Reporting Fellows

Until the border opens and they can return home, Thailand's migrant workers must navigate a labyrinthine immigration system, fight for health care, and struggle to survive, reports Medill Journalism School student Kira Leadholm.

Qualifying for the Paralympics is far from her toughest battle. An intimate profile of 22-year-old Victoria Isaacson's life of international wheelchair fencing while battling Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

In Louisiana, at least 1,601 people are still incarcerated on the basis of a Jim Crow-era law allowing for conviction by a non-unanimous verdict.

"These are hard times; hope can easily go sour. We can’t give them that," writes 2020 LaGuardia Community College Fellow René Sing-Brooks in his poem set in pandemic-stricken New York City.

“There are 700 people who depend on me. That can be scary,” the principal of Oscar DePriest Elementary, a public school serving predominantly low-income households, tells Medill Journalism School professor Peter Slevin.

A lack of COVID-19 protections only scratches the surface of a long line of injustices suffered by migrant farmworkers who have lived in unsafe conditions and faced labor exploitation for years.

With all the suffering amidst the pandemic, how do we process our own pain? Five months after shutdowns began, "it is still okay to cry," writes Medill School of Journalism junior Amy Coval.

"This time made me realize the people, my unconditional best friends, that I want to rush back to,” one sophomore tells fellow Wake Forest University student Madison Borsellino.

An 18th birthday, the MCAT, a raucous third grade Zoom classroom, and job loss. These are just a few of her family's life experiences that Wake Forest University senior Marlee Rich chronicles during the pandemic.

“In order to care for our patients, we also need to be cared for,” one methadone clinic director who struggled to find PPE told Columbia Journalism School graduate Anastassia Gliadkovskaya.

“The whole place was engulfed in flames. We saw an exodus of people from a burning hell,” says Marco Sandrone, the field coordinator for MSF in Lesbos where the Moria refugee camp is located.

Designed to hold 3,000 people, Moria refugee camp now has 13,000 residents. The overcrowding makes it nearly impossible to follow social distancing guidelines and practice proper hygiene during the pandemic.