Angeline Echeverría grew up the daughter of two Cuban immigrants, but it wasn't until she came to the South that she truly learned about racism. Her exposure to racial injustice led her to a life of social activism that has taken her to Arkansas, Costa Rica and New York. In April, she became the executive director of the Latino advocacy organization El Pueblo in North Carolina. The group has supported Latino rights since its inception in 1994, but in recent years, losses of funding and leadership have damaged its reputation in the community. Host Frank Stasio talks to Echeverría about her life of social activism and her plans to turn El Pueblo around.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.