click to enlarge 
photo courtesy Governor's Press Office
There's no question about where nearly all Florida politicians stand on the question of Cuba. Democrats and Republicans alike firmly back the US line of the last 60 years, saying that Cuba is ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime and in desperate need of "liberation" (read: opening up to American capital). Gov. Ron DeSantis stands with the anti-Fidelista protesters across Florida, he just wishes they wouldn't stand in the road.
At a recent news conference in South Florida, the Republican governor who signed a law granting civil (
though not criminal) immunity to drivers who run over protesters asked that anti-Cuban government protesters who shut down roads in Orlando, Miami and Tampa would express their outrage elsewhere.
“We can’t have that,” he said, per a report from the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “It’s not something that we’re going to tolerate.”
The anti-Castroist protests throughout Florida are exposing hypocrisy and faults in
Florida's embattled anti-protest law. Democratic lawmakers across the state have
asked DeSantis for clarity about who gets punished under the law after most protest were allowed to play out without the intervention of law enforcement. Potentially biased use of the statute, particularly against Black protesters, is at the heart of the
ACLU's challenge of the law in court.
In Orlando, protesters were by and large
allowed to block Semoran Boulevard for an hour on Wednesday, before police forced them onto the sidewalk. Similar scenes played out across Florida.
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