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Part 2 of The Pandemic Inside: COVID-19 and Prisons
Making Contact · Part 2 of The Pandemic Inside: Covid-19 and Prisons 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 Florida jail to learn why activists want to end pre-trial detention. This...
read morePart 1 of The Pandemic Inside: COVID-19 and Prisons
Making Contact · Part 1 of The Pandemic Inside: Covid 19 and Prisons 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 people in prison 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 safely release large amounts of people currently incarcerated...
read moreActivism and The Fight for Black Trans Lives (Encore)
Making Contact · Activism and The Fight for Black Trans Lives (Encore) On this episode of Making Contact, we will look at transgender activism and the call for inclusion and intersectionality in the movement for Black lives. We’ll also meet Trans activists in Louisiana who have been organizing against a state law that has been used to unfairly target trans women for decades. Like this program? Please click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring: Sean “Saifa” Wall, intersex activist based in Atlanta,...
read moreThe Pseudo-Science of Whiteness: Biology as a Social Weapon
Making Contact · The Pseudo-Science of Whiteness: Biology as a Social Weapon 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. The Fund used such research to lobby for eugenic policies like forced sterilization and the restrictive 1924 Immigration Act, and to wage an...
read moreGeraldine’s Story: How Public Schools Are Failing Black Students with Dyslexia
Making Contact · Geraldine’s Story: How Public Schools Are Failing Black Students with Dyslexia Black students with dyslexia all too often carry a heavy burden in our public schools. This documentary centers around a grandmother who fought for years to get her grandkids — particularly her grandson — properly assessed for dyslexia. Like too many African American boys, Geraldine Robinson’s grandson had been erroneously labeled with an “intellectual disability” and deprived of proper reading remediation. Image Caption: Geraldine Robinson,...
read moreCanada’s Slavery Secret
Making Contact · Canada’s Slavery Secret Today we’ll take a look at Canada and its history of Black enslavement. Canada, our northern neighbor, is rarely mentioned when we talk about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In fact, we often equate Canada with being the safe space where Blacks escaped US slavery – the final stop on the underground railroad, so to speak. But Canada indeed has its own history of slavery – dating back to the early 1600s when the country was coined “New France” by European colonists. The...
read moreMirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible
Making Contact · Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible Today on Making Contact, we present the film Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible. The film takes us on the transformational journey of white men and women who overcome issues of unconscious bias and entitlement. Producer, Dr. Shakti Butler explores what is required to move through stages of denial, to awareness, to making a solid commitment to end racial injustice. Like this program? Please click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring:...
read moreOne Long Night: Andrea Pitzer on the Global History of Concentration Camps
Making Contact · One Long Night: Andrea Pitzer on the Global History of Concentration Camps Today we use a lot of euphemisms: re-education camps, internment, work camps, prison camps, camps for internally displaced people. But before World War I, these prisons were known simply as concentration camps and they started in Cuba in the 1890s to control an uprising against the Spanish colonizers. Since then, concentration camps have proliferated across the globe, and have become the tool of choice for governments attempting to control large groups...
read morePresident Biden and America’s Expectation
Making Contact · President Biden and America’s Expectation Today, a divided nation experiences one of the most tumultuous presidential transitions in US history. Leaders from marginalized communities across the nation are watching, with cautious optimism, as Biden and Harris seek to tackle several serious crises amid a raging pandemic. Thank you to freelance journalist Maritza L. Félix for reporting from Arizona. Like this program? Please click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring: Nicole Henderson,...
read more70 Million: How the Asylum Process Became Another Carceral Matrix
Making Contact · 70 Million: How the Asylum Process Became Another Carceral Matrix The Trump administration has issued numerous policies to systematically dismantle asylum as a legal right. They’re also locking up asylum seekers for months or years, until they either win their case, are returned to their home countries, or self deport. Reporters Valeria Fernández and Jude Joffe-Block follow two asylum seekers as they endure detention, legal cases, and family separation in the US, where they sought refuge. Thank you to Maria and...
read moreThe Fallen of 2020
Making Contact · The Fallen of 2020 2020 was a tumultuous year rocked by two twin plagues: police violence which led to the George Floyd protests and continued discussions about police brutality and of course the novel disease COVID-19. Normally here at Making Contact, we look back on movement leaders we’ve lost over the year in order to pay them tribute and honor their lifetime of work. But this year, we’re commemorating those we’ve lost to police killings who might not have received as much media coverage in part one of...
read moreThe Pandemic, Loss and Racial Inequity
Making Contact · The Pandemic, Loss and Racial Inequity According to the CDC, Blacks and Latinos are 3 times as likely to die from COVID as their white counterparts. This disproportionate harm has sparked a response from community organizers and researchers alike. We turn our attention to those Americans who are bearing the brunt of the coronavirus fallout. You will hear from folks on the front lines to data experts looking to use pandemic related research to address racial and health disparities and to initiate progressive change. Image...
read moreThe Deep: Rising Sea Levels and Corporate Control of Water (Encore)
Making Contact · The Deep: Rising Sea Levels and Corporate Control of Water (Encore) On this episode of Making Contact, we look at the privatization of our earth’s most precious resource – water. 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. Like this program? Please click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring: Matt Schwartz, South Florida Wildlands Association Jayantha...
read moreAftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm
Making Contact · Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm 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 abandonment. This event includes the premier of the new short...
read moreOn the Brink: Homelessness before and during COVID-19 (Encore)
Making Contact · On the Brink: Homelessness before and during COVID-19 (Encore) When the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. many of us were told to “shelter in place” in order to minimize the spread of disease. But, for a lot of people who are forced to live on the street, it’s not possible to just close the door and retreat into safety. Today’s show is about homelessness. We start by following two women as they undergo several evictions, even though they’re already living in encampments. And we talk about the impact these ongoing...
read moreLanguage Is Life, Land Is Sacred (Encore)
Making Contact · Language Is Life, Land Is Sacred – Encore Making Contact’s Community Storytelling Fellow Vincent Medina is a Chochenyo Ohlone Native-American who is a part of a young generation working to revitalize the Chochenyo language for future generations. Making Contact’s Community Storytelling Fellow Isabella Zizi is a young Native-American environmentalist shaped by the 2012 Chevron Refinery Explosion and by her indigenous women elders in the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks in the Bay Area of California. Like this...
read more#SayHerName: Black Women, Police Violence, and Abolition
Making Contact · #SayHerName: Black Women, Police Violence, and Abolition It’s been six years since #SayHerName, the movement to draw greater awareness and action around Black female victims of police and state violence, was created by the African American Policy Forum. Today, the deaths of Black women and girls at the hands of law enforcement still don’t generate the same vocal concern and outrage as that of Black men and boys. Listen as we provide historical context of that disparity. This story highlights specific...
read moreThe Electoral College’s Dirty History (Encore)
Making Contact · The Electoral College’s Dirty History (Encore) 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 disadvantage of either major political party. On...
read moreElection 2020 Special: More Than a Vote
Making Contact · Election 2020 Special: More Than a Vote Image Credit: Verónica Zaragovia 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 had 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 the program we’ll hear about election power grabs, and...
read moreVoter suppression in some communities is ‘by design’
By Emily Rose Thorne, Mercer University Center for Collaborative Journalism Voter suppression in the Native American community is compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Native American populations, who could tip the scales in several key states, testified before Congress about the voter suppression they experience. Prohibitive distances from voting locations have posed significant challenges for voters living on reservations, who have reported travel times of several hours just to cast their votes. Voter ID laws can also exclude those who live...
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