Texas Civil Rights Review

Author: mopress

  • Ramsey Muniz: 'The world is not going to let them bury me in the prisons of America'

    As supporters of Ramsey Muniz gather today in Houston, we share a recent letter forwarded by his wife, Irma.–gm

    Dear Friends:
    I share a personal letter sent to me by Ramsey.
    –Irma Muniz

    Your father has given lectures like you have no idea or thought. He takes me all the way back to when we, the roots of our Chicano cultural, political, and spiritual movement, would speak about freedom, justice, and about having a voice in America’s process like never ever before in our history. I would ask why it was that we, Mexicanos, were the majority of population in the entire South Texas and we would at times not even have one city council or school board member.

    The conservative establishment was against me because I was arousing the consciousness of our people like no other in history. Before they knew it, Mexcianos, Chicanos, and Hispanic candidates were stepping forward in the life of democracy like never ever before. That is a history that was created with the help of God. Now we have Latinos, Hispanics, Chicanos, Mexican American U.S. Congressmen and Congresswomen and even Republican women as governors in New Mexico and in Nevada and all because we had a vision that one day we would be the majority and counted in this world. I sought happiness, peace, love, equality, and family love like never ever before and all of that has now gradually come to pass.

    Even our young people are going to witness changes in the entire Southwest of the United States like never ever before in our history and they can mark that down because it is going to happen. How do I know? Well, they would have to communicate with the spirits who are in heaven and those spirits only communicate with those that God has chosen.

    We will forever keep our hearts open and our souls ready to forgive those who never ever gave me a drink of water for my thirst, a piece of bread for my hunger, or a blanket to cover my body which was naked for days, weeks, and months shackled and chained the entire time.

    The world is not going to let them bury me in the prisons of America which is what they desire to do. Otherwise they would be up front seeking my freedom. We do not wish to die in the prisons of America and we are going to do everything possible because my freedom is the freedom for the masses of humanity out there in the so-called free world

    Amor,
    TEZ

  • Whitewashing Election Fraud

    By Greg Moses

    IndyMedia Houston / North Texas / Austin / NYC /
    Michigan / Atlanta / DC /

    ILCA Online / Portside / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice / OpEdNews

    Racism is best

    known among white folks for the overt
    ways that bigotry chooses to abuse. This is what
    allows

    white liberals to excuse themselves from
    charges that they are racist, because (God bless ’em)

    they don’t set out to hurt anybody. But Ralph Ellison
    titled his classic novel Invisible Man,

    because racism
    is a grim problem also of what white folks do not see.
    And this problem persists

    insufferably, right down to
    this morning’s news.

    On this day after the election-fraud

    hearings led by
    John Conyers and his Democratic colleagues at the
    Judiciary Committee, I am

    beginning to feel the
    effects of racism’s one-two punch. On the overt side,
    we have the written

    testimony of Judith A. Browne,
    acting co-director of the Advancement Project in
    Washington,

    D.C.

    For Browne, whose testimony to the Conyers committee
    is posted online, “voters

    of color” have been targets
    of Republican-led disenfranchisement in the elections
    of 2000 and

    2004.

    Click to access brownevotestmt12804.pdf

    “In

    2004,” writes Browne, “it became clear that there
    were efforts underway to dust off Reconstruction

    Era
    statutes in order to disenfranchise voters,
    particularly minority voters.”

    “There were clear warnings that challenges would be
    used to disenfranchise voters,”

    says Browne. “Prior
    to Election Day in Nevada and Ohio, 17,000 and 35,000
    challenges were

    filed, respectively,
    disproportionately in urban areas. (Over 17,000 of
    the Ohio challenges were

    filed in Cuyahoga County.)
    In addition, poll observers registered in
    unprecedented numbers in

    Florida and Ohio, with the
    intent to engage in massive challenges inside

    polling
    places.”

    Browne is referring to laws that allow pollwatchers to
    act as

    self-deputized vigilantes at voting precincts,
    thrusting their bodies between ballot boxes

    and
    voters, demanding proofs of identification and
    registration.

    If you have never

    seen this process at work, then you
    might not feel the nausea. But I have seen them, the
    close

    shaven, starched-pants Republicans who show up
    on election day to a black community center and

    lean
    over old women with their dirty questions. Makes you
    want to spank them on their freshly

    cut heads. Didn’t
    their mothers teach them no manners?

    “The targets,” Browne

    reports, “were new voters in
    urban areas.” Or to put it more plainly, new Black
    voters, the

    “Vote or Die” crowd that P-Diddy was
    trying to mobilize.

    Add to this the “felon

    purge” technique, in which
    Republican Party officials, knowing that they are
    working with

    “felon” lists “tainted by racial
    discrimination”, set out to challenge thousands of
    voters by

    the batch.

    “This,” says Browne, “is voter suppression in 2004.”
    And this is what

    we may call racism of the overt
    bigotry kind. Racism type one. On this form of
    racism,

    Browne’s statement continues for several more
    pages at the Conyers hearing

    website.

    Which brings us to racism type two, the invisibility
    maneuver. For this type

    of racism, it’s best to begin
    with liberal columnists. Scan their morning-after
    reports for

    words like “minority”, “black”, “civil
    rights.” Or try this Google test. First do a

    news
    search for Conyers hearings. Very good, lots of fresh
    hits. Now try a news search for

    Judith Browne
    Advancement Project under “News.” See there. Your
    search did not match any

    documents (at 9:25 am CST).

    Overt racism by right-wing Republicans is the core
    dynamic

    at work here, but it is aided and abetted by
    invisibility racism found in left commentators

    and
    media reports, who fail to center the civil rights
    struggle. An issue that is clearly about

    racism and
    civil rights has been whitewashed into “voter fraud”
    generica. Type one racism

    answered with type two.
    Browne’s careful citation of race-based discrimination
    followed by

    Browne’s invisibility in the press. The
    one-two punch continues.

    There may not be

    much that can happen to change the
    results of the presidential election, so the
    whitewashing of

    “election fraud” may not have an
    immediate consequence for those who are focused on the
    Bush

    machine today. But here in Texas, Republicans
    are taking three newly elected Democrats into a

    costly
    process of hearings before a Republican-controlled
    chamber. “Election fraud” is the

    allegation that
    Republicans are bringing against the Democrats.

    In Texas, therefore,

    the generic cry of “election
    fraud” will very likely make invisible the crucial
    civil rights

    component that ties together the fates of
    three would-be state legislators with racist powers

    in
    Ohio and Florida.

    In particular, take the case of Hubert Vo, a
    Vietnamese

    immigrant who beat a Republican powerhouse
    by about 30 votes. If the Vo election is

    overturned
    by a Republican-led Legislature on whitewashed charges
    of “election fraud”, then the

    losers will be a
    coalition of urban voters who worked hard on this
    grassroots coup. And the

    winners will be white
    suburban voters, again.

    Yet, if the pattern of injustice in

    “voter fraud” is a
    pattern that seeks to favor white suburban voters over
    struggling urban

    voters, wherever they are, then
    making this pattern visible, for once, could tip this
    30 vote

    scale in Vo’s favor, and reverse for the first
    time in more than 30 years a steady trend

    toward
    Republican domination of Texas politics.

    The white left is meaningless without

    a civil rights
    coalition. The sooner the white left embraces this,
    in deed and word, the sooner

    we’ll be able to see a
    real future in front of us. The sooner, also, that a
    national movement of

    progressives can make a real
    difference in the

    South.

  • Opinon: Perfect Backlash

    The November feud between the Texas A&M University administration and the Young Conservatives of Texas over the impropriety of an “affirmative action bake sale” reveals that the concept of “diversity” need not entail a commitment to civil rights. Soon after the president of the university appealed to the YCTs for civility and diversity, he suspended civil rights in admissions.

    Whether one opposes civil rights loudly and uncivilly, as with the bake sale, or loudly and civilly, as with the suspension of affirmative action, the common bond is opposition to civil rights as we know them in the 21st Century….

    The administration’s emphasis on a strategy of “diversity” without civil rights serves to frame the process of admissions as something the University confers solely by its own good graces. This construction of the matter evades recognition that some applicants, as members of protected classes under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, hold civil rights that the University is bound to respect.

    The Texas Civil Rights Review documents the essential history of how Texas pledged to undertake affirmative action as a way to meet its responsibilities under civil rights law. The decision to suspend affirmative action breaks that promise and declares that Texas A&M will serve as its own authority in matters of civil rights enforcement.

    (I don’t know where these recent developments leave the athletic department, which has been quite vocal in its opposition to the YCT bake sale antics. Now the coaches and recruiters work under a president who is telling the state’s elected leaders of color that he’s not going to respect their demands for civil rights at Texas A&M.)

    Adding all this up, it is tempting to conclude that the administration is mostly irritated by the YCT lack of tack, presenting the Aggie attitude in ways that make the administration’s policies much more naked than they otherwise might have seemed. The YCTs also serve as a more scary alternative to leadership that at least recognizes the importance of diversity.

    The YCT’s opposition to “diversity” policy as such reveals that attitudes of racist supremacy still thrive. They could not even tolerate the administration’s appointment of a “diversity officer.” In this context, the administration’s promise to provide “diversity” without civil rights may be viewed as a way of pandering to a climate of racist opinions.

    The dramatized tensions displayed between the YCTs and the president over the question of holding an “affirmative action bake sale” served to keep the focus of the community mired in reactionary alternatives to the status quo.

    Thanks to the YCT flap, the president is able to swoop in to “defend” his new diversity chief, announce a “bold new program” of pure salesmanship, and never mention that he is deliberately breaking commitments made by the state of Texas to federal offices of civil rights.

    140 years after the emancipation proclamation the party of Lincoln returns triumphant to the South, so Southern that Lincoln is surely wincing at the meaning of it all. Whether we consider the “affirmative action bak sale” by the YCTs or the unilateral suspension of affirmative action by the administration, Texas A&M provides evidence that it is still a pre-eminent incubator of racist leadership. Keep an eye on those YCTs as their careers blossom before your eyes.

    (Gates taught the YCTs a lesson all right: Looks kids, stop pushing cookies. Watch a real pro at work.)

    In the end, the showcase dispute over the value of “diversity” does not mask the fact that there is no disagreement between the YCTs and the administration about the substance of civil rights. And without any clear commitment to civil rights there can be no “excellence in leadership.”

    If we sum together Texas A&M’s suspension of its civil rights commitments and the Republican-driven redistricting plan that is now under judicial review, then we come up with an image of perfect backlash in Texas.

    gm–last revised Dec. 12, 2003

  • Dallas Morning News: A&M Sticks to Stand

    Several minority lawmakers on Monday urged Texas A&M University officials to reverse their decision to not consider race in admitting students, but university President Robert Gates told them in a private meeting he opposes using race as a factor.

    Source:dallasnews.com

  • Caravan for Peace from Mexico Visits the Rio Grande Valley Town of Alamo

    By Nick Braune…

    I was pleased to see an article in The Monitor — and it was front page in the Sunday Mid-Valley Town Crier — about the Caravan for Peace which stopped in the Valley for a rally last Thursday. The Caravan was founded by a Mexican poet, Javier Sicilia, whose son was murdered by one of the outlaw cartels in Mexico.

    Composed of two large busses and a contingent of cars, the caravan crossed the border into California and has been traveling east, holding local rallies and planning for a major rally in Washington, D.C. upcoming. I attended the rally in Alamo, which was spirited and drew about 100 people. (ARISE and other concerned groups in the Valley got out the word and organized a reception for the travelers.

    One part of the event was sharing stories of lives lost due to the violence of the cartels and particularly the drug trafficking. Sicilia himself spoke. But another part of the event was an expression of hope: If enough people reach out on both sides of the border and reach out for other solutions, this may inspire change, particularly since current policies have failed so noticeably.

    A woman traveling with the caravan explained to me that she represents an inter-religious group in Mexico City, although she made sure to clarify that the caravan had many non-religious participants too. She said that obviously the caravan has goals in mind: for instance, stiffening America’s commitment to stopping gun trafficking into Mexico but also rethinking the total “prohibition” of drugs approach. (The “militarization” approach to the problem, the current Mexico/U.S. “war on drugs” approach, has simply failed.) But the articulate woman was also eager to explain that the goal of the caravan was not a blanket “decriminalization of marijuana” or any other panacea. The caravan simply intends to open dialogue on these issues.

    I definitely agree it is time for dialogue on new approaches, and in fact the July Mexican elections were unusual in that all three candidates were for re-conceptualizing the “war on drugs” mentality, which many see as one-dimensional and originating in U.S. military circles.

    Military music has never been good music; and military solutions have never been good solutions. Despite its thousands of officers, myriad bases, sophisticated technology, military colleges and massive Pentagon (with its connections to think tanks, big industries and academia), the military mucks things up, repeatedly.

    A small example: A young woman just back after serving in Iraq was one of my students three years ago. She was upset about the war, saw no real reason for it, and had seen things she didn’t want to see. When she returned to the Valley, she was still a reservist and the military told her to take “anger management” classes. She told me that she thought that was OK until she learned that the classes were in San Antonio. She got so angry on the regular four hour drive up there that she stewed angrily during the classes, and she was even angrier driving the four hours back.

    A larger example: The war in Afghanistan has now seen 2,000 Americans killed. Others have been physically and emotionally injured — news reports say military suicides are up — and the ten-year war is going poorly. Newspapers this last week expressed concern that Afghan soldiers paid by NATO are sometimes targeting NATO soldiers.

    More news this week: Blimps, used “successfully” in Afghanistan to monitor large swaths of land, are now being tested for use on the Tex-Mex border to help keep illegal drugs and undocumented immigrants from entering the country. (Glance upward, watch for ballooning military solutions.)

    (Update, the Caravan for Peace is arriving this week at Fort Benning Georgia, where it is planning a rally and meeting with leaders of SOA Watch. This organization exposed the School of the Americas, an inter-American military training operation, which was probably lurking in the background when the current Mexican cartels were gaining strength.)

    [First appeared in “Reflection and Change,” Mid-Valley Town Crier, 8-26-12]