Anyone wondering how strongly committed the Christian Right is to installing a theocratic government in Tampa need look no further than the hornet's nest stirred up when the Hillsborough County School Board pulled Christian and Jewish holidays off the school calendar two weeks ago instead of granting Muslims a holiday of their own.
Let me cut right to the chase. As part of the fallout of this vote, one of Hillsborough's elected county commissioners, Brian Blair, actually said on a highly rated national television show:
"This is America. If you don't like America, then, you know, find another place to live."
Wow.
And you thought all former professional wrestlers were dumb.
So let me give you the run-up to that outstanding piece of Archie Bunkeresque political wisdom.
It is June 2004. Some Tampa Muslims thought it was time to ask the school system if it would recognize its most holy days as holidays for students, just as we do for some Jewish and Christian holidays. Ahmed Bedier, of the Council on American Islamic Relations of Tampa Bay, thought he would get a simple up or down on the question, which was posed on behalf of the estimated 5,000 Muslim families in Hillsborough County.
There are only two major holidays on the Muslim calendar. Eid al-Fitr (pronounced "eed ul-FIT-ur") is the Muslim Feast of Breaking Fasts, a day of celebration, gifts and — most importantly — giving charity that comes at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. (Muslims were celebrating this holiday in the midst of last week's firestorm.) The other is Eid Al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice that commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God.
Bedier asked that the schools designate Oct. 24, 2006, a holiday for Eid Al-Adha. "Since other religious groups are given… days off during their holidays, I am confident the calendar committee and school board will act with due fairness and grant this request," Bedier wrote.
The school system assigned the request to its calendar committee, which meets annually to set which days kids have to go to school.
Now, this committee (and, later, the school board itself) had two easy choices: Say yes and move the holiday already granted on the day after Easter Sunday to coincide with the Muslim holiday; or say no, that while we respect our Muslim community, it comprises too few students and its heritages are not yet part of our national culture and therefore not compatible with a school holiday.
Instead, the board took what I call the lawyered-up option: Nobody gets a religious holiday since the Muslims have now asked for one.
This is the same rationale used when teens at schools across America have asked to form gay and lesbian support clubs, and some leaders respond by instead saying that no students can have clubs rather than allow them for homosexuals.
I call it the lawyered-up option because that is what drives it. The school board's lawyer, Tom Gonzalez, a tough advocate and good attorney, told his client that recognizing holidays for strictly religious purposes violates the Constitution.
The 5-1 school board vote (which the superintendent wants to have rescinded this week) accomplished several things:
• It demonized Muslims further by de facto blaming that community for raising the issue.
• It reversed a gain made by the Jewish community by taking away its Yom Kippur school holiday: Hillsborough was the first county in the Bay Area a few years back to grant the holiday.
• It upset Christian parents and students, who lost their Good Friday off and who have their Christmas tradition secularized as a "winter holiday."
• It empowered the Christian Right to demagogue yet another stupid government move.
To wit, Blair's Oct. 27 appearance on the famously open-minded Bill O'Reilly's nightly conservative lovefest on Fox News Channel. Blair, standing in for the only vote in favor of a Muslim holiday, School Board member Jennifer Faliero, told the nation just how wrong the Muslims are after O'Reilly said the notion of an Islamic holiday was a whacko idea.
O'REILLY: So the Muslims wanted a Muslim holiday, which is absurd in a Judeo-Christian country. I mean, we can't be having Hindu and Buddha. I mean, come on. I mean, this country is founded on Judeo-Christian traditions.
BLAIR: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: Those traditions have been in play for more than 200 years. Christmas is a federal holiday. You know, somebody walks in and says, "Well, I just moved here and I want, you know, this Shinto shrine."
BLAIR: … This is simply not fair. It's unacceptable. This is America. If you don't like America, then, you know, find another place to live.
O'REILLY: Well, certainly…
BLAIR: But with that said — let me just say this if you don't mind. With that said, we are respectful and tolerant of all religions and all people.
(Except for gays and lesbians, of course. But that's another story…)
Radical Press in Ybor City: O'Reilly's opinion on the Trib and Times notwithstanding, we're lucky in Tampa Bay to have two large and good daily newspapers, the Planet's alternative voice and other smaller weeklies like La Gaceta. Lots of different ideas from which to choose. Most metro areas are down to the crushing corporate voice of one daily paper.
But Tampa used to be even richer in alternative voices. Nearly 90 small, often radical newspapers circulated in Ybor City between 1886 (starting with El Yara) and the 1950s. They had names like La Traduccion ("The Translation"), L'Alba Sociale and El Critico de Ybor City. Some were hand-typed through sets of carbons and distributed to the lectors, who read the news of the world to the immigrant cigar rollers in Ybor's myriad factories.
Many of these newspapers espoused such crazy leftist workers'-rights notions as eight-hour workdays, maternity leave, collective bargaining and the ability to get up from your cigar-rolling desk to grab a cup of joe. Radical.
We can thank Manny Leto of the Ybor City Museum for bringing these newspapers of the past to our attention, with both a traveling exhibit called Otras Voces (co-sponsored by the Planet) that is making its way through four stops in Tampa and a panel discussion Nov. 3 on the role of the radical and alternative press in Ybor City. Former state attorney and appellate judge E.J. Salcines held the crowd of about 50 people at the West Tampa library spellbound with a recitation of the way it used to be in the cigar factories.
I was fortunate to be part of the panel, and it struck me as I looked at the list of newspaper names that they were the bloggers of their time: multiple voices from citizen journalists providing a diversity that gave Tampa its unique history and brand identity. As we move beyond blogging into the age of podcasting, we come full circle to the days of listening to the lector, who read news of the day and great novels.
Let's just hope it is a change for the better.
The Otras Voces exhibit is at the West Tampa Library, 2312 Union Street, through Nov. 18 and then moves to the International Bazaar at Centro Ybor through Dec. 5. Political Whore can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com or by telephone at 813-739-4805.
This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2005.