Love em or hate em, they’re an ever present part of American culture. And they’re not going away anytime soon. On this edition, we talk guns…from the shooting range, to the black panthers, to red state America. The people behind the trigger are probably not who you’d assume.

Featuring:

More information:

Communist Party USA

Gun Control ProCon

Buying Your First Gun and Learning How to Shoot

National Rifle Association

Mass Shootings Are Preventable

How teachers are funding gun companies against their will

Reducing Gun Violence in America

The post Guns: An American Tradition appeared first on KPFA.

This is a special encore edition.

Featuring:

Featured music:

Blue Dot Sessions, Farsical Slow Driver

Trans Alp, Gnossienne N1

Blue Dot Sessions, Tanguedo

Black Ant, Fater Lee

Blue Dot Sessions, Inside the Origami Violin

Broke For Free, Night Owl

Phour Trakk, Long Transfer

Trans Alp, Gnossienne N3

Kai Engel, Written in Ink

Archival Footage:

AP, New Sketches of California Serial Killer, December 18, 2009

ABC News, Grim Sleepers Mysterious Photos

More information:

Her Resilience https://www.facebook.com/herresilience/timeline

Kimberly Robertson’s obituary http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?pid=170694312

Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders https://www.facebook.com/blackcoalitionfightsback

Sojourner Truth Radio http://www.sotrueradio.org/

HBO Tales of the Grim Sleeper http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/tales-of-the-grim-sleeper#/

LA Weekly, Grim Sleeper Returns: He’s Murdering Angelenos, As Cops Hunt His DNA http://www.laweekly.com/news/grim-sleeper-returns-hes-murdering-angelenos-as-cops-hunt-his-dna-2155416

The Grim Sleeper timeline http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/260246/Grim-Sleeper-Investigation-Timeline#vars!date=1985-07-10_14:46:16!

Nick Broomfield http://www.nickbroomfield.com/

Sociedad Mexicana Pro Derechos de la Mujer, A.C. http://semillas.org.mx

Accountability in Maternal and Reproductive Health: Experiences from Civil Society from India, Mexico, and Nigeria http://semillas.org.mx/pdf/maternal_health.pdf

Femicide in Mexico: Mapping of Silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31G1MQzKhPY&feature=youtu.be

The post Not Throw Away Women: Black and Indigenous Women Disrupt Violence (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

Ross McKenzie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but after 15 years on Lithium, he wasn’t getting any better. He decided to take matters into his own hands, get off the drug, and find out why so many people are being told they have mental illnesses.  This week on Making Contact, we bring you an abridged version of the film Bipolarized; Rethinking Mental Illness, chronicling McKenzie’s journey.

Special thanks to Specialty Studios

Featuring:

More information:

The post Bipolarized: Rethinking Mental Illness appeared first on KPFA.

Nationally, American prisons release more than 650,000 people into society every year. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Memphis or Boston. On this edition, producer Aaron Mendelson followed ex-prisoner Kevin Tindall on his journey out of prison.

Special thanks to Claire Schoen and the University of California Berkeley, School of Journalism.

Featuring:

More information:

The post Getting Out appeared first on KPFA.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Southern Gulf Coast. Ten years later, it s estimated there are nearly 100,000 fewer African Americans living in the city of New Orleans. Drawn by reconstruction work, the number of Latino immigrants has nearly doubled. Reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina drew thousands of people from India, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, and other Latin American countries. Workers were charged with pulling dead bodies from abandoned homes and rebuilding New Orleans. But the influx of migrant workers also increased immigration crackdowns.

On this edition of Making Contact, we talk to residents about how the city has transformed since Hurricane Katrina and the resulting friction.

Featuring:

 More information:

Katrina: The debris/Missing

15 photos to remember Katrina

The Voices of Hurricane Katrina

These workers came from overseas to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina and were treated like prisoners

Tomamos las calles: New Orleans Blocking Roads at ICE

Voice from the Storm

The Black Scholar

 NOLA: Crawfish and Cowboys 

The post Changing Communities, Imminent Threats: Katrina’s Legacy appeared first on KPFA.

Covering the movements and organizations fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Andrew Stelzer, George Lavender, Laura Flynn, and Jasmín López.

The post Making Contact – August 14, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

Since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, many states have pushed changes to voter laws that raise disturbing connections to the past. On this week’s show, we’ll hear about hard fought battles for voting rights and the implications of new laws.

Featuring:

For More information:

 Civil Rights Library of St. Augustine

Civil Rights Museum of St. Augustine

http://civilrightsmuseumstaug.webs.com/

 The Formula Behind the Voting Rights Act New York Times

Southern Poverty Law Center

Department of Justice

NY Times:

ProPublica Civil Rights timeline

ACLU

Movement Music

Lyrics of the Freedom Songs

Articles, reports, etc.

Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws U.S. Government Accountability Office

 United States v. Fox, 211 F. Supp. 25 (E.D. La. 1962) District Court, E.D. Louisiana.

FBI Re-Examines 1946 Lynching Case

Remembering A Civil Rights Swim-In: It was A Milestone’

Lyndon B. Johnson speech Before Congress on Voting Rights (March 15, 1965)

The post Thwarting Democracy, the Battle for Voting Rights (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

Covering the movements and organizations fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Andrew Stelzer, George Lavender, Laura Flynn, and Jasmín López.

The post Making Contact – July 31, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This is a special encore edition.

Special thanks to The People’s Picture Company for allowing us to excerpt the film ‘Living Downstream’.

Host: Andrew Stelzer

Producers: George Lavender, Laura Flynn, Jasmin Lopez

Music:

For More Information:

Living Downstream

Living Downstream Home Video DVD

Sandra Steingraber

Dangers of Fracking

Food and Water Watch

About Air Toxics-EPA

Blacksmith Institute

Articles, reports, etc.

A Conversation with Sandra Steingraber

Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States

The post Living Downstream ENCORE appeared first on KPFA.

From unpaid bills to entire governments facing bankruptcy, debt is never far from our minds or the news. It’s deeply embedded in our lives: our language, culture, even major religions. It’s also at the heart of many of our most pressing political debates. But have you ever thought about where debt comes from? On this edition of Making Contact we hear from Anthropologist David Graeber, author of “Debt: The First 5,000 Years.” Graeber traces the history of debt and asks what might we learn from how societies in the past dealt with it. His 2011 talk was recorded by Allan Campbell, producer of People United at KOOP radio, in Austin Texas and featured on Bread and Roses Radio.

Featuring: David Graeber, anthropologist and author of  “Debt: The First 5000 Years”

Host: George Lavender

More information:

David Graeber on Twitter

The Debt We Shouldn’t Pay

David Graeber Talks on Debt 5000 Years (Bread and Roses Radio)

Bread and Roses

The (Perceived) Tragedy of Greece

Jacobin:Debt: The First 5,000 Years

The post Why We Owe: David Graeber on the Origins of Debt appeared first on KPFA.