The People's Forum: Endorse the Philippine Human Rights Act
Issue #5: Protests against evictions in Houston, Austin reducing its police budget by 1/3rd, BAYAN USA and more.
Hey y’all, this week we’re focusing on providing call-to-actions for you via our community updates section. Our donation section is looking a little sparse, so if there’s a crowdfunding effort you want to plug, reach out!
Community Updates
The People's Liberation Front will soon be hosting its first session of Freedom School! The Freedom School is TPLF's monthly knowledge re-distribution campaign. Starting at the beginning of September, we will have three weekly sessions about houselessness. Each week will have recommended resources to learn more, as well as a live zoom session focusing on the specific topic of the week. If you’re interested in volunteering to shape our curriculum and make sure it runs smoothly, we'd be happy to have you on board! You can sign up to attend or to volunteer at this link.
We are now accepting new members (with an updated application process)! You can apply here to get started. In the mean time, why not join our social chat on signal, available to anyone in the community? DM us on Instagram to be added!
Join Malaya Movement's educational webinar on Monday, August 24th! It’s been one month since the Anti-Terror Law took effect. The Malaya Movement is sounding the alarm on what we see as a Duterte regime assassination policy of activist leaders and progressive organizations. Duterte’s incessant attacks on civil liberties, press freedom, and the practice of critical dissent has left democracy in the Philippines in critical condition.
We call on everyone to join us for a national webinar to discuss updates on the impacts of the Anti-Terror Law since it took effect one month ago, and concrete campaigns and next steps we can take in our collective struggle against Duterte’s dictatorship! Join the Malaya Movement & Bayan USA on August 24th at 530 PT / 730c CT / 830 ET for a National Webinar. Register today! Read and sign the Declaration of People’s Demands vs. Duterte’s Dictatorship here. For more information, click here or visit the Malaya Movement’s site here.
Endorse the Philippine Human Rights Act (PHRA). This is one concrete way to support Human Rights and Human Rights Defenders. Our U.S. tax dollars should not fund the human rights violations perpetrated by the Philippine police and military! Learn more about the PHRA at humanrightsph.org. If your organization can endorse, click HERE.
With the recent news that the Census will be ending counting efforts on September 30th, one month earlier than was previously announced, APALA TX in partnership with the Gulf Coast AFL-CIO, and many community partners have opportunities for everyone to make a difference. We have the following activities this week and next:
Houston Food Bank Phone-Banking:
Local partnership with the Houston Food Bank to reach out for those experiencing insecurity during COVID-19
Please connect Elizabeth (elizabeth@gcaflcio.org) or Sunee (sunee@gcaflcio.org)
Watch Party: 13th in partnership with OCA Houston
Friday, August 28th at 6pm CT
Facebook event to follow: find us on Facebook APALA Texas
News Around H-Town
The eviction protests on Friday, Aug. 21 were an inspiring success!
The protest, which was organized by multiple local groups including the Houston Tenants Union, TPLF, P.U.R.P Houston and Age of Change, saw its peak of 100 attendees early that day at 8 a.m. Members of many other organizations like DSA and PSL as well as fellow Houstonians showed out in support, angry about the city's inaction during this eviction crisis. The protest remained peaceful with minimal police presence, and attendees were invigorated by passionate chants and refreshed by free ice cream and tacos. The action was also covered by the Houston Chronicle, which you can read here.
In the wake of Austin reducing police budget by 1/3, Governor Abbott has threatened to freeze property taxes in any city that defunds their police.
The defunding, which many are claiming would put officers in danger, will mainly be reducing the number of new cadet classes, eliminate empty positions, and shift certain services to other areas of the city government- hardly anything that would endanger a police force that's had a single officer death by shooting in the past decade. Despite the threats, Austin will continue with their plans to defund the police. Abbott's decision shows that he has no problem letting cities reopen amid a pandemic so that the rich can continue getting richer, but when cities take the bare minimum steps to decrease the power of the occupying forces terrorizing impoverished communities, he must step in.
Texas Democrats have made a last minute push to get Green Party nominees for local elections off the ballot.
They're citing a new, poorly worded law requiring filing fees for third party candidates. Texas courts ruled against the green party mere hours after a deadline for write in candidates and a few days before ballots will be finalized, in an obvious move to make it as hard as possible for the Green Party to stay on the ballot. It should be noted that Libertarian candidates are being allowed to stay on the ballots, likely because they aren't seen as a threat to either party. This move should be a sad reminder that, whether Democrat or Republican, legislators will do everything in their power to maintain their hegemony over electoral politics at the local and national levels.
Donate! Donate! Donate!
"Telling the Story of Freedom" in Freedmen's Town is an effort to protect and share the history of Houston’s Freedmen’s Town Conservancy. They’re raising funds to keep the stories alive and part of the community. “Stories of the migration of some 1,000 freed slaves to Houston; of how these freedmen serviced their own community, becoming blacksmiths, lawyers, and doctors, building paved streets with bricks made by hand, and building their own schools and churches.” Donate here.
Revolutionary Recs
BAYAN USA, an alliance of 30 progressive and anti-imperialist Filipino organizations in the U.S, publishes a recurring newsletter discussing current events related to the Duterte regime, ongoings in the Philippines, and the anti-imperialist movement. Feel free to subscribe or to just check out the latest issue here!
Only a few months ago, Amerika seemed like it was going through a process of fundamental change through the galvanizing of the masses. These uprisings lent the people hope that even if the rich and powerful continued to ignore our material interests, we would still find a way to show that the power lied with the masses. However, the reality is that much of that revolutionary energy and fervor was co-oped and subsumed by the political establishment. The result was a recurring frequency of symbolic gestures like demanding voice actors match their race to their character, Democrats wearing kinte cloths, and other limp 'solutions' instead of radical forms of justice. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosphy at Georgetown University, writes about this phenomenon in "Identity Politics and Elite Capture", about the conniving capacity of the elite to "hijack activist energies for their own ends". Their work offers a lesson so that when the next revolutionary moment comes, it will be so disruptive that the powers that be will be unable to bend us to their will.