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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and desperate measures were taken during the last month of 2015 to call attention to the inhumane treatment that’s ongoing in our detention of civil immigration detainees. In early December, a group of ten men from Bangladesh started a hunger strike in protest of their detention at the Krome Service Processing Center. The men, many fleeing violence in Bangladesh, were originally detained in Hidalgo, Texas, shortly after requesting political asylum when they crossed into the country from Mexico. Most of the men have been in detention for over a year without being granted parole by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while fighting their asylum cases. And this is not a first. Over the last few months there’s been a wave of hunger strikes in various immigration detention facilities in South Florida and across the country.

Though we find ourselves in an election year, some of the responses to President Obama’s recent initiatives on gun control reverberate outside this political silly season. Some responses to the president’s actions were easily predictable: How effective will these very limited initiatives really be in curbing rampant gun violence? Are some of these initiatives (for example, expanding the number of gun buyers who are subject to a background check) an overreach of executive authority? Is he exercising powers that belong to Congress, not the executive branch? But it is past due to retire one common theme — the bogus claim that “any regulation of gun ownership violates Second Amendment rights.”

Recent lethal encounters with police make it clear that we need to continuously work to build trust between police and the communities they serve. We know there is a better approach to policing, and one of those approaches is using civilian review boards to hold police departments accountable for their actions or inaction. Voters in Miami have a chance in this election to make a difference for fairer and safer policing.

The lives of Floridians could be changed forever. Thanks to the “vigilance” of Representative Lake Ray from Jacksonville, it has come to our attention that our way of life in the Sunshine State is at serious risk of being conquered or destroyed by foreign invaders. As a precautionary measure, Rep. Ray is trying to pass the ridiculous “Prevention of Acts of War” bill that would secure our way of life based on Florida’s power to defend itself against the imminent threat of surreptitious invasion the state has been facing for the last 15 years. How is this bill supposed to help us during a time of war? Let’s get into it.