Interaction Institute for Social Change

08/24/2026

📣 NYC friends: passed along from our partners at Mississippi Food Policy Council

Hindu, Muslim, and interfaith organizations are holding a press conference this Tuesday, August 25 at 10:30 AM at NYC City Hall, opposing RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's upcoming appearance at Madison Square Garden on August 29.

NYC Council Members Brad Lander, Shahana Hanif, and Lincoln Restler have already called on MSG to cancel the event, joined by dozens of interfaith, civil rights, and South Asian organizations.

If you're in NYC and this matters to you, consider showing up or learning more.

📍 Steps of NYC City Hall
🕥 Tuesday, August 25, 10:30 AM

Hindu, Muslim and interfaith groups will gather at City Hall on August 25 to oppose the spread of Hindu nationalism and RSS influence in the United States.   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   NEW YORK, NY, August 24th, 2026 | Hindu, Muslim, interfaith and civil rights organizations

08/24/2026

Transitions, especially in these times, are inevitable, but how we lead through them is a choice. Whatever you're currently facing, whether it's a leadership change, a restructure, or priorities shifting overnight, your team(s) need steadiness, transparency, and shared leadership.

So we're offering a brand new workshop, Leading Through Organizational Change & Transitions, this Thursday, August 27, 2026 from 3-5pm ET. It'll give managers, directors, and anyone shepherding people through a hard shift real tools for exactly that.

We'll explore:
- Building transparency and alignment in uncertain moments
- Supporting staff through the emotional side of change
- Practices for shared leadership and collective resilience
- Keeping values front and center as you move forward

Sliding scale tickets are available, including a limited number of Grassroots-rate tickets. Last chance to register! https://www.tickettailor.com/events/interactioninstituteforsocialchange/1963020

08/18/2026

We love being in the room with folks, especially those who are passionate about moving from isolation to working collaboratively in networked ways. That energy is even more rewarding when it lasts after we've left the room, as is the case with the Climate Partners Convening hosted by Allegany Franciscan Ministries, which we helped facilitate this past May in Orlando.

85 people from 34 climate justice organizations across 37 Florida counties came together because they'd asked for more chances to connect and build real relationships in person.

77% said the convening helped build trust. 68% made meaningful new connections. 68% left more motivated to stay engaged with the network. 77% felt welcomed and cared for throughout.

Over three days, these organizations named shared priorities together: weaving a statewide network, creating ongoing connection points, strengthening emergency response capacity, and advancing shared storytelling and PR.

Grateful to have supported Allegany Franciscan Ministries and this incredible group of Florida climate justice organizations in that process! The real credit belongs to the partners themselves, and to Allegany for listening closely enough to build the space this network asked for.

Read more about this Climate Partners Convening in the Impact & Commitment Report here: https://www.afmfl.org/connecting-community-our-common-home

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08/13/2026

What are we working toward if we never take the time to imagine something better? 💫

The most popular read in our latest newsletter, "An Exercise in Radical Imagination" from Simone Field's Liberatory Dreamscapes, includes this quote from Everyday Activism Network: "If the future you see gets a reaction such as 'that will never work,' then you know you are engaging in radical imagination!”

Field's piece includes a guided visualization you can try solo, with your team, or with family. You're asked to imagine waking up in the future you've already won. What's present? What's missing? How are people living? How are they caring for each other? Then the guide helps you name what you saw and what you want to help build.

Worth setting aside ten quiet minutes to actually try it! https://liberatorydreamscapes.substack.com/p/an-exercise-in-radical-imagination

Permission to vision beyond our current circumstances...

08/06/2026

LAST CALL FOR APPLICATIONS! Sunday, August 9, 2026 is the deadline. If Gathering to Rise has been on your mind, now is the time to apply.

This fall cohort is for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders ready to be held, not just holding everyone else.

Three group sessions (Sep 15, Oct 27, Nov 17) plus three 1:1 coaching sessions, scheduled with your coach between September and November. Real space to reconnect with who you are and what you're capable of.

Apply here: http://bit.ly/gatheringtorisefall2026

Something special happened when our first Gathering to Rise cohort came together this spring, and we're ready to do it again!

Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort are now open.

This is a space for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders to come back to themselves, reconnect with what matters most, and be held in community during a time when so many of us are carrying heaviness and possibility in the same breath.

Does this sound like you?

This fall, we'll explore practices rooted in resilience, ancestral wisdom, imagination, and liberatory leadership, aka the kind of practices that remind you who you are and what you're capable of. Three group sessions + three 1:1 coaching sessions = space for collective discovery and personal integration.

Applications close August 9, 2026: http://bit.ly/gatheringtorisefall2026

08/04/2026

We usually break our Interaction Tip of the Month into a few swipeable slides, but this illustration by J. Chavez (IG: stormcloud72) said it better than slides could.

The strongest systems aren't led by one thing. They're held up by all of them. Corn, beans, and squash, aka the Three Sisters, grow by depending on each other: corn gives beans a place to climb, beans enrich the soil for all three, and squash spreads low to shade the ground and hold in moisture. None of them is the "main" plant.

This is actually a metaphor we teach directly in our Facilitative Leadership™ for Social Change training. We draw on Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013), where she writes about each sister needing to know and carry her unique gift and how to use it in the world. Kimmerer describes the three sisters as a living picture of what a community becomes when its members understand and share their gifts fully, not by blending into sameness, but by each staying strong in who they are.

There's a real lesson here for anyone doing the work of Facilitative Leadership, and it's that building collective power doesn't mean flattening people into interchangeable parts. It means creating the conditions where each person's distinct strength has room to matter, and to hold up something bigger than themselves.

So this month, try asking yourself:
- What's the "middle" in my own work, the unglamorous, connective labor that makes everything else possible?
- Am I resourcing that work, or overlooking it?
- What's something that's been holding me up that I haven't tended lately?

Then bring that into your conversations:
- "What's the connective work here we haven't named?"
- "Who's been quietly holding this together?"
- "What needs tending in the middle before we launch into fall?"

📬 Want more facilitation tips like this? Subscribe to our Love in Interaction newsletter for monthly tools, resources, and reflections: https://interactioninstitute.org/contact/

07/23/2026

65% of workers feel underappreciated. Close to 82% feel lonely at work.

That's not a wellness problem, according to researcher Zach Mercurio, it's a mattering problem. People are not feeling seen, valued, or needed by those around them.

Fair pay, predictable schedules, and real healthcare access are non-negotiable. Mattering doesn't replace any of that, but it's what determines whether people feel valued even when those foundations are already in place. And it's a set of skills leaders can actually learn and practice!

Transitions are exactly when mattering is hardest to hold onto, and most needed. When a leader leaves, a restructure happens, or priorities shift overnight, people need to feel noticed and valued more than ever, right when leaders have the least capacity to offer it.

That's part of what we'll dig into in Leading Through Organizational Change & Transitions, Thursday, Aug 27 from 3-5 PM ET, with our skilled facilitators Curtis Ogden and Jeremy Phillips,.

We'll explore:
- Building transparency and alignment in uncertain moments
- Supporting staff through the emotional side of change
- Practices for shared leadership and collective resilience
- Keeping values front and center as you move forward

Ideal for managers, directors, and anyone leading people through a hard shift.

Register at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/interactioninstituteforsocialchange/1963020

And check out the article, The Power of Mattering at Work: https://www.physicianleaders.org/articles/the-power-of-mattering-at-work

07/13/2026

Something special happened when our first Gathering to Rise cohort came together this spring, and we're ready to do it again!

Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort are now open.

This is a space for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders to come back to themselves, reconnect with what matters most, and be held in community during a time when so many of us are carrying heaviness and possibility in the same breath.

Does this sound like you?

This fall, we'll explore practices rooted in resilience, ancestral wisdom, imagination, and liberatory leadership, aka the kind of practices that remind you who you are and what you're capable of. Three group sessions + three 1:1 coaching sessions = space for collective discovery and personal integration.

Applications close August 9, 2026: http://bit.ly/gatheringtorisefall2026

07/07/2026

We've moved into summer, and while that usually means a slower pace, many of us are still very much in it. Either way, we're using this moment to reflect - and this month's Brain Boost is an invitation to do the same: Pause before you react. In your work, in your conversations, or wherever you need it most.

Swipe through for three questions to ask yourself and a few prompts to bring into your next meeting. If you only use one with your team, which one will it be?

📬 Want more facilitation tips like this? Subscribe to our Love in Interaction newsletter for monthly tools, resources, and reflections: https://interactioninstitute.org/contact/

06/29/2026

Back in 2020, Black and brown women were being put into leadership roles at a rate we hadn't seen before. And a lot of them were calling us at IISC, not to celebrate, but because they were exhausted, isolated, and inheriting organizations that were never built to hold them.

Gathering to Rise: A Leadership Cohort grew out of those conversations.

That was a few years ago, but the need hasn't gone anywhere. Honestly it's gotten bigger. The question has shifted from how do we sustain ourselves before burnout sets in, to how do we recover, reconnect, and continue without it taking everything from us.

The second cohort is coming this fall. September through November 2026. For Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders who are ready for a space that was actually built for them, by folks like them.

Applications open soon. Link in the comments to join the interest list!