El Tímpano is proud to announce our first collaboration with the Peabody Award-winning public radio program, Latino USA. 

The episode, “Undocumented & Unhoused”—produced by Latino USA’s Marta Martinez and El Tímpano’s Madeleine Bair—is a rare, in-depth look at how the region’s housing crisis impacts Latino immigrants, and how the pandemic has made an existing crisis untenable. 

Latino USA, hosted by Maria Hinojosa, is the longest-running national Latino news and cultural public radio program in the country.

This collaboration is the latest of El Tímpano’s ongoing coverage of health and housing produced with, for, and about the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrants. El Tímpano has provided accessible news and information to a growing audience of immigrants throughout the Bay Area, with a focus on rental relief and renter protections, as paying the rent has been the top issue of concern for our audience since the start of the pandemic.

Collaborations with The Oaklandside and KQED have also told stories of illegal evictions and displacement among immigrant residents. Our report, Roadblocks to Relief, based on participatory research with our audience, outlines barriers immigrants have faced accessing financial assistance and other resources they need, and El Tímpano has been invited to present our findings to government officials throughout the region. 

Madeleine Bair is an award-winning journalist and media developer, and the founder of El Tímpano. Madeleine has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she belonged to the Oakland bureau of the Peabody Award-winning youth media organization, Children’s Express. As Senior Program Manager at the international nonprofit, WITNESS, she led a pioneering initiative dedicated to advancing the use of citizen video as a tool for human rights. Madeleine has taught radio production to young adults, worked on a morning show at Chicago Public Radio, and produced multimedia for Human Rights Watch. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Colorlines, and Orion, and broadcast on PRI’s The World and Independent Lens. She lives with her partner and son in Oakland, where she spends her free time making mixtapes, dancing cumbia, and exploring the region on bike.