Politics and Movements: US

The deadly results of DeSantis’s ‘own the libs’ governing strategy

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is showing what happens when one’s governing style is based on scoring points with Fox News audiences: everyday Floridians get left behind.

by Marc Steiner September 3, 2021September 3, 2021

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis holds a news conference on September 1, 2021, at the Florida Department of Health office in Viera, Florida, to announce that the state of Florida has provided more than 40,000 monoclonal antibody treatments to COVID-19 patients statewide at 21 state treatment sites. Last week, Florida reported 1,727 COVID-19 deaths in its weekly report, the most on record. Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

For the state of Florida, August saw the highest number of COVID-19-related deaths since the very beginning of the pandemic. And yet, Gov. Ron DeSantis is continuing his crusade against mask mandates in schools, appealing a judge’s ruling that his office’s blanket ban on mask mandates is unenforceable. As we have covered previously on The Marc Steiner Show, DeSantis has cruelly demonstrated what it looks like when rightwing culture-war paranoia is translated into state policy. But how are Democrats fighting back? In this installment of The Marc Steiner Show, we talk with Florida State Representative Anna Eskamani about how Democrats can’t just be against the right—they have to stand up for something and do the work to build grassroots support. Eskamani is a member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing the 47th district in Orange County.

Tune in for new segments of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday and Friday on TRNN.

Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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Marc Steiner

Host, The Marc Steiner Show
Marc Steiner is the host of "The Marc Steiner Show" on TRNN. He is a Peabody Award-winning journalist who has spent his life working on social justice issues. He walked his first picket line at age 13, and at age 16 became the youngest person in Maryland arrested at a civil rights protest during the Freedom Rides through Cambridge. As part of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968, Marc helped organize poor white communities with the Young Patriots, the white Appalachian counterpart to the Black Panthers. Early in his career he counseled at-risk youth in therapeutic settings and founded a theater program in the Maryland State prison system. He also taught theater for 10 years at the Baltimore School for the Arts. From 1993-2018 Marc's signature “Marc Steiner Show” aired on Baltimore’s public radio airwaves, both WYPR—which Marc co-founded—and Morgan State University’s WEAA.

marc@therealnews.com

@marcsteiner

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