Tent cities have popped up across the country, from New Jersey to Texas to New Mexico. Many are starting to build more permanent living structures. So what are the benefits of living in a cluster of tents? And is this part of a real solution to homelessness?

Special edition of Making Contact with guest Host, Rose Aguilar discussing reproductive health and abortion rights 43 years after Roe v. Wade.

Featuring:

• Corrine Rivera-Fowler, deputy director of COLOR, the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights
• Carol Joffe, professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco and author of “Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us.”

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th 1963, Martin Luther King Jr delivered one of the most famous speeches of all time.

But it nearly didn’t happen.

On this special edition of Making Contact for MLK Day, Gary Younge, author of “The Speech” talks about Martin Luther King Junior’s “Dream” and the story behind it.

Women Rising radio profiles food sovereignty activists from India, Mexico, and Native American communities.

Featuring:

• Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya
• Adelita San Vicente Tello, founder of Semillas de Vida
• Sage La Pena, Native American, ethno- botanist and food sovereignty activist
• Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Native American youth educator

Robert Neuwirth, author of “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World”, estimates that more than a billion people–thats 1 in 7–are squatters. This week, we visit squats in Venezuela and the Philippines, and find out why squatters aren’t just tolerated…they are crucial to the growth of major cities and national economies.

Featuring:

• Robert Neuwirth, author of “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World”
• Filomena Cinco, Barangay captain of Estero de San Miguel
• Luz Sudueste, Urban Poor Associates organizer
• William Gonzalez, Gladys Flores, Jacqueline Calderon and Yolimar Noriega, Toree David residents
• Andres Antillano, Universidad Central de Venezuela professor & activist for squatters’ rights.

From the Fight for 15 campaign to the Syrian refugee crisis, the past year was full of news headlines that were tough to keep up with. Making Contact is committed to in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On this edition of Making Contact we take a look at shows we produced in 2015, and we ll find out what’s happened since.

• Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter co-founder
• Cat Brooks, Anti Police Terror Project
• Antonia Juhasz, Investigative Journalist
• Thomas DarDar, United Houma Nation Chief
• Mark Miller, Southern Utah University History professor
• Sylvia Rivera, Remembering Stonewall oral history project
• Michael Schirker, Remembering Stonewall oral history project
• Aesha Rasheed, Southerners on New Ground.

Thousands of local social justice organizers passed away this year. People doing crucial work in their communities, whose deaths didn’t make the headlines. On this edition of Making Contact, we’ll hear about some of the fallen heroes of 2015.

Featured Fallen Heroes

• Grace Lee Boggs, activist, philosopher and movement builder
• Danny Schechter, author and media critic
• John Warshow, anti-nuclear campaigner and hydro power developer
• Emiliano Amor Mataka, Environmental Justice activist, co-founder Valley Improvement Projects
• Hashem Al-Azzeh, Palestinian peace activist
• Juan Evans, trans activist
• Hank Williams, Platform Summit founder
• Shannon Williams, Sex Workers Outreach Project board co-chair
• Dori Maynard, president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education

In 1973 the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade established the legal right to abortion in the United States. Since then, state legislative and executive bodies have battled to restrict access to abortions. Federal law banned the use of federal funds for most abortions in 1977, and public funding for abortion remains a contested issue.

One recent study in Texas found that more than 200,000 women performed abortions on themselves because they weren’t able to find clinical services. From restrictive laws to a lack of information to violent attacks, the blocking of abortion access is eroding the reproductive rights of women.

On this edition, we hear from the New Orleans Abortion Fund and Ibis Reproductive Health, as well as experiences from an abortion provider and a woman that sought abortion access in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Who remembers the local beat cop, who lives in and really knows the community? Increasingly, police don’t live in the neighborhoods, or even the cities they patrol. But is that a problem?

On this edition, should police be required to live in the cities they patrol? Law enforcement agencies around the country are struggling for answers to a question that’s about race, class and geography.

In this radio adaptation of the documentary film, Walking in Two Worlds, we bring you to Alaska’s Tongass Forest, where the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act turned tribes into corporations and sparked a lengthy logging frenzy.

We meet a Tlingit brother and sister, who are trying to heal both the forest and their native community.

Special thanks to Specialty Studios.

Featuring:

• Wanda Culp & Bob Loescher, Tlinget brother & Sister
• Peter Coyote, narrator
• Mike Jackson, Tlingit tribal historian
• Ernestine Hanlon-Abel, Weaver & Activist
• Byron Mallott, Former Seaalaska CEO
• Israel Shotridge, Tlingit carver
• Tom Thorton, anthropologist
• Lydia George, Tlingit Clan Mother
• Joe Sebastian, Alaska Fisherman & guide
• Deny Bschor, former US Forest Service Regional Forester
• John Rowan, Tlingit carver
• Richard Nixon, President of the United States
• Rick Harris, Former Seaalaska Executive VP
• Rosita Worl, Seaalaska Board member