The Fascist State of Florida & Student Resistance

Refuse Fascism Episode147
The Fascist State of Florida & Student Resistance

Mon, Mar 06, 2023 8:20AM • 1:09:26

Rafael Kadaris 00:00

There is a nationwide fascist assault on education.

Ben 00:03

If this bill goes through, nobody can major in gender studies. What he’s done is dehumanize the LGBTQ community and now he’s proposing to not let people learn about how he dehumanizes them.

Stephanie 00:15

Because if this goes through and this sticks and other states see that this can be done, it will continue to happen everywhere else.

Rafael Kadaris 00:22

First of all, resist this fascist assault on education. Defy these laws. More and more people are standing up and resisting these fascists, but also more and more people are learning the real truth that these fascists are trying to suppress.

Ben 00:36

It was such an incredible display of the passion, of this diligent work all of these students have been doing to protect their freedoms and their friends’ freedoms.

Sam Goldman 01:08

Welcome to Episode 147 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we talk about Florida where nobody seems to fascism better. Almost nobody.

First, we’ll share an interview with Rafael Kaderis, correspondent on the RNL show regarding the ban of AP African American History course in Florida, and the larger fascist assault on education that it is a part of. Then you’ll hear from student organizers with Stand for Freedom Florida, who are leading college students in resisting Governor Ron DeSantis’s tax on higher education.

Thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. If you appreciate the show and want to help us reach more people who want to refuse that fascism, be a gem, go write a review, drop five stars wherever you listen to your pods. Please tell the people out there in podcast land why you listen and they should too. Subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, keep up all that great commenting, sharing on social media.

Oh yeah. Shout out to our new patrons. You can support the show for as little as $2 a month. See the show notes. This episode is jam packed. So I am keeping my notes short, but I do want to highlight one thing. It’s good, really good, that people are waking up to the reality that there is a fascist movement in this country seeking to “eradicate” transgenderism, which is advocating the eradication of our trans siblings. After Michael Knowles explicitly said so at CPAC, let’s get real.

What do these bills that propose taking away children from their parents, like in Florida, where a bill has been proposed to seize children from their parents if those parents are “at risk of” providing gender affirming care, which is life saving care, to their trans or gender nonconforming children, or Mississippi and Tennessee, which just signed into law bans on gender affirming care for youth, or punishing doctors for providing gender affirming care… What are those if not a program of elimination, a program of genocide? There are bills sweeping the nation, literally banning our transgender siblings from existence. It’s the topic of next week’s episode, so be sure to tune in. We can’t wait till this shit is eminently Tweetable, ’til the algorithm finally admits it, to start ringing the alarm. Now, here’s my conversation with Rafael.

Sam Goldman 03:59

As listeners know, there is a multifaceted fascist onslaught going on in Florida. As in many states across this country, there is a particular cruelty and momentum behind the attacks in Florida, where the state has declared open war on women, the right to abortion and LGBTQ people, voting rights for black folks, education, the right to protest, and much, much more. Today we’re talking about the rights of students to learn the real history of this country, including the white supremacy in its DNA. This is under ferocious nationwide attack by the Republi-fascists, particularly in Florida.

Later in the show, we’re gonna bring you the voices of some students themselves who are rising up against these attacks, but first, we need to talk about what’s driving them. To talk more about this, including fascist Ron DeSantis’s ban of AP high school African American history courses, and the broad attacks on education and history, education in particular, that they’re a part of. I’m happy to speak to Rafael Kaderis, member of the National Revolution tour and a correspondent for the Revolution Nothing Less show on YouTube. Welcome, Rafael.

Rafael Kadaris 05:12

Thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam Goldman 05:13

So let’s get into it. There is a war being fought out in classrooms and school boards, in state houses, political conventions, definitely on social media and the public consciousness over what history is, what it should be based in — fact or myth — who history belongs to, and who and what it should serve. I was hoping you could give us some background on a little bit of this.

Rafael Kadaris 05:39

Well, I thought your introduction spoke well to the situation, which is there is a nationwide fascist assault on education. Florida is very much at the front lines of this; Florida and the fascist governor there, Ron DeSantis, someone who recently said that no one questioned slavery until the Declaration of Independence. As if the slaves who were actually part of, not only being brutally oppressed and enslaved and tortured and raped, including during the colonial period, but also repeatedly rebelling against their conditions of enslavement, as if they never questioned it.

So this is the kind of person who’s dictating what should and shouldn’t be taught about history and about Black history, and about this country as a whole. And this is part of, as you said, a nationwide campaign. It really took off about a year and a half ago, particularly directed at critical race theory. This was the buzzword that these fascists grabbed a hold of. To these fascists, Critical Race Theory is a scary sounding word. It’s got the word ‘critical’ in it, it’s got the word ‘race’ in it, it’s got the word ‘theory’ in it — all very scary to these fascists. Most of them did not know anything about what Critical Race Theory was, which — for people who don’t know, is a legal framework that tries to explain a persistence of racial inequality, even in situations where the laws actually on the surface appear to be equal, but yet, racism persists — in housing and schooling and jobs and police treatment of people of color.

But these fascists turn this into a boogeyman and a scare word to go after any teaching about the real history and reality of this country, including the white supremacy, which, as you said, is built into the DNA, to the fabric of this country. It’s not like these fascists exactly are saying: Oh, we can’t even mention that slavery happened, but they’re saying that you can’t say that it’s foundational; you can’t say that this country is fundamentally a racist or sexist country. This is actually written into the laws that are being passed in state after state.

I think at this point there are about 18 states that have laws banning critical race theory, but there are also literally hundreds of bills that have been proposed or passed in every single state to ban critical race theory. As well as a whole bunch of laws banning books — we can talk a little bit more abut this — I know that last week you had a guest on the Refuse Fascism podcast that was kinda counter to that by distributing banned books. It’s very important that people will defy these laws. that this be boomeranged back on these fascists.

As well as there are a number of bills banning discussion in schools and more broadly on questions of sexual orientation and gender. This is the “Don’t say gay” bill that DeSantis and the state of Florida are also on the front lines of. This really is about imposing a false narrative of American greatness and ramming that down the throats of children and forcing teachers to teach lies. This is already creating a chill in society. We see teachers who have been forced to resign.

We’ve seen censorship of student yearbooks, we’ve seen mobs of white angry parents showing up at school board meetings, demanding that their children not learn about racial oppression. This is also written into the laws, that white kids, or, they say “children” shouldn’t be made to feel guilty or shame on account of the race, but this is just a code word and a way for white parents, or white students for that matter, to say: Oh, this lesson about slavery made me feel bad. To which we have to say: Well, feeling bad might not be such a bad thing. Actually learning about this history can make people uncomfortable. It’s shocking to learn about what America has done to black people and other people of color.

You can just look at the bloody history of the state of Florida and we might want to talk to them about that during our discussion, but some of the things that have been done in this country are truly shocking, depraved and it any decent person who hasn’t lost their heart should feel some discomfort about that. But that discomfort is a good thing because it can drive you to actually want to do something about it. It can make you ask: Why is this happening? It can cause you to look at the deeper questions that are behind this: What is the system that drove the slave trade drove the production of cotton?

When we talked about slavery being foundational to this country, that’s not just a word to throw around, it means the whole economy of this country was built on the backs of slaves, not just in the South, but in the North, even the expansion westward of this country, the Louisiana Purchase the war against Mexico and the theft of half of Mexico, this was driven by the slave trade and in his book ‘Basics’ from Bob Avakian, the first quote in it is “there would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.” And this is exactly the simple and basic truth that these fascists are trying to outlaw.

Sam Goldman 10:51

Thanks for that. I was shaking my head for listeners around, in particular, the depth of what it means that this is foundational. There are often conversations — including amongst decent folks like y’all listening — that it is left to the realm of history, that when we talk about slavery, being foundational to this country, that we need to recognize it because it had affected things that happened back then. And there’s often a strong desire — I’ll put it that way — to make believe that those factors aren’t affecting what goes on today, in not only the lived experience of people, but the very workings of our economic system; what people have and don’t have.

There are two things that you had brought up that I wanted to just touch on before moving forward. One was — you had talked about Florida — I had the opportunity to watch a couple times, your segment that you did shortly after Florida banned the AP courses, and you talked about some things that are like: Yes, this is Florida — Is there is a reason why Florida, as we know it today as this fucking fascist laboratory, why it is the way it is? And part of that is who Florida was. I was wondering if you want to talk a little bit more about anything that you had learned about Florida? That has you like: People need to know this!

Rafael Kadaris 12:11

When it comes to racist violence against Black people and other people of color, there is stiff competition in this country. You can look at what California did to the native peoples; [SG: Yeah] one of the most brutal extermination campaigns of any state. You can look at Texas and how Texas was created, and also as part of the expansion of the slave system, you can look at Mississippi — Nina Simone’s song Mississippi Goddamn — but Florida has one of the most bloody histories of racial violence.

One of the things that I learned when I was looking into this after I heard about this ban, is that Florida actually came into the Union a little bit later. It was a Spanish colony and, although Spain had brutally colonized most of the native people in Florida, spread through disease and violence, they did actually ban slavery in Florida in 1693, I believe. Meanwhile, in the United States, the slave system was expanding, production of cotton was expanding, and the brutality of slavery was intensifying. This was also part of what happened when cotton became the cash crop; King Cotton that was fueling the rise of capitalism in the United States. People were fleeing from this.

Back to Ron DeSantos’s notion that no one questioned slavery until the Declaration of Independence, actually, many slaves were questioning slavery and they were both rebelling and they were also escaping. Many fugitive slaves actually crossed the border into Florida where slavery was illegal, and many of them joined up and settled among and lived among the Seminole Indians. It was an abandoned fort which the Americans called the Negro Fort, in Florida, that was settled by a bunch of fugitive slaves as well as Seminoles and they developed a whole thriving community of people. People flocked there from all over to be part of this thriving Negro Fort, as they called it.

One of the things that Andrew Jackson did — who was a notorious slave owner himself, later President, also responsible for the Trail of Tears, which drove out the Cherokee and other people and forced them on a long march to Oklahoma, where 1000s of them suffered and died — one of the ways he became famous was he led a military assault on this fort and completely destroyed it and massacred hundreds of men, women and children — because it was such a threat to the American ruling class and these slave owners that there would be a settlement of free Black people and Native Americans. You can fast forward to 100 years ago this year, actually, 1923 was the notorious massacre in Rosewood, Florida, which became memorialized in a movie by John Singleton, I believe, in the 90s.

This was a massacre by a white mob, not too different from the racist massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white mob just destroyed Black Wall Street, similarly, this white mob was in part motivated by a false accusation of sexual assault by a Black man against a white woman. But it was also driven by the hatred of these white people in this area against a thriving Black community and Rosewood, where many Black people owned their own land and were not subordinate; were not in their place, the way that white supremacists have always wanted Black people to be. So they burned the entire town of Rosewood to the ground. There’s heroic resistance that happened, but, nonetheless, this was like an utter destruction of this town.

This is just some of the bloody history of Florida. It’s not unique to Florida, but it stands out. It, again, is the kind of history that they’re trying to whitewash and rewrite, and replace with this false narrative of the special greatness of America. It’s history that, again, is dangerous to these fascists. It’s dangerous to the system overall, but particularly dangerous to these fascists, because it raises the question of what kind of country is this really, that would do such depraved things.

Sam Goldman 16:29

I wanted to return to what’s happening now, and how that history that you so powerfully spoke to is being erased and rewritten, as you put it. If you could just remind listeners some of the basic details that folks need to understand on Ron DeSantis’ attack on critical thinking broadly and on the teaching of Black history in particular. I think that this is important, because some are dismissing this right now as just Florida, or just an AP course. I think it’s really important that people understand why this matters.

Rafael Kadaris 17:09

About a month ago, the Florida Department of Education under Ron DeSantis announced that a ban on Advanced Placement African American Studies — which is already being taught as a pilot course in 60 schools around the country. This coming year, it’ll be taught in, I think, 300 schools. It’s the College Board, which puts on this course, describes it as a multidisciplinary course, that involves history going back to before slavery in Africa, and traces the history of African Americans through slavery, Jim Crow, to the situation today. It deals with art, literature, all kinds of things. Keep in mind, the College Board is not a radical institution.

This was not a radical course. But it is a course in AP African American Studies, and that in itself triggered these fascists because Ron DeSantis has also announced he wants to mandate teaching of Western civilization, which is essentially a codeword for — yes, people should learn about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and the Renaissance and all this stuff. There’s a lot to learn from that history, but to mandate Western civilization as the core curriculum is code words for — mandating white supremacy. When Ron DeSantis and the Department of Education in Florida announced this ban, they said it violates state law, but because they already have this “Stop Woke Act” and other laws banning Critical Race Theory in Florida, they also added that this AP African American course lacks educational value, which is an insult on top of an injury.

I mean, just think about the level of racism to say that. A course, not only teaching about the real history of Black people, but also about the culture and the resistance of Black people, the literature and art that’s been produced. To say that this lacks educational value is just despicable, racist insult on top of injury. This ban by Ron DeSantis is already being mimicked and replicated in states around the country. A number of states are considering their own bans of this.

So Florida is very much on the frontlines of this fascist assault on education. But again, this is in the context of a whole nationwide assault by these fascists — suppression of the real history in an effort to not just suppress history and suppress facts and suppress the actual truth about this country, but also to suppress critical thinking — to mold a whole generation of people to be mindless foot soldiers for a white Christian America, not very different from the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany. The Nazis too made that major campaign to remold young people in order to be able to carry out the crimes that they went on to carry out.

Sam Goldman 20:02

I think it’s really helpful the way that you were breaking down how this is indoctrination of the youth. DeSantis and those like him across the country, governors and others, fascists in positions of power, have talked about — their words, not mine — woke mobs indoctrinating the youth, in their view leftist ideologies or whatever it is. The truth is, they have very clear aims on what they the fascists are planning to indoctrinate youth in.

I wanted to mention a couple of things that I found noteworthy when looking over the College Board’s proposed AP African American studies course. There was research done that helped do keyword search in the Washington Post. While I don’t think keywords in and of themselves are enough to really evaluate a curriculum, I do think that it is worth noting that regardless of DeSantis, or not, regardless of the Florida Department of Education or not, the College Board themselves was redoing their course, as curriculum developers do. And when they were redoing it, they eliminated some really foundational themes to exploring Black history in this country, including, I think most notably. systemic. The word ‘systemic’ was ripped from the curriculum. The word ‘incarceration’ has one mention. ‘Womanism’ was taken away, ‘reparations’ was reduced.

Kimberly Crenshaw, who is the developer of things like intersectionality, has been taken away from the curriculum, and Colin Powell has been added. The movement for Black lives was eliminated — while, I should note, it can still be a research topic or something like that for credit. I think that it’s worth noting, and when asked about it, a representative from the College Board stated that: “All of those terms are going to be challenging.” As an educator, I feel like if they’re not challenging, what are we teaching? If they’re not uncomfortable, then we probably aren’t teaching history. If there’s anything that you have to say on that you’re welcome to, but you don’t need to speak to that.

I wanted to put that as a backdrop into this as part of a situation where there’s very much a battle, as I said previously, over history, but also over the future, and whether it’s going to be fascist and overtly white supremacist or not. I feel — this is my personal opinion, not the opinion of everyone with Refuse Fascism, but it’s my personal opinion that — there are a lot of forces out there, including and especially institutions, that just want to make the conflict go away. Even while there’s a civil war brewing, even while you have the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene saying we need a national divorce: If we just change some words, if we just don’t talk about certain things, maybe the fires will die down. I just think that’s part of the terrain. I wanted to hear your thoughts on that as part of the situation that we’re in right now.

Rafael Kadaris 23:22

It does tell you something that the word ‘systemic’ was eliminated. That is actually the core grievance of these fascists who are against critical race theory. They don’t say, absolutely you can’t mention slavery, the KKK, the various things that were done to Black people, but you can’t say this was systemic. You have to say it was a deviation from America’s founding principles. You have to say it was it was aberrational, as opposed to integral. In fact, these crimes that have been committed, were integral and they were at the core of America’s founding identity.

White supremacy was literally in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, where it talks about the merciless Indian savages. Slavery was codified in the Constitution. This is systemic. It has been systemic from slavery through the new system of Jim Crow segregation and KKK terror up till the present. How can you understand, for example, why the police get off almost every single time when they murder Black people, including unarmed Black people. So when we talk about systemic we’re talking about a system in which Black people have been super exploited and other people of color and immigrants have been super exploited, last hired, first fired, have been kept at the bottom in terms of housing, jobs, education, healthcare, every single sphere of of life.

On the one hand, you have fascists who want to whitewash this reality and replace it with this narrative of unquestioned American exceptionalism, America’s the greatest country in the world. Don’t even think about questioning it. On the other hand, you have Democrats and you have mainstream liberals — the College Board could probably be in that category — who are part of ruling class institutions who will allow some teaching about the actual history. This is part of the concessions that have come off of the 1960s. You did have because of heroic struggles of Black people, the Black liberation movement, the Chicano liberation movement, the women’s liberation movement, LGBT liberation movement. You had the development of African American studies. You had the development of ethnic studies. You had a lot of suppressed and buried history coming to light that, frankly, had not been taught much.

Maybe you can look at writings of W.E.B. Dubois. You can look at Frederick Douglass, who said: “For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.” Overall in the dominant intellectual life and cultural life and education in this country: America the great, pledging allegiance, one country under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, that’s what ruled. Some of this was punctured in the 1960s. On the part of the Democrats, that section of the ruling class — which is what the Democrats are, like the Republicans, these are two parties that both represent the ruling class of this capitalist imperialist system. But the Democrats’ approach has been to try to absorb some of this history, allow some of the teaching to come to light. Barack Obama, I believe, said that slavery was the original sin. Well, no, it wasn’t a sin. It was a crime of very real people.

They acknowledge some of this reality, but they cast it in terms of the steady march of progress towards a more perfect union. But that is another lie. That idea of the steady march of progress towards a more perfect union is also a narrative that is false. In 2022 the police killed more people than ever. Yes, formal Jim Crow, legalized discrimination has mostly been banned. But yet it’s been replaced with what? With mass incarceration. This country has a higher incarceration rate than almost any other country in the world. Same thing with police murder. So this is not a country that is moving towards a more perfect union in which all this historical racism is being corrected, but as a country that is perpetuating this racism in new forms, because this racism is built into this capitalist system; to its economic system, to its culture, to its ideology.

This is also a system which, beyond even all the crimes, it’s continuing to carry out against Black people, against immigrants, against women — we’re seeing women’s right to abortion being stripped away and we’re seeing the Democrats putting up no fight against that. This is also a system that is now driving humanity to the brink of nuclear war in the proxy war that the United States is now waging with Russia in Ukraine, and is pushing humanity to the threshold of environmental devastation and climate catastrophe. The solution to this situation is not to rally behind the Democrats and their mythology of a more perfect union, nor is it obviously to get behind the Republicans and their mythology of American exceptionalism and unchallenged Western civilizational chauvinism, but to get organized for an actual revolution, to get rid of this whole system, which has this white supremacy built into it.

Sam Goldman 28:53

I wanted to close out by moving to, I’ll dare say, a hopeful message. I wanted to talk a little bit about a piece that Bob Avakian wrote that was titled Racism, White Kids Need to Learn About It. In this piece, it exposed how this specific act of white kids learning about racism can very literally and immediately have a powerful impact, but also how this teaching and the political battle over it — I’m going to quote from a piece — “can be and must be part of getting rid of the whole system of capitalism, imperialism, which has bred this fascism.” I was hoping that you could speak to both parts of that: the immediate impact of literally teaching white kids about racism and the larger societal impact that this can be a positive part of.

Rafael Kadaris 29:47

I love that piece from Bob Avakian and encourage people to go check it out at Revcom.us. This tells you something about who Bob Avakian is as a person. This is someone who came up in mainstream America. At one point in his memoir, he said he thought Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican president, was a pretty good guy. But he was transformed through his interactions with Black people and learning about the civil rights struggle, in particular growing up in Berkeley and encountering the Black Panther Party and learning about the actual history and reality of what Black people face in this country. Then particularly when the Civil Rights Movement moved towards the Black liberation struggle, that was very transformative for him in terms of becoming a revolutionary. This is someone who was driven by a sense of injustice about what’s being done to other people.

Your first step, really, in becoming a revolutionary is you have to care. You have to give a shit about other people. You have to see what’s being done to Black people, to women, and you have to identify with that, and you have to say this is wrong and shouldn’t happen. But then you also have to go deeper and look at, okay, what are the root causes of this? How do we put an end to this? This has been the life work of Bob Avakian, something he’s never stopped and has gone on to develop a whole new understanding of how do we make a revolution. What do we replace this capitalist system with? What would a new socialist system look like? A whole new synthesis of communism.

But it’s always been driven by this feeling of Black people, women, people around the world suffering because of the crimes of US imperialism. These are my people. These are our people. Bob Avakian or someone like myself, I don’t have the same life experiences as Black people do, but he’s someone who doesn’t see some kind of separation, where you can just allow horrible things to be done to people. This is the kind of process that more and more people need to go through. This is what these fascists find so dangerous about even admitting, even a little bit of truth about the real nature of this country.

I want to really encourage people to, first of all, resist this fascist assault on education. Defy these laws. Seriously, no one should go along with teachers being hounded and forced to teach lies. No one should accept censorship of students and what they’re allowed to be taught. People should actually defy these laws. It’s very good that there have been some student walkouts. There’s a retired professor in Florida whose name is Marvin Dinis taking students on Teach the Truth tours, going to places like Rosewood, where racist violence was perpetrated throughout the state of Florida. There are people like your guest last week who are spreading banned books.

But we need to make this fascist attack on education boomerang so that more and more people are standing up and resisting these fascists, but also more and more people are learning the real truth that these fascists are trying to suppress. At the same time, I want to encourage and urge — and it’s really urgent — for people to look deeper into what this truth reveals. Why has this country been an unmitigated horror show for black people for hundreds of years? What does has to do with the nature of the capitalist imperialist system and how it was formed in this country. There’s answers to these questions in the work of Bob Avakian.

Lastly, I want to encourage people to look into the radical alternative to this system. Bob Avakian is also someone who’s drafted a constitution for a new socialist republic in North America, which is a whole different economic system that’s not based on profit. It’s based on meeting the needs of people and protecting the environment, as well as spreading revolution throughout the world. It’s a whole different political system. It’s a whole different legal system. And it’s also a whole different educational system. How radically different it would be than the educational system that we have now.

For one thing, we have an educational system that’s more segregated in many ways, even than in the 1960s, in which for whole sections of people school is a little bit more like prison. In any case, it’s a pipeline to prison for many of them. Even for more privileged sections of people, school is not a place under this society that really encourages, for the most part, yes, there’s teachers trying to really do important things in the context of an overall educational system, though that does not encourage critical thinking and curiosity about the world. This is something that would be done in a new socialist system. It’s written into the Constitution.

Sam Goldman 34:37

Thank you.

Sam Goldman 34:39

Students in Florida are planning days of action this week in protest of House Bill 999, which Jeremy Young, Senior Manager of Free Expression and Education at Penn America described as, “almost an apocalyptic bill for higher education, orders of magnitude worse than anything we’ve seen either in the recent or the distant past.” What’s in House Bill 999? Barring colleges and universities from whole fields of studies such as gender studies, majors and minors, plus any study of “critical race theory” or intersectionality. Prohibition of any campus activities that promote or foster diversity, equity and inclusion, and could make student organizations like Black student unions forbidden. Muzzling the history of slavery and the genocide of native people. For more, see the link in the show notes. Now, here’s my interview with student organizers with Stand for Freedom Florida.

Students at Florida public universities, including Florida State University, University of Florida, Florida International University — I know I’m forgetting some — staged a coordinated walkout Thursday February 23 in protest of Ron DeSantis’ ongoing attacks on education, targeting people of color, targeting the LGBTQ community, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Since these walkouts were planned DeSantis has now proposed attacks on whole departments, including gender studies. To talk more about it. I am so excited to be chatting with some of the bad-ass organizers. I want to welcome on first Ben. Welcome, Ben. Thanks for coming on.

Ben 36:23

Hi, thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Sam Goldman 36:26

So, Ben, first, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What are you studying in college and what school do you go to?

Ben 36:32

I go to the University of South Florid — Go Bulls — and I’m majoring in Economics, Philosophy, and Women and Gender Studies, one of the majors that in House Bill 999 Ron DeSantis proposed to cut. If this bill goes through, nobody can major in Gender Studies. What he’s done is dehumanize the LGBTQ community, and now he’s proposing to not let people learn about how he dehumanize them. Criminal.

Sam Goldman 37:00

How did you get involved in calling for these walkouts?

Ben 37:04

This started when Ron DeSantis asked all the 12 major public colleges in Florida to send over their trans student health data. I was just scrolling through Instagram, I saw that and I was like: That’s insane, who’s doing something about this? Nobody at USF was. So I started a petition that gained a thousand signatures in a day and 2,600 in a week. At the end of that week, we had gathered a team of amazing students. We really tried to prioritize diversity and inclusion because that’s what we care about.

We didn’t even have to try. The students are ready to speak up for themselves. They feel that they need to speak up for themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of them feel like they aren’t ready, and they have to anyway. So at the end of the week, we decided to hold a rally that was about celebrating trans joy — because the narrative is so often taken from trans people and twisted and turned into just trans issues and all the problems of being trans, when , really, we know if people are allowed to be who they are, then they’re happy. We gained 700 signatures at that day alone. After meeting with USF administration, we decided they couldn’t do anything — so we did.

We started by just reaching out to other universities, at the colleges. There was such a strong and amazing student body across the entire state. We have 1 million public college students in this dam — and over 1 million. They were ready to do this, so in just a few short weeks we got this together. We had help from Representative Anna Eskamani, Representative Fentrice Driskell, Congressman Maxwell Frost, Dream Defenders, Equality Florida — all these amazing organizations and people who want to make sure students can speak and want to protect the freedoms guaranteed to us. So we held these walkouts and it was just amazing the number of students who showed up to support their freedoms.

Sam Goldman 38:55

Can you talk to our listeners a little bit more about why a walkout was necessary, what people were signing on to when they were saying they were going to walk out of class? It’s not a light thing for people to walk out of their studies these days. We don’t live in a current climate or culture where such acts of resistance are normalized. It’s very much out of the norm to put that much on the line to potentially risk your education in a certain way. Why was this such a necessary act for so many to join?

Ben 39:28

That’s the problem in this society that we live in, this was mostly problems of professors and administrators. I talked to presidents of major universities who said they wanted this to happen. I talked to administrators who are so supportive of us. There were administrators who, while doing their job were just supportive of our freedom to speak and even doing that they were scared; they were scared to support students to speak. If that’s not cruel government overreach, I don’t know what is. Professors wanted to be out there. They’re the ones teaching us how to speak up for ourselves, so we know how much it hurts them that they can’t do that.

Luckily, we got the United Faculty of Florida with over 25,000 members to stand behind us, as we had shockingly few professors actually able to come to the protest. But yeah, it’s not easy for the students either. They want to get their degrees. They’re going to these colleges, because they want to learn, because they value education, but that education is being mandated out of the classroom. We feel like if there is no diversity, there’s no diversity of thought in the classroom, there’s no education in the classroom. Because that’s what it means to learn to engage and access new ideas and see how you can improve your own.

Sam Goldman 40:41

I think that a lot of listeners might not be that familiar with what DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] has meant for colleges. Could you talk a little bit about your experience as somebody who is a white dude, right? How you have also benefited from DEI initiatives?

Ben 41:00

Why DEI is so important, like the broadscale — the University of Florida, I think, has something like 6% of its population is Black people. At the University of South Florida, we provide the majority of teachers for Hillsborough County. The majority of teachers come from our School of Education. If those teachers don’t represent their students, if those teachers can’t engage with and appreciate their students culture, they’re just gonna be the worse teachers. You have to be able to empathize with other people. There are so many more reasons why diversity equity and inclusion is important. One being that these voices have been actively repressed.

As Martin Luther King said: If something special happened, somebody to keep him down, we have to do something special to make sure they can rise to the same place to make sure it’s equitable — as diversity, equity and inclusion. When it comes to me, I truly believe I wouldn’t be anywhere without diverse people propping me up. In this movement alone, I am a straight white man, and my goal is to use my privilege to help other people to speak their mind. Some of my organizers, who are trans, were saying that we want you there because we don’t feel comfortable talking. The worst thing that can say to me is go to hell or take away my Women and Gender Studies degree. What happens to the actual marginalized community is dehumanization. It’s disruption to their health care. It’s lack of access to any opportunities. That’s what’s truly brave, when they stand up for their rights while actively being pushed down.

Sam Goldman 42:29

That is really, really beautiful, and I commend their courage. Speaking the truth when there’s too much silence is part of how you turn the tide. I want to talk more about the walkouts and what you saw, what you heard, what you felt. One of the things that resonated while you were just talking now is that when I was watching the footage that I could find online, different actions, you know. One of the chants that I heard was “You Can’t Ban Us.” The assaults on trans folks in the LGBT community overall in Florida, I think is part of an elimination list agenda where they’re trying to be erased. I think that chant just spoke volumes to me. So I wanted to ask you how did the walkouts go? What were they like what happened? Tell us about them.

Ben 43:16

First of all, that [You] Can’t Ban Us — that’s actually from Dream Defenders. The way the mockups went, it was such an incredible display of the passion, of the diligent work all of these students have been doing to protect their freedoms and their friends’ freedoms all across the state. I think we had 17 college campuses and more high school campuses. We were estimating about 5000 students. They walked out. They showed their support, and it was so inspiring.

One thing I’ve been saying, this is the diversity that we’re talking about. We didn’t want every university to just do a standard Stand for Freedom walkout. We wanted their students’ voices to talk to what they wanted at UF. Their Office of Multicultural Affairs actually helped them do their walkout. At UNF they had somebody who wrote a book come in and talk about why their book was important — why it shouldn’t be banned. At FSU and FAMU, they did theirs together and had some representatives, come down. When we have this diverse thought, we have people working for what their goals are in tandem, that’s how we win. Those are the best ideas coming through. It’s not just my idea. It’s not just my team’s ideas. It’s everybody’s ideas.

Sam Goldman 44:33

I didn’t know that high schools were going to participate. Then when I looked at the coverage and saw high school students walking out, their reasons, obviously, were slightly different because the attacks that are happening in the high schools are slightly different than what’s happening at the college level — students, mainly, Plantation High School and so forth were walking out around the AP program for African American history being thrown out. So it’s really a multi- faceted assault on education at all levels, starting with the babies all the way up to the colleges,

Ben 45:07

You’re not letting LGBTQ past or present be discussed in classrooms and teachers who just have a life. Every teacher talks about their life in the classroom. I remember when I was in high school, we were trying to get our teacher to talk about her life so we wouldn’t have to do work. When people say that you can’t talk about your life just because you love somebody of the same gender, how disgusting! How despicable! How dehumanizing! How much cruel government overreach can we stomach?

Sam Goldman 45:41

One of the things that I noticed prior to your walkout was how many signs the different actions that Stand Up Florida had been part of said the word “fascism” and connected the dots between what DeSantis is doing and his what I call “fascist laboratory of Florida,” in terms of fostering and really relying upon the worst of American chauvinism, the worst patriarchal mindsets, the worst of white supremacy to really advance a program that, yes, dehumanizes, but also criminalizes so many hope communities, and does so in service of this program that seeks to eliminate all civil and democratic rights. I just wanted to see if you have any thoughts on that, from what you’ve been hearing from other students, things that you’ve seen at actions you participated in, or any thoughts that you have on that?

Ben 46:39

Why do you say laboratory fascism? Is that like a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s laboratories of democracy?

Sam Goldman 46:43

Yeah, basically, he’s testing how far and how fast he can go in his — not so little — state, really with a goal of advancing that nationwide. We’ve talked about on the show how, even now, he’s not president, he’s the governor of Florida. But what he does in Florida when he lays that gauntlet down, it gets replicated in state after state. In the same way, when Abbott laid the anti-abortion gauntlet down and the anti-immigrant got locked down, it advanced things in many other states and galvanized the movement that looks up to them.

Ben 47:18

I think that’s a really great line. Our movement is centered around a celebration of our values, which is freedom in education and diversity of thought. So, when we talk about fascism, any reasonable person will look at this as a cruel government overreach and we’ve seen this pattern before. The problem is, coming from a straight white man, the only repression I’m facing right now is that I might not be able to get my Women and Gender Studies degree. It’s not completely fair for me to say that we should be celebrating these values when people are being hurt physically, killed and dehumanized and criminalized because of the things that DeSantis is doing. I truly believe that what you’re saying is necessary and valid. At Stand for Freedom, we’re trying to make everything a celebration of values.

Sam Goldman 48:14

I totally get that. I’m a kindergarten teacher, so it’s a teacher at me that is going to say this: I would push you to reconsider that. You said it doesn’t directly impact you, except for this potential, of the course being taken away. I think it affects you much more than that. I know where you’re coming from, when you’re saying that; you want to fully appreciate the gravity in which your siblings are being attacked. I definitely respect that. I do also think that we need to get real in the fact that if one of us isn’t free, none of us are free, and that affects us on the level of being a human.

If you’re anybody who’s listening in Florida, it definitely does affect you that Ron DeSantis has banned abortion, up to 15 weeks and wants to take it further. It does affect you that as a white student, that Black history doesn’t get taught, it affects us all. I’m not saying this to you, Ben, but it’s a it’s a wider question out there of people usually think that of saving their own skin. Usually it’s an excuse — not in your case, but oftentimes — it’s an excuse to not take that step out to speak out for others. In your case, it motivates you more to sneak out for others.

But I do think we always have to reflect on the ways that as you were saying, you know, we’re all very, very connected. And what affects us really does affect all of us. Yeah, and there really isn’t any of us [B: not being harmed by this]. Yeah, not being harmed, or feeling like somehow we are in some sort of oppression Olympics. That doesn’t help get us free. What does help us get free is saying all of it is intolerable. All of us have to fight against it. We have to do it shoulder to shoulder, and we have to not relent until all of us are free. And that’s just my personal opinion.

Ben 50:11

No, I completely agree. Yes, certainly none of us are free unless all of us are free. I was talking to one of our administrators about this. I’m a straight white man, how do I make sure I’m not trying to represent communities I can’t speak for. He said: Just don’t represent them. Speak for yourself, speak as a white man and speak to other white men. So, to other straight white men: Get out there! If we are the problem, and if you recognize that we are inherently a big part of the problem just by existing how we do, then get out there. Then do your part. Speak up.

Sam Goldman 50:44

Absolutely, I wanted to close off by: What’s next? And how can people who want to amplify the resistance happening at campuses? How can they be involved,

Ben 50:57

If you the listener, the watcher, the reader, care about freedom, if you want to enshrine basic rights in our laws and make a line the government cannot cross a line that government cannot cross to infringe citizens rights, then join us. Talk to us, tell us how you think we can make our messaging better, how we can make our movement better. Whenever people tell me what’s protesting gonna do? I always want to say: Yeah, then what do you want to do? And then I think for a second, about how we genuinely care about diversity of thought, and I say: Yeah, then what do you want to do? Because these criticisms, there is truth to them. Protesting will not achieve it all. Nothing that we do will achieve it all. So tell us what else we can do.

Sam Goldman 51:42

Thanks so much for joining us, Ben. We’ll be rooting for you and the students of Florida.

Ben 51:47

Thank you.

Sam Goldman 51:48

So, Stephanie, you are a student at University of South Florida. What year are you? What are you studying?

Stephanie 51:56

I am a fourth year. This is actually my last semester going out strong.

Sam Goldman 52:00

Nice. Congratulations.

Stephanie 52:02

Thank you. I am studying psychology, as well as political science and education. So this very much so falls into what I am studying currently. Very excited to be part of it. Other than that, I’m part of the Honors College at USF. I think that about does it — and student government.

Sam Goldman 52:18

I am so glad to welcome you on to the Refuse Fascism podcast. We are so glad to get to talk to student organizers like yourself about what’s going on in Florida. And that really courageous action that you’re all taking to stand up for yourselves and future generations as well. So let’s get into it. Can you talk to us a little bit about why you decided to do a walk out — what was it now two weeks ago?

Stephanie 52:49

Yes. Oh, goodness. First and foremost, we feel as though a lot of times when these kinds of things come out that students don’t see other people caring about them or don’t see other kinds of actions. Our Florida Legislature in particular loves to slide these things under the rug. We saw things go really fast with the “don’t say gay” bill, we saw things go really fast with a “Stop Woke” bill, which I’m actually in a lawsuit — part of — as the Stop Woke. They do these things really fast, and they do them kind of under the nose of a lot of students. They’ve slowly worked their way up from elementary to high school with the AP courses and now we’re seeing kind of headway into higher education.

So we did the walkout to make students, one, who aren’t aware of what’s going on, make sure that it was set as loudly as possible so that students understood what was happening. So whether or not they care one way or the other, at least it’s not being done under their nose. They’re aware of what’s going on in our legislature. Another big thing is that we feel for our staff and administration because ultimately, this affects them just as much as it affects us. So we wanted our staff and our administration and especially our professors to know that we don’t want these changes happening to them quietly that we’re going to be here for them and stand with them.

Sam Goldman 54:06

For listeners who aren’t in Florida may not be following the story as closely what is happening to colleges and universities?

Stephanie 54:17

There is this big hubbub from legislature that we are being indoctrinated. That is the phrase they use over and over and over again. In the courtroom where we were doing the case for Stop Woke, the judge said: So you want to stop indoctrination by indoctrinating students. I think that’s a really great way to kind of sum up what’s going on, which is that in the conservative legislatures efforts to prevent whatever left wing or liberal indoctrination they see going on, they are absolutely demolishing any semblance of viewpoint diversity that is going on in higher education and middle school and high school and elementary school — wiping it clear in the opposite direction.

So, if they believe that indoctrination is going on now, it really will be when they wipe everything else clean. There’s not even a veil of effort to make some sort of middle ground effort happen. It’s a pretty blatant act of wanting only what the government sees to be true as being what’s taught in schools.

Sam Goldman 55:23

And what is the impact that these measures that DeSantis is trying to implement at the college level? What would the impact be for students or what already is the impact?

Stephanie 55:35

I’m actually gonna start with faculty if that’s okay, because part of this is really to make staff and professors fear for their jobs. That’s part of why the House Bill 999 includes a line about tenure, and the removal of tenure from Florida universities. They want staff to be afraid to express their opinions, if it’s anything different from what Governor DeSantis sees as being true. With that fear, then students lose access to professors with great vast amounts of knowledge on topics that the university doesn’t want us to talk about. Students lose access to all of those professors, all of that knowledge, all of those classes, all these interesting topics that for some reason the government has deemed inappropriate for adults.

Sam Goldman 56:19

There is another story that has to do with the colleges and universities, but it’s kind of its own separate story, which is what’s happening at New College. [S: I’m familiar.] Could you talk a little bit about that. We had a listener of the show. I’m going to pull up his question. One of our listeners wrote: “Can you dive into the DeSantis takeover of New College? From the media reports I’ve seen the people in the New College community are in turmoil, but largely clueless about what just hit them and the larger forces behind it.

I’m hoping more opposition and understanding exists than what makes it into mainstream reports. I find this particularly distressing, remembering that when the school was relatively new, it was part of a wave of efforts to change society by reforming the educational system. From what I can tell is retains some of that character.” The listener goes on to talk and say that DeSantis has replaced the board and leadership of the college with people carrying out the fascist agenda, including Christian fundamentalist fanatics.

Stephanie 57:19

I can absolutely speak on this. I think, to the point where the listener said the people at New College don’t seem to really know what hit them, that is true. That is because we don’t really see our college president and our Board of Trustees all that often as students. We don’t really know what they do unless you’re politically active. You don’t really get a feel for how big of an impact they have until they start doing things differently than they already are. Because to us, it just kind of happens behind the scenes.

What happened at New College, which was for all intensive purposes, kind of Florida’s only state liberal arts college. It was based, I believe, on Montessori schools. I actually looked into going there. They have a different system. [SG: It’s kinda cool] It was considered pretty, like, hippie. A lot of liberal arts students went there. So, of course, it was seen as very liberal. Upon changes wanting to be made, that did not happen, governor DeSantis just got rid of all of the people on the board and the president and put his own people in. Because it was a small college with not enough people to really protest what was going on, it was pretty easy to slide that in there. Again, like I said, it’s a pretty small campus.

Students don’t really know what it is until it happens. That has actually had a very big impact on our larger universities because, even though it’s a smaller one, it is still a State University and therefore sets the precedent that that could happen at any of them. So, in some of our talks with administration, there has been concerns that if a university steps too far out of line, if UF steps too far out of line, if FSU steps too far a line, if USF steps too far a the line, oh, there goes our president, oh, there goes the people we like on our board of trustees, oh, there goes our staff, oh, they’re replacing our deans. It’s this really complicated thing where yeah, maybe New College was a small issue, but now we have very high up staff at our very large universities truly afraid for their jobs and consulting their lawyers at every turn, because now, technically, the governor can replace anyone he wants.

Sam Goldman 59:19

Thanks for walking that through. I think looking at it in terms of how this could be replicated elsewhere, is scary, but also very helpful in terms of what people should be paying attention to. I wanted to return to these walkouts. On this show, Refuse Fascism, we see that what’s happening in Florida is really a laboratory of fascism. When we talk about fascism, we’re we’re talking about, once consolidated, a form of rule that eliminates civil and democratic rights. That would include the freedom of speech and ideas free flowing and things like that. A bunch of us that work on this show were noticing that there was a lot of messages at these walkouts.

You know, students were recognizing that this was part of a larger struggle and a larger fight, even while they’re impacted on what’s going on at their colleges and universities, they see this as a part of remaking of society in a fascist direction. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about how you personally — not on behalf of an organization because everybody in your organization has different views on things, but how you personally — Stephanie, see the connection between what’s going on at the colleges and universities and some of the other initiatives that you see happening in your state.

Stephanie 1:00:41

I will start by saying, I started a club on campus and the vice-president of a club called the First Amendment Forum. So when it comes to free speech, I feel very strongly that everyone should be able to express their opinions. The greater picture I see here — and you see this at the beginning of a lot of fascist movements — it starts with the denial of media, it starts with dismantling knowledge. They are afraid of students having access to the knowledge that they disagree with. That’s what they fear. They don’t want us to have access to these things, because if we do, and we disagree with them, that makes their lives harder.

It would be so much easier for the Florida government, if none of us could study these things, if none of us knew these things, if none of our professors could talk about these things, because they could slide everything they do under the rug. But because we learn these things, and because we know about these things, we have the voice and the power to speak up. As someone who cares deeply about education, education is that knowledge and that power. So these attacks aren’t gonna stop in Florida. Governor DeSantis is running for president in the next election. His hope is to be the Republican running candidate.

So it’s not going to end here. Either he stays in Florida, or he gets out of Florida and everyone here kind of jokes like, what’s worse? Do we contain him in the state? or do we want him out of here? Which is not very funny when you really think about it. But, it’s a much bigger fight than what we’re doing because if this goes through and this sticks and other states see that this can be done, it will continue to happen everywhere else. It will slowly trickle out until any of the agreeing conservative candidates can see that DeSantis can do something to this scale in Florida, they will also do it in their own states. So if we could stop it here, we will bite that bullet and it will happen here and hopefully nowhere else.

Sam Goldman 1:02:33

It really is in so many ways test case after test case — from the legislation against protesters that is passed in Florida, the voter suppression, the 15-week ban on abortion. [S: You could keep going.] I can keep going. The anti-trans measures. There’s so many different things, and it really is a continual throwing down the gauntlet of either meet this in your cruelty, or outdo it, because this is our way. It matters very much as you are pointing to that it be given a full-throated, not just denunciation but refusal, and be stopped in its tracks right now. Because it matters for all the people in Florida and for everywhere else where his ilk is looking and saying: Ooh, what do we need to do now? So I think that your point is really, really important around that. I wanted to ask what’s next? How are we taking this further?

Stephanie 1:03:34

Yes. Actually, very soon, in four days, we’re holding a sit-in at the Board of Trustees meeting. We will be taking as many people as we can into that Board of Trustees meeting. We are abiding by the Board of Trustees rules. We requested to comment. They have given us the floor. So we have a couple of people speaking at this Board of Trustees meeting. We are both going to keep holding sit ins. We’re going to keep holding walkouts. FSU is holding a synod on the 8th. We’re doing a sit-in of our Board of Trustees meeting on the 7th and doing a rally after. It’s just going to be being as visible as possible so that the media doesn’t let this go, and people don’t let this go from their minds, while also working with any Democrats we have access to or people who work for the state who are willing to work with us. Working with our student governments, working with administration, anyone we can get our hands on to actually make a real difference at the same time as we bring it to people’s attention.

Sam Goldman 1:04:27

Then, on March 8th, you’re gonna go to the state Capitol. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Stephanie 1:04:33

I actually don’t believe that’s happening, more for a reason you said earlier, which is that we are not legally allowed in the state of Florida to march on the Capitol. So that has been moved to happen at FSU. That will be a rally and a sit-in on campus at FSU, because they’re in Tallahassee. It’s kind of the closest you can get. They are right there, right within the state Capitol. So we cannot actually march on the Capitol yet. We actually have a GoFundMe set up that we advertised on CNN when we did our first round of interviews. So we are hoping to set up bail funds and stuff like that and be really secure before we actually do go march on the Capitol. We don’t want to put anyone in bad situations. That is our hope, first and foremost.

Sam Goldman 1:05:15

Is there anything else that you want to let listeners know who want to support y’all?

Stephanie 1:05:21

First, kudos to everyone who cares, especially people outside of Florida. It’s really easy with these things to just, if they’re not in your state, to pretend they don’t exist, if you’re not a college student to pretend it’s not happening. if you’re not a high school student or an elementary school student to be like: Oh, that doesn’t affect me. We really appreciate everyone who continues to fight with us, even though it does not directly affect them, because it will affect the rest of society. Right now, follow Students for Freedom Florida on Instagram. I think right now that’s the best place to go. That’s where we update everyone on everything that we’re doing. If anyone who’s listening is from any of the major universities in Florida, or from smaller ones or even if you’re a state college or community college, to reach out to us, because the bigger net we can cast with our network, the better. But just thank you to everyone.

Sam Goldman 1:06:08

Thanks so much for joining, Stephanie, and sharing your insight and perspective and the work you’re doing.

Stephanie 1:06:15

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Sam Goldman 1:06:17

International Women’s Day, Wednesday, March 8, is a day to give voice to our fury against the ways that women’s lives and rights are threatened and to our dreams of the future where women and all people are free. While we await an imminent decision in a federal lawsuit that is poised to ban abortion medication mifepristone nationwide, Walgreens has caved to Christian fascists. Twenty GOP attorneys general threatened Walgreens. Now, that company won’t sell mifepristone — half of the medication abortion regimen — in most states, including states where abortion is legal. It’s time that we stop relying on the courts, stop relying on corporations, and recognize and act on that it’s up to us to demand legal abortion on demand and without apology, nationwide and everywhere. I’ll be joining the rally that’s taking place in Philadelphia this Wednesday, March 8 at 5pm at City Hall. If you want to meet up I’d love to see you. Find an event near you at RiseUp4AbortionRights.org.

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, ideas for topics or guests, or lend a skill. Our Q&A episode is coming up real soon and we want to speak to your burning questions, so send them our way. Tweet me @SamBGoldman or drop me a line at [email protected]. We’re also on Mastodon, see link in the show notes. Or leave a voicemail, again, see link in the show notes for how to do that.

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Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.