Week ending March 7, 2025

Finite Disappointment

Our community quietly received the news that the relatively ancient nuclear power plant on the shores of Biscayne National Park and between that park and the largest American crocodile breeding ground in the world, would have its life extended decades past its operational life expectancy. You can see Downtown Miami from this nuclear power plant.

As people demanding a different solution (replace it or upgrade it) note, this isn't about nuclear power. Personally, I'm pro nuclear power. It's about this particular plant being ancient, in the same type of coastal position and age as the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which maintains the dishonorable title of world's second worst nuclear power disaster, and already having leaks getting dangerously close to the aquifer that 6 million people rely upon.

Then there's the first measles case in Florida in a decade in a high school student in my child's school district in Miami. But good news, that child had the right to not receive a vaccination. "In accordance with s. 1002.20(3)(b) and Board Policy 5320, Immunization, a parent has the right to exempt his or her minor child from immunizations." Too bad my child doesn't have a right to breathe air uncontaminated by the most easily spread airborne disease known to humans.

At least, unlike about a dozen other communities in Florida, including the popular tourist destination of Naples, we still, for the moment, have fluoride in our water.

But really, that's not what troubles my heart right now. When you read this, we'll have said goodbye to our housing crisis dog, Whiskey. Upon receiving the news that Whiskey had cancerous tumors all over his internal organs, I started joking he was Dogpool without the regenerative powers. All eight pounds of Whiskey loved to go for walks with our hundred pound dog, Bear, keeping up great with the lumbering larger dog. On those walks I marvelled at how his little ears vibrated and how he could stop to sniff in such a way that brought my 260 pounds to a stop. He was a sweet little boy who will be missed by two families, our family who took him in because his human parents couldn't keep him due to the housing crisis in Miami, and, of course, his first family.

Historic Interlude

March 3, 1845 Florida Becomes a State

Though by far the smallest state in the Union and way too unpopulated (unless you counted the more than half the population of enslaved people) to qualify to be a state, in 1845, Florida applied to become a state of the United States of America. Why? because Iowa had entered the Union as a free state, and the Slavocracy demanded "fair" treatment.

March 5, 1946 Jackie Robinson harassed

100 years after Florida became a state and 80 years after it was readmitted to the Union having fought for white people's "right" to own other humans, Florida's legacy of treating people of color as second-class citizens made headlines as the citizens of Sanford, Florida ran Negro League superstar and Brooklyn Dodgers spring training invitee, Jackie Robinson, out of town. Though the harassment by locals was not widely reported at the time, the story appears in Chris Lamb's Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training.

March 5, 1998 PACT gets Miami Police Department to add more Haitian police officers

On March 5, 1998, People Acting for Community Together, a non-profit I volunteer with in Miami-Dade County, successfully completed a campaign to add 20 Haitian-American officers to patrol the streets of Black neighborhoods in Miami, focusing on the "Little Haiti" neighborhood. This nearly doubled the total number of Haitian-Americans on the force of about 1,000 officers. On Wednesday, I participated in a press conference with PACT and several aligned organizations in Little Haiti. Since it was formally founded in 1988, PACT has led dozens of citizen-driven initiatives to improve the lives of community members in this county. PACT's methodology has been studied by academics and duplicated by organizations around the country.

Infinite Hope

Mardi Gras

The truth is, my church is "woke af" and depressed "af" after November 5, 2024 and January 20, 2025. So, this year's "Mardi Gras Sunday" Celebration was an act of defiance in and of itself. Something of a middle finger to those who want to strip the county of funding for research, pro democracy efforts in Cuba that are based here, the LGBTQIA+ community of rights, destroy our public schools, and force our sheriff's to participate in ICE raids, among other things.

As the attendance for this event rivals our Christmas and Easter services, it was also a middle finger to the runaway display of hedonism across our parking lot at the Biltmore Hotel, which was hosting an exotic car show. Nothing wrong with exotic cars, of course. But rolling up to our church, during services and expecting to buy your way into a nice parking spot for the show, not the service, was a bit rich. And yet, it happened. Still, my pair of Subarus, one with nearly 150,000 miles on it, were happy to help congregants park and celebrate the season's end before Lent.

Each year, Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ celebrates "Mardi Gras" with a New Orleans-style band ("Dixie" is a nod to the Mason-Dixon line, which separated free states from slave states), so this year was no different.

The celebration in the shadow of defeat and despair gives me hope this week. Later in the week, the church celebrated Ash Wednesday in a somber and reflective service that I only made it to the end of because I had been in Little Haiti, Miami, at a press conference demanding a new billion-dollar development there bring with it basic workers' rights like fair pay and breaks during excessive heat.

It was from that decorated pulpit that I first learned about PACT, the organization I represented at the press conference. Standing with construction workers, doctors, nurses and medical students, pastors, and concerned citizens at that press conference filled me with hope too.

I hope you find hope this weekend.

Best things I read this week

The links I mention above are from authors I respect and rely on. I suspect everyone who reads this reads Heather Cox Richardson, but I still want to draw attention to her March 2 Substack post. It covers a lot about our incredible and terrifying foreign policy swing towards Russia and Putin, and how the battle for information is ongoing and critical to understand.

Daniel Drezner, an associate dean at Tufts University and a political science professor, talked about universities and the Federal Government in response to an op-ed by a person he's known for twenty years. His response is, "Pssst...Everyone relies on the Federal Government." It's well worth the read (everything Drezner writes is!). It's concise and brief, and I agree with it completely. I don't know if it goes quite far enough. The whole premise of the column he's responding to is that universities should have groveled to Trump instead of leading "the resistance." The reality is, and I know someone reading this will think I'm wrong. Still, my entire life revolves around universities; most universities are neutral if not conservative politically.

I imagine there's a university or two out there that wants to lead the resistance, but they are very few and far between and almost always private schools. Even that "mess at Berkeley," that Reagan campaigned on, was mostly blown out of proportion and really about the right of liberals (including non students!) to protest, mainly about the Vietnam War, off campus. Most want to stay out of it.

That said, I can't think of any major university that doesn't have very liberal and very conservative professors, staff, and administrators, and everyone in between. A few of those people will use the platform the university provides them to make their voices heard. For example, the school I received a Master's degree in history from, last spring, Florida International's Stephen J. Green School of International and Public Affairs boasts Marco Rubio, the man hand-picked to be the Secretary of State for the current Administration, as a Faculty Fellow. One former Trump aid turned FIU professor FIU, Mario Loyola, said after the 2024 election regarding Miami-Dade County's flip from +7 Biden to +11 Trump, "Trump won voters who are worried about the threat to democracy because people know who the real threat to democracy is." Do I strike you as a person that would attend a university with a conservative bias? Universities are best seen as small cities; every city has people all over the map. Sure, some universities tilt more one way or another, but overall, they're politically diverse places. More than anything, in my experience, most professors tend to stick to their areas of expertise, which tend to be narrow, and not pontificate much about politics.

On Social Media and Politics: Trump Lost; Voter Suppression (and propaganda) won

This week's post originally included a long piece on why I've, at least temporarily, left all social media platforms and how that decision is related to the 2024 election. The too long didn't read version is that Trump lost the 2024 election--but voter suppression coupled with a massive billionaire and foreign adversary led propaganda gave him the Electoral College and a plurality of the votes (note, the majority of Americans voted for someone else). This is in contrast to the popular narrative that I'm increasingly convinced is being pushed by the foes of democracy, that supposedly liberal voters who stayed home cost Harris the election. I call that voter "Tommy down the street."

The reality is voter suppression alone in 2024 accounts for Trump's margin of victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote. I think the continued voter suppression efforts combined with propaganda and psychological warfare being waged on our country are the things we need to fight and fight now. Not Tommy-down-the-street. You can read my hot take here.