The people of South Florida have always lived at the mercy of capitalists. Since it was developed, the working and laboring classes of South Florida have been moved around like chess pieces on a gameboard, used by the bourgeoisie to shape the world in their interests – not ours. Those of us living here seemingly exist in a historical time loop: every few years, developers, looking to create markets, reshape the landscape of our communities with the willing and often celebratory help of politicians and local government agencies. Homes, apartment complexes, and entire city blocks are cyclically torn down to make way for expensive condominiums, gated suburbs, sprawling malls, or trendy restaurants. Rent and home prices balloon way past affordable rates, courting cashy transplants while families and individuals are priced out of homes they’ve lived in for decades. Every time this development shuffle happens, we are forced to accept it – to accept displacement, accept inflation, accept the gentrification of our communities. But working & laboring Floridians do not have to roll over. WE are the people who make up our communities, who live and work in “undesirable” areas before they’re razed and re-developed. The workers among us are the ones who have built the development capitalists covet while every drop of their survival is squeezed for capital. We can resist – we can end this abusive cycle – but we first have to understand how history is repeating itself in the interests of the ruling classes, shaping every facet of existence to their benefit.

Florida’s east coast would have been unrecognizable to us before Henry Flagler, an oil tycoon who monopolized the national fuel and railroad industries with John D. Rockefeller, decided to “develop” it. He believed that Florida had the potential to attract large numbers of tourists, so he brought workers from the Bahamas and Southern US to construct the Florida East Coast Railway, which reached Biscayne Bay by 1896. With the railroad’s expansion came real estate development: workers dredged channels, built streets, and formed the infrastructure for water and power systems. However, it’s Flagler’s name on street signs and beaches because he dominated the entire region, from newspapers to hotels to steam engine routes carrying Florida oranges. He’s remembered fondly by bourgeois history as a “father” of Florida, not the hundreds of workers who actually constructed what would make Southern Florida inhabitable.

Extravagant resorts and commerce aren’t Flagler’s only legacy: the way all east coast Floridian cities are laid out is a physical remnant of the forgotten workers Flagler exploited. All the lower income and Black neighborhoods are just slightly west of each major city (Overtown in Miami, Sistrunk in Ft Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach). At the time of the Florida East Coast Railway’s construction, these were areas close enough to railroad working sites but far enough not to be in direct sight or contact with all the wealthy tourists and new residents this project brought. Working class Black people made up the majority of Flagler’s workforce that laid down the railroad construction and serviced the hotels and retail that sprung up along its tracks. Many of these railroad workers were leased convicts or were forced to work off a debt. They didn’t live in the fine hotels they helped to build and service – in fact, they weren’t given official housing at all. They settled in shanties along the railroad tracks. After the tracks and stations were completed, many remained to work in other endeavors. The layouts of our cities are a physical ramification of this class struggle.

The Styx – an improvised community of Flagler’s workers in Palm Beach – was a blueprint for the forced removal of people to make way for bourgeois “renewal” in Florida. There’s controversy surrounding exactly how Styx residents were removed. What’s agreed upon is once Flagler’s Royal Poinciana Hotel opened up the market for more tourist lodging, the way Flagler’s workers were forced to live due to repressive wages and terrible working conditions could no longer stand – meaning wealthy tourists could no longer stand to see the poverty their vacations were built upon. The Breakers Hotel would replace the Styx, and Palm Beach would become a haven for scum like Jeffrey Epstein and the Trumps because of Flagler’s design. Today, we can see this model repeated in neighborhoods like Overtown, Wynwood, and Sistrunk. The state declares “blight” in places where their own policies and partnerships have forced low wages and oppressive working environments on the residents.

Now, instead of a single oil baron trotting out the interests of capital, dozens of players are pushing for South Florida to be swallowed whole. Florida politicians are entirely compliant with capitalists’ domination of people and the planet. Today, a host of local Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach politicians in cahoots with developers and hospitality groups are now following in the footsteps of Flagler, shaping the landscape of our communities based on the class interest they represent. Miami Mayor Suarez touts Florida as a crypto hub, recruiting tech companies and approving expensive real estate projects. It’s no secret he has several jobs representing the interests of luxury real estate and private equity. The city of Ft Lauderdale was more than happy to allow the historic Mizell Center to be razed to move a YMCA a few blocks, despite protest from local residents. These local politicians, like every other politician, are not serving the people; they only serve hedge fund managers, global investment firms, NGO’s, and other worshippers of capital. Our political “representatives” will mobilize law enforcement to have us removed from our homes to make way for development, then pushed into jails to keep the consequences of their brutal domination out of sight.

South Florida historically has had some of the slowest growth in wages and pay but is currently experiencing some of the fastest spikes in rent and housing rates. Over the past six months the prices of homes in Florida have increased faster than any other US state. We have prices trending on par with New York, California, and Virginia while our wages lag at about half the average rate of those same states. As more and more people are unable to afford their rent or mortgage payments, NGO’s and charities step in to make up for where the government has failed us. While they might help some people for a short time by providing services like legal representation and financial band aids, they aren’t equipped to fight this war. The arms of NGO’s are sustained by capitalists who need to keep us desperate and dominated so they can continue to expand their influence and mold the world in their interests. How can they have our best interests at heart when their paychecks are written by the people who want to foreclose on our homes and evict us? While families struggled through the pandemic to pay rent and bills on time, the wealthiest of the ruling classes doubled their wealth! The crisis that we are in as a result of the pandemic – and were in before it began – was created by capitalists, and capitalist fronts and puppets don’t have the tools to solve these problems. We are caught in a cycle of helplessness and complaining to government officials or nonprofits is not changing this.

The landscapes of our cities change as the ruling class sees fit, and somehow there is never room for the people. The bourgeoisie dominate every aspect of our lives, physically shaping our neighborhoods and communities to best suit their interests according to the booms and busts of capitalist/imperialist economies. But we don’t have to accept this reality lying down! We can resist this cycle of domination and exploitation that threatens our homes. The carving up of Florida in the image of capitalist class interests has persisted, and therefore, so must our resistance! We know that not all the independent efforts of the people have been fruitless: when rent hikes were proposed in New Jersey in 1970, over 20,000 tenants united to protest in multiple rent strikes, and landlords dropped planned increases; in California, when property taxes were cut by Proposition 13 but landlords increased rent for millions of tenants, the tenants began meeting and organizing, and demanded an end to the rent increase, which they were granted along with rent control in some areas.

For too long, our fights for better living and working realities have been swallowed by capitalists and imperialists, spit back at us half-digested, only to be taken away when our crumbs become inconvenient. But we’re not doomed to watch genuine reforms die before they can bear real potential for a progressive future – one that pushes history past the brutalities of class divided society. If we organize independent of bourgeois interests, without the poison of their “aid” and control, we can steer our reforms toward pressuring the ruling classes, and their rotten forms of accumulating capital, toward destruction. We can’t afford to win rent control or community ownership of lands just to enrich a smaller sector of capitalists; we can’t fight to shape our neighborhoods and cities if it’s off the resources pillaged from countries we dominate. In fighting one putrid symptom of capitalism’s continued decay, we must resist the entire disease – the global arrangement of imperialism. That’s why our organization must push to have an understanding of class not determined by skin color, gender, sexuality, or country of origin. It is class solidarity among all those dominated and exploited by capitalism that will make us a force to be reckoned with!

Our first step to the mass movement we need is to construct political unity. If this article has resonated with you, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Speak to your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends, and your family about the insanity we’re witnessing around us. We can fight back together, organized as a social force in the interests of the people!

Stand Up! Fight Back! Organize!

 

If you agree, or want to discuss this more, get in touch:

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