Author: Carma Henry

        Over the weekend a community of young and old came together to celebrate 50 years of The Marshall L. Davis, Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center (DAHCAC). A place where Liberty City youth can experience all genres of performing and visual arts including theater, art and band; falling in love with something they didn’t even know existed. The evening featured extraordinary performances from the Nu Deco Ensemble, alumni whose lives were forever changed by the center, and a one-hour screening of the documentary feature film An Instrumental Start: A Model for the Nation. 

        Being a senior in Broward County Public Schools, I’ve seen the problems and potential that shape the classrooms we sit in five days a week. Sitting in testing rooms that have outdated technology that freezes in the middle of State tests and exams. AP courses that my school has and that many students take advantage of that other schools across the county don’t offer. Even though I am a student at a predominantly white high school, I’m still a Black female in today’s school system. I can’t disregard that schools in communities with kids that look just like me are underfunded, under-supported, and last to be acknowledged during tough decisions.

David Jolly brought his gubernatorial campaign to the Florida panhandle for the fourth time, hitting Pensacola, Milton, Panama City, and Tallahassee. Outside the Capitol City, Democrats brand the region “No Man’s Land” for its conservative leaning, but Jolly says affordability is just as important there as it is anywhere.  So is diversity.  Equity is also on his agenda, where everyone is welcomed and uplifted.” Why has equity become an extreme idea?” he asked.

       Two of the deaths in Louisiana were linked to tainted oysters, but the Department of Health says 85% of those sickened “reported wound/seawater exposure.” Vibrio can cause an infection if a swimmer has an open cut or scrape, or recent tattoo or piercing.

     Campaign Nonviolence Action Days is underway an impressive 5,595+ actions and events across the United States and around the world working to “build a culture of peace and active nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism, and environmental destruction.”

      On September 13, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police. Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson―a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal―told the assemblage that British government officials believed “that Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.” Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as: “Why are white people despised when our money pays for everything?”

       Charlie Kirk’s killing – and the aftermath of grief and political outrage – are too overwhelming to ignore, even though I couldn’t possibly have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.

      One cannot examine the wars in Ukraine and Gaza without noticing certain parallels. First and foremost are the human and economic costs of aggression. Those costs are staggering, and how they might be made up is anybody’s guess, since the aggressors—Russia and Israel—are not going to pay. And the aggressors happen to be led by people judged war criminals—Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, and their inner circles—another parallel.

     Today Republican leaders and party regulars fully endorse the Christian world view. Just a few years ago former Attorney General Bill Barr said, “Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate rules for human conduct” and that “the fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.” And the Christian-dominated Supreme Court also affirmed his belief in Christian morality with the Dobbs decision which allowed states with Christian majorities to impose their religious anti-abortion beliefs on their fellow citizens. Both fail to understand the nature of our Constitution or the origin of moral standards.

       An effort to limit federal homeless funding to locales embracing Trump Administration policies on sanctuary cities has triggered a lawsuit from homeless advocates.