Calls for reparations were ignored for decades. Now, local governments are taking up the cause – and outrage is growing.
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Cynthia Rodriguez
Cynthia Rodriguez is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She is an award-winning journalist who came to Reveal from New York Public Radio, where she spent nearly two decades covering everything from the city’s dramatic rise in family homelessness to police’s fatal shootings of people with mental illness.
In 2019, Rodriguez was part of Caught, a podcast that documents how the problem of mass incarceration starts with the juvenile justice system. Caught received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism in the public interest. Her other award-winning stories include investigations into the deaths of construction workers during New York City's building boom and the “three-quarter house” industry – a network of independent, privately run buildings that pack vulnerable people into unsanitary, overcrowded buildings in exchange for their welfare funds.
In 2013, Rodriguez was one of 13 journalists to be selected as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where her study project was on the intersection of poverty and mental health. She is based in New York City but is originally from San Antonio, Texas, and considers both places home.
40 Acres and a Lie Part 2
We trace “40 acres” land titles to a staggeringly beautiful sea island off the coast of Georgia that’s now a wealthy gated community.
40 Acres and a Lie Part 1
Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land – only to see it returned to their enslavers.
The Great Arizona Water Grab
A surprising group of investors is fueling a global scramble for water in the most unlikely of places – the Arizona desert.
Cashing in on Troubled Teens
How the country’s biggest psychiatric hospital chain is profiting off kids trapped in a broken child welfare system.
Blue State Barriers and the Messy Map of Abortion Access
In New Mexico, when the only hospital in a vast rural county turns Catholic, reproductive health care is suddenly on the line.
Listening in on Russia’s War in Ukraine
Secretly intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers in Ukraine reveal how fear and propaganda fueled Russia’s violence against its neighbor.
Gaza: A War of Weapons and Words
The loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel has sparked outrage and protest, but a group of grieving parents continues quietly working for peace.
Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires
Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
Cashing in on Troubled Teens
How the country’s biggest psychiatric hospital chain is profiting off kids trapped in a broken child welfare system.