Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday that Cuban Americans need to stop blocking roads in Miami to express solidarity with anti-government demonstrators in Cuba.
“We can’t have that,” he said at a news conference in Miami. “It’s not something that we’re going to tolerate.”
On Tuesday, major thoroughfares were blocked in Miami-Dade County and elsewhere in the state, snarling rush-hour traffic in several locations. Protesters also closed roads in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville. Demonstrations also took place on Wednesday.
Most prominent was the protesters’ shutdown of the Palmetto Expressway/State Road 826 for some seven hours, including the afternoon-evening rush hour. The Florida Highway Patrol warned that the shutdown was illegal, but for hours didn’t try to clear the highway.
In Miami, the city Police Department said motorists should be patient with traffic snarls, which it attributed to people exercising their First Amendment rights.
DeSantis who has assiduously courted Cuban American voters and community leaders parted ways with the demonstrators — just on this one issue.
“It’s dangerous for you to be shutting down a thoroughfare. You’re also putting other people in jeopardy. You don’t know if an emergency vehicle needs to get somewhere and then obviously it’s just disrespectful to make people stand in traffic,” he said.
He said peaceful protestors have the right to express their views. “But it can’t be where you shut down commerce or you shut down the ability to use these arteries. It’s very important that people are able to get, especially in a place like Miami where the traffic can be really bad, and, again, again you never know someone may need to get to a hospital or something like that.”
The blocking of Florida’s major roads by protesters sparked discussion about the state’s new anti-protest law — championed and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in response to 2020 social justice demonstrations the MAGA movement didn’t like. The law makes illegal some of what anti-Cuban government protesters have been doing this week.
