Fascism won't let you be

I know some people in Gainesville who think they can ride this one out. They feel secure because they have means: a house, some savings, maybe even a bubble they feel they can retreat into. I want to pop that bubble right now.

Florida is ground zero for fascism in the US, and if you think you are too small to be on the radar, you are sorely mistaken. Fascism is a movement grounded in smallness: smallness of thinking, of understanding, of being. Fascists thrive on picking on the small things because they know that those things cause pain and suffering and lead to fear. Authoritarians operate on fear.

The state of Florida has already built a concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades with, by many reports, grossly inhumane conditions. That is a feature, not a bug for the governor and his allies. Governor DeSantis has plans to build a second concentration camp at Camp Blanding in Starke, just a stone’s throw away from Gainesville. The existence of any camp like this is a stain on our country.

Speaking of Gainesville, the Governor, who has no love for the city, sent what he branded as “Florida DOGE” to the city to investigate the city’s finances. The claims made by Florida’s CFO about Gainesville’s finances are so wildly off base that you wonder if he knows how to read a spreadsheet. Florida DOGE wrapped up whatever work they were doing at the city and now we wait to see what narrative they spin from the data they’ve collected. Dollars to donuts that the findings won’t be kind to Gainesville city officials.

Now you might find yourself thinking “so what?” So what if the state hates Gainesville. So what if Florida DOGE digs around the city’s finances. I’d tell you to pay attention to national news. The template for what DeSantis is attempting is being played out at the federal level by Trump. Well, DeSantis seems to think the order is flipped and Trump is following Florida’s model. I can’t tell which is more reprehensible.

DeSantis isn’t exactly subtle in his power grab. Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings pulled back the curtain on how the governor deals with local governments. Governor DeSantis demands and when that doesn’t work, he threatens. In the case of Orange County, DeSantis threatened to replace every member of the county commission if they didn’t agree to his demands. The power to replace local officials is a real one, although it is not a power that was intended to be used in this manner. In saner days, replacing local officials only came into play in extreme circumstances when an local official was engaged in obvious corruption or other illegal activities.

I hope by now you can connect the dots here. But I’ll spell it out because this is not a time for subtle arguments. Gainesville has frequently been a target of this governor. Already, DeSantis and his allies in the legislature stripped local control of our utility. Whatever you may think of how GRU was run, removing it from the city’s control and giving it over to a DeSantis-controlled board is a terrible outcome. DeSantis and his allies have frequently attacked the University of Florida, the economic center of our city. They’ve been wildly successful at making sure people stop regarding UF as a top tier academic school. If you think DeSantis will hesitate to replace the city commission and mayor with his hand selected cronies, please scroll back up and reread everything above. More likely, he’ll use that threat to coerce the commission into reluctantly supporting stances they would otherwise oppose. He’s already done this in Orange County and got the result he wanted. Why would he stop?

In fact, he’s already started doing this in Gainesville. Gainesville’s leaders are being forced into another decision they have said they don’t want to make. Years ago, after the hard work and fundraising of human rights activist Terry Fleming and others in town, a few crosswalks around downtown were painted as rainbows. Those crosswalks were symbolic of the city’s inclusive nature. At its best, Gainesville is for everyone. The rainbow crosswalks were also much more visible than regular white ones so they were also a lot safer for the people who used them. DeSantis’s Department of Transportation and Trump’s Department of Transportation want those rainbow crosswalks removed. This, of all things, this is the priority for them. And to ensure their removal, they presented the city with a choice that is not a choice: remove the crosswalks or lose all state and federal DOT funding. Gainesville can’t afford to lose that funding so the rainbows are going away.

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans made strident arguments in favor of local control. In cities and towns, people could experiment to find ways to improve their lives and improve how they were represented in government. But as the Republican Party no longer seems to believe in democracy, it makes sense that they have little tolerance for cities acting as the laboratories for democracy.

If you can’t ignore this, if you can’t pretend that life is still largely normal, and I’m telling you that you can’t, what can you do? Fighting back, attending or maybe even organizing protests, writing, donating time and money and energy to groups that are fighting back are all very good things to do. Resisting fascism will require community and it also requires hope. It does not require one person to do everything. In community, you find that you can contribute in the ways that are best for you and as others do the same, we tend to get all that we need.

There’s another option, and I think it’s going to sound funny coming after the previous paragraph that encouraged resistance: You can leave. An old friend who has done more to help immigrants in this country than most anyone else I know reminded me recently that there is no shame in leaving for somewhere better. The story of the United States is largely that of people leaving a bad situation to come here in hopes of finding a better one. I think it’s a sad commentary on the state of things that instead of coming to the US for refuge, I think you should now be leaving it for somewhere else. Do what feels safe for you and your family.

I grapple with this quite a bit. Do I stay? Do I leave? Does it make sense to move abroad and find a different life in Canada or Europe or Japan or Australia? Do I stay in the US but move to a different state? Some states (California, New York, Washington, Illinois, Colorado, basically all of New England) will do better than others (Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana) at protecting its residents from the worst excesses of the Trump administration. Will that be enough? Florida is all too happy to exacerbate the problems that Trump is creating. Will people here finally have enough of it? What is the tipping point, not just for me but for other folks? It’s not always easy to tell when you’re in the middle of it.

There’s one other thing to do. Regardless of whether you choose to stay and resist here or move somewhere else, we need to start undoing the core causes of why fascism was able to take root in the world yet again. In the US, there’s a feeling among a lot of folks that they’ve been left behind and that their communities are broken. I suspect this is the case for a lot of folks around the world. A lot of people need help and unfortunately, some of them have turned to a huckster promising revenge against the wrong people as the key to turning their lives around. It’s not the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last time. But we don’t have to be resigned to this shitty cycle of history either.

A lot of US culture at the moment encourages a taking mentality, “winning” every decision, every interaction. Winning at all costs. It’s not enough to say fuck that, but it’s a start. Fuck that. And then you show that there is a different way. When people need help, we shouldn’t insult them, belittle them, or kick them while they’re down. We need to start lifting people back up. We need to show people that decency, kindness, real community still matter. Giving instead of taking, helping and lifting instead of pushing down. I’m not saying to ignore fascists or to help them. Don’t look the other way at fascism. Don’t help a fascist who is trying to hurt. Help the people who are being hurt. A joy in resistance, a joy in helping, and a joy in showing people, not just telling them, how small and stupid fascism is compared to real community.