Texas

911 Services That Dispatch Mental Health Counselors, Gain Traction

June 23, 2020 Candice Bernd, Truthout. Create! mental health, Police Abolition, Police violence, Texas

Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Capt. Jason Castleberry grabbed his shoulder radio, responding to a dispatcher from his office at Austin EMS’s Station 5, “Chip 100, chip 1, are you calling me?” “Yes, we’ve got a confirmed psych call. Are you available?” “Yes, we’ll get moving.” Castleberry helps oversee the city’s Community Health Paramedic team, abbreviated as CHP, or “chip,” and this was just the type of call I had come to the station that morning to witness. We hopped into the station’s marked SUV, and rolled. “Normally for these, I would go lights and sirens. The reason we’re not is I can tell medic 3 is already on scene,” he tells me, pointing to his monitor. The monitor also showed that mental health counselors with Integral Care’s Expanded Mobile Crisis Outreach Team (EMCOT) had been dispatched; it didn’t show police among the responders at or heading to the scene.

Traveling 800 Miles For Abortion Care

April 13, 2020 Dennis Carter, Rewire News. Educate! Abortion, COVID-19, Health Care, Texas

Republican leaders in Texas are further exacerbating the harm of the state’s raft of anti-choice regulations by stopping legal abortion amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) ordered a halt to abortion care as part of Texas’ response to the COVID-19 outbreak; on Tuesday, conservative judges on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, including President Trump appointee Judge Kyle Duncan, upheld the policy. The abortion ban, scheduled to end April 22, will push care out of reach for many, force people to seek abortion later in their pregnancy, and create onerous travel requirements that haven’t existed since before the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Rising Tides Will Leave No Choice For US Millions

February 28, 2020 Tim Radford, Climatenewsnetwork.net Educate! Climate Change, Texas

The Texan city of Houston is about to grow in unexpected ways, thanks to the rising tides. So will Dallas. Real estate agents in Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; and Las Vegas, Nevada could expect to do roaring business. The inland counties around Los Angeles, and close to New Orleans in Louisiana, will suddenly get a little more crowded. And from Boston in the north-east to the tip of Florida, Americans will be on the move.

In Amarillo, Copper Workers’ Strike Enters Fourth Month With No End In Sight

February 28, 2020 Gus Bova, Texasobserver.org Resist! Class Struggle, Mining, Strikes, Texas

It’s a February evening in the Texas Panhandle, and it’s cold as hell. Five men stand on the shoulder of Highway 136 northeast of Amarillo, huddled around a fire in a 55-gallon oil drum. Patches of snow linger from a morning flurry, and barren fields cut none of the whipping wind. In the distance, a power plant and a copper refinery dot the sparse horizon.

Economic Development Department Directed To Create A Worker Co-op Pilot Program

November 7, 2019 By Annelies Lottmann, Acba.coop Create! New Economy, Texas, Worker Cooperatives

The Austin Cooperative Business Association announces a big win for cooperatives in Central Texas, as the Austin City Council passes an express directive to the Economic Development Department to pilot a worker cooperative development program in fiscal year 2020. This program will create outreach and education materials, and provide direct technical assistance to groups seeking to form worker owned businesses as well as cooperative conversions, in which an existing business is sold to its workers.

Police Try To Assassinate Atatiana Jefferson’s Character After Killing Her In Her Own Home

October 15, 2019 By Bruce C.T. Wright, Newsone.com Educate! police brutality, Texas

The Fort Worth Police Department was in shameless damage control mode after one of its officers killed a Black woman in her own home by shooting his gun through a window early Saturday morning. The unnamed officer was responding to a non-emergency welfare check requested by a concerned neighbor. In a subsequent press release announcing the shooting, Fort Worth police seemed to be trying to justify the shooting of Atatiana Jefferson by claiming the officer was “Perceiving a threat” at the time. The press release also said that officers saw “a firearm” when they entered Jefferson’s home and found her.

Texas Charges Oil Port Protesters Under New Fossil Fuel Protection Law

September 18, 2019 BY Nicholas Kusnertz, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Fossil Fuels, Oil, Protests, Reform, Repression, Texas

A group of activists who shut down one of the nation's largest oil ports by hanging off a bridge over the Houston Ship Channel have been charged under a new Texas law that imposes harsh penalties for disrupting the operations of fossil fuel infrastructure. The charges could present the first test for a wave of similar state laws that have been enacted around the country over the past three years in response to high-profile protests against pipelines and other energy projects.

Federal Judge Rebukes Houston DA For Using The Willie Horton Strategy

September 13, 2019 Daniel Nichanian, Appealpolitics.org Create! Reform, Repression, Texas

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal gave preliminary approval last week to a settlement that restructures the bail system and provides for the pretrial release of most people charged with misdemeanors in Texas’s Harris County, the nation’s third most populous county and home of Houston. And she did it over the objections of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg. Rosenthal offered a stern rebuke of Ogg’s bid to stop the settlement by reviving the Willie Horton strategy, so named because of an ad that George Bush’s allies ran during the 1988 presidential campaign to portray Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime.

To Understand The El Paso Massacre, Look To The Long Legacy Of Anti-Mexican Violence At The Border

August 13, 2019 David Dorado Romo, Texasobserver.org Educate! Mass Shootings, Racism, Texas, White Nationalism

In the immediate aftermath of the El Paso shooting—the largest massacre of Latinx people in the history of the United States—politicians of all stripes stood before the cameras and gave their diagnosis of what just happened. They sounded like the proverbial blind men who touched one part of the elephant and confused the different fragments for the whole. El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, a Republican who once praised the “freedom fence” for keeping out “riff raff,” emphasized that the atrocity was committed by an outsider.

‘Astonishing’ Texas Legal Win Tops Decades Of Clean-Water Heroism

July 18, 2019 By Robert S. Becker, Nationofchange.org Resist! Activists, pollution, Texas, Water

Sometimes, unstoppable anti-pollution champions must get their feet wet. Literally, in polluted bays. Long on need yet short on cash for pricey consultants, clean water champions along the Gulf of Mexico’s Lavaca Bay (Texas) refused to accept that industry power and government indifference could openly poison their backyard. A successful court fight to stop Formosa Plastics’ ongoing illegal wastewater discharges of plastic pollution into the Bay and nearby waterways demanded hard, extensive evidence.

Texas State Bill Would Make Protesting Pipelines A Felony On Par With Attempted Murder

May 20, 2019 By Eoin Higgins, Commondreams.org Educate! Pipelines, Reform, Repression, Texas

A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder. "It's an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people." — Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years.

US Judge Strikes Down Texas Anti-BDS Law

April 30, 2019 Middle East Eye. Resist! BDS, Courts, Texas

A US federal judge has struck down a controversial Texas anti-boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) law, saying it violates freedom of speech under the country’s first amendment of the constitution. The judge, Robert Pitman, delivered an injunction to strike down Texas’ law late on Thursday, saying in his opinion that it forces “public debate through coercion rather than persuasion”. The law ran into legal trouble when Bahia Amawi, a speech pathologist, was not allowed to sign a contract extension with Pflugerville independent school district...

Indigenous Activists Set Up Protest Camp At South Texas Cemetery To Stop Trump’s Wall

April 17, 2019 By Gus Bova, Texasobserver.org Resist! Border, Indigenous Peoples, Protests, Texas

The 154-year-old Eli Jackson Cemetery sits about a mile from the Rio Grande, south of the Hidalgo County town of San Juan. Encompassing about a quarter-acre, it hosts the remains of some 150 South Texans. Just a few feet north rises a sloped earthen river levee, which the Trump administration soon plans to transform into a 30-foot concrete and steel border wall. South of the wall, the feds plan to clear a 150-foot “enforcement zone,” raising fears that bodies will be exhumed, and most of the cemetery razed.

Massive ICE Workplace Raid Jails 280 Immigrant Workers In Texas

April 6, 2019 Matthew Taylor, Wsws.org Educate! ICE, Immigration, Repression, Texas, Undocumented

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided an Allen, Texas business on Wednesday morning and arrested 280 undocumented workers. The business, CVE technology, employs 2,100 workers who repair cell phones and other electronic devices. The business is the third largest employer in that city. Some 200 law enforcement officers participated in the raid, rounding up the entire workforce and separating them into groups based on immigration status. Agents then forced workers to wear wristbands, labeling employees in green if they had legal status and yellow if they were suspected of being undocumented.

Water Protectors Lock-Down Dallas Mansion Of Kelcy Warren, CEO Of Energy Transfer Partners

October 23, 2018 L'Eau est la Vie, Earthfirstjournal.org Resist! Dallas, Pipelines, Protests, Texas, Water Protectors

DALLAS, TEXAS 10/19 – On Friday morning, Water Protectors locked themselves to gates at the entrance of the residence of Kelcy Warren, CEO and Chairman of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), demanding the company abided by a court-order mandating it provide an evacuation route for the African-American community of St. James, the terminus for their controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline and the end of their Dakota Access Pipeline. The community of St. James lies in the heart of what is dubbed, Cancer Alley, where cancer rates among residents is far higher than the average due to the toxic infrastructure of chemical plants, refineries and pipeline export facilities.

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