FL is a very dangerous place for those who speak their mind or support causes GOP officials oppose

About 20 FSU student activists gathered outside the university’s board of trustees meeting to demand divestment from Israel. Nov. 10, 2023. (Credit: Christian Casale)

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Last year, a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted before the 60^th anniversary of the landmark March on Washington showed that 81% of American grown-ups believe that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King has had a positive impact on the country.

Of those polled, 47% considered King’s impact to be very positive, while a mere 3% regard his impact on the United States as being negative.

It wasn’t always that way.

“In the May 1963 Gallup survey, for example, 92% of Black Americans but only 35% of white Americans had a favorable opinion of the civil rights leader,” Pew researchers said. “As more white Americans learned who King was over the next three years, a higher share of them viewed him unfavorably. Around four-in-ten white adults (41%) had an unfavorable view of King in May 1963 – a figure that rose to 69% by August 1966.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Park Service.

King, a social justice activist and Civil Rights icon, first came to prominence as a 26-year-old pastor who in 1955 headed the Montgomery Improvement Association which organized a boycott of the city’s bus system in an effort to end racial segregation. After seamstress Rosa L. Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, African Americans refused to ride buses for 381 days, breaking the backs of the bus company and the city. The bus boycott also established King as the leader of the modern Civil Rights movement.

The young King ultimately attracted and served as the leader of legions of children, teens and young adults to the crusade, all seeking to destroy Jim Crow and segregation, fight centuries of violence and push the country towards justice, equality and fairness for all Black people.

In retrospect, King — and his ground troops, allies and brain trust, including Stokely Carmichael, Lawrence Guyot, Dorie and Joyce Ladner, Diane Nash, Jim Bevel and Marion S. Barry — were ahead of their time. Young people impatient with the slow pace of change and pushing public officials, policymakers and institutions to accede to their demands.

A myth

In 2024, the generational divide; the collision between young and the old; friction caused by disparate ideas of what society owes us is wide and widening. There are stark disagreements about how the government spends our money; who has a voice; and most of all, who benefits.

America has long prided itself on being the only country in the world with the level of freedom, sovereignty and independence that its people enjoy. But a peek under the microscope makes it clear that the length and breadth of freedom that Americans supposedly enjoy is a myth.

Millennials and Gen Xers in Florida and across the country have been at the forefront of this generation’s civil rights struggle. In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis has introduced and made law a batch of barely-legal McCarthyite policies aimed at controlling young people while ruthlessly suppressing and crushing dissent.

Children at a public charter school in South Florida attend a bill signing, HB 7, with Gov. Ron DeSantis. CRT references Critical Race Theory. April 22, 2022. Credit: Diane Rado

That includes efforts forcing educators to teach a whitewashed curriculum on race and gender identity, and laws such as the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the “Stop Woke Act,” and the Parental Rights in Education Act, or “Don’t Say Gay.”

Fortunately, the courts have been keeping DeSantis from running roughshod over Floridians he doesn’t like or seeks to control. Recently, a court curbed the excesses of “Don’t Say Gay.” And earlier in March, a federal court blocked the Stop Woke Act, which banned classes or instruction in schools or the workplace which dealt with racism, discrimination or white privilege.

DeSantis and his Republican cabal are undeterred, moving ahead with eliminating any semblance or shred of diversity, equity and inclusion in the state’s educational infrastructure as part of a crusade to kill off these programs that ensured parity, a place and a platform to treat underrepresented or marginalized communities fairly.

Florida has become a very dangerous place for those who speak their mind or support causes that Republican elected officials oppose. Case in point, the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Thousands of Hamas militants launched a brutal multi-pronged attack on sections of Israel closest to Gaza that left about 1,200 Israelis dead, thousands wounded and about 250 more taken hostage.

Israel’s response has been a ferocious, vicious and brutal response over the past 146 days. The results have been calamitous: more than 32,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed because of the air, land and sea offensive. Almost 74,000 Palestinians have been injured and analysts say 144,000 and 175,000 buildings – between 50 and 60% — across the whole Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed.

And satellite analysis by The Guardian newspaper shows that almost half of Gaza’s trees have been burned and a significant swathe of farms have been destroyed. The non-stop blitz had caused rising levels of water and air pollution, rendering Gaza’s ecosystems unlivable.

Vocal critics

Posters of some of those kidnapped by Hamas are displayed on a pole outside of New York University on Oct. 30, 2023, as tensions between supporters of Palestinians and Israel increase on college campuses across the nation. A U.S. House Committee Nov. 8, 2023 held a hearing looking at antisemitism on college campuses. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

College students and young people in Florida and across the U.S. have been the most vocal critics of the death toll of innocent Palestinians, who are facing starvation, a severe shortage of clean drinking water, the almost-total cessation of AID convoys, disease and unsanitary conditions. But American politicians – the majority of whom are stanch supporters of Israel and the Netanyahu government – have pushed back hard.

“I’m sick of hearing the media, I’m sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for defending itself,” one of those candidates, DeSantis, told an audience during the third GOP presidential debate in Miami in November.

DeSantis also bragged about banning a Palestinian student advocacy group from state universities. This justification and sidestepping of Israeli atrocities is common. (DeSantis has since suspended his GOP presidential campaign.)

There have been lawsuits from organizations on First Amendment grounds, but the issue hasn’t yet been resolved. Despite the hostility from all corners of the political, social and educational universes, those calling for an unconditional ceasefire have been attacked, lambasted, sanctioned and fired from their jobs, all in an attempt to silence their voices.

Democrat Angie Nixon of Duval County speaks with reporters after the House overwhelmingly rejected her resolution advocating for de-escalation and a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza. (Credit: Jackie Llanos)

In November, state Rep. Angie Nixon of Duval County filed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. She was the lone lawmaker to mention Palestinian deaths, and she was called an anti-Semite and evil during a teary-eyed debate in the state House.

Arab and Muslim Americans, a segment of African Americans and legions of young people, have been outspoken in their criticism of the Biden administration’s unconditional support of Israel militarily and diplomatically. During the recent Michigan primary in February, more than 100,000 residents voted “uncommitted.” If they decide to sit out the presidential election, Biden could conceivably lose one of the most consequential elections in this country’s history.

Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has been attacked and censured by her colleagues in Congress.

But neither she nor those supporting a humane U.S. policy towards Palestinians are backing down.

“Whether they fail to mention Palestinians, question our death tolls, attack our students and protests, or censure the only Palestinian American representative in Congress, their attempts to silence us won’t work,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR). “As much as they wish us to disappear, we are here and will be here, and they will be seeing much more of us moving forward.”

In the future, I expect historians, political experts and others to view these social justice activists in the same way that The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is viewed.

Their positions are moral, principled and humane and they, by their actions, are pulling the U.S. towards the arc of justice.

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