CNN's Shasta Darlington reports from Rio de Janeiro on a recent "pacification" of the favela Rocinha.
For their participation in these reports, Paul Sneed and the Back|Story team would like to thank religious leader Pai Almir who lives in the favela Rocinha. Also a big thank you to Viviana Rodrigues who is a teacher in Rocinha and co-founder of 2bros.org. A big thank you, as well, to Sergi Navarro-Rivero, a Harvard PhD student who is working in Rio de Janeiro and filmed the Rocinha resident interviews for this segment; and finally, thank you to Marcos Burgos, an American community activist and CUNY PhD student living in Rocinha who helped with logistics. Thank you to everyone for coming together to make this segment happen.
In June, Thelma Gutierrez brought us the story of a police bust in Oceanside, California, where gang members were operating a sex trafficking ring out of a Travelodge hotel. Today, Thelma brings us an important update about a CNN viewer who saw the original story and went after Wyndham hotel chain, which owns Travelodge.
You can see Thelma's original reporting and read producer Traci Tamura's blog about getting the original story here.