Only the NRA was invited to the signing of a bill enabling anyone to carry a concealed loaded weapon with no training, no registration, no nothing.
Meanwhile, in Nashville, students, parents, and teachers protest the use of guns that killed their classmates.
And at the state capitol
The shooter at the school shot 126 rifle rounds and 26 from a handgun in 14 minute. 3 children, 3 staff murdered. This is the 38th mass shooting in 2023, and Florida’s Governor and the NRA celebrated the Constitutional Carry Act.
Be careful what you wish for. I spent 35 years in Florida and I just moved to North Carolina, where it’s been 95 to 100 degrees but seems to be cooling down. At least, it will be cooler in the Fall. But this snowbird might wish he’d thought about his move to Florida, first.
Dear Diary,
Just moved to Florida! Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. It is beautiful. I’ve finally found my home. I love it here.
June 14: Really heating up. Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun every day like this. I’m turning into a sun worshipper.
June 30: Had the backyard landscaped with southern plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
July 10: The temperature hasn’t been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it’s kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.
July 15: Fell asleep by the community pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ol’ sun in a climate like this.
July 20: I missed Lomita (my cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car at noon, Lomita had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The car now smells like Kibbles and Sh*ts. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good ol’ Mr. Sun strikes again.
July 25: The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it’s hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.
July 30: Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now, $225,000 house and I can’t even go inside. Lomita is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?
Aug. 4: It’s 115 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state.
Aug. 8: If another wise ass cracks, ‘Hot enough for you today?’ I’m going to strangle him. Damn heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!
Aug. 9: Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my ass was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and ass. Now, my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.
Aug 10: The weather report might as well be a damn recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It’s been too hot to do sh*t for 2 damn months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn’t it ever rain in this damn state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can’t live in this damn heat.
Aug. 14: Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cacti are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me??? “Hot enough for you today?” My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Florida. What kind of a sick demented people would want to live here?? Will write later to let you know how the trial goes.
The incoming Biden-Harris administration reflects the diversity of Americans.
“I did my brother a grievous wrong, and I will never forgive him!” When I first read that statement years ago in Utne Magazine, I was baffled. If I did my brother wrong, wouldn’t it be me that needed forgiveness? Reading on, I saw the meaning which I think it is incredibly relevant to America today: When you’ve acted inhumanly to your fellow members of the human race, you can repent it OR you can keep insisting that THEY MUST HAVE DESERVED IT. Otherwise you, an upstanding member of society, could never have acted that way. So you have to keep piling coals of fire upon your brother’s head to justify your actions and avoid being repulsed by yourself. Today we are seeing a culmination of 400 years of misplaced blame in America. “We have to take our country back!” is a macabre example, considering that the people uttering those words descend from those who massacred millions of indigenous people that were here long before Europeans invaded. “They’re going to take our jobs and give them to the lazy Blacks!” is another common mantra. Disrespect reigns for anyone not white, such as that expressed even by someone as privileged as a member of the board of the Naval Academy Alumni Association, who unwittingly broadcast himself saying hateful slurs. As a Black woman who has learned America’s history at the pivotal places where it happened in the National Park System, I confess I sometimes feel a little smug. Because it requires an astounding lack of knowledge about our country’s history to claim that it was once “white” and a colossal level of self-deception to pretend that non-white Americans are lazy. Could it be that revulsion to their ancestors’ actions at events such as the massacre at Sand Creek force today’s racists to maintain their antipathy towards their non-white brothers and sisters? Could the need to be able to stomach or excuse the actions of their forebears propel them to claim a shallow ‘superiority?’ Because it is stomach churning: “… in late autumn of 1864, about 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho lived in tepees here, at the edge of what was then reservation land. Their chiefs had recently sought peace in talks with white officials and believed they would be unmolested at their isolated camp. “When hundreds of blue-clad cavalrymen suddenly appeared at dawn on November 29, a Cheyenne chief raised the Stars and Stripes above his lodge. Others in the village waved white flags. The troops replied by opening fire with carbines and cannon, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies. . .” I need not document the industriousness of African Americans in farming, building, metalwork, defense and even saving America’s economy. and instead refer you to some of those parks that commemorate that history at the places where it happened, African American Heritage. Americans of every race and ethnicity contributed to the development of our country and can find sites in the National Park System where their contributions were pivotal to getting us where we are today. The humanity of white Americans is similarly on display. I’m not a psychologist (though I could play one on TV.) But I believe it’s important to investigate all the potential triggers that are leading our white brothers and sisters to act out in such a paroxysm of rage. A few cautions I might share from the System which protects the “natural, cultural and historic” treasures of our great Republic: A civil war is no joke, as the graves at these national parks attest, and the suffering recorded at sites such as Andersonville National Historic Site place them off my list, (although my life goal is to visit all 400-plus units in the system.) 750, 000 dead and untold numbers injured. For what purpose would the losing side want to repeat that in 2021?! I read about a tribe in Africa where, when a member has transgressed, the elders take them out into the village square. There, the villagers sing and dance around them, reminding them how good they are and that they are a vital part of the community. When the transgressor has repented, the tribe takes him back into the village. I wish we could do that for these American transgressors. Because a house divided against itself cannot stand. I’d tell them, “Your brothers and sisters who’ve been so terribly wronged don’t hold it against you. We just want to move on as humans together on a level playing field, to make real what we Americans committed to centuries ago, ‘with Liberty and Justice for all.’ ” How about it? There’s a brighter day in view and I embrace it wholeheartedly.
Thanks to Audrey Peterman of Earthwise Productions, Inc. in Fort Lauderdale for permission to repost this message.
This message was in my email, today. It outlines some solutions to the economic disparity experienced by people of color in the USA, during the pandemic.
Dear All People’s Day friends,
Wednesday night Elliott and I were on an NAACP call that included Nancy Pelosi and other congressional officials who are trying to help in this time of need. We learned that people of color are the largest group impacted by the Coronavirus. Many are the most exposed because their jobs are considered essential and they won’t get paid if they don’t go to work. Jim Crow laws hadn’t allowed them to save funds for a rainy day and stay home plus many people of color have compromised health issues because of prejudice against them in the health system. I have heard many stories about this neglect throughout the years but no one has amassed scientific data. Thus, people of color have the highest death rate from the Coronavirus in the US.
In the spirit of All People’s Day inclusion, here is a way you can help them and everyone in this time of need.
Call Governor Ron DeSantis 1(850) 717-9337
Senator Marco Rubio (561) 775-3360
Senator Rick Scott (202) 224-5274
Congresswoman Lois Frankel (561) 998-9045
Ask them to support the following issues:
THESE ARE ISSUES THAT WILL BE HELPFUL IN OUR BATTLE AGAINST THE CORONAVIRUS
Expand Medicaid throughout the country
Since people of color have the highest death rate keep track of racial demographics about people with the virus so zip codes can pinpoint testing sites. Also, make public transportation to the sites available.
Increase the amount of Food Stamps.
In the next cash infusion: a) Include small businesses owned by people of color that have not been able to get the stimulus loans because they cannot afford to use a bank that requires a certain balance. b) Other institutions like Credit Unions should be approved for distributing the money. c) 501c3 nonprofits and churches should be treated like small businesses for the loans. If 75% is given to workers the business loans are forgiven.
Vote by mail for all states due to the Coronavirus
Contemplate this: What the midterm election showed was:
A large group of eligible voters is uninformed about the importance of their right to vote.
There is a criminal faction among Republicans to disenfranchise voters who may vote Democratic.
White people love white privilege and will do anything to keep it.
Hispanic people do not understand that they are not considered to be white.
We must find a way to wrench the power out of the hands of the White Supremacist Patriarchy that is heavily supported by white women who benefit in ways that people of color will never know or understand.
To understand the “white woman story,” we must first acknowledge that white supremacy remains the prevailing force in electoral politics.
These elections were not aberrations; white women have voted Republican for the better part of the last three decades. Women of color, black women especially, are responsible for the so-called gender gap in electoral politics and form the core of the progressive base.
Some white women face voting pressure from their more-conservative husbands, a dynamic Hillary Clinton acknowledged in her analysis of her 2016 election loss. Investments in mobilizing newly activated white women must be the frosting atop a cake of much deeper investment in year-round organizing in communities of color – those best poised to lead and drive real progressive change.
Unfortunately, many black people can’t see the forest for the trees because this midterm election is a win for black America because when black people took the house of representatives, we went from being on the menu to [having] a seat at the table.
On November 5, black people were sitting strapped down in the electric chair with the hood over [their] heads, waiting for November 6, when white America would pull the switch to literally legislate black people back into 1856 chattel slavery in real time. But, once black people took the house of representatives, then, reprieve, good news, the electric chair blew a fuse.
For our victory, instead of talking about black people like we are not in the room, Trump [said] he regrets his heavy tone and will work on taking the bass out of his voice when talking to or about us.
In a war, there are battles. We have not won the war but we won this battle and, in victory, we won breathing room and a 2-year window to re-organize, re-construct, re-formulate, refortify, rejuvenate, regroup and rebuild without being under constant political gunfire from the other side. So, don’t waste it.
Then there is this . . . Who are the 8% of Black men and 18% of Black women that voted RED? Why did they vote that way? Do 46% of Latino men think they are white men? Do 38% of Latino women think they are white? Is any of this relevant?
Other Victories – Takeover of House by Women Democratic Candidates
Washed clothes, cried, angel cloud and moon, sun and celestial cloud, my father is flying, he’s soaring [. Haiku] while I’m down here on the ground. ~ DrDivaJC
After being uprooted from my lakeside apartment in Oakland Park, Florida, in February 2013, moving three times, with the last one being to Atlanta with my daughter, I am finally back in my beloved South Florida.
On the road home. When I crossed the state line from Georgia to Florida, something magical happened!
Now, that I’m back I know why I missed Florida so much.
First, there is the beach! The Atlantic Ocean was calling to me in Atlanta and I could not wait to get there. So, my first morning back, I got in my car, emptied of its cargo into the tiny bedroom given me by my generous brother. I drove over the Intercoastal to Palm Beach and immediately, I was caught up by the sea, sand, and sky. The beautiful clouds beckoned me to the seashore but I was not to be distracted by this dreamy moment because I was destined to arrived at the place where my second reason for moving back to Florida was.
For almost 2 years, while living in Atlanta, I only saw my Dad (96) three times. I spoke with him almost every day. But this was not enough. I needed to see, touch, hug, and kiss my Dad.
Although he’s 96, he is alert, mindful, and reminiscent of decades gone by. He always asked me where I was, what I was doing, and how I was feeling. He always tells me to take good care of myself. Truthfully, it is my father’s counsel that has kept me from ever being depressed.
Upon returning to South Florida, I am able to visit him two or three times a week, now. This is such a blessing and I am ever grateful for having the ability to make this choice to return.
The third reason that I’m so happy to be back home is seeing so many of my friends. Lisa invited me to a luncheon with women the first Saturday I was home. I drove to Hallandale and really enjoyed meeting these progressive women.
The incoming Biden-Harris administration reflects the diversity of Americans.
Contemplate this: What the midterm election showed was:
Now, that I’m back I know why I missed Florida so much.
d reason that I’m so happy to be back home is seeing so many of my friends. Lisa invited me to a luncheon with women the first Saturday I was home. I drove to Hallandale and really enjoyed meeting these progressive women.
Words We Speak 