Walt Shepperd is a veteran of Central New York's political scuffle, having covered government and politics in Syracuse for more than four decades before being asked for press credentials.
He is the Senior Editor of the City Eagle and the Mayor of Montgomery Street in downtown Syracuse.
Shepperd is also the producer of the The Media Unit, Central New York national award winning teen performance and production troupe.
Samadee is his alter ego. At least that's the rumor.
Stephanie Miner had planned her mayoral inaugural outside in Clinton Square because we some hardy folks. Appealing to that hardiness seemed to emerge as a theme for her administration as dipping temperatures and slippery snow on the evening of her first State of the City address might have dissuaded the frailer folk from attendance. But the Marshall Hall auditorium at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry was packed, with standing room only...
TAGS: Walt Shepperd,The state of the city,Stephanie Miner,mayoral inaugural,SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry,Common Councilor Matt Rao a happy 24th birthday,County Executive Joanie MahoneyClinton Square
Samadee missed an opportunity to announce his gubernatorial candidacy when, after a week of local snow totaled more inches than all of last year, his campaign canvas disappeared. The thaw robbed him of a way to get the word out that he was running, while still staying true to his perennial pledge not to take any campaign contributions. Searching the back of the closets in his studio, he came up with enough leftover spray paint to script slogans in Hanover Square, Thornden Park, and the lot at the corner of Onondaga Street and South Avenue where the Republican Party was founded. With the snow gone, spraying the announcement would court a graffiti bust and confusion four years hence, when he would be running for something else...
TAGS: Bergan Brothers Clothes,salina street clothier,Syracuse samadee,syracuse politics,walt shepperd,Fred Dicker’s column,African-American voters,syracuse Pastabilities,gov. David Paterson
It was a tough read, even in an age of alphabet soup organizations all trying to change some element of how we lived. SCFFI. Skif-fee. The people’s television. Actually, it existed as an ad hoc band of warrior fleas biting at the back of the Caucasian male dominance of the television of the time: 3, 5, 9 and 24—no cable. Words moved to action through a Federal Communications Commission process for bringing challenge to the licenses of the companies which owned the stations. The wording of the challenge process was legalese to shore up the myth of public ownership of the airwaves, but in the early Seventies, SCFFI brought challenges against the three local network affiliates on the basis of on-screen images and off-screen employment...
