On this edition of Making Contact we go from Cape Town, South Africa to Los Angeles and Oakland, California— three cities grappling with evictions, displacement, and homelessness. Featuring: Needa Bee, Oakland-based housing advocate; Messiah Ali, Oakland resident; Tom Waldman, Director of Communications, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority; Flora Harris, C-3 Program Director, St. Joseph … Continued
Updates on Armenia’s Political Spring, banks big profits, Harley-Davidson fires hundreds, unjust criminal penalties, US households’ financial distress, Germany bans diesels, US drug companies put profits above health again, and huge wealth increase among world’s 2,754 billionaires. Interview with Roderick Prude (union worker) and Dyln Namm (student) on successful student-worker alliance at New School University’s … Continued
Origins of the Opioid Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew of OxyContin Abuse in 1996 But Covered It Up; “Pain Killer” Author Barry Meier on How West Virginia Became Ground Zero of Opioid Epidemic; Cities & States Sue Big Pharma, Targeting the Firms Who Profited from Peddling Addictive Opioids.
In light of the newly revised estimate of 4,600 deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria last year we present today a one-hour special on Puerto Rico. We’ll begin with a conversation with our news correspondent Rosa Clemente who is a Puerto Rican American and who traveled to the island in the weeks following the … Continued
Mitch Jeserich speaks with renown geographer Richard Walker about the immense wealth, politics and contradictions of the San Francisco Bay Area. Richard A. Walker is professor emeritus of geography at U.C. Berkeley and author of the book Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area. … Continued
John Bolton Names Professional Islamophobe & Bush Official Fred Fleitz to National Security Staff; Palestinians Demand Human Rights & Medical Care in Fight to Break Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza; Indigenous Activist: Trudeau’s Purchase of Kinder Morgan Pipeline Is “Huge Step Backward” for Canada.
7:34 – Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi is a filmmaker, educator, and organizer and the co-founder of Defend Puerto Rico, a group organizing relief and rebuilding efforts in Puerto Rico. 7:45 – Alex Post is with the Democratic Socialists of America and an opponent of San Francisco’s Prop H tasers initiative. 8:18 – Christina Gutierrez is an organizer with the Mothers Against … Continued
A Harvard Study has concluded that nearly 5,000 people were likely killed by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year – a massive jump from the official death toll of 64. On our show today we’ll share a recent speech by former political prisoner and Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar Lopez Rivera, discussing the history … Continued
Building solidarity across racial lines has been one of the thorniest problems of the left in the US, stymying struggles against capitalism over generations. David Roediger talks about race, class, and solidarity — as well as the radical scholar George Rawick and the organization Facing Reality. Resources: David R. Roediger, Class, Race, and Marxism Verso, … Continued
Virtually no part of the modern United States—the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements—can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. Historian Gerald Horne digs deeply into Europe’s colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus’s arrival until the Civil War, … Continued
