By Pat Bryant*
Floridians are shocked. Americans are shocked. Youth are shocked. Gays and transgender are shocked. Christians are shocked. Labor Unions are shocked. Teachers are shocked. There is general shock and awe at quick changes that have become law in one short year by Florida legislature.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce led its members, companies you spend money with daily, like Amazon, Publix Super Markets, Sun Trust Bank, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, State Farm Insurance Company, Florida Power and Light, Allstate, Duke Energy, Coca Cola, AT&T and the list includes more than 100 companies used by most Americans daily.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce through Mark Wilson its president and CEO directs Secure Florida’s Future Inc. which gave more than $8.5 million for “issue education” for Re-publican candidates to achieve a super majority of its members to control the Florida legislature.
Secure Florida’s Future is listed on the Chamber web site. With that super majority and a willing Governor Ron DeSantis, abortions after six weeks were banned, what public school teachers can teach has been curtailed, diversity inclusion and equity in colleges banned, books banned in schools and libraries, guns are legally carried permitless concealed by all, voting restricted, and Disney’s perks that allow a self-governing district was taken back when Disney got out of line with the program and criticized the “Don’t Say Gay Law” passed to curtail discussion of gender in public schools.
According to its website, the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s “number one goal climate?”
Public school environments have been decimated by the laws the Chamber backed legislators championed. The icing on the cake was a law providing state funded vouchers for every child in Florida to attend private schools. Future of public education has not been in questioned since public education was a right for white students only.
To sum the changes, Florida has become an experiment in authoritarian control much like Germany’s Third Riech in which liberalism and individualism were erased to save ‘the Aryan race (whites)” from Jews and non-whites. The governor and legislature have launched intense attacks on people of color, labor unions, LGBTQ persons and groups and their supporters. This process is called Nazification.
Unlimited funding by corporations has exploded in Florida since Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission case in 2012, in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled it was constitutional for corporations to make unlimited contributions in politics that could be shielded by third parties.
The Nazification of Florida is almost complete, with guns in the hands of anyone who cares to shoot an undesirable, which three white men are accused of doing two weeks ago in the Jacksonville killing of a Black man in the wee hours of the morning. And with radical Republican well-funded legislators, this Florida Nazification may be hard to turn around.
It took fifty plus years from the Plessy v Ferguson decision of the U S Supreme Court in 1898 where the court ruled segregation was alright to the Brown v Topeka decision in 1954 which overturned racial segregation. DeSantis’ and Republican anti-woke campaigns are set to undo the gains since the Brown decision.
Governor Ron DeSantis gets the notoriety for these changes, the most in any period of Florida history, including period ending the first Reconstruction around 1900. But these changes could not have been made without the money citizens give McDonald Corporation, Burger King, Publix Super Market and the other members of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
So far there has been a reluctance of Florida’s progressive leaders to challenge DeSantis funders as he prepares to run for president of the United States as Republican Party nominee or from a third party. There have been several marches to the legislature, demonstrations, arrests at DeSantis office, and a coordinated walkout of high school and college students for anti-DeSantis and anti-legislature rallies. But not a peep at the businesses that gave the money that made Nazification of Florida possible.
One group, the Florida Chapter of Branches of the NAACP, has recommended that its National Organization ask its members not to come to Florida, since tourism is its major industry. The Florida Immigrant Coalition and Equality Florida that represent gays, lesbians, and transgender have called for a national travel boycott of Florida. But none of these organizations target directly the companies that have created Nazification of Florida, which is spreading across the nation through affiliates of the United States Chamber of Commerce.
This writer texted several Florida leaders with the following text: “The crying shame is there is opposition to DeSantis, but very little opposition to the corporations that fund him and Trump”. Only one elected leader Senator Shevrin Jones, Democrat of Broward County that includes Fort Lauderdale, replied. “I actually agree with you.”
*Pat Bryant is a southern journalist who covers the Southern Freed
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