Please support our programs

Election ’08: Can Politics and Healthcare Mix?

On this edition, we hear how Democratic activists have been pushing their party to make health care a priority for all. And we’ll hear a first hand account of how regular citizens led a movement and won their battle for universal health care in the San Francisco

Listen

Live From Main Street Ohio: Will Your Vote Count?

This year Ohio is again a crucial swing state, and it remains to be seen whether changes in voting laws there and in other states will make the process better or worse for citizens who want to cast their votes.

Listen

Parental Notification: Protecting Our Youth?

We hear from a group in California that says a proposition requiring parental notification before abortion threatens the health, safety and rights of young women, especially communities of color and immigrant communities. We also visit Texas where both parental notification and consent laws have transformed the ways young women handle unexpected pregnancies.

Listen

Battle for Bolivia

President Evo Morales nationalized foreign corporations and distributed the revenue to the poor. Now he’s pushing a new constitution that will weaken the power of the country’s traditional economic elite. But the conservative, pro-business opposition forces have blown up gas pipelines and murdered pro-government peasants, trying to provoke a civil war. How will the struggle turn out?

Listen

Whatcha Gonna Do When The Well Runs Dry?

From Australia to Arizona, we take a look at three growing communities facing water shortages along with the pressure to grow. We’ll hear their different approaches to finding solutions — including denial.

Listen

Whose Neighborhood is This Anyway? (encore edition)

Making Contact’s Joaquin Palomino speaks to former gang members, and other mission residents, about gang injunctions, a controversial legal strategy that’s divided the community. Some call it a solution, but many believe it’s an ineffective measure that does more damage than good.

Listen

Chile’s 9/11 (encore edition)

As US citizens observe the 4th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, few realize the dark significance of that day in Chilean history. Thirty two years ago, on September 11th, 1973, a US-backed military junta toppled Socialist president Salvador Allende, marking the beginning of decades of repression. Hundreds of thousands of Chileans fled to other countries, including the United States, in search of a peaceful existence. On this edition, a group of Chilean Exiles in the US reflect on the coup, and how music transformed their experience of terror into artistic expression.

Listen

For Us, By Us. Health Care after Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive disasters in U.S. history for human lives and destroyed property. And while a full three years have passed since the storm, New Orleans and the surrounding region are still in a state of “rebuilding”. How does this ongoing state of recovery translate into the daily lives of the city’s marginalized populations? We talk to activists and visionaries from the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic who are reinventing their community’s health and wellness landscape.

Listen

Live From Main Street in Denver: So You Say You Want Change?

Laura Flanders hit the streets of Denver at the Democratic National Convention to find out what real, sustainable change looks like.

Listen

Black and African

African immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the black population in the U.S. But the cultural boundaries between black Americans and African immigrants are hard to break down.

Listen