Dream.org Sets the Tone for Optimism in Action with CEO Nisha Anand

Episode Notes

Transcript

Nisha Anand:

We have been through much worse as humanity and still found our way back. Together we have been through things like the partition we have been through Civil War. We have been through terrible circumstances where we never thought we could come together and here we are. So if someone voted the wrong way or somebody tweeted something you didn’t like, that’s nothing we can find our way back together.

Announcer:

That’s today’s guest on SideBar. Nisha Anand, CEO of dream.org. SideBar is brought to you by Monterey College of Law, San Luis Obispo College of Law, Kern County College of Law, empire College of Law, located in Santa Rosa and the colleges of law with campuses in Santa Barbara and Ventura. Welcome to SideBar featuring conversations about optimism in action with lawyers and leaders inspiring change. And now your co-hosts Jackie Gardina and Mitch Winick.

Jackie Gardina:

Mitch, I know you and I try to stay abreast of the political and legal news and it can be demoralizing at times. The rhetoric coming from so-called political leaders seems more polarizing than unifying even when Congress successfully passes bipartisan legislation. It’s viewed by some anyway as capitulation. Perhaps I’m being nostalgic for a time that never existed, but it seems as if we used to find common ground at least around basic issues like providing funding for disaster victims or I don’t know, championing the peaceful transfer of power. I often ask myself, how did we get here and how do we forge a path forward? Well, our guest today is hopefully going to shed light on those two questions.

Mitch Winick:

Jackie Nisha Anand is an Indian American activist mom of two teenagers and leader for racial justice. Once a radical grassroots activist arrested in Burma for passing out pro-democracy leaflets, Nisha’s expansive organizing experience solidified her belief in the power of working with unlikely partners to find real solutions. Nisha is currently the CEO of dream.org where she leads what they describe as a diverse group of people who understand the value of unconventional relationships. dream.org pursues what they call radical common ground. A bold effort made even more remarkable during a period, as you’ve said, Jackie, in which civil dialogue is almost entirely absent from our current social and political environment. Previously known as the Dream Corps. dream.org was founded by Van Jones who many of us know for his work as a CNN media personality, but who is less well known for his almost three decade commitment to criminal justice, human rights, and social impact. Today we are pleased to have dream.org, CEO Nisha Anand join us on SideBar. Welcome Nisha.

Nisha Anand:

Thank you for having me.

Jackie Gardina:

Nisha, many people first became aware of you through your 2020 TED talk on the topic of radical common ground. Is this a good place to start our discussion about both your dedication to social change and the mission of dream.org?

Nisha Anand:

Yeah, absolutely. I can talk about radical common ground all day.

Jackie Gardina:

I want to focus in on something that you said in your Ted talk. First, you spoke of yourself as a bridge builder, that it was something in your DNA and you relate it back to your origin story, how your dad, a Hindu was born in India and how his family found themselves on the quote wrong side of the border, the Muslim side when India was partitioned, a Muslim family risked their own lives to save your dad’s family. It’s a powerful story and it feels so relevant to today. How do you think that family story influenced your own personal and professional trajectory?

Nisha Anand:

It is such a piece of our family story that I didn’t even think about it growing up really. There was a partition in India, just like everyone has these stories and history and I was always told that story of how my father, when they went into hiding once the partition, it’s just this arbitrary line drawn when the British left said, this is now Pakistan, this is now India. You all sorted out. My father was a baby and he was crying, and so I always heard the story of my grandmother rocking my dad to stop him from crying or risk the entire family being found. That’s the story I heard, which is remarkable and I always thought I might not be here if he didn’t stop crying in that moment. What I didn’t realize, and it didn’t occur until much later, it happened to be one of the times that we were traveling in India and all of the kids, my dad’s generation was all reminiscing about growing up and how they didn’t even know how to speak proper Hindi and they only knew how to write in Urdu because of how they had grown up.

When it dawned on me, I finally asked who was the family that was hiding you? And there is so much hatred in India between Hindus and Muslims and I’d say authoritarian regime, but with Modi’s government there that’s continuing too. They have that same kind of division and it’s kind of ugly, and so it wasn’t anything they spoke about, but in that moment I realized obviously it was a Muslim family. Then the stories came out about how they had all Muslim neighbors. Those were the people they were breaking bread with. There was no lines dividing them. So when it came time to save a family, they didn’t care. They would’ve been justified to turn them in and save themselves that Muslim family, but they didn’t. That’s why I’m alive today and I like to remind my parents when we’re discussing politics, they disagree with me on just about everything. My father is a very proud Trump supporter. He voted for him twice and loves to talk politics. We talk it all day and I have to remind him, dad, it’s not everyone that says this. A lot of the rhetoric that comes out as very extreme, very absolute, and this is a story that’s such a part of us that it shaped who I am. It shapes our conversation still.

Jackie Gardina:

I was going to say you have to build bridges at home as well as in your work. So you’ve been in training for quite a while for the work that you’re doing now.

Nisha Anand:

Oh yes. I was training after dinner every single night. Still my father will call if he can’t get me on the phone, he’ll call my husband and try to argue with him about politics every day. So yes, I’ve been training for a long time and that’s often people’s hardest moment, the hardest people that they have to talk to or the folks close to them. So you have people that are estranged from their family, don’t talk to their uncle who voted one way or never want to see this family member again. We have been through much worse as humanity and still found our way back together. We have been through things like the partition we have been through civil war. We have been through terrible circumstances where we never thought we could come together and here we are. So if someone voted the wrong way or somebody tweeted something you didn’t like, that’s nothing. We can find our way back together.

Mitch Winick:

Nisha, you said something interesting in your TED talk. You said that finding common ground isn’t about compromise. I want to make sure I understand that position because it isn’t intuitive to me. Isn’t compromise a necessary component of finding common ground? How does each side need to let go of their more extreme positions in order to coalesce on something in which they can all agree?

Nisha Anand:

When I say we don’t compromise, I don’t compromise who I am. I don’t compromise my values. I come to the table. People know I’m a progressive. I have this long history that will follow me. If you Google me, you will find out I can’t hide it. When I come to the table, I can say, these are my values, this is who I am. I care about this work because I believe in justice. I’m sitting at this table because I believe in freedom. I’m not going to hide who I am. When I talk about radical common ground, that means that you can come to the table exactly as you are and say the same thing. So I will never compromise on who I am. You’re not going to get me to say equity isn’t important. I’ll be at the table and I’ll talk about equity just like I expect my conservative allies, the ones who are coming to the table to talk about some of my blind spots like individual liberty or certain different values that we have, but they can stay strong in those values and I can stay strong in my values and we will come to a solution at the end.

The solution might involve compromise. I might’ve wanted 10 things in this bill and I only got eight, but of those eight, they’re going to have my values. I’m going to stand behind them. So that kind of compromise comes later. I tell people, you don’t compromise your values. You have to fiercely love who you are and to fiercely love who they are.

Jackie Gardina:

So Nisha, I want to circle back to something that you said a little bit earlier. I’m a big believer that we’re a country that is constantly evolving. The preamble to the Constitution states, we the people in order to form a more perfect union and each generation has the opportunity to push us towards that more perfect union and we haven’t always agreed on what a more perfect union looks like. As you mentioned, we’ve fought a civil war over it, so political violence has entered the political discourse again, how can we effectively counter those voices?

Nisha Anand:

I think that going back to those words to form a more perfect union is part of the proposition. It has to be part of what we come forward with is that we knew from the founding we were imperfect. That’s codified in those words and getting us closer. Each generation is the goal. I like to say that what America has always been about is making a bigger circle, a more inclusive circle, that it was imperfect from the start. There were people excluded from that. We were built on enslaving people from Africa, genocide of the native peoples here. That was imperfect, but there was also this beauty that we had separation of religion and state. That’s what people were fleeing from the colonist when they came over and there was this idea that we could have freedom of religion. We built a multi-state nation where different states could have different views on certain things and still come together with different religions, with different identities. It took a while for women to get the right to vote, but women got included later in that vision. For me, it’s ever expanding.

Jackie Gardina:

We are going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we return, we’ll continue our conversation with Nisha Anand, CEO of dream.org.

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Mitch Winick:

Nisha, let’s talk about several of the specific dream.org programs in your green for all initiative. You’re working on climate investments, transformative communities, climate advocacy, and establishing an entrepreneur’s network for climate. Each of these in their own right are huge efforts, but can you give us some highlights that might inspire our listeners to get involved in one or more of these programs?

Nisha Anand:

So Green for All is one of our longest running initiatives. It was started by Van Jones after he left the White House in I want to say 2008. The decades are running together now, so Green for All has had to pivot and change each year, but the idea was how do we get more people of color invested in this future green economy, in the great green jobs that are coming? And back then it was all promise. We thought there was going to be a lot of green jobs coming and people weren’t denying that it existed. We knew we had to make this transition to a clean economy and it just seemed like folks that were left out of the current economy we’re going to get left out of this future economy. That’s how it was built. Well, we’ve had 20 pivots in the country since then to where we were living with climate denial for quite some time and we still are in some areas.

The strategy had to change as the country changed and I think that the organizations that are doing the most effective work are the ones that are able to pivot and are able to look at what are the political circumstances right now and where are we most needed. And so Green for All always played a bit of an intermediary role because equity is at the center of everything we do. We’re able to see how communities get left out of a lot of the green planning and green solutions, but because we also do a lot of legislation and we’re not scared to go into powerful rooms and work with powerful people and we think they’re also part of the solution in the equation. We often found ourselves in government offices where a lot of the environmental justice groups we’re not invited. And so we always have played this intermediary area role. How do we explain the needs on the streets to the folks making the decisions?

Jackie Gardina:

I think the answer to the question I was going to ask is embedded in the answer you just gave in some ways, but I’m going to go ahead and move forward with it and just see if we can perhaps get some more specifics. Your organization just doesn’t work on climate change works on criminal justice reform and one of your most successful initiatives has been in the area of criminal justice reform. Your empathy network launched the Dignity for Incarcerated Women campaign that has improved living conditions for more than 30,000 women incarcerated in 14 states. You’ve also had success in spearheading bipartisan federal reform legislation such as the First Step Act, something the New York Times called the Most Substantial Breakthrough in Criminal Justice in a Generation and dream.org is currently lobbying for the passage of the Equal Act. These are incredibly ambitious efforts that require sustaining policy campaigns at both the state and federal levels and really within the administrative and the congressional areas at the federal level. So how do you select these particular policy issues and then how do you manage to coordinate both a state and federal policy campaign?

Nisha Anand:

I have so many policy nerds on my team, so I’m very thankful for all of them. That is the most important part about sustaining this campaign is having people that are smarter than you on certain state issues and federal issues and live and breathe in DC and how to get things done to do the work we do. You need an excellent team. And so a lot of my time as CEO, and I can’t say this enough, is investing in your team, making it a phenomenal place to work, making it a place that people know they can make the change they want to make. 25% of our staff is formerly incarcerated individuals. When you have that passion to be free and get free and help others be free, you are going to fight all day for it. In terms of the actual legislation and policy work we do, it’s the same thing.

The ability to pivot is really important and because we know we come at it from a justice angle, we believe there are people inside who shouldn’t be inside. They should be free. They should have had their second chance already. And that is always going to be the passion is for that freedom and that justice. That’s not necessarily why other people want to be involved in criminal justice reform. We have libertarians that are just against the overinflated incarceration state. They believe marijuana should not be criminalized, which still is in many places. And you have the social conservatives who believe in second chances and their anti-death penalty and they want to see some pathway towards redemption that’s absent from the criminal justice system. You have fiscal conservatives who just don’t want taxpayer dollars going to it. It’s hard to argue be a great thing if they could say, I’m getting people out.

The streets are safe and your taxpayer dollars don’t go to it anymore. So they’re coming at it from a different angle. But for me to sustain it, and for us [email protected], it is about that freedom. And so when the political conditions change, when it’s possible to get something done on the federal level, we are going to push as hard as we can. If it’s a plan that helps people get free and if it becomes much harder on the federal level, we can go to the states. And so we’re built that way for when conditions change. Last year we actually passed six bills in Republican states because we couldn’t get it done in blue states and even in a democratic controlled federal government, we could not get that equal act passed and the equal Act is simply getting cracked in cocaine finally on a one-to-one sentencing ratio.

And we had filibuster proof Republican support. We had enough Republicans said they would sign the bill, but it would not get brought to the Senate floor because everyone was worried about the poison pills and the add-ons and the different kind of political jockeying that would come when everyone was in agreement on the equal act. That kind of politics is maddening. Here’s something everyone wants to do, it would pass and it won’t even get brought to a vote because of this comedy that is sometimes our politics. So we went into states, Mississippi, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, we got stuff done there. And the Dignity Act I think was a great example that we started because when I would tell people, women are shackled during childbirth and we really don’t think that is necessary and it should be the case, never was met with resistance. No one was like, oh, no, but they’re dangerous.

Everyone knows that is low hanging fruit. And then just to extend it, women should get feminine products without having to spend everything they’ve earned. Women shouldn’t have male guards watching them when they go to the bathroom. Those dignity for incarcerated women bills was a way to start building an alliance between Republicans and Democrats in these states. It passed unanimously in Georgia unanimously. It was an easy way to start building that muscle of working together because when you can do some things like that, you can do bigger things and that’s what we’ve been able to see and we’ll continue to do that.

Mitch Winick:

Nisha, let me follow up with that, but talk a little about the how. I’ve told us the what, but big ideas alone are rarely enough. It takes, as you’ve pointed out, organization leadership and funding dream.org has been successful in all three as you’ve pointed out. But in fact, you’ve grown in recent years from approximately $5 million in annual support to recently more than $50 million. That’s a huge leap. How have you achieved this success, particularly in such disruptive times with covid, the economy, politics and even courts creating challenges and barriers to social change and for our future social entrepreneurs who are listening, what advice can you give them about how to move their ideas and their initiatives?

Nisha Anand:

Actually, I started in the nonprofit worlds as a community organizer. That’s where a lot of us get our start. But my first job after that was as a fundraiser, I was told, if you don’t know how to fundraise, you’re never going to grow in this social change world. So I took a job with no experience and that was in 2000. I got a lot of mentoring, a lot of training and started fundraising. So I was a fundraising professional for quite a while. In fact, that’s how I came to dream.org. There was a fundraising position opened. It was after my kids were in school. I was ready to get back into the game. I didn’t want to fundraise anymore. I felt like I had been doing it way too long, but I knew I could get this job. Van Jones was on my list of people that I wanted to work for, and so I took another job.

Fundraising those early days, it’s like 11 years ago now. We were always struggling even with a leader like Van Jones with a name. A lot of people would take our calls but wouldn’t necessarily give money. And we have this story of the long march, which is every year around March we run out of money. And it was always like, where are we going to get this big grant from? So we always called it the long March, and I want to say that because it’s not like all of a sudden we have $50 million and I have a secret recipe for that. It was 20 plus years of my career scratching, trying to get money. And then the summer of 2020 happened and I was sitting at my desk and a lot of people in the nonprofit world, there was a lot of money flowing that summer.

There was corporations that have never given a dime to social justice giving away thousands and thousands of dollars and we were the beneficiaries of some of it. Certainly other groups that were more positioned to take advantage. Took a lot, but we certainly had this influx of money. But I was sitting at my home office one day, it was a Friday, I remember it really well, and I got an email that said, hi, Nisha, I am wondering if you can speak with Jeff Bezos on Monday. He’d really like to talk to you about what you’re up to. I looked at that email and I sat in my seat. I’m like, me, he wants to talk to me. What does he want to speak about? I was trying all the things to get some information like I don’t know what is the interest, but he had launched the Bezos Earth Fund.

I kind of said, Hey, could it possibly be our green initiatives? Is that what he’s interested in? Finally got a yes. So I brought on my much smarter colleague, Michelle, onto that call on Monday. And yes, it was with Jeff directly. Just wanted to talk. What are you guys up to? We talked to him a bit about our program. He was making the first set of grants out of the Bezos Earth Fund. I don’t know how we got lumped into that first set of grants and we got a $10 million grant. That was when we started to change our green strategy. And for us, we are one of the groups that Center Equity in everything we do, and we could see the opportunity coming. So that gave us the ability to scale up. That was a $10 million gift. I had never gotten a gift that large.

We knew that if we scaled up, that would get us three years or so into the future. We wanted. Well, about a year later, Jeff Bezos started a new award called the Courage and Civility Award, and his first recipient of that was Van Jones, our founder, and that was a hundred million dollars gift. Van has been a serial entrepreneur for all of his life. He has a lot of ideas. He starts up a lot of organizations, then they grow and they live on their own and he has a huge success rate. And so this was this moment when he said, it’s time for dream.org to grow. He had already been gone for several years at this point, and so he left a big donation [email protected] so we could continue forever. It’s lucky I knocked on thousands and thousands of doors and then randomly a billionaire gives us money. So I don’t know. I wish I had some lessons in that.

Jackie Gardina:

We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we return, Nisha Anand, CEO of dream.org will tell us more about the radical act of choosing common ground

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Jackie Gardina:

In July, 2026. It’s going to be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And as we look forward to this milestone, you’ve actually been giving quite a bit of thought about how this is an opportunity to revisit how we define America. Many of us are extremely concerned about the polarization that divides us on so many issues. So bringing the discussion back to your concept of radical common ground, as we think about the founding of our country and this great experiment we call democracy, what are your thoughts on how we can bring our country and our communities back to a willingness to engage in civil dialogue and explore the opportunities available when we seek that common ground?

Nisha Anand:

If we do nothing, the 250th will be a moment of this very cheap version of patriotism, this very rah rah America. It’ll be some folks saying, America’s best days are behind us, and why can’t we get back to America of this land that never was? And you’ll have a group of people saying America is horrible and has never produced anything good, and it’s the evil empire. That is the kind of crash course we’re on. But neither one of those things is true for me, who has seen and felt and been part of the harm that’s happened in this country, and that is a lot of people in this country. We also have to look at the beauty of the past. I would encourage all of us that know very deep how the racism and the sexism and all of the isms have impacted us. We have to look at the beauty that has also happened.

All of those freedom fighters, we talked about all of the people before us who’ve made this a more free and just place. That’s also part of American history. Some of the most important moments that I look back on in terms of my development as an activist came from right in this country. Speeches. I’ve listened to moments of protests that are just gorgeous and beautiful, that formed who I am too, and that is also America. So I think on the left, we have to really push people to look at the beautiful things that have come and said That is too, for folks that think our best days are behind us, I want to encourage them to envision a future where that is not true. A future that can be great and to think what can bring us that vision of this American dream for everyone. The next thing we have to do is really lean into a future where we do come together.

Where can I exist? And you exist, and we’re not existential threats to each other. When you had Muslims and Hindus in my family, saving each other’s lives because that’s what neighbors do. When you love that neighbor who is part of the group that you think you’re against, but oh, there’s an exception to that rule, those types of feelings of love. That’s what I want to build our future on, and we do this in our personal lives. We need to do it in our politics. So I would like to set us in a different narrative. That two 50th, that signing of Declaration of Independence. What can we declare now? What can we declare we want for the next two 50? Can we be the pioneers of the next version of government to exist? I think it could be a moment to reinvigorate ourselves and expand the definition of American and come at this together. We are one of the most diverse countries in the world. That means we have a lot to show. We have a lot to learn. We’ve already learned so much from each other. We can absolutely lean into that and create something better.

Mitch Winick:

Nisha, that message of not just optimism but activism, something that Jackie and I love to hear, we support in our own law schools with our own lawyers who are looking for their pathway to create change in the future. I believe you’ve outlined exactly the foundation of how we can do that. Thank you for sharing that with us, and thank you for the work you’re doing.

Jackie Gardina:

I appreciate it. It was wonderful to have you on here,

Mitch Winick:

Jackie. What a delightful and inspiring episode with Nisha Anand and dream.org. It’s a reminder of many of the things we talk about on other episodes as we grapple with these challenging issues. How many times have we talked about how can we get the sides to talk to each other in a civil manner? That’s where it has to start. And without that, none of the rest of it works. I think niche is exactly correct to focus on what she calls radical common ground on having individuals and groups who have diametrically opposed ideas about things. Still being able to get to the table, articulate those ideas with respect, and by listening find common solutions.

Jackie Gardina:

I really encourage people to listen to her Ted Talk because I think she starts it with that really powerful story about her dad’s family being hidden in Pakistan by Muslim family to save them. It just really goes down to that basic idea of humanity, that we are essentially decent good people. We see it every day in our lives, but with hot button issues, we somehow lose that sense of humanity. And when we use dehumanizing language, it gets even farther away. So I think it’s important to go back to that basic golden rule, treat others as you’d like to be treated. Listen to others as you’d like to be listened to. It seems so simple, but it’s something that we have to relearn in this country, and I think she and her organization are doing a good job of bringing that back around. Once again, I want to thank everyone who joined us today on SideBar, and as always, Mitch and I would love to know what’s on your mind. You can reach us at SideBar media.org.

Mitch Winick:

SideBar would not be possible without our producer, David Eakin, who composes and plays all of the music you hear on SideBar. Thank you also to Dina Dowsett who creates and coordinates sidebar’s. Social media marketing.

Jackie Gardina:

Colleges of law and Monterey College of Law are part of a larger organization called California Accredited Law Schools. All of our schools are dedicated to providing access and opportunity to a legal education to marginalized communities.

Mitch Winick:

For more information about the California accredited Law schools, go to ca law schools.org. That’s ca law schools.org.