Staff Writer Alan Halaly is the Metro desk editor and a second-year journalism major. He spent this past summer reporting for the Miami New Times and his first two semesters in college on The Alligator’s Metro desk covering city and county affairs. Above all, he’s passionate about bringing Gainesville’s hidden stories to UF’s campus.
After a year of online performances, “Murder For Two” is opening for a live, socially distanced and masked audience at the Hippodrome Theatre this weekend. The premiere will be split between Friday and Saturday to allow for smaller audiences.
The Old Fire Station, where about 15 people live in tents outside, has been vacant since 2018, and in February 2020, the city commission invited proposals for how to use the space. In April 2020, UF Center of Arts proposed replacing the Old Fire Station with a community center for wellness, arts and cultural engagement, but current residents have largely been left out of the conversation.
At the beginning of the Fall semester, the staff had one outstanding task — documenting a year of Hyflex classes spent wearing masks and on Zoom.
In Gainesville, a college town where the median age is about 26, organized demonstrations occur frequently. Although Gainesville protests almost never descend into violence, some students and local activists are worried about the precedent the legislation will set.
Vote-by-mail drop boxes can alleviate the stress of commuting to a precinct for voters of color, those in low income communities, disabled people and those in quarantine, the clergymen’s letter to Florida lawmakers read.
Community gardens like the one at Reserve Park are part of a citywide effort to increase food security since the first one was built in 1998. Each garden is equipped with a hose and a handful of plots that belong to other residents who applied to get one from the city.
In response to the three Atlanta mass shootings and upward trend in hate crimes, more than 200 protestors marched down Main Street from Bo Diddley Plaza to Depot Park Saturday afternoon to condemn the ongoing violence and stand in solidarity with victims.
Students and families questioned their future plans and finances when the bill was first proposed and are still worried about funding not being guaranteed for students.
Johnson and Duncan-Walker, whose swearing-in ceremonies have not yet been planned, have continually fought against the construction of luxury student housing in the city’s historically Black neighborhoods.
Following the lead of United Chinese Americans, a nonprofit Chinese cultural and heritage organization that planned vigils across the nation Saturday, the Gainesville Chinese American community participated in four simultaneous rallies at street intersections and a subsequent vigil at Turlington Plaza.
Stevie VanAusdale, a 30-year-old UF PhD student and mental health professional who spoke at the rally, brought her two daughters, two-year-old Aria and one-year-old Maya whose shirts read “Tiny Changemaker.”
Marchers carry signs with messages such as “Just Biden my time! Kama-long with me!” and “I am tired of still marching” in support of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Amanda Foreman, a 19-year-old UF animal sciences sophomore, marches alongside Alachua County protesters down Main St. to Bo Diddley Plaza.
Solutions by The State News
