Category Archives: Articles

by Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson, former Alachua County Commissioner

At the bottom of the Nov. 8 ballot are two local referenda that require some understanding before deciding how to vote. It is important to know why they were proposed and what they will do. The first goes by the catchy title: “Wild Spaces/Public Places, road repair, fire stations, and affordable housing one percent sales surtax.”

If passed, our sales tax (currently at 7%) would go to 7.5% for ten years starting in 2023. It would do this by simultaneously repealing an existing half-penny sales tax and replacing it with a full penny. The current tax provides funding for Wild Spaces/Public Places (WSPP) projects for county and city governments. These funds are used to purchase conservation lands that protect water, provide recreation (“Wild Spaces”), and build and improve parks, trails, and recreation centers (“Public Spaces”). Voters have twice approved WSPP ballot measures.

The grand bargain in this referendum is two-fold:

by the Save Maguire/UVS Coalition

In case you did not hear, historic Maguire Village and University Village South are still on the chopping block next year, and we desperately need your help to change that. 

This peaceful community of 348 on-campus apartment homes for graduate students and their families at the University of Florida have been facing the looming threat of demolition since 2020 when cruel UF Housing administrators pushed for their complete annihilation in the UF Campus Master Plan update.

by Gainesville Neighborhood Voices

On Friday, August 26, Alachua County sent an official comment letter to the City of Gainesville and to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity expressing concerns about the City’s proposed comprehensive plan change that would eliminate all single-family zoning citywide. The proposed change will nearly double the allowable density in all existing single-family areas from eight dwelling units per acre to 15.  

The primary concern expressed by the County is the City’s failure to provide data and analysis of the potential impacts of their proposed actions. The City’s submittal has many deficiencies including no quantification of new households that could result from the profound change, nor impacts to the public infrastructure that would be required to support them. No Gainesville-specific data or analysis supports the City’s stated goal—to provide affordable housing for the City’s residents.

by National Women’s Liberation, Gainesville, Florida chapter

In 2017, National Women’s Liberation’s Gainesville chapter campus committee launched a campaign to get the morning-after pill in vending machines on the University of Florida and Santa Fe College campuses. We were inspired by other universities already offering morning-after pill (MAP) vending machines, a number that continues to increase on campuses across the country. 

The need was clear then, as it is now. Despite MAP’s over-the-counter (OTC) status, restrictions remain. It’s costly ($40-50), often in bulky anti-theft containers in pharmacies, or it’s even still behind the counter — though this should not be allowed as it is FDA-approved as an OTC medication. You can purchase MAP at the UF infirmary for $10 — but only if they’re open. Their limited hours are M-F from 8am to 4:30pm in the summer and M-F from 8am to 5pm and Sundays noon to 4pm during the fall and spring semesters.

The span of my life on earth has seen all the varied ingredients of the political mess we are in develop into what we are facing today. 

The early 1950s saw the rise of television, and the instant celebrity of one Joe McCarthy raving about Communists. Television also brought to people’s home the Civil Rights Movement, with biting dogs, fire hoses, and anti-integration white people harassing brave Black youth. 

Segregationists like Lester Maddox and George Wallace got fame (and when I was in college in Michigan in 1972, Wallace won the Democratic Presidential primary!). As some of the Democratic Party moved left in support of civil rights (Kennedys, Johnson, Humphrey, etc.), Nixon set up and won with the Southern Strategy, which went after the votes of anti-integration white people, a conservative populist base, which, when later merged with the politicization of evangelical Christians in the late ’70s, formed a powerful bloc that elected Ronald Reagan.

by Homer Jack Moore

It’s Micanopy 3, Dollar General 0. 

With some help from the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners, the scenic and historic little town of Micanopy just sent the Dollar General store packing for the third straight time. 

Dollar General and its developers have repeatedly tried to stand up a mini-box convenience store in Micanopy only to run afoul of a buzz saw of community opposition. 

It’s not as if Dollar General wouldn’t be welcomed at an appropriate site such as the I-75 Micanopy exit. Instead, Dollar General stores metastasize to otherwise pristine countryside and contribute to environmental degradation and rurban (rural-urban) sprawl and blight. 

by Joe Courter

Primaries are over. A look back on them before looking ahead to November …

Thank you to all who took democracy seriously and engaged in campaigning for office. Stepping up to run is a big move, and within campaigning there is stress, and also a lot of side-taking and at times negative criticism lobbed around. 

Within our community there were and still are divisions about the controversial single family/exclusionary zoning proposal among people who otherwise get along well and are generally on the same page (see page 7). It is unfortunate the outgoing commissioners decided to try and ram this through, but now is the time when the big election picture needs to come into focus, even as that divisive proposal lingers.

The September 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.

Bernie Sanders: Student loan forgiveness is a win for working people
by ABC News | “This Week” Transcript | Aug. 28 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1435
George Stephanopoulos interviews Sen. Bernie Sanders on his show “This Week with George Stephanopoulos, about the controversies of Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. 

How to make Congress accountable to the people
by Ralph Nader | Common Dreams | Aug. 27 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1433
Two simple bills would go a long way toward making members of Congress identify with their voters, to be more “we the people” instead of “we the Congress.” Bill No. 1:  Congress members will have no employment benefits that are not accorded to all American workers, including pensions, health insurance and deductible expenses; members will be paid no more than ten times the federal minimum wage. Bill No. 2: Anytime the U.S. is engaged in armed warfare, declared or undeclared by Congress, all age-qualified able-bodied children and grandchildren of senators and representatives shall be immediately conscripted into the armed forces for military or civilian rendition of services.

Inside the war between Trump and his generals 
by Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker | The New Yorker | August 8 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1426
How Mark Milley and others in the Pentagon handled the national-security threat posed by their own Commander-in-Chief.

People in Republican counties have higher death rates than those in Democratic counties
by Lydia Denworth | Scientific American | July 18 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1443
A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem from policy choices.

The origin of student debt: Reagan adviser warned free college would create a dangerous ‘educated proletariat’
by Jon Schwarz | The Intercept | Aug. 25 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1434
In 1970, Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.

The far-right crusade against human sexuality
by Kenn Orphan | CounterPunch | Aug. 25 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1428
Whether it is banning the word “gay,” or banning books that contain topics related to human sexuality, or the Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federal right to an abortion, the war on human sexuality and those who are sexually divergent is ramping up on multiple fronts.

The most important election in the Americas is in Brazil
by Vijay Prashad | Globetrotter | Aug. 31 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1445 
Prashad looks at the current Brazilian presidential campaign between the “boorish and vulgar” far-right incumbent and the “refined and presidential” former president “Lula.” The campaign illustrates the stark differences of these two camps: one offering real solutions to the problems facing Brazil and the other willing to do and say anything to maintain power. 

‘There are good reasons to defund the FBI. They have nothing to do with Trump’
by Amy Goodman | Democracy Now | Aug. 16 | tinyurl.com/Iguana1430
Professor Alex Vitale: The FBI has “always been a tool of repression of left-wing movements”; Vitale calls for efforts to “reduce the power and scope of the FBI in ways that limit their ability to demonize and criminalize those on the left.”