The Healing Project: An Abolitionist Story (Encore)
Composer, pianist, and vocalist Samora Pinderhughes tells us about The Healing Project. The Healing Project, a fundamentally abolitionist project, explores the structures of systemic racism and the prison industrial complex. This story first aired February 2023. The Healing Project takes action towards abolition with forms such as musical songs, films, an exhibition, community gatherings, live performances, and a digital library of...
Caring Relationships: Negotiating Meaning and Maintaining Dignity (Encore)
The vast majority of care recipients are exclusively receiving unpaid care from a family member, friend, or neighbor. The rest receive a combination of family care and paid assistance, or exclusively paid formal care. Whether you’re a paid home care provider, or rely on personal assistance to meet your daily needs, or a family member caring for a loved one, the nature of the working relationship depends on mutual respect and dignity....
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation
Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too—erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless...
The Art of Healing: Finding Strength Through Frida Kahlo
This week on Making Contact we take a look at one of the most prolific Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo, and how she inspired the Latina artist collective “The Phoenix Fridas.” Producer Anthony Wallace tells the story of Thania Betancourt Alcazar, a member of The Phoenix Fridas, in a piece brought to us by In Confianza, with Pulso. Alcazar discovered a lifeline in the art of Frida Kahlo and her artistic message of resilience and...
Uncovering the Refugee Experience & Healing Through Storytelling (Encore)
This week’s Making Contact episode is about two strong women who survived historic trauma, and the stories they later told their families. We start with the story of Katie Wilson. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Kiev, Ukraine, she grew up safe and comfortable – until the Russian Revolution. After holding it close for years to protect the next generation, she tells the story of the family she lost to her...
America’s Black Capital
“America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy” chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. Alongside author Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, in this episode we examine the methods in which Black Atlanteans pushed for social,...
Reproductive Justice: The Ongoing Struggle for Bodily Autonomy (Encore)
Today we share excerpts from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary filled with stories that still resonate today as women face new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence. The documentary tells the stories of the activists of the Women’s Liberation Movement that gained traction in the late 1960s and led to social and policy changes that set women on a path towards equality and reproductive...
Giving Bayard Rustin His Flowers (Encore)
Today, we continue celebrating Black history and heritage with a special encore episode honoring an often forgotten civil rights leader. We take a look at the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin, a central figure in the and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin was a trusted advisor to labor leader A. Phillip Randolph and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rustin’s methodology for challenging racial inequality and imperialism...
Denial of the Funk: The Impact of Racism on our Nation’s Health
The problem in America is, America’s been in denial about its problems. And that’s a problem. America doesn’t have a race problem, in reality there’s been catastrophes visited upon Black people. Catastrophes visited on Indigenous brothers and sisters. Catastrophes visited on Latino brothers and sisters. Catastrophes visited on working people. Catastrophes visited on women of all colors. We can go on and on. This week on...
70 Million: Grand Juries, the Black Box of Justice Reform?
Grand juries are supposed to safeguard against the government charging people with a crime when it lacks sufficient evidence. But because prosecutors control what happens in grand jury proceedings, they almost always get an indictment. That is, unless the accused is a police officer. This week on Making Contact, we hear a story from our podcast partner 70 Million about a case of police brutality in Dallas that evaporated after going...
