The city’s long inaction on removing Confederate monuments sparked a dramatic arrest last night. Activist and former journalist Ben Frazier had a court appearance Wednesday morning after being detained at City Council on Tuesday night, taken out in handcuffs and spending the night in jail.
Frazier was arrested after speaking during the City Council’s public comment period. He kept talking after his public comment seconds were up, and at the direction of Council President Terrance Freeman he was arrested. The Northside Coalition, NAACP, Florida Rising and a coalition of other groups also turned out to protest Confederate monuments ahead of the City Council meeting at 5 p.m. Supporters of keeping the monuments in place also showed up, some of them wearing Confederate flags.
The dramatic scenes happened just a week after a group called Save Southern Heritage rented a plane to fly a Confederate flag over Jacksonville.
Guest: Dan Scanlan, WJCT News reporter.
NASA to launch new satellite
A new Earth-orbiting satellite, led by NASA and the French space agency, is scheduled to launch Thursday morning. It will be a game changer for keeping tabs on one of our most precious resources — water.
SWOT, which stands for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, will measure the height of water in lakes, reservoirs, rivers and the ocean. That data can help communities better monitor droughts, forecast for floods and understand the effects of climate change.
Guest: Tamlin Pavelsky, SWOT’s hydrology science lead.
Debbie Gibson to perform at WJCT’s JME Studios
For more than 35 years, Debbie Gibson has been a pioneer in the entertainment industry. A music prodigy, Gibson first burst onto the Billboard Pop Charts at the age of 16 with her self-penned hit “Only in My Dreams.”
She also became the youngest artist ever to write, produce and perform a No. 1 hit song, “Foolish Beat,” on the Billboard Hot 100 and entered the Guinness Book of World Records.
Gibson has sold more than 16 million albums worldwide and released 10 studio albums and five compilations.
Gibson’s Winterlicious Tour comes to the JME Soundstage at WJCT Studios, in partnership with The Florida Theatre, this Saturday night.
Guest: Debbie Gibson, musician
What’s Good Wednesday
Some Florida homes are still inaccessible due to hurricane-damaged roads, rising water, fallen trees and other storm-related issues, especially in and around Sanibel Island. If you can’t access your primary residence due to storm damage, you may be eligible for FEMA rental assistance.
If you live in one of the 26 counties designated for federal disaster assistance and have not already applied for FEMA assistance, you should contact FEMA to apply. If you need to apply for federal disaster assistance go to DisasterAssistance.gov, use the FEMA mobile app or call the FEMA helpline at 1-800-621-3362. The helpline is open every day from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
To be eligible for temporary rental assistance:
- You must first apply with FEMA.
- The home must be your primary residence.
- The home must be either destroyed, uninhabitable or inaccessible as a result of Hurricane Ian.
- Insurance proceeds do not fully cover additional living expenses and/or home repairs.
Season three of the PBS TV series "Home Diagnosis" will be filming in St. Augustine next week in conjunction with the St. Johns Housing Partnership. The upcoming season is all about disasters, natural and human-made, and building resilience, making Florida a perfect setting.
"Home Diagnosis," created by Atlanta-based home performance experts Grace and Corbett Lunsford, is the first-ever series on the physics, chemistry and microbiology of homes, airing on public television stations nationwide.
Jacksonville Gospel Chorale
This Saturday, St. John’s Cathedral is hosting the Jacksonville Gospel Chorale. The group was founded by Cedric Williams to share and preserve African American sacred choral music. They will be singing excerpts from "Born to Die a Christmas Cantata," written by Glenn Edward Burleigh.
The musical extravaganza celebrates lyrically the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cantata also includes seldom-told stories of events leading up to Jesus’ birth.
Members of the Chorale joined us in studio for a live performance
Guests:
- Cedric Williams, founder/owner of Music Educators for Christ and the Jacksonville Gospel Chorale
- Members of the Jacksonville Gospel chorale
