Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR).

The National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) condemns attacks by Governor Ron DeSantis and the right wing dominated legislature in Florida. During this current legislative session, the Florida Legislature is poised to pass legislation targeting the movements for police accountability, the labor movement, the movement to end white supremacy and remove confederate monuments, attacks on the right to organize for a free Palestine, as well as continued attacks on LGBTQ students, and a continued onslaught on the immigrant community and all oppressed peoples.

NAARPR and all our branches and affiliate organizations call for national solidarity with all the progressive forces in Florida fighting back in this political climate, including the numerous NAARPR branches and affiliate organizations who are fighting on the frontlines against these repressive forces.

One especially dangerous bill for the national movement against police crimes is Senate Bill 576/ House Bill 601. This bill, the first of its kind nationally, seeks to ban all methods of civilian oversight from local cities and counties, concentrating even more power into the hands of police chiefs, sheriffs and police unions. We understand that what racist and bigoted forces are seeking to do in Florida seeks to serve as a model for their efforts nationally.

As a national mass defense organization, we pledge to stand with those in Florida fighting against these attacks on our movements and our right to organize. We call for every section of the people’s movement to do the same.

Dump DeSantis!

Stop the attacks on the people’s movements!

Kill the bill! Defeat SB 576/HB 601!

Community Oversight and Community Control of the Police Now!!

#Florida #InJusticeSystem #NAARPR #CommunityControlOfPolice #HB576 #HB601 #DeSantis

USF SDS’s demands were that the university take a stand against House Bill 999, the latest in Governor DeSantis’ attacks against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and that the USF administration take immediate action to increase Black enrollment and restore the Diversity department at their College of Arts and Sciences.

The Tampa 4 includes Gia Davila, Chrisley Carpio, Laura Rodriguez and Jeanie Kida. They face trumped-up charges of assault or battery of law enforcement officers, resisting an officer without violence to his or her person, and interrupting a school.

UCF students unaffiliated with Students for a Democratic Society saw the videos online and organized an event in solidarity with the student organizers. The solidarity protest consisted of protesters waving signs and talking to students about the Florida legislature's continued attacks on diversity programs, the campaign USF SDS is fighting for, and the repression of activism happening across the state, both against student and community organizations.

The arrests of the Tampa 4 are part of a string of repression aimed at activists that has swept the state of Florida in recent years. From the anti-protest law passed last year to recent moves to curtail public demonstrations at the state capitol building, Florida is seeking to quell the public discontent arising from its repressive policies. These policies include attacks on diversity programs, attacks on reproductive rights, attacks on trans rights, and attacks on union organizing. One protester said, “It’s important to show solidarity with our student comrades who were brutalized and arrested by the police,” because the police are simply trying to intimidate and silence student dissent against these policies.

Another organizer explained how important it is to “fight for our right to fight.” They continued that protesting “will become harder as DeSantis reaches further into our education system,” so now is the time to organize and unite to fight back against this repression.

Jacob Muldoon, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), summed up that, “Building a mass movement and striving for unity among scattered organizations is a vital step to stand up, fight back and deal blows to our common enemy: the monopoly capitalists.”

Muldoon continued, “An attack on one student is an attack on all students,” and said that solidarity events like this are important to building a nationwide student movement capable of fighting and winning.

#OrlandoFL #students #Florida

Tampa, FL – On Wednesday, September 14, Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society organized a protest as a part of a National Day of Action around reproductive rights. The rally brought out about 30 students to march across campus to show their support for abortion rights. Members from many other student groups gave speeches to show solidarity on this issue.

Diego Falcon, a member of UndocUnited, said that he “saw this coming since the Trump administration” and that “the abuse of women in ICE detention centers facing forced hysterectomies” was a precursor to the loss of bodily autonomy.

Florida’s own abortion ban, House Bill 5, was passed at the beginning of this year. The bill bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and allows no exceptions for rape or incest.

“Despite the passing of HB5 and the overturn of Roe v. Wade we are still out here to demand safe, legal abortion,” said Eithne Silva of Tampa Bay SDS. “We demand that the Florida government repeal HB5. The right to a safe, legal abortion should be available to anyone and the law should reflect that.”

Tampa Bay SDS has a long history protesting against HB5. They mobilized to Florida’s state capitol in response to the bill when it was first presented and again when it was voted on.

“We were out there to remind everyone that we are still fighting,” said Bashak Newman, a member of Tampa Bay SDS.

The marchers chanted, “My body, my choice” and “Repeal HB5”. The protest had support from students on campus, with many expressing solidarity by joining the march.

#TampaFL #students #Florida #AbortionRights #reproductiveJustice

On July 2nd, less than 100 Patriot Front members from across the country convened in Boston for a march through the downtown. Patriot Front is a white nationalist hate group that engages in street protests, offensive attack training, and utilizes American fascist imagery for propaganda and recruitment purposes. Outfitted with steel police shields and flags depicting the fasces, a symbol used by Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, the cowardly group marched with their faces covered in an attempted show of force. Additionally, members assaulted a local man, requiring him to be transported to the hospital. No arrests were made.

This kind of “show of force” is not new for the group, especially in recent months. On December 4th, nearly 100 members traveled to DC to march on the National Mall while carrying shields and chanting “Reclaim America.” On June 11th, 31 members of Patriot Front from across the country were arrested outside of a local Pride event in Idaho. They were arrested with riot gear, a smoke grenade, shields and a written plan for their attempted riot.

There is a consistent trend in these actions that must be discussed: the mass traveling of people from across the country to show an inflated number of members. We know from leaked messages and police reports that the members attending these acts of intimidation have coordinated travel across state lines. Additionally, leaked chats have shown that members are required to commit vandalism and attend these events to be a part of the group. This shows that any identified Patriot Front member must be treated as an active threat to the community they are invading.

Member Calvin Stow-Ortiz, alias Arthur FL, has proven to be a highly motivated fascist; he travels hundreds of miles for events, engages in marching and hand-to-hand training activities, and is being used to further recruit at Florida State University and in the greater Tallahassee area. Stow-Ortiz, stepson of a Tampa Police Department officer Antonio Ortiz-Saldana, has traveled to DC, Georgia, and throughout Florida to engage in vandalism and fascist organizing. He was identified en route to Boston and there are reports of his being in Massachusetts over the weekend. This evidence, as well as historical precedence, leaves us with little doubt that Stow-Ortiz was present at this march.

FSU Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) will continue their calls for the removal of Stow-Ortiz from Florida State University, which would greatly hamper his fascist recruitment and propagandizing. FSU administration has been completely ineffective at protecting students from an active fascist presence on their campus. They will continue to turn a blind eye until it is too late. FSU SDS calls on all people (classmates, teachers, etc.) who know Calvin Stow-Ortiz to isolate this fascist. The university and the police will not do anything without outside pressure, which is why everyday people must act. We keep us safe!

#Florida #FL #StudentsForADemocraticSocietySDS #Antiracism #Antifascism

The Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC), along with various other local Asian American organizations such as InterVarsity, FSU’s Asian American Student Union, Asian Coalition of Tallahassee, and FSU’s Filipino Student Association spoke out at the event.

Co-organizer Tina Lu, representing InterVarsity, stated “we wanted to organize this event so that Asian Americans in our community can grieve.”

Ireland Hadley, vice president of AASU, highlighted the system oppression of racism and capitalism that we as a community need to address. He urged the crowd to fight back, pointing out “the world can be changed by one person and that person can be you!”

President of the Filipino Student Association, Sharry Solis, touched on the emotional weight of the loss of the eight victims, stating “Six is a number too big. One is a number too big, their pain is our pain!” and noted that if we, as a society, took fetishization seriously, then this wouldn’t have been possible. Solis also highlighted her disappointment in the lack of response from FSU’s leadership to rising Asian hate crimes.

Aurora Hansen, founder of Asian Coalition of Tallahassee, led the moment of silence. Everyone turned on their tea lights and held the silence for 80 seconds, to represent the eight lives that were taken, as the rally transitioned to the final performer, Kelsey Tesalona, singing Without You by AJ Rafael.

There was an open mic period to encourage members of the Tallahassee community to let their voices be heard.

The event closed with Tanvi Marulendra, co-organizer of this event, thanking people for coming, highlighting resources for grieving during these hard times.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #Antiracism #Atlanta #atlantaShooting #AntiAsianHate

Tampa, FL – On May 14, Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a car protest at the University of South Florida (USF) to demand COVID-19 relief funds for undocumented students. USF has offered no financial help for undocumented students during the pandemic and the only COVID-19 aid for students is the CARES Act Fund, for which DACA and undocumented students are ineligible.

Students and SDS members parked near the USF president’s mansion on campus for socially-distanced speeches and chants demanding that USF provide relief for undocumented students. Simon Rowe, a member of SDS stated, “DACA students are more at risk for losing housing or income compared to other students. USF needs to account for the increased risk and lack of federal aid by providing aid to undocumented students using their own funds.” After the speeches were finished, the protest formed a car caravan where students drove near the mansion while honking to further their demand.

This is Tampa Bay SDS’s second action demanding COVID-19 aid for undocumented students, and SDS will continue to make these demands until USF provides funds specifically for undocumented and DACA students.

#TampaFL #ImmigrantRights #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #SDS #ImmigrantsRights #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #USF #TampaBay

Miami, FL – More than 2 million Floridians have now applied for unemployment benefits. Only a fraction of the applications have even been processed and even fewer workers have received payments. Florida’s unemployment system was already terrible before the crisis and it has completely collapsed under pressure from COVID-19.

Florida’s online application process for unemployment was designed to fail. It was created by right-wing former Governor Rick Scott with big business in mind. Its goals were to be as confusing as possible for any worker trying to submit an application and to reject as many applications as possible for minor errors. That way benefits could be cut, and big businesses could pay less in unemployment taxes.

Even those close to current Republican Governor Ron DeSantis admit as much. One DeSantis advisor was quoted in the online magazine Politico as saying: “It’s a shit sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott. It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”

Since March, millions of people have been laid off due to COVID-19 and Floridians have been reporting serious problems with accessing the system. The website had technical difficulties and was even shut down for three days to resolve the issues. Phonelines were overwhelmed as there were not enough state workers to process the huge number of calls. Even for those who actually managed to complete an application there have been big problems. 250,000 applications were wrongly rejected because simply because they filed in March instead of April. Those people were asked to reapply. Meanwhile they are left without any income for weeks, perhaps months.

Trying to ease pressure on the system, the governor brought back paper applications. DeSantis was even forced to remove some of the strict requirements, like weeklong waiting periods before money is disbursed and providing proof every two weeks that you are actively looking for work. Due to the changes, last week the percentage of applicants being paid was up to a meager 22%. This represented a dramatic increase from a week before when only 6% of those who applied for unemployment had been paid.

Even when the government pays out, the benefits offered are not enough for working people to get by. In fact, Florida’s unemployment payments are some of the lowest in the country. At most unemployed workers are given a measly $275 per week. On top of that, those benefits are only available for 12 weeks. After that you are kicked out of the system. There is a law that allows for increases in the duration of unemployment benefits based on the overall unemployment rate. That means that if the official unemployment rate goes above 5% then people can be paid for longer than 12 weeks. However, that increase will only kick in in June because the calculation is based on a three-month average. By then many workers will have been left without income, totally abandoned by the government. Meanwhile there has been no moratorium on rent payments for working families.

Florida won’t release its official unemployment numbers for April until May 22. However, there does not seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for its workers. Some economists are calculating the national unemployment rate to be 20%. The nature of Florida’s economy means that number may be much worse. The tourism industry and farming industry are the largest sectors of the economy. Both are deeply impacted by the pandemic.

Florida has the highest concentration of service sector jobs in the country, many based in cities like Orlando where Disney and Universal are some of the largest employers. With few tourists willing to travel and the state’s significant population of elderly baby-boomers sheltering in place, the future looks bleak for the hospitality business. We have seen farms experiencing serious difficulties due to interruptions to food supply chains. Some have even been dumping milk and other produce, abandoning fields of crops and euthanizing animals. As long as restaurants remain closed, produce prices seem likely to stay low. Owners are already suggesting cutting wages for farmworkers.

As the state moves into hurricane season, a storm is brewing for Florida’s public sector workers as well. As tax revenues fall, the right-wing legislature will try to impose vicious cutbacks and layoffs to balance the budget. Without a doubt a serious fight will be on for the future of workers’ pensions, union contracts and public education in the Sunshine State.

#MiamiFlorida #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #Unemployment #US #Healthcare #Florida #economics #DonaldTrump #SunshineState

Tallahassee, FL – On March 20, Tallahassee Police Department Officer Zackri Jones killed 31-year-old Mychael Johnson. Mychael Johnson was the second person shot and killed by Jones, and the first since Lawrence Revell became chief of police in January. Revell’s nomination in November and his later appointment led to protests due to his killing of George Williams, a Black teenager, in September 1996.

The Tallahassee Police Department has issued statements claiming that Johnson had attempted to steal a car and had fought with Officer Justin Davidson before being shot and killed by Jones. However, the family is questioning whether the police have told the full story.

“Mychael was fun, loving, intelligent, he was a giver, and a protector, he was a son, brother, father, and a great friend to have known,” Johnson’s sister Mildred Richardson said. “I think that there is way more to the story that we aren’t getting and the small details that we have received just doesn’t sound like him at all, it’s just not sitting well and adding up with the family.”

The family is also questioning whether the police were justified in using deadly force.

“What I think happened is that he was afraid, he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but he didn’t want to go back and have to spend time in a broken prison system,” said Mychael Johnson’s mother Evelyn Johnson. “I feel like he was running for his life because he was scared. It’s sad that I reached out to his probation officer, the police office, the Apalachee center, and the Leon county sheriff’s department, before this point. And the only thing that they assisted with was taking his life.”

The Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC) has criticized the lack of transparency from TPD. They organized community members to call into police and city officials on March 25 to ask for the release of body cam or dash footage and for an independent investigation led by the community.

“We can’t let the police investigate themselves, as we see time and time again that the police never have a transparent process,” said TCAC President Regina Joseph. “We need an independent investigation for this case, and every case from now. That is why we are fighting for community control of the police. We need an elected body that will investigate all police crimes and bring peace and justice to our community.”

“I want people to know what type of person that he was, I don’t want his name to go in vain,” said Mildred Richardson. She continued, “And I also want people to be more aware of the police violence against the Black community, and that if we all stick together so many things can be accomplished.”

#TallahasseeFL #PoliceBrutality #PeoplesStruggles #Racism #Florida #BLM

Tampa, FL – On January 4, Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a protest against U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. The event was in response to recent aggression from the Trump administration against Iran following the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. “Shortly after we heard the news, we decided that it was important for us to organize a demonstration against a new war as quickly as possible,” said Matthew Wheat of Tampa Bay SDS.

Students and community members held signs and chanted on the corner of a busy intersection in Temple Terrace, home to the University of South Florida, which has many contracts with the U.S. military and is complicit in funneling students into the war machine. Temple Terrace is also home to a large Middle Eastern community, many of whom immigrated to the area as a result of the destruction of their homes due to previous U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. The protesters received an overwhelming show of solidarity from passersby, including honking, thumbs up and shouts of support.

During the protest, speeches highlighted the United States’ pattern of military intervention across the globe, which has resulted in countless civilian casualties throughout the years. Additionally, speeches emphasized that the American people have nothing to gain from wars abroad, echoing the chant: “1, 2, 3, 4! We won’t fight a rich man’s war!”

The event was successful in forwarding the anti-war movement in Tampa Bay and pushing back against pro-war rhetoric in the media. According to Matthew Wheat, Tampa Bay SDS, “hopes to continue to raise public consciousness about the inevitable catastrophes that would result from a war with Iran.”

#TampaFL #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #SDS #PeoplesStruggles #Iran #Florida

Jacksonville, FL – The outcome of Jacksonville’s 2019 runoff elections looked remarkably like the general election back in March. Even fewer people participated in the runoff, which saw voter turnout sink from an already dismal 24% in March to just 14.35% two months later. By all accounts, Republicans came out on top. Dixie money ruled the day again, with the candidate who raised and spent the most money winning every single runoff.

Five city council seats went to a runoff after no candidate received a majority of the vote in March. While Democrats elected three city council members, only three of the five runoffs pitted a Republican against a Democrat. In those competitive races, Republicans won two of three. Districts 8 and 10 featured two Democrats facing off against one another.Lenny Curry will go into his second term with a Republican supermajority on the city council. In actuality, his level of support goes beyond party affiliation. Two of the Democrats elected, Tommy Hazouri and Ju’Coby Pittman, owe their wins to Republicans. Hazouri, a former mayor of Jacksonville from a business family, proved that class lines run deeper than party lines by openly endorsing Curry for re-election. While Democrats declined to field their own candidate for mayor, most backed former city council president Anna Lopez Brosche. Hazouri’s gamble paid off, drawing ire from progressives and mountains of cash from Curry’s donors. Pittman, on the other hand, owes her meteoric rise in city politics to Republican Rick Scott, the former governor and current U.S. senator from Florida. Scott selected Pittman to replace District 8 Councilwoman Katrina Brown, who lost her seat after getting indicted for fraud in a federal investigation. Brown, who represented one of the handful of majority-Black districts in Jacksonville, drew the fury of Curry and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office after refusing to vote for the mayor’s massive budgetary handouts to the police. Her indictment soon followed, allowing Scott to appoint Pittman in her place.The Duval Democrat catastropheMay’s runoff proved devastating for the Duval County Democratic Party, already on life support from the March election. Lisa King, a real estate developer and former Democratic Party committeewoman, has spent half a decade trying to win local office. When Republican Anna Lopez Brosche ran for mayor, King hoped to take her vacant seat on the council. Some have speculated that the two worked out a formal deal to this effect. But Curry soundly crushed Brosche in March, leaving hundreds of thousands in leftover campaign contributions to funnel into King’s opponent and fellow political insider, Terrance Freeman. Out-raised and out-spent, King lost to Freeman 46% to 54%.The most heartbreaking loss for Democrats came in District 14, which comprises a wide and diverse swath of neighborhoods on the westside. It was won by Andrew Gillum in the state’s 2018 gubernatorial election. Democrat Sunny Gettinger, a tech industry professional formerly with Google, ran on a platform of infrastructure development against Republican Randy DeFoor, a vice president for Fidelity National Finance. DeFoor out-raised Gettinger almost two-to-one in campaign contributions, drawing a total of $424,000 between her campaign and political action committee, versus Gettinger’s $213,000. With the full backing of Curry’s well-oiled machine, DeFoor flooded voters’ mailboxes with deceitful attack ads and squeaked out a 51% victory over her opponent.Why do the Democrats lose so badly in Jacksonville, a city where they enjoy a 28,000 registered voter advantage over Republicans? For one, they usually get out-spent on the campaign trail. Like the rest of the country, the candidate with the most money wins their election most of the time. But just 87,318 people voted in the May runoff – just over 14% of registered voters – meaning the vast majority of people in Jacksonville aren’t swayed either way by attack ads or campaign mailers.It’s a problem of class. The Democratic Party may offer a more centrist approach to capitalist rule, but it represents the same ruling capitalist class interests as the Republicans. We can see this plainly in the type of candidates who they field locally: small business owners, upper-middle class professionals and mid-level developers. Unfortunately for these Democrats, big business and developers already have a party to push their interests locally, namely the Republicans, and most are quite satisfied with Mayor Curry’s more authoritarian pro-business policies.Curry and the Republican-dominated city council push policies that help big business and developers at the expense of the working-class majority. During the mayor’s first term, child poverty rose 12.2% and more than half of all students in Duval County Public Schools are ‘low-income.’ Roughly one in six residents live in poverty. Wages lag behind the national average. Schools are falling apart. Rent costs are the fifth fastest growing in the country. Scant public transportation leaves many workers cut off from better jobs, and many Black neighborhoods on in the city’s northwest quadrant lack basic sewage infrastructure.But rather than running on a platform to make life better for the working class, the Democrats hardly run on a platform at all. The candidates generally put forward vague calls for more ‘development’ or ‘supporting law enforcement’ to reduce the city’s rising crime rate. All of these broad planks fit perfectly with the party leadership’s own class interests, namely those of capitalists. But to the vast majority of working people, this makes them virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans. With no reasonable prospect of their lives substantially improving, the working-class majority sits it out. This allows tools of big business, like Curry, to win re-election despite receiving support from just 14% of the total registered voters.Labor and the working class in JacksonvilleTwo serious progressive forces exist in Jacksonville that can mobilize a mass base to challenge the power of Dixie capital: organized labor and the Black community.Since the end of the civil war, Jacksonville has served as a major logistics hub in the southern United States. Its large port and access to the Saint Johns River made it a significant shipping center for international trade and the site of two large naval bases. When railroads opened the rest of the state to northern investment, Jacksonville became a central junction for feeding rail loads in and out of Florida. Today, the city sits at the crossroads of Interstate 95, which stretches from Miami to New York, and Interstate 10, which stretches across the southern states to Los Angeles, California. Jacksonville’s heavy concentration of logistics gives the city a huge industrial working class, numbering around 500,000. The logistics industry itself employs about 60,000 workers, and workers in three of the four largest logistics employers – UPS, CSX railroad, and Crowley Maritime Corporation – are unionized, mostly with the Teamsters. Roughly 40,000 workers and their families are represented by unions in north Florida, according to the North Florida Central Labor Council. The biggest unions in the city are Duval Teachers Union, Teamsters Local 512, the building trades unions, and AFSCME, which represents city and state workers in Duval County. Dock workers at JAXPORT, represented by the Longshoremen, also remain a powerful section of Jacksonville’s working class.That said, the vast majority of workers in Jacksonville are non-union, owing in part to the state’s anti-union policies and the city government’s hostile attitude towards labor. This has serious ramifications for the power of the working class in city, state and national politics. In the absence of organization, most workers don’t vote. Among the city’s unions, labor leaders have a difficult time turning out their members to vote for endorsed candidates. Like much of the country’s unions, top labor officials will endorse and cut checks for candidates with little member involvement.Black JacksonvilleThe Black community is the other major progressive force in Jacksonville – one that overlaps significantly with the working class as a whole. African Americans make up about 31% of the city’s population and an even larger percentage of the city’s working class. Staggeringly, they also comprise about 44% of those living in poverty, which is particularly concentrated on the city’s majority-Black north side. Facing decades of systemic underdevelopment in their neighborhoods and discrimination, it’s not surprising that Black workers make up a disproportionate section of north Florida’s labor movement. Black small businesses, too, face a strangulation by city planners, who restrict the flow of loans and capital to the north side. Gentrification programs, masked under the banner of ‘re-development,’ aim to displace Black working class and poor residents from their homes. Springfield and other neighborhoods in the city’s ‘urban core’ remain the target of developers, who hope to buy up prime real estate they themselves abandoned in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Jacksonville ranks second on the top ten cities with the lowest Black neighborhood property valuation, which declined 47% from 2012 to 2016. When the market and rising rents won’t do the trick, the city relies on an outsized, bloated police force, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO), to brutally repress the community. From 2015 to 2017, African Americans made up 63% of those shot by police. Based on the windfall of campaign donations by commercial and real estate developers in the 2019 local elections, Mayor Curry’s second term will step up this offensive.Shared interests and the possibility of a strategic allianceBoth the entire working class and the Black community as a whole have an overlapping interest in ending the rule of Dixie capital in Jacksonville. The city’s Chamber of Commerce boasts “positive tax advantages” and “affordable construction and real estate” for employers. This is just business-speak for “we pay little to no taxes for social programs to help working families” and “wages are lower here.” They’re not wrong. Wages lag $2.50 per hour behind the national average, and even further behind in major occupations like nursing and construction. There are two main reasons for this: One, the low union density in the city. Curry and the Republican-dominated city council promote this by favoring non-union construction companies for city building projects, which rely on low-wage, no-benefit, out-of-state labor. Second, the presence of a section of unemployed for under-employed workers, who employers can call back into the workforce to drive down wages. Because of ongoing discrimination, inequalities in education, over-policing and underdevelopment, Black unemployment remains stubbornly high at around 7 to 9%, even as total unemployment numbers hit record lows.Police accountability remains another important area of united interest between these two forces. Under Curry, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has seen its budget substantially increase every year despite a rising violent crime rate and the state’s second-lowest crime solving rate. Under the 2018-2019 budget, a staggering 36 cents of every dollar went to the JSO. African Americans are disproportionately arrested and prosecuted, but poor and working-class white neighborhoods, particularly on the westside, also suffer from the city’s expansive police state.In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. criticized the U.S. war on Vietnam, drawing an explicit link between the amount spent on military and the poverty experienced by the country’s working families. “Despite feeble protestations to the contrary,” he said, “the promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.” It’s no exaggeration to say that the promises of a better life for the majority of families are shot down on the JSO’s own battlefields on Jacksonville’s north side. The JSO wages a war on the working class and Black community that drains the resources necessary to fix public schools, expand public transportation, rebuild and expand infrastructure, and reduce poverty.Strong unions and mass movements are the way forwardDuval Democrats can call all they want for more ‘modern’ development. So long as they continue voting for expanding the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, they make improving our conditions impossible. The JSO will have to be reduced and put under community control to actually tackle crime and its social causes. It’s naive nonsense from professionals and technocrats to say otherwise. With Dixie capital firmly in control of the city government, activists and organizers will have to look outside the Democratic Party to confront their offensive. Unions will need to energize their rank and file and get them directly involved in the fight. Powerful mass movements will need to expand their reach and deepen the struggle for community control of the police.To that end, the Jacksonville Community Action Committee announced a mass protest of Mayor Curry and Sheriff Williams’ inauguration on Monday, July 1 at 8 a.m. at the Florida Times Union Center. In a few months, the new Republican-dominated city council will convene to discuss a new budget. The few Democrats on the council would do well to stand against any expansion for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and push an alternate program designed to strike at poverty, underdevelopment and crumbling schools. Whether they do or not, Jacksonville’s growing people’s movements are up to the challenge.Dave Schneider is a union worker and community organizer in Jacksonville, Florida.

#JacksonvilleFL #PeoplesStruggles #Florida

Tampa, FL – On March 10, over a dozen Tampa community, student and labor leaders gathered at Lykes Gaslight Park for a protest against President Donald Trump’s anti-woman agenda. Since coming into office, Trump has led an all-out assault on women’s rights, including defunding abortion services, erasing sections of Title IX that protect women from sexual assault and discrimination, and locking asylum-seeking women and children in cages in the southwestern United States. In the spirit of the women’s marches that occurred in response to Trump’s inauguration, protesters chanted “Pro-life is a lie, you don’t care if people die,” and “When women are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!”

Angelica Schreifer, member of Tampa Students for a Democratic Society said, “I’m opposed to Trump’s policies because they’re negatively impacting the lives of women everywhere. It’s important to make a stand against him and his administration and bring awareness to these issues. By organizing and speaking out we can encourage others to get together and do the same.”

The protest was among the many across the country marking International Women’s Day.

#TampaFL #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #WomensDay

Tallahassee, FL – On January 26 dozens gathered at the Florida State Capitol building in protest of Donald Trump's recognition of the right-wing self-appointed presidency of Juan Guaido in Venezuela. The democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has called this a coup attempt ordered by the U.S. government.

“We should value the voices of the people. Juan Guaido did not run in the previous election and was not voted in. It’s imperative to recognize leaders who were democratically elected, not political figures who seek to undermine the masses and simply declare themselves president,” said Isabela Casanova, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and organizer of the rally. Casanova continued, “Donald Trump does not care about the people of Venezuela, he only wants to take their oil and help his friends on Wall Street.”

Protesters held a banner stating, “Hands off Venezuela: Say no to Trump’s coup!” and signs reading “Respect Venezuelan sovereignty” and “No blood for oil.” Jamila Lorde, a member of SDS, led the crowd in chants including “No wall, no detention, no U.S. intervention” and “Trump wants war, Trump wants oil, hands off Venezuelan soil.”

“I protested because I’m fed up with the interventionism and destruction the U.S. causes in their never-ending quest for money and power,” said Denzel Pierre, an FSU student who spoke at the rally. “I think people in the U.S. should know the similarities between U.S. intervention in Venezuela and U.S. intervention in the past. I wish more people understood the damage of U.S. sanctions to the Venezuelan people and how the U.S.’s past policies have helped sabotage Venezuela.”

#TallahasseeFL #AntiwarMovement #Venezuela #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #Maduro #Trump

Doral, FL- Fifty passionate activists gathered on a sidewalk across from the Univision TV station in Miami, January 26, to denounce U.S. attempts to overthrow the democratically-elected government in Venezuela. The protest targeted the overt and illegal coup plans being hatched by Donald Trump and the U.S government, and media stations like Univision and CNN who continue to spread propaganda pushing for intervention and regime change.

The energized crowd shouted, “Hands off Venezuela!” and “I,2,3,4 intervention no more!” They held signs and banners in English and Spanish along with pictures of late-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and current President Nicholas Maduro. Venezuelan flags waved in the air as cars and people passed by. One protester held a sign written in Spanish that read “Venezuela does not have a dictatorship, it has oil.”

This bold action was held in the heart of Doral, a city in the Miami area known for being home to Trump National golf resort and an extremely right-wing, wealthy Venezuelan community. In fact, Doral has the highest percentage of Venezuelans than any other U.S. city – several of whom shouted obscenities and derogatory cries, as well as threats to the protesters as they walked or drove by.

Those in attendance represented many backgrounds and nationalities. Speakers representing Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, and Nicaragua were some of those who addressed the crowd by denouncing U.S. intervention in their respective home countries. The event was organized by the Emergency Hands Off Venezuela Committee, a coalition the represents several progressive South Florida organizations, and that will continue organizing against any U.S coup attempts in Latin America.

#DoralFL #AntiwarMovement #Venezuela #PeoplesStruggles #Florida #Maduro #Trump

Jacksonville, FL – AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) held a rally and march to end the government shutdown on January 19. Over 10 unions were represented, including teachers, electricians and nearly a dozen rank-and-file Teamsters. Several speakers gave personal accounts of how they and their families had been affected. The 70 union members marched down to a busy intersection while chanting “End the shutdown, call the vote!”

Protesters held signs that read “29 days without pay” and “Do what is right.” They stood and waved to honking cars and semi trucks. Bike police couldn’t resist coming over to harass the members near the end of the rally, but protesters stood fast. Union members gave several testimonies to local media that covered the downtown rally.

Joyce Westley, CWA retiree, gave her thoughts on the shutdown: “I think it’s unfair to those workers affected because they are just being used as pawns. It is inconsiderate to those families, the hardships that are being caused. And not just for the workers who are going to be paid, there are more who will not get to be caught up with their money so I’m standing out here for them. I hope our congress; the senate and the president can come together to get this resolved. The wall – that’s not a major issue here. It's terrible to cause so much hardship for so many people. It needs to stop now.”

#JacksonvilleFL #PeoplesStruggles #furlough #governmentShutdown #Florida

This is part two of a two-part series. View part one here. The specter of socialism in South Florida

It’s notable that Gillum saw narrower margins of victory in the three largest counties in South Florida, which typically go big for Democrats. He won, but he needed to win bigger to overcome DeSantis’ mega-margins in rural Florida. Some have pointed out that DeSantis’ better-than-expected performance in Miami-Dade and Broward came from his Cuban-American, Spanish-speaking running mate, Representative Jeanette Nunez. Neither Gillum nor his running mate, Chris King – nor Bill Nelson, for that matter – speak Spanish, precluding them from direct appeals to many Latino voters.

The far more decisive factor in DeSantis’ performance in South Florida was blatantly pandering to the right-wing Cuban exile community, along with wealthy Venezuelan and Colombian expatriates. Elections analyst Giancarlo Sopo estimates that DeSantis won 66% of Cuban-American voters in South Florida to Gillum’s 33%, accounting for a 160,000-vote difference. Remarkably, DeSantis improved on Trump’s 2016 vote totals among Cuban-Americans and picked up 78,000 more votes than his master.

How did he do it? From the minute DeSantis clenched the Republican nomination, the former congressman sought to label Gillum a ‘socialist.’ Scott and the GOP joined in, sending out mailers and running TV ads comparing Gillum to Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the late Fidel Castro. It earned DeSantis the support of reactionary Cuban exile organizations like the Inspire America Foundation and the Bay of Pigs memorial society, Brigade 2506.

Gillum ran on the most left-wing platform Florida has seen from a gubernatorial candidate in decades, but he is not a socialist. He sidestepped the question in a primary debate and moved away from more left-wing issues, like Medicare for All, during the general election. At one point, Gillum even tweeted out condemnations of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and Maduro – a move ridiculed by left-wing activists. But these ham-fisted attempts did nothing to downplay the fears of Cuban exiles.

Of course, the anti-socialist attacks on Gillum worked well among white small business owners too – another natural mass base for the GOP in Florida. DeSantis coupled his ‘Red scare’ rhetoric with blatantly racist dog whistles, which the Dixie ruling class has historically used against unions, communists and the Black liberation movement. It reflects a growing fear of socialism by the ruling class, and I suspect Florida was a test-run for the GOP’s national rhetoric to come.

Amendment 4: Game-changer, or too-little-too-late?

All but one of the twelve constitutional amendments on the ballot passed. The most important of these, Amendment 4, passed with 65% voting yes to automatically restore the right to vote for non-violent ex-offenders. Amendment 4 can, in theory, restore the right to vote for over 10% of eligible voters – and over 20% of Black voters, which significantly reshapes the electorate.

On the other hand, it’s also possible that these gains will be offset by the Trump-directed census and redistricting process, which will begin in 2020. Florida’s electoral maps are heavily gerrymandered, despite passing two constitutional amendments to supposedly fix the issue in 2010. Gillum as governor could have vetoed a new set of gerrymandered district maps. DeSantis will do no such thing. The Republicans have the institutional power to counter the effects of Amendment 4 with a more aggressive gerrymandering process or Georgia-style voter suppression laws.

What’s next? The people’s movements after the midterms

Gillum’s campaign aroused a lot of enthusiasm in the people’s movements, which proved instrumental in his primary victory over four better-funded Democratic candidates. It remains to be seen what will happen to that energy. There’s a great likelihood the Democratic establishment will use Gillum’s loss to rebuke progressives in the party – wrongheaded, since centrists like Alex Sink and Charlie Crist lost by even larger margins with less turnout than Gillum. If this happens, it will cement the bankruptcy of the Florida Democratic Party and probably push away many activists. Conversely, that may also open an opportunity to push for the formation of a mass labor or workers party in cities and eventually the state.

Florida has seen an explosion of activism in the last decade, much of it originating from former student organizers. The Black freedom movement, in particular, has grown significantly and developed in a more radical direction. Immigrant rights work remains uneven – heavily dominated by non-profits and weakened by large, right-wing exile communities from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Without the benefit of data, it’s hard to know what effect, if any, organized labor had on the election. Anecdotally, it was very difficult to mobilize our base of Teamsters to vote. For one, many part-timers and likely Gillum voters were demoralized from having their votes “not count” weeks before in the UPS contract vote. But another factor – the low credibility of the union’s endorsement with the membership – also made things difficult. Many militants who voted no on the UPS contract see the union, locally and internationally, as having so little credibility that they vote the opposite way the union suggests, almost as a matter of reflex. Combined with the very poor political education done by our Teamster leadership and their coddling of reactionary attitudes by high-seniority white workers, I have no doubt that a large amount of the Teamsters who did vote went for DeSantis.

Florida

DeSantis’ win over Gillum – and to a much lesser extent Scott’s win over Nelson – reveals that the contradiction between Florida’s rural counties and its urban centers continues to deepen. In general, the GOP has represented big business in the cities and the Dixie capitalists of the rural counties. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, represents the state’s finance sector, real estate and commercial developers, and some key parts of the tourist industry – all located in the state’s metropolitan centers.

Both candidates won their respective nominations by defeating others backed by their party’s traditional capitalist supporters. Gillum drew major donations from liberal billionaires like Tom Steyer and George Soros, the bete-noire of the far-right, but he was by no means the choice of the establishment Democrats. DeSantis, too, won the GOP nomination without Big Sugar and large agricultural companies, who backed his opponent. But while Gillum’s victory represented a popular upsurge, DeSantis’ win was more a top-down affair orchestrated by Trump.

As the third-largest state in the U.S. by population, Florida and its 27 electoral votes will continue to play a large role in presidential elections and primaries. Socialists in Florida should carefully consider the field of Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. While unsuccessful, Gillum’s unlikely primary win and electrifying campaign proved that a large mass base of African Americans, Latinos and young workers of all nationalities exists in Florida that support a progressive program. If Bernie Sanders or a similar ‘democratic socialist’ runs, mobilizing that mass base could make the difference between winning the nomination and not.

Duval County

The unprecedented voter turnout in Duval County that won it for Gillum has many in the Democratic Party convinced that they can win the 2019 mayor and city council elections. GOP Mayor Lenny Curry and Sheriff Mike Williams claimed wins on election day for endorsing their fellow Trump acolyte, DeSantis, early on. But while both may curry favors from the governor’s mansion for their loyalty, they could easily find themselves out of office in the next year if the same voters return to the polls.

Significantly, Gillum won Duval County by both driving up turnout in the city’s Black community – heavily concentrated on the Northside – but also by flipping key precincts on the Westside, including some majority white, working-class precincts. It suggests that Gillum’s platform, which avoided typical centrist issues in favor of more direct appeals to the working class (health insurance, raising wages, criminal injustice reform), resonated with younger workers of all nationalities in Jacksonville.

With its large, struggling, multinational working class and its enormous Black community, Jacksonville has the potential to become a major site of class struggle in Florida. It’s impossible to imagine a successful mass workers party, even locally, without the support of a major section of organized labor. But if Jacksonville’s unions pursued a third party in alliance with the city’s Black community, it’s equally impossible to imagine they wouldn’t make huge inroads.

#Florida #FL #PeoplesStruggles #Elections #FloridaElection2018

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

Tallahassee, FL – On November 7, students, activists and community members from around the Tallahassee area gathered at The Plant Arts Center to celebrate the 101st anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. The event was organized by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

FRSO member Regina Joseph introduced the event and then called on Zachary Schultz to give a short speech about the history of the revolution and its significance. “Under worker power, the Soviet Union used its wealth to help people instead of filling the pockets of the small minority. That’s what we’re trying to do here in the United States. To overthrow the rule of the imperialists on Wall Sreet, and actually establish true freedom, democracy and equality for the people here,” Schultz said.

The event included a showing of the 1981 film Reds, about American socialist journalist John Reed, who wrote about the October Revolution based on his firsthand experience in Russia in 1917. At the end of the event, the group was led in singing the socialist song The Internationale.

#TallahasseeFL #CapitalismAndEconomy #Socialism #PeoplesStruggles #revolution #Florida #USSR

On November 14, administrators at Robert E. Lee High School issued a new interpretation of the dress code that prohibits students from wearing memorial clothing on campus or at school-sponsored events. Citing prohibitions of “gang-related paraphernalia,” the school administrators banned any clothing with the acronym “RIP,” or “Rest in Peace,” even if the person commemorated has no proven gang affiliations.

The move comes on the heels of a major local controversy a week before involving several African American students from Lee High School at the Jacksonville Fair. Two Black teenagers were harassed and ejected by Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) after purchasing tickets and entering the fairgrounds. Video footage taken by the teens shows JSO officers yelling at the students to “pull up their pants,” to which the students complied. The officers then instructed one of the students remove or conceal a memorial necklace bearing the image of his deceased mother, ejecting the two soon after.

JSO claimed they were enforcing the Jacksonville Fair’s dress code prohibiting “memorial clothing and jewelry.” Fair management doubled down on this fake policy by posting a sign the day after ejecting the students. An investigation by News4Jax found that no such policy existed prior to the incident.

These policies against “memorial clothing” are thinly veiled racist rules targeting African Americans. Black communities across the U.S., including in Jacksonville, have a history of wearing airbrushed t-shirts, photo-print jewelry and other clothing items as memorials to deceased friends and family, particularly those killed by police.

The incident sparked community outrage, and many took action to challenge it by flooding the fair with memorial attire ranging from deceased celebrities to pets. One women, a white teacher who knew the students personally, exposed the racist nature of this policy by wearing a t-shirt in remembrance of ‘fallen veterans’ a few days later. She took photos with JSO officers and fairgrounds staff, who complemented and praised her shirt. These same officers later expelled more Black teenagers from the fairgrounds right in front of her.

To date, the Jacksonville Fair management has refused to issue a refund to the expelled students. They issued an insincere apology that recognized “hurt feelings” while reiterating their racist, arbitrary policy.

After several news reports exposed the JSO’s blatant racial profiling and the coverup, fair management went into overdrive attacking the Lee High School students from their social media account. JSO reportedly spoke to Lee High School administrators, prompting this new, racist interpretation of the dress code.

Hypocrisy and hope at Lee High School

Many students and community members have pointed out the double standard of a school named after a slave-owning Confederate general – Robert E. Lee – banning ‘memorial clothing.’ Jacksonville, like many cities across the U.S. South, had a string of schools, public parks and monuments named after racist Confederate Civil War figures in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Pushed by white supremacist groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, these ‘memorials’ were created in response to desegregation and the successes of the Black freedom movement.

Students at Lee High School have a recent history of activism and organizing in the community. The EVAC Movement consists of 15 African American students who meet regularly to learn about the law, social change, and activism with their mentor and teacher, Amy Donofrio. These students, rejecting the label ‘at-risk’ in favor of a more proactive ‘at-hope’ approach, have earned national recognition for their activism, even visiting the White House and meeting President Barack Obama several years ago.

“I’ve met several of these students from Lee High School’s EVAC program,” said Michael Sampson, a lead organizer with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee. “These young people have a real spark for making positive change in their classrooms and communities. The way the school, the police, and the fairgrounds management have targeted them is flat-out disgusting. We’re demanding nothing less than accountability across the board.”

Racism and national oppression in Jacksonville

Jacksonville is home to nearly 270,000 African Americans, making it one of the largest concentrations of Black people in the United States. But while African Americans make up 30.3% of the city’s population, they comprise 47.9% of those living in poverty.

The Black community in Jacksonville, heavily concentrated on the city’s Northside, has suffered from over-policing and economic strangulation by the city’s ruling class of Dixie capitalists. From 2009 to 2016, Black males made up 76% of those shot and 68% of those killed by JSO officers, according to research by News4Jax’s investigative team. The same investigation found that from the earliest available data in 1996 to present day, not a single shooting by a JSO officer has ever been ruled ‘unjustified’ or resulted in indictments.

The JSO’s long history of racial profiling goes beyond police shootings. In 2017, a study by Ben Conarck of the Florida Times Union and Topher Sanders of ProPublica found that JSO deliberately targets Black communities for “jay-walking.” Black people received 55% of all jay-walking tickets issued by the JSO, making them “nearly three times as likely as whites to be ticketed for a pedestrian violation.” According to the study, “Residents of the city’s three poorest zip codes were about six times as likely to receive a pedestrian citation as those living in the city’s other, more affluent 34 zip codes.”

Jacksonville sits at the outskirts of the Black Belt, a region that stretches across the U.S. South originally named for its rich soil. Home to the transatlantic slave trade, this region was ground-zero for chattel slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S. From the 1700s to present day, the Black Belt has the highest concentration of Black people in the U.S., making it a historic home of both national oppression and Black resistance.

Fighting for police accountability

In the last decade, Jacksonville has seen a rising Black freedom movement pushing back against racist police crimes and other discriminatory policies. Activists forced the Duval County School Board to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in 2013, which had been named after the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. In 2016, the Black community and its allies removed State Attorney Angela Corey from office. Corey had worked closely with the JSO to incarcerate a record number of Black youth.

Since that time, Black-led groups like the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC) have launched a campaign for community control of the police. Organizers want the creation of an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), which would have the power to hire and fire officers, rewrite conduct policies, subpoena evidence, and investigate police crimes. If created, the CPAC could investigate police misconduct, like the incident at the Jacksonville Fair, and hold the officers involved accountable.

National oppression of the Black community in Florida runs deep, making the fight for police accountability in Jacksonville difficult. Florida statute 112.532 establishes a “Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights,” known as LEOBOR, which grants extra protections to police and prevents the community from holding them accountable. The JCAC, along with other community organizations, have called on lawmakers in the Florida state legislature to repeal LEOBOR and create a Civilian Police Accountability Council.

#JacksonvilleFL #StudentMovement #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #AntiRacism #students #Florida

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

Jacksonville, FL – The United States has a notorious history with the national oppression of Black people. In the South, remnants of slave society exist as a constant reminder of this – Confederate street names, school names and monuments are physical reminders one encounters daily – but we see it also manifest in the social structure of the Black Belt South – the historically constituted nation of Black people in the United States.

The Black Belt South originally referred to the dark, rich soil geographically native to the region. The use of Black slave labor to cultivate this soil, however, changed the meaning of the term. Even after the abolition of slavery, the majority of Black families were left in the area with no land reform or resources to relocate. Since reparations were never distributed to former slaves or their descendants, many Black individuals and families were stuck in Deep South plantation culture, despite being ‘free.’ This poor start to ‘freedom,’ mixed with lingering racism harbored by the plantation owners who faced no retribution for their crimes against Black people, have impacted the Black Belt in the form of extreme social and economic repression.

The Black Belt has the highest concentration of African American and Caribbean American Black residents. It is also home to the lowest wages, lowest education rates and highest poverty rates in the country. These implications can be examined through the structure of Jacksonville, Florida – a city near the southern portion of the Black Belt.

Jacksonville, Florida is a hub for violence, and the numbers prove it. In the city’s 2017 homicide report, the number one cause of death was getting shot, while the second cause was getting shot by the police.

Jacksonville’s 2018 back-to-school season saw two mass shootings. Raines High School experienced a mass shooting during a football game against rival team Lee High School on August 24. Two days later at the Jacksonville Landing, a well-known landmark downtown, another mass shooting took place during a Madden NFL video game tournament.

Both incidents were carried out by young men, and both happened on the same weekend. Individually, however, they received very different coverage, coverage that mirrors how the U.S. media portrays whites positively and Blacks negatively. The coverage of each story reflects the racist national oppression of Blacks in Jacksonville and the Black Belt.

Consolidation, poverty, and the Black community

Raines High School sits north of Jacksonville’s 45th Street and Moncrief Road, also known as Jacksonville’s Northside. Historically, Blacks make up the majority of Jacksonville’s Northside – and this continues to be the case today. From the late 1800s to the early 1960s, before Urban Renewal plans hit neighborhoods in an attempt to ‘desegregate,’ the Northside experienced a Black renaissance. The area was formerly known as Sugar Hill.

Regarded as a ‘prestigious, upscale suburb,’ Sugar Hill included present-day Davis Street, Jefferson Street, Moncrief Road, and 8th Street. The neighborhood economically benefited by having a Black-owned hospital, George A. Brewster Hospital & School of Nurse Training, the Duval Medical Center, as well as a Black higher learning center prior to 1924 called the Cookman Institute. The Darnell Cookman School still stands on the intersection of present day Davis Street and 8th Street as a middle and high school.

Sugar Hill’s prosperity, however, came to an abrupt end with the addition of the Interstate-95 expressway in 1960. The expressway cut through the neighborhood and required the demolition of Black-owned homes and businesses in Sugar Hill during its construction.

For the Black-owned businesses not demolished by construction, the new interstate redirected traffic completely over and away from the neighborhood. Potential customers would no longer know these businesses even existed unless they took an exit. With the end of legal segregation and the passing of Civil Rights legislation, city politicians argued there was “no longer a need for a Black hospital.” In 1966, Brewster Hospital closed, which also landed a devastating economic blow to the area.

These actions arrived just three years before the city’s historic Consolidation Plan. The Consolidation Plan aimed to consolidate the outer suburbs of Jacksonville, which were predominantly white, under the same leadership as the urban core of Jacksonville, which was predominantly Black. This was a form of voter suppression. With consolidation efforts officially passing in 1968, Jacksonville’s Black leadership began to dissipate as white votes poured in from the surrounding areas suddenly recognized as Duval County. Jacksonville is the largest city in the United States by land area because of this consolidation.

These economic and political attacks have created many problems for Black people in Jacksonville, ranging from material difficulties to mental health issues. The conditions on the Northside remain desperate in the wake of natural disasters, like Hurricane Irma in 2017, which flooded out the Ken Knight Drive area ; the area received no aid from the city to rebuild. All of these forms of oppression forced upon the Black community often leads to individuals suffering from complex trauma. Complex trauma is a psychological disorder that can develop in response to prolonged, repeated negative experiences from which the individual has little or no chance of escape.

Present-day crime and city spending

Most violent crimes in Jacksonville are shootings. In a very failed effort to combat this, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office attempts to out-police violent gun crime. Since there is no way to actually ‘out-police’ crime – what the city sees instead is that police shootings rank as the number-two cause of homicide in Jacksonville.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams asks for more funding around the same time of year (back-to-school season/election and budget season) based on the idea that more cops will help “crack down on crime.” However there have been no conclusive studies to prove this claim. The recent spike in violent crime in Jacksonville, despite city council leaders voting to increase the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) budget by $4.4 million and add 80 new officers in 2017, further illustrates that there is no correlation between more cops and less crime.

Crime results from the failures of the current system, which can only be swept away with a radical restructuring of society that places poor and working people in charge. The rich and powerful create the material conditions that lead to crime by depriving people of access to basic human needs. We can fight for increased spending on after-school programs, greater investments in public health and infrastructure, better job opportunities, public transportation and accessible mental health treatment as important ways to reduce crime as we fight for a better world.

The 2018-2019 Jacksonville city budget, which passed despite several organized community speakouts against it, adds $30 million in additional funding to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Many people, particularly the Black community, expressed through several ways that $30 million could be better spent on programs and infrastructure that actually reduce crime rates.

Activists with the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC), some of whom are members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), led community members and other activist organizations in demanding city leaders redirect funds to social programs such as after school and other youth programs, rehabilitation centers and accessible mental health. However, the city, once again, voted to allocate funds towards disproportionately over-policing the Jacksonville area. They ignored the growing tide of activists fighting for community control of the police and an elected civilian police accountability council that could hold the police accountable for their crimes.

Racist reporting and lack of urgency

Early in 2018 Jacksonville made national news for the JSO inaccurately reporting five attacks on Black transgender and queer people, which included four fatalities. JSO’s investigation did not comply with the Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, which is a federal law mandating that police recognize the perceived identity of a victim, regardless of their legal name and gender marker. JSO failed to comply with this in their reporting, despite community activists and advocates informing them of the discrepancy.

This was incredibly disrespectful towards Black transgender people. It also allowed important evidence to disappear during the most critical hours of the investigation. For the first investigation, the police asked witnesses if they knew “DeVonne Walker,” while everyone knew her as Celine Walker. The Black transgender community, though small, suffered incredible trauma from both her death and the lack of urgency for justice and respect shown by JSO. This was repeated again and again after the four attacks on the same community that followed. Not only did the police fail to bring justice, but they insulted the victims again and again.

“The Black LGBT community is scared right now,” said the director of Coalition for Consent, a local gender liberation group led by Black and oppressed nationality activists. “It’s traumatic to see so many attacks back to back, but considering that there was no warning from officials or police about the targeting of Black transgender people really adds a disturbing aspect. It shows how much Black lives matter to them. If it were any other group of people, there would be warnings issued to help protect that community.”

A terrible aspect to these cases – one often seen in police reports about murdered Black people – is the suggestive language used by the police. It is not uncommon for reports to suggest that victims ‘deserved’ their fate in some way when it is a Black death in question.

For the Black transgender attacks in Jacksonville, it is important to note that an extension of the 2009 Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Act also claims that victims have a right to an investigation even if they were engaged in illicit acts such as sex work or drug dealing.

Despite these federal protections, reports from the JSO heavily suggested that Celine Walker was engaged in sex work because she was found in a hotel room. By adding this to the public reports, it muted the urgency in finding her killer. It suggested to the public that somehow, she deserved her fate because of her perceived lifestyle choices.

This is the same type of reporting we saw in 2016 when 22-year-old Vernell Bing was shot by Officer Tyler Laundreville on 9th and Liberty Street – an area formerly part of Sugar Hill. Initial police reports mentioned drugs and firearms were involved. Though later reports admitted that neither were actually present at the scene of Bing’s murder, the initial statements stuck in the media. This allowed JSO to paint Bing as a ‘thug’ and allowed Laundreville to keep his position on the force. This was one of the first local cases that started the fight for community control of the police in Jacksonville and demonstrated the need for a police accountability council.

Keegan Roberts, a Black working-class father, was murdered in his own front yard by a racist vigilante neighbor. Police reports said he had marijuana on him at the time of his death. This was an unnecessary addition since he was not being targeted by the police at all for anything illegal. Keegan was killed by his white neighbor over a small piece of litter. Keegan’s neighbor walked over to Keegan’s side of the street and murdered him while hurling racial slurs at Keegan and Keegan’s pregnant wife because he believed Keegan was responsible for a small piece of trash that had blown onto his lawn. The attempt to suggest that victim had drugs on him is a common tactic to deny the killer’s accountability. It also reinforces the notion that Keegan somehow deserved to be killed on his own property over a piece of trash. Neither the cops, the state attorney, or other city leaders have to do anything because Keegan ‘deserved it.’

Jacksonville also made national news in 2017 from an award-winning article by the Florida Times Union and Pro Publica titled “Walking While Black” which exposed illegal stop and frisk procedures and racial profiling of Jacksonville’s Black community. When asked by the JCAC if this was common practice by the JSO against Black civilians, Undersheriff Pat Ivey did not even seem to realize that stop-and-frisks were illegal. He admitted that they were a common method used by JSO to stop people and search them.

Overpoliced, facing discrimination and impoverished, the Black community in Jacksonville battles these conditions and all the problems they bring. Suffering from police crimes and a general lack of urgency when justice is needed, the community must also fight to hold the police accountable to the community.

Violent crimes: The double standard

According to Child Poverty as a Potential Developmental Trauma: Shame, Self-Esteem, and Redignification of Childhood, children living in extreme poverty suffer from trauma. Extreme poverty, with unaffordable childcare options, little to no after school youth programs, and parents working 50 hour work weeks, negatively impact children. Extreme poverty also leads to whole communities suffering from high crime rates as people struggle to survive. When crime is on the rise like it is in Jacksonville, the material conditions that cause crime must be addressed. In Jacksonville these conditions continue to be ignored, and more violent outbursts are seen, often targeting young people.

Black ‘gang’ violence was immediately associated with the shooting at Raines High School on the Northside by the police and media. This paints a negative picture of everyone involved, including the victims. The shooter at The Landing, a young white male gamer, was immediately deemed mentally ill. This dampens the call for accountability around the white shooter. These are dangerous reports in a city with a strong history of racism and demonstrate a double standard.

Tweets from the white shooter at The Landing revealed a hatred of women, hatred of humanity in general, and reverence for other mass killers like the Columbine, Colorado shooters. Media reports paint a picture of a lonely young man let down by society. As outlined above, Black youth are let down by society more often than not, but most mass shooters are white males. The fact is that mental illness does not correlate to violent crime.

Both shooters are murderers and must still be held accountable for their actions. Prevention should be taken more seriously, and care must be taken when reporting tragedies like these to avoid racist stereotypes and stereotypes against those who suffer from mental illness. It is wrong to associate violent crime with mental illness while ignoring the real material reasons behind everything. The rich and powerful are to blame for creating the conditions which produce crime. Only when the working class is in power can these conditions be swept away.

National oppression and the struggle for liberation

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, humans first have physiological needs that must be met, i.e.: food, water and shelter, and then the next set of needs that must be met are safety and belonging. People need these requirements to be met, but when we do a breakdown of the Black community in Jacksonville, homelessness and unemployment rates suggest that many people go without basic needs. According to the 2012 Homeless Coalition Report, the homeless population is 55% Black while only accounting for 24% of the total population in Duval, Nassau and Clay counties.

While food, water and shelter are inaccessible to many Black people, particularly those in Jacksonville’s urban core, everyone suffers. For children living in poverty, some reports say they are three times as likely as an adult combat war veteran to suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the Florida Times Union, 23% of Duval County is under the age of 18. A quarter of those under the age of 18 live below the poverty line. Of those living below the poverty line, 58% are Black and 32% are white. Poverty, homelessness, limited job opportunities, high unemployment rates and racism leave the Black community much less prosperous than it was back in the days of Sugar Hill. These factors especially affect the youth struggling to survive in these conditions.

Cities like Jacksonville need to make sure that the basic needs of the community are met from the physiological (food, water, shelter) to psychological (safety and belonging). It is clearly not in the interest of the rich and powerful who rule society to ensure that basic human needs are met. It is up to the working class and oppressed nations, like the Black Belt nation, to fight to change society from the ground up and win political power away from the 1%.

In the Black Belt South, the struggle for self-determination faces political, economic, historical and mental oppression. It is only through militant, dedicated organizing efforts that the people’s movements are growing and cities like Jacksonville are organizing and fighting back.

#JacksonvilleFL #InJusticeSystem #NationalOppression #US #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #AntiRacism #Florida #PoliticalRepression