Instagram and the social media network Threads are restricting the amount of political content you see on their platforms.

From The Hill:

​Instagram has moved to limit political content, with users now having to go into their settings on the app to turn the limiting feature off...Users of the popular social media platform now have to go into their settings under “[c]ontent preferences,” click “[p]olitical content,” and choose the option to not “limit political content from people you don’t follow,” or else Instagram will limit political content from those the user doesn’t follow by default....“We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone,” a post on Instagram’s blog from last month reads. “If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow.”​

I mention this as a reminder that we are at the mercy of these companies and that we must have our own ways to communicate. In an authoritarian crisis and at the "request" of a government, we can easily be cut off from one another.  

Recall back on Super Bowl Sunday how you could not search "Taylor Swift" on Twitter.  Much of the Meta social network went down earlier this month on Super Tuesday primary day. These companies or hackers or governments or whoever can do whatever they want to mess with how we interact. They can cut off our channels of communication when we need them most. 

In these challenging times, be sure you have the phone numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses or whatever you'd need to keep in touch with people you value and people you trust.        

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

The Houston Democracy Project likes to read books.  

I've finished reading Boss Cox's Cincinnati by Zane Miller and will next read The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Cincinnati is my home town.

About Boss Cox's Cincinnati:

* The accounts of the different geographical sections of Cincinnati were vivid & informative.

* The subject of should saloons be open on Sunday took up a lot oxygen in Cincinnati at the turn of the 19th century.

* Different ethnic groups with no historic grudge with one another will still find a path to fighting when tossed together by circumstance. Can't we all get along?

* All groups were unkind to Black Cincinnatians.

* Bossism has good points and bad. Reform has good points and bad. A middle course has good points and bad.

* Boss Cox was counted out many times, but came back time and time again. Different factions and viewpoints would rise and fall and then return again at the ballot box.

*It was a long haul up the hills from Downtown to places like Hyde Park and Avondale before street cars & automobiles. Especially in winter.

* Boss Cox has a big grave in Spring Grove Cemetery that I see twice a year when I visit the cemetery, but is as dead as any other Cincinnatian of the era.

​* After 30 years of staring at Boss Cox's Cincinnati on the bookshelf, I can now say I've read it.

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney said the following yesterday:

“We know (Trump) tried once not to leave office, and he will have no incentive to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power and to leave office should be selected again,”.....“As frustrated as I know people get sometimes with policy disagreements you might have — and I certainly have policy disagreements with the Biden administration — I know the nation can survive bad policy. We can’t survive a president who is willing to torch the Constitution.”

I highlight this to make the point that Republican elected officials can denounce Trump. We don't live in North Korea yet.  Ms. Cheney denounced Trump even though it led to the loss of her Congressional seat. Sticking with Trump, or remaining silent about Trump, is a choice. Every elected Republican in every office has this choice to make and has the option to speak up. People in Houston and Harris County concerned about the fate of democracy should demand that elected officials fully reject Donald Trump and all attacks on democracy.

It is essential to speak up even if it means losing your office or being run out of the Republican Party. It is Republican silence that has done so much to bring us to this point. It is the obligation of these officials to help fix what they have so badly broken.    

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

It's always a great day in Houston, Texas. 

Please check out the photography section of the Houston Democracy Project.  

And please have an excellent day! 

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​I attended the Harris County Democratic Party Convention over the weekend. 

One of the featured speakers was U.S. Representative Colin Allred who is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in the race against traitor Ted Cruz. 

(Above you see Rep. Allred at the Harris County Democratic Convention.)

Rep. Allred said twice 2024 was "The most important election in U.S. history."

Might be true. 

Given the high stakes, I certainly hope Rep. Allred spoke with Harris County Democratic state legislators from low turnout districts about how they will working to increase turnout in the most important election in U.S. history. He also had opportunity while in Houston to reach out to the 11 Democrats on Houston City Council. I might have missed somebody, but I didn't see any Council Democrats at the convention.     
 
Congressman Allred says the upcoming election is the most important in U.S. history. He came to the Harris County Democratic Convention to ask for help from the active rank & file of the party. This can't all be on the rank & file. Democratic Elected officials must be clear how they will be part of the fight in 2024.

​Active rank & file Democratic Party volunteers are tired. 

We are told every election cycle that this is the most important election ever. The central premise of the Houston Democracy Project is in fact that we are facing an immediate authoritarian threat. At the same time, you can't keep telling people everything is on the line and then just keep doing the same thing over and over.   

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]    

Official channels and leaders on our side of the aisle must reach out to the Palestinian protest movement, rather than just ignore, arrest, laugh at and lecture them. 

Rank & file advocates of democracy must do the same. 

Even if the War in Gaza ended tomorrow, these mostly young folks are not going to "vote blue" and fall in line. 

We hear over-and-over how we want young diverse people to take part in politics. But then once we get that involvement and organizing by young & diverse folks, we tell them they are not doing it the right way or call a cop or some bullshit.

We have nobody to spare in the fight for freedom and home and abroad. Let's find our way to one another while we still have the chance. Let's treat people with respect. 

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]       

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Alexandra Mealer has been appointed to the board of Metro.  Ms. Mealer was appointed as a representative of 14 smaller cities in Metro's service area. Here is the Metro press release if you want to read the bad news for yourself.   

Above you see Ms. Mealer being sworn-in by Harris County Precinct #3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey.

It makes sense Commissioner Ramsey would swear-in Ms. Mealer. Commissioner Ramsey, for no valid reason, voted no on certifying Harris County off-year election results in 2021, and Ms. Mealer pursued a frivolous lawsuit to overturn her well-merited 2022 ballot box defeat to Lina Hidalgo.

But despite their mutual contempt for democracy, here these scoundrels are in positions of power and influence.   

We've become sadly accustomed to election deniers in positions of public trust. But that doesn't mean we must accept it. Commissioner Ramsey & Ms. Mealer are out for our most basic freedoms in whatever positions they hold. The good news is that if are willing to push back at the ballot box, on the streets, and wherever the right takes this anti-democratic challenge, we will prevail.  

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

​There was a vote yesterday in Houston City Council regarding a $3.5 million tax abatement for child care providers in Houston. The item passed with four of the six Council Republicans voting "no."

The 10 minute debate over the abatement was interesting because Mayor Whitmire, who supported the abatement, kept saying over and over that the city is broke. He said childcare is important and so are many other things. And that there would not be money for much of anything going forward. 

The discussion starts at the two hour 18 minute mark of yesterday's meeting. Here is a link to yesterday's meeting.      

The Mayor says the city is broke, but just recently announced a deal with the Houston Firefighters Union that will cost the city at least $650 million. There is at the moment no funding plan for the firefighters contract.

(Above is screenshot of Mayor Whitmire yesterday saying we are broke.) 

We'd have more money if the firefighters would get less money. They could give back $100 million of the $650 million. It would be a goodwill gesture to a city planning across the board cuts in every department but police and fire. It would be solidarity with fellow city workers. There is a discussion about the firefighters contract in yesterday's meeting that runs over an hour, at the 35 minute mark of the video linked to above.  

Mayor Whitmire paints a picture of a city that can fund nothing other than police and fire at what he sees as sufficient level. Why even bother having a city?         

The firefighters union says don't "politicize" the contract. That's something coming from a public safety union that endorses election deniers & that was fully content to be on board with John Whitmire's portrayal of Shelia Jackson Lee as soft on crime in last year's mayoral election.  

We don't have to glorify first responders or their unions. We can respect first responders while remaining justly wary of their unions. People entrusted with our safety have a duty to speak up for democracy and not support extremist Republicans. There is no public safety without democracy. Fire and police departments exist to serve us. Not the other way around.

Please sign the Houston Democracy Project petition to make the pledge to show up for freedom in 2024 no matter what.

The Houston Democracy Project works daily to inspire, organize and strengthen pro-democracy coalitions in Houston and Harris County.  

Please share word of the Houston Democracy Project and support the effort with your contribution. If you have a question about the Project or a suggestion, please send an e-mail to [email protected]

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Community Voices for Public Education is organizing a protest tomorrow at the location of the State of the District address from Greg Abbott-appointed HISD Superintendent F. Mike Miles. Details above.

CVPE has done a good job keeping the fight going against the undemocratic far-right takeover of HISD. Check out the website and offer them your support.