Making Contact

African American students across the country are much more likely than any other student group to be placed in special education. This week, we hear what is and isn't working for black students with special needs today.

New Orleans could become the battleground for bail reform. The city has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world. And most people are there because they can't pay their bail. The current arrangement with the local bail industry gives the impression that judges there could have a financial conflict of interest when setting bail. In this episode, Sonia Paul digs into how an ongoing lawsuit, pretrial consequences of bail, and poverty, bias, and algorithms come into play.

Master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, Remember This House. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.

According to Ytasha Womack, use of the imagination for self-development and social change is one of the greatest tenets of Afrofuturism. This show features Womack's presentation at the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival, Afrofuturism: Imagination and Humanity.

We speak with author Dr. Stacey Patton about her book, Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Won't Save Black America. The book examines the unique cultural and historical specificity of corporal punishment in Black communities. Given the prevalence and acceptance of spanking in American culture, the discussions will be useful to a wide and diverse audience.

Michelle Alexander, Mark Lamont Hill and Vonya Quarles discuss the modern prison abolition movement, what's changed in the past ten years, and the rise of the 'open air prison.'

This episode explores the past and present of the far right and anti-fascism. We begin with the murder investigation of anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas. In the second half, author Mark Bray describes antifa responses to Hitler and Mussolini.

In a special 2 part program by Making Contact we explore new safe at-home abortion options and the growing movement for "self-managed abortions."

A handful of companies are making millions off of ankle monitors strapped to undocumented immigrants in ICE custody. The makers pitch the monitors as an alternative to being jailed, but are they simply another form of bondage?

On this edition of Making Contact, we speak with author Paul Kivel about his book, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice. This book offers a framework for understanding institutional racism. It provides practical suggestions, tools, examples, and advice on how white people can intervene in interpersonal and organizational situations to work as allies for racial justice.