For several months now, “The ReidOut” has featured Floridians who are on the ground pushing back against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ repressive education restrictions.
But it’s time to stretch our legs a little bit! This Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET, catch us in the Sunshine State covering the National Action Network’s scheduled demonstration at the State Capitol. The event is billed as an activist response to the DeSantis administration’s anti-democratic attacks on voting rights and education equality.
As a preview, I figured it’d be great to hear from Joy herself about why we’re planning to pull up. So check out our brief Q&A below!
Ja’han Jones: You have personal ties to Florida that go way back. What’s it been like seeing the state transition into a hotbed of extremism, especially when it comes to education?
Joy Reid: My husband and I raised our kids in Florida. We lived there for 14 years. They went through the South Florida school public school system. And even when we were there, there was a challenge to make sure that my Black children felt affirmed in Florida schools. So I know these schools well. And now you have a governor who’s taking his ideology, which is deeply reflective of white supremacy, into every single classroom in that state and depriving not just Black children, but white children, brown children, all children.
Jones: What accounts for Florida’s lurch to the right in recent years?
Reid: Florida really is the tip of the sphere in the right wing crusade to roll back facts of American history, and to inculcate this gauzy fake version of American history. The facts about Florida are that it was a Confederate state that seceded from the Union, specifically to protect slavery. But it’s become a vanguard for this right-wing movement because of who’s in charge of it. As Andrew Gillum said, “I’m not calling DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”
[Check out Gillum’s heated exchange with DeSantis…
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