Showing posts with label Everglades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Everglades. Show all posts

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Escape to Paradise: Now Departing from the Big Cypress Swamp Detention Center

Forget Disney World. Forget South Beach. The hottest new Florida tourist experience isn’t a theme park or a beach—it’s a swamp. Specifically, the Big Cypress Swamp Concentration Camp™, proudly brought to you by the Trump administration and its latest innovation in human rights violations.

With tourism to the U.S. on the decline (turns out xenophobia isn’t a great brand strategy), local Everglades airboat operators have had to get creative. And by creative, we mean they’ve pivoted to a thrilling new service: underground freedom rides for immigrants detained in America’s very own jungle holding cell. It’s part humanitarian mission, part survival gig economy. Because in Trump’s America, you’re either a boot or you’re under it—or you’re trying to pay your mortgage with side gigs powered by moral whiplash.

Each escape package comes with a scenic moonlit ride across the sawgrass, with stars brighter than your future in ICE custody. Guests (formerly known as “detainees”) will enjoy the natural beauty of Florida’s wetlands, dodge the occasional gator (don’t worry, only the reptilian kind—we avoid the ones in uniform), and maybe even spot a bald eagle crying softly in the distance.

Where do these freedom tours end, you ask? Mar-a-Lago, naturally. Because if you’re going to flee a swamp prison in the land of the free™, why not end up at America’s gold-plated Versailles of moral decay? Sure, it’s trespassing, but at least the lobster bisque is hot and the beds have Egyptian cotton sheets—better than the aluminum-foil blankets and concrete floors back at Camp Isolation.

Of course, there are risks. You might get caught. You might get deported. Or worse, you might get recruited as unpaid staff at one of the “guest properties.” But hey—at least you’ll be doing it in style, gliding across America’s last remaining sliver of untouched wilderness, guided by a salty boat captain who once gave nature tours to Canadian retirees before the visas dried up.So book now—supplies (and civil liberties) are limited.

Friday, July 11, 2025

he Everglades: From Sanctuary to Detention

I spent a lot of time in The Everglades back in the 70s. I wish I could share the images I captured – endless sawgrass marshes stretching out in every direction, alligators drifting lazily in the sloughs, and birds with colors so vivid they seemed unreal. Those photos still sit on old slides, a quiet record of a place unlike anywhere else on Earth.

The Everglades has always been a place of life and resilience. A place where nature thrived despite human attempts to drain it, build over it, or exploit it. But now, it’s being used for something it was never meant to hold: a detention center for immigrants.

This new facility, dubbed by some as “Alligator Alcatraz,” is being built to detain immigrants who have been arrested and are awaiting deportation under new Trump administration policies. The irony is devastating. A place that has always been a symbol of wild freedom and unique beauty is now becoming a prison for people whose only crime was seeking a better life.

It makes me sad to see what The Everglades is being used for today – and how the media reduces it to sensational headlines. The land is more than a backdrop for human cruelty. When I think back to those quiet mornings with my camera, I remember a place of wonder and refuge. I can only hope we find a way to restore both the dignity of the land and the dignity of the people we are so willing to lock away.

Monday, January 9, 2023

Even my hard-headed dad understood the importance of Florida’s wetlands

We buried my dad last week. Oscar Pittman had a good, long life. He’d just turned 87, and he and my mom had celebrated 67 years of marriage. more

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Smoke in The Everglades

The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the 
Air Is Safe. here

Friday, July 17, 2020

The Everglades Need Your Help

And they want to use Congress 
to take more!

Alcee Hastings and Rick Scott, two Florida politicians in the pocket of Big Sugar, are trying to add language to the 2020 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) to make Big Sugar’s cane fields the top priority for water flowHERE

Sunday, May 3, 2020

The Everglades Need Our Help

Sugar lobbyists trying to slip in language in Washington while no one is looking.
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Under the cover of a global pandemic, lobbyists for the sugar cartel are trying to slip in language to the federal Water Resources & Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 that will make toxic discharges more likely and starve the Everglades and Florida Bay of the freshwater they desperately need. INFO

Friday, May 1, 2020

FLORIDA: SILENT, SNEAKY SUGAR PLAN EXPOSED!

Under the cover of a global pandemic, lobbyists for the sugar cartel are trying to slip in language to the federal Water Resources & Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 that will make toxic discharges more likely and starve the Everglades and Florida Bay of the freshwater they desperately need. HERE

Sunday, December 8, 2019

We cannot let them drill for oil in the Everglades

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried calls it “outrageous” to allow oil-drilling on-shore in the Everglades and Apalachicola basin, a move that would put “precious water, popular beaches, and wildlife at great danger of being tainted 
by an oil spill.” HERE

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Florida GOP not stopping on-shore oil drilling

State on the verge of allowing drilling in both the Everglades and 
Apalachicola basin.
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Oil companies have been far more successful with drilling on land in Florida. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection has done little 
to stop them. HERE

Friday, August 30, 2019

Helen Frigo of Jensen Beach Asks

We can see Louisiana from space. The heel and sole of the “boot” is pretty much gone. Channelizing and controlling the Mississippi River has deprived the Delta (swamp) of land-creating soil. Has Florida been doing the same with its River of Grass? HERE

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Florida's Culture Of Corruption: Everglades

This place "Kanter Real Estate LLC" wants to drill for oil in the Everglades.
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Broward County and the city of Miramar 
tried to stop it.
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They dropped their legal efforts to have the Florida Supreme Court hear the case, saying they didn’t receive cooperation from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. HERE

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Trump Snubs Everglades Clean-Up

Coastal oil drilling could come next. Fortunately he doesn’t have the last word on the Everglades.

Florida GOP expressed everything from anger to astonishment upon hearing that the president’s 2020 budget proposes just $63 million for the “River of Grass.” Gov. Ron DeSantis and the others had wanted $200 million. HERE