support for First Ghost Connect is provided in part by Baptist Health and North Florida TPO.

Opinions expressed on the First Coast Connect week in review are those of our panelists and do not reflec the views of WJC News 89 nine.

Good morning.

I'm Anne Schindler.

And it's Friday, which mean it's time for our first coast.

We can review.

Among our topics, a strike over wages and automation is put on hold just days after it begins.

Florida broadcasters may unwittingly be subsidizin the state's anti-abortion ads.

A statewide public sleeping ban takes effect.

A Florida Blue and Baptist agreement comes after weeks of discussions.

But not everybody is covered by the last minute deal.

And a former state senator is found guilty in a ghost candidate scheme.

To talk about all that and more, I'm joined in studio by NICKISCH Williams, Jacksonville today, columnist and author.

Good morning, Nketia Good morning and good morning, Jacksonville.

Nate Monroe, Florida columnist for the USA Today Network.

Hey, Nate.

Hey, Anne and Renata DiGregorio.

Reporter at First Coast News.

Hey, Renata.

Hey, good morning.

We're also joined remotel by Hamilton Nolan, labor writer for In These Time and author of The Hammer Power Inequality and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

Good morning, Hamilton.

Welcome.

Morning.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure.

Let's start with the news.

I mean, it's been sort of fast and furious.

HAMILTON over the last like 12, 24 hours.

Remind us what this strike is about and where we are currently.

So this is a strike of the ALA International Longshoremen's Association, which is the union for all of the East Coast port in the United States of America.

They went on strike October 1st at the expiration of their contract.

They were looking for raises of to begin around 77%.

The company was offering raises that were now 50% over six years.

This is.

And the longshoremen shut down all the ports.

It was a big deal.

A lot of U.S. commerce goes to this port strike can cost billions of dollars a day.

And now three days in, they have, in fact, settled the strike.

And so there are a couple of main issues, as you know, at issue here.

I guess there's the money and there's the question of automation.

And so the agreement that they've reached this kind of temporary hal on the strike deals with money.

So remind us about the money part of it.

What they have received in terms of an apparent concession and then what?

Right.

What stands out with the automation still?

Yeah, in terms of the money.

Like I said, the the reality, you know, even though this strike made a lot of people nervous and sort of ha a lot of people's hair on fire and had a lot of conspiracy theories going about this being an opt for the electio and all types of stuff, really, they weren't that far apart on the money.

The these are international shipping companies that made something like $400 billion in profits since the beginning of the pandemic.

And so this was sort of an act by the workers to say, hey we need our piece of this now.

The company started around 50% increase in wages over six years, and they've landed at, I think, 62%.

So so, you know, fo all the drama that went into it as a pretty straightforward negotiation in the sens that they landed in the middle.

In terms of automation you know, that's an idea issue.

There's there are longshore unions on the East Coast and the West Coast, and they both deal a little bit differently with the question of of how how they approach the automation of their jobs.

You know the East Coast, Ala. Is is more oriented to tryin to stop automation in its tracks and the West Coast tends to be a little more oriented toward trying to make sure they share in the gains of automation.

And so that's still an outstanding issue for the ALA on the East Coast, and it's one that's going to play out in reality over years and probably decades.

You know, Hamilton, you're not from here.

I mean, you are from here, bu you're not living here anymore.

I'm curious.

You know, this is not an area that w typically think of as striking.

But of course, our local port joined in this strike.

Do you think overall the movement is changing in terms of becoming more amenable to staging a walkout?

You know, there hasn't been a strike like this in many decades.

But it is interesting because because since these ports are located in every state, you know, throughout the East Coast, that includes a lot of red states and even a state like South Carolina, for example, which is the most anti-union state in America, has a very strong longshoremen's union there at the Port of Charleston and Jacksonville to pretty similar situation.

So, yeah, I think, you know you saw the United Auto Workers go on strike last year, and when a big strike, you saw the Teamsters made a threat, a credible strike threat against UPS.

And when a really rich contract for their members and this is a little bit similar in the sense that these big, strong industrial unions are seeing and proving time and time again that that strike threat gets the goods.

And I'm going to open it up to our guest, to our panelists here in just a minute.

But I want to ask you specifically about that North Carolina anecdot that's in your book, The Hammer, because you talk about the issue of water and the way that the union there has kind of held firm on no bottled water, but you kind of mak a persuasive case as to why that why it.

Well, it sounds like foot dragging or in the case of automation, you know, concerns about just preserving someone's, you know, small tas that could easily be automated.

Why it's important in the eyes of the unio to preserve those kinds of jobs.

Yeah.

I mean, if you think about NAFTA and the legacy of NAFTA and the legacy of of quote unquote, free trade in this country, it really destroyed a lot o blue collar, middle class jobs.

And there was no safety net for those people.

So even though when people se things like the longshore strike and they say, hey, these people are, you know standing in the way of progress, another way to look at it is that the union is the only safety net for all of these livable blue collar, middle class jobs that exist in many cases in red states that don't offe that sort of thing, particularly to workers of color.

And so, you know, I would argue that the union is doing something that the United States government has not been good at doing traditionally which is building a safety net for all these working people in the face of change in technology and automation.

My colleague Wil Brow spoke to the Jacksonville, Ala. President Warren Smith this week before the strike was called off.

But he had some really interesting comments.

Let's hear a little bit of what he had to say about what's being requested in these negotiations Are fair.

Wages during COVID are a little bi 1408 lost more than 50 members.

We had hundreds of members who were sick.

Some members have called it two and three times.

We work in an industr that we cannot social distance.

We were front line essential workers.

We did not ask for a raise.

We did not ask for hazardous pay.

We stayed on the job.

We kept getting sick, we kept dying.

And now we're saying it's tim for you all to treat us fairly.

Nketiah This deal that was reached would raise the wage roughly from $39 an hour to $63 an hour, which many people in that who work in that industry say is necessary currently to be a wage that you can live on and also, you know, raise a family on.

Yeah, let's let's do that math.

Right.

That's okay.

So $63 an hour, 8 hours a week, $504, 3 hours a week for.

Oh, you're right, 63 times 40.

I mean, I'm no bigger, you know, But so that's 20 $500 per pay period.

52 weeks a year is not bad money, $131,000 for a yearly salary.

But taking the comment that you just played, they lost members during COVID.

They had no wages.

They were frontline essential workers.

Their people were dying.

And we have we're facing a reckoning in this country in regards to labor, where we have to decide that we want, that we need and we want to protect jobs as well as embracing technology and talking about the automation.

And so everybody is not going to go to college and do a AEI or Silicon Valley or a tech or finance job that allows you to work from home and adjus and use technology in this way.

And we still have to acknowledge that frontline workers are more than just doctors and more than just nurses or teachers.

They're also grocery store driver, grocery store clerks and longshoremen and people who drive ships and all of those things.

And so they deserve to live in the new century as well.

They deserve to have all the protections of their labor as well.

And businesses need to understand and learn how to be able to integrate both technology, while also making sure that their members and their employees are taken care of and are not pushed asid because the world is evolving.

Nate I mean, you've worked some blue collar jobs.

I've worked a bunch of them and I do think that it's a truism that the hardest jobs in America are the worst paying jobs.

It just seems that you know, the more opportunity you have to advance to jobs that are cleaner and more containable and have more, you know, opportunities for health insurance and all of those things, those jobs are generally not as grueling as the ones that have none of those benefits.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, working in the back of the back of the house in a restaurant is a lot harder than being a columnist, that's for sure.

No doubt about that.

Yeah.

And to like piggyback on a point that's been made here, you know, particularl in like red states like Florida, you know, you hear this talking point a lot from Republican politicians about just what the key issue was saying, that we want to encourage people to get into, you know, the trades that not everyone should have to go to college to have a living in.

The irony is like collective bargaining is how a lot of these trades make those jobs livable and make it possible for people to raise families.

But that's also the thing that Republican politician are incredibly hostile toward.

And so, like we like what are you trying to encourage exactly?

Like you just want people to go into trade so they can have, you know, bad jobs.

Like that's it's it's a it's just one of many contradictions of of like, you know, living in a in a red state.

Yeah.

If you're just joining us, we're talking about the week's biggest headlines.

You can join the conversation at 904 or 5492937.

You can email first Coast Connect at WJCT Talk, or you can reach out on social media.

We have a call from Angie in Ponte Vedra.

Good morning.

Angie, go ahead.

Hey, how are you?

Thank you.

I just have a question and it goes to data.

Are we comparing our U.S. ports with ports in Europe and Shanghai, like Amsterdam, as far as throughput and as far as automation?

Because that's where the heart of this lies.

I agree with your your guest in that we have to protect our workers, but we also have to take in data from the international ports in comparison because we're just we're comparing it to us, you know, and that leaves us in a bit of a vacuum.

You mean in terms of of remaining competitive against those other more automation?

HAMILTO What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a global industry.

And so I think that some amount of automatio is inevitable in that industry, and it's more of a question of of how that will be rolled out and how much it will impact the people that work in those ports.

You know, but I thought that I thought that clip you paid, you played from the the president there in Jacksonville he made such a powerful point, you know, because this this nation asked millions of people to risk their lives as essential workers throughout the pandemic.

And almost none of them got permanent gains for that.

And so this is this is payback time.

But, yes, it's a global industry, but then again, it's u to the companies to handle that more than the unions.

Okay.

We've got a call from Rick in the beaches.

Good morning, Rick.

Go ahead.

Yes, good morning.

I listened to your panel.

There's two they agree with the strike, but I just wanted to make a quick comment or try This whole No.

One product no one talks about for every minute raised.

And we work during hurricane season.

So what about that?

You're talking about traffic.

Long haul truckers, you say trying to trash your trash.

Gotcha.

That is.

Thank you, Rick.

Appreciate it.

I mean, that is far and away one of the most difficult dirty job made kind of as we were saying.

And it is not necessarily one that pays anywhere near enough to offset the kind of work that it is.

Right.

And, you know, it's it' kind of worth pointing out here that the legislature passed a law in this last sessio that has made public employees unions vulnerable to being decertified.

So like the kind of union that would represent a municipal trash hauler.

And so, like, you know, once again, like, I think we all want important jobs like that to be well-compensated and to be the kind of thing that you can you can support a family with.

But, you know, when you get to the nitty gritty of it, like collectiv bargaining is is one of the only kind of tools in the toolkit you can use to to force reluctant employers to pay their employees.

Right.

And Renata, it's interesting.

I mean, there was some discussion about the politics of this, obviously leading up to the election, how it could hur one side or benefit another side and discussion about whether there should be some sort of intervention by the president, you know, to get people back to work.

But it's interesting.

I mean, there was this very long, drawn out Hollywood writers strike recently.

And of course, you know, that's not considered the kind of work that anybody' going to force them to go back.

But it does take time for them to win those concessions.

Yeah, And it seems like the kind of thing, too, where, as was mentioned a little bit, whenever a certain group strikes, I think other people kind of come out and they're like, Hey, well, what about us?

We don't really make enough here either.

And it's interesting because kind of what do you do about that?

And with the economy, that kind of people always want to blame that on everything as well.

So it's hard to figure out.

But it's also interesting how COVID keeps coming up, because I feel like during COVID, we were all like, yes, we care about mental health.

We acknowledge that we do have families.

And it seems kind of like we'v forgotten that now years later.

But then it takes you back to where the person the president during a strike is bringing up.

Hey, remember this?

Remember how we weren' taking care of during this time?

And it really shows how much of a reckoning it was for so many people.

Hamilton, I want to ask you and we'll let you pop off the line in a little bit.

But you know that question as to what's to be done or the idea of, you know, what about us?

There is a dynamic in this country very often between, you know people who are making a middle class wage and the peopl who are making less than them.

And as you've pointed out, sometimes less questions about the people who are making, you know, massive amounts of money.

And, you know, the the share that they take of kind of the overall economy.

Yeah, no doubt inequality has been rising in this country for 50 years.

And, you know, I would lov for whenever people see a strike like this, go down and see the workers win, to not say, hey I'm jealous of them, but to say that could be me.

You know, that is a that is a win for all working people.

And the you know, it's a your caller who called in and said, I am the sanitation worker and what about us?

You know, he he made a great point in the answer to his question is that he needs the union, just like the longshore workers have at Union, because by having a union, you can collectively bargain and you can go on strike and you can get your own fair wage.

So I think that the message fo this, you know, should not be, hey, we're all crabs in a pot and I have to pull down the next perso and I have to get mad at people.

If longshore workers are making six figures, it should be, Hey, that's great.

And I need a union of my own.

Well, Hamilton thanks so much for joining us.

He's Hamilton Nolan, labor writer for In These Time and author of The Hammer Power Inequality and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

Thanks for joining us this morning, Hamilton.

Thank you and appreciate it.

And if you're just joining us we're talking about the week's biggest headline with our panel of journalists.

You can join our conversation at 904 or 5492937.

Or you can email us a First Coast Connect to WJC talk.

You can also reach out and tag us on social media.

I want to move on now, Nate, to a topic that you've covered, investigated and reported on about ads that have been airing.

You may have seen them.

They're all over television opposing amendment four.

Tell us what it was that you started in looking at and what you discovered.

Yeah.

So this is a broad story that has been discussed on this show a couple of times.

But to catch people up, the Agency for Health Car Administration, this is a state agency set up a Web site several weeks ago with very explici messaging about Amendment four.

This is the amendment that would restore abortion rights in Florida.

It would reverse a six week ban on abortio that's currently on the books.

AKA, set up a websit and kind of a landing page that that has very explicit political messaging that that would, you know, persuade a a neutral observer to think that Amendment four was quite bad.

It says that Amendmen four threatens women's safety.

It cast aspersions on organizations and people who support Amendment four.

This is very explicit kind of electioneering messaging.

Remarkabl to see a state agency engaging in that, to say the least.

Complementing that Web site, AKA began running television ads that direct people to visit the Web site.

And that when when occurred, they sort of tweeted out this this commercial that they were going to be having running on television, something that caught my eye at the very end.

It said that the ad was sponsored by the Agency for Health Care Administration, which is obvious.

But then it said it was also sponsored by the Florida Association of Broadcasters and this local station.

So presumably whatever station you might be seeing it on.

And I was just ver curious about what that meant.

Like, what did it mean for the Broadcasters Association to be sponsoring an ad and by extension for a TV station, very likely like a news station to be sponsoring an ad that is kind of currently the subject of a very active controversy over electioneering with state resources.

And so myself and a peer of mine, Jason Garcia, he's an investigative reporter in central Florida.

He has a newsletter called Seeking Rents.

He and I have worked before on stories in the past.

We both sort of put our heads togethe and started reporting this out.

And what we found first is that, like nobody wanted to talk about this, the Board Association of Broadcasters did not want to talk to us about what it meant for them to be sponsoring this ad campaign.

People in the industry, people on the on the association's board did not want to talk about this in the state, would only respond wit sort of generic talking points and we would send very specific questions.

So we were nonetheless able to piece together that what's going on here is broadcaster in Florida television stations donate airtime to the Florida Association of Broadcasters.

And what the association can do is take that, take that advertising time and they heavily discount it.

They put a 75% discount on the value of this airtime and they can sell that airtime to the state for the purposes of public education campaigns or, you know, public service announcements, things like, you know, DUI enforcement, how to put baby seats in the car the right way, things that are supposed to be very nonpartisan.

That is the vehicle through which the state has been purchasing airtime to run these ads designed to tank Amendment four.

There is a there is another one on Amendment three, the marijuana decriminalization amendment that is also airing.

And so, you know, really what's going on here is the governor, who is openly, vocally opposed to these two amendments, is laundering political messaging through a state agency.

And they're using discounted airtime to ru those TV ads all around Florida.

And so the Florida Broadcasters Association allows the state to run these pieces, these public service announcements.

They do it at a discounted rate, and therefore, their name is on this kind of as an underwriter or a sponsor of this ad.

Do you think that they were aware that that was what was happening, that this particular PSA was very political and perhaps might lead into this controversy?

You know I don't know because they won't respond to us.

It would be difficult for me to imagine that at some point somebody along the way wouldn't have pieced together some very basic stuff and realized what that advertisement was.

You know, the television ad on Amendment four, to be fair, is not quite as explicitly political as the website that it directs viewers to go visit, but it is nonetheless a very odd kind of public education advertisement.

It's not at all.

Again, it's not.

It's nothing.

Make sure you wear your seatbelt in the car.

It's it's a very defensive sort o ad about Florida's abortion law and frankly, mischaracterizes the state's six week ban by, frankly, not even mentioning that it has a six week ban.

It makes it sound like Florida's policy support women and families.

And that's a very debatable premise.

Nketiah I'm going to go a step further and say that the ad peddles in misinformation and disinformation, period.

It is shameful that the ad is running and ha to be run through this program so that we see the governor and the legislature's hands meddling in this election to try to dissuade voters from educating themselves about what Amendment four is and what it will do.

First of all, there's a six week abortion ban in the state of Florida.

That means that before a woman might truly know that she's pregnant, unless she's, like actively trying and monitoring her cycle, that by the time she wants to make a decision about what to do about that pregnancy, that time may already be too late.

Also, by criminalizing abortion after six weeks, that puts doctors in hospitals and makes them liable for providing care to a woman who might be in distress.

So if they have pre-eclampsia, if they start bleeding, if they have a miscarriage, i if anything goes wrong in that pregnancy, hospitals and doctors may wait to render care.

And so we see in the state of Georgia, which just a week ago, a judge halted their six week abortion ban after we saw the deaths of Kandi Miller and Amber Thurman, two African-American women who died because they could not get the care they needed because of the six week abortion ban on the state.

This is in addition to the fact that the United States as a whole has a maternal health care crisis and that it disproportionatel impacts black women, indigenous women and other and other women of color with who are now 3 to 3 times more likely to die in birth, in birth than they are compared to any other woman around the world.

Yeah.

So there's that.

And so now you're trying to tell women that the state of Florida supports you.

How.

Yeah.

And we're not a we should say.

I mean, these ads have been running on all the local TV stations, probably yours included.

And so, you know, I wouldn't ask you to speak to that.

But this is part of a larger controversy, obviously, that's been going on in terms of, you know, the use of state resources for electioneering or for weighing in on a political issue.

And it's also the sourc of a lawsuit that the ACLU has filed.

Specific to the website that was created and whether taxpayers are funding a message, a political message.

Yeah, it gets t some pretty weird area in there because then I know with like TV stations, for instance, there comes the law.

You have to have this amount o time of this political person.

They have to have like the same amount and you have to do it because it has to be fair, that sort of thing.

But with this, honestly, it kind of just makes me sad as a journalist because it's like how many people are going to see the headline and say, Oh, corrupt media, like you guys are biased.

Like, you're just kind of making you're the one who figure this out.

But then in the end, how many people are going to think it's us that are the problem sort of thing?

Yeah, and Nate you reached out to the Florida Broadcaster Association, and interestingly, you got a response from the Agency for Health Care Administration.

The state agency?

Yeah, it it it was like they were passing our questions on to the state, which was bizarre.

And for what it's worth, the state did not answer our questions.

I mean, we just the few times we reached out, we would just get talking points in response to, you know, how much did you pay for this as well?

You know, we have regularly educated citizens on issues.

It was like that sort of thing.

And so if the Broadcasters Association did this unwittingly, I guess you could say after your reporting, they certainly are now aware it is winning.

Now, if they are if they continue to do it.

And I think for what it's worth, it looks lik in some of the spending ledgers that that the stat you know, some like procurement, it looks like they're still purchasin discounted airtime to run either Amendment four or Amendment three advertisements.

You know, most of the revenue comes from this.

This this program is a very turgid name.

The noncommercial sustaining announcement program.

But most of their revenue comes from selling the state this discounted airtime.

Yeah, well, I want to move on to talk about a different subject.

But if you're just joining us, I'm with Nate Monroe.

We're not a DeGregorio Nketiah Williams.

We're talking about the week's biggest headlines.

You can join us at 9045492937.

You can email questions to First Coast Connect, WJC to talk or you can tag us on social media.

Nketiah.

I want to move on now to the subject of a ban on public camping, public sleeping that took effect this week.

We're in day four now of the statewide ban, and enforcement such as it is or implementation is being managed by the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department.

They've got a team specifically for this.

Are we seeing anything on the streets yet that is like a manifestation of this new law?

Are we seeing anybody being removed or or redirected or taken somewhere to find shelter as opposed to living on the street?

So according to Jeffrey, what's really been happening is like they're working around the clock trying to find the people who are unhoused and figure out basically triage what's happening with them on the street.

So are do they have substance abuse issues?

Let's get them into a program.

Do they d they have a psychiatric issues?

Let's get them into a mental institution.

Do they are they just down on their luck?

Let's find some programs to help them get back on their feet or is there a criminal element at play?

And then let's, you know, funnel them into the criminal legal system and go the jail route and then after they are triaged into whatever locations they can go to get them off the street, then it begins to address, I guess, the problem of their homelessness.

But what the problem really is, is the law like what contempt that you have for people, for the citizens of your state, that instead of trying to provide funding for more services that would help them and really get them off the street, we are now criminalizing the fact that they are on the streets to begin with.

I think that is absolutely unconscionable and just shows the contempt that the this governor has for the people of the state who are citizens.

We've talked earlier abou in talking about the longshore strike, longshoremen strike, they you know, they fightin and striking for a livable wage.

Well, if you don't have a livable wage, you may not have a place to live.

And you can very much have a daily job and still be homeless and unhoused.

So it's the same tension that Nate was talking about, where we want to see people go into trades or people go into these different areas of life, but then we don't set them up for success so that they are able to make a living and have a sustainable quality of life.

And so that now you come back and criminalize them for some of the choices that you put before them.

Renata you've reported on this as well.

And the Jacksonvill Sheriff's Office said on Tuesday that they're starting this educational phase, that they expect to last about 30 days and that enforcement action will only be taken as a last resor if individuals decline services.

Yeah.

So the if they declined services seems kind of like a big part there.

I know when I talked to JSO, they said during this time 30 days for the educational phase people will be given a warning at times two.

So that can happen.

But like you said, Nikki show with people how it comes down to funding most of the people who are dealing with homelessness, who I've talked to recently, all have jobs.

They're just like, I just don't make enough.

And so this is where I sleep here on the sidewalk.

And they're actually not really planning to leave from the people who I've spoken with, at least so far.

So it comes down to, all right, if people are coming by and they're showing you thes services, how does that play in?

Do they have to accept a certain thing In kind of when I was speaking with people, they were saying, well, I don't want this.

I if I go there, I'm not going have as much freedom at that shelter.

I want to stay over here.

So it gets into like a really kind of muddled spot right there.

And it should just kind of be interesting to see how it all plays out, because the other part is when you speak to all of the people who are doing the city' plan to try to end homelessness, they're saying, yeah what we really need is funding.

Like once we get the funding then we can do all these things because they're still four months.

They've been using the word in the beginning.

We're still in the beginning of like trying to get the message out.

And that's what they said months ago.

So we're still here, but they're still not having that much funding because the mayor wante $10 million to try to do this.

City council ended up passing a fraction of that.

So now they have about two and a half million dollars to do all of this, just a lot less money.

So it should be interesting, just by the January 1st deadline which is when the city can start to be sued by residents and business owners, if they see people who are sleeping outside.

Should just be interesting to see.

Like if we if we get there, that we have people that are shelters.

I got a call from Moe in Jacksonville Beach.

Good morning, Mo.

Go ahead.

Good morning, everyone.

First of all, I wanted to commend Mr. Monroe for being so professional this morning.

His writing tends to be a little, uh, radical, if you will, or or controversial.

It's been a very professional experience.

It's been nice to listen to him.

It seemed like Miss Nikk should, however, was allowed to criticize the misinformation, disinformation of the advertising campaig that you all were talking about, but then kind of went off on a bit of an emotional tangent, if you will, that I think really mischaracterized a lot of things and dramatized a lot of things.

So can you just be specific and we'll try to address it?

Well, it was it was it was kind of a, you know, shotgu approach it criticism of of, uh, of the advertising campaign.

And then I think, you know, I don't you know, there's the recent tragic deaths of a couple of women, unfortunately.

And and that's bee there's been two or three four sides of of that story in the media.

And I really don't like talking about that because the because the the tragedy in and of itself.

But, you know, I just felt that Nikki should kind of us that as a way to make her point.

And I don't think she really characterized it accurately.

Alexis, thank you.

Thanks for the feedback.

Um, Nate, thank you for being so I think that's always the consummate pro.

NICKISCH It's obviously an emotional issue.

And, you know I think that that's, you know, part of the reason that it is difficult to talk about, um, but, you know, there has been this reporting recently on these women, as you said, who have died because they were not treated in out of concern by doctors about when they could be treated or if so, here's the thing.

And part of me for my emotions, um, women were dying before Florida had a six week abortion ban.

Women were were dying before Roe was overturned.

Women have been dying in childbirth or due to advers pregnancy outcomes for decades.

That is why the the United States Congres worked to pass the omnibus bill that was first introduced into the legislature in 2019.

We are now five years later and it's finally been passed, and that is to do the work of making sure that women do not die in pregnancy.

Women do not die because they have doctor who are not listening to them.

And I'm Michael.

And just recount the stories of Abbott, Thurmond and Candy Miller.

We can point to celebrities who have almost died in childbirth.

Serena Williams, Beyonce, Allyson Felix, those that's a tennis champion, a mega superstar and an Olympian.

So, yeah, I would be emotional about the fact that now in an effor to restore the right of a woman, to be able to make decisions about her own body, her own future, her own livelihood, because let's let's be clear, havin a child is a financial decision.

And we've been talking about finances all day.

Right.

So to take that right away and then to use the airtime discount that you that you are getting from the Florida Association of Broadcasters to try to educate the public and then to use that time t discredit what has been a safe legal medical procedure for mor than 50 years is disingenuous.

And peddling and disinformation.

And the fact that women are dying because they are not getting the services that they need when they go when their bodies g into some type of septic shock or when their pregnancies don't last.

Because also, let's be clear, miscarriages happen and you shouldn't be left to die at home or bleed out on the floor or in your car or in the hospital waiting room because the doctor doesn't want to go to prison.

And I would just say, you know, according to the CDC, the mortality rate, the maternal mortality rate for black women is 2.6.

So, you know, between two and three times the rate for white women, regardless of income and regardless of education.

So that is, you know, an issue that is separate and apart, but that's also an issue where abortion we're looking at the rate for white women just in the United States.

But let's take it globally because the United States ranks dea last among all developed nations in the world for maternal health outcomes as well as for infant mortality.

So it's not just a black woman issue.

It's not just an issue of minorities and strategically undervalue people.

It's a global issue.

And it's an issue specifically in this country where the voices and the bodies in the choices and the autonomy of women are not respected.

We're going to move on because we've got just a little bit of time left.

Renata, you wer reported this week on the deal that was reached between Florida Blue and Baptist Health.

This has been a standoff that threatened to put, you know, maybe 50,000 people without deal on their health insurance.

And so there is a deal, but not everybody's covered by this deal.

Yeah, And it's kind of weird the way that it happened because, you know, for forever, you and I, we go to random interviews talking about other people and people be like, oh, you know, I also have Florida Blue and Baptist.

What's going on with that.

So people were really stressing.

I talked to a mom before the deal was reached and she had found out three days before that she was going to need to pay $11,000 almost to get her three yea old the surgery that she needed.

So as that kind of thing ended up working out, actually, while I was there, she got a call and ended up being that she was under the continuity of care.

But so then it was just hours before the deadline they finally reach a deal.

We didn't have the details of it, but people kind of assume they were good, right?

They were like, all right, there's a deal.

Like we still have our coverage.

And then news organizations started getting people reporting problems like, hey, I tried to sign up for this.

It wasn't working.

What's going on?

So we had asked for more specifics and then it turns out tha if you have Medicare Advantage or you have my blue, no everything is covered anymore.

And I think it kind of came as a surprise a lot of people, because they were trying to sign up for stuff and that's when they found out.

Yeah.

And so what we're hearing about the Medicaid advantage and the Florida the My Blue customers, so that' my blue is sort of low income, you know, a cheaper form of health insurance and Medicar Advantage.

Obviously, seniors, Nate, they've basically been informed that they don't have a primary car physician in a network anymore.

I mean, that they're basicall going to lose their primary care physicia and have to find another doctor.

They've got until the end of the month.

You know, I, I did not do like this is no a story that I've reported out.

And so I just kind of as an observer, I mean, we just are our health care and insurance systems in this country are just utterly broken.

It is absurd to make people like wait on this, you know, behind the scenes hig stakes negotiation to come out to see if they're going to have, you know, really actually just have health care because uninsured people like affect I mean, this stuff's too expensive.

And so, like you just don't have health care.

You know, if if a deal like this falls through and it's it's just it's the height of absurdity to expect people to sit around and wait for, you know, these two companies to stop screwing around and get things figured out.

And this isn't the only current stand.

I mean, standoff.

You have health and UnitedHealthcare are in their second month of a standoff in their hospita insurer contract which expired at the end of August.

And so, you know, there's several tens of thousands more people that are, you know, either paying out of network prices or finding a new doctor, which is no small task.

Not at all.

Like I have Florida Blue.

I had to get some procedures done.

And so I was like raisin the last two weeks of September, trying to make sure that I got all of my appointments in before that deadlin just in case I lost my coverage.

And so to think that tens of thousands of people have no health care coverage with the United and the U.S. health standoff, I remember I went to go find a primary care physician.

They're like, we're not taking any more Florida, Florida blue patients.

So now you have doctors tryin to protect their own practices and make sure that they're going to get reimbursed from insurance companies who may or may not be with a network anymore.

So everybody's scrambling.

It's always about money and the people are left holding the bag.

And as Nate said earlier, it's the problem it's always been the problem of insurance in this country that it's not something that you are given.

It's something that you have to define as.

You have to go through a middleman where you see those people who have public positions like our Congress or like our military.

They have public health insurance and they have the best health insurance, and they can go and get as many procedures and all the care that they need.

But everybody else that works within this capitalist system has to go out and find an insurer, whether it's provided by your employer and depending on how large your employer is, your employer may not have to provide medical insurance for you.

Right.

So you either have to have an employer that is going to provide your medical insurance or you have to go find it yourself.

And depending on the nature of your health, if you have preexisting conditions or anything like that, that's going to raise the price.

And so this is somethin that we've been grappling with for decades.

Yeah, remains pretty intractable.

Nate, I want to talk just briefl about the ghost candidate story.

This is a South Florida story, but it's got some local connections.

It involves a former senator who was found guilty of basically faking an election, you know, election fraud in a way.

Explain to us what happened and remind us what the connection is.

Yeah.

So a former state senator, Frank Hartleys, was found guilty of a few different felony charge for basically giving another guy tens of thousands of dollars to run as a kind of sham.

No show candidate.

You know, this guy was running solely to siphon votes away from the Democratic incumbent in that South Florida state Senate seat.

And so that trial was quite narrow, was focused on a pretty narro controversy about that election.

But it was happening against the backdrop of a bigger controversy, which is that there were at least three ghost candidates in that 2020 election cycle who ran with the support of dark money groups and effectively siphoned away votes from the Democratic candidates in those seats.

It helped Republicans retain control of the state Senate.

One of the dark money groups that provided support for our Tillis candidate was a group called Grow United.

Grow United was a501 C4 organization controlle by Matrix operatives and Matrix.

And when a power and light are kind of its own saga that we've talked about before on this show, it's shameful to try to make you condense all of that into like you know, a minute and a half.

But a very interesting story and one that will continue to follow.

Nate Monroe, Acacia Williams, Renato DeGregorio, thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Thanks again.

We'll be right back.

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Welcome back.

Well, we're talking culture, music, fashion and wine.

It's a Saturday's wind down festival.

And here to tell me about it is DJ Larry Love.

Welcome, Larry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

How you doing?

And Dominique Toll.

Hey, Dom.

Nice to meet you.

How you doing?

Really good to have you here.

So this event has been going on since I think 2023 wind down.

But tell us a little bit what is the Wind Down festival?

Yeah, so the Wind Down festival is kind of a culmination of an event we've been doing all year long.

You know, it started as wind down Wednesday at Vagabond Coffee, and we actually received a grant from Placemaking Jack.

Right.

Because of this, because of them seeing the work that we did.

So we are now able to put together a large scale event and let their voic and sing part to the highlight.

Arts, culture, music, food, wine in a way that tells a stor about our event and the impact we're trying to make.

Exactly.

But of course.

So this is going to be at the Lift Every Voice and Sing Park.

And this is like maybe th first event, This is the third.

Technically, there are techniques outside of the urban core outside of the ribbon cutting.

Okay, that's great.

And what a neat venue to do it at.

And so how did this originate, Larry?

Like, what was the germ of the idea that got wind down even going?

Yeah.

So a shout out to Ravi Young as he Ravi Dr. Down and a father vagabond.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I'm workin so they kind of came together.

Ravi had an idea him and Dom can already knew each other on a kid together, and Dom was like, Hey, I actually have a a great place for this idea that you have.

And it came together at will and kind of talk through it.

And, and then Kalia, his partner, came, came aboard and I saw them do the first event.

And what I want to say is, is just I did and I've been kind of contemplating for a while, but the way is done was purely about the arts and I never saw one.

I went there was usually, you know, inside of a bar, there's wine is a deejay.

This is not this is communit on a Wednesday, a random, random Wednesday of a week.

So I saw it and I knew Ravi an I kind of knew everybody else.

I reached out, I was like, Hey, I would love to be a part.

I'm a community influence.

I've done a lot of these here and they embraced me and I started designing this family.

Ever since I'm so described for somebody who hasn't been but would like to go kind of what is the vibe, what's the atmosphere?

What are you doing?

And seeing and eating and drinking?

Absolutely.

So the vibe of me, you know, but it's magical to be on This is truly a community.

So you walk in, there's food vendors, you get the smells right befor you even walk inside the door, you come in, there's about 20 plus actual merchant vendors, and we also have food in the inside.

Then we'll have a deejay playing music.

And so Ravi comes on.

He's the hosts.

We have a house.

They basically we jus have artists perform their sets, differences, maybe a ten minute sit in between each other.

We've recently added a band for the last couple of ones, and this is like a big vendor festival.

Essentially.

It is happening on a Wednesday, right?

And we always have a lot of visual artists supply work as well.

So like that.

Another huge part of the story.

Yes.

And so who like curates it?

How do you find the artists or are they just like friends or associates, people that you've worked with previously?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, we all, the five of us, come together and we just, you know, we work together to create the event.

You know, literally everything that happens, the wind out comes out of our hearts and souls.

You know, I handle the art portion.

Robbie handles the majority of the music, but we all kind of collaborate on that.

You know, we just, you know, we're all in our community.

We we know all the artists and, you know we just try to make sure that we go to art shows, go to different events, or that we find the talent so that we can display it to the city, right?

So we just try to be intentional about and it might correct an understanding that kind of a discussion just about where hip hop is and its futur and its its currency, I guess.

Yes, it's part of that.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, honestly, I mean, Robbie was integral in that because he is an M.C.

We know what Jacksonville is known for in the hip hop community.

You know, a lot of violence.

So we are very, very intentional about how we display our musical artists that the music that we play, you know, as Larry being the deejay, like everything is peaceful.

Everything is about good vibes.

We don't promote violence because we want people to see that.

JACKSONVILLE From a musical standpoint, a hip hop community has a lot of positive things to say, and we can bring people together and create community because that's the ultimate goal of wind down, is to establish that community in Jacksonville and grow it for us.

Yeah.

And so how is it received?

I mean, obviously, Larry, you took to immediately, but just is it building?

I mean, do people that come feel like they want to come back, are they return customers, so to speak?

We've grown every month since the beginning, every month.

And is really the community has literally been growing wit this is what I'm saying is it's an extremely communal event and it started with us building a community together and other people kind of coming in and saying, okay, this is this feels familiar and it's just grown and grown and grown.

So it's truly a community that we can't do this without the people.

But to be clear, this wind down is not on a Wednesday, right?

It's Saturday, October 5th.

Yes.

Breaking the mold.

Absolutely.

So the event that lif every voice, park it said noon.

Noon to eight and eight.

Yes.

Wow.

They are.

They do.

And you can get tickets on Eventbrite.

So Larry loved Dominique tell thanks so much for being here Is really nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you as well.

We happen.

Thank you.

And that's our program Thank you so much for listening.

We encourage your feedback and suggestions you can send either to First Coast Connect at WJCT, Dawg.

And if you missed anything, you can catch our rebroadcast at 8:00 tonight.

Or you can find our entire archive on your favorite podcast platform.

Don't forget to listen.

Saturday at four when Dr. Joe Servin discusses the importance of finding joy in challenging times.

The executive producer of First Coast Connect is David Luckin Our producer is Stacy Bennett and our director is Brady Corum.

Our associate producer is Jamie Vella, and our theme musi is performed by Club de Belugas.

Join us again Monda when we talk to Ambassador Nancy Soderber about how dramatically the world has changed since October 7th.

And a special shout out to our directors.

Dad Corum Papa Corum turned 76 today.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Im Anne, Schindler, You've been listening to First Coast Connect on WJCT News 89 nine Support for First Coast Connect is provided by Baptist Health and the North Florida TPO Baptist Health is a prou supporter of First Coast Connect Baptist Health, committed to building a healthier community for all of us.

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