Two months ago, Valerie Navarrete — a Miami Beach real-estate agent and chairperson of the city’s homeless committee — launched a passion project using nothing more than an iPad and her Facebook account.
When white people first “discovered” the Everglades centuries ago, they figured it wasn’t good for anything. To them, it was just a swamp full of bugs. But the weather was nice, so they just stomped all over everything, ruined the land, and dropped some roads and strip malls on the area.
Around 4:30 p.m. today, Jorge de Cárdenas was getting some work done in a Starbucks on South Dixie Highway near the University of Miami. A group of people stood waiting in line at the counter for their coffee and snacks. But one disgruntled white customer got so upset at how long his order was taking that he began screaming “Trump!” at a black employee.
When Univision bought Gawker Media, many media observers questioned whether Fusion’s days were numbered. For years, critics have touted Miami’s Univision as one of the most forward-thinking and daring media organizations in America. Jorge Ramos, the network’s charismatic lead anchor…
Thousands of Miamians have taken to the streets since last week to protest Donald Trump. By all accounts, they’ve been entirely peaceful. Miami Police Commander Albert Guerra even took to Twitter after a Wynwood protest on Saturday to “thank the protesters for peacefully exercising their [First Amendment] right.” But the Miami…
Donna Thomas-Jones fears she’ll soon be squeezed out of the neighborhood she has called home for most of her life. For years, she’s watched rent climb and apartment buildings crumble in the West Grove, forcing out families who have lived for generations in this historically Bahamian enclave.
Murder evidence is pretty important, so you’d think the Miami Police Department would have a good place to store all of those key items in unsolved cases. But it turns out that for years MPD has kept vital evidence in a metal storage container under an I-95 overpass. As blogger Al Crespo revealed last month, the container rusted, letting in water and pests that destroyed evidence in more than 500 cases.
The following sentence represents the lowest threshold for political “success” in U.S. history: Americans should be actively hoping that Donald Trump turns out just like Florida Gov. Rick Scott. For many Floridians, that idea goes down as easily as a milkshake made from cigarettes and cat litter.
Miami-Dade County overwhelmingly rejected Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election. This past Friday, Miami residents reminded the world that the city really doesn’t like the guy: Protesters shut down two highways to make sure the nation knows Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant policies won’t fly here.
Thanks to the National Rifle Association, academic studies examining the impact of gun laws on public health are hard to come by. The gun lobby helped force the federal government to ban funding for studies that track how gun rules affect the homicide rate.
As a historic supermoon glows over Miami Beach this week, record-breaking king tides boosted by sea-level rise are swamping the barrier island. In what has become an October tradition, residents have to wade through pools of deep standing water on sidewalks and in parking lots to go about their daily lives.
Ana Navarro won the hearts of thousands of Americans by saying “pussy” on television. In her most famous clip, the CNN commentator launched an exasperated verbal attack on Scottie Nell Hughes, a supporter of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who tut-tutted Navarro for quoting Trump’s now-infamous “grab ’em by the pussy”…
When Gov. Rick Scott signed the Infectious Disease Elimination Act into law this past March, Dr. Hansel Tookes nearly fell off his rolling chair. Tookes had encountered such stiff resistance over the past four years while fighting for Florida’s first needle exchange program that he’d nearly given up. But now…
When he ran for Miami City Commission last year, Ken Russell’s opponents mockingly called him the “Boy Wonder.” As a newcomer to politics, the 42-year-old was seen by critics as little more than a hipster activist with a penchant for Hacky Sack. “That nickname came about during the campaign I…
Chances are, a Plantain article has probably come across your Facebook feed by now. The 6-month-old Miami satire website has gone viral by offering cutting takes on everything from local politics (“Summer Camp Run by Jeb Bush Sued After Leaving Child Behind”) to transit (“Miami-Dade to Create Freeway ‘Texting Lane’…
The day after Hurricane Matthew hit western Haiti, the country’s main airport stopped accepting flights. But across the border, the storm hadn’t touched the Dominican Republic. So Michael Capponi, a Miami Beach nightclub promoter-turned-humanitarian, chartered a flight from South Florida to the DR and then hopped a small private plane…
The business card lists his job title as “atmospheric manipulator.” That’s how Alejandro Gonzalez describes what he does as the owner and founder of Kryogenifex, which creates special effects using liquid nitrogen. Unless you’ve been to one of the many Miami-area clubs that cools partiers using puffy white clouds of…
Over the weekend, a Columbia University professor from Turkey, N. Turkuler Isiksel, shared his best advice for fighting Donald Trump if his administration turns toward autocracy. “Protest early and often,” wrote Isikel, who lived through the rise of the democratically elected strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Florida Democratic Party hasn’t won a governor’s race in Florida since 1994 but in recent years has been totally unwilling to invent a new strategy to change that streak. For the past four elections, like clockwork, the party has nominated a milquetoast Tampa-area centrist. And for the past four cycles, they’ve all lost.
In March, citing an uptick in mass shootings and terrorist events, the Miami-Dade Police Department upgraded its officers’ gear to powerful AR-15 rifles and the most up-to-date bulletproof vests on the market.
Miami often acts as a bellwether for the nation’s issues. After all, the Magic City is a majority-minority community with serious affordability, transportation, and climate problems. If Miami finds a way to beat those challenges, that’s a great sign for the rest of the country.
If you want to snap Miami out of its warm, tropical stupor, you shut down its highways. At 6 last night, a few hundred Miamians upset by Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency gathered outside the entrance to the Bayfront Park Amphitheater downtown. The crowd quickly spilled into the…
