On Relationships, Generative Conflict & Planting Seeds — with Aisha Rios of Coactive Change
I'm thrilled to share the launch of How Change Happens: Stories & Insights from Social Justice Changemakers — a podcast about the messiness of praxis and what emerges when our theories about change meet our day-to-day lives.
About Our Inaugural Episode
For this episode, I sat down with my long-time collaborator and friend — a community organizer, "reluctant anthropologist-evaluator," and Learning & Change Strategist at Coactive Change.
Aisha kicks off our conversation by sharing a powerful original poem that captures their approach to change work: "My people are Freirien teachers, learners and connectors who love deeply because we know relationships foster change." From there, we explore how deep, authentic relationships—which necessarily include conflict and challenging conversations—can create the foundation for transformation at both personal and larger scales.
We talk about Aisha’s "change lineage"—a blend of texts like The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, and personal influences like their mother who worked with organizers and their grandmother who cared deeply for her community. All of which contributed to how Aisha’s change work integrates theory and embodied knowledge, organizing and consulting.
We explore real stories about how seemingly small moments can plant seeds that bloom months or years later — and how challenging perspectives in different spaces can lay the groundwork for meaningful shifts that aren't immediately visible but are still powerful. And Aisha shares insights about how they decide where to invest their attention and energy.
Aisha and I both identify as weavers, so naturally our conversation connects various people, frameworks, and resources that have shaped how we think about change (all of which are listed in the show notes). And my AuDHD brain was having an ADHD-forward day when we recorded this episode, so apologies in advance to the folx whose frameworks and book titles I remixed or failed to recall live!
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I also love when people reach out to share feedback with me directly — which you can do via the contact form on my website. I want these conversations/podcast episodes to be both inspiring and useful to folx doing social change work, so how they land with you genuinely matters to me.