Tuesday, June 16, 2020

TexProgBlog Wrangle, Defund the PoPo edition

The second edition of the best of the left of Texas from last week contains blog post links, embedded Tweets, and news from mainstream sources that reference the ongoing American crisis of police brutality leveled against police brutality protests.  And the societal aftershocks, reverberating in every direction.  The latest involves the death by public hanging of another man of color -- by most accounts the fourth since George Floyd was murdered -- this time in Houston, yesterday.


Perhaps it was just as Acevedo relates to the Chron's reporter, Gill.  HPD's chief is a pretty accomplished gaslighter, unfortunately.


And he's got friends in high places.


H-Town doesn't have the biggest problem; at least for the moment.  That distinction belongs to the killers of Javier Ambler, also known as the Williamson County Sheriff's Department.


Kuff detailed the state of police reform in Houston and Harris County, with a coda about HISD. DosCentavos had a series on the possible re-hiring of Chauna Thompson. The effort failed. Craig Mills says he should not know the names of George Floyd and so many other black men who are known to him because they were killed by police.

These are not -- as has been made crystal clear to all of us -- isolated incidents.


And there have been attempts in legislative sessions past by some of our lawmakers to codify penalties against bad cops.


But don't count Governor Abbott among them.


It's doubtful he or his acolytes will settle for even the mildest criminal justice reforms.


Still, progress is being made.


And the most progress will keep being made by those who remain courageously in the streets, showing out and speaking up.


(It's important to know who your allies aren't.)


And knowing your history is never a bad thing.


If you can't march, if you can't donate, if your activism is limited to what you can manage online ... there's plenty of those opportunities.


As we close out another Wrangle, here's a couple of quick hits about the virus.

-- Florida and Texas: Please Put Masks On, Or We'll Never Get Out of This



The Houston Sierra Club reports that Harris County is considering releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment to see how that goes.

The mosquito species Aedes aegypti, originally from Africa, has been genetically modified by a British biotech company to prevent them from reproducing. The mosquito is one of several species of mosquitoes responsible for the Zika and other viruses in Harris County, according to the Harris County Public Health Department. However, the Aedes aegypti prefers to live near and feed on people.

[...]

Frank Blake of the Sierra Club writes about modified mosquito project that “there are social and environmental justice concerns around the lack of transparency, the release site of the mosquitoes, the fact that Harris County residents cannot consent to essentially being human experiments and the impacts this may have on our local environment.”

He notes that environmental advocates suggest that “there are existing, less risky methods of mosquito control that have documented and demonstrated effectiveness.”

Find out more.


Last, the HouChron marks the 52nd anniversary of the opening of Astroworld, a seminal experience for a generation of Southeast Texans now full-grown and sentimental about it.

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