The End of Policing, Alex Vitale
Making Contact · The End of Policing, Alex Vitale (Encore) Alex Vitale is Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. Vitale’s book The End of Policing, is an accessible study of police history as an imperial tool for social control that continues to exacerbate class and racial tensions. Vitale also goes deep into the shortcomings of reform and in contrast,...
The End of Student Debt: Free College and Debt Strikes
Making Contact · The End of Student Debt: Free College and Debt Strikes 44 million Americans hold over 1.6 trillion dollars of student debt and the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket. — And it’s the poor, people of color and women who are most severely impacted. — The COVID-19 crisis highlights the vulnerability of debt when people are unable to find jobs or pay off loans. We look at two urgent...
Kimberlé Crenshaw: Intersectionality
Making Contact · Kimberle Crenshaw: Intersectionality 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. Now, amidst COVID-19’s disparate impact, police murders and brutality against of...
From Juneteenth to Reparations: The Freedom Promise of Unfinished Resolve
Making Contact · From Juneteenth to Reparations: The Freedom Promise of Unfinished Resolve (ENCORE) Juneteenth also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th Major Gen. Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas, to inform a reluctant community that President Abraham Lincoln, two years earlier, had...
Say Their Names: George Floyd and the Movement to Uplift Black Lives
Making Contact · Say Their Names: George Floyd and the Movement to Uplift Black Lives On May 25, 2020, the nation ignited after a bystander posted a horrific video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes. Now the movement to uplift Black lives, and to defund and dismantle police departments where officers disproportionately kill and brutalize African American men...
Mrs. Hamer, Echoes
Making Contact · Mrs. Hamer, Echoes Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke words that are all too relevant. Today on Making Contact, you’ll hear archival recordings, and excerpts from a powerful new film featuring Fannie Lou Hamer’s contemporaries– themselves now elders. You’ll hear about the context of her life, and the lives of other sharecroppers in Mississippi from a seldom heard film produced for the Student Nonviolent...