I’ve spent years learning what happens when civic conflict stops being civic, and gets downright ugly. Violence has found its way to my family, my animals, my property, hell, even my work. Don’t say that for drama, and not claiming every ugly political statement predicts violence — we both know it doesn’t. It’s rather this: trauma often changes how a person hears certain words, and those seeking public office have a duty to understand how their language lands in the real world.
I also two children of Marjory Stoneman Douglas in my life. I know people whose lives split permanently into the before and after. They didn’t experience gun violence as a metaphor; to them it’s a permanent absence.
So imagine my grimace when a Davie candidate feels the need to write: “THE COURAGE TO PICK UP GUNS AND FIGHT IN PUBLIC, IN PERSON.” Some of us don’t have the luxury of pretending those are ordinary words.
I’m speaking about Toula Amanna.
Amanna is the former operator of the Deerfield Beach Cafe, evicted after the city won every round of a fight that left the operation roughly $700,000 behind on rent and $1.7 million in the hole overall. She’s a known ally of Dan Herz, who ran for mayor of Deerfield Beach in 2025, lost, and currently faces a state charge stemming from an incident at City Hall. Now she talks about picking up guns and overthrowing city government — the same government that beat her in court.
Her message sorted the world into people with the courage to fight, and those without. If someone’s keeping a list of people who’ve made that camp’s life difficult in open court, I’m at the top of it. And it’s a short list.
Perhaps Amanna will reach for a mulligan, claiming that’s not what she meant. But I’m of the school of thought that you’re judged by the foreseeable meaning of your words. Years ago, Assistant State Attorney Dave Schulson blistered me over my choice of language, burning one lesson into me: words have meaning.
If you meant “attend the meeting,” say that. If you meant “organize and vote,” say that. What’s not allowed is encouraging people to arm themselves and fight in public, then acting wounded when residents, city staffers, and LEO hear danger in the phrase.
Let me tell you about the file this landed on top of. Over nearly twenty years, I’ve been told a man would cut my head off and hand it to my mother on a platter. I’ve found bullet holes in my car. I’ve had rounds pass over my head. BSO once posted a unit in front of my house for weeks — on their own initiative — because of a threat they took that seriously. Days after one of my tormentors was arrested, my dog was poisoned. I stopped attending Commission meetings after deputies had to physically separate me from a man who wanted to fight inside the chambers. To be clear: I am not accusing Amanna or Herz of responsibility for any of those earlier incidents. I’m explaining what the record already holds.
To me, democracy means read the agenda, file the records request, speak at public comment, run for office, vote. “Pick up guns and fight in public, in person” is something else — dangerous rhetoric that imports firearms into the political argument.
Is it a criminal threat? Above my pay grade. But as I told the BSO deputy this morning while filing the report, it’s serious enough to document and confront, because threat assessment doesn’t wait for certainty or tragedy. Insurance is a pain in the ass, right up until you get t-boned in the Publix lot. I take language like this seriously every single time, because the one time you don’t is the time it stops being rhetoric, and end up with a cap in your ass.
Some will say I’m reading too much into this. Really? Trade places with me. Sit in the house with the patrol car parked outside for two weeks, then tell me I’m overreacting. People with a documented history of being targeted don’t owe the public a performance of naivete, certainly not you Dear Shitposter, and there’s no prize for reporting a warning sign too politely.
Amanna is running for Davie Town Council, District 3, which means voters get to ask her directly: Did you write it? What did you mean? Do you regret putting firearms into a political conversation in Broward County, of all places? And do you intend to run the taxpayer checkbook the way you ran your restaurant?
Those aren’t censorship. They’re accountability.
Let the polls decide. But hand the voters the whole record first.
