Mitch Perry
Cara Jennings, the Lake Worth activist whose verbal thrashing of Gov. Rick Scott in a Gainesville Starbucks went viral last month after a video captured her calling him “an a**hole,” is featured in a new video that she herself produced where she continues to address the governor.
Although the video was only made available on Wednesday, it originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s website Monday in a blog post, where she described the April 5 incident and why she went after him.
Rather than bow down to etiquette, I chose to stand up to power. In confronting the Governor I took inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement and DREAMers of the youth immigrant rights movement whose bold direct actions have ushered in a new era of political engagement. These activist leaders have called out police and politicians, using their voices and bodies to stop families from being torn apart. They stand at the forefront of social change by taking risks because lives and communities depend on it.
In the Gainesville incident, Jennings called Scott out for a crummy record on job creation, as well as for cutting funds for vital health care services for low-income women.
She continues her criticism about his record in the video. In it, she says she penned a letter to the governor after their confrontation, asking him to sit down and talk with him about issues like women’s reproductive rights, voter disenfranchisement and climate change. She didn’t get a response. Well, not directly, anyhow.
Instead, a few days later came an ad from Scott’s “Let’s Get To Work” PAC bashing Jennings as a “latte liberal” and someone who “clearly has a problem.”
Jennings served a Lake Worth commissioner from 2006 to 2010.
