Cruelty for Profit: How Private Companies Built the Immigrant Prison Industrial Complex

A criminal conviction doesn't end when the sentence does. Across much of the United States, a felony record can cost you your vote, your seat on a jury, and your shot at housing, jobs and professional licenses, sometimes for life. This week on Making Contact, we trace felony disenfranchisement and the "collateral consequences" of a record back to the Black Codes and the post-Civil War state constitutions, and ask why these laws still fall hardest on Black Americans. We hear from Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project, UC Davis law professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin, and Tamora and Lance Wissinger of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, who describe life after conviction in their own words. Content advisory: one segment describes sexual assault by a police officer. Featuring: Nicole Porter, Senior Director of Advocacy, The Sentencing Project; Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Professor and Director of Clinical Legal Education, UC Davis School of Law; Tamora, returning citizen, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition; Lance Wissinger, Electoral Campaign Manager, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition Archival audio: Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, speaking at Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City, January 12, 2012 (Pacifica Radio Archives) Credits: Host and Producer: Stephanie Sharp Producer: Vanessa Kolb Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish Executive Producer and Engineer: Ace Estwick Music: Pixabay Envato Learn More: https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/locked-out-2024/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/juryexclusion.html https://reentry.ojp.gov/national-inventory-collateral-consequences-conviction https://floridarrc.com/ https://www.vpm.org/elections/2026-09-15/king-v-youngkin-felony-voting-rights-elect-koski-gibney/ https://newjimcrow.com/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world. Making Contact is produced by Pacifica Radio at KPFK, Los Angeles.

When a supermarket closes, you'd expect another grocer to move in. But across the country, chains write restrictive covenants into deeds and leases that bar any competing grocery store from opening on that site, sometimes for decades after the original store is gone. Advocates call them zombie covenants: the store is dead, but the restriction lives on. They help explain why so many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are still waiting on a place to buy fresh food. This week we trace the story from white flight and redlining to today's consolidated grocery industry, hear from a former Whole Foods purchasing chief about why chains treat stores like ATMs, and follow the fight over California's AB 1857, the Grocery Store Access Act. Plus what cities from Chicago to Woonsocket, Rhode Island have tried, and what a public grocery store could look like. Featuring: Beth Smoker, Policy Director, California Food and Farming Network Kyle Winterboer, Investigative Policy Analyst, Winterboer Policy Dig Deja Thomas, Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Community Initiatives, Los Angeles Food Policy Council Errol Schweizer, former head of purchasing, Whole Foods Market, and host of The Checkout Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry Archival audio: California Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and Cameron Mims Jones of Nourish California, testimony on AB 1857, California State Legislature Brandon Housekeeper, Northwest Grocery and Retail Association, testimony on HB 2294 before the Washington House Consumer Protection & Business Committee, January 14, 2026 (courtesy TVW) Credits: - Host: Casey J. Adler - Producers: John Johns, Vanessa Kolb, Dan Pavlish - Senior Producer: Dan Pavlish - Executive Producer and Audio Editor: Ace Estwick - Engineer: Ace Estwick Music: - "Remembrance" by Dale Nichols - Additional music from Pixabay Learn More: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2294&Year=2025 https://www.winterboerpolicydig.com/lasgrocerymerger/grocery-covenants https://www.goodfoodla.org/ https://www.thecheckoutradio.com/ https://www.austinfrerick.com/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world. Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

Much Western coverage treats October 7th as the beginning of the war in Gaza, but the conflict reaches back more than a century. In this encore edition, historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, walks through the early history of the Zionist movement: how founders like Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky described their project in colonial terms, why British imperial strategy made Palestine a priority, and how the movement found new patrons in the United States and the Soviet Union as Britain pulled back. The episode opens with a report from Gaza by longtime Pacifica and Making Contact reporter Rami Almeghari. Originally aired April 2024; casualty figures cited reflect that time. Featuring: Rashid Khalidi, historian and Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University Credits: * Host: Salima Hamirani * Reporter: Rami Almeghari * Executive Director: Jina Chung * Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, Lucy Kang * Engineer: Jeff Emtman * Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong Music: * Komiku "Blue" * Doctor Turtle "Leap Second" * Chris Zabriskie "Take Off and Shoot a Zero" * DAM "Resale in Zenzana (A Letter From a Prison Cell)" * Montplaisir "Ridiculous" Learn More: Learn More: * https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798556/thehundredyearswaronpalestine * https://makingcontactradio.org/2023/05/the-nakba-75-years-on/ * https://makingcontactradio.org/2023/11/gaza-solidarity-and-the-movement-for-palestinian-liberation/ * https://makingcontactradio.org/2016/06/nakba-naksa-future-palestine/ Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

To serve in the U.S. military as a non-citizen, you have to be a lawful permanent resident, and many are told that service is a path to citizenship. For thousands, it became a path out of the country instead. Since a 1996 immigration law took away judges' ability to weigh a person's service against a conviction, veterans have been deported under every administration, Democratic and Republican alike. This week, three veterans tell their stories, and two immigration lawyers explain the machinery behind them: what "aggravated felony" actually covers, how a path home opened under the Biden administration, and why it has now closed. Featuring: James Lynwood Smith II, Marine Corps veteran and documentarian, cofounder and director of Black Deported Veterans of America; David Bariu, Army veteran, deported to Kenya, now a naturalized U.S. citizen; Hector Barajas, Army veteran and founder of the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana; Michael J. Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School and director of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic; Amanda Shuft, Director of Legal Services at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center Archival audio: Excerpts from the film American Exile, including Rep. Seth Moulton; excerpts from the documentary Bring Them Home (Excuse My Accent); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recruitment spot Credits: * Host: Stephanie Sharp * Producers: Stephanie Sharp, Dan Pavlish * Executive Producer and Engineer: Ace Estwick * With excerpts from the film American Exile Music: * Pixabay Learn More: * https://lsa.umich.edu/ftvm/people/faculty/valadez/american-exile-.html * https://www.excusemyaccent.com/aboutbringthemhome * https://www.bdva.us/ * https://www.facebook.com/DeportedVeteransSupportHousePage/ * https://law.yale.edu/clinics/vlsc * https://www.immdef.org/deported-veterans Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.