FirstRepair executive director Robin Rue Simmons

My Double Dutch Group Is a Sisterhood

Robin Rue Simmons is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit First Repair, which promotes local reparations policies around the country to help Black Americans secure financial redress. Before joining Zócalo at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis for for “Why Isn’t Remembering Enough to Repair?”—the third public program in our two-year events and editorial series, “How Should Societies Remember Their Sins?,” presented in partnership with the Mellon Foundation—she shared stories in the green room about forest bathing, her Double Dutch aspirations, and hip-hop’s 50th anniversary.

September 1, 2023

Why Today’s Social Revolutions Include Kale, Medical Care, and Help With Rent

In the Pandemic, Community Organizations Have Returned to Their Roots in Mutual Aid and Self-Determination

by Rinku Sen | July 1, 2020

When I needed to donate a box of vegetables recently, I called a nonprofit in my neighborhood in Queens, New York, that organizes low-wage immigrant workers. As we arranged the …

Can the Literary Arts Thrive in an Open Book?

A Minneapolis Collaboration Between Three Book-Minded Nonprofits Created a Home for the Arts—and Lots of Other Things

By Jay Gabler | June 22, 2017

When it comes to music or theater, community-building happens right in front of your eyes. Crowds surge forward to see a band, or settle together into rows of seats as …

I Dish Out the Food Your Supermarket Can’t Use

My Neighbors Were Going Hungry, So I Got My Local Trader Joe’s to Donate Carloads of Groceries

by Linda Hess | September 10, 2014

In the spring of 2009, my teenage daughter and I attended a memorial service in Pasadena, California, followed by a family-style luncheon. After the service, the retired clergyman who had …

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