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Oct. 4: Birthday celebration for Cathy DeWitt, Stetson Kennedy

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

The Civic Media Center will host a free event honoring Florida folklorist/author/activist Stetson Kennedy and local singer/songwriter Cathy DeWitt on Sunday, Oct. 4 from 4 pm to 6 pm.

The Stetson Kennedy Foundation earlier this year awarded Cathy with the 2015 “Fellow Man and Mother Earth Award” recognizing her outstanding achievement in promoting environmental kinship, human rights and the preservation of traditional culture. The upcoming event offers the community a chance to recognize Cathy, and has the added bonus of being a birthday party for both her and Stetson — born just a day apart. Thee CMC is the home of the Stetson Kennedy Library, where his personal library of 2,000+ books found a home after he died in August 2011. The author of nearly a dozen books, Stetson used his brave heart, curious mind and sharp pen to effect change, infiltrating and exposing the KKK in the late ’40s. Stetson’s widow Sandra Parks-Kennedy will present this important award to Cathy. Past winners include Frank Thomas, Pete Gallagher, and Jeanie Fitchen.

Cathy has contributed her music to the Gainesville community for decades, hosting the NPR affiliate radio show Across the Prairie, composing songs, and playing in benefits to support the environment, arts, and human rights. Cathy’s band “Patchwork’’ will perform at the event, and will speakers and testimonials celebrating the achievements of both Stetson and Cathy — on their birthdays! Refreshments will be served.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

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Florida’s Water Crisis is Deepening

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Dr. Bob Knight, Director of the Florida Springs Institute

The front page article in the October 2012 Iguana by Joe Courter was titled: “This Election is Pivotal.” Truer words were never spoken.

In 2010 the Florida Republican party cemented their virtual dictatorship over the state government with the razor-thin election of a tea party, big business governor, Rick Scott, and a super majority in both the Florida House and Senate. In the 2012 election, Florida’s outrageous gerrymandering designed by the same Republican operatives strengthened their party’s stranglehold on every aspect of Florida’s state government.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

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From the publisher: Chin up—There’s work to do (don’t let the bastards grind you down)

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

joe-WEBWell, Summer’s over, the consistent 90s will make way for cooler and more energized times. There’s lots going on in the world, let’s have a great year.

We are glad to have Kelly Mangan’s firsthand report from Vermont on Bernie Sanders. It is infuriating to watch and listen as the media spends all its time covering the reactionary celebrity candidacy of Trump, and then, even worse, equate Bernie with Trump as fringe candidates, but then still spend their time on The Donald. The topics Bernie is putting on the table are the issues most Americans care about. They are about hope, positive solutions, and challenging the power of corporations and big money in our politics. They are not what the media wants to talk about.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

Daughter of Malcolm X, Ilyasah Shabazz, to speak

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

On Sept. 27 and 28, the Gainesville community will have a chance to hear Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, as she is in town for multiple speaking engagements. She is a woman who has embraced her roots and heritage, and has become a very successful and prominent person herself, leading a life dedicated to empowering young people by capitalizing on the arts and entertainment to encourage the understanding of history, culture and self-expression.

On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 27, she will be speaking at the Downtown Public Library at 2:30 p.m. The following day, Monday the 28th, she will be speaking at the Ocora, which is the lobby area in Pugh Hall on the University of Florida campus. That talk will be at 3 p.m.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

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He ‘fights like hell for working people’

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

bernieby Kelly Mangan

It was a warm summer’s night three years ago in rural Vermont. I pulled down a long driveway, past cow pasture and hay bales, up to a small farmhouse porch where an old fellow in a slouch hat was smoking his pipe. He nodded to me and asked if I was lost.

“No, sir,” I said. “I work for Bernie Sanders’ senate campaign.”

He stood and beckoned me inside, then called for his wife saying, “This girl says she’s from Bernie Sanders.”

For more information about how you can get involved in local activities supporting Bernie Sanders for President, contact Jenn Powell of Florida Independent Voters, jennifer@floridaindependentvoter.org or Molly Vise of Progressive Gators, mollyvv@ufl.edu.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

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Co-Op welcomes community support

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Citizen’s Co-Op Board of Directors

A year after the membership uprising at the Citizen’s Co-Op, and months after a settlement with the fired workers (see Iguana April 2014), the co-op finds itself with a new invigorated board, and an effective manager in Kim Drummond. The co-op will be celebrating Drummond’s year-anniversary, the longest tenure of any general manager.

Kelsey Naylor, one of the fired workers and now a board member, sees the Co-op as a valuable community asset and has been active in engaging old and potential new membership.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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‘This oppresses women’ stickers go viral

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

nwl 1by Jenny Brown, Iguana Editor Emeritus

The feminist groups National Women’s Liberation and Redstockings have been getting lots of press—as far away as India—for vintage stickers they’re distributing that keep appearing on sexist ads in New York. Women are sick of being bombarded with advertisements that depict women only as sexual objects,” Erin Mahoney of National Women’s Liberation told The Huffington Post. “That use our bodies to sell products. That embolden men to disrespect us. That tell us we are not worthy unless we conform to unrealistic, sexist, racist, and unhealthy beauty standards.”

The campaign has its roots in some Gainesville history: During the founding years of the Women’s Liberation movement in the late 1960s, there was a close collaboration between Gainesville Women’s Liberation and Redstockings. The two groups started working together again in the 1980s to distribute the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Some reflections on the Supreme Court

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Donna Waller

The U.S. Supreme Court is a fascinating institution. I have actually been focusing on it since 1964 when I decided to become a Government major with a concentration in Constitutional Law. In my lifetime I have watched it do away with segregation, demand that state legislatures apportion themselves fairly, affirm that the free exercise clause must take precedence over state laws and local ordinances, and require the enforcement of due process rights in the face of arbitrary judicial and police power. I have watched the Court affirm a woman’s right to choose, and now, marriage equality. I have seen some negative moments, too, the worst of which in my opinion is the Court’s recent decision in the Citizens United case.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

History and the people who make it: David Barsamian

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

Transcript edited by Pierce Butler.This is the 28th in a series of transcript excerpts from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program collection at the University of Florida, continuing last issue’s Barsamian interview.David Barsamian was interviewed by Paul Ortiz [O] and Matthew Simmons [S] in 2014.The first part of this interview ran in the June 2015 issue of The Gainesville Iguana.

B: I was a terrible student. I hated school. I was a model student through elementary school and from 7th, 8th grade on, I went down the tubes. I barely graduated from high school. I had to go to summer school and make up classes so I could get the lowest possible graduation diploma that New York City schools give.

I managed to get into San Francisco State for a year, but I hated that too and dropped out. Then I went to Asia and that’s really where my second life begins.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Struggling for justice in Mexico

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Nayeli Jimenez Cano

Since September 26, 2014, a phrase has been heard all around the world — “they took them alive, we want them back alive.” These words reflect the unfortunate night when 43 rural students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, were forcibly disappeared. They were travelling from Ayotzinapa to Mexico City to a national protest to commemorate the 2nd of October. Every year hundreds of students go to the streets to demand justice for the hundreds of students that were killed by military the 2nd of October in 1968 at Tlatelolco, a public plaza of Mexico City.

Ironically, while they were addressing to demand justice, policemen stopped in the highway of Iguala, Guerrero. Police shot them; 6 students were killed and 25 were injured. Then policemen gave the students to a narco group, Guerreros Unidos. They have been missing ever since.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Rad Press Café closing up shop

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by joe courter

Rad Press Coffee, despite a number of people doing a lot of work, has folded. They just could not muster the level of business needed to make it work out.

The Civic Media Center owes them great thanks for the infrastructure they added to the space, with sinks and counter-top that will remain for whatever other activities occur there. The CMC can use it for serving at their events, and it WILL be in use for The Fest at the end of October for sure. Summer was a poor time to launch their re-opening, but optimism is a hard thing to keep in check. However, for all the planning and the training of new workers it was not working in that configuration.

While that loss puts the CMC in a pinch for volunteers, too, as Rad Press people could serve that function, persevere the CMC will. It has shortened the hours for summer to save on time the A/C has to run. The new hours are 2pm to 6pm, Monday through Saturday.

South Main is still cooking, though. A new space called The Primitive Studio is opening in the space being revitalized by the Freewheel Project at 618 S. Main St. This will include a performance space for plays and comedy. While the immense work of the City is prepping Depot Park, around it are a lot of small enterprises using sweat and dreams to build assets to a future hub of activities for all of Gainesville to come down to and enjoy.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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A livable wage campaign for Alachua County

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Sheila Payne, Alachua County Labor Coalition

The Alachua County Labor Coalition is forging ahead with the first leg of its Livable Wage Campaign in Alachua County. We are speaking to many groups, congregations, unions, businesses and individuals to educate our community about the need for a higher minimum wage in Alachua County, a livable wage.

Over 25 organizations including Veterans for Peace, The Sierra Club, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1205 have endorsed the campaign so far to lift low wage workers over the poverty line. If you would like one of our crackerjack speakers to come speak to your organization, please contact us. We welcome the involvement of the whole community in this effort, which will not only raise the wages of our target businesses, but the wages of the whole community. As wages rise in certain sectors of a community, all wages rise as businesses compete for workers.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Local farms are alive and growing in the summer

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Frog Song Organics

Have you visited the new location of the Union Street Farmers Market to see what is growing in summer? Despite the heat and humidity, the local farmers at Frog Song Organics have not given up. Since starting their small farm four years ago, they have served the Union Street Farmers Market every week, rain or shine, with certified organic produce. Over the summer, you’ll find heat-loving crops like eggplant, okra, callaloo, peppers, basil, watermelon, native Florida Seminole Pumpkin, and fresh, bright, flowers.

Due to the efforts of farm staff, and the help of CSA members, market customers, family, and friends, Frog Song Organics has grown from its original six acres. They recently purchased fifty-seven acres of land through the USDA Farm Service Agency’s Beginning Farmer & Rancher Development Program to grow the farm and lengthen crop rotations. They are planning to cultivate about forty of these acres over time, and will slowly transition it into certified organic farmland with more fruit trees and vegetable crops.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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From the publisher: Go beyond old myths, false narratives

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

joe-WEBby joe courter

Last month in this spot, the Publisher’s Note dealt with the concept of history as stories which, through time and selection, become the accepted narrative of our ancestors and their activities. The impetus was the release of Seymour Hersh’s counter narrative about the U.S. raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and also cited were the Armenian Genocide and Columbus as false narratives accepted as official history.

Well, the massacre in Charleston, S.C., opened up a whole other discussion about history and the conflicting feeling about accepted truth and actively correcting the record. The Civil War and the Confederate flag are now part of a raging debate across the country as to whether there needs to be an active correcting of the record and an inclusion of suppressed information to create a more accurate and complete picture of what went on 150 years ago and its ramifications to our lives today.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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What’s in a monument? Dealing with Alachua County’s statue commemorating the Confederate war dead

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson

Alachua County has had a memorial commemorating the Confederate war dead since 1904 when it was erected by the Kirby Smith Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

At the time it was put up, many of these Daughters were actually the daughters of fathers who did not return from the Civil War just 39 years earlier. As anybody who has been to other battlegrounds can attest, our monument is very much in keeping with those found by the hundreds that were erected around the nation during this era. Indeed, our monument is on the site of one skirmish in that terrible war.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Confederate flags, re-enactors, complex symbols

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Matt Gallman

About six weeks ago two high school students from North Carolina found themselves in the center of a minor kerfuffle when they posted an Instagram picture from their recent class trip to Gettysburg.

The two girls had just finished walking the ground at Pickett’s Charge and posed waving Confederate flags. A friend of mine who is a popular blogger wrote that it was a particular desecration to wave the Confederate flag on the sacred ground at Gettysburg.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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September 2015 Gainesville Iguana

Posted on September 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

sept 15 iguana web coverThe September 2015 issue of the Iguana is now available! Kelly Mangan talks Bernie Sanders, Bob Knight discusses Florida’s water crisis, Susan Bottcher writes on redistricting corruption in Florida, and we remember some of Gainesville’s finest — Travis Fristoe and Pat Fitzpatrick. If you want to get your hands on a hard copy, check out our distro locations here.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

Government in the Shadows vs. Payne’s Prairie

Posted on September 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

by Robert “Bob” Simons

The workings of government in Tallahassee have always been messy. The money from the Florida Lottery, voted upon by the people of Florida for the purpose of increasing funding for education, was long ago syphoned off into the murky politics of Tallahassee. Amendment 1, also voted upon by the people of Florida (passing by a 75% to 25% majority of the people who voted) is suffering the same fate. (The overall funding for the environment in the State’s 2015 budget, in spite of supposed additions from Amendment 1, is $48 million less than it was in the 2014 budget according to Pegeen Hanrahan – Gainesville Sun 7/19/15.) The Water Management Districts, designed to carefully ration Florida’s fresh water supply to ensure a sustainable future for the people of Florida have been downsized and reworked to eliminate the “sustainable” aspect of that idea. And now, it seems, Tallahassee’s attention has turned to Florida’s State Parks.

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Posted in Articles, September 2015

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The System Stinks!

Posted on July 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

by bill gilbert

Rise Up Citizens! It is time to Alter the present Political System/Government because it has become Destructive of the Stated Self-evident Truths of the Declaration of Independence, those of Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness.

The majority of the Senators and Representatives in the U.S. Congress who claim to represent us do not represent us but represent corporate and other wealthy special interests based primarily in Wall Street. Those congresspersons do not represent the People because they are beholding primarily to those corporate and wealthy special interests that financed their election campaigns.

This all came about because of the Supreme Court case decisions of Santa Clara v. Southern Railroad 1886, Buckley v. Valeo 1976, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010, and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission 2014 that essentially handed the political system over to corporate and wealthy special interests by allowing unlimited amounts of money to flow, even in secrecy, from corporations and wealthy special interests to support or oppose candidates and/or members of Congress.

This has amounted to a Supreme Court Coup d’e-tat handing the reins of power over to corporate and wealthy special interests that now control the legislative and executive branches of government.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2015

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Stetson Kennedy (1917-2011) and the pursuit of truth

Posted on November 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

by Paul Ortiz

This article was originally published on Aug. 27 in “Facing South” by the Institute for Southern Studies

Stetson Kennedy passed away today. He was 94 years old. Stetson died peacefully, in the presence of his beloved wife Sandra Parks at Baptist Medical Center South in St. Augustine, Florida.

Stetson Kennedy spent the better part of the 20th century doing battle with racism, class oppression, corporate domination, and environmental degradation in the American South. By mid-century Stetson had become our country’s fiercest tribune of hard truths; vilified by the powerful, Stetson did not have the capacity to look away from injustice. His belief in the dignity of the South’s battered sharecroppers, migrant laborers, and turpentine workers made him the region’s most sensitive and effective folklorist.

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Posted in October 2011