The legacy of MLK Jr in South Florida--the week ending January 23, 2026
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Over 300,000 human beings from Haiti living in the United States face the end of Temporary Protected Status for them on February 3, 2026. For Venezuelans facing a similar situation, the date where things change and mass deportations can begin is October 2, 2026, so far as I can tell.
So, as we celebrated MLK Jr. Day in South Florida, a place the Rev. Dr. King visited often (as did other civil rights icons like Malcolm X), where do you think Dr. King would stand on Temporary Protected Status for people facing almost certain death if they were forced back into their countries?
Meanwhile, apparently in (dis)honor of Dr. King's legacy, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier released a memo stating in part that his office would not defend or enforce any “race-based state action occurring in any context...[nor] any of these discriminatory provisions.”
Yet, South Floridians are standing up for their neighbors, which I'll get into in today's note.
Also, I'm adding a new section I'm tentatively calling "Buy Local" where I highlight a locally owned and operated business I enjoy here in South Florida.
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington Dec in February of 1968.
Table of Contents
Buy Local! Not an ad–an endorsement!
Finite
Disappointment
An injury to one is an injury to all: TPS ending for Haitians living in America
I wrote a bit about Temporary Protected Status ending for Haitians living in the United States in the next two weeks, potentially exposing them to being sent back to Haiti, a country the United States has declared unsafe for visiting. To say that it is a disappointment would be an understatement. But there is hope! South Floridians are standing with their neighbors and great example of that is what the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is doing. Read the link below to learn more!
Philip Cardella
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier vows to stop enforcing anti-hate laws--in an announcement on Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier was being deliberately provocative when he released a memo on Martin Luther King Jr. Day stating he wouldn’t enforce or defend dozens of laws that mention race, the Florida House minority leader said Thursday. “I think he did it, basically, to flaunt that he has the power and to do it to taunt Black and brown people in Florida,” said Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, at a news conference Thursday. “I think he did it to be inflammatory,” Driskell added, “and I think he did it, frankly, to try to get a big reaction.” The Miami Herald in a story entitled "Why did Florida’s attorney general choose MLK Day to shoot down race-based laws?" by Lawrence Mower Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau on January 22, 2026
You can read the whole story–it's a gift link–yourself, but needless to say, a lot of people were unhappy with the Florida attorney general's pronouncement. Florida's constitution throughout most of the 20th century was so blatantly racist they had to toss the whole thing out and start over in 1968–the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Interestingly, in 2022 Governor DeSantis, the man who appointed Uthmeier Florida's top lawyer, removed an elected state attorney for similarly refusing to enforce laws. This has not been lost on some state legislators.
To think that racism somehow left Florida–the state was directly mentioned by Earl Warren in his deliberations in Brown v. Board of Education as being used by Soviet propagandists to recruit countries to their alliance, rather than the United States–when the constitution was rewritten is wishful thinking.
If that's too old for you then how about this article from last spring reporting a new study shows that Florida leads the nation in hate groups.
Central Florida Public Media | By Danielle Prieur
There are whole books on racism in Florida, but not enough. Anyway, I'll stop there for now, "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope," indeed.
Florida
Gonna Florida
Did you read what Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier did to (dishonor) Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy on MLK Day? Being intentionally provocative with your deep seated racism is about as Florida Man as it gets.
Learndis Hamilton would like for me to hold his moonshine, however.
Skyler Shepard
Buy
Local! Not an ad–an endorsement!
I wanted to try something new with TWIFL. I genuinely want this thing to be mostly positive and yet most weeks that seems like being mostly positive is a bit of a stretch. I've long wanted to write about food–particularly my quest for things I can get every other part of the United States I've lived in (remember, I've lived in CA, WA, IN and VA (DC area) for extended periods of time).
What on earth, you ask, can I not get in Miami that you can get elsewhere?
I wrote about it at length here. Check it out if you're interested.
Philip Cardella
So, enough preamble for this new section. Let me tell you about one of my new favorite restaurants, Taqueria los Jalapeños, a place where I finally found Mexican (American) food I'd go out of my way to get in California.
Some folks in Miami have already checked out, not because of the length of this, but because of the word jalapeños. A lot of folks here don't like spicy, at all. That's cool. I love it.
Taqueria los Jalapeños delivers the heat the second you sit down to a table with two fresh made hot sauces. Then they deliver the appetizer, a bowl of fresh made pinto soup. Before sitting down at this place I didn't know pinto soup existed. Now I crave for it nightly! So yummy! And it's just the appetizer!
Californians, especially Northern Californians, know that a proper burrito is a Mission Style Burrito, not named after some quaint racist notion of an imagined Mexican history but after a busy ass street in San Francisco where businesses are crammed into spaces too small to be some reader's shoe closets, named after colonizers' nastiest idea, with two amazing burrito serving establishments with about two chairs to sit in between the both of them. Because of the shortage of seating guests expected to walk out of the place holding their burrito–no forks, no knives, not even a plate, just you and the burrito and if you're lucky a napkin and a soft drink.
So how do you get that food to people without a mess? And what do you do about the traditional rice and beans as a side? The solution is a big ass flour tortilla, toasted on the outside for structural integrity and stuffed with a protein, some produce type of stuff, maybe some pico de gallo and sour cream (or Mexican cream), maybe some cheese and...the requisite beans and rice.
Wrapped in aluminum foil to go.
It looks a lot like this.
Notice, in some ways that sounds like Chipotle, which is trying (and failing) to be a Mission Style Burrito selling establishment. No crusty tortilla? It's not legit and tastes wrong and, honestly, do they even have Mexican seasonings at Chipotle?
Southern Californians will balk at the beans in rice being in the burrito as a filler to cheapen the experience, but most Northern Californians would have it no other way. Why? When done right, it's a delicious symphony of flavor that treats your mouth to a masterpiece and Taqueria los Jalapeños is run by a maestro.
The food and service at this place is great as is the atmosphere. The hard working owner has served my table on two different occasions and I keep meaning to ask him if the pinto soup is his abuela's recipe because it has that energy and deliciousness.
So, is this section meant to be a food critic section? No, not at all. It's not an advertisement either. I'm just going to share places I like and not share the ones I don't.
Food should take you on a journey and is best experienced in community. Taqueria l0s Jalapeños is a place that does just that.
Where can you find it? They have two locations. I've only been to this one:
4264 SW 8th St, Miami, FL
https://taquerialosjalapenos.com has the menu, ordering online and the second location's address, which is: 220 NW 137th Ave, Miami, FL
Historic
Interlude
January 22, 1986 I was in fourth grade in California and I didn't need a teacher going to space to stir space fever in me, I already had it. But I was certainly excited that Christa McAuliffe, a history teacher from New Hampshire, was going to space. Not that I knew or cared what she taught or where she was from. I remember exactly what I was doing on January 28, 1986 when my P.E. teacher pulled the entire class inside to announce that the Florida launched Challenger had exploded.
McAuliffe had been selected to fly on STS-51-L from over 10,000 applicants for the Reagan Administration's Teachers in Space Project, "designed to inspire students, honor teachers, and spur interest in mathematics, science, and space exploration," per Wikipedia. Why? Because the Soviets were probably, maybe, potentially ahead of us in math and science and if the Soviets were ahead of us in math and science that could possibly, maybe, OMG, lead to them have a more advanced technological military than us and we'd soon be speaking Russian and not allowed to do capitalism!
While the Soviet threat was real–just ask the people of East Germany or Afghanistan (yes, the Soviets spent decades ruining Afghanistan and sending thousands of young men to die there before we decided they could hold our beer)–it was overestimated. A lot of young people now think that the overestimation was an intentional attempt to manipulate the public and that the threat was thus intentionally overstated in an effort to expand the reach and hold of capitalism and this is probably true. That said, the Ollie Norths of the world certainly were afraid of communism for more reasons than just its conflict with capitalism–not for nothing while Christa McAuliffe was training to be the first teacher in space, Oliver North was definitely neck deep in the Iran-Contra Affair, which would take over headlines, not long after the Challenger Disaster finally left the front pages, in November of 1986.
Still, while we tend to think of the Challenger and Christa McAuliffe in terms of after the disaster on January 28, 1986, it is worth remembering that before the launch there really were millions of kids excited about her going to space at all. And it re-invigorated interest in the NASA program, ironically, making that particular launch one of the more watched NASA launches in years.
Infinite
Hope
I wrote about it above and linked to my longer piece, but Temporary Protected Status is ending for Haitians living in America on February 3, two weeks from now. This is certainly a finite disappointment.
Philip Cardella
What gives me hope this week was the dozens of union members connected to SEIU that chose to make protecting their Haitian co-workers in the union, who number in the "hundreds" according to one leaders out of the 8,000 SEIU 32BJ union members in Florida, their priority at the 49th MLK Day Parade in Liberty City, Miami, Florida.
Liberty City is home to Liberty Square, the first public housing unit for people of color in the nation. It is a historically Black area and as such was frequented by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his ministry. It was a fitting place to take a stand for neighbors, particularly ones who are Black.
And, of course, the prayer vigils across from the abomination on US 41 aka Tamiami Trail that goes by the deeply racist nickname, Alligator Alcatraz, continued for the 25th week in a row. By my count, the attendance has been trending up in the last several weeks.
The prayer vigil on Sunday honored the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in multiple ways and the vigil concluded with the civil rights anthem, "We shall overcome."
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Kevin Kruse
Judith Levine
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