Protesting out-of-control development used to be an amateur sport: Gather a few neighbors, wear matching T-shirts and surround city hall.
All sports aim at mastery over an opponent, a defining fact that makes it difficult to watch Team USA put Cuba in a chokehold and not see 50 years of geopolitics twist across mat No. 1.
In the end, the mayor was not strong enough. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez fought hard to expand his powers, and voters finally granted him his wish last year. As strong mayor, Alvarez now enjoys greater authority over the county's bureaucracy. But he's so far proved no match for the real power structure: the forces of development.
Wilbert Benoit, father of two, taken away on a dark morning. Marie Thelusma arrested in front of her baby boy. Francieuse Lafortune, new mother, locked up while she was still breast-feeding. Fabienne Josil, five weeks pregnant, dragged away after fainting.
Monday at 5:01 p.m., I did what 1.7 million people in South Florida do every weekday: I got in my car downtown and drove to the suburbs.
Prosecutors in the case against the Liberty City men accused of plotting terrorism are going for broke: a third trial for the bumbling jihadists.
Drive around downtown Miami long enough and one day you'll be forced to consider the eternal time-space riddle: Would it have been faster to walk?
Fidel Castro is out of power and brother Raúl is preoccupied with Cuba's delicate transition, but in Miami, island politics can still resonate as if it were 1992.
It's too early to know what lasting effect Raúl Castro's rise to power will have on Cubans. But in Miami, Fidel's farewell has already reinvigorated a vital component of the local economy: the Cuba-conference industry.
The rich and well-connected always have friends to spare. The poor, the marginalized and the unpopular have the Labor Center at Florida International University.
