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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Defiant Fort Lauderdale: ‘We Are Not That’

Defiant Fort Lauderdale: ‘We Are Not That’

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Fort Lauderdale has a New Year’s message for Ron DeSantis – we are not bigots, we don’t hate everyone like you do, so screw you, and stop destroying our livelihoods. (paraphrased)

Everyone Under the Sun, Rose Parade Style

'We Are Not That' in Fort Lauderdale: Everyone Under the Sun, Rose Parade Style

A collection of excerpts from the article.  (LA Times)

The Florida governor had spent more than a year attacking LGBTQ+ rights, and the Broward County seat was suffering. In 2023 alone, 18 conferences pulled bookings from the county, repelled by the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and DeSantis’ forays against queer and trans people and reproductive rights, among other targets.

So Ritter came to California and enlisted 45,000 flowers; a raft of Brussels sprouts; the nephew of the late Harvey Milk, one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials; and what amounts to a two-hour televised ad — also known as the 135th annual Rose Parade — that is viewed by millions.

Thanks to Ritter, president and chief executive of Visit Lauderdale, her county now has its first Rose Parade float, complete with rainbow umbrellas and a slogan she hopes will counteract DeSantis’ march to the right: “Everyone under the sun.”

“We’re hoping that the way we have designed the float will show how diverse and inclusive this destination is,” Ritter said of Fort Lauderale. “It’s a place that might be different from your perception of Florida and what the headlines say Florida is. We are not that.”

Featuring a yacht, a lifeguard tower topped with a pride flag and depictions of wildlife, the float incorporates nods to the county’s beachy tourist attractions. It’s topped by a replica of the Guitar Hotel at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla.

Moreover, Ritter said, the float will feature community leaders such as Miss Florida Seminole Thomlynn Billie, who described Visit Lauderdale’s message as “powerful.”

Given the Rose Parade’s national reach, the Visit Lauderdale float will send a message across the country that it’s “OK to be who you are and celebrate who you are,” said Anthony Ocampo, a professor of sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. But it’s also one step in the right direction. “It’s a symbol of support, and as much as symbols of support are important, it’s also necessary to have policies of support, because policies are what affect people en masse,” he added.

I especially love this:

“I’m a big believer in trying,” she said. “Not everything that we do will be a huge, resounding success, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know. I think this is one of those things that’s going to be a huge resounding success and that the people who live [in Broward County] are going to be proud of for a really long time.”

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    BJ Peeps, Zoom Reminder:

    New Year’s Day zoom from 1-3 pm Eastern

    Having this one midday so hopefully some of our BJ peeps around the world can join!

    Send email if you want the zoom link.

  2. 2.

    Almost Retired

    This is awesome.  Personally, if I were a float designer, I’d fill it up with drag queens with kazoos and a banner reading “FUCK OFF DeSANTIS..and also visit Fort Lauderdale.”
    And flowers, of course.

  3. 3.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Huh. I was wondering why FLL has a float in a parade on the other side of the continent. Good for them.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    Okay, for anyone who was confused like me because even after clicking through, there was no further mention of Brussels sprouts or their importance to the story:

    The float, which is 24 feet long by 18 feet wide and 55 feet high, depicts Greater Fort Lauderdale’s tropical “paradise,” using 45,000 flowers — 1,000 varieties of roses, coupled with flax seeds, brussels sprouts, sesame seeds, blue statice, heliconia and cymbidium orchids.

    Sounds like something that would’ve been on the menu at this hippie-dippy vegetarian cafe I used to love in SF. It had a slight cult vibe to it, but it was good! (Also, I got curious and Googled it and it sadly closed earlier this year, after 40 years. That sucks.)

  6. 6.

    catclub

    @brantl: I love that the tourist capital of Florida is telling De Sandbox to Stick It Up His Ass.

     

    I suspect that the tourist capital of Florida is closer to Disney World than to Fort Lauderdale.

  9. 9.

    dr. bloor

    One hopes that the various Chambers of Commerce and similar entities around Florida are as eager to devote time and resources into getting out the vote and replacing the bigots this November.

    I’m not holding my breath.

  10. 10.

    Burnspbesq

    @Almost Retired:

    Personally, if I were a float designer, I’d fill it up with drag queens with kazoos and a banner reading “FUCK OFF DeSANTIS..and also visit Fort Lauderdale.”
    And flowers, of course.

    That might go over in West Hollywood or Venice, but it’s worth reminding all of the non-SoCals out there that the Tournament of  Roses is one of the most staid, stodgy, and tradition-encrusted organizations this side of the Greek Orthodox Church. Fort Lauderdale is already pushing the envelope.

  11. 11.

    Barbara

    @Burnspbesq: Well, in fairness, those of us tuning in from across the nation are unlikely to be super aware of the stodginess.  I tuned in but was having a lot of problems with ROKU so didn’t see a whole lot.

  13. 13.

    wjca

    @catclub: I suspect that the tourist capital of Florida is closer to Disney World than to Fort Lauderdale.

    But equally out of charity with DeSantis.  The man definitely knows how to piss out a major state industry.

  15. 15.

    Almost Retired

    @Burnspbesq:  I was joking, of course.  But….yeah….the Committee is super conservative; long part of the old Pasadena Protestant elite, although it’s become more diverse.  My wife used to work on our South Bay city’s float in the 1990’s, and they had to be ever-so-careful thematically with the float.

  16. 16.

    wjca

    O/T   So, saw this leading off an earlier (inactive) thread, but had to comment.

    Pakistan’s plea for U.S. support against the growing threat of TTP militants has faced silence

    Gosh, for two decades you charge the US hundreds of millions in “fees” to move supplies to Afghanistan.  While your intelligence organization is busy using a big chunk of that to fund the Taliban.  And now you wonder why the US isn’t eager to help you fight off the monster you worked so hard to create.

    Surprise!  Sometimes, the US is unwilling to overlook past offenses.

    Not feeling a lot of sympathy for the Pakistani government right now.

  17. 17.

    Burnspbesq

    @Almost Retired:

    The Tournament of Roses embodies a Pasadena that disappeared around the time Mack Robinson won a silver medal in the 1936 Olympics and his younger brother Jack(ie) was winning varsity letters in five sports at Muir High.

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    Good on ya, Fort Lauderdale!  My aunt and uncle (Saint Louis transplants) live just north of there, and they HATE DeathSentence.

  19. 19.

    Miss Bianca

    @wjca: I am uncharitable enough to want to say, “you broke it, you bought it” to the Pakistani government, personally.

    Probably a reason that I’m not a diplomat..

  20. 20.

    bbleh

    It’s kind of fascinating, in an awful way, the degree to which DeSantis (1) doesn’t simply not care about but actively fks over his state’s economy and (2) his supporters think it’s just fine, even great, even if it fks them over personally.

    And yes, I know a LOT of his supporters are retirees who aren’t affected much by the local economy, but there are a lot who aren’t and who are hurt by his stupid stunts.  But they all just keep it up.  This sort of clench-jawed Fascism — yes it’s bad for everyone, including me, but it’s the Right Thing To Do, Dammit — just kinda mystifies me at times.

  22. 22.

    Jacqueline Squid Onassis

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    For sure. Like, I’m happy you don’t want us to think Ft. Lauderdale is for Rhonda Santis’ fascist dystopia but I’m still not stepping foot in Rhonda Santis’ fascist dystopia no matter how much you’d like my business.

  25. 25.

    bbleh

    @Dan B: one might so infer, tho certainly not necessarily all of them nor just them.  I really have trouble imagining how … empty one’s life must be not just to make other adults’ sex lives a Big Thing but actually to be willing to suffer in order to do so.

    I’m with SGB tho: not gonna go anywhere with a governor who would be happy to see me put in a cattle car and shipped off to a camp.

  27. 27.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Burnspbesq: And the 1950 The Pasadena Affair, basically created the template for the sort of school board fascist activism by white mothers (with astroturf support from powerful Conservative groups across the country) under the guise of Parent’s Rights , that we are seeing in Florida and elsewhere today:

    Women’s local struggle against communism first received public attention in the quiet hamlet of Pasadena in 1950, in an incident involving education that became known as the Pasadena Affair. At the center of the affair was the highly renowned progressive superintendent Willard Goslin, who had been hired by the Pasadena School Board in 1948 to revitalize the district. According to the investigative journalist at the time, David Hulburd, who wrote the expose, It Happened in Pasadena, superintendent Goslin was direct and forthright regarding his ideas on education, the role of the board and his role as superintendent, which he saw as “a leader not only of schools, but of the community as a whole.”[37] However, although the board wholeheartedly supported the changes he made, such as “vertical groups” to aid in communication, summer workshops for teachers, the hiring of a number of new staff members and the introduction of the “core system” in which a high school student was placed under the tutorship of one teacher for at least two (preferably 3) hours a day to cover several subjects, it would buckle to pressure from conservative women in the fall of 1950.[38]

    In the view of concerned mothers Willard Goslin epitomized everything that they fought against as conservatives. These women were traditionalists and felt that eastern elitist educators (of which Goslin was one) were trying to usurp parental authority, and brainwash them via state sponsored summer camps and the use of “experience curriculum,” “common learning,” and
    “core” tutorship instead of the traditional 3 Rs. To these mothers, progressive education was an effort to dumb down the children and fill them with socialist, communist ideology. [39]…

    However, the tax was not the core issue as evident from one of the slogan’s used; “Progressive Education Means Progressive Taxation.” It was Goslin’s progressive policies that struck fear.[43]

    Willard Goslin’s progressive education policies were not limited to the classroom. As superintendent he oversaw the public schools of the whole district of Pasadena and as part of his progressivism he strongly advocated desegregation, which resulted in a policy of abolition of neutral zones. Neutral zones had been in effect for some time and were areas in which children were exempted from attending the school in their neighborhood. In effect this meant that white students underrepresented racially in West Pasadena could be bused at the expense of the taxpayer to schools in La Canada. The abolition of these neutral zones were seen as an attack on parental control of their children’s education and an attempt by the state to mandate desegregation, an idea that was opposed by many conservatives.[44]

    …

    Another consequence of the Pasadena Affair according to Michelle Nickerson was that it highlighted how a few women, imbued with a sense of purpose to protect their family and community from communist infiltration, were able to use red scare tactics and “decimate prize school districts.”[47] Indeed, although Pasadena was the first to remove a superintendent because of his progressive (socialist) policies, this grassroots movement had national repercussions as Louise Padleford and Francis Bartlett formerly of the SDC led the vanguard to oust Houston’s deputy superintendent George Ebey, as the name “Goslin” became synonymous with the danger of progressive ideas and practices invading a districts educational system. A small grassroots movement gained the national spotlight.

  28. 28.

    Ksmiami

    @bbleh: and no offense, but California offers more than Florida in terms of nature and it’s not run by fascist dipshits so…

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