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25 March 2021
Mayor Dan Gelber did not respond my courteous request to resign as head of a government responsible for a sudden emergency order imposing an 8 PM curfew on the South Miami Beach Entertainment District. The manner in which the order was carried out stampeded the crowd and endangered the lives and property of nearby residents who had not been disturbed by the event because it was contained to that district and the celebrants had no reason to come into the neighborhood except to park. Without that curfew, a person living a block outside of the District would not know about the “chaos” unless she joined the party, or listened to the news, or was called by alarmed relatives and friends from all over the world advising her to move.
The Entertainment District was crowded with mostly Black visitors for Spring Break from Covid Civilization, with little else to do except drink and pack the area, thanks to the influential mayor, a former federal prosecutor and state legislator best known for his partisanship, his piousness, his resentment for what he called “big bowl drinks” popular in resorts everywhere, and for his longstanding obsession to team up with big developers to convert the Entertainment District into a family-oriented destination replete with a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. He and his sycophants had made sure no events were scheduled to keep the Dionysian celebrants distracted. The result was his worst nightmare and fondest hope for redevelopment come true .
Instead of erecting manned barricades to protect residents as the size of the crowd grew over five weeks, the Spring Breakers were, by order of the political elite, stampeded by police into the surrounding neighborhood, terrorizing residents there, whose complaints over the unnecessary chaos have been largely ignored by the government and its “fourth branch,” the mainstream media toilets busy defaming South Beach and screaming CHAOS for lack of something better to do than agonize over the coronavirus panic and Free State of Florida Governor Ron DiSantis’ refusal to force people to wear masks and stay away from each other.
Miami Beach officials were well aware of the effective crowd control plan that was devised in the past for Memorial Day Weekend. That event was also known as Urban Week and Black Week. After the Freaknik event in Atlanta had been stifled by the Black leadership, hordes of innocent fun-seekers notwithstanding the usual low-class, pants-down, foul-mouthed hip-hop riffraff descended on Miami Beach for that event and pandemonium the likes of which the Greek god Pan would have reveled in ensued until the police finally “rioted," surrounded a vehicle fleeing them in the Entertainment District, and shot the driver to death as some witnessed rejoiced—I was upstairs with a friend whom I visited after being barraged by racist insults nearby.
Consultants were called in, meetings were held, and a successful plan was devised to control the crowd and protect visitors and residents. Most importantly, the residential neighborhood was barricaded off. The number of arrests fell over the years. If course horrifying crimes are more likely to occur in tourist areas regardless of events, and media is glad to trumpet the worst ones, such as the Black law school grad who was down to celebrate Memorial Day and was raped and disposed of in a garbage bin in Miami by Black Men, and the young White woman picked up by two Black guys this Spring Break, drugged and raped and robbed, then left to die of the drug.
Eventually an airshow and other Memorial Day events were sponsored by Michael Grieco, disk jockey, state attorney, and city commissioner. That set the tone and attract a mixed-interest and partially patriotic crowd. Sadly for Miami Beach, Grieco was opposed in his run for mayor by Gelber. He used his connections to the media and state prosecutor to defame Grieco and have him prosecuted because he failed to launder campaign contributions from a Russian investor as is normally done, and then lied about it. Grieco happens to be enormously popular, especially in South Beach where he lives and got things done for rich and poor, and now he is a state representative.
Despite experience with the successful Memorial Day plan, the current Miami Beach leadership, just in advance of the arrival of the Spring Breakers, took down barricades that had impeded mostly local traffic in the South Beach residential area when South Beach was a virtual ghost town during the coronavirus panic. Those barriers, incidental to the so-called Slow Streets program, were the brainchild of Commissioner Mark Samuelian, a business strategist, master chess player and bicycling enthusiast who lives in luxury on the other side of South Miami Beach.
Commissioner Samuelian is a frustrated republican despite his democratic facade. He has expressed in writing his disapproval of participatory democracy. Still, he is more responsive to constituents in social media than other commissioners and the mayor, who has publicly expressed contempt for social media critics. He has the temple and the power of the throne and does not need social media, but Mark is an expert at it and he is not the only one. He appears to do “cool” things for the public, yet many of those cool things turn out to be rather superficial, leaving critics unimpressed with his cat-like smile and with the notion he is playing chess, which is, after all, a game of deception. That being said, he is better than most part-time representatives of the power elite, perhaps with the exception of Michael Gongora, a very smooth and likeable lawyer with tons of political experience; beware of his beautiful File Thirteen Aide.
Now, then, even if the Spring Break had by chance suddenly created a sort of “chaos” that happened to dovetail with the mayor's plan to rename and makeover the Entertainment District for his developer, lobbyist and lawyer friends, the Cowboy Show herding visitors into the Flamingo Park Neighborhood was unnecessary and downright foolish.
At the very least, manned blockades should have been set up along Washington Avenue and the crowd slowly herded south instead of west to Flamingo Park with sirens and speakers blaring, pepper guns banging, people screaming and fleeing, girls stopping to twerk on cars; one man even stopped running and paused at our gate to offer us some cocaine. Since the rest of the area was not under the suddenly declared curfew, the crowd could have been spread south to South Pointe, perhaps pausing at Majory Stoneman Douglas Ocean Beach Park for a speech by civic leader Frank Del Vecchio from his balcony on the virtues of not trashing other people's cities.
The bottom line is, maybe “They” will not come back since the curfew has been extended. Las Vegas would love to have “Them.” Some of “Them” paid $800 or more to visit Miami Beach for relief from the coronavirus panic. Las Vegas knows how to entertain people and make sure they leave their money in Vegas.
The bottom line is that what we have here in Miami Beach is a sort of banana republic. No, the Honorable Mayor will not commit honorable harakiri for the disgraceful behavior of his government. He is not Japanese and he does not have to answer to powerless people whom he offends. He is a Better Than Thou man. Oh, yes, he might invite a social media member to his office and overawe him, but the others will have no access. His cohort are of course partly to blame, so they will back him, but a couple are sharpening their knives. In the end, the richer will get richer and the poor poorer until chaos breaks out in the spring.
Maybe Spring Break Will Pan Out Well
21 March 2021
Mayor Dan Gelber, Esq.
CITY OF MIAMI BEACH
Your Honor:
I respectfully ask you to resign as mayor of our city because you have deliberately endangered the lives and property of its residents and stakeholders by placing a severe limited curfew in a limited area thereby pushing the chaos you deemed very dangerous out of that area into the rest of the city not under that curfew. I believe your continuance in office has a virtual dictator given this sort of judgment poses a serious threat to the community.
Attached is a map published by the city designating that curfew area; apparently the planners do not live in the area because Pennsylvania Avenue does not extend all the way to 5th Street.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of this request.
David Arthur Walters
NOTES
1) The City Attorney has the power to issue emergency orders. A careful reading of the charter makes it seem like the commission would have to approve of disease-related orders in contrast to orders related to civil unrest. The mayor has, by the way, expressed dismay that the Spring Breakers did not observe social distancing and masking rules, but the main concern has been with a few violent events common to crowding especially when alcohol is a factor. The issue of authority came up when Mayor Dan Gelber was telling former city manager Jimmy Morales what to do during the early pandemic period. I read the charter requiring the commission to ordain certain emergency actions related to public health, and inquired of the commission about that detail. Commissioner Arriola said decisions were being made at that time without consultation with the commissioners. And then consultations began and the commission started authorizing the City Attorney to issue emergency orders. Now Interim City Manager Raul Aguila, long-time attorney for the city, has apparently dictatorial power over this specific event as a civil disorder whether or not supported by a specific ordinance. He probably would not mind being scapegoated as that is one of an attorney's functions.
Nevertheless, Gelber is the virtual dictator, although this mistake is not technically his fault, so all the commissioners who did not object to the particulars of this order should resign as well for their negligence and incompetence, which of course they won't do. They probably will not even address my request nor the many complaints by residents on social media; Mayor Gelber, well known for his pious persona, has condemned social media as immoral. Most likely the mayor will just say it was not his decision, if the so-called legitimate press asks about it, or he will say that I and the residents infuriated are complete idiots. It is highly unlikely, however, that the "legitimate" media would report on this aspect because it is, after all, a branch of government hence long responsible for its favorable reporting on the authority it must cotton to for information, to the point of political campaigning for this mayor.
Ultimately the police did what they could under the circumstances, the main fault being that the mayor, despite his moaning and groaning about Entertainment District activities for weeks in hopes of handing the area over to friendly developers for rehabilitation into a family-oriented destination with a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round, suddenly imposed a curfew on a limited area, and herded the crowd through the vulnerable area west of the entertainment district instead of securing it beforehand, as has been done in the past by setting up checkpoints and manned barricades. Those barricades alone would have prevented the crowd from parking in the residential areas, and those who parked in the city garages in the entertainment district could have been guided out to the bridges.
Ironically, Commissioner Mark Samuelian, known for doing cool things, now with the blessing of the mayor and a county commissioner, had barricades set up at the outset of the pandemic panic at intersections throughout the Flamingo Park Neighborhood on the premise that they would slow down traffic for his bicyclist friends during the pandemic, yet during that time the streets were those of a ghost town, and the barricades actually were dangerous for motor and bicycle traffic and especially to pedestrians who took the foolish advice on the signs to walk into the streets. Those barricades were taken out of the intersections for spring break, allowing the crowd into the neighborhood with their vehicles including Slingshot race-like cars The Slow Street rules were not enforced anyway by the police department; Florida has one of the worst traffic accident rates in the country, and the police in South Beach are notorious for lack enforcement of traffic laws, especially those that would protect pedestrians and bicyclists too.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that the Spring Break crowd was not pushed directly south on Ocean Drive into the wealthy South Pointe restaurant and residential area, where business remained brisk with a mainly white crowd. Instead, the mostly black crowd was herded through the neighborhood like cattle, and mobs stampeded helter-skelter in the Flamingly Park Neighborhood. Stampedes, as crowd control experts well know, can injure and kill.
Before that, the crowd was confined to the entertainment district, and posed no danger to residents outside of that area because the celebrants were not interested in going into residential areas.
Imagine someone paying several hundred dollars to come down here because he thought it would be fun, and then find out all the events are canceled because the mayor, who has publicly complained about the big bowl drinks served on the beach, is afraid of him and there's nothing to do except stand around and drink what's a crowd of other frustrated persons, and then the area is shut down. A serious student of crowd control would refer to herding techniques and to the many studies on crowding and stampeding and the behavior of rats crowded into spaces.
Although there is no excuse for the misbehavior of some celebrants, no effort was made to entertain the participants on the beach, as has been done in the past.
Jimmy Morales, Chief Oates - Disk Jockeys in Lifeguard Station
The Police Chief has noted that the party could not go on because there had been over 1,000 arrests the past six weeks, yet there were nearly as many arrests during a single Memorial Day Weekend until it was dealt with reasonably. The Spring Breakers were greeted by this mayor with a prejudicial, hostile attitude he has demonstrated long before this pandemic.
And now the mayor's worst nightmare or fond hope has come true . And the media toilets all over the world are spreading the bad news for lack of something better to report on for the moment.
You see it to be much more of a political struggle than I do. And I didn't know that the primary frolickers were black. From the few shots that were taken of spring breakers, they didn't look to be primarily a black crowd. But I understand if Atlanta had banned freak week, that those revelers would look for somewhere else more accommodating.
My concern was for you and the other residents of your neighborhood, since COVID-19 incubates nicely in crowds like that. Recently, many of the northern states have reported increases in the number of infections, probably due to young people taking advantage of spring break to break free from the confines of the pandemic and let off a little steam. Bringing the virus home to grandpa and grandma as a souvenir of their fun times.
That's what it was supposed to be about. Preventing the spread of the virus by young people acting irresponsibly like they always do when given the chance. I'm so sorry to hear that your neighborhood was over run with despicable people fleeing from police enforcing a curfew.
I'm still shot less and hoping to get one before the novel Corona comes to my neighborhood. But they just opened the floodgates to anyone older than 16, making it fat chance that this guy who is old enough and has an existing condition will ever get one in the crowds of those clamoring to get shot.
Ron