WLRN Public Media

WLRN would like to thank Adrienne for 37 years of leadership and congratulate her on her retirement at the end of the month! Meet the outstanding Adrienne Kennedy: Title: Vice President of WLRN Television Birthplace: Sydney, Australia Favorite WLRN Documentary: Troubled Waters: A Turtle’s Tale and Treblinka’s Last Witness What are you most proud of?: Being part of a passionate storytelling team at WLRN, especially all the television documentaries we have produced and presented for our South Florida community, and so proud to have shared these stories nationwide.

After more than 20 years of reviewing citizen complaints of police misconduct, the City of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel (CIP) faces imminent closure. The independent oversight board, made up of 13 volunteer panelists and an office of professional staff, was informed this week by the city’s administration that it would no longer be funded. Without funding, the CIP will cease to exist at the end of September. “We were informed by city officials earlier this week that they would not be funding us for the next fiscal year, thus dissolving our department, the Civilian Investigative Panel,” Rodney Jacobs Jr., executive director of the CIP, told WLRN. This comes after the Florida Legislature passed a law that prohibits cities or “political subdivisions” from creating independent bodies to investigate complaints against law enforcement officers. In a prepared statement, City of Miami spokesperson Kenia Fallat said the state law does not allow the city to continue funding the CIP. “As a consequence of the new law, the City of Miami is barred from allocating budget funds to a board whose main purpose and duties are contrary to Florida statutes,” Fallat said. Jacobs said the CIP offered the city an alternative to dissolving the panel: a new version of the CIP ordinance that strips the body of its investigative powers. Under his proposed language, the CIP would only be able to review MPD's departmental policies and recommend that the department reopen its own investigations. "Obviously all of that was to no avail and the city has decided to take this approach and dissolve us completely," he told WLRN. Jacobs added that the CIP is enshrined in the city charter and asserted that the state law does not address charter language, only ordinances. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Joshua Ceballos. 📸 Gaston De Cardenas/Miami Herald

As affordability issues in South Florida continue to strain families, local pantries are reporting an increase in reliance on their services. Meanwhile, food supplies have continued to diminish since the COVID-19 pandemic. About one in eight Monroe County residents struggled with food insecurity in 2022, according to the latest data from Feeding America. “The bottom line is Monroe is really starving right now,” said Tom Callahan, the CEO for the S.O.S Foundation, the largest food pantry operator in the Keys. Pantry and food bank operators say there’s a myriad of reasons for the lack of food available — from supply chain issues and farmers struggling to keep their land to less donations from corporate partners and the loss of government assistance contracts. But the issues have culminated into one outcome: less quality food available to people and families that need it — even as local food pantry operators have become savvy at stretching out food stock to last longer. The summer months are when pantries worry the most about having food on the shelves. That’s because when school is out, families using pantry services rely more heavily on them to supplement the school breakfast and lunches that kids are no longer receiving. Anni Martinez and her mother have visited the St. Justin’s food distribution center in Key Largo once a week, every week for over a year. It’s how they keep their family of seven fed as the cost of living in the Keys rises. “I'm the oldest of five kids, so we kind of need that extra help food wise, so this is really like the best thing for us,” Martinez said. Between the income that both Martinez’s parents bring in and her own small business, she says it’s still not enough to keep up with living in the Keys — where 10% of residents fall under the federal poverty line and another 33% live paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent United Way report. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Julia Cooper.

The Miami Heat did not get their name from nowhere. But lately, that heat is starting to feel unbearable, as South Florida is hit by repeated heat advisories with few days of relief. Study after study shows that South Florida is only going to get hotter in the coming years due to climate change, and it's become a top priority of the administration of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to try to do something about it. The county was the first in the nation to create the role of a Chief Heat Officer to coordinate efforts to combat extreme heat. An official "heat season" has been declared from May through October. Public facilities are being opened to the public as "cooling sites" during extreme heat incidents. In many ways, the main pillar of the effort to combat extreme heat is an ambitious goal of covering 30% of the surface area of the county with tree canopy, since that canopy significantly reduces surface temperatures. Technically, that has been the goal of the county government since 2006, a year after Hurricane Wilma and Hurricane Katrina devastated the existing tree canopy in the county. But now for the first time, the county has rolled out a comprehensive Miami-Dade Urban Forestry Draft Plan that will tackle these efforts across departments and across the county. The draft plan is open for feedback from the public until August 26. After that, the plan will be finalized. WLRN recently spoke with Chief Heat Officer Jane Gilbert about the plan and what it means for the future of the county. "We need to start treating trees as the critical infrastructure that they are," she said. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Daniel Rivero.

Melina Santiago is passionate about being involved in sports, especially soccer — not as an athlete but working on the management side of what is a growing industry in South Florida. The 22-year-old Argentine, who wants to combine her passion for sports and her experience working for a nonprofit, took a step to achieving her career goal this summer when she enrolled in a new course at Florida International University to develop future leaders in the multi-billion dollar sports industry. FIU and the Argentina Football Association partnered to launch the 10-week sports leadership global program, where participants could learn about sports management. The hybrid course with the option to attend in person or online, started in late June to coincide with the Copa America soccer tournament. Miami hosted several games, including the final on July 14 at Hard Rock Stadium. “I love the experience, it's great that they are bringing a lot of professionals,” said Santiago, who lives in Miami and attends an in-person course on FIU’s Main Campus. “I didn't expect it…I thought it was going to be a professor teaching the class. You can ask real questions to somebody who actually knows and has been in it.” The program addresses all kinds of topics from soccer governance, stadium and match-day operations, marketing to sports nutrition, sports science and psychology. And, unlike traditional university lectures, the course features professionals in the sports industry as panelists. "It’s not really theoretical. It's not historical or academic. It's really learning from people about what they do in their day to day … and how they have tried to apply different principles to what they're doing,” said Anthony Pereira, director of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University and one of the program’s organizers. Lectures are predominantly in Spanish, with English subtitles available online. The program ends Aug. 29, but the modules are recorded and available for purchase. Registration for one module is $150, for three $350 and for the 10 modules, it costs $900. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Jimena Romero. 📸 Rebecca Blackwell/AP

“I’m not shocked by the viciousness of the election theft that Venezuela’s dictatorial socialist regime is committing right now. I’ve seen that vicious face before — not just there but here. And seeing it this summer in Venezuela reminds me of the awful likelihood of seeing it this fall in the U.S. This is hardly the first time Venezuela’s regime has lost out and lashed out. In 2007, its messianic founder, the late President Hugo Chávez, couldn’t summon enough votes to change the Constitution to let him run for re-election in perpetuity. The night after his setback, I had drinks in Caracas with two of his top aides — and what I saw on their own faces was frightening. Up to then, these leftist but sensible young men had insisted Chávez was no Fidel Castro-style autocrat looking to rule for life. Now, after eight years in the hyperbaric chamber of “revolution,” it was obvious they’d drunk the dictatorship-of-the-proletariat Kool Aid. Their opinion of Venezuelans who’d voted No on Chávez’s eternal re-election bid was, well, vicious. ‘ They’re fascists,’ one told me with a menacing look I’d never seen him flash before. ‘They’re escuálidos,’ said the other — using Chávez’s insult for what he labeled the filthy, evil nature of anyone who opposed him. And if those escuálidos wouldn’t submit, then the revolution would have to ram the re-election measure down their throats. Which is exactly what Chávez did. Ditto after the revolution lost the National Assembly to los escuálidos in 2015. Chávez’s successor, current dictator Nicolás Maduro, simply shut down that legislature and created a new one. Anyone who cried foul got pounded by his security forces — viciously enough that the U.N. designated the crackdown a crime against humanity. Ditto after Maduro lost to escuálido candidate Edmundo González in the July 28 presidential election by the largest landslide in Venezuelan history. Maduro claimed “victory” while his security forces performed a brutal encore, jailing 2,400 protesters and killing 27. So far.” Editor's note: The above is an excerpt of a weekly commentary by WLRN's Americas editor Tim Padgett. Tap the link below to continue reading. 📸 Matias Delacroix / AP

An unexpected Florida plan to jazz up wilderness in state parks with golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts has outraged conservationists who say the proposals violate state law and tarnish areas of staggering beauty. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees state parks, announced the plans Monday, triggering a flurry of objections. Under the proposals, nine parks from St. Augustine to Tampa and Miami — which include habitats for vanishing species, the site of wade-in protests to desegregate beaches in the 1960s and swaths of pristine beaches — could get trendy pickleball courts and hotels. At Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County, a park that holds the largest protected habitat for threatened Florida scrub jays, officials are recommending golf courses at two different locations. “This proposal completely bypasses, completely skirts the very established process for making decisions about what's going to go on in parks,” said Eric Draper, who served as state park director from 2017 to 2021. Even if they followed laws, Draper said the proposals run counter to the mission of state parks. “The primary purpose for state parks, as opposed to other state lands, is to conserve natural resources,” he said. “They're for recreation, but it's recreation based upon enjoying natural resources.” State officials did not respond to WLRN’s requests for more information. They’ve scheduled a one-hour public meeting Aug. 27 at each of eight parks, where they will take public comment. After DEP quietly posted an announcement on its web site Monday, a retired state worker forwarded a memo about internal plans to WLRN the next day. While it was unclear where the memo originated, it reflected FDEP plans outlined in amendments to management plans for each park. The memo said the governor’s office ordered park staff to come up with the amendments to plans at nine state parks. Park planning staff had been told to play pre-recorded presentations at public meetings and gather feedback without answering questions. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Jenny Staletovich. 📸 Florida State Parks

Last Friday night’s show at Lips starts like any other, pounding electronic beats pierce the room before a voice over the loudspeaker lists rules for the audience to follow: “Rule one, the use of flash photography is strictly mandatory. You think I look this good only to exist within your feeble memory?” What follows is an hour and a half of dancing, lip syncing, and raunchy comedy from a cast of drag performers who undergo multiple costume changes. But up until last week, this show wasn’t supposed to happen. After weeks of speculation that the venue would be closing after its owners failed to secure two separate deals to keep it open, Mike Barrett and his husband swooped in at the last moment to purchase — and save — Lips. Barrett is the owner of Aquaplex, a celebrated LGBTQ bar and drag venue in Key West. He isn’t from the area but almost overnight has turned into a local celebrity almost overnight. “We walked into one bar — I don’t know how everyone knew who we were because we’re from Key West — and everyone started clapping,” he said, “It was surreal.” Even after Friday night’s show guests queued up to shake his hand on their way out and express their gratitude. That sense of gratitude is also shared by the cast of queens, some who had performed at Lips for over a decade and many of whom wondered if the venue closing would force them to retire. “I'm 52, I’ve been doing this for three decades now,” said Amanda Austin who hosted the show on Friday, “I was literally at the point of 'What am I gonna do? Is this the end of my drag career?’” Two weeks ago, the performers were told that this week's Sunday brunch performance would be their last show. “When I heard the news I was devastated,” said Mirkala Crystal, who has performed at Lips for almost 20 years, “I cried for three days.” The venue began canceling reservations for the following week, but then Barrett stepped in — so quickly that Lips never even missed a show. A Facebook post announcing the sale let the performers know their jobs were safe. Tap the link below to continue reading. Story and 📸 by Carlton Gillespie.

On an almost six feet tall sculpture made up of produce boxes, there’s a full body sketch of a man in ink and charcoal. The boxes, wearing recognizable brands like Chiquita and Sunkist, are stacked up on top of each other. The man sketched on the boxes is wearing a white baseball cap, with a bandana wrapped around his nose and mouth — only his eyes are visible. Like much of Narsiso Martinez’s work, the man depicted in Magic Harvest is a migrant farmworker, inspired by Martinez’s brief time working on agriculture fields after he immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in the late 1990s. “[Martinez] makes that individual visible to basically a nation that's used to consuming fruits and vegetables, but not knowing how that fruit actually arrived at their table,” said Gilbert Vicario, chief curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Martinez is one of more than 70 artists featured in PAMM’s newest exhibition, “Xican-a.o.x. Body.” It was co-curated by Vicario, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Marissa Del Toro, and it’s on display until March 30, 2025. The exhibition’s title is a take on the term “Chicano,” which is an ethnic identity commonly used by Mexican-Americans in the U.S., particularly in the West. The term dates back to the early 1900s, first used as a slur toward lower-class Mexican-Americans or recent Mexican immigrants. But by the 1960s, being a Chicano became something to be proud of. The Chicano Movement led Mexican-Americans to embrace their heritage, while also fighting for farmworker and labor rights, land reclamation and educational reforms. Some of the work in "Xican-a.o.x. Body" references much of this movement and what it means to be a Chicano — then and now. “It's an exhibition that's dense with information, it's intergenerational,” said Vicario. “It really positions artists who were working in the 1960s to artists that are working in the present.” Tap the link below to continue reading. Story by Sherrilyn Cabrera. 📸 Lazaro Llanes / Courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami

This year marks one of the most consequential election cycles of our time. Voters will choose important seats spanning every level of government, including the next president of the United States to Miami-Dade’s first ever County Sheriff. That’s why the WLRN News team and our public media partners across Florida have put together a comprehensive guide to help you … ✔ Find your districts for upcoming races ✔ Read detailed candidate profiles with their positions on key issues ✔ View candidate information for the federal and state August 20 primaries ✔ ️ Toggle between U.S. Senate, U.S. House, State Senate and State House races ✔ How and where to vote in South Florida *Note: Our 2024 voter guide will be updated as and when we receive more information. View the Voter Guide through the link below!