Florida Studies program director and USF St. Petersburg geography professor Chris\u00a0Meindl told\u00a0The Crow\u2019s Nest\u00a0last year that he would like to see the festival become an annual event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His dream came true with this year\u2019s event featuring, notable speakers\u00a0like former\u00a0Senator and NASA administrator Bill Nelson, award winning author and USF alum Jody Noll and Kerry Kriseman,\u00a0author\u00a0and spouse of Rick Kriseman \u2014 the former mayor of St. Petersburg from 2014 to 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each of them discussed\u00a0different aspects\u00a0of Florida\u2019s life and history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nelson\u2019s book\u00a0\u201cMission: An American Congressman\u2019s Voyage to Space<\/a>,\u201d which details his experience aboard the space shuttle Columbia, has been updated with a new premise and republished.\u00a0<\/p>\n To promote the book, Nelson spoke about the history of space exploration in Florida, as well as his own experience being both a temporary astronaut and the administrator of NASA.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He connected his own time in space to the new Artemis era of NASA \u2014 which most recently launched the\u00a0Artemis II<\/a>\u00a0mission \u2014 and\u00a0excited the crowd\u00a0with his description of how NASA brings communities and governments together and could continue to discover new aspects of space in the coming years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Additionally, he discussed war and the militarization of space.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe next war will be fought in space,\u201d he said; a prospect that he feels is inevitable and influenced by current state and national politics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n While Nelson\u00a0stated\u00a0that he is an eternal optimist, that optimism has been tested in the last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am worried about civic understanding of our institutions, which come from our Constitution,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when our people don\u2019t understand that they are susceptible to all kinds of dalliances\u2026if certain norms are not understood by the populace, namely that we operate as a rule of law, then it shakes our very foundations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kerry Kriseman was the next speaker, following a short lunch break, and she delved into politics on a much smaller scale: the local and the personal.\u00a0<\/p>\n She was interviewed by Sam Henderson \u2014 former Gulfport city council member and mayor of Gulfport \u2014 about her 2021 book,\u00a0\u201cAccidental First Lady: On the Front Lines (and Behind the Scenes) of Local Politics<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She spoke about how she and her family became very visible figures throughout the duration of her husband\u2019s 22-year political campaign, which sometimes led to uncomfortable amounts of scrutiny from the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n As time passed, a lot of this scrutiny came from the internet and social media. Kriseman said that as these platforms became more entrenched in partisan bias, the impact reached even local politics, which was difficult to navigate and led to some unfortunate incidents for her family that are detailed throughout the memoir.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both she and Henderson agreed that one of the hardest parts of being closely tied to someone in politics is seeing them be disparaged by strangers on the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, being four years removed from her husband\u2019s last political venture, Kriseman stated that while her family is unlikely to return to local politics, there are still ways that they feel called to help their community.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kriseman has been involved in several activism campaigns, such as one for sensible gun-control policies and breast cancer awareness, and community initiatives, such as Dogs Incorporated, that she feels can make a difference in the Tampa Bay area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jody Noll touched on community activism as well in his talk about his book,\u00a0\u201cThe 1968 Florida Teachers\u2019 Strike: Public Sector Unionism and the Fight Against Sunshine State Conservatism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Noll\u2019s research on this topic began as an honors thesis when he was an undergraduate student in a class taught by co-founder and former director of the Florida Studies Program, Gary Mormino. It evolved into his master\u2019s thesis and a dissertation before becoming a book.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Florida teachers\u2019 strike<\/a>, which was the beginning of a lot of union activism in Florida, mirrors some of the conditions that are present in Florida\u2019s current education system \u2014 such as pay cuts for teachers and reduced funding for certain schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n While many sources would call the strike a failure, Noll sees the many successes that resulted from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n School systems gained $68 million in revenue and Florida legislature\u00a0added a clause to the\u00a0state constitution to grant public sector employees the ability to collectively bargain.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Noll pointed out that, while many of the state laws that are in place to protect employees are under attack from government officials like\u00a0Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis, collective activism can still yield positive change.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cComing together, organizing, camaraderie really, really works, and is a really powerful tool,\u201d he said to the crowd. \u201cNow, it\u2019s illegal for me to tell people to go on strike, and that\u2019s not a decision I could ever make, but I do think, you know, this kind of collective action and mass mobilization is an incredibly effective tool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Much like the Florida Studies Program\u2019s aim, the festival generated\u00a0hope for the future using lessons from the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t Post Views: 40
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"More](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776787627_797_b5aa768c7ce89e30e1a37fbfe02887b1.png\")
<\/a>
Written by: Julia Birdsall<\/a> on April 21, 2026.
Last revised by: Julia Ferrara<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere is recognition of a crying need for a place to cultivate the study of\u00a0Florida,\u201d\u00a0co-founder and former director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-240515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}