What a week (ending August 22, 2025)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Whoa, what a week. From just the second protest this year in the northern part of the county, to a multi-faith prayer vigil with people from all over Florida in the middle of mosquito territory, to fabulous chart topping live jazz to the (potential) beginning of the end of the immigrant detention center in the Everglades, this week had a lot.
Worth noting my kids are back in school, one in a public high school the other in a public university and that means more traffic and more me asking for donations to support this work. ROTFL.
A five dollar donation won't offset the cost of tuition, room and board, and school supplies much, but it won't hurt either!
Also, this newsletter is late this week because I was working on several Special Coverage pieces, some are done, others are waiting for some confirmed details from sources. At any rate, check out that part of TWIFL. I'm writing this Saturday night and I've got 100 pictures from another event (a panel at the Unitarian Universalist Church on the detention center in the Everglades) and I'll be covering the prayer vigil on Sunday at the detention center gates.
Philip Cardella
Finite
Disappointment
The detention center in the Everglades is still there
The detention center in the Everglades with the formal name with the initials AA persists. It was dealt a blow this week, which will be discussed below, but it is still there, the appeal to the ruling against it has been filed and if nothing else, the damage it has caused to the fragile South Florida ecosystem and the human beings who have been detained there and who work there will last for a long time.
Federal US District Court Judge Kathleen Williams, who supporters of the detention are quick to point out was appointed by President Obama, ordered the site closed not because of the inhumane conditions there, but because of the threat it poses to the environment. While some, like the Miami Herald Editorial Board applauded the decision while expressing some frustration with the exact circumstances (they argued the humanitarian crisis at the site was reason enough to close it), it was the only thing the lawsuit assigned to her requested of her.
Herald reporting also notes that several of the companies who built the site or are operating it have histories of fraud and price gouging, begging the question of why they were selected to help work on the site in the first place.
The Herald, among others, posted a helpful breakdown of what comes next in the coming weeks in the legal fight over the site. Needless to say, the Governor does not think the ruling will impact the state's push to detain and deport immigrants.
Meanwhile, just north of the site a fire has raged for days in the Everglades, which is totally normal as the Everglades, more than almost anywhere else on Earth, relies on fire as part of the annual life cycle to maintain the ecosystem. One of many reasons why a city of tents and trailers smack dab in the middle of it is so stupid it defies comprehension.
How is this even legal? Cops chase a couple of teens in stolen car, causing lock downs in several schools
In the latest case of law enforcement serving and protecting property over lives, police chased some teens in a stolen Cadillac Escalade through Coral Gables and into neighboring Coconut Grove, forcing three schools to go into lock down during morning drop off.
A Coral Gables police chase about a stolen car Friday morning led to roads being shut down off U.S. 1 and a lockdown at three Coconut Grove schools with parents unable to drop off their kids and some parents stuck inside, according to police and parents who contacted the Miami Herald. Read More at the Miami Herald.
The Miami Herald story on the event sticks to the facts, so to speak, it fails to mention a couple of important facts. For one, Florida's "Fresh Pursuit" law (Florida Statute 901.25), which is at play given Coral Gables police left Coral Gables to pursue the suspects into Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in the City of Miami. A common successful defense in the case of "Fresh Pursuit" is that law enforcement recklessly endangered the community by refusing to break off pursuit "if the pursuit was unreasonable or excessive, posing disproportionate public safety risks or if alternative apprehension methods were available (emphasis mine)," according to the website Legal Clarity. Importantly, this is how defendants, that is, the people being chase, can argue that the pursuit itself was unlawful.
That's assuming the chase was lawful in the first place.
Pursuits are reserved for situations where an officer has a reasonable belief the fleeing person has committed or is fleeing after committing a “forcible felony.” This term is defined in Florida Statute 776.08 as any felony involving the use or threat of physical force or violence against an individual...The balancing test required by law involves a continuous and dynamic assessment of multiple factors by both the pursuing officer and their supervisor. Officers must constantly evaluate the environment in which the pursuit is taking place, including population density and whether the chase is moving through a congested urban area or a sparse rural one. Other conditions that must be considered include the time of day, weather, and road conditions, all of which can dramatically increase the danger of a high-speed chase. The officer must also monitor the volume of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The behavior of the fleeing driver is another consideration; if the suspect is driving with extreme recklessness, it may elevate the danger to a point where terminating the pursuit becomes the safest option for the public. From Legal Clarity on police pursuit law in Florida
It's possible that the defendants can get charges thrown out because the cops couldn't be bothered to break off pursuit of teenagers in a stolen vehicle to protect the lives of children and their parents during school drop off.
In fact, the teens did crash the car, which is how the cops apprehended them. If the teens are injured and they have a decent lawyer they can likely sue the police over their injuries because the cops pursued them, even if they are convicted of stealing the car.
Florida
Gonna Florida
I want to say that the oldest Black owned newspaper in the county, the Miami Times, is my favorite news source in South Florida. Why? Because they do fantastic work and supporting them is an easy decision. You should too.
But, they only post original content about once a week. It's great, but my favorite news source in South Florida is in fact the Miami New Times. They do everything from stories on unmentionable lists Miami tops to serious, hard hitting reporting on immigration, to the best Miami has to offer, to well, just Miami being Miami. So here are three stories from the Miami New Times from this week, of Miami being Miami.
Quick note about the first one to the author, Bro, people outside of Miami use terms like Bro. Got it, dude? Some of the rest of the list though– yeah, that's all Miami.
Jose D. Duran
Alex DeLuca
Celia Almeida
Historic
Interlude
The pandemic that shaped GenX was just getting started 40 years ago– and of course Miami was in the thick of it
When I was in elementary school a pandemic swept across the planet, eventually claiming 44,000,000 lives, spreading fear and mistrust among nearly everyone and altering the trajectory of history. While Saudi Arabia was blaming its first ever AIDS fatality on blood in Miami 40 years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan was still unwilling to give an address on it for two more years.
Health officials had known about what would be called HIV/AIDS since 1981, the beginning of the Reagan Administration but they largely refused to mention it until the pleas of a dying actor named Rock Hudson made national headlines just the disease claimed his life in 1985.
That year, HIV/AIDS killed at least 62,000 people globally. Ten years later, HIV/AIDS deaths would be in the top ten causes of death for humans, taking around a million lives a year until 2008.
By the time I was in middle school in the late 80s, we had emerged from the recession of the early 1980s but were terrified of each other due to HIV/AIDS and soaring violent crime rates that would peak around 1992– the all time peak for violent crime in the US.
It wasn't all bad though. The Goonies and Back to the Future both hit the theaters the summer of 1985 and, frankly, I watch those movies at least once a year to this day. Back to the Future came out in early July 1985 and the hit single it generated, The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News was still topping the charts 40 years ago this week. Crazy thing is, Back to the Future was still the top movie in theaters 40 years ago this week despite having been in the theaters for nearly two months. Different times!
Infinite
Hope
Tyreek McDole wants you to Open Up Your Senses
Tyreek McDole already held an honor only one other male singer has ever claimed when he recorded his first album, Open Up Your Senses, released this summer: he's only the second male voice to ever win Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that his debut album shot to the top of the charts and has remained there the better part of a month.
And by golly, can this man sing. His voice soared and plummeted, echoing through the old– by Miami standards– church sanctuary doubling as a music venue several nights this summer.
He wasn't alone.
From long drum solos, to sensational piano improvisations, to the zipping melodies of saxophones and the dulcet sounds of the bass, the men who accompanied him on stage were up to the tall order of keeping up with his magnificent voice.
It was a much needed break from the well over 100 degree heat indexes this week fueling a fire in the Everglades that's nearly topped 20,000 acres and the march of intense news stories nationally and locally.
It was also a chance for TWIFL to cover something other than depressing news or stories about overcoming adversity.
The Power of Prayer? Persuasion? Persistence? Patience?
Philip Cardella
Sunday marked the third week of interfaith prayer vigils outside the detention center on the busy tourist highway it is situated on (any one suggesting US 41 is remote and unused is either clueless or lying about the nature of the two lane road). Perhaps 250 attended the prayer vigil this week, led by a church from Tampa, which for non-locals is about a four hour bus trip away from the site (whereas Miami and Naples are about an hour to the east and the west, respectively).
But, late Thursday night (after TWIFL got to cover that amazing jazz concert!) news broke that US District Judge Kathleen Williams functionally ordered the site closed within 60 days due to environmental threats the site poses to the fragile surrounding ecosystem.
Laura C. Morel
Betty Osceola of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians posted on Facebook:
Still feeling ecstatic from hearing the good news last night. As I sat across from the entrance to Detention and prayed, just like everyone else who was waiting on the judge’s ruling, I was starting to count the minutes as the sun had already set. The crickets were singing as if they were happy, even the mosquitoes were a bit less abundant, but the air was heavy. As I watched the smoke from my little prayer fire circle me and drift cross the street, we got the news. Myself and 5 others. I was like “YES!!!!”, thank you Breathemaker.
TWIFL tries to be as politically neutral as possible, but there's no way to love humans, nature or the rule of law (you can be into only one and not the others and if you know the facts you'll be incensed) and be OK with that abomination. So, thank you Breathmaker, indeed.
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Oliver Milman
Oscar Lopez
Fuzzy the Bear, rather than Bear the Dog, gets ice cream in Lake Tahoe
Bear wants you to know that we went on a hike in Lake Tahoe without him and got ice cream without him at the Ice Cream Parlor at Camp Richardson. He also wants you to know that Fuzzy the Bear prefers strawberry ice cream and that Fuzzy the Bear got to get ice cream from the parlor there, so why can't Bear the Dog?