Riberia Street (courtesy of City of St. Augustine, Florida)
Photo credit: Marie Bermudez-Phillip
“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last.”
(“Negro spiritual,” oft-quoted by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
The government of our City of St. Augustine, Florida was for too long under the domination of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society and allied racists and right-wingers.
Our Nation's Oldest City continued Jim Crow long past the point when it was illegal. The once-controlling political faction used (and still uses) hate websites to target dissenters. They hounded artists and entertainers off St. George Street, adopting harsh, repressive, illegal laws, purporting to create misdemeanors, in violation of America’s and Florida’s Constitutions.
But as Bob Dylan said, “the times, they are a-changin’.”
Our City of St. Augustine now has wise leaders who respect diversity and civil rights.
This was demonstrated to all who watched on Monday night, February 28, 2011, when our City Commissioners voted unanimously to fix Riberia Street, in the historic African-American community of Lincolnville. About half of the $18 million bond issue will fix up Riberia Street.
Riberia Street is the worst street in St. Johns County, Florida and a national disgrace. Originally a dirt road, Riberia Street is the main artery going into and out of the historic African-American community of Lincolnville. Riberia Street has never had proper drainage or paving. Riberia Street is a stench in the nostrils of the Nation and a symbol of the Environmental Racism that has long haunted our Nation’s Oldest City, the State of Florida and the United States of America.
As I told St. Augustine City Commissioners Monday night, “Here we right a wrong.” (Quoting the monument in Washington, D.C. to the Japanese-Americans wrongfully interned during World War II).
Local St. Augustine activists threatened civil rights lawsuits (and possible criminal prosecution) against the City of St. Augustine, Florida for its longstanding violations of African-Americans’ right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The very first time I attended a City of St. Augustine City Commission meeting, on April 11, 2005, I spoke of inequality and civil rights violations, focusing on the City's illegal pattern of annexations of only all-white areas on instructions of developers, while refusing to annex West Augustine, an African-American community.
Controversial, then-City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS assaulted me after the meeting, sticking his finger in my space. He threatened me, stating “I could have your arrested for disorderly conduct,” e.g., for criticizing rampant civil rights violations by the City of St. Augustine, including violations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
I do not cower to power.
Undeterred, I have continued attending City meetings for nearly six years.
So have other concerned citizens.
As our Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “it takes a village.”
Good and decent people united, elected three new City Commissioners, attended meetings, lobbied, asked questions, and ran City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS off. He "retired," after becoming increasingly irrational and irascible.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
As Anthropologist Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
WILLIAM B. HARRISS' mentor, former City Manager WILLIAM POMAR “joked” in 1998 -- to a sitting City Commissioner -- about how he would like to take twelve bulldozers and destroy the African-American community of Lincolnville.
This is the sort of redneck peckerwood (pardon my redundancy) that KKK and John Birch Society members wanted in charge of our City of St. Augustine.
These are the sort of unjust stewards that once ran our City government, until less than one year ago.
They have now been replaced, thanks to citizens’ exercise of our God-given rights to free speech, freedom of association and equal protection under law.
Check out our City’s Coat of Arms below, and kindly notice the words in bold below, which amply describe what our City and its residents showed --- and what our Nation’s Oldest City has as its potential --- as shown by nearly five decades of activism and ending in the vote on February 28, 2011: “faith, wisdom, and valor…. loyalty and splendor…. defense and safety… fortitude and creative power. .. in the fighting position … majesty and kingship…. strength, courage, and generosity…. nobility and serenity.”
As President Bill Clinton said in his First Inaugural Address, Americans “force the Spring” when we elect wise leaders. Those words were written by a Jesuit University President, Fr. Timothy S. Healy, S.J. (1923-1992), longtime President of Georgetown University (Clinton’s alma mater and mine). Fr. Healy was later the President of the New York Public Library. Fr. Healy reportedly had the draft Inaugural Address in his carryon bag when he dropped dead of a massive heart attack, changing planes at Newark Airport on December 30, 1992.
As President Clinton said in that moving Inaugural Address:
Today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring. A spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy that brings forth the vision and courage to reinvent America….. The American people have summoned the change we celebrate today. You have raised your voices in an unmistakable chorus, you have cast your votes in historic numbers, and you have changed the face of Congress, the Presidency and the political process itself. Yes, you, my fellow Americans, have forced the spring.
Now we must do the work the season demands. To that work I now turn with all the authority of my office. I ask the Congress to join with me. But no President, no Congress, no government can undertake this mission alone. My fellow Americans, you, too, must play your part in our renewal.
The Trumpets' Call
I challenge a new generation of young Americans to a season of service; to act on your idealism by helping troubled children, keeping company with those in need, reconnecting our torn communities. There is so much to be done. Enough, indeed, for millions of others who are still young in spirit to give of themselves in service, too.
In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth: We need each other and we must care for one another. Today we do more than celebrate America, we rededicate ourselves to the very idea of America: An idea born in revolution and renewed through two centuries of challenge; an idea tempered by the knowledge that but for fate we, the fortunate and the unfortunate, might have been each other; an idea ennobled by the faith that our nation can summon from its myriad diversity the deepest measure of unity; an idea infused with the conviction that America's long, heroic journey must go forever upward.
And so, my fellow Americans, as we stand at the edge of the 21st century, let us begin anew with energy and hope, with faith and discipline. And let us work until our work is done. The Scripture says, "And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not."
From this joyful mountaintop of celebration we hear a call to service in the valley. We have heard the trumpets, we have changed the guard. And now each in our own way, and with God's help, we must answer the call.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Not only did St. Augustine City’s residents “force the Spring” Monday night – we beat the Ku Klux Klan (again)!
In my life, I reckon that the joy of beating the Ku Klux Klan is second only to beating Big Government or Big Business tyrants -- like the Oak Ridge Operations Office of the U.S. Department of Energy and Union Carbide Nuclear Division, dysfunctional organizations that put "lost" 4.2 million pounds of mercury into creeks (and nuclear weapons workers’ lungs and brains), expecting workers to respect the U.S. Government’s indecent demand that nuclear weapons workers respect an oath of silence (omerta) and keep quiet about the pollution and unsafe workplaces.
Beating the Ku Klux Klan is something that has happened with increasing frequency in recent years here in St. Augustine, Florida Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously called St. Augustine, Florida “the most lawless city in America.” See Dr. King’s June 11, 1964 letter to rabbis. (Many rabbis responded to Dr. King’s letter, resulting the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history here on June 18, 1964.
In the last six years, St. Augustine residents have beaten the KKK (and all its works and pomps), as we:
1. Won a Federal Court Order for Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions June 8-13, 2005, honoring Gay Pride week (thereby overcoming KKK threats to City Commissioners, who bowed to anti-Gay hatred only to be trounced before the Honorable Henry Lee Adams, Jr. in Federal Court);
2. Halted efforts in 2007 by our City Commissioners, our then-City Manager, WILLIAM B. HARRISS and the large Florida corporate law firm of AKERMAN SENTERFITT (and lawyer WILLIAM PENCE) to bring 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste back to the Lincolnville neighborhood for a “park.” Their “junk science” was rejected by our community. Solid waste is now in a Class I landfill, where it will remain.
3. Got the City of St. Augustine fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for illegal dumping of solid waste, sewage and semi-treated sewage effluents in the African-American communities of West Augustine and Lincolnville.
4. Elected Justice Department retiree J. Kenneth Bryan County Commissioner in 2008 (he’s now County Commission Chairman);
5. Forced the retirement of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS in 2010.
6. Elected local historic preservation advocate Nancy Sikes-Kline (2008) to City Commission, elected local lawyer Leeana Freeman to City Commission (2008) and elected former Department of the Interior and Council on Environmental Quality lawyer William Leary to City Commission (2010).
7. Persuaded the City to spend money on Lincolnville, commencing days after HARRISS retired in 2010 with $20,000 in sidewalks for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, culminating in the proposed “Lift Up Lincolnville” plan and $9 million in Riberia Street improvements in 2011.
As President Clinton said in his First Inaugural Address, “This is OUR time!” He said, in the wonderful words that Georgetown’s Father Healy (a professor of English literature):
We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence. Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people, and we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us. From our Revolution to the Civil War, to the Great Depression, to the Civil Rights movement, our people have always mustered the determination to construct from these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow Americans, this is OUR time. Let us embrace it.
Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our OWN renewal. There is nothing WRONG with America that cannot be cured by what is RIGHT with America.
Today, I am proud of the City of St. Augustine. It has taken almost six years, and the effort was worth it.
We “shall overcome” – we have overcome – which is why I thanked our City Commissioners and City Manager Monday night, February 28, 2011, and thank them again now!
As Nelson Mandela once said to his colleagues, “We did it!”
Thanks to everyone, including City Manager John Regan, Mayor Joseph Boles, Vice Mayor Leeana Freeman and Commissioners Errol Jones, William Leary and Nancy Sikes-Kline.
Our cause endures. There is so much to accomplish here.
Let’s “force the spring” by ending the secrecy and unaccountability City of St. Augustine’s cat’s paw agency, the First America Foundation, to which the City has assigned the mission of celebrating our 450th anniversary (and other coming celebrations), while claiming exemption from Sunshine and Open Records laws, showing contempt for the 3.8 million Florida voters who voted in November 1992 to enact Article I, Section 24 of our Florida Constitution.
Let’s “force the spring” by uniting our city and ending discrimination and pollution, creating green jobs and transforming Lincolnville (a/k/a “the Pollution Peninsula”) and West Augustine.
Let’s redouble our efforts to make St. Augustine, Florida and St. Johns County a better place. Let’s work for Congressional enactment of the St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway. www.staugustgreen.com. It will include a Civil Rights Museum honoring the civil rights activists who helped adopt the 1964 Civil Rights Act through their activism right here in St. Augustine. Today, African-Americans, women, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals and other Americans enjoy liberty and justice thanks to what happened here in St. Augustine.
Our Civil Rights history deserves a suitable museum, like those in Memphis and Birmingham.
As Albert Camus said, “if you do not help us do this, then who else in the world will help us do this?”
My first boss, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, told the Democratic National Convention in 1980:
… may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:
"I am a part of all that I have met
To [Tho] much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are --
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
… For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
What do you reckon?
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