4 July 27 - August 2, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | ▼ MIAMI-DADE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT LGBTQ YOUTH BUILD MINI-LIBRARIES TO COMBAT ACADEMIC CENSORSHIP. BY JESSE FRAGA S ix young activists have deployed their first “Little Library” in Mi- ami-Dade County, filled with banned books and works they hope will counteract academic censorship and the stigmatization of LGBTQ people under Florida’s new public education regime. The Alliance for LGBTQ Youth’s unveiled a hand-crafted, weatherproof book hut on July 15 outside of the Allapattah YMCA — the first of three Little Libraries planned for the county. Vince Cuadra, a 19-year-old member of the alliance’s “Changemakers” leadership pro- gram, explained that their mission is to pro- vide the public with examples of books by and about people from marginalized groups whose stories have been shut out of school li- braries amid the culture-war furor. “It is the role of the Miami-Dade County public school system to provide accurate ed- ucation of these truths. However, we refuse to wait to be recognized,” Cuadra said at the unveiling. Over six months, the Changemakers, a six- member group ages 13 to 20, learned about education censorship on topics recently barred from Florida’s public schools. Courses involved the kind of material that might make the blood of the anti-”woke” boil: intersec- tionality, ingrained anti-Black discrimination, the history of LGBTQ resistance, colonial ori- gins of gender binaries and sexuality, stu- dents’ rights, and campaign building. The group pursued the Little Libraries project in opposition to the large-scale re- moval of books from Florida public school li- braries. Between July and December 2022, Florida school districts banned more than 350 books based on challenges lodged by par- ents, activists, and politicians. Cuadra tells New Times that as a queer res- ident from a working-class family of immi- grants, he sees the Little Libraries project as essential for marginalized communities. “It’s the intersection of all my identities,” Cuadra says. “We need to see ourselves repre- sented in our education.” The surge in the removal of books — many about race, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity — came after the 2022 pass- ing of the Stop WOKE Act, which restricted teaching about systemic racism in schools, and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which banned instruction involving gender identity and sexual orientation before fourth grade. Promoted and pushed by Gov. Ron DeSan- tis, the laws don’t ban specific book titles, but book challenges mirroring the legislation’s language have flooded Florida school dis- tricts. Educators across the state have cited the laws and related administrative rules by the Florida Department of Education as the reason for the removal of books tackling LG- BTQ and race-related topics. HB 1467, a bill that facilitated parents’ book challenges, mandated new school-li- brarian training, and reinforced libraries’ “alignment to state academic standards,” was also passed last year. Book huts in the Little Libraries project will hold 25 books each and will be restocked regularly by the Alliance for LGBTQ Youth (with donations from the public), Books and Books, Haymarket, and Paradis Books and Bread. The project now has 150 books, and organizers hope to expand through future donation drives. A flyer beneath the little door on the book re- positories asks passersby to “take a book, leave a book, tag them @all4lgbtqyouth, and enjoy.” Last year’s students also wrote and pub- lished a book titled The Courage to Be Truly Free, a play on the title of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ book, The Courage to Be Free. The story, re- cited during the Little Library unveiling, fol- lows a lonely zebra named CoCo, who didn’t fit in with others in school, but finds the cour- age to express their identity to the world. Proceeds from the book’s sales on Amazon and Barnes and Noble go toward the Alliance. Lucia Nuno, a 14-year-old group member, hopes others can see themselves represented in the Little Library books in the same way she found solace on queer TikTok and LGBTQ communities online during the pandemic. “I knew I never really resonated with being a guy, so after seeing all this stuff talking about LGBTQ issues, I was like, wow, this is my community. This is where I fit in,” Nuno says. | RIPTIDE | GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS Nadya, Lucia Nuno, and Vince Cuadra (left to right) fill the first Little Library with books at the Allapattah YMCA on July 15, 2023. Photo by Jesse Fraga ▼ MIAMI-DADE WASTED AWAY LAWSUIT: MENTALLY ILL MAN STARVED IN MIAMI-DADE JAIL BY ALEX DELUCA B y the time he died alone in his Miami- Dade jail cell in the summer of 2021, Randy Heath weighed just 113 pounds. The 39-year-old’s severely emaciated body is shown in a series of autopsy photos with a pro- truding ribcage and collarbone, sunken cheek- bones, and atrophied arms and legs, with what appear to be bruises around his body. “He’s like a skeleton,” his mother, Angela Heath, reportedly said of the images. In a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in federal court this week against Miami-Dade County, Heath’s mother, Angela Heath, claims guards at the county-run Turner Guilford Knight Correc- tional Center (TGKCC) allowed her son, who had bipolar and schizophrenia disorders, to languish in the jail’s mental health unit before he was found unresponsive in his cell. The lawsuit alleges that jail employees did not properly feed, monitor, or administer Heath’s medication during his roughly nine-month-long incarceration. “When Heath was booked into TGKCC, he was able to communicate. Despite his medical challenges, he was able to bathe himself, shave, and communicate with the guards,” the lawsuit (attached at the bottom of this story) states. “Towards the end of his life, you could see a re- ally harrowing picture of a shell of a person.” His mother’s lawyer, Daryl Washington, tells New Times there’s “no doubt” that Heath should have been at a dedicated mental health facility instead of jail. “I mean, you put these individuals in jail in these facilities that just don’t have the ability to properly treat someone like Randy,” the Texas- based civil rights attorney says. “Anybody can see that something was majorly wrong with Randy.” According to a 31-page report from the Miami- Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office, Heath was last seen alive during a routine check at around 4:15 a.m. on July 18, 2021. But when guards returned to his cell for a second check around 20 minutes later, he was found unresponsive. Fire rescue responded and pronounced him dead roughly an hour later. The report found that Heath died from “food asphyxia” after a large piece of orange was found blocking his airway, with the contributory cause being pica, an eating disorder in which people compulsively eat things that aren’t food. It notes that several foreign materials, including bandages, a mustard packet, and part of a pea- nut package, were found in his small and large intestines. Heath, who had been in and out of Miami- Dade jail since 2002 on various charges, was ar- rested on a burglary charge in October 2019 and re-arrested in April 2020 for allegedly tampering with his ankle monitor. As the months went on at the jail, according to the lawsuit, Heath’s health slowly deteriorated. He would remain on the floor of his cell unat- tended for hours, at one point in his own urine and feces, his family says. Al- though he was regularly prescribed medication for his mental illnesses, his toxicology report detected no medicine in his system at the time of death. The lawsuit alleges Heath pleaded for help and advised he could not breathe prior to his death, but that the jail did not transport him to a hospital. According to the complaint, pica was never listed as an eating disorder in Heath’s medical records. Before he was incarcerated, Heath, a lifelong Miami resident, worked at International House of Pancakes and lived in a group home for adults with mental illness and substance abuse issues. A former facilitator at the home recalls how Heath, a 5-foot-10-inch man who weighed 204 pounds, “loved to eat.” The Miami-Dade court docket states that on July 9, a little more than a week before Heath’s death, a judge ruled that Heath was incompetent and ordered him remanded into the custody of Florida’s Department of Children and Families. In response to a request for comment, Miami- Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Juan Diasgranados tells New Times that the department does not comment on pending litigation. Near Miami International Airport, the secure TGK facility can house up to 1,300 inmates. The jail’s ninth-floor psychiatric ward, known as “The Forgotten Floor”, was shuttered in 2015 after years of criticism and a federal probe. After nearly a decade and a half, the county’s Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery, a facility aiming to break the homelessness-to-jail cycle, is set to open this fall. [email protected] “ANYBODY CAN SEE THAT SOMETHING WAS MAJORLY WRONG WITH RANDY.”
