While wages have flatlined for most working class people, rents have reached new highs, leaving most people struggling. But it’s not just in the US. The rising cost of living is affected the entire world. Samuel Stein’s new book, Capital City and the Real Estate State, highlights the growing influence of investment capital into land as the driving force behind gentrification and the power developers have over city and local governments. We talk to Samuel about the rise of the global real estate ...
Mar 29, 2023•29 min
On this episode, we turn our focus to how journalists and historians today are covering the Tulsa Race Massacre. KalaLea, producer and host of the podcast series Blindspot: Tulsa Burning, talks about how she led coverage of the brutal 1921 attack on a prosperous Black Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma known as Black Wall Street. And, we'll hear from members of Tulsa's Tri-City Collective who continue to investigate the history there.
Mar 22, 2023•29 min
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.
Mar 15, 2023•29 min
On today's show, we hear a story from our podcast partner 70 Million about the relationship between students with special needs and school resource officers and the changes some would like to see in an edited version of “Why Policing Our Schools Backfires."
Mar 08, 2023•29 min
We talk to Raj Patel and Rupa Marya about their book "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice."
Mar 02, 2023•29 min
In this episode, long-time producers Anita Johnson and Salima Hamirani introduce the newest members of the Making Contact team, recap highlights from the past year, and preview what to expect from the show in 2023.
Feb 23, 2023•29 min
On today's show, we bring you a special encore episode from our archives to honor Black history and heritage. We take a look at the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin, one of the most central figures in the African American struggle for civil rights and freedom. Rustin was a pacifist, a gay man, and a practitioner of nonviolence who dedicated his life to racial equality, economic justice and ending warfare. This program first aired on Making Contact in 2021.
Feb 16, 2023•29 min
This week on Making Contact we bring you to "The Healing Project," a multimedia installation that shares stories from incarcerated people about how the trauma of imprisonment has impacted their lives and families.
Feb 09, 2023•29 min
On the face of it, the legal arguments at the Supreme Court over the Indian Child Welfare Act seem to be a custody battle over Native children and the right to adopt them by white parents. But, the funding behind the court case hints at something deeper and could dismantle indigenous sovereignty as we know it.
Feb 02, 2023•29 min
Joshua Potash, a New York City-based anti-capitalist abolitionist discusses the history and theory behind mutual aid with our partners at The Response Podcast.
Jan 26, 2023•29 min
On today's show we learn about worker cooperatives: what are they and can they offer an alternative to the dominant capitalist mindset? Our partner podcast Upstream brings us to a bike and skate shop in Richmond, CA that's providing a much-needed service to its community, while also empowering its own workers, in this story that first aired in 2018.
Jan 19, 2023•29 min
This week on Making Contact we continue with our look at a community of unhoused people in Echo Park in Los Angeles, California and how they were forcibly evicted by police despite an enormous show of support from protesters. Thanks to our podcast partners at 70 Million we bring you part two of “Punished and Persecuted for Being Unhoused.”
Jan 12, 2023•29 min
Jan 05, 2023•29 min
Thousands of social justice leaders in communities all over the world passed away this year. We're closing out the year, as we usually do, with inspiring words from some of the Fallen Heroes of 2022.
Dec 27, 2022•30 min
In the midst of our stress and trauma dealing with the sometimes harsh realities of life, its hard to imagine what stories we will ultimately tell our children and grandchildren. This week's Making Contact is about two strong women who survived historic trauma, and the stories they later told their families.
Dec 21, 2022•29 min
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.
Dec 14, 2022•29 min
In this special mini-episode, producer Amy Gastelum sits down with Rebecca Piazza to learn more about WIC, and what the program is doing to try and increase its low participation rates.
Dec 08, 2022•17 min
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 wi...
Dec 08, 2022•29 min
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...
Dec 01, 2022•30 min
What does food mean to identities struggling against colonialism and displacement? First, we visit the Blackfeet Nation in Montana as members of Indigikitchen harvest bison and talk about Native food systems. Then, we head to Bloomington, Indiana where a young archeology professor has brought methods of growing and sharing food from the deeper past to a modern Latino diaspora.
Nov 23, 2022•30 min
Mutual aid efforts to provide pregnancy prevention and medical abortion in post-Roe southern United States.
Nov 17, 2022•29 min
Our friends from the podcast The Response bring us their piece Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Landscape, plus a quick update on how the issue of abortion access impacted the 2022 midterms.
Nov 08, 2022•29 min
Groups all over Latin America turn to the age-old practice of communal cooking to feed citizens during pandemic lockdowns. A Buenos Aires arts organization solidifies their community, and a Peruvian architect brings new ways of building to the hillsides of Lima.
Nov 02, 2022•29 min
This week on Making Contact - with assistance from our podcast partners, 70 million - we head to the state of Alaska, where rising violent crime and substance abuse have increased incarceration rates among Native Americans. Making use of their legal sovereignty, some Alaskan Native leaders issue “blue tickets,” documents that sentence offenders to legal expulsion. Journalist Emily Schwing looked into these banishment practices and their impacts on those affected by both tribal and state criminal...
Oct 27, 2022•29 min
We revisit a major race debate within the Romance Writers of America that began in 2019 and talk about why questions of race in art and in institutions are so relevant in today's America. This is a two part series.
Oct 20, 2022•29 min
We revisit a major race debate within the Romance Writers of America that began in 2019 and talk about why questions of race in art and in institutions are so relevant in today's America. This is a two part series.
Oct 12, 2022•29 min
One child’s experience in a neighborhood with high asthma rates and other health challenges.
Oct 05, 2022•29 min
We talk to Raj Patel and Rupa Marya about their new book "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice."
Sep 29, 2022•29 min
In today's episode, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs tells the birth story of the book she co-edited with China Martens and Mai'a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and gives context to the book with stories of the Reproductive Justice Movement.
Sep 21, 2022•29 min
Nagi Daifallah was a young farm worker from Yemen who participated in the 1973 Grape Strike along with the UFW until he was murdered by a Sheriff. We visit his story via our friends at Kerning Cultures.
Sep 15, 2022•29 min
