Making Contact

Activists in the Latinx immigrant community of Los Angeles share what they do to take care of their mental health. Self-care becomes a “selfless act” when it allows activists to stay healthy and do their work in a sustainable way.

Journalists have been violently targeted by police and arrested alongside demonstrators at Black Lives Matter protests across the country. In this episode we’ll look at the struggle for press freedoms during a time of repression and surveillance.

On this episode of Making Contact, we will look at the privatization of our earth’s most precious resource – water. We will look at the ways people around the world have been organizing against this privatization in the face of climate change and rising sea levels that threaten to contaminate our limited drinking water supplies.

Our radio adaptation of the film, Let the Fire Burn. Directed by Jason Osder, examines the controversial, 1985 clash between police in Philadelphia and MOVE, a radical, non-violent group. On May 13, police dropped a bomb on MOVE's home, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes.

Producer Robert Raymond interviews Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing--a critical examination on the history of the police, and the police’s evolution as a tool for social control that exacerbates race and class divisions.

44 million Americans hold over 1.6 trillion dollars of student debt and the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket. This unpayable debt causes long term financial damage, especially, for students of color and women. What can we do to fix the debt crisis? We look at two solutions: Free schools like Berea College in Kentucky and the possibility of a student debt strike.

Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw defined the concept of intersectionality 30 years ago. She developed that framework to understand how identities such as race, gender and class intersect in overlapping systems of oppression and discrimination -- resulting in compounded damage.

Juneteenth, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.   In this show, we'll explore the history of Juneteenth and we’ll expand our conversation of Juneteenth to include a case for reparations.The topic of reparations for African Americans has recently resurfaced with Democratic presidential candidates taking positions on the issue, elevating the discussion to the mainstream.

The movement to uplift Black lives and to defund and dismantle police departments has grown to a point where it cannot be ignored. We’ll hear from activists in Minneapolis, mourners in Houston, and our archives for an interview with the brother of Yuvette Henderson.

Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke words that are all too relevant today. Today on Making Contact, you’ll hear archival recordings, and excerpts from a powerful new film featuring Fannie Lou Hamer. You’ll hear about the context of her life, and the lives of other sharecroppers in Mississippi.

The biggest tech companies generate enormous wealth and power by harvesting information about people. It’s called surveillance capitalism. This episode features journalist Rana Foroohar, author of Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles—and All of Us. 

Gig Workers, driver's for app companies such as Lyft and Uber, are struggling during COVID-19. They're considered essential workers, so they can still work but many of them aren't making enough to cover rent. Many have chosen to stay home, facing economic insecurity. Those who work, however, are continuing to drive without much protection in the way of personal protective equipment, and very little help from the app companies themselves. We take a look at the future of the gig economy and how to protect "essential workers."

Our radio adaptation of the film, Let the Fire Burn. Directed by Jason Osder, examines the controversial, 1985 clash between police in Philadelphia and MOVE, a radical, non-violent group. On May 13, police dropped a bomb on MOVE's home, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes.

In the midst of our dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s hard to imagine what stories we will ultimately tell our children and grandchildren. This week's episode is about two strong women who survived historic trauma, and the stories they later told their families.

The world as we knew it seemingly turned upside down overnight. With stay at home orders in place, we are no longer rushing to work each day, getting stuck in traffic, hustling to get the kids to school, and scrambling for time to take care of chores. This strange and abrupt stop to “business as usual” has shined a light on the capitalist systems that are now crumbling down, and offers us the chance to pause and ask what’s next?

Most of us have a home to shelter in place during COVID -19. But what about the homeless? We take a look at life on the street before COVID-19, following two women as they undergo several evictions from encampments. And then we talk about the specific challenges the homeless face during COVID-19 and what we can do to fix the housing crisis.

How are witch hunts and Capitalist economies linked? Silvia Federici, wrote the ground breaking book, Caliban and the Witch, in 2004. In the book she argues that the witch hunts of the fifteenth century were a necessary pre-condition for Capitalism to flourish. Today, witch hunts are still happening, in places like East Timor, India and Cambodia. Federici, who never really left the subject of witch hunts, returns to the topic with her book, Women Witches and Witch Hunts. She looks back to the witch hunts of the middle ages and sees them replaying today, in countries that are newly adopting capitalism as their economic model.

In 1918, humanity faced a deadly global pandemic-- the Spanish Flu. How did those who lived a century before us respond to the crisis, and what we can learn from their response and the aftermath? 

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many Americans are worried about their health insurance. The cost of treating the illness, if a patient ends up in the ICU, can run into the tens of thousands of dollars without coverage. Which most people just can’t afford. Today we bring you a piece we produced last year about a related topic -the rising cost of insulin, and the effectiveness of medicare for all. First, we visit a group of community scientists called the Open Insulin Project, an organization trying to create its own insulin outside the lengthy FDA process and whether it's worth the associated risks. And we talk about the benefits of Medicare for All, a policy which would get rid of private insurance and make all medicine and medical care accessible and affordable.

On this edition of Making Contact, acclaimed author Ian Haney López talks about his new book - Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America.  This book explores the links between current day wealth and race inequality, elections, and how coded racism has evolved in the Trump era.  The book also looks at ways we can proactively build cross-racial solidarity to diminish barriers between us.  Author Ian Haney López holds an endowed chair as the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley.