in the months leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, Pop & Politics went on the road to talk to people about what matters most to them. In an election marked by high anxiety, host Farai Chideya asked about race, rage and the state of the American Dream. These conversations are featured in three radio specials: Florida,
Arizona, and a live conversation recorded in NYC the morning after the election.
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Congressman Kendrick Meek met us straight after getting off a plane from New York, where he’d been fundraising for his Senate race with President Bill Clinton, a longtime supporter. His Congressional and campaign offices are inside the same nondescript building in Miami Gardens, a working-income, heavily African-American area where there are a significant number of foreclosures.
We drove through West-Central Florida, stopping at the 20,000-person retirement community Sun City for what turned out to be a fabulous political round-table of residents. But let me leave that as a tease, and turn to a story that has been in the news.
A pastor of a 30-person church near Gainesville, Florida, was able to get on the media map for a planned mass burning of the Koran, the Islamic holy book. Pastor Terry Jones named his church Dove World Outreach, and despite its small size, their plans to burn the Koran inspired comments from the President and a call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking Pastor Jones to cancel the burning.
It also inspired an interfaith alliance of Gainesville residents at Trinity Church on 9/10, the day before the canceled burning and, of course, the day before the anniversary of 9/11. We asked attendees what they would say to Pastor Jones if they had the chance.
Yesterday we figured out the perfect mix of next-stage journalism and fun, which is to say that we threw a Tweetup in Miami. Sponsored by the Knight Foundation, this Tweetup brought together folks from public radio, newspapers (daily and alternative weekly), politics, activism, and the arts. I got to meet so many amazing people, from the head of Friends of WLRN to a Haitian-American relief and community organizer to the Miami Herald‘s coordinator for the Public Insight Network.
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