National Radio Project

Every week since January of 1995, Making Contact has been bringing you voices and perspectives from the grassroots…analysis of the larger structures driving our global economies…and solutions being created by people all over the world.

On this special 20th program’s creation by volunteers, and how this little radio show became part of a new generation of media outlets that continues to both counter the mainstream, and transform our conception of who and what is considered newsworthy.

Featuring:

• Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President Emertia of Bennett College for Women
• Peggy Law & Norman Solomon, Making Contact co-founders
• Paul George, Steve Rock, Shelley Kessler, Pam Law, Bill Creighton, early Making Contact volunteers
• Food Not Bombs volunteers
• Laura Livoti, former Making Contact Managing Director
• Michael Eisenmenger, Community Media Center of Marin Executive Director
• David Cole, Georgetown University constitutional law professor
• Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report founder

In September of 2014, Women Rising radio rode the People’s Climate train coast to coast, with over 200 activists heading to New York City to join the largest climate change march in history.

Victims and perpetrators sitting down face to face…it can help heal their wounds, and our society. Incarcerating our way out of crime clearly hasn’t worked, and it’s costing us billions. Meanwhile, school suspensions are reaching record highs.

Now, Institutions across US are finally starting to consider problem solving methods other than punishment.  Restorative justice is gaining ground–in the schools, and behind bars.

Featuring:   

• Paul Jacobsen, Rosa Parks elementary school principal
• Mekaylah Porter, Marilyn, Rosa Parks elementary students
• Yari Sandel, restorative justice coordinator
• Helen Parker, San Francisco’s restorative practices department coach
• Sonya Shah, Insight Prison Project Justice Program Director
• Nancy Potts, mother of son killed by drunk driver
• Chris Scezech, drunk driver
• Radha Stern, mother of murder victim
• Sam Johnson, San Quentin prison inmate

More than a decade after the start of the second Gulf War, the United States has embarked on a bombing campaign targeting Islamic State forces inside Iraq and Syria. It’s the third U.S. military action inside Iraq in as many decades.

But the reasons for the new war keep shifting, from protecting ethnic and religious minorities, to preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S.

As independent producer Reese Erlich reports from Northern Iraq, this latest conflict, and the future of the region is tightly connected to the oil industry and international politics.