#Student Housing Tallahassee

[redpointwtenn-blog]

Contemporary Student Apartments Near Florida State University - Redpoint West Tenn Hunting for a student's apartment in Tallahassee somewhere off the beaten path but still convenient to the campus? Redpoint West, Tenn, is a place with a little more space that meets all your needs. Redpoint West Tenn re-imagines the student lifestyle. All the luxuries you are looking for with a little more room to roam, like Sand Volleyball Court, 24-hour fitness center, Resort-style swimming pool, Clubhouse and gaming zone, Pet-Friendly. Everything here is a little larger, including the floor plans. Plus, select residences are pet-friendly. So you can bring along your pup or cat. Exclusive features we offer spacious layouts, A real community, Private outdoor spaces. We have a limited-time-only offer for you – Apply now to secure your preferred placement, and we will waive the deposit and application fee. You can get in touch with us on call (805) 505-2500 or visit us at https://redpoint-wtenn.com/.

[tallahassee-fl-first]

Redpoint West Tenn in Tallahassee, FL 

We know that three bedroom apartments near FSU area is perfect nowadays, especially if you’re living with roommates. In that case, one of the trusted real estate service providers in Tallahassee, FL area is Redpoint West Tenn. Interestingly, luxury amenities and upscale living has never looked better. If you want to know more about luxurious apartment homes in the city, check out the website of the aforementioned apartment. If you'll visit their site, you'll find helpful information and amazing ideas for city living. Besides, they have useful pages that can help you in your research. For example, you can check out their Gallery Page. It has remarkable photos of their place that will surely inspire you to have a tour there.

Tallahassee, FL

Are you curious about the current state of the educational system of the Tallahassee, FL area? Well, many people study the educational background of the city. Tallahassee anchors the Leon County School District. As of the 2009 school year, Leon County Schools had an estimated 32,796 students, 2209 teachers and 2100 administrative and support personnel. Apart from that, it was known that the superintendent of schools is Rocky Hanna. Furthermore, Florida State University that is commonly referred to as Florida State or FSU, is an American public space-grant and sea-grant research university. Last but not least, it was founded in 1851.

Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee, FL

Let’s discuss a little about the Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee, FL area. Interestingly, Tom Brown Park is a 255-acre city park in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. In addition, it is situated on the eastern side of Tallahassee off Capital Circle. Moreover, Tom Brown Park is a large recreation park, highlighting several baseball fields, a disc golf course, tennis courts, a BMX track, a 3.1-mile mountain bike trail known as Magnolia Trail, picnic areas and nature trails for walking and running. Furthermore, it is located in the park, and as part of the southern end of the Goose Pond Trail and the east end of the Fern Trail.

Tips during National Financial Planning Month: Financial planning is best started as early as possible

One of the interesting news reports this year in Tallahassee, FL is about the National Financial Planning Month. Based on the report, it's National Financial Planning Month, and experts are sharing their personal finance tips with Scripps News. Based on the news, automating your savings is a great way to make planning for large purchases easier. At least 50% of your paycheck should go to the needs portion of your daily expenses, and other amounts can go to other areas of personal finance like entertainment and other non-essentials. Additionally, some automated savings programs can help when not working with a financial planner or adviser.

Link to Map Driving Direction

Tom Brown Park 443-557 Easterwood Dr, Tallahassee, FL 32311, United States

Follow Easterwood Dr to Conner Blvd 1 min (0.4 mi)

Drive along E Park Ave and E Tennessee St 18 min (6.4 mi)

Drive to your destination 45 sec (0.1 mi)

Redpoint West Tenn 2195 W Tennessee St, Tallahassee, FL 32304, United States

[the-cimmerians]

At 2:27 p.m. on Friday, March 8, the Florida Legislature adjourned sine die. With this adjournment, 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were effectively killed, leaving an anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education bill as the lone piece of legislation to pass this session. This session featured some of the most severe bills ever proposed against transgender individuals, all of these bills are now officially dead. LGBTQ+ activists in the state now have the rest of 2024 to regroup, with hopes that the November general election will yield results against a legislature that has spent two years targeting transgender individuals in every aspect of life.

The bills that have failed include H599, a bill that would have expanded "Don't Say Gay" policies to the workplace. It proposed banning government employees and any business with government contracts from sharing pronouns. Furthermore, it aimed to prohibit all nonprofits in the state from requiring education and training on LGBTQ+ issues—a significant issue for LGBTQ+ nonprofits, which would have been unable to operate within the state. That bill is now dead.

Another bill that died is H1639, a measure that would have mandated transgender individuals to have driver's license sex markers matching their sex assigned at birth. It also aimed to penalize insurance providers offering gender-affirming care coverage and would have required health insurance plans to cover conversion therapy for transgender individuals. Although this bill did not pass, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has reinterpreted certain provisions that already exist, effectively banning changes to driver's license gender markers in the state and threatening individuals with accurate markers with charges of criminal fraud. However, challenging an administrative action is simpler than challenging a law enacted by the legislature, and such actions can also be reversed by future administrations.

Further bills that made headlines which died include:

A ban on Pride flags in schools and government buildings.

A “bill of rights” for student organizations to exclude transgender people.

A bill that would end legal recognition of trans people in the state.

A bill that would exempt rejection of transgender youth from child abuse provisions.

A bill that would make calling someone racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic be treated as defamation.

In a press release from the Human Rights Campaign, Geoff Wetrosky stated, “Despite years of relentless attacks and dehumanizing rhetoric, LGBTQ+ people and our allies have never given up the fight for Florida. And we are shifting the momentum. People across the state showed up by the thousands to speak out and push back against anti-LGBTQ+ bills; and they are to thank for pushing back the tide of hateful and discriminatory policy. The fight to free Florida from the grip of Governor DeSantis’ devastating and extreme agenda of government censorship and intrusion into people’s lives is far from over. And the devastation he and his allies have caused will last long after these politicians are gone. But the tide is turning. Perhaps the anti-LGBTQ+ fever in Tallahassee is beginning to break. The people will prevail.”

Not every bill was defeated in the state, which still has some of the harshest anti-transgender laws in the nation. The one bill that did pass, House Bill 1291, prohibits educating teachers on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) topics and bars "teaching identity politics." Additionally, transgender drivers still face the potential revocation of driver's licenses by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV), and many transgender adults have lost access to gender-affirming care. The state also enforces a criminal bathroom ban that could jail transgender individuals for up to a year.

However, this is the first time in three years where the bills targeting LGBTQ+ people, and trans people in particular, seem to be losing steam, according to local organizers.

“The momentum is undeniably shifting against extremism,” Nadine Smith of Equality Florida said in a press release, “Extremist groups are collapsing amidst multiple scandals. Parents are mobilizing on behalf of their kids and to stop the dismantling of public education. We will build on this momentum and redouble our commitment to the fight. Together, we can put power back in the hands of the people.”

[elisabethloxx]

 It had to rain. The friends and family of Lisa Levy placed her body in the ground Tuesday, and strained to understand why a girl so young, so bright, so full of life, had to die at the hands of a murderer. THE GLOOMY gray morning only thickened the feelings of sorrow, as almost 200 persons ringed the canopied gravesite in Largo to pray and cry and rememler. "She will stay in our hearts forever, young and fresh as springtime." The words came from Rabbi Jacob Luski as he tried to comfort Lisa's grieving mother, father and brother during a crowded funeral in Pinellas Park "Tears are being shed, but memory is beginning," the soft-bearded Luski said.

"Lisa was a very determined young lady, lovable . . . determined in all ways of life." The Sunday before, as the 20-year-old Florida State University ( FSU) student slept in her Tallahassee sorority house, she was clubbed and strangled by a killer still at large. A second St.Petersburg girl was murdered, and three other young women were beaten before the attacker fled into the darkness, leaving at best a faint and scattered trail for police to follow. "IT WAS A tragedy, a stunning blow," the rabbi said. But he urged the mourners, "Do not judge your fellow man until you find yourself in his circumstances." Then he asked God to "teach us how to accept this bitter loss." Throughout the services, police, photographers and television cameramen milled in the background. The face of Lisa's mother, Henny Levy, looked blank and too numb for tears. Her divorced husband Sam, who lives in Sarasota, wore a gray suit and the traditional black yarmulke syna gogue cap.

Lisa's brother Fred, stationed in Maine with the U.S. Air Force, was gripped by emotions. As he prepared to shovel a spade of dirt on top of Lisa's pine coffin, he threatened to break a photographer's camera if he continued snapping pictures. AFTER THE BURIAL about 25 Chi Omega sisters from FSU and the University of South Florida joined hands in a circle and sang the sorority song Shades in tribute to Lisa's memory. Tear tracks glistened down the cheeks of Joanne Schultz, 20, as she and her husband walked in the drizzle after the funeral.

Both had been friends of Lisa during their high school years. "I knew her since siith grade," Mrs. Schultz said. At Dixie Hollins High School, "I was a cheerleader and she was a baton-twirling majorette. I'll always remember her smiling.

I don't want to remember any sad things. "He (the killer) just must have gone crazy. Yeah, I'm bitter. They say it happens to good people, and it happened to one of them " REPRESENTING FSl' was Stephen B. McClellan, the vice president for university relations. He also will attend funeral services at 2 p.m. today for the other murdered girl, Margaret Bowman, 21, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church. 1200Snell Isle Blvd.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Sims Family Murder

On 22nd October 1966, most of the population of Tallahassee was attending a football game at the popular North Florida Fair. Events like this quite literally left the streets empty since entertainment was infrequent. The Sims family, namely Robert, 42, his wife Helen, 34, decided to stay back home at Muriel Court Drive with their youngest daughter, Joy, aged 12. Their 15-year-old daughter Judith Ann was out babysitting, and Norma Jeanette, 17, was at the game. Florida State beat Mississippi State 10–1 that night. While the town enjoyed the game, someone, somewhere, killed the three Sims staying home and vanished like a ghost. Norma had expected to find her family still watching the game when she returned. The TV was on, but her family was nowhere to be seen.

Dr. Robert Sims, an information technology expert with the Department of Education, was lying on the bed fighting for his life. He had been shot once in the head. It was clear that the attack had taken place not too long ago. Helen Sims, a Sunday school teacher, and church secretary was lying on the floor, also alive. She had been shot twice in the head and in the leg (some reports state she was stabbed). Joy Lynn Sims wasn’t alive; the child had been shot in the head and stabbed more than 6 times in her stomach. Her panties were pulled down to her thighs, and her cheek was bruised.

The first people to arrive on the scene were Russell Bevis and his young son, Rocky, in response to Norma’s call to Bevis Funeral Home. In an attempt to save their lives, Bevis tried to loosen their bindings, an act that compromised the crime scene. The first investigator on the scene, officer E.C. Cooper Donley remembers this horrific scene to this day. Helen Sims passed away in hospital 9 days after the attack. She didn’t regain consciousness to give information to police about the assailant, given that a bullet was buried deep into her brain and rendered her comatose.

Considering the situation, investigators were sure that the murderer was known to the family. There was no sign of a break-in; nothing had been stolen to suggest a botched robbery since money was lying around in plain sight on the scene. The attack had taken place a short while before Norma got home — coffee cups were lying half-drunk on the table, and the full ashtray remained untouched.

A neighbor corroborated this story, telling police that they had heard screams around 10:45 pm. The most compelling evidence found was the specialized Granny knots used to bind the 3 Sims with material from their own house: lingerie, socks, pantyhose, and ties. Unfortunately, the inefficacy of DNA evidence back then led to nobody being identified as being on the scene.

Old investigators later took to the internet to share their speculations that the assailant(s) had stayed back to clean up the crime scene and had been from the neighborhood. Others reject this theory, saying that Tallahassee’s unsuspecting and violent crime-free nature would have anybody opening their doors to a stranger. Yet others theorize that the murder was calculated, relying on the town being preoccupied with the football game.

Some advancements were made in 2015 and 2016 through documentaries made by FSU students; however, the case could still not be solved. Norma and Judith Sims have never spoken publicly about the murder of their family and remain under the radar to date.

[queeryouthautonomy]

State march masterpost (updated as information comes in!)

All times are local time unless otherwise specified. Reblogs are off because this is a living, regularly updated post; please see our website or send an ask for more information! Post you can reblog is here. Alabama: Florence—114 W Mobile St -> 200 S Court St, 3/31, 3:30pm (link) Montgomery—Alabama State House, 3/31, 1pm (link)

Alaska: Anchorage—Dimond Center -> Costco Wholesale, 3/31, 12pm

Arizona: Prescott—Prescott Courthouse, 3/31, 2pm Sierra Vista—Fry and Coronado -> City Hall, 3/31, 3pm (link) Tuscon—Tuscon City Hall, 3/31, 4pm (link)

Arkansas: Eureka Springs—Basin Spring Park, 3/31, 6pm (link) Little Rock—Lucie’s Place, 3/31, 6pm Marion—Brunetti Park -> Marion City Hall, 3/31, 5pm

California: Castro Valley—Castro Valley High School (non-students please join in once the protest has left school grounds) -> Corner of Redwood Rd and Castro Valley Blvd, 3/30, 3:35pm (link) Fresno—N Blackstone Ave & E Nees Ave, 3/31, 4pm (link) Hollywood—Corner of Sunset & Vine, 3/30, 4:15pm Merced—3055 Loughborough Dr -> Laura's Fountain -Applegate Park 1045 W 25th St, 3/31, 4:30pm (link) Pomona—Pomona Pride Center 836 S -> City Hall, 3/31, 4pm (link) Riverside—Back To The Grind Coffee Shop –> Riverside City Hall, 3/31, 4pm (link) Sacramento—Capitol Complex, 3/31, 12pm (link) San Diego—Balboa Park at the Bea Evenson Foundation -> El Prado, 3/31, 5pm San Francisco—Corner of Turk & Taylor -> City Hall, 3/25, 11am (link) | Patricia's Green -> City Hall, 3/31, 2:15pm (link) San Jose—San Jose City Hall, 3/31, 5:30pm (link) Santa Ana—Brad Brafford LGBT Center on 4th, 3/31, 6pm (link)

Colorado: Denver—Civic Center Park, 3/17, 8:30pm | West Steps of the Capitol, 3/24, 11am (link)

Connecticut: Bristol—131 N Main Street, 3/31, 1pm Fairfield—Upper Quad of Sacred Heart University, 3/31, 4pm New Haven—corner of Chaple and Church St, 3/31, 4pm

Delaware: Wilmington—Delaware Historical Society –> Rodney Square, 3/31, 6pm (link)

District of Colombia: Union Station -> US Capitol, 3/31, 3pm (link)

Florida: Altamonte Springs—3/31, 9am (link) Naples—Cambier Park, 3/31, 6pm (link) Ocala—Pine Plaza -> City Hall, 3/31, 3:30pm Orlando—Dr Philips Performing Arts Center, 3/31, 11am Port Orange—Corner of Yorktowne Blvd. and Dunlawton Ave -> Port Orange Regional Library, 3/31, 4:30pm Tallahassee—state Capitol building, 3/31, 2pm (link) Venice—Town Center -> Venice Beach, 3/31, 10:30am

Georgia: Atlanta—state Capitol building, 3/31, 12pm (link) Dalton—3/31, 11am (link) Gainesville—Gainesville Square –> Jesse Jewell Parkway (in front of CVS), 3/31, 5pm Savannah—Forsyth Park -> City Hall & back, 3/31, 6pm

Hawaii: Honolulu—state Capitol building, 3/31, 3:30pm

Idaho: Boise—TBD Shelley—Shelley City Park, 3/31, 2pm

Illinois: Champaign—McKinley Foundation Church Chapel, University of Illinois, 3/31, 5:30pm Chicago—Grant Park, 3/31, 5pm Rockford—1005 5th Ave, 3/31, 5pm (link) Streamwood—7 Augusta Dr –> 7 S Sutton Rd, 3/31, 8am (link)

Indiana: Fort Wayne—Boone Street Playlot -> Allen County Courthouse, 3/23, 3pm (link) | Allen County Courthouse, 3/31, 5pm (link) Hanover—Hanover College Quad, 3/31, 1pm Indianapolis—433 N Capital Ave -> 1 Monument Circle, 3/31, 3pm Terre Haute—Terre Haute Courthouse, 3/31, 5pm

Iowa: Des Moines—state Capitol building (West Capitol Terrace Stage), 3/31, 6pm (link) Dubuque—Dubuque Courthouse -> Washington Park, 3/31, 4pm (link) Iowa City—Pentacrest -> Wesley Center, 3/31, 6pm (link)

Kansas: Lenexa—Lenexa Rec Center -> City Hall, 3/31, 5pm Topeka—state Capitol building entrance, 3/31, 5pm (link) Wichita—121 E Douglas Ave, 3/31, 4pm (link)

Kentucky: Frankfort—front of Annex Building, 3/29, 9:30am (link) | Kentucky State Capitol, 4/8, 1pm (link) Lawrenceburg—Anderson County Courthouse -> 44 Anna Mac Clarke Ave, 4/3, 3pm (link) Lexington—Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza, 3/31, 4:30pm | Outside of the Old Fayette County Courthouse, 3/31, 6pm

Louisiana: Lake Charles—Prein Lake Park, 3/31, 12pm New Orleans—Washington Square Park 700 Elysian Fields Ave, 3/31, 5pm (link)

Maine: Bangor—West Market Square, 3/31, 6pm Portland—456 Congress St, 3/31, 6pm (link) Rockland—Intersection of Main Street and Park Street (near Walgreens and Maine Sport) –> Chapman Park, 3/31, 5:30pm

Maryland: Baltimore—400 E Biddle St, 3/31, 5pm Oakland—32 Oak St –> 305 E Oak St, 3/31, 3pm (link)

Massachusetts: Boston—state house, 3/18, 11am (link) | state house, 3/28, 10am (link) Sunderland—North Star, 45 Amherst Road, 3/31, 12pm

Michigan: Detroit—Woodward-Warren Park, 3/31, 5pm (link) Fenton—Rackham Park, 3/31, 6pm (link) Grand Rapids—Downtown, 3/31, 5pm Lansing—state Capitol building, 3/31, 11am

Minnesota: Saint Paul—state Capitol building, 3/31, 9am (link)

Mississippi:

Missouri: Columbia—701 East Broadway Blvd, 3/31, 5:30pm (link) | Uptown Columbia –> Downtown Columbia, 4/15, 9am Jefferson City—Missouri State Capitol, 3/29, 2pm (link) St Louis—11911 Dorsett Rd –> 715 NW Plz Dr, 4/27, 1pm

Montana: Missoula—Missoula Courthouse, 3/31, 5pm (link)

Nebraska: Lincoln—state Capitol building, 3/31, 5:30pm

Nevada: Las Vegas—Las Vegas TransPride Center -> The LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada, 3/31, 11am (link)

New Hampshire: Keene—Keene State College Campus Main Entrance -> Center Square, 3/31, 5pm (link)

New Jersey: Flemington—Flemington Historic Courthouse -> Flemington DIY, 3/31, 3:45pm (link) Trenton—State House, 3/31, 3pm (link)

New Mexico: Albuquerque—Civic Plaza, 3/31, 5pm Santa Fe—State Capitol -> the Attorney General's office, 3/31, 11am

New York: Albany—Washington Square Park -> Capitol Park, 3/31, 1pm Canandaigua—7 Mill St, 3/31, 3pm Forest Hills—Forest Hills Station, 3/31, 2:30pm New Paltz—SUNY New Paltz Campus, 3/31, 3:30pm New York City—Union Square -> Washington Square Park, 3/31, 5pm (link) | Times Square, 3/31, 5pm Penn Yan—Yates County Courthouse, 3/31, 3pm (link) Plattsburgh—Hawkins Pond -> Samuel Champlain Monument Park, 3/23, 3pm Utica—Genesee-Parkway Intersection, 3/31, 5pm Westchester—SUNY Purchase College, 3/31, 5pm

North Carolina: Asheville—TBD Mooresville—Freedom Park -> Town Hall, 3/31, 2:30pm (link) Raleigh—John Chavis Memorial Park, 3/31, 1pm Wilmington—Historic Thalian Hall Steps, 3/31, 5pm (link)

North Dakota:

Ohio: Cleveland—Free Stamp @ Willard Park -> City Hall, 3/31, 4pm Cleveland Heights—City Hall, 3/31, 11am (link) Columbus—Goodale Park, 3/31, 5pm Dayton—Lily’s Dayton (329 E 5th St) –> Courthouse Square (23 N Main St), 3/31, 4pm Lakewood Park—Lakewood Park, 3/31, 4pm (link) Madison—Madison Village Square Park, 3/31, 4pm (link)

Oklahoma: Oklahoma City—Supreme Court of Oklahoma -> state Capitol building, 3/31, 5pm Tulsa—Central Library, 3/31, 4pm (link)

Oregon: Bend—Drake Park, 3/31, 5pm Hillsboro—Civic Center -> 145 NE 2nd Ave, 3/31, 5pm Medford—Vogel Plaza 200 E. Main Street, 3/31, 4pm Portland—Tom McCall Waterfront Park -> Pioneer Courthouse, 3/31, 2pm

Pennsylvania: Harrisburg—state Capitol building, 3/31, 1pm (link) Oil City—Oil City -> Franklin, 3/31, 8am Philadelphia—Temple University Bell Tower, 3/29, 1pm (link) | City Hall, 3/31, 6pm (link) Pittsburgh—City County Building, 3/31, 5pm (link)

Rhode Island: Providence—the Wheeler School -> state Capitol building, 3/31, 11:30am

South Carolina: Columbia—State House Grounds, 3/31, 2pm Greenville—300 S Main St, 3/31, 3pm (link)

South Dakota: Brookings—City Council Building, 3/31, 5pm (link) Rapid City—Main Street Square, 3/31, 5pm

Tennessee: Knoxville—Downtown Hilton, 3/31, 10:30am (link) | Gay Street & Market Square (where the water fountain markers are), 3/31, 2pm Memphis—Civic Center Plaza, 3/16, 4pm

Texas: Amarillo—Amarillo Chamber of Commerce -> Potter County Courthouse, 3/31, 5pm Austin—state Capitol building, 3/20, 9am (link) Dallas—Main St Garden Park 1902 Main St, 3/18, 12pm (link) | Pacific Plaza, 3/31, 3pm Houston—Discovery Green Park -> City Hall, 3/31, 11:30am Killeen—101 N College St -> 1114 N Fort Hood St, 3/31, 5:30pm Lubbock—Mahon Library parking lot -> county Courthouse, 3/31, 5pm San Antonio—San Antonio Courthouse, 3/31, 6:30pm (link)

Utah: Salt Lake City—state Capitol building, 3/31, 5pm (link)

Vermont: Montpelier—Montpelier State House, 3/31, 12pm (link)

Virginia: Richmond—Open High School -> state Capitol building, 3/31, 3pm

Washington: La Center—by the bridge into town, 3/31, 5pm Olympia—Heritage Park -> state Capitol building, 3/31, 3:30pm Seattle—SeaTac Airport Station, 3/31, 1pm | Volunteer Park -> Seattle Courthouse, 3/31, 4pm (link) Spokane—Cracker Building, 3/18, 12pm (link) Walla Walla—Pioneer Park -> Land Title Plaza, 3/31, 3:45pm (link) Wenatchee—Memorial Park, 3/31, 4pm

West Virginia: Charleston—3/31, 4:30pm

Wisconsin: Appleton—Houdini Plaza, 3/31, 10am (link) Janesville—Corner of East Court Street/Jackman Street -> Corner of West Court Street/South Locust Street, 3/31, 2pm Kenosha—Civic Center Park, 3/31, 12pm Madison—Library Mall, 3/18, 2:30pm (link) | 534 State St –> Wisconsin State Capitol, 3/31, 12pm Milwaukee—TBD

Wyoming:

CANADA: Toronto, Ontario 3/17, 3pm, US Consulate (link)

[redpointtallahassee]

Redpoint Tallahassee in Tallahassee, FL

Redpoint Tallahassee has notable Tallahassee student housing options for rent for the people in the city. Besides, there are many students who have been planning to check out their apartment complex. If you’re interested, you can ride on the hype and discover the benefits of living there. First and foremost, they have a floorplan for every lifestyle. Are you curious about the living spaces at the above-mentioned apartment? Well, every place there has a furniture package available and it includes private bathrooms, in-unit laundry, Wi-Fi, porches, and more. Besides, you can enjoy every nook and cranny of the apartment without thinking about being bored. There are many activities for you.

Tallahassee, FL

At present, creating a travel itinerary is exciting. In looking for pre-planned in Tallahassee, FL area, it is significant to check out online articles. In addition, you can also check out Eventbrite posts since they have tons of future events. First, there will be Halloween Night | Angels & Demons this coming Thursday, October 31, 2024, at around 10:00 in the evening at Bajas. Second, the After Set Darty: Homecoming Edition is scheduled on Friday, November 1, 2024, at around 3:00 in the afternoon at 315 Barbourville Drive. Lastly, you can also opt to attend the 99 House- CPA: The Comeback this coming Friday, November 1, 2024, at around 5:00 in the afternoon, at Signature Lounge Tallahassee.

Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee, FL

Nowadays, the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee, FL is a well-known tourist spot. If you like exploration, it is also one of the best places for you to visit at the present time. Well, the Museum of Florida History is the U.S. state of Florida's history museum, housing exhibits and artifacts covering its history and prehistory. It is located in the state capital, Tallahassee, Florida, at the R. A. Gray Building, 500 South Bronough Street, named for Robert Andrew Gray. Additionally, it has a mastodon skeleton on display at the Museum of Florida History. Last but not least, the museum features a gallery with exhibits that change every few months.

Madison County dairy farm home to $25 million renewable natural gas facility

There are many interesting news reports in Tallahassee, FL area. In a recent news article, the topic was about a renewable energy facility. Reportedly, a dairy farm in Lee is now home to a $25 million renewable natural gas facility. Aside from that, the facility captures methane gas from manure, which can be used power homes, cars and businesses across the state. Besides, it’s located at Full Circle Dairy, a farm that has about 3,700 cows. Before this facility began operating, the methane gas produced by those cows was released into the atmosphere. Currently, instead of being released into the air, it’s being processed and transported to a facility where it can be used as fuel.

Link to map

Museum of Florida History 500 S Bronough St, Tallahassee, FL 32399, United States Take Duval St to W Tennessee St 2 min (0.6 mi) Turn left onto W Tennessee St Pass by Jimmy John's (on the right in 1.3 mi) 7 min (2.7 mi) Follow White Dr and Mission Rd to your destination 2 min (1.1 mi) Redpoint Tallahassee 2636 Mission Rd, Tallahassee, FL 32304, United States

[redpointtallahassee-blog]

Premium Amenities and Comfort at FSU Student Housing

For top-class FSU student housing, choose Redpoint Tallahassee. We elevate student living with luxurious, spacious units and premium amenities tailored to students' needs. Enjoy a 24-hour fitness center, sand volleyball court, resort-style zero-entry pool, and gaming lounges. Each unit offers private bathrooms, in-unit laundry, Wi-Fi, porches, and an available furniture package. Relax on the tanning ledge, in the club room, or play golf and watch movies. Learn more at https://redpoint-tallahassee.com/

[alightwtenn]

Convenient FSU Student Housing Near Florida State University

Find the ideal student housing balance at Alight West Tennessee, just a short drive from Florida State University. Enjoy pleasant, convenient off-campus living in Tallahassee. Our spacious apartments are perfect for sharing with friends, cooking together, and making lasting memories. No more parking headaches—our location is designed for ease. Maintain your fitness in our state-of-the-art gym and unwind by the pool. Learn more about Alight West Tenn at https://alight-wtenn.com/fsu-off-campus-housing/.

[damage-defense-digest-32571]

FAMU Declares State of Emergency Due to Storm Damage

Power Outages and Building Damage Disrupt Normal Operations at Florida A&M University

Florida A&M University (FAMU) President Larry Robinson, Ph.D., has declared a state of emergency following severe storm damage on the Tallahassee campus. High winds and heavy rain during a severe thunderstorm caused power outages, roof damage, downed trees, and scattered debris across the university grounds. FAMU employees are working diligently to assess and repair the damage, with the hope of restoring normal operations as soon as possible.

While the storm has caused significant destruction, there have been no reports of injuries or loss of life.

As the cleanup efforts continue, FAMU has received assistance from the State Division of Emergency Management, which provided tarp sheets to secure damaged roofs until repairs can be completed. However, the university has been informed by city utility officials that power outages may persist through the weekend. In response, FAMU has deployed generators to provide backup electricity.

Assessing the Damage: Buildings and Infrastructure Affected

At least 15 buildings on the FAMU campus have suffered roof and water damage, including notable structures such as the Grand Ballroom, the Banneker Buildings, and the old Plant Operations and Maintenance (POM) Building. The flashing on Lee Hall was also damaged during the storm. To ensure the safety of the campus community, the Tallahassee main campus will remain closed for extracurricular activities until further notice.

Faculty and non-essential staff have been instructed to work remotely until it is safe to return to the office. Other Professional Service (OPS) employees are allowed to work with the authorization of their supervisors. The university emphasizes that the campus remains unsafe for non-essential personnel, and professional cleanup crews are handling the restoration process.

Volunteers are not needed at this time.

Impact on Academic Operations: Remote Classes and Extended Add-Drop Period

The storm's aftermath has disrupted the start of the Summer A and C semesters at FAMU. In response, the university has made the decision to conduct classes remotely from May 13 to May 17. Students are advised to contact their course instructors for further details on remote learning arrangements.

Additionally, FAMU has extended the add-drop period until Monday, May 20, to accommodate any necessary adjustments to course schedules.

While the cleanup efforts are underway, the FAMU Developmental Research School (DRS) administrators will announce their plans for reopening over the weekend. The Educational Research Center for Child Development (ERCCD) will remain closed for repairs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday due to roof damage. However, the Durell Peaden Jr.

Rural Pharmacy Education Campus in Crestview will reopen as scheduled on Monday.

Housing and Support for On-Campus Students

The Office of Housing at FAMU has taken measures to ensure the safety and well-being of the nearly 200 students residing on campus. When it is deemed safe to do so, these students will be relocated to Phase 3 housing. In the meantime, box lunches are being provided to support their needs.

The storm damage at FAMU has prompted President Larry Robinson to declare a state of emergency, as the university community works tirelessly to assess and repair the destruction caused by the severe thunderstorm. With power outages expected to last through the weekend and significant roof and water damage to multiple buildings, FAMU has taken necessary precautions to prioritize the safety of its students, faculty, and staff. Remote classes and an extended add-drop period have been implemented to minimize disruptions to academic operations, while the Office of Housing ensures the well-being of on-campus students.

As the cleanup efforts continue, FAMU remains grateful for the support and prayers from the community and is committed to restoring normal operations as swiftly as possible.

[aqua-aid-atlas-911]

FAMU Declares State of Emergency As Storm Damage Disrupts Campus Operations

Power Outages and Building Damage Prompt Closure and Remote Learning at FAMU

Florida A&M University (FAMU) has declared a state of emergency after a severe thunderstorm caused extensive damage to the Tallahassee campus. President Larry Robinson, Ph.D., announced the emergency declaration as employees work tirelessly to assess and repair the aftermath of the storm. The university is grateful that no lives were lost or serious injuries reported, but the campus now faces significant challenges in restoring normal operations.

The storm brought high winds, heavy rain, and widespread power outages, leaving the campus in disarray. Trees and utility lines were knocked down, roads were blocked, and debris was scattered across the grounds. FAMU has been informed by city utility officials that power outages may persist through the weekend, further complicating the recovery efforts.

Extensive Building Damage and Roof Leaks

At least 15 buildings on the FAMU campus have suffered various degrees of damage, with roofs and water systems being particularly affected. The Grand Ballroom, the Banneker Buildings, and the old Plant, Operations, and Maintenance (POM) Building are among the structures that have experienced roof and water damage. The flashing on Lee Hall, a prominent building on campus, was also compromised.

To mitigate further damage and secure the affected buildings, the university has received tarp sheets from the State Division of Emergency Management. These temporary measures will provide protection until permanent repairs can be completed.

Campus Closure and Remote Work

Due to the extensive damage and ongoing cleanup efforts, FAMU's Tallahassee main campus will remain closed for extracurricular activities until further notice. Faculty and non-essential staff have been instructed to work remotely until it is safe to return to the office. Essential staff members are working diligently to restore normal operations as quickly as possible, with the assistance of backup generators to provide electricity.

While professionals handle the cleanup, the campus remains off-limits to non-essential personnel. The university emphasizes that no volunteers are needed at this time.

Impact on Academic Calendar and Student Services

The storm's aftermath has disrupted the academic calendar at FAMU. Summer A and C semesters, scheduled to begin on Monday, May 13, will now be conducted remotely from May 13 to 17. Students are advised to contact their course instructors for specific details and instructions.

Additionally, the add-drop period has been extended to Monday, May 20, to accommodate the challenges faced by students during this period.

The College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences' Institute of Public Health P4 Comprehensive Exam, originally scheduled for Monday, May 13, will proceed as planned. Exam site details will be communicated directly to the test takers by the staff.

For students residing on-campus, the Office of Housing is making arrangements to move nearly 200 students to Phase 3 once it is deemed safe to do so. In the meantime, box lunches are being provided to ensure their well-being.

As FAMU declares a state of emergency and begins the arduous task of cleaning up after the storm, the university community remains resilient and focused on restoring normalcy. President Larry Robinson expresses gratitude for the prayers and support received from the community. While the road to recovery may be long, FAMU is committed to overcoming the challenges posed by the storm and ensuring the safety and well-being of its students, faculty, and staff.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

In Tallahassee, Florida, a federal judge has ruled that a transgender woman teacher no longer has to be referred to as “Mr.” or “teacher” in the classroom, citing first amendment protections. Instead, she can use “Ms.” and female pronouns. This decision follows the passage of HB1069 in Florida, which mandated that teachers could not use pronouns that “do not correspond to his or her sex.” Judge Mark Walker enjoined the state from enforcing the law against her, stating, “The State of Florida has not justified this grave restraint, and so the United States Constitution does not tolerate it. Ours is a Union of individuals, celebrating ourselves and singing ourselves and being ourselves without apology.” The plaintiff, Ms. Wood, a teacher at a Florida high school, has been known as “Ms. Wood” for four years. She regularly would write her name, title, and pronouns on the whiteboard and used these pronouns with students, faculty, and staff, as well as in her personal life. In evaluating Ms. Wood’s usage of her name, title, and pronouns, the judge determined that “The freedom to use the title ‘Ms.’ and to share her preferred pronouns at school is essential to her basic humanity.”

Ms. Wood’s ability to use her preferred title and pronouns was threatened following the passage of House Bill 1069. Enacted into law in 2023, House Bill 1069 prohibits all employees and contractors of public K-12 educational institutions from using their preferred personal titles or pronouns if those “do not correspond to their sex.” After the law's enactment, administrators informed Ms. Wood that she had to remove her pronouns and title from display and could not correct students who referred to her as “Mr.” or “him.” The judge commenced his ruling with a scathing critique of the state, writing, “Once again, the State of Florida has a First Amendment problem. It has occurred so frequently of late, some might say you can set your clock by it… The question before this Court is whether the First Amendment allows the State to dictate, without limitation, how public-school teachers refer to themselves when communicating with students. The answer is a thunderous ‘no.’”

The judge ultimately determined that prohibiting Ms. Wood from using her pronouns or title constituted an unconstitutional violation of her freedom of speech, deeming it a form of viewpoint discrimination. In his decision, he refuted several arguments presented by the state, including the claim that Ms. Wood using “Ms.” could “impede her job duties.”

Judge Mark Walker ruled in favor of the 1st Amendment by allowing a trans woman teacher named Ms. Wood to use “Ms.” and female pronouns instead of “Mr.” and male pronouns as directed in Florida HB1069, aka the supersized version of the Don’t Say Gay or Trans law.

See Also:

The Advocate: 'Florida has a First Amendment problem' — judge rules trans teacher can use 'Ms.'

[driverdefens]

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Redpoint Tallahassee delivers top-quality off-campus housing near Florida State University. Enjoy resort-style amenities and spacious apartments just minutes from campus. Experience the best of Tallahassee students living with Redpoint.

[xtruss]

The Future of Democracy: The Last Time Democracy Almost Died

Learning From the Upheaval of the Nineteen-Thirties.

— By Jill Lepore | Published: January 27, 2020 | Sunday October 8, 2023

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to argue about it.Illustration by Joan Wong; Photograph by Massimo Lama/Getty Images

The Last Time Democracy nearly died all over the world and almost all at once, Americans argued about it, and then they tried to fix it. “The future of democracy is topic number one in the animated discussion going on all over America,” a contributor to the New York Times wrote in 1937. “In the Legislatures, over the radio, at the luncheon table, in the drawing rooms, at meetings of forums and in all kinds of groups of citizens everywhere, people are talking about the democratic way of life.” People bickered and people hollered, and they also made rules. “You are a liar!” one guy shouted from the audience during a political debate heard on the radio by ten million Americans, from Missoula to Tallahassee. “Now, now, we don’t allow that,” the moderator said, calmly, and asked him to leave.

In the nineteen-thirties, you could count on the Yankees winning the World Series, dust storms plaguing the prairies, evangelicals preaching on the radio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt residing in the White House, people lining up for blocks to get scraps of food, and democracies dying, from the Andes to the Urals and the Alps.

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson’s Administration had promised that winning the Great War would “make the world safe for democracy.” The peace carved nearly a dozen new states out of the former Russian, Ottoman, and Austrian empires. The number of democracies in the world rose; the spread of liberal-democratic governance began to appear inevitable. But this was no more than a reverie. Infant democracies grew, toddled, wobbled, and fell: Hungary, Albania, Poland, Lithuania, Yugoslavia. In older states, too, the desperate masses turned to authoritarianism. Benito Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922. It had taken a century and a half for European monarchs who ruled by divine right and brute force to be replaced by constitutional democracies and the rule of law. Now Fascism and Communism toppled these governments in a matter of months, even before the stock-market crash of 1929 and the misery that ensued.

“Epitaphs for democracy are the fashion of the day,” the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, dismally, in 1930. The annus horribilis that followed differed from every other year in the history of the world, according to the British historian Arnold Toynbee: “In 1931, men and women all over the world were seriously contemplating and frankly discussing the possibility that the Western system of Society might break down and cease to work.” When Japan invaded Manchuria, the League of Nations condemned the annexation, to no avail. “The liberal state is destined to perish,” Mussolini predicted in 1932. “All the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal.” By 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann was telling an audience of students at Berkeley that “the old relationships among the great masses of the people of the earth have disappeared.” What next? More epitaphs: Greece, Romania, Estonia, and Latvia. Authoritarians multiplied in Portugal, Uruguay, Spain. Japan invaded Shanghai. Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. “The present century is the century of authority,” he declared, “a century of the Right, a Fascist century.”

In 1922, Benito Mussolini (Center) marched on Rome. A decade later, he declared, “The liberal state is destined to perish.” Photograph from Getty Images

American democracy, too, staggered, weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation. “We do not distrust the future of essential democracy,” F.D.R. said in his first Inaugural Address, telling Americans that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. But there was more to be afraid of, including Americans’ own declining faith in self-government. “What Does Democracy Mean?” NBC radio asked listeners. “Do we Negroes believe in democracy?” W. E. B. Du Bois asked the readers of his newspaper column. Could it happen here? Sinclair Lewis asked in 1935. Americans suffered, and hungered, and wondered. The historian Charles Beard, in the inevitable essay on “The Future of Democracy in the United States,” predicted that American democracy would endure, if only because “there is in America, no Rome, no Berlin to march on.” Some Americans turned to Communism. Some turned to Fascism. And a lot of people, worried about whether American democracy could survive past the end of the decade, strove to save it.

“It’s not too late,” Jimmy Stewart pleaded with Congress, rasping, exhausted, in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in 1939. “Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light.” It wasn’t too late. It’s still not too late.

There’s a Kind of Likeness you see in family photographs, generation after generation. The same ears, the same funny nose. Sometimes now looks a lot like then. Still, it can be hard to tell whether the likeness is more than skin deep.

In the nineteen-nineties, with the end of the Cold War, democracies grew more plentiful, much as they had after the end of the First World War. As ever, the infant-mortality rate for democracies was high: baby democracies tend to die in their cradles. Starting in about 2005, the number of democracies around the world began to fall, as it had in the nineteen-thirties. Authoritarians rose to power: Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Donald J. Trump in the United States.

“American democracy,” as a matter of history, is democracy with an asterisk, the symbol A-Rod’s name would need if he were ever inducted into the Hall of Fame. Not until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act can the United States be said to have met the basic conditions for political equality requisite in a democracy. All the same, measured not against its past but against its contemporaries, American democracy in the twenty-first century is withering. The Democracy Index rates a hundred and sixty-seven countries, every year, on a scale that ranges from “full democracy” to “authoritarian regime.” In 2006, the U.S. was a “full democracy,” the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world. In 2016, the index for the first time rated the United States a “flawed democracy,” and since then American democracy has gotten only more flawed. True, the United States still doesn’t have a Rome or a Berlin to march on. That hasn’t saved the nation from misinformation, tribalization, domestic terrorism, human-rights abuses, political intolerance, social-media mob rule, white nationalism, a criminal President, the nobbling of Congress, a corrupt Presidential Administration, assaults on the press, crippling polarization, the undermining of elections, and an epistemological chaos that is the only air that totalitarianism can breathe.

Nothing so sharpens one’s appreciation for democracy as bearing witness to its demolition. Mussolini called Italy and Germany “the greatest and soundest democracies which exist in the world today,” and Hitler liked to say that, with Nazi Germany, he had achieved a “beautiful democracy,” prompting the American political columnist Dorothy Thompson to remark of the Fascist state, “If it is going to call itself democratic we had better find another word for what we have and what we want.” In the nineteen-thirties, Americans didn’t find another word. But they did work to decide what they wanted, and to imagine and to build it. Thompson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Germany and Austria and had interviewed the Führer, said, in a column that reached eight million readers, “Be sure you know what you prepare to defend.”

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to attack it, to ask more of it, by way of criticism, protest, and dissent. American democracy in the nineteen-thirties had plenty of critics, left and right, from Mexican-Americans who objected to a brutal regime of forced deportations to businessmen who believed the New Deal to be unconstitutional. W. E. B. Du Bois predicted that, unless the United States met its obligations to the dignity and equality of all its citizens and ended its enthrallment to corporations, American democracy would fail: “If it is going to use this power to force the world into color prejudice and race antagonism; if it is going to use it to manufacture millionaires, increase the rule of wealth, and break down democratic government everywhere; if it is going increasingly to stand for reaction, fascism, white supremacy and imperialism; if it is going to promote war and not peace; then America will go the way of the Roman Empire.”

The historian Mary Ritter Beard warned that American democracy would make no headway against its “ruthless enemies—war, fascism, ignorance, poverty, scarcity, unemployment, sadistic criminality, racial persecution, man’s lust for power and woman’s miserable trailing in the shadow of his frightful ways”—unless Americans could imagine a future democracy in which women would no longer be barred from positions of leadership: “If we will not so envisage our future, no Bill of Rights, man’s or woman’s, is worth the paper on which it is printed.”

If the United States hasn’t gone the way of the Roman Empire and the Bill of Rights is still worth more than the paper on which it’s printed, that’s because so many people have been, ever since, fighting the fights Du Bois and Ritter Beard fought. There have been wins and losses. The fight goes on.

In the thirties, community leaders across the country ignited debate on the meaning and the future of democracy, inviting Americans to assemble in the same room and argue with one another—to stretch their civic muscles. Courtesy Library of Congress

Could no system of rule but extremism hold back the chaos of economic decline? In the nineteen-thirties, people all over the world, liberals, hoped that the United States would be able to find a middle road, somewhere between the malignity of a state-run economy and the mercilessness of laissez-faire capitalism. Roosevelt campaigned in 1932 on the promise to rescue American democracy by way of a “new deal for the American people,” his version of that third way: relief, recovery, and reform. He won forty-two of forty-eight states, and trounced the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in the Electoral College 472 to 59. Given the national emergency in which Roosevelt took office, Congress granted him an almost entirely free hand, even as critics raised concerns that the powers he assumed were barely short of dictatorial.

New Dealers were trying to save the economy; they ended up saving democracy. They built a new America; they told a new American story. On New Deal projects, people from different parts of the country labored side by side, constructing roads and bridges and dams, everything from the Lincoln Tunnel to the Hoover Dam, joining together in a common endeavor, shoulder to the wheel, hand to the forge. Many of those public-works projects, like better transportation and better electrification, also brought far-flung communities, down to the littlest town or the remotest farm, into a national culture, one enriched with new funds for the arts, theatre, music, and storytelling. With radio, more than with any other technology of communication, before or since, Americans gained a sense of their shared suffering, and shared ideals: they listened to one another’s voices.

This didn’t happen by accident. Writers and actors and directors and broadcasters made it happen. They dedicated themselves to using the medium to bring people together. Beginning in 1938, for instance, F.D.R.’s Works Progress Administration produced a twenty-six-week radio-drama series for CBS called “Americans All, Immigrants All,” written by Gilbert Seldes, the former editor of The Dial. “What brought people to this country from the four corners of the earth?” a pamphlet distributed to schoolteachers explaining the series asked. “What gifts did they bear? What were their problems? What problems remain unsolved?” The finale celebrated the American experiment: “The story of magnificent adventure! The record of an unparalleled event in the history of mankind!”

There is no twenty-first-century equivalent of Seldes’s “Americans All, Immigrants All,” because it is no longer acceptable for a serious artist to write in this vein, and for this audience, and for this purpose. (In some quarters, it was barely acceptable even then.) Love of the ordinary, affection for the common people, concern for the commonweal: these were features of the best writing and art of the nineteen-thirties. They are not so often features lately.

Americans reëlected F.D.R. in 1936 by one of the widest margins in the country’s history. American magazines continued the trend from the twenties, in which hardly a month went by without their taking stock: “Is Democracy Doomed?” “Can Democracy Survive?” (Those were the past century’s versions of more recent titles, such as “How Democracy Ends,” “Why Liberalism Failed,” “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” and “How Democracies Die.” The same ears, that same funny nose.) In 1934, the Christian Science Monitor published a debate called “Whither Democracy?,” addressed “to everyone who has been thinking about the future of democracy—and who hasn’t.” It staked, as adversaries, two British scholars: Alfred Zimmern, a historian from Oxford, on the right, and Harold Laski, a political theorist from the London School of Economics, on the left. “Dr. Zimmern says in effect that where democracy has failed it has not been really tried,” the editors explained. “Professor Laski sees an irrepressible conflict between the idea of political equality in democracy and the fact of economic inequality in capitalism, and expects at least a temporary resort to Fascism or a capitalistic dictatorship.” On the one hand, American democracy is safe; on the other hand, American democracy is not safe.

In 1939, the World’s Fair opened in Queens, New York, featuring an exhibit called the Democracity, a model of utopia that was in keeping with the event’s chipper motto, “The World of Tomorrow.” Photograph by Fritz Goro/Getty Images

Zimmern and Laski went on speaking tours of the United States, part of a long parade of visiting professors brought here to prognosticate on the future of democracy. Laski spoke to a crowd three thousand strong, in Washington’s Constitution Hall. “laski tells how to save democracy,” the Washington Post reported. Zimmern delivered a series of lectures titled “The Future of Democracy,” at the University of Buffalo, in which he warned that democracy had been undermined by a new aristocracy of self-professed experts. “I am no more ready to be governed by experts than I am to be governed by the ex-Kaiser,” he professed, expertly.

The year 1935 happened to mark the centennial of the publication of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” an occasion that elicited still more lectures from European intellectuals coming to the United States to remark on its system of government and the character of its people, close on Tocqueville’s heels. Heinrich Brüning, a scholar and a former Chancellor of Germany, lectured at Princeton on “The Crisis of Democracy”; the Swiss political theorist William Rappard gave the same title to a series of lectures he delivered at the University of Chicago. In “The Prospects for Democracy,” the Scottish historian and later BBC radio quiz-show panelist Denis W. Brogan offered little but gloom: “The defenders of democracy, the thinkers and writers who still believe in its merits, are in danger of suffering the fate of Aristotle, who kept his eyes fixedly on the city-state at a time when that form of government was being reduced to a shadow by the rise of Alexander’s world empire.” Brogan hedged his bets by predicting the worst. It’s an old trick.

The endless train of academics were also called upon to contribute to the nation’s growing number of periodicals. In 1937, The New Republic, arguing that “at no time since the rise of political democracy have its tenets been so seriously challenged as they are today,” ran a series on “The Future of Democracy,” featuring pieces by the likes of Bertrand Russell and John Dewey. “Do you think that political democracy is now on the wane?” the editors asked each writer. The series’ lead contributor, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, took issue with the question, as philosophers, thankfully, do. “I call this kind of question ‘meteorological,’ ” he grumbled. “It is like asking, ‘Do you think that it is going to rain today? Had I better take my umbrella?’ ” The trouble, Croce explained, is that political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. “We need solely to make up our own minds and to act.”

Don’t ask whether you need an umbrella. Go outside and stop the rain.

Here are Some of the Sorts of people who went out and stopped the rain in the nineteen-thirties: schoolteachers, city councillors, librarians, poets, union organizers, artists, precinct workers, soldiers, civil-rights activists, and investigative reporters. They knew what they were prepared to defend and they defended it, even though they also knew that they risked attack from both the left and the right. Charles Beard (Mary Ritter’s husband) spoke out against the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, when he smeared scholars and teachers as Communists. “The people who are doing the most damage to American democracy are men like Charles A. Beard,” said a historian at Trinity College in Hartford, speaking at a high school on the subject of “Democracy and the Future,” and warning against reading Beard’s books—at a time when Nazis in Germany and Austria were burning “un-German” books in public squares. That did not exactly happen here, but in the nineteen-thirties four of five American superintendents of schools recommended assigning only those U.S. history textbooks which “omit any facts likely to arouse in the minds of the students question or doubt concerning the justice of our social order and government.” Beard’s books, God bless them, raised doubts.

Beard didn’t back down. Nor did W.P.A. muralists and artists, who were subject to the same attack. Instead, Beard took pains to point out that Americans liked to think of themselves as good talkers and good arguers, people with a particular kind of smarts. Not necessarily book learning, but street smarts—reasonableness, open-mindedness, level-headedness. “The kind of universal intellectual prostration required by Bolshevism and Fascism is decidedly foreign to American ‘intelligence,’ ” Beard wrote. Possibly, he allowed, you could call this a stubborn independence of mind, or even mulishness. “Whatever the interpretation, our wisdom or ignorance stands in the way of our accepting the totalitarian assumption of Omniscience,” he insisted. “And to this extent it contributes to the continuance of the arguing, debating, never-settling-anything-finally methods of political democracy.” Maybe that was whistling in the dark, but sometimes a whistle is all you’ve got.

The more argument the better is what the North Carolina-born George V. Denny, Jr., was banking on, anyway, after a neighbor of his, in Scarsdale, declared that he so strongly disagreed with F.D.R. that he never listened to him. Denny, who helped run something called the League for Political Education, thought that was nuts. In 1935, he launched “America’s Town Meeting of the Air,” an hour-long debate program, broadcast nationally on NBC’s Blue Network. Each episode opened with a town crier ringing a bell and hollering, “Town meeting tonight! Town meeting tonight!” Then Denny moderated a debate, usually among three or four panelists, on a controversial subject (Does the U.S. have a truly free press? Should schools teach politics?), before opening the discussion up to questions from an audience of more than a thousand people. The debates were conducted at a lecture hall, usually in New York, and broadcast to listeners gathered in public libraries all over the country, so that they could hold their own debates once the show ended. “We are living today on the thin edge of history,” Max Lerner, the editor of The Nation, said in 1938, during a “Town Meeting of the Air” debate on the meaning of democracy. His panel included a Communist, an exile from the Spanish Civil War, a conservative American political economist, and a Russian columnist. “We didn’t expect to settle anything, and therefore we succeeded,” the Spanish exile said at the end of the hour, offering this definition: “A democracy is a place where a ‘Town Meeting of the Air’ can take place.”

Public forums that began in Des Moines grew so popular that the programming became a part of the New Deal. The federal government paid for it, but everything else fell under local control, and ordinary people made it work. Photograph from Alamy

No one expected anyone to come up with an undisputable definition of democracy, since the point was disputation. Asking people about the meaning and the future of democracy and listening to them argue it out was really only a way to get people to stretch their civic muscles. “Democracy can only be saved by democratic men and women,” Dorothy Thompson once said. “The war against democracy begins by the destruction of the democratic temper, the democratic method and the democratic heart. If the democratic temper be exacerbated into wanton unreasonableness, which is the essence of the evil, then a victory has been won for the evil we despise and prepare to defend ourselves against, even though it’s 3,000 miles away and has never moved.”

The most ambitious plan to get Americans to show up in the same room and argue with one another in the nineteen-thirties came out of Des Moines, Iowa, from a one-eyed former bricklayer named John W. Studebaker, who had become the superintendent of the city’s schools. Studebaker, who after the Second World War helped create the G.I. Bill, had the idea of opening those schools up at night, so that citizens could hold debates. In 1933, with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation and support from the American Association for Adult Education, he started a five-year experiment in civic education.

The meetings began at a quarter to eight, with a fifteen-minute news update, followed by a forty-five-minute lecture, and thirty minutes of debate. The idea was that “the people of the community of every political affiliation, creed, and economic view have an opportunity to participate freely.” When Senator Guy Gillette, a Democrat from Iowa, talked about “Why I Support the New Deal,” Senator Lester Dickinson, a Republican from Iowa, talked about “Why I Oppose the New Deal.” Speakers defended Fascism. They attacked capitalism. They attacked Fascism. They defended capitalism. Within the first nine months of the program, thirteen thousand of Des Moines’s seventy-six thousand adults had attended a forum. The program got so popular that in 1934 F.D.R. appointed Studebaker the U.S. Commissioner of Education and, with the eventual help of Eleanor Roosevelt, the program became a part of the New Deal, and received federal funding. The federal forum program started out in ten test sites—from Orange County, California, to Sedgwick County, Kansas, and Pulaski County, Arkansas. It came to include almost five hundred forums in forty-three states and involved two and a half million Americans. Even people who had steadfastly predicted the demise of democracy participated. “It seems to me the only method by which we are going to achieve democracy in the United States,” Du Bois wrote, in 1937.

The federal government paid for it, but everything else fell under local control, and ordinary people made it work, by showing up and participating. Usually, school districts found the speakers and decided on the topics after collecting ballots from the community. In some parts of the country, even in rural areas, meetings were held four and five times a week. They started in schools and spread to Y.M.C.A.s and Y.W.C.A.s, labor halls, libraries, settlement houses, and businesses, during lunch hours. Many of the meetings were broadcast by radio. People who went to those meetings debated all sorts of things:

Should the Power of the Supreme Court Be Altered?

Do Company Unions Help Labor?

Do Machines Oust Men?

Must the West Get Out of the East?

Can We Conquer Poverty?

Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished?

Is Propaganda a Menace?

Do We Need a New Constitution?

Should Women Work?

Is America a Good Neighbor?

Can It Happen Here?

These efforts don’t always work. Still, trying them is better than talking about the weather, and waiting for someone to hand you an umbrella.

When a Terrible Hurricane hit New England in 1938, Dr. Lorine Pruette, a Tennessee-born psychologist who had written an essay called “Why Women Fail,” and who had urged F.D.R. to name only women to his Cabinet, found herself marooned at a farm in New Hampshire with a young neighbor, sixteen-year-old Alice Hooper, a high-school sophomore. Waiting out the storm, they had nothing to do except listen to the news, which, needless to say, concerned the future of democracy. Alice asked Pruette a question: “What is it everyone on the radio is talking about—what is this democracy—what does it mean?” Somehow, in the end, NBC arranged a coast-to-coast broadcast, in which eight prominent thinkers—two ministers, three professors, a former ambassador, a poet, and a journalist—tried to explain to Alice the meaning of democracy. American democracy had found its “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” moment, except that it was messier, and more interesting, because those eight people didn’t agree on the answer. Democracy, Alice, is the darnedest thing.

That broadcast was made possible by the workers who brought electricity to rural New Hampshire; the legislators who signed the 1934 federal Communications Act, mandating public-interest broadcasting; the executives at NBC who decided that it was important to run this program; the two ministers, the three professors, the former ambassador, the poet, and the journalist who gave their time, for free, to a public forum, and agreed to disagree without acting like asses; and a whole lot of Americans who took the time to listen, carefully, even though they had plenty of other things to do. Getting out of our current jam will likely require something different, but not entirely different. And it will be worth doing.

A decade-long debate about the future of democracy came to a close at the end of the nineteen-thirties—but not because it had been settled. In 1939, the World’s Fair opened in Queens, with a main exhibit featuring the saga of democracy and a chipper motto: “The World of Tomorrow.” The fairgrounds included a Court of Peace, with pavilions for every nation. By the time the fair opened, Czechoslovakia had fallen to Germany, though, and its pavilion couldn’t open. Shortly afterward, Edvard Beneš, the exiled President of Czechoslovakia, delivered a series of lectures at the University of Chicago on, yes, the future of democracy, though he spoke less about the future than about the past, and especially about the terrible present, a time of violently unmoored traditions and laws and agreements, a time “of moral and intellectual crisis and chaos.” Soon, more funereal bunting was brought to the World’s Fair, to cover Poland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. By the time the World of Tomorrow closed, in 1940, half the European hall lay under a shroud of black.

The federal government stopped funding the forum program in 1941. Americans would take up their debate about the future of democracy, in a different form, only after the defeat of the Axis. For now, there was a war to fight. And there were still essays to publish, if not about the future, then about the present. In 1943, E. B. White got a letter in the mail, from the Writers’ War Board, asking him to write a statement about “The Meaning of Democracy.” He was a little weary of these pieces, but he knew how much they mattered. He wrote back, “Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.” It meant something once. And, the thing is, it still does. ♦

[mystlnewsonline]

Florida Action - Schools- Ties to the Chinese Communist Party

Florida Takes Action Against Four Florida Schools with Ties to the Chinese Communist Party TALLAHASSEE, FL (STL.News) Friday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis directed the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) to suspend the availability of school choice scholarships to four schools that have direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Through a thorough investigation, FDOE has determined that Lower and Upper Sagemont Preparatory Schools in Weston, Parke House Academy in Winter Park, and Park Maitland School in Winter Park have direct ties to the CCP and their connections constitute an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s students and the public.  The Department is working with non-profit scholarship funding organizations to assist impacted students in finding and enrolling in nearby eligible schools.  On May 8, 2023, Governor DeSantis signed SB 846 to prohibit any school affiliated with a foreign country of concern from participating in Florida’s school choice scholarship programs. “The Chinese Communist Party is not welcome in the state of Florida,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.  “We will not put up with any attempt to influence students with a communist ideology or allow Floridians’ tax dollars to go to schools that are connected to our foreign adversaries.” “The Chinese Communist Party has no place in our schools,” said Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr.  “I am grateful for Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature for their work to keep students and our communities safe from foreign countries of concern.” Since taking office, Governor DeSantis has enacted major educational reforms targeting the Chinese Communist Party, such as: - Blocking access to TikTok on educational institution servers and devices. - Prohibiting state colleges and universities from accepting any grant from or participating in any agreement or partnership with any college or university based in China or another foreign country of concern unless approved by the Board of Governors or State Board of Education. - Prohibiting state colleges and universities and their employees and representatives from soliciting or accepting any gift in their official capacities from a college or university based in China or another foreign country of concern or foreign principal. - Banning “Confucius Institutes,” which serve as propaganda centers for the Chinese Communist Party. SOURCE: Florida Governor Read the full article