The Long Ride Home: The Get on the Bus Program and Incarcerated Families
The Get On The Bus program, coordinated by the Center for Restorative Justice Works, offers support and free transportation services to families affected by the criminal justice system. They bring children and their guardians/caregivers, from throughout California, to visit their mothers and fathers in prison. These rides happen over several weekends, from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day, hundreds of families are reunited for the...
Brightness of Courage: The Fight for Transgender Access to Gender-Specific Spaces
On this edition of Making Contact we look at some of the struggles and victories in the fight for transgender access to gender-specific spaces and programs. Like this program? Please show us the love. Click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring: Gavin Grimm, high school senior whose case is scheduled to be heard by the US Supreme Court in 2017 Joshua Block, attorney representing Gavin Grimm, American Civil...
Resistance and Resilience: The Cultural Legacy of the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party combined Black Power’s militancy with socialist ideology, and infused funk music with Franz Fanon’s writings. Their impact on American Culture, from music to style to community organizing, continues to resonate today. Fifty years after the birth of the Black Panther Party, we take a look at the lasting cultural legacy of the Black Panther Party through the eyes of the generations that followed....
The Murder of Fred Hampton
Dec 4th is the 47th anniversary of Fred Hampton’s murder. We are presenting this program to provide historical context amidst current media dis-information and government surveillance of groups organizing for Black Lives and Liberation. Trump’s legitimization of white supremacist ideas and actions makes Fred Hampton’s words from 1969 apt today. The Murder of Fred Hampton began as a film portrait of Hampton and the...
The Electoral College’s Dirty History
Given the Trump Election and the difference between popular votes and Electoral votes, we explore the Electoral College. Who are the electors, anyway? And will the United States ever join the rest of the world, and adopt a popular vote for president? Yale University Law & Political Science Professor Akhil Reed Amar says the Electoral College discourages voting, lessens the power of the states, and could work to the...
Rosa Brooks on How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything
The US military didn’t shrink much under President Obama, and our perpetual state of war has barely waned since 9-11. Author Rosa Brooks says the consequences of this ‘new normal’ reach deep into our society; far beyond the body count of those killed overseas. On this edition, Rosa Brooks speaks about her new book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. Special thanks to Politics and Prose...
