Making Contact

Women Rising Radio 28 profiles global community organizers - whose work is based in their compassion and common sense, and whose organizing is making a worldwide impact.

It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in America: taxi driving. In this special joint episode from ReWork and Making Contact, we’ll hear a radio adaptation of TeAda Productions’ play “Global Taxi Driver,” and we’ll take a ride to meet the cab drivers at one of the country’s busiest airports.

Featuring:

• Abate Teferi and Daniel Kassa, taxi drivers at LAX and organizers with National Taxi Workers Alliance
• Leilani Chan, Shaan Dasani, Elyse Dinh, Kenesha Hemmings, Joshua Lamont, Marcos Najera, and Ova Saopeng, Teada Productions Global Taxi Driver Director and Cast

A radio adaptation of the documentary Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle. This documentary examines the life and mysterious death of pioneering Mexican-American journalist Ruben Salazar.

At the heart of the story is his transformation from a mainstream, establishment Los Angeles Times reporter to a supporter and primary chronicler of the radical Chicano movement of the late 1960s until he was killed by a law enforcement officer in 1970.

Featuring material from recently released files, the program removes Salazar from the glare of myth and martyrdom and offers a clear-eyed look at the man.

Black Lives Matter. This simple phrase has become the motto of a growing movement calling for true justice and equalty for black people. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, first typed out those three words back in 2013.

In March of 2015, Alicia Garza visited the University of Southern Maine to tell the story of how Black Lives Matter came to be, and express her hopes for where it’s headed. We hear her speech.

Featuring:

• Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter co-founder
• Cephus Johnson, uncle of Oscar Grant
• Grace Anderson, protestor

On this week's show we’re exploring how some women have been dehumanized to the point of indifference.

We’ll learn how one community is undoing the silence around the violence women of color face. We’ll also hear about how serial killers were able to hunt down mostly Black women for three decades in South Los Angeles. Then we’ll take you to the Yucatan where pregnant indigenous women struggle under a health care system failing to provide proper medical care.

While you're listening to this week's show, take a minute to support our Immigration and Elections crowdfunding campaign: http://radioproject.org

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.

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:

• Gordon Brown, ex-prisoner
• Monta Kevin Tindall, ex-prisoner
• Jerry Elster, ex-prisoner
• Tom Gorham, Program Director Options Recovery Services
• Barry Krisberg, Director of Research and Policy and Lecturer in Residence at Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, UC Berkeley
• Debra Mendoza, former parole officer, consultant

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Southern Gulf Coast. 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.

Making Contact’s Jasmin Lopez follows Jose Monterubio, a reconstruction worker. He tells us about his detention and how he stands for immigrant rights with the support of Congress of Day Laborers. Next, Jose Torres Tama recites Corporate Coyotes Smuggle Immigrant Workers, a poem from his book Immigrant Dreams, Alien Nightmares.

Ten years later after hurricane Katrina, it’s estimated there are nearly 100,000 fewer African Americans living in the city of New Orleans. Andrew Stelzer visits the Lower 9th Ward Living Museum, to learn how some are trying to preserve the lessons and legacies of the past. And we talk to a resident of one of the ultramodern homes built by Brad Pitt’s Make it Right project.

As a new lower 9th ward emerges, what will it look like and who will be included in the remake?

Featuring:

• Luis Medina, immigrant reconstruction worker
• Jose Monterrubio, immigrant reconstruction worker
• Jose Torres-Tama, artist
• Robert Green, Lower 9th Ward resident
• Beck Cooper, Director of the Lower 9th Ward Living Museum

It’s something many of us take for granted: access to clean drinking water. But for many Americans it’s not something they can rely on. From chemical spills in West Virginia to ecoli in the water on the Texas-Mexico border, to contamination from farming in California. On this edition, we hear what happens when there’s not a drop to drink.

• Angela Walker, Charleston resident
• Neena Satija, environment reporter Texas Tribune
• Daisy Gonzalez and Vicente Lara, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
• Horacio Amezquita, resident San Jerado

It’s election season! But 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:

• Reverend Tyrone Edwards, civil rights historian in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana
• Tyrone Brooks, Georgia State Representative
• Clifford Kuhn, Professor of History at Georgia State University
• JT Johnson, civil rights organizer
• Allen Secher, rabbi
• Jerel James, Tamia Adkinson, docents at Civil Rights Museum of St. Augustine
• August Tinson, testified in U.S. vs Fox (1962)
• Gary May, professor of history at the University of Delaware and the author of Bending Towards Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy.