Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

Indymedia Austin / Counterpunch

On a hot day in July the chamber of the Texas Senate turns out to be a
great place to catch some A/C and think about how there are two
monuments to Confederate heroes on the front lawn of the Capitol.

Read that Southmost monument carefully. The
only reason they lost that war, explains the marble script, was because the Heroes were outnumbered six to
one. It never was a fair fight, and the monument testifies that the Heroes never lost it.

The Heroes put 400,000 lives on
the line, but so did the Northern Aggressors, so the Heroes had not
another 400,000 to waste, but the Northern Aggressors did. Jesus,
what a bloody mess. In 1901, they were not at all ready to let that one
go, so they built another monument on the South Capitol lawn.

And even today, over my bar-b-que lunch I see a fellow
diner in a Confederate flag
t-shirt. Here we are at Ben’s Long Branch Bar-B-Que on East 11th Street, where they
serve Soul Food Wednesdays. And in walks this confederate
flag. Do
these fights never go away?

To comment on this article please go to the comment blog.
These are the things you can ponder as you stare at the chandeliers
round about 1:30 PM Thursday, as the titans of the Democratic Party
huddle on the Senate floor, having no company to keep with
Republicans who were huddled somewhere out of sight.

In the huddle that you could see, there were, among others, Gonzalo Barrientos, the long-time survivor from Austin; John
Whitmire, the filibusterer from North Houston; Royce West, the
education whip, hobbling around with a kind of cast on his left
leg no less (it was West wasn’t it with the cast? if I’d known that was
going to be the best image of the day, I’d have taken notes); and
Eliiot Shapleigh, the one who will tell you plain out
that Texas would do much better having an income tax.

Other than that, all we see in terms of Senators is one guy on the Right side of the aisle cruising
Google Earth in search of various properties that we up in the gallery
suppose that he owns.

Everybody could see that these hapless pols weren’t part of the back-room deal making that,
by day’s end, would be sure enough promised to deliver the Senate this time once more,
yeah sure, to successful conclusion on education policy.

When Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst walked out to rationalize for
the press, you could see that it was gonna be a little more talk and a
lot less action. Not a bad time to get a
Starbuck’s coffee, read the New York Times article about Rumsfeld in
Baghdad, and cross your fingers about mid-term elections next year.

It also
helps to sit near lobbyists. "There she
goes back to her office," said two well-heeled suits at the same time,
indicating a well-placed staffer who smiled briefly into the galleries
before disappearing. "It’s going to be awhile," they agreed.

But can you believe it? Not one, but two monuments to the Confederacy out
front? The history of this legislature is surely written in
granite priorities outside.

I had time to mosey through the monuments Thursday morning, being as how I
was early to the Latino Coalition’s press conference, and even after
circling both Civil War monuments, I was still early enough to catch the
MALDEF team standing alone at the South Steps.

David Hinojosa, Luis Figueroa, and an intern were staking out the
territory for this morning’s announcement of a six-point plan–a simple
way of reminding Texas what a good education bill would look
like–one that wouldn’t require court intervention either.

"They say we’re out of ideas and we only oppose bills," said
Figueroa. "So we’re here to show them the ideas that we’re for."

"People have asked whether no bill would be better than a bad bill," said Hinojosa. "But what about a great bill?"

A great education bill would:

(1) Equalize Funding so that all children would share the wealth regardless of where they are born.

(2) Make sure facilities are up-to-date, a need that remains unmet in
many of MALDEF’s client districts in the
latest round of education litigation.

(3) Fund realistic "weights" for the education of English Language
Learners (15 percent of all students) and Low Income Children (50
percent, yes half of all Texas Students are Low Income). These
students need a forty percent increase right away.

(4) Pay teachers good wages. The Southwest Workers Union was on
hand Thursday morning with signs asking, "Living Wages for School Workers",
and a huge banner demanding: "Mandamos Justicia".

(5) Accountability without high stakes testing. As the press kit

explained, many students take tests that assume they have been taught the
material in the first place by obedient if not qualified teachers.

(6) And finally (because there are only really five things that the
legislature refuses to do, not six) why not give the kids of Texas a
chance to excel in
education. Give them the education they need to rank among the top
tiers of their
globalized peers. Wouldn’t that be the kind of thing a state
would want for its kids? Isn’t this the kind of things heroes
fight for?

But what does any of this have to do with tax cuts, you ask?
And aren’t tax cuts the one thing that legislators have to bring back
to their voters this year? The MALDEF team
takes no official line on taxes, but they have noticed that cutting
taxes is much more important to this legislature than doing six (or five) good
things for education. But who hasn’t noticed that?

The message of the Latino Coalition is crisp and bright. But it ain’t a
cheap message, that’s for sure. And Texas voters are having
difficulty rising to level of maturity required to say: children first.

By afternoon Thursday, it’s not clear that any of this Latino Coalition
sunshine has penetrated into the carpeted hush of Senate chambers where
up at the gallery level children come and go quickly with their
vacationing parents. It’s not a bad space to be walking around or
sitting around as the July sun climbs up the ladder outside.

A dozen blocks away at City Hall I tug on the first door handle, my
body looking forward to the whoosh of chilled air, but what’s that
noise? Turns out that door handle is unauthorized entrance and I’ve
just set
off an intruder alert. A guy is wagging his finger at me. I don’t
wait for him to finish his sentence. I step back out into the
heat. Great. Shows you how well I know
City Hall these days.

Okay so back out the door and around through the metal detector and
x-ray, probably a video tape, too. Here I don’t set off any
alarms, so I go stand by the Chief of Police for a second while I
search for a seat.

Councilmember Brewster McCracken is looking over the freshly drafted
city budget and trying to come to grips with the fact that the city is
headed toward a police state far as the eye can see. Of course,
that’s not the way he says it exactly. But he notices that the
police portion of the city budget is up to 75 percent and
climbing.

Give us a decade, and we’ll all be working for the
police union, while not doing jobs like librarian, park maintenance,
after school programs, health care–you know, all that socialist
nonsense that we began to finally outgrow round about 1980.

So I’m not unhappy to go out and join the socialists, anarchists,
greens, poets, artists, and possibly even Democrats who have gathered
along Cesar Chavez Street this aftern

oon to protest the killing of
18-year-old Daniel Rocha, who, according to the sign I was holding, was
shot in the back at point blank range. He was unarmed at the
time, although possibly guilty of having smoked a reefer two hours
earlier, if you believe the revised toxicology report, which folks out
here with signs aren’t really wanting to to.

And even if Rocha had
been stoned two hours earlier, so what? I mean you go around
killing previously stoned people in Austin, Texas? No wonder
Willie is keeping a heavy touring schedule these days.

Back inside the building, Councilmember Danny Thomas wants to know how
police get a 2.7 customer satisfaction rating? Those are the
kinds of questions you can sincerely wonder about in there with your
air conditioners humming, behind your security screens, as you pass out
an award to the cop who killed a mentally deranged woman who was
threatening someone with a knife. Today it is official, that the
cop has been cleared by the feds, so he is a hero, he saved a
life. Now on to the Rocha killing.

And, um, I forget, what
was that question you asked Mr. Thomas? Oh right. Why are people who
are not federal agents or Councilmembers not impressed with police
today? And I know you didn’t ask this, but why won’t they–even
in the face of what a police state looks like–raise taxes for
education?

"Money for jobs and ed-u-ca-tion. Not more po-lice
oc-cu-pa-tion." I put down my sign and make a note of this
chant. Sort of sums up my day. Two standing monuments to Confederate Heroes, can
you believe it?

Let’s review what happened when our state leaders met in Austin in 2005
to do the work that we elected them to do for us. After the regular
session and the added expense of two special sessions, they did not even
come close to solving the key issues facing Texas. After all was said
and done and facing the competing forces of political fallout and
constituent demands, the Texas legislature presented Texas voters with a
consolation prize of nine propositions on the November 8th ballot. Nine
propositions of which not even one is related to the key issues facing
Texas. As Texas voters, we are faced with a government that has failed us,
again.

I believe that Texas voters of all party affiliations see clearly now
the government waste produced by our state leaders wrapped in
ideological straight-jackets. The evidence lays in the sum of the accomplishments
of the past legislative session – nine propositions on the November 8th
ballot that do not address a single key issue facing Texas. I propose
that we take the opportunity to voice our discontent with our state
government leaders on November 8th by voting ‘No’ to all propositions on
the ballot. By voting ‘No’ to all propositions, we assert our right to
reject a government that does not serve the people. This is the boldest
statement every Texas voter can make this November.

–Excerpts from an email distributed by Alvarado for Texas Lt. Gov.

Note: describing the final minutes of a 15 minute ride that he gave to two friends.

As I was approaching the stop sign at Quicksilver and Pleasant Valley I
saw an unmarked police behind me. When we got to the intersection
I saw a gray unmarked police car pass Quicksilver southbound on
Pleasant Valley and then back up real fast. I stopped at the stop
sign and the gray police car pulled in front of me. When the
police car stopped in front of me I just stayed where I was. Rick
and Daniel said something like, "Oh Shit!" and they got out and started
running. I heard a female voice yell to Rick an Daniel by name
and tell them not to run. A female officer who was wearing a
yellow top came to my side and opened my door. She placed her
hand on my arm she told me to get out of the car. I then asked
her if I should put it in park. Right after I put the vehicle in
park, I heard the gunshot…

Signed and notarized June 10, 2005

The Governor’s Office has a pdf file that claims
Texas ranks way high up in total spending on schools. Well it
ought to rank high up as the second most populous state. Question
is, how does Texas rank in terms of spending per pupil? Here the
Governor’s preferred source (the NEA) ranks Texas 34th or 35th.

Here’s the Governor’s PDF

Here’s the NEA (see page 57)

And here are the latest census numbers (Released June 30, 2005)

Also worth mentioning, since 2000 Texas is the second fastest growing state in terms of raw numbers (1.6 million), fourth in terms of percentage (7.9).

***

"In the view of attorney David Thompson who represents the
property-rich plaintiffs led by West Orange Cove, the steady
improvement of the past ten years cannot assure the Court that things
will go equally well in the next decade. For Thompson the difference
this time around is that standards are being rapidly increased and
achievement gaps are showing up again but state appropriations are not
matching the challenge. Although total state funding has gone up, the
state is also growing, with the result that state spending per pupil
has gone down. Meanwhile local tax options have reached capacity."

See below: Texas Supreme Court Justices Seek Role in Education

Note: the following account is posted by permission of the author who
would like to remind readers that the story was quickly written after
some disappointment with other media reports. It should be considered a
draft.–gm

By Roberto R. Calderon

I attended the Marcha Contra el Racismo / Contra los Minutemen / En
Pro del Dream Act / Y Sixth Annual Austin, Texas 16 de Septiembre
Desfile/Parade, all rolled up into one. Perhaps these were too many
agendas to attach to one single event, perhaps not, but one could make
the argument surely that all of these various agendas are related in
that they have to do with migration, immigration, and in the case at
hand particularly that of Mexicanos and Latinos.

But before I make a few brief comments, let’s describe the
following four newspaper articles, three of which directly discussed
the event in Austin, and the fourth talks about the Minutemen in Tejas,
especially in El Valle and Brownsville, where our gente including the
authorities don’t want them there, present, and they’ve been put on
notice. The four articles are as follows:

1. Notimex, "Se enfrentan racistas e hispanos," El Universal, Mexico, D.F., Lunes 19 de septiembre de 2005, p. 34.

2. Patricia Estrada, "Marchan contra los ‘Minutemen,’" Al Dia, Dallas, Tejas, Lunes, Septiembre 19 de 2005.

3. Dick Stanley, "Annual Mexican Independence Parade Protested," Austin American-Statesman, Sunday, September 18, 2005.

4. Mark Lisheron, "Minutemen’s Arrival Prompts Concerns, Former Group
Leader Warns of Violence," Austin American-Statesman, Austin, Tejas,
Sunday, September 18, 2005.

For starters the Austin American-Statesman’s reporter’s
disinterested article has the numbers all wrong about how many
attendeded the marcha and how many right-wing protesters met us at the
gates to the Capitol grounds.

I should say that I attended the event and documented it by taking
some 260 photographs of the event from beginning to end. I was there,
and I didn’t leave until the last of us left the event. Several of us
who were present discussed the numbers or how many we thought were in
attendance. Between the Austin groups participating in the September
16th Annual Parade, and there were at least two floats, the Fiestas
Patrias Queen riding a car, several low riders, motorcycles, bicycles,
no charros on real horses though, and what not, the Austin crew in
short. Then there were two buses that came, one each from the greater
Dallas and San Antonio areas, and many individuals and families in
cars, trucks, and what not. Then there was another entire contingent of
people who didn’t actually march the two or three miles from the
assembly point at the Texas Department of Transportation’s huge parking
lot at the corner of Riverside Drive and Congress Avenue, to the
beautifully manicured grounds of the Capitol.

It was a beautiful, hot day for a marcha and rally, and we all
sweated generously. The temperature was close to 100 degress Farenheit.
We marched directly north toward the Capitol on Congress Avenue and the
event went off as scheduled and on time. The marcha started at 4 pm,
and the rally began around 5:30 pm and lasted until about 7 pm, when
everyone by then was leaving or had already left. Altogether we
estimated that there were about 1,000 persons in attendance at the peak
of the event which coincided with the first hour of the rally at the
Capitol grounds, on the Southside entrance.

The groups of people along the route of the marcha were mostly
friendly and supportive with many looking long and with interest at the
many contingents and individual participants. There were those who of
course yelled their displeasure, especially some in cars who had been
stopped by Austin City PD on motorbikes to let the marchers walk on
through. Some of these who had to wait at the lights weren’t too
pleased.

The marcha stretched along Congress Avenue for many a quarter of a
mile long at its greatest extension, with lots of room between
contingents. The atmosphere among those who participated in the marcha
and rally was definitely upbeat, celebratory, and full of energy. There
were many families with children at the event, there were many
university and college students at the event. And for many of the
college students, mostly Chicanos/Latinas, this was their first such
marcha and rally.

There were students and others though of course from all kinds of
groups, some blacks, even a few more whites, with the vast majority
present being comprised of raza. University contingents from the
University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, University of
Texas at Dallas, University of North Texas at Denton, University of
Texas at San Antonio, and other universities and junior colleges also
attended. The students brought out their mantas, their t-shirts, their
youth and ideals.

Also present were several important contingents of Chicano and
Latino organized labor groups including some from the Austin and
Central Texas area, from San Antonio, from Houston, from Dallas, and
from Lubbock pa’ acabarla de fregar–!Si Se Puede! The same could be
said of Chicano/Latino professional associations, like the social
workers’ association that participated with their banner, and the
Centro por los Derechos Humanos out of Dallas, a Salvadoran
organization primarily.

There were specific leaders and politicians that particiapted.
Congressman Lloyd Dogget, D-Austin, spoke first and was followed by
whole host of other excellent speakers, some speaking with great
clarity, and some with great passion.

There were speakers from Arizona and the immigrant rights’
struggles there. Representatives from the League of United Latin
American Citizens (LULAC) particiapted including natioinal president
Hector Flores, who’s from Dallas, he walked the entire length along
with the rest and spoke with great effect at the rally.

There was Jaime Martinez of San Antonio and currently the president
for Texas statewide LACLAA and the annual Cesar Chavez Marcha in that
city as well. There was also Rosa Rosales, the Hatted Lady, as they
call her in San Antonio, a longtime civil rights activist in San Anto
and a longtime member and leader in women’s issues within LULAC.

There was State Representative Roberto R. Alonzo (D-Dallas) who
spoke as well to his credit. There was the only current Mexican
American/Latino on the Austin City Council, Raul Alvarez, who also
spoke forcefully in both Spanish and English. There was Ana
Yanez-Correa, one of the young organizers of the event who spoke with
much clarity and passion both, she is currently involved in efforts to
reform the Texas criminal justice system and has been past Texas LULAC
statewide education director.

There was Julieta Olivarez, her last name may escape me, a student
leader at UT Austin and immigrant who is fighting to have the Dream Act
pass so that she may exercise her profession, she is a registered nurse
and plans to continue her studies and obtaining a master’s in light of
being unable to work in the US. She spoke from a prepared script in
both English and Spanish with much emotion and compassion. Her
statement was moving and powerful. There were any number of men and
women from the different organizations that had attended who also
spoke. There was some music at the prior to and at the end of the
speeches.

At the entrance to the Capitiol grounds off of Congress Avenue
there were aligned some thirty to fifty mostly Anglo males tending
toward middle age rather than on the younger side of things. They held
signs and banners and yelled things like "Keep on marching all the way
south of the border…to Mexico," and "Go back to Mexico," and old
standard as we all know.

Needless to say paranoia runs deep among this crowd, and the media
gave them as much attention as the next person. Ap
parently a local
right-wing talk radio station, 106.6 FM, that had its banner at the
site of the counterdemonstration widely displayed, worked the airwaves
to generate the counterprotest.

Alongside this bunch of screaming white males were ordinary people
who weren’t necessarily white (Latinos and blacks) waiting for buses
and what not, and they applauded and cheered the marchers on, much to
the chagrin of the anti-immigrant bunch with whom they shared the
sidewalk space at the moment. This group of pro-Minutemen whites was by
no means anywhere near to numbering 100, as reported in the short
articles that follow. Clearly, each observer/reporter has his or her
own truth of the matter.

Raza and others in the marcha and rally used many of the standard
civil rights calls including "Si Se Puede!" "La Raza Unida, Jamas Sera
Vencida," "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the Minutemen Have Got to Go," "What Do We
Want? Justice! When Do We Want It? Now!" "Fuera con los Minutemen!"
"Raza Si, Migra No!" A young Chicana university student held a
hand-lettered poster that read: "Who Would Jesus Deport?"

And of course, there were many more slogans, chants, and posters
presented to create the statement that the marchers sought to make not
least among them that one born in the struggles of the Califoria
immigrant rights movement in the 1980s and 1990s if not earlier, "No
Human Being Is Illegal/Ningun Ser Humano Es Ilegal."

While there were definitely many people of all different ages and
current generations, which was definitely another positive contribution
made by the marcha on Saturday (September 17), the majority of the
participants were on the young side, from children to youth currently
enrolled in and/or recently graduated from our state’s colleges and
universities.

The presence of organized labor from all points of the Tejas map
was heartening and another positive contribution made by the marcha
this past Saturday. One can say that many different segments of our
communities were in attendance, from longtime Tejano/Chicano residents
to more newly arrived gente. Similarly there were present more
acculturated and settled longtime immigrant families, leaders and
activists in their own right within their own communities. Mostly the
participants were came from the more urbanized areas of the state.

There were some Chicana/o faculty present that should be mentioned.
From UT Austin there were present Angela Valenzuela and Emilio Zamora,
and their daughters Clara and Luz. Also from UT Austin was
Radio-Television-Film professor Cary Anderson, recently arrived to
Austiin from Kentucky. He assited in documenting, filming, the marcha
and rally.

From UT San Antonio came Rodolfo "Rudy" Rosales with his wife Rosa
Rosales and their son Gabriel. From the University of Houston came
Lorenzo Cano, of the Center for Mexican American Studies there and the
new movimiento newspaper about the state, La Nueva Raza. And there were
other faculty from different campuses that I may not have recognized
but who were working in documenting the event as well. "Civil rights
for all," read the back of one t-shirt raza wore.

The t-shirt of the day, however, was being sold for $10 bucks by a
Chicana university student, never did catch her name or school
affiliation, but she sold out her entire stock. It was a plain white
t-shirt with the word "Minutemen" on front crossed out by a red circle
with a line drawn through it. And on the back was a dictionary like
definition of the word "Min-ute-men. def. Cowards; un-Americans;
domestic terrorists;…" and I can’t recall what other two or more
definitions were provided. Those in attendance liked the item and
bought it up accordingly.

There was lots of creativity, lots of networking, lots of plans for
continuing the struggle for civil rights, which is one and the same as
immigrant rights. This was one of the leading messages. Justice, means
all of us, not Just-Us, as activists have long said at such events
across the Southwest and across the country since at least the 1960s.
There were vague statements heard about there being another marcha
planned in the state and another sometime in 2007 or 2008 in
Washington, D.C. It was all in a day’s work down in Austin this past
weekend. Si Se Puede!