The Gainesville Iguana

by Joe Courter    

Note, to vote in the Democratic primaries on Aug. 18, (county commission, governor, senators, and representatives) you must be registered as a Democrat.  If you are not, you must make that change by July 20, through the supervisor of elections office. Otherwise, you only get to vote in the non-partisan primary races (city, school board, etc.) 

We will have one more Iguana after this one before the primary election voting in August. The actual election day is Aug. 18, with early voting and mail-in voting in the weeks before. This is important if you are going to be out of town in that period, as classes will not be resuming for another week, and you will need to arrange for voting by mail with the VERY helpful folks at the Supervisor of Elections office: 352-374-5252.  

by Dex Lewis

The Pride Community Center is officially on-site at 1204 NW 10th Ave., and our focus has shifted to preparing for its public opening. Moving into the building was huge, but our work is far from finished. Our ongoing capital campaign has seen incredible initial success, raising $120,000 so far, but we still have a long way to go. We are working to unlock matching funds and secure financial support to pay for crucial facility renovations.

Our daily tasks involve managing infrastructure setup, and finalizing facility plans alongside our two local nonprofit partners, Camp Silver, and Unspoken Treasure Society.

This interview is from a continuing series of transcript excerpts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

UF Dean and historian Michael Gannon [G] interviewed George McGovern [M] on April l7, 1983. McGovern is a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, and was his party’s nominee for president in 1972. In the wave of conservatism in the 1980 elections, McGovern was defeated in his bid for a fourth term in the United States Senate. At the time of this interview, he was the chairman of Americans for Common Sense, a public interest group headquartered in Washington, D.C. He has served as a visiting professor at numerous universities and is the author of six books. Transcript edited by Beth Grobman; a full transcript of this interview is available at tinyurl.com/iguana2488.

G: It is a special delight to talk with a fellow historian, if I might identify you that way. I am very interested [in] your perceptions of the historical process and your understanding of the history of the American people. In view of your own considerable practical experience in politics, does it make a difference to have had the kind of experiences you have enjoyed with eighteen years in the Senate, four years in Congress [the House], and race for the highest office in the land [1972]? 

M: I remember there was a format in the 1960 presidential campaign in which the reporters went on television with John Kennedy and Richard Nixon during their [four] debates. After the opening statements by the two candidates, the reporters would then ask each candidate to respond to the same question. The first question was, what one quality do you think commends you to the president of the United States more than anything else? Mr. Nixon answered first, and he said he thought it was his experience. He gave what I thought was a rather convincing answer about his years as vice president, in the Senate, in the House, and world travel. 

by Carmen Rose Ward, President, Alachua County Education Association

I will always be a unionist but on June 30 I’m passing the torch on being the teacher union president. I have served as a teacher union president for fourteen years: six years for LCEA (Levy County Education Association) and eight years for ACEA (Alachua County Education Association) from 2018 to 2026. On July 1, Dr. Crystal Tessmann Hall will succeed me as the ACEA President. Our great union will survive, and I hope thrive for the workers.

by Amy Trask 

I was sipping my hazelnut coffee last week when I got a text that read “Go online RIGHT NOW. He signed it! Congratulations!” 

I had tried to prepare myself for every possibility concerning this final step, yet I ran to my laptop in the other room. I opened a new tab, navigated over to the Governor’s Report, double checked on the Senate website, and sure enough — I read “Approved by Governor.” 

by Mary Savage

The Trump administration has underhandedly moved forward with something most Americans oppose: Privatizing Social Security. Yahoo Finance reports that Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles last month the $1,000 Trump accounts are meant to privatize Social Security!

In usual crude bluntness, Cruz called this a “dirty little secret” that the “Trump Accounts are Social Security personal accounts.” (MoneyWise article by Godwin Oluponmile, May 25) 

by Alfredo Morales

Six years ago, I walked into the Civic Media Center carrying a box of dry goods, wearing a dark green cloth mask and a “Dream Defenders for Bernie” shirt. 

After a few hours of unloading, sorting and then packing food into bags for delivery, I left the Civic Media Center with a car full of food and a list of addresses. Each address was a neighbor that had reached out, during a global pandemic, for help. 

by Michelle Nolan, UFF-UF Co-President 

Calling all unionized public employees!

As you may have heard, the Florida legislature recently passed another piece of union-busting legislation, this one called SB1296. This legislation poses an existential threat to the existence of all public employee unions and the workplace rights we have secured over decades of collective bargaining.

by Ryan Smart, Florida Springs Council

Even during the best of times, the Florida Legislature is impenetrable and opaque to the average Floridian. This is particularly true of the process to create and pass a state budget, the only thing the Legislature is required to do each year. 

Disagreements between the Senate and House over the budget are handed off to a “conference committee” composed of a handful of Legislators from each chamber handpicked by leadership. Whatever the conferees come up in their private negotiations, that isn’t vetoed by the Governor, becomes the budget. Those decisions, and the policies tied to them, impact the lives of over 23 million Floridians.

by Joe Courter

As the gains of the last fifty years seem to be unraveling before our eyes, it is hard not to be angry or depressed. Coming into the 1950s and ’60s that new medium of television did a lot to heighten awareness. We could see poverty first-hand in our living rooms. We could see the war in Viet Nam, soldiers lighting villagers’ houses on fire with their Zippo lighters. We saw police siccing dogs on black folks in the south. We saw leaders assassinated — both political leaders and civil rights leaders. It led to a greater awareness that changes needed to happen to rectify such injustice.  This was the world as I saw it as I entered my teen years.

by Kaithleen Hernandez

Mutual aid has had a resurgence in recent years despite it being a practice as old as life on Earth. Civilizations have leaned on mutual aid even in times before money existed as we know it today. It is nothing new but has been conflated to equate to direct service aid when it is much more than that. 

There are plenty of examples of how mutual aid has shown up across time globally, and I will let you research that on your own so you can be inspired by the communal ways of the past. 

by Joe Courter

Shortly after the last Iguana came out, I heard two stories that convinced me that the topic of mutual aid needed to be addressed in the next issue, and here we are. 

One was a great interview I caught on YouTube by former network, now independent journalist Katie Phang with Kat Abughazaleh, who had just come in second in an open primary in Chicago for Jan Schakowsky’s Congressional seat (tinyurl.com/iguana2489). In it she talked about gearing her campaign organizing around mutual aid; her campaign office became a mutual aid hub for the community, and postelection she intended to keep it going.