PODCAST · society
Building Local Power
by Institute for Local Self-Reliance
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s podcast presenting empowering stories and transformative ideas that break monopoly power and drive community resilience, equitable economies, and sustainable futures.
Episodes
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The Data Centers are Coming: Bonus Episode 2 - Fighting for Our Lives
Danny heads to Nashville to emcee a panel hosted by Stand Up Nashville, which has assembled “The Avengers” of the data center fight in the American South. But Nashville has meaningful data center regulations already in place — why is this activist group convening such a powerful panel in a city...
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Bonus Ep. 1 - A New Lens on Community
Danny gets an intriguing email from Joe Cuccio, a photographer on a years-long mission to document data centers and the physical infrastructure of the digital cloud. When Joe visits central Ohio on his travels, he takes Danny into the field to photograph the data centers of New Albany, a Columbus...
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 6 - Closing Arguments
This is it, the final episode! Danny gives us his closing arguments, reflecting on all he’s learned about the data center fight in communities across the United States. We listen in on Danny’s conversation with prolific author and tech critic Cory Doctorow about the centaur/reverse centaur theory...
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 5 - A Better Way
Throughout this season, we've learned about the threats and harms data centers pose to local communities. But is there a better way to build this tech infrastructure? On this episode, Danny invites energy, broadband, and local business experts to discuss how we can build and regulate data centers...
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 4 - Transmission (Im)possible
If you’re anything like Building Local Power’s host, Danny Caine, you’ve seen your electric bill creep up and are wondering: are data centers to blame for this? Danny sets out to answer this and other burning questions about the murky way in which Big Tech’s data center arms race, public…
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 3 - Contamination Without Representation
Some residents of the Boxtown neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, didn’t know Elon Musk was building a huge data center nearby until they saw city and Chamber of Commerce officials hyping the deal. A historic Black neighborhood founded by freedmen after the Civil War, Boxtown is one recent…
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 2 - They Underestimated Us
When a notice appeared in a local newspaper about a company applying for an air quality permit for a power plant, it set off alarm bells in the small West Virginia town of Davis. After residents realized that a major data center project, enabled by West Virginia’s hastily passed state preemption...
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The Data Centers Are Coming: Ep. 1 - Planting a Flag
Welcome to Building Local Power’s “The Data Centers Are Coming,” where we journey to some of the most active places in the cross-country battle over data centers in our local communities. We start at the epicenter: Data Center Alley in Loudoun County, Virginia. This once semi-rural community has...
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Introducing "The Data Centers Are Coming"
Welcome to the newest season of Building Local Power, The Data Centers Are Coming, where we take a trip across the country to some of the hot spots for data center fights. Big Tech is racing for AI dominance, attempting to steamroll local communities through secrecy and shell companies, but…
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Internet as a Human Right: Christopher Mitchell on Community Networks
You'd think a company with as many resources, employees, and facilities as AT&T or Comcast would have good customer service. Surely, with all the billions of dollars flowing through these businesses, there'd be some resources devoted to creating a really good customer experience, right? If only...
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Why Solving Waste Has To Be Local: Brenda Platt on Sustainability and Community
We hear it again and again on this show: neighborhoods that are presumed less likely to fight back are taken advantage of by huge corporations and monopolies. Through predatory decisions and massive market power, a chain grocery store erodes a historically black neighborhood into a food desert....
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Why Clean Energy Is Not Enough: John Farrell on Lessons from David Morris
When ILSR co-founder David Morris published his pamphlet The Dawning of Solar Cells in 1975, nearly the only people using solar power were those in the Apollo program at NASA. Yet David saw decades into the future as he laid out a vision for community control and local ownership of a solar power...
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The Problems You Can Solve: Stacy Mitchell on David Morris’s Legacy
On this week's episode of Building Local Power, we continue our series honoring ILSR's co-founder David Morris, who passed away in June. One way to measure the impact of someone's work is to measure their influence on those they mentored. And if you ask Stacy Mitchell, the word "influence" isn't...
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What Cities Can Do: Remembering David Morris
Here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, we recently received some shocking news as we learned of the sudden passing of our beloved co-founder, David Morris. A giant in the antimonopoly field, an innovative thinker ahead of his time, and a crucial mentor to so many of us here at ILSR, David...
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Increasing Internet Access at the Speed of Trust: Sean Gonsalves on the Digital Equity Act
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represented one of the largest ever investments in broadband infrastructure. Many in the digital equity space believed the bill would go a long way to solve the digital divide. Provisions like the Digital Equity Act promised to be powerful tools in...
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The Human Side of Government Work: Paola Santana on Procurement
The United States government is one of the biggest purchasers in the world. Few people or entities spend more money on more goods and services. Add state and local governments to the mix, and you have a massive market with the potential for a lot of businesses to make a lot of money. The process…
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The Champion of Local Champions: Recast City’s Ilana Preuss
One way to build local power is to catalyze change directly in your community. Another, equally important method is to catalyze the catalysts. To really make change and build sustainable local economies, we need not only entrepreneurs but also people connecting entrepreneurs to each other —…
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The Diner Building Community In Times of Crisis: Ladybird’s Meg Heriford
Saturday, March 14, 2020, was even busier than the typical bustling Saturday at Ladybird Diner in Lawrence, Kansas. Bottles of handmade hand sanitizer were perched on each table. It was Pi Day, a special occasion for the homey diner famous for its pie. But Ladybird owner Meg Heriford was scared…
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Where Things Are Happening: Ron Knox on the State(s) of Antitrust
Ron Knox was a successful reporter covering antitrust and antimonopoly issues until he couldn't take it any more. His growing passion for the fight against corporate power didn't match a reporter's need for neutrality and objectivity. Shedding the mantle of neutrality, Knox joined ILSR to fight…
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Civil Unrest, Group Chats, and Representation: Rachel Hernandez on Governing as a First-Gen Mayor
In late 2024, Rachel Hernandez ran a successful campaign to become mayor of Riverbank, California. A small town at the top of the state's central valley, Riverbank may not fit into what you imagine as California. There are no beaches or Hollywood signs here. The town follows the rhythm of the...
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“A Little Odd, but A Little Amazing”: Adriana Valdez Young and the Secret Mall Apartment
In the early 2000s, a behemoth rose above Providence, Rhode Island. The massive Providence Place Mall was heralded as the solution to Providence's 1990s economic woes and cited as a catalyst for urban renewal. However, not all residents of Providence welcomed the mall. For one thing, the wave of...
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Taking a Risk for Rural Economic Growth with Dante Pittman
The third episode in the Building Local Power, The New Class series finds us talking to North Carolina State Rep Dante Pittman, recently elected to represent his hometown of Wilson, NC and the surrounding Wilson County. From municipal fiber broadband to monumental folk art, Wilson has never shied...
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From Neighborhood Streets to City Hall with Zac Blanchard
The second episode in the Building Local Power, The New Class series finds us talking to Baltimore City Councilman Zac Blanchard, who recently won a tight race to unseat his District 11's incumbent. Blanchard, a Marine vet and father of two young children, got his political start joining and...
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Staying Local at the Statehouse with Tristan Rader
This episode is the first in our new season of Building Local Power, The New Class, where we are talking to interesting changemakers among the state and local politicians newly elected in November 2024. Our first guest is Tristan Rader, representing District 13 in Ohio's House of Representatives....
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How Structural Racism Fuels American Monopolies
The inspiration for this season of Building Local Power is ILSR's Power Play report, written by ILSR senior editor and researcher Susan Holmberg. Sue joins us today for a wide-ranging and candid conversation about the report and its main finding: that monopolies leverage systemic racism to build...
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“The Bad Target”: The Rise of Consumer Redlining
AI technology and large language models are growing in popularity. Also growing is the technology's detrimental effect on the environment. Each query into ChatGPT, to use one example, requires billions of calculations. Multiply that by millions of users, and suddenly, tech companies need to…
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A Rebalancing Act: How We Restore Local Power in 2025
ILSR co-executive directors Stacy Mitchell and John Farrell join Reggie Rucker to discuss the year in ILSR and the issues we care about. What did the media get wrong about the economy in the lead-up to the election? How can voter frustration turn into positive political change? Will we ever move...
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The Environmental Inequity of AI
AI technology and large language models are growing in popularity. Also growing is the technology's detrimental effect on the environment. Each query into ChatGPT, to use one example, requires billions of calculations. Multiply that by millions of users, and suddenly, tech companies need to…
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Pizza, DMs, and Solidarity: Filming the Amazon Labor Fight
In March, 2020, Amazon warehouse worker Chris Smalls led a walkout protesting a lack of Covid-19 safety measures at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. He was fired two hours later. In the following days, a leaked memo revealed that the Amazon c-suite (including Jeff Bezos) was planning to...
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Amazon, Labor, and Race
For many years, Reverend Ryan Brown has been a picker at Amazon's RDU1 warehouse outside of Raleigh, NC. In 2020, he was asked to work in a part of the warehouse he knew was a dangerous COVID hot spot. He refused, calling his decision to do so a "Rosa Parks moment." In the immediate aftermath,...
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Bookstores and Local Power with BLP’s New Host, Danny Caine
The first bookstore Danny Caine fell in love with was a suburban Cleveland outpost of a mega-chain. Since then, he has not only fallen in love with independent bookstores and other local businesses but has also become a widely known advocate against Amazon and other corporate monopolies. Now…
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The Will and the Way to Revive ‘the Mecca’
The destruction of Dorr Street in Toledo, Ohio isn’t just a story of physical destruction; it's about the dismantling of crucial social infrastructure that once allowed residents to communicate, organize, and thrive. In the final episode of our Toledo season, we are joined by board president of…
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Mending Broken Promises on Dorr Street
Toledo’s Dorr Street bears the deep scars of federal policies that stripped away Black economic power and prosperity. Once a thriving center of Black business, Dorr Street was decimated by discriminatory practices that prioritized urban expressways over vibrant communities. In this episode of...
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A Heyday in the Toledo Life
Johnetta Turner McCollough and her husband, Nelson, ran The Spot, a popular restaurant on Dorr Street, Toledo, that was more than just a business—it was, well, the Spot. Known for its lively late-night gatherings and frog legs The Spot offered a unique space where people came to eat, unwind, and...
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Rediscovering Toledo’s Black Wall Street
Lifelong Toledo resident Doris Greer takes us back to a time when Dorr Street was the heart of Black wealth, culture, and community. Doris vividly recalls the bustling Black-owned businesses, close-knit neighbors, and a deep sense of pride and ownership. But today, that vibrant community has been...
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Healthy Skepticism of Pharmacy Giants is Spreading
Independent pharmacies are the unsung heroes of healthcare, providing critical services that chain pharmacies simply can't match. On this summer special, ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell illustrates how corporate giants like CVS and Walgreens have used predatory tactics to drive these vital local businesses...
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Absolute Power Corrupting Our Energy System
In the groundbreaking report Upcharge: Hidden Costs of Electric Utility Monopoly Power, John Farrell exposes the severe environmental, financial, and economic costs imposed by monopoly utilities. John joins Building Local Power to discuss how these utilities perpetuate a monopoly model that is...
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A National Strategy for Community Composting
Last month, the Biden White House released its National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. ILSR’s Julia Spector joins Building Local Power to discuss how the leading advocacy of ILSR and allied organizations led to community composting becoming a featured component…
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DOJ Takes On Live Nation/Ticketmaster
In 2019, we aired an episode titled "Independent Musicians and the Antimonopoly Movement," which explored the impact of industry concentration on independent musicians. We are resurfacing that episode in light of recent news that the Department of Justice is suing Live Nation for hindering...
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Inside Scoop on Local News’ Future
Veteran journalist, Harry Jaffe, reflects on his four-decade career dedicated to covering some of Washington D.C.’s stories, emphasizing the crucial role of local reporters in holding public officials accountable and keeping communities informed. Harry, founder of Spotlight DC, a nonprofit...
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Reviving the Riverfront, and D.C.
In 2000, Uwe Brandes moved to Washington, D.C. to join Mayor Williams' administration with a bold vision to transform the Anacostia River waterfront, one of the nation’s most polluted rivers at the time. Uwe spearheaded a participatory planning process that was and still is far too rare, actively...
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Essential Tools for Neighborhood Revitalization
Arriving in the nation's capital in the mid-90s, Gina Schaefer found herself drawn to Logan Circle, a neighborhood that had been scarred by the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Inspired by the community's resilience and potential, Gina embarked on a mission to fill a void…
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The Seed of Local Power
In 1974, in Washington D.C., amidst a backdrop of economic turbulence and social unrest, the seeds of the Institute for Local Self-reliance were sown. David Morris, Neil Seldman, and Gil Friend, driven by a shared vision of community resilience, founded the Institute in a townhouse in the Adams...
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Giving DC Its Flowers
Born and raised in DC, Kehmari Norman established her flower shop to bridge culture and floristry. The visionary behind Blk Flower Market drew from her background as a stage designer at Temple University, transforming her skills into landscape design, intertwining environmentalism with...
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New Generational Wealth in Detroit
In the heart of Detroit, a movement is underway to rebuild democracy and economic power from the ground up. The Detroit Community Wealth Fund sits at the epicenter of this movement, providing non-extractive capital and technical assistance that empowers local businesses and cooperatives.…
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It Takes an Avalon Village
Mama Shu’s journey began with a profound commitment: healing her community. Despite the challenges faced by her hometown of Highland Park, Mama Shu felt a deep connection to the area. Determined to make a difference, she embarked on a mission to reclaim neglected spaces, tirelessly working to...
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Detroit Has No Time to Waste Food
Reneé’s journey began with a simple idea: composting isn’t just about reducing waste — it’s about building communities. Reneé V. Wallace, executive director at FoodPLUS Detroit, empowers Detroiters to drive systemic change within themselves, their homes, and throughout their community. Through...
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Feeding Detroit
Lanay Gilbert-Williams, born and raised in Detroit, experienced a childhood marked by both trauma and love, instilling in her a deep sense of community. On this episode of Building Local Power: The City Series, Lanay shares her journey to becoming the board president of The Detroit People’s Food...
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Writing Detroit’s Next Chapter
A vibrant independent bookstore symbolizes a shared community enthusiasm for learning, discovery, heritage, and progress. Source Booksellers, nestled in Detroit, has long been a reliable hub for non-fiction literature. Janet W. Jones established the store in 1989 and nurtured her daughter, Alyson...
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The City Series
In our new season of Building Local Power, The City Series, we take a tour of cities and towns across the U.S. and talk to guests who are working to make their communities more locally self-reliant. Independent business owners, elected city officials, and community leaders explain how their work…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Building Local Power have?
Building Local Power currently has 145 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Building Local Power about?
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s podcast presenting empowering stories and transformative ideas that break monopoly power and drive community resilience, equitable economies, and sustainable futures.
How often does Building Local Power release new episodes?
Building Local Power publishes regularly with 145 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Building Local Power?
You can listen to Building Local Power on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Building Local Power?
Building Local Power is created and hosted by Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
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