Florida cities race to save rainbow crosswalks as state’s deadlines for removal loom

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida – A meeting of the city of emergency is scheduled for Wednesday evening in the city of southern Florida de Fort Lauderdale as a battle to save the so-called Arc-En-Ciel road passages to be sanded or painted enters the 11th hour with deadlines for imminent withdrawal.

Florida communities are ordered to withdraw them at the beginning of next month by the state, which threatens to retain millions of dollars in state funding if the cities do not comply. Many street passages in bright colors are intended to celebrate the rights of homosexuals and LGBTQ pride, while others are tributes to blacks and police.

Miami Beach received a deadline of September 4 to eliminate its passage for rainbow pedestrians on Ocean Drive-a deadline similar to that given to Florida communities.

“They cannot delete our pride and they cannot delete our inclusive values,” Miami Beach Commissioner said this week Alex Fernandez, to the Associated Press in an interview.

Fernandez plans to raise the possibility of a call during a city meeting on September 3, one day before the deadline of the state. He considers pedestrian crossing as a safety symbol not only for the LGBTQ community, but also other residents.

“When the gay community is safe, the wider community is also safe,” he said.

Among the first level crossings, there was a rainbow crossing marking the 2016 massacre outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were slaughtered. He was painted in the middle of the night by work teams, angry with community members.

The withdrawal of the impulse crossing put the dispute under projector. This occurred several weeks after a directive of July 1 of the American transport secretary Sean Duffy, who gave us 60 -day governors to identify what he called security improvements.

“The roads are intended for security, not for political messages or works,” said Duffy.

Duffy “has made each state receiving federal dollars responsible for identifying dangers on its roads,” said Federal Highway Administration in a statement to the Associated Press.

So far, Florida Governor Ron Desantis has been the first American governor to make federal directives aggressively.

“We will not allow our state roads to be requisitioned for political purposes,” said Desantis recently on X.

A declaration from Florida Department of Transportation said that the agency had the duty “to ensure the safety and consistency of public roads and transport systems”.

“This means that our roads are not used for social, political or ideological interests,” he said.

The efforts to remove works of art are “clearly an anti-LGBTQ thrust on behalf of the federal government and the Copycat version of the government of the State,” said Rand Hoch, founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.

“They blackmail municipalities, counties and states saying” if you don’t do that, we will remember “” said Hoch. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Despite the directive of the Secretary of US transport, there is no indication of widespread actions to eliminate rainbow passages outside Florida. The state of Sunshine is often the avant-garde at the national level in the fights on what some call the cultural wars of politics. These include battles on the abolition of library books deemed inappropriate by Desantis and other Republicans.

In Key West, state transport managers said that if the roadmarks of the road in its historic city center are not deleted by September 3, “the Florida Department of Transportation will delete them by any necessary appropriate method without notice.” In a letter to the municipal director of Key West, the federal authorities also threatened the “immediate restraint” of public funds if it finds “additional violations”.