by Gary Gordon
It’s become a normal practice at Gainesville City Commission meetings to have people removed by armed police officers. A normal occurrence. Acceptable.
Who’s being removed? Generally it’s people who disagree with Commission decisions or contemplated plans. But their specific crime is speaking longer than the allotted three minutes.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Penny Wheat, Chair
2020 Alachua County Charter Review Commission
In 1986, Alachua County voters approved the Alachua County Charter, giving us more powers of local self-government and freedom from State control. The Charter requires that a Review Commission of electors be appointed in 1990 and every ten years thereafter, to review the County Charter and propose amendments or revisions which may be advisable for placement on the general election ballot.
The time is now.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
The Gainesville Housing and Community Development Department is creating a long-term Housing Action Plan, and we need input from our neighbors.
After hosting a series of public workshops in 2019, we are broadening our reach and community input in 2020 to hear from more of our neighbors about how Gainesville can provide, support and foster more affordable housing. We know many people have many different ideas about housing, and we’d love to hear from you.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Bob Freeman with Liz McCullogh
Arupa Freeman passed away December 22, after several months of illness.
Arupa was born Kathleen Emond in North Bennington, Vermont. She took great pride in her family’s long history in Vermont, going back to colonial times. Though raised by her grandmother in difficult circumstances, Arupa relished small town childhood memories: flying kites, picking wild strawberries, ice skating, Christmas caroling. She studied English and French literature at the University of Oklahoma.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
Florida has an awful situation in its judicial codes resulting in driver’s license suspension for a huge array of offenses, really screwing up people’s lives. Until the Legislature rewrites the overly broad suspensions, Jess Irby, our Clerk of the Court, has instituted a program to help. Periodic clinics are run to assist people in getting their situations taken care of. Yeah, folks still need to pay the fines, but this program really helps navigate the process.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Merrillee Jipson
As a New Year’s present to local groups looking to restore, protect and preserve living natural systems—such as rivers and springs and the groundwater that is the source of drinking water—in their individual areas around Florida, Senator Albritton, chair of the Agricultural Committee, introduced SB 1382 on January 3, 2020. Section 1 of the bill introduces a spate of new programs associated with Florida’s already anemic environmental protections, complete with language such as “where technically and financially practical” that render those protections optional, giving Florida’s citizens only the illusion of protection.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Kate Ellison
If you follow the on-going struggle in Bradford County with the phosphate mine proposed for both sides of the New River, you know that mining brings serious risks to the rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands that many of us want to preserve for sake of the aquifer, the plants and animals living there, and for the eco-tourism that could come to our community.
Without warning, this fall a new titanium mine was proposed and then approved within a matter of weeks by the Bradford County Commission.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Heather Halak
Third House Books is celebrating our fourth year, in a new, bigger space for 2020. We will be having a soft opening of our new location on Wednesday, Jan. 15, and a grand opening party on Jan. 25 at 400 NW 10th Avenue all day. We are excited to join the Grove Street neighborhood next to Earthpets and look forward to seeing both old and new faces.
Please do not fear – we are not closed! We’re just getting bigger, and better. This move has been the result of rent hikes in downtown Gainesville, frustration with city parking, and wanting to provide our customers with adequate space for local authors and other events. But we promise: we’re not going anywhere, Gainesville – except just down the street.
Posted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Roz Miller
The debut of the Sunshine State Book Festival on Jan. 24-26 will change and further enrich North Central Florida’s existing rich cultural landscape.
Our cultural smorgasbord offers multiple preforming arts stages; supports three outstanding visual arts festivals; provides musical groups and ensembles from orchestral, band, jazz, blues; a professional dance troupe and choral groups.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Joe Courter
Once again world events have me writing this at a moment of unknown outcomes. This one is a big one, too. Possible war. We are standing at the edge of a slippery slope. Over and over, once a war starts and soldiers are killed, it partly becomes avenging those who have died. Logic goes out the window. One of my greatest fears is irreversible decisions being made by delusional leaders, and, to be honest, fundamentalist Christians and their “End Times” beliefs, or for that matter, those who justify war and conquest with the “God is on our side” rationale. They are delusional people. And dangerous. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Robert Mounts
At a final “Neighborhood Workshop” conducted on December 11 by CHW Consultants on behalf of an out-of-town investor, it was disclosed that the plan to build a large luxury student apartment complex on the vacant Seminary Lane site on NW 5th Avenue near the University of Florida – that once was set aside for “affordable housing” – is now a “by right” development.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
A future to believe in!
Not me. Us!
A Political Revolution Is Coming!
As a living expression of his campaign slogans, Bernie Sanders, the only Democratic Presidential candidate not accepting corporate funds, is growing a grassroots movement of activists and organizers in communities nationwide. The campaign is currently focusing on texting and phone-banking voters in the early primary states.
To find out more, go to: https://berniesanders.com/volunteer/ and download the BERN mobile app to learn about participating or organizing a Bernie campaign event in Gainesville or anywhere in the U.S.
Posted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Dream Defenders
The election of state attorneys with progressive policies has become a central focus of national civil rights organizations. This year, Dream Defenders, along with many allied social justice organizations, is supporting strategic state attorney races across Florida. The landslide victory of Amendment 4 is undeniable proof that the majority of Florida voters want a system that treats people humanely.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
by Joe Courter
Florida is a closed primary state, which means only people of a given party can vote in the primary election for that party.
To vote in the Democratic primary March 17, you must be registered as a Democrat by February 18. If you are registered otherwise, or NOT registered at all, you need to change your registration by February 18.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, January-February 2020
The January/February 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.
Posted in Articles, January-February 2020
Intro by Joe Courter
What we are witnessing, at least to those prepared to look, is a generation change in the Democratic party. Being a person of that older generation, I found Ryan Grim’s article in the Washington Post, “Haunted by the Reagan era,” quite valuable, explaining the timidity of the Democratic party leadership and the bold fire of the next generation coming in. A lot has to deal with perceptions of the power of the Reagan-era Republicans to those who lived through their reign, and the new generation shaped by Obama, with all the hope and disappointment therein. The concluding paragraphs of the article are below, but you can read the whole thing here: https://tinyurl.com/Iguana1036.
“A lot of us were politicized under Obama,” Varshini Prakash, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, which focuses on climate change, told me. “We were like, ‘We don’t need to take control of the government, because . . . there’s this benevolent figure in the government who likes us and cares about the issues we care about, or at least says he does, and all we need to do is convince him of the right course of action.’ And that proved to be untrue.”
Continue readingPosted in Articles, November-December 2019
by Hannah Bunkin
On Nov. 1, a bustling crowd gathered in High Springs. The occasion? To make our position clear: we reject Nestlé as it prepares to privatize our water. Over 9,000 comments have been submitted to the SRWMD to review as it considers renewing Seven Springs Water Co.’s permit to withdraw 1.152 million gallons of water per day from Ginnie Springs.
Crucially, Nestlé is one among many threats to our watershed to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve. These activities also threaten the rights of the residents of Alachua County to a healthy, flourishing Santa Fe River and the right to pure, clean, unpolluted water.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, November-December 2019
by Joe Courter
The new book Winter Warrior uses the words of Scott Camil as he tells of his youth, and the path that took him to Viet Nam, and then upon his return, into the anti-war movement as a leader so effective that government agents shot him in an attempted drug sting, as an effort to neutralize him in J. Edgar Hoover’s words. His words are illustrated by graphic artist Eve Gilbert whose simple drawings are augmented by speech bubbles enhancing her illustrations of Camil’s words.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, November-December 2019
by Pam Smith
There are hundreds of women in Gainesville and the rest of Alachua County who have worked tirelessly over the past 60 years to make the world a better place.
Some did it so quietly that the rest of us hardly knew that they were making big differences. Others thought and wrote powerful pieces that changed the way we thought in a split second. Still others created businesses, created organizations, tilled the ground, organized voters, advocated for the people who were less powerful, tended to the ones who needed hope and guidance, and in general used their one life to move humanity closer to “justice for all.”
Continue readingPosted in Articles, November-December 2019
by Panagioti Tsolkas
Local organizers with the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) invite you to volunteer in an effort to find and register newly eligible voters in Alachua and surrounding counties. Training and volunteer orientation occurs Monday through Friday, 2 – 3pm at the FLIC office in the Seagle Building, 4th Floor, 408 West University Ave.
It has been said before that if voting changed anything it would be illegal. Although the sources of that quote has been disputed (was it Emma Goldman? Mark Twain? Some meme-making troll?) the sentiment is understood and it became popularized for a reason. People are skeptical about the government, on most all sides of the political spectrum (yes there are more than two sides!) But the concept of voting being illegal is not just hyperbole or anarchists rhetoric.
Continue readingPosted in Articles, November-December 2019