Nicholas Ruiz III
for U.S. Congress 2012
FL District 24
For the new wave of American progress.
Miami
by Nicholas Ruiz III

It was a great pleasure to attend the Congressional Progressive
Caucus Speakout Tour event on July 16, 2011 in Miami. Also in
attendance were hundreds of concerned Florida citizen-voters, as
well as Raul Grijalva (AZ-7), Frederica Wilson (FL-17) and Ted
Deutch (FL-19) of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The experience brought to mind some recent history. In 1969, Jim
Morrison of the Doors was arrested in Miami. Jim Morrison’s arrest
was largely symbolic; the result of an uptight status quo,
uncomfortable with the freedom of social and political expression.
The Miami Herald reported that at a sentencing hearing on Oct. 30,
1970, Circuit Judge Murray Goodman told the singer his acts
amounted to "utter contempt for our institutions and heritage." But
then, forty-one years later, former Florida governor Charlie Crist
(himself a hybrid of political expressions ranging from the right to
the left) would come to argue for a posthumous ‘forgiveness’ to
pardon Morrison in 2010. And so it was that the State of Florida lay
to rest its obsession for control – with a full pardon of the poetic
singer.

In 2011, some forty-two years after the Morrison incident, Nicole
Sandler of Radio or Not.com was arrested for asking an
uncomfortable question at a town hall meeting held by Allen West
(FL-22) in South Florida. The irony of course, is that Allen West is
African-American, and clearly, his candidacy and subsequent
election to U.S. Congress are the very real products of the Civil
Rights revolution wrought by progressive Democrats and liberal
poets like Morrison in the 1960s. Paradoxically, Allen West arrives
as a tea-baggin’ Republican. Go figure.

And that makes one think about the problems that we face. The
inability to act differently in the face of overwhelming reason and
imploration to the contrary is the key to the global uncertainty of our
time. The status quo is the dogma we must reject.

Yes, I was there in Miami: representing you.

Have things changed for the better since 1969? In some ways, yes.
But in so many other ways they haven’t changed worth one grain of
sand.

Drama-queens, political hysterics and beltway show horses
continue to step all over the progressive mix. And to be sure, the
White House blizzard is a cold one. And though the liberal agenda is
so often snowed over by the whiteout, we are not snow blind.

The citizen-voters in attendance buried their fear as they criticized
the garbage dump of policies being thrust upon them by the
compliant pale of Capitol Hill. They were, as they say, one with the
fire. We might say that the citizens’ chakra was unchained, revealing
the collective glow.

Many of those in attendance expressed their dissatisfaction with the
Republicans. And nearly as many expressed the same
dissatisfaction with submissive Democrats. They said that the
problem is not Republicans. You know why: there are always going
to be Republicans. Our problem is not a medieval matter of religious
conversion. In today’s parlance, converting the right to the left as it
were. The people say the problem is that Democrats that don’t act
like liberals anymore. If a Democrat isn’t a liberal, then what is she?
The people feel betrayed. They want to feel represented. I know – I
talked to them.

And it struck me that our so-called liberal community is always
looking for guarantees. Always in search of some effervescent path
to some fairy-tale victory. But the people know – there are no
guarantees. There is only the guarantee of your efforts to do the
right thing.

The People, together, press onward as they always have - with or
without you. I am happy to join them, and hope you will do the same
by helping my campaign succeed.


























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Political advertisement paid for and approved by
Nicholas Ruiz III, Democratic candidate for Congress
Nicholas Ruiz III for Congress
PO Box 1372
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170

nicholasruizforcongress@intertheory.org