CITY CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE CENSORS COVERAGE by ED SLAVIN: "SOLD OUT" "KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE" VIOLATES FREE SPEECH RIGHTS

Friday, May 3, 2019, 6 PM Update:

My April 24, 2019 civil rights discrimination and retaliation complaint against Flagler College concerning this conference has been docketed and is being assigned tonight by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. 

When will they ever learn?  Secretive City of St. Augustine/Flagler College, "KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE" leaves much to be desired.
 

CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE RETALIATES AGAINST FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTED ACTIVITY, ONCE AGAIN.

The City of St. Augustine and Flagler College still lack a welcoming spirit to the exercise of First Amendment rights. 

At their joint City of St. Augustine and Flagler College KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE community public meeting on January 31, 2019, there was an air of white privilege.  All-white meetings, one in the morning,  one in the afternoon.  Zero sensitivity to minority communities and flood-proofing.  Zero outreach.

Held at the City-owned Willie Galimore Center, named for an African-American footballer and civil rights activist, this unfriendly, uncivil, unconstitutional sign was on the door, in violation of civil rights laws.  (Sign was later removed after I complained):



In a city still divided by racial issues, there was no outreach to the African-American communities in Lincolnville and West Augustine, no socioeconomic data shedding light on their unique problems and public policy preferences concerning Keeping History Above Water (KHAW).  

The KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE community meeting seemed amateurish, with biased presentations and even a suggestion of a particular hurricane cleanup vendor (ServPro).

As a result of this blinkered approach, I:

• asked questions about a $500,000 Coquina Avenue land purchase -- questions shared by our beloved reformer, then-Mayor Nancy Shaver -- of City Public Works Director MICHAEL G. CULLUM, P.E. 
• watched in horror as CULLUM and his acolyte, TODD GRANT, P.G., both refused to answer publicly, asking me to "step outside" at the KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER community meeting at the Galimore Center where an unfriendly sign discouraged community attendance at two community meetings held that day. 
• questioned inaccurate survey data, which did not ask socioeconomic questions -- I was told there were no plans to ask about income or race, rendering the public opinion data unhelpful to public policy debate. 
• questioned a speaker's promoting a particular vendor (ServPro) that had done bad hurricane recovery work in Lincolnville without city licenses or permits as documented by City. 
• questioned a speaker's uncritical advocacy for subsidies, tax credits, tax incentives or other money for historic properties without needs testing.

It's our money.

At the City's and Flagler College's two all-white community public meetings on January 31, 2019, I asked questions and demanded answers.  

That's how God made me, my parents raised me and my mentors taught me.  Faced with oppression, I do not cower to power. 

And as LTC Oliver L. North once said to Congress during Iran-Contra, "I'd do it again."

Robotic, retaliating for First and Ninth Amendment protected activity, the City of St. Augustine and Flagler College ignored requests for a press pass/scholarship since February.

The twin tortfeasors have freely distributed free KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER passes to others, refused to provide me with a list of them, while denying my request by ignoring it since January, never responding in writing. 

This is "viewpoint discrimination." 

It is unconstitutional. 

Denying me press credentials in retaliation for First Amendment protected activity is a civil rights violation and discrimination on the part of the itty-bitty City of St. Augustine and its lapdog, Flagler College, to which it doles zoning and demolition favors and propaganda.  

It's our money.

[Flagler College WFCF "Radio With A Reason" has no local news.  No news at all, but the City gets its say.   Budding communications students in a 20,000 square foot building have no radio news department.  Flagler College's only news-related programming consists of 15 minutes of City PR spin broadcast twice weekly, amounting to hundreds of hours of propaganda over three decades.]  

Just like CNN reporter Jim Acosta or the late Robert Glenn Sherill, I've been illegally denied a press pass by the City and Flagler College.

This is retaliation for my exercise of cherished constitutionally protected free speech rights.

As JFK said, "There are three things in life that are real.  God, human folly and laughter.  Since the first two are incomprehensible, we do what we can with the third."  

In JFK's spirit, I'm laughing at the "human folly" of St. Augustine City Manager JOHN PATRICK REGAN, P.E.:

1. Dubbed "The Minister of Propaganda" by fellow City directors circa 2002 for his PR spin on massive downtown parking garage.
2. Can't stand criticism.
3. Kisses up, kicks down.
4. Caters to developer interests.
5. Designed an ocean level rise conference sans "gadfly," as I was once publicly called by former Vice Mayor Mayor Todd David Neville, C.P.A., Chair of the City's increasingly critical Audit Committee.

In JFK's spirit, I'm still laughing at the human folly of those who denied me a press pass for the May 6-9 KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE, sponsored by the City of St. Augustine, Flagler College, University of Florida, Florida Climate Institute, Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, U.S. Department of the Interior, et al.

The $400/person four day national conference runs Monday to Thursday, May 6 to May 9, with out-of-towner accommodations in the four-star Casa Monica Hotel.

The event is now said to be "sold out" except for a token pair of speeches on Sunday, May 5.  

"Sold out?"  

That could be stunningly, unwittingly self-referential and revelatory by the retaliators in quo. 

The City of St. Augustine knows me, but evidently does not love me yet.  The first time I ever attended and spoke at a City meeting, City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRIS walked up to me, said "I could have you arrested for disorderly conduct," after I questioned the City's long series of annexations violating the 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act (there were no residential annexations from 2006-2018).

Since 2005, I've helped win than more than 70 public interest victories in St. Augustine and St. Johns County

• I reported City environmental crimes to federal and state environmental law enforcement
• I've disclosed Environmental Racism, helping result in Riberia Street being paved properly, drained and sidewalked for the first time.  
• I've exposed and help remedy illegal sewage dumping and illegal solid waste dumping by the City of St. Augustine, suffered, permitted and ordered by successive City Managers. 
• I was called an "environmental hero" by Folio Weekly. 
• I helped the New York Times investigate homicide coverups and retaliation by St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID B. SHOAR, who was until 2004 the SAPD Chief.
• I helped win First Amendment victories. 
• I helped research the facts that led to Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions June 8-13, 2005 by federal court order. 
• I've fought demolitions of Echo House and Carpenter's House. 
• I've exposed ex-Mayor CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS' illegal demolition of 211-year old Don Pedro Fornells House (the longtime Historic Architectural Review Board Chair was fined only $3700). 
• We the People helped stop destruction of Fish Island.
• We've exposed corruption, including the no-bid lease of City land to ex-Mayors JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. and CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, Jr., cover story in Folio Weekly in August 2014.
• We helped elect reform Mayor Nancy Shaver, who served honorably for 1550 days, 2014-2019. 
• I co-wrote a March 20, 2019 Folio Weekly Magazine cover story about the City's response to panhandling and its criminalizing art and music on St. George Street. 
• We helped persuade the City to contextualize and destroy an 1879 Civil War monument to local veterans, preserving and protecting it from misguided demands to "take 'em down."

Now I am unwelcome at the May 6-9, 2019 KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE.

Yes, folks, PNG.  

PERSONA NON GRATA from Flagler College and the City of St. Augustine for their fancy-bears national "KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER" Conference.

Quite an honor.  

I feel as perplexed as Jim Acosta or the New York Times reporters who have been denied visas by  Russia, China and other deadly dictatorships.

This is not America -- it is Proctorville. 

Taxpayer funds are being spent for presentations by city, state and federal employees, but you and I can't go and see them.  

It's our money.

The high price and denial of press pass/scholarship accommodations is freighted with animus.

Records have been withheld by the City of St. Augustine, Flagler College and the University of Florida. 

So the KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE is "Sold Out?" Harrumph. Indeed.     That dawg won't hunt.

See my unrebutted comments in the St. Augustine Record, below: 


Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rightly called the City of St. Augustine, Floria the "most lawless" in America. 

To retaliatory City Manager JOHN PATRICK REGAN, P.E., and his janissaries at FLAGLER COLLEGE:

In Dan Quayle's words, "I wear your scorn as a badge of honor."

Civil rights complaints have and will be filed.

KEEPING HISTORY ABOVE WATER CONFERENCE's First Amendment violations are a symptom of the maladministration afflicting America, from City Hall to the White House.

Perhaps someone will raise eyebrows today.

Perhaps someone will call for a national search for a new City Manager, one who is not so insecure or incompetent as to presume to exclude an "environmental hero" investigative reporter and human rights activist from a city-sponsored conference on the environment and the future of St. Augustine in the face of climate change.

Enough.   

From The St. Augustine Record: with my comments below:



City to host forum on sea level rise starting this weekend
By Sheldon Gardner
Posted May 1, 2019 at 6:18 PM
Updated May 1, 2019 at 6:18 PM
St. Augustine Record

A national conference on sea level rise is coming to St. Augustine, and it will likely boost the city’s efforts to prepare for sea level rise, City Manager John Regan said.

“It will elevate our status,” Regan said.

That change will come from having so many eyes on the city.

The Keeping History Above Water conference will kick off on Sunday and end Wednesday.

It will bring some “national leaders on sea level rise” to the area, said Leslee Keys, Flagler College assistant professor and a conference co-chair. The conference will focus on the impacts and threats of sea level rise on coastal communities and their historical resources, as well as ideas for solving problems over the next 30 years, according to the event website.

Keys said the event is probably the broadest effort in the community so far to address the issue.

Among the attendees will be planners, preservationists, attorneys, scientists, journalists, architects and engineers, Keys said.

Scheduled presenters include Paul Backhouse, Seminole Tribe of Florida historic preservation officer; Kelly Legault, a senior coastal engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Jacksonville District; and David Kriebel, a professor of ocean engineering for the U.S. Naval Academy.

IF YOU GO

As part of the Keeping History Above Water conference, two events will be free and open to the public on Sunday at Flagler College’s Lewis Auditorium (14 Granada St., St. Augustine):

• A Podcasting Primer: Learning to Launch Your Own Podcast with Doug Parsons, director of climate change podcast “America Adapts;” 1-4 p.m.

• A presentation and book signing by author and investigative journalist Jeff Goodell, and a screening of the documentary “The Oldest City: Underwater;” 5-7 p.m.

For information, go to historyabovewater.org/2019-st-augustine.

Conference tickets have sold out, but a couple of events will be open to the public on Sunday at Flagler College’s Lewis Auditorium. One of the free events is scheduled from 5-7 p.m. and will include a screening of the documentary “The Oldest City: Underwater” and a presentation and book signing by author and investigative journalist Jeff Goodell.

The first Keeping History Above Water conference was held in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2016 by the nonprofit Newport Restoration Foundation as part of an effort to spark national dialogue about the risks posed by sea level rise on historically important communities.

“Importantly, it was not a conference about climate change, but about what preservationists, engineers, city planners, legislators, insurers, historic home owners and other decision makers need to know about climate change, sea level rise in particular, and what can be done to protect historic buildings, landscapes and neighborhoods from the increasing threat of inundation,” according to the site.

Officials from Flagler College, the University of Florida and the city of St. Augustine are hosting the city’s conference as part of a collaboration with the Newport Restoration Foundation.

City of St. Augustine officials, including Public Works Director Mike Cullum, will present at the conference.

Aside from being vulnerable to major storms, the city experiences routine flooding, especially during high tides and full moons. The biggest move the city is making to address flooding is a multi-million-dollar project focused around Lake Maria Sanchez, Regan said.

With the backing of Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars for the project, the city plans to strengthen infrastructure against major storms and add infrastructure to reduce routine flooding in part of downtown.


Comments:
Edward Adelbert Slavin

1. Do Dr. Leslee Keys and Flagler College have emotional problems with First Amendment protected activity concerning the City of St. Augustine and global ocean level rise? You tell me.
2. This KHAW conference requires reportorial and public scrutiny.
3. It is government-funded, with city, state, UF and federal funds.
4. City officials will be making presentations, including hortatory presentations on controversial purchase of 91-93 Coquina Avenue for putative flood control purposes. Don’t lock out public scrutiny. It’s our money. It’s our City’s future. « less


Edward Adelbert Slavin
5. City and Flagler College President have not yet complied with my Open Records requests for documents on the conference, filed pursuant to Florida Statute 119.0701. City says it does not have documents, but 119.0701 requires it to obtain them from its contractor, Flagler College. Flagler’s Tallahassee lawyer, Mr. Robert Sniffen, wrote me that Flagler College is “private,” while violating its mandatory legal duties to comply with Open Records requests about a news event on global ocean rise, with government experts presenting at a four day conference, with accommodations at a four-star resort hotel, all paid with government funds. « less


Edward Adelbert Slavin
1/31/2019: Flagler College held all-white morning and afternoon sessions of “Keeping History Above Water” conference at City-owned Galimore community center,r with hostile offensive signs posted on center door saying only invitees were allowed.
1/31/2019: Left message for Flagler College President Dr. Joseph Joyner, Ed.D. complaining about January 31, 2019 Galimore event. No return phone call.
2/8/2019: Applied for press pass/scholarship to May 5-8, 2019 “Keeping History Above Water” conference with Dr. Leslee Keys, Ph.D., conference coordinator for Flagler College, a contractor of the City of St. Augustine, receiving federal, state and local funds. No response.
2/24/19: Wrote Flagler College, City of St. Augustine, et al. requesting: civil rights law and ethics compliance and data quality and evaluation documents on the May 5-8, 2019 Keeping History Above Water Conference and separate all-white business/government and citizen meetings held January 31, 2019 at the Willie Galimore Center. No response.
4/15/2019: Wrote followup to January 8, 2019 correspondence. No response.
4/17/2019: Asked St. Augustine City Manager for assistance.
4/22/2019: St. Augustine City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E. orally reported via telephone at 8:18 pm that his putative efforts to obtain a press pass/scholarship for me from Conference Coordinator Dr. Leslee Keys, Ph.D were unavailing. He yelled, cursed and hung up the telephone at 8:22 pm. No further response re: press pass/scholarship for May 5-8, 2019 “Keeping History Above Water” Conference at Respondent Flagler College.
4/24/2019: Complaint filed with U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights « less


Edward Adelbert Slavin
2/24/19: Wrote Flagler College, City of St. Augustine, et al. requesting: civil rights law and ethics compliance and data quality and evaluation documents on the May 5-8, 2019 Keeping History Above Water Conference and separate all-white business/government and citizen meetings held January 31, 2019 at the Willie Galimore Center, including:
“1. failure to ask socioeconomic questions of the 212+ St. Augustine respondents to the survey and refusal, without explanation, to ask such questions in the future. ”
“2. refusal to discuss means-testing of any subsidies, tax credits or grants to historic building owners.”
“3. failure to address institutional racism in St. Augustine and other historic cities as a factor in addressing ocean level rise with laws and government policies.”
“4. listing Casa Monica Hotel as the only place for conference attendees, omitting Flagler College dormitories, used to house conference participants at other conferences”
“5. lack of diversity in speakers and attendees ”
“6. lack of scholarships or press passes for May 2019 Conference featuring government and contractor speakers.” 
“7. need for scientific peer review”
“8. avoidance of organizational conflicts of interests and banning endorsements of particular vendors or products (e.g., ServPro).”
“Please call me to discuss today.”
No reponse.
City, state and federal funds are being spent on this discriminatory conference by Flagler College, et al.
I have since learned that there are press passes/scholarships, being doled out in a discriminatory manner, as was at issue in federal court cases involving Robert Sherrill and Jim Acosta.
Hence, I have filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights re: Flagler College and the Keeping History Above Water Conference. « less


Edward Adelbert Slavin
THOMAS JEFFERSON: “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush Monticello, September 23, 1800.

Edward Adelbert Slavin
1 day ago
2009: Dr. Leslee Keys, Ph.D., without identifying herself, attempted to prevent us from bringing St. Johns County Democratic banner to Senator George McGovern speech. Annette Capella, Jamin Rubenstein and I unfurled the banner as McGovern walked by -- his eyes lit up and he happily shook our hands.
2012: Flagler College "won" 3-2 vote for 20,000 square foot Communications Building Planned Unit Development on Cuna Street. Before meeting started, Leslee Keys pointed at me in a whispered discussion with Assistant City Manager Timothy Burchfield, attempting to have me removed from a seat "reserved" for press. Half the seats in the room were "reserved" for Flagler College, outside the ordinary course of business. City General Services Director James Piggott had earlier tried to argue with me that I was not press, but City Manager John Regan directed that staff bring an extra chair brought for me, in front of all the others, recognizing my media status.
January 31, 2019: City/Flagler Keeping History Above Water Conference at Willie Galimore Center -- all-white morning and afternoon meetings. No outreach to minority communities in Lincolnville and West Augustine. Unfriendly sign on door of Galimore Center (later removed and materially altered) discouraged community member attendance.
January 31, 2019: Dr. Keys interrupted Flagler College tv students who were interviewing me, mid-interview, during lunch break.
January 31, 2019: During morning session for business owners/government officials, City Public Works Director Michael Cullum asked me to "step outside" in response to my questions about the etiology of the 91-93 Coquina Avenue land purchase --which reform Mayor Nancy Shaver believed was based on materially false and misleading information from City staff.