The Bombing of MOVE, 35 Years Later
The Bombing of MOVE, 35 Years Later Our radio adaptation of the film, Let the Fire Burn explores the controversial, 1985 clash between police in Philadelphia and MOVE, a radical, non-violent, back-to-nature group. After a standoff with the group MOVE, Philadelphia Police dropped a bomb on the roof of MOVE’s home, killing 11 people including five children, and destroying approximately 61 homes. Thirty-five years later,...
The Big Lift
The Big Lift Meeting family needs in a city of widening wealth gaps is a big lift. Dozens of studies show that when parents or guardians are engaged in their kids’ education, it has a huge impact. Not just on academics but on a student’s attendance, self-esteem, and behavior in class. That’s true across income levels. That’s why the San Francisco Unified School District created the position of “family liason” fifteen years ago: to...
Legacy of Mistreatment
Special Education African-American students across the country are much more likely than any other student group to be placed in special education. In this week’s episode, we present a documentary from San Francisco, where we hear about a landmark education case, and what is and isn’t working for black students with special needs today. This story first aired on KALW-FM’s news magazine Crosscurrents as part of the series Learning...
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools is an examination of the experiences of Black girls across the country whose intricate lives are misunderstood, highly judged “by teachers, administrators, and the justice system” and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. In her book, Morris shows how, despite obstacles, stigmas, stereotypes, and despair, Black girls still find ways to...
Mrs. Hamer Echoes (Encore)
Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke words that are all too relevant today. On this encore edition of Making Contact, you’ll hear archival recordings, and excerpts from a powerful new film featuring Fannie Lou Hamer’s contemporaries– themselves now elders. You’ll hear about the context of her life, and the lives of other sharecroppers in Mississippi from a seldom heard film produced for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
Jeff Chang on Revolutions in Seeing and Being
From almost every kind of responsibility and tie from engagement and from faith. So the artist–our task is to move ourselves and the rest of us in the opposite direction. Toward more engagement, towards stronger ethics, toward a social that’s open and inclusive to all toward seeing each other in full, to challenge us to recognize the debts, and yes, the reparations that we owe to each other. – Jeff Chang...