Covering the movements, issues and people fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Amy Gastelum, Salima Hamirani, Anita Jonhson, and Lucy Kang. Sign up for program alerts and sneak peeks from Making Contact at: http://ow.ly/1FkV30aq1z2 The post Making Contact – October 31, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Covering the movements, issues and people fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Amy Gastelum, Salima Hamirani, Anita Jonhson, and Lucy Kang. Sign up for program alerts and sneak peeks from Making Contact at: http://ow.ly/1FkV30aq1z2 The post Making Contact – September 5, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Covering the movements, issues and people fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Amy Gastelum, Salima Hamirani, Anita Jonhson, and Lucy Kang. Sign up for program alerts and sneak peeks from Making Contact at: http://ow.ly/1FkV30aq1z2 The post Making Contact – August 1, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

The vast majority of care recipients are exclusively receiving unpaid care from a family member, friend, or neighbor. The rest receive a combination of family care and paid assistance, or exclusively paid formal care. Whether you’re a paid home care provider, or rely on personal assistance to meet your daily needs, or a family member caring for a loved one, the nature of the working relationship depends on mutual respect and dignity. During this week’s anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we’ll revisit the dynamic and complex relationship of care receiving and giving. Covering the movements, issues and people fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Amy Gastelum, Salima Hamirani, Anita Jonhson, and Lucy Kang. Sign up for program alerts and sneak peeks from Making Contact at: http://ow.ly/1FkV30aq1z2 The post Caring Relationships: Disability and Maintaining Dignity (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

Covering the movements, issues and people fighting for some of the most important social justice issues of our time. Hosted by Amy Gastelum, Salima Hamirani, Anita Jonhson, and Lucy Kang. Sign up for program alerts and sneak peeks from Making Contact at: http://ow.ly/1FkV30aq1z2 The post Making Contact – July 4, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

On this week’s show, we explore Latino food and culture in Chicago’s historic Pilsen neighborhood and hear about how food can bring communities together. We tag along with the podcast In Confianza with Pulso as they try to answer the question: what does a Latino version of the TV show “The Bear” taste like? We’ll head to two restaurants, Cafe Jumping Bean and Pochos, to find out. GUESTS: Eleazar Delgado, owner of Cafe Jumping Bean. Miguel Hernandez and Irene Acosta, owners of Pochos.   The post What does a Latino version of “The Bear” taste like? appeared first on KPFA.

In this weeks episode, we look at how, over six decades after the Korean War, South Korea processed the most international adoptions in history and how the demand for a domestic supply of (adoptable) infants may be playing a role in increasing threats to autonomy over pregnancy in the U.S. This show first aired in November 2024. The post Mothers, Markets, and Migration (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

To celebrate Pride Month, we have a special show featuring stories from the Making Contact archives. We’ll revisit the Stonewall Uprising with the 1989 audio documentary Remembering Stonewall and then head to the gay rodeo with producer Vanessa Rancaño in a story from 2014.   The post A Making Contact Pride Show! appeared first on KPFA.

A year ago, the world said goodbye to Reverend James Lawson Jr. On today’s show, we look back at the work and legacy this leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement and advocate of nonviolence, with the help of the podcast Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center.   The post Soul Force: The Legacy of Rev. James Lawson Jr. appeared first on KPFA.

In part one of our series on water in the Central Valley of California, we visited a town called East Orosi, which has been fighting for clean water for over 20 years. This week we turn our attention to their sewage system, which is also falling apart. Why has it been so difficult for East Orosi to get clean drinking water and fix its sewage problems? To answer that question we take a look at the entities that run things like sewage and water in unincorporated towns all across California. They’re called Community Utility Districts. Community Utility Districts are often one of the only forms of self governance in unincorporated towns. But they’re staffed by volunteers, they’re underfunded, and they’re trying to share a vital resource, water, which is also slowly disappearing in the San Joaquin Valley. We talk about the problems with Community Utility Districts and ways to save them. GUESTS: Berta Diaz Ochoa – community member of East Orosi Janaki Anagha – Director of Advocacy, Community Water Center Kayla Vander Schuur – Community Development Specialist, Self Help Enterprises Carlos Sanchez – board member of the East Orosi Community Utilities District Maricela Mares-Alatorre – Community Solutions Advocate, Community Water Center   The post Thirsting For Justice (part two): Community Utility Districts and East Orosi’s Drinking Water Problems (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s episodes of Making Contact and Pushing Limits are preempted by special programming for KPFA’s 2025 Spring Fund Drive. Sasha Lilley speaks with Greg King, an award-winning journalist and activist credited with spearheading the movement to protect Headwaters Forest, in Humboldt County, California. King initiated the “redwood wars” following the notorious 1985 takeover of the venerable Pacific Lumber Company by the Houston energy and real estate conglomerate Maxxam. King has spent decades researching redwood logging and preservation efforts and is the author of the book The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods. To support our mission and receive the book The Ghost Forest as a thank-you gift, please donate here or call (800) 439-5732 (800-HEY-KPFA).   The post Special Spring Fund Drive Programming: Greg King on the California Redwoods appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s episode of Making Contact is preempted by special programming for KPFA’s 2025 Spring Fund Drive. Brian Edwards-Tiekert speaks with photographer and author Josh Jackson, an advocate for public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Through his Forgotten Lands Project, he employs storytelling and visual narratives to inspire engagement with California’s unknown landscapes. His latest book is The Enduring Wild: A Journey Into California’s Public Lands. To support our mission and receive Josh Jackson’s book The Enduring Wild as a thank-you gift, please donate here or call (800) 439-5732 (800-HEY-KPFA).   The post Special Spring Fund Drive Programming: Josh Jackson on California’s Incredible Public Wilderness appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s episodes of Making Contact and Pushing Limits are preempted by special programming for KPFA’s 2025 Spring Fund Drive. Christopher Bache, a professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies, speaks with C.S. Soong about his twenty-year psychedelic journey, which is described and interpreted in his book LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. To support our mission and receive Christopher Bache’s book as a thank-you gift, please donate here or call (800) 439-5732 (800-HEY-KPFA).   The post Special Spring Fund Drive Programming: Christopher Bache on the Psychedelic Journey appeared first on KPFA.

Composer, pianist, and vocalist Samora Pinderhughes tells us about The Healing Project. The Healing Project, a fundamentally abolitionist project, explores the structures of systemic racism and the prison industrial complex. This story first aired February 2023. The Healing Project takes action towards abolition with forms such as musical songs, films, an exhibition, community gatherings, live performances, and a digital library of audio interviews. At the center of the project are the intergenerational voices of people across the country, including folks incarcerated in prisons and detention centers. Their stories, experiences, and ideas serve as the foundation for The Healing Project’s vision for societal transformation. Featuring: Samora Pinderhughes, composer, pianist/vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist   The post The Healing Project: An Abolitionist Story (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we bring you a story at the intersection of therapy, healing and social justice. We’ll hear about one therapist’s work to bring the lens of radical therapy and community care into her practice. This piece was produced by the podcast Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center. GUEST: Claudia Morales, therapist at Social Justice Healing   The post Radical Therapy (from Re:Work) appeared first on KPFA.

Geoengineering is defined as some emerging technologies that could manipulate the environment and partially offset some of the impacts of climate change. Seems like the perfect solution for a consumerist society that lives on instant gratification and can’t stop polluting even at the risk of our futures, right? Well, let’s slow down. Today we’ll discuss the dangers of geoengineering and the ethics of the fact that these new technologies are being tested on Indigenous lands. GUESTS: Basav Sen – Climate Justice Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies Dr. Steven Zornetzer – Vice-Chair, Governing Board of Arctic Ice Project Panganga Pungowiyi – Organizer for the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network in Alaska   The post The Promise and Peril of Geoengineering (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

For Black Maternal Health Week, we celebrate the important work that Black midwives do in their communities. In this week’s show, we’ll hear a conversation about how one woman followed her calling to midwifery in a story brought to us by the podcast Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center. GUEST: Kimberly Durdin, licensed midwife and co-founder of Kindred Space LA and the Birthing People Foundation.   The post The Calling: Black Midwifery appeared first on KPFA.

Caste — one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world — is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the US, too — erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless Dalits to live in fear of being outed. Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts forth a call to awaken and act — not just for readers in South Asia, but all around the world. She ties Dalit oppression to fights for liberation among Black, Indigenous, Latinx, femme, and Queer communities, examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective and laying bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed. Incisive and urgent, her book The Trauma of Caste is an activating beacon of healing and liberation, written by one of the world’s most needed voices in the fight to end caste apartheid. Thenmozhi Soundararajan is the author of The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition. She is a Dali- American artist, organizer, technologist, and theorist and the Executive Director of Equality Labs.   The post The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

On this week’s episode, we speak with Bay Area based comedian Karinda Dobbins about the release of her debut comedy album, Black & Blue. In Black & Blue, Karinda shares personal stories, finding humor in the most ordinary moments of her daily life, including her girlfriend’s arbitrary policy on household pests, the changes hipsters have brought to Oakland, and a Black woman’s unique packing list for hiking.   The post Catching up with Comedy Queen Karinda Dobbins (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

During his first term, Trump stacked the Supreme Court with hard right judges, creating a 6-3 split that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a stunning ruling in which a human right which was previously granted by law was taken away from the public. This time Trump faces even less resistance and could remake the Supreme Court once again. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent and columnist for The Nation magazine, joins us to talk about the Supreme Court — not only what the democrats could have done under Biden to fix the third branch of government so that we wouldn’t now be in such a politically vulnerable position but also what we can expect in terms of possible new Supreme Court nominations and what they could mean for our remaining rights.   The post The Supreme Court Under Trump appeared first on KPFA.