Nani Jansen Reventlow: How To Actually Change The World

About this episode

Caitlin Schiller interviews Nani Jansen Reventlow about systemic change and her book Radical Justice.

A loss isn't always a loss—sometimes, it's one of many stepping stones towards winning big. When you change how you think about what succeeding looks like, the long game of changing the systems we live in seems infinitely more doable. This week on Simplify, Caitlin speaks with international human rights lawyer and author Nani Jansen Reventlow about her book Radical Justice— and about what real, systemic change actually looks like from the inside. Nani founded two nonprofits, the Digital Freedom Fund and Systemic Justice, and has spent her career building a model of legal action in which communities most affected by injustice stay in the driver's seat. The implications of that, for how we think about winning, losing, and the long arc of change, are quietly radical. They also get into the surprising connections between different kinds of justice, who gets left out of the climate conversation and why, and what it takes to imagine a world that isn't just a patched-up version of this one. Nani is one of those rare people who can hold a wide-angle view of broken systems and still tell you exactly what to do on a Tuesday. Her parting thought is one of those things that sounds simple…

People in this episode

Host: Caitlin Schiller

Guest: Nani Jansen Reventlow

Topics covered

• systemic change
• human rights
• legal action
• community justice
• climate conversation

Keywords

• systemic change
• human rights
• legal action
• community justice
• Radical Justice

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Digital Freedom Fund, Systemic Justice

Books & works: Radical Justice

Places: Berlin, Germany, Chapters Bookshop

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