Borders: What are they good for?
What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the US-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza? And what happens when borders cross living land and communities? We’ll dig into these questions in this week’s episode with the help of Heba Gowayed, sociology professor at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center. And then we’ll hear a story brought to us by In...
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...
Powerlands (Encore)
On this week’s Making Contact, we bring you a special encore of an episode that first aired in June. We’ll hear an extended interview with Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, a queer Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning documentary Powerlands. Powerlands traces how multinational energy corporations extract resources and profits while displacing and harming Indigenous communities around the world. The film follows...
Mexicans Confronting Racism: Aztec myths to modern stereotypes
There’s an idea in Mexico that racism doesn’t exist, that all Mexicans are “mestizo” – a homogenous blend of Spanish and indigenous. But cultural worker José Antonio Aguilar says racism is lived by Black and brown Mexicans in many ways. He founded Racismo MX, an organization which seeks to dismantle racism, after coming to terms with his own racial reality as a “prieto” – a brown man. We also hear from anthropologist...
Powerlands
On this week’s Making Contact, we feature an extended interview with Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, a queer Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning documentary Powerlands. Powerlands traces how multinational energy corporations extract resources and profits while displacing and harming Indigenous communities around the world. The film follows Indigenous activists in Navajo Nation, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines who...
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 in rural Montana, Mariah Gladstone and Kenneth Cook are trying to change that. They launched an online cooking show called Indigikitchen and in this episode, we follow them into the field as they...
The Way Home
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 in rural Montana, Mariah Gladstone and Kenneth Cook are trying to change that. They launched an online cooking show called Indigikitchen and in this episode, we follow them into the field as...
The Response: Fighting Misinformation in the Aftermath of the Mexico City Earthquake
Misinformation in the Aftermath of the Mexico City Earthquake The Response travels to Mexico City and puts the focus on the 2017 Puebla Earthquake — a magnitude 7.1 quake that toppled over forty buildings and killed over 350 people. In the aftermath of a disaster, information can mean the difference between life and death. After the earthquake hit in Mexico City, it wasn’t just buildings that collapsed, the normal lines...
70 Million: Locals Divided Between Diversion and Border Security
In Pima County, where Tucson is located, formerly incarcerated individuals and local government officials have joined efforts to send fewer people to jail. Meanwhile, a federal program designed to stop drug and human trafficking at the border is also sending people to jail for months over traffic violations and minor drug offenses. Reporter Jesse Alejandro Cottrell explores just how complicated it can be to reform a local criminal...
Fallen Heroes of 2017
Like this program? Please show us the love. Click here and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Thousands of local social justice organizers, activists and other leaders passed away this year. People doing crucial work in their communities, whose deaths didn’t make the headlines. On this edition of Making Contact, as we do every December, we’ll hear about some of the fallen heroes of 2017. Special thanks to...
