The May 13 Group PODCAST

In this episode, hosts Carolina and Vidhya reflect on our first year building a solidarity economy through this podcast. We connect recent topics—collective knowledge-making, individualism, and the idea of an economy—to each other, evaluation, accountability, and resource distribution. We note the years of work ahead, as today's socio-political situation results from decades of deliberate effort, not recent elections. Grateful ...

In this episode, Carolina and Vidhya engage in dialogue with ⁠Justin Laing⁠ of ⁠Hillombo Consulting⁠ to understand the idea of an economy, which is foundational to building a solidarity economy. We delve into the way knowledge—or perhaps narrative—is produced within racial and gendered capitalism and the role evaluation plays for the owning and ruling class. We close with an invitation to imagine what knowledge work could look like...

Carolina and Vidhya reflect on individualism and interrogate how it shows up in our personal lives and is built into our work—including NPIC and evaluation’s training, practice, and literature as well as existing field-building and change efforts.

⁠⁠Episode 7 TRANSCRIPT

Notes

• 02:17 “Utopia” asperceived or portrayed by dominating forces
• 11:55 Concentric circles still center the individual and nuclear family, unlike the more web-like...

In this episode, we discuss “The Power of Perspective: Generations of Evaluators Generating Change,” an interactive journey map featured at the 2022 American Evaluation Association conference. Rooted in popular education and critical pedagogy, it highlighted the suppression of critical voices in evaluation and connected participants’ lives to a lineage of resistance within the field. We discuss its development, installation, and re...

In this episode, thought partner and podcast producer Nayantara Premakumar joins hosts Carolina and Vidhya to reflect and update listeners on our retreat and recent milestones. We share our struggles resisting racial/gendered capitalism through cooperative, decentralized, and transparent governance and ownership structures. This includes a discussion of fiscal sponsorship and technocratic tools for decision-making. We also highligh...

In this episode, Sarah Stachowiak joins Carolina and Vidhya in reflecting transparently on our financial relationship. How does the owning class’s control over manufacturing processes and products show up in the knowledge economy and the evaluation of public and nonprofit/ nongovernmental programs? What does it mean for the “raw material” (data about/ from program participants)? For the “independence” of knowledge workers, who mark...

In this episode, Carolina and Vidhya reflect on the tension among learning from the past, meeting immediate needs in the present, and both imagining and building a better future. We discuss evaluation’s origins as a tool for capital and grapple with our status as members of the professional/ managerial class. Folx with our training and current positionality find uncertainty “risky.” Whose interests do we ultimately serve? Could a s...

In this episode, hosts Carolina De La Rosa Mateo and Vidhya Shanker ask, “why evaluation?” We wonder if evaluation can be a site of resistance against racial/gendered capitalism, when capital developed evaluation to support its interests and continues to control the means and ends of knowledge production. Can evaluators renounce capitalism and positivism to organize against exploitation alongside the working class? Can we refuse to...

In this episode, we (hosts Vidhya Shanker and Carolina De La Rosa Mateo) introduce ourselves, share how our worlds came together, and discuss The May 13 Group. We talk about our personal histories inside and outside evaluation, the Minnesota IBPOC in Evaluation Community of Praxis, how The May 13 Group came to be, and what it could possibly become. We invite anyone who works in and around evaluation or other knowledge work (e.g., p...

The May 13 Group is an emerging ecosystem oriented toward—and energized by—epistemic healing and wholeness in, through, and around evaluation. Join hosts Carolina De La Rosa Mateo and Vidhya Shanker as they dive into ideas and stories that deepen our understanding of how structurally-focused collective action, including direct action organizing, can challenge capitalist relations of knowledge production and colonial ways of knowing...