A recent New York Times Magazine article profiled John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, PA. Fetterman was a featured speaker at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival where he spoke passionately on how art brought about social change in his struggling town.
The profile begins at Fetterman’s talk in Aspen:
“At the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado last July, John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, a small Pennsylvania town 10 miles upriver from Pittsburgh, was introduced by Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, as a man who demonstrates “how ideas can change the world.” It was four days into the weeklong festival, and Fetterman, a 41-year-old, 6-foot-8 white man with a shaved head, a fibrous black beard and tattoos up one arm and down the other, was presenting a slideshow about how art could bring social change to a town where one-third of its 2,671 residents, a majority of whom are African-American and female, live in poverty.”
Click here to read the full profile.
Fetterman also spoke at our 2009 Aspen Cultural Diplomacy Forum. Hear how he got his start in politics and his connection to the youth of Braddock, PA:
