Let’s talk about the University of West Florida Board of Trustees – what it’s about, and what’s going to happen on Thursday, Jan. 23.
I fear the new board will fire the university president and target UWF programs like the new trustees did at New College of Florida in 2023.
Everyone tells me we cannot stop this from happening. But we can’t sit quietly. Please join me in fighting for our UWF. ?Sign our petition?.
New School was their prototype for a cultural coup.
With that travesty secured under their belts, now they’re coming for the real estate.
And they’re starting their privatization land grab of public university systems right here in Escambia County, which is being set up as the crucible for the worst Project 2025 has to offer.
4 years ago, I said from the podium of a BCC meeting that what we were witnessing in the state of Florida was textbook fascism proceeding at a four-alarm pace–that it couldn’t be any more clear that DeSantis et al were running a program that had been decades in the making, one that was being handed to them on a silver platter by people in the background who were way smarter with far more experience and a lot more skin in the game. People thought that was crazy.
Now local republican voters and leadership can begin to behold the fruits of their misplaced faith. Sadly, this is only the beginning. Thank you for your efforts, Rick. Hopefully there will be a whooooole lotta people pulling their heads out of the sand and finding their voiceboxes, real quick.
And if these mercenaries come in like light-footed lambs that first meeting, they’ll simply wait for people to relax their guard until they’re least expecting the sword of Damocles to fall, unless people stay focused and vigilant on monitoring their power and their greed, and constantly push back en masse so that they go try their luck with seizing campus buildigns and land elsewhere.
Sadly, that’s what it will take. Because as the fall of fascism has always happened throughout the course of history, what would have taken a moderate amount of wherewithal and courage to stop all of this in the beginning will now take, to put it lightly, a heck of a lot more. And those of us who have already had eyes wide open to the threat, and have been out on a dead limb for years with all of it–the normalization and legalization of corruption, the nepotism, the clown car of oligarchs, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the tearing down one pillar of democracy after another–are tired. Really tired. So thank you again for finding the stamina, Rick, and for having the courage.