Making Contact

Fifty-one years ago, 30,000 people peacefully protested the disproportionate number of Latinos dying on the frontlines in Vietnam. The August 29 th  Chicano Moratorium ended with an attack by police, 400 arrests, and the deaths of four people, one of whom was Los Angeles Times journalist Rubén Salazar.

On June 14, 2017, a fire started in a 24-story public housing apartment in West London called Grenfell Tower. The fire raged all night and reduced the building to a shell. Seventy-two people lost their lives, making the Grenfell Tower fire the United Kingdom's deadliest disaster since World War II. In this episode, we examine the events that led up to the Grenfell Tower fire and learn how the comm...

Barbara Bernstein's story of several communities in the Pacific Northwest of the United States who are fighting mammoth fracked gas projects that would turn this green region into a fracked-gas export hub. For years, Bernstein has reported for Making Contact on David versus Goliath battles against oil and gas corporations, and the fight for a clean environment. Today you'll hear part one of Bernst...

Regardless of race, gender, or political affiliation, Americans in 2020 bought guns; many, for the first time. In this show, we hear from gun and mental health communities on last year's panic buying, and what they are doing to prevent gun violence and suicides in the wake of surging national gun sales.  

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.

Our radio adaptation of the film  Symbols of Resistance : A Tribute to the Martyrs of the Chican@ Movement, offers a reflection on the untold stories of the Chicano Movement with a focus on Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Produced by Freedom Archives, the film delves into issues of cultural identity, student activism; land rights and social justice, in the face of police oppression.  

Our radio adaptation of the film  Symbols of Resistance : A Tribute to the Martyrs of the Chicano Movement, offers a reflection on the untold stories of the Chicano Movement with a focus on Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Produced by Freedom Archives, the film delves into issues of cultural identity, student activism; land rights and social justice, in the face of police oppression.  

Minneapolis, MN - May 25 marks the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd's death - captured on video that showed Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes - sparked a global uprising in defense of Black lives and against police brutality. But amid the coverage of protests in the wake of Floyd's death, media att...

On today's program we honor the life and legacy of civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs through the lens of the documentary film, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. Produced and directed by Grace Lee.  

We bring you one little girl's experience in a neighborhood with high asthma rates and other health challenges. We also look at one part of Southern California that is bombarded with pollutants from oil refineries, a trucking thoroughfare, and one of the world's largest ocean ports.

On today's program we honor Bayard Rustin, one of the most central figures in the African American struggle for Civil Rights and Freedom. Rustin was a pacifist, homosexual and practitioner of nonviolence who dedicated his life to racial equality, economic justice and ending warfare. 

It's been a year since the call to "Defund the Police" rang out through the George Floyd Protests. The idea isn't new - redistributing police funds into community projects that better support healthy communities -but, it's never been as popular and forceful. We take a look at some of the gains organizers have made over the past year and, we talk about the challenges

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 abandonme...

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...

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 Flor...

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...

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 Lo uisiana 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.