Making Contact

On today's program we honor Bayard Rustin, one of the most central figures in the African American struggle for Civil Rights and Freedom. Rustin was a pacifist, homosexual and practitioner of nonviolence who dedicated his life to racial equality, economic justice and ending warfare.

It's been a year since the call to "Defund the Police" rang out through the George Floyd Protests. The idea isn't new - redistributing police funds into community projects that better support healthy communities -but, it's never been as popular and forceful. We take a look at some of the gains organizers have made over the past year and, we talk about the challenges

2020 and the first few months of 2021 are shaping up to be some of the biggest periods ever for U.S. firearms sales. In California, however, gun sales last year decreased slightly. In this episode we hear from members of the gun and mental health communities on what they are doing to help prevent gun violence in the wake of surging national gun sales.

Three years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. We bring you a Haymarket Books talk by Marisol LeBrón, Yarimar Bonilla, and Molly Crabapple, on a collection of essays called "Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm" which discusses the legacy of Maria, and also community organizing in the face of government abandonment. This piece includes clips from the Short Film : "Aftershocks of Disaster," directed by Juan C. Dávila, and produced by Yarimar Bonilla.

Domestic abuse affects everyone it touches—intimate partners, children, and elders. COVID-19 created new problems for victims of domestic violence and made some worse. This show looks at the challenges to survivors and their advocates posed by the pandemic and examines a landmark piece of legislation in the UK that could change the way countries there handle domestic abuse cases.

This week on Making Contact, we look at so-called quality of life laws that criminalize unhoused individuals and entangles them in a cycle of poverty and incarceration—and how advocacy groups are breaking the cycle.

Water is critical to maintaining the balance of life. Some corporations claim ownership of fresh water sources to bottle and sell for profit. Others use water as a tool to extract oil and gas. In this encore edition, we'll hear from communities fighting to keep water bottling companies out of rural Oregon, and to protect water from oil and gas contamination in New Mexico.

Amid national outrage over the police killing of George Floyd in May of 2020, and other police-shootings of Black people, the movement to "defund the police" became a rallying cry to reimagine our approach to public safety. In this show, we'll hear from scholars about how we can build a global movement for abolition.

We take a look at the ongoing rise in hate incidents against Asians in the U.S., a long-running history of anti-Asian racism, and a new push by Asian Americans — especially in underserved communities — to expose and overcome this ugly side of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode (the first of a three-part series by Self Evident), we hear the stories of these two Asian Americans on the frontlines of anti-Asian hate. Then, with a little help from researcher and activist Melissa Borja, we unpack the impact of these hate incidents and how Asian Americans are responding to them across the country.

As reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act awaits a vote in the U.S. Senate, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls continue to face an unequal system of justice. In this show we'll hear from indigenous women scholars and activists on what justice means for MMIWG2.