A long time coming...TWIFL is back on schedule?
Introduction
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC in February of 1968.
Hopefully, I'm able to get back into the routine this week of putting out the weekly newsletter. I've been swamped! But it's not been for nothing. My work has been used in at least three news outlets over the last two weeks on two different topics.
The stories my work was used in are both important to me personally: People Acting for Community Together's Nehemiah Assembly and the ongoing prayer vigils across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz.
While my own biases exist on these topics, I hope that I can convey why all of us should care about them.
Table of Contents
Finite
Disappointment
"Alligator Alcatraz" is still open
Hopefully, you saw the news stories the last few weeks that made national headlines about the so-called Alligator Alcatraz.
1: it is still open and still torturing people.
2: it will remain open while a lawsuit trying to shut it down continues through the courts–this is a ruling from this week and at least a temporary set back for the groups trying to shut it down.
I wrote about it more deeply this week:
Philip Cardella
The County Strikes Back
I sent out an update this week about People Acting for Community Together's Nehemiah Assembly and the victories that they were promised by the county.
I missed that a commissioner who was invited to the assembly (they all were, contrary to a mistake in one of the reports by the press) but did not show up decided to take time that was not listed in the agenda during a committee meeting to attack the Center for Mental Health and Recovery that was one of the focuses of the Nehemiah Assembly.
The short version is, the center was authorized to be built 20 years ago by voters. The center is ready to open and has all expenses covered for the next three years, it just needs one vote in the county commission to give the final green light–it's been waiting for that vote for THREE YEARS. Some commissioners keep moving the goal posts (look to their donors if you want an insight as to why) to opening the center. This week, the day after the Nehemiah Assembly, using time that was not publicly declared (so no one would know to show up in support of opening the center), a commissioner punted the vote two more months while asking for a different assessment for how the center will be paid for in ten years.
CBS Miami's Jim Defede breaks it down well and succinctly.
Florida
Gonna Florida
It's been a busy week, so it's good that the Florida Man stories are easy to find and share.
Danielle M. Antonetti
B. Scott McLendon
B. Scott McLendon
This following may not seem like a Miami story based on the headline, but like many in the Trump Administration, the FBI Director has deep ties to Miami.
Andrew Feinberg
Historic
Interlude
Michael Lee Platt, a hazel-eyed fanatic no one knew, was a crack commando with a doomsday vision, schooled in the evil art of mayhem. In high school, he wanted to be an FBI agent. For Michael Platt, 32, doomsday arrived 13 days ago on a suburban Miami street, when, finally, he was shot to death like a mad dog. He was trying to steal the car of two murdered FBI agents.
So begins the front page story in the Miami Herald 40 years ago today. The suburb mentioned in the story is now known as Pinecrest, a well-to-do area along US Route 1–and apparently the scene of most of his criming. At least eight violent crimes are attributed to Platt and his partner in crime, William Russell Matix.
Most of their crimes were robbery related–as in, trying to steal things while pointing guns at people and in many cases shooting them–in multiple cases, including one where an armed guard survived despite having at least 100 shot gun pellets in his back, they tried to murder people. They also murdered at least one person, but they were each suspected in the murders of their wives and, during the shootout on the Miami street that made them infamous, they shot and killed two FBI agents.
The Wikipedia entry on this pair is long. The shootout mentioned in the Miami Herald story above led to many changes in how law enforcement behaves and arms themselves to this day.
1986, it turns out, was one of the most violent years in Miami's history with 12,000 incidents of crime per 100,000 people (it would peak in 1989 at 13,500). By 1999 it had dropped to 9,000 violent crimes per 100,000 people; in 2016 it was down to 4,118. In 2020 it was 2860.
In other words, in 1986 the crime rate was quadruple what it is today. People like Platt and Mattix, as well as The Medellín Cartel, led by the infamous drug-importing Ochoa crime family and its accomplice, Pablo Escobar, certainly contributed to that. But the reality is, Miami is far safer today than it was 40 years ago.
Infinite
Hope
Philip Cardella
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Will Bunch
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