Category Archives: May-June 2016

by Jon DeCarmine

April 1 is the National Day of Action for Housing, so we plan to make some noise in Tallahassee to protect Florida’s affordable housing dollars and fight laws that criminalize the homeless.

The goals are to stop Gov. Rick Scott’s proposal to steal from Florida’s most vulnerable citizens by taking 77 percent of housing trust fund monies and appropriate 100 percent of affordable housing trust fund monies for affordable housing, with an increased focus on the housing needs of extremely-low-income, homeless, and special needs households, and to end the criminalization of the unhoused by supporting the campaign for the Homeless Bill of Rights.

To help with this event, please contact Julie Matheney at julie.matheney@gmail.com or (352) 213-4184.

Follow the Sun is a three-day music festival traveling from coast to coast in Florida, and featuring 22 of the region’s most talented musicians and national bands. 

This year’s dates are Friday, May 27 in St. Augustine, Saturday, May 28 in Gainesville, and Sunday, May 29 in Cedar Key.  In each of the three towns, bands will play in two locations.

This is the third year of this migratory festival. Much like a mini version of the annual Halloween weekend FEST put on by No Idea records, Follow the Sun is a chance to get a a big dose of a lot of top bands playing back-to-back – in one city, two, or, if you are a real glutton – all three.

Three-day tickets cost $40 each; one-day tickets in St. Augustine and Gainesville are $15 each, and one-day tickets in Cedar Key are $10 each.  For a band listings, a schedule and to purchase tickets, go to: followthesunfest.com.

After nine years of a (sadly) ever-growing display of tombstones honoring the US soldiers who died in the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Gainesville Veterans for Peace chapter and community volunteers will not be putting up the “Memorial Mile” display on NW 8th Avenue in 2016. 

The reason is the City of Gainesville’s decision to eliminate the grass strip along the south side of 8th Avenue to widen the sidewalk.  This came after the decision to not have NW 8th Ave be single traffic lanes with a center median and bike lanes, and revert to a higher speed two lanes each way, a curb-to-curb cars and trucks speedway. 

To many people involved in Gainesville’s annual Memorial Mile Project, that grass strip had become a sort of sacred ground They feel it was painful to see it torn up. 

Transcript edited by Pierce Butler.

This is the 35th in a series of transcript excerpts from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program collection at the University of Florida.

Genevieve Payne Benson [B] and Alvester Duckworth [D] were interviewed by Ryan Morini [M] in 2012.

M: What was your date of birth?

B:  December 22, 1927 [in] Naciemento Coahuila, Mexico. I was born at home. My mother had twelve children and never had a doctor. Tia Panchita was the midwife, the señora partera. My daddy’s aunt. She delivered the whole Naciemento.

My grandfather was named Isaac Gardner and he and two brothers escaped from slavery from Georgia. They came to Florida. Then they escaped to Texas and in Lockhart, Texas, they put ‘em in jail.

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by Paul Ortiz, Alachua County Labor Coalition

On Thursday, April 15, the Alachua County Labor Coalition brought two vanloads of activists from Gainesville to join a rally in support of the Fight for $15 campaign at the world’s largest McDonald’s on International Drive in Orlando.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Central Florida boasts “the lowest median wag of any major metropolitan area in the country,” so this demonstration was desperately needed by area workers who face a skyrocketing cost of living and stagnant wages.

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by Nich Rardin

Trans rights are human rights.

It’s not complicated. There’s no secret agenda, or diabolical plan to overthrow the cis-gendered population—just equality, something that is promised here in America, but has to be fought for.

The transgendered community isn’t some new idea thought up by Generation Y to add more confusion to the world. They have been around since the beginning, the same as every other gender and orientation. They are your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers. Not monsters that live under your bed like some people want you to believe. They are human, just like you.

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