Dear John: The Podium Is Where Change Goes to Die
Singlehandedly, from my spot as 6th man on the dais, I changed the direction and vibe of Deerfield politics. And now I’m a pawn?
Eat me.
Besides a flower garden outside our high school, what’s Ben Preston gonna be known for, decades down the road?
John Slattery called me a hack, in the pocket of Deerfield’s elected (present and past) officials.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Slattery, the man who has spent years perfecting the art of the three-minute public comment — gassy, gesturing, red-faced, righteous, and completely ignored — looked at my track record and decided the problem was me.
John, I want you to think carefully about what you’re arguing here.
What the Podium Gets You
You walk up, get three minutes, say your piece. Commissioners are playing iPhone Tetris. The city attorney doodles, CM looks at the clock. The mayor silently thinks Dear Fucking Lord, while thanking you for your comments.
And then they vote exactly the way they were going to vote before you opened your cake hole.
Or, if you’re Dan “The Hulk” Herz, you steam out of the Chambers, slamming the door on your way out, showing everyone who’s the bitch boss, all while breaking said door in an ensuing hormonal rage.
WTF is he drinking in the AM — Mylanta and Bushmills?
In the end, you leave, or don’t. Nothing changes. No documents produced. No policy reversed. No official charged. No conviction. No resignation. Just you, your grievance, and a meeting minutes entry that nobody will ever read.
That’s not activism. That’s theater. And the city loves it — because the podium is the pressure release valve that keeps people like you from doing anything that actually works.
Now, before you cite Fane Lozman at me — just don’t.
Yes, Lozman got to the Supreme Court of the United States because of the podium. That’s real. That happened. The podium, in his case, was the flashpoint for a First Amendment retaliation claim that went all the way.
But you’re not Fane. Not even close. Not even a factory fourth of a factory third of a factory second.
Honestly, I’m not sure you could even properly manage a wet dream.
Fane is a singular human being who combined the right incident, the right documentation, the right legal posture, and the right trajectory over years of litigation to produce a landmark Supreme Court ruling. That’s not a model. That’s lightning in a bottle. For every Fane Lozman there are ten zillion people who grabbed three minutes at a microphone, said their piece, got thanked by the mayor, and changed absolutely nothing.
Fane got thrown to the floor, I’ve been shot at, and you?
So John, which category are you in?
Before you argue — Chaz, you’re not Fane. Agreed. Not even close, I’ll be first to admit that. But Lozman has provided me with a pathway, and I’m heading in for a landing.
NOTAM: Get the fuck out of my way.
What the Paper Trail Gets You
While you were perfecting your podium delivery, I was filing public records requests. And making a Florida Governor blink at his podium. And sending electeds to jail.
While you were timing your three minutes for maximum dramatic effect, I was building 18-month forensic files. And suing, pro se mind you, in Federal Court for maximum effect.
While you were being thanked for your comments and shown the door, I got Pastor Anthony Davis, paster of Brotherly Love, jacked up on a $50,000 ding from DOJ OIG people.
Here’s the thing, John. The podium is free. It costs the city nothing. Your three minutes are budgeted, managed, absorbed. A federal lawsuit affects their insurance premiums. When the city’s risk management team starts calling the Mayor because something just landed in the clerk’s inbox, that’s real institutional pressure. The podium crowd doesn’t affect the city’s credit rating. My methodology does. And has.
Here’s the box score. Not my opinion. The documented record.
- Steve Gonot: 365 days in a Broward County jail cell.
- Lauderdale Lakes CRA: five officials investigated. Three removed.
- Sylvia Poitier: charged by the Broward State Attorney’s Office with corruption.
The Deerfield Beach Housing Authority adopted an illegal resolution banning public records requests containing profanity — aimed directly at me — then rescinded it when they realized how badly they’d exposed themselves legally.
That last one is my personal favorite. They were so rattled by my records requests that they put their hurt feelings into a formal resolution. And then they had to eat it. Publicly. In writing. Forever part of the public record.
Also, for shits and giggles, I chased DBHA Executive Director Pam Davis out of town, who giggled and shit her way to Gainesville.
How many resolutions have been rescinded because of your podium speeches, John?
I’ll wait.
And then there are the quiet wins. The shady deals that never happened. The contracts that didn’t get signed. The backroom arrangements that stayed theoretical because someone in the room said — wait, Stevens might file on this. You can’t put those in a box score. But they’re real. The deterrence factor. I’m not just reacting to corruption. I’m the reason some of it never starts. That’s the difference between an activist and a practitioner.
The difference between a hack and a well-documented stress tester with decades of receipts.
On Complaints
Let me tell you about the other path. The one that sounds official. The one that makes people feel like the system is working.
I’ve filed complaints with the Broward Office of the Inspector General. Mine were the first complaints ever filed with that agency. I’ve filed ethics complaints. I pursued Jean Robb through the ethics process for years.
You know when the State found five of my complaints against her to have merit?
On her last day being on the right side of the grass.
On her literal deathbed.
Five findings of merit.
Delivered to a dying woman.
Meaningful to exactly no one.
The OIG, the ethics boards, the complaint processes — in a word, they are worthless as tits on a bullfrog.
Which, when one ponders that image, are a better look than, say, a naked drunk Caryl Berner at your local swimming pool.
But back to those OIG complaints.
They are designed to absorb your energy, validate your grievance, and produce findings that arrive too late to matter, against people too old or too gone to be held accountable. They are the system’s way of telling you that you were right while ensuring nothing changes.
So here’s the real hierarchy of civic engagement, ranked by actual impact:
- Scream at the podium.
You’ll be thanked and ignored. Unless you’re Fane Lozman — and you’re not. You’re so not. - File complaints. The Florida Commission on Ethics will take your paperwork, deliberate for years, and deliver findings to someone’s deathbed.
Or …
- Sue. Now you have their attention. Legally binding. Can’t be tabled. Can’t be thanked and dismissed. This is where the city’s lawyers start earning their retainer.
- Get a seat at the table. Stop petitioning power. Become power. Get elected. Get appointed. Get hired as the consultant in the room. Have an actual say in how decisions get made — not three minutes before the vote, but before the agenda is even written.
That’s the ladder. Most people never climb past the first rung.
What “Pawn” Actually Means
Here’s what Slattery is really saying when he calls me a pawn: you got results, and I don’t understand how, so it must be corruption.
I don’t agree with you, I don’t like the city’s direction … so, ipso facto …therefore it’s one big ole conspiracy.
You dickhead.
This is textbook horizontal hostility — residents fighting each other while the city sits back and watches. Municipalities don’t fear the podium crowd. They’ve been managing podium crowds for decades. Three minutes, thank you for your comments.
NEXT.
What they cannot manage is a legally-binding public records request. What they cannot ignore is a paper trail that leads to the State Attorney’s Office. What they cannot spin is a formal resolution that gets rescinded because it was illegal.
The difference between a pawn and a practitioner is simple: one of us has a body count.
Convictions.
Resignations.
Rescissions.
Policy reversals.
Documented, public, permanent outcomes that exist in the record long after the meeting minutes from your podium speech have been archived and forgotten.
The Standard vs. The Slattery Standard
In 2011, Kessler International — a global forensic accounting firm that investigates corruption for corporations, governments, and law firms worldwide — named their annual Corruption Hunter Award after me.
Not after a podium speaker. Not after someone who showed up to meetings and made passionate arguments that commissioners ignored. After someone who followed the paper trail until it led somewhere prosecutors could use.
A room full of professional fraud investigators looked at the methodology and said: that’s the standard.
And John, while we’re talking about pawns and players — let’s talk about your eye for talent.
You spent years at that podium as the loudest defender of Alex Benefield. You stood up for the Packer Rattler President despite a criminal history long enough to wallpaper the Commission Chambers.
And where is your boy now? In FBI custody for dog fighting. Right here in Deerfield Beach.
That’s the Slattery Standard: you use your three minutes to protect a guy running a blood-sport ring, while calling the guy who gets corrupt officials jailed a pawn.
Not to be redudant, but you dickhead.
If that’s your version of activism, I’ll stick to my spreadsheets and subpoenas. My methodology puts criminals in orange jumpsuits. Yours just gives them a character reference before the Feds move in.
And John — one more thing. While you’re waiting for your three minutes at the microphone, I’m building the curriculum that the attorneys on the dais have to study to keep from getting sued by people like me. I’m IMLA CLE Faculty. I teach municipal lawyers how the First Amendment works. I’m not some guy complaining to the city attorney. I’m the guy who trains them.
John, at this point, I’m not even asking you to be effective. I’m just asking you to be honest.
You’re not a crusader. You’re a hobbyist. You’re a guy who likes the sound of his own voice more than he likes actual justice. If you had an ounce of self-awareness — especially after your defense of a dog fighter — you’d find a hole to crawl into. Any hole. Hell, crawl into Dan’s and pull a rock, or his anus, over your head.
Just stay out of my flight path. I’ve got work to do, records to pull, and people to put in front of a grand jury.
The adults are talking now. Move.
The Real Question
Here’s what I want Slattery — and anyone else watching from the cheap seats — to sit with:
If the city is afraid of you, why do they keep letting you speak?
They give you your three minutes because three minutes at a microphone is the safest possible thing you can do. It’s contained. It’s documented as “public participation.” It changes nothing.
The day you stop screaming at the podium and start filing surgical public records requests anchored to specific decision nodes — the day you stop performing and start engineering — that’s the day the city’s lawyers start paying attention.
Until then, enjoy your three minutes.
