National Radio Project

Thousands of social justice leaders in communities all over the world passed away this year.

We're closing out the year, as we usually do, with inspiring words from some of the Fallen Heroes of 2022.

In the midst of our stress and trauma dealing with the sometimes harsh realities of life, its hard to imagine what stories we will ultimately tell our children and grandchildren. This week's Making Contact is about two strong women who survived historic trauma, and the stories they later told their families.

This week, we explore an often-overlooked issue in the Arab world; racism towards Black Arabs. In this episode, Kerning Culture reporter Ahmed Twaij looks at racism in his own community, taking us from his Iraqi roots, through to modern day slurs still commonly used in many Arab communities around the world.  

In this special mini-episode, producer Amy Gastelum sits down with Rebecca Piazza to learn more about WIC, and what the program is doing to try and increase its low participation rates.

Federal food programs, like WIC, face big changes coming out of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. Meanwhile, a single moms collective in Ohio holds it down for the single pregnant and parenting people in their community. Motherful's resource pantry serves their 325-strong membership out of a garage three times a week.  We talk to members and founders to learn what's it's like to participate, how it all started and where food justice is headed for them now and in their wildest dreams.  

As climate change melts the polar ice caps and raises sea levels, how will we adapt? We visit two locations: On Sapelo Island Georgia, the last remaining Gullah Geechee community fights to save their ancestral lands from the flood waters. Instead of leaving their land, or building a giant sea wall, they've chosen to use oysters to create what's called a living shoreline. We take a look at how they're built and if they're working. Meanwhile, in New York, the Army Corps wants to construct seagates to protect the city from another Hurricane Sandy. But, the gates could have massive ecological repercussions and, they might not even work. Scientists think there's a better way to work with the local ecology and protect residents. 

What does food mean to identities struggling against colonialism and displacement? First, we visit the Blackfeet Nation in Montana as members of Indigikitchen harvest bison and talk about Native food systems. Then, we head to Bloomington, Indiana where a young archeology professor has brought methods of growing and sharing food from the deeper past to a modern Latino diaspora.  

Mutual aid efforts to provide pregnancy prevention and medical abortion in post-Roe southern United States. 

Our friends from the podcast The Response bring us their piece Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Landscape, plus a quick update on how the issue of abortion access impacted the 2022 midterms. 

Groups all over Latin America turn to the age-old practice of communal cooking to feed citizens during pandemic lockdowns. A Buenos Aires arts organization solidifies their community, and a Peruvian architect brings new ways of building to the hillsides of Lima. 

This week on Making Contact - with assistance from our podcast partners, 70 million - we head to the state of Alaska, where rising violent crime and substance abuse have increased incarceration rates among Native Americans. Making use of their legal sovereignty, some Alaskan Native leaders issue “blue tickets,” documents that sentence offenders to legal expulsion. Journalist Emily Schwing looked into these banishment practices and their impacts on those affected by both tribal and state criminal justice systems. 

We revisit a major race debate within the Romance Writers of America that began in 2019 and talk about why questions of race in art and in institutions are so relevant in today's America. This is a two part series.

We revisit a major race debate within the Romance Writers of America that began in 2019 and talk about why questions of race in art and in institutions are so relevant in today's America. This is a two part series.  

One child’s experience in a neighborhood with high asthma rates and other health challenges. 

We talk to Raj Patel and Rupa Marya about their new book "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice."

In today's episode, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs tells the birth story of the book she co-edited with China Martens and Mai'a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and gives context to the book with stories of the Reproductive Justice Movement.

Nagi Daifallah was a young farm worker from Yemen who participated in the 1973 Grape Strike along with the UFW until he was murdered by a Sheriff. We visit his story via our friends at Kerning Cultures. 

 

In some parts of the world, traditional herbal remedies are the norm.  When we  think of natural remedies we tend to think of older generations living in remote areas, in far away  countries,  with little access to modern healthcare.  We rarely think about the ancient medicinal plants that might exist in our very own cities. On today's episode we look at plant and herb medicines through the lens of Michele E. Lee the author of Working The Roots.  

In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on energy poverty. When temperatures rise to the point where they become dangerous, what happens to people who can’t escape the heat? As temperatures continue to soar and extreme heatwaves become the norm, a lack of resources to stay cool — so, having access to things like air conditioning, for example, — is a huge issue across the world. To find out how people are fighting energy poverty, we visit southern Europe, a region that experienced a series of record-breaking, climate-fueled heatwaves this past summer. Today’s episode comes to us from our friends at The Response podcast.

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the web at www.radioproject.org.

What does food mean to identities struggling against colonialism and displacement? First, we visit the Blackfeet Nation in Montana as members of Indigikitchen harvest bison and talk about native food systems. Then, we head to Bloomington, Indiana where a young archeology professor has brought methods of growing and sharing food from the deeper past to a modern Latino diaspora.

While wages have flatlined for most working-class people, rents have reached new highs, leaving most people struggling. But it’s not just in the US. The rising cost of living has affected the entire world. Samuel Stein’s new book, Capital City and the Real Estate State, highlights the growing influence of investment capital into land as the driving force behind gentrification and the power developers have over city and local governments. We talk to Samuel about the rise of the global real estate market and we look at how radical city planning, rent control and socialized land projects can help fight gentrification.

New York City taxi drivers were drowning in debt because they had to buy their licenses from the city. We join our friends at the podcast Self-Evident to take a look at the hunger strike they used to renegotiate the terms of their debt.

This week, we bring you a story from our podcast partner Kerning Cultures about Patrice Lumumba’s children, and their escape to Cairo. 

More and more coastal communities want to build sea walls to prevent catastrophic flooding because of rising sea levels. But do they work? We talk about the risks of the planned seagates in New York and we visit Sapelo Island Georgia to learn about how to Gullah Geechee community plans to defend their ancestral lands by using a natural shoreline, built of oysters.

This week on Making Contact, we look at Bail Reform in the state of Texas with the help of our podcast partners 70 Million. For conservative lawmakers and bail reform advocates have long debated what bail reform can look like for those who cannot afford to bail themselves out of jail.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors are much more likely than their straight counterparts to be alone and isolated as they age. Housing and support for these elders is a growing need--and the issue is not confined to the United States. In this edition, we'll visit Jakarta Indonesia, and Los Angeles, California, to hear stories of building housing and community for LGBTQ seniors.

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the Web at www.radioproject.org.

We revisit a major race debate within the Romance Writers of America that began in 2019 and talk about why questions of race in art and in institutions are so relevant in today's America. This is a two part series.

The Palestine Broadcasting Service started airing in 1936, from a brand new transmitter tower in Ramallah. It was a British station in three languages, aimed at promoting the message of the mandate government throughout the region. But over the following decades, as Palestine saw political upheavals, bloody conflicts and power shifts, the radio station found itself in the middle of it all, and became a unique capsule of the events that lead up to the Nakba. This story originally aired on Kerning Cultures, a podcast telling stories from across the Middle East and North Africa and the spaces in between.

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the web at www.radioproject.org.

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. 

This episode explores the story of Billy Taing, a Cambodian refugee who got caught up in the US criminal justice system at a young age.

Nearly two thirds of all children in the U.S. juvenile justice system are kids of color. That’s according to a report by the Children’s Defense Fund. In this episode of Making Contact, we’ll hear from Dr. Kris Henning on the disparities faced by Black youth in the juvenile justice system.

A year ago, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize drug possession. The goal is to reverse some of the negative impacts of the War on Drugs by approaching drug use from a health-centered basis. Reporter Cecilia Brown visits an addiction and recovery center in Portland that’s gearing up for what they hope will be an influx of people seeking treatment.

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the Web at www.radioproject.org.

This week, Making Contact’s Jessica Partnow offers a look at the state of Russian youth activism from 2012 to today. She revisits her reporting from Ukraine and Russia and speaks with the people in those stories against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine today. In the first part of the show she shares the story of re-connecting with her childhood pen pal Sasha, a Ukrainian boy who witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and is now fighting to protect his country from the Russian invasion, through the eyes of his younger sister Anna who is now living in the US and desperately trying to stay connected with her Ukrainian family and friends under siege. After the break, we meet Vassili, a Muscovite who has always been proud of his country but is now grappling with a grim view of its future.

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the Web at www.radioproject.org.

Jeremy Menchik volunteered for Moderna’s vaccine trials, wanting to help end the COVID pandemic. However, as Moderna continues to hold patent rights and refuses to openly share their vaccine technology, Jeremy began to feel conflicted. He has since publicly quit as a volunteer and urges others to do the same, until everyone can freely access the vaccine. Listen to our interview with Jeremy on this special edition of Making Contact, an extra to our larger show on vaccine equality.

 On Dec. 11, 2021, the UCLA Labor Center’s historic MacArthur Park building was officially named the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, in honor of a civil and worker rights icon who has been teaching at UCLA for the last 2 decades. In this episode of Re:Work, 93-year-old Rev. Lawson shares stories from his youth, and how he came to discover soul force and the path of nonviolence.

 

Through the work and birth stories of midwife Allegra Hill, the producers of Re:Work Radio explain how Black midwives in Los Angeles are helping women to experience empowered births.

Police encounters during a mental health crisis have a greater chance of turning deadly if you're Black. New response mechanisms bypass law enforcement and result in helpful interventions. Reporter Jenee Darden looks at how folks in Northern California are trying to reimagine crisis response services.

While Black women have played a critical role in the development of the nation, their stories have been mostly overlooked. In the new book, A Black Women’s History of the United States, historians Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross honor the many significant contributions of Black women who have worked tirelessly to build this country and fight for social justice in the face of racism and sexism.

In this encore episode, we look at how COVID-19 has torn through prisons and how organizers are trying to push state and local governments to release inmates in order to contain the spread of the pandemic. In part one, we focus on California. We take a look at why a prison, like San Quentin, is such a perfect environment for infectious diseases, especially an airborne one like COVID-19, how we might safely release large amounts of inmates across the prison system, and what we’ve learned from past release programs like realignment.

A legal matrix that incentivizes criminal convictions can motivate unethical prosecutors to bend or break the rules. In New York, a group of law professors is trying to curb that by pushing the system to discipline its own. Reported by Nina Sparling.

When India went into lockdown in 2020, millions of jobs disappeared and tens of millions of migrant workers struggled to get home, often on foot. Many died attempting the journey. This week, we bring you the story of one man who left his village as a child to earn money to support his family.