Tampa, FL – On Monday, March 6, students at the University of South Florida marched to the president's office to protest attacks against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs by Governor Ron DeSantis. Led by Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the protesters marched to the building that houses the president's office and occupied the lobby to demand a meeting with the president.

“Attacks on DEI programs affect the entire USF student body, but DeSantis has been specifically targeting Black history, gender studies and trans students,” said SDS member Lauren Pineiro. DeSantis’ most recent attack, House Bill 999, would cut funding for departments related to African American studies, gender studies, and multicultural programs at public schools and universities in Florida.

After the protesters entered and occupied the lobby, they chanted and demanded a meeting with the president. They were immediately met with hostility from the USF police department. Police Chief Chris Daniels, who has an active lawsuit against him regarding gender and racial discrimination, grabbed SDS member Victoria Hinckley by the arm without telling her she was under arrest.

“This escalation of violence from the police clearly shows that our university does not value student safety, but instead is complacent in the face of attacks from DeSantis,” said Hinckley.

The attack continued as police grabbed the students, most of whom were women and nonbinary, slamming them against walls and preventing them from leaving the lobby of the building. One member of SDS was arrested inside the building and the rest of the protesters moved outside to continue making their demands heard. Despite complying with the police's orders to move outside, three more protesters were arrested. They were not read their rights or told why they were under arrest. When asked about where those arrested would be taken, the police gave conflicting answers.

Those arrested were charged with disrupting school campus, battery on a law enforcement officer, and resisting an officer without violence. Only one member of SDS was charged for trespassing in an occupied structure or conveyance. They were eventually bailed out with community support. The police released a statement to the media saying that the students initiated violence against the police despite several videos showing the police attacking the students.

University of South Florida President Rhea Law has yet to make a statement about the police brutality against students.

Despite the aggression and brutality carried out by the USF police department, Tampa Bay SDS has made it clear that they will continue to fight against the wave of anti-DEI cuts being carried out by DeSantis, with many members attending another protest on campus the next day.

“Myself and other members of Students for a Democratic Society stand against these attacks on diversity in university curriculum and programs,” said Pineiro.

Nationally, SDS chapters in other cities have had emergency actions demanding that the charges against the “Tampa 4” be dropped and that DEI be protected. “With the local, statewide and national attention on us, we understand that it is more important than ever to continue fighting against DeSantis’ attacks on African American studies, LGBTQ students, and academic freedom. We will continue to demand that universities protect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on campuses, regardless of the pushback we face,” said Hinckley.

#TampaFL #RonDeSantis #DEI

Jacksonville, FL – On November 21, the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC), alongside other organizations and over 250 community members, gathered at the Duval County Courthouse to rally against the repressive and undemocratic legislative proposal by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, as well as the killing of 18-year-old Devon Tillman Gregory by four Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office officers: Nicholas McDonald, James Mills, Aaron Roe and Brandon Shea.

In attendance were the family of Devon Tillman Gregory, and the mother of Vernell Bing, who was killed in 2016 by killer cop Tyler Landreville. Tawana Myrick, Devon’s mother, and other family members expressed their anger and pain over Devon being killed by JSO, with over 30 shots reportedly being fired.

Devon Tillman Gregory’s cousin, Tina Rhiles, powerfully reflected that before the killing of Devon, it was easier to show support from a distance, but now that must change, saying, “before this, we were sharing, and were at home. But now we know. Last week we were the people that were at home, and not out here. This week, we are here with you, and every other week, and every other time we will be here.”

The same sentiments were echoed by Ms. Shirley, who directed her words to Sheriff Mike Williams: “Leave our kids alone! Stop taking from us! And Mike I told you, Landreville was gonna kill again and that's what the hell he did, and you still let him come back in our community. But you better get him out of it, we’re tired.”

Speakers also articulated opposition to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ proposal for the “Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act,” which seeks to institute mandatory minimums for protesters, alongside other amendments, including those that seek to retroactively legalize vehicular homicide of protesters.

Christina Kittle with the JCAC encouraged attendees to get ready to go to Tallahassee to protest this legislative proposal, reminding them that “this bill would make everything that we gained this summer, all of the momentum that we got started here in Jacksonville, illegal. So the 74 protesters who were brutalized, gassed and unlawfully detained by JSO this summer would have felony charges, trumped-up charges. The bill would also have made raising bail for them illegal.”

#JacksonvilleFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #PoliticalRepression #JacksonvilleCommunityActionCommitteeJCAC #RonDeSantis

Tampa, FL – On November 17, Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a “Students Against Political Repression” protest in front of the Sam M. Gibbons Federal Courthouse in downtown Tampa. They rallied students and members of the community against political repression at the university, state and national level.

A topic covered in many speeches was Governor Ron DeSantis’ proposed bill titled “Combatting Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act.” With the provisions in this bill, any protest can be labeled ‘disorderly’ and felony charges can be leveled against the participants. Additionally, the bill removes liability for drivers who hit protesters with their car. This was a common tactic used by white supremacists against Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer, including multiple incidents in the Tampa Bay area.

Zachary Rashas, member of Tampa Bay SDS, said in a speech about the proposed bill, “People have the right to speak out when they feel they are being wronged, and this specific brand of mass incarceration would only serve to silence dissenters and give more power to the police.”

The event was part of a national day of action in honor of International Students’ Day. The students emphasized the importance of showing solidarity with those who are punished for protesting injustice, such as the Tallahassee 19 and the 646-plus people arrested in Minneapolis on November 4.

Tampa Bay SDS is also facing political repression from its own university, the University of South Florida (USF), by being suspended and having members threatened with arrest for protesting on campus.

Simon Rowe of Tampa Bay SDS stated, “I'm glad that SDS is speaking out about its political repression. USF threatening student activists with arrest for protesting the university’s recent budget cuts is no different from DeSantis threatening protest organizers with felony charges. It's about silencing and intimidating progressive movements, and we cannot afford to give up.”

#TampaFL #PeoplesStruggles #TampaBayStudentsForADemocraticSocietySDS #PoliticalRepression #RonDeSantis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite the large police presence and their efforts to keep protesters outside of the Florida State Fairgrounds, community members from all over central Florida were determined to be present and heard.

“We have to stand up to Trump every chance we get. We have to show the people that his policies and rhetoric do not represent all of us, by turning up in massive numbers to protest whenever we can. I plan on continuing to fight back by pushing for more progressive legislation and candidates locally and nationally,” said Grace Moseley from Saint Petersburg.

There was also a large contingent of Trump supporters who confronted the protesters. They attempted to provoke several people into physical altercations and lobbed offensive language at the crowd. In response the protesters chanted progressive messages such as, “No Trump, no wall, sanctuary for all,” in unison, drowning out the hate speech.

“I came to this protest because I want to advocate for radical change outside of electoral politics. We can’t let people think that elections and the two-party system are the only options apart from fascism. We’re here to represent and show the power of the people when we unite in a common cause,” said Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society member, Chase Smith.

The Trump supporters largely dispersed afterwards, as the protesters’ chants continued.

#Tampa #DonaldTrump #trumpRally #RonDeSantis #FloridaStateFairgrounds #MakeAmericaGreatAgain