Category Archives: Articles

The symphony of our democracy 

The  League of Women Voters promotes and protects women’s voices needed to maintain representative balance

By Stefanie Gadalean 

The grand experiment of American democracy can be compared to that of a symphony: they both rely on a harmony of diverse melodies to uplift the full potential of their respective masterpieces. Each citizen’s contribution to the democratic orchestra, akin to an instrumental note, plays a crucial role in creating representative governance. Comparable to how a diverse ensemble is needed to achieve true harmony, our nation thrives off the cooperation of multiple perspectives to achieve a country for the people and by the people. 

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‘Unity in education: A resolve for equality’

 by Tina Certain, District 1 Alachua County School Board Member

As we begin this new year, I stand before you, not just as a school board member but as a member of our community, with a resolute spirit to foster unity and optimism for our educational future.

The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us of the ongoing fight for equality. In our schools, we face disparities that persist—segregated systems and unequal opportunities. It’s time to ensure that a student’s zip code or race never dictates their access to quality education.

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From the publisher… Looking ahead

by Joe Courter

Entering a new year, there are all sorts of retrospectives produced, and indeed there are a few within these pages. But I want to look ahead at the coming year and its challenges.

I started making a list of the things I see ahead — pivotal important issues. My list included the horrible ongoing armed conflicts, the ever obvious climate dysfunction, and the danger of information technology further aiding those with no regard for truth to create false narratives and bogus information. 

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Local activists work to meet, exceed state reqs in campaign to put abortion rights on 2024 ballot

By Alex Leader and Beth H., National Women’s Liberation, Gainesville

Thank you for helping to put abortion rights on the ballot, Alachua County!

The following organizations and individuals are being recognized to celebrate their leadership, but also to encourage Iguana readers to join up with these organizations in the fight that still lies ahead to place protection for abortion rights in Florida on the November 2024 ballot through a voter ballot initiative. If successful, this voter initiative will win a state constitutional amendment to protect and expand abortion rights. 

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The precipitous decline of Florida Blue Key 

How a once-powerful UF leadership honorary society resorted to extracting $1,000,000+ in tuition money

By Rey Arcenas

It is an open secret that Florida Blue Key controls the student government of the University of Florida. Over the course of their one hundred year grip on power, they’ve been associated with petty corruption scandals such as throwing out thousands of copies of newspapers with negative headlines, slashing tires, and pouring sugar in their opponents’ gas tanks. Nevertheless, Florida Blue Key celebrates a long list of influential politicians that stretches decades across political lines: Spessard Holland, Fuller Warren, Bob Graham, Lawton Chiles, Buddy MacKay, and Adam Putnam among others. 

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Gainesville stands with Palestine

by the Gainesville pod of Jewish Voice for Peace, Gainesville Radical Reproductive Rights Network, and the Gainesville pre-branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation

The tragic events of Oct. 7 brought international attention to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Israel’s war has spurred mass movement for Palestinian self-determination, in Gainesville and around the world.

Since October, Gainesville communities have organized over 20 events in solidarity with Palestine, sponsored by local organizations including the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Gainesville Solidarity Network, both the UF and newly formed Gainesville pods of Jewish Voice for Peace, Veterans for Peace, Gainesville Radical Reproductive Rights Network, UF Central American Latin Organization, and the Gainesville pre-branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

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January/February 2024 Gainesville Iguana

The January/February issue of the Iguana is now available, and you can access it here! If you want to get your hands on a hard copy, check out our distro locations here.

Florida Clears Hurdle to Vote on Abortion Amendment. What’s next?

This article was written by Gainesville-based reproductive rights activists working on the abortion petition initiative.

Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF), the sponsor of the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion has submitted almost 1.5 million petitions to Florida Supervisors of Elections. At the time of writing, more than 911,619 petitions have been verified statewide, and 17 Congressional districts have met the required total of verified petitions equaling 8% the number of votes cast in the 2020 presidential election. That means we’ve cleared the biggest hurdle to put a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the ballot in Florida in 2024! Now we need your help to get over the finish line!

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Editors’ picks: News that didn’t fit

2023 Roundup: 13 must-read Florida stories
Journalists salute their hard-working peers who told the critical stories of the past year
by the Marjorie Team | The Marjorie | Dec. 20 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1788

A ‘major win’ for PEN America, publishers, and parents in book ban lawsuit
Lawsuit challenging school’s removal of books heading to jury trial.
by Jennie McKeon | WUWF | Jan. 10 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1779

As migrants flee, Florida GOP pushes to ease child labor laws to deal with shortage of workers
If Republicans have their way, 16- and 17-year-olds may soon be working the overnight shift at McDonald’s
by Charles Jay | Daily Kos | Dec. 18 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1780

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You’re invited, Dec. 3: CMC turns 30!

by Joe Courter

We had postponed the marking of the Civic Media Center’s 30th birthday back on Oct. 18 because, frankly, October had big events every dang weekend. As an active part of the CMC all these years, and well aware of the date, I have, however, been flooded with memories and reflections on the last three decades as we lead up to our Dec. 3 celebration.

Regardless of when in that entire span, we were and are a hub of progressive minded people looking for connection and purpose beyond their regular lives. These people, meeting and working together, showing up to staff, helping organize events, or even just coming to the events as audience or performer, they got to be in a volunteer-run, community-supported, overtly politically conscious, audacious space. Some dabbled around the edges, but nonetheless had a spark of awareness, of inspiration land on them.

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Meet the author event in honor of World AIDS Day

In honor of World AIDS Day (Friday, Dec. 1), join author Margaret Galvan in conversation with UF professor Kenneth Kidd at 6:30pm at Third  House Books, as they talk about photographer Nan Goldin’s HIV/AIDS activism that Galvan writes about in her new book, In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s

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Conditions ‘intolerable’ at Baker County Detention Center 

Detained and degraded with taxpayers’ dollars

by Pierce Butler

The US Dept of Homeland Security continues to hold Latinx immigrants at the Baker County Detention Center in Macclenny, FL, and the American Civil Liberties Union, after filing multiple complaints on behalf of the detainees, continues to find their conditions intolerable:

  • Medical care denied, including blocking medication for a woman who suffered an epidemic seizure at BCDC;
  • Inedible food, dirty and stinky clothing and bedding (which has caused numerous infections);
  • Beatings, pepper sprayings, racial slurs, excessive use of solitary confinement, voyeurism on female detainees; and
  • Blocking access to lawyers and visitors.
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Rest in Power, Paul L. Doughty

Paul Larrabee Doughty, an Emeritus Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Florida and recipient of the Malinowski Award from Society of Applied Anthropology, passed away Sept. 27, at the age of 93, while under hospice care in Gainesville.

Born on Feb. 27, 1930, in Beacon, New York, Paul led a remarkable life that left an indelible mark on countless individuals and communities. From a young age, Paul’s love for sports, fishing, and scouting ignited his adventurous spirit. He explored the picturesque Mount Beacon and scoured the area’s creeks and empty lots for scrap metal to support the USA’s World War II effort. Paul’s formative years were spent at Oakwood Friends School, where he graduated in 1948. Little did he know that his experiences at this Quaker-based institution would shape one of the defining chapters of his life.

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Rest in Power, Garrett Quinlivan

by Marilyn Eisenberg

Garrett Quinlivan left for Germany in the early ’70s and returned to the United States in 2011. He could not believe how much the country had changed in his absence (for the worse) and joined many activist groups here in Gainesville to find out why and what he could do.

Garrett originally went to Germany just on a tour, but fell in love with a woman on the tour, married her, and raised three children in Hamburg. He was trained as a librarian, but joined the staff at the university in Bremen, Germany, as a tutor and teacher of English for German engineering students. There he wrote a German/English dictionary geared especially for engineering students. 

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History and the people who make it: Scott Camil (Part 2)

This month, we continue highlighting a Gainesville activist, veteran, honored hero, and friend of SPOHP, Scott Camil. Scott is a member of the Gainesville Eight: the group of seven Vietnam War veterans and one civilian caught in a conspiracy by the FBI, who attempted to frame them for terroristic threats. 

In this 2005 interview with John Aversono (A), Scott Camil (C) shares about his upbringing, his time in the Marine Corps from his training to engagements in combat, and touches on how he became an antiwar activist. Be advised this includes profanity and graphic descriptions of war. Transcript edited by Donovan Carter.

A: How long after basic training were you sent to Vietnam?

C: I graduated boot camp in September of 1965. Then I went to ITR, for October of 1965 and November of 1965, that’s infantry training. It is like boot camp but not as strict except now you are learning tactics, mountain climbing and that kind of conditioning. I arrived in Vietnam on something like March 20, 1966.

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The pig is landing

The world’s first Flying Pig Parade is a people-powered “un-parade”

by Glenn Terry

Gainesville is getting a performance like it’s never seen. The world’s first Flying Pig Parade will take wing on Saturday, December 30, at 2 p.m. The downtown satire of a traditional holiday procession will feature a unique brew of home-grown talent. It’ll include hip musicians, dazzling performance artists, towering puppets, and a dozen dancing mosquitoes.

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Thanksgiving Together, Nov. 23

By Drake Cromer-Moore, Outreach Pastor, Meizon Church

During the global pandemic of 2020, Meizon Mission started as an online church creating services and devotionals for people displaced by the many disruptive events of that year. In 2023, Meizon Mission found alignment with First Christian Church of Gainesville, a church that has been actively present in our city for over 100 years. Affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), First Christian Church merged with Meizon Mission and together we look into the next century, unified together, as Meizon Church. 

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¡Cuba Sí, Bloqueo No!

A report back from the first ever Democratic Socialists of America delegation to Cuba, and how it ties into DSA’s broader program of anti-imperialism

by Aron Ali-McClory,National Co-Chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America

“I feel human again.”

Those were the words of a delegate from Michigan who was visibly emotional after Mariela Castro, the Director of Cuban National Center for Sex Education, led some 43 DSA members in both a minute of silence for Gazans, but also in chants of “Free Palestine!”

Castro’s response to the delegate: “We all have family in Palestine.”

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End genocide in Gaza

At this moment, we are witnessing crimes against humanity in Gaza. More than two million people are being denied food, water, and electricity, and their hospitals are being bombed and infrastructure destroyed, all with the express purpose of ethnic cleansing—to push the population of Gaza into the Sinai. 

Innocent Israeli lives were lost on Oct. 7 and should be mourned, but as Stefanie Fox, the director for Jewish Voices for Peace, stated, “Reality is shaped by when you start the clock, you know, and while the Israeli government may have just declared war, its war on Palestine started 75 years ago.” 

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Veterans for Peace Winter Solstice Concert, Dec. 9

Veterans for Peace welcomes all to attend their 37th annual Winter Solstice Concert, a community celebration of peace and light, singing, dancing, and fellowship, on Saturday, Dec. 9 at 7:30pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at 4225 NW 34th Street in Gainesville.

The show will feature performances, including a Cherokee Peace Chant, from Drums for Peace, John Chambers & Friends, David Beede & Janet Rucker, Quartermoon, Other Voices, and a Choir of Heavenly Semi-Angels. And of course Master of Ceremonies Bob Treadwater, with signing for the deaf graciously provided by Diane Delage. Pre-show music by Cathy DeWitt and Mark Billman starts at 7:30pm.

Tickets can be purchased online at tinyurl.com/Iguana1738, available on a sliding scale from $20 to $40 each. Pay what you can. 

For the safety of all guests and performers, masks will be required inside.

Questions? Contact vfpgnv.donations@gmail.com.