Talking To Houston City Council About Mass Deportations & Republican Accountability

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Here are Houston Democracy Project Blog Notes & Observations for October 15th. Election Day is in 21 days on November 5th & Early Voting begins in 6 days on October 21st.

I spoke today at the public comment session of Houston City Council. This session is every Tuesday at 2 PM. The agenda items of Council are addressed each Wednesday morning at 9 AM. I signed up to speak with the City Secretary. Here are details on the process to sign up and more information about Council meetings.  (Above is a picture of Council and the empty seats where some councilmembers should be.) 

I signed up today to make certain Councilmembers were aware of the threat of mass deportations, to say Council Republicans should be held to account and ask Council Democrats to act with urgency given the clear authoritarian threat we face.  I wanted to be certain Council heard these things so they could not say they had not.          

For reasons never explained, there were many absences at Council today. This is disrespectful to the public. It's an undertaking to get Downtown in the middle of the day, find parking, pay for parking & go through City Hall security. Mayor Whitmire was absent today. Councilmembers Abbie Kamin, Ed Pollard, Tiffany Thomas and Carolyn Evans-Shabazz were also absent with no reason provided. Councilmember Twila Carter left after about 90 minutes without explanation. Theoretically staff watches the public sessions. Who knows?                  

Here is what I said: 

Nothing is more important to Houston right now than the results of the upcoming election. The race hatred and anti-semitism, along with credible threats of mass deportations from the Trump/Vance/Musk ticket, strike right to heart of the identity of Houston as the most diverse city in America.        

I’ve heard Mayor Whitmire twice say he doesn't see how mass deportations would be legally or logistically possible. Yet we are told clear as day what federal laws would be cited, that federal, state and local, military and police resources would be employed, and that detention camps would be established.

Harris County Sheriff candidate Knox has said he’ll use his office to deport people. What about the six Republicans here? Mass deportations? Not accepting election results? Threats to federal law enforcement? Project 2025? Any view on that?

Authoritarianism will require a local infrastructure of supportive officials. Migrants won’t round up themselves. Maybe right here we have the local officials ready for the job.   

The local political press was fine with asking Shelia Jackson Lee last year if she supported defunding the police. The press could instead ask real questions of Council Republicans to find actual threats to Houston

This Council did the right thing-so far-ditching the Mayor’s proposed anti-first amendment protest ordinance. Four council members recently had the political courage to propose a needed tax increase to make the city budget whole from storm recovery costs. Maybe just as importantly, those councilmembers used a creative zoom town hall forum to talk to Houstonians about the proposal. You could hold a democracy town hall. 
     
Let’s build on on the insight, political courage and creativity we’ve seen from Council at its best. This leadership will have to come from individual council-members or members working together. It won’t come from the administration. 

Do your constituents know about the tearing apart of Houston families that would result from mass deportations? That Project 2025 would bust their union? That the Supreme Court recently upheld Texas law allowing women to die, rather than get essential reproductive care in an emergency? Mayor Whitmire  campaigned on that last issue. These are all local issues.    
       
You’ve got three weeks to do all you can inform Houston what is at stake. After that, the tasks and decisions get more difficult. 

What side of the police line do I stand on when Harris County votes are tossed out and election results overturned? What do I do when state and federal forces direct HPD to help in migrant round ups? What do I say when-as we’ve seen elsewhere in Texas-my supporters get their doors kicked in by Ken Paxton and DPS?     

I ask you to act with urgency to fight this extremism.  

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

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