These video stories are listed in sequential order and represent my work for the websites of PBS programs, online magazines, my own reporting projects, and for class work at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism).

Avatar Hits Home With Indigenous Colombians (PBS – June 2010)

(Web exclusive for PBS WIDE ANGLE’s Women, War and Peace series) Colombia has its own version of the Na’avi, the imperiled indigenous people whose story lies at the heart of the international blockbuster Avatar. They’re called the Wayuu, and a very valuable store of coal lies on their traditional homeland. Further comparisons between the Wayuu and the Na’avi are striking. Both are matrilineal peoples with ancient cultural and spiritual ties to their land — land which is now threatened with violence and displacement by corporate interests. Click below to learn how Wayuu activist Debora Barros was touched by the indigenous struggle portrayed in Avatar.

Join Me On the Bridge (PBS – March 2010)

Thousands of people worldwide gathered on bridges to mark International Women’s Day on March 8, 2010. Women for Women International organized the “Join me on the Bridge” event to build support for peace and development in Congo and neighboring Rwanda. Women, War & Peace was there when hundreds of people gathered on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

Women as Peacebuilders (PBS – March 2010)

Why is it important for women to be included in waging peace in conflict zones? How can telling their story inspire others to act? After watching Pray the Devil Back to Hell two leading voices for women, Zainab Salbi and Melanne Verveer, reflect on these questions.

Despite a US Supreme Court Ban, Texas Continues to Send Mentally Retarded Criminals to Death Row (Democracy Now!)

A 2002 Supreme Court ruling allowed states to set their own definitions of mental retardation to decide who meets the criteria for execution. Instead of adopting the Supreme Courts accepted clinical standards for mental retardation, Texas has granted heavy leeway to psychologist evaluations. Now one psychologist, George Denkowski, is facing scrutiny over methods that critics say unfairly send mentally retarded prisoners to death row. For more, we go to a report from Renée Feltz for the Texas Observer.

Meet Juan Crow (Part of a News21 report of the same name)

This investigative report examines how Arizona’s tough voter registration law is suppressing the nation’s fastest growing voting block. The state has rejected nearly 40,000 voter registration applications in just 3 years. Many of the applicants were eligible Latino immigrants. A dozen other states are considering similar legislation.

(Note: A shorter version of this video was published online by The New Republic, but the page has been lost in a website redesign).

When Your Mother Is Deported  (part of BusinessofDetention.com)

(Featured on Mother Jones website) In a Texan business park named Export Plaza, the Corrections Corporation of America operates a complex of concrete buildings where illegal immigrants are locked up until they agree to leave the country.

“When you first get there, they tell you you’re nobody,” says Sergia Santibanez, who spent 18 months inside CCA’s Houston Processing Center while she fought to remain in the United States with her children.

Watch her daughter, Luisanna, speak about her mother’s detention:

Business of Detention: The First Private Prison Housed Immigrants (part of BusinessofDetention.com)

The Houston Processing Center was Correction Corporation of America’s first contract to build and operate a private prison. Michael Davis, spokesperson and chaplain at CCA’s Houston facility, describes the detention services CCA provides and the history of the facility.

Business of Detention: “America’s Family Prison” (part of BusinessofDetention.com)

In 2006, this former medium security prison began housing immigrant families. It’s been dubbed “America’s Family Prison.” Interviews include Williamson County Comissioner Ron Morrison and Jose Orta, a Taylor, TX rep from the League of United Latin American Citizens.

South Bronx activist turns 90 and keeps working

90-year-old Verna Lee Judge has worked for forty years to help the South Bronx rise from the rubble of the 1960’s and 70’s, and she has no plans to stop.