Florida

Florida School Superintendents Revolt Against Testing

October 7, 2015 Valerie Strauss, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Education, Florida

By Valerie Strauss for The Washington Post, A battle over Florida’s public education system may be reaching a tipping point, with school superintendents revolting against the state’s school accountability system and editorial boards of major newspapers now weighing in on their side. One, the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida, is warning against the collapse of that system. The Florida Association of District School Superintendents issued a statement on Sept. 25 saying that superintendents have “lost confidence” in the current accountability system for students and schools, which is based on the scores students receive on the controversial Florida Standards Assessments. The superintendents called for a suspension of the accountability system and a full review.

Lakeland Students: “Won’t Let This Happen In Publix’s Hometown!”

September 23, 2015 Coalition of Immokalee Workers, www.ciw-online.org Resist! Farmworkers, Florida, Food and Agriculture, Social Change, Student Activism

By Coalition of Immokalee Workers - This past Thursday, in a classroom just miles from Fair Food holdout Publix’s corporate headquarters in Lakeland, FL, a crowd of over sixty Southeastern University students, professors, staff, and Lakeland community members gathered to learn about the CIW’s groundbreaking work for farmworker justice and of the shameful, six-year refusal of their hometown supermarket, Publix, to join the CIW’s Fair Food Program. The began the evening with a screening of the critically acclaimed documentary “Food Chains“. Lakelanders’ response to the film was strong and clear: excitement at the tremendous gains of the CIW, and dismay that their hometown grocer has refused to take responsibility for farmworker exploitation in its supply chain.

Resist 450 Activists Arrested During Anti-Colonial Demonstrations

September 9, 2015 EarthFirst!, www.earthfirstjournal.org Resist! Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism, Florida, Genocide

By EarthFirst! - Six people were arrested today for demonstrating against the celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Spanish invasion of so-called Saint Augustine, Florida.Arrestees are being held at the St Johns County Jail with misdemeanor charges. So far, three have been released. The support team does not have enough support to bond out all arrestees. Tribal elders and the Council of the Original Miccosukee Simanolee Nation Aboriginal Peoples called for resistance demonstrations months ago. The Council asked Saint Augustine city officials not to glorify the rape, torture, displacement, enslavement, and genocide that accompanied European colonization but they were repeatedly ignored.

There Is A Movement A Coming…

July 4, 2015 Bruce Wright, www.gulfcoastgreens.org Organize! Florida, Homeslessness

By Bruce Wright in Gulf Coast Greens - This movement is a grassroots movement from the bottom up of Homeless, formerly homeless, and their supporters in Florida. This is a movement, a coalition forming to answer and struggle with those who would criminalize folks simply because they are homeless. It is a movement in several cities uniting around this idea of fighting back and not allowing the non-profit industrial complex “sell out” the homeless community simply because these non-profits don’t want to “rock the boat” and lose their funding. This movement’s cities include St. Petersburg, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Sarasota, Brooksville, and Gainesville. It includes homeless folks who have been criminalized by the system and ”left out to hang” by non-profits that do not have the guts to stand up to power on behalf of the homeless.

Florida Employee ‘Punished For Using Phrase Climate Change’

March 23, 2015 Katherine Krueger, www.theguardian.com Resist! Climate Change, Florida, Keystone XL, Republican

An employee of Florida’s environmental protection department was forced to take a leave of absence and seek a mental health evaluation for violating governor Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on using the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” under any circumstance, according to a complaint filed against the state. Longtime employee Barton Bibler reportedly included an explicit mention of climate change in his official notes from a Florida Coastal Managers Forum meeting in late February, during which climate change, rising sea levels and the possible environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline were discussed. On 9 March, Bibler received a formal reprimand for “misrepresenting that ‘the official meeting agenda included climate change’”, according to a statement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer).

Marissa Alexander To Be Released From Jail

January 27, 2015 Maddie from AutoStraddle, www.autostraddle.com Organize! Florida, Law, Patriarchy, Racial Justice

In August 2010, Marissa Alexander fired a warning shot with a lawfully registered gun to keep her abusive and estranged husband from killing her in her home in Florida. No one was hurt, but Alexander was arrested and charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon. After years of navigating the legal system and spending three years incarcerated, on Tuesday, January 27th, Alexander is expected to be released from the Duval County Jail. She will spend two years under house arrest while wearing an ankle monitor. Activists from around the country will converge on Jacksonville and in their home cities to stand in solidarity with Alexander and bring visibility to women who have been targeted for their resilience and survival.

Changing Domestic Violence Culture One Quilt Square At A Time

January 26, 2015 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Art, domestic violence, Florida

Two hundred years ago, quilts were an integral part of the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists sewed patterns into the squares of their quilts. They then hung the quilts in their yards, ostensibly to air them out. Runaway slaves could use the squares to identify friendly people, possible guides, preparations and directions towards freedom. This Tuesday, January 27, quilt squares will once again serve as a beacon towards freedom. In Jacksonville, Fla., the lawn outside the Duval County Courthouse will beblanketed with quilt squares. The reason: to bring attention to and protest the continued prosecution of Marissa Alexander, a black woman, mother of three and domestic violence survivor. Collected by the Monument Quilt, an ongoing project that crowd-sources stories of domestic and sexual violence, each of the 350 four-foot by four-foot squares contains a message about domestic violence or sexual assault.

Activists Go On Hunger Strike Against Homeless Laws

November 25, 2014 Mark Douglas, www.wfla.com Resist! Florida, Homelessness, Hunger Strike, Protest

Tampa activists Dezeray Lyn and Chris Mince are joining two South Florida food sharing activists on a hunger strike to protest a recent crackdown on feeding the hungry in Ft. Lauderdale. "There's nothing that would stop me from expressing my humanity for the people I've grown to live,"said Lyn. The arrest of 90-year-old Arnold Abbott, a longtime social activist who feeds the homeless in Ft. Lauderdale, has sparked national attention and outrage among people who routinely organize food sharing in parks. Lyn says one of her fellow activists in South Florida has now gone without food for 22 days and another hasn't eaten anything in 11 days to protest the food sharing crackdown.

Florida: Hughes Oil Company Drops Fracking Project

July 15, 2014 Julie Dermansky, www.desmogblog.com Resist! Environment, Florida, Fracking, Protest, Water

On Friday morning, Dan A. Hughes Oil Company and the Collier Resources Company agreed to terminate their lease agreement, with the exception of the Collier Hogan 20-3H well, next to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, Florida. Hughes Oil dropped its plans to drill an exploratory well adjacent to the Golden Gates Estates development. “We are very happy that Hughes won’t drill next to our home,” Pamela Duran, who lives 1,000 feet away from the previously proposed drill site, told DeSmogBlog. “I think the whole neighborhood feels like there is a heavy weight taken off our shoulders,” she said. “We make this announcement with the knowledge that our activities in the region have caused no harm to the environment and have been fully compliant with Florida Law,” Dan A. Hughes Company stated this morning in a letter published by the Naples Daily News. However, Hughes was caught moving forward with a workover request they made that had been denied by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) last New Years Eve. Their work order called for an “enhanced extraction” procedure synonymous to fracking, which had never been done before in Florida.

Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051.

May 29, 2014 Scott Keyes, www.thinkprogress.com Educate! Florida, Homelessness

Even if you don’t think society has a moral obligation to care for the least among us, a new study underscores that we have a financial obligation to do so. Late last week, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets. The study, conducted by Creative Housing Solutions, an Oklahoma-based consultant group, tracked public expenses accrued by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room intakes that the patient was unable to afford. Andrae Bailey, CEO of the commission that released the study, noted to the Orlando Sentinel that most chronically homeless people have a physical or mental disability, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. “These are not people who are just going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job,” he said. “They’re never going to get off the streets on their own.”

Zimmerman, At Gun Show, Wonders Why World Is Mad With Him

March 10, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Florida, Gun Control, Racism, Trayvon Martin

George Zimmerman, singing autographs at a gun show in Orlando, Florida over the weekend, wondered why people are angry with him. Here is one possible answer: Here is the thing, George, people know that it is not an aberration for a wanna be cop like you to patrol a neighborhood with a loaded gun and, upon seeing an African American kid whom you did not recognize, assume that kid was a threat, and then tail that kid with your itchy finger on the trigger of your loaded gun and initiate and then escalate a situation that resulted in that unarmed kid murdered and killed by you, Georgie. It is more than that, however. People are angry at the ALEC written stand your ground laws that, while it played no direct role in your not guilty verdict, played a very direct role in the culture that empowered you to cruise around packing heat. In the case of stand your ground, the NRA wrote the law, and worked with ALEC to grease it through the legislature and get it passed into law in 2005, and the rate of legally justifiable homicides in Florida has tripled since then.

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