Making Contact

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.

Making Contact's Community Storytelling Fellows Vincent Medina and Isabella Zizi share deep and personal stories on Native American organizing and activism on Ohlone lands in the Bay area.  

Why is that the deaths of Black women at the hands of police don't seem to generate as much outrage as the deaths of Black men? Is it because Black women are valued less? Is it a combination of reasons? Or is it just a figment of some people's imagination? 

Given the election, and the difference between popular votes and electoral votes, we revisit our show on the Electoral College. It's history in the era of slavery, and how it works today.

Voting in one of the most momentous presidential elections in the nation's history is over. The morning after polls closed nearly 136 million ballots had been counted. But as has been reported for weeks ahead of the election, there is no clear winner, and the tally of absentee ballots continues. In this election special, we go to Arizona, Florida, and Oregon to hear from voters there. And later in...

Voter suppression and its target's aren't new phenomena. People of color and the poor have always been dissuaded from voting. We take a look at how race and voter suppression might play a role in the 2020 election, and we talk to organizers from the South who are fighting it, and ensuring that everyone has the right to vote not just in this election, but in every single election.  

Activists in the Latinx immigrant community of Los Angeles share what they do to take care of their mental health. The issues these activists work on often impact their personal lives, and people who work in the service of others are particularly at risk of burnout and compassion fatigue. Self-care becomes a "selfless act" when it allows activists to stay healthy and do their work in a sustainable...

On this episode, we'll explore felon disenfranchisement and the battle to restore the voting rights of people on parole. We will also turn our attention to the Native American vote and examine the ways in which their votes are being suppressed.

A year ago, Illinois passed a law requiring all jails to ensure that pre-trial detainees have an opportunity to vote. Chicago's Cook County Jail was turned into a polling place during the 2019 primaries. Sheriff Tom Dart is an enthusiastic supporter of the program. And advocates like Amani Sawari are working to ensure voters in custody are informed and prepared to vote in the upcoming election. Pa...

Women are challenging male-dominated power structures, and creating alternatives to the profit-driven economic model of capitalism. Women Rising Radio features Jinwar, a women-led village in Northern Syria. And we meet worker-owners of Up & Go, a cleaning cooperative in New York city. To place this global movement in historical perspective, we speak with feminist scholar Silvia Federici. Her books...

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 posed by the pandemic and examines a landmark domestic abuse bill in the UK.

Election protection is increasingly seen as a critical issue in the US. From gerrymandering and voter purges, to precinct closures and problems with voting machine technology,  Women   Rising Radio  explores threats to the US electoral process with two election protection activists.

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. 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.

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 littl...

Fifty 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.

We often see children as innocents who need love, support, and stability. But not all young people are nurtured this way. Too often youth from marginalized communities of color are not seen as needing protection -- they are treated as the ones we need protection from. We see this in this episode, brought to us from Re:Work Radio, with Phal Sok, who was once a kid in Long Beach forced to grow up to...

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 cand...

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.