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Call for Pitches – December 2022
ABOUT MAKING CONTACT Making Contact is an award-winning, 29-minute weekly documentary-style public affairs program heard on over a hundred radio stations in the United States and across the world. Making Contact tells stories that go beyond the breaking news to showcase voices and perspectives often excluded by corporate media. We focus on the human realities of politics and the connections between local and global events through a social justice lens. We are committed to uplifting the voices of people and movements who are doing the work on...
read moreThe A Word
This week, we explore an often-overlooked issue in the Arab world; racism towards Black Arabs. In this episode, Kerning Culture reporter Ahmed Twaij looks at racism in his own community, taking us from his Iraqi roots, through to modern day slurs still commonly used in many Arab communities around the world. This story originally aired on Kerning Cultures, a podcast telling stories from across the Middle East and North Africa and the spaces in between. Special thanks to Noon Salih and Sara Elhassan. Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures...
read moreWell Nourished: How Mutual Aid is Transforming Food Security for Single Moms in Ohio
Federal food programs, like WIC, face big changes coming out of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. Meanwhile, a single moms collective in Ohio holds it down for the single pregnant and parenting people in their community. Motherful’s resource pantry serves their 325-strong membership out of a garage three times a week. We talk to members and founders to learn what’s it’s like to participate, how it all started and where food justice is headed for them now and in their wildest dreams. Image...
read moreHow to Hold Back the Ocean (ENCORE)
As climate change melts the polar ice caps and raises sea levels, how will we adapt? We visit two locations: On Sapelo Island Georgia, the last remaining Gullah Geechee community fights to save their ancestral lands from the flood waters. Instead of leaving their land, or building a giant sea wall, they’ve chosen to use oysters to create what’s called a living shoreline. We take a look at how they’re built and if they’re working. Meanwhile, in New York, the Army Corps wants to construct seagates to...
read moreThe Way Home (Encore)
We visit two distinct projects working with food to revitalize identity and ancestry: Part one: In many Indigenous communities, there’s a gap in knowledge about growing and cooking traditional foods. On the Blackfeet Nation in rural Montana, Mariah Gladstone and Kenneth Cook are trying to change that. They launched an online cooking show called Indigikitchen and in this episode, we follow them into the field as they harvest a bison and film the process. Part two: Dr. Keitlyn Alcantara studies the reason the Tlaxcala, an...
read morePost-Roe Abortion Access from The Response Part 2
This episode is part two of a series about post Roe abortion access produced by our friends at The Response Podcast. Since the loss of federal protection, access to abortion care has become more difficult, especially in the south, the plains and the Midwest, but the movement for reproductive justice has only strengthened. Today we hear about mutual aid efforts to connect folks to medical abortion and emergency contraception, but we also acknowledge that reproductive justice is about more than abortion access. Image Credit: Digital...
read morePost-Roe Abortion Access from The Response Part 1
We hear a quick update about how the issue of abortion access has impacted the 2022 midterm elections, followed by the piece Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Landscape, brought to us by The Response podcast. We learn about how abortion funds, mobile clinics and other mutual aid efforts are helping people access this critical healthcare – especially in areas of the American South, where states have enacted some of the most restrictive abortion laws. Image Credit: Shareable/Bethan Mure Like this program? Please...
read moreOllas Populares- Lessons from Lockdowns
Reporter Rosina Castillo takes us to her Buenos Aires neighborhood. There, a community arts organization called La Casona de Humahuaca hosts an olla popular, a community kitchen, to feed hundreds of hungry neighbors during pandemic lockdowns. In turn, La Casona learns more about their own identity and purpose while transforming how they operate. And, we sit down with architect and urbanist, Belen Desmaison. She explains how the Research Action Group worked with community members in Jose Carlos Mariategui, a neighborhood in the outer ring of...
read more70 Million: Tribal Land, Banishment, Rehabilitation and Re-Entry
This week on Making Contact – with assistance from our podcast partners, 70 million – we head to the state of Alaska, where statewide increases in violent crime and substance abuse have led to increased incarceration rates among Native Americans. Making use of their legal sovereignty, some Alaska Native leaders issue “blue tickets,” documents that sentence offenders to legal expulsion. Journalist Emily Schwing looks into these banishment practices and their impacts on those affected by both tribal and state criminal justice...
read moreThe Agony and the Ecstasy: Race and the Future of the Love Story Part 2 (ENCORE)
PART 2….In 2019 a well known romance writer began tweeting about other writers in her community and concerns about racism. It led to a huge reckoning within an organization called the Romance Writers of America, which is still unfolding. And although the online debate seemed to be isolated to a specific community of romance writers and their fans, it was really a microcosm of what’s been happening all over the US. We learn all about romance novels and how newer writers are changing the norms of the genre, and giving it a...
read moreThe Agony and the Ecstasy: Race and the Future of the Love Story Part 1 (ENCORE)
In 2019 a well known romance writer began tweeting about other writers in her community and concerns about racism. It led to a huge reckoning within an organization called the Romance Writers of America, which is still unfolding. And although the online debate seemed to be isolated to a specific community of romance writers and their fans, it was really a microcosm of what’s been happening all over the US. In this episode we learn all about romance novels and how newer writers are changing the norms of the genre, and giving it a...
read moreWhere There’s Smoke: Asthma, Wildfires, and Fossil Fuels (ENCORE)
In this episode we bring you one little girl’s experience in a Northern California 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. Special thanks to the Park Foundation for support of this program. Image Caption: Ta’Kira Dannette Byrd, 11-year-old Vallejo girl and Shawntierra Dolton, Ta’Kira’s mother in 2020. Photo By: Lee Romney Like this program? Please...
read moreInflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice
Inflammatory diseases are on the rise around the world, and doctors are finally starting to pay more attention to them. But why does a beneficial part of our immune system turn unhealthy? Raj Patel and Rupa Marya think it has a lot to do with the world we’re forced to live in. They talk about the collapse of our planet and what it has to do with inflammation, and how our bodies are a mirror of a much deeper disease in society and the environment. But, they also point a way back to health via Deep Medicine, which is the quest to...
read moreRevolutionary Mothering and Reproductive Justice
In the mid 1990s, the Reproductive Justice movement was formed by Black and indigenous women as a response to the limitations of the “reproductive rights” movement. Movement leaders argue, “rarely do we find ourselves fighting for just one aspect of reproductive justice such as abortion rights” – SisterSong. Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, scholar and writer, joined us to talk about her book Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines, her experience being a teenager during the formation of the Reproductive...
read moreViva Brother Nagi from Kerning Cultures
Nagi Daifallah was a young farm worker from Yemen who moved to California in the early 1970s when he was just 20 years old. He went on to become one of the organizers of the infamous 1973 grape strike in California, led by Cesar Chavez. But one night in 1973, after a day of striking he was beaten to death by a local county sheriff outside a restaurant in Lamont, California. Although the sheriff who killed him never faced justice, Nagi’s story – and the movement he helped organize – went on to make real change to farm workers’ rights in...
read moreA History of Traditional Root Healing (ENCORE)
In some parts of the world, traditional herbal remedies are the norm. When we think of natural remedies we tend to think of older generations living in remote areas, in far away countries, with little access to modern healthcare. We rarely think about the ancient medicinal plants that might exist in our very own cities. On today’s episode we look at plant and herb medicines through the lens of Michele Elizabeth Lee the author of Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African-American Healing. Image Credit: Anita Johnson;...
read moreThe Response: Heatwaves and Energy Poverty in the Mediterranean
In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on energy poverty. When temperatures rise to the point where they become dangerous, what happens to people who can’t escape the heat? As temperatures continue to soar and extreme heatwaves become the norm, a lack of resources to stay cool — so, having access to things like air conditioning, for example, — is a huge issue across the world. To find out how people are fighting energy poverty, we visit southern Europe, a region that experienced a series of record-breaking, climate-fueled heatwaves...
read more70 Million – Forget Reform, They Want Abolition
This week on Making Contact we’re taking you to St. Louis, Missouri with the Podcast 70 Million to learn about the city’s ongoing efforts to re-imagine public safety beyond incarceration. Organizers in St. Louis have given up on trying to simply reform the criminal legal system. Now, they’re working to abolish it. And they’re starting with the closure of the “Medium Security Institution” known as the “Workhouse.” For more than a century, this St. Louis jail has been known for incarcerating people unable to pay their...
read moreThe Way Home
We visit two distinct projects working with food to revitalize identity and ancestry: Part one: In many Indigenous communities, there’s a gap in knowledge about growing and cooking traditional foods. On the Blackfeet Nation in rural Montana, Mariah Gladstone and Kenneth Cook are trying to change that. They launched an online cooking show called Indigikitchen and in this episode, we follow them into the field as they harvest a bison and film the process. Part two: Dr. Keitlyn Alcantara studies the reason the Tlaxcala, an...
read moreCapital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (ENCORE)
The cost of living in a city has skyrocketed. While wages have flatlined for most working-class people, rents have reached new highs, leaving most people struggling. And this, despite the economic costs of the pandemic. A one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is over $3,200 a month. But it’s not just in the US. The rising cost of living is affected the entire world. But why does the cost of housing continue to spiral upward? Samuel Stein’s new book, Capital City and the Real Estate State highlights the growing influence of investment...
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