Live from Main Street Blog

Just writing to share the great news! We've added two more stellar folks to the Live From Main Street Denver lineup. We're very excited to have Andre Banks, Deputy Director of Color of Change, and Faye Wattleton, President and Co-Founder of the Center for the Advancement of Women, join us on Sunday, August 24.

Other guests include:

• Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD), the first African American Congresswoman from Maryland who harnessed the power of the netroots to win a special election this June by 80%
• Van Jones, co-founder and President of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
• David Sirota, bestselling author of The Uprising: The Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington
• Polly Baca, Former Colorado State Senator and President and CEO of the Latin American Research and Service Agency (LARASA)
• Lee Camp, Laughing Liberally comedian
• And more…

We're looking for volunteers to help with the Denver Live From Main
Street! This event will be the third in a series of 5 town hall events
hosted by Laura Flanders that will be broadcast on multiple television,
radio and satellite stations. Live Form Main Street is dedicated to
putting the voices of everyday Americans back into the national
political dialog. For more information, click here.

We're looking for 10-15 friendly faces to act as ushers, distribute
promotional materials, track RSVPs and help with set-up/tear-down. All
volunteers will get Progressive Media goodies and will be have seats to
the show!

If you'll be in Denver and are available from either 1:00 pm to
6:00 pm or 3pm to 8pm Sunday, August 24, please email your name and
phone number to Becki Scholl at becki AT themediaconsortium DOT com.

To ease the load on volunteers, we plan to have two groups, one to help
with set-up and one to help with tear-down--this is the reason for the
different times. However, you are more than welcome to help all day!

Live From Main Street is coming to Denver during the DNC. Please join us on August 24 at 4 p.m. at The Big Tent for "So You Say You Want Change? Exploring the Conflicts and Opportunities Ahead."

 

We're taking a closer look at what "change" means and discussing what real, sustainable change would look like. Is a new, more progressive era on the horizon? And what impact will this new era have on education, security, the environment, immigration reform and other issues critical to the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans?

 

Join the discussion with community leaders and make your voice heard.

Special Guests include Van Jones, Rep. Donna Edwards, Polly Baca, David Sirota, Laughing Liberally and more!

 

WHEN: Sunday August 24, 4pm (doors open at 3pm)

 

WHERE: The Big Tent 1536 Wynkoop Street Denver, CO

FREE OF CHARGE and open to the public. Seating is limited so please arrive early -doors open at 3pm.

RSVP for preferred seating here: http://livefrommainstreet.com/content/RSVP

RSVP is not necessary to attend- there will be general admission seating available on the day of the event.

Sunday August 24 4pm @ The Big Tent
This event is open to the public

Streaming video of the entire Miami show is available here, courtesy of LinkTV!

As the Bush administration unveiled a publicly-financed plan to "save" mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, local residents at a town hall forum in Miami were calling for criminal prosecutions of the loan-shark mortgage brokers and investment firms that profited from poor people's housing despair.

 

It would be hard to think of a better place to hold a public forum on the housing crisis and and sustainable development than Overtown, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami, Fla. While Overtown is just minutes from downtown geographically-speaking, it's worlds apart economically and culturally.

 

On Saturday, The Lyric Theater, was host to the second of the five part nationally broadcast town hall series, , Hundreds of community members gathered to talk about how massive foreclosures, bad loans and gentrification had impacted their city--and what could be done about it in a town hall forum dubbed, "Magic City; Hard Times."

 

Miami is widely known as for the national housing crisis. "Miami's the canary in the coal mine of our economy," Gihan Perera, Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center told the engaged crowd. "In terms of rich vs. poor, uneven development, the impact of global trade and immigration: Miami is the cutting edge," Perera added.

 

And the Lyric Theater, once at the heart of what was called the Black Broadway, is right where that edge cuts. Over-shadowed now, literally, by the vast condominium skyscrapers rising over downtown, the Lyric, founded in 1915 by a wealthy businessman (who was part of a large middle-class Black Miami community in the first half of the 20th century,) was almost destroyed in the 1960s when developers BUILT a highway through these parts. From "the Harlem of the South," the area became, "Overtown," a community the road drove over – and into destitution.

 

Today, the Lyric survives thanks to money from the local redevelopment council, but the neighbors are worried that "development" for others will steal the last land they've got.

 

"You can understand why gentrification's a threat," Denise Perry of Power U – a community empowerment project based in Overtown, one of the Live From Main Street panelists told me after the event. "In the 1960s developers had a choice whether to build the road near the water, nearer downtown, or smack through a thriving black community – and they chose the last."

 

The desolation of neighborhoods is a pattern that has rippled across this country. But where is the national media's coverage? Well, here's a typical newspaper headline from the past the weekend, "Which Candidate will Benefit from the Housing Flap?" A quarter of a million foreclosures in June is hardly a "flap." And which politician will gain advantage is hardly the most important point.

 

This is exactly that sort of reporting which Live From Main Street puts into harsh relief. At the Lyric, tenant organizers, green builders, political advocacy groups and Miami residents (on the stage and off) got a chance to speak. Latasha Jones, a tenant organizer in Liberty City and panelist on Saturday, lives in an apartment with no hot water and leaks in her roof. The families she knows didn't walk willingly into sub-prime mortgages. Miami currently has four people waiting for each of the city's 10,000 units of public housing. Jones herself is on that waiting list.

 

''I've spent about 13 years on the waiting list for public housing,'' Jones told the Miami Herald, one of several local media outlets that came to Overtown, drawn by the national event.

 

At the same time, local residents are entering into bad loans due to shady mortgage practices by lenders or because their only other option was homelessness. Do you think it's fair that "relief" for the profit-makers should come from public coffers (which are already slashing public services) while immense profits remain in private hands? Darin Woods, a financial advisor from Countrywide Home Loan – got an earful from his critics at LFMS where he appeared as a panelist, but, he concluded, "[Live from Main Street] is just the sort of forum we need more of." (Florida's Attorney General joined the AG's of three other states in suing Countrywide for deceptive practices July 1.)

 

The presidential candidates are unlikely, ever, to talk about today's housing crisis and sustainable development in a place like Overtown.

 

"That's why we're here," said Tracy Van Slyke, director of The Media Consortium, a network of some 45 national, independent media outlets, which is the producer of Live From Main Street. "Live From Main Street's goal is to tell real stories from real people about the issues that effect their communities, and our country, during this election season. We're cutting through political spin and horserace coverage." Pooling resources (as the Consortium has, to make LFMS possible) and working together, independent media can bring national attention to places like Overtown, and put key issues into national context.

 

There will be more. LFMS is a five-part series, taking place in five states in five months in the run up to November. The first event

occurred June 7 in Minneapolis. The next will be in Denver, at the start of the DNC. After that, the project goes to Columbus, OH, where the topic will be voting, and finally Seattle, where the producers are convening an all–female panel to talk about national security.

 

Live From Main Street is a production of the Media Consortium with GRITtv.org. Portions of the program will appear on GRITtv this Thursday, July 17th, and on both satellite networks – Dish Network, CH. 9415 (Free Speech TV ) and Direct TV (Link TV) later this week.

This is a community-supported reporting project (made possible also with funding from the Wallace Global Fund and the Arca Foundation.)

 

Together, we really can make a new media world.

 

Laura Flanders is the host of Live From Main Street and the daily news and culture program, GRITtv with Laura Flanders. Watch GRITtv on Free Speech TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415) or at GRITtv.org.