Thanks to DeSantis’ fascist policies, civil-rights lawyers have their hands full in Florida
state’s maximum leader, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
When he quacks like a fascist, the GOP choir, from Miami to Tallahassee, applauds him with fervor.
ANTI-PROTEST LAW
DeSantis is, after all, channeling his political mentor, Donald Trump, and following his bombastic, destructive script to reelection next year, and onward, to the White House in 2024, perhaps.
If, in the process, DeSantis and his enablers turn the Constitution into a pliable document, chipped away by legislating at the state level in order to win elections, then so be it.
If, in the process, DeSantis quacks like a racist, that’s just the price of doing business with the base.
That’s why, surrounded by more than a dozen white men and women in deep-red Polk County as Americans waited for the Derek Chauvin verdict, a proud-as-a-peacock DeSantis signed his so-called “anti-riot” bill.
That’s why, in the aftermath of the verdict, DeSantis told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham — with a straight face — that Chauvin’s conviction may have happened because, “The jury is scared of what a mob may do.”
Same DeSantis who last year when the nation saw the George Floyd video, which prompted the protests he’s now trying to outlaw, said: “George Floyd’s murder was appalling.”
Same DeSantis who then says to Ingraham, another bona fide bigot, that there’s no systemic racism in this country when he and the Legislature are targeting minorities.
Without an ounce of sensitivity, DeSantis assaults the rights of Floridians to protest, presiding over a major crackdown on free speech, delivered by the acquiescent, overwhelmingly Republican Legislature via the HB 1 bill — their No. 1 priority after more than a year of a pandemic.
Coming in a close second: voter suppression.
VOTER SUPPRESSION
At first boasting that Florida had the most wellrun elections in the country when he delivered the state to Trump in 2020, DeSantis ordered another assault, this one on voting by mail.
And Republican lawmakers proceed to require people to re-register to receive mail-in ballots after just one election cycle; curtail ballot boxes; and change signature-matching laws.
As of this writing, the election bills had been watered down by the Senate, which did away, at the request of election officials and voting-rights groups, with the massive undertaking of requiring the updating of signatures. The remaining bill, still controversial, needs a full Senate vote and reconciliation with the House bill to make it to the governor’s desk.
All of these efforts are transparent, multilayered assaults on Floridians’ rights.
Who’s going to go to a protest knowing that if a few protesters get violent or more rowdy than police feel like tolerating — and you get caught in the melee — you’ll be carted off to jail, charged with a felony and held without bail like a murderer?
What low-income minority resident who works — and they’re the ones holding down essential jobs tied to a schedule — is going to risk losing a job to stand in hours-long lines when they find themselves without a mail-in ballot?
The governor is trashing the sacred right to vote, making it harder, not easier for U.S. citizens to participate in democracy. And, with the anti-protest measure, he deals a big blow not only to the protesters, but to the hard work some police departments in
South Florida are doing to build trust in our communities. at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. But Bozon, buoyed by her faith in God, developed a reputation as a motherly figure who would listen to younger inmates’ problems. She helped coordinate religious services with the prison chaplain, prayed with other inmates, taught classes on rehabilitation and passed her GED test.
Bozon made a lasting impression on several inmates, including Liz Mendoza.
“When I went to the cafeteria, I saw many people, all sitting with others in groups,” Mendoza recalled. “I didn’t know anybody and I sat at a table by myself. I couldn’t even touch the disgusting food that was served, and I started to cry. And out of 1,800 woman that were in that institution, only Evelyn [Bozon] came to me and she gave me a hug. And she told me that it was going to be OK.”
After her release, Mendoza joined others in supporting Bozon’s effort to gain her freedom, including another former prisoner at the Tallahassee facility, Damaris Ramos, and Jason Hernandez, who was serving a life sentence for crack-cocaine distribution when he was granted clemency by President Barack Obama in 2013.
While her clemency petitions failed, Bozon’s plight caught the attention of the Gender and Family Justice Clinic at Florida State University, headed by law school professor Carla Laroche. She said her clinic focuses on mass incarceration, seeking to help women who fall into a life of crime at an early age and have suffered from abusive relationships, like Bozon.
Sen. Shevrin Jones, who represents parts of northern Miami-Dade and southern Broward, best summed up the intention — and the injustice — of the anti-protest bill on the Senate Floor.
“You don’t want us on the streets. You don’t want us to kneel at games. ... Our response to injustice is to protest, but your response is to criminalize it when the recourse for us is to turn to the streets to make our voices heard in this unjust system.”
In his quest for absolute power, the Ivy League-educated governor, a lawyer, forgets the law of the land isn’t that of his scribes in the Legislature, but the document signed on Sept. 17, 1787.
Bring on the civil-rights lawyers.
Florida needs them to show the governor who’s boss.
Fabiola Santiago: 305-376-3469, @fabiolasantiago
“My students worked on Ms. Bozon’s case for a very long time,” Laroche said. “Many of my students this semester and last semester understood that this injustice needed to be righted.”
“We thought of how we could humanize Ms. Bozon, who was not just another prisoner seeking compassionate release but a mother who had been away from her children for 26 years,” Laroche said. “Even though she was facing a life sentence without parole, she got her GED. Even knowing she was in a facility for the rest of her life, she would not just sit there and be.”
Bozon, now free and reunited with her family in Colombia, is mindful of all the people who helped guide her through her legal odyssey. “They all fought for me,” she said.
Now back in Colombia after a couple of weeks of freedom, Bozon says she is slowly adapting to her new life — just being with her four children, a medical doctor, architect, clothing designer and logistics coordinator. She said several members of her extended family have been infected with the coronavirus but that she has been vaccinated.
“My priority right now is to be with my family, make them happy and feel comfortable with them,” Bozon said.
In the long run, she said she hopes to join an organization that helps other women who have suffered from abuse and battery. “I want to get involved in that because I have the spirit now,” Bozon said. “I can give to them a lot of positive things and make them free.”
Jay Weaver: 305-376-3446, @jayhweaver