The People's Forum: We are still donating to the Lebanese Red Cross
Issue #4: Protests begin as the first day of school approaches, pressure builds to reinstate the HEROES Act, an update on the closure of the Chinese Consulate, and the Racial Justice Act. Read up.
How’s it goin y’all? We’ve had a busy week here at The People’s Liberation Front.
Our Freedom Food program began last Tuesday, and we’ve partnered with our friends at HTX Community Fridges to put together our first round of COVID-19 care packages for the houseless. Updates to come. In the mean time, catch up!
Community Updates
Welcome to The Creative (Hour)! Where the lot of you who easily succumb to all work and no play can dedicate time to the much needed self-nourishment you’ve been missing out on. Join us this Thursday at 6 p.m., and bring a friend! Zoom link can be found here.
Houston's first community fridge is now up and running! Community fridges are a growing movement across the country to provide neighborhoods with food and other goods for free, all run by the community itself. Houston's first fridge is at 3801 N MacGregor in 3rd Ward, and is stocked and run solely by the volunteers and through funds donated by you all. Another fridge, located in Alief, should be set up to today! Updates can be found on their Instagram. If you want to volunteer or donate, click here for more information.
Immigrant communities are set to be under-counted in this year's Census. The Trump Administration is cutting back the Census Bureau capacity so we need all the volunteers we can get. Volunteer however much you can to make sure that your communities are counted and get the resources and community power they deserve. You can sign up here, and the time commitment is flexible.
This past Thursday, Malaya TX hosted a state-wide vigil to support the family of recently fallen comrade Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis, a 73-old Filipino lifelong advocate for peasant workers and peace seeker who was extrajudicially killed by the PNP and state actors on Monday, Aug. 10. He was specifically targeted for his positions as National Chairperson of the Anakpawis Party List and Deputy Secretary General of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Philippine Peasant Movement) and was a leading consultant of the NDFP on agrarian reform and member of the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms.
Malaya and other allies came together to condemn the latest installment of state repression under Duterte and the Anti-Terror Bill. To learn more, tap into this article titled “Randall 'Ka Randy' Echanis: Lifelong reform advocate”. See above for a photo from the event in Houston, and learn more about Malaya here as well as the artist group Filipinx Artists of Houston on their Instagram to get involve
Imam Jamil Al Amin (formerly known as H Rap Brown) — a political prisoner imprisoned for his work as a Black Panther and as the fifth chairman of the SNCC, the student arm of the Civil Rights Movement — has a new opportunity for freedom and needs our help now! Visit the Linktree for "Free Imam Jamil" to complete 3 easy steps to demand his freedom. Learn more about Imam Jamil's life here. Share our campaign account content and follow us on social media for updates: @_freeimamjamil on Instagram/Twitter and Students for Imam Jamil on Facebook.
News Around H-Town
On Monday, Aug. 10, teachers and parents protested outside a Cy-Fair ISD board meeting.
Like several other school districts in the Greater Houston area, the district located in the northwest suburb of Cypress plans to send students back in person on Sept. 8th. Students that don't opt in to online learning will be put back into schools which often have over 3,000 students, where they will undoubtedly risk infection. Across the country schools have begun to reopen in person, inciting anger from parents, teachers and students about the obvious risks.
Teachers are at an even greater risk, and the ones protesting have demanded for faculty training to be done online in the coming weeks. Houston ISD begins online learning on Sept. 8th for six weeks and is allowing parents to opt in for continued online learning through the rest of the semester. Cy Fair ISD, among others, have chosen to hasten starting in-person education, mirroring the words of lawmakers such as Abbott and Trump. Although the efforts of the protestors are admirable, the board unsurprisingly went along with their plan for in-person schooling.
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, workers in the UNITE HERE union protested and gave out food in front of Senator John Cornyn's office to pressure him to sign the HEROES act.
It was part of a nationwide effort put together by UNITE HERE and other labor unions to pressure Republican lawmakers to sign legislature that will reinstate $600 weekly payments to the unemployed. The houston chapter of UNITE HERE primarily serves workers at various hotels and the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, 95% of whom are currently unemployed. Ultimately, it's unlikely that workers will manage to make their voices heard in a politial system that only cares about the rich and powerful, but it's still an inspiring example of what a united working class can do.
New information clearly shows that the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston was ordered on false pretenses.
There's nothing to show that the Houston consulate was out of the ordinary in espionage, according to PHD and fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, Steven Lewis. Indeed, it should be noted that espionage is a normal function for consulates of any country. Regardless of one's opinion on China, the closure of the consulate was a blatantly pointless move only designed to antagonize China. The closure will also cause immense harm to the over 33,000 Chinese immigrants currently living in Houston, and the tens of thousands more in the area the consulate served. The consulate covered much of the Southern U.S, issuing visas and passports for Chinese citizens currently abroad and aiding them with any other needs.
The Texas branch of the Racial Justice Coalition (RJC) is continuing its efforts in passing the Racial Justice Act as the 2021 Legislative session approaches.
Research gathered by the RJC found that "a Black defendant’s race increased the odds of proceeding to a capital trial by 75%" [Houston Law Review]. The heart of RJC's work comes from cases like McCleskey v. Kemp, in which the Supreme Court established a precedant that "placed the burden of proving discrimination on the defendant, in their own case" [Reform Austin]. Because of this, addressing racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is virtually impossible. The Racial Justice Act would allow defendants on death row to dispute their sentencing on "the basis that racial bias was a substanial factor in the outcome of their case."
Donate! Donate! Donate!
Success! Houston's community fridges are now up and running. Spread the word within your community, and donate here or to the new Alief location here so they can keep up with maintenance and stock.
We will continue to plug and urge you all to donate to the Lebanese Red Cross (LRC). You can donate by downloading the app here. The LRC is an independent organization in which 93% of all donated funds goes directly to humanitarian aid and their work. For more trusted places to donate to in support, you can visit this website.
Local Houstonian Josue Zuniga is fundraising for his parent's hometown in Olanchito, Honduras, where there are no current facilities to treat COVID-19 patients. The small town is struggling to handle the pandemic. If you're interested in helping, donate here.
Blue Rose Gallery is collecting donations to continue and replenish Houston's queer artist residency spaces like Private Eye, and Common House before that. "Honorably joining the footsteps of cultural mirroring institutions such as the Houston Museum of African American Culture and Project Row Houses, Blue Rose will be the first Black, queer run gallery in the city of Houston and will serve to continue the enrichment of the massive spirit that resides in the South." Donate here.
If you like to shop locally for your groceries, Plant It Forward sells their sustainably-grown produce at farmer's markets across Houston. Plant It Forward is Houston's largest network of urban farms. They're fundraising in support of their essential, small scale farmers, who are all former refugees. Donate here to help PIF essential workers pay rent, buy supplies, and pay staff salaries.
Revolutionary Recs
The Black Yearbook by Adraint Khadafhi Bereal beautifully documents the lives of Black students on campus at the University of Texas at Austin. An astonishingly small 4% of the 40,000 students enrolled at UT are Black [The Atlantic]. Bereal interviews and photographs over 100 students, documenting the "highs and lows of Black life at a predominately white college" [The Atlantic]. View his work below and here or stay up to date on Instagram.
The podcast The Women's War is a journalistic look into the kurdish-majority socialist region of Rojava. It documents how various aspects of its revolutionary society function through interviews, with a special focus on the place of women within Rojava. Of particular note is the third episode, which details Rojava's restorative justice system that has managed to rehabilitate ISIS fighters far better then traditional punitive prisons.
A new documentary, published by the Popular Front, details the short-lived Capital Hill Occupied Protest. It shows a side of the brief autonomous zone free of cops that corporate media rarely showed—a side of community, play, and peacefulness compared to the violence on the streets in the days before its establishment. It also dives in on some of its flaws and how the actions of fascists and cops caused the violence that eventually led to its disbandment.
Angela Davis once said in a speech in Turkey that as a young activist, "I remember reading and feeling inspired by the words of Nâzim Hikmet, as in those days every good communist did." For anyone looking for a dose of romantic communism during these tumultuous times, take a peek into the experience of being "an exile from the future.”
Tariq Ali's presentation of Fidel Castro's Declarations of Havana provides a glimpse into the motivations of a pre-Revolutionary Cuba through appreciation and contextualization of Cuban radicalization in response to western capitalization. Included is Castro's legendary 'History will absolve me' speech, which provides the reader with the source of his convictions to provide all of Cuba's people with the human rights to housing, healthcare, education, and to one's own labor value. Castro and his contemporaries wished for a harmonious existence among nations, in a world without the exploitation of human life for simple mercantilism.