Michel Martin talks about the conference with Karen Finney, a former spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton, Nakisha Lewis, an organizer for Black Lives Matter, and New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Coleman.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Later this week, prominent black women from across the country will be heading to Atlanta, Ga., for a conference they call Power Rising. Now, it’s not unusual for black women to get together. Their sororities and social clubs are actually known for their under-the-radar powerhouse organizing. But this get-together might be different in that its sole purpose is to harness that organizing ability towards specific policy and political goals. To talk more about this, we’re joined in our studios in Washington, D.C., by Nakisha Lewis. She’s an organizer with the New York City chapter of Black Lives Matter, and she’s one of the organizers of the Power Rising conference. Also here with us in Washington, D.C., another organizer, Karen Finney. She’s a former senior adviser and spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Welcome to you both.

KAREN FINNEY: Good afternoon.

NAKISHA LEWIS: Good afternoon.

MARTIN: And joining us from Ewing, N.J., is Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. She will be speaking at the conference. Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us as well.

BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN: Thanks for having us.

MARTIN: And I’d like to start with you because I understand that this idea came out of a retreat by the women members of the Congressional Black Caucus last fall, where you all were brainstorming about next steps. And the Reverend Leah Daughtry, who chaired the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, said something like if I could wave a magic wand, then I’d have you all get together and say, you know, how do we leverage all of our kind of political and economic power to do something when we often are ignored? Is that about right? Does that conform with your memory of things?

WATSON COLEMAN: Yeah, absolutely. We recognized that we had really shown up in a big way in these various elections from 2016 and 2017. We recognized that people are suddenly recognizing that we are dependable. There’s very little necessary to get us going in doing the things that we do, and that we’re going to do the right, and that we have a collective power that just has not been appreciated. And so in talking to one another – the women in the Black Caucus and some other women – we talked about, let’s do something with this moment. So…

MARTIN: Could I just ask you to tell me – when you say that you feel often ignored, what do you mean by that?

WATSON COLEMAN: Well, secondarily considered I should say – marginalized. I don’t think that we have sufficient representation at the table when we’re discussing the agendas and futures. You know, we’re not just sort of unified behind one interest. We have lots of interests that, at the end of the day, are directed at ensuring that the right thing is happening in our respective communities and in this nation.

MARTIN: Nakisha, I’m going to go to you. I want to point out that Congresswoman Coleman, for example – she was in the state legislature. She was the majority leader. She was the chair of her state committee. A lot of activists in your generation have not found traditional politics to be particularly helpful. They feel that they haven’t served the needs of the African-American community. A lot of people don’t want to identify with traditional political organizations. And I just wonder, you know, has that been a bit of a struggle for you in any way?

LEWIS: Absolutely not. So the beauty of this summit is that it is not a political summit, right? I understand that when people look at the list of names of women who are organizing, many of them are, you know, Democratic operatives or, you know, very partisan people. And so what I’ve been able to do is talk with my communities about why I’m here. And this group of women has been really awesome in that they’ve been willing to also hear my critiques when I comment and say actually, we need to make sure that trans women see themselves front and center in this because that hasn’t always been the case when our people have organized. We need to make sure that young people see themselves. And the committee has been amazing because we are actually doing this work as sisters.

MARTIN: So I think – is the idea here that everything is not for everyone, and if you don’t feel that you’re a part of the sort of traditional political mechanisms, there’s still other work for you to do and that you want the people doing that work to be visible in this system?

LEWIS: Yes, absolutely. And the reality is that here we say – but on Audre Lorde’s birthday, and her words come to mind for me in that there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we don’t live single-issue lives. If that is not black women, then I don’t know what is.

MARTIN: Karen, what about you? What made this attractive to you?

FINNEY: A couple of things. I mean, you know, what makes this summit different is two things. Number one, we are trying to both leverage the work that has been done and really put some things on an agenda that say how do we move these issues forward? You know, by 2021, they estimate that black women will drive about $1.3 trillion of our economy, looking at the ways that black women have an impact on culture and music and fashion and Hollywood and the rate at which we’re starting businesses, and we are successful, and yet financial institutions aren’t marketing to this very successful sector.

MARTIN: Karen, can I ask you this, though? It is true that at the end of the day, at the end of the 2016 election, African-American women showed out in force for Clinton? But before that, there was a lot of tension between the elements who saw themselves as being more progressive than she. I mean, in some cases, even some of her rallies were disrupted by activists who felt that she needed to be held to account for policies, particularly around criminal justice, that they felt had been unhelpful. Is the idea here that your kind of common experience as black women overrides what have really been very serious policy differences – single-payer health care, for example, and various taxing strategies and things of that sort?

FINNEY: Yeah, I mean, there are places where, I mean, let’s be honest, in the black community – and I say this as a – you know, I am a Democrat. I am a progressive. But there are times when I don’t feel that the progressive movement always understands the intersectionality of how some of these issues affect black people. You know, I – give you an example. In Virginia during the election – right? – there was great reporting about how important health care was to the black community, particularly black women. And you saw high turnout among black women because people realized hey, we need to really speak to this issue in a way that is authentic to the black community. That’s part of what I would like to see come out of this – is a recognition when we’re talking on the policy level, there’s got to be authenticity around how we’re talking to the black community, and then making good on those promises.

MARTIN: And Congresswoman Coleman, if I can ask you, it’s been a long-standing struggle, at least since President Clinton’s presidency, between the so-called moderates and the so-called progressives. I mean, this is not a secret. And it has been a source of some kind of resentment, I would say, among African-American political leaders that they sometimes feel that their agenda items are considered – I don’t know how to put it – secondary or alienating to the kind of white moderates that you feel you need to sort of keep the Democratic Party together. And I’m just – this plays out in primaries, like, all the time. So how do you reconcile that within this kind of framework? I mean, is the feeling that your common concerns as African-American women supersede all that?

WATSON COLEMAN: You know, the exciting thing for me is this is an opportunity not about how to be a stronger Democrat, not even how to make the Democratic Party react to me in a more respectful manner, recognizing the work that we as African-American women do in their party. This is about me, the person, the African-American woman in the United States of America, who has value, who has contributions but who experiences structural barriers simply because of that intersectionality of race and sex. And we need to be able to define and develop agendas on our local level, state level and national level that take into consideration the diversity of our issues, our concerns, our challenges, our accomplishments. And what we do for that next generation?

MARTIN: All of you go to a lot of conferences, and all of you go to a lot of meetings. So I’d like to ask how you are going to know whether this one has been a success.

FINNEY: For me, it will be seeing women talking to each other and really digging in on issues. But also, I hope we can change the conversation a bit to understand that we are impacting this society and this culture, and we deserve – we’re not a backbone, right? Treat me as a swing voter. Treat me as someone who you have to come and court my vote and make your case to me. And I would like to see us as black women take that back to our communities and to the national conversation.

MARTIN: Nakisha.

LEWIS: It will be a success for me if, one, knowing that all who do come, regardless of where they sit on the gender spectrum and regardless of where they come from in background, understand that they are part of the large fabric that is black womanhood.

MARTIN: If I could just mention what’s on your T-shirt, it says elect black women, fund black women, believe black women, invest in black women, follow black women, defend black women, hire black women, promote black women.

LEWIS: Yes. And above all else, trust black women.

MARTIN: That is Nakisha Lewis. She’s an organizer of the Power Rising conference, which is meeting in Atlanta next week. Also with us, Karen Finney, former spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey. We reached her at her home office in Ewing, N.J. Thank you all so much for speaking with us.

LEWIS: Thank you.

FINNEY: Thank you.

WATSON COLEMAN: Thank you for having us.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

D’Wayne Edwards created the Pensole Footwear Design Academy to try and diversify the sneaker business. Edwards was one of the first black designers in the business and created the academy, in part, because of how difficult it was for him to get started.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Lots of industries acknowledge they have a diversity problem. Maybe it’s with age or gender or race. Our Planet Money podcast wondered, how exactly does an industry begin to change itself? And reporter Kenny Malone says the answer is on your feet.

KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: D’Wayne Edwards was just out of high school – this was in the ’80s – and managed to get a job at LA Gear, the sneaker company, which was great.

D’WAYNE EDWARDS: But I’m in the accounts payable department, just filing papers.

MALONE: Which was not great because sneaker design was his dream job.

EDWARDS: And so I start asking around. And everyone’s saying, well, you have to go to design school, and you have to do this. You have to do that.

MALONE: Edwards couldn’t afford the normal, expensive paths to shoe design. But he did notice that the LA Gear company had these wooden suggestion boxes. And he thought, you know what? While I’m here, what the heck?

EDWARDS: So my suggestion was, hire me as a footwear designer. So I would – every morning before I started my filing-papers job, I would put a sketch in the box. So I did that for six months.

MALONE: He had no idea, but somebody was looking at these sneaker sketches.

ROBERT GREENBERG: The line work was very trendy, a little futuristic-looking.

MALONE: This is Robert Greenberg, president of LA Gear at the time.

GREENBERG: D’Wayne’s talent is to create what does not exist. You know you go to those car shows and they show the futuristic cars?

MALONE: Yeah.

GREENBERG: That’s what he did.

MALONE: Greenberg called Edwards into his office.

EDWARDS: And he had all 180 sketches on his desk. And he was like…

GREENBERG: Here, come in, and sit down. And let’s talk.

EDWARDS: I’ve heard you’re the one that’s been putting these (laughter) sketches in the box.

GREENBERG: You know, look at this – looks nice. What do you want to do?

EDWARDS: What do you want me to do with these things? You know, did you go to design school? What’s up? And I was like, well, no, I just graduated from Inglewood High School about seven months ago. And he was like, well, you have talent, and I like your ambition. And I’m going to offer you a entry-level design job if you want to take it.

MALONE: And that is the story of how D’Wayne Edwards became one of the first black designers in the sneaker industry. His career skyrocketed from there. Eventually he became the lead designer at Nike for the Air Jordan brand. But Edwards always wondered. Why did a kid like him even need this suggestion box miracle to launch his career in the first place? And so about 10 years ago, he quit his dream job to build a new way to launch careers. He built one of the first sneaker design schools.

EDWARDS: You see that white shoe with the navy midsole on the wall right there?

MALONE: Edwards is surrounded by about eight students trying to explain to them how sneaker color blocking can make a shoe stand out even from across the room.

EDWARDS: That’s why blocking’s important. And it started on basketball courts.

MALONE: The Pensole Footwear Design Academy in Portland, Ore., is some hybrid of a vocational school, a design college and an apprenticeship.

EDWARDS: But because I wasn’t able to go to school, I want to figure out a way to make it free so kids like me don’t get lost.

MALONE: So Edwards gets sneaker companies to fund scholarships for many students, and the sneaker companies get this pipeline of undiscovered talent.

EDWARDS: So the other thing that we – oh, Precious.

MALONE: Almost on cue, one of Edwards’ first students shows up to say hi.

EDWARDS: Precious is an alumni. She work at Jordan now. How are you doing?

PRECIOUS HANNAH: I’m good.

MALONE: Precious Hannah now works at Nike and still comes back as a mentor.

HANNAH: So I think it’s very important for others to understand, like, you know, you don’t have to go to this prestige school just to understand something. You could come somewhere where someone understands how to do things and just, like, give you the knowledge like D’Wayne gave me.

MALONE: In recruiting for the school, Edwards says he makes a special effort to find students who do not look like the industry looks right now. And there aren’t great statistics about diversity in the footwear design field, but the number of non-white designers does seem to be growing, and a big part of that is the Pensole Academy.

EDWARDS: Real quick, I’ll just show you a couple of things.

MALONE: Yeah, sure.

EDWARDS: So we keep a…

MALONE: Edwards walks over to a wall covered in different companies’ shoeboxes.

EDWARDS: And we put shoeboxes up on the wall when they get jobs at different places, for whatever said company…

MALONE: Every single one of these is a job.

EDWARDS: Yeah.

MALONE: One, two, three, four, five, six.

I’ll save you the counting. It’s more than 300 graduates who’ve wound up working at footwear companies.

EDWARDS: All the companies have a diversity agenda. Like, oh, we need more people of color. Oh, we need this. We need that. So in a lot of ways, with me starting this is to show the industry, this is what happens when you actually focus in on something.

MALONE: Kenny Malone, NPR News.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.