In This Week’s Inweekly
For Pensacola poet Ericka Streeter, every poem is an act of devotion to her ancestors. In Inweekly’s Sept. 17 issue, we meet her as she releases her second collection, then turn to a community radio station 26 years in the making, a county budget hearing that ran long and got personal, and the latest Buzz from around town.
Fanning the Ancestral Flame
The poet. Ericka Streeter has spent years nurturing Northwest Florida’s literary community, mentoring writers through journaling and writing workshops and hosting Pensacola Poetry for two and a half years. This fall, she releases her second collection, “Soul Fire: The Warmth of the Ancestral Flame,” a deeply personal exploration of ancestry, womanhood, grief and reclaiming oneself.
- The heart of it. Dakota Parks talks with Streeter about a collection that celebrates Blackness, community, resilience, history and joy. It includes eulogy poems for her ancestors and interweaves poems by her daughter, Elondrice Hodge. Streeter also leans into Black vernacular, reclaiming the language she once felt pressured to leave behind. Read more.
“It is my right and responsibility as a poet to document history.”
Ericka Streeter
Where to find it. “Soul Fire: The Warmth of the Ancestral Flame” is available locally at Perfect Day Books, Open Books and Black Café & Bookstore. Follow Streeter at @soulfireprose.
A New Voice on the Dial
The launch. WPNX 107.7 FM, a do-it-yourself community radio project from Free Radio Pensacola, goes on the air Sept. 24-26, the same weekend Pensacola hosts the national Grassroots Radio Conference downtown at Voices of Pensacola. The station will operate under an FCC license and expects to reach roughly an 11-mile radius from its transmitter atop the Studer Community Institute building at 220 W. Garden St.
The dream. For more than 25 years, the idea of a community station lived mostly in conversation. Sean Linezo and Fred Touchette first talked about it in 2000, at End of the Line Cafe. Now, with Coy Glass, they are taking the project from the internet to the FM dial. Tom St. Myer explains what they are building and why they are not aiming for polish.
“It is your friends and neighbors just playing the records for you.”
Coy Glass, WPNX
What’s on tap. The conference weekend is built for listeners as much as radio builders:
- Thursday, Sept. 24: the premiere of the short film “Free Radio WPNX: Community Radio in Formation 2000-2026” at 5:30 p.m. at Voices, followed by a Dave Dondero show at End of the Line Cafe
- Friday: singers, songwriters and DJs on the downtown square as the sun sets
- Saturday: a record fair, DJs from noon until sunset and a closing party at the Bunny Club with Quintron and his puppet show
- All weekend: an exhibition on Billy Pierce, a largely forgotten Pensacola piano player who performed with Bessie Smith at the Belmont Theater
Get involved. WPNX wants volunteers, and the conference workshops cover podcasting, DJing, radio production and syndication. Registration is $150 through Sept. 24 and $185 afterward. Visit freeradiopensacola.com and wpnx.org for details.
Zachx
The seven out of 10. When Zach Robbins was in middle school, he was too afraid to sing for his mother, so he played her a recording instead. Her review was an honest but respectable seven out of 10. Today, the Milton musician creates electronic rock as Zachx, and Savannah Evanoff’s A&E feature explains why he is running toward the critique that comes with sharing his music.
What’s next. His latest singles, “CITRUS” and “POWER : PLANTS,” preview the album “EARTH,” due April 22, 2027, which is Earth Day. The album art comes from graphic designer Trinity Dennis and local mixed-media artist Chase Colley, part of his push to embrace human-created art. Follow him at @zachxart.
Outtakes: Unsung Park Heroes
The story behind the win. Twenty years ago, the 2006 Community Maritime Park referendum won 9,684 votes. Quint Studer usually gets the credit, and that is fair. But as Pensacola marks the 20th anniversary of the vote, Outtakes turns the spotlight on six volunteers who did the unglamorous work:
- Jeff DeWeese kept a spreadsheet on every residence in the door-to-door canvass.
- Bob Hart was the attorney who helped make the Community Maritime Park Associates legally viable.
- Juanita Scott ran the get-out-the-vote effort in Pensacola’s Black precincts.
- Ashley Hodge spoke for a generation of young professionals in a packed council chamber.
- Lumon May did the same patient, block-by-block work years before he became a county commissioner.
- Joe Vinson helped turn a satirical idea into the animated ad “Chuckie and Donno.”
The Budget Brawl and This Week’s Buzz
Budget Brawl. The Escambia County Commission adopted a tentative $890,095,709 budget for Fiscal Year 2026/2027 at a contentious Sept. 8 hearing that ran nearly an hour longer than expected. The board cut the countywide millage rate by $1 million, to 6.571 mills, on a 4-1 vote, with Chair Ashlee Hofberger dissenting. Along the way, Commissioner Mike Kohler and Clerk of Court Pam Childers clashed sharply, and Commissioner Lumon May held out until he secured an additional 4% raise for non-union county employees earning under $50,000. The final hearing is 5:01 p.m. Sept. 24.
Winners & Losers. Commissioner Steven Barry, who brokered the millage deal, tops the winners list, joined by Mamie Webb Hixon, inducted as a “Lady of Distinction” by the Ella L. Jordan African American Women’s Museum, and the Pensacola Blue Wahoos staff, ranked No. 1 among Minor League Baseball clubs in MLB’s fan experience survey. On the losers list: Hofberger, Childers and Florida’s presidential searches, which keep producing lone finalists.
Also in the Buzz:
- DCF reform. Sens. Don Gaetz and Jason Pizzo announced plans to file child-welfare legislation for the 2027 session.
- Paid parking returns Oct. 5. Downtown Pensacola gets new senior passes, free Mondays and a warnings-before-citations approach during the transition.
- Perkins passes. Walter “Dale” Perkins, known as “Captain Dale,” served 32 years on the ECUA Board and died Sept. 6 at age 64.
- Public safety. Mayor D.C. Reeves says police have responded to Vibes and Smoothies 32 times since March.
- Maternal health. The Florida Blue Foundation is accepting applications for roughly $3 million in grants, due by 2 p.m. Oct. 5.
Mark your calendar: Thursday, Sept. 24
- 9 a.m.: Escambia County Commission meeting, with public forum at 4:30 p.m.
- 5:01 p.m.: Second and final county budget hearing, Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building
- 5:30 p.m.: Pensacola City Council regular meeting, City Hall
- 5:30 p.m.: WPNX film premiere at Voices of Pensacola
Pick up the Sept. 17 issue of Inweekly this week for all of these stories and more. Or read it online.