5/21/2023 0 Comments Freedom factory![]() ![]() As governor he has taken aim at Florida’s teachers unions, one of the few bastions of organized working-class power in a “right to work” state with just 4.5 percent of the workforce unionized. The Tampa cigar workers would have scoffed at DeSantis’s anti-union, free-market populism as counterfeit liberty.Īs a US representative from 2013 to 2018, DeSantis voted to axe Medicare and Social Security spending, applauded lifting the retirement age to seventy, and helped found the social spending–phobic House Freedom Caucus. So what does freedom look like to DeSantis? A sort of pre–New Deal society with a weak welfare state, weak regulatory state, and, crucially, weak labor unions. He spoke in a similar register at his second inaugural address this year, using the words “freedom” or “free” fourteen times and “liberty” four, dwarfing even his favorite bête noire, “woke” (three). ![]() Early in his new book, The Courage to be Free, DeSantis declares that he’s animated by “blue-collar values,” unlike the “entrenched elites” that come out of places like Yale and Harvard Law (his two alma maters). They and other Florida Socialists of the era - tenant farmers in the cotton-growing North, timber workers in the Panhandle, trade unionists in and around Jacksonville - saw working-class solidarity as the lifeblood of freedom, and democracy in the factory and the fields as the solvent to petty tyrants.ĭeSantis, the son of two Rust Belt parents, cites his working-class background when explaining the origins of his crusading, freedom-focused philosophy. Many of the cigar workers sympathized with or were card-carrying members of the Socialist Party of America. While DeSantis frequently touts his working-class Italian roots, scorns well-connected elites, and drapes himself in the garb of freedom, the Tampa cigar workers would have scoffed at his anti-union, free-market populism as counterfeit liberty - a surefire way to press workers further under the thumb of swaggering employers. (University of South Florida historical photography collections via Wikimedia Commons)Įl lector could hardly be more alien to Ron DeSantis’s Florida. Cuban patriot Jose Marti poses with cigar-factory workers after giving a speech in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida in 1893. The workers would keep their reader, at least for the time being. The explosion of mass solidarity forced management to relent. The business establishment’s attack on this totemic figure - which culminated in the violent deportation of the lector himself - sent cigar workers across greater Tampa into the streets, brandishing signs in Spanish and Italian. They - not the factory owners - chose what the lector would read: novels, the news, or, most enraging to management, radical material. They - not the factory owners - handpicked the lector. The lector was the very emblem of the Tampa-area cigar workers’ proud status as free, autonomous workers. Factory management had obstructed the cigar workers’ lector, or reader, who read to them as they crafted their highly coveted, hand-rolled product. ![]() private drag strip rentals), spoilers would not be allowed unless someone on the Cleetus team has already posted it on social media.On a fall day in 1902, in a working-class town not far from where Florida governor Ron DeSantis would grow up, West Tampa cigar workers walked off the job to protest what they viewed as an assault on their freedom. The only exception is private events (i.e. You should avoid social media if you know an event is happening and don't want to see spoilers. Spoilers are allowed if they're related to a public event. This includes but is not limited to members of the Cleetus team. There is to be no posting of personal information of any kind. Video submissions should use the exact title of the YouTube video without being modified. Friends of Cleetus videos can be posted as long as the video is related to Cleetus or the community in some form. Posts must be related to Cleetus McFarland, the YouTube channel, the Freedom Factory, etc. ![]() Try to keep the family friendly vibe that Cleet has in his videos. Personal attacks and hateful language are not tolerated. This is a place to organize meet ups, events and to have general conversation about all things Cleetus. ![]()
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