New work from my Karen refugee project

I spent a few hours today working on my project on Karen refugees. I couldn't have done it without the help of a member of the Karen community who took time out of his day to introduce me to families and translate for me for the time I was there. I'm not sure how cool he is about putting his name on my blog, so for now, he'll be anonymous. I will say he's been in the United States for almost three years and besides English, knows Burmese, Karen, and some Thai. He's a pretty impressive guy. That being said, I think I made some progress as far as getting a little deeper into the community. So far everyone has been great.

EK

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Karen refugees project begins

I started on a project today on the Karen refugee community where I hope to tell the story of their daily lives here in Houston. The Karen, to my knowledge, have been emigrating to the United States in large numbers since 2008 and are repressed by the government regime in Burma/Myanmar with genocide frequently used to describe their situation. The Karen, however, are a strong, resilient people who have been in active conflict with the Burmese military government since the end of World War II. I hope to find a number of stories in this community over the following weeks and months. It's so interesting to me what stories we can find in our own backyards.  

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http://vimeo.com/31701106