Askew

Recent political events in Florida obscure shining moments in our history that we could have been proud of, had we managed to sustain them.

Florida’s “Government in the Sunshine” law is still one of the nation’s best open government laws though it is now being slowly eroded. State Treasurer Bill Gunter led the fight to disinvest Florida retirement funds from apartheid South Africa and to publicize the failure of state agencies to appoint women to management posts. March 7 is the anniversary of the bloody civil rights march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. When the Legislature wouldn’t pass the legislation, Askew got it on the ballot in 1976 as the Sunshine Amendment, where it passed with 78%. He championed the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and, later, after being unseated by a political hack who labeled him “Red Pepper” for his liberal views, won a House seat and, for the rest of his life, worked to protect Social Security, pass Medicare, and generally provide security for the elderly. March 9 is the anniversary of the second march in 1965, at which then-former Gov.