Some of our favorite interviews and stories from the past year
This week on New Mexico in Focus, in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday we’re bringing you some of our favorite interviews and stories from the past year.
Correspondent Russell Contreras sat down in May with photographer and New Mexico resident Maria Varela to talk about her experience photographing voting rights demonstrations in Alabama. Varela also discussed her efforts to create Head Start programs in poor, rural areas of the American South during the Civil Rights movement. She had an exhibit up last spring in the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
In July of this year, New Mexico in Focus premiered a new series, “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future.” In the début segment, correspondent Laura Paskus took us to the Jemez Mountains to see how the forest is recovering after the Las Conchas wildfire in 2011. The forest isn’t the same, and likely will never be, but there are interesting new questions about what the future may look like
In the second installment of “Our Land,” Laura Paskus introduced us to a collaborative program that’s brought together local and tribal communities, the federal government, state officials and local individuals to manage 200 thousand acres of forest in the Jemez Mountains.
We also revisit the DWI Recovery Court in Bernalillo County and hear how a focus on treatment for repeat offenders might help people struggling with alcohol addiction and make the community safer. NMiF Producer Sarah Gustavus interviews Judge Edward Benavidez and Daniel Blackwood, executive director of the Evolution Group, in the studio.
And producer Sarah Gustavus visits the Navajo Nation to look at the unique challenges facing entrepreneurs on the reservation. She also sits down with Leah Todd of the Solutions Journalism Network, one of the media partners in this State of Change project, focusing on economic resilience in rural and underserved communities.
Host:
Gene Grant
Correspondents:
Russell Contreras
Sarah Gustavus
Laura Paskus
Studio Guests:
Maria Varela, photographer
Judge Edward Benavidez, Bernalillo County DWI Recovery Court
Daniel Blackwood, The Evolution Group
Leah Todd, project coordinator, Solutions Journalism Network
Line Panelists:
No Line this week