Deradicalizing a person who has been influenced by political rhetoric is a complex and challenging process. It requires patience, empathy, and a multi-faceted approach. Here are some strategies that may be helpful in deradicalization:
- Active Listening and Empathy: Approach the individual with empathy, actively listen to their concerns, and try to understand their perspective without judgment. Showing genuine care and concern can build trust and open the door for constructive dialogue.
- Engage in Constructive Dialogue: Encourage open and respectful conversations. Avoid confrontations and arguments that may further entrench their beliefs. Focus on finding common ground and shared values to build on.
- Provide Reliable Information: Offer evidence-based information from reputable sources that challenge misinformation or extremist narratives. Encourage critical thinking and fact-checking.
- Promote Media Literacy: Help the individual develop media literacy skills to identify biased or misleading information. Teach them how to recognize and question propaganda techniques.
- Encourage Diverse Perspectives: Expose the person to diverse viewpoints and perspectives through various media, social interactions, and educational resources. This exposure can help broaden their understanding of complex issues.
- Address Emotional Needs: Radicalization is often driven by emotional factors. Address any underlying emotional needs or feelings of alienation, anger, or fear that may be contributing to their radicalization.
- Involve Trusted Influencers: If possible, involve trusted friends, family members, or community leaders who can help guide the individual away from extremist ideologies.
- Support Networks and Interventions: Seek professional support from organizations or experts experienced in deradicalization programs. These experts can offer tailored interventions based on the individual's specific circumstances.
- Offer Positive Alternatives: Present positive alternatives and opportunities for constructive engagement within the community or society at large.
- Address Root Causes: Recognize and address the underlying social, economic, or political factors that may contribute to radicalization in the first place.
It's essential to understand that deradicalization is not a quick fix and may require significant time and effort. Each individual's path to deradicalization is unique, and success may not always be guaranteed. Patience, understanding, and a commitment to building bridges are essential elements in the process.
- Definition: Deradicalization refers to the process of helping individuals leave extremist groups or ideologies and reintegrate into society. It involves ideological, psychological, and social interventions.
- Individualized Approach: Deradicalization programs often take an individualized approach, recognizing that each person's path to radicalization is unique, and the factors driving their beliefs may differ.
- Multidimensional Strategy: Successful deradicalization involves multiple dimensions, including ideological counseling, psychological support, education, vocational training, and social reintegration.
- Disengagement vs. Rehabilitation: Deradicalization can involve two primary goals: disengagement, which focuses on the immediate cessation of extremist behavior, and rehabilitation, which aims for long-term ideological transformation and reintegration into society.
- Community Involvement: Community-based initiatives are often essential in deradicalization efforts. Family members, friends, religious leaders, and other trusted individuals can play critical roles in providing support and influence.
- Debunking Misinformation: Deradicalization programs may focus on debunking misinformation and extremist narratives with evidence-based information from reliable sources.
- Cognitive Empathy: Encouraging individuals to develop cognitive empathy, where they can understand others' perspectives without necessarily agreeing with them, can help break down barriers between different groups.
- Preventing Recidivism: Effective deradicalization programs include measures to prevent relapse into extremist beliefs or behaviors after leaving the program.
- Evaluation and Assessment: Deradicalization programs require ongoing evaluation and assessment to measure their effectiveness and adapt approaches as needed.
- International Efforts: Many countries have developed deradicalization programs and initiatives to address various forms of extremism, including religious extremism, political extremism, and violent ideologies.
It's important to note that deradicalization is a challenging and nuanced process, and the success of such programs can vary depending on individual circumstances, the nature of the radicalization, and the resources available for intervention. Due to the complexities involved, experts in psychology, sociology, counterterrorism, and related fields often contribute to designing and implementing deradicalization initiatives.
[The words that follow should be prefaced upon the understanding that the author has lived in South Florida since birth and has family roots stretching back in the state for four generations.]
During an interaction on Threads someone shared a meme that said, “Can you imagine being stupid enough to vote for Donald Trump?” to which I replied he should focus on the leaders who have been lying to their voters, not the voters themselves, who weren’t the racist evil people they were being made out to be. The question I was asked, “Do you really honestly think these people aren’t bad racist people?” was enough to make me start a Substack and write the following words.
I do not believe that the people who voted for Donald Trump are bad people. I can only say this about the people who voted in South Florida though.
South Florida isn’t like most of the United States. In fact, it shares a great deal more in common with the Caribbean islands around it than it does with Tallahassee or Tampa. To truly understand why South Florida is the way it is you need to understand it’s history.
One of the defining factors influencing South Florida’s culture is the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, the year in which over 100,000 Cubans consisting of political prisoners, dissidents, criminals and other “undesirables” were given the option of fleeing Cuban or facing constant violence from the government and pro-Castro citizens. Many of these “undesirables” were gay or trans which is one of the reasons South Florida has become a mecca for so many in the LGBTQ+ community today.
On May 17th, 1980 the McDuffie Race Riots in Liberty City set much of Miami ablaze, literally and figuratively, when the police officers who beat former marine Arthur McDuffie to death were found not guilty for his death.
“Opa-tisha-wocka-locka” is a Seminole word that means "a big island covered with many trees and swamps”. The Seminole & Miccosuke are proud tribes and loomed over my childhood growing up in South Florida before the development destroyed so much of our culture and environment. They deserve to be talked about.
Florida was owned by Spain before it became an American territory and this is why you can find the only castle in the United States, the Castillo de San Marco, in St. Augustine Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida declared everyone free which is one reason the first Underground Railroad ran to Florida. This led to Seminole and Maroon communities (a.k.a. Black Seminoles, free Africans that were escaped slaves or their free-born children) flourishing in northern parts of the state up until the early 19th century.
For much of the early 1800s though the US was at war with the Seminole Indians over attempts to move the tribe to Oklahoma. There was the First and Second Seminole War which the United States claimed victory in both instances. Some few Seminole escaped during the last of the Indian removals in Florida and fled back to their lands and to this day proudly state that they have never signed a peace treaty with the US.
Today the Seminole Tribe is the third richest Native tribe with an annual revenue of over 800 million dollars from their ownership of the Seminole Hard Rock. Unlike many other Native tribes the children of Seminole get hundreds of thousands of dollars from trusts when they are 18.
No matter what the United States says I believe that the Seminole have never been conquered.
1980 is also the year that I was born in Opa-locka, the city where Amelia Earhart started her journey around the world, that was built with an Arabian Nights theme and today has the most Moorish architecture in the western hemisphere. My father had lived off the coast of Yemen and in Saudi Arabia for a decade in the 60s as an imported American worker before coming back home to South Florida where he worked as a construction worker.
In 1982, Key West (where Ernest Hemingway lived) renamed itself the “Conch Republic” before seceding and declaring war against the United States. This succession, which lasted only a day, was in retaliation to the US Border Patrol setting up roadblocks on the only route in or out of Florida Keys and forced Americans to prove their citizenship before letting them in.
In the 1980s, the city of Opa-locka was just transitioning from predominantly white to predominantly black but had been in decline since the 1950s. From the 1980’s onward Opa-locka became one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States and consistently ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in the United States. Most people don’t see the name Opa-locka listed in these crime statistics because is often referred to simply as “Miami”.
The Mariel Boatlift, you see, did bring in a huge influx of crime. Both the show “Miami Vice” and the movie “Scarface” capitalized off of the crime and backdrop of South Florida. Unlike the Mexican and Central American asylum seekers coming here to better their lives that have unjustly been called “rapists and murderers”, some of the Marielitos actually were. This doesn’t mean that Cubans are all rapists and murderers; it means that Fidel Castro opened the prisons and released all of the murderers, rapists, drug-dealers, and violent criminals as well as the mentally ill.
I don’t recall growing up in a drug-dealing, race-rioting city. Some of my earliest memories are of canepole fishing with my mom and dad, often with black or brown friends of my parents and their children. My father worked as a construction foreman putting in steal rebar before concrete was poured in building foundations. I know both from his own words and from knowing the men he worked with that he helped countless “illegals” work under the table for the places he worked.
My father raised me to be the person that I am. He never let me badger the waitress to refill my drink because, and I quote, “She’s busy, don’t drink so fast”. I might have been born looking like a blond haired Aryan baby but it is only because of my mother’s genetics. My father is descended from the Arapaho but could never prove it because of his father’s 1917 forced adoption.
We left Opa-locka when I was four and my family still owns a home passed on to us from my grandmother built in the 50s located on the county line between Miami and Broward. For those of you that might consider this ‘white flight’ it was not from fear of people of color but because of a serious influx of crime and my family didn’t want to get murdered.
Growing up I existed in this weird dichotomy of visits with family in northern Florida where it was very much the South and a day to day existence of living in a world where I had to speak Spanish if I wanted to do anything. The schools I went to were overwhelmingly black and my high school had less than ten percent of white people.
The school systems in Broward County, while no longer segregated “de jure” (under the law) were still segregated de facto. White kids needed to be bussed in from other locations. To the best of my knowledge the school systems were still not fully integrated when I graduated.
When I came out as gay at 15 years old I recall big black boys from the football and basketball team walking up to me and saying, “Yo, dawg, you gay?” and nodding “yes” and extending my hand in introduction.
In my 11th grade English class I asked, in front of mostly black classmates, my white teacher if I could write about the queerness of Plato and Socrates during Black History month. She asked the rest of the class if they thought it was OK. I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of acceptance and pride when my classmates not only didn’t object but supported my choice to be gay and understand who I was. This was two years before June was designated Pride Month by Bill Clinton.
In 2001, at 21, I began living with my first husband. He was Venezuelan, with so many brothers and sisters, and his family was scattered between the US and Venezuela. A few years earlier when he still lived in Venezuela his superiors at an airline he worked at had him procure a plane for Hugo Chavez to use to campaign with in his quest to become President. He had no idea of the destruction Chavez would bring to his country or his family. For the entire 6 years of our relationship there was always, always a member of his family that we were working to help bring into this country. Cubans and Venezuelans have always had legal pathways to citizenship that have been denied to Mexicans, Haitians and those from Central America.
The entirety of my 43 years have been spent in Florida. I’ve seen snow once.
I, as a white person, was a minority for the entirety of my K-12 education.
I know what it is like to feel otherized and to be a token member of a group.
I understand the pain and anxiety caused by not knowing whether or not your loved ones will get deported or not.
I understand systemic racism because I have lived and been educated under systems that were the direct result of legal segregationist policies.
I understand privilege because these policies never affected me.
So to the person who asked me, “Do you really believe that they aren’t bad, racist people?” I said, resoundingly, no.
Most of these people don't support Trump because they are racist. They support him because they are brainwashed.
My father retired in a very in a retirement community near the Space Coast that is now considered ruby red Republican. His best friend was Fox News. He disowned me because he said “You love immigrants more than you love me”. Then he said, “All of the goddamn Mexicans should be lined up and shot in the head.” We never spoke again. He passed away in 2021.
My mother and father separated in the 90s. Her new husband was a Teamster. He told me the only people worth voting for were Democrats. They retired in central Florida in what is now ruby red Republican country. I called to make Thanksgiving plans and they kept going on and on about how the goddamn Puerto Ricans could come to this country and get on food stamps. She told me how during the 80s she tried to get on food stamps but all she could get was peanut butter.
We were never, ever on food stamps.We had hard times, and should have been on food stamps, but my father was proud and he would take us fishing so we could have fish for dinner. This was something we did almost every weekend when I was a child growing up.
My mother, who can make some of the best Black macaroni & cheese I’ve ever had, suddenly hated Puerto Ricans and could not (or would not) understand that they were American citizens. I told them they were being racist and changed the subject. I asked if they were vaccinated so I could come and visit that they told me, seriously, that the vaccine was a way for Joe Biden to control everything we say and do. I’ve been HIV positive since 2008 but hadn’t told my family until that moment. I said if they weren’t vaccinated that I couldn’t come and see them. My family disowned me after telling them because they didn’t want to get infected by me. Not from HIV but from the vaccine.
My sister, who has a black husband and a biracial child, disowned me shortly after because my mother was so hurt that I had called her racist.
Despite separating from my first husband in 2006 we have always been close. He votes Democratic but almost his entire family, people I know and love and worked to bring to this country, are now Trump voters. They voted for Trump because they saw the horrors that can come because of socialist dictators and wouldn’t vote for Democrats because they were “socialists” and believe that they kill babies after they are born.
I grew up in a loving home and had a really amazing, loving circle of family and friends.
Until 2016.
All of these problems came about after years of disinformation. I've lost nearly all of my friends and family because of all the hate and lies.
Republican leaders tell their voters that they are right to feel the way they do. They tell them lies and fill them with hate. It is because they have believed these lies that they have made such horrible choices. When we call these Trump voters names and laugh at them we simply strengthen their resolve and make it easier for them to keep voting for and supporting Republicans.
Hate and lies are addictive.
Before writing this article it was my opinion that Trump voters were like addicts that refused to give up drugs. After writing it though I feel that many Trump voters don’t realize they are addicts. If an addict loses all of their friends and family it becomes much harder to get clean. If a person doesn’t even know they are addicted and they have no one there for them how will they ever get clean?
In 2018 there was a huge campaign called #DeleteFacebook that resulted in most of the left leaving Facebook and for Twitter. That meant most of our families and friends kept hearing the hate and the lies only we weren’t there to tell them the truth. They believe that Biden is senile because their Facebook friends share that and nobody uses Facebook anymore that tells them the truth. I was able to deradicalize someone on Nextdoor simply by letting him know Biden was a lifelong stutterer.
Please stop attacking low information, poorly educated people who are actively being lied to.
American is not a racist nation. America is an ideal to be aspired to. Trump voters are not causing the hate and the lies. They are a symptom of the hate and the lies. If we ever want to live in a country that we can truly be proud of then we need to rise up collectively and resoundingly destroy the Republicans electorally at the ballot box.
Nothing will change if we do not create the change because WE ARE THE CHANGE.
During an interaction on Threads someone shared the following meme:
I replied that we should focus on the leaders who have been lying to their voters and not the voters themselves. They are not the evil racist people they are being made out to be.
The response from [name] was enough to make me start a Substack and write this article.
I do not believe that the people in South Florida who voted for Donald Trump are bad people. South Florida isn’t like most of the United States. South Florida has more in common with islands in the Caribbean than Tallahassee or Tampa. To truly understand why South Florida is the way it is you need to understand it’s history.
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 is an inescapable part of South Florida's identity. Over 100,000 had the option to flee the island-nation or face violence and imprisonment. Most of these people were political prisoners, dissidents, criminals and other “undesirables”. Many of these “undesirables” were gay or trans. This is, by the way, one of the reasons South Florida has become a mecca for so many in the LGBTQ+ community today.
On May 17th, 1980 Liberty City came to a standstill because of the McDuffie Race Riots. Arthur McDuffie was a former US Marine who was beaten to death by four white police officers. A jury made up of white men jury found these officers not guilty. After the verdict was read there were three days of rioting and looting. 18 people died and Liberty City was left looking like a war zone.
- The origin of the city of “Opa-locka”
“Opa-tisha-wocka-locka” is a Seminole word that means "a big island covered with many trees and swamps”. The Seminole & Miccosuke are proud tribes and loomed over my childhood growing up in South Florida before the development destroyed so much of our culture and environment. They deserve to be talked about.
Florida was owned by Spain before it became an American territory and this is why you can find the only castle in the United States, the Castillo de San Marco, in St. Augustine Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida declared everyone free which is one reason the first Underground Railroad ran to Florida. This led to Seminole and Maroon communities (a.k.a. [Black Seminoles](https:/
1980 is also the year that I was born in Opa-locka, the city where Amelia Earhart started her journey around the world, that was built with an Arabian Nights theme and today has the most Moorish architecture in the western hemisphere. My father had lived off the coast of Yemen and in Saudi Arabia for a decade in the 60s as an imported American worker before coming back home to South Florida where he worked as a construction worker. /daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-the-black-seminoles/), free Africans that were escaped slaves or their free-born children) flourishing in northern parts of the state up until the early 19th century.
- 1982: Key West Secedes and Declares War on the United States.
In 1982, Key West (where Ernest Hemingway lived) renamed itself the “Conch Republic” before seceding and declaring war against the United States. This succession, which lasted only a day, was in retaliation to the US Border Patrol setting up roadblocks on the only route in or out of Florida Keys and forced Americans to prove their citizenship before letting them in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8i5MxwEjPY&pp=ygUJb3BhLWxvY2th
In the 1980s, the city of Opa-locka was just transitioning from predominantly white to predominantly black but had been in decline since the 1950s. From the 1980’s onward Opa-locka became one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States and consistently ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in the United States. Most people don’t see the name Opa-locka listed in these crime statistics because is often referred to simply as “Miami”.
The Mariel Boatlift, you see, did bring in a huge influx of crime. Both the show “Miami Vice” and the movie “Scarface” capitalized off of the crime and backdrop of South Florida. Unlike the Mexican and Central American asylum seekers coming here to better their lives that have unjustly been called “rapists and murderers”, some of the Marielitos actually were. This doesn’t mean that Cubans are all rapists and murderers; it means that Fidel Castro opened the prisons and released all of the murderers, rapists, drug-dealers, and violent criminals as well as the mentally ill.
I don’t recall growing up in a drug-dealing, race-rioting city. Some of my earliest memories are of canepole fishing with my mom and dad, often with black or brown friends of my parents and their children. My father worked as a construction foreman putting in steal rebar before concrete was poured in building foundations. I know both from his own words and from knowing the men he worked with that he helped countless “illegals” work under the table for the places he worked.
My father raised me to be the person that I am. He never let me badger the waitress to refill my drink because, and I quote, “She’s busy, don’t drink so fast”. I might have been born looking like a blond haired Aryan baby but it is only because of my mother’s genetics. My father is descended from the Arapaho but could never prove it because of his father’s 1917 forced adoption.
We left Opa-locka when I was four and my family still owns a home passed on to us from my grandmother built in the 50s located on the county line between Miami and Broward. For those of you that might consider this ‘white flight’ it was not from fear of people of color but because of a serious influx of crime and my family didn’t want to get murdered.
Growing up I existed in this weird dichotomy of visits with family in northern Florida where it was very much the South and a day to day existence of living in a world where I had to speak Spanish if I wanted to do anything. The schools I went to were overwhelmingly black and my high school had less than ten percent of white people.
The school systems in Broward County, while no longer segregated “de jure” (under the law) were still segregated de facto. White kids needed to be bussed in from other locations. To the best of my knowledge the school systems were still not fully integrated when I graduated.
When I came out as gay at 15 years old I recall big black boys from the football and basketball team walking up to me and saying, “Yo, dawg, you gay?” and nodding “yes” and extending my hand in introduction.
In my 11th grade English class I asked, in front of mostly black classmates, my white teacher if I could write about the queerness of Plato and Socrates during Black History month. She asked the rest of the class if they thought it was OK. I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of acceptance and pride when my classmates not only didn’t object but supported my choice to be gay and understand who I was. This was two years before June was designated Pride Month by Bill Clinton.
In 2001, at 21, I began living with my first husband. He was Venezuelan, with so many brothers and sisters, and his family was scattered between the US and Venezuela. A few years earlier when he still lived in Venezuela his superiors at an airline he worked at had him procure a plane for Hugo Chavez to use to campaign with in his quest to become President. He had no idea of the destruction Chavez would bring to his country or his family. For the entire 6 years of our relationship there was always, always a member of his family that we were working to help bring into this country. Cubans and Venezuelans have always had legal pathways to citizenship that have been denied to Mexicans, Haitians and those from Central America.
The entirety of my 43 years have been spent in Florida. I’ve seen snow once.
I, as a white person, was a minority for the entirety of my K-12 education.
I know what it is like to feel otherized and to be a token member of a group.
I understand the pain and anxiety caused by not knowing whether or not your loved ones will get deported or not.
I understand systemic racism because I have lived and been educated under systems that were the direct result of legal segregationist policies.
I understand privilege because these policies never affected me.
So to the person who asked me, “Do you really believe that they aren’t bad, racist people?” I said, resoundingly, no.
Most of these people don't support Trump because they are racist. They support him because they are brainwashed.
My father retired in a very in a retirement community near the Space Coast that is now considered ruby red Republican. His best friend was Fox News. He disowned me because he said “You love immigrants more than you love me”. Then he said, “All of the goddamn Mexicans should be lined up and shot in the head.” We never spoke again. He passed away in 2021.
My mother and father separated in the 90s. Her new husband was a Teamster. He told me the only people worth voting for were Democrats. They retired in central Florida in what could be considered ruby red Republican country. I called to make Thanksgiving plans and they kept going on and on about how the goddamn Puerto Ricans could come to this country and get on food stamps and how bad it was. She told me how during the 80s she tried to get on food stamps but all she could get was peanut butter.
We were never, ever on food stamps.We had hard times, and should have been on food stamps, but my father was proud and he would take us fishing so we could have fish for dinner. This was something we did almost every weekend when I was a child growing up.
My mother, who can make some of the best Black macaroni & cheese I’ve ever had, suddenly hated Puerto Ricans and could not (or would not) understand that they were American citizens. I told them they were being racist. During the same conversation I asked if they were vaccinated so I could come and visit that they told me, seriously, that the vaccine was a way for Joe Biden to control everything we say and do. I had never told my family about my HIV status but if do then. I said if they weren’t vaccinated that I couldn’t come and see them. My family disowned me after telling them because they didn’t want to get infected by me.
My sister, who has a black husband and a biracial child, disowned me shortly after when I asked to see my nephew because of my status.
Despite separating from my first husband in 2006 we’ve always been close. He votes Democratic still but almost his entire family, people I know and love and for worked to help some of them come to this country, are now Trump voters. They voted for Trump because they saw the horrors that can come because of socialist dictators and wouldn’t vote for Democrats because they were “socialists” and killed babies after they were born.
I grew up in a loving home and had a really amazing, loving circle of family and friends.
Until 2016.
All of these problems came about after years of disinformation.
I've lost nearly all of my friends and family to misinformation. When we call them names and laugh at them we simply strengthen their resolve and make it easier for them to keep voting for and supporting Republicans. Republicans tell them that they are right to feel the way they do. They tell them lies and they believe them and because of that they have made bad choices.
Trump voters are like addicts that refuse to give up drugs. They know what they are doing is wrong but they keep doing it because hate and lies are addictive. If an alcoholic loses all of their friends and family it makes it much harder to fight their addiction. In 2018 there was a huge movement that resulted in most of the left leaving Facebook and turning to Twitter. They lost their friends and families but people continued to lie to them and they continued to be addicted to the lies and the hate only we weren’t there to tell them the truth.
They believe that Biden is senile because their Facebook friends share that and nobody uses Facebook anymore that tells them the truth. I was able to deradicalize someone simply by letting him know Biden was a lifelong stutterer.
Please stop attacking low information, poorly educated people who are actively being lied to.
American is not a racist nation. America is an ideal to be aspired to. Trump voters are not causing the hate and the lies. They are a symptom of the hate and the lies. If we ever want to live in a country that we can truly be proud of then we need to rise up collectively and resoundingly destroy the Republicans electorally at the ballot box.
Nothing will change if we do not create the change because we are the change.
South Florida isn’t like most of the United States. It has more in common with islands in the Caribbean than Tallahassee or Tampa. To truly understand why South Florida is the way it is you need to understand it’s history.
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 is an inescapable part of South Florida's identity. 125,000 had the option to flee the island-nation or face violence and imprisonment. Most of these people were political prisoners and dissidents and other “undesirables”. Many of these “undesirables” were gay or trans which is one of the reasons South Florida became a mecca for the LGBTQ+ community. Of the 125,000
On May 17th, 1980 Liberty City came to a standstill because of the McDuffie Race Riots. Arthur McDuffie was a former US Marine who was beaten to death by four white police officers. An all-white male jury found these officers not guilty. After the verdict was read there were three days of rioting and looting. 18 people died and Liberty City was left looking like a war zone.
1980 is also the year that I was born in Opa-locka, the city where Amelia Earhart started her journey around the world, that was built with an Arabian Nights theme and today has the most Moorish architecture in the western hemisphere. My father had lived off the coast of Yemen and in Saudi Arabia for a decade in the 60s as an imported American worker before coming back home to South Florida where he worked as a construction worker.
Opa-lock comes from the Seminole word “Opa-tisha-wocka-locka” that means "a big island covered with many trees and swamps”. The Seminole & Miccosukee loomed large over my childhood growing up in South Florida before the development destroyed so much of our culture and environment.
Florida was owned by Spain before it became an American territory and this is why you can find the only castle in the United States, the Castillo de San Marco, in St. Augustine, Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida declared everyone free which is why the first Underground Railroad ran to Florida. The escaped slaves, known as Maroons, established flourishing communities in the northern parts of the state. They began intermarrying with the Seminoles and have become known as “Black Seminoles”.
1982: Key West Secedes and Declares War on the United States. In 1982, Key West (where Ernest Hemingway lived) renamed itself the “Conch Republic” before seceding and declaring war against the United States. This succession, which lasted only a day, was in retaliation to the US Border Patrol setting up roadblocks on the only route in or out of Florida Keys and forced Americans to prove their citizenship before letting them in.
- In the 1980s, the city of Opa-locka was just transitioning from predominantly white to predominantly black but had been in decline since the 1950s. From the 1980’s onward Opa-locka became one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States and consistently ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in the United States. Most people don’t see the name Opa-locka listed in these crime statistics because is often referred to simply as “Miami”. The Mariel Boatlift, you see, did bring in a huge influx of crime. Both the show “Miami Vice” and the movie “Scarface” capitalized off of the crime and backdrop of South Florida. Unlike the Mexican and Central American asylum seekers coming here to better their lives that have unjustly been called “rapists and murderers”, some of the Marielitos actually were. This doesn’t mean that Cubans are all rapists and murderers; it means that Fidel Castro opened the prisons and released all of the murderers, rapists, drug-dealers, and violent criminals as well as the mentally ill. I don’t recall growing up in a drug-dealing, race-rioting city. Some of my earliest memories are of canepole fishing with my mom and dad, often with black or brown friends of my parents and their children. My father worked as a construction foreman putting in steal rebar before concrete was poured in building foundations. I know both from his own words and from knowing the men he worked with that he helped countless “illegals” work under the table for the places he worked. My father raised me to be the person that I am. He never let me badger the waitress to refill my drink because, and I quote, “She’s busy, don’t drink so fast”. I might have been born looking like a blond haired Aryan baby but it is only because of my mother’s genetics. My father is descended from the Arapaho but could never prove it because of his father’s 1917 forced adoption. We left Opa-locka when I was four and my family still owns a home passed on to us from my grandmother built in the 50s located on the county line between Miami and Broward. For those of you that might consider this ‘white flight’ it was not from fear of people of color but because of a serious influx of crime and my family didn’t want to get murdered. Growing up I existed in this weird dichotomy of visits with family in northern Florida where it was very much the South and a day to day existence of living in a world where I had to speak Spanish if I wanted to do anything. The schools I went to were overwhelmingly black and my high school had less than ten percent of white people. The school systems in Broward County, while no longer segregated “de jure” (under the law) were still segregated de facto. White kids needed to be bussed in from other locations. To the best of my knowledge the school systems were still not fully integrated when I graduated. When I came out as gay at 15 years old I recall big black boys from the football and basketball team walking up to me and saying, “Yo, dawg, you gay?” and nodding “yes” and extending my hand in introduction. In my 11th grade English class I asked, in front of mostly black classmates, my white teacher if I could write about the queerness of Plato and Socrates during Black History month. She asked the rest of the class if they thought it was OK. I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of acceptance and pride when my classmates not only didn’t object but supported my choice to be gay and understand who I was. This was two years before June was designated Pride Month by Bill Clinton. In 2001, at 21, I began living with my first husband. He was Venezuelan, with so many brothers and sisters, and his family was scattered between the US and Venezuela. A few years earlier when he still lived in Venezuela his superiors at an airline he worked at had him procure a plane for Hugo Chavez to use to campaign with in his quest to become President. He had no idea of the destruction Chavez would bring to his country or his family. For the entire 6 years of our relationship there was always, always a member of his family that we were working to help bring into this country. Cubans and Venezuelans have always had legal pathways to citizenship that have been denied to Mexicans, Haitians and those from Central America. The entirety of my 43 years have been spent in Florida. I’ve seen snow once. I, as a white person, was a minority for the entirety of my K-12 education. I know what it is like to feel otherized and to be a token member of a group. I understand the pain and anxiety caused by not knowing whether or not your loved ones will get deported or not. I understand systemic racism because I have lived and been educated under systems that were the direct result of legal segregationist policies. I understand privilege because these policies never affected me. So to the person who asked me, “Do you really believe that they aren’t bad, racist people?” I said, resoundingly, no. Most of these people don't support Trump because they are racist. They support him because they are brainwashed. My father retired in a very in a retirement community near the Space Coast that is now considered ruby red Republican. His best friend was Fox News. He disowned me because he said “You love immigrants more than you love me”. Then he said, “All of the goddamn Mexicans should be lined up and shot in the head.” We never spoke again. He passed away in 2021. My mother and father separated in the 90s. Her new husband was a Teamster. He told me the only people worth voting for were Democrats. They retired in central Florida in what could be considered ruby red Republican country. I called to make Thanksgiving plans and they kept going on and on about how the goddamn Puerto Ricans could come to this country and get on food stamps and how bad it was. She told me how during the 80s she tried to get on food stamps but all she could get was peanut butter. We were never, ever on food stamps.We had hard times, and should have been on food stamps, but my father was proud and he would take us fishing so we could have fish for dinner. This was something we did almost every weekend when I was a child growing up. My mother, who can make some of the best Black macaroni & cheese I’ve ever had, suddenly hated Puerto Ricans and could not (or would not) understand that they were American citizens. I told them they were being racist. During the same conversation I asked if they were vaccinated so I could come and visit that they told me, seriously, that the vaccine was a way for Joe Biden to control everything we say and do. I had never told my family about my HIV status but if do then. I said if they weren’t vaccinated that I couldn’t come and see them. My family disowned me after telling them because they didn’t want to get infected by me. My sister, who has a black husband and a biracial child, disowned me shortly after when I asked to see my nephew because of my status. Despite separating from my first husband in 2006 we’ve always been close. He votes Democratic still but almost his entire family, people I know and love and for worked to help some of them come to this country, are now Trump voters. They voted for Trump because they saw the horrors that can come because of socialist dictators and wouldn’t vote for Democrats because they were “socialists” and killed babies after they were born. I grew up in a loving home and had a really amazing, loving circle of family and friends. Until 2016. All of these problems came about after years of disinformation. I've lost nearly all of my friends and family to misinformation. When we call them names and laugh at them we simply strengthen their resolve and make it easier for them to keep voting for and supporting Republicans. Republicans tell them that they are right to feel the way they do. They tell them lies and they believe them and because of that they have made bad choices. Trump voters are like addicts that refuse to give up drugs. They know what they are doing is wrong but they keep doing it because hate and lies are addictive. If an alcoholic loses all of their friends and family it makes it much harder to fight their addiction. In 2018 there was a huge movement that resulted in most of the left leaving Facebook and turning to Twitter. They lost their friends and families but people continued to lie to them and they continued to be addicted to the lies and the hate only we weren’t there to tell them the truth. They believe that Biden is senile because their Facebook friends share that and nobody uses Facebook anymore that tells them the truth. I was able to deradicalize someone simply by letting him know Biden was a lifelong stutterer. Please stop attacking low information, poorly educated people who are actively being lied to. American is not a racist nation. America is an ideal to be aspired to. Trump voters are not causing the hate and the lies. They are a symptom of the hate and the lies. If we ever want to live in a country that we can truly be proud of then we need to rise up collectively and resoundingly destroy the Republicans electorally at the ballot box. Nothing will change if we do not create the change because we are the change.
South Florida isn’t like most of the United States. It has more in common with islands in the Caribbean than Tallahassee or Tampa. To truly understand why South Florida is the way it is you need to understand it’s history.
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 is an inescapable part of South Florida's identity. Through 1980 there was a mass exodus of 125,000 Cubans. Most of these people were political prisoners, dissidents and others deemed “undesirable” by the Castro regime. Many of these “undesirables” were gay or trans which is one of the reasons South Florida became a mecca for the LGBTQ+ community. Of the 125,000, as many as 20,000 were violent criminals whom Castro released from prison.
On May 17th, 1980 Liberty City came to a standstill because of the McDuffie Race Riots. Arthur McDuffie was a former US Marine who was beaten to death by four white police officers. An all-white male jury found these officers not guilty. After the verdict was read there were three days of rioting and looting. 18 people died and Liberty City was left looking like a war zone.
1980 is also the year that I was born in Opa-locka, the city where Amelia Earhart started her journey around the world, that was built with an Arabian Nights theme and today has the most Moorish architecture in the western hemisphere. My father had lived off the coast of Yemen and in Saudi Arabia for a decade in the 60s as an imported American worker before coming back home to South Florida where he worked as a construction worker.
Opa-lock comes from the Seminole word “Opa-tisha-wocka-locka” that means "a big island covered with many trees and swamps”. The Seminole & Miccosukee loomed large over my childhood growing up in South Florida before the development destroyed so much of our culture and environment.
Florida was owned by Spain before it became an American territory and this is why you can find the only castle in the United States, the Castillo de San Marco, in St. Augustine, Florida. The Spanish colony of Florida declared everyone free which is why the first Underground Railroad ran to Florida. The escaped slaves, known as Maroons, established flourishing communities in the northern parts of the state. They began intermarrying with the Seminoles and have become known as “Black Seminoles”.
The Seminoles are the "Unconquered People" despite both the First and Second Seminole Wars of US aggression. Today the Seminole Tribe is the third richest Native tribe with an annual revenue of over 800 million dollars from their ownership of the Seminole Hard Rock.
1982: Key West Secedes and Declares War on the United States.
We left Opa-locka when I was four and moved to Broward. It wasn't because of ‘white flight’. From the 1980’s onward Opa-locka became one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States and consistently ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in the United States. Both the show “Miami Vice” and the movie “Scarface” capitalized off of this crime and the backdrop of South Florida.
Unlike the Mexican and Central American asylum seekers coming here to better their lives that have unjustly been called “rapists and murderers”, as many as 20,000 of the Marielitos actually were violent criminals.
This doesn’t mean that Cubans are all rapists and murderers; it means that Fidel Castro opened the prisons and released all of the murderers, rapists, drug-dealers, and violent criminals as well as the mentally ill.
There was a strange disunion growing up of living both in a very southern state and in a foreign country. The Broward County school systems were no longer segregated “de jure” but remained segregated de facto. My high school was made up of less than ten percent of white people and there were still bussing systems in place. To the best of my knowledge the school systems were still not fully integrated when I graduated in the late 90s.
When I came out as gay at 15 years old I recall big black boys from the football and basketball team walking up to me and saying, “Yo, dawg, you gay?” and nodding “yes” and extending my hand in introduction. In my 11th grade English class I asked, in front of mostly black classmates, my white teacher if I could write about the queerness of Plato and Socrates during Black History month. She asked the rest of the class if they thought it was OK. I remember being overwhelmed with feelings of acceptance and pride when my classmates not only didn’t object but supported my choice to be gay and understand who I was. This was two years before June was designated Pride Month by Bill Clinton. In 2001, at 21, I began living with my first husband. He was Venezuelan, with so many brothers and sisters, and his family was scattered between the US and Venezuela. A few years earlier when he still lived in Venezuela his superiors at an airline he worked at had him procure a plane for Hugo Chavez to use to campaign with in his quest to become President. He had no idea of the destruction Chavez would bring to his country or his family. For the entire 6 years of our relationship there was always, always a member of his family that we were working to help bring into this country. Cubans and Venezuelans have always had legal pathways to citizenship that have been denied to Mexicans, Haitians and those from Central America. The entirety of my 43 years have been spent in Florida. I’ve seen snow once. I, as a white person, was a minority for the entirety of my K-12 education. I know what it is like to feel otherized and to be a token member of a group. I understand the pain and anxiety caused by not knowing whether or not your loved ones will get deported or not. I understand systemic racism because I have lived and been educated under systems that were the direct result of legal segregationist policies. I understand privilege because these policies never affected me. So to the person who asked me, “Do you really believe that they aren’t bad, racist people?” I said, resoundingly, no. Most of these people don't support Trump because they are racist. They support him because they are brainwashed. My father retired in a very in a retirement community near the Space Coast that is now considered ruby red Republican. His best friend was Fox News. He disowned me because he said “You love immigrants more than you love me”. Then he said, “All of the goddamn Mexicans should be lined up and shot in the head.” We never spoke again. He passed away in 2021. My mother and father separated in the 90s. Her new husband was a Teamster. He told me the only people worth voting for were Democrats. They retired in central Florida in what could be considered ruby red Republican country. I called to make Thanksgiving plans and they kept going on and on about how the goddamn Puerto Ricans could come to this country and get on food stamps and how bad it was. She told me how during the 80s she tried to get on food stamps but all she could get was peanut butter. We were never, ever on food stamps.We had hard times, and should have been on food stamps, but my father was proud and he would take us fishing so we could have fish for dinner. This was something we did almost every weekend when I was a child growing up. My mother, who can make some of the best Black macaroni & cheese I’ve ever had, suddenly hated Puerto Ricans and could not (or would not) understand that they were American citizens. I told them they were being racist. During the same conversation I asked if they were vaccinated so I could come and visit that they told me, seriously, that the vaccine was a way for Joe Biden to control everything we say and do. I had never told my family about my HIV status but if do then. I said if they weren’t vaccinated that I couldn’t come and see them. My family disowned me after telling them because they didn’t want to get infected by me. My sister, who has a black husband and a biracial child, disowned me shortly after when I asked to see my nephew because of my status. Despite separating from my first husband in 2006 we’ve always been close. He votes Democratic still but almost his entire family, people I know and love and for worked to help some of them come to this country, are now Trump voters. They voted for Trump because they saw the horrors that can come because of socialist dictators and wouldn’t vote for Democrats because they were “socialists” and killed babies after they were born. I grew up in a loving home and had a really amazing, loving circle of family and friends. Until 2016. All of these problems came about after years of disinformation. I've lost nearly all of my friends and family to misinformation. When we call them names and laugh at them we simply strengthen their resolve and make it easier for them to keep voting for and supporting Republicans. Republicans tell them that they are right to feel the way they do. They tell them lies and they believe them and because of that they have made bad choices. Trump voters are like addicts that refuse to give up drugs. They know what they are doing is wrong but they keep doing it because hate and lies are addictive. If an alcoholic loses all of their friends and family it makes it much harder to fight their addiction. In 2018 there was a huge movement that resulted in most of the left leaving Facebook and turning to Twitter. They lost their friends and families but people continued to lie to them and they continued to be addicted to the lies and the hate only we weren’t there to tell them the truth. They believe that Biden is senile because their Facebook friends share that and nobody uses Facebook anymore that tells them the truth. I was able to deradicalize someone simply by letting him know Biden was a lifelong stutterer. Please stop attacking low information, poorly educated people who are actively being lied to. American is not a racist nation. America is an ideal to be aspired to. Trump voters are not causing the hate and the lies. They are a symptom of the hate and the lies. If we ever want to live in a country that we can truly be proud of then we need to rise up collectively and resoundingly destroy the Republicans electorally at the ballot box. Nothing will change if we do not create the change because we are the change.