This evening at 5:30 pm, Moveon.org is sponsoring a Defend the Dream rally here in Tallahassee and in other cities throughout Florida. This event, like the one two weeks ago, is in support of the citizens of Wisconsin who are determined to take their state back from the Tea Party which holds the governorship and majority in the Wisconsin legislature. This is also a companion event to the Awake the State rallies held here in Florida one week ago. We in Florida are facing many of the same issues as our fellow citizens in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and other states where the Tea Party has taken over. It is an almost impossible battle, but we must fight to save our state from being sold off to corporations.
On February 26, Tallahassee held the first Save the Dream rally which I diaried here. Then on March 8, Awake the State rallies were held throughout Florida, including two in Tallahassee which I diaried here and which tygerwilde diaried here.
Local newspaper coverage of these three rallies has been particularly disappointing. The corporate media seems to be in full swing here in Tallahassee. After the Save the Dream rally, there was a very negative editorial about the turnout which was estimated to be 250 people. After the Awake the State rallies, the local coverage was equally negative, including elevating the coverage of the competing Tea party rally over the coverage of the Awake the State rally, both in the headlines and the photographs.
It is a battle that has been difficult without much support of the media. That is why I was pleasantly surprised to read a guest editorial this weekend in no holds barred support of the Awake the State movement. What was so stunning about this guest editorial was that it was written by a former state senator and Republican, Nancy Argenziano.
Our local news media has treated the Save the Dream and Awake the State rallies as simply union issues. They are not. I was interviewed four times at the morning Awake the State rally, twice by television stations, once by a newspaper, and once by NPR. In each case, I was asked if I was a state employee or a teacher and I responded that I was not. Both televsion reporters had difficulty understanding why I was participating when I was not being directly affected by the budget cuts. Even after I explained that ultimately all Floridians would suffer due to cuts in education, state employees, growth management regulations and water quality controls, one reporter simply did not get it. Only the NPR reporter understood the bigger picture.
Well, Nancy Argenziano gets it and she correctly identified the issues, which our local news media has ignored. Here is how her editorial began (bold is the diarist's emphasis):
This week, there were grass-roots "Awake the State" rallies all over Florida. For years, I have wondered what it would take to finally stir the people to oppose the corruption, the selling of policy, the hypocrisy, lying and the greed of their leaders. Today, I think they have awakened.
For me, this is not just about unions, this is not about liberals vs. conservatives or Republicans vs. the Democrats. It's about shouting a warning to Floridians that their elected leaders are selling them down the river, saying one thing, but doing another.
As her editorial continues, she urges citizens to follow the money and gives numerous examples in which legislators and former legislators have gained financially at the expense of Floridians. Then she deconstructs Rick Scott's argument of fiscal responsibility by pointing out the following:
Florida is tied for last in the ratio of state employees to residents (118 per 10,000, where the national average is 216 per 10,000) and last in the ratio of cost of state employee workforce per resident ($38 per resident vs. a national average of $69), according to the 2008-09 State Personnel System Annual Workforce Report. I would characterize this as reflecting a state workforce which is, nationally, first in efficiency.
Yet what does the Scott/Senate President Mike Haridopolis/Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon plunderbund do? Penalize that efficiency, stab state workers in the back, further savage a workforce that hasn't had a raise in five years, to effectively decrease their income by reneging on the bargain and requiring pension contributions, pensions which average in the lowest national tier.
Finally Nancy Argenziano's guest editorial takes a well deserved final swipe at the Tea Party and its Fox News connection with this gem:
The proposals today are just a way of getting essential rules out of the way in the pure interest of making more money, the societal cost be damned.
But the ideologues are not persuaded by either common decency or the facts.
They have public education in their sights. This I understand: Unless you eliminate the cohering cultural core and dumb down the population, you won't have a population capable of being persuaded by the likes of Fox News' Glenn Beck and his crony fellow travelers.
So despite my local newspaper saying that these rallies are in vain because the Rick Scott/Tea Party legislature budget is a done deal, I will be there at 5:30 pm at Kelman Plaza for the Defend the Dream rally. We may lose this battle in the legislature, but if we can educate our voters to make better choices in the future, we may be able to Save the Dream for Floridians.