Author: mopress

EDITORIAL

Thanks to help from our friends at Rembrandt-We-Ain’t Web Services, we’re getting a clearer picture of what’s happening at the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE). See the visualization here.

One obvious flaw in the democratic structure of the TSBOE is the way it purports to represent Travis County, the premiere educational community of Texas.

Dallas and Houston each have urban districts which reflect Democratic and minority voices. South San Antonio is appended to South Texas for a fair representation of party and ethnicity, Even El Paso is able to claim long-standing representation. But not Austin.

Not only have liberal Democrats been robbed of fair representation to the Texas State Board of Education as part of the Travis County voter pool, but urban Black and Hispanic children of Travis County are now paying the price of this democratic oversight with the prospect of an increasingly hostile curriculum.

We’re not lawyers here, but we think there are clear Constitutional principles involved, including the God-given rights of children, affirmed in Brown v. Board, to be treated to educations that are respectful and uplifting, not demeaning to their aspirations of leadership, responsibility, and self-esteem.–gm

By Nick Braune

On January 9, some 70 people attended a rally/prayer vigil protesting the “tent city” immigration detention center in Raymondville, Texas. It was lively — although I was out of town, I saw a video clip of the event — with vigorous picketing, signs demanding that human rights be respected and calls on the megaphone for an end to the failed, cruel, immigration system.

The event was convened greatly by various United Methodist ministries and teams including the United Methodist Women Immigrant and Civil Rights Initiative. Watching the video, I recognized people joining in from Pax Christi in Brownsville, the Southwest Workers, People for Peace and Justice and Border Ambassadors.

The press release stated, “We call for closure of for-profit detention centers like Raymondville, which have a history of denying basic civil and human rights to immigrants. We call for basic rights for all immigrants.

“We call for an end to detentions and deportations until just immigration reform is in place. The reform should include a pathway to citizenship for migrants in the U.S.; protection of workers’ rights regardless of status; the unification of families, and humane border policies that respect human rights. The Willacy County detention center has had a series of allegations of horrendous conditions and abuse, including alleged sexual assaults on female detainees by guards, reports of detainees being fed rotten food and inadequate food, and poor access to medical and mental health care.”

The press release emphasized a “faith-based” approach, using the Pauline principle that, despite status and nationality differences, humans are fundamentally connected and “when one member suffers, we all suffer.”

I called Cindy Johnson, an organizer of the event and a deaconess for the United Methodist church. I had two questions for her, one about follow-up and one about the response of the guards. Answering the first question, she assured me that her group intends to keep the pressure on Raymondville, on ICE and their private contractors. She has been getting messages from people urging more public events, and smaller events are scheduled hopefully leading to a major one in May. (Johnson also told me she plans to attend the Valley-wide People for Peace and Justice “Gathering” in Weslaco on January 30th, the theme of which is that the fight against the Iraq and Afghanistan War and the fight for immigrant rights are connected.)

The other question I asked her concerned the guards. About two months ago there was a rally where some Raymondville guards became strangely belligerent and pulled out guns. Cautious because of that previous incident, Cindy’s group, before their vigil, took a lawyer to the site; they determined that there could be no reason for authorities to prevent demonstrations there. Johnson indicated that even the local sheriffs seemed to agree. The vigil went well and the guards behaved themselves.

(Incidentally, about two years ago, Amy Goodman, producer of a national media group, Democracy Now, was ordered away from the Raymondville detention center by a guard pointing a rifle at her. I interviewed someone who accompanied Goodman, and it was obvious that the guards were way out of bounds. The guards are poorly trained, as is the whole private staff running the fiasco there. It is operated by a Utah-based management and training corporation which is cost-cutting for extra profits wherever possible, at the expense of the immigrants and the whole tax-paying public.)

Because the rally was intended to help break the silence on detention centers, it was encouraging when the day after the rally the New York Times ran another critical report on America’s detention centers. The story has upped the ante considerably, reporting a trove of documents the paper and the ACLU had gathered, specifically looking at the 107 deaths of detainees nationwide (according to an ICE count) since 2003.

“Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails,” said the Times. “For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.”

One incident found in documents newly released to the Times: In New Jersey a detained Guinean tailor was left in isolation for 13 hours without treatment after suffering a skull fracture. Eventually an ambulance was called. “While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail on how to avoid costs of his care and the likelihood of ‘increased scrutiny and/or media exposure.’”

Documents show that they discussed sending the tailor back to Guinea, but they couldn’t because he hadn’t regained consciousness and he had tubes connected to him; they also discussed renewing his work permit so he could be eligible for Medicaid; they thought about a nursing home, but it would cost too much. Eventually they settled on a “humanitarian release” to relatives in New York who objected that they had no way to care for him. The issue became easier for agency managers when he died.

[This article also appears in Nick Braune’s column in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.]

By Greg Moses

Posted at CounterPunch and

at The Rag Blog with a comment from Brother Jonah

To really understand the day that the Democrats won the national health care bill for America you really needed to be at the Austin Rodeo. Sure, there are days when Rodeo-style patriotism could set your jaw muscles to steel, and there are weeks when what it means to be Texan is a (cough, cough) world-historical embarrassment.

But Sunday afternoon when Charley Pride sang his soaring eagle song from that spinning round stage at the rodeo arena, there wasn’t a heart in the house that wasn’t melted into some life-breathing hope that all of us around that dirt-floored arena had something really deep in common.

No doubt I’ve seen some world-class rodeo shows by George Jones and Willie Nelson in that dusty place. But without subtracting anything from the great native sons, allow me to muse something about the magical and reverent bond that Charley Pride forged with the rodeo audience on Sunday afternoon.

Some of what happened had to do with organic Texas connections. Charley’s band is mostly from Texas; he wore a fat ring gifted to him by Waylon. He remembered out loud how he caught an early career break by singing opening acts for Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. Charley and Texas are welded together.

And some of Charley Pride’s art has to do with the way he references his skin color at these 99-percent-white gigs. There’s the story he tells about the being named an honorary Norwegian by his fans at the Norsk Hostfest of Minot, North Dakota, an honor he cherishes, “although I haven’t quite made the transition completely” he winks as he holds up the back of one hand and rubs it with an instructive circular motion.

But none of these things would make a diff if it weren’t for the way Charley Pride sings. Much like my first experience with George Jones, there is something you get from the man in person that cannot be recorded. I don’t know why or how that happens, but it’s one reason why you still need a Live Music Capital of the World. Something you know about an artist only after you watch the eyes of the audience twinkle back.

It was the white-haired man in the cowboy hat up in section BB that really broke through for me, the way he carried his six or seven decades with dignity. And the way his lips moved to every word of his favorite Charley Pride song. Good Lord, he musta sung that song a thousand times in honky-tonks and pickup trucks under the Texas big sky, through who knows what heartaches.

The whole experience, as you can see, put me out onto the thin branch of a long limb. But there I was feeling more at home than I usually feel anyway, transfixed in a waking dream of possibility.

With that kind of spiritual preparation I just didn’t have any cynical energy to spend on Sunday night as I watched President Barack Obama take the last few steps to the East Room podium with that little springy step, that slight back-and-forth thing he did with his head, I don’t know, like he was about to treat everyone to an unobstructed slam dunk?

While I’m out on this limb where Charley Pride left me, I don’t for a minute think there will be any alternative to lots of hard work for lots of people for lots of years. I agree with the President when he says nothing was finished Sunday night. But something was started. And now that it has been started, I believe it’s something that we could have not done another hour without.

Like 1932 or 1964, the year 2010 has become a new year for the common life of the American people. And for reasons having nothing to do with Charley Pride, or Barack Obama or even Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, like 1861, this will be a year to decide whether a common life is worth fighting for.

Already, the Texas Governor has issued a midnight statement about how he’s going to lead his state out from under the power of federal “excess” and “overreach.” After everything that happened on Sunday, I don’t think so much about how awfully hard it’s going to be to dissent from the Governor’s leadership in the coming year.

With Pride, Obama, and Clyburn, I’m beginning to see through the eyes of a new eagle. What could be more fun than the really hard work of America, far as the eye can fly?

The Democratic candidate for Texas Governor Bill White on Wednesday complained in an email to supporters that incumbent Governor Rick Perry was not asserting leadership for a more “mainstream” approach to school standards.

“I respect the sincerity of Texans who hold different views of what our students should and should not be taught,” said the email from White’s campaign. “But we should have a governor who finds common ground and moves our state forward, rather than appeasing people intent on pursuing partisan agendas in public offices.”

White’s objection to the cultural extremism of Anglo Republicans on the Texas State Board of Education–who last week dismissed Thomas Jefferson from the standard curriculum on Enlightenment–echoes a theme that he introduced when lamenting the Anglo bias of Republican voters during the March primary election. Republican voters ousted the sitting Chair of the Texas Railroad Commission because he had a Hispanic name.

If White, who served as Houston Mayor, can wage a campaign of urban tolerance vs. suburban cultural supremacy, he may be able to motivate a winning moderate-liberal coalition against Perry in the November elections.

However, the morning headlines out of Houston suggest that White is already on the ropes at the start of an eight-month campaign. While Mayor of Houston he also served on the board of directors for a “fracking” company, BJ Services, that has apparently admitted to federal investigators that it injected diesel into the ground near water supplies after promising not to.

Foul water or cultural extremism? We’re betting that the ghost of Thomas Jefferson is happy to be relieved of responsibility for this sort of history, whatever you want to call it or whichever way it goes.–gm