Florida Senate - 2021                            (NP)    SR 1074
       
       
        
       By Senator Jones
       
       
       
       
       
       35-00925-21                                           20211074__
    1                          Senate Resolution                        
    2         A resolution rejecting and condemning white
    3         nationalism and white supremacy as hateful expressions
    4         of intolerance which contradict the values that define
    5         the people of Florida and the United States.
    6  
    7         WHEREAS, recent acts of domestic terror, including acts of
    8  mass violence, have shocked and saddened our nation, and
    9         WHEREAS, in a 2006 assessment, the Federal Bureau of
   10  Investigation (FBI) found that white supremacists believe that
   11  the white race is superior to all other races, that nonwhites
   12  are subhuman, and that the white race was created to rule over
   13  other races, and
   14         WHEREAS, in that assessment the FBI stated, “To be a white
   15  nationalist is to be pro-white. The domestic white nationalist
   16  movement seeks to promote, honor, and defend the white race....
   17  White nationalists view multiculturalism, diversity, and illegal
   18  immigration as direct assaults on the white race and race-mixing
   19  as akin to white genocide. They hope to appeal to mainstream
   20  whites, believing that the majority of white people do not
   21  understand the imminent or long-term threat to their race,” and
   22         WHEREAS, in 2019, the FBI reported 7,314 hate crimes in the
   23  United States, an increase from 2018, including 111 hate crimes
   24  in Florida alone, and
   25         WHEREAS, white supremacy and white nationalism are contrary
   26  to the ideals of the State of Florida as expressed in the State
   27  Constitution, which declares that “all natural persons, female
   28  and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable
   29  rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and
   30  liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and
   31  to acquire, possess and protect property. No person shall be
   32  deprived of any right because of race, religion, national
   33  origin, or physical disability,” and
   34         WHEREAS, Abraham Lincoln, in an 1858 speech, said of the
   35  founders of our nation, “Wise statesmen as they were, they knew
   36  the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they
   37  established these great self-evident truths, that when in the
   38  distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set
   39  up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men,
   40  were entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, their
   41  posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence
   42  and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began
   43  so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and
   44  Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so
   45  that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the
   46  great principles on which the temple of liberty was being
   47  built,” and
   48         WHEREAS, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., while recognizing
   49  that “no other nation can mean to us what our nation means,”
   50  condemned “nationalism perverted into chauvinism and
   51  isolationism” as “preached by ... the advocators of white
   52  supremacy” and asked, “Will we continue to serve the false god
   53  of racial prejudice or will we serve the God who made of one
   54  blood all men to dwell upon the face of the earth?”, and
   55         WHEREAS, President Ronald Reagan observed in a 1988 speech,
   56  “Anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in
   57  America and become an American.... This, I believe, is one of
   58  the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the
   59  world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our
   60  strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And
   61  by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While
   62  other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we
   63  breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world
   64  follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to
   65  this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever
   66  bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting
   67  edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This
   68  quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed
   69  the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would
   70  soon be lost,” NOW, THEREFORE,
   71  
   72  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:
   73  
   74         That white nationalism and white supremacy are rejected and
   75  condemned as hateful expressions of intolerance which contradict
   76  the values that define the people of Florida and the United
   77  States.