The homeless population in Miami is — it’s
a large population.
And basically, because we live in Miami and
we are at the helm of climate change, we have
a crisis situation every year during hurricane
season, which is June through November.
And so, you know, what we’ve seen in the
past is that not only just with homeless people,
but also with vulnerable populations, those
who are working-class, low-income, live in
poverty, and particularly in the black neighborhoods
throughout Miami-Dade County, we’ve seen
that there’s a disparate response when it
comes to crisis situations, like during hurricane season.
And so, during Hurricane Irma, we found that,
you know, FEMA and the government were saying
one thing on TV, but, in reality, people on
the ground
weren’t being fed, they weren’t getting water.
Their electricity was taking weeks to come
back on, and people who depended on these
things to actually live — oxygen and, you
know, dialysis —
were not getting the things that they needed.
And so, it really took a coalition of organizations
to step in and actually be — and actually,
you know, to take the place of or to step
in where the government was not.
And so, usually we activate during hurricane season,
but during the pandemic, we actually decided to activate, as well.
And during this time, we actually decided
to focus on unhoused people, because we know
that when you’re asking people to shelter
in place, houseless people have — they can’t
put tents outside, because police are harassing
them.
So, not only are police harassing me outside of my house,
but they’re also harassing homeless people.
They don’t let them put up tents.
And, you know, we’re not allowed to feed
homeless people on the street, etc.
So we’ve been going out as an act of civil
disobedience to feed the homeless, to provide
them with socks and toiletries and sanitizer
and masks, because during a public health
crisis like this, the homeless population
should be the population that you pay the most attention to.
And the county organizations that are supposed
to protect and provide for these organizations
just are not doing enough and much of anything
at all.
The people that we see actually succumbing
to the virus and having the worst morbidity
and mortality are those that are poor, that
are homeless, that are working-class, those
that live on the — that run the transit
systems, those that are in supermarkets, etc.
So, when you say — when President Trump
or Ron DeSantis — they’re basically the
same person — when they say these things,
that they’re going to open up the city and
continue as business as usual, then what you’re
saying is that you really don’t care about
the poor people, the working-class individuals.
You don’t care about their health.
And so, you know, honestly, I was one, early
on — you know, in the community emergency
emergency center — community emergency operations
center that we run, the coalition of organizations,
we have an epidemiologist who works with us,
and also a public health expert, who follows
the numbers, particularly for Florida and
Miami-Dade County.
And so, early on, we were seeing that not
only were the number of cases low, but also
the number of deaths were low, as well.
And, you know, people have speculated about
a number of reasons of why that is.
But the reality is, is that it actually benefits
our governor, because he’s saying, “Oh,
look at our low numbers.
Like yeah, we have a bunch of cases, but our
deaths are low.”
And so they use that to justify opening up
economies earlier, knowing that individuals
are dying at a higher rate than what’s been
seen.
And so, yeah, it’s just a complete disregard
for poor and working-class people, particularly
those who are African Americans in places
like Overtown, Liberty City, but also all across Florida.
So, yeah, I mean, it’s politics as usual
for our governor.
And he’s going to parrot whatever Donald
Trump says.
And I can go on record saying that, because
even before DeSantis was even chosen as our
governor, you know, I was one to say that
it’s obvious
that he’s not going to care about poor people.
I mean, this is a guy who had a commercial
with his kids building a wall,
as advertisement for his governorship.
You know, “Build that wall!”
And, of course, people thought it was funny,
but it’s like, “Wow!
Like this is the time that we’re living
in.”
And he’s fulfilled every promise around making sure 
that people knew that he was Trump Junior.
