Listen To This Story

Editor’s Note: On August 21, Alligator Alcatraz was ordered to shut down. This week’s actions were taken prior to the order. 

We’re at a point where we see things crumbling on a national and international level, and we feel it existentially. And we see things crumbling on a local level, and we feel it deeply personally. Florida has its own version of DOGE and it’s coming for my city, Gainesville, FL, (probably due to our patent “misbehavior” in the past) — and this time, local officials are giving in a lot more easily. They may even give up their own (we have an embattled school board member in the national news over her Hulk Hogan comments, of all things). 

We have to remind our local officials to stand their ground. And with school starting again here in Florida, I’ve redoubled my efforts to help keep our kids safe while they’re there. If you recall, Alachua County currently allows ICE to come into schools and take students without a warrant or parental permission. 

We’re not the only county where students are subject to this arbitrary police action. A high schooler was just taken by ICE after a traffic stop in Georgia. His family is devastated. I can’t change that, but maybe, just maybe, some things can be changed before it’s too late — if we take action to defend our values where we live and work and raise our families. Here is a list of things we can do to fight back.

1. Donate to Amnesty International to help fund the fight against Alligator Alcatraz.

Florida’s new immigration detention center in the Everglades reportedly feeds its detainees food with worms in it and has overflowing toilet waste on the floors. Prisoners at Alligator Alcatraz say they are given only one meal a day, and only minutes to eat it. Fluorescent lights shine day and night, they say, depriving detainees of needed sleep.

Amnesty International has been around since the 1960s, fighting for human rights around the world. More than 10 million people have supported them in one way or another worldwide. Now they have launched a campaign to shut down Alligator Alcatraz. I donated $25 to the cause.

2. Write legislators about Alligator Alcatraz.

Having attacked the concentration camp from a human rights standpoint, I then turned my attention to attacking it on a local level from a cost-prevention angle.

I emailed members of the Alachua County Legislative Delegation about the high cost of Alligator Alcatraz. Below is the language I used, courtesy of the League of Women Voters (LWV). Since I now work as a volunteer for the LWV, I updated their website with this “action item” as well:

Subject line: No accountability for cost of detention camps 

The state [Florida] is concerned about financial waste, excessive costs, and the use of taxpayer money. The detention camp in the Everglades was built with no-bid contracts and a lack of transparency of costs. Further, it will take some 450 million dollars a year to maintain. The governor says FEMA will bear the costs, which would take needed emergency services from Florida residents. The president says FEMA will be dissolved by the end of this year.

Waste and traffic from the camps are predicted to damage the Everglades, where millions of dollars have been spent to restore them and assure quality water for South Florida. And the cost of maintaining the camp does not have a solid funding source. This is not good use of taxpayer money. Some detainees have legal resident status and they are being kept in tents in the Everglades where heat is sweltering and storms are a certainty. I object to the use of tax money and the conditions. Dismantle the detention camp.

As a result of this kind of messaging and support from the courts, Alligator Alcatraz has been ordered to shut down within 60 days, and inmates are emptying out. Small things do matter.

3. Follow up with area media about immigration.

As the school year revs up again, I returned to the fight against our school district allowing ICE agents to come into our schools and take our students without a warrant or parental permission. Another activist had obtained hundreds of emails between school and government officials from a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request; I indexed the emails and added them to a 2024 video of a presentation by district administrators, telling teachers to stay out of ICE dealings in the school. 

With this packet of information, I stirred some initial interest in running a story at the Orlando Sentinel, but, as happens many times in the freelance world, nothing but silence since. The important thing about submitting stories to local media is not to get discouraged. Sometimes it takes months of follow-up before you get the story out there.

4. Give media contacts to activists in need.

For these past months, I’ve been facilitating contact between an activist group here in town and the newspapers they’ve been trying to interest in the ICE-in-the-schools story. With no luck so far. 

Well, it’s one thing to try to help because you have good contacts, but it’s another to bogart those contacts if you’re failing to get the desired results. So I gave the activists my files of email addresses and phone numbers to let them pitch the story to media outlets directly — perhaps with more heartfelt stories or fresh angles that will catch an editor’s eye. At the very least, this will give local activists more experience in media relations and more control over their own narrative — which may pay off in better coverage in the long run.

5. Don’t let DOGE come to town without a fight. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is auditing Gainesville, again. He did this in 2023, and that’s why our local electricity supplier, Gainesville Regional Utilities, is now run by the state. Well, DeSantis is doing it again. Our city continues to make him angry, and that comes with consequences. I emailed our city commission, CityComm@cityofgainesville.org, a letter of support with the following language:

Dear Mayor and Commissioners

I am writing to express my support of our city. Gainesville is a special place. We are home to a diverse array of people with incredible talent, creativity, and love of nature. We are a welcoming city as experienced by so many people who come here for events and comment on our culture of friendliness. Our parks and recreation sites are enjoyed by many and are under frequent improvements. We have an urban tree canopy of some 50% coverage that keeps us cooler, keeps our air clean, and makes being outside refreshing. We have numerous live theater venues, run by talented volunteers, who put on high-quality, entertaining performances. We have a wide array of farmer’s markets for nutritious food that traveled about 10 miles, not thousands of miles, to find its way to our kitchens. Despite state pre-emptions, we are making progress on affordable housing. All this is possible because of the work of the leadership of Gainesville and city staff. We are not perfect, but we are well-intentioned, and we are strong.

It is unfortunate and a little hard to understand why the state keeps meddling in our affairs. For over 10 years, they worked, against the will of voters, to take our municipal utility out of our hands and into the hands of the governor. In 2023, the Legislature ordered, and auditors completed, a detailed financial audit and made recommendations, which we followed. Now, the Florida DOGE team will descend on us again. One goal is to eliminate extravagance in spending. The state performing two audits in two years sounds like extravagant spending to me.

I want you to know that I support you and our city staff. I appreciate the work of the city manager, the budget office, and all the staff who have adjusted to difficult circumstances. It’s been hard. But because of your good work, we who live in Gainesville and those who pass through continue to enjoy the culture that is unique to Gainesville.

Please share this message with staff.

With deep gratitude,

Keep ever vigilant in your cities and towns. Florida has its own version of DOGE, but if the federal DOGE comes to town, or your state or region starts to impose its will upon your local government because it doesn’t agree with your elected choices, you must stand firm and stand up, immediately. Republicans say they are against big government, but what would you call this?

6. Support your local school board if they are worth supporting. 

Earlier this summer, Hulk Hogan died. It was right after he did a photo op in front of a detention center, ridiculing the detained. Our local school board chair, Sarah Rockwell, posted a comment on social media. Something along the lines of, “Oh, Hulk Hogan died? Well, one less MAGA in the world.”

As you can imagine, the state came down on this hard. There have been calls for her to resign, and she’s made several apologies. In keeping with our standard advice, we urge everyone to keep a close eye on the dynamics of your local administrative boards — including the school board. If you want them to change a policy, start speaking up. But when they are right and need support, give it freely. I wrote an email to our local school board to ask them to stand with our embattled chair. Here’s the email I sent:

Good afternoon,

I’m writing to implore you to stand tall with Sarah Rockwell, whose steadfast leadership and refreshing willingness to go to bat for our teachers, parents, and residents here in Alachua County is irreplaceable.

There is no need to capitulate to partisan voice boxes in our community. Rockwell made a mistake, she apologized, and in the grand scheme of things, her crime is no more than being a human with thoughts and emotions, representing a cohort of people traditionally attacked by certain celebrities who may or may not have passed away.

I stand with Sarah Rockwell, as does the majority of our community. We must stop letting the louder minority tear our institutions apart just because they think they can. Let the voters decide later, as it should be. I have every confidence they will come through. Please do not prematurely concede. Y’all are too important to us.

Please support our school board by supporting Rockwell. With all the trials and tribulations y’all have weathered, with every barb and petty sling aimed at you over the course of the past several years, you have the strength to continue to stand tall. To continue to be the glimmer of hope in Alachua County’s local government.

Thank you for listening,

When you get in touch with your local boards, keep it professional, keep it to the point, ask for things within their reach, things that seem reasonable. Give them ways to support each other and their constituents that are based more on policy and regulation than emotion.

7. Keep reaching out to local activists in your area. 

As the months roll by, I’m still networking locally. There are multiple groups in town, some more professional and some more grassroots. There’s one woman in particular who is very active on the scene, but does things her own way. She doesn’t wait, she doesn’t overthink things. She sees bad things happen and she protests them. She posts the protests on social media and she protests in person. She’s actually barred from House Rep. Kat Cammack’s (R) office at this point, which none of us even knew could happen. But since our congresswoman’s office is private property, apparently barring constituents is allowed. 

I had coffee with our nonstop activist to discuss how we can all be more effectively active in our communities. Writing and calling are important, marching is important, but how do we show up physically every day, in our own communities, together with like-minded people? That has to be our goal in the hard times ahead.

The structures we’ve always depended upon to keep us safe are shifting, even crumbling. If they ever really were there. In this time of crisis, we have to become defenders of our own communities and local institutions. 

Sure, each one of us alone is no match for the might of an authoritarian government. But together, we can slow the juggernaut of MAGA’s antidemocratic assault. At this point, we set small goals, and we see them through. It’s all any of us can do. Every small victory builds morale for the long haul. See you next time.

Past weeks of “One Small Thing” can be found here.