GETTING BEYOND GETTING ALONG?  Facing the Diversity of Miami-Dade’s Ethical Traditions
Transcript

Getting Beyond Getting Along

April 12, 2004

Hosted by: Greg Bush and the College of Arts and Sciences

Greg Bush : Good evening. My name is Greg Bush and this is the third series of community programs, community forums in the subject of Democracy In Miami : A Work in Progress. It is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Science in association with the League of Women Voters, the Urban Environment League, and I’d like to thank the College especially for helping get a lot of this together. Our two earlier programs focused on News and Education, as well as political cynicism in our region. And the idea behind the series was to link questions in relationship to the presidential campaigns in local issues. And as many of you know too, this is being taped and going up on streaming video so you can see these programs afterward, and we’re getting them transcribed with links and stuff like that so it’s, even if the audience is very selective it will have some kind of value. I think it’s important for programs to have that.

Our program this evening takes off from the comment after a 1992 LA riots by Rodney King who said, "Can’t we just get along?". This program poses the question whether we in Miami are beyond just getting along. How far have we come in those respects? Let me just mention a couple of background things and then I’ll introduce the panel. I’ll have them actually say a word about themselves and then we’ll get into some discussion.

It is clear I think the record here in Miami that there’s been a strong legacy of bitterness in the treatment of people in different ethnic groups in this area. Jews early, Cubans in the 1960s, African-Americans over the long haul, Haitians and others. The targets have been varied. Whites, Cubans themselves, African-Americans, a lot of different people and all of this has involved job discrimination, police brutality, media portrayals, etcetera. And yet as Alex [] and others have said Miami is supposedly a city of the future facing the raw quality of diverse and ethnic traditions more directly forthrightly than almost any other North American city, but here we are in the year 2004. It’s been almost 4 years since the Elian Gonzalez affair in the last year of the Clinton administration. President Bush has now enunciated a new immigration policy and it seems to me it’s fitting and proper to start addressing some of these serious questions. How will immigration issues play out in this presidential election year? Are there any distinctly different ethical traditions within our region that we can identify and talk about? How have ethnic stereotypes changed over the past few years? What role have liberal politicians or groups of the news media played in helping alleviate the situation?

Joining us are four distinguished visitors and I’m going to ask them to identify themselves starting with Cheryl if you would.

Cheryl Little: Hi. Great to have you here tonight. My name is Cheryl Little. I’m the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center for a non-profit organizations. We provide legal help to immigrants of all nationalities.

Bill Tech: I’m Bill Tech. I was the editor and founder of a Generation [] magazine for a number of years. It was geared to young Latinos and Cuban Americans and I’ve written books for that audience as well and done some documentaries on PBS. I’m filling in for Joe Garcia the executive director of the Cuban American foundation. I’m not on the board but I’m a dues-paying member so I guess they asked me to fill in for Joe because I know something about that group.

Leonie Hermantin: Good evening, I’m Leonie Hermantin. I’m the director of the strategic planning at the Institute of Haitian Neighborhood Center. I’ve worked in the Haitian community for…eight years. At the neighborhood center we focus at providing access to information to both members of the community and any outsiders who want information and access to the Haitian community.

Ken Goodman: Good evening my name is Ken Goodman. I’m a philosopher who with a colleague directs the Ethics program at the University of Miami, something we’ve done for thirteen years. I’m not sure it matters here tonight but I suddenly feel like it’s important to mention that. I mean let’s do a question, how many people are native South Floridians in the room? We don’t need to go into what year it was for those who are natives. But while I haven’t lived here my entire life I have returned here. I was born in South Florida and I somehow believe that matters in terms of the topic.

Greg Bush: Ok. Let’s start and I’d like to ask each of our guests to talk for a few minutes and address the question as they see fit. But I’d like to start with Ken. Do you think that there are distinctly ethical traditions in Miami and do you have any suggestions on some of the questions that I posed?

Ken Goodman: One of the things that we try and do that address ethics, ethics in the professions, ethics in the environment, ethics in health care, all of which are courses which are offered at the University of Miami. We talk about that very question. Is what is right or wrong, is it universal? Or is it local? And how would you defend either of those answers? We know there’s lots of practical differences about the ways that different people, and they may not correlate by the way with ethnic groups at all, identify their sense of right and wrong and the challenge for the rest of us is why on earth should it be different? The alternative to moral relativism, the belief that what’s right or wrong varies by culture or era, or tradition is a moral universalism that says that if it’s right or wrong then it doesn’t make sense to say that morality can be local. A moral universalist argues that in fact, the values that we share are in fact universal. And in South Florida at least, one points, in fact I’m going to say something that is completely uncontroversial, I think, and it’s not just South Florida but I think it could be said anywhere. Does anybody know, for example, of a culture that says, "yes, please treat us with disrespect." We disagree about the details about what that would constitute treating someone with disrespect. There’s an appropriate level of abstraction which is what look for in the sciences all the time, the underlying structure, if you will, the underlying structure of matter, the underlying structure of a bridge, the underlying structure of a common morality. We might say, "You know something? We actually share and hold in common far more things, and far more important things that divide us."

Greg: Ok. Cheryl, do you have any reflections about what Ken said or beyond?

Cheryl Little: As Ken was talking, I was thinking, "Yes, the professor should have taken that question." You know when I heard him say, "you know I never heard anybody say we’re going to treat people with disrespect" I can tell you that in my line of work, we unfortunately do feel that all too often certain immigrant groups are treated with disrespect.

Ken Goodman: You think that’s wrong, though don’t you?

Cheryl: I do think that’s wrong. Absolutely. There is a point of contention when similarly situated groups are treated so differently as is so often the case, and I can talk about that a little more later if you’d like.

Greg: No, if you’d like, now is the time.

Cheryl: Well, for example, in Miami we have such a diverse immigrant community and I think that’s wonderful. But oftentimes our laws treat these different ethnic groups very differently. For example, let’s just talk a little about the Cuban group. Congress in 1966 passed a law, the Cuban Adjustment Act, that permitted Cubans who were admitted or paroled in the United States to apply for legal residency a year and a day later. Then in 1996, when a number of anti-immigrant laws passed, one of which was expedited removal, which said if you were an asylum seeker and say you land at a Port of arrival in Miami airport, you are going to be mandatory detained at least until you can convince an asylum officer you have a credible fear of persecution upon return, but one group was exempt and that was the Cubans.

There was a law that passed I believe in 1997, NICARA, which gave Nicaraguans and Cubans here before a certain time, the opportunity to apply for legal residency. It gave some groups from eastern Europe a little something, and it gave groups like the Haitians absolutely nothing. And just recently, in fact in November of 2002, after a group of Haitians landed here by boat and it was, many of you may have seen it in your televisions, and shortly after President Bush was asked why the Haitians were being treated the way they were, because they were being indefinitely detained and he said, "I think the Haitians should be treated fairly." And within a day or two after that, this administration announced that everybody who made it by boat to land from now on was going to be subject to expedited removal and wouldn’t be entitled to bonds. There’s the dry foot, wet foot policy that was in place so up until then if you made it to land on your own, you were at least entitled to ask a judge to bond you out. These are just some of the different ways, fro example, in which Cubans and many other groups are treated differently.

I work for an organization as I said earlier on that represents immigrants of all nationalities. And we call for fair and humane treatment of all groups but it’s hard not, when you work for an organization like in mine, not to be mindful that Congress and or lawmakers have treated certain groups with special treatment, if you will, and have in many ways done, to what many would argue a discriminatory treatment of groups like the Haitians. And I think that’s a huge problem because it tends to be very divisive and pit one group against another. The good news is when after the NICARA legislation passed, the legislation giving Nicaraguans and Cubans the opportunity to apply for legal residency, I was very worried because many Haitians I talked to were very upset and many others were as well. We were reaching out to Cubans and others saying, "Look, can we please be united in an effort to call for similar legislation to pass for Haitians and other groups?" and actually that was a terrific moment in Miami because for the first time leaders from many groups in this community came together and were supporting a bill HORIFA which was to give Haitians who had lived here a certain time to apply for legal residency. So that was a good thing.

Unfortunately, we don’t see enough of that. I don’t think. I think you know if you’re from a certain immigrant group you’re bound to have tunnel vision. You’re going to concerned on helping advance the rights of your own group.

Ken Goodman: Haven’t you found that a lot of Cubans also criticize the policy toward Haitians? Feeling an unfair advantage as a result of that.

Cheryl: Have Cubans criticized the Haitian policy? I’m sure they have probably and I think maybe Leonie can address this better than I. but I have talked to many Haitians who would certainly like to see more support in a day to day basis from the Cuban American community, for example when they’re speaking to their elected representatives or at rallies or whether they’re trying to get to officials in Washington. I want to be clear. I am not in any way suggesting that the Cubans shouldn’t be afforded the protections that they have been afforded by our lawmakers. I am only pointing out the problem that’s created when similarly situated groups are treated so differently.

Greg: I think Bill next.

Bill: Sure, sure. Well I agree with everything Cheryl said. It is definitely not a level playing field. I think some of the reasons for that is that there was a lot of Cold War hysteria and you know whether it was real or not is not the issue. But certainly that led to the early 60s, sort of favored the immigrant status with Cubans who were allowed a more liberal immigrant policy than I think anyone in history. I mean it was pretty much you guys are clean from the iron curtain come on over. And so there was a great deal of facility with that and we have a unique situation in Miami in that for example, in Los Angeles there is a constant influx of people but it’s basically one group of people, and so one policy will cover it whether fair or unfair and I think it tends to lean towards the unfair. In Miami where you have all these different groups trying to get in for basically the same socio-economic reasons no matter how it’s [], what winds up being the deciding factor in how the different groups are treated is unfortunately the result of lobbying. Because remember that the Cuban American Foundation, the main thing that they do is lobby. They base their whole organization on the [] lobbying basically saying, "we have s somewhat unpopular situation. We want to get all these immigrants in." Not that that’s what Israel is trying to do, but we’re going to spend all our money and time lobbying.

On the one hand, you have the old Cold War rhetoric, then you have the strong lobbying of various groups with a lot of economic say, creating sort of an unequal balance of power when in reality it should be fair because you could say, "Well, Cubans are political refuges, and the Haitians are economic refugees." But I don’t think it would necessarily be true. I think they’re both running at this stage from an economic crisis. Now, that does bring up a couple of other points. I don’t want to take up too much time.

Leonie Hermantin: I just want to clarify that Haitians are not simply running from economic issues. As we have seen in the past couple of months, there have been, whether you’re pro-Aristide or anti-Aristide, there have certainly been legitimate reasons. What Cheryl didn’t point out is that President Bush’s policies have actually changed in the midst of the turmoil that occurred in Haiti. Because they said if anybody is intercepted at sea they will not be, they will just be returned to Haiti whether they have a legitimate claim for asylum or not. so what I think, one of the issues which have somewhat divided the communities is that the Cuban American community would say that they would not get involved in the refugee issue pertinent to Haitians because I think politics. It goes down to party line. You know Haitians Republicans and Cuban Republicans were saying that until the Haitians advocates who talk about the refugee rights address the issues of undemocratic movement in Haiti, they will not get involved. That is one of the arguments views. There was no democracy in Haiti but hat advocates here would now address that issue not until we faced the realities, they would not really embrace us as openly as they embraced the Venezuelans for example. Because there was am ,ore homogenous group, politically, sort of anti-Chavez sentiment that was universal as opposed to sort of the pull and tug of the pro-Aristide and anti-Aristide. SO ti think that was one of the arguments used by some Cuban politicals as to why they did not get too heavily involved because it wasn’t clear to them. We were saying it was political and yet we were not talking about the political push factor, then why should they get involved?

I also think that the immigration issues have, and going back to NICARA, in terms of the local politics have really compelled the Haitian communities to become much more vocal about their issues, much more organized and take their protests beyond the streets and I think that we have from HARIFA which was enacted in 1998 you have the emergence of advocacy groups that were much more organized much more focused and also a bit more, a whole lot more focused on local politics.

A state legislator, mayor of North Miami, you have the Haitian Republican party. That is an anomaly but they acted. Haitian American Republicans and you have several, a whole lot of civic organizations, and they are very much engaged in the local politics. Recently someone wrote a letter in the Herald reminding the democrats that Kerry, that they should not, and I would like to discuss that when we talk about the congressional black caucus and its position on Haiti and how divisive it was in terms of local politics. This is one of the issues that I’d like to address at some point. Did you want to say something?

Bill: Oh yes. I didn’t mean to oversimplify the economic situation nor did I mean to simplify on the Cuban side to say that it was economic. It was political on both sides. I just wanted to say that it’[s more similar than it is dissimilar at this point in the game. I’d like to add if I could, that is seems as thought the plying field will get more parity because the possibility of a gigantic influx of people, I believe, is so terrifying, to whatever administration is in charge, I think, I know we don’t want to jump ahead to the young man Mr. Gonzalez, but I think that the heart of returning the boy was some kind of "we don’t want another influx. We want to give Mr. Castro, whatever Mr. Castro is asking for. I think similarly now with the return of these guys that are coming in the big boats, you know with the cars too, I think if this were the 1980s and the Cold War were still going on, the United States would be much more adamant about it. "This is our enemy and we’re not going to do this and this." I think at this stage, it’s : Listen, just don’t let a mass exodus come here because whatever party is in office is going to get a huge blow, especially Florida is. I think similarly with Haiti they’re more apt to help out and send troops and do what they have to do because they US government wants to avoid and influx. My own paranoid thought but I’m putting it out there.

Greg: what kind of communication exists these days, be it better or worse, between Cuban Americans and Haitian-American politicians and others? Either of you conscious about it?

Bill: I could give a brief answer. I don’t know how strong it is when I watch television. When President Bush was here last year, and you the Haitian community, I don’t know what the organization was, they had a protest and presented …and was signed by not politicians but community activists who signed it and I don’t know how much weight that had. When the boat load of people arrived, I remember that guy that was always at Elian Gonzalez’s case, what was his name? Ramon Sanchez. I heard him saying on the news, "well, the Haitians are being treated unfairly." I don’t know how far that goes besides a couple of civic minded people. I think the Cubans are in a situation where they’re losing footing and ground everyday. And even when they weren’t I’m not sure they’d be worried outside their particular group.

Cheryl: yeah, I just wanted to clarify. When I mentioned that in November of 2002 this administration put in place a policy saying if you arrived by boat you’re no longer going to be eligible for bonds, and you’ll be mandatorily detained, once again we exempted Cubans. And to just say a little bit more about that, after the December 2001 boat load arrived here our government started keeping the Haitians in detention during the course of their asylum proceedings which made it very difficult fort them to get attorneys and make their case for political asylum. After the October 2002 boat arrived which was a sort of very public event, with television cameras down there on Key Biscayne recording what was going on, the Haitian policy got even more restrictive. Our attorney general in fact went so far as to suggest that Haitians had to be kept in detention for purposes of national security because there was terrorists from Palestine and Pakistan hanging out in Haiti waiting to board the Haitians boats and invade our borders. And I can’t tell you what that did to our Haitian clients who were in detention. They could not for the lives of themselves understand that. and frankly, if we ant distinguish between a real terrorist and a Haitian refugee on board a Haitian boat, God help us all.

One young Haitian, 17 year old David Joseph, he was our client. He asked the judge for a bond. The judge gave him a bond for 250o dollars. We were thrilled. And then next thing we knew, Asa Hutchinson the undersecretary for DA Jess went to the attorney general and said, "Mr. Attorney General I want you to issue a directive not only preventing David Joseph from being released on bond, but preventing all Haitians granted a bond from being released" and in the 19 page decision the attorney general did jus that.

Now this is a post 9-1 world we live in, where you would think that our administration would have its hands full focusing on the real terrorist in this world and not innocent Haitian refugees who are doing nothing more than trying to flee persecution in their homeland. At least that’s the case with many of them.

Ken Goodman: It’s interesting of course how quickly we have moved from ethics to politics and strategy. And in fact immigration. There are large segments of the South Florida community that are not immigrants. They say, "we feel that we have been left behind as well." And in fact some of the tensions in our communities are shaped by just that. I mean how long different groups have neither been discriminated against or disadvantaged notice how much favor newcomers get depending on which way the political winds are blowing. It’s good to be able to hate Fidel because I guess that get’s you stuffed and Washington hears about it more than it might care about it. for example, we had a, we do a lot of stuff in environmental policy in environmental ethics, and one of the issues in South Florida continues to be unaddressed which might be something that would be of interest to you in terms of addressing past wrongs which goes by the name of environmental justice. The highest levels of lead in the soil in Miami-Dade county are where? They are on the edge of I-95 from the old days when cars had leaded gasoline. I-95 goes through what Miami community? Overtown. The people who used to live where I-95, by the way built it there because that was the cheapest land. They moved communities all over South Florida. The families that are left on the side are the families whose kids in the 60s, after they built I-95, and to this day are playing on the dirt that’s still got the lead that the cars left. So what’s to be done about this? This goes back 40 years. And children in principle, the epidemiology is still very clear, there is still lead exposure in these neighborhoods that’s far in excess of lead exposure everywhere. So now the challenge is, and everybody agrees that that was a bad thing to do, in fact for a bunch of different perspectives you notice no one is disagreeing. So here’s an opportunity to disagree. What sort of regional address is appropriate?

We talk about the context of sexual discrimination. We talk about redressing that comparable worth for example. The evidence is still clear that women make a lower salary for no particular reason other than ht atmen made more money than women did. You discover that there are opportunities in discrimination that we don’t realize. But the interesting ethical issue it seems to me is one that is a very interesting source of controversy, while we all agree that discrimination is wrong, I think mo0st people if you could get them to speak their mind, they’d say, "you’re right, there’s really no principle reason to treat Haitians any different than any other group of immigrants" and the only reason we’ve done it is, and you can fill in the blank with whatever reason you deem appropriate. One of the things the University of Miami has been doing for years are NIH grants to reduce the under representation of minorities in the sciences. A worthy grant and the people keep suing it and suing it, saying you can’t do that, you can’t base it on ethnicity or race. The challenge for people who have those grants is the following,. I actually have this challenge for several years. My job was to put kids in laboratories at the marine campus, in Coral Gables and the Medical Campus and I would go to a laboratory and they’d say to me, "Look, I’ve got some kids from Dade county schools and we’d like t put them in labs." And you would say to me (to Greg), because you’re a white guy, and been there for years, "I wish you’d been here a little earlier. My church group. I’m committed to helping kid in my church group." And you’d say, "I wish my kid was going to be in the lab." And what you discover is a bunch of people who are not racists but were part of it. you got a gig in the University laboratories whether you knew somebody or not. not because there was any racists intents by anybody, but it was overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white that it became an instant challenge on how to get these kids into laboratories. That was the whole point of the grant. The idea was taxing people in non-trivial amounts in order to try and grow the scientific enterprise in this country. It would be nice if somebody’s grants actually went to people of color or people of different ethnicities. Once again everybody aggress that that’s bad but now everybody comes and says, "how can we make sure that the laboratories of a private university are more accessible for the sake of the grant?"

Leonie: Well, I think it has to go beyond the goodwill of individuals. I think that and this is where we an address the issues on how do we get along, I mean I think that once you do have tunnel vision. I am an advocate for the Haitian community and I can give you the statistics about the poverty, the abject poverty, the lack of access to X-Y-Z, but I am not that well-versed to the issues of other communities. And you talked about the lead issues in Overtown. I can tell you it’s in Liberty City. It’s in Little Haiti. Part of Little Havana and if we can go beyond this sort of vulcanization of our issues and concerns and really start talking to each other, in a meaningful way. I mean I think there’s a lot of superficiality in this community in terms of how we get along. You know we invite each other to events. We make sure that there’s a token that represents and again I’m talking about Haitian events. You have to have a Hispanic, etcetera etcetera. But it doesn’t go beyond that. The interaction only takes place at the level of leadership. At the level of the feel-good…but when it really comes to getting communities to understand each other. Or actually organizations to really cross those invisible lines and really work together then it becomes much more difficult for obvious reasons. Language, geography, culture. But I think that the challenge is in really creating these mechanisms. There are attempts to do that. There are organizations that do try to bridge that divide. But there’s so many issues we’re bombarded with. There are so many issues. You know when we try, we try to do one thing around getting communities to talk together and then a boat load of Haitians arrive. And we have to focus on the Haitians. Again we try to work together and poverty is an issue in our community. The compelling needs of our community it takes a real focus and a real effort to meet those challenges.

Greg Bush: Let me ask a question relating to our earlier forums. What role do you think that the news media and educational institutions have played in addressing these issues in any positive way? Or do you still see that as a major stumbling block? In the school system for example, is it starting to sensitize students more? Or can they do better in your view? Maybe Cheryl first. Have you seen…have you asked on programs in terms of the school system, is there much information that goes out to school children in relation to some of the issues that we’ve been talking about tonight?

Cheryl: No. I mean, generally, when I am talking to the media, I am talking about a specific legal issue that affects my immigrant clients and that’s it. and I think that is the problem, and I think in many ways Miami is a segregated town. I think it ahs been for along time. If we talk about bringing people out of poverty, if we talk about empowering people, we are not talking about this group or that group. I mean, really, this is one of the things I say so often is. Our clients, we the different groups have so much in common with each other. While it is true what Leonie said that if we have a rally, we’ll get leaders, sort of the usual suspects from the different communities to help, but we don’t get that grassroots kind of support that is needed to change policy to bring people out of poverty and for empowerment to make this a better community. And you know, when I was talking about the Haitians earlier, forgive me for doing that, but when we talk about the Haitians and the Cubans, in some ways it represents the two extremes of our immigration policies, but in this post 9-11 world, if we can say, "well, we’re going to use national security, as a justification to keep Haitians in detention" then it’s only a matter of time before the next group is disenfranchised or discriminated against. What’s really surprised me is the lack of outrage, the lack of support.

I know that in the aftermath of Elian Gonzalez I spoke to many Cuban friends who felt beaten up. Who said, "oh, my goodness people don’t understand what we’re fighting for." And I should tell you that the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center filed an amicus brief in the Elian Gonzalez case, saying that Elian should be entitled to a full and fair asylum hearing. You know, immigration is the agency that was in charge of deporting him. But that agency was also charged for looking out for his best interest. We weren’t predicting what the outcome should be. I spoke with many Cuban Americans in the aftermath of the Elian Gonzalez’s arrival and I was very hopeful at that time that we would be working more closely with the Cuban community. I saw that as a great opportunity, but you know then people get back to the things that take up a lot of their time. And unfortunately we don’t see the kind of interaction that I think, you know I think that the Cuban community…we’ve got so much to learn from them. They’ve done so many things well which is why they have some of the benefits that they have.

Leonie: In terms of the media, I just want to add that, for us there are two groups that we talk about. There’s the Spanish media and there’s the English media and I think that very often we overlook the importance of the Spanish media in helping us in bridging that gap because when we go out and try to sell an idea, we ask the media to cover us or something, we really focus on the Herald and the English-speaking media. I think that that is a mistake because there’s such a deep penetration. I mean 60% of the population is Hispanic and we’re not taking advantage of that.

In terms of the, whether the media helps or not, I think that the media has been very interested to some extent in certain immigration issues. There will be, when there’s issues that relate to immigration and there’s the unfair treatment of a refuges, I think that that will find coverage. And what that does to some extent is to detract from the other issues, the other community issues, whether it be community building efforts across ethnic lines. I mean very rarely do you see that covered. There was this great even about women and prosperity the other day, and I don’t know that received that much coverage, and it was an event where women from all ethnic groups came and talked about wealth-building strategies. There’s the prosperity campaign that again is making a tremendous effort to work across, and it’s been a real struggle to get the media to cover this community wide effort.

Ken: Not in defense of the media, necessarily, but the news will be where things go bad or when things go well. In the meantime, the broad margins between success and failure are not particularly news-worthy. Notice that when we talk about conflict over immigration and conflicts over acts, there are surrogate markers for conflicts that arise because of poverty. One of the things that existed before there were any immigrants and has gotten worse over the past 40 years is that Miami-Dade county continues to be unfortunately, still among tem poorest communities in the Untied States of America. One of the reasons why people don’t go about holding each other’s hands celebrating our shared values is they’re too busy trying to get their kids to school and put food on the table. Some of them do that more or less successfully. It seems to me, and no one would suggest that civilized society should say to the children of these people, "well, your parents made bad investments, therefore tough for you." I think we all say that civilized people should help each other out in that sort of way. The politics becomes interesting when you take morality and you try and move into the political sphere. People who are agreeing completely about what I just said, will disagree vehemently about how you get there. How do you redress a past wrong? How do you resolve fundamental problems in society? The fact that people are doing exactly what you say and a lot of them are doing it in the community and are spending a fair amount of time is it’s hard to get the media’s attention. They don’t see the angle that they can work there.

In the schools, for what it’s worth, we have kids in Dade county schools. I mean on these issues what I seem to be seeing is, well it’s what you want kids to be learning. There are no good grounds for discrimination for instance that are based on what country your grandparents came from or what have you. The legacies of poverty are very often not the fault of the people who endure them, and the kids learn about each other’s cultures in ways that we never did. People your age for example.

Greg: I want to make sure that if people have some questions, they I guess come up to the microphone in a few minutes.

Bill: I’m sorry to interrupt you. I just didn’t want that media thing to get away because I think that that’s the…we expect the media or at least I expect television media to be sensationalistic and not really get the heart of things. But i think where they really miss the boat is print media. It’s so disappointing in Miami. You have one group being Cuban American, they are so over covered, and then we’re really unhappy to be covered. We always think they missed the story and then everybody else is like, "all they write about is the Cubans." So it’s not fun for anyone. If it happens in the Haitian community, you’re not going to read about it. If it happens in the African-American community, even less so. It’s completely invisible because they’re not these gigantic issues with boat loads of people arriving, so it’s still just as dramatic and just as trying. It’s pretty frustrating. I just want to finish my point, I think in Miami it’s easy to get isolated because it’s sprawled out. It’s not New York City where people are being pumped out into this giant machine. It’s little by little sprawled out. There’s so much land and it is easy for the Cubans to get into their little enclave and granted that enclave is not geographical so much anymore. But it’s easy to get into that enclave. I live in North Miami in a predominantly Haitian area and no one was happy about me moving in, I’ll tell you that. in that area, one can see the Haitian American community because the way that that community operates and the social, economic things that it brings. It’s creating its own enclave which I going to, not by any fault of theirs, but it is going to alienate, whoever is on the other edge of that. Same thing for the Cubans.

I grew up in Coral Way. It used to be Little Georgia and then it was the "Southwest-cera" which is the Southwest area. Transliteration of Southwest area, and you know, people little by little were, "what’s with these people?" , and then I hear about the Haitians, you know. It’s so difficult to have all these groups and all this space to sprawl out. You would think that the Miami Herald or the New Times would try. I don’t believe they have one Creole-speaking reporter on beat covering Little Haiti. She’s in Washington now.

Cheryl: Who? The Miami Herald?

Leonie: They have Jackie Charles. They have more than one. Leslie Cassimere is in New York. Jackie Charles is here. Daphne is here.

Bill: You find that coverage is way under-covered?

Leonie: I think it’s better. It’s definitely improved. I think that it’s better than it was and again it’s result of the community’s advocacy. We’ve met with the Herald on many occasions and we’ve pointed out that the coverage was very biased and did not reflect the diversity that existed within the community and it was very negative.

Greg: So you complained directly to the Herald?

Leonie: We have had several meetings with the Herald.

Bill: …during the whole Elian thing the lead editor, I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago, we were on Calle Ocho and he said, "you know what? I never walked on Calle Ocho before." I’m like, "You were assigning all the stories during that big thing and you never walked by Calle Ocho? Would it have killed you?"

Greg: Yes. Could you identify yourself?

Audience Member: Sure, my name is Jennifer Goodman, no relation although I wouldn’t mind. You’re a great thinker. I work for the City of Miami and strategic planning. My first thought when I saw the panelists was that there was no representation from an African American which is unfortunate because I think that some of the thing that we’ve been talking about tonight are maybe skirting around just a little. It’s perhaps that some of the issues in this community in particular is that the African American community has been really disenfranchised, and it is my belief that some of the Haitian immigrants are in the situation that they’re in is because of a race issue. That’s my belief and I think that’s something that we don’t talk about. That’s one thought that I had.

Something else that I wanted to mention was that there are people in the community who are looking to run organizations. I do have an organization that I am affiliated with called Meet Miami which is a social organization but also with a mind for wanting to bring together people of all ethnicities for social activities now. But there’s also something that Leonard Pitts wrote an article about on Martin Luther King’s Jr. birthday which was called Dallas Dinner Table. And I am looking to start an organization here called Miami Dinner Table where we can have forums for talking about issues on race relations, but that’s a very narrow topic. Community relations I think is a better way of putting it so if after this we can talk a little bit. I think it’s hard for people like myself who have inexhaustible amounts of energy for wanting to do things for this community to get access to different ethnic groups and to people who have the kind of resources to people who can kind of help bridge the gap in those kinds of areas. At least I’ve had trouble getting access. So if you have any suggestions to people who want to get access and kind of put things together that would be great.

Leonie: I have to tell you, I don’t know but to some of us, to those of us who are invited to these let’s sit down and talk, let’s discuss, it gets a little exhausting. I think that the next step is in the doing. It’s in the actually stop talking about it but to actually provide opportunities for this sort of interaction to take place. I mean, if you want to find…

Greg: But even this is just talk right?

Leonie: Well, there have been and maybe I’m getting too old for this, but there have been numerous efforts where we’ve all sat down and talked about what divides the Haitian Americans versus the African Americans and Cuban Americans, etcetera, etcetera. But you know it remains still where there’s this place where the gap still exists because at the end of the day we all go back home and that’s it. I think there needs to be, and I don’t know, but meeting the challenge that he’s posed again. What do we do in a much more engaged manner beyond talk to really get those communities to work together? I think that there are models that could be supported to continue. Going back to Daniela’s campaign where we’re talking about bringing wealth into all these communities. I think that efforts like that should be supported because people are talking to each other, but people should socialize, break bread together. And again there are incredible people who do it. My friend Jessica who has Chabot every Friday where it’s a hodge podge of everyone under the sun. And I think that we need to get beyond. I don’t want to discourage you, but I think that we really need to go beyond the talk.

Bill: Can I?...i want to commend you because you did mention the one thing that is the big colossal zeppelin above everybody’s head, which is the racial problem in our community and America at large and I’ll throw this bomb out there that I tend to believe that we have this systematic economic apartheid. We have in the ghettos of every major city, black people. I don’t think that’s some accident. I think that’s part of a larger situation, and I want to commend you on that. it is admirable anything that anyone does because we are just talking and she’s a saying let’s take action.

Audience: My plan is to get a solution and have it assigned to me and have resources such as people like yourselves, to have people like yourselves as mentors because those are the things that people like myself need. I think that the problem in our community is that there are not as many people as there are in different parts of the country like in the Northeast and the larger cities, that are willing to take on the responsibilities and to really run with them.

I’m not really as young as you said. I’m just wearing a t-shirt and pants. You know it comes a time when there are people, people really do need to run with it. they need access.

Bill: I just want to add that there is no infrastructure wherein people can have access to an economic benefit that we have not created. Because we don’t do anything, we don’t make anything here in Florida, expect we develop. So if you’re not some rich developer guy, there are not going to be those big opportunities unlike New York or Chicago. Well, the whole country is changing. And Florida especially the focus is on something that will promote some sort of interaction because there’s no infrastructure in place.

Cheryl: I just wanted to mention that I think one of the problems is that we have so many people in our community who are disenfranchised. You know, Miami is the poorest city in the country and again the Prosperity Campaign I think is a very important part of this discussion. And I know that the Dade community foundation under the direction of Ruth Shack tried to get different people at a table talking about things that we could do together, things that we had in common. With respect to the last comment, by our young idealist here, which is wonderful, we need to clone you. I know that many African Americans have been concerned to what’s happened to the Haitians because they do see it as a racists issue. On the other hand, while many African American leaders have spoken out publicly on behalf of the nations, I think it’s also true that some of those leaders were criticized by people in the African American community because they said, "Look, you’re spending all this time dealing with Haitian issues while we’ve got a lot of problems too." And that is just part of out dilemma here.

Greg: Fragmentation…

Cheryl: Absolutely.

Leonie: And on the other hand, you know we’ll say, "it’s really important that you talk about immigration issues but we also want the founding to come to our communities because one of the things that has happened is that many elected officials really love the opportunity to come to the floor and say, "this is discriminatory, this is wrong..etc", but when we talk about a family of four surviving on 14,000 dollars a year; when we’re talking about improving the opportunities for members of our community then suddenly we hear, "well, we’ve already talked about immigration and if we give too much then we are alienating our []." So we really cannot put the resources that you may need and that’s also the other side of the coin in terms of…

Greg: You had brought up the Congressional Black Caucus. Maybe this is the time…

Leonie: Oh yeah. What has happened, if people have not been following what has happened in the past two months in Haiti was that you had the democratically elected President Aristide who was by some account he resigned and by others he was kidnapped and whatever. I think he resigned but …anyway, the congressional black caucus, some members, I think there has been a stepping back from the general membership has taken the position that you know Aristide should be returned. And they’ve sort of been defending Aristide and that has alienated. There were many Haitians who’ve become very irritated with, particularly Congresswoman, Maxine Waters’ position on Haiti. There is this sense that she is dragging the African American leadership into an issue where they should stay out. They should allow Haitians Americans to really speak about what the issues are. So there’s been this sort of undercurrent of resentment not only against the Congressional Black Caucus but against the democratic party because there’s this fear that because the Congressional Black Caucus was sort of the intermediary for all black issues, the democrats will sort of heed to their own interests and turn against the new government in Haiti. So there’s this tension that exists between the Haitian American community and the congressional black caucus.

Audience Member: ….are not recognizing that soccer is the sport that brings everybody together because the whole world plays it and that includes Cubans. As a matter of fact, for better or for worse, the Cuban national team is getting a lot better. I know there are some people in this town who would not want to support that team but the fact is that I’m into bringing people together regardless of what country they are from. And you can name the country and there are people who play soccer and that includes Iraq because the Iraqi national team is back together. So anyway, my point is that I work with politicians here. I have a good rapport with some of them, unfortunately the City of Miami is still living in the 18th century when it comes to sport of soccer. And what can we do to convince the City of Miami politicians that this is the sport to help make the City of Miami a better lace to live?

Bill: Could I really answer? I would like to answer. I know this is going to sound crazy because I said that I lived in Little Haiti and now I’m going to say that I liked soccer, you’re going to think I’m trying to kiss everybody’s butt, but my father played soccer after World War II in Europe as a team that they organized to play against European teams, it was called the Miami Americans very ironic name, they played in Tropical Park. We’d go see the Forth Lauderdale Strikers and I think that we can lead into an issue that you did bring up which is about politicians and what they can do. For example, the Orange Bowl had the opportunity to be the host for a major league soccer franchise and it would have brought a lot of the diverse elements of a community other, and I always thought the Orange Bowl was doing big stuff with football. And now with soccer, everybody loves it. And Joe Carollo at the time asked for an exorbitant long contract so they took the team elsewhere where there were not any Latinos and Haitians or Jamaicans and people that really liked something, and we lost it. So maybe we get on the political track.

Leonie: There’s this part in Little Haiti in the plan in Little Haiti and one of the issues when the communities came together was over the soccer fields because people were saying, "well, we want football." This is the sports that’s played in this country. And this is again where the major ethnic issues are put to the surface. Around to what sports you are going to be playing. Are you going to have a baseball field or football field or soccer field?

Ken: …somebody needs to say something on behalf of the Dominican population in South Florida….for what it’s worth disagreement is not a bad thing. Sometimes intense disagreement is what makes, what greases some of the wheels the way we want them greased. When reasonable people disagree, then you end up having a level of discourse. If everyone started agreeing with each other, then you’d know that something had gone wrong.

Audience: Just to give an example of the problems we’ve had here. Just when soccer started to get popular in the City of Miami in the last few years, all of a sudden a fence appeared on Douglas Park on 37th Ave. in the city where there was soccer going on and all of a sudden a fence went up and it was not an accident.

Greg: Who are you?

Audience Member: My name is John De Leon and I’m vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union and I’m an attorney here in town. I’m very intrigued with this whole issue about soccer now that you bring it up. I was in California last year and practicing law and one of the big issues in Santa Anna was there was a huge soccer population in that part of California and the public parks were funding football and baseball at levels like 10 to 1 in relation to soccer. And we were sort of thinking, how do we turn this into a lawsuit? And it really is true because you have a huge population of people who love soccer. If you go and watch the TV shows that we all talk about on Spanish media, they’re not watching football or baseball. They watch some baseball but they’re really watching soccer every weekend, and the fact that we take it as an unimportant issue, it really isn’t. it’s a very important issue because it goes to the very heart of what people like to do and a large portion of this population. And it goes back to the types of leadership being completely unresponsive to the makeup of this community. So I think it really potentially could be civil rights action that there is discrimination against poor Hispanics who come from their countries who love soccer but they’re not getting in terms of athletic accommodation, sort of attention that they should be getting here in this community.

Ken: That’s right Counselor.

Audience Member: but beyond that I think the time has come in Miami for some real good, strong and direct action by groups of populations, and I know that it’s starting by bunch of these folks that are up here in the panel. But what can be done to sort of foster groups in this community, given that we are the poorest community in this country, the direct action to demand the rights that people should have in any community? I’m just baffled that there’s not more of this, and how do we go about fostering?

Greg: Can I just do a quick follow-up with a quick question back at you? In one sense, how do you get people to deal with more direct action/ with what specific issue that anybody else has brought up?

Audience Member: I think that when you know there’s a group of Haitians who are put in detention or taken back to their country, without an asylum hearing that the Haitian community to say, "we’re not going to work today. We’re going to cripple the economy here in this community." Yeah, it might be self-defeating but it will grab people’s attention. What can you know…Cheryl is particularly sensitive to everybody in this community who are immigrants. What can be done to get immigrant groups to say, "we’re not going to put up with the sort of discrimination that goes on." Like in the old days, when they had the bus boycott. You know, in Montgomery. What’s it going to take? What can be done to take that sort of action by large groups of people?

Ken: Do you think those are analogous though? Do you think immigrants in Miami are treated in 2004 as analogous to how blacks were treated in Selma in 1960s?

Audience Member: well, let me tell you something. I have been in Homestead this weekend dealing with migrant workers and I can tell you it is analogous. I can tell you people are afraid to talk in this area of the country because they’re afraid that [croochies] are going to be monitoring what they’re saying because they’re going to lose their jobs….the fact is that the Haitian and Hispanic communities which are being treated that way…

Ken: Are they analogous? Are they being treated as they did it before in the 1940s? Immigration more broadly though, the fact of the matter is…

Audience: Immigrants are criminalized in this country. That’s reality.

Ken: Certainly lots of them are but that includes lots of people who are of means and are able to buy what they want. Public health trusts tries to figure out what to do with the money. By the way, the last time that the people went to the taxpayers of the county and said, "would you like to raise your own taxes and provide care for poor people?" Remember how they voted? They said, "raise our taxes because we have a clear undiluted moral duty to take care of each other." Which is what we’re thinking about in the context of the tax cut. The fact of the matter is though that public health trust doesn’t have enough money to take care of the population that it faces particularly in cases that come up for instance with people with the renal disease, that need dialysis and kidney transplants. And the debates that they have cause they drill right down to the level of individual people who need medical attention lest they die, suggest that a lot of people of good will are actually fighting very hard on balance to get these people what I think to be a human right. And I think you would agree as well. When you’ve got a population that has this immigration [], the migrant workers who are in Homestead, who have…how many are form Mexico by the way?

Audience Member: There are around 400,000 in Florida, which in the down South there are tens of thousands.

Ken: We discover a crate of new ways to exploit people depending on a whole bunch of different factors. But what I would like to say is that there are parts of the community…the Mexicans in the fields are not immigrants, they are seasonal workers and we’re exploiting them for that purpose. Opposed to the way that we expose Haitians or to that matter Dominicans or to that matter Nicaraguans. Nicaraguans is a bad example. But other people who want to come here for different reasons but we manage to find ways to make them feel that they are more or less wanted or unwanted.

We’re debating politics when in fact is that we’re also agreeing. I think it’s a good thing that Daniela is sitting in the front row. What ultimately drives half of the disagreement and divides ethnic groups is poverty. If you have African Americans who are angry with Jamaicans, who are angry with Haitians then in some sense the people who are trying to the address the issue have basically set the community against itself and without the benefit of raising the economic status of the people who are suffering.

Leonie: Let him finish. But I disagree.

Ken: With me?

Leonie: mhhm.

Ken: There must be some mistake.

Leonie: No. No. No. Go ahead John. I’ll let Daniela say what she has to say.

Audience Member: My question goes back to given that we are the poorest city in the nation, or one of the poorest, given that a large part of our populations are immigrants many of their activities are criminalized, including driving for example. Undocumented illegal immigrants aren’t allowed to drive. Hopefully that will change soon. What can be done to encourage direct action that we used to see 20 or 30 years ago?

Cheryl: John, our organization houses the Florida Immigrant Coalition, you may be aware with that. and one of the things that we’re trying to do is advise the immigrants in the state of Florida about laws that either have passed or are about to pass that can very much adversely affect their lives, tell them what others are trying to do about it, to try to organize these folks. One of their biggest problems of course is, when you’re dealing with people in Belle Glade for example, some of these poorer rural areas, they have not way to get to a rally in Miami or to get the e-mails they need to get, or the faxes they need to get. That is a huge problem. And again, I know Daniela is going to be asking a question in a minute and we get back to the prosperity campaign because really, you know it’s all about, in order to empower people the bottom line is they got to have the tools to enable themselves to get the information and then to organize do whatever it’s going to take to grab attention to their plate and so many of our clients work two or three jobs, and have families to feed. And it’s very difficult for them to think how do we get to the next step? It’s out job, those of us who have more time and more resources to try to find a way to lend, for their voices to be heard.

Ken: The last big direct action in Miami, ended how?

Greg: FTAA?

Ken: I mean the idea of people working three jobs and convince them to go to a demo so they can get arrested so they cant work any of those three jobs.

Greg: A rather chilling effect.

Cheryl: But the rest of them you know, like I said earlier in the evening, where is the outrage? Given what’s happening post 9-11, and not just to immigrants by the way. I have been talking to US citizens who have been unjustly targeted. Those of us who are outraged by what is happening need to strategize and need to talk about what can be done to call attention to this because I think that you know right now people are so afraid that many people say, "whatever it takes." Without realizing that not only are we eroding our civil liberties, but in my view, we’re making our country les safe not more safe because we’re wasting our precious resources targeting the wrong people. So that being said, what are those of us that do have some time and resources doing about it? In a concerted way. You know it’s just so easy to be apathetic and say, "you know, I’ve been trying to do something about this I just ant be bothered anymore." It’s just very easy, and I am guilty of it, to just throw your hands up in the air…

Leonie: But Cheryl I think that part of it, people are apathetic, but part of it is also that we have not changed our strategies. The strategies that we have used to engage people have not changed. Maybe people just don’t want to go and protest in front of the INS anymore. Maybe they want a different type of protest. I think we have been stuck in a way in this model of protest of 20 year ago, and perhaps it’s time for us to talk about how do we do it differently to engage those who are apathetic. Because there is a lot of outrage out there; people are very upset about what‘s happening, maybe we’re not giving them the means with which they can express that anger.

Cheryl: I think it’s a feeling of helplessness, like there’s nothing we can do.

Leonie: But what we do is say, "let’s go protest today or let’s go protest tomorrow." And that’s it. I think that its’ sort of [] us now, and we need to come up with other strategies of engagement. In terms of the poverty issue, I don’t know that the poverty is what divides us. I think that what divides communities are the strategies. What I find as one who’s been involved in service for the community is that the powers that [] have adopted certain models to combat poverty with the assumption that the model that worked in community A will work in Community B which is not necessarily the truth. So poverty itself doesn’t divide. I think when you have the school system and you tell parents that their children area all stuck in F schools I think that they will agree that together, coming together will be the best solution.

Ken: so you don’t disagree with me after all.

Leonie: Well, it’s not poverty as I said. The image that I saw is this sort of this….communities that are fighting over []. I don’t know that that’s the case. Again it is the issue of how do we, how do we empower African Americans, versus Haitian Americans, versus Cuban Americans, versus Dominicans maybe all totally different strategies. I think that that is the challenge that we have here in terms of poverty.

Ken: And then the crumbs devoted to our school system. That’s exactly what some people are fighting over. When kids across the board…

Leonie: But not across ethnic lines..maybe in neighborhoods…most of the F schools are not exclusively one group.

Bill: I think that the danger is that too often, I know in the Latino community we are expect to think as Latinos and it is not the way Latinos or exiles think. Because if you look at New York, they will want to put that label on everything from magazine to this to that, whereas in New York you didn’t have immigrant magazines. You had the Irish, the Italians, the Germans. You have the people, they are first generation they haven’t assimilated yet. Sure but the first thing that they do is hold on to their ethnicity very strongly and that also creates a certain division.

Audience Member: Ah, yes my name is Daniela Levine and director of the Human Services Coalition and active in many of these issues as mentioned. I am here to speak in favor of an assets-based approach which is to say that I believe that attitudes will not change about any of this until we preach and practice a celebration of our differences. So having dinner together is a great way to start down that path, but it often ends right there. The really important thing as a community is to recognize that together we florusoih, separate we perish. And that’s true across the board. It’s true obviously the wealthy could seclude themselves more and more but essentially we live in a very unique time and unique place. Miami is at the forefront of the change this nation is experiencing and in fact at the front of global trends as well. And what we have here is a polyglot society. You have people coming from every which way with huge ambition and hopes and dreams. We have people who have lived here before or who still live here which if you still live in this community in some sense you appreciate the differences, and also a lot of people left who didn’t appreciate the differences. So we really have a society of people who in some way and they look like they love it here. So I think that it drives our economy. It drives our tourism. Economy is more than what you said in terms of the wealthiest. We have the opportunity for tremendous innovation, tremendous idea generation, really new kinds of economic opportunities because of the fact that we have proven that we do live very well side by side.

In fact, we really have remarkable little conflict given the tinderbox in which we live. I could speak a lot about the civic engagement issue and I do think that our democracy is in peril. I think that he fact that we have new ways, as Americans, is our greatest hope: to rekindle an enthusiasm without participation in civic life. I really am very optimistic because I think we’ve demonstrated that we’re a very resilient people. I also think that to talk about poverty. As you know, I don’t talk about poverty anymore. Nobody is poor in America. Nobody thinks themselves as poor. It’s very important for us to understand that poverty means to people poverty of morality. So people think of themselves as struggling middle class, so of course as you know, to be middle class is to be American. We have to sort of generalize this condition. The middle classes are struggling enormously. If you look at what it actually costs to live in this community, it’s amazing that half of the people in our county are living because they really do live below the basic standard of living. Never mind the poverty level which is antiquated and so on.

So I think we have to really practice the politics of inclusion and the politics of embracing differences and really find the ways to really all of us, embrace and capture that and celebrate that and that will be the way of [].

Greg: Ok. Any reactions?

Ken: One of the things that we had was a program a couple of months ago with Daniela and the coalition where we had some of the leaders of the largest businesses of South Florida onstage with people who they wouldn’t hire in a minute agreeing with you 100%. Sometimes disagreements are not only good but they encourage the broader issues. The way Daniela put it makes it hard and irrational to disagree and at that point, call it poverty or not, the upshot is that we’re not sharing very well and we need to do a better job so that people who have less bread on their tables get more of it. And if it means a living wage movement, then we can be in there. There’s a lot of work going on in different places and jobs in specific places to do it.

Greg: but then that becomes a politically dynamite issue.

Ken: Well, a presidential campaign in Florida is an interesting proposition. If you don’t like the way we pick your presidents in Florida then you can…among of the things that have happened in Florida as a result of the presidential campaign is that 70 scientists from the United States were told they could not go to a neurology conference in Havana. This was not a kumbaya, hands across the water kind of thing. This was people studying brain damage who wanted to learn from each other from Japanese, from Europeans and others. And OFAC and the treasury department at the last minute yanked the license. Talk about being afraid to speak out. There are a lot things in Miami that you really can’t say. I’d be curios to know your opinion about that. In a presidential campaign in a year…seriously, you get the sense that people are getting their signals from Andromeda when it comes to decisions being made in this country.

Audience (Daniela): : Can I just make one last comment and then I’ll sit down? Which is to say that there’s also tremendous enthusiasm among young people in this community. Recently, I’ve had the great pleasure to work with the Youth Vote Coalition and we have from the League of Women Voters, Vanessa and [], and the people who are coming out, we are as a community so excited and energized about the adults if you will, helping to steer toward some sort of civic engagement opportunities. But they give it their own youthful enthusiastic twist, and it’s really very captivating and very hopeful. So I encourage all of us to look to the youth. You know we’re old and tired.

Bill: You know I’m still processing the thing about the people don’t think of themselves s being poor. I didn’t understand that and I don’t want to seem that I’m dumber than anyone else on the panel. Were you being ironic?

Daniela: Well, actually if you ask people who were living at the minimum wage they don’t consider themselves as poor.

Bill: well, I’ve been pretty poor and I’ve thought of myself as poor. Yes, yes, I don’t come from the big Cubans. I come from the little Cubans and I’ve thought of myself as being poor and being disenfranchised, and I think people think if themselves as that. but now as for your point as for the astronomers, astrologers…but I think the thing that gets my goat it’s that to often, since I do want fairness for the Haitians, for the Cubans etcetera. It’s important or the Cubans if they’re going to keep this favored status to comport themselves as true political exiles. And if you’re really a political exile, if you really are at war with these people, then you cant do it. Well, we can. Then that changes the rules as to who can come and who can’t.

Ken: And you have a point…trust me for a few hours and I’ll have Fidel on a plane to North Korea and the answer is throw open the borders.

Bill: you’re right. And a lot of people…

Ken: There is a constituency by the way… if nobody mentions it then I will. We live in some of the oldest community in the country that is overwhelmingly underserved with resources and whether they think of themselves as poor or not, they are actually in many cases very poor. In health care we talk about this as a vulnerable population. Economically vulnerable. But certainly elders, children are in ways that the rest of us are not. while it’s always good that I’m not above it, I started it in fact with that crash joke at your expense earlier. But the fact is that there are not a lot of old people that are doing very well in south Florida.

Greg: Hi. Who are you?

Audience Member: Hi. I’m Nancy Lee. I have a question. It frustrates me very much in Dade county when they say Jimmy Morales is not Cuban enough when the election, and I’m thinking why cant be elect good candidates and not get into these ethnic things. When I talk to someone and ask them, "why don’t you run?" "Oh, well I’m not Cuban. I’m not Haitian." Whatever neighborhood you’re in, you have to be that ethnicity. And I think that gets you really bad candidates at some times.

Bill: I think that gets us bad candidates a lot of the time. I’ll tell you as a Cuban American who’s made my living off that base. When I was younger, I chose people because they were Cuban. "oh that guy is Cuban, he’s got to be cool." And then you find out that it’s not necessarily true and as you mature, and hopeful as the community matures they’ll look at. And I know it’s a very political thing to say but obviously we want he best leader, the best guy, the best qualified, not this guys is Cuban, this guy is Puerto Rican.

Leonie: Nancy, I have to say that the reason why people are not…because people will vote Haitian, will vote Cuban, is because people have felt invisible, excluded. I know in my experience, I can tell you what happened to me once. I was trying to get a meeting with a director of a county agency and I called all summer and I was working at the Haitian American Foundation at the time. I called all summer and I was never able to get an appointment. The day after Phillip [] ran and lost by something like 200 votes, his secretary called and made an a[appointment. I had suddenly became visible because they realized that Haitians were a voting bloc. So I have to say that I know that we’re not always happy with the choices or ethnic candidates that we get, but it does come from experience. It comes from feeling excluded because sometimes you do vote for good candidates who sometime forget you when it comes time to dividing the pie. So you know.

Greg: I think we’re just about out of time.

Audience Member: Good evening, my name is Jean Barretto and I’m the director of diversity for the Greater Miami Society for Human Resources management and I think that a lot of the issues that we are discussing here today transcend not only from the community but they go directly into our work environment. And as human resources professionals, one of the things that we’re doing is creating programs and trying to bring information to the HR professionals who then can go back and into the work forces and then educate the managers that are managing the people from that part of our community. In order for them to create a level field for them to have better opportunity and also to improve the productivity of our organization. A lot of these misunderstandings or lack of other cultures that we don’t understand and all of these issues, they affect our ability to be productive in our own organizations. So we’re trying to shift the focus into more of an inclusiveness that diversity is good and it is good for business. It gives ideas. It gives different points of views in order for us to create more opportunities for others. So I welcome the opportunity to partner with any of you that you may feel we could benefit from your expertise or your resources to bring educational material to our professionals.

Greg: Ok. One more final question.

Audience Member: I’m Helen Scar and I work for the University of Miami medical group and 24 years ago I was saying the same thing when I worked on an ambulance during the Mariel boat lift, the Haitian boat lift, the Liberty City riots and I was making 3.35 an hour for the privilege of working on the ambulance. And I was living out of my car for 5 months because I didn’t make a living wage, but I saw people more poor than I was that I picked up and took to the emergency room because they didn’t have a primary doctor. And 24 years later I still see these things and I listen to you all but what I hear is lack of resources, lack of time. Your focus is your specialty, and there’s no one whose responsibility it is to do the bridging.

Greg: Any final comments to this? That’s a really great point.

Greg: I want to thank you all in the audience. I want to thank the panel very much for taking the time to talk.

Cheryl: I just wanted to mention that on April 21st which I think is next Wednesday, we are giving free tickets to a film called the Agronomies film about a very prominent journalist in Haiti, Jean Dominique who was murdered a couple pf years ago. And his widow is going to be here for the film. It’s a wonderful film. This will be the Miami screening and it is free. If any of you are interested you can call our office and we’ll send you tickets. 305-573-1106 extension 1360.

Greg: I have one final comment thanks to Nancy. The Urban Environmental League is going to have a forum for the Mayoral Candidates coming up on April 28th. So you can get in contact with us. And then our final panel of this series is called Planning and the Public Voice: Charettes, Democracy and Growth Management Process. And it will include Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Maria Anderson, commissioner from Coral Gables and as of this afternoon, George Burgess the County Manager will be there, and that’s on May 24th here. Anyway, thank you all very much.