(((I Will Outlive)))

I've been trying really hard to stop comparing current political events to past ones cuz I get that it can come across wrong, but idk how else to explain to people that we are in the middle of a genocide without using past ones as an example so like listen:

Every single time I hear someone say "we should just get all the good people out of Florida and then get rid of it" ALL I'm hearing is "we should just rescue all the Indigenous people and let white people have the land they're colonizing" or "we should just get all the queer and Jewish people out of Germany and let the Nazis have it" like I know that's probably not what people who are saying the Florida/red state thing intend but y'all gotta understand that's basically what you're saying at this point.

No one should ever have to leave their homes to escape political violence. Frame it any other way and it becomes obvious how horrible of a thing it is to even SUGGEST but for some reason when it's Americans being forced to leave red states so idk?? we don't actually have to deal with dismantling power structures and taking down fascist wannabe dictators?? it's magically a good thing. But it's not. It's giving up and handing DeSantis and people like him EXACTLY what they want. They want to make these places as hostile as possible to the people they hate so they leave, and once it becomes clear that doesn't work(because even if they could get rid of most marginalized people they'd never get rid of us all) they will move on to more drastic measures. It's been done before. They want to do it again.

We need to stop pretending that's not what's going on, and we absolutely need to stop acting like "just leave" is a viable solution.

Can people please fucking stop making "haha, Floridians are all poor stupid crackheads" jokes?

If we're poor, it's because our state government cares more about the rich tourists in the coastal high-rises than the average citizen, and the cost of living won't stop rising no matter how hard the people scream for relief.

If we're uneducated, it's because our state government is gutting education left and right, and turning it into a battleground in the white supremacist culture war.

If we're addicts, it's because we have no social safety net and self-medication is all we can turn to.

Every Florida Man headline is about a real human being, usually one under extreme duress and with absolutely no social resources to fall back on.

I hope none of you ever have to see a loved one--or yourself--represented as little more than a "Florida Man" joke, when the truth of the situation is that you were scared, starving, and vulnerable to state violence and asshole reporters who would rather pursue a viral headline than respect the dignity of a human being in crisis.

also everyone should keep in mind that Florida gets a bad reputation for one simple reason: Florida's police records are more open.

They passed a law in 1991 that makes a lot of state and local documents public, meaning (among a lot of other things) police have to publish details on all the calls they get. So if someone is doing something weird in Florida and the police get called, it gets written up and then every reporter can write on it. You do the same thing right across the border in Alabama or Georgia? It can stay private.

And in the world of 24-hour news and internet articles, this makes Florida into a perfect source for "weird guy did weirder thing" stories. Running out of stories to talk about late on a lazy thursday? Go check the police records for Florida towns and I'm sure you'll find something if you look far enough. That'll fill a small article or a couple minutes.

It absolutely does not mean that the stuff happening in Florida is any weirder than the rest of the south, the nation, or the world. I promise, just as much strange stuff is happening everywhere, but it doesn't get as much attention as the stuff in Florida.

(And personally, this isn't just guessing. My home state (NC) didn't have such a law, but my town did have a police department that published their list of calls in the local newspaper every week. And yeah, it was just as weird as "Florida Man" stuff.)