Pandemic and Profit
To mark the three year anniversary of the official start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ll be looking at two alternative supply chains for masks that emerged in the fallout of the Trump administration’s failure to prepare. We’ll be speaking with ProPublica reporter David McSwane about his book Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick. The book details the shadowy supply chain...
I Am Because I Am: The Expansion of Gender Identity (Encore)
Gender Identity I Am Because I Am, explores the expansion of gender identity and presumed roles in our society. A look beyond the socially constructed ideas of what is male, female, masculine or feminine. Especially considering Trump’s administration attempts to redefine gender to be solely based on a person’s genitalia at birth. Thus potentially threatening Transgender, Intersex and Non-Binary Identity. In this show we’ll ask...
President 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...
70 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...
I Am Because I Am: The Expansion of Gender Identity
Gender Identity I Am Because I Am, explores the expansion of gender identity and presumed roles in our society. A look beyond the socially constructed ideas of what is male, female, masculine or feminine. Especially considering Trump’s administration attempts to redefine gender to be solely based on a person’s genitalia at birth. Thus potentially threatening Transgender, Intersex and Non-Binary Identity. In this show we’ll ask the...
The Arrival: Trump’s Travel and Refugee Ban
After the US Supreme Court’s June 2018 ruling on Trump’s travel ban, we’ll discuss how the new order impacts people from affected, Muslim-majority countries. We also talk about what’s different about the new ban and how to fight it. We begin with the story of a woman who was in flight to the US when President Trump signed his first travel ban. Special thanks to the Stanford Storytelling Project and State of the Human...
The Arrival: Trump’s Travel and Refugee Ban
Leading up to the US Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s travel ban, we’ll hear about the order’s impact on people from affected, Muslim-majority countries, and how advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations are responding. On this edition of Making Contact we begin with the story of a woman who was in flight to the US when President Trump signed his first travel ban. Special thanks to the...
Building Resistance: Japanese Imprisonment and the Fight Against a Muslim Registry
This year is the 75th anniversary of we now call Japanese Internment. And every year since 1942, Japanese Americans have tried to get the rest of us to remember what happened. To notice the scar that mass incarceration left, not just on the Japanese community, but on all of us. We found ourselves at similar crossroads in 2001 when the Bush Administration used the chaos of 9/11 to push through drastic changes, including the creation...
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...
