Healing in St. Augustine, Florida

Healing in St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine was founded by optimists but was nearly ruined by cynics, including "developers" former County Commission Chairman Ben Rich called "worse than any carpetbagger."
Nearly 450 years ago, some 800 Europeans and Africans moved in, joining Native Americans to form a polyglot culture that included the first Christians, first Hispanics, first Jews, first African-Americans and first Eureopean settlement in America..
But for too long in too much of our history, haters dominated the life of St. Augustine, Florida, from soulless slave-drivers and segregationists and racist, sexist, misogynist homophobes who long dominated the place to the likes of that clueless, putative Catholic clergyman who yelled "carpetbaggers and naysayers" at dissenters (on Facebook, after ex-Mayor Len Weeks destroyed 210-year old Don Pedro Fornell House).
Historic building destroyer Len Weeks, a/k/a "CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, Jr." is the longtime business partner and law client of eight-year incumbent Mayor Joe Boles. Boles has incorporated some 224 corporations.
While Len Weeks' resignation from the Historic Architectural Review Board hinted of "healing," we see no evidence of intent to do anything but "make money," in the words of Boles' famous debate "Floridian slip" in response to what our city does best.
The two Mayors -- Boles and Weeks -- both exploit the rest of us.
Boles and Weeks are like two peas in a pod -- they lack respect.
No respect for your right to freedom of speech.
No respect for your right to "freedom from fear."
No respect for law and order.
No respect for our history.
No respect for nature and natural history.
No respect for Red House Bluff, voting for strip mall and destruction of 3000-4000 Indian structure north of St. Augustine High School without proper archaeological study.
No permits for demolition of Don Pedro Fornell house. No apologies for ex-Mayor Weeks illegally risking workers' lives and destroying our history.
No permits for City's illegal dumping of 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, 2005-2006. No logic in plans to ship it in 2000 truck loads and dump it in Lincolnville, wasting $300,000 in legal/engineering fees, 2006-2008, put dirt on top of the contaminated solid waste and call it a "park."
No public comment when Commissioners voted 3-0 for this scheme on November 12, 2007, in a morning meeting held outside the ordinary course of business, with mendacious, misanthropic Mayor Joe Boles a/k/a "JOSPEH LESTER BOLES, JR." abusing police powers and threatening arrests of citizens who were promised a right to speak in the Sunday St. Augustine Record.
No apologies when "We, the People" stopped them and won and the contaminated solid waste was dumped in a Class I landfill.
No apologies when Boles wanted to violate DEP landfill guidelines and build a coral farm, aquarium and children's museum on top of 35 feet of garbage at the south end of Lincolnville.
No apologies from Mayor Boles and ex-Mayor Weeks for their lucrative no-bid lease of commercial property, dubbed "the best ever public-private partnership" by Boles.
No respect for our First Amendment rights, with hundreds of musicians, artists and entertainers arrested on St. George Street.
No respect for our First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment rights, requiring federal courts to intervene repeatedly to restore order, from the days when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Robert Hayling, D.D.S. and Ambassador Andrew Young were here.
No respect for the truth in the Michelle O'Connell shooting case, with our ex-SAPD Chief, Sheriff David Bernard Shoar, embarrassing us in the eyes of the world.
As Albert Camus once said, "we must first posit denial and absurdity, because that is what our generation has encountered."
Let the truth be told.
Let freedom ring.
Let musicians sing.
Let artists paint.
"Let justice flow like a might stream," as Amos said, for we are "now entering an era of consequences," as Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said.
We must consider "the consequences of consequences of consequences," as State Senate candidate Kathleen Trued says.
Stand up.
Be counted.
Now is the time for all the "good people" of St. Augustine to rally to her support.
For 449 years, our Nation's Oldest City has been a survivor. She's survived wars, tyrants, sieges, invaders, epidemics, murderers, bad leaders, bigots, greedheads, and hurricanes.
We shall overcome the latest two tawdry tatterdemalion tyrants, Boles and Weeks.
Yes we can.
Yes we will.
Love thy neighbors.
Let us have democracy, at last.
Now.
No more Caudillos like City Managers WILLIAM POMAR and WILLIAM BRUCE HARRISS.
No more kowtowing to corrupters and bosses and developer shills.
Vote as if your life depends upon it, because it does.
Let St. Augustine, Florida, at last, truly become part of "the land of the free and the home of the brave.'
We are all Americans.
We love it here -- we all reject kooky, scheming big-shot crooks and all of their works and pomps, their toadies, and their derisive, dirty looks.
Our City is now united.
I agree with former Mayor George Gardner's endorsement of Nancy Shaver, John Valdes and Nancy Sikes-Kline, below.
It's time to elect a woman as Mayor, after 449 years.
As LBJ said after Selma, "We SHALL overcome."
We shall overcome racism, sexism, misogyny, waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery, nincompoopery and corruption.
We shall preserve and protect our history and nature.
Heal the land.
Heal the streets.
Heal the people.
Heal the ancient wounds of division and strife that haters long created, as they long divided our community, pitting Europeans against Native Americans, whites against blacks, rich against poor, the "Establishment" against those to whom the Record derisively refers to as "upstarts."
Heal our City of St. Augustine.
Let it at last become, in John Winthrop's words, "a shining city upon a hill."