The Abomination is Dead: Week ending June 26, 2026
Introduction
It's been a minute since I was able to post and for that I apologize. A lot of that is because I went and got myself super busy. One thing is the decision to go all in and make a documentary about the prayer vigils across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz. Another is a lot of people have decided my photos and videos are actually good (thanks, y'all!) and that's just made things busier. Then there's just normal family things.
I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do with this in the coming weeks, but we'll see!
The first thing I hope to do is publish some sort of retrospective of the 47 prayer Sunday prayer "Freedom" vigils across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, so be on the look out for that. I have 1031 photos and at least 40 hours of video from the vigils themselves (nevermind interviews and broll from the area), so that might take a minute–don't worry, the retrospective would be a fraction of that. A handful of the photos and videos of the vigils are in the link immediately below:
Philip Cardella
So, some news about Florida this week. As mentioned, the so-called Alligator Alcatraz closed, really closed, though we don't know what's going to happen to the property. Almost immediately after that good news we got the terrible, terrifying news that the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump Administration to end Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians living in the United States, a plurality of which live in South Florida.
So, some good news, some bad, a little of this, a little of that. Let's jump in and never forget:
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC in February of 1968.
A quick request
With 1031 selected photos from prayer vigils across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz (and literally 10,000 rejected that I've kept just in case and for the archive) and dozens of hours of footage (I think with interviews and broll we're looking at 100 hours), storage is becoming an issue–a major one. I am having trouble keeping all of the videos (which are 1080p, not 4k, 6k, or 8k) on one hard drive. Simply put, I need a big hard drive in order to make the documentary about the prayer vigils. I don't need anything fancy, it just needs to be fast, stable and a large, not massive amount of storage (I already have a 5TB drive that is full). I plan to get something like the LaCie d2 Professional 10TB External Hard Drive Desktop HDD – USB-C USB 3.0 7200 RPM (whatever that means, right?). I'd probably be better off with the 20TB version, but get this, I've been looking at these for about two weeks and in that time the price appears to have increased by 50% to $418. Here's an article from January about this new reality, which is created by the demand for AI–those data centers you're hearing about are consuming everything tech. In January hard drive prices had doubled. It's now almost July and it looks like that's not slowing down much. The longer I wait, the more expensive it's going to get.
If each of you chipped in $5-10 I'd be able to secure one of these drives. Will you please help me?
Table of Contents
Finite
Disappointment
Let's take a look at how small Miami-Dade County, a count of 2.7 million people is for this week's Finite Disappointment. As you know, I'm making a documentary about the prayer vigils across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz. I have no idea what I'm doing so I reached out to people who might and they connected me to a man who does.
His work includes one of the best historical documentaries on Miami, called When Liberty Burns. Specifically, When Liberty Burns is about the rebellion that erupted in Miami in 1980 after five cops were acquitted of murdering Arthur McDuffie around Christmas of 1979. How egregious was that acquittal? One of the cops confessed to the crime and covering it up with five others (one wasn't charged). I highly recommend the documentary.
I was connected to this documentarian and he warmly greeted me and gave me lots of time and advice even while he's working on other projects, including documenting the World Cup.
So how is that disappointment?
The man, Dudley Alexis, is Haitian. I don't know if he's a TPS recipient or not, but I do know that many of the people in his life are. How can I be sure? Because many of the people in my life are Haitian living with TPS. While the media insists on looking at the very real plight of 6,000 Haitians with TPS in Springfield, Ohio (out of 45,000 total in the state), they seem content to ignore the plight of hundreds of thousands of Haitians with TPS here in Florida.
Practically, how many people are Haitian and in Miami-Dade County with TPS? Every single person reading this who has even been in South Florida in the last decade has interacted with someone from Haiti with TPS status. Every single one of you. The 300,000 people in Miami-Dade County with Haitian roots represent more than 1 in 10 people in Miami-Dade's population of 2,700,000. Most of these human beings work in our airports, at our amusement parks and on our cruise ships, as well as in all of our hospitals and most of our clinics, and agriculture sectors. Without these workers advocates fear the home health care system here will collapse.
Yet, our governor, who cares not a jot about our economy, much less the humans that live here, championed this decision that even moderate news outlets are calling a display of white supremacy. Meanwhile, the not particularly liberal Miami Herald Editorial Board called on the state's two Senators to pass the House bill that would restore TPS to Haitians.
From a purely selfish standpoint every American should be concerned about this. Florida likely dragged the United States into the Great Depression in 1929 (Florida's depression started two years earlier) and the Great Recession of 2008. Removing potentially 40% of the airport workers in our airports has the potential to crush our economy, and Florida has a proven track record of taking everyone down with it.
Florida
Gonna Florida
This section is the easiest to put together.
Joe Kucinski
Historic
Interlude
There's a lot going on this week so let's keep the Historic Interlude light and highly applicable. If you've been to the Miami International Airport in the last 40 years chances are you've used the moving sidewalks that connect the parking garage to the airport terminal.
Well, those opened 41 years ago this week. If you watch old episodes of Miami Vice you'll notice that the areas of the airport for cars haven't changed much at all and that's...not great. Anyway, happy birthday moving sidewalks.
Why 41 years instead of 40? Well, I forgot what year this is, looked at news articles from 1985, and I'm sticking with it.
Okay, I can't just let it go. 40 years ago this week Miami was jubilant about the arrival of the MS Jubilee, a 48,000 ton cruise ship built for $134m in 1986 for Carnival, which would be just over $400m in 2026 dollars. By contrast, Royal Caribbean's newest ships, such as MS Icon of the Seas, which operates out of Port of Miami, weigh in at 250,000 tons, literally 5 times as much, while costing over $2b, which, you know, is ten times as much.
Infinite
Hope
Finally, the Florida Soft Sided Detention Facility South, aka the South Florida Detention Center, aka the racist nickname bearing Alligator Alcatraz, has been formally shut down.
I'll have much to say on this in the coming weeks, and I'm working on a documentary about the prayer vigils that played some role in shutting it down, though how much is certainly up for debate.
Again, you can check out a few of the thousands of pictures I captured at prayer vigils outside of the facility here.
Philip Cardella
Personally, while the governor says the facility served its purpose, and while the State and Federal Government is claiming, ludicrously as they started construction on the facility a year ago during hurricane season–that hurricane season shut the facility down, I think a real culprit is, ironically, the drought we're in as much as anything. The Krome Detention Facility, which is just down the road, was evacuated this month due to brush fires. The Krome facility, sitting at an intersection of two highways, one of which is quite large (the other the same two lane highway that runs in front of the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, is far easier to evacuate than the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, which is made of tents on a site shared with tanks of literal jet fuel, on a two lane road with no real intersections for miles.
Also, as I've said from the beginning, even conservatives should hate this thing because it is an egregious use of money–if they had operated this facility in Homestead, where they have operated similar facilities during the first Trump Administration, it would have cost a fraction of the $1b they spent on this thing.
Let's let it suffice to say that this abomination, where physical torture was common, psychological torture (and propaganda) was the entire point and the illegal denial of habeas corpus was the modus operandi needed to be shut down and its demise is cause for hope.
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Bear is enjoying Heather Cox Richardson's 250 to 250 series
250 to 250
Tim Murphy
Paul Krugman
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