Hey folks:
Woohoo! The eagle-eyed reporters of WNYC’s Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya project have landed on the sunny shores of Southern Florida… well, it is thunderstorming right now, but you get the point. In any case, we are here for several days of on-the-ground, on-the-road reporting about American politics in an era of high anxiety.
We started out our morning at 4AM at the airport in New York and by 10:30 we were in Miami’s Liberty
City neighborhood speaking to housing and civil rights activist Max Rameau of “Take Back the Land.” TBTL has a simple strategy: place families without homes in abandoned homes… even though it’s illegal. Rameau makes the case that local homeowners would rather have a non-paying (but well-mannered) family in a home than have an eyesore that’s at risk of getting stripped by thieves. It’s a controversial position to say the least, but Rameau makes the case that civil disobediance during the Civil Rights era was illegal… but moral. He sees occupying land the same way.
Later we headed to a meeting in Opa-locka, just outside of Miami, where Florida Governor Charlie Crist was making a stop at a local union hall in his Senate campaign. The crowd was mainly middle-aged and older men (and they were almost all men, of different races) who belong to a 1,300-member Air Conditioning and Pipe Fitters local…. men who have weathered the economic storm, for now, that has eaten away at their business like so many others. Their entire union threw its support for the Senate race behind Crist.
Governor Crist is engaged in a very unusual three-way race… the former Republican, under a tough primary challenge from the more conservative Marco Rubio, renounced his party and became an independent. So you have a white American running as an independent; a Cuban-American running as a Republican; and a black American, Kendrick Meek, running as a Democrat. All have significant political careers, but Crist is truly in uncharted territory. Many of the union members we spoke with were registered Democrats who are supporting Crist because they believe he has a better chance of beating Rubio than Meek. Despite the racial diversity in the field, race is not by any means the biggest issue here… a fragmented, refracted party politics is. What happens when the Tea Party movement rejects some Republican candidates for not being conservative enough? In Crist’s case, as he told us, he was tired of being labeled — and of course faced possible defeat in the primary — so he made a move.
Tonight, September 8, we host a get together in Miami… a Meetup/Tweetup with free food, cheap drinks, and great conversation. COME MEET US!
RSVP here: http://tweetvite.com/event/miamipop
Come by 6-8 Wednesday in Miami here:
News Lounge
5580 NE 4th Ct
Later this week we’ll have SOOOOOOOOO much more politicky goodness you’ll just feel like you’re at a news banquet.
Until soon, keep your voter registration ready and your v-RAGE (Voter’s Righteous Anger Gone Explosive) under control. Remember, politics is nothing more and nothing less than people… it’s all our drama, our ridiculousness, our compassion, and our excellence. Here’s to keeping it in perspective.
Farai
