The People's Forum: Keep your eyes on the Houston Police Officer's Union
Issue #8: TPLF to host a transformative justice circle, addressing policing injustice in Houston with Justice Can't Wait, and the rise of anti-Asian terror in the U.S.
Community Updates
The Houston Police Officers' Union contract must go. Organizers in TPLF's wider community are pressuring specific Houston elected officials to put it on the City Council's agenda.
We're demanding that the Justice Can't Wait recommendations are met. Want to stay in the loop? Join the Houston Revolutionary Mobilization Network, or the Mob. Sign up to receive text updates from the Mob, which includes groups like TPLF, PURP, Extinction Rebellion, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Our text service should be up and running by October, so get on the list now and stay tuned for more details!
The People's Liberation Front is hosting “Taking Care,” an introduction to transformative justice facilitated by Angelique Geehan.
Join us via Zoom, on Sep. 20, from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. Topics will include pod mapping, accountability, care networks, and everyday practices to prioritize consent. We're using this workshop to dedicate some space to an ongoing conversation about how to embody transformative justice in our own relationships, teams, networks, and families. Register via our Linktree.
[Image description: A purple box with “TAKING CARE” at the top, next to the logo for The People's Liberation Front. Below that, there’s a green divider that could be peas in pods or a very long caterpillar, then text reading: “An introduction to transformative justice facilitated by Angelique Geehan. Learn to embody TJ values in your work, relationships, and culture. Sunday, 9/20, 9am – 2pm CST (on Zoom). Registration now open! linktr.ee/tplf.” Three graphic panels on the left each show a four-stage butterfly metamorphosis, with slightly different color saturations and some substitutions for actual butterfly parts like a pea pod, a set of four chrysali.]
Building a Fighting Labor Movement in the Trump Era: Sunday, Sep. 13th from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
Wisconsin trade unionists from a variety of workplaces will discuss questions facing the labor movement today: Working and organizing through the pandemic, the fight for racial justice at work and in the community, and organizing the unorganized.
Please join Defeat "Right to Work" in Wisconsin for this special web event featuring several young labor activists and leaders from Wisconsin. Rank-and-file workers from USPS, UPS, and other front line work places will speak about their experiences. Viewers will also hear from a worker at the Milwaukee Art Museum where there is an on-going campaign to unionize.
There will be a question and answer session at the end. Viewers are encouraged to leave their questions in the comments over the course of the livestream.
[Image description: An all black colored background. On the left there is a figure of a woman with her right hand raised in the power symbol. The left side of the graphic reads: ‘4 p.m., Sunday, Sep. 13th, Facebook live” in white. The right side of the graphic reads: “WORKERS RISE UP: Building a fighting labor movement in the Trump Era” in white and red.]
On September 18th at 7:00pm CT, Austin and Dallas Committees for Human Rights in the Philippines would like you to join us for a virtual film screening of J.L. Burgos' "Portraits of Mosquito Press”,
co-hosted with our partnered organizations: Anakbayan Austin and Houston, Malaya Texas, Rice Filipino Students Association, and Filipinx Artists of Houston.
This event is in remembrance of the declaration of Martial Law in the Philippines on Sep. 21st, 1972. We will provide a brief introduction to the core history of the Martial Law period, including the closure of media outlets and the threats on journalists and lawyers, while discussing the similarities to what is now occurring in the Philippines with the closure of ABS-CBN and increased repression of any outspoken Filipinos under the Anti-Terror Law.
"Portraits of Mosquito Press" by J.L. Burgos shows the impacts of the Martial Law period on one journalist while showing the broader implications for journalism and attorneys under a repressive regime. The Mosquito Press were independent journalists who worked to inform the public of the true brutalities of Martial Law and the Marcos dictatorship despite constant threats, surveillance, arrests, and even assassinations.
We hope to introduce new allies to the history of Martial Law in the Philippines and discuss the work being done by organizations and advocates for human rights and democracy in the Philippines today. This event is free and open to the public, and we encourage people of all knowledge and backgrounds to learn with us! There will be opportunities throughout the presentation and film to submit questions that may be answered by panelists after the film screening. We look forward to (virtually) seeing you all there!
RSVP at tinyurl.com/MLscreening2020 to get the Zoom link! Here's the Facebook event page.
[Image description: A flyer with a red, black and white multicolored background. The left of the flern reads “Film Screening” with a photo from the film on the right, captioned “Portraits of Mosquito Press.” Below the photo reads “Portraits of Mosquito Press: A Martial Law Remembrance Event. Sep. 18 at 7 to 8:45 p.m. RSVP at tinyurl.com/MLscreening2020 — Virtual Event.”
Trump's Secret Police, in Context
Read our second op-ed, written by TPLF member Jade.
News Around the Nation
The City of Houston is set to auto-renew its contract with the Houston Police Officers' Union on Sep. 27th.
The HPOU is closely related to Houston's City Council, and donated a combined total of $100,000 to 14 of our 16 councilors this past year [Indivisible]. Their current city contract blatantly protects police from any legal or professional recourse. It gives cops 48 hours to review evidence against them before they have to go into an interview. It also sets a 180-day timer on any misconduct, so that after that period an officer is immune to discipline. Third, the HPOU contract makes sure that "independent hearing investigators," who investigate all serious police misconduct, are appointed by a Labor Relations Committee (or LRC) composed entirely of cops [ACLU].
Mayor Turner has the power to negotiate the contract behind closed doors, and seems to intend to do so. He could place it on the agenda for City Council to discuss, but the narrowing timeframe between now and Sep. 27th only includes two more City Council meetings. There's a lot at stake in the HPOU contract. In the five years since the LRC has been in place, HPD has killed 41 people. Every one of those officers was found justified, until this week, when HPD fired Nicolas Chavez's killers.
The ACLU's Justice Can't Wait report lays out specific findings and recommendations for Houston police reform.
The report was published in June by 18 different organizations, including BLM Houston and Texas Applesee. Some of its recommendations include abolitionist steps like reallocating funding to non-cop emergency response and social services, ending no-knock warrants, and requiring HPD to actually release body camera footage without stalling for months. Other recommendations specifically address the HPOU contract's provisions we outline above [Justice Can't Wait].
HPD fired four officers who murdered Nicolas Chavez, after finally releasing body cam footage to the public.
Nicolas Chavez was shot and killed in a flurry of gunshots back in April. Chavez appears to have been experiencing a mental health crisis and was actively self-harming. So unsurprisingly, when 28 police responded with drawn tasers and guns, they failed to de-escalate the situation, despite spending fifteen minutes using flashlights, sirens, and voices to attempt to resolve the situation. While Chavez was kneeling several yards away from a crossfire of HPD officers, he reached for an empty, deployed taser. At that moment, four HPD officers fatally shot Chavez, who died soon after [NPR].
In his usual fashion, HPD Chief Art Acevedo waited through nearly five months of pressure from the Chavez family and activist groups before releasing the footage [Houston Press]. The president of the Houston Police Officers' Union, Joe Gamaldi, has publicly claimed the firings are unjust. Unless the four officers do end up seeing a trial, as Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has announced, it's likely they'll get to fade away into some other police department and continue the same practices. Nicolas Chavez's murder is one instance a wider problem of how the police respond to mental health crises, and the fact that we need mental healthcare professionals to respond to these situations instead of cops armed to kill. City Council member Robert Gallegos has expressed similar sentiments [Houston Public Media], although we shouldn't trust someone who proudly brags about encouraging cops to crack down on homeless people ["Vote Robert Gallegos"] to actually champion the policies he pretends to care about.
We continue to witness America waging a new cold war against China.
The unfortunate reality is that the increasingly popularized narrative of China as being a "threatening superpower" to American hegemony has led to an escalation of Sinophobic and Anti-Asian terror against Chinese and Asian people respectively in America. The US has recently canceled more than 1,000 visas for Chinese nationals who are classified as "security risks", barring them from entry and immediate deportation for those who are already here [Reuters]. The excuse of national security will only foment already existing xenophobia and an incident of this kind of abhorrent justification has occurred right here in Houston.
A recent incident occured at Rice University when a Chinese international student returned to their dorm room, only to see that the outside of their door was marked with the words "SPY" in caps. Though the tweet describing this incident has been deleted, around the country, we see a marked increase in hate crimes directed towards Asians [New Yorker]. Asian activists are taking to the streets to call for justice for those who have been harmed, most notably in New York's Chinatown where #TheyCantBurnUsAll has formed as a campaign in response to an 89-year old Chinese woman who was attacked and set on fire [MSN]. This call to rally may be a new chapter in the story of the "Asian-American" movement set against the backdrop of a looming cold war and a global pandemic. Geopolitics and racial terror often go hand-in-hand.
Open Your Purse
The air quality in the Bay Area currently is horrible, and most unhoused folks don’t have the ability to go inside to avoid it. Please donate to @MaskOakland to purchase masks/PPE kits for unhoused people in Oakland. Donate here: http://maskoakland.org/give
The Long Beach People's Collective has stepped up to the task of addressing these needs and filling in where the City of Long Beach and its associations have not adequately supported the unhoused community. Their mutual aid work has taken multiple forms to address our community's needs. They have been preparing food for 6 months on a twice-a-week basis to distribute to our unhoused community members. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have heard people ask for hygiene products such as masks, soap and sanitizer, gloves, etc. and we intend to ramp up our capacity to meet those requests.
“As our food production continues, we are currently producing home cooked, fresh and healthy meals for $1.25 per person. As a volunteer-run organization, we have a $0 overhead and every cent goes to meet the needs faced by our unhoused neighbors. Our longstanding operation means that we have forged ties within our community here in Long Beach and we are able to deliver on needs that they identify.”
Donate here to support the Long Beach People’s Collective and the unhoused communities currently at risk.
Revolutionary Recs
If you're interested in exploring Houston policing abolition, read the Justice Can't Wait recommendations. The joint report, spearheaded by the ACLU of Texas, lays out some specific findings and reforms regarding the way we handle municipal courts, internal HPD investigations, the HPOU contract, and other policies. If you get a chance to read it, pay attention to which recommendations seem like they contribute to the abolition of police, and which function as harm-reduction within the existing paradigm of carceral justice.
Listen to the 2014 tUnE-yArDs album "Nikki Nack." Under her project's pseudonym, Merril Garbus uses ecstatic electronic production and vocal modulations, along with some random scatting, to talk about World Bank neocolonialism and the antisocial institutions of patriarchal dominance. "You and me, never free / Attached by bands / They're cutting off the blood to our hands."
[Image description: The album cover for Tune-Yards's album Nikki Nack, on a square background of white-speckled baby blue. A white-gloved hand, polka dotted in black, holds its palm up to a shiny, red, wrinkled sheet of something unspecified. It looks like a suggestively gory fruit roll-up.]