Cara Jennings fans, celebrating with high-fives after watching the now-famous video of Jennings' encounter with the governor at a Gainesville Starbucks, are blaming Donald Trump for her outburst.
Some of them, anyway.
And who hasn't seen the video? Have (another) look below.
"By Thursday," reported the News Service of Florida, "a Google search for 'Rick Scott Starbucks' brought up 593,000 results -- including items posted by USA Today, the Washington Post, liberal publication Mother Jones, the New York Daily News, conservative websites like Hot Air and on and on."
FSU student Amy Case told Sunshine State News on Thursday, "Trump started this kind of attack on people he doesn't agree with. Scott apparently speaks the same language as Trump, so why shouldn't Cara fight him the same way Trump fights his political opponents?"
Graduate student Joe Calaccio, agreed. "It's high time Democrats found their voice. ... I think Trump has taught us well how to intimidate the enemy."
Poppycock, you guys.
Cara Jennings, self-professed "big mouth," has been doing what she did Tuesday for a lot longer than Donald Trump has been using his celebrity and TV tactics to "make America great again."
If you looked at Jennings' background, you know Rick Scott walked into a buzz saw with a screw loose and the motor on at full throttle. And I'm betting for the rest of his life, every time he walks into a Starbucks, he cases the joint for Cara Jennings and her laptop before he approaches the counter.
And she wonders why she drives to Tallahassee but the governor won't see her. Not only are this Palm Beach County woman's chances of getting an audience with Scott now reduced to somewhere between pigs flying and hell freezing over, but watch how fast the governor hides in the Capitol broom closet as soon as she enters the building.
The Internet is full of stories of Jennings' radical feminism, radical anarchism, radical activism, radical everything. In 2006 she was actually the first anarchist ever elected to office in Florida, serving on the Lake Worth Commission, a position that failed to calm her down -- though she made meetings interesting, especially when she pushed to allow chicken farming within the city limits. She's been arrested for assaulting a police officer, she once chained herself to the gate of the Florida Power & Light Co. plant on Southern Boulevard and much, much more -- plus, for a while there, she proudly professed to be an "urban survivalist" living out of garbage dumpsters.
Now she's sitting at a Starbucks drinking $7 decaf lattes and working on a laptop? Curious.
Dialing back to the turn of the century, Jennings and her sister Aimee probably got their start in notoriety in the Sunshine State when they set up Villa de Vulva -- that's what they called it -- a small ranch house on B Street in Lake Worth where regulars were "punks, skateboarders, students, slackers, riot grrrls, or hippies ..."
In 2001, the New Times Broward-Palm Beach called the Villa "... one of South Florida's most active cells of all things radical feminist, anticapitalist, antiracist, anarchist, queer, vegetarian -- or none of the above."
In fairness, try reading a more sympathetic view of Jennings, written by Mary Emily O'Hara, a friend who recalls, "We spent our twenties traveling to many of the same protests, in an activist performance-art troupe called the Radical Cheerleaders that Cara founded in the late 1990s with her two sisters, Aimee and Colleen." It's an interesting read. (Yes, she said it right -- Radical Cheerleaders.)
Claims O'Hara, Jennings hasn't changed much. She's now a working mom who does contract work for the Service Employees International Union (though, sorry, SEIU, Jennings just told the governor she doesn't have a great job). She resides in an anarchist collective house known as a crash pad for activists passing through the area. "Her erudite criticisms of both local politicians and global issues frequently make the news."
Jennings can't get healthcare insurance and blames Scott for failing to expand Medicaid with federal money. So, running into the governor -- or, the governor running into her -- was from her point of view "a lucky encounter."
O'Hara asked Jennings: Why confront the governor in person, as opposed to an online petition, or whatever people would normally do?
"Well," Jennings replied, "you know, 12,000 people signed a petition opposing this bill that was delivered to the governor (on abortion). And for months, people have been trying to meet with him at the capital in opposition to the bill. I’ve been in Tallahassee before to try to meet with him on immigration issues with over 100 of his constituents, and he’s refused meetings."
It's not easy for reporters to talk to the governor one on one, so believe me, I understand what she's saying. Been there, done that. And I have to tell you, I was envious of the way she dismissed the governor's aide, who tried to run interference in Starbucks. "I'm not talking to you," she snapped. That's what all of us should have said to Scott's flacksters six years ago and maybe we would be getting real answers to our questions today.
And, freedom of speech -- it's a beautiful thing in the United States of America. I love to see it in full cry and wouldn't deny Jennings a minute of it.
But that said, her style gets her nowhere. She wins nothing.
Jennings has an admirable cause -- the plight of the poor. With no chance on God's green earth of advancing it.
Her life work in "rad" is a series of photos and YouTube videos and Facebook postings that largely preach to the converted. Show me the accomplishment. What else do they do, I ask you, except speak to the moment? Tuesday's video of Jennings railing at the governor is still flooding social media, it was on the 6 o'clock news, and guess what? She probably hasn't made one favorable impression on a man or a woman who can make a difference. What a wacko are the words I hear most.
Even in this era of angry protest, of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and all their discordant supporters, civility and mutual respect still win the day most of the time. You want to talk to power? Develop a forceful argument, deliver it, then listen.
Granted, there are no guarantees even then. But for sure, anarchy plain won't cut it.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
