Pop & Politics Radio: The New Map: America, Redrawn and Reconceived

NOVEMBER 4: The New Map: America, Redrawn and Reconceived

On Wednesday November 3rd, the Pop and Politics live event at WNYC’s Greene Space brought together panelists, audiences and web viewers for a fascinating discussion about how race, anger and the economy affected the outcome of the November 2010 midterm elections. Guests included actress Rosie Perez (visit her arts organization here ), blogger Reihan Salam with The National Review, Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry, youth activist Erica Williams, and WNYC’s The Takeaway reporter Todd Zwillich.

Watch the Discussion HERE

'Left of Black': Episode #7 featuring Farai Chideya and Cathy J. Cohen

Host Mark Anthony Neal discusses the mid-term elections and NPR's firing of Juan Williams with journalist Farai Chideya, founder and managing editor of Pop & Politics and former host of NPR's News & Notes.

Neal is also joined by Cathy J. Cohen, the David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of the new book Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics. Cohen is also the author of The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (1999)

Pop & Politics Radio: New Voters, New Challenges

New Voters, New Challenges

Farai Chideya and team go to Arizona to look at immigration and jobs, and check in with new voters to see if they’re getting involved. With the passage of the state’s controversial immigration bill in April, Arizona is at the center of the nation’s immigration debate. From Phoenix to border regions of the Tohono O’odham Nation and Yuma, Chideya talks with people about their hopes, fears, and anxiety.

Listen HERE

Race, Rage, and Reconciliation

from Pop & Politics

Race, Rage, and Reconciliation
Pop & Politics Radio Special

Farai Chideya and team go to Florida to talk about the ways the American Dream is colliding with reality, and what it means in the voting booth. Chideya speaks with Colonel Allen West, a black Tea Party candidate; residents of a historic black community, where the land has been contaminated by industrial toxins, who say business and politicians have abandoned them; Muslim-Americans in Gainesville; and victors and victims of the foreclosure crisis.

Listen HERE

Is Home Qwnership Still the American Dream?

Is Home Ownership Still the American Dream?
by Nona Willis Aronowitz

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.

“The American dream is now a nightmare,” she told us listlessly. A little later: “Capitalism should not mean greed, but that’s what we’ve had.” Ruby didn’t expect elected officials to do much about her situation. She waxed poetic about her house, but she was disappointed–not only by the government, but by the direction of our country. She felt alone and in limbo.

Read the Full Essay @ Pop & Politics

Farai Chideya Interviews Kendrick Meek

From PopandPoliticsMedia

Congressman Kendrick Meek, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, sat down to talk about his chances of winning in November, the challenges of running as a minority, and his thoughts on the state of the economy

The Revenge of Uncle Baldy

from The Story w/Dick Gordon

The Revenge of Uncle Baldy

Musician Boston Fielder has music in his blood; his Uncle Baldy was one of Elvis’ first musical influences. But Boston didn’t grow up with dreams of making it as a professional music man. He didn’t even play an instrument until his mid 20s. But when Boston found himself on a tour of a recording studio and picked up a bass guitar, he immediately fell in love with the idea of making music.

His band MuthaWit just released a new album called “Men & Women or la Revenge de Uncle Baldy.” And Boston’s also spreading his musical love through the UrbAlt Music Festival. Boston talks with guest host Farai Chideya about those projects and about how he’s connecting generations of his family through music.

Listen Here

Haiti IS Cursed–By Our Ignorance

Haiti IS Cursed–By Our Ignorance
by Farai Chideya

An op-ed in [the] New York Times begins by saying:

Those who know a little of Haiti’s history might have watched the news last night and thought, as I did for a moment: “An earthquake? What next? Poor Haiti is cursed.”

The author, Tracy Kidder is a well-respected journalist who penned Mountains Beyond Mountains, about public health guru Paul Farmer and his work in Haiti. But to use the “cursed” meme to sell people on an otherwise uncontroversial op-ed seems, to me, sensationalistic at best and at worst irresponsible. The word conjures up racialized images of voodoo (the fact that voudoun is actually a religion and not just a mockery is another battle I can’t even fight here) that people with far worse intentions are all too eager to exploit.

Take, for example, evangelist Pat Robertson, who says that Haiti “swore a pact with the devil” to become free of the French. (See the video below.)

The truth is far more inspiring, humbling, maddening, and challenging to our notions of freedom. The Devil probably could have cut Haiti a better deal than the French did. (And can we just talk about who that woman is sitting next to Pat Robertson and how she can stand looking at herself in the mirror after murmuring assent to Robertson’s words?) After being defeated militarily by revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, the French colonial powers who held Haiti demanded reparations in the form of 150 million gold francs in order to recognize the new, free nation. That number was later, generously of course, reduced to 90 million gold francs, or over $20 billion current U.S. dollars.

The ripple effect of this bargain cannot be underestimated. A free Haiti was hobbled economically from the start. They did not finish paying off the “independence debt” to france until 1947. The triangle of Haitian/French/US relations also paved the way for the Louisiana Purchase, which expanded and enriched the United States. Deposed former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide wanted to get the money back from France. The current President has forgone any such claims. (A good primer on the claim for the return of the money comes from this article from the Wall Street Journal.)

Read the Full Essay @ Farai Chideya