Borders: What are they good for?
What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the US-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza? And what happens when borders cross living land and communities? We’ll dig into these questions in this week’s episode with the help of Heba Gowayed, sociology professor at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center. And then we’ll hear a story brought to us by In...
Operation Boulder from Kerning Cultures
Since 9/11, US governmental agencies have poured millions of dollars into spying on Arabs, Muslims and Arab Americans. Their surveillance has changed countless lives as ordinary citizens all over the country were interrogated, arrested or had their homes raided. But this didn’t start in 2001. Invasive – and even illegal – surveillance programs against Arabs and Arab Americans have a long history in the US, going all...
A Thin Black Line: Press Freedom, Repression, and Surveillance
Making Contact · A Thin Black Line: Press Freedom, Repression, and Surveillance 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. Image Caption: “A U.S. Park Service Police Officer takes video of spectators observing an incident...
Bad Math: the Risks of Artificial Intelligence
Like this program? Please support our work. Click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Artificial Intelligence When we think of Artificial Intelligence we often think of intelligent robots who act and think like humans -the walking, thinking, feeling machines that we see in the movies. The advent of that kind of intelligent robot is so far off in the future, that we often don’t recognize the...
The Future of Abolition: Marc Lamont Hill, Michelle Alexander and Vonya Quarles
The Future of Abolition “Prison Abolition” had been a widely discussed idea for centuries, and was adopted –even by centrists– in the 1970’s. During the last 40 years and a staggering boom in imprisonment – prison abolition seemed like a fringe idea. “Get rid of prisons?!” Only radical activists thought that was possible. But in the last decade the tide has been turning. We’ve had the work of Michelle Alexander and...
Spies of Mississippi
Spies of Mississippi is a journey into the world of informants, infiltrators, and agent provocateurs in the heart of Dixie. The film tells the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve segregation and maintain “the Mississippi way of life,” white supremacy, during the 1950s and ‘60s. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) evolved from a predominantly public relations agency to a...