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Sunshine Advocacy is a consulting service established in 2014 and led by Peter Phillips, a 40-year veteran. Sunshine Advocacy has provided organizing and public policy consultation in housing, healthcare, and economic justice campaigns. Currently the scope of work includes public education reform and support of the charter school movement.

The charter school movement, while benefitting over 3 million students in the US, is constantly under attack as a wrong-headed reform movement to siphon tax dollars from public education and benefit the wealthy. The authentic voice of organized parents and students is the best way to fight these attacks and hold policy makers accountable to charter state policies. Parents are more than willing to fight for their students’ education when they are given the political knowledge and organizational tools to speak in a unified voice to decision makers. Organized parents are also foundational to supporting at home learning and school community recognition.

Following a summer and fall of over 27 town hall meetings congregations and local agencies, a newly formed coalition called Gadsden United, met the end of October with their County Commissioners to share concerns from 800 people who attended this fall’s meetings. The primarily African American churches and pastors asked two attending County Commissioners to respond to the platform’s concerns. The other three Commissioners did not attend but one agreed to support the demands of the organization. This included televising BOCC meetings, banning the box asking job applicants to identify as convicts and agreeing to overturn the county’s Citizen Bill of Rights that requires a super majority votes on some County funding items.

The clergy leaders also announced community improvements agreements including resurfacing of local roads, air conditioning in a number of schools, and Gadsden Technical Institute agreed to offer evening carpentry and GED classes. Congratulations to Pastor Charles Morris and the other ministers on this historic effort in a rural county often bypassed by community organizing. Gadsden County, Florida, population 46,000 a predominately African American county  to the west of Tallahassee

See local story: Groups shares concerns, goals with county leaders

Thank you Trabajando Juntos (Working Together Coalition) for the honor of giving me the El Faro Award recently at their 11th Annual Conference recently in Orlando. The award was given for the work of Central Florida congregations, businesses, and nonprofits to fight for health insurance for over 200,000 uninsured Latinos and 1 million uninsured in Florida through expansion of Florida Medicaid. Thanks you Samuel Rodriguez of Trabajando Juntos and Kevin Epps of New Life Fellowship Baptist Church for receiving the award on my behalf. I am also excited to accept a new position in Los Angeles as Director of Southern California Parent Organizing for the California Charter School Association.

Gracias Trabajando Juntos (Working Together Coalición) por el honor de darme el Premio El Faro recientemente en su 11ª Conferencia Anual recientemente en Orlando. El premio fue entregado por el trabajo de las congregaciones de la Florida central, empresas y organizaciones no lucrativas para luchar por el seguro de salud para más de 200,000 latinos sin seguro médico y 1 millón de personas sin seguro en la Florida a través de la expansión de Medicaid de Florida. Gracias usted Samuel Rodríguez de Trabajando Juntos y Kevin Epps de New Life Fellowship Baptist Church para recibir el premio en mi nombre. También estoy emocionado de aceptar un nuevo puesto en Los Angeles como Directora del Sur de California de Organización de Padres de la Asociación Escuela Charter de California

Dear Friends,

It’s with different feelings I write to let you know our family has moved to Los Angeles, California to be closer to our two older children, John and Lauren, working in LA and to get our youngest child, Olivia, in college in Santa Monica where she hopes to follow her siblings in entertainment.

I am so heartened about the work I have been associated with in Florida and look forward to continuing the relationship with many of you. I apologize to so many of you that I was not personally able to say “Goodbye”.  I treasure the many relationships I have had across the state over the past 20 years, and I will miss you and Florida’s crazy politics. We learned so much, and while the struggle for justice and equity for communities of color in Florida is daunting, collaborative leadership is growing and change is coming! Thank you for the education you have given me.

To my new friends in SoCal, thank you for your hospitality and encouragement! I am excited about reaching out to meet the incredible advocacy community here and learning about your successes. I plan to spend the next couple of months understanding the landscape and see where I might fit in.

Whether in Florida or California, our country and communities are still impacted by this country’s racial narrative of injustice of poor people and people of color. I am sad it is so difficult to move the needle. For all of you who know me, let’s keep organizing, empowering our people, and disrupting the status quo! Don’t give up! Peter

When 150 people met from Orlando Faith United Church, JUMP Ministries, and New Life Fellowship African American churches June 18 (at approximately the same time as the Charleston murders were committed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church), tension was high. Reports of Noel Carter repeated beating by Orlando Police Department were headline news, and members of JUMP Ministries had had police recently enter their church with guns drawn. People want police violence stopped; want to know what to do when stopped, and want to know what their rights are.

Orange County Sector Commander Joe Picanzo described deputy stop procedures in two forms. When suspicion of illegal activity is seen by the officer, or even thinking there is a violation, the officer has full investigative power, and the citizen must comply with any reasonable requests. If the officer is threatened or feels threatened, he has authority to use deadly force. He urged anyone under investigation to cooperate fully, “Don’t pick your fight with an officer on the street. Do it filing a complaint afterwards.” Picanzo also clarified that when an officer is talking to someone to get information, the officer needs to get permission to ask questions, and one can refuse, in this case, to talk. Defense attorney Celine Cannon agreed with Picanzo and described our constitutional rights:  Article 4 not allowing a police search without a warrant, and Article 6 protecting an individual from questioning without an attorney.

The issue, of course, is too few people know and understand police procedure or their rights. Most in the room were hearing this in detail for the first time. If we are to lower the temperature between community and police, it must start with widespread understanding of police authority and citizens rights.  The other piece to build community law enforcement relationships is to take concrete steps to work together. The churches presented Picanzo with a list of steps to strengthen community relationships:

• Residents have a negative relationship with law enforcement because they usually only encounter in a police incident. Work with us to have your deputies in this sector build a community engagement plan, especially holding community events involving youth and sports.
• We are not recruiting enough deputies that from the community and deputies that understand their racial bias. Recommend to Sheriff Demmings review the existing recruiting policies of OCSO and create policies that will recruit qualified persons to become deputies that  come from the community, and are not restricted by arbitrary regulations such as previous traffic violations.
• OCSO salaries are not completive with other jurisdictions. We are losing qualifies deputies. Recommend to Sheriff Demmings to make salaries competitive.

Picanzo will recommend all three and set up a meeting with Sheriff Demmings.

In a 72-41 lopsided vote last week House Republicans defeated the Senate proposal to expand healthcare coverage to 800,000 uninsured and 200,000 Latinos using federal Medicaid funds. Expanded healthcare is now dead for this year. This followed a long campaign by church, non-profit, and the business community to ask the legislature to use federal funds and cover the uninsured in Florida’s healthcare gap. See vote by each House member

The Hispanic community especially contributed to the campaign. Thirty churches in the Association of Evangelical Ministers of Central Florida held town hall presentations in their churches, a prayer service to lift up the suffering of the uninsured, 4 press events, two trips to Tallahassee, and numerous meetings with Central Florida state legislators. The Central Florid Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, NCLR, supported expansion along with numerous Latino non-profits.

So what happened? All House Democrats voted in favor of expansion and 4 Republicans broke ranks. This included Rep. René Plasencia of Orlando who met on with the Latino community and delivered on his promise to vote for expansion – a great credit to the organizing of Latino leadership. However, that was not enough. To pass the bill 25 Republicans would have had to have voted favorably.  8 – 12 representatives said privately they were considering voting for expansion. They didn’t. We were a long way from victory in the House. This was a bitter pill in contrast to the Senate where an almost unanimous bipartisan vote passed healthcare expansion.

Nevertheless, the long term outlook is brighter. Next year as the federal government reduces support again to hospital indigent car (LIP program) and the state will have to make up the difference by either cutting other state programs like education, economic development, or  accept Medicaid federal funding. This dilemma will make Medicaid expansion more desirable especially before the 2016 election. For the first time in three years the House was forced to vote up or down a Florida alternative to Medicaid that would have given uninsured affordable quality health care. The vote now reveals publicly where each representative stands on this issue. They now stand accountable for their vote.

This is not really the end; rather the beginning. From now to September legislators are in their district; then they start the legislative process again with committee meetings this fall to decide what bills they want to consider next session starting in January. The work this past year has given us new capacity, commitment, and awareness of how government affects our lives. Our churches, businesses, and non-profits are better positioned to educate the community with a moral mandate that our people needlessly not suffer. Now we educate, we organize,  we register to vote, and we unite. Adelante!