Voices for Change: Nikki Fried
Welcome to the teachers unify podcast. I'm Sarah Lerner. This episode features Nikki Fried, the former Florida commissioner of agriculture and current chair of the Florida Democratic Party. She talks about her role in public service, her support for the gun violence community, how people can get involved to make change, and much more. We are joined today by Nikki Fried, who I have been trying to get on this show for a hot minute.
Speaker 1:She is the former Florida commissioner of agriculture, the current chair of the Florida Democratic Party, and an all around outspoken badass. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on. I'm sorry it took so long for us to do this, but I appreciate the patience and the tenacity.
Speaker 1:I am tenacious. Alright. So I know time is limited. We will jump right in. What made you decide to get into public service?
Speaker 2:You know, it really started when I was a kid, you know, to be honest. I was very involved in my youth organization down in Miami where it was just kind of embedded in every aspect of my life. In the Jewish community, we call it to heal the world. And so I was just really involved in that. I was doing soup kitchens and Habitat for Humanity and all of this just senior center volunteer work.
Speaker 2:And that was really kinda what guided me throughout high school. And then I got to University of Florida. I kinda continued that activism on campus, eventually to become the first female student body president in almost twenty years. And I knew that I was given an opportunity to do good in in society, that I was fortunate to have been raised by a middle class family who instilled in me the the the work ethic and that I had a moral obligation to continuously give back. And that's always just kind of been my driving force throughout my entire life.
Speaker 1:In 2022, when you were commissioner of agriculture, you worked to keep guns out of the hands of medical marijuana patients. You said after you won the election in 2018 that you, quote, kicked the NRA out of Florida's gun licensing office, which I think is fantastic. What did it mean for you to take on the NRA in a pro gun state like Florida, especially as the only statewide elected Democrat at the time?
Speaker 2:You know, again, this goes back to a little bit of my background. You know, my mom was a teacher, so she taught preschool for most of my life. My dad is a diehard republican that when I was telling him in high school that I was going to it wasn't gay pride parades back then. It was gay pride protests. And was going to one of those protests, he subscribed me to an NRA newspaper and sent me T shirts.
Speaker 2:So a little bit different than my political spectrum. But even when I was running for office in 2018, you know, my growing up in a household where my dad had guns, I was familiar. I didn't I wasn't scared about it. I went, you know, shooting ranges and was just comfortable around firearms, but also understood that we had to have a responsibility around firearms. And so when I ran in 2018 under it was right after Parkland.
Speaker 2:I was living in Broward County and became extremely close with a lot of the Parkland families, including Fred Guttenberg and David Hogg and a lot of the people in that community that were now, you know, standing up and fighting back. Some of the other March for Our Lives founders and I, you know, developed a really strong relationship. And we had a conversation actually outside of cameras, outside of cell phones, and just a very true real conversation after my primary in 2018 with some of those March for Our Lives kids and tried to explain to them how important the commissioner of agriculture position was. Because for the most part, most people in our state didn't even know that it was an elected position and that it wasn't just commissioner of agriculture. Was agriculture and consumer services, which encompasses 19 different divisions.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a $1,400,000,000 department, and gun licensing was part of it. And and watching what happened with my predecessor, Adam Putnam, who campaigned in his gubernatorial campaign that he was an NRA sellout and had pushed legislation over the years on gun licensing and trying to get permits moved through the process a lot faster and found out that 262 people had fallen through the cracks when it came to the concealed weapons program. And so I knew that there was a way to balance the conversation. And I I'd have conversations with my dad to kinda see the the other side of it and define common ground on these issues, which is smart regulations. It's universal background checks.
Speaker 2:It's you know, in light of even what we saw at FSU a couple weeks ago, you know, it's safe storage. It's, you know, certain trainings and classes and things that we should, as a collective, be able to get behind. And and that's kind of where I I walked into that space and was able to take a concealed weapons program that Adam had let kind of fall through the wayside. The statutory requirement to review the concealed weapons were ninety days to go through the background checks, to get people, like, if there's a problem, to go through the to go through those programs within ninety days. Well, his average was ninety three days.
Speaker 2:So he was already out of statutory requirements, and he actually tried to push a piece of legislation. The hearing was on the floor on 02/16/2018. So, obviously, in the height of everything, he had to pull back that legislation, which was if the Department of Agriculture didn't make a determination before ninety days, it was an automatic approval trying to skirt around his responsibilities. So we got in there. We cleaned house, brought in a complete new leadership team, and Adam actually advised me.
Speaker 2:He's like, this is the worst part of your job. Get rid of the department. Get rid of concealed weapons. Give it to anybody else. Well, that's not how I operate in life.
Speaker 2:I'd rather get in and fix it. And that's what we did. We got through there. We cleaned up the background checks, and we actually got the the approval process done in a more efficient and effective way, and showing how when you have good governance, there's a way to make that balance of your responsibility as the regulator, but also making sure it's efficient.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you remember. I know you meet a million people, but we met at a Parkland March for our lives rally.
Speaker 2:Was 21? Yes. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:You do remember. So as you know, I'm a teacher at MSD, and I had Jamie, Fred's daughter, and I never taught David. But I know David, and I had some of the March for Our Lives kids. And the support that you have shown, not just in the immediate and not just in, you know, your run for office, but even since, has been really meaningful and incredibly profound. You know, I was so happy to support you when you ran for governor because I knew that you would have been the candidate to turn things around.
Speaker 1:Of course, things did not go the way that either of us wanted. And here we are, which will bring me to another topic, but before I get to governor DeSantis. You did an interview with CBS Miami shortly after the shooting at FSU, and you spoke about all of the gun violence and the mass shootings that have happened in Florida within the past seven to ten years. Because it's not just, and I know you know this, mass shootings. It's all types of gun violence, and it's not just school shootings.
Speaker 1:You know, we've had Pulse. There was the Waffle House shooting. There was the yoga studio in Tallahassee, and a million things in between. I'd like to play the clip. I think it's, like, two or three minutes, and then I have a follow-up question.
Speaker 3:The mass shooting on the campus of Florida State University took place just blocks from the state capital where the legislature is meeting. We have seen in recent years the legislature weaken gun laws in the state. Last year, DeSantis pushed a bill doing away with requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon. This year, he has been pushing a bill to lower the age from 21 to 18 to buy rifles and shotguns. After the FSU shooting, I spoke to Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
Speaker 2:We saw during the twenty eighteen after Parkland, this just everybody came together. They understood that they had a responsibility to protect the communities. We had the kids from March for Our Lives starting it and massive protests all across our state, all across the capital, both here in in Tallahassee and in Washington DC. And it seemed like, finally, people were putting partisan politics aside and doing what was best for their communities. You saw legislation in 2018 that was pushed by Republicans, that were signed by Republican governor at that time, Rick Scott, and it seems like we were moving in the right direction.
Speaker 2:But, unfortunately, in the last couple of years, whether it is the ambitions of of Ron DeSantis to have wanted to win a presidential primary for president or people are just forgetting our history in the past here in the state of Florida because it wasn't just Parkland. It was also Pulse. There was just back to back gun violence and mass shootings here in our state that got us to that pivotal moment in in our history. And, unfortunately, yeah, we we are seeing a Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, pushing these initiatives and getting support from mostly from the house and a couple of senators, to untangle, all of these protections that are put in place. You know?
Speaker 2:And, again, as somebody who oversaw the concealed weapons program for four years, the background checks for somebody to have it concealed, was essential to protect protect our communities. And I don't understand why that they felt that that was a program that was too much, and now people don't need a permit, don't need to go through trainings in order to have a a concealed at this point. And, yeah, we saw that the gun safety bills that that continue to push by Democrats not see the light of day. And the house passed this year moving the the purchasing of firearms from 21 to 18, all for political reasons. This is not for the best interest of our communities.
Speaker 2:It's for politics, and shame on them for even having these conversations.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think you spoke brilliantly as you always do. In light of everything, what have you and the Florida Democrats, any Republicans who feel similarly to the way that you and I feel, you know, what have people been working on, and how can Floridians work to make change?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, like, before I answer some of that stuff, I also wanna do a shout out to the March kids and showing how when you do organize, you can make a difference. Like, we saw I mean, I still have the videos of me standing outside of the Senate chambers in 2018 with all of the students that had come up and the parents and the teachers, you know, demanding that there was change and that there was action at that moment. You know? All of the catchphrases that are public and say, you know, are finally, action is coming. And when NRA filed filed for bankruptcy in Texas a couple years ago, I sent a message to David.
Speaker 2:I said, you all did this. Like, this is what activism looks like and organizing looks like and getting coalition partners together. And I think that that is exactly what has to continue to happen here. And so, you know, even when I was commissioner, we pushed forward a couple of things. Like, I found loopholes.
Speaker 2:You know, after I was able to clean up the efficiency of the actual program itself, we found significant loopholes, you know, including that we can only retain fingerprints for five years because that is federally all we are allowed to do. Meanwhile, our renewals are every seven years. So what happens in those two year periods of time when we don't have fingerprints? Or if somebody gets arrested for a disqualifying offense in another state, there's no obligation to inform Florida and to suspend, you know, somebody's, you know, permit. So we tried getting through some of those loopholes, including, you know, I have a gun.
Speaker 2:I own a gun. I have a concealed weapons permit, and I take that very, you know, seriously. But I also know I haven't been out to a shooting range in the last few years, you know, to test out my gun, to make sure my you know, that I'm still proficient in, you know, my gun and cleaning it out. What happens if, God forbid, I needed it? I could probably do more harm to myself than to the perpetrator.
Speaker 2:And so it was really important that we are pushing legislation to get more trainings, that when you go through the renewals, you have to go through more trainings and at least an hour course to show that you've held your gun in some point of those seven years. Unfortunately, none of that legislation moved through the ranks. It also gave me an opportunity when those January came around and got themselves arrested that I had suspended, you know, per the law. You know, it was a disqualifying offense and was able to do that. And so today, where we are is Democrats continuously are fighting back against this legislation, you know, continuously fighting back about the move removal of the the age requirements of, you know, the red flag laws.
Speaker 2:Democrats have been standing in the way of all of that for the last couple years, and who is still a very big champion even here in the state on this issue is Jared Moskowitz. You know, Jared has continued up his relationships in in the Florida senate, making sure that that bill was never going to see the light of day in the Florida senate, moving the age from 21 to 18. He and I talk all the time on if there's movement. He you know, his commitment to be here and actively lobby against any of those bills. People like Dan Daly and Chevron Jones have also filed every single year different types of safe storage laws, dealing with the ghost guns, you know, all of those issues and sitting in solidarity.
Speaker 2:And I do think that there is has been a movement with the people. Like, if you even if you if you pulled the the assault weapons ban, you know, that from before Parkland probably pulled well under the 60% threshold. Today, it is well above it. I think that people are trying to have finally come to the understanding of kinda where we are in society, and it is about building coalitions. But until which time that we actually can have an ungerrymandered state where you know that a Republican primary and whoever wins the Republican primary is gonna be that elected official, whether it's the house or the senate, even as some of our congressional, that makes them all go far right in searching for that NRA endorsement even though the NRA is, for all intents and purposes, kind of defunct in Florida.
Speaker 2:But, unfortunately, the the Republican primary electorate is still very strong. And and, look, and I think there's also something to be said. Democrats don't want to take people's guns. Like, that is a horrific policy thought that we are behind. That is not the case.
Speaker 2:It's not the thing that you've ever heard from me. You've never heard it from David. You've never heard it from Fred. You've never heard it from Jared. You've never heard it from any of us.
Speaker 2:What we've said is we have to play and do this smartly. We should need to make sure that we're doing these things and make our community safe. And you're right. It is not just the mass shootings. Every single day, I wear my bullets for life bracelet.
Speaker 2:I have four different colors. And those who don't know what bullets for life is, it is an organization that was started in Miami Dade County. Unfortunately, this woman who started it, her niece was shot by a a drive by. I think she was, like, two or three years old and was killed on the streets. And so she has been actively working with the community to take bullets off the streets.
Speaker 2:And so finding those types of organizations where you're you're bringing action items to people with education. And so every time I wear my bullets for life, people people always are looking at my wrist. What is this? And I get to educate people on what is happening, what are the movements that are going on in the ground, and it's to make sure that we're not not having conversations until there's a mass shooting. Like, this is a conversation that is happening every single day in some of our communities that there is gun violence every day and that there are a lot of, and I'm gonna say this, black and brown children that are being killed on the streets because we haven't figured out how to do it this better.
Speaker 2:And and it is a culture change. You know, that there's a very and I always make this example. Look at where cigarettes are today. You know, cigarettes used to be something that my grandmother, you know, smoked packs a day and and the next generation afterwards. And, like, you look at not so much our generation, but probably the generation right after us, like, smoking is gross to them.
Speaker 2:Like, they would never even contemplate it. And whether that was the truth campaigns or the lawsuits that happened along the way, but there was a fundamental culture shift. And I think that that's where we have to go in showing people, like, no. Holding a gun during a party in the air and shooting it off is not cool. Like, that is not a cool thing to do.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's something that I would continue to encourage our community organizers and people to start having those types of conversations of how to change the culture, not just the policies.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought up the kids in these black and brown communities because it's not just the kids. And with this community gun violence that is a huge percentage of gun violence in general, you know, it's really impacting all communities. Going back to Stoneman Douglas and governor DeSantis, we know that there is this legislation out there, this push to lower the age to buy a firearm from 21 to 18. He wants to have a gun holiday. I can't even think of what it's
Speaker 2:A tax. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes. To encourage people to, like, purchase guns and purchase more ammunition, which, of course, makes everyone safe. You know? And in lowering the age from 21 to 18, it will undo the legislation passed in the wake of the shooting at my school. How can teachers and students and families and communities feel safe, not only with the permitless carry that we have in Florida, but also now these potentially weaker gun restrictions?
Speaker 2:And it's not just that. It you know, there is DeSantis is pushing. And and there's a lot of not just DeSantis, but a lot of even NRA, you know, affiliates here in Florida are trying to test the boundaries of open carry. You know, DeSantis wants open carry, and there are some groups that are challenging our state statutes on whether or not it is constitutional to force a concealed. You know, I sit down, and I have conversations with Republicans all the time.
Speaker 2:I had a a couple that I was vacationing with in Key West A Couple Years ago when this conversation about open carry came up. And staunch Republican, has guns. And I looked at him, and I said, okay. We're hanging out on Duval Street. Would you like to turn around and see somebody with an AR walking down Duval Street?
Speaker 2:And he's like, well, of course not. I said, well, that's the practicality of what would happen, and we'd have no way to prevent that, you know, from people openly carrying, you know, firearms in crowded areas where people are partying and, you know, potential fights and whatnot. And so it is something that is really front and center that they're all trying to push, and it has nothing to do with safety. And then let's talk about, like, the tax breaks. Like, look.
Speaker 2:As a Democrat, you know, people always think that we're tax and spend. Routy is I don't know any Democrats in my career that have wanted to increase taxes. That that is not anything. And so getting tax holidays and getting things but it's for essential goods. It is for diapers.
Speaker 2:It is for school supplies. It is for helping to to boost, you know, a certain economy aspect of things. It is for hurricane preparedness, you know, things of that nature. Guns are not essential. Like, that that that is not an essential.
Speaker 2:And if you are so choosing to purchase a firearm, why are we giving you a tax break? It it just doesn't make any logical sense except for, again, what I was saying even in that interview, it's not based on logic. It is not based on what's best for the communities. It's not based on safety. It is purely based on politics and trying to get to the base.
Speaker 2:And that is what drives me absolutely nuts. That when you're pushing policies that is purely for your own political ambitions and not within the best interest of the people you're supposed to serve, that is why I said shame on them in that that they should not be having these conversations, but we need to be having these conversations. We need to be having them with our teachers, with our PTAs, with our students, and in in a consistent way because the last thing we're gonna do is that we're gonna forget all of the people who have been killed by gun violence. And you forget them when you're pushing these insane initiatives. How we remember them?
Speaker 2:We stay active. We stay having these conversations. And, again, it's about building coalitions. And so making sure that we're not saying things like take people's guns. We're talking about how do we form a better coalition to make sure that our communities are safe and getting people to agree there's more that we agree on than than what unites us.
Speaker 2:We always know that philosophy.
Speaker 1:Staying in the vein of keeping the conversations going, and your mom was a teacher. I am clearly still a teacher. Why do you think it's important for teachers to use their voices and use their platforms to speak out and continue to keep their schools and issues of gun violence in that conversation?
Speaker 2:My mom used to always teach me that when you know, who a child is at five is who they are at 55, and so the molding of a child at a young age is so essential. You know, knowing what the teachers do for our communities and for the future of our country, you spend more time with these children than parents do in a lot of respects. And you have an ability to see them from year to year, see their challenges in the classroom, see their social habits, be able to see where they're struggling in classes. And so you have a vested interest in the outcome of a child's life. And so you are are vested whether you believe it or not.
Speaker 2:Like, when the child's in your care and in your classroom, it is your job to protect them, whether it's an hour or a full day block. And and I think that teachers take that very seriously, that that is their responsibility to make sure that a child walks in their classroom and walks out of their classroom that day, just like a parent wants their kids to come home when they kiss them off to school that day. And I think that teachers have this unique ability to see all types of walks of life. If you are teaching in a public school setting, if you see all types of backgrounds, you can see from day to day where a child may be starting to get some aggression, that there might be something going on at home, and that you can pinpoint some of those issues. You bring them to attention of the parents or to the school counselors and try to get to the bottom of this of a child who's struggling.
Speaker 2:And so I think that teachers are the best equipped with actually having these conversations. Most of the times, if you hear these stories, most of the time, not all the time, where you've had a a child or a student that has done something like a gun violence, like even the one at FSU a couple weeks ago, you know, the parents are always like, I didn't know. I didn't realize. I didn't and then you start hearing all the other warning signs that the community was already engaged in that sometimes the parents because, you know, I know my mom thinks that I'm the best thing since sliced bread, and I could do no harm, except when I got grounded. But, like, outside of that, like, you wanna always think the best of your child.
Speaker 2:And so you sometimes put blinders on, and and yet a teacher can see things from a different perspective. And I think it's really important that the teachers are front and center because the amount of time that you all put into the development of of our students, that you're in the forefront of these conversations. It's essential.
Speaker 1:During COVID, everyone realized how much we do and really, like, appreciated us and, you know, hyped us up on social media. And then as soon as schools reopened, we were the enemy again. And, like, what do those teachers know? But you're right. We are the ones who were best equipped to have these conversations, which is why Abby Clements, a survivor from Sandy Hook, Sari Beth Rosenberg, who's a teacher in New York City, and I came together to create Teachers Unified You on Gun Violence because in these conversations, teachers are often left out.
Speaker 1:It's the families, and it's survivors, and it's all of these other people, but never the teacher perspective. To acknowledge that we are, like, the key piece in this means a lot because you're absolutely right, and it's nice to hear someone other than one of our own speak out and say that.
Speaker 2:And I say this too from personal experience. I have a learning disability. I have an auditory processing disability that my third, fourth grade teacher identified. And my parents wouldn't have known or been equipped to what was going on. And but for her acknowledgment and and and ability to recognize what was going on, I'm now an attorney.
Speaker 2:I have now been elected statewide, graduating top of my class from Palmetto, graduating top of my class from University of Florida. That none of that would have been possible if my teacher had not identified the problem and made sure that I got help for it.
Speaker 1:Do you still talk to her?
Speaker 2:Yes. I still talk to her, and she is still alive and kicking. I was actually at her son's house a couple of weeks ago. He used to actually be chair of the Florida Democratic Party a couple years prior to me, and his niece was actually, like, my, like, little sister, so her granddaughter. But, yes, they're still very involved in some capacity in my life.
Speaker 1:Without getting too political, since Trump took office in January, gun laws have been weakened. The White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention has been dissolved. He's looking to dissolve the Department of Education, and all of these other pro gun policies and legislations have been enacted across the country. As chair of the Florida Democratic Party, along with the National Democratic Party, what are you all doing to prepare for not only the twenty twenty six midterm elections, but also looking ahead to the twenty twenty eight general election.
Speaker 2:I don't sleep. I wake up every morning that that I've never felt such heavy weight, on my shoulders every single day, knowing that a lot of the results and outcomes of that depends on what I can get accomplished here in Florida. And and knowing that the national conversation has really steered away from Florida in the last few election cycles, which makes it very difficult. I've been saying this for a while that we have been the lab rats of project twenty twenty five here in Florida. And, unfortunately, we're seeing it all unfold in Washington DC.
Speaker 2:But what we are doing is we are organizing. There's kind of a a two pronged approach. You know? One is making sure that we are ready on the ground, that we are recruiting candidates up and down the ballot. So if any of your listeners are feeling this moment to please consider running for office.
Speaker 2:We need good people. We need good storytellers to be running for office from everything from school board to to US senate and everything in between. Two, we're putting together a ground team and a ground game that we haven't really had here in Florida where we are gonna be competing in 67 counties, have a complete field approach. We have us hired a statewide field director that is working with all of our local party chapters, working through voter registration, vote by mail reenlistment. So anybody who's listening to you, if you have not reenlisted and vote by mail in the state of Florida, please do so.
Speaker 2:That was another change to the laws a couple years ago, thanks to the Republican supermajority, that every two years, you have to reenlist and vote by mail in order to get your ballot. So plea it takes two seconds, so please make sure you go on to supervisor of elections website to do so. And most importantly, we're fine tuning our message because the message has got to be universal. Here in the state of Florida, it is not just enough to have a democratic talking point. We've got to bring a coalition of Democrats, independents, and Republicans into the fold in order for us to be successful.
Speaker 2:And what we are seeing is that the the Trump administration is handing us our platform, and it's it's, you know, what we should have always been running on. You know? We are going to be able to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, fight for our veterans as we see so many in the national, federal workforce being fired, cuts to the VA outside of just the economic turmoil that has been happening. So many of our small businesses are gonna go out of business because of the tariffs, and people's, you know, retirement four zero one k's have gone through the toilet. And so as long as Democrats, not just here in Florida, but across the country, can stay laser focused on our message, we are fighting for the working class.
Speaker 2:We are fighting for our seniors. We are fighting for our veterans. We're fighting for our communities, and that we are going to be able to make the pendulum move faster in this twenty six election. The other thing which has taken Democrats a hot minute, and we're not there yet, is what are we doing in this moment? What are we doing to show up for our communities?
Speaker 2:And it's not the party. The party's job is to register voters. It is to recruit candidates and then turn out voters. This has to be a partnership between the party, the electeds, and our grassroots organizers. Meaning that when and I've said this to lots of our members of our congressional delegation that, okay.
Speaker 2:We know that they're moving towards making seniors show proof of life in order to get their Social Security. We know that so many of our seniors don't have access to websites and cell phones and cars. Okay. What are you all doing in this moment to step up to provide those resources to take people to Social Security Administration offices or have computers at your own offices. When the navigators from Obamacare have all been fired, how are we navigating the health care system?
Speaker 2:How are we making sure that we're providing those types of resources? Our feeding programs. You know, when we know that a billion dollars was cut from feeding programs, we know who what communities are gonna be harmed the most from that, whether it's summer feeding programs or it's SNAP benefits or it's universal, you know, lunches. Those are things that are going impact our communities. It is gonna be important for Democrats to stand up and fill the gaps today so that when people are going to vote, they're gonna be like, alright.
Speaker 2:My people were there for me. Or, hey. I saw that Democratic elected. I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Republican, but they still serviced and helped me.
Speaker 2:That is what is going to take in this moment. So it is important for party leaders across the the state and the country, but also for electeds to stand up in this moment and serve. Going back to the first question that you asked me, that is why I'm hoping that Democrats across the country decided to run for office to begin with is because they wanted to serve their communities. And this is what we're gonna have to prove, that we are the party that is gonna take care of our communities, that are gonna stand up, and that we've got rational solutions to the everyday problems that are facing our communities.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Don't forget to follow teachers unified to end gun violence on Instagram and threads at teachers unify, and follow the podcast on both platforms at teachers unify p c.