This is part one of a two-part series. See part two here.

With the recounts complete, the 2018 Florida midterm elections have ended. For all the sound and fury over uncounted ballots, the final results changed very little in the weeks since election night. Democrats lost in Florida, and the narrow margins only make the sting worse. The GOP and the reactionary big business interests they represent still control the governor’s mansion and the state legislature. But while little changed, this is hardly a return to the status quo. This analysis is for socialists in Florida to consider in shaping our strategy and tactics moving forward.

Historic campaign, disappointing results

The Florida Democratic Party has never run a candidate for governor as progressive as Andrew Gillum, nor has either party ever run an African American for the office. Indeed, Gillum won the nomination in a crowded field of billionaires, millionaires and establishment favorites, propelled to his unlikely victory by the African Americans and an insurgent push by young progressive activists. The energy and enthusiasm surrounding Gillum’s campaign – from the dozens of well-attended rallies to the historic voter turnout – jolted life in the moribund Florida Democratic Party, which typically runs white business centrists for governor.

In contrast, the Republican Party saw a pitch battle between establishment favorite Adam Putnam, the Commissioner of Agriculture, and former congressman Ron DeSantis, a virtually unknown Trump acolyte and Fox News contributor. Trump endorsed DeSantis early on, and his loyal base crushed Putnam in the primary. DeSantis, with the full support of Trump, ran a blatantly racist campaign aimed at highlighting the color of Gillum’s skin and stoking rural white anxieties. Significantly, most Republican political operatives in the state believed DeSantis had no chance of defeating Gillum. Some even publicly defected in a bid to bring the ‘Trump wing’ of the GOP to heel in time for the 2020 primary.

Voter turnout broke state records for midterm elections. Gillum flipped four counties that went for Trump in 2016, most notably Duval County (Jacksonville). Almost every poll gave Gillum a two to eight-point lead over DeSantis. But recount drama aside, it was clear on election night that DeSantis had narrowly defeated Gillum.

Senator Bill Nelson performed slightly better than Gillum in his re-election contest against Governor Rick Scott, but that’s racism at work, pure and simple. Most polls showed Nelson trailing far behind Scott before Gillum won the nomination. That the Senate race was even close reflects the bump in voter enthusiasm, especially among Black voters, that Gillum’s campaign generated for Democratic candidates. Nelson probably picked off a few more votes than Gillum among racist whites, particularly in southwest Florida, who just couldn’t stomach the idea of a Black governor.

Notably, Nikki Fried won the Commissioner of Agriculture race, making her the only Democrat to hold a state cabinet position in Florida. Fried, a young lawyer from the University of Florida, won the support of women and young voters, who supported her pro-legalization stances on marijuana. Like Nelson, she certainly benefited from the Gillum bump too.

How do we as socialists make sense of these results? What lessons can we draw from the outcome, and what does it mean for the future of the people’s movements in Florida?

In an 1895 introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggle in France, Frederick Engels outlined a useful way for socialists and revolutionaries to look at elections in a capitalist democracy.

“And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in the number of votes it increased in equal measure the workers' certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness – if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, then it would still have been more than enough. But it has done much more than this. In election agitation it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass of the people, where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and, further, it opened to our representatives in the Reichstag a platform from which they could speak to their opponents in Parliament and to the masses without, with quite other authority and freedom than in the press or at meetings.”

In the interests of “accurately informing us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties,” and to “provide us with a measure of proportion for our actions,” let’s examine the Florida midterm results – with the understanding that Engels was talking about the election of socialists, not candidates of Democratic Party.

Duval goes blue

Gillum won every county with a major city (over 100,000 people). Indeed, it was the backbone of his support. But Trump’s appeal to the racist and backward cultural prejudices of rural Florida won the day for the GOP.

For the first time since 1986, the Democratic candidate for Florida governor won a majority in Duval County, which shares a consolidated government with Jacksonville. Typically a Republican stronghold, Duval County voted 51.71% for Gillum (196,537 votes) versus 47.32% for DeSantis (179,869 votes). Enthusiasm for Gillum was high here, especially among Jacksonville’s Black community. He earned about 4300 more votes than Senate candidate and three-term incumbent Bill Nelson.

Although Duval was the only county in northeast Florida to go for Gillum, he performed better in neighboring counties than past Democrats. The efforts of progressive activists in places like Saint Johns County, along with Gillum’s decision to hold rallies in these areas, boosted turnout.

Unfortunately, this miniature ‘blue wave’ it didn’t translate into wins for Democrats – locally or statewide. It wasn’t enough to put Gillum or Nelson over the top, which speaks to the sheer volume of white rural votes DeSantis received. Even in local races, the ‘blue wave’ didn’t translate into Democrat wins, seen in the fact that Mia Jones, a popular African American progressive state representative, still lost her countywide election for tax collector. We will revisit the Duval County results later.

White-minority rule in Florida’s rural counties

The main pillar of support for DeSantis and Scott came from Florida’s rural, majority-white counties. Of the top ten counties by voter turnout percentage, not a single one contains a major metropolitan area. DeSantis won nine of these ten counties, in most cases by double-digit margins. Sumter County, for instance, which has a population of just 125,000 people, saw the highest turnout in Florida at 77.68%, with DeSantis capturing 70% of the vote. The only county out of the ten to go for Gillum was Gadsden County, which is the state’s only majority-Black county and neighbors Gillum’s home in Tallahassee.

Florida’s rural counties saw massive turnout and enthusiasm for Trump in 2016, ultimately delivering him the state’s 27 electoral votes. Spurred on by dramatic intervention by Trump in the 2018 race, these counties turned out again for DeSantis and Scott, providing them large-enough margins to stave off the massive vote totals secured in the cities.

While Democrats in the past have largely left these rural counties uncontested, Gillum did spend considerable time campaigning there, holding relatively large rallies in GOP-dominated counties like Saint Johns, Putnam and even Sumter County. But without any stable on-the-ground organization, along with decades of neglect by Democratic campaigns, DeSantis handily defeated Gillum in these areas.

Florida’s rural, majority-white counties exercise undue influence over the state’s politics and remain key to the GOP’s dominance. Sparsely populated, they carry few votes on their own.

How do they do this? Florida’s sprawling prison system and high incarceration rates primarily benefit rural counties, particularly those surrounding metropolitan areas. They house most of the state’s prisons, making law enforcement and corrections facilities the largest employers in many of these counties. This creates a natural base of mass support for the GOP’s ‘law and order’ rhetoric and policies of mass incarceration.

This naturally reactionary base sees its political weight boosted by racist redistricting laws. Districts for Florida’s federal and state representatives are drawn based on U.S. Census data, which counts inmates as part of the county where they are incarcerated. These inmates are disproportionately Black, disproportionately from cities, and unable to cast a vote, yet they still count towards the county’s proportional representation – a more egregious version of the “three-fifths compromise.”

For other counties, particularly in and around central Florida, agriculture predominates. Whites have made up most of the large and mid-sized landowners in Florida long before the tourism boom of the 1970s, and they remain in control today. While Latino farmworkers comprise a sizeable mass base in these counties, most are undocumented, unorganized, poverty-stricken and cannot vote. Nevertheless, they provide the same population boost to these rural agricultural counties as inmates during redistricting.

The result is that these rural counties, overwhelmingly white and predisposed to the GOP’s policies, are apportioned extra seats in the state legislature and Congress. GOP politicians have cultivated relationships and ties to landowners, employers and local power brokers capable of turning out votes at a high rate.

Villages of the damned

DeSantis also saw huge turnout among old, white retirees. Florida has a large population of retirees from northern states, who move to Florida to avoid taxes. Many congregate in insular, retired communities, the largest of which is the Villages in rural Sumter County, which again saw the largest turnout by percentage in the state.

These retirees are overwhelmingly white and affluent, and they bring their prejudices and anti-social attitudes with them from the north. Brainwashed day-in, day-out by Fox News and right-wing media, they have nothing but time on their hands to vote for Republicans in every election. Democratic appeals to retirees in the Villages have proven ineffective in the past. They don’t care about Social Security cuts by Mitch McConnell – they care about NFL players not standing for the national anthem and scare-mongering around the migrant caravan.

#Florida #FL #PeoplesStruggles #Elections #2018FloridaGovernorElection

Amendments in Florida require a 60% majority vote to pass. A 2006 constitutional amendment that raised the percentage needed to pass – from a simple majority to 60% – went through, ironically, with just 59% support.

The Jacksonville District of the Freedom Road Socialist organization encourages all Floridians who can vote to do so. We support a YES vote on amendments: 3, 4, 9, 11 and 13. We urge a NO vote on amendments: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 12.

YES on Amendment 4: The most important amendment

First things first: The single most important Florida amendment this year in Amendment 4, which would “automatically restore the right to vote for people with prior felony convictions, except those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense,” after serving their sentences. It is crucial that every Floridian who can goes to the polls and votes yes on Amendment 4.

Florida is one of only four states that do not automatically restore a person convicted of a felony’s right to vote after serving their sentence. Currently felons have to apply to a state board overseen by the governor to regain their franchise. Under Governor Rick Scott, the board has restored the rights of fewer than 3000 and added a five to seven year waiting period, even after their sentence is served!

This is voter suppression, pure and simple. 1.7 million people in Florida, about 10.7% of eligible voters, are disenfranchised because of past felony convictions. It’s a problem around the U.S., but Florida accounts for a staggering 27% of those disenfranchised due to past felony convictions.

Disenfranchising people convicted of felonies became a common practice in the South after the Civil War and Reconstruction to deny African Americans their right to vote. White landowners, police and the Ku Klux Klan would target, arrest and imprison Black people and strip them of rights. This practice continues today through the War on Drugs, racist policing and discriminatory prosecution practices. The result is that over 21% of Black eligible voters could not cast ballots in the 2016 election.

Florida is the third-largest state in the U.S., with about 21 million people. It also has the third-most African Americans and Latinos in the country, who make up 16.9% and 25.6% of the population, respectively. But despite its large and diverse working class, Florida has remained controlled by the GOP and the racist, big business interests behind it. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement is one of the ways they stay in power.

Voter suppression is an attack on the power of the whole working class. A vote for Amendment 4 will not fix all of these issues, but it will strike a major blow to the GOP’s racist, anti-worker attempts to suppress our rights.

NO on Amendments 1, 2 and 5: Tax-breaks for the rich and corporations

We encourage a no vote on Amendments 1, 2 and 5, which all help big business, developers, landowners and the rich. All three are backed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce – the leading representative of big business in our state – and opposed by Florida’s labor unions.

Florida’s constitution has an amendment requiring the state government to “balance the budget” every year. This means that if tax revenues fall, the legislature must make cuts to their spending. For nearly two decades, the Republican Party has controlled the state house, the state senate, and the governor’s office in Florida, pushing the agenda of big business at the expense of the working class. Their appeals to ‘fiscal conservatism’ let them lower taxes for corporations and then ‘balance the budget’ by slashing social services for the working class. That’s what these amendments are all about.

Amendment 1 increases the homestead exemption from non-school-related property taxes from $50,000 to $75,000. This move benefits wealthier homeowners while doing nothing for renters and poorer homeowners. It would take an estimated $750 million in state and local property tax revenue and return it to wealthier homeowners. A budget shortfall of this size would trigger cuts to services like public transportation or health care, and it would likely result in city and county governments raising regressive sales taxes, which disproportionately tax the working class.

Amendment 2 makes permanent a tax exemption on second (or third) homes and other dwellings not used by the owner as a home. It’s backed by the Florida Association of Realtors, which has spent $5.56 million in support, along with landlords and property developers. They claim that if Amendment 2 doesn’t pass, they will be forced to raise rent rates on tenants.

Of course, working class renters know that our landlords and property owners are raising the cost of rent already! Jacksonville has the fifth fastest rising rent costs in the United States, up 5.1% from last year. Miami, the Tampa Bay area and Orlando all see similarly sharp increases, well above the 2.7% increase national average. Amendment 2 isn’t about saving renters money – it’s about tax breaks for landowners and rich people, who don’t give a damn about our families.

Amendment 5 would be a particularly major disaster. It would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature to raise taxes, instead of the majority required right now. Corporations already snuck a provision like this into the state constitution in 1971, which requires the legislature to have a three-fifths majority to raise corporate income taxes. This amendment makes it easier for the rich to skip taxes and drive the state broke – on purpose!

YES on Amendment 3: Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Casino Developers

Let’s get one thing straight: Amendment 3, which requires voter approval for any new casinos built in Florida, has nothing to do with ‘democracy’. It’s a battle between the Seminole Tribe of Florida and Disney on one hand and South Florida developers and real estate moguls on the other. It will make the approval process for new casinos more difficult, meaning the Seminole Tribe-operated facilities will retain their near monopoly. Disney and the rest of the Central Florida tourist industry, meanwhile, won’t have to compete with an explosion of big-money casinos in South Florida for traffic.

Nevertheless, we encourage a yes vote on Amendment 3 in solidarity with the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

With revenues from casino gambling, Florida Seminoles have near-universal health care coverage, covered tuition costs for their students, and pay out dividend checks to their over 3300 registered members that guarantee a living income. Gambling is not their only industry, but it remains an important source of economic life for an indigenous tribe historically devastated by U.S. imperialism.

In the 19th century, Florida’s Seminoles faced systematic extermination by the U.S. government, which waged war on the tribe and forced most of its members to relocate at gunpoint. Several hundred refused to leave and continued to defend their land until the turn of the century, when they reestablished relations with the U.S. government.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida has held a virtual monopoly on casino gambling in Florida dating back to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which allowed indigenous tribes to open gambling facilities on native lands. Since that time, the tribe has fought constant legal battles with the Florida state government, under both Democrat and Republican governors, to preserve the compact. South Florida developers despise the Seminoles, who they see as an obstacle to profit-making. Working people in Florida should stand with our indigenous sisters and brothers by voting yes on Amendment 3.

NO on Amendment 6, 7, 10 and 12: Trojan horses

We recommend a no vote on Amendments 6, 7, 10 and 12. The Florida Constitutional Revision Commission, appointed by Republican Governor Rick Scott and his cronies, submitted several amendments for the 2018 ballot. They bundled many unrelated issues together, using more innocent-sounding amendments as Trojan horses to smuggle in more destructive measures.

Under the banner ‘victims rights’, Amendment 6 actually tramples on the constitutional rights of the accused. Some analysts see it putting corporations on legal par with human beings in their claim to ‘victimization.’ The amendment also raises the retirement age for Florida judges from 70 to 75 and puts more restrictions on deferring to state agencies in legal interpretations. If that seems confusing, it is – and deliberately so.

Amendment 7 expands the definition of ‘first responders’ and provides death benefits to their spouses. It also raises the requirement for universities raising college fees and codifies the current board of trustees system that governs Florida’s colleges. Backed by the Association of Florida Colleges and many university administrators, the amendment is vocally opposed by the Florida Educators Association and the United Faculty of Florida for draining important state revenue away from schools.

Amendment 10 creates an ‘Office of Domestic Security and Counter-Terrorism’ in the state government, which no doubt would spend its time harassing Muslim and Arab families and spying on activists. But along with this massive and wasteful expansion of state repression, it also requires that elections are held for county offices (they’re not currently). This has nothing to do with democracy, though, since most counties already have this in place. This amendment is backed by most Florida sheriffs and police groups, including Jacksonville’s sheriff Mike Williams, because it massively expands their power. Vote it down.

Amendment 12 raises the restriction on public officials from lobbying their former agencies from two years to six years. Florida has a revolving door of politician-to-corporate lobbyist corruption that all working people have an interest in seeing end. But without an enforcement mechanism, lobbyists will continue to exploit loopholes, acting as ‘consultants’ for corporations and big business rather than direct advocates.

At worst, some believe Amendment 12 extends these restrictions to public employees in general. Given the right-wing makeup of the state legislature and judicial bench, it’s not hard to imagine this amendment being used to strip more rights away from public-sector unions.

YES on Amendments 9, 11 and 13

Several of these amendments are also bundles, but the benefits outweigh the cons. We encourage a yes vote on amendments 9, 11 and 13.

Amendment 9 is a baffling combination of a ban on offshore drilling in state waters and a ban on indoor vaping in workplaces, with some exceptions. While e-cigarette second-hand vapor is far less harmful than second-hand tobacco smoke, most employers already ban the vaping indoors. The real crux of this amendment protects Florida’s water, wildlife and natural resources from energy companies. It’s not enough – the amendment would only ban offshore drilling ten miles off the coast – but it’s a start until we have a federal ban.

Amendment 11 repeals a nasty, racist, xenophobic law added to Florida’s constitution in the 1910s and 20s, which restricted immigrants from owning property. Aimed at Asian immigrants, the law was found unconstitutional but never repealed. Another provision of the amendment repeals the so-called ‘Savings Clause’, which prevents sentencing reductions passed by the legislature from applying to current inmates. Racist mandatory minimum sentencing laws dramatically hurt working-class people, particularly African Americans and Latinos. Right now, if the legislature lowered a mandatory minimum sentence from 20 years to five years, someone serving 20 years would still carry the full sentence. This amendment ends that and levels sentencing.

Finally, Amendment 13 bans gambling on greyhound racing in the state of Florida. Greyhound racing is almost extinct as a form of gambling in the country. Florida houses 11 of the final 17 greyhound racing tracks. Old state laws regulating gambling require racetrack owners to hold a minimum number of greyhound races per day, regardless of participation levels or profitability, which have dropped significantly. A very narrow subset of the gaming industry, along with dog breeders and suppliers, profit from this practice and have come out against the amendment. They want to defend their dying cottage industry, which leads to one greyhound death every three days in Florida. There are plenty of other ways to gamble, even in Florida, that don’t grind up dogs into dust.

Vote on November 6 to advance a people’s agenda in Florida

Florida’s 2018 election matters greatly to the future of the people’s movements in this state and around the country. In cities like Jacksonville, the Black liberation movement continues pushing for community control of the police and the repeal of Stand Your Ground. Public sector unions have fought eight years of attacks from Governor Rick Scott and the GOP-controlled legislature. Immigrant rights activists have fought against deportations.

The Jacksonville District of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization hopes to see Rick Scott (who is running for U.S. Senate), the GOP, and the racist, big-business agenda they push defeated in Florida on November 6. But long after the elections are over, the problems facing the working class, African Americans, Latinos, women and others will persist. We see this election as a building block for even larger people’s movements in Florida capable of challenging the rule of the 1% and putting the working class in power. We encourage you to join with us to make that vision a reality.

#JacksonvilleFL #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #US #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Florida #Elections #DonaldTrump #2018FloridaGovernorElection #FloridaElection2018

Less than 12 hours after winning the Florida Republican nomination for governor, right-wing congressman Ron DeSantis went on Fox News and launched a racist attack on his opponent, Andrew Gillum.

Speaking to Fox News host Sandra Smith about Gillum on the morning of August 29, DeSantis said, “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.”

Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, is the first African American to run for governor of Florida. He clinched the Democratic nomination in a major upset victory over party establishment favorites, all of whom were either millionaires or billionaires. Endorsed by self-described ‘democratic socialist’ senator Bernie Sanders, Gillum won out with a platform calling for Medicare for All, a $15 per hour minimum wage, higher taxes on corporations, and reforming the state’s criminal injustice system.

DeSantis’ racist smear came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s own attacks on Gillum via Twitter, calling him a “failed socialist mayor.” Trump endorsed DeSantis, a frequent Fox News contributor, early in the primary, which allowed the rabidly right-wing congressman to easily defeat Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam for the GOP nomination.

Racists have a long history in the U.S. of comparing African Americans to ‘monkeys’ or ‘apes’ dating back to the beginning of the slave trade. Even after the civil war, propaganda produced by white chauvinists and the Ku Klux Klan often portrayed Black people as primates to dehumanize them. Most recently, TV personality Roseanne Barr saw her re-launched show cancelled after comparing Valerie Jarrett, an African American woman who advised former president Barack Obama, to ‘apes’.

DeSantis’ smear drew widespread outrage across the country. Even Sandra Smith went on the defensive and claimed Fox News didn’t condone DeSantis’ comments – laughable for anyone familiar with the network’s regular programming.

Gillum accurately clocked both Trump and DeSantis’ attacks on him, saying on CNN that they were “scraping from the bottom of the barrel” and doing “the bidding of big business and big lobbyists.”

“Frankly, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the rural panhandle of Florida, or in the I-4 corridor, or the very populous and very diverse south Florida – if you’re working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you’re not happy,” continued Gillum. “If you’re worried about your next illness driving you into bankruptcy, you’re uncertain about that and uneasy. If you see the toxic algae blooms that are flowing out the eastside and westside of this state, killing off sea life and also impacting our quality of life, you’re also pretty upset about that. What my candidacy offered was basically a foil for all those issues, to say we can talk about those things and give our voters something to vote for, and not just against.”

Gillum pulled together a coalition of grassroots activists and organizers across the state to win the Democratic primary. Activists in Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Orlando, Miami and elsewhere ran an insurgent campaign on a fraction of the money possessed by his wealthy opponents. They won by taking Gillum’s platform, which speaks to the real needs of Florida’s working class, to the people. Like the GOP, the Democratic Party is also a party of big business with a long history of running bankers and 1% politicians for governor in Florida. But Gillum’s upset victory – and especially the mass movement behind it – has made DeSantis and the particular class interests he serves very nervous.

It’s worth quoting DeSantis’ remarks at some length because they reveal something important about racist discrimination in the U.S. and whose interest it promotes. DeSantis called Gillum “an articulate spokesman for these far left views,” and “a charismatic candidate.” But he continued, “I watched those Democrat debates and none of that is my cup of tea, but he performed better than the other people there, so we’ve got to work hard so that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let’s build off the success we’ve had with Governor Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That is not going to work. That’s not going to be good for Florida.”

With remarkable candor, DeSantis acknowledges the unique challenge that Gillum and his message poses to the right-wing business interests in Florida. Unlike the centrist, pro-business millionaires and billionaires who ran against him in the Democratic primary, Gillum’s message spoke to the real issues faced by Florida’s working class – low wages, lack of health care, unaffordable education, and mass incarceration. It’s a message that can unite the state’s working-class majority of all nationalities in November and defeat the Republican nominee, which hasn’t happened since 1994.

When DeSantis refers to “the success we’ve had with Governor Scott,” the ‘we’ he’s talking about are the rich, big business, and corporations. Florida’s ruling capitalist class has done quite well under Governor Rick Scott, who has delivered massive profits, deep tax cuts, weakened unions, fewer protections for workers and the environment, and crumbling infrastructure. Our state’s working class, on the other hand, has seen their lives get worse in Scott’s eight-year term. Looking to Trump for inspiration, DeSantis wants to deepen Scott’s attacks on African Americans, Latinos, public education and the entire working class on behalf of the ruling class.

Since corporate shills like DeSantis can’t attract much mass support to their big business agenda, they fall back on racism and bigotry to divide working people and hold down the oppressed. Historically, the ruling class in the U.S. drums up racist sentiments to re-direct the anger of many white workers away from their destructive policies and towards oppressed people. Trump and DeSantis have continued this tried-and-true divide-and-conquer tactic, especially by targeting immigrants and Muslims.

Solidarity between workers of all nationalities and genders is the strongest weapon our class has to fight for our interests and win. Racist discrimination is a feature of U.S. society and it is a tool of the bosses, big business and the ruling class that is used to exploit and oppress entire nations. It creates real inequalities between whites and other nationalities in terms of income, housing, and more. With this injustice as its base, racism erodes solidarity. It’s used to break white workers away from their natural allies – African Americans, Latinos and workers of other nationalities – and weaken the entire working class in the process.

Here we saw DeSantis using blatant racism to attack a candidate whose message has broad appeal to Florida’s working class. He knows the Florida GOP’s 1% policies cannot compete with Gillum’s platform to raise wages, provide health care to everyone, stop mass incarceration, and more. So he falls back on racist attacks on Gillum aimed at breaking off white supporters.

Even DeSantis’ redbaiting of Gillum, who is not and has not called himself a socialist, echoes Klan-era propaganda, which targeted both socialists and African Americans alike. Many of the authors of the Taft-Hartley Act, and the Right to Work laws which significantly weakened unions, supported the Klan and couched their assault on unions in terms of fighting ‘socialism.’ DeSantis follows in this long, disgraceful line of Southern right-wing attack dogs.

Florida’s working class has every reason to oppose DeSantis’ racist attacks on Gillum and fight for a better way of life. Eight years of Scott’s policies have ravaged our schools, our unions, our communities and our lives. To confront these challenges, the community organizers and activists whose work in Florida paved the way for Gillum’s remarkable victory must continue building fighting unions and mass people’s movements – and that means rejecting DeSantis and Trump’s racist agenda.

#JacksonvilleFL #InJusticeSystem #Labor #OppressedNationalities #US #Editorials #AfricanAmerican #Antiracism #Elections #AndrewGillum #RonDeSantis #2018FloridaGovernorElection #ElectoralPolitics