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AHF CEO Michael Weinstein Admits His Plan To Change US Cities “Sounds Radical But Doable” While Mocking Fort Lauderdale Residents

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Earlier this month at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Vermont, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) CEO Michael Weinstein discussed his “radical” plans to change Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. Weinstein was representing his Healthy Housing Foundation, the same group seeking to build a 680 unit building near downtown Fort Lauderdale. Weinstein discussed his ideas alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders and actor Danny Glover.

Michael Weinstein’s ideas were filled with the coded language favored by socialists and far-left activists.

Noting he is a world traveler, Michael Weinstein called Los Angeles the homeless capital of the world. “I have never seen more homelessness than in the city of Los Angeles,” Weinstein said. “It’s scandalous…shameful.”

Weinstein said, “We cannot treat shelter as a commodity.” He said housing is the number one economic justice issue and inequality issue in America. “People choosing between food and shelter…it’s scandalous.”

Weinstein placed blame on Democrats who “run the biggest cities in the country.” He said Democrat politicians have “been involved in the multi-billion dollar giveaways to the real estate interests.” Weinstein claimed a political contribution to council members or the mayor could allow a developer to build bigger towers. “All of it luxury,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein said citizens should not be happy with “crumbs” politicians give in the form of affordable housing. He said 1/3 of every new building should be set aside as affordable housing.

Weinstein recounted his failed ballot initiative to force new rent control policies on local cities.

Weinstein even proposed putting micro houses (aka granny units) in everyone’s backyard. “Our nation is filled with backyards,” he said.

Weinstein called for the end of “speculative building” as well as a “crackdown on AirBnB that’s taken away a lot of housing stock.”

Weinstein said we must secure “housing for Americans” and not foreign investors “who are moving their money from one despotic country.”

Weinstein admitted this “sounds radical but it’s doable.”

MARXIST PAST

As REDBROWARD reported last week, Michael Weinstein has a long history with the American communist/Marxist movement.

In the 1960s, fourteen year old Michael Weinstein was part of “a group of activists occupying” a New York high-rise development to protest the gentrification of their Brooklyn neighborhoods. At the Sanders Institute Gathering this month, Weinstein lamented “When you plunk a luxury building into a working class area everything around it becomes gentrified.”

According to an April 2017 exposé in the New York Times Magazine, Michael Weinstein is an “ex-Trotskyite” who founded one of California’s first gay communist organizations. After his move to Los Angeles in 1972, Weinstein started the “Lavender And Red Union.” In 1977, a socialist newspaper reported the Lavender And Red Union, “a self-proclaimed “communist’ gay liberation group…recently embarked upon a cautious ideological turn toward Trotskyism.” The socialist paper said the group’s call for a “permanent revolution” was “a clear break with the Stalinist/Maoist/New Left milieu from which we emerged.”

Months later, the same socialist newspaper claimed Weinstein’s group betrayed the gay liberation movement. According to the report, “About 85 conference attendees witnessed the pitiful and ironic spectacle of the [Lavender And Red Union] majority members vilifying their own gayness and past struggles in order to fuse with the notoriously anti-gay and anti-feminist Spartacist League.”

Weinstein went on to become an editor for “Young Spartacus,” the official newspaper of the Spartacist League. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Young Spartacus produced the typical pro-Communist screeds. Headlines of the Young Spartacus blasted US attempts to undermine the Soviet Union or Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, while other stories praised unions and left-wing political groups.

WEINSTEIN MOCKS FORT LAUDERDALE RESIDENTS

Last week, REDBROWARD covered Michael Weinstein’s stunning press conference at AHF offices in Fort Lauderdale. In his opening statement on Tuesday, Michael Weinstein said his Fort Lauderdale project is a “moral issue.” Yet his remarks were filled with the political language of an experienced communist newspaper editor. He said, “Will Fort Lauderdale…and these other communities of great wealth, continue to be places that are hospitable to people of low income or will these cities become, in essence, rich ghettos.”

Weinstein said he would continue to oppose development in Los Angeles. He said, “We have been against granting exemptions to luxury development in working class areas.”

Weinstein mocked residents who opposed his project because, “I see cranes everywhere. If the drawbridge goes up as soon as it involves poor people, it doesn’t speak well for the community.” He said, “Why is the luxury building going up? I see them everywhere.”

Weinstein tried to paint the opposition as bigots. He repeatedly said residents referred to not wanting “those people” living nearby. Weinstein refused to give specifics.

At the Sanders Institute Gathering On December 1, 2018, Michael Weinstein used a question about climate change to mock concerned residents in Fort Lauderdale. Weinstein said:

We are attempting to build 680 micro units in downtown Fort Lauderdale right now. And you would think we’re trying to overthrow the entire government, Ok. It is so ugly and raucous, the opposition. This is in a non-residential area south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. We have to organize at the local level for sure.

The audience laughed and cheered.

Michael Weinstein may not want to “overthrow” the government, but his plans would definitely change what he calls the “housing industrial complex.”

Does Mayor Dean Trantalis subscribe to Michael Weinstein’s “radical but doable” ideas?

Would Mayor Trantalis pull the welcome mat out from under Canadians and South Americas who own homes in Fort Lauderdale?

What happens when Michael Weinstein wants to “plunk” micro units near the beach, Coral Ridge or Victoria Park?

Do Mayor Trantalis and Commissioner Steve Glassman support remaking established Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods with privately-owned “working class” housing projects?

Will Trantalis and Glassman rebuke Weinstein’s attacks on Fort Lauderdale residents?

Or will it be business (and development) as usual in Fort Lauderdale?

President Obama and Billionaire Socialite Using Everglades To Support Florida Democrats

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On right, Paul Tudor Jones parties with Charlie Crist, center, and musician Sting

On right, Paul Tudor Jones parties with Charlie Crist, center, and musician Sting

President Barack Obama’s Earth Day visit to the Everglades is the latest ploy to use the river of grass to support Florida Democrats. White House officials admit President Obama is making his first visit to the Everglades for political reasons. “This is an effort to raise this debate,” Josh Earnest, the president’s press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday evening. “Those Republicans that choose to deny the reality of climate change, they do that to the detriment of the people they are elected to represent.” While the move may be intended to create debate in Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio’s home state, prominent liberals have been using the Florida Everglades as a political weapon for years.

Paul Tudor Jones, the Connecticut billionaire behind the Everglades Foundation, funds a wide array of liberal politicians. When he’s not attending Palm Beach social events with his buddy Jimmy Buffett, Jones serves as one of the driving forces behind the proposed deal to buy land owned by US Sugar. In 2008, Jones held a fundraiser for Mr. Obama at his Greenwich, Connecticut estate.

As a part-time Florida resident, Jones makes hefty contributions to Florida Democrats.

Since 2008, Jones contributed nearly $15,000 to Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He gave another $15,000 to help get Senator Bill Nelson re-elected to office. Jones gave generously to Congressman Alcee Hastings and Ron Klein.

On April 9th, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), “effectively canned a 2010 deal to buy 46,800 acres of U.S. Sugar land that it once considered critical to restoring the Everglades and coastal estuaries.” Jones and his allies hoped to force the Florida Legislature to finalize the land grab. The SFWMD board preferred Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Everglades Restoration Plan. The plan would spend $5 billion over the next twenty years.

“If we can get $5 billion in state dollars and match that with $5 billion in federal dollars and have $10 billion, to me that is the big huge goal we have to go after right now,” said SFWMD board chairman Dan O’Keefe.

Now, another group tied to Paul Tudor Jones is urging President Obama to support the US Sugar land deal.

According to the influential SaintPetersblog website, Mary Barley of the Everglades Trust told supporters about the importance of Obama’s Earth Day visit. “Florida has a contract with U.S. Sugar Corporation to buy land that would save the Everglades,” Barley wrote. “But if our legislature does not act by May 1, we could lose this natural treasure. That’s why the president’s visit and attention are so vital.”

State records show The Everglades Trust non-profit corporation is operated by allies of Paul Tudor Jones. Mary Barley uses the same Islamorada address as George Barley, a founding member of The Everglades Foundation.

Last week, The Sunshine State News wrote how nearly twenty years ago, investigative reporters Bob Malloy and Will Bourne detailed “how money and political influence contributed to the demise of water quality and the seagrass/coral reef ecosystems of Florida Bay and the Florida Keys.”

According the Sunshine State News story, Malloy and Bourne claimed George Barley bought into “bad science promulgated by Joseph Zieman, a University of Virginia seagrass biologist, and his colleague, Ron Jones of Miami’s Florida International University; Tudor Jones bankrolled the development of their wrong conclusions. Meanwhile, water quality in Florida Bay and the upper Keys worsened because of it.”

Malloy and Bourne concluded that politics and money had harmed Florida’s environment. “What began for us as an investigation of bad science, of a flawed hypothesis that seemed to acquire supernatural powers, evolved into an examination of power, money and big-business environmentalism in South Florida. As environmentalists, it rapidly soured us on the philosophy and tactics that have moved to the forefront of the battle to save our natural treasures. It became a case study in ethical disintegration.”

Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg is another director of the Everglades Trust. A recent Palm Beach Post editorial called Eikenberg, the former chief of staff for Governor Charlie Crist, “the driving force behind efforts to convince the district to spend more than $400 million on the land.”  He said, “Florida’s leaders have a duty to buy strategic land needed for storage to protect the interests of thousands of homeowners.”

In 2010, Paul Tudor Jones gave $9,200 to Charlie Crist’s ill-fated US Senate campaign against Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek.