This week on New Mexico in Focus, in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, NMiF brings its viewers some of NMiF's favorite interviews and stories from the past year. 

New Mexico in Focus regularly airs Fridays at 7 p.m. and repeats Sundays at 7 a.m. on Channel 5.1, and Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. on Channel 9.1, except during pledge drives. 

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.

NMiF also revisits 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.

Additionally, 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

New Mexico in Focus is New Mexico PBS’ prime-time news magazine show covering the events, issues, and people that are shaping life in New Mexico and the Southwest. Hosted by Gene Grant, New Mexico in Focus takes a multi-layered look at social, political, economic, health, education and arts issues and explores them in-depth, with a critical eye to give them context beyond the "news of the moment.”

The producer of New Mexico in Focus is Sarah Gustavus with Kathy Wimmer, associate producer. NM PBS Public Affairs executive producer is Kevin McDonald.

Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided in part by the McCune Charitable Foundation.

Involved, informed, in-depth media: watch New Mexico in Focus again online shortly thereafter.

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