Micha Kurz co-founded Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects stories from members of the Israel Defense Forces (compulsory in Israel for young men and women) who served in the occupied territories. Kurz served in the IDF during the second intifada, and his experiences led him to work against the occupation and treatment of Palestinians.

When Deirdre Summerbell was approached about teaching yoga to the women in Rwanda, she was skeptical, but she decided to try it. “Yoga is slow medicine but it is medicinal in character," she says now of Project Air, where she helps women and girls reconnect with their bodies and heal their spirits. Summerbell joined us in the GRITtv studio to talk about her project and her plans to expand it into the Congo and other areas of the world, like Gaza and Afghanistan.

Every Thursday, we look at the way the stories of the day get told, point out the problems and offer some solutions with a variety of media makers.

This week, our Got Docs feature is Jennifer's documentary in production, From Baghdad to Brooklyn, telling Mohamed's story, from his exile from Iraq after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for the killing of homosexuals "in the worst, most severe way possible." Mohamed, who is gay,wound up in Syria, where Jennifer met him and took up his cause. Mohamed's story may have ended happily, but over a million Iraqis are still displaced. More of their stories are available here.

Esmeralda came to the U.S. seeking asylum from her native Mexico. She tried twice to enter the country legally, each time forced into detention. As a transgender woman, she was segregated and subjected to abuse from guards on her first attempt, and when she tried again, she was held with male detainees.

Environmental journalist Karl Grossman gets the dirt on solar energy from Dean Hapshe of Majestic Son & Sons Solar Energy. Since the Reagan years, where government tax credits for installing solar panels were killed, we've come a long way as far as efficiency and costs are concerned. In New York, on top of the federal tax credit recently passed in the stimulus bill, you can get a state and local tax credit for installing the panels--and then it's possible to produce more than enough energy to run your whole home.

Why aren't reporters asking the real questions? That's what our media panelist Rose Aguilar asked today, and it's a valid question.

U.S. history has seen many presidents elected on a wave of progressive promises, only to see them compromise again and again once in office, caving to the very interests, military and corporate, that they railed against so effectively. Barack Obama is only the latest to get elected on a promise to end a war and take care of working people, only to preside over an administration stacked with Wall Street types and wind up continuing a war he wanted to wind down.

In the new film Collapse, filmmaker Chris Smith follows Ruppert and looks into his theories. Is he a genius, or just paranoid? The film allows you to make your own judgments, while showing the risks and rewards of having--and publishing--unpopular opinions.

This video, made by Rikshaw Films, gives a little bit of insight into the kind of work the Institute is promoting with this award. Diana Lopez is a food justice activist in San Antonio, Texas, and she created the Roots of Change community garden in the Eastside of San Antonio to provide fresh organic food to community residents.