Making Contact

2020 and the first few months of 2021 are shaping up to be some of the biggest periods ever for U.S. firearms sales. In California, however, gun sales last year decreased slightly. In this episode we hear from members of the gun and mental health communities on what they are doing to help prevent gun violence in the wake of surging national gun sales.

Three years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. We bring you a Haymarket Books talk by Marisol LeBrón, Yarimar Bonilla, and Molly Crabapple, on a collection of essays called “Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm” which discusses the legacy of Maria, and also community organizing in the face of government abandonment. This piece includes clips from the Short Film : "Aftershocks of Disaster," directed by Juan C. Dávila, and produced by Yarimar Bonilla.

Domestic abuse affects everyone it touches—intimate partners, children, and elders. COVID-19 created new problems for victims of domestic violence and made some worse. This show looks at the challenges to survivors and their advocates posed by the pandemic and examines a landmark piece of legislation in the UK that could change the way countries there handle domestic abuse cases.

This week on Making Contact, we look at so-called quality of life laws that criminalize unhoused individuals and entangles them in a cycle of poverty and incarceration—and how advocacy groups are breaking the cycle.

Water is critical to maintaining the balance of life. Some corporations claim ownership of fresh water sources to bottle and sell for profit. Others use water as a tool to extract oil and gas. In this encore edition, we'll hear from communities fighting to keep water bottling companies out of rural Oregon, and to protect water from oil and gas contamination in New Mexico.

Amid national outrage over the police killing of George Floyd in May of 2020, and other police-shootings of Black people, the movement to "defund the police" became a rallying cry to reimagine our approach to public safety. In this show, we'll hear from scholars about how we can build a global movement for abolition.

We take a look at the ongoing rise in hate incidents against Asians in the U.S., a long-running history of anti-Asian racism, and a new push by Asian Americans — especially in underserved communities — to expose and overcome this ugly side of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode (the first of a three-part series by Self Evident), we hear the stories of these two Asian Americans on the frontlines of anti-Asian hate. Then, with a little help from researcher and activist Melissa Borja, we unpack the impact of these hate incidents and how Asian Americans are responding to them across the country.

As reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act awaits a vote in the U.S. Senate, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls continue to face an unequal system of justice. In this show we’ll hear from indigenous women scholars and activists on what justice means for MMIWG2.

Women Rising Radio re-visits the 2020 election year, to assess the outcomes and talk with those who made those outcomes happen, the grassroots election protection and GOTV activists.  This is Part 2 of Women Rising Radio’s two part programming on “Election Protection Advocates”. (Part Two - #39 is Part One)  

In a two-part series, we look at how COVID-19 has torn through prisons and how organizers are trying to push state and local governments to release inmates in order to contain the spread of the pandemic. For Part 2, we talk about why vaccines aren’t an effective solution to ending COVID in prisons, and we also look at how re-entry has become harder during the pandemic. Then we head to a South Florida jail to learn why activists want to end pre-trial detention.

In a two-part series, we look at how COVID-19 has torn through prisons and how organizers are trying to push state and local governments to release inmates in order to contain the spread of the pandemic. In part one, we focus on California. We take a look at why a prison, like San Quentin, is such a perfect environment for infectious diseases, especially an airborne one like COVID-19, how we might safely release large amounts of inmates across the prison system, and what we’ve learned from past release programs like realignment. This story has been supported by the Omnia Foundation and the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

This week we look at transgender activism and the call for inclusion in the movement for Black lives. We'll also meet Trans activists in Louisiana who have been organizing against a state law that has been used to target trans women.  

This week, filmmaker Stephanie Welch explores the role that racist, unscientific propaganda has played in promoting white supremacy in the U.S. She traces the history of the Pioneer Fund, the primary funding source for research that claims to demonstrate that people of color are genetically and intellectually inferior.

Black students with dyslexia carry a heavy burden in public schools. This program centers around a grandmother who fought for years to get her grandkids properly assessed for dyslexia. Like too many African American boys, Geraldine Robinson’s grandson was erroneously labeled with an “intellectual disability.”

This week we take a look at Canada and its history of Black enslavement. Canada, our northern neighbor, is rarely mentioned when we talk about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In fact, we often equate Canada with being the safe space where Blacks escaped US slavery - the final stop on the underground railroad, so to speak.

Today on Making Contact, we present the film Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible. The film takes us on the transformational journey of white men and women who overcome issues of unconscious bias and entitlement. Producer, Dr. Shakti Butler explores what is required to move through stages of denial, to awareness, to making a solid commitment to end racial injustice.

"Honorable people can do terrible things" says Andrea Pitzer in her book "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." We talk to Andrea Pitzer about her research as she traces the evolution of the camp, from its earliest incarnation in Cuba to its modern day forms in China, Burma and Guantanamo. What is a concentration camp? Why are they so deadly? And most importantly, what do we do to fight them?

Today, a divided nation experiences one of the most tumultuous presidential transitions in US history. Leaders from marginalized communities across the nation are watching, with cautious optimism, as Biden and Harris seek to tackle several serious crises amid a raging pandemic.

This year on making contact, instead of our normal end of year show commemorating movement leaders we've lost, and highlighting their work, we remember victims of police murders who didn't receive as much coverage, and activists who succumbed to COVID-19.

The Trump administration has issued numerous policies to systematically dismantle asylum as a legal right. They're also locking up asylum seekers for months or years, until they either win their case, are returned to their home countries, or self deport. Reporters Valeria Fernández and Jude Joffe-Block follow two asylum seekers as they endure detention, legal cases, and family separation in the US, where they sought refuge.