In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Yes we can! Every thinking voter should support Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Reject extremist Fox News talking head RONALD DEON DeSANTIS, who is still receiving briefings on Florida issues.
Post-primary Dem poll shows Gillum leading DeSantis in Florida
Democrat Andrew Gillum leads Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis (Fla.) by 5 points in the race for the Florida governor's mansion, according to the first publicly released poll since the state's primary elections on Tuesday.
The survey was commissioned by Florida Democratic consultant Christian Ulvert and conducted by the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) from Aug. 29-30 — just after Gillum and DeSantis secured their parties' nominations. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Forty-eight percent of the 743 voters surveyed chose Gillum, the current mayor of Tallahassee and a self-styled progressive, in the match-up, while 43 percent said they would cast their ballots for DeSantis.
Among independents — a massive voting bloc in the state — Gillum leads DeSantis by 34 points, the poll found.
Gillum also beats out DeSantis in favorability among Florida voters. Forty-five percent said they have a favorable opinion of the Tallahassee mayor, while 41 percent reported a favorable view of DeSantis.
The poll provides a snapshot of the earliest days of the race between Gillum and DeSantis.
Gillum notched a stunning upset victory over former Rep. Gwen Graham (D-Fla.) in Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary, edging out a field of more moderate Democrats and putting him on track to become the first black governor in Florida's history.
Gillum is backed by progressive firebrand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who made a trip down to Florida earlier this month to stump for the mayor. Gillum long lagged behind his primary opponents in public polls, but mounted a late-in-the-game comeback that pushed him to victory on Tuesday.
DeSantis, a three-term congressman who won the endorsement of President Trump, handily defeated Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday.
The primary victories by two populists from different ends of the political spectrum tee up a bitter proxy fight between two diametrically opposed camps — that of Trump and that of Sanders.
The PPP survey released Thursday pegs Trump's support among Florida voters at 46 percent, while disapproval is slightly higher at 49 percent. DeSantis has cast himself as a reliable defender of Trump and his agenda, leaving open the question of whether he can win over more-moderate voters in the state who may see the president unfavorably.
The poll also showed a dead heat in the Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) — 46 percent and 45 percent, respectively.
Nelson is considered among the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection this year and faces a formidable challenger in Scott, a wealthy two-term Florida governor who has the backing of Trump.
If any of you ever runs for office, be sure to ask corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR for an endorsement .... (wait for it) ... OF YOUR OPPONENT!
Is four-flusher St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR an eight-time loser?
Anyone who still thinks that stinky $heriff DAVID SHOAR is still a kingmaker does not know DICK.
(DICK WILLIAMS, that is).
Just ask:
DICK WILLIAMS, endorsed/defeated in St. Johns County Commission Republican Primary, 2018. SHOAR's endorsement caused him to come in third in the August 28, 2018 primary. ADAM PUTNAM, endorsed/defeated in Florida Republican Governor Primary 2018
FRANK WHITE, endorsed/defeated in Florida Republican Attorney General Primary, 2018
KRIS PHILLIPS, endorsed/defeated, St. Augustine nonpartisan race for Mayor 2016
ANDREA SAMUELS, endorsed on letterhead/defeated, St. Augustine Beach Commission, 2016
JERRY CAMERON, endorsed/defeated St. Johns County Commission Republican Primary, 2016
JOE BOLES, endorsed/defeated for St. Augustine Mayor, 2014
RANDY BRUNSON, St. Johns County Commission, 2012
(to be continued)
This nasty man abused the powers of his constitutional office to attempt to destroy the career of FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers, fomenting a bogus SLAPP Lawsuit by Deputy JEREMY BANKS.
This vicious varmint accused a bereaved family of "molesting" Michelle O'Connell's body when they obtained a proper autopsy, which found her jaw was broken, a fact missed by PREDRAG BLUIC, malfeasant St. Johns County Medical Examiner.
Is disgraceful, conniving Sheriff DAIVD SHOAR less popular than:
A. Ebola?
B. Zika?
C. Shingles?
September 2, 2018 is the eighth anniversary of the Michelle O'Connell homicide.
Northeast Florida's alien implant, Flori-DUH's goofy gooberish, gubernatorial candidate RONALD DEON DeSANTIS is most noted for his appearances on Fox News, which disavowed his campaign opening remarks urging Floridians not to "monkey this up," concerning our Democratic nominee for Governor, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, an African-American.
Rebarbative retromingent reprobate U.S. Rep. RONALD DEON DeSANTIS (R-FL 6/KOCH INDUSTRIES) has no executive branch experience.
RDS is most noted for "Stolen Valor" (misrepresentation of his "service" in his first campaign).
RDS was Yale University Baseball Team Captain and earned a Juris Doctorate at Harvard University, but uses Harvard Law School in his schoolboy schpiels to admiring Tea Partiers, portraying Harvard Law School as Socialistic.
Briefly and inexplicably hired as a briefcase-toter at Holland&Knight, RDS had little to no connection to our District, but was nonetheless narrowly voted in as the Republican nominee in 2012, with Right-wing Koch Brothers support.
Is RDS a dimwitted doofus racist demagogue, a lugubrious goober, one who did little or nothing for St. Johns County in six (6) years of representing all or part of it? You tell me.
We look forward to insipid, idiotic, insensitive RONALD DEON DeSANTIS being trounced by Andrew Gillum in the November 6, 2018 Florida Governor's election.
DeSantis attacks Gillum by telling Floridians to not 'monkey this up'
DeSantis launches campaign against Gillum by telling Floridians to not 'monkey this up'
The Florida Democratic Party chairwoman called the comment 'disgusting.'
"It's very clear that Mr. Desantis is taking a page directly from the campaign manual of Donald Trump," Gillum said. "But I think he's got another thing coming to him if he thinks that in today's day and age Florida voters are going to respond to that level of derision and division. They are sick of it."
When pressed whether the comment was racist, Gillum paused for a moment before sidestepping the question.
"Well, in the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls. They are now using full bull horns," he responded.
Gillum added that he is going to continue to talk about the issues affecting Florida and will not engage in the charged style of talk coming from DeSantis and Trump.
"He's very clear on day one that he is willing to go down to the gutter," Gillum said of DeSantis.
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo was more direct in condemning DeSantis' comments, saying he's launching a racist campaign to the lead up of the general election in November. "It's disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles," Rizzo said in a statement.
Brad Herold, a spokesman for DeSantis' campaign, however, denied that the congressman was making a racist remark.
"Ron DeSantis was obviously talking about Florida not making the wrong decision to embrace the socialist policies that Andrew Gillum espouses. To characterize it as anything else is absurd," he said. "Florida’s economy has been on the move for the last eight years and the last thing we need is a far-left democrat trying to stop our success."
Fox News host Sandra Smith, who conducted the interview with DeSantis, later said on air that the Republican candidate had clarified his remark, reading Herold's statement. She added that the network does not condone DeSantis' language.
"We do not condone this language and wanted to make our viewers aware that he has since clarified his statement," Smith said.
What a way to celebrate the 453rd anniversary of St. Augustine! We've survived wars, weather, Caudillos and Political Tourists. "Political Tourist" BILL McCLURE (BM) was crushed.
BM thought he would buy the office of Mayor of St. Augustine. We, the People, proved BM wrong.
Bumptious bully BM listed Apartment No. 6 at the 105 Marine Street Tourist Home as his residence. BM had the support of, well, no one.
Facing imminent arrest or criminal charges for Medicaid fraud, this fast-talking fraudfeasor suffered ignominious defeat on August 28, 2018, during Primary Election Day. (corrected).
Even with another ringer in the race, BM was unable to force St. Augustine's beloved Mayor Nancy Shaver into a runoff.
As we cheered on Election Night, "Four More Years!"
The St. Augustine Record's coverage of the campaign was almost nonexistent.
Thank God for blogs. Some of us are still fulfilling the Founding Father's vision of hold those in power accountable to We, the People.
Wondering why the print version of the St. Augustine Record omitted the Democratic Primary victory of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum for Governor and the Democratic Primary victory of Sean Shaw for Attorney General.
They're both African-American and they're both Democrats. Nothing in this dupey Republican rag about either election night victory.
Under prior owners, in the 1960s, this "newspaper" printed advance notice of KKK rallies. It printed the names and addresses of the black school children who were attending local schools that were newly desegregated -- this led to firings, evictions and firebombing. It printed a page one story where Mayor Shelley of St. Augustine threatened African-American student protesters with arrests and lifetime blacklisting.
TRUMP has little knowledge of history and no sense of irony. The John Adams blessing, carved in marble in 1945 in the mantle of the White House State Dining Room, states in full: I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.” (From a letter written to Abigail Adams from the President's House by Adams in 1800 and were engraved on the mantel in 1945 during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
Trump Privately Urges Pastors to Help Him From the Pulpit in Midterms
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President Trump during a prayer at a dinner for evangelical leadership in the State Dining Room of the White House on Monday evening.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — In remarks to evangelical ministers in the White House State Dining Room on Monday night, President Trump spoke in high-minded tones about religious liberty, abortion and youth unemployment. He noted a John Adams quote carved into the room’s fireplace: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house.”
But once reporters and television cameras were ushered out of the room, Mr. Trump turned to the more pragmatic concerns of how evangelical leaders can use their pulpits to help Republicans win in the midterm elections, according to an audiotape of his remarks provided to The New York Times by someone who attended the event.
“I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote,” Mr. Trump told the group of about 100 evangelical ministers. “Because if they don’t — it’s Nov. 6 — if they don’t vote we’re going to have a miserable two years and we’re going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time because then it just gets to be one election — you’re one election away from losing everything you’ve got.”
Mr. Trump spent most of his private remarks to the group bragging about having gotten “rid of” the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision of tax law that threatened religious organizations, like churches, with the loss of tax-exempt status if they endorse or oppose political candidates.
Under that amendment, Mr. Trump said, religious leaders had been prevented from speaking their minds.
“Maybe it’s why you are very plateaued. I hate to say it, if you were a stock, you’d be like, you’re very plateaued,” Mr. Trump said, prompting laughter in the room. “I really believe you’re plateaued because you can’t speak. They really have silenced you. But now you’re not silenced anymore.”
The president recalled when he first learned about the Johnson Amendment at a meeting during the 2016 campaign, when several dozen pastors and ministers came to see him at Trump Tower in New York City. He said he was pleased by the meeting because the religious leaders seemed to like him.
“I know when people like me,” Mr. Trump said. “I know when people don’t like me. You know, pretty good at that stuff. A lot of them like, and some don’t and that’s O.K. But this group really liked me.”
Mr. Trump also recalled on Monday night looking out the window during the Trump Tower meeting, though it was unclear why he chose to discuss it.
“We were in the 68th floor of Trump Tower and we looked down on the sidewalks and there were thousands and thousands of people,” he said. “They looked like ants, little people going all over — boom, boom, boom — so little, ’cause when you’re 68 floors, they look really small. But there were a lot of them.”
Mr. Trump said he told the religious leaders at that campaign meeting that he would oppose the Johnson Amendment if he won the presidency and “fight very hard to make sure that provision gets taken away.”
In fact, the president has fallen short of that promise.
Eliminating the provision in the law would require Congress to act. Instead, Mr. Trump signed an executive order in May 2017 directing the Internal Revenue Service not to aggressively pursue cases where a church endorses a candidate or makes political donations.
Legal experts have said the I.R.S. has very rarely pursued such cases against churches, and religious leaders have often been outspoken about politics even if they have had to stop short of officially endorsing a candidate.
Mr. Trump ignored that reality Monday night. He urged religious leaders to use what he described as their newfound freedom of speech to campaign from the pulpit on behalf of Republican candidates.
“You have people that preach to almost 200 million people — 150 to, close, depending on which Sunday we are talking about, and beyond Sunday, 100, 150 million people,” he said.
Mr. Trump warned that if Republicans do not retain control of Congress, religious communities would lose all of the gains he had secured on their behalf.
“They will end everything immediately,” he said, apparently referring to Democrats. He added, again without being clear whom he was talking about: “They will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently. And violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa, and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people.”
Antifa is a term that describes some militant, leftist anti-fascist groups in the United States.
Mr. Trump bantered with the religious leaders at the dinner, noting at one point that Robert Jeffress, a Dallas evangelical pastor who once said Jewish people were going to hell, had observed that Mr. Trump “may not be the perfect human being, but he’s the greatest leader for Christianity.”
“Hopefully, I’ve proven that to be a fact,” Mr. Trump said, prompting applause, before adding, “In terms of the second part, not the first part.”
After his remarks, Mr. Trump invited several religious leaders to speak at the podium, as he often does with friendly groups. Several heaped praise upon the president, though it was not possible from the audio to identify them.“The biggest thing I said to the president is, we are here tonight to say to you, Mr. President, and to you, First Lady Melania, and to Ivanka and to Jared, we love you and we believe in you,” the first religious leader, a man, said, referring to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. “You are doing amazing, amazing things.”
He added that attacks on Mr. Trump by political adversaries frustrated the pastors.
“In the meeting today, we all got down on our knees and we prayed for you because we can’t imagine the pain,” the man said. “You are human beings and when people are lying constantly, accusing constantly, attacking constantly, it hurts.”
A second minister noted that “there are a few of us people of color in the room” and noted that “many of us have taken shots and hits because we are with this president.”
The minister added: “Now we have a warrior at the helm who is willing to stand up and fight. Amen. Sir, I commend you for your courage. It is an amazing thing. So, team — let’s fight and we’ll win. God bless you.”
It was 44 years ago today (August 28, 1974, the Feast of Saint Augustine) that I heard Ralph Nader speak at Gaston Hall at Georgetown University:
It was 44 years ago tomorrow (August 29, 1974) that I went to work for the office of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, on the morning before my first class at Georgetown University.
Thanks to the Navy SEAL veteran son of a Philadelphia Inquirer classified ad department workplace friend of my Aunt Helen (who celebrates her 100th birthday next month), I was in like the proverbial Flynn
Like the character played by Robert Morse in the musical comedy "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," I started in the mailroom.
It was around the corner from Senator Kennedy's main office. In fact, it was formerly and formally one of five rooms assigned to progressive Democratic Senator "Fritz" Hollings of S.C., which he had lent (permanently, it turns out) to Senator Kennedy after RFK was murdered, to handle the overflow of mail, which never abated.
For 2.5 days/week, as a freshman and sophomore (Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoon), I worked as an intern, first free, then paid ($53/week for up to 30 hours of work).
I opened and stapled mail, read mail, assigned mail to other people to read, auto-pennned and stuffed response letters, ran errands, did research, helped with casework, and quickly earned a mafia-sounding nickname. My widely-used nickname in Senator Ted Kennedy's office was "Fast Eddie."
Because if you needed to send something somewhere quickly (this was 1974), there was no Internet, no E-mail and only slow cumbersome fax machines, which took 4-6 minutes per page (and emitted fumes that could make you dizzy).
You put it in an envelope, you called the mailroom, and you asked for an intern. Any intern.
Or, if it was Tuesday, Thursday or Friday afternoon, you would say, "Is Fast Eddie there?"
Fast Eddie (the EMK staff gave me that nickname) had survived rheumatic fever and arthritis. I was (and still am) a klutz. I did not drive (still don't and you should be glad I don't).
But Fast Eddie moved swiftly, got things done quickly, and did not tarry, unlike your typical undergraduate interns, who moved like molasses going uphill in Vermont in January.
I got to meet and talk and laugh with phenomenal staffers and superlative secretaries, including legislative director Carey W. Parker (a Rhodes scholar, one of several in that big room, and his secretary Shannon McDonald), Mary Murtagh and Melody Miller, and people who went on to be Ambassador to NATO (Robert Hunter), first Jewish director of the Peace Corps (Marc Schneider), and be appointed on EMK's death to the U.S. Senate (Paul Kirk). I learned how to answer a telephone, how to solve problems, how to use the telephone, and how to persuade government officials to do their jobs.
I would walk several times a day and take the subway (a/k/a the Toonerville trolley in Tom Wicker's novel, Facing the Lions) from the Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. U.S. Senate Office Building (a/k/a "OLD S.O.B.) to the Capitol, dropping freshly mimeographed speeches and press releases to the three Senate press galleries (newspaper, tv and periodical), sometimes to eye-rolling from journalists who were amazed to see so many EMK press releases.
I read the press releases and speeches, and learned from the scholarly style of Carey Parker, et al.
On November 21, 1974, by vote of 65-27, the United States Senate overrode President Ford's veto of the Freedom of Information Act -- urged by then-youthful Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Antonin Scalia. After the historic veto override, I carried the triumphant Ted Kennedy speech and press release to the press galleries. To get there, I took the subway to the Capitol Building, took the elevator to the second floor, walking up the marble steps to the third floor, past this venerable painting of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation:
Less than nine years later, I became the "pest who never rests," using FOIA to win declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in Earth history, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on May 17, 1983, as Appalachian Observer editor.
We also helped empower Sheriff's deputies to blow the whistle. Result: the FBI arrested and incarcerate a corrupt Anderson County Sheriff (two-time Tennessee Sheriff of the Year Dennis O. Trotter).
We also helped run off a corrupt school superintendent, Paul Eugene Bostic, Jr., a "school dictator" of the sort documented by Harry Caudill in Night Comes to the Cumberlands.
After spending much of eighth, ninth and tenth grades on my back, my health became more robust as I walked several times a day, learning the corridors of power on Capitol Hill, walking by beautiful U.S. Capitol Hill artwork, paintings, sculptures and frescoes, and through secret corridors and hidden basement corridors, to obscure places like the Capitol basement, the Senate Folding and Stapling Room, the Senate Carpentry Shop, and the Russell Building Attic.
I would watch committee hearings and Senate sessions, pre-CSPAN. I would watch the legislative assistants in the Dance of Legislation (as Eric Redman called it), and the warp and woof of constituent correspondence and casework.
I would hang out with the likes of Mary Murtagh, press secretary Dick Drayne and the case workers, and by sophomore year even had a tiny 2x3 table-desk between press and case operations, complete with tiny chair and, of course, a telephone.
I found that saying "This is Ed Slavin in Ted Kennedy's office" got your calls returned, and that we could perform minor miracles.
It's like Harris Wofford said on January 20, 1961: "You can do anything with these phones!" (After calling to desegregate the Coast Guard, after JFK complained there were no blacks in the Coast Guard contingent at his Inaugural Parade.
In Senator Kennedy's office, I learned the power of positive thinking, knowing that with a keyboard, a telephone and a democracy, we could do anything to make the world a better place.
Mary Murtagh and I helped to end sperm whaling with our research on jojoba, an oil seed that is an exact chemical duplicate for the oil of the endangered sperm whale, of which there were 20,000 killed in the world back then -- 2/3 of all the world's whales murdered then, saved by the wonders of the market system and a replacement product that nature created and we promoted. Google® jojoba and see what happened!
I was inspired by hearing Ralph Nader speak in Gaston Hall at Georgetown University the evening of August 28, 1974 (Feast of St. Augustine). (It was also the eleventh anniversary of the "I have a dream speech" by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial.)
In 2008, Folio Weekly (Anne Schindler, editor, now with First Coast News) would call me an "environmental hero" for detecting and remedying the City of St. Augustine's dumping a landfill in a lake. In 2017, I have been threatened by St. Johns County Commission Chair JAMES JOHNS, a developer puppet and Sheriff DAVID SHOAR crony, for First Amendment protected activity.
Be not afraid.
My political theory professor, Jose Sorzano, said "Ideas have consequences." (He was later Deputy UN Ambassador under President Reagan, working under Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, another GU professor whose class on "Personality & Politics" I never took, only because it was only offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my work days).
Yes, hearing Ralph Nader's speech 44 years ago tonight had consequences.
It led to life in, around and surrounded by, investigative reporting, government service and working to improve the lot of others.
It led to work for EMK and in two other Senate offices (Gary Hart and Jim Sasser), investigative reporting, two judicial clerkships at the Department of Labor (Charles P. Rippey and Chief Judge Nahum Litt), work at the AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and Health Legal Rights Foundation and the Government Accountability Project and privately, representing whistleblowers around America.
It led me to stand up for equal rights and honest government here, in the City of St. Augustine, where for the last eleven years, we band of brothers and sisters have worked to transform our City government, from one of the worst to one of the first in North Florida on human rights, winning Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions, respect for GLBT rights, respect for Environmental Justice, and transforming our town (electing the incomparable Nancy Shaver, the first woman Mayor elected by vote of all of the people as such, on November 4, 2014)(see Folio Weekly article here).
Most recently, we enjoyed beating numerous demolition permits before the Historic Architectural Review Board and watching as yet another federal court victory in Bates v. City of St. Augustine (Bates II), by U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis (fine visual artists harassed by 32 years of Jim Crow law ordinances and oppression by City). This afternoon, a settlement of the Bates case is possible after a Shade meeting.
Last year, votes were counted in four fixed county races, including the fixed Sheriff's election, one of four illegally closed primaries, with two shills (one of them the Sheriff's own massage therapist, a former jailer) claiming "write-in" status, violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article VI, Section 5(b) of Florida's Constitution, denying us the universal primary to which we're legally entitled. Last year, I asked the Justice Department Civil Rights Division to bring a lawsuit. Now that Trump is President, there's two chances of that, Slim and None. But a resolution was passed last year by the St. Augustine City Commission, calling for an end to such illegally closed primary shenanigans.
Last week, activists and tourism business owners and managers united, with eight of us convincing the St. Johns County Visitors and Convention Bureau, Inc. to reverse the illegal firing of CEO Richard Goldman.
We won.
And in all my years of labor law, I'd never won reinstatement of a CEO before, or any victory nearly that quickly. People are uniting and listening, and we're making St. Augustine a better place. No longer do developers and millionaires and billionaires and racists throw their weight around here quite like they did in 2005, when I first spoke at a City meeting, or in 2006, when the City dumped a landfill in a lake, and thought it was cute.
One year ago tonight, on the Feast of Saint Augustine, our St. Augustine City Commission will consider what to do about two inoffensive monuments to Confederate war dead in our city (the decision was to leave them alone and contextualize them with plaques, which has led to whining and gnashing of teeth by Smug Whiteys Indignant About Nearly Everything (SWINE).
This ill-advised proposal to remove monuments was a demented demand by a misguided "minister, homophobic Rev. RONALD RAWLS, JR., of Gainesville, married to a UF law professor who is seeking a judgeship. Is Rev. RAWLS a small-minded bigot, a willful man who has already destroyed 2/3 of historic Echo House, a 1926 African-American community center, with his parishioners loudly lecturing City board and Commission members that God told him to tear it down for parking?
God doesn't do parking lots, Rev. RAWLS, and sure doesn't issue fatwas (like you do) about taking down memorials to other peoples' ancestors.
There's a modest state park at Fort Mose, which honors the African-Americans who won freedom from slavery under the Spanish, fleeing oppression in British colonies in the Carolina.
Fish Island has remains of eight slave cabins, slave graves and the mansion and graves of Jesse Fish, Florida's first crooked realtor, and founder of the citrus agricultural industry here. We've stopped a proposed Planned Unit Development by developer DONALD R. HORTON and look forward to buying the land for a park -- part of a future St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
We need more archaeology and greater National Park Service status here. We need more history commemoration, not less, here in St. Augustine, including:
Enactment of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, first proposed by Mayor Walter Fraser, Senator Claude Pepper, et al. in 1939.
Monument at Emancipation Park (where locals heard the Emancipation Proclamation read in January 1863);
Monuments to documented local lynching sites;
Monument to St. Augustine's Union Civil War veterans;
Seated sculpture honoring slavery victims, showing a family being split for auction;
Seated sculpture of civil rights heroes and sheroes Dr. Robert S. Hayling, D.D.S., Stetson Kennedy and Barbara Vickers, engaged in conversation, perhaps looking at the slavery sculpture and one of the other Civil War monuments (like the one honoring General William Wing Loring);
A large civil rights museum honoring St. Augustine's pivotal role in adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not unlike the ones in Memphis, Atlanta and elsewhere, putting everything in perspective;
A new Florida law requiring K-12 civil rights education, like in Mississippi;
Florida fourth graders trekking to St. Augustine to learn history and empathy, with National Park Service rangers explaining to them and millions of other visitors the places here where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Andrew Young, Ralph David Abernathy, Dr. Robert Hayling, et al. helped change history for the better, making America truly a shining "City on a Hill" for the world.
Yes we can!
My parents, both union organizers, were my first teachers. It took them twelve years to have their only child -- the result of my father having malaria in Sicily and my mother being subjected to unethical x-ray experiments at age 11. They taught me about right and wrong and standing up to power and oppression, something they were both adept at doing during most of their lives.
My aunt Bunny is a Franciscan nun in South Korea -- I did not meet her until I was ten, and I was impressed with her dedication to human rights. She said if she said anything against the South Korean dictator on a bus, she'd be overheard and bounced out of the country as persona non grata in 48 hours. She's still there, and South Korea is now a democracy.
History is complicated, I've learned. One of my professors, Holocaust hero Jan Karski, is memorialized with this monument on the Georgetown campus, NYC, Israel and three places in Poland:
True to the standards of my first boss, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his two murdered brothers, remember EMK's words at the 1980 Democratic National Convention: 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.
