Like waking up from a horrible nightmare only to realize you’re living in an even more terrible reality, 2017 was the year we mentally rapped ourselves for believing, nay hoping, that 2016 would the worst thing that ever happened to us. If last year was the frying pan, these past 12 months have felt like being thrown into a burning blaze of horrible presidential tweets, an endless Russia investigation and the dreadful epiphany that all your fears of human suffering have materialized – and they come with memes!
If President Trump has accomplished anything as head of the executive branch, it’s the fact that he’s succeeded in slowly chipping away at the block that is our democracy. The only inevitable outcome, at least from what we can predict of our 45th commander-in-chief: If he has his way, that same block will eventually look like a statue of himself, coated in fool’s gold.
The only light through this dark-ass tunnel is that we’ve made it to the end of another year, somewhat in shambles, but hey – at least we’re together. (Sort of.)
JANUARY
We started the year on the wrong foot when we swore into the presidency a racist xenophobe who boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” In a rosy-hued, pussy-hatted rebuke to the campaign rhetoric of President Donald Trump, an admitted sexual predator, millions of women across the nation and world organized demonstrations in support of the Women’s March on Washington on Inauguration Day, which was reportedly the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. In Orlando, thousands marched around Lake Eola in support of women’s rights, racial equality, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights and other marginalized groups. Hear us roar, America.FEBRUARY
The Trump administration’s refugee ban became a reality on Jan. 27, just a week after he took the presidential oath. Even with that, the true outrage over the executive order that banned citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entry to the U.S. for 90 days – didn’t set in until the following month. And as the fervor grew, the protests followed President Trump to Florida – more specifically, to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, where more than 1,000 protesters gathered along the bridge that separates West Palm Beach from the posh island. They beat drums, rang bells and carried freedom’s empty casket. It was the nation’s first nod to the onset of a presidency with no honeymoon period.MARCH
Newly elected Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala threw Gov. Rick Scott into a tizzy after she announced her administration wouldn’t pursue the death penalty for first-degree murder cases, including in the case of Markeith Loyd, who stands accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and an Orlando police lieutenant. Florida’s death penalty statutes were not in a constitutional place, per se, and Ayala cited a number of valid reasons for ending the practice. Scott pretty much ignored that and used his executive authority to remove Ayala from 30 capital cases, saying Ayala, the state’s first African-American prosecutor, would not fight for justice. Someone sent Ayala a noose, and Republican lawmakers even took it out on her by removing more than $1 million from her budget. After losing the showdown in the Florida Supreme Court to Scott, Ayala assembled a panel of prosecutors to determine which cases deserved the death penalty. Still, this public feud doesn’t look like it will die any time soon.APRIL
Although critics suggested that a change in how “stand your ground” self-defense cases are defended could allow individuals to more easily get away with murder, Florida’s Republican lawmakers already had their hearts set on it. The original law, passed in 2005, says people can use deadly force and do not have a duty to retreat if they deem it necessary in order to prevent death or harm. That law, however, was used to defend George Zimmerman in 2012, after the neighborhood watchman shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford. Zimmerman’s attorney claimed he “reasonably” believed his life was in immediate danger, and it was enough to get him off. Although April marked the heart of the most recent debate, in June, the law was indeed changed so that the burden of proof for such claims is placed on prosecutors, and Gov. Rick Scott’s signed it soon after. The following month, a Miami judge ruled the law unconstitutional.MAY
After lording it over downtown Orlando for over a century, the “Johnny Reb” Confederate statue at Lake Eola Park was ordered removed by Mayor Buddy Dyer. Commissioned by a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1911, the monument was the concrete embodiment of a revisionist myth that paints the Confederate cause in the Civil War as noble instead of what it was – a defense of the institutions of slavery and white supremacy that powered the nation’s economy. Spearheaded by former Orlando Sentinel journalist David Porter and Organize Now, a group of local activists called on the city to remove the Confederate statue in May. Despite the dozens of protesters who flooded Orlando City Hall with Confederate battle flags and got into screaming matches with activists, the majority of city commissioners agreed with the mayor’s plan to take down the statue and reassemble it in the Confederate section of Greenwood Cemetery.JUNE
The year after the Pulse massacre felt like a long extension of that hot day on June 12, 2016. The shock of a gunman walking into a local gay nightclub, mowing down a dancing crowd and murdering 49 people, all with their own hopes and dreams, was hard to explain that next morning. In the grief-filled days, weeks and months after, it didn’t get any easier. One day at a time, Pulse survivors found the courage to reassemble the shattered pieces of their lives by leaving the hospital, going to counseling, learning to use a wheelchair and adjusting to their new normal. On the one-year mark of Orlando’s mass shooting, we paid tribute to the lives that were taken with candlelight vigils and honored survivors, victims’ families and community members whose lives were irrevocably changed.JULY
2017 robbed us of more joy when it took Billy Manes. The former Orlando Weekly columnist and Watermark editor-in-chief died at the age of 45 from complications related to severe pneumonia surrounded by friends, family and his husband, Tony Mauss. More legend than man, Manes had a larger-than-life influence on the Orlando community despite his tiny frame. He wrote the cheeky political column “Happytown™” and the “Daily Weekly Reader,” investigated local crooks, ran as Orlando’s first openly gay mayoral candidate and always, always championed the underdogs. After the Pulse massacre, he became the voice of a grieving community, openly pouring his heart out in his last columns for Watermark and appearing on MSNBC and NPR. We miss you, Billy.
AUGUST
The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 13, was a confirmation of just how ugly our nation’s reality has become, as if 2016 hadn’t made it clear enough. And along with that grasp of our situation came Trump’s response: He condemned violence on “many sides,” seeming to indicate that there was no right and wrong between the white-power marchers and the counter-protesters. Even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, with his history of attempting to look tough then slinking away, was quick to condemn it. On the evening following the tragedy, more than 100 mourners gathered at Lake Eola in Orlando, where the Confederate statue “Johnny Reb” had stood for decades, to honor the late Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old who died after she was mowed down by a white supremacist’s speeding car, among the others who were injured in the incident.SEPTEMBER
When Hurricane Irma made landfall on Sept. 10, a reckoning of both present and future began to set in for the people of the Sunshine State. An estimated 10,000 people in the Florida Keys were left homeless. The state’s already struggling citrus crops were shaken to the pulp. Millions of gallons of raw sewage overflowed into the state’s streets and waterways. About 5.8 million Floridians were left without power for weeks. Estimated insurance losses topped $6.55 billion, with the latest calculation of the number of claims approaching 866,000. On a mortal level, within a week of Irma’s eye glaring across Florida’s southern portion, at least 34 deaths tied to the storm were reported. The following month, according to figures compiled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state Division of Emergency Management, Irma’s death toll in Florida would officially climb to 69.OCTOBER
Anxiety. Hopelessness. Exasperation. The month of October brought a mixed basket of ugly emotions for immigrants in America, both documented and not. For beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, the uneasiness that set in was a result of the nation’s executive branch cranking up its anti-immigrant rhetoric yet again. It was a sort of purgatory for immigrants’ apprehensiveness: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Sept. 5 that the Trump administration would end DACA, providing Congress exactly six months to figure out a solution, the month prior. And on Nov. 6, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke announced the administration’s decision to terminate the TPS designation for Hondurans and Nicaraguans, and later for Haitians.NOVEMBER
By the time the truth about state Sen. Jack Latvala having groped six women had floated to the surface, the #MeToo movement was already well underway, gaining momentum across the country as powerful men – from Hollywood hotshot Harvey Weinstein to comedian Louis C.K. – continued to be felled by their own inappropriate shortcomings. Throughout November, Latvala angrily denied ever having been a sexual harasser to any extent. However, following a public corruption investigation in December, Latvala resigned shortly before the holidays. In a letter following the investigation, in reference to the #MeToo movement, he wrote, “My political adversaries have latched onto this effort to rid our country of sexual harassment to try to rid the Florida Senate of me.” It worked, but not in Latvala’s favor – in the favor of a better, more decent, future.DECEMBER
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September, but months later and likely for years to come, Central Florida is feeling the effects. The majority of the 3.4 million American citizens on the U.S. territory remain in debilitating conditions without power, electricity, basic services or shelter. The slow pace of recovery and seeming neglect from President Trump and federal officials pushed hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to evacuate the island and head toward the mainland. The majority of evacuees came to Florida, especially Orlando, where they found more challenges: the lack of affordable housing, employment and health services. A report by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College estimates that, in two years, the island will lose 14 percent of its population – which could change Puerto Rico, and Florida, forever.
This article appears in Dec 27, 2017 – Jan 2, 2018.