Hey, ‘Gov. Florida Man,’ Martha’s Vineyard is far more than your tired, old stereotype | Opinion

Dear Gov. DeSantis,

As the chief executive of your state, and one of its civic boosters, I’m sure you’ve wearied of the Florida Man meme: Florida Man attacked during selfie with squirrel; Florida Man arrested for throwing alligator through drive-thru window; Florida Man trapped in unlocked closet for two days.

The frequency and variety of these headlines is not a good look. The state may be shaped like a gun but, thanks to Florida Man, it sometimes seems more like a funnel, drawing ever southward the hapless, the dangerous, the aggressively dumb.

Of course that’s a gross mischaracterization of Florida’s citizenry. Take you, for instance. Graduate of Yale. J.D. from Harvard. Ten years in elected government office. Even the “legacy media” you so disdain — The New York Times, The New Yorker — have been fulsome in its praise of your intelligence, ambition and cunning. You’re like inverse Florida Man! I imagine you chafe at the jokes about Floridians being stupid. No one likes being reduced to a cliché.

But clichés were surely top of mind for you Wednesday when, without warning, you sent two chartered planes, carrying 50 South American migrants, to Martha’s Vineyard. Your ideas about what these people represent to you can be easily gleaned from your previous anti-immigrant tactics. Sting operations to round up “illegals” whom you falsely accused of trafficking fentanyl. Blaming a summer coronavirus surge — again, without merit — on President Biden letting “COVID-infected migrants pour over our border by the hundreds of thousands.”

So when you hatched this stunt — the latest in a game where red-state governors use humans to have a laugh on blue states — you weren’t solving for a specific problem, but rather furthering a concept. Take a bunch of — in your estimation — dangerous, disease-carrying folks and drop them on someone else’s doorstep.

The destination, though — that was really next level. Martha’s Vineyard, an island that has, over the years, morphed in the public imagination from a New England vacation spot to an Elysium of the Elites. The Vineyard is where President Obama lives and parties. Where Larry David snubs Alan Dershowitz on the porch of the General Store, where Stacey Abrams is celebrated at seaside mansions, where — according to Ted Cruz — “rich liberals swirl Chardonnay.” More than the Hamptons or Malibu, Martha’s Vineyard is now the terrestrial symbol of everything the MAGA world has been groomed to hate: rich, woke and inured to the problems of real people.

The Vineyard is where I also live. Part of the year, every year of my life, I have called the island home. Pro-immigrant, anti-racist, wine-swirling, I’m definitely the eye you were trying to poke with your scheme. I don’t even mind if you call me “Vineyard Woman.”

If I hew closely to the stereotype you imagine, Martha’s Vineyard and its 20,000 year-round residents definitely do not. Almost 7.5% of Vineyarders live in poverty; more than 3,000 people are registered at the Island Food Pantry. In Edgartown, Donald Trump captured almost 30% of the 2016 presidential vote. Fully 20% of the current population was born in Brazil.

We have many, many undocumented residents. Indeed, ever since Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold arrived on the Native Wampanoag’s land in 1602, Martha’s Vineyard has been accommodating foreigners. It has also been an exemplar of meaningful integration of all kinds. In the 19th century, Chilmark boasted one of the largest deaf communities in the country, and much of the island spoke sign language. For well over a hundred years, Oak Bluffs has been a premier summer destination for African-American families. In Vineyard Haven, Camp Jabberwocky, an extraordinary retreat for adults with disabilities, is entering its 63rd year. Yes we have pretty beaches, but it’s the island’s deeper and more dynamic character that gives the place true appeal.

Here’s another thing we have: a profound housing crisis. Like a lot of nice places in the country, The Vineyard has seen a COVID-era population surge, driving up property values and pushing real-estate opportunities for the working and middle classes further out of reach. The problem, though, began long before 2020. In many ways, the island is a victim of its own success.

Decades of careful conservation efforts have helped to preserve the area’s radiant beauty, beauty that has attracted more homebuyers to a shrinking pool of buildable land. New houses require more people to service them; new residents require new people to service them. The living options for the back end of these equations are vanishingly scarce. When the median sale price of an island home is $1.3 million, it’s not just the waitresses and landscapers who can’t pay the bank note. It’s teachers, and doctors, and fishermen whose families have plied the local waters for centuries. There’s another cliché for you, of the newest vintage.

Last spring, Martha’s Vineyard moved toward ameliorating the crisis, voting to establish an island-wide housing bank. A 2% purchaser-funded transfer tax, levied on every real-estate transaction over $1 million. The capital would allow for the purchase of buildable land and support long-term affordable-housing solutions. The Housing Bank’s financial goal is to raise $12 million a year. It’s philosophical goal: keeping people who want to work close. What a rich irony: $12 million is the exact amount you’ve earmarked to send people who want to work far, far away.

On Friday, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency ferried the migrants to a military base on Cape Cod. We just don’t have the facilities necessary for safe, and dignified, transitional housing. Still, I know the memories our visitors carry with them will be good ones. Forty-eight hours passed in the company of a generous and empathetic community.

Vineyard People Rally for Fellow Humans — that’s a headline I’d be happy with.

How about you, Gov. DeSantis?

Alexandra Styron is the author, most recently, of the YA book “Steal This Country: A Handbook for Resistance, Persistence, and Fixing (almost) Everything.”