ericadawn16 | Florida is NOT All Bad

I've been avoiding a lot of the internet lately and social media and cringing at some of the talk shows.

When people talk about everyone in Florida being "a waste of space" as one person put it. I try not to but it hurts. Florida is not only my home, it has my mom, my family, my friends, so many that I love.

So I've compiled a list of things to show how we're not all racists who don't believe in science or equality as everyone is trying to make us out to be. We're generally weird but the majority of the time, it's in a nice way.

1. Florida is the ONLY Southern state to vote that Obama should be president in 2008 AND 2012.

2. The University of Tampa contains a monument from the Gravity Research Foundation.

3. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens at Delray Beach was opened in 1977 as the first museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to the living culture of Japan.

4. The first monument in the United States dedicated to Atheism was erected in Starke, Florida on June 29, 2013.

5. Tampa's police chief is not just a woman, she's also very open about being a Lesbian. There are also homosexuals serving on the Hillsborough county commissioner as well as serving in the Florida House of Representatives for parts of Miami and Orange county.

6. Fort Gadsden. Never heard of it? It contained the first fort entirely manned by African-Americans, Seminoles and Choctaws. They were so successful at raiding and fighting the slavery states that surrounded them that the federal government saw them as threat. The utter massacre that Andrew Jackson and his men conducted on the fort is what led to the Seminole Wars.

7. Jacqueline Cochran grew up in Florida and later helped found Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Unfortunately, she was ashamed of her poor Florida roots though.

8. If not for Florida, you wouldn't have mechanical refrigeration, manufactured ice, air conditioning, sunscreen, commercial flights, Gatorade, Trillian, Wikipedia and Merrill Lynch.

9. Florida also gave you Jim Morrison, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Backstreet Boys, *nsync, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Ray Charles, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Mandy Moore, Victor Nuñez, Sidney Poitier, Bob Ross, Bob Vila, Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Estefan, Willa Ford, Tom Petty, and Butterfly McQueen.

10. If not for Florida, Johnny Depp would probably have been a respected insurance agent or other boring career. I'm going to guess the same about Channing Tatum, Megan Fox, Mickey Rourke, Aasif Mandvi, Vanilla Ice and Carrot Top.

11. Florida isn't currently enacting anti-abortion legislation or forcing everyone to carry identification at all times unlike other states I could name.

12. We have real mermaids.