By Fine Print Staff
It’s hard to believe that just a month ago you could cross the street at 13th and University in the middle of the day and not run into another pedestrian. Gainesville slows for the summer as most students take off on road trips, head home or study abroad. But that doesn’t mean the city shuts down.
The Fine Print has kept an eye on what went down between May and August, in case you were missing in action. You can expect more in-depth coverage of these issues in the coming months.
Welcome back!
Locally:
The Shot Never Heard Round Gainesville
Back in May, an unarmed, 18-year-old Gainesville man was shot “several times” and killed by an Alachua County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant on NW 34th Street after resisting arrest and potentially threatening the officer’s life.
On the surface, it seemed like a clear-cut case of self-defense; in fact, ASO officer Mike Hanson was cleared of the case after an investigation when a grand jury ruled the death a justifiable homicide.
Hanson was driving to the office on his way back from lunch when he saw Nicholous Vertex Weeks in the middle of the street, violently arguing with a woman in a car. Hanson tried to subdue him and shot him with a Taser gun, but Weeks, who was unarmed, continued to resist.
In the end, Hanson shot Weeks “several times,” fatally wounding him, in what ASO calls self-defense in a life-threatening situation. The strange thing is that even after an autopsy, the sheriff’s office refuses to release how many times Weeks was shot, and local media outlets have yet to publish an answer.
In fact, the only thing that’s been published, and only once in passing, was the testimony of Weeks’ grandmother, who said her grandson was shot seven times in a Gainesville Sun article.
It’s certainly plausible to think that a criminal can lose his life during a violent struggle with the cops. But to shoot an unarmed man several times after he’s already received 12,000 volts of electricity?
Because the shooting occurred in Gainesville, GPD was put in charge of the investigation. Basically, the cops investigated the cops; there were no independent investigations performed.
After only three months and an Alachua County grand jury trial brought on by the State Attorney’s office, Hanson was cleared and is now back at work.
Tent City Exodus
Residents of Tent City, the mini-city in Southeast Gainesville that was home to about 200 homeless people, received eviction notices in June and were given six days to gather all their belongings and leave the area.
The only problem is they have no where to go.
The city has not provided an alternative living space for the people and has vowed to arrest anyone on the property after the deadline for trespassing. The official reasons the city gave for the eviction are the stabbing of two residents back in early June and that people can’t squat on public lands.
A very similar thing happened two years ago, but that time they gave the evicted residents vouchers to stay at St. Francis House and the Salvation Army. That is not happening this time.
City officials say they’re focusing on fixing the problem long term and cited the recent “victory” of settling on a one-stop homeless center (the proposed site is off 800 block of NE 53rd Avenue) as a move in the right direction.
But the one-stop shelter isn’t expected to be completed for at least another 18 months, and that’s being optimistic.
Where will these people go until then? It’s time for the city and county commissioners to stop condemning the 1,600 people without homes and start seeing them as people in need of aid and assistance. No wonder we’ve been labeled the fifth meanest city to the homeless the last two years in a row.
So Long, Seminary Lane
For years, Seminary Lane Apartments have been home to poor families in Northwest Gainesville. But last December, the Gainesville Housing Authority and Gainesville Florida Housing Corporation decided to close the subsidized housing project because the development ran a deficit of nearly $40,000 last year, and the property failed to meet housing standards, which meant costly repairs would have been required to keep it open.
Tenants were told they had to be out by May 27, and most received vouchers for other housing.
Coincidentally, Seminary Lane, located at 1019 NW 5th Ave., falls within the Fifth Avenue Community Redevelopment District, an area between NW Second and Eighth avenues targeted for public investment and tax incentives. Two blocks to the north, University House, a swanky new apartment complex, was completed last year.
City officials and the owners of the land told The Gainesville Sun that the property, which is worth $1.2 milliion, will be rebuilt as low to moderate-income housing and that it will not be turned into student housing.
Seminary Lane Apartments are just a few blocks away from Mom’s Kitchen, which was recently purchased by the city as part of the redevelopment project.
But questions remain: will the city’s revitalization efforts rescue an historic neighborhood and create opportunities for its poor residents, or will the problems be washed away in a wave of gentrification? And if the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development continues its shift from funding-subsidized housing to vouchers, will there be enough affordable housing available to meet the needs of cities like Gainesville that already suffer from a shortage?
Nationally:
Healthcare Debacle
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
We’ve all seen the sponsored, stage-managed outrage erupt at town hall meetings across the country. But what have President Obama and other Democrats offered to counter the vitriol and misinformation?
So far the answer has been, not much, other than a willingness to compromise with people who oppose healthcare reform to begin with.
Obama made healthcare his signature issue, but hasn’t proposed a transformation of a system that spends more to get less than any other in the industrialized world. He’s let other people frame the debate, and broken his promise to get on television and hold his opponents accountable for their obstructionism. He appears to be playing to lose.
The president has said he would prefer single payer healthcare if he could start from scratch, but that he doesn’t want to disrupt the one-sixth of our economy that’s consumed by healthcare. Which is precisely the problem. Healthcare shouldn’t consume 17 percent of our GDP, and it should even cover everyone. Incrementalism is only going to make the problems worse. Our dysfunctional system needs to be scrapped entirely, but Obama has ruled that out from the get-go.
Single payer may not be the answer, but we need something worth fighting for if our mess of a healthcare system is ever going to get fixed; that hasn’t been offered so far. Nothing is changing, and that’s what the industry wanted.
Audit the Fed
More than 100 members of Congress from both parties have endorsed HR 1207, a bill that would require the Federal Reserve – America’s central bank – to open its books, a move supported by two thrids of Americans. In the wake of the financial crisis, the Fed’s Balance sheet has grown by more than $2 trillion, including an untold amount of potentialy toxic assets, such as mortgage-backed securities, which the bank had never purchased before.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner opposed the plan, saying that letting politicians get involved with monetary policy would be “problematic for the country.” where is the quote from? -The Fine Print 8/31/09 10:31 PM But an audit wouldn’t involve monetary policy per se. It would actually shine a light on the Fed’s secretive actions – like buying risky assets with taxpayer money – that go beyond its job of regulating interest rates and controlling the money supply.
Internationally
The Summer of Speeches
There’s almost no way you could have missed Obama’s speech in Cairo, which drew praise from Capitol insiders and the mainstream media for “hitting all the right notes.” The speech was brilliant, and brilliantly crafted, but it was hardly a “bold overture” that signaled “a new beginning.” Obama quoted from the Quran (with echoes from Jimmy Carter’s speech endorsing the Camp David Accord) and riffed on the same themes as his predecessors – including George W. Bush – albeit with more grace and better resonance.
We were told that this speech somehow signaled “a new direction” in the relationship between America and the World’s Muslims. But that would mean we stop propping up reactionary authoritarians like Egyptian President Hosini Mubarak. It would mean we stop supplying weapons to Israel while turning a blind eye to its war crimes. It would mean renouncing the hubris that for decades has led presidents to believe the United States can impose peace and democracy on a region where we wage wars and prop up tyrants.
Instead, Obama condemned Muslim violence but not American bombing campaigns, holocaust denial but not the occupation of Palestine, opponents of democracy but not the tyrany of Saudi princes. The notes may have been played masterfully, but we’ve heard this song before.
Thus began A New Era in Israeli public relations. Just weeks later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supposedly endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state, as the New York Times’ headline mentioned, “with caveats.” Caveats indeed. The state he proposed would have neither a military nor control of its borders. In short, it would be less a state than an occupied ghetto, like the Bantustans of Appartheid South Africa, which would have offered the black majority a “homeland” of sorts. When Palestinian leaders responded by denouncing the plan, they looked uncooperative.
In short, we have another new President, another set of promises for lasting peace in the Middle East. It may still be possible for the U.S. to be the force of “progress” Obama extolled. But before that can even begin to ring true, a lot more than the tone and composure of the speaker will need to change.
Free Trade that Isn’t
On June 5, government forces in Peru massacred dozens of indigenous people (impartial estimates are as high as 60; activists have claimed “more than 100″; the New York Times reported “at least 10;” many bodies are still unaccounted for) in what has become known in some circles as “Tianamen in the Amazon.” The victims had been protesting a law that allowed loggers, miners, oil companies and hydroelectric dams onto their lands without their consent. The decree was a condition of the free trade agreement the Peruvian government signed with the Bush Administration.
The struggle underscores what people mean when they say they oppose “Free Trade.” The problem isn’t trade; it’s agreements like the one signed by Peru, which gut environmental protections, overrule the rights of indigenous people, and promote exploitation by Western corporations.
