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Voters in the nation’s fourth largest city went to the polls today and elected Equality Texas-endorsed candidate Annise Parker the next mayor of Houston. Parker was elected with 53 percent of the vote, defeating her runoff opponent Gene Locke who garnered 47 percent.

Houston is the winner because Annise Parker’s prior experience will serve her well as Mayor. Parker, a native Houstonian, has already served the city for over a decade as a City Council Member and as the current City Controller. Prior to entering public service Parker spent twenty years in the oil and gas industry. Parker will need to draw upon this experience to lead Houston through lean economic times and position the city to be a leader in new energy development.

Houston is the winner because it did not succumb to bigoted fear-mongering and homophobia. Yes, Annise Parker will become the first openly-lesbian mayor of a major U.S. city. However, Houston voters demonstrated, for the 7th time in Parker’s case, that they can elect candidates based on their experience, qualifications and abilities, without regard to their sexual orientation.

Houston is the winner because it has elected an eminently qualified public servant as its next mayor. We are all winners because fear-mongering and homophobia lost.

Source: Equality Texas.

By Wayne Krause
Legal Director
Texas Civil Rights Project

As summer approaches, an APD officer has shot another young person of color. We don’t yet know all of the details of how or why Nathaniel Sanders was killed, but there is one thing we are sure of already, and it is inexcusable: there is no video from the shooter’s police car.

How can there be no video?! Is it not APD policy to turn on the camera when an officer might come into contact with a dangerous individual or make an arrest?

APD Policy A306b mandates that police car videos record at all traffic and pedestrian stops, sobriety tests, and pursuits. APD cars are equipped with video cameras, so why aren’t officers using them?

Time after time, Austinites are forced to endure tragic incidents of APD brutality in which the actual events are shrouded in an air of impenetrable mystery. It doesn’t have to be this way. Not only do pictures tell a thousand words, but video cameras don’t write false or biased reports to protect themselves or their partners.

With violent officers such as Michael Olsen and Gary Griffin, we all now know how video cameras expose lies about what really happened on the scene. Having represented victims of these police attacks, I am certain they never would have found justice without having a videotape as evidence.

But for every case I’ve accepted, there are dozens I have not because the video backed up the officer’s account or at least showed some understandable reaction. If an officer acted reasonably on the scene, turning the camera on is her insurance policy. So why wouldn’t there be a tape?

We hear the excuses: the tape was lost, I forgot to turn it on, and so on. None of them ring true. If you’re an officer doing your job right, you want that camera on.

During the death of Jessie Lee Owens, four of the five officers who eventually arrived at the scene had video proof of their actions. The one that didn’t was the shooter, so we’ll never know what really happened.

The bottom line is if there is a shooting, but no video, we are left with nothing but the perception that the officer wanted it that way for a reason.

If the APD seriously wants to put an end to this problem, it will actually begin punishing officers who violate its video policy and it will ensure that video recorders are in working order. When is the last time an officer got more than a slap on the wrist for refusing to turn the video camera on? And if police supervisors, who are required to check the cameras regularly, can’t or won’t keep them running well, we should appoint a neutral, competent employee to do so.

Video cameras are a window to truth, and officers who turn them off cast a shadow on that truth and their profession. If we have cameras, they should work. And if you won’t do your job, you should be fired, or at least suspended for as long as your victim remains horizontal. Until that happens, it will remain a sad irony that our citizens who run red lights have a better chance of being caught on video than those shot dead.

A TCRR Sunday Sermon

By Greg Moses

For many months the right wing populist chatter box has been drumming up the spectre of a socialist radical president with no respect for civil liberties, due process, or property rights. Then as soon as the president says it is stupid to arrest a man on his own property for speaking his own mind, the right wing populist chatter box denounces the president for that.

Overnight, the fashion for denouncing the president is all the rage. Nobody worries anymore about private property, due process, or civil liberties. It is the uniformed officer who can do you no wrong. And just like that, America’s post-racial presidency has come to a windshield-smashing end. The color line is back.

One hardly knows how to defend the man who holds the most powerful office in the world. His defeat already shows on his face. Either one has already helped to defeat the president or one is already too late.

It is already too late to distinguish between racism as bigotry aforethought and racism as saturated cultural response. It is already too late to point out that the president said, “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that . . .”

It is already too late to ask how a career cop in Cambridge can approach the home of Skip Gates without already knowing who he is. It is already too late to undo the swift victory that white supremacy has won, with all its well-known right wing populist momentum.

The choosing time has passed. You already know which side you’re on. And if you’re on the president’s side this time, you know what comes next. The president will try to figure out how to appeal to the side that you and he are not on. He’ll try to appease the right wing populist rest. Say you’ve been on the president’s side before? ‘Nuff said.

With another three years of hard work left in this presidency, I think the shape of things going forward will depend upon the internal struggle now at play between the bulls and bears. As I’m working on that struggle internally in a fractal replay of things writ large, I have to think that the arrest of Skip Gates marks a bear market in the currency of respect.

By coincidence Skip Gates was returning home from the land of scholars when he encountered some difficulties at his own front door. “Slight the learned,” warned Mozi in 400 BCE, “and you will neglect the ruler and injure the state.”

Even in Cambridge Massachusetts the learned are not respected. Apparently they are not even well known. The ruler has been neglected, the state injured. Neat as a fortune cookie America, in the image of Skip Gates handcuffed, your future has just been read.

Recent news and writings from Irma and Ramsey Muniz

Jesus Christ – Born to bring Love, Spirituality, Faith, Courage, and Freedom to all Humanity

Dec. 25, 2009

Dear Friends:

Ramsey, our families and I celebrate Christmas with you and share the profoundness of this glorious, spiritual day in our lives. Historically, on this special day, Jesus Christ was born to bring love, spirituality, faith, courage, and freedom to all humanity. Jesus’ suffering, confinement, and crucifixion was and is the reason that humanity shall forever struggle for freedom and love.

We thank you with our hearts for making it possible for my husband, Ramsey, to return to Texas after fifteen long years in exile away from those who love him. This is only the beginning. It was destined that with your assistance, his freedom would become a part of our freedom and that of all humanity on this earth.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

With love,
Ramsey and Irma Alvarez Muñiz

“Learning how to survive can end up being the greatest lesson in learning how to live.”

The Late Dr. Salvador Alvarez
My Beloved Father

www.freeramsey.com

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Loving Spirits are With Ramsey

Dec. 6, 2009

“As a family we must reunite our hearts once again, and there is no right way or wrong way to experience spiritual healing. There is ultimately only a deepening into one’s soul’s journey and one’s ability to live compassionately with all that surrounds us.”

Tezcatlipoca

************

Dear Friends:

On December 13, 2009, Ramsey Muñiz will turn 67 years old, and I send this message for those would like to mail him a card. His address is shown below.

You cannot imagine the transformation that Ramsey is still experiencing. The spirits continue to be with him. When his heart is very heavy and tears of sadness prevail, they all appear to him. The loving spirits of our deceased loved ones make their presence known, provide consolation and wisdom.

Ramsey wakes up after the dreams with the realization of what has happened, and he writes everything that he recalls. His writings are the most beautiful words you can imagine and I am convinced that he is having communications with the spirit world.

Remember that we almost lost Ramsey in 2005, and he went through a most profound near death experience. It is said that some people that go through this type of experience are able to communicate with the spirit world.

Among those that he communicates with regularly are his beloved mother, Hilda Longoria Muñiz, and my beloved father, Dr. Salvador Alvarez. Recently he asked my father how we should pray to him, and the words that he wrote were:

“Beloved father
Fill me with your spiritual love
That I might serve you
That I might serve my beloved mother
That I might be a true messenger of your love.”

Several weeks later, Ramsey recalled the exact conversation that he was having with my father as he was receiving the prayer above. The prayer was actually more specific to our family.

I share the prayer below so that others can pray the same for their families and deceased loved ones. The revised prayer is:

“Beloved father, Salvador
Fill our family with your spiritual love
That we might serve you
That we might serve our beloved mother, Irma Ramos Alvarez
That I may be a true messenger of your family spiritual love.”

I am in awe every time that Ramsey receives this beautiful and divine insight. I invite you to take this information to heart so that we can all experience a spiritual Christmas season with our families.

Shortly you will receive correspondence on the current plans to free Ramsey. We need to free him now! See his mailing address below.

Ramiro R. Muñiz – 40288-115
FCC Beaumont – Medium
P.O. Box 26040
Beaumont, TX 77720

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Set up your altars, as the spirits are with us. It is US who are dead.

Oct. 31, 2009

Dear Friends:

Below is a letter about El Dia de los Muertos written by my loving husband, Ramsey Muniz, in 2003. it was written during intense pain and suffering. Out of this suffering came profound thoughts about our culture, spirituality, life, and death. When I ask Ramsey where our deceased loved ones are, he states, “They are here. They are alive and it is us who are dead.” I treasure his insight, because one of the spirits that provides comfort and guidance to my husband is my father, the late Dr. Salvador Alvarez. I thank my beloved father for consoling and guiding us now, just as he did during his time on earth.

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“I write what I live, and I live what I write.”
Ramsey Muniz – Tezcatlipoca

Listen closely, for my destiny is to speak the true history. There is a day that pertains to our religious culture, which connects the earth, heaven, and nature. It is a day when we realize the true essence of cosmic visions, which prove that we are truly a part of Mother Earth, heaven, and the spiritual realm. On this day, the veil that separates the living from the dead is removed, and we are reunited with the loving spirits of our ancestors, forefathers and deceased family members. It is a day of rejoicing, communing, sharing, praying, fasting, and meditating with our ancestors and family members that now reside in “Ilhuicatlitic,” the heavens, because once again we share our ancestral spirituality on earth. It is a day that truly brings us together with our past in worship to our gods and rejoicing as one world, one people, and one nation in our minds and hearts for the past, present and future. It is a day so religiously and spiritually powerful, that even five hundred years ago, priests like Sahagun, Torquemada, Molina, Duran, and others realized the power of Teotleco — the arrival of the gods. They repeatedly witnessed the spiritual ancestral power granted from the past to the present and future raza on El Día De Los Muertos.

“On this day of remembrance, do not judge me by the shackles and chains that confine me in bondage, but by who I am.”

“On this day of remembrance, in this mode of darkness confined and isolated from humanity, I am not afraid nor do I fear the coming of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”

Ramsey Muniz – Tezcatlipoca
http://www.freeramsey.com

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Survival Through Love

Oct. 23, 2009

Dear Friends:

The letter of love and gratitude received by my husband, Ramsey Muniz,
represents a profound spiritual transformation that he is experiencing.
We thank God for this change. I will be with Ramsey this weekend.

************

Citlalmina:

As I sit in this 6×9 cell my mind and heart travels back into the past, wondering how it was possible for me to survive three years spent in solitary confinement (dungeons) in the Leavenworth United States Penitentiary. Only the Creator and all of our Mexicano gods and goddesses are able to provide the answer. Be that as it may, I will forever share with the world that it was your love!

“Our harmony and power have not lessened. They have increased, and no external force can overcome the beauty and intensity of our “ome.”

Yes, I’m back! Never in my life have I felt so much love. I truly believe in my heart that as my wife God gave you a power of love because of your suffering, pain, grief, sorrow, and sadness with my imprisonment.

Give my tender and profound love to mom always.

************

“No one will do for us what we fail to do for ourselves.”

“One functions spiritually for our ancestors, for ourselves, and for those who come after us.”

“While I swam in a sea of knowledge and intelligence, I lived in a world of oppression and despair for
the last sixteen years of my lif
e.”

“My spiritual face was seen in the colors of the wind
And in the dampness of the earth.
My face is illumination in life and death. I was
The first cry of a new born and the last breath of dying.
My face is the spirituality of Aztlan and the soul,
Mexikayotl, of the universe.”

All my world is caged and confined, yet
My spiritual birth soul runs free.”

“It is not true, it is not true that we have
Come to live here. We came only to sleep – only to dream.

“The clouds have been dispelled and the darkness
In which I have loved for the last 16 years have fled.
The Sixth Sun has appeared and the light of the day
Shines upon my heart after such darkness that shall never appear again.”

www.freeramsey.com

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Visit in Beaumont, Texas

Sept. 29, 2009

Dear Friends:

My mother and I have just returned from the Beaumont FCI. We have been visiting my husband, Ramsey Muniz, for the last three days. After sixteen years of confinement in prisons away from his family and those close to our hearts, it is now our spiritual obligation, within the political/humanitarian realm, to prove his innocence and free him.

They have kept my husband unjustly incarcerated for many years in order to hide the truth, and the time has come for us to speak about his innocence.

We extend our love and gratitude to all who have made it possible for my husband to be close to his family.

Sincerely,
Ramsey & Irma Muniz
www.freeramsey.com