KPFA - Making Contact

Spoken word.  Its poetry…its hip-hop…and it’s increasingly, the chosen means of expression for today’s youth. On this edition, to celebrate National Poetry month, we bring you the poets and students of Youth Speaks, from their annual event in honor of another master orator, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Special thanks to Youth Speaks.

Featuring: James Kass, Youth Speaks Founder & Executive Director; Talia Young, Dante Clark, Gretchen Carvahol, Prentice Powell, Justin Jodiatis, spoken word artists.

For More Information:

Youth Speaks

Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, Vona

Read, Write, Think 

Hot Water Cornbread 

Red Room

Poets

Split this Rock Poetry

National Association for Poetry Therapy

Poetry Foundation

Philly Youth Poets

Articles:

This Is the Time for Poetry’: A Conversation With Alice Walker

Adrienne Rich, LA Times obituary

Music:

Dear Mama by Tupac

Hip-Hop by Dead Prez

The post Making Contact – Bigger Than Hip-Hop: Youth Speakin’ for Themselves (ENCORE) appeared first on KPFA.

Americans eat out more than any other people. But the workers who put food on our restaurant tables are struggling to feed themselves and their families. On this edition, Saru Jayaraman, co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and author of “Behind the Kitchen Door” makes the case for bringing justice to restaurants and how ordinary diners can help.

Featuring: 

Saru Jayaraman, co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and author of “Behind the Kitchen Door”

For More Information: 

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United 

Living Off Tips Campaign

Articles/Videos, etc.:

Workers ROC the Restaurant Industry

How the Restaurant Lobby Makes Sure Fast-Food Workers Get Poverty Wages

Raise the Minimum Wage

Giants Fans Bring Their Own Lunches To Support Concessions Workers’ Strike

For Restaurant Workers, A Struggle To Put Food On The Table

The post Making Contact – Behind the Kitchen Door: Restaurant Workers’ Fight for Justice appeared first on KPFA.

Our world is generating more and more nuclear waste, but has no permanent place to dispose of it. But the nation of Finland has a plan. They’re building an underground cave, to hold thousands of tones of nuclear waste, for at least 100 thousand years. On this edition, we hear excerpts of the film, “Into Eternity,” which explores the logistical and philosophical quandaries around the construction of something that if it works, might very well outlast the entire human race.

Special thanks to Specialty Studios.

Featuring:

Timo Äikäs, Onkalo Executive Vice President of engineering; Timo Seppälä,
Onkolo Senior Manager of Communications; Juhani Vira, Onkolo Senior Vice President of research; Esko Roukola, Nuclear Waste and Material Regulation advisor to Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority; Wendla Paile, Chief Radiologist on Health effects of radiation for Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority; Mikael Jensen, analyst for Sweden’s Radiation Safety Authority; Berit Lundqvist, Sweden’s Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Science Editor; Peter Wikberg, Swedish Research Director of Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management; Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm, Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste theology professor; Sami Savonrinne, Onkolo Blaster.

For More Information:

Into Eternity

Specialty Studios

Nuclear Power in Europe

Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority

Posiva

Articles/Videos, etc.:

Danger! Nuclear waste! Keep out — forever!

Nuclear Power in a Post Fukushima World

Nuclear waste tomb soon to reach final depth

Into Eternity trailer

The post Making Contact – Into Eternity appeared first on KPFA.

It’s being sold as a cleaner way to wage war. But unmanned military drones are wreaking havoc in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. On this edition, we bring you voices from Pakistan of families destroyed by drone strikes. And we hear from Medea Benjamin and other activists who are working to build a global movement against this controversial military technology.

Featuring:
Medea Benjamin, Code Pink founder; Sister Megan Rice, anti-nuclear activist; Pakistani drone attack survivors and their family members.

For More Information:

Code Pink

New America Foundation: The Year of the Drone

Nevada Desert Experience

Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin

Peace of the Action

Knowdrones

Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International

Syracuse Peace Council

The Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars

Renard Surle

Articles/Videos, etc.:

Lobby Group Promoting Killer Drones Shuts Down Dissent

Cover-Up of Civilian Drone Deaths Revealed by New Evidence

Creech 14 Found Guilty, Sentenced to Time Served

How the Drone Warfare Industry Took Over Our Congress

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

The post Making Contact – Drones: A New Death From Above (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

The post Making Contact – October 18, 2013 at 1:30pm appeared first on KPFA.

Renowned biologist Sandra Steingraber has made fighting environmentally induced cancers her lifes work. Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream, has been turned into a movie chronicling a year in her life trying to create a world free of cancer causing toxics.  On this edition, we hear excerpts of the documentary film, Living Downstream.

Special thanks to The People’s Picture Company for allowing us to excerpt the film ‘Living Downstream’.
 
Featuring:
Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal
Investigation of Cancer and the Environment.

Music:
Sunchyme by Dario G
Recurring by Bonobo

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 Making Contact – Living Downstream appeared first on KPFA.

At overcrowded and underfunded public schools across the country high suspension rates are exacerbating existing achievement gaps. Often, chaos in the classroom is to blame, keeping students from concentrating on their classes. On this edition we’ll hear excerpts from Russell Long’s film “Room to Breathe” which takes us to a middle school in San Francisco, California, that began teaching mindfulness in the hopes of giving students the skills they need to focus on learning.

Featuring: Ling Busch, guidance counselor at Marina Middle School; Megan
Cowan, mindfulness teacher, students and teachers at Marina Middle School
in San Francisco.

For More Information:

Mindful Schools

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness

Reproducing Social Inequality through School Security

“Mindfulness” meditation being used in hospitals and schools

In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind

The Garrison Institute

UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center

Books:

Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness: A Guide for Anyone Who Teaches
Anything

The Mindful Child

The post Making Contact – Room To Breathe: From Chaos to Peace in the Classroom ENCORE appeared first on KPFA.

The post Making Contact – September 13, 2013 at 1:30pm appeared first on KPFA.

The post Making Contact – September 6, 2013 at 1:30pm appeared first on KPFA.

Have you ever wanted to run your own radio station? Well, this October, the government agency responsible for administering America’s airwaves, is giving you and your neighbors…the opportunity to create your own low-power FM radio station. It could result in hundreds or thousands of new radio stations across the US, and could radically change the countries’ media landscape. On this edition we visit current LPFM stations, communities hopeful to have their own frequency soon, and find out how you can get involved.

Special Thanks to The Prometheus Radio Project for some audio used in this show.

Featuring:

Domingo Jacinto & Rolando Salas,*WCIW DJ’s; Cam Tu Nguyen, Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association community organizer; Brandy Doyle, Prometheus Radio Project Policy Director; Autumn Labbe-Renault, Davis Media Access Executive Director; Jeff Shaw, Davis Media Access Production Manager; Roots & Emmett Brady, KDRT Programmers, Albert Sykes. Young People’s Project Director of Policy and Advocacy; Tracy Rosenberg, Common Frequency Board member; John Friedman, Southern Development Foundation President, Arlene Sweeting, WSLR Station Manager.

 For More Information:  

FCC on Low Power FM Radio 

Prometheus Radio Project 

Common Frequency

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association

Young People’s Project

KOCZ

WSLR

KDRT

Davis Media Access

Insect News Network

Articles:

Don’t Touch That Dial! Low-Power Radio Is About to Make FM Hot Again

$19.5k Seattle grant helps Hollow Earth radio reach for Low Power FM license

The post Making Contact – Low Power (Radio) to the People appeared first on KPFA.