- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

Right now in WEDU, it's Pride Month.

How will the new laws pass by the state legislature affect the celebration?

Florida flies more immigrants from Texas to sanctuary states, while new concerns are raised about a labor shortage in construction and agriculture.

And teachers say they are leaving the profession because of limits imposed by Tallahassee on academic freedom.

All this and more next on "Florida this Week."

(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

This is Pride Month, the time set aside to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bi and transgender community.

- [Narrator] It started as a commemoration of protests against the police raid on a gay bar, The Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969.

That was a major turning point in the modern gay and lesbian rights movement in the US.

One of the largest pride events in the south takes place every year in St. Petersburg, where hundreds of thousands of people gather for a parade that stands for diversity and inclusivity.

This year is the 20th anniversary of St. Pete Pride and it takes place on June 24th, but it comes as social conservatives have been passing laws limiting LGBTQ expression here in Florida.

- And here to talk about this year's event is Dr. Byron Green-Calish, Co-vice President of St. Pete Pride.

And Byron, nice to meet you.

- Likewise, nice to meet you.

- Thanks for coming by.

- So last year, 300,000 people showed up.

Is it gonna be bigger this year?

- We are absolutely looking to top last year's numbers and I think we might do it this year.

- [Rob] Why do you think it might be bigger?

- Every year we get ready for Pride and I talk to people across the country that reach out to us saying, what's the deal for this year?

This year while we've talked to a lot of the same people, we've talked to a lot of allies that have made a really good point that this is the year they need to show up for people in their lives that identify as a part of our community.

And they're like, you know what?

I'm gonna come to Pride this year and bring my kids, or bring my friends or bring my family.

So I think this year we're gonna have a lot more allies participating in our festivities.

- All right, so with all the actions by Tallahassee and some of the far right, do you have concerns about safety this year or legal problems this year because of the new laws passed?

- Sure, absolutely.

I think with the increasing divisive rhetoric that's happening in the public discourse, that always encourages more disdain amongst people looking to come out and protest.

I think, we have a beautiful relationship with the city of St. Pete and the police department that help keep all of our festivities safe and welcome everybody to the space.

So while I am a little concerned, increased concern about safety, luckily we have a really great team behind us to make sure that everybody can be safe.

- There have been protests in the past.

What are the instructions?

what do the parade organizers say to the parade goers about interacting with the protestors?

- We allow people that freedom of speech.

So if they would like to engage with protestors they have the right to do so.

We let them know like, here's where the parade is gonna start and stop in that space.

Most of our protestors happen on the outskirts of the protest space because so many people come to the space they end up pushing them out to the outskirts of it.

So on the parade route itself you don't see a lot of protestors.

- There's a new law in Florida that goes into effect July 1st and it says that kids should not be allowed to view adult performances.

Does that intersect with the Pride celebration at all?

Will there be anything adult in the Pride parade?

- We have worked incredibly hard to make sure that all of our performers are aware of what's happening.

We also like I mentioned, have worked very closely with the City of St. Pete to preempt in any of our planning, to make sure that we can stay within the bounds of all local ordinances and potential legislation that's coming down the pike.

Our performers know, they know this is a family friendly event, and a majority of our performers want to make sure that kids can enjoy this space.

- Several cities in Florida have canceled their pride events this year.

What do you make of that?

- I don't take it lightly for any organization to cancel a large scale event that they may have been planning like us for 364 days.

I joke that the day after Pride we take that off and then the Monday next we are back at it planning.

But I know how much work goes into planning those events.

And my heart goes out to people that felt they needed to cancel that, their organizations festivities.

But we made it a point that we were not going to back down.

We were going to move full steam ahead with the plans that we had.

- The NAACP issued a warning last year, travel warning to Florida saying that for African Americans, other people of color and for the LGBTQ community, this is a hostile state, would you agree?

- I think that is where we are at unfortunately, that there are multiple identities that are being attacked in the political discourse and conversation, and that's upsetting.

And even for myself, I don't get to pick which one I show up in my queerness or my blackness and I exist in both of those worlds and recognize that both are under attack right now.

Be it the erasure from history books in the classroom, or the villainization of queer people and making them the bad boogieman in the story.

I think the NAACP has to do the thing that is important for them and that is to warn people about what's happening here in Florida.

I think as someone that works very closely with the members that are here in Florida, black and brown communities and queer across the board, that they are still here.

That there are black folks here, there are queer people here, there are trans people here that are still trying to make their way here in the state of Florida.

And that is tough.

Which I think is why Pride this year is even more important than ever to come together and band together to make things to celebrate joy.

- We just have 30 seconds left.

But I gotta ask you, you got your PhD in adult education and you're an expert on DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion.

What do you make of the moves that politicians in Tallahassee have made against DEI?

And we just have a short amount of time.

- Sure, I wrote a whole dissertation about this.

I think the tough part about it is the realization that things can be weaponized.

And even when you are mischaracterized, that there are a lot of things that are looking to provide an equal playing field to everybody that's at the table.

And using certain words like critical race theory or woke and mischaracterizing their true origins is a detriment to all people because it is looking to create spaces where everybody feels welcome at the table.

My hope is that this pendulum swings back, it writes itself, but I am not gonna sit on the sidelines idly.

I will continue to work with organizations like St. Pete Pride and fight for equity across all people.

- Byron, thanks a lot for coming by WEDU.

- Absolutely, thank you for having me.

- Good to meet you.

(upbeat music) Joining us on the panel this week, Natalie King is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of RSA Consulting and a Republican.

House member, Lindsay Cross represents District 60 in Pinellas County and is a Democrat.

And Ray Roa, is the editor in chief of Creative Loafing Tampa.

Well, welcome to all of you, great to see you.

- [Ray] Thanks for having us.

- Good to see you.

Well, the DeSantis administration has admitted responsibility for another transfer of asylum seekers out of Texas.

- [Narrator] This time two planes arrived in Sacramento, California, carrying 36 people from Columbia and Venezuela.

They were originally picked up in El Paso, Texas.

Florida has admitted responsibility.

The DeSantis administration says the three dozen migrants gave verbal and written consent.

Here's Governor DeSantis.

- We have put forth resources to assist with the transportation of illegal migrants to sanctuary jurisdictions where they've advertised that they welcome that, that prevents from coming to Florida and I think it's also been very effective.

- [Narrator] California officials say the individuals were coerced to travel under false pretenses.

Here's California's Attorney General.

- Many did not know, I know that for a fact, they told me they did not know.

They did not know they were in Sacramento until they were in Sacramento.

So the kidnapping and the crimes that are related are a category that we're looking at.

- So Natalie, let's start with you.

What has the governor accomplished by sponsoring these flights?

- I think that really at the end of the day he's sending the message that he believes that our border needs to be secure.

And I think that working together as states is something that's important to them.

Recently meeting with other states to put together a plan to collectively work together.

And so of course, those kind of activities are gonna cost dollars.

And so he wants to put forward funding to assure that those efforts are going to be strong and are gonna secure our border.

There's a failure at the federal level, we have an immigration issue, we have a illegal immigration issue, and I think that that is what he's trying to accomplish.

However, I do think that there are times when those kind of dollars there are pertinent needs here in Florida as well.

So I think that we do need to look at as we're sending those dollars to that initiative is what could we be doing here back at home?

- And Lindsey, the last trip to Martha's Vineyard, the 50 migrants who were sent up cost the state $30,000 to $35,000 of flight.

You could travel around the world for that much money, but does the legislature have any oversight ability to look into the spending of this money?

And do you as a Democrat have any oversight ability?

- So I think it's disgusting that we're putting our taxpayer money into this.

I think we approve 12 million in the budget.

And when you're voting on the budget you're looking at the good things of that, but there are certainly components of that including these flights that really don't belong in our budget.

I think what we need to be focusing is on the humans and the humanity of this.

And these are human beings.

About one in five Floridians are immigrants, and they're helping to provide the backbone of our economy.

And so this is ultimately going to hurt people and it's gonna hurt our economy here in Florida.

- What about Natalie's point, that things are broken at the border.

Somebody's gotta do something so DeSantis is taking the bull by the horns.

- So I don't think this is about finding solutions.

I think this is another act to get attention from the media.

If we wanna be working on comprehensive immigration reform, we do need to be working cooperatively with other states in the federal government.

But doing this and coercing people, doing things that really attack their humanity that's not the way to go about it.

- All right, let's talk about jobs for a minute.

Florida's new immigration law is causing concern.

The state is losing construction and agricultural workers.

The governor says he only wants immigrants and businesses to follow the law.

- We want businesses to hire citizens and legal immigrants, but we want them to follow the law and not do illegal immigrants.

- [Rob] At a large pro-immigration rally last week in Tampa, the workers there say they do essential jobs.

- We are your real first.

(foreign language) - [Translator] It's not fair to me more than anything because we come simply to work, we don't come to do harm.

- [Rob] And earlier in the week at a meeting in Hialeah in South Florida, Republican house members Rick Roth and Alina Garcia implored immigrants to stay in the state.

- This bill is 100% posed to scare you.

(foreign language) - I'm a farmer and the farmers are mad as hell.

(foreign language) - We are losing employees.

They're already starting to move to Georgia and other states.

- And Ray, there's a Republican legislator saying we're losing employees because of these new laws.

- Yeah, I mean, well, first off, we're running clips from elected officials and DAs and I think there's a lot of journalism that has to be done to find out who flew under what pretenses, whether how willing they really were.

So I think we should wait for that to come out and kind of pay attention to this.

But yeah, you have people fleeing the state, Republican lawmakers begging people to stay.

And I think about like to the point of spending taxpayer money on these flights because we have a surplus.

I just think about like somebody who sees a figure like 12 million but also goes to the grocery store and checks their bank app before they check out because that anxiety of that or the anxiety of paying your rent or your mortgage and things like that.

And I can't imagine that the person that feels that anxiety is looking at these migrant flights and thinking, yeah, that's definitely like helping me, are there complex nuanced things?

Is it hard to process that many people at the border?

Yes.

But you have to remember the humanity and the money is incredible.

- Natalie, you represent some groups that are on the other side of this issue too in Tallahassee.

What are you hearing from the groups that you represent and do you think Tallahassee is listening?

- So I do have several clients that work in the construction industry, the hospitals, we have groups that work with our migrant farmers, and they are starting to see a real impact already.

And I think that is something that we need to take a real deep look at.

And how do we make sure that there's no misinformation out there?

The bill itself that is triggering this with the e-verify component, those laws have been on the books.

It is there's some changes that we need to make sure we're articulating properly because our workforce is essentially going to be kind of knee capped in this aspect if that information is creating a fear mongering scenario.

We have families who maybe some of them are documented, maybe some of them are undocumented.

And so those families can't take that risk.

And so we have some families that we've heard from that are moving away and may not come back because of it.

They're gonna go up to North Carolina, they're gonna go to Georgia and do that farm work there and not come back.

But I think that the most important thing is that we do have a responsive.

I mean, I can personally vouch that Senator Passidomo, President Passidomo cares deeply about this conversation.

Senator Albritton who too and he's in line for senate leadership, is a farmer.

He cares, our local representative McClure, he works closely with the ag community, he cares.

These conversations are happening.

We see a lot of bills in Tallahassee that have unintended consequences and misinformation can be very, very damaging and harmful.

And so I think making sure that we understand the provisions of e-verify, understanding what that transport component looks like, what the real risks are, understanding what those penalties are because that is really the challenge right now.

- Lindsay do you think that Tallahassee might go back and look at some of these immigration laws that they've passed and change them?

- I think when we continue to have uprisings from people in the ag community, the home builders, our state continues to grow by close to 1000 people a day.

Immigrants help to support our economy, and if we lose them prices are gonna go up.

And if we thought inflation was high previously, we're gonna continue to see that uptick.

- And what about this idea though that, if we leave the immigrants out, these undocumented immigrants out, people who are citizens will come in and fill these jobs in agriculture and construction and that it will just make it better for the citizens that live here, right?

What are you thinking?

- I'm not of that mind that we're like, oh, immigrants they do the dirty work.

And so immigrants are people, they just wanna work like just like everybody else.

I don't know that a citizen is gonna come do this job, I guess, we'll find that out.

And one thing I keep thinking about I'm sitting next to the legislature like there's a super majority up there maybe that they rushed this legislation and we're just so interested in getting this passed for what, we're playing politics with people, maybe propping up somebody's presidential aspirations.

- We also have a shortage currently, you look at the construction industry, they don't have enough today.

So it's not as though that they aren't doing active recruitment.

So there's not an apple and orange kind of like you can switch the fruit out here.

- Okay.

Well, Hernando County which already has a shortage of instructors, saw almost 50 more teachers resign or retire last week.

- [Narrator] The county has been embroiled in a controversy over classroom instruction.

A school board member who is also a parent complained that a Disney film called "Strange World" featuring a young gay character was shown in a classroom.

The teacher who showed the film has resigned.

At a school board meeting last week 500 people showed up to either oppose or support school superintendent, John Stratton.

He survived a no confidence vote.

Members of the Proud Boys and Moms for Liberty had called for the superintendent to step down.

The tension caused several teachers to speak out.

Teacher Daniel Scott explained his reasons for resigning from the Hernando system.

- I'm leaving because I feel the board is more interested in removing Pride flags and banning literature than they are in protecting us educators.

I'm leaving because I don't feel that I can adequately provide a safe environment for my students anymore.

I'm leaving because I refuse to work for an organization that sees supporting kids for who they are as indoctrination.

I'm leaving because I refuse to teach fabricated history that prioritizes a nationalistic narrative before an accurate one.

- Ray, did Tallahassee do anything this year to solve the teacher's shortage?

- I don't know, I was just thinking he's probably also leaving because he's not making enough money to pay his rent and it's not worth it.

And this is the one that shocked me the most when I saw the sheet because on one hand I can't imagine in Florida of all places, Disney is a word that triggers people.

I'm also flabbergasted that this was the first Disney movie with a queer lead.

But yeah, I don't see how same sex relationships are so different from male female, mom dad, husband wife, kissing like they probably kiss at home, right?

So I don't know why it makes comfortable.

You've mentioned the Proud Boys and Mom's for Liberty and this is contagious but labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I try to think about those people at their house and why homosexuality maybe is so icky and became an issue for them.

And what do they do?

And you listen to David Bowie or like Prince or like the village people so I don't know.

I don't think Tallahassee has done much to keep teachers there, but maybe we'll see how this charter school thing turns out.

- Lindsay, same question to you.

Do you think Tallahassee did much this year to encourage teachers to stay and encourage them to continue in the profession?

- The complete opposite.

I mean, we saw a union busting bill that is gonna have serious implications for some of our public sector unions including teachers.

We saw expansion of the Don't Say Gay bill into the kindergarten through 8th grade, K-8.

We're seeing book bands with one person.

Doesn't even have to be a Floridian, could be someone up in Alaska who objects to something that's being read in a classroom, can get that book or that film pulled from the shelves.

And so teachers are, it's intimidation, it's chipping away at their profession.

Both my parents were public school educators.

I couldn't imagine them having to operate in this environment.

- Natalie, of course the governor says, look, we're exerting parental rights and we're empowering parents.

- And I think that's exactly what they're doing.

And I think that there's different lenses you can look at this issue with.

I think that in the issue with Hernando County, this teacher was a first year teacher.

This teacher had given resignation notification prior to the movie being shown in her classroom.

So we knew she was leaving.

We know that 15% of of first year teachers leave anyways.

40% leave after five and 50% leave after 10.

We had a teacher shortage before this kind of more recent conversation has been happening around transgender, don't say gay, whatever you want to use the narrative around.

But we need to solve for the teacher's shortage just like we need to solve for our construction worker shortage and we need to solve for our electrician shortage.

Workforce is gonna be an issue.

I do think that the state over the last several years and I know in my almost 20 years of working in this space, has seen improvements made.

I think this year in particular and over the last few years the teacher's salaries have been increased.

I think there has been additional resources applied to districts to have the flexibility to incentivize those teachers, whether it be first year or those that are returning.

I think that professional development, adding resources for mental health in the schools and those wraparound services has been continuing to grow.

And I think more importantly, the districts have finally started to work more collaboratively with the state to ask for the flexibilities they need.

So this year in the budget they made an adjustment in how the FEFP and the VSA and the dollars that were being allocated down, there's more flexibility in that structure.

- Okay, well, lots of more to talk about but we're gonna move on at least two Florida cities, St.

Cloud and Port St. Lucie have seen Pride celebrations canceled in the wake of Governor DeSantis signing bills impacting the LGBTQ community.

- [Narrator] Last month, DeSantis signed four bills into law that directly or indirectly target the community.

Among them new legislation restricting gender affirming care for minors, another requires people to use bathrooms aligning with their sex assigned at birth.

And another ban's kids from attending adult live performances.

The NAACP last month issued a travel advisory to the state calling DeSantis' policies openly hostile to people of color and LGBTQ individuals.

The Governor's Press Secretary criticized the NAACP move as a stunt.

- Lindsey do LGBTQ people have a right to be fearful here in the state of Florida.

Why?

- I think they do.

Just like we've seen attacks on immigrants, we've seen attacks in our public school education.

We're attacking our queer community by telling them that they are not as equal as other people that are heterosexual in our community.

And I think there is right for many of these cities and counties to be scared of some of the repercussions.

I'm glad the city of St. Petersburg that I represent is standing strong.

We're not backing down on this.

We're going forward with our Pride marches on June 24th and all of the other activities.

And we wanna welcome people who feel like they can't be their authentic selves and celebrate who they are and their contribution to their community.

We wanna welcome them to St. Petersburg, continue to grow that community within Pinellas County and hope that we can fight back against some of these really egregious laws.

- Ray, the governor says all he is doing is protecting kids and the innocence of kids.

- The innocence of kids.

You showed a drag show there, kids not attending adult performances.

I don't think kids were going to adult performances before that.

And yes, parents should have have a say here in what's not getting talked about.

Well, first off, stunts, come on, like them declaring that travel advisory is as much of a stunt as some of these migrant flights.

But there's only like 46,000 adults who identify as trans in Florida.

Their lives have been upended as you've alluded to.

But compared to 17 million adults in Florida, that's like half a percentage point of who lives here.

Their lives have been upended.

Meanwhile, citizens insurance is asking for a 12% rate hike.

They own 16% of the market share.

Let's get those issues to the forefront of the conversation and not pick on already marginalized groups that are easy to pick on for political points or whatnot.

I don't wanna live in a world where that's like the strategy to get elected like president.

- Okay, we're out of time.

So let's go to our last segment, the other story of the week.

What should we be paying more attention to?

And let's start with Natalie, your other big story of the week.

- Well, we're hoping the big story of the week is that the governor has issued the vetoes and has signed the budget and that we can all move forward on July 1 with a new fiscal budget and know where we're at.

So we're all kind of a baited breath waiting to see that come out.

- [Rob] All right Lindsay, you're other big story of the week.

- So I think we saw the horrific air quality in New York City and other areas on the East Coast from the wildfires in Canada.

I think it points to the importance of climate resilience, making proactive action there.

And also the importance of laws like the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act.

- All right, Ray, your other big story.

- I'm excited to see St. Pete Pride go off and see that celebration, see a lot of joy and happiness and staying in St. Pete they're gonna consider a renter's right to council, an eviction processing.

So continuing to attack housing here in Tampa.

A report came out you have to make $85,000 to not be rent burdens.

So we'll keep watching housing and what municipalities are doing to help people stay in their homes.

- Yeah, it's becoming surprisingly unaffordable to live in this area.

Thank you all for a great show, and thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org or like us on Facebook.

You can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

"Florida This Week" is now available as a podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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