Texas

Houston’s Fight To Decriminalize Mental Illness And Homelessness

July 16, 2022 Atirikta Kumar, The Real News Network. Create! Health Care, Homelessness, Housing, Houston, mental health, Texas

While Harris County is spending millions of dollars on mental health services and service-providing agencies to reduce the number of mentally ill people entering its county jails, activists on the ground are tackling the problem from another angle—by providing direct support to the county’s homeless population. “We don’t have the best safety nets in Texas, and from the mental health standpoint, there really aren’t the mental health services available that people need,” Catherine Villarreal, director of communications at the Coalition for the Homeless, told TRNN. But Villarreal also stressed that, for people experiencing homelessness and/or mental health crises, the lack of healthcare resources and social support is a crisis unto itself: “when someone ends up homeless, often that didn’t happen overnight.”

Rights Groups Urge Court To Strike Down Unconstitutional Texas Law

June 23, 2022 Kristian Bailey, Palestine Legal. Resist! BDS Movement, Israel, Laws, Palestine, Texas

The Center For Constitutional Rights And Palestine Legal Filed An Amicus Brief In The Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals In Support Of A Lawsuit Seeking To Strike Down A Texas Law That Requires Government Contractors To Pledge Not To Engage In Boycott, Divestment And Sanctions (BDS) Campaigns For Palestinian Rights. After A Court Blocked An Earlier Version Of Texas’s Anti-Boycott Law Following Lawsuits From Individuals With State Contracts, Texas Amended The Law To Exclude Companies With 9 Or Fewer Full-Time Employees And Contracts Under $100,000. While The Revised Law Mooted The Previous Lawsuits, Its Underlying First Amendment Challenges Remained. The Center For Constitutional Rights And Palestine Legal’s Brief States That The New Texas Law Still Violates The First Amendment And Unconstitutionally Targets Protected Political Speech In Support Of Palestinian Human Rights.

Uvalde And The Border Security Scam

June 12, 2022 Michelle García, Texas Observer. Educate! Customs and Border Patrol, Gun violence, Police, Texas

For so long, the people of South Texas have been expected to sacrifice their communities to a border security apparatus. Drones, helicopters, and agents have saturated cities and towns where residents have gone without health insurance and send their children to underfunded schools. It was this apparatus that responded in late May when a gunman rampaged through an elementary school classroom in Uvalde, killing children—19 in all—and two teachers. Hundreds of state troopers, federal immigration agents, sheriff’s deputies, U.S. Marshals, and local police quickly descended on a town of 15,000, set among ranchlands 80 miles southwest of San Antonio and 60 miles from the border with Mexico. That rapid influx reflected the deep penetration of the border security apparatus in the region.

Austin Starbucks Employees Become First To Unionize In Texas

June 5, 2022 Drew Knight, Kvue. Organize! Labor Movement, Starbucks, Texas, Unions

Austin, Texas - A local Starbucks location celebrated victory Friday, becoming the state's first unionized store. KVUE first learned about the 45th Street and Lamar Boulevard location's attempts to unionize in March. The location had sent a letter to the CEO of Starbucks after another local store also announced its plans to attempt a union. At the time, Starbucks provided KVUE with the following statement: We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country. From the beginning, we’ve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed.

Does America Stand For Guns Or For Sanity?

May 31, 2022 Colonel Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Resist! Gun violence, NRA, Texas, Veterans

I changed my flight back home to Hawai’i so I could be at the protest of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Houston on Friday, May 27 following the mass murder of 19 kids and 2 teachers at the Uvalde, Texas elementary school earlier in the week. The NRA callously refused to postpone its annual gun-selling convention in Houston despite the call for the organization to stand down in wake of yet another mass killing, the third in a period of three weeks with ten killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York and one person killed and five wounded in shooting at a church in Laguna Woods, California. Thousands of angry people of all ages jammed into Discovery Park across the street from the massive George R. Brown convention center in downtown Houston.

Texas School Shooting Reveals The Advanced Sickness Of American Society

May 28, 2022 David Walsh, WSWS. Educate! Failed State, Gun violence, Mass Shootings, Texas

The mass shooting of 19 children and two teachers, and the wounding of 17 more people, at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday was a genuinely horrific event. The students killed were 9, 10 and 11 years old, in the second, third and fourth grades. The adults killed, both women, were fourth-grade teachers. The perpetrator of the crime barricaded himself inside a classroom and opened fire with a lightweight semi-automatic rifle that he had obtained a day after his 18th birthday, one week earlier. In the most immediate and direct sense, hundreds if not thousands of people will never recover from the damage done in this one incident alone. The American ruling elite, its politicians and its media outlets, have nothing insightful or useful to say about this most recent calamity.

Protesters Take On NRA Convention After Texas Shooting

May 28, 2022 Charlie Scudder, The Guardian. Resist! Gun violence, Mass Shootings, NRA, Texas

Houston, Texas - After two sleepless nights wondering what, if anything, she could do, Nancy Harris, 73, decided to drive four hours to Houston. Before she left, she pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down 12 names. Each name was someone she knew had been shot. She put an asterisk next to the ones who had died, including her own daughter. She says she didn’t know the National Rifle Association, one of America’s most powerful lobbyist groups, was meeting in Houston this weekend until after the horrific shooting in Uvalde on Tuesday. She is a gun owner but stood across the street from the NRA’s convention to share her story with anyone who would listen. “I have no children left,” Harris said.

The Radical Immigrant Farmers Who Helped Defeat The Robber Barons

May 21, 2022 Thomas Alter II , In These Times. Strategize! Farmers, Immigration, Socialism, Texas, Worker Rights and Jobs

“I was born in Fayette County, Texas, from German parents, and who fled from the reaction [to] the 1848 revolution. I think that I inherited some of my revolutionary qualifications. I am not responsible for them. I cannot help it.” So testified E.O. Meitzen before the Commission on Industrial Relations in March 1915 about why he involved himself in the political struggles of working farmers. At the time, Meitzen was a veteran leader of the Texas Socialist Party. Nearly thirty years earlier, his inheritance led him to help organize and lead the Fayette County Farmers’ Alliance. When the Farmers’ Alliance failed to bring relief to farmers, Meitzen joined the Populist revolt, becoming a statewide leader of the People’s Party. The Meitzen political legacy extended to E.O.’s children, in particular his son E.R., who was a leader successively in the Farmers’ Union, the Socialist Party, the Nonpartisan League and the Farm-Labor Union of America.

How Border Deployment Led To Union Organizing In Texas

May 2, 2022 Steve Early And Suzanne Gordon, Convergence. Organize! National Guard, Texas, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When a group of Texas workers started discussing job problems and what to do about them a few months ago, their list of complaints would have been familiar to Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse staff, or restive young journalists at new and old media outlets. With little notice, their employer changed work schedules and transferred employees to a new job location. Some of those adversely affected applied for hardship waivers, based on family life disruption, but many requests were denied. Meanwhile, access to a major job benefit—tuition assistance—was sharply curtailed. Even paychecks were no longer arriving promptly or at the right address. When a few brave souls called attention to these problems, management labelled them “union agitators” who were trying to “mislead” their co-workers.

Texas: Progressive Student Union Wins Victory At Referendum

April 11, 2022 Fight Back News. Resist! Education, Texas, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

On April 4 and 5, the University of Texas at Arlington held its semester student elections. In addition to these elections was a referendum brought forth by the administration of UTA to justify raising tuition and fee costs related to the school. This fee increase would be a four-fold increase, from $39 per semester to $150, making it more expensive than most of the UT system schools student union fees. The caveat was that this fee increase would not take place until “significant construction” had been completed on the New UC. What had not been properly conveyed is that the UT Systems Board and UTA administration reached an agreement whereby the UT Systems would grant a loan to help construct this ‘New UC’ which would approximately cost $100 million – but with the collateral that the student union fee increase be tied to it via a referendum in order to begin paying back the New UC the moment of its technical completion. Progressive Student Union (PSU) kept an eye on the issue, and resolved to be the bulwark of the ‘No’ vote when the referendum came.

New Reports Allege Texas Oil And Gas Regulator’s Lax Enforcement

February 9, 2022 Amal Ahmed, DeSmog. Educate! Energy, health, Oil and Gas, Regulation, Texas

When a Canadian company started drilling for oil and gas near Jim and Sue Franklin’s ranch in a small Permian Basin town called Verhalen, Texas, it didn’t bother the couple too much at first. But Sue suspects that it was the third well that started causing problems. “They put up these big signs that said, ‘H2S gas, danger, keep out, blah blah blah,’” she says. The well was being drilled in what’s called a sour-gas field, an oil field that naturally has a high concentration of a deadly gas called hydrogen sulfide (H2S). The company promised the Franklins that the gas — which can cause headaches, irritate respiratory systems, and even be fatal in high concentrations — would never get into their home, despite the fact that it was barely a mile away.

Indigenous Leaders Pledge To Oppose New Enbridge Developments

December 6, 2021 Darren Thompson, Native News Online. Resist! Enbridge, Indigenous Sovereignty, Pipelines, Texas

On November 5, the Canadian oil company Enbridge announced that it plans to increase capacity on its pipeline system that connects a crude-oil storage hub in Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast, now that the Line 3 pipeline linking Alberta and Wisconsin is complete. The Carrizo Comecrudo and other Indigenous groups in the area, along with the Indigenous Environmental Network, have pledged to protect Indigenous sacred sites and oppose future pipeline developments. Increasing capacity may include building a new pipeline linking the Houston area to the Port of Corpus Christi, more than 200 miles away. In October, Enbridge acquired the Ingleside Energy Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, the largest crude-exporting hub in the U.S.

Texas Doctor Provided Abortion In Violation Of New Law

September 19, 2021 Celine Castronuovo, The Hill. Resist! Abortion, Health Care, Physician Activism, Texas

A Texas doctor has revealed that he recently performed an abortion in violation of the state's new controversial law that prohibits nearly all abortions after roughly six weeks into a pregnancy, arguing that he “had a duty of care to this patient.” Alan Braid, a San Antonio-based physician, wrote in an op-ed published by The Washington Post Saturday that on Sept. 6, just five days after the Texas abortion ban went into effect, that he “provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit.” Braid, who began his obstetrics and gynecology residency at a San Antonio hospital in 1972, said that during the year before abortion was recognized as a constitutional right in the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, he saw “three teenagers die from illegal abortions.”

Roe V. Wade In Grave Danger

September 2, 2021 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Educate! Abortion, Health Care, SCOTUS, Texas

A draconian Texas law banning abortions beyond around six weeks of pregnancy took effect at midnight after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court did not act to block it on Tuesday, a decision that could have major implications for reproductive rights across the country. While the Supreme Court could still grant an emergency request to suspend the law in the coming hours, the justices' decision to remain silent Tuesday allows Texas to begin implementing what rights groups have characterized as the most restrictive state-level abortion ban since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Abortion providers estimate that the measure could bar care for "at least 85% of Texas abortion patients."

Governor Signs Law To Stop Teachers From Talking About Racism

June 25, 2021 Jennifer Bendery, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Education, Public schools, Racism, Texas

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed one of his party’s top legislative priorities into law: a bill aimed at stopping teachers from talking about racism and any current events that may be contentious. The legislation, supported by virtually every GOP state legislator, states that social studies teachers in public K-12 schools “may not be compelled” to talk about current events or public policy or social issues considered controversial. If they do talk about such things, they are required to present the issue “without giving deference to any one perspective.” The law specifies all the things that social studies teachers aren’t allowed to talk about. They can’t make it part of a course to talk about the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.”

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