Aired on NBC6, Miami, Florida

Two months ago, Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas and nearly 4,000 Bahamians evacuated to nearby South Florida. Now, some of those evacuees are starting to leave South Florida and return home to rebuild. Other families are building new lives and new beginnings in the United States.

The post Bahamian Evacuees Adjust to Life in South Florida appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The high tides that flood the Miami Dade County for a few weeks every September, have gone on up. As the sea level rises beaches get more and more narrow to a point where seawater reaches streets and properties on the waterfront. When the amount of water that encloses the area exceeds the capacity of the drainage system, floods occur in low inland grounds as well.

During the current administration, Miami Dade County passed a $192 million plan to maintain and improve it’s infrastructure solutions to mitigate floods, such as seawalls, water pumps, raising roads, and elevating buildings, as well as reparations and the restoration of beaches. The county’s multi-year projection of resiliency is estimated at $20 billion. But when it comes to supporting private businesses, there is only so little that the local government can do.

The post Businesses in Miami Dade affected by Ocean Level Rise appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The crowd of mostly middle-aged or older Cuban Americans chatted with friends and talked politics over the sound of shuffling domino pieces and Latino music coming from nearby establishments. When asked about President Donald Trump, many of them were quick to express their support.

“There are many Cubans sympathetic to Trump because Trump is a Republican,” Alberto Castrillo, 62, said in Spanish. “The majority of Cubans who are here in Miami are Republicans.”

More than half of Cuban voters in Florida backed Trump in 2016, and according to Florida International University’s 2018 Cuba Poll, 54% of Cubans in South Florida were registered as Republicans in 2018. To win Florida in 2020, Trump will need their support again.

Cuban support for the Republican party goes back to the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, when the CIA backed a failed attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. Cubans saw the Bay of Pigs Invasion as a betrayal from the Democratic Party.

Associate Director of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute Sebastián A. Arcos said that most Cubans assimilated to political life in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century through the Republican Party and that many of them were drawn to the party’s hard stances regarding the Castro regime.

Today, he said, most Cuban Americans in Florida that back the Republican Party are older men and women who were exiled and have lived in the United States for several years. In fact, the 2018 Cuba Poll found that 76% of Cubans 76 or older are registered as Republicans.

Alberto Castrillo, 62, has lived in the United States for the past 30 years. He is Republican and voted for Trump in 2016. Photo by Amanda Pérez Pintado

Castrillo has lived in the United States for 30 years and is registered as a Republican. He voted for Trump in 2016, and so far, he has been pleased with the president’s performance, although he described the president as rude and “malcriado” (spoiled).

“The Cuban community recognizes that,” he said. “But they don’t criticize him because he is Republican and the economy is doing well.”

Joaquín Mesa, 74, said he is not affiliated to a particular party, but sympathises with the Republican Party and supports “everything that is against Castro’s regime.” Mesa’s father was a political prisoner in Cuba, and he has been living in the United States for the past 40 years.

“I hope our president keeps winning,” he said. “If he does, it will be the end of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Contrary to Castrillo and Mesa, Luis Vazquez, 82, said he is not interested in politics. He has not voted during the 53 years he has lived in the United States, but he would not have backed Trump in the 2016 election and does not support him today.

“That man doesn’t attract my attention. He’s a bit crazy,” said the West Palm Beach resident. “He says things that are incoherent to me.”

Vazquez said he is against the president’s stances on immigration, saying “there is no one here who is not an immigrant,” and he condemned Trump’s racism towards Latinos in the United States.

A few miles away from the park, José Pérez, 71, stood outside Versailles Restaurant, in Calle Ocho, talking with a group of men. He said he is against illegal immigration and supports Trump’s stances on the issue.

“You can’t let anyone in,” he said. “Whoever comes here to the United States has to come to produce, not to take.”

Pérez, who came to the United States in 1962, identifies as an independent. He voted for Trump in 2016 in what he describes as really a vote against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Almost three years into Trump’s presidency, Pérez believes the president has improved the economy, which the 2018 Cuba Poll identified as the issue that most motivates Cuban Americans in Miami to vote for a candidate

Looking at the 2020 elections, he said Trump would be his candidate over any of the Democraric hopefuls.

“I am not voting for a socialist that wants to give away things to those who don’t work. No, no, no,” Pérez said. “I have worked here nonstop for 50 years. I don’t want them to take away what I earned to give it to someone else. I don’t accept that.”

Ana Escrich, 73, voted for Trump in 2016 and would do so again in 2020. For her, he is the best president the country has had in the 52 years she has lived in the United States.

“I love our president,” she said, standing outside the restaurant La Carreta in Westchester. “I have been in this country for more than 50 years and never in my life have I seen a president that has been working like that man.”

Escrich, who identifies as an independent, does not think that Trump is racist and she assures that she has never felt discriminated against in the United States.

Nereyda Alfonso, 72, also said she has never faced discrimination in the 60 years she has been in the United States and went as far to say that there was a deeper racial divide during Barack Obama’s administration than now.

Both Alfonso and Escrich expressed concern because younger generations are skewing too far to the left.

Lisann Ramos, 27, was born and raised in Miami. Her parents are Cuban immigrants that she described as very conservative and Republican. She, on the other hand, is “definitely a liberal, Democratic human.”

Ramos described herself as left-leaning on social issues and emphasized that she does not support Trump and his policies.

“Cannot stand him. He should go in a rocketship very far away,” she said. “He’s a manifestation of a lot of very backwards thoughts that apparently the entire nation- the ones who back him- support: racism, homophobia, misogyny.”

For Ramos, more younger Cuban Americans like herself are breaking with tradition and moving away from the Republican Party. According to the 2018 Cuba Poll, 40% of Cubans between the ages 18 and 39 are not affiliated to a party, while 35% are registered as Republicans and 23% as Democrats.

“I know there’s definitely a wave. I don’t know how big it is,” she said. “I don’t feel alone at all in being a left leaning Cuban American child of immigrants.”

The post Elderly Florida Cubans Remain Loyal to Trump appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

By Bessie Liu & Thomas Hengge

Overtown is a historically black district in Miami, Florida. Home to one of the first and only black police precincts in the state, the neighborhood used to be called “Coloredtown” and was a thriving black cultural center often visited by renowned performers and artists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. This all changed in the 1960’s when the government decided to build a highway right through the heart of Overtown. Many families were forcefully displaced.

Today, because of climate change and rising sea levels, developers are seeking land in higher areas of Miami which are not prone to flooding. This includes Overtown, an inland neighborhood close to the city center. As a result, residents of Overtown are being cornered out of their community by the creeping cost of living. In order to make sure the history of Overtown is not being forgotten, many local non for profit and community organizations are working together to preserve what is left of the once thriving black neighborhood.

The post Gentrification in Overtown appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I reached out to the kids and I told them that, you know, this was their job,” Falkowski said. “There were kids who really wanted to work on the stories, and there were other kids who felt like they were not capable. I didn’t push kids to do things that they weren’t comfortable [with].”

Following the shooting, the Eagle Eye put out two issues of their quarterly print newsmagazine, one dedicated to the memory of those who died, and another centered on gun control and the activist movements that quickly grew out of Parkland and galvanized a whole nation.

Melissa Falkowski, the school paper advisor, and Dara Rose, one of the four current editors, responsible for the print magazine. Photo by Catarina Lamelas Moura

While grieving for their peers, the paper staff stood up to the challenge.

“That was really mind opening to me, because that’s when I [realized] this is what it means to be a journalist,” current editor, Zoe Gordon, said. “I went from covering local sports games to stories larger than myself about nationwide politics.”

Almost two years have passed. These student journalists have traveled around the country, giving interviews and gone to journalism events. They have even received a special mention by the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, for their coverage.

“There was so much that needed to be said and done,” Brit Taylor, president of the Florida Scholastic Press Association, said. “Obviously the effect of what those students did is going to be felt maybe forever.”

The younger staff writers who were sophomores at the time are about to graduate, but they leave behind a legacy.

“They’ve left incredibly large shoes to fill,” Falkowski said. “Student journalists all over the country are doing really important work. And I hate that they are often discounted and told that they can’t print this or that”.

Of the four current Eagle Eye editors now applying to college, one is planning on following a career as a journalist.

“After everything happened, I got really involved. I was staying after school everyday,” 18-year-old Dara Rosen said. “The commotion of it all, there was just something that was like, oh my god, I want do this.. I love the fast pace.”

Likewise, her peers were shaped by their time in the newspaper. Brianna Fischer, for one, is looking into a career in law.

“Going into law was a way to make sure that these victims of these terrible crimes have a way to get help and make sure that that doesn’t happen to them again,” Fischer said. “Especially after everything that’s happened at the school that kind of just propelled me into wanting to help people.”

After her time in the Eagle Eye, current editor Brianna Fischer plans on following a career in the field of law. Photo by Catarina Lamelas Moura.

While not necessarily going into journalism, Zoe Gordon and Leni Steinhardt are planning on majoring in communication.

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t really imagine writing for the rest of my life, but I love the creativity aspect of journalism and just like interacting with people,” Steinhardt said.

Some of the news coverage she witnessed in the aftermath of the tragedy made her rethink a career in journalism.

“Immediately after the shooting I saw the good side of journalism, that reported on the activism, and that showed my school in a good light, that we persevered past this tragedy,” Steinhardt said. “And there is a bad side of journalism: walking out of school, teary eyed because it was just a really bad day, people had microphones in my face, it was like ‘talk about happened to you that day’. It kind of made me feel embarrassed to say I want to go into journalism.”

Leni Steinhardt is one of the four current editors at the Eagle Eye, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school’s newspaper. Photo by Catarina Lamelas Moura.

For the students tasked with covering the consequences of the shooting, as well as writing the obituaries of fellow classmates and school staff, being respectful was an important standard to follow.

“Seeing news trucks and reporters trying to shove microphones in your faces every day at the school was difficult,” Fischer said. “Even though we’re doing something on a much local and smaller level, we didn’t want to be those types of reporters. And it made us look at that, especially for people going into journalism, kind of determine who they wanted to be in the future.”

Their work was also a balancing act between the will change gun policy and their role, as journalists, to remain as objective as possible. For the issue on gun control they invited individuals who had opposing views to express their opinion.

“[The students] felt like they wouldn’t be taken seriously if they came at the issue one sided, if they didn’t allow other voices to be expressed,” Falkowski said. “They would just be dismissed as liberal.”

Besides reporting on what happened, they were dealing with their own grief, and being asked to share their stories through countless interviews and op-ed pieces.

Zoe Gordon is also an editor of the Eagle Eye, and she oversees social media. When faced with the challenge of writing for the paper, after the shooting, after a first “feeling of dread”, she realized how impactful her words could be. Photo by Catarina Lamelas Moura.

“It was kind of difficult to distinguish the two, especially when you have strong opinions and when you’re also in the same position as any other students,” Gordon said. “For a lot of the pieces, we did cover them like journalists, and we did get the facts and we were making sure that everything was truthful and not editorializing.”

The staff benefited from a unique perspective from inside the school.

“All these people that other news organizations are trying to interview we can just pull them out of class and interview them,” Rosen said. “And they’re happy to talk to us, whereas they’re not going to want to talk to a random news organization.. It made it easier for everyone: for you, for the family that you were interviewing.”

In their coverage, the Eagle Eye made it a point to avoid weighing in on the trial of the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. They also steered away from finger pointing.

“This is made by teens for a teen audience. So you also have to ask, what does your readership want?,” Falkowski said. “Does the readership want to read about Nikolas Cruz? No, they don’t. So we don’t write stories about him because our audience is victimized by him and doesn’t want to hear about him. And they’re going to read about it in the Sun Sentinel anyway.”

The weeks that followed the Valentine’s Day shooting tested the limits of the teenagers, who had to grapple with their own feelings, while facing head on their self-imposed duty, working long days after school.

“I think everyone was there for each other. If you just sit there and start crying, there’d be 20 people giving you a hug and wanting to help you and support you,” Rosen said “And it was really nice to have this environment while we were doing something that was so hard and so new to all of us.”

While gun control remains an important topic, the newspaper’s staff — which as of now has 74 writers — has been trying to gradually move on and get back to reporting on the most pressing issues for their peers. At the moment, they are working on an issue about the climate.

“Fifty percent of the kids who were here during the shooting have graduated,” Falkowski said. “You know, life is starting to get back to normal. So the stories are starting to get back to being about the regular everyday concerns that kids have.”

The post In the midst of tragedy, Parkland student journalists persevered appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Florida passed a new law, SB 168, that bans sanctuary cities and requires local law enforcement to enforce federal law by reporting undocumented criminals to ICE. Earlier this year, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis signed the bill as he believes it will make communities safer. Despite the efforts of communities and activists disputing this, the bill went into effect. The state of Florida has a diverse population, where many of its immigrants are undocumented. According to a 2018 report by the Department of Homeland Security, Florida is the third state with the highest number of undocumented residents, an It estimated 810,000.

The post New Florida law targets the undocumented appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School will be remembered in American history. Almost two years later, Parkland, Florida is still a thriving city for families and businesses.

The post Parkland thrives two years after deadly shooting appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I keep telling them, I got two years here. That’s it. I’m retiring,” said Quinones, the current Test Chair and former ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher at Miami Jackson Senior High School. “But I don’t know. I’m an advocate for my babies and I love my kids. I don’t know if I can retire. I lose full time. I don’t know. I think I would miss fighting for them.

Although no longer in the classroom, Quinones knows of almost every student in Miami Jackson, especially those in the ESOL program. For a teacher who promotes “tough love”, dozens of the almost 400 ESOL students come to her office each day, sharing their test scores, an update in their program, or even just to converse in Spanish.

Miami Jackson is one of the many schools in southern Florida who have seen significant changes due to an influx of immigrant students in the past few years.

Quinones said that at Jackson, which has a population of about 1500 students, at least that more than half of the school had been ESOL at one point or another. About three years ago, the school saw a number of students in Jackson’s ESOL program, from its average of 250 to over 400.

“It’s very heartbreaking. But you know, we had one year that it was like 100 kids. I mean nonstop,” said Quinones. “We were at a point where we went over the 400 but we have a lot of in and out. Okay. They’ll come in, they’ll leave, they’ll come back or they go to another school and you know, that kind of thing.”

When students first enter the school, they must take an English proficiency test. If they qualify for ESOL, students take developmental classes and English classes, along with common curriculum classes such as math, science and history. In January, ESOL students take another exam to test their improvement. If their results deem efficient, students are then “exited” from the ESOL program, and start the next grading period by taking fully integrated classes with English speakers.

At Miami Jackson, it’s not uncommon for ESOL students to remain in the program for over four years, the average time of high school.

“Sometimes we’ve got to push them like the baby birds to make them fly and they’ve done well, very well,” said Quinones. “But usually it’s like three years . . .it’s three years when we start to think and say, okay, the grades are good, the testing is not so good. You know, some people don’t test well, okay, they can handle it. So we make decisions, you know, based on data, based on analyzing. You don’t live in there. It’s not a place where you go from ninth grade to twelfth grade.”

While certain schools such as Jackson can offer larger ESOL programs, teachers in other south Florida schools feel the weight of lack of resources.

Sarah Leonardi, a 10th grade English Literature teacher at Nova High School in Broward County, said with one ESOL coordinator for a student population of 2000 , accommodating students in her classroom can be challenging. She says that in her experience, students are expected to pick up English in class with native speakers.

“It makes it difficult when you’re trying to teach Shakespeare and this child who like got here last week is expected to sit in your class and read it and understand it and like pass tests,” said Leonardi, who incorporates multiple strategies to help ESOL students, including printing out Shakespeare in other languages. “It’s very discouraging to the kids and that’s how they’re learning English. It’s just like, it’s really, it’s not feasible.”

In the state of Florida, teachers are by law required to complete ESOL training if they have at least one English Language Learner (ELL) student in their classroom. But Leonardi, who is running the District 3 seat on the Broward County School Board, believes this training isn’t enough, and that having more resources such as more than one ESOL coordinator per school, are the solutions to helping students.

“There needs to be conversation about around like how and why these all students are expected to pass this English language arts test no matter like if they got here yesterday or they got here two years ago,” said Leonardi. “ I think that there needs to be a conversation about, providing classes where kids can learn English.and that’s just like school-based resources.

According to Karla Hernandez-Matz, president of United Teachers of Dade, in 2018 an estimated 10% of students in the Miami-Dade school district were immigrants, or over 34,000 students.

“Anytime that there is political unrest, we’ll see how that impacts our school system,” said Hernandez-Matz. “We try to make sure that we are able to provide not only opportunities for our workforce to be engaged, but also opportunities for the community to understand that we’re with them.”

In 2017, Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez, who is Cuban-American, made Miami a non-sanctuary city. Miami was the first city to comply with Trump’s executive order, after he threatened to pull funding from sanctuary cities. In response, the Miami-Dade school district, which includes over 100 nationalities, reaffirmed that anything school board property was deemed a safe zone.

“We’re really proud of that,” said Hernandez-Matz. “We know that our children were really concerned and parents were really concerned and although we never ask for an immigration status. We want our children to feel safe and the parents that are in the schools visiting or picking up their kids to feel safe as well.”

Alfonso Tetro, teacher with the Title I Part C Migrant Program in Homestead, said that fear has been prominent in his community, after several deportations of students’ family members.

“The kids were actually scared. Parents have been separated because of the deportation,” said Tetro. “And you know, and not because they did something, you know, most of these cases are because they, they just were caught by ice. And it’s traumatizing. “

The Migrant Title I Part C program provides additional educational programs for migrant children. In Homestead, the program caters to about 1,900 students on a 36-month school schedule, but the number can fluctuate depending on the crop season, according to Tetro.

Tetro, who grew up in a migrant family, was part of the Migrant Program as a child. Now he and his sister have both become educators, serving the community they grew up in. Tetro even works with students in Homestead High School, his alma mater.

For Tetro, some things in the program have changed while others have stayed the same.

“It’s a little different now because now honestly, immigrants weren’t looked down upon,” said Tetro.”It wasn’t an important issue, you know, because somebody needs to pick the field, somebody needed to work, whatever needs to be done. But people don’t see that now. Now they see them as a burden. Now what the current political climate is becoming. Like immigrants are bad.”

Nira Nova, 19, a student at Miami-Dade College, teaches a free ESL class to Rouss Salinas, a visitor from Peru. Nova teaches through her church, Church by the Sea in Bal Harbor. Nova intends to transfer to American University’s legal studies program. Nova’s mother came to the United States from Bogota Colombia while she was seven months pregnant. Photo By: Maureen Mullarkey.

Nira Nova, 19, a Miami-Dade College student, knows this first hand. A first generation Colombian-American, Nova was part of her elementary school’s ESOL program.

“I know what it’s like having parents that don’t speak English” said Nova. “I took English as a second language when I was in kindergarten because when I went into school I didn’t know any English and Spanish was my first language.”

Nova, who intends on studying law at American University, now volunteers teaching English as a Second Language at her church, Church by the Sea in Bal Harbor.

“It makes me really happy being able to make a difference in people’s lives, especially since as a first generation student,” said Nova. “We have a huge amount of immigration and unfortunately a lot of these people aren’t able to speak English. So for them living in the United States, it must be really difficult not being able to know how to defend themselves or how to represent themselves.”

For Quinones, her relationships with her students are the key ingredient to seeing her students succeed.

“We have kids that have no education in their country. We have kids that missed out on the basics even here, because mom and dad are not stable at home,” said Quinones. “They need to understand that kids are kids and that you have to reach kids in any way possible in every way possible.”

The post South Florida schools strive to help immigrant children embrace English appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The post The end of DACA looms over undocumented young people appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

As one of the largest wetlands in the world, Florida’s Everglades is home to many different plant and animal species. In recent decades, human activities have caused many issues in the area, including water flow, invasive species and climate change, which are all direct threats to the ecosystem. To protect the Everglades, both state and federal government have been working together to create legislations and programs such as Tamiami Trail and Combined Operational Plan. The rise in temperature also affects some animals’ egg hatching pattern. Despite the challenges, the Everglades National Park still attracts visitors overseas. With the recent return of the wading birds, many remain optimistic about the Everglades’ future.

The post The Everglades Crisis appeared first on Pavement Pieces.