Two weeks: Week ending November 7, 2025
I just got busy last week and had a partially written newsletter that didn't go out. So, here is one newsletter with two weeks of news and notes from South Florida.
I personally continue to think about community, our community and community in general, what it means to be in a community and maybe what it doesn't mean. We are in this together.
Of course, I've seen this in popular media with the two big Marvel movies this year, Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four being about the importance of family, with the broadest definition possible of the word (in Fantastic Four, family is extended to include every human). Perhaps that is influencing my thinking.
I've seen it at my church, where the pastor told us a few weeks ago that other pastors write off our church's growth because "they'll take anyone there," and community is a foundational theme of a piece in the Miami Herald a friend showed me yesterday–though the story was published in June–about the VOUS mega church here in Miami.
“You can feel guilt, shame, you can feel anxiety… But once you enter VOUS church, it kind of goes away, because it’s kind of a community, a family,” a VOUS attendee told the Herald this spring.
And you see it in stories, like one below, about Miami-Dade County Commissioners and the Miami-Dade County Mayor packing supplies for victims of Hurricane Melissa.
But what happens when the notion of community fails? This week a Miami-Dade County Sheriff's Deputy was shot and killed with his own gun, apparently over a car accident dispute the deputy was trying to assist with. The assailant then turned the gun on himself.
How is that community? How are we better off as a county where gun violence is the answer to solve differences?
Or how about the Brightline train taking MORE victims this week despite a massive year long story by the combined newsrooms of WLRN, the local NPR station, and the Miami Herald? When you've been accused of being the deadliest train in the country and you apparently do nothing in response– what does that say about your role in our community?
Anyway, Deep Thoughts with TWIFL, I guess.
Table of Contents
Finite
Disappointment
Hurricane Melissa
Even before the massive monster hurricane named Melissa slammed into Jamaica, Miami-Dade jumped into action. The storm thrashed Cuba and Haiti after it ravaged Jamaica, albeit as a lesser storm.
Miami-Dade County is clearly home to thousands of Cubans and Cuban Americans, as most know. Locals know that thousands of Haitians and Haitian Americans also call this county home.
Yet, as is the case with pretty much every island of the Caribbean and every Central and South American country, Miami-Dade County is also home to many Jamaican and Jamaican Americans.
But that story of leaping into action to help our "neighbors" belongs in a different section.
"Only in Dade" SNAP
If you had a contingency fund explicitly meant for food and you were faced with tapping into it to eat or starving, would you tap into it?
The United States government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP (formerly "Food Stamps") has a $5 billion contingency fund to ensure SNAP benefits are always available.
And yet, as you read this, the SNAP program has ceased issuing checks to those in need, falsely claiming that the program has run out of money as justification for starving the Americans most in need.
KEVIN FREKING
While many dense urban areas do not have a darker shade of green on this map, note which South Florida county does.
That's right. Miami-Dade County is one of the darker shades of green on the map, indicating that as of 2021 the county I live in has nearly one in four households receiving SNAP. If you know your geography, you'll note that Los Angeles County, King County (Seattle), Sacramento, San Francisco and the surrounding counties, New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are not shaded in that darker green. Most of them are in fact the lighter or even the lightest color.
We have a joke around here that's a local version of "Florida Man" and it goes "Only in Dade." Well, so far as I can tell from that map, only in Dade can you be in a major city and know that between one and four and one in five of your neighbors needs SNAP. No other major city's county is in that darker green shade that I can see.
Last week my church, which hosts a food pantry, announced that the cupboards are already close to bear, months ahead of the year long supply we build up each winter. This is before SNAP was ended.
From the senior pastor's email to the members of the church:
Recently, we have been overwhelmed by the need. According to Pastor M. we have been handing out between 75 and 80 bags of food a month and it is increasing. If any of you are here on Wednesdays or Thursdays, you know the doorbell is constantly ringing and folks are often lined up outside waiting to receive a bag or two of groceries. We sense that it is going to get worse before it ever gets better.
The church will redouble its efforts– the fact I can quote from the pastor's email to the congregation is part of exactly that. But people are suffering. This directly impacts my friends and my family (admittedly, both in Florida and in one of those lighter shades of green counties in California).
Is it liberal to say that eating is a basic human right?
Paul Krugman
At any rate, communities stand together, right? If you can, help out a local charity or food pantry helping with food assistance.
If you need help, please seek it. Everyone deserves to eat, no exceptions.
Open Enrollment and the Affordable Care Act commonly known as "Obamacare" hitting Miami-Dade County hardest
If we can agree that food is a basic human right then its might not be a leap to say that access to decent, affordable health care is a basic human right. Yet, as open enrollment begins, thousands of Miamians and Floridians are struggling with the new normal: skyrocketing health insurance costs. The story above (and here) actually features a member of my church, who I know as Nick.
From the Herald Story:
No region will be more impacted by subsidy rollbacks than Miami-Dade County, where more than 1 million people are enrolled in the Obamacare marketplace. In three Miami congressional districts, more than a third of the population is enrolled in Obamacare plans, among the largest shares in the country, according to data compiled by KFF.
Nick is as engaged and hard a worker as anyone I know. He volunteers regularly, despite holding down his job as a security guard. If anyone deserves affordable healthcare relative to other people it is Nick.
Of course, Nick– and you and me– "deserve" affordable healthcare because we are human beings.
Do you know what's going on in Darfur, Sudan?
While there is legitimate concern and focus on other areas in the world right now, the undisputed worst crisis on Earth, to those paying attention, is the Darfur region of Sudan. NPR ran a couple of stories this week on it that shed light on this.
An example of what's going on: early this week soldiers live streamed walking through a hospital and executing patients. What's worse is weapons used to execute patients in hospital beds were likely provided by the United Arab Emirates.
You may know the UAE from all of the ads they are running in the US right now as a tourist destination, their popular Dubai Chocolate brand and as the home to three major United States Bases as it is the US's "best" ally in the region.
As an American-Sudanese poet told NPR this week in a related story about the fall of her hometown, the genocide in Sudan is a proxy war for most major global powers– even Russia and Ukraine have taken sides and are shooting at each other in the country.
The human toll in Sudan is difficult to comprehend but as it involves our fellow human beings being slaughtered by our the allies of our allies, it is an important one to try to wrap our minds around.
Al Jazeera Staff
Florida
Gonna Florida
Temperatures will likely drop to the low 50s this week in South Florida so apparently it is time to panic. Not that the story below is that dire, but as a person who once wiped icicles off the inside doorknob of his front door (on a day Indiana that it was 15 below and the windchill was 45 below), color me bemused by how South Floridians think 50 degrees is cold.
Naomi Feinstein
Infinite
Hope
Teach the Truth: Stop the Steal?
Playing on the common, though baseless, accusation that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen from a candidate, Dr. Marvin Dunn, a retired professor at FIU turned activist, turned his Teach the Truth (about Black history in Florida) campaign into an opportunity to talk about why he sued to stop the transfer of Miami-Dade College property to the state and onto a presidential library trust.
According to Dunn, it doesn't matter whose presidential library would be built next to Freedom Tower, Miami's first skyscraper and the "Statue of Liberty" for thousands of Cubans fleeing the Castro regime.
If I'm going to paraphrase the Miami Herald on why Dunn is suing to prevent the land transfer I may as well just quote them so here is. Florida and Miami-Dade County "Sunshine Laws" require transparency on when meetings are scheduled and what they are about. However, according to the Herald:
The college’s advance notice of the meeting mentioned only “potential real estate transactions,” and did not describe which plot of land was under consideration or the intended purpose of the transaction. A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge blocked the college from transferring the land last month as the case proceeds.
The Herald goes on to say that State Attorney General "Uthmeier’s office filed a notice of appeal Monday, seeking to overturn a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge’s ruling. As part of the injunction, Dunn must post a $150,000 cash bond in less than a week, and he is currently trying to raise funds to do so. Dunn said the injunction is on hold until he pays the bond."
So, how is this all "infinite hope"?
Well, for starters, people from all over the county showed up to a "teach in" on a Tuesday in the middle of the day. The guy talking to Dunn in the photo above, for example, lives in the northeast part of the county (and apparently likes long bike rides).
Another thing, as long time readers of TWIFL will recognize, is that this blog celebrates resistance and protest. Yes, I have my own biases and perspectives, but while the country seems to be polarizing more, I personally have become increasingly interested in what my neighbor needs and how we can be neighbors with one another more than I'm interested in any political party or ideology.
The interfaith non-profit I hang out with, Miami PACT, likes to ask "What keeps you up at night when you think about your neighborhood or this county?" I think what is keeping Dunn up at night, among other things, is the idea that land used by a public school, accessible to all of our community, is about to be given away without so much as an open public forum to discuss it.
Actually, I know that's something that keeps him up at night because that was essentially his message on Tuesday to anyone in the county who will listen.
Hurricane Melissa
Its been more than a day so I know a lot of our minds have moved on from the record breaking hurricane that smashed into the island nation of Jamaica last week, but it is worth reminding everyone, I think, about both its devastation and our response to it.
"They are our neighbors," the headline of a Herald story quoting Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins reads. And indeed they are. Whether that is perhaps literally true for Cohen Higgins, who has family that lives on the island, or the County Mayor, Daniella Levine Cava or Miami-Dade County Commissioner Oliver G. Gilbert, who was also at the event in the Herald story, who may not have kin in Jamaica, the people of Jamaica are still our neighbors.
And, of course, in Miami-Dade County thousands of people living in the county were born in Jamaica and even more are descended from Jamaicans who immigrated to the county.
In a healthy community you help when you see someone in need.
The Prayer Vigils at Alligator Alcatraz Continue
While the persistence of the abomination on US 41 known by its racist nickname, Alligator Alcatraz, continues to pollute the Everglades with feces, fuel, trash, and light, all while housing human beings, the majority of whom have no criminal record, in conditions unfit for a dog, the prayer vigils standing in solidarity with the people inside continue.
The people who lead these vigils insist that they are not opposed to the people inside the detention center, including the employees. They are opposed to the conditions inside and to the impact on the environment. They pray for everyone.
To illustrate the point, it was noted that a few weeks ago an employee of Alligator Alcatraz joined the vigil, offering prayers for those detained. He is putting food on the table but hates his job.
The leaders of the vigils recognize that he too is our neighbor and that being in community means caring about him, about the employees at the detention center that love their jobs, the detainees and the Miccosukee, whose sacred land is desecrated by the acres of asphalt put down for the thing.
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Made by History