I first met Congresswoman Kathy Castor when she was six years old.  She was riding in the back seat of her mother's car, along with her younger sister and brother.  I was pregnant with my daughter, who now is 46, and we were headed to a feminist convention in Orlando.  Because of this longtime family closeness, I sometimes hesitate to give Kathy the public praise that she is due – but I've decided that I'm over that.  She is a model for legislators everywhere and at every level, and I'm going to talk today about just two of her many achievements.

 

First, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Congresswoman Castor to head a special committee on climate change early in 2019, when Democrats again gained a majority in the House – now, midway through 2020, that committee already has released a report of 500+ pages.  I've known of committees who take that long just to arrange the chairs in a meeting room.

 

Unlike the science denier in the White House, Kathy's committee absorbed the technical testimony of experts and then offered a roadmap explaining in simple language what we need to do to save our planet.  You can read more at www.climatecrisis.house.gov.report, but the important point is that the committee considered the many factors of the world's economy that are being affected by historic climate change.  Rising ocean levels caused by melting icebergs is especially important here in Florida, but global warming is happening everywhere.  Trumpsters may consider Mother Nature to be a hoax, but you can't fool her; it is getting hotter.

 

So instead of continuing to pollute the earth by burning coal and oil, the committee calls on us "to build a clean energy economy that values workers, centers environmental justice, and is prepared to meet the challenges of the climate crisis."  Among its thoughtful bullet points:

 

·      "Support rapid deployment of wind, solar, energy efficiency, and other carbon-zero energy sources…

·      Launch new economic sectors to meet our climate goals, such as direct air capture and low-carbon building materials

·      Ensure new jobs in the clean energy economy are high-quality, good-paying jobs by strengthening workers' right to organize a union and ensuring federal spending only supports projects that meet high-road labor standards…

·      Develop a national strategic plan to help communities respond to climate-related health risks and disasters, including frontline communities and vulnerable populations…

·      Set strong standards for farmworkers, construction workers, and others who have to endure extreme heat waves.

 

There's more, of course, and you can read it for yourself.  The point, though, is that this is what environmentalists and other futurists have worked for since the 1970s, when the nation had its first oil crisis.  Kathy was a little child then, and now her work will have truly global impact.

 

AND MORE

 

You saw at the beginning that I intended to make two points, but the first topic used more space than expected.  Here's the second:  Congresswoman Castor also is a model for how we solve the current controversy about historical statues.  I've written about this before, but it probably won't hurt to review:  Since 1922, every state has been entitled to two statues in the US Capitol, and state legislatures make the decision about who gets honored.  Smart people started thinking about inappropriate ones years ago, and several states have changed their honorees without much public notice.  The result is appreciably more diversity, especially with more images of women.

 

Some old statues in the Capitol Rotunda were moved to the new Capitol Visitor Center, which opened about a decade ago.  This was a much needed addition; it separated tourists from those who actually work in the Capitol, and especially after 9-11, there was a need to limit the number of people in the Capitol itself.  The new space also allowed better historical exhibits -- but unfortunately, someone placed one of the two Floridians at the top of the escalator, where it attracted greater attention than it had in the Rotunda.

 

It was an image of Confederate General Kirby Smith, who was born in St. Augustine but lived there just the first five years of his life.  He was a fervent rebel against the United States:  Smith not only fought for the Confederacy, but even tried to continue the Civil War from Mexico.  Congresswoman Castor was embarrassed when she had to show this statue to visiting schoolchildren, especially African-American children, and she quietly set out to change things.  She led a low-profile lobbying campaign that included yours truly and other friends, and we got the legislature to look at the issue. 

 

As always, a committee was appointed.  There was some online nomination of candidates, ranging from pioneer environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas to the guy who founded Publix; in the end, the choice was Mary McLeod Bethune.  As I wrote at the time, Dr. Bethune not only founded Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona, but also was internationally famous.  Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her as the first African American of either gender to head a federal agency, and Harry Truman chose her as a delegate to the founding meeting of the United Nations -- the only woman of color in the entire world.

 

So now Kirby Smith is resting in a broom closet somewhere, while we await the end of the pandemic to dedicate the Bethune statue.  Equally important, Kathy could give lessons on how to achieve change – diplomatically, democratically, and thoughtfully.  (Oh, and Florida's other statue?  Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola, whose experiments with cooling his fevered patients were the beginning of air conditioning.)

        

QUICK THOUGHTS

 

Did you see that Wayne Mixson died at age 98?  He was lieutenant governor under Democratic Governor Bob Graham, and we have a picture of him with Hubby on our study wall.  I remember him mostly through his wife, Margie Mixon, who went with me to legislative meetings for our goal of creating a child-care center in the Tallahassee Capitol.  That was both a new building and a new idea at the time, and no, we were not immediately successful.

 

Another recent death:  Thomas Blanton, a wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who participated in the Sunday bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham that killed four African-American girls.  He met his death in prison – finally, after prosecutors delayed for decades.  The attack was in 1963, and it was not until 2001 that a jury convicted him.  Federal authorities, led by the notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, looked the other way back then, and when justice eventually was delivered, it was by the State of Alabama. Finally, I was delighted to see that Wikipedia's first line of ID on Blanton is "American terrorist."

 

Switching topics again, it's really unfortunate that at this unprecedented and tragic time, we have new guys in the highest education positions in our community.   Both Hillsborough's new school superintendent and USF's new president face unprecedented challenges at the beginning of their first academic year in this position, and there seems to be a great deal of public mistrust, especially among parents.  It would help, I think, if we felt we knew them better, but the governing boards of both institutions hurried through their hirings with little community input. 

 

It was very different when I was a trustee at Hillsborough Community College.  As you doubtless know, that school had a terrible reputation until we turned it around by hiring Dr. Gwendolyn Stephenson, an African American, in 1998.  We spent more than a year on this:  We appointed a diverse search committee, held open-mic meetings at each of the campuses, and made sure that students and faculty had every opportunity for input.  The result was that everyone was invested in Gwen's success, and the college made a complete transformation.  The way to grow support for any cause is to have many public meetings and lots of channels for opinion.  Inclusion --that ever is the secret of success.

 

doris@dweatherford.com