Community leaders plead with mayor to nix Jacksonville's Republican convention

[Eugene]

Source: Florida Times-Union

Community leaders plead with mayor to nix Jacksonville’s Republican convention

By Dan Scanlan
Posted Jun 12, 2020 at 2:52 PM

About 20 local community leaders and lawmakers stood in the hot sun in front of the site of the Republican National Convention’s final events and pleaded with the mayor to stop them in light of recent protests, the coronavirus and other issues.

Angie Nixon operates a smoothie shop on A. Philip Randolph Boulevard, less than a half mile from where Jacksonville will host the Republican National Convention’s late August grand finale with President Donald Trump.

Joining community activists, lawmakers and others opposed to the convention, with thousands of delegates as well as expected protesters coming to the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, Nixon called it a “selfish choice” by the mayor over the health of the community.

“The mayor is putting party over the people he represents,” Nixon said at a Friday news conference. ”...The mayor did not reach out to a single business owner in the area when he made this unilateral decision. Public safety and the health of our community should be his number-one concern, not scoring points in his party.”

Duval County Democratic Chairman Daniel Henry was just as blunt as he spoke about the impact of the event, mostly pulled out of Charlotte by the Republican Party after that state’s concerns about hosting a huge event during the COVID-19 pandemic.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20200612/community-leaders-plead-with-mayor-to-nix-jacksonvilles-republican-convention

[struggle4progress]

1. "No Mask. No service"

[Tanuki]

2. The irony of the arena being located on A. Philip Randolph Boulevard!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Philip_Randolph

..."In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a voice that would not be silenced. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against unfair labor practices in relation to people of color eventually led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully pressured President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed services.

In 1963, Randolph was the head of the March on Washington, which was organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. Randolph inspired the "Freedom Budget", sometimes called the "Randolph Freedom budget", which aimed to deal with the economic problems facing the black community, it was published by the Randolph Institute in January 1967 as "A Freedom Budget for All Americans".[2]
....
Randolph was born April 15 1889, in Crescent City, Florida,[3] the second son of the James William Randolph, a tailor and minister[3] in an African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which had a thriving, well-established African-American community.[4]

From his father, Randolph learned that color was less important than a person's character and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of education and of defending oneself physically against those who would seek to hurt one or one's family, if necessary. Randolph remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his father tucked a pistol under his coat and went off to prevent a mob from lynching a man at the local county jail."....(more)

[greymattermom]

3. So locals should keep reminding the local Republicans of how they are honoring the legacy

of A. Philip Randolph by hosting the convention on a street named in his memory.

[Laelth]

4. Cool dude! Thanks for the history lesson. n/t

-Laelth