Category Archives: July-August 2019

by Gaby Gross, Alachua County Labor Coalition

Before the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) was enacted in 2010, the main work of our organization was to push for single-payer, universal healthcare. We believed then and still do that healthcare is a human right and that its delivery would be less costly and more efficient without the intervention of insurance companies. Although it definitely did not offer universal healthcare, the ACA provided significant improvements in healthcare coverage and it was unfeasible to work against it. The ACLC turned its energy to local issues.

Magaline Duncan [D], farmworker, was interviewed by David Lynch [L] in July, 2013.

This is the 53rd in a series of transcript excerpts from the UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program collection. Interpolations in {curly brackets} by Iguana.

Transcript edited by Pierce Butler.

L: Where and when were you born?

D: January 23, 1942 in Madison, Florida. I growed up—eight years old when we left. We moved to Pahokee. When we moved here {Apopka}, I was thirteen.

By Fred Sowder, WGOT Station Coordinator

For over 11 ½ years, WGOT has existed, through thick and thin, as the Civic Media Center’s radio station. Summertime is always a bit slow, but there are things you can do to help us out, with little or no cost involved.

First, tune in on our worldwide internet stream. There’s a direct listen link at wgot.org or you can find us on the streaming app TuneIn. You can probably even listen to us on your television. We’ve been streaming since April and are still getting the word out, so please help spread the word on social media and elsewhere. 

by Carol Mosley, Bridges Across Borders & Bradford Environmental Forum

The Upper Santa Fe River basin gets little attention though it includes the New River, which feeds the Santa Fe River. The New River is the county line between Bradford and Union County, and the proposed HPSII phosphate mining would straddle that river.

The fight began in 2016 when four local families made it clear they intended to mine nearly 10,000 acres in both counties, and on both sides of the New River. Union County enacted a Moratorium against accepting any mining application until they updated their Land Development Regulations and Comprehensive Plan. Bradford County did not enact a Moratorium and received a Master Mining Plan from HPSII in April 2016. 

by Joe Courter

The Women’s World Cup will wind up Sunday, July 7, but by all means try and catch the quarter finals June 27-29 and semi finals July 2-3. 

Why? Because the women play hard and clean, with very little “diving” that plagues the men’s game. 

Seeing how far the world has come with respect and support for the women’s game is a mirror of women gaining their rights and respect in their own societies. 

by Jason Fults

For the past two years, adjunct faculty at Santa Fe College have been working hard to improve their status, wages, and working conditions. Despite teaching a majority of the class load in many departments, these faculty are treated like second-class citizens by the college, including being paid less than half the rate of their full-time colleagues, with no benefits and no job security from one semester to the next.  

Alongside numerous efforts within the College Senate, a “recommending” body where adjuncts have little voice to begin with, they began collecting union authorization cards. The Santa Fe Organizing Committee has been, from the beginning, comprised of full and part-time faculty and staff who support adjuncts’ right to union representation and fair wages and benefits.

This year marked the tenth anniversary of the Peace Poetry Contest in Alachua County, hosted by Gainesville Veterans for Peace, where are students, grades K-12, were encouraged to submit one original poem focusing on their interpretation of “peace.” This year, VFP received 300 poems from all grades, and the poems were judged by a panel of community judges and writers. The winners were asked to read at the Peace Poetry Reading at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville on May 4, and their poems are published in the 2019 Peace Poetry Contest Book. We are pleased to include a couple of the winning poems here.

by Joe Courter

Eating and sleeping are things we share with every other living being in the world. Finding what to eat and determining where to sleep are handled in a variety of ways. Some need to work at it harder than others. Some spend their time as independent entities, some join herds or small groupings. Some live in small areas, others have to either search a wider area or even undertake stunning long-distance migrations. There are ones who live below the water, who live on land or burrowed under it, or who have the ability to soar in the sky. What a wondrous planet we all share.

The Friends of Susan B. Anthony will celebrate Women’s Equality Day with their annual festive luncheon on Saturday, Aug. 24. (Women’s Equality Day is Aug. 26.) 

This event, which began as an informal birthday party for Susan B. Anthony over forty years ago, is now held in conjunction with the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. 

by Fight Toxic Prisons

On June 17, a demonstration at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) offices at 5007 NE 39th Ave, disrupted the activity of Department of Corrections (FDOC), which has a $19.6 million contract to lease out prisoners as unpaid slaves to do road work for the State. 

The protest came at the close of a weekend-long gathering of activists from across the country, the Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) Convergence. The group also coordinated the Father’s Day Bailout / Juneteenth rally later that day at the Alachua County Jail. The bailout raised almost $14,000 and has successfully bailed out three pre-trial prisoners including Gerald Bell, held on a $7,000 bond for drug-related charges.

by Heather Vrana

Now that the glitter is ground into the carpet and the rainbow flags are put away ‘til next season, it is crucial to remember our comrades in Central America whose gay pride parades sometimes lead northward toward the Mexico border, across the deadly Sonoran Desert, and into the United States. 

To be LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer) in Central America is “to carry a heavy colonial burden,” in the words of Nahil Zeron, Honduran Latinx scholar-activist, who spoke at the Latin American Studies Association meeting in May. “We migrate across borders of gender, heterosexuality … to liberate our bodies.”

by The Gainesville Alliancefor Equitable Development

For years, Seminary Lane Apartments – located in one of Gainesville’s oldest historically black neighborhoods – was home to citizens who needed an affordable housing solution to their economic woes.  

After years of neglect and disinvestment, the 2-story townhouse-style apartment homes fell into disrepair and, in 2009, were torn down with the promise to tenants that more suitable affordable housing would be built for them at the Seminary Lane site.  

The July-August issue of the Iguana is now available, and you can access it here! If you want to get your hands on a hard copy, check out our distro locations here.