I feel imprisoned in Ron DeSantis’ Florida on Fourth of July – Chicago Tribune

Prior to the Fourth of July holiday, I checked my rearview mirror to see if I had been followed into the post office parking lot.

I was there to mail a package from Florida, where I am a prisoner.

Allow me to explain: For most of my life, I lived on Chicago’s South Side, and the Illinois secretary of state’s office requested that I send copies of the books I’ve written for the “Illinois Authors” room of the State Library in Springfield.

So, I boxed three books for delivery up north. But what should have been a routine mailing chore felt more like a smuggling operation, now that I am an inmate of the Sunshine State.

Not in the literal sense. I don’t wear prison garb or use cigarettes as currency or shower with others in a common area ringed with spigots.

But ever since Ron DeSantis took over as governor, our freedoms, which we ought to be celebrating on the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, are being retracted, one by one. Persecution has been mounting to such an extent that I’m starting to feel like Tim Robbins’ character in the film “The Shawshank Redemption.”

DeSantis has clamped down on schools and teachers like me, threatening to punish those who do not adhere to his political policies. He started by signing a series of laws stripping school boards of their power to implement mask mandates and other science-based means for battling COVID-19. Instead, they must follow the orders of his controversial surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, whose quackery is in line with DeSantis’ strategy to retain popularity and power from Trump’s base. Ladapo’s guidance does not reflect the best health practices recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Secondly, DeSantis signed a measure that bans instructors from talking to children about sexual identity and another that significantly restricts the teaching of American racial history.

Next, he mandated that an annual survey be conducted in colleges and universities to identify “indoctrination,” or otherwise known as professors with liberal leanings.

For the rest of the population, he signed a controversial election law that is a thinly disguised effort to reduce voting by minorities, and he rejected a congressional map in favor of his own redistricting plan that wiped out an entire African American district.

To show he means business, DeSantis instituted a special police force, which, according to Florida state Rep. Yvonne Hayes Hinson, is a “bullying tactic” to frighten and discourage minority voters. He also signed an “anti-riot” law to discourage (if not quash) Floridians’ freedom to assemble and protest any of his dictates.

If you think those of us in Florida are starting to resemble the oppressed citizenry in George Orwell’s classic science fiction novel “1984,” you are not alone. LGBTQ rights advocates called out DeSantis for his doublethink, Orwell’s term for government’s mislabeling of laws to hide their tyrannical nature — as in DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education law, whose real meaning LGBTQ rights advocates exposed as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

And in case you’re wondering about the reason for my post office paranoia, DeSantis initiated what is essentially a statewide book ban. It has empowered parents and members of the public to request the purging from school libraries of titles by the likes of Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Judy Blume and other books that diverge from DeSantis’ views about the exclusive awesomeness of heterosexuality and the exceptionalism of white people.

I do not, of course, belong in the exalted ranks of the authors mentioned. But if books by award-winning writers like them can be banned, certainly my humble efforts at fiction and nonfiction might also be.

Which is why I paid the higher first-class rate to mail my books, rather than using the cheaper media mail, which would allow the postmaster, or, for all I know, another of DeSantis’ special police, to open the package and inspect the contents.

The good news is that DeSantis’ efforts have been challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters and other constitutionally vigilant organizations.

Meanwhile, call me hysterical, but you may soon be reading more “Florida man” stories about folks like me feeling the strain from Warden DeSantis’ political and psychological confinement that has us plotting escape.

Which I have thus far been dissuaded from implementing because of my teaching gig at a state college (Florida SouthWestern State) and my writing gig for a Florida outdoors magazine (Florida Sportsman).

Whether my ultimate fate ends in a flight to freedom on a beach in Mexico, as in “Shawshank,” or with futile but valiant resistance till the end, as in “Cool Hand Luke,” my hope is that I convey the message that the freedoms our forefathers won and declared on the Fourth of July are neither permanent nor guaranteed: We must constantly guard our independence and fend off all efforts of power-craving despots to take it away.

David McGrath is an emeritus English professor at the College of DuPage and the author of “South Siders.” He can be reached at mcgrathd@dupage.edu.

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