Making Contact produces media that analyzes critical issues and showcases grassroots solutions in order to inform and inspire audiences to action.
Angelic Troublemaker: Bayard Rustin (ENCORE)
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...
The Healing Project: An Abolitionist Story
This week on Making Contact we speak with composer, pianist, and vocalist Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes about The Healing Project at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The Healing Project, fundamentally an abolitionist project, explores the...
The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle
It’s a lesser-known case in the docket for the Supreme Court, but if The Indian Child Welfare Act is overturned, it could have massive implications for the laws that govern Indigenous sovereignty in the United States. We talk with...
The Response: Mutual Aid with Joshua Potash
Joshua Potash is an anti-capitalist abolitionist based in New York City. Joshua co-founded Washington Square Park Mutual Aid, which provides free food, clothing, and various supplies once a week in the New York City park. They also...
Upstream: Worker Cooperatives
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...
70 Million: Punished and Persecuted for Being Unhoused, Part 2
More than a quarter of the people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. live in California. Nowhere is the unhoused crisis more visible than in the city of Los Angeles, where almost 30,000 people camp out on sidewalks and in parks every...
- Climate Justice
- Criminal Justice
- Immigration
- Indigenous
- Labor & Economics
- Women's Issues
How 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...
Where 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...
The 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...
How to Hold Back the Ocean
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...
The Response: Mutual Aid with Joshua Potash
Joshua Potash is an anti-capitalist abolitionist based in New York City. Joshua co-founded Washington Square Park Mutual Aid, which provides free food, clothing, and various supplies once a week in the New York City park. They also...
70 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...
70 Million: When “Bail Reform” Isn’t
This week on Making Contact, we look at Bail Reform in the state of Texas with the help of our podcast partners 70 Million. For conservative lawmakers and bail reform advocates have long debated what bail reform can look like for...
Unequal Justice: the Criminalization of Black Youth
Nearly two thirds of all children in the U.S. juvenile justice system are kids of color. That’s according to a recent report by the Children’s Defense Fund. In this episode of Making Contact, we’ll hear from Dr. Kris Henning on the...
Two Revolutions, Many Secrets (ENCORE)
In the midst of our stress and trauma dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s hard to imagine what stories we will ultimately tell our children and grandchildren. This week’s Making Contact episode is about two strong women who...
re:Work – Redemption
In today’s political climate, immigration is often discussed within the context of who “deserves” to be here versus who does not. Many politicians have strayed away from addressing immigration as a humanitarian issue...
September 11th 20 Years Later: Surveillance, Policing, and Torture
Making Contact · September 11th 20 Years Later: Surveillance, Policing, and Torture September 11th, 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In today’s program, we turn our attention not to the...
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...
The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle
It’s a lesser-known case in the docket for the Supreme Court, but if The Indian Child Welfare Act is overturned, it could have massive implications for the laws that govern Indigenous sovereignty in the United States. We talk with...
The 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...
Ollas 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...
70 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...
Upstream: Worker Cooperatives
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...
Viva 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...
70 Million: An Effort to Hold Prosecutors Accountable
Making Contact · 70 Million: An Effort to Hold Prosecutors Accountable Prosecutors hold immense power in the criminal justice system. They decide who to charge with what crime, when to offer deals, what sentences to recommend, and...
Re:Work Radio: Stranded
Making Contact · Re:Work Radio: Stranded In 2020, India suddenly went into a national lockdown without advance planning or adequate government support. This led to a humanitarian crisis in addition to the COVID-19 public health...
Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (ENCORE)
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...
Well 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...
Post-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,...
Post-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...
