Thanksgiving in South Florida 2025

by Philip Cardella

Introduction

After the conclusion of the 17th weekly Sunday prayer vigil held across from the entrance to the South Florida Detention Center, commonly known by its racist nickname, Alligator Alcatraz, a tourist pulled me aside. She was driving the popular tourist road on which the immigration holding facility sits, saw a group of people gathered across from the entrance, and wondered if it were a protest of some kind.

I told her it was a prayer vigil, not exactly a protest, per se, because, among many reasons, the Miccosukee, the indigenous tribe whose land the facility sits on, wanted it that way. I told her the basics of the vigils, that they are interfaith, though a Jewish nonprofit from New York City is helping organize them, while congregations from all over Florida facilitate the actual events.

I asked her where she is from and she told me Washington State and I mentioned I attended a private university there called Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington and she smiled broadly and told me that was her alma mater as well.

Then she asked me something that took me aback, though the question has crossed my own mind many times. Perhaps it was so abrupt and so blunt.

What she asked was, "How can you live here?"

Regular readers of TWIFL may have noticed an increased focus on community as of late in these posts. As 2025 has wrought its challenges upon the country and the county, the importance of community has never been more apparent to me in my fifty years.

Finding people acting for community together, such as the folks at these weekly prayer vigils, or in demanding nonprofits be funded at county commission meetings, or at my Christian church, which boasts Jewish, Muslim, agnostic and atheist members, or with the nonprofit I give much of my time to, fittingly named, People Acting in Community Together, or with the children's choir my youngest belongs to, or the university my life partner is a professor at and my oldest is in the honors college of, another alma mater of mine, is a lot of how I find ways to love living here.

It doesn't hurt that from about this time a year through March the weather can best be described as sub-tropical paradise, where the temperature is a perfect room temperature day and night.

The multitude of cultures with their bright music, bright colors and amazing (though too often not spicy enough!) food certainly helps too.

So, rather than my usual weekly format that tries, and maybe fails, to balance positive and negative weekly stories as well as Florida Man stories and the history of the place, I thought I'd post why I love living here.

Don't worry Mom, I love living in Northern California more, I swear, and pretty much everyone who knows me well can confirm this.

Don't worry, dear readers other than my mother, we're not intentionally carpet bagging, though, well, we are here to teach in the South, which is...well...anyway...let's move on to why I love living in South Florida, or more accurately, what I'm thankful for in 2025 in South Florida.

Miami– but not the part with thongs, banana hammocks, bikinis, and other beach attire

While Miami Vice really put Miami on the map (seriously, before then it was more Ft. Lauderdale than Miami that was the tourist destination), it also painted Miami as a glamorous, scantily clad, drug running, gambling, violent, spectacular place.

While all of these things can be found in abundance, perhaps too much abundance, in parts of Miami-Dade County (though the most glitzy being largely in the city of Miami Beach, a city on an island across from the City of Miami), they over simplify and undersell so much of what Greater Miami is and isn't.

Even the City of Miami-Beach, which is actually what many people think of when they think Miami, is only sort of captured by the media and entertainment industries. There are parts of Miami Beach that are scantily clad and have all manner of vices to offer you, and there's the rest of Miami Beach, which is a sleepy town on a barrier island in paradise, where golf and bicycling are some of the big attractions.

But that's just Miami Beach. The rest of Miami-Dade County includes two National Parks, a National Preserve, many of the best state parks you'll ever see, and an abundance of neighborhoods that look like they were teleported from any number of countries in the Americas.

From late November until the start of Spring Break, the place is basically paradise–with mother nature dialing up 24 hours a day 7 days a week room temperatures, a stunning array of foods to try, people from all over the world, people representing any group you can think of and a nucleus of people that simply love the place.

There's plenty to be frustrated with with living here, but that's true everywhere. We do have more than our share of con artists, dirty politicians, money launderers, and traders of all manner of evils but that's not who we are.

We are a community of vibrant, messy people just trying to live (same as everywhere). For those people who make up the majority of Miamians, the people who want to live and let live, they make this place wonderful and for them I am grateful and thankful.

The interfaith weekly Sunday prayer vigils across from the South Florida Detention Center

Frequent readers of TWIFL will know that I love community, people standing up for their community (even when I disagree with them!) and the Everglades (see below) so it should come as no surprise that I am so thankful to the thousands of people (total attendance, not individuals who have attended) who have attended one or more of the 17 prayer vigils held outside the South Florida Detention Center, commonly known by its racist nickname, Alligator Alcatraz.

The South Florida Outback aka The Everglades

Somehow, for some reason, maybe it was my unfounded fear of alligators and snakes, we lived in Florida for two years before I found myself in the National Park that borders Greater Miami. Either of the National Parks, really, because there is one to the east (Biscayne National Park) and to the west (Everglades National Park). My first venture into the park was with a dear friend from Indiana who visited. We took a ride on an airboat and I saw my first wild alligator. Note: airboats do not operate inside the official Everglades National Park; the historic natural boundaries of The Everglades stretched all the way to where Disneyworld presently sits, hours to the north–the airboat tour was just to the north of Everglades NP.

The following week I was waist deep in the waters of Everglades National Park with my youngest kid and that kid's classmates on a field trip. We explored a cypress dome, viewed the alligator hole in the middle and then went for a walk on the jewel of the park, the Anhinga Trail.

Anhinga Trail is dry and asphalt and a great place to get some solar power, if you're an alligator. So there, on the trail, I saw alligator two and three in my life, stretched out on the path, sunning, ignoring the teenagers standing ten feet away, screaming and pointing and asking "are they real"?

I had already fallen in love with the place earlier in the day. At that point I was hooked. That was February of 2024 and I've been back at least 100 times in the 21 months since. It is my happy place where I get up close and personal to birds, insects and yes, alligators (who, folks, couldn't care less we exist so long as we don't step on them or try to punch them).

While it is one of the most magnificent parks in the United States for wildlife, it is also one of the most accessible parks in the entire National Park system. It should be on your bucket list if you've never been.

I am so grateful and thankful to have discovered the place and that it has been restored from its nadir in the 1980s when humans all but destroyed the place.

Florida International University

We moved to Florida so my spouse could take a professorship at the largest 4 year degree offering Spanish speaking institution in the world. With a focus on improving the lives of the whole South Florida community, especially Miami-Dade County, FIU is a public university that offers a top tier education at an affordable price.

It consistently tops Florida's internal public university rankings, and despite being only about 50 years old, is a leading research and education institution in the United States.

While we came here for my spouse to work as an engineering professor, I attended FIU and completed my Masters in History last year. As I finished my graduate degree, our oldest child entered FIU's Honors College to study public policy and religion.

The school continually impresses me with its commitment to excellence, improving the lives of Floridians and humans everywhere and its affordable price. I am so thankful to be a part of Panther Nation.

CAP and MCC

The Community Arts Program (CAP) and Miami Children's Chorus (MCC), two musical groups based out of Coral Gables, have brighten my life, lifted my soul, and educated my kid and I'm so grateful they exist and so thankful to be a part of each.

Both programs focus on affordable music education for the young people of Miami-Dade County and both produce award winning shows. While the students in CAP by themselves have stunning performances, each summer, CAP hosts its Summer Concert Series which features an array of award winning adult jazz and classical performances.

MCC is a children's chorus that features artists up to about 20 years old who continue to amaze and delight audiences around the world, but especially in South Florida.

Both continually amaze me, lift my spirit and fill me with hope for the future of our planet and our community. I'm grateful and thankful for both.

The multitude of culture and their tasty food

While my former homes in Sacramento, Seattle, the Bay Area, the DC Area and the Midwest, have introduced me to new cultures and new foods, there are many groups common in each of those places.

What's unique about Miami is that I've discovered and enjoyed an astounding number of cultures I didn't get to experience much of in any of the previous places I called home. From the abundance of Cuban culture and cuisine, to Venezuelan culture and food to the Argentinean steakhouse and grocery store down the street from my house, I can't imagine any place that embodies the whole of the Americas the way Miami-Dade County does.

I am so grateful and thankful to be immersed with friendships and foods from around the Western Hemisphere.

People Acting for Community Together

I was looking for a place to get involved to try to do things to make my community better when I found a group whose name is literally, "People Acting for Community Together." It is an interfaith social justice group made up of churches, synagogues, masjids (mosques) and schools in Miami-Dade County that comes together to solve tough problems like lowering unnecessary arrests, increasing our tree canopy, eliminating out of school suspensions, and in the early days, razing crack houses.

Since 1989 (officially, though it formed in response to the community crisis after the McDuffie Riots in the early 1980s0, PACT has worked to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with G*d, a sentiment taken from the scriptures shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike (and appreciated by our Universalist Congregation as well).

PACT boasts 40 member congregations and schools that together represent nearly 50,000 Miami-Dade County residents. When PACT speaks, the people in power listen.

Being active with PACT has brought me new friends and many joys as we struggle together to make Miami-Dade County a better, safer, healthier place for everyone. I am so thankful to have found PACT.

Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ

"No matter who you are or where you are on your life's journey, you are welcome here," our pastors tell us at the opening of every service at our church, and they mean it.

The church tells people who visit:

Know that in this space you are welcome as you are, for who you are.
Together we celebrate all of God’s children – young, old and in-between;
male, female and in-between; gay, lesbian, straight and in-between;
the assured, the doubting, and the in-between;
the optimistic, the cynics, and the in-between;
the foolish, the wise, and the in-between.

Earlier this month the church announced the hiring of a "Rabbi in Residence" to teach us the Hebrew Scriptures (Christians often call this the Old Testament) and later during service had a testimony from a Muslim woman who became a member at the church, as a practicing Muslim. After this woman's testimony our Senior Pastor stood up and said, "I guess I didn't need to write a sermon this week," praising the testimony of this dear member of our community.

The church genuinely cares about each and every person in our community–that is, South Florida, not just the congregation–and tries to live that out every day. I love it and am so thankful for having found this place to call home.

Family, Friends and You

Finally, and by no means least, I'm so thankful for my family, my friends, my fur babies and for you, Dear Reader. From Seattle and Tacoma, to Sacramento, Lodi and the Bay Area, to Indiana and of course South Florida, I'm so grateful for the people who have touched my life and make it so beautiful.

TWIFL wouldn't have lasted this long without you, Dear Reader, I mean it. It in fact did fizzle out once a couple of years ago, but knowing that so many of you read this regularly makes it so worth it. I am thankful for you all.