The crowd gathered at the “Reduce the Rancor” event at the Naples United Church of Christ. (Photo: Author)
Feb. 19, 2024 by David Silverberg
On Feb. 7 over 700 people gathered for a “Reduce the Rancor” forum at the Naples United church of Christ, to calmly, rationally discuss handling political differences and bridge them in respectful, civil ways.
A week later, on Feb. 13, the Collier County Board of Commissioners, following three hours of public comment, chose to take a step backward in time, ignore scientific evidence, and end fluoridation of Collier County’s water. Fluoride had been added to Collier County’s drinking water since 1985 in an effort to reduce teeth cavities and improve overall dental health, in keeping with recommendations from a wide variety of organizations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the American Dental Association and the American Medical Association among many others.
The two events may seem unrelated; one a polite conversation by the county’s leading citizens, the other a formal, governmental function considering a chemical process. However, each displayed the differences playing out in this county and in the country as a whole between rationality and emotion, expertise and suspicion.
There was another difference: the forum provided a common ground for a theoretical discussion of behavior; the Board made a decision that will actually affect people’s health.
The forum
Panelists at the “Reduce the Rancor” event. From left to right: Andy Solis, Francis Rooney, Mike Love, Nick Penniman, Dick Gephardt and Sharon Harris-Ewin. (Photo: June Fletcher)
The “Reduce the Rancor” forum was sponsored by Greater Naples Leadership, a non-profit organization promoting civic engagement and training, the League of Women Voters, the Naples Airport Authority and the church.
While political partisans have rallies to fire up crowds and mobilize the faithful, the “Reduce the Rancor” forum was a kind of rally for people who want to restore some sort of calm and civility to public dialogue.
It featured six speakers, all accomplished local residents, from all political sides. Andrew “Andy” Solis, a Republican, was a former Collier County commissioner from District 2. Francis Rooney, also a Republican, represented the 19th Congressional District from 2017 to 2021, after a term as US ambassador to the Holy See. Richard “Dick” Gephardt, a Naples resident, was twice a Democratic candidate for president and served 28 years in the House of Representatives. A media perspective was provided by Nick Penniman, retired publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and lead director of NewsGuard, a company that evaluates accuracy in media, and Tim Love, a veteran advertising executive and author of Discovering Truth, a book on media accuracy. Rev. Sharon Harris-Ewing, a leader of the Interfaith Alliance of Southwest Florida, rounded out the presentations by focusing on values beyond just politics.
“Civil discourse requires some specific shared values,” she noted, observing that some of the values and skills that enable that discourse comes from faith and “an open mind and an open heart,” as well as humility and respect for others, a sentiment that was echoed by other panelists.
The forum was moderated by Mike Kiniry, the producer of the “Gulf Coast Life” program from WGCU-FM. But it was introduced by its organizer, Gunther Winkler, president of Greater Naples Leadership and a native of Austria.
In introducing the program Winkler recalled growing up in a war-shattered Austria, where people wondered how their misfortune had come about. “It was divisiveness,” he said, recounting the violent Nazi takeover of the country. Today, he said, he is seeing the same demand for picking sides and calls for violence that occurred then. However, today “we have the power to reverse this”—hence, his work in creating the forum.
The speakers attempted to get at the causes of the political rancor being experienced in Collier County and in the country generally. It was blamed on the political climate, social media, a mainstream media playing up the extremes and on the personalization of politics.
Only one panelist, Rooney, took aim squarely at an individual as the cause of rancor in the public square. Asked who was chiefly responsible for the current discord and told that he did not need to mention names, he said: “You know who, and it starts with a T”—a striking statement given that Rooney in his first term was an adamant and outspoken defender of Trump.
“There are individuals who fire this thing up and the biggest one of all, I think, is Donald Trump,” he said. “He exerts a magnetic influence over an awful lot of Republicans—not the ones like me who are financing Nikki Haley, by the way.”
Solis, who served District 2 from 2016 to 2023, during the worst of the COVID pandemic, faced sometimes bitter and vituperative attacks for trying to protect Collier County residents from the worst of the disease.
He blamed personalization of issues and the use of threats and insults against elected officials as a prime cause of the national mood of rancor and distrust.
During his time in office, he said, “at least once a week I’d have to say, ‘You know, insulting someone that you’re trying to get to see things your way is an interesting strategy because it’s not working.’ As soon as something becomes personal it takes it out of a discussion about the issues and makes it a personal thing and that gets in the way of having a good discussion about what the issues really are.”
The full, 2-hour, 19-minute discussion can be seen here.
The Board of Commissioners
Beth Sherman at the Collier County Board of Commissioners meeting on Feb. 13. (Image: CCBC)
One of the people who has done that accusing in the past was Collier County anti-vaccine activist Beth Sherman. In 2021, during discussion of an anti-federal ordinance, she angrily accused Solis of supporting mandatory vaccinations, a charge he vehemently denied. At the time she also denounced COVID vaccinations in general, the Naples Community Hospital for denying patients hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and called the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection a false-flag operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She then demanded commissioners pass the ordinance or resign.
That was a bitter and contentious discussion, full of passion and accusations, the very thing that the people at the “Reduce the Rancor” forum were trying to mitigate.
But this time, when Sherman stood before the Board of Commissioners again on Feb. 13 as they considered removing fluoride from Collier County’s water, she didn’t have to make threats or accusations. The Board was firmly in anti-fluoride hands and everyone knew it.
She just read her argument that fluoride deleteriously affected people’s brains, thyroid and bones and infringed on a citizen’s right to opt out of treatments. Fluoridization, she said, also violated a Collier County ordinance passed in April that, among other measures, prohibits implementing directives from the World Health Organization, which favors fluoridization. Among other charges, she alleged that the US Department of Defense was censoring information on the deleterious effects of fluoride.
At the meeting civility and order were sternly enforced by Commissioner Chris Hall (R-District 2), the chair, who warned participants against displays of emotion or outbursts, in stark contrast to previous proceedings. Commissioner Rick LoCastro (R-District 1) was absent following a warrant for his arrest on battery charges against his girlfriend, a medical emergency and a subsequent arrest, incarceration and bonding. He joined the proceedings remotely.
But while the demeanor of the commissioners and the speakers was restrained and polite and there was no vitriol or personal attacks, the substance of the testimony reflected the same passions, fear and even paranoia that governed the opposition to COVID vaccinations.
This was given most dramatic expression by Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the farmer, grocer and political activist who fought vaccine mandates during the pandemic. He and his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee endorsed and funded two of the commissioners, Hall and Dan Kowal (R-District 4).
(The full, verbatim, text of Oakes’ speech follows this article.)
It was Kowal who introduced the motion to end fluoridation, arguing that it was a health treatment being administered without recipients’ consent. It violated the April 2023 ordinance, he said, there was no legal requirement that it be maintained and the county would save about $200,000 per year by ending it.
While there were some defenders of fluoridation, the vast majority of speakers, already alerted and mobilized for the discussion, opposed it. Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3) expressed skepticism but ultimately chose to support it and in the end the Board voted unanimously to end fluoridation.
Analysis: Rancor and reason
The “Reduce the Rancor” forum with its surprisingly high turnout demonstrated that there is a large constituency in Collier County for the rule of reason. It was a kind of rally for people who want to restore some sort of calm and civility to public dialogue.
The fluoridation vote, though, demonstrated that these are not the people in charge of the county’s government right now. While the discussion before the Board was civil, the logic underlying the opposition showed evidence of the kind of anti-science, anti-expertise, anti-government, suspicious conspiracy theorizing that characterized the anti-vaccine movement during the COVID pandemic.
Once the anti-fluoridation motion passed, dentists and oral hygienists in the county began expressing their opposition, mostly in letters to the editor of the Naples Daily News but by then, of course, it was too late.
Collier County has now taken two votes against mainstream public health measures. This comes at a time when COVID is resurging. According to data from the Florida Department of Health, there have been more than 98,000 cases of COVID-19 in the state since the start of the year. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a JN.1 variant causing 92 percent of cases across the country.
While this is not the deadly and novel COVID virus that struck the world in 2020 it nonetheless shows that public health risks remain. Whether they will be met with a measured, rational, scientific response in Collier County remains to be seen in light of votes taken by the Board of Commissioners to weaken public health measures.
So perhaps the common lesson of the “Reduce the Rancor” forum and the Board of Commissioners vote is this: It is fine to support civil dialogue and reasoned, logical disagreement but unless there’s a willingness to act on behalf of reason, unreason will triumph—and then no amount of openness, or dialogue and respect, will make any difference at all.
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Alfie Oakes addresses the Collier County Board of Commissioners on Feb. 13. (Image: CCBC)
The speech by farmer and political activist Alfie Oakes to the Collier County Board of Commissioners merits quotation in full.
This is a verbatim transcript of his remarks. Additions for clarity are marked in brackets [ ] and incomplete thoughts are marked with ellipses (…). Otherwise, it is unedited.
“So, thank you for hearing me today. As you know this is somewhat personal to me, my father that passed away back in 2013, a couple years before his passing was up here fighting with the commission to get the fluoride out of the water. It was something he was very passionate about. I had the privilege of my father, while he never made a lot of money, he drove a 300-dollar car, when I was at the age of 11 and he spent 900 dollars for a reverse osmosis system for our house because that was more important to him than the car that he drove but he didn’t want to damage mostly us kids but the whole family with the fluoride when he found out that the only way to get fluoride out of the water was with reverse osmosis. So, he was way ahead of the curve on a lot of things and I have, except for one time, when I was in like third or fourth grade there was a fluoride supplement that they made us take it and my father found out about it and lost his mind. That’s the only time that these teeth have ever seen fluoride. They don’t look like they have too many cavities, do they?
“So, I’d also like to talk about…we find out a lot about who is on the right side of things by…who, what I call our enemies are and when I see something that’s reported or that’s encouraged by the World Health Organization or by [Adm.] Rachel Levine [US Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services] and even the World Economic Forum and promotes this fluoride and you have to ask yourself ‘Why?’
“I was lucky enough to attend an event over in Mexico this past summer and it was the first time that I’d ever heard – and I heard this gentleman say it again today – the first time I ever heard that fluoride actually calcifies the pineal gland, it’s that element that calcifies your pineal gland.
“So, I’ve been lucky in that my pineal gland hasn’t been calcified. Maybe it’s why I have eternal energy. I get up at four o’clock in the morning and go until 10 o’clock at night. I have…the pineal gland is represented in ancient history as the third eye, our connection into our spirituality. It’s also what I consider a driving force. When I hear that the IQ has been lowered of all these reports of these kids that are taking tested, their IQs are directly proportional to how much fluoride that’s in the water, it’s stunning but when I think about that in a logical sense it makes sense because I don't believe that, like some of these doctors here, who, their vessel is filled with knowledge from the university, I think that real learning comes from the lighting of a fire and the lighting of the fire is that pineal gland. That’s our fire that connects us to our spirituality, it gives us drive.
“I got a high school education. I’ve done pretty well because I got the fire burning. And, and this is intentional – if you don’t think this is intentional, to dumb us down, to keep control of the people in this country, then I don’t think that you’re paying attention.
“The fluoride…unfortunately, I’m going to take a few minutes – because there’s a hundred different things said that I was going to bring up today but the fluoride is not the only problem. So, as we know, that the fluoride that they’re putting in the water is not naturally occurring fluoride. It’s man-made substance, it’s toxic to us. When they found out how well that worked to poison us and dumb us down back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, in 1977 they just decided they were going to put folic acid in the bread. Folic acid in all the bread, 99.9 percent of all the bread in this country has folic acid in it. It’s, again, another man-made substance. It’s poisoning us. And, you know, I don’t think…thank God we’re not putting the folic acid in the water or we’re getting that out but I might be back here asking everyone to put poison labels on all bread in Collier County that has folic acid in it because it’s just another sham from the same people that are trying to bring us down.
“And, you know, the difference between right now and when my Dad was here 13, 14 years ago whenever it was, fighting against the fluoride is, we don’t trust the white coats any more. They got up here and put on the same show. I just listened to them, they – you say not to say the same things over again? – almost every one of their talking points from the university are exactly the same talking points and they’ve been using it over and over again, it’s the same thing when I sat here with my father 14 years ago that they used. As a matter of fact, the gentleman got up, Johnny Johnson [President of the American Fluoridation Society and a former pediatric dentist], he goes around the whole state doing this, I don’t know whether he’s paid or not. It doesn’t matter to me but you have to wonder what is driving it. What’s the driving force? Why are they trying to do this? Why are they trying to put a neuro-toxin in our water that’s poisoning us?
“You know, I never had to take a shower where my skin was absorbing, a hot shower where it opens up your pores and have a neuro-toxin pour into your skin. Thank God I wasn’t! But everybody else in this county has been subjected to it and it’s certainly time that we, like Mark Twain said, it’s hard sometimes to realize when you’ve been duped, it’s hard to admit it but I think we need to, you know, time for us to be responsible. We have a great group of commissioners up here so that I think is going to make the right decision. I’ve never felt more blessed to live in this great county, Collier County. Thank you.”
Mr. Oakes’ remarks can be seen in the Board of Commissioners video from mark 3:12 to 3:17.
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg