A 64-year-old San Francisco woman finds herself before a panel of Guatemalan judges facing 20 years of hard time in a foreign prison.

She had gone to Guatemala decades ago to work with the neediest of children. Now she stands accused of child trafficking.

The saga of Nancy Susan Bailey, on this episode of Q’ed Up.

Late summer had felt apocalyptic.

Raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, a deadly earthquake in Mexico, catastrophic floods in South Asia — and hurricanes with innocuous names lashing Texas, the Caribbean, and Florida.

But in the face of all of this destruction and despair there were flashes of hope and bravery. Scenes of rescuers hard at work: pulling flood victims into boats and helicopters, providing medical treatment, and bringing supplies to emergency shelters.

KQED’s Alex Emslie embedded with rescuers from California as they searched flooded areas in Texas after Hurricane Harvey. He met men and women who dropped everything to head across the country and into the flood.

What does it mean when Nazis march in American towns? Is it free speech or is it a freeing of hate speech? Forty years ago, Neo Nazis wanted to march on the streets of Skokie, Illinois. A few weekends ago, Neo Nazi’s marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. Shortly afterword, far right fringe activists planned to hold “free speech” rallies in San Francisco and Berkeley. The far right is trying to rebrand free speech. They are using the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement — Berkeley — to do it.

KQED reporters take you into the mostly peaceful protests in late summer in Berkeley to ask what is free speech? And what happens when the line between speech and violence become blurred beyond recognition?

When Michael Essien became an administrator at Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Middle School in San Francisco he saw right away that he needed to help teachers get behavior issues under control. If students acted out in class, teachers were sending them to an in-school detention, where they waited for disciplinary action. Pretty soon, any kid who struggled with a lesson was trying to get sent to detention, just to avoid challenging work that might be embarrassing. Essien was seeing too many kids not learning in this dysfunctional system.

Then Essien has an “ah ha” moment, and things start to get interesting. Q’ed Up presents the first episode of the MindShift podcast’s new season, where we find out how Essien and his staff hit upon a way to support teachers in the classroom, so kids can actually learn.

In California, local jails get paid millions to house immigrants facing deportation. In some poor rural counties, it’s a large source of income — one of the few sources — and they depend on it for basic services, like keeping police on patrol.

But some critics say bad conditions and inadequate health care in these jails puts detainees at risk.

Are these places taking the money, and failing to provide proper care for inmates? And is this deal humane?

Read the full story, view archival photographs and search the documents used to report this project.

And see if there’s a detention facility by you incarcerating people for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In every city, there are a handful of committees that are essential  to the way government functions. Committees made up of average, unpaid citizens. It’s the people part of that “for the people, by the people” thing in our constitution.

So just who wants to be on one of these committees? From our friends at The Specialist producer Raja Shah went to find out.

The middle class in America is being squeezed by rising housing costs.

One family is fighting to hold on to their home in one of America’s toughest real estate markets — Oakland, California.

The problem is they’ve got a corporate landlord. And that might be the reason we’re in this trouble in the first place.

What happens when you’re poor and struggling, trying to go to college in one of the most expensive cities in America?

Sometimes you end up living out of your car. That’s what happened to Ebony Ortega. She works at Starbucks and has a full course load at San Francisco State. What she doesn’t have is a home.

All this leaves her at risk for failing out of college. But there’s one person who may hold the key to getting her back on track. Sometimes our families, those who know us best, hold the key to helping us find ourselves.

James de la Nueve: it’s a new name for a fresh start. He really messed up his life in the last few years – kicked out of college, kicked out of the house – and he was ready to start again, and get it right this time.

But he was going to have to do it from the streets. Going to calculus class, studying at the library, all the while pretending, for the sake of his classmates and professors, that he’s not homeless.

“I’m going hard at school,” he says, “but at the same time I have to deal with, just, keeping myself alive.”

James is like a modern day Jay Gatsby, born to a poor family, but striving for greatness. He’s on a mission to transform himself. But the new identities he’s creating – sometimes James himself can’t keep track.

Brittany Jones rummages through a cramped storage locker in West Oakland. Looking at this stylish 24-year-old, you’d probably never guess this storage unit is the closest thing she has to a home.

She keeps her homelessness hidden, sleeping on friends couches or waiting out the night on the 24 hour bus.

But after Brittany shares her story on the radio all that will change.

Brittany’s story is about how others see us, and ultimately how we see ourselves.