The Gainesville Iguana

National Women’s Liberation, in cooperation with Redstockings, is proud announce the publication of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women’s Work. 

Author Jenny Brown is coming to Gainesville for two official events, on Friday, April 26, there will be a celebration/book launch party at the Civic Media Center from 7:30 to 9:30pm, and then at Third House Books on Friday, May 3, for a talk and signing. Books will be available at both events.

by Panagioti Tsolkas

This June, between June 14-17, Gainesville will be home to the fourth annual national gathering of a growing movement aimed at merging environmental justice and prison abolition into a unified force for shaping the world to come. In previous years, the Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) Convergence succeeded in drawing several hundred participants from across the country. Previous locations included Washington DC, Texas and Pennsylvania.

David Horne [H], co-founder of the UF Black Student Union, was interviewed by Ryan Morini [M] in November, 2017.

This is the 52nd 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.

M: You were here during the founding of the Black Student Union. What led up to founding it?

H: My colleagues, and I, kept up with what was going on elsewhere in terms of Cornell students trying to get the Cornell administration to accept a Black Studies department, and Columbia, and San Francisco State; combating this tendency to teach all history was basically White history, the history of Western civilization. And that old adage that African history should not be taught because Africa was darkness, and darkness could not be history. We decided that at UF we had enough of a student population to have a Black Student Union. So we just formed one. About ten of us got together to fill out the application to be a student organization.

by the Gainesville chapter of Industrial Workers of the World

What: May Day Celebration March and Teach-In
When: Wednesday, May 1, 5pm (March) and 6pm (Teach-In)
Where: Civic Media Center and Alachua County Public Library

For 132 years — since 1887, one year following the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago and the Bay View Massacre in Milwaukee, when twelve striking workers were martyred in the struggle for the 8-hour work day — the 1^st of May has been a day set aside to celebrate the struggles and contributions of working people. 

by Sam Bam

Social media has replaced the diary, the bulletin board, the alt weeklies. It has given us the ability to broadcast to the world. We’ve all heard the warnings about sharing too much, but not many discuss what happens when the government chooses to censor you, to erase your online existence. 

by Jeremiah Tattersall, Florida AFL-CIO – North Central Florida Central Labor Council

This is an incomplete list of bills to watch this legislative session. Contact Senator Perry at 352-264-4040 to make your opinion on these bills heard. 

Anti-Collective Bargaining  – HB 13 by Williamson limits the ability for public sector unions to represent their members by curtailing the activites union officials can engage in. 

Workers’ Compensation – SB 1636 by Perry / HB 1399 by Byrd drastically hurts workers who have been injured on the job. In 2003 the legislature radically altered Florida’s workers’ comp system by slashing benefits and capping attorney fees in an attempt to restrict the working class’ access to the courts. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that this cap on fees was unconstitutional and this bill attempts to graze the already low bar of unconstitutionality.

by Lauren Cohen

Students from around the country and the world participated in a Youth Climate Strike on March 15. Here in Gainesville, the strike took place in the form of a demonstration downtown in front of City Hall.

The strike was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who started striking regularly from classes in an effort to raise awareness and demand reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.

As a young activist (I am a 15-year-old high school freshman), I was attracted to the significance of this world-wide event. Having been involved in other events in the past and maintaining a strong moral understanding that we all have responsibility for the future of our world, I believed that participating in the Youth Climate Strike was not only important, but necessary.

by Joe Courter

Community: this word is in my mind a lot. We humans are social beings, and how we relate to one another impacts ourselves (our internal experiences) and the others in our shared world. The Google dictionary says this:

• a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

• a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

by Molly Mencken

Note: A number of people expressed surprise at the Iguana for not endorsing Lauren Poe and Adrian Hayes-Santos in this past election, candidates we had strongly endorsed previously. This piece gives a good reflection of the value of challenging incumbents as a way of making them better and bringing issues to the fore.

Movement organizers are reluctant to hinge hopes on election campaigns at the state and national level, where party politics interfere with justice and equity work. But the 2019 Gainesville Mayor’s race shows how a local low-budget grassroots leverage campaign can move mountains against a popular establishment Democratic incumbent.

by Coalition of Immokalee Workers

On March 19, the University of Florida Student Government escalated student pressure on Wendy’s—and on UF President Kent Fuchs—voting unanimously to call on the UF administration to cut the university’s contract with Wendy’s until the fast-food giant joins the Fair Food Program. The vote came just days after students, farmworkers and Gainesville community members organized a huge march on President Fuchs’ office, demanding action in support of Florida farmworkers’ fundamental human rights.  

by Aggie Agreros

On Thursday, March 28, UF student organizers, including myself, learned that our fight to hold the university up to its stated ideals had made an extraordinary breakthrough. 

In a meeting between Divest UF, a loose collective of students, faculty, alumni, and community members organizing to financially disentangle UF from toxic industries, and the University of Florida Investment Corporation (UFICO), the University agreed to dramatically change their investment strategy by passing an ESG Policy to which they will hold their fund managers accountable. 

The April 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.