Up From Cynicism: Politics, Campaign Finance, and Civic Activism in Miami-Dade County
Transcript

Greg Bush: . . .initial four part series, called "Democracy in Miami a Work in Progress." This series is itself a work in progress, forging a public forum that hopefully will last beyond the moment. Including a website with links to transcripts soon to be up on for the first panel, streaming video on all our programs, and soon a chat site in place for additional comment. So it is meant to, in a number of respects juxtapose a set of broad and provocative questions resonating with both national and local conditions in this presidential election year. We will be encouraging audience participation after some of the presentations by the panelists and some of the brief remarks I going to make here at the beginning.

In our first session, we heard from four people about the converging problems of local public news and education. Two topics that are not normally linked in discussion. They were comments by Merritt Stierheim, Michael Putney, Tony Doris, and Walter Secada, and we learned about the sad quality of local news, the difficulties of our educational bureaucracy, and the frustration many feel not having enough high quality information about the local political system.

The title of this week’s forum is "Up from Cynicism," as presumably most of you know, "Politics, Campaign Finance, and Civic Activism in Miami-Dade." It is a take off on Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, "Up from Slavery." I argue, in one sense, that one aspect of our modern system of mental cages, from my perspective, involves not only racism as well as class and gender inequality, but another overlooked condition the power of cynicism itself, as a fact of our recent democratic life. Some argue that Miami-area residents live in one of the most politically cynical regions of our nation where our voting rights and forms of political participation have been greatly circumscribed. Yet, having said that, I also believe there are innumerable examples of newly creative activism here and across the nation that can provide some hope for increased participatory democracy in our country.

Our panelists include Ric Katz, political consultant, County Commissioner Katy Sorenson, Thomasina Williams, noted local attorney, and Robert Sechen, General Counsel of the Florida Republican Party. Thomasina Williams on the left, is a lawyer who represented the NAACP and other civil rights groups and sued the state and seven counties, if I have that correct, over the 2000 election. She was involved in the Boycott Miami campaign, in relation to Nelson Mandela, and is a nationally recognized expert in group-voting rights litigation.

Next to Thomasina is Katy Sorenson, originally from Wisconsin. A local activist who was first elected to the County Commission in 1994. She’s been reelected twice since then and represents her South Dade district with great distinction championing a host of issues. Ric Katz is one of the preeminent political consultants and public relations gurus in our area widely quoted, Spokesperson for Mayor Penelas among other people and a consultant to the Department of Transportation among other clients. Robert Sechen is the General Counsel of the Florida Republican Party came all the way from Tallahassee and I want to particularly thank him much for the trip. I really appreciate coming all the way down and as I was learning earlier he worked in Miami for many years in the City Attorney’s office and I gather in Vero Beach as well and went up to work for Governor Bush a couple of years back. So thank you again for coming down.

The focus of tonight’s dialog will hopefully go well beyond whether we will be voting for a Republican or a Democratic Party candidate for President or for Ralph Nader for that matter. It’s about the state of our democratic practices, the value of voting, and how we make our voices heard in local, state, national and even global arenas. It’s about our changing style of civic engagement, the nature of our public forums and how we can expand the nature of our participatory democracy. There are a number of perspectives that one can bring to this but I actually don’t want to speak too long so that I can turn it over to you all and maybe interject some comments as we go along.

Just a couple of things that I wanted to say first too. The evidence around us, it seems to me, is rather pervasive in terms of the cynicism within which we live. You can look at historical examples such as Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran[], Monica Lewinsky, etcetera etcetera is enough to feed people’s cynicism from one direction. We all know that there is low voter turnout in this day and age, Specially in contrast to the 19^th century when 80% or more turned out in a number of elections. There’s something strange with this picture and there are few young people who vote. But locally there is another set of circumstances too. We see numerous uncontested local elections. Many potential candidates are fearful of running against safe incumbents. Numerous voters have been systematically stripped of their voter rights in certain respects, and then one can argue that there is a lack of quality political coverage in local media. SO the people aren’t engaged in local politics because you don’t read about, you don’t see it very clearly, it seems to me. But I don’t want to make this my forum. In one sense it’s your forum and everybody else’s forum so I would first like to turn it to Ric if I can, and if he can give us a little bit of background in terms of your thinking in this topics. And also I think it would be useful for people to begin to hear from a practitioner what it takes to run for political office in this day and age too. What kind of commitment does it take?

Ric Katz: Thank you. I think I was asked to speak today out of some remarks that I made over at the Environmental League several months ago. When the discussion turned to the normal belly-aching activist groups of, "Oh those politicians! Oh those terrible politicians." There was this assertion that somebody else seemed to own this government. That we the people were powerless that we had to put up with this element that was dropped down from another planet, taken over our mind and our bodies and now we’re the politicians and we were somehow the numb-skulls that had to obey, and I hear that every where I go. Conservative, liberal, regardless of the audience I hear these poundings on the table "Oh, these politicians." What about the Katy Sorensons of the world? Well, she’s the exception. But the truth is I hear this all the time and finally at an Urban Environmental League dinner I stood up and I said, "Bullshit."

It isn’t their government and those people aren’t, they don’t own these seats, it’s ours. It’s our government and it’s our fault if we don’t rise up and do the right thing, which is run for office or find somebody crazy enough to do it too. I hear this everywhere I go. Because of the work my firm does, which is mostly public affairs public relations, very little political anymore, we are in community meetings all the time. Spanish, Creole, African American heritage communities, what’s left of the white population. We’re out in these meetings day to day and night to night and believe it or not I hear the same bellyaching everywhere I go, and I’ve had it up to here.

And now I want to say to people, "Do something about it." Now I was fortunate I grew up in a generation where people took issues seriously. In my family, if you weren’t involved in an issue, there was something wrong with you. My parents would say, "What are you doing now? What are you involved in?" I grew up in a Philadelphia suburb near New Jersey called Pattonfield. I grew up in another era also. I grew up in the 50s, 60s time, and everyone in our neighborhood belonged to something. It was a Jewish, Italian neighborhood at the time. I move to Florida in the late 60s, early 60s and that same environment existed here. Different issues, different attitudes, but where I grew up I thought that’s how everybody was. When I went to University of Florida, I discovered that people from small town Florida, very different from me, were looking for the horns on my head cause I’m Jewish. They really were. But they in their own way had activism in their own community. That died. Probably if I could wave a magic wand and make change it would be to revitalize, give birth again to that whole era of involvement. Regardless of the side of the equation, you have to look beyond a specific issue. It doesn’t matter to me which side you’re on, you just have to be out there expressing your points of views.

Sally and I were talking about this earlier this evening and I said, "That’s gone." I’m a former academic so I have friendships with people all over the country, and with the internet I’m in touch with people all over the United States, in England, South America, and they say the same thing. The activism isn’t there. So it’s not something localized to Miami-Dade County. It’s something that’s all over the country and probably all over the world. That’s a missing ingredient. I don’t have the answers on how to reignite that feeling of caring and involvement. I thought that the "Me" generation would end at some point and another generation would come in that would be a "We" generation. It hasn’t happened, but given that I don’t believe in sitting back and crying, I will get into, for a couple of seconds, some elements of running for office.

People run for office for different reasons. Some run because they are concerned about the direction in which the community is heading. I know a little bit about Katy’s background, having been there with her in the beginning, and I know that that was a lot to do with it. Some people run because they think that they can do a better job than the people who are already there. In Miami-Dade county, that’s easy. Some people run because they’re angry and they want to get back at an office holder or group for doing something in particular. Other people run because they always want to be in public office and a lot of those folks have Esq. next to their name and they will say to you, "Well, I’ve always wanted to be in public office." Something that drives people in law school and then ask you to vote for them. Other people are obsessive compulsive, narcissistic, and delusional and they love holding office. For those and others who come to our office and say, "Ric, I want to run for public office" the first thing I say to them, and I think I said this to you, and I say this to almost everyone is, "If we catch a curly, it cant be reversed." I have friends in the psychoanalytic field who can work with you in the early days and I would like you to write this down, if you have a paper, 1-850-626-2222. It’s the Florida Psychiatric Association, and so if you are thinking about running for office or if you know someone who is afflicted with it, do that because you go to be a little bit nuts to do this…but I like nutty people.

Robert Sechen: For the record, that is the Tallahassee number so that’s got to tell you that in and of itself.

Ric Katz: People today in the United States like instant gratification, and so the third gratification, the thing ion getting started, isn’t necessarily connected with wanting to run for office. When the person gets the bug and they want to run, they want to do right then and there. If you are independently wealthy, that’s fine. If you can afford to take six months off from your life, your business life; if you can afford to fund your campaign yourself so you don’t have to mess with fundraising, you can start from scratch and jump out there and get a campaign going, but I don’t think that’s healthy. I think you should make your mistakes on somebody else’s time which means you ought to volunteer for somebody else, do some work, learn what a campaign is about before you start to launch your own. I got to tell you folks, there are so many people who come to us saying, "I want to run." And they’ve never been in a campaign before. We’re very much trying not to talk to those people. We send them out and tell them to go work in another campaign and come back in a few years.

Learn the dynamics of a political campaign, whether you work for someone else or whether you observe a campaign for full cycle. Get out there. Then start to build relationships. Test your strength. See where you have support, where you don’t. Be self-analytical. Discover your weaknesses. Find out what your flaws are and see if you can tone up in those areas or see if you can compensate in other areas. Build network. Develop a relationship with groups like yours, people who care about the world and are willing to spend some time solving a problem. Learn the law. Find out what the elections laws are and how they work before you run for office, not when you are being summoned in some tribunal for some mistake that you made after the fact. Now what I’m saying, you could just apply to someone else you know. In getting someone to run for office, it may not be you, but someone you know, or your civic organization likes and is willing to generate some help to get that person going.

[ ] walked in and I was thinking today as I was thinking about his meeting that once upon a time when we met Charles he was a relative newcomer, and over a short period of time, Charles developed a network of friends who were caring enough about Miami-Dade County and put some time in. He did a lot of those early things. He put the time into establish himself, became known as a champion and then running, not jumping in headfirst without knowing how to swim.

I’m not going to talk all evening because I want to hear from everybody else. One of the other things that I think you need to do, whether it’s you or somebody else that is running for office, is: start thinking about where you want to do this. These are very simple things, very early things in campaigns. You’d be surprised that many people do not understand that wherever you live, you probably in Miami-Dade county live in a city possibly in a county area but not for much longer. If you live in a house or an apartment somewhere in a place, you’re also in a school district. You’re also in a County Commission District. You’re in a Florida House District…so there are any number of offices that are open to you. Scan out where those districts overlap and start to build relationships in that territory. Get known. Do good deeds. And this I’ve said to Charles and to Katy.

You need to start accumulating good deeds. You need to do a good deed. Go into a neighborhood and I’m going to close on this, is finding something that needs to be done in a community. Most schools need a crossing light. Many schools have PTAs and spouses who have been wanting to get a crossing light near that school and there’s not light. And so you take on that task. You figure out who in downtown you have to see. You get four or five people to work with you in your committee and lo and behold you get a traffic light. Come on the day that they’re going to have the light opened and made operational. Get a camera and get some pictures of all those parents patting your back and saying, "It’s wonderful". Do a good deed, check it off and go on to the next topic and do another one. Doing things is good for your soul but it’s good for your repertoire. It’s good for you to be able to say to the people, "I get things done. I care about my community." So it is do-able and with that I’m going to turn to m colleagues and say, "You can cure this illness of absenteeism, of cynicism. You can get involved. There’s lots to be done. You just have to start early and make a plan.

Greg Bush: Thank you Ric. I think, I’m trying to think again, but logically in terms of the order here. I think that Katy as a person who was in fact an activist and then became a politician. It makes sense for you to go next.

Katy Sorenson: Thanks for inviting me today, Greg. You know the topic is cynicism and apathy and just as an overall kind of things that I’ve been thinking about lately, is I think a lot of it is not so much cynicism and apathy. It’s that our culture has become focused on the wrong things. Going from citizenship to consumerism. We talk about consumers all the time instead of citizens. I think there are examples of that where the defining moment was 9-11 and instead of the presidents saying, "ok, now we have to conserve all because we have to stop what’s going on in the middle East and if we conserve, and we all pull together." Instead the message was, "you have to go shopping. You have to build up the economy so go shopping." And I thought, "what a missed opportunity in having a country pull together.

I grew up a little bit later than Ric. My first political act was going to a civil rights demonstration in Chicago at the age of 10 with my cousin, and it was to demonstrate for open housing in Chicago. I always think of that as my defining political moment and that’s how I became an activist. And that’s how it had meaning for me, and I understood that there was a lot of things that we had to accomplish as a society.

John F. Kennedy had been assassinated just a couple years earlier, and the whole "not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" that had a great meaning for me and I think for a lot of people from the Baby Boomer generation. As I went thourhg, I was just kind of at the right time for all these movements. In 1968…all of a sudden I found myself caught up in the women’s movement as a teenager in 8^th grade. Then I got the first Miss magazine when I was graduating from high school. And it was just a natural progression in looking at social justice issues and so when the whole human rights ordinance came along and I sponsored that, and gay rights became an issue in this community, it had been an issue years before. But having the opportunity to work on that and to see another grassroots movement in action and taking power was very exciting. I was all over again seeing people who really could mobilize and getting active.

There are a couple of examples in my political career. That was one. The other one was defeating the airport in Homestead. A lot of you were involved in that issue too. And it was citizens organizing coming together, working for a common purpose, working for a common cause and people got excited about it and really felt that they were making a contribution.

So I reject the idea that it’s just a cynical world because I have examples that are pretty recent where that’s just not the case. All kinds of people came together. One group that I really love in this community is the group PACT: People Acting for Community Together. They worked really hard in the transportation bond issue, not the bond issue, the sales tax and they were very effective. This is a group of mostly church people and they’ve been very active and outspoken on certain issues. Transpiration being a key issue and engaged their elected officials in making sure that they were working for them. I think there are lots of examples of groups coming together and that it’s not just what’s in it for me but that it’s people thinking about how they can have impact on their community. But I think that the overall culture is very much greed and Me culture. And that those of us who really care about things are really fighting against that because the emphasis is that we want to shrink government. We want you to have as much money in you pocket as possible. Instead of the mindset of "Let’s invest in our community, let’s invest in our institutions, in our schools, and our public buildings, and things that are really a value to everyone. Our parks." All the things that great value fro the entire community. We’d rather starve the beast of government rather than risk that some of the money should go astray and instead we have, we’re fighting to hold on to a lot of the things that we consider to be of great value.

I’m very nervous about the budget and its impact on the county budget this year. The state wants us to assume a lot of the state’s cost. They’ve bailed from the Department of Juvenile Justice. They want to give it to the county to fund but they still want to keep the control of it. to me that is such a wrong-headed approach to how we ought to be doing things and how we ought to be investing in community service. Part of it is cultural. I think there are people who really care. There are people who do care about these things and who want to organize to make things happen.

But going back to what Ric was saying about campaigns. All campaigns involve money, organization and message. M.O.M. The money is very important but the organizing everybody is important and having the message and knowing what the purpose is and knowing why you’re doing it. I’m still an idealist. I’m probably more of a practical idealist than what I was 10 years ago when I started in public service, but there’s such an agenda of things that need to get done and there seem to be people who are willing to do that work and it’s just a matter of getting people organized to do it.

Greg Bush: Can I ask you a quick follow-up question? One of the things hat I was thinking about, reading a number of comments about this today is that the normal number of politicians get out of touch with the public when they’re in office for a period of time. The way the system works simply removes them because they’re to busy going to dinners and things like that. How have you tried to fight that natural inclination?

Katy Sorenson: Really, I don’t have to fight that because you know all I have to go is shopping at Publix and somebody comes up to me and says, "what about this and what about that?" So I never really feel like I’m separated. Local government, I don’t think you’re really separated from the people you serve. You’d have to be in the skies all the time.

Greg Bush: You haven’t seen that in colleagues even…

Katy Sorenson: Well, I don’t know because we do represent districts and everybody has to travel around their districts. I think in local government it’s very hard to get removed from the constituency. I think it’s easier if you go up to Tallahassee and you’re there for two months and you’re going around to cocktail parties every night. And I was there last week and I’m going again this week, and it’s an entirely different world. I mean it’s just amazing. I think they really untouched with their constituents but part of that is the fault of the constituents that don’t make sure that they show up, go up to Tallahassee, write the letters and e-mails and hold their feet to the fire. Here, it’s very hard to getaway from your constituents.

Greg Bush: Mhhm. Ok, we’ll come back to you. Bob, what’s your perspective as a Counsel of the Republican Party from what you’ve been hearing from Katy and Ric and some of your own experiences?

Robert Sechen: Well, I was a congressional intern in high school in Winter Park, Florida and basically the same times of discussions were occurring back in the 1970s especially the 70s with things going on in the war and people were out of touch with the government and there were allegations about these kinds of things. I’ve had the opportunity to live this, then in Winter Park and then in Tampa where I went to college, and then here in Miami where I cam to law school in this fine University. I worked here from 1976 to 1997 as a partner in law firms. I was active in political races.

Quite frankly in some of the political races the party, the people of the party left the party on occasion, especially the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party would not elect Hispanics. I ran campaigns for Hispanics to be elected. They were thrown out. You had [Rosario Kennedy] who were to be United States Senator had she won the Democratic Primary beating Jerry Richman. The political structure, and I’m here as a political representative, and I want to comment that the political structure technically left the people at that time. And why that happened and the dynamics of that happening is a very interesting dynamic because it’s not really focused on very much. But you had Amado Prado who ran in a race in Coral Gables and South Miami as a democrat against [ ] and lost in the Primary. You go through these races…lost in the primary, lost in the primary…essentially part of Miami’s issue right now and part of it all is that the Democratic Party made some mistakes and so that’s very interesting as to where we are in the cynicism that has been created.

Greg Bush: So both parties in a sense are seemingly not as inclusive, is what you’re saying.

Robert Sechen: Oh, absolutely. I think clearly the Democratic Party then wasn’t a republican party because it wasn’t very organized. It was by default inclusive and it has put itself in the position it is right now. 86 out of 120 in the House of Representatives are controlled by the Democrats. It’s real close to that number. You know, that’s, those are amazing numbers around this day….

…what is the dynamic that has changed in that party? How has the state changed that has led it to that? But I don’t think that the concept of the cynicism is just here in South Florida. As I said, I practiced law here and went to school here and was here in the community for 23 years and it’s not that much a dynamic difference than the other places that are around the state.

I think turnout is an interesting comment coming out of the political people because polling affects turnout probably more than anything else now. People know the results before they go in. It’s only the very close races that they don’t. so that has an effect on the turnout. You have a lot more information. You mentioned that 80% of the people use to vote because nobody had an idea of what was going to be turned out. If you go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and who was supposed to win and whatever else, they had some idea to some degree but nowhere near what we have today. That has affected things, and then the cynicism of the politicians themselves. Heavens knows. You mentioned Monica Lewinsky. You mentioned the other types of candidates and everything, and it’s created a tremendous concept of the citizens in towards the individual candidates. I mean, here, you’ve got an activist who ran in 1994 who 10 years later is now part of the system of the County Commissioner having been there for 10 years. Not to take anything away from your particular policies and anything else but what we’re seeing now in Tallahassee with 8 years and you’re out has created its own set of problems and quite a few problems, I’ll grant you that. But it then creates a churning of what’s going on.

Lastly, the comment about local government and the coverage of what is focused on in local government is significant. Even in Tallahassee, and I say this as having represented the City of Miami as an assistant city attorney and having been a city attorney myself for the City of Vero Beach, local government gets far more focus than state government from the media. Far far more focused. You can just sit there and count the []. I won’t even get into the Sports programs and how much coverage that they get comparably to the other areas. But local government gets it. and there are other resources that are available. I mean meetings are recorded and played back. When I was a in a grocery store, being the City Attorney in a small community in Central Florida, people would say, "Oh, that’s the city attorney in front of me buying beer and pizza" and would know everything about you. That’s helpful though because that gets around to control the simple media, but it’s an interesting process. But I guess I’m here to tell you that it’s not just South Florida that this is going on. South Florida has many more dynamics than a lot of the other areas, than North Florida and everything. But you would be amazed at the issues that go on in Pensacola and in the Panama City area that are not much dissimilar to what happens here in South Florida now. They just do it in more languages and more international flavor here in Miami.

Greg Bush: Ok. What about, let’s do some comparison or comments in terms of conservative activism in the Republican Party these days and how that may have changed in the state or in your experience in the last 10 or 15 years.

Robert Sechen: Well, the Republicans have done a very good job of cornering the uninvolved on election day. The people from the religious communities, the faith-based communities, the people who have essential been or have felt that they have been left out by the mainstream media. I saw a small bit on Fox right before I left my hotel room tonight and they said, "We are the unbiased faithful media in the news. What’s interesting about this is that whether or not you believe Fox is, they are selling that to an audience that does in fact believe. They are doing it on mainstream television and people are mainstream enough…and Rupert Murdoch is clearly one of the major media forces in this country as he manages it from Australia. The fact is that that is something that is being said and it’s always been the unspoken said and you know our country for many years has had a liberal bias in the media.

So Republicans have really used that in a "democratic establishment" and organized all thse other groups to the point that as I say that 120 state representatives are Republicans in the state of Florida. And Florida is considered a split state between Democrats and Republicans.

Greg Bush: Thomasina, you’ve been hearing lots of comments from different directions. How do you react the general concept of cynicism to our South Florida culture? The roots of it, the value of it and the problem that it brings to your mind.

Thomasina Williams: Well I guess I speak from the standpoint of someone who’s probably more on the civic activist end of the spectrum as opposed to the political spectrum. Not having been an elected official and having no aspirations to be an elected official, and I guess a couple of things come to mind. I guess my activism is based on the fact that as a young person growing up, I saw so much injustice. I grew up in the 60s, early 70s and the reason I went to law school was not so that I could become an elected official, but so that I could try to have the ability to impact those people that were elected officials who were in policy decisions that affected, in my community, primarily black people and lower income people. I guess I grew up being taught that to those whom much is given, much is required. I guess that’s why I do what I do because I have been very blessed in many ways and have had lots of opportunities that other people simply not have had that opportunity. And so I struggle and fight and try to open the doors within the political context because I think that politics really affects everything we do whether we realize it or not. And I am one of the people that has decided that being an elected official is not something that I personally have any aspiration for but I think it’s important that we each do what we can with what we have. As a lawyer I have chosen to use my activism and my skills as a lawyer to also try to impact what happens with respects to politics mainly in the community in which I live.

One of the things that I worked on most recently, I think that that’s why I was invited to be on this panel, is having been the only Florida lawyer, who’s part of the of the legal team that represented the NAACP and the class of black voters who were disenfranchised as a result of the presidential election in 2000. That was a very activist thing for me. I am a solo practitioner. It was something that was something so important to me that I took that on as the only local council so to speak working on that because I thought it was very important to try to make sure that happened to people across the state would not happened to people in 2004. We were hoping to avoid some problems in 2002. we had a whole other set of issues that arose as a result of the 2002 gubernatorial elections as you all know, and I think that’s one of the frustrations of a lot of people. One of the comments I’ve heard from people is, "Thomasina, you got to get people organized." To get turnout vote, and bring your family members, your friends, and whomever and look what happens. As soon as we do what we’re told what we should do, then the rules change. Or there’s some other way that’s used to impact people and their ability to impact the vote.

So a lot of the cynicism and apathy comes from people who actually did register folks in record numbers. If it had not been for the huge increase in the black turnout that we had in the prior presidential elections, it wouldn’t have been as close as it was. It was like 50% greater turnout. So the people that actually got a chance to vote in the black community, not talking about those who did not get a chance to vote, but those who actually passed their ballots was 50% greater than the prior presidential election. That’s a phenomenal turnout for people. Think about the thousands of people who got turned away and you have that apathy and the cynicism because people say, "Well, we followed the rules. We did what we were supposed to do and here the rules changed in the end and they try to find another way to try and disenfranchise people." I think that’s where a lot of the frustration really turns into apathy and turns into cynicism on a certain level.

And I think in general, a lot of what happened with the democratic party and the Republican Parties insurgents, was the Democratic Party got complacent. It was the majority party and I think that the reason the people have changed parties or just become Independent is because they feel as though there’s been irresponsiveness from the Democratic Party. When I first went to register to vote, they told me I had to choose and if you don’t choose then you don’t get to vote in the primary for example, and so my point was well, that’s disenfranchising me to a certain extent. What if neither one of them do anything for me? I come from a perspective of I want to know who’s going to be able to be responsive to my particular needs. I don’t really care if you’re a democrat or you’re republican. I am a registered Democrat by virtue of having to choose but I want to decide oftentimes who gets to the general election depends on who wins the primary.

There are all kinds of systemic things that happen that frustrate people and make people have a sense of apathy. One of the biggest issues that got the most publicity coming out of the 2000 election was the tremendous number of people who were disenfranchised because they were put on a so-called felons list who were not felons, had never committed any crime of any sort and yet here people have been victimized and denied their right to vote because of that…

I think it’s because of those kinds of things that there is apathy. I think it’s more of a frustration. People who feel as though as they are trying to make an effort and somehow the tables are turned. But I think it’s also important that we try to press forth no matter what the odds are. The key is to have people engaged, but the problem comes when they feel they don’t make a difference. Sometimes I have sat and watched county commission meetings and people come down there and they’ve been there, taking off their day from work, they’ve been there since 10 o’clock in the morning expecting to have their issue heard by the officials. And they sit there till 6 o’clock at night and the issue doesn’t even come up on the agenda. Those kinds of things, they seem like little things to those of us who may know a little bit more about the process, are very frustrating to the average working person who says, "Well, what’s the point? I took the whole day off from work. I tried to exercise my right to address my elected official and this is what happened". And no disrespect to commissioner Sorenson but I’m sure she’s seen some people who are somewhat disrespectful to people who are helping to pay their salaries, which is another issue.

A lot of people cannot afford to run for elected office because...it’s just absurd that our system says that to manage and to be a policy maker for a city the size of Miami is a part-time position. That is ludicrous on its space, number one. You almost have to be independently wealthy to be able to do this or have a partner or spouse who can pay the bills while you try to be a good elected official. Even if you have the ability to do that, the time commitment from a part-time to a full-time, it’s really a full-time job. We all know that and then we don’t want to pay our elected officials for the grief that we put them through. It’s just absurd that it’s a 6,000 dollar a year salary. That just makes absolutely, positively no sense and there are a very few people who have the flexibility in their jobs to have a full time job that actually pays the bills and make a full-time commitment as an elected official and then for 6,000 dollars.

For some people, it’s frankly, just not worth it. and I think that, again, I look at it as the people being frustrated. I think that one of the interesting things for me that after the 2000 election and in some respects after the 2002 elections, there were pockets of people who were talking to each other over dinner, talking to each other at work. People who want to do something, but people feel frustrated and didn’t know what to do. I think oftentimes people are looking for a leadership, looking for some guidance, for some direction. Everyone, unfortunately, is not going to be a Katy Sorenson who is going to offer herself up to be an elected leader.

A lot of us are just followers who will be there to do what needs to be done at the ground level and we need someone who has that ground vision. Unfortunately, because of the way, oftentimes elected positions again are ridiculously part-time and being only 6,000 dollars a year, using the county commissioner as an example, not very many people frankly, who are our best and our brightest are going to offer themselves that kind of a personal sacrifice. And this is very frustrating to a lot of people who say, "well, what’s the use?" And I think that’s what we have to overcome, it’s that sense of frustration. But what I tell people, even now with the people interested in theelection of 2004 is, that if you feel like you have somehow being used or manipulated, just think about the people who are manipulating the system behind the scenes, they will have won if we do nothing. So the response to that is to keep fighting, to keep coming back, to be more vigilant than ever. Because as Ric said, it’s really government of the people, for the people and by the people. I think it’s an incumbent upon us who care to make sure that we keep that sense of activism going and that we bring people into the fold. One of the things that I’ve been encouraged by with respect to the democratic presidential campaign is that people so seem to be energized. And you have people talking about actions and voting, where quite frankly there was a time when I wasn’t so sure that we would be where we are today in terms of the level of interest that you see coming out of Democratic Party. And my hope is that it will continue beyond November. That we will keep people engaged. One of the things that I think frustrates people is that the only time we hear about elected officials is at election time. There are people who are very active in their communities who are in touch with their constituents, but then there are a lot of elected officials who are not. and again I think it is incumbent upon us as the voters that help them put them up there to hold their feet to the fire.

Greg Bush: Thank you. I have one or two follow-up questions and then I want to open up for the audience and then others of you may have other questions. One of them comes I guess from what you were saying, $6,000 salary, Katy that I guess you’ve kept, which is pathetic. It’s wrong. Certainly the people on this panel would agree, but an argument that I’ve heard is that the voters wouldn’t pass it. So in other words, it’s thrown back at the voters. At times.

Katy Sorenson: But you have the keep going back because the City of Miami was in the same position. It was just until recently that the City of Miami finally passed that. Well, people try to articulate the argument that they don’t deserve anything because they’re not doing anything now. They’re all a bunch of crooks, or whatever it is that people say. You can’t give up just because someone tells you no. If I gave up when somebody told me I couldn’t go to law school, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. So you have to keep going back and I think that those of us who have that sense of fire have to make sure that we maintain that and get people into the fold.

Greg Bush: And one of the qualities, I guess I’ve learned over a few years that I’ve been involved in a few things, is that more than anything else it’s far more than brilliance, its far more than anything. It’s persistence. Being there day in and day out, listening and either being respected and having your face known. Which in one sense is a sad commentary.

Ric Katz: It’s a sad occurrence here in Miami-Dade county it’s very typical all over the country. People sometimes hate the institution but love their individual representative. We defeated the salary increases for county commissioners yet re-elected county commissioners time through time through time in districts. The commissioner in the district is well-loved , appreciated and yet unwilling to campaign for the salary increase because they don’t want to rock the vote, but isn’t it an irony that the public can hate the institution of the Florida State Legislature or their county commission and return their county commissioner over and over again.

Robert Sechen: Historically, Congress was that way for many many years until one day a bunch of them did get thrown out. When Newt Gingrich took over. So there is opportunities and if in fact the motivation is there and the same things that you’re talking about with the county commissions, that happens all across the state too. The last time that there was a positive article about the Florida legislature in the Miami Herald was probably 1982, but nonetheless the re-election rate is tremendous among the state House of Representatives just as it is in the County Commission, and that’s a phenomenal of government until something occurs or a movement occurs that changes it around but those movements have occurred without revolutions.

Katy Sorenson: Right, and I think the school board is a good example. I think it’s going to be real difficult for incumbents to get re-elected this year for the school board. I don’t know what you think Janet, I have not been on the school board. But I really do think it’s going to be tough.

Thomasina Williams: Well oftentimes there are no, you know people are running un-opposed or they don’t really have viable candidates, and that again comes from us the voters and people saying "I’m going to make a difference." One of the conversations had with commissioner Betty [] before she ran was that she kept saying that somebody in her community needs to run, and one day she realized, "Hey, I am somebody." You know we can’t always look to someone else to do the dirty work for us. We go to be able to roll up our sleeves and pitch in and make the difference. But I think that’s why oftentimes people are getting re-elected because there are not any viable oppositions, if any oppositions.

Greg Bush: What is your motivation in really and I don’t want to press you unduly, but in not wanting to run yourself?

Thomasina Williams: I’m not,. I don’t see myself as a politician. I think that when you get into a system to some extent you become to some people part of the problem that they are fighting against on the one hand. I think sometimes it’s easier to force a civic change from the outside. I think people like Commissioner Sorenson who are in there fighting on the inside need people like me on the outside as well. I think it takes a combination of forces to really impact something and to have some sort of systemic change. And frankly you have to be very diplomatic to be a politician and I don’t think I would consider myself …it’s not something that I ever had the aspiration to do. I think there need to be people on the outside who are willing to be spokespersons and advocates and not be afraid to speak truth to power because there are a lot of people out there who just don’t know how to manipulate or I guess maneuver the system. They don’t know how to get that stoplight out in front of their school…but they have not a clue as to what steps to take to get that very first step.

Ric Katz: I think Betty Ferguson is perfect example of somebody who was a wonderful activist off the commission. I think she was frustrated on the commission. Simply overwhelmed by the shock that the numbskulls weren’t going to move forward. But as an outsider I think Betty did more and as she recovers from this tenure on the board and she gets back to her neighborhood, you’re going to see Betty doing a lot more and making change.

Greg Bush: Two other quick comments and then I’ll go to the audience. It seems to me from all the comments you’ve made that one subject we haven’t really dealt with very much is the power of money and that’s an argument that’s often used. I’m not blaming anybody in particular but it’s just the power of money these days is so overwhelming and it’s just going through the roof locally and nationally, and that everybody decries it and there’s some sort of fatalism it seems to me about anybody really being able to address it, attack it, and even touch it as a subject and I’m just curious.

Robert Sechen: In the national level, we passed, Congress passed a by-partisan approach, the McCain-Finegold. They limit the use of soft money and corporate money and they do all of these things, and then even as the Supreme Court predicted in its own ruling, now these 5-27s are now coming up. And now according to the New York Times this week, they are matching everything that Bush is spending with 5-27 money essentially what is illegal under McCain-Finegold. Which was intended to have been stopped, but it’s not now being stopped. And it’s being done by groups, not the Republicans, I would add but by the other groups.

Katy Sorenson: Because they don’t have to.

Robert Sechen: And that may be the case. Maybe they don’t have to but the fact is that you did have this law passed and that it was the intent and now all the rules are now being changed. The John Kerry’s campaign manager, former campaign manager, is now running one of the funds on these 5-27s…for every cure comes another problem, and that’s what we’re seeing now. And the question is, even if the Supreme Court in its cynicism when they wrote the opinion talked about how corrupt politics was if you read it. And I have had to give speeches to all of these groups, all these little mom and pop groups as I call them that have been in existence in the Republican Party for many years and saying to them, ‘The McCain-Finegold will affect you and it’s going to change the way you do things." And we try to get them to buy into that and they really have in the end of the way, but it’s really disheartening to see that it’s already being circumvented by other people. I have to wonder whether that will ever stop. The Supreme Court said it probably will never. Water will find its own level essentially is what the gist of it was.

Katy Sorenson: I think the money in politics is really a threat to our democracy. I think its that serious and that much of a threat and as long as the Supreme Court insists that it’s speech, that money is speech, I don’t think that it can ever get past this problem. Because if you consider money to be freedom of speech, and freedom of speech to be the highest value, I don’t know how we can ever get past it. The campaign finance reform is worth much more for the Republicans than for the Democrats now that the limits are much higher getting personal contributions and the money being amassed by the President’s campaign is just astronomical. It’s doubled from the last campaign and that’s all campaign finance and reform. The whole idea of these rangers of 250,000 dollars here, and we have George Lopez, he’s one of the rangers, 250 K, he’s put together for the Bush campaign.

Greg Bush: And yet that’s legal.

Katy Sorenson: Yeah, that’s legal.

Robert Sechen: George [] has said, "Move on" and he’s going to put in 80 million.

Katy Sorenson: He can’t mention the candidate. He can’t coordinate with the candidate he’s paying. So it leaves us this crazy world, you know you cant coordinate the message in any way and there’s another dynamic going on alongside the campaign. It’s a very weird year, but I do think it’s a big threat.

Greg Bush: Let me throw out a very naïve question here. Why don’t people run against that system? Because they need money to do so is the answer.

Ric Katz: It takes money. It takes time. It’s the instant gratification sort of thing. If you want to run for Congress and you get into your district far enough in advance. You learn where it is when you first get out of college and you do those good deeds in the district and start building relationships, you can get there. But if you want to get there in one year you need a ton of money.

Greg Bush: Right, right. I guess I’m wondering though in this day and age in Miami the internet is an extraordinary powerful new tool for activists, and it just seems to be we’re sort of in an infancy in using it in political campaigns and the cost level can go down so much, ‘ive seen. Not in terms of getting an audience here.

Ric Katz: Dean was supposedly breaking all bounds and making this an internet election. I’ve been convinced for some time that the internet is a nice thing to have but it doesn’t get people elected yet. That day may come and candidates come to me and they get all excited about their website and I ask them, "how many voters have you shaken hands with?" and "how many groups have you spoken with before?" "Oh, but I’ve got a great website" and I don’t think it does it yet.

Katy Sorenson: Yeah, and what was interesting with the Dean campaign I thought it was going to be a very cost-effective too to organize….i think one of the things you learn is that you don’t spend it all at first, you save it till the end when you need it. He was spending right along and he had the internet and it didn’t seem like he had to do that. And I think people at the end of the day still want to touch and feel. They want a real life person. Somebody whose hand they can shake and take a picture with the baby, whatever whatever. That they want that sort of personal touch from their elected officials.

Greg Bush: In fact, it makes the candidate better. And thinking about John Kerry, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, but his candidacy is much stronger, I gather, because he’s done far more person to person politics over the last few months as a much better speaker and candidate that he was a few moths ago.

Audience Member: …..one, and I’d like you to comment on this. One I find that in Miami, from what my experience is, it’s one of the few communities in the country where a small group of people can actually effectuate change on almost any issue. Why is that in light of, I was living in California last year where you have 100,000 people on Los Angeles demonstrating against the war and you have maybe 100 people here in Miami demonstrating against the war and you’ll have, why is it that we have such little involvement in things like demonstrations, organized movements here in Miami as compared to other places who have similar demographics with immigrant groups and diverse communities? Cause here we have the same problems so probably we’re at the forefront in the nation of all the issues which are probably going to be confronting our nation for the next 100 or 200 years. And I’d like you to comment on why we have such little participation in those issues. But for example, the Cuban community, where you can get out 10 or 15,000 people on an issue related o Cuba which is not an issue which affects our local community or our country. Why aren’t people protesting on issues they feel strongly about or do people feel here in this community differently than other people about their relationship to the community in particular?

Katy Sorenson: So you’re asking about demonstrations? Big demonstrations? Well, think that’s because we have so much drama in this community anyway, and we don’t need to have big demonstrations. You know there are Hurricanes, or Elian Gonzales. We’ve always got something happening that’s really dramatic so I don’t think that’s really the venue of this community. That’s not really how people do things here.

Audience Member:  But, for example in Chicago, or LA, or New York, which there’s an equal amount of drama probably in those places.

Katy Sorenson: No way.

Audience Member:  you do, you have great drama, yet people here don’t get involved in those ways, which I think are very effective ways especially in this country, of effectuating change in whatever people believe in.

Ric Katz: Well, in the principal municipal government in X laws or in ordinances, it basically says that it’s illegal for two people to take a deep breath on the street corner during a particular major event, it kind of tells people to stay home. Then they resend the law, they want it safe. I think that they are sending a message there. A bad message. When I travel and I hear the Miami model of express, it sends chill because what when on here by virtue of the City of Miami is now being replicated in other cities with pride. I’m not saying that’s universally the case, but I sure say that it did set an example for people not to go downtown and make their voices heard in the very time when they could have done that and would’ve been heard all over the world.

Thomasina Williams: One of the things too is people question how effective that is it’s because of the way the system works here. And oftentimes if you can get people to come to some function,. Are they going to follow through with that? is there going to be some follow-up after the demonstration? And I think that’s where the apathy and cynicism comes in. People figure it’s not going to do much difference because the politicians are going to do what the politicians want to do anyway. So why should I stand out in that 80 degree heat?

Audience Member: but why doesn’t the community go out and protest and maybe they are effective in ….

Robert Sechen: well one of them is an emotional response.

Ric Katz: I think it’s also cultural activity. Is there anybody here from the Cuban community who would like to express their thinking about it?

Thomasina Williams: I don’t know if that’s what people respond because the people out protesting in the streets. I think people are responding because they are afraid of being labeled, you know pro-Cuba, pro-Castro which doesn’t require people protesting in the streets either to necessarily do that.

Greg Bush: well, that’s also another element that strikes me and that is to a lot of people’s thinking and certainly I guess the news media, and Ric you would know more, demonstrations…might well not be effective.

Thomasina Williams: well, that’s my point precisely.

Greg Bush: and in another respect, so you can’t go down the same road all the time.

Robert Sechen: In Tallahassee, two people literally showed up to protest something that Bush did, it was on the evening news too. I thought that you know jeez, if I get two people they’ll bring news coverage. It’s being over covered and in fact under covered in other instances. If a protest could be described as two people, then literally any conversation that happens in America could be described as a protest. So to a certain degree there has been too much attention focused on some and not really focus on more important things.

Greg Bush: Well, a number of us were conscious to in the time of the Miami Circle, that some of the early Tuesday evening vigils that we had to try to stop, I remember like 10 or 15 people showing up. But we were conscious that there was one Seminole with a headdress that made the front page of the Miami Herald.

Ric Katz:…got a lot of attention on the issue.

Katy Sorenson: And then there was the huge demonstration that followed that. A huge march in Tallahassee.

Robert Sechen: and this year that march went from let’s claim 10,000 two years ago to 1500 or 2500 at best.

Thomasina Williams: I think part of it too, we are a reactionary society. You have to have something that gets people outraged…and what we had going on at that time was, the day before the or the day after that protest we gave arguments before the Supreme Court on the proposed amendment that Warren Connelly had put up to try to basically outlaw affirmative action from the state of Florida and make it unconstitutional. So there were things. People were also reacting to the governor’s One Florida initiative. So there was something people were reacting to as opposed to this time trying to get people organized and people up to vote for something that going to happen, you know, the lection is not till November and they had to march in March, I guess. So again I think it becomes a question of what’s going on. And it’s much easier to get people organized and get them energized when they’re angry about something that has happened as opposed to get them organized to act in the first interest and be proactive. I don’t know what it is about our society for this to be the way that it works.

Ric Katz: What’s going on in the churches and synagogues now as opposed to what was going on in the 60s? where is the drum beat? I mean that’s the greatest number of people in this community go to church and synagogue. I’m not saying large numbers within the community but that’s a heavy concentration, and where are the sounds? Where is the message coming out?

Thomasina Williams: Well, I think again, people were fighting for something then. And in the black community, you were fighting against legalized segregation and you could feel, you could see, you were personally impacted by that, but now racism has taken a much more subtle form and because I can sit here on the platform with you all, people would say there isn’t such thing as racism in America. Other people who have actually experienced that and no matter what kinds of education they got and no matter how much money they make and where they live they can still get pulled over in their car because they are driving a nice car and happen to be black. Driving while black is their only crime. It’s difficult to fight against that kind of thing. I think it was a very different time in the 60s. There was something much more tangible that people could fight against as opposed to being proactive.

Katy Sorenson: And the Christian groups are being organized against gay marriage and that’s a big thing right now to try to get the churches mobilized in that respect. There’s church activism. But when I was a kid, the churches were very much for social justice and there were a lot of messages coming out of the church. I grew up a Catholic. There was a Catholic priest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who was very instrumental in organizing civil rights demonstrations and all of that. there was a sense of social activism, anti-war demonstration that were very much church driven…but it’s a much more different focus today.

Ric Katz: Has American culture gotten tired? Is it sleepy? Did we simply just lock into the Me generation and never got back to the We generation? What’s happened that makes it such a difficult place to generate any type of involvement. We do polling constantly. One of the things that we see over and over again is that about 90% of the population disdain politics. They disdain the government. They don’t want to know anything about it. They don’t want to listen to it. They don’t make up their mind for political decisions until the last five days of a campaign and then it’s one of those pointing down at a piece of paper to decide where to vote. 92% disdain politics. They don’t want anything to do with it and only get into it under major necessity.

One of the things we do learn is that people don’t pay attention to politics until they own property. It’s generally mainly in the United States where at one time high school and college people were involved in political movement. Nowadays until people actually own property , a condo or house, there is a drop off or an absence of political involvement. We don’t send campaign literature to people who don’t have a property stake hold for many reasons. We drop out the younger voters who do not own, they rent.

Greg Bush: So as a practical decision, of course in one sense, few of the cynicism because they’re not a part of the process.

Ric Katz: We know it’s not worthwhile to spend that kind of money. We know in most political races that I’m involved in, there are small-time candidates, low-budget candidates and we have to be very careful where we spend the money. And we’re going to completely ignore those people who don’t have the propensity to vote.

Greg Bush: What about the lack of interest respect for government between Democrats and Republicans? Or is that too respective down here?

Ric Katz: It seems to be universal. About 90 to 92 percent of the population would just as soon not listen to politics.

Greg Bush: Because I was reading, I guess it was a poll that just came out recently, saying that not surprisingly most Republicans now are supportive of government, have more trust in government, presumably because the Bush administration whereas during the Clinton administration it was the opposite.

Ric Katz: In terms of [ ] behavior, we see that people don’t make a political decision until very close to the lection. Up until that point, they really don’t want to know and people who do early mail later realize that that was a mistake.

Robert Sechen: Do you imagine either asking someone to change their party or change their toothpaste? Many more would change their parry because…people put more emphasis in selecting toothpaste than selecting what would be the governor of the state of Florida.

Thomasina Williams: And it think that’s a god point. I think the reason why a lot of people do not make decision until very near the elections, because as far as they’re concerned for the most part, they want half a dozen and 6 in one hand in the other. People don’t see a dramatic difference on how it’s going to impact their lives as to who the elected official is going to be. When you are talking the national levels, state level, or quite frankly even at the local level, I think a lot of people just don’t see the difference.

Katy Sorenson: And the reason they don’t see the difference is they’re not analyzing the issues, paying attention, really looking for doing that critical analysis that is so necessary for participating. And I think that goes back to education and not having an adequate education system in this country and in fact it’s being de-funded and de-funded to the point that I think maybe it’s a strategy to keep people ignorant so that they can’t figure out the differences and that they can’t make those critical analyses.

Thomasina Williams : …in respect to people’s education they feel like no matter what an elected official tells you they’re going to do, it doesn’t matter once they get into office because they’re going to forget about that. at least that’s the sense a lot of people have. And one thing we haven’t talked about is the dynamic the whole culture of the bureaucracy that exists on a lot of levels independent of the elected officials. I mean I am just amazed sometimes at the things that happen in the county staff level. Commissions don’t have a clue. They’re the ones that are getting blamed for it by the media, but their staff is going directly contrary to what the policy is and the policy makes have voted and expected them to do, and so there’s a whole culture around the bureaucracy I think that is a part of this dynamic that we need to take a look at in terms of the bureaucrats having been career bureaucrats, they feel like it’s their system. They’ve been there for 30 years in the state legislature, now that the state Senator or state Legislature have only been there for 8. So they feel they can outlast them all. Oftentimes, when you are talking about it, a local race is the same thing. I think there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in or near the trenches that policy makers are blamed for that they should not be blamed for because they have made the correct policy decision but for whatever reason, it’s not actually getting implemented the way it was meant to be.

Ric Katz: Greg, I see some lifetime veterans in the audience who have on many occasions been successful on getting people motivated and involved in things and since I don’t think we have the answer collectively here on the table or on the stage. Janet, Sally, what’s missing? What can be infused back into this community? Let’s just look at the community, let’s not look at the nation, because the nation is too big to look at tonight, but what are we not doing that would light some fires and get some people motivated to pay attention to the community we’re living in?

Audience Member: One thing that is very disturbing to me is that we have young people not getting involved in the future of their country. They may have to go to war for their country, but the idea that they are in college and haven’t a great feeling for the next election and the importance of it. Katy’s got a daughter who’s a senior and college and Ric and I talked about it earlier. I wonder if it’s not our educational system at a lower level that we are really neglecting the importance, and then should not out two parties come to the young people with a good advertising campaign. I mean there’s go to be something that knocks their socks off and gets them thinking about the future of other nation. I think that’s just not happening.

Katy Sorenson: One of the things about education is they don’t teach civics anymore. When I was in school, civics was a class and we had a project. You had to actually do something in your community. It wasn’t just a text book kind of thing. So that goes back to the issue of education, I think.

Audience Member: Well, I put a lot of blame on single-member districts and also incorporating of these small cities and municipalities all over. People banding together to look after their own. The single member districts that are drawn by race and ethnicity. Theoretically, you are going to get people who are more in touch with the local community. Then when Pinecrest and Key Biscayne and Aventura and all the different areas incorporate to just look after their own economic, racial or social group. I think that narrows their focus dramatically, and single member districts do too. I never ran for a single member district. I always ran county-wide and the four time I ran for the school board, and I thought it was great preparation for serving on board where you heard the issues from all over the county. And you ha to become aware of that. I felt that it improved my understating of the entire constituency in this county and I was grateful for it, and I think it energized me. And when people from other racial groups, or ethnic groups or economic groups came to the school board with their concerns I was sensitive and I encouraged them to come because I had been out there and asked for their support and I respected them, even those who didn’t support me. I still encouraged them to come to the school Board and especially students. That was the greatest thing. When student came to the school board talking about their issues. The best ones were the student journalists and the sudetn speaks who ca me with first amendment issues. They were so magnificent and often they came by the hundreds on their issues. I was in a position as were other school members to encourage them and empower them because I thought if they learned to speak for themselves and make their arguments so effectively they would always be able to do it. So I don’t like this political system, where now everybody just looks to their own, racial ethnic or economic group. I think that that stifles involvement and expression in all the issues that we have to deal with.

We did have thousands of people who were in this town in November top protest the policy of the free trade area of the Americas. This local structure here just polarized them, many of them. They were there to be citizen activists expressing their ideas on a very important national public policy that was being discussed and made here. I think that was wrong. But sort of what happened was the local establishment gave the impression that we were going to be invaded by hordes of people that were going to tear the town apart. That didn’t happen. There were very few bomb throwers or paint throwers. There were not bomb throwers. There were people who did graffiti. We came down so hard on them.

Greg Bush: Do you think that relegated cynicism from a lot of people about being involved?

<b>Audience Member</b> Well, I think that some of them are very cynical about what happened to them. Others are infuriated and are complaining and not giving up on it. I hope they don’t. I hope they work through all these issues in courts and local government and raise these issues again. I’m not afraid. I think that for all of us in this country, it’s the obligation of citizenship to be involved and it is such a privilege to do that. All of you in your various ways have done that and I think we’ve got to encourage people to do and not beat them up when they try to do it.

Greg Bush: I’d like to make one comment in terms of what you said about the single member district is a book out fairly recently by [ ] I think his name is and it’s called Republic.Com . It’s kind of interesting in that sense because it formed with the notion that through websites that people look at they tend to be looking at websites that reinforce certain very narrow [ ] on their own opinion. In other words, people aren’t getting a broader view if the world and different kind of information but kind of the same…

Robert Sechen [to audience member]: Janet you are so articulate and such a classy lady and it’s so nice to see you here. Having been in Tallahassee for a number of years and coming back, it’s always nice to see some people. But I want to say on the single member districts, and I have commented it before, to every cure comes another problem. Ok. Single member districts were a cure to a problem of unfair minority representation…lack of representation….county-wide still you have very few minority people elected county wide in Broward County. In Miami-Dade back then before single member districts, very few if any. I think Carrie Meek, but not very many in the multi-member districts and they were in fact used by those people. My mother, God rest her soul, was a staunch Democrat from New York for many many years….I told her in 1990, "wait and see that the interest of the blacks in the legislature will combine with the interests of the Republicans to create more minority representation" and it did. In fact it did. A coalition was developed. They did the reapportionment and as a result of that reapportionment the state has changed in that regard.

Thomasina Williams: It’s changed for the better Republicans not for the better of black folks.

Robert Sechen: Well, there are more black elected officials in Tallahassee than there have ever been.

Thomasina Williams: And they are mostly Democrats. As someone who represented Congresswoman Carrie Meek and [ ] Betty Ferguson and other who were the ones who got us the single member districts. The reasons that single member districts were so important for the black community in particular was because our neighborhoods had been neglected. Commissioner Ferguson didn’t have the sewage in her neighborhood. It took her years to gets sewage. I mean that’s ridiculous in this day and age. Didn’t have sidewalks, basic infrastructure that other communities did. And so while school board member [] one of the people who was responsive to all segments of our community, unfortunately School Board Member [ ] and Commissioner Sorenson are quite frankly, the exceptions in the world in a lot of cases. And so the people were not having their basic needs met like sewage, police protection and sidewalks some kinds of basic services that they had been paying taxes for all of these years. People who were homeowners in their neighborhoods didn’t have those kind of basic things. So I think it’s important that t we’re looking at who our elected officials are that those people also be astute enough and intelligent enough to have a broader perspective. There’s so many issues that come before the Commission that have nothing to do with the district. We have everything from whether or not we should or should not have an airport authority, the transportation issues. There are all kinds of issues that impact us all without respect to the district we happen to live in. so I think from the perspective of other people in this community, they have actually gotten concrete tangible benefits from single member districts by virtue of infrastructure improvements that were not there prior to that.

Katy Sorenson: I agree with Thomasina, but I also agree with Janet. And Janet is my political mentor by the way. She encouraged me to run and I always admired her tremendously when she was in office. The whole issue of incorporation right now, to me, is very troubling and in some ways I feel like I am re-segregating the South in South Dade. We’ve got all these groups that are parceling themselves out and that it’s very color segregated the way it’s going.

Thomasina Williams: That’s why the neighborhoods look that way. That’s why the districts look that way because housing patterns still remain very segregated in this country.

Greg Bush: Quick comment.

Audience Member:  Hi. Ok. I was just going to ask, was going to make a comment, and I have an announcement, and I have a question maybe if you have time. I’m from the Youth Vote Coalition here in Miami Dade and we do have a very low participation in civic engagement in youth in Miami, in my opinion, being a youth and trying to encourage other youths to participate in the political process. I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue of apathy because I do think young people have a lot of emotion about certain issues that isn’t necessarily, I don’t exactly know why, it doesn’t turn into political activism. But I wanted to make a quick announcement that we are going to have a meeting on April 88^th at 5:30 so if you know any young people who want to become more civicly active and it’s going to be at the United Way Building at Coral Way…. Why is it that we are not so passionate about how we exercise our passion about issues here in South Florida, particularly in Miami Dade.

Katy Sorenson: I think it’s hard for those of us who are active to answer that question cause we are all motivated to do stuff like that. so it’s hard to figure out why people don’t want to participate. There’s going to be a big pro-choice march in April 24^th, 25^th and a lot of people are going to be going and I’m going to. I’ve been demonstrating for abortion rights since I was a teenager. Yeah exactly. Because I think reproductive freedom is really in danger right now. And I think a lot of people will show up Washington to take stand and all kinds of people going from Miami Dade. So we are going to converge in Washington and let our voices be heard today.

Thomasina Williams: And if I could just make one comment. As I sit here today thinking about how to get more people involved I remember I was one of the people on my college campus to start a Free South Africa movement and I remember having a conversation with someone about people in Africa and trying to get people involved in activated and their response to me was, "Thomasina, you can’t worry about those other people. All you can do is worry about yourself and those people who are willing to work with you." And my mother said, "well, you know what, Jesus had only 12 disciples" and so we don’t always have to have necessarily everyone agreeing, everybody on board, but those people willing have to be willing to come on board to stay together, to stay focused and not deal with a lot of the egos that sometimes cause groups to splinter off and you have all these fractures. And it think you just take what you have and you organize to the best of your abilities. But I think it’s also very impotent to be very strategic. One of the things that the Republicans have far outdone the Democrats on is strategy. They actually sit down and devote brain power to thinking through issues and how we’re going to do this as opposed to stepping out there and not knowing what your next step is going to be. So you should take the group that yo have of young people organize those few people and you go off and try to make the best impact that you can and it think slowly you are going to grow when other people feel as though you are making a difference because everybody wants to be in the train of a winner.

Greg Bush: I agree with that, but I have a question to Bob as a follow up to that, and that is why aren’t there more by-partisan conversations where there can be some real constructive moves made, let’s say at the state level. I mean it just strikes me that everybody is looking for advantage so much and you know everybody knows the strategies and how you have to face forward and get the right PR buzz out of an issue. But are there people in Tallahassee that really try to reach across and make those strategic alliances to get some things done? …because I saw you shaking your head to some of the issues that Thomasina was bringing up and my guess is that there’s a lot of agreement.

Robert Sechen: There’s a lot of agreement on a lot of different things. You saw in a lot of thing that there’s a lot of by-partisan support of. You had Ron Silver here in Miami. He was a State Senator here for many years, very well-respected by Republicans in the House and did an excellent job at representing the community down here or it seems to me. He was always elected. You have a Rod Smith in Gainesville who has a powerful position in the Senate who has various funding aspects. So you do have those that have learned to work on both sides and you have very passionate people, Representative Gelbert who was very passionate. I used to play basketball against him at the downtown athletic hall and let me tell you. If he’s as passionate in the legislature as he was known for a rebound…but also in order to accomplish anything you can’t just sit in the sidelines complaining. There is quite a bit, but the fact is that you’re actually talking about what is the art of politics. The art of politics is the art of compromise. You compromise based on your position of power. So you’re going to have less compromise by the Republicans in the House of Representatives who hold the majority of votes than you’re going to have the needy compromise of the Democrats. But however, that’s still needed and that’s still part of the process both in Congress and in Tallahassee.

Thomasina: But at this point in history, we have republican president, Republican senate, republican house, and at Florida Level same thing and a republican Supreme Court. SO it really has gotten so scary and the compromises as you say never have to have happen when there’s htat large power in one party. And we really have to take that back and shift that power, and I think re-districting now has become so scientific. In the last re-district, computer analysis made it so scientific that you could just re-district all these great since the Republicans were in power the district republican district, all you can point out, it’s really a split state and we have to come up with a better system for re-districting or else this is just going to perpetuate itself.

Ric Katz: Which is somewhat gratuitous to the Democrats.

Thomasina Williams: Well of course it is.

Greg Bush: I think there’s a gentleman here wanting to speak.

Audience Member:  Hi. Kenneth Newman. Since you mentioned civics before. I have a social studies certificate. I’m not teaching right now. In Miami being such an immigrant community has led to to a lack of activism when it comes to things of civics and understating how government works which unfortunately I think has contributed to some apathy here. If more people understood the political processes, even if they are citizens, if they’re foreign born they are less likely to be involved in government and activism simply based on their own personal involvement to where they come from. So I would hope that teachers would bring civics back into the classroom so the next generation would be more civicly active.

Katy Sorenson: It’s all about the FCAT.

Ric Katz: I could think of two campaigns where this will be an issue. Evelyn’s and Mike’s. Civics will be.

Thomasina Williams: If I could just make a quick comment, I think your comment is an interesting one but I find that at least in certain instances where people who are not native born to this country actually appreciate more the right to vote because of where they have come from. Whereas those who were born here take it for granted and are lot more complacent.

Audience Member …they’re scared to involve themselves in a campaign where….

Audience Member:  I’m in the majority in this community. I am an immigrant and I am involved So I don’t think we should be stereotyped. I am among those people who did from October of 2002 until March of 2003 stand on a street corner every Friday during rush hour with groups of 6, 10, 15 people protesting the imminent attack upon Iraq. There are immigrants who are involved. I think it goes far beyond not teaching civics and just studying for the FCATs, I think that the horizon is closer in on people is much smaller on single member districts, far smaller, than incorporated entities in the county, the horizons are becoming much more narrower and I am one of those people who goes door to door for candidates every election for the candidates of my choice. I go up to people’s door, what do I hear about? "They moved my boating precinct four blocks north of where it was and that is an outrage. And why should I go vote?" The level of consciousness is shrinking and I don’t know if it has to do with single member districts or consumerism or the influence of money in campaigns or whether it just coincides in timing, but I am very uncomfortable to people reacting to candidates and to issues in a way that is limited to their own household. It is a brave thing to venture beyond the familiar surroundings. Some of us are doing it but people make us feel very odd than we do and I’m sadden by that. and it’s not just immigrants.

Greg Bush: I know we have to stop here.

Robert Sechen: There is a major clothing retailer that says "An Educated Consumer is our best customer". And now that you mention the fact that 92% don’t make up their mind till the last few weeks, maybe these are the smart people….aren’t we sick of already of the national adds that we’re hearing on television. The idea of campaign finance reform, of course both parties want to get their message out there, but do people really want to hear a message, do they really want o be educated? To me, we ought to have equal time with the media. In other words, if there’s a print ad that goes out there, there ought to be a republican that goes right next to it….well, in terms of television you have 30 seconds, you have 30 seconds.

Ric Katz: What if 30 people run for president?

Robert Sechen: well, that’s not the realistic…but the bottom line is that is education or is it a message. And I think people hear so much and they just consider it noise and they turn them off and that’s where we get our [ ]. It’s just so much nose that we hear.

Greg Bush: Final comment from anybody here? Because I know you all need to get going.

Katy Sorenson: Well, I just want to thank everybody who is here because i know somebody may have been involved in… historic preservation and Nancy, in environment and a whole host of issues. You are everywhere doing everything. So many of the people I know in this room are the people who are doing things, who are listening and creating change and making a difference for lack of a better term. But they are actually putting their money and their activism where their mouths are. You’re not the only ones. There are more like you and i see it downtown all the time.

Greg Bush: And it goes way beyond Democrat or Republican.

Katy Sorenson: I don’t feel so despondent. You know we’re going to get back. The pendulum is going to swing but things are better than they were 30 years ago.

Robert Sechen: You know, I’m here. I work for the republican Party of Florida. Republican Part of Florida are supported by people who wrote 5, 10, 20 dollar checks. You would be surprised by how activism, people will go to a post office and buy a postal money order, put it in an envelope, and send that in because they believe in the principles of republican Party. Thousands do that. it’s all public information. Thousands are doing it. John Dean tapped into that kind of thing in his political campaign. Howard Dean, I’m sorry. But the fact is that those people are out there and it is incumbent upon the activist which I think the room is pretty much filled with to find out a way of motivating those people and to getting them involved. They are out there and they’re doing their thing.

Greg Bush: Thank you all very much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming.