Pop and Politics

What to do with children of undocumented immigrants?

For many of you, no doubt your vote in this mid-term election hinges on where your states’ candidates stand on one of the major issues facing our country — unauthorized  immigration.  As part of our road trip across the country, we wanted to hear the arguments on both sides of the immigration spectrum and see what progress, if any, is being made towards a more civil and balanced discussion.

In Florida, like many states with high immigrant populations, one of the most heated debates surrounds the children of immigrants and The Dream Act—proposed legislation that would provide conditional permanent residency to unauthorized immigrant children who attend college or join the military.  These are the children whose immigrant parents brought them to the United States at a very young age.

The debate among politicians focuses on the push by conservatives to amend the Constitution’s 14^th amendment in order to deny children of unauthorized immigrants citizenship.  Currently, parents are deported and for those families, separation wreaks emotional and financial havoc. I recently came across one of the most moving multimedia pieces I’ve seen in a while that touches on this very issue. The San Jose Mercury News spent a year following a California family struggling to stay together after losing one parent to deportation.   If you have a half hour to spare, take a look at this piece, as the debate on immigration can often get bogged down in policies and we often forget who they are affecting.

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What one word describes race in your community?

One of our missions at Pop and Politics is to explore how the issue of race affects the way Americans cast their vote. This question was foremost in our minds as we traveled across the country, from the foreclosure-ridden neighborhoods of Miami, Florida to the borderlands separating the U.S. from Mexico in Nogales, Arizona.We found a country where issues of race remain a significant player in local and national politics, where immigration is polarizing the political landscape and anti-Islamic sentiment has gone mainstream.

We want to hear what you think. What one word describes race in your community? Post that one word (and as many other thoughts about the subject as you want) in the comments below.

Is home ownership still the American Dream?

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  Take Back the Land

Housing has been on this journalist’s mind lately. I just moved back to New York City after being gone for a while, and the reality of real estate here has hit me like a punch in the gut. Shiny condos that sit half empty have replaced warehouses and greasy spoons I used to know. Subsidized middle-class housing complexes have 20-year waiting lists. New Yorkers like me are priced out of their childhood neighborhoods.

Thoughts of my gentrified hometown reverberated through my head a few weeks ago when we visited Miami, a city still knee-deep in the housing crisis. This metropolitan area was one of the epicenters of the housing boom, where new constructions and sub-prime mortgages abounded a few years ago. A few hours after we stepped off the plane, we met Max Rameau, founder of Take Back the Land. The group moves homeless people into government-owned, foreclosed homes that are standing empty. (Check out the video above to hear his philosophy.)

We also met Ruby, a Miami native whose house was at risk of foreclosure after going through a bankruptcy and several rounds of refinancing. To her, a house is everything–a place to make your mark on the world. It is a place to lay down roots and engage in a community, a place to make beautiful, to make yours. Continue Reading…

Putting the “Civil” Back in Civil Society

I went on The Takeaway this morning to talk about a new move to get anger under control in politics.

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Recently , a group called Former Members of Congress for Common Ground (politely) laid down a gauntlet. Their petition to current candidates embraces the concept of partisanship, but then adds:

The divisive and mean-spirited way debate often occurs inside Congress is encouraged and repeated outside: on cable news shows, in blogs and in rallies. Members who far exceed the bounds of normal and respectful discourse are not viewed with shame but are lionized, treated as celebrities, rewarded with cable television appearances, and enlisted as magnets for campaign fund-raisers.

The 130 signers, all former members of Congress, then ask office-seekers “to conduct campaigns for Congress with decency and respect toward opponents, to be truthful… [and] to refrain from personal attack…”

That serves notice to political insiders. But what about to citizens? While the midterm elections will, one way or the other, reset the balance of power on Capitol Hill, they won’t insure that people on the ground engage in serious but civil debates. Ultimately, it’s up to us to ask that we do better, act more generously, and live more comfortably with the intense debates that come in a time of big decisions.

Tallevast’s Search for Justice

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  Tallevast's Search for Justice

One of the issues we will be addressing in our radio specials is the responsibility the government bears towards its citizens in exchange for their vote. Ideally we give power to our representatives in exchange for their agreement to work on our behalf.

What happened in Tallevast, Florida is an example of that compact breaking down, of a government institution failing those it was created to protect. Charlie and Beatrice Ziegler are two faces behind that failure, one of dozens of couples living with the debilitating effects of Baryllium pollution and TCE contamination from a plant that was once the economic lifeblood of Tallevast.

Politics and Population Density: Not Quite Arizona

Our team returned this weekend to New York (left) , a city with, to say the least, a high population density. Similar sky, but not quite Arizona (right).

One of the more thoughtful articles I’ve read recently about America’s differences in attitude and governance touched on population density as a key determinant of attitudes toward Federal powers. Kathleen Parker (now known to many as Eliot Spitzer’s co-host on CNN), wrote:

As Barack Obama told us at the Democratic convention in 2004, we are not a red and blue nation, etc., etc., etc. True enough, but we are a high-density/low-density nation.

She continues:

As a smallish-town girl come to the humongous city, I am all too aware of the appeal and horror of centralized government. Simply put, the more people cram themselves into small spaces, the more government will be involved in their lives….

If you live in a large urban area, chances are you are accustomed to lots of rules and regs. But to the newcomer, fresh from living largely independently by her own wits, the oppression of bureaucratic order is a fresh sort of hell.That sounds good on the surface, but as we found out in Arizona, there is a river of Federal money flowing into the state, mainly for military and law-enforcement. And with that, particularly with border enforcement, comes a constant insertion of Federal powers into peoples’ daily lives. Be prepared to stop, pull over, and show ID at all times. (We were.) Whether that is good or bad is precisely the crux of the debate over Arizona’s controversial immigration law S.B. 1070 and other laws or bills.

I would love to know your thoughts on how you perceive the Federal government’s influence in your specific community. How does law enforcement affect you, your family, and neighbors?

For bonus points, I’m intrigued by this demographic trend, which Fox calls “reverse white flight”… more of the Paris model of city v. suburb perhaps? Our first radio special, airing October 21, will definitely touch on this and gentrification.

The Border Story You Don’t Hear: The Tohono O’odham Nation

When the media cover “the border,” they pit Mexico against America, Spanish against English, two increasingly melding cultures separated by a porous partition. But what happens when a border cuts straight through your own people’s land? What happens when you’re the forgotten voice in a three-way conversation – which hurts doubly, since you were there first?

The Tohono O’odham Nation, one of the largest native reservations in the country, straddles the U.S.-Mexican border. Our team spent the day in Sells, Arizona, soaking in the landscape, eating short rib stew and prickly pear smoothies at the local cafe, and, before talking with Sells native Art Wilson, checking out the border. A far cry from the looming wall in Nogales, the border here is marked by some wire and posts barely taller than my chin.

Art explained that the border meant little to him as a child, that he inhabited both countries freely. “It was more like a a fence that kept the livestock from crossing over,” he said. “It was like crossing into somebody’s backyard.” He didn’t think of his world as a U.S.-Mexico duality, instead thinking of it in terms of “O’ohdam and white.”

After our conversation with Art, he generously shared a private moment with us — a ceremony in the middle of the desert memorializing the anniversary of his mother’s death. Here, we had a rare breath of calm amid our frenetic schedule, an hour enveloped in a prehistoric landscape that stood in stark relief against the cacophony of New York City.

These are the moments I’m glad I’m a journalist. These are the reasons to go on the road — to appreciate the vastness of our country, to force ourselves to see colliding identities, to get out of our comfort zones and glimpse into another person’s reality. Right before we got back in our cars, Farai mused, “You can never really walk in anyone’s shoes. But once in a while, you can stand where they’re standing.”

More soon…

Sheriff Joe: Ego Over Sound Immigration Policy?

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  Interview with Sheriff Joe

What strikes you immediately when sitting down to an interview with Sheriff Joe Arpaio is how clearly he relishes the attention that his law enforcement policies have brought to Arizona, generally, and to him, specifically. He is obviously proud of the 3,000 citizens he’s recruited to serve in his 57 posses and talks with enthusiasm about plans for posse number 58, a group of civilians who will be dedicated to identifying the illegal aliens among us, a posse to which he’s already recruited Steven Seagal and other celebrities he refuses to name. He gets a gleam in his eye when he talks about the half-a-million people he says have gone through his tent jails where temperatures soar to 140 degrees in the summer, a jail where the male inmates are forced to wear pink and watch the Food Network to make them hungry.

We visited the tent city,where the inmates complained to us about the conditions. The food looked nasty, and it was indeed hot. But nothing to write home to Amnesty International. The pink sheets and socks were odd, but again, hardly torture.

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Wounded But Still Standing: America in an Age of High Anxiety

Producer Suzie Lechtenberg at Interfaith Forum (Gainesville, FL)

Traveling through America as I have been for our elections project, I cannot help but look at America in military metaphors, as a soldier who has served a tour of duty and, even amid a momentary respite, cannot help but wonder if rotations to the field will continue indefinitely. The battles are economic, on one level. Jobs and the economy remain the top issues. Neighborhoods rocked by foreclosures are sometimes finding a new equilibrium — even if that equilibrium means learning to live with one or two abandoned houses on a once-full block. America has survived the dizzying economic crash of 2008, but we remain ready to fight for an American Dream that sometimes we can’t even define.
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Farai Chideya Interview with Allen West: Tea Party Star in Florida

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  Interview with Allen West

Pop and Politics host Farai Chideya interviews Florida Tea Party candidate Colonel Allen West about his views on race, anger among voters, and why he believes he can win in Congressional District 22 in Florida.