversity of thought in there, we're actually going to have a better piece of legislation if we do. So, I also think it works. I think it's morally right. And I think it's the best path forward.
Omkari Williams 13:45
I mean, just from a pragmatic point of view, what you say makes complete sense. The broader your coalition, the more durable whatever you create will be. And you actually worked on something that is a perfect example of that, because there is that picture, the photograph of you and Newt Gingrich, which I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that college age, Nisha would never have thought she would be in a photograph with Newt Gingrich of all people.
Nisha Anand 14:18
Smiling.
Omkari Williams 14:18
But you were and you're smiling, and you're standing really close together. And I mean, it's like friends.
Nisha Anand 14:26
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 14:27
Tell the story of that photo, because I think that's really important to hear.
Nisha Anand 14:32
Yeah, high school Nisha would have pictured me like throwing a pie in the face of Speaker Gingrich but certainly not smiling next to him. In 1994 I was a high school senior. And that's when the crime bill was introduced and passed. Then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was a big piece of that. And this crime bill was horrible. It brought in the era of mass incarceration as we know it, a huge increase in the incarcerated population. It also ushered in things like me mandatory minimums and things that we're still fighting the legacy of. Three strikes laws popped up everywhere. This was a horrible piece of legislation, Biden was actually part of it. He's said that was a mistake. We also found out that Newt Gingrich thought it was a mistake, which blew my mind away. And when I say we discovered it, it was when I started working at Dream Corps, where I work now and was working with Van Jones. Van is the founder of Dream Corps and he was also, at the same time, a CNN commentator, who was on a show with Newt Gingrich called Crossfire. And this show is supposed to be the healthy debate of democracy, right and left arguing back and forth.
Nisha Anand 15:36
That show has failed three different times when it has come up and you know, been brought back to life. And that's unfortunate. Because that should be what democracy is, is the ability to have different ideas and debate them. But through that show, an amazing thing happened was Van met Newt. And when he met Newt and found out that Newt had some misgivings about the crime bill and what had happened, they talked about it some more. Now, I have been fighting for change in the criminal justice system, as long as I have been an activist. And when Van came to me, it was actually in our interview, he told me, this was nine years ago, we're going to pass bipartisan criminal justice reform. And I said that is an oxymoron. I've never met a Republican in my life, who ever wanted to have criminal justice reform. In fact, I had been arrested protesting, you know, in front of the Republican National Convention in 2000. I thought it was bananas, and Van walked me through it very clearly. And this was what he learned from Newt fiscal conservatives do not like prisons, they spend a ton of taxpayer dollars and get horrible results.
Nisha Anand 16:39
You're like setting fire to millions and millions of tax dollars. They don't want to raise taxes anymore for prisons, it's not making anyone safer. The religious right, conservatives that are on the religious side, they believe in second chances, they believe in redemption and they don't see that anywhere in our incarceration system. They want to see that change. They're anti death penalty, their natural allies, even if they're not coming at it from the same angle, they want that change. And he said, Libertarians, also, another arm of the Republican Party, or the right wing coalition, hates the idea of such a large police state and that you're in prison for marijuana crime violations. That doesn't make any sense. And he's like, so there are three different arms of this conservative coalition that want prison reform for different reasons in themselves in very different reasons for us. For me, it was all about justice, and the history of racism and oppression throughout the country and what the prison system represented. So we don't have to agree on everything about it. But there is a lot that we could get done.
Nisha Anand 17:38
And we started during the Obama administration, we started as much as we could building this coalition. We held a lot of meetings. That picture is taken from when Obama was still president. During that time, we held a bipartisan summit on criminal justice reform, Van and Newt were the co-hosts of the summit. And on the Hill we thought maybe 80 people would show up. 800 people showed up, including Attorney General Eric Holder. We had Republican red state governors like Nathan Deal in Georgia and Rick Perry in Texas. It was a full run of who's who in DC saying, "Yes, it's time to do something". And then Trump got elected. And Van said that picture, I had to take it because my dad's a Republican. So me having to debate ideas comes from a long, long history of having to debate my ideas every night at dinner. But my dad is a huge Newt fan. And we put on this event together, and Newt's team I loved working with them. They were phenomenal to work with. They are public servants, they believe what they are doing is best for the country. And we don't have to agree on everything. In fact, we could disagree on 99 things. But if there's one we agree on, let's get that one thing done. That's functional government, if we can find that one thing, get it done.
Nisha Anand 18:49
So I took that picture to send to my dad, because he also would never believe in that I did that. And it was a delight working with him. But then Trump got elected. And we had a really hard decision to make. The bill did not get passed during the Obama administration, it was close. We didn't have a lot of time, it didn't get passed, should we stop? Because Trump was elected, because we might not get the things we needed, because it wasn't an issue that he had shown any interest in. And Van turned to all of us on the team and he said, "There are people inside who do not want us to stop, they do not care who's in the White House. They want to come home to their house. So I'm asking you, if you will not work with the Trump administration to get this done. Leave this team and leave this organization. We owe it to the people inside to keep fighting for them". And so that's what we did.
Nisha Anand 19:36
We kept that bipartisan coalition going. We organized absolutely anyone in the White House who would listen because at the end of the day to pass a massive piece of legislation, which is the First Step Act, you have to have the President's signature, there's no way around it. We worked every angle we had of being activists our whole lives and what we knew about how to influence power and change minds and move it forward and we got this piece of legislation passed during the Trump administration with a Republican controlled House and Senate. 89, I want to say, "yes" votes to the First Step Act in the Senate. So not just bipartisan by one, bipartisan by a lot. It passed in the Senate. And today 20,000 people are home, because we passed it. It wasn't popular. There were a lot of people, especially in the progressive circles that did not want us working with officials in the White House, didn't want to give that win, to what it might look like. But 20,000 people are home today from it. And for me, it was absolutely 100% worth it and the right thing to do. We did not play politics, we played for our beliefs.
Omkari Williams 20:41
I think that's really important. And I think it's really important to just be honest about the fact that, you know, on the progressive side, we can be as dug in as people on the right. Because if you're saying, we don't want to do this, because we don't want to give someone the win, your perspective is off.
Nisha Anand 21:00
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 21:00
You're not paying attention to what's actually important here. I mean, do you want to give them the win? Of course not. But you have to, if the win means that you're doing right by people, then you have to just suck it up and give them the win. You know, purity politics also works in the progressive realm as well, when we decide that we're just going to have to be so holier than thou that we're only going to do things with people we like who agree with us. And we're not going to do anything with people we disagree with, because we don't want to make their profile shinier and higher. And I mean, that's just ridiculous. It's, it's self defeating.
Nisha Anand 21:43
It's self defeating. And, you know, it's very limited thinking. It was called the First Step Act for a reason. It's a first step, you do more and more and more, and him getting a win, I can promise you, you did not sway a single progressive to now all of a sudden vote for Trump, because that was passed, you know, it was just out of it was very strange. That didn't sway anyone's mind that Trump was a great person, if you're already gonna not vote for him. This wasn't gonna sway you.
Omkari Williams 22:09
Not at all.
Nisha Anand 22:10
Yeah, we're fighting a similar battle too I think on climate. It's an existential threat. We know, progressives know that we need to do a lot, not a little. And you have something like the Green New Deal, which represents everything I care about and value, I would love to see all of it pass. The all or nothing mentality, though, is going to get us to nothing. It's going to get us faster to destruction. And so is there a first step on climate? What are the areas where we do have bipartisan agreement? Can we pass those now, because time is of the essence, we're actually losing time, like pass as much as we can now. Because even incremental steps are important to get us to the bigger vision. And I think we've dug in our heels there, too. And I'd like to see that move this year, if we can.
Omkari Williams 22:54
Completely. The climate is a circumstance where any progress is better than nothing. And at this point, we're sort of doing kind of nothing. And time is running out on nothing. And would I like to see a whole cap on carbon emissions? Oh, yeah. Is it going to happen? No, it's not going to happen right now. But there are things we could be doing. And again, the purity politics gets in the way. And it also just puts us into silos that we don't need to be in. Something that I think has become increasingly clear over the two years that we've been in this pandemic so far, is that as a society, we desperately need to return to the practice of mutual aid that was so common in times past, when we live in small communities, and we didn't move around as much. And you know, you basically knew everybody, and were accountable to one another. And I think that we've seen through the pandemic, where mutual aid actually props us up in places where government is failing. And something you've talked about is the Commons as a place of shared resources. Would you talk about that paradigm and why you think it's critical and how we can restore that model?
Nisha Anand 24:14
Yeah. I think this is everything. The idea of the Commons is are there certain common goods, common ways of being, common property, things that it's in everyone's interest to support and make sure happen whether or not you're using them daily, weekly, yearly? I think parks is always a good one. When I'm explaining to my kids like we want the park to be there. We don't think it should just be me paying for it while you guys are young and we're going to the park it should be everyone that helps maintain it because it's a common good that everyone is actually getting benefit from. Schools is the same argument, sometimes harder for people to jump into. Potholes on the roads are a good one. You know, these are gateways to explaining why, you know, we pay taxes or we have the Commons. The idea is you have to believe that part of your job as a human being is to create a better world for other people to and not be purely self interested. And I wake up every day believing that that's the majority of people are not completely selfish. I really do believe that. I haven't met. I mean, you know, I've certainly seen movies of the total selfish person, I haven't met anyone who is purely 100% selfish and does not want to do something, whether it's for their family, their friends, their neighbors, so I believe in the possibility to Commons.
Nisha Anand 25:28
I also believe in the future of technology, which is bananas to say, because I think technology is itself is amoral, it's what you put into it. And I think technology has now made it possible for the Commons, to actually do good. We've seen what the Commons can do. That's bad in the digital space, everyone having access to put out content that's complete lies and falsehoods, has allowed some conspiracy thinking that I didn't know was possible. That's a bad part of the digital Commons. But a good part I saw during our ability to actually affect change in such a huge way at scale in a mutual aid is Next Door, which gets a lot of, you know, Next Door gets a lot, a lot of hard feedback for what it does allow. The negative part of the Commons, "Hey, I saw a suspicious guy" becomes actually a whole, you know, racist neighborhood problem. But one other thing they did right at the beginning of pandemic, we knew that older people were getting affected by COVID at much higher rates than anyone else. We did not know how it was getting transmitted. We did not want anybody over the age of 65 to go to a drugstore or go to a grocery store, it was dangerous.
Nisha Anand 26:34
And Next Door started up this neighborhood sharing because they had the most people in your neighborhood. And they said I need help. Can you bring me groceries? Can you find me this? Can you do this and they made these connections by making that a priority of their platform to really work with each other was a mapping app built on top of this technology that was just meant to share ideas in the neighborhood all of a sudden could be this mutual aid, it could be the Commons. And I saw the most beautiful things happen during that time. We saw people cheerlead out their windows near a hospital when the nurses and frontline workers went in to just giving that uplift of like you are there to help serve us. I saw the most beautiful things possible at the beginning of the pandemic. Because I gave this talk and thought about the idea of the Commons before the pandemic, I saw what's possible. I know the world can change in a day.
Nisha Anand 27:25
I do think it was fleeting, I don't think we extended it enough, a lot more could have been done, we should have looked at the children and said what do the children need, and made sure we could school and educate. We had kids sitting in parking lots trying to zoom in to their virtual school because they have no broadband, or access to internet where they were. We could have done a lot more to make this future better for our children, we missed an opportunity. But I also saw a possibility of when the best of humanity is activated, it can change overnight, people were willing to help their neighbors in ways I hadn't seen in the last decade. And I want to hold on to that possibility and make sure the next time a tipping point moment shows up, we can extend it, we can dig into it, we can use the best ideas that are out there in technology, and organizing and create that mutual aid society that I think is what the great American experiment should be his opportunity for all.
Omkari Williams 28:23
I completely agree. And I also think that when we leverage community in the best possible way, we also wind up having a bigger view of what's possible, both on the good side and the bad side. Because I think one of the problems in the beginning of the pandemic was, we didn't think it would go on as long as it's gone on. So, of course we didn't think about the children in school, we sort of assumed that they'd be back in school in eight weeks. We didn't think that they were going to be out of school for over a year. It just didn't occur to us that that was even a possibility. And I feel like if we had been in a more communal environment, there would have been people there who said, Okay, but what if, what if this doesn't work out the way we're thinking, what do we do then? And we would have been able to draw on the common wisdom to put plans in place that would have alleviated some of the real suffering that has occurred. I mean, I have a friend whose five year old, was in school for three months. And then she was out of school for over a year and a half.
Nisha Anand 29:32
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 29:33
And that's a real problem, an only child, and she had no exposure to other children. I mean, what it did to her socialization was really significant.
Nisha Anand 29:44
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 29:44
And we couldn't have prevented some of the damage, but we could have alleviated it to some extent if we'd had a broader vision. And that's where having access to other people's ideas really comes in handy. So I want to shift gears here because I want to talk a bit about Dream Corps, because I want to talk about how you all are making things better, because we can get stuck in what's not working. But let's talk about what is working and Dream Corps focuses on three areas criminal justice reform, a green economy and tech equity. Talk about why those are your areas of focus and the intersections that you see in those areas.
Nisha Anand 30:28
Yeah, these are big problem sets, I should say that we could have chosen a few issues to start with, we chose with those because they were big, big problem sets. And what's more important than the issues we work on, is the way we work on those issues. And we've talked a little bit about it already. What is the common ground? Where can we be radically inclusive with our progressive ideas to make the biggest change possible. And so the first thing we do is approach the issues with that lens, we call it the Dream Corps way. It's more of a feeling than something written down on paper and a formula at this moment. But it is just kind of the rules of engagement, that we will be open to listening ideas that if there is a problem in your community, in your neighborhood, in this country, whatever skill we're looking at, that you'll be open to listening every way that people come at the problem. We have our ideas from our own life experiences, we have to be open to that there's kind of a rules of engagement in solving the problem.
Nisha Anand 31:24
And then I've already talked about a lot radical inclusivity progressive ideas. I think there are a lot of groups out there that have very progressive ideas that want to push out a pretty sweeping agenda to make the world a better place that fall in that progressive realm. We definitely fall in that. But there are not many who say we're progressive, and we're radically inclusive. That say we will work with conservatives of all types, if they want to solve this problem. We'll bring them all to the table and we'll bring the best of ourselves as liberals and we want you to show up as the best of yourself as conservatives. That there's actually something, you bring the liberty which conservatives are great at doing, they're gonna fight for liberty we'll bring the justice, which we're great at fighting for on our end. We know what isn't fair, and what's unjust liberty and justice for all is, I believe, kind of thrown together because it is it's very important. We can lack, you know, without that viewpoint, we could have a solution that lacks so coming together of being radically inclusive and will bring the progressive ideas. And one thing, we absolutely do at Dream Corps is put equity upfront. That we know who's been left out and left behind. Whenever people try to solve problems, that will be the first thing we can bring to the table. And we think that offering is very welcome.
Nisha Anand 32:35
With our conservative partners they're not thinking about equity. And they know they need to, they know they need to they don't know how. They've been shamed every time they've reached out and said, "How do I do it?" They're shamed from every possible way. But actually what we've learned is there are great conservative partners who want to think about equity and need help. So we'll put equity up front, we'll be radically inclusive. And we will take a very big problem set. So criminal justice, climate and tech equity are big problem sets. But we look very future focused. Our mission is close prison doors and open doors of opportunity, because we believe that, at its essence, everybody in this country believes that you should have the opportunity to pursue your dreams. You should have the opportunity to do something better. And we can disagree about what cut that opportunity off for you. Because certainly we do disagree on that. But if we can at least start with, "I want to have opportunity for all" we believe a clean green economy is a very good progressive value, a very good place to start for opportunity. We think the tech sector by having more of us building apps in this tech economy, building platforms, ideas, products, we're going to have a better set of products that are out there that can actually solve the world issues instead of the ones that are turning us into nasty hate machines.
Omkari Williams 33:54
Yeah, those those apps are charming.
Nisha Anand 33:56
Yeah, what is getting produced right now I know we can do better. And I think that that starts with representation and opportunity. So that framework really allows us to be future focused. I think that on the progressive side, we've done a lot of analyzing the past and what went wrong in the past. I want to take that, but I want to be very future focused. So Dream Corps has a future focus lens, equity at the front and radically inclusive, and I think we're pretty unique in that area. And it we've had some pretty huge wins because of it like the First Step Act, and 20,000 people coming home. We've had large climate legislation where we've moved billions of dollars from any of the corporate tax or carbon tax that are getting how do we make sure that that money gets reinvested in the communities hurt first and worse by pollution? And by doing it with the Dream Corps approach, we've had major, massive wins that are outsized from who we are, how small we are and what we've done, because I think the way we do it is pretty unique.
Omkari Williams 34:54
I completely agree. I mean, just the notion of sitting down at a table and arguing and disagreeing and coming together around something like criminal justice reform is massively significant. The impact it has is beyond the 20,000 people who are home, it's their families and their friends and their communities and the taxpayers who aren't footing the bill for keeping people in prison for a nonviolent crime that they really should never have been sent to prison for in the first place. There's a whole ripple effect throughout society of how that benefits us. And I think that too often, when we stay in our little niches of conservative, liberal, progressive, we're missing an opportunity to really shift that dynamic in a way that's going to accrue to the public good, to the common good. So I really appreciate that. And I'm curious, when you look at the challenges that we're facing right now, what are the tools that you think that we, as a society and as individuals need to bring to bear to solve some of those challenges?
Nisha Anand 36:13
There's so much we have innately in us that we're not using, we know how to be good listeners, because we're good friends to our friends. We know how to listen, and we know how to be empathetic. And we make this really weird exception, where it's like, but if you, you know, voted Republican, I can't listen to you. I think that's a tool we all have. And in 1998, I was arrested in the military dictatorship of Burma. We called it Burma at the time, Myanmar, and I was there on a pro democracy mission, we knew that we could get arrested. It was me and 18 other activists from around the world, six different countries represented. And we went in there. And we handed out this leaflet, it said, We are your friends from around the world. We support your hopes for human rights and democracy. That was a very simple message, but highly illegal in a military dictatorship. And as I mentioned, in the 90s, I was a very radical activist, I had a lot of opinions about a lot of things, and you were going to hear them because that was the type of person I was. And we were arrested. All 18 of us were found before our flight out, arrested, held for a week, sentenced to five years in jail.
Nisha Anand 37:24
And our fake trial is a sham trial. Military dictatorships don't have real trial. Obviously, that was terrifying. And I should, before I finish the rest of the story tell you we were deported. We didn't serve our five years, I was deported out of there along with all the 18 other folks. One of the reasons was countries like Indonesia and Thailand have diplomatic relationships with Myanmar that America didn't. So they were able, because there were citizens from those countries that were arrested too, they were able to put a different type of pressure to release us. But the one American that came over to help get us out of jail was Representative Chris Smith. He's a Republican from New Jersey, and he sat on the Human Rights Commission, he's still in Congress, in the House. And he came over to get us out, he made a big speech, head of the Human Rights Commission. And when we were released, and I found out a Republican came and got me, first of all, I was not mad, which a lot of other folks are, I'm not going to let a Republican save me, I was very glad that I was released. And he came on our behalf and helped get us out.
Nisha Anand 38:23
But I also had this moment where I'm gonna have to sit next to him for this entire plane ride from Thailand back to the States. And should I use this time sitting next to him to tell him all my ideas? We did not disagree on abortion, for one, I was definitely ready to get there and give a long lecture like 19 hours worth about why he was wrong. And I didn't. I didn't do that. Instead, I listened. Here's somebody who's part of a human rights commission in the House, and I'm just a college kid that yes, you know, there's more than just a college kid. But I had a lot to learn from him. What a path. And that's how we used our time, I found out what human rights issues he had worked on. A whole lot of them, I agreed with. A whole lot of them, I actually was completely aligned with human rights was important to him for different reasons. And we didn't agree everywhere. But that taught me that just listening and finding out that someone has that brought them to where they are, there's value, you can learn from absolutely everyone out there. And I'm deeply appreciative of that experience, because it showed me, it showed me that help is everywhere, compassion is everywhere. And if we don't listen, we'll miss it.
Omkari Williams 39:34
I really love that. That's such a great story. And I find tremendous power in story. So it feels like a perfect place to just sort of wrap this conversation and I'm gonna ask you what I ask everyone which is to give me three actions that people can take in support of the work that Dream Corps does, in support of creating common ground for all of us.
Nisha Anand 40:02
Absolutely. I think the first one I actually just talked about, the first thing I had in mind is listen, I think you have to listen deeply and with curiosity and not trying to change someone's mind. Not saying I'm only listening so I will convert you to my way of thinking. That, people can see right through it first of all, but also that's the, that was the colonial project. I know better than you know, I'm going to come over, you savages, and change your mind. Because I know the better way, that's not who we are. Don't do that. Listen deeply, listen for understanding, be very curious, don't try to convince, you might actually learn something.
Nisha Anand 40:37
I think the other thing that's most important right now is to grieve with each other. We have all lost something in the last three years, something significant. And I know that we tend to do a little bit of the grieving Olympics, so I didn't lose my parents. So you know, I have to be okay about it. We've lost something. When you grieve with someone else, when you grieve with someone who's lost that life, lost their livelihood, lost their business, lost their dream wedding, like I said, whatever it is, they've lost, that grief brings us closer together. You can love somebody when you do that. And that's one of the biggest things we're missing right now is that ability to love that will bring us back to the Commons. That will bring us back to the idea that all kids are our kids, that every child deserves what my child can get, you know, living in Berkeley, California. And so grieve, open yourself up to that, and we're natural, that's a natural gift. We all have, listen, deeply grieve with each other for whatever we've lost, be willing to love each other from that.
Nisha Anand 41:39
And then I would say the final thing, and this is the Dream Corps thing is to dream big. Now we all know how easy it is to change the world overnight. The entire world, we changed multiple times in the last three years, we can do hard things so dream bigger. And that's what I want Dream Corps to be for everyone else, you can go to our website, which is the Dream Corps, corps spelled like Marine Corps or Peace Corps, https://www.thedreamcorps.org/ and find out about the programs and get involved and I want to hear everyone's dreams, I want to know what's possible, what you see possible in your neighborhood. And I want to start elevating those ideas. Because I think ideas are distributed everywhere, the microphone to shout them out and show the world, that's not evenly distributed. And so anything I can do to help get those dreams out in the world I want to do. And that's what Dream Corps wants to do.
Omkari Williams 41:40
I will have the information so people can find you in the Episode Notes for the show. So people can go there. And I will also have these three actions. So in case they forget, they can go and find them as well. I am so grateful for this conversation. Thank you so much. It's both been edifying but it's also been deeply uplifting. And in this particular moment in time, uplifting feels incredibly important. So thank you so much, Nisha,
Nisha Anand 42:58
Thank you for having me. I'm really glad we got to talk today. It helped me too.
Omkari Williams 43:02
Great.
Omkari Williams 43:04
Sometimes we start down a path and then recognize that we need to make a change. We need to do something differently if we want to achieve our goal. And that can be hard. But when the goal is something we truly care about the discomfort of the shift is worth it. And that's what Nisha did. She shifted her methods in order to attain a big goal. What is it that you're working towards? Is there someone out there who doesn't look at first glance like an ally who might be able to help? I know that I'm going to be looking around for unlikely partners and see what common ground we might be able to find and what mutual good we might be able to create. I hope that you'll let Nisha inspire you to do the same. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. And until then, remember that change starts with sharing our stories. So keep sharing yours.