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Southwest Voter Registration Education Project
2914 N. Main Street Los Angeles, CA 90031
Phone: 323-205-2190
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SVREP LatinX Politics Weekly Review
Vol. 1 #15 J
uly 10, 2017
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By SVREP President Antonio Gonzalez
Los Angeles, CA, July 20, 2017
Economic Boycott of Texas Gaining Momentum Among Raza Leadership
Good news: last week we talked about raising the demand for dissolution of Mr. Trump’s misnamed “voter integrity” commission, and this week the “commission” quietly announced it was shelving its widely rejected request for voter databases from the states!
Today we wanted to share insights from a swing to Austin, Texas this week. At the July 19 SVREP Latino Vote reception held together with the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) of the Texas House of Representatives and the Hispanic Legislative Caucus of the Texas Senate the room was abuzz with word of veteran Texas civil rights attorney Jim Harrington’s call early this week for an economic boycott of Texas to pressure the state for a repeal of the recently enacted anti-Mexican law SB4.
Harrington’s call was carried in the widely respected Texas Observer and was
reinforced in the minds of the event attendees by the results of a recent leadership
poll conducted by the National Institute for Latino Policy, the results of which said
80% of Latino leaders across the country favored a Texas Boycott.
SB4 also called the “show me your papers law” is arguably the worse in a series of
anti-immigrant/anti-Latino laws passed over the last twenty years, the most well-
known being Prop 187 in California in 1994 and SB1070 in Arizona in 2010.
In my remarks, I recalled to the crowd that in both California and Arizona the racist laws sparked Latino organizing and voter rebellions that turbocharged Latino voting, punished the parties and politicians that sponsored the laws, and ultimately overturned them. I asked the crowd if this was what would happen in Texas as well?
I told them that various Texas organizations were coming together to launch a state
fight back conference thru the Texas Latino Congreso in September and everyone
should get involved.
Afterwards three different legislators told me they supported the Texas boycott which presumably would consist of demanding that non-Texas entities move conventions and events to other states unless SB4 was repealed. Coincidentally a Chicano marketing expert sent me an old policy paper that talked of defending of the Dreamers back in 2006 with the tactic of corporate boycotts!
Imagine the leverage that would be gained if Latino leaders in Texas published a list of good corporations that opposed SB4 and blacklisted those corporations that funded the racists legislators that enacted SB4 and refused to either pull that funding or oppose the new law. Imagine what 11 million Latino consumers in Texas would do with that information.
It was a good event and two days later a press release hit my desk back in Los Angeles with a lead quote by one of those legislators I talked to in Austin on July 19, the Honorable State Rep. Roberto Alonzo of Dallas. Alonzo announced that the National Caucus of Hispanic State Legislators was pulling its national conference from San Antonio and moving it to Chicago to protest SB4!
The announcement made my day. Congrats to Roberto Alonzo. Onward Texas Raza, onward!
Follow SVREP at www.svrep.org, @suvotoessuvoz, and www.facebook.com/suvotoessuvoz.
*****
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HOUSTON Police Department chief Art Acevedo remembers the day when a little boy came up to him with tears in his eyes.
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“I’m afraid to go to school because when I come home my parents will be gone,” the boy told him.
He also tells the story of an 18-year-old — who finished top of the class at his high school and went on to complete a mathematics degree, graduating with honours — who also approached him with tears in his eyes.
“I really wanna be a police officer but I’m an undocumented immigrant. My parents brought me here when I was three,” the teen told Mr Acevedo. ...Read More
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Latest News in Case You Missed It:
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SAN ANTONIO — The state of Texas faced a healthy dose of judicial skepticism on Saturday as its lawyers laid out final arguments in a trial over whether lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minority voters in enacting current Texas House and congressional district maps.
A three-judge panel peppered lawyers from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office with questions that suggested they were having trouble swallowing the state’s defense of its maps, premised on the argument that lawmakers were merely following court orders in creating them.
The state Legislature adopted the maps in 2013 in an effort to halt further legal challenges that began in 2011.......Read More
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SAN ANTONIO — Texas' defense of its electoral maps suffered a setback Friday when a state witness couldn't defend lawmakers' intentions for much of his testimony.
A three-judge panel is considering whether state lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities during a special legislative session in 2013, when they redrew the 2011 maps that the panel
ruled discriminatory earlier this year
. Read More
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Gov. Greg Abbott, saying he has kept the promises he made when he launched his first campaign for governor here, returned to the Alamo City on Friday to ask voters to give him four more years so he can take on the “liberals” trying to make Texas inroads.
“To keep Texas the very best state in the United States, I’m running for reelection,” Abbott told an enthusiastic crowd at The Depot in Sunset Station. “I’m willing to take on liberals, I’m willing to take on Washington, D.C., and I’m counting on you to have my back.”.... Read More
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Patricia Brown couldn’t prove her identity. On a Saturday morning in May last year, she rushed into the basement of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church, frantic that she would miss its I.D. Ministry hours. She took deep breaths as she reached the bright-yellow room crowded with narrow tables, where people sat poring over papers. Without valid identification, she couldn’t get housing or work, her food stamps or medication. She sat in a metal chair beside me, wiping away sweat from her forehead. The volunteer across from us looked concerned as Brown reviewed an intake checklist: Social Security card? No. Birth certificate? No. ID? Expired.
.... Read More
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Illinois Comptroller General Susana Mendoza visited some areas so often during her 2016 election campaign that she recalled an elderly woman complaining. “I already told you I'm going to vote for you. I am 80 years old. It's not easy for me to get up to open the door,” the woman said, according to Mendoza.
Mendoza's intense campaigning has been credited by many—from the co-president of Hillary Clinton's Illinois campaign to Hispanic vote researchers in Chicago—as part of the reason for a significant increase in Latino voters in the state......Read More
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What you need to know
As the week-long trial on Texas' redistricting battle nears its finish line, testimony Wednesday washed the 2013 Legislature — the body of lawmakers who adopted the court-drawn state House and congressional maps still in place — back to shore. Here's what you need to know:
• It's been a legal squabble years in the making. Did the Republican-dominated Legislature in 2011 intentionally discriminate against Latino and black voters in redrawing the state's House and congressional maps? That's what the state of Texas and minority groups have gone back and forth over for six years. A panel of federal judges this spring ruled they did, but here's the catch — those maps never took effect. Instead, the same judges created temporary maps before the 2012 elections, and with the backing of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott and Gov. Rick Perry, the Legislature in 2013 eventually adopted them......Read More
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WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, a Bryan Republican, called on President Trump to eject his children from the White House in light of continuing revelations over their activities in the 2016 presidential campaign.
"I'm going out on a limb here, but I would say that I think it would be in the President's best interest if he removed all of his children from the White House," Flores told East Texas affiliate KBTX Thursday morning. "Not only Donald Trump, but Ivanka and Jared Kushner." ....Read More
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The nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy group is rebranding. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), currently wrapping up its annual convention in Phoenix,
has announced
that it will be changing its name to UnidosUS. President Janet Murguia said that the name change was three years in the making, and came in response to members who felt that the NCLR name was outdated.
The new name deliberately leaves out any punctuation, so that the part following “Unidos” — Spanish for “united” — can be pronounced as “U.S.” or “us.”.....Read More
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After a cacophonous two weeks of political news, a new sound has begun to emerge from Washington: the word “impeachment.” Following the
news
that President Trump may have tried to bully FBI director James Comey out of investigating Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia, Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent,
told CNN
that recent allegations, if true, are already making impeachment hearings more likely. Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, became the first congressman to
call for Trump’s impeachment
from the House floor. And even some Republicans in blue-leaning districts, such as Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, have
begun to entertain impeachment
as a possibility.... Read More
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LOS ANGELES –Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., has introduced articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, making good on a promise he made to move the process forward.
Sherman, an 11-term Democrat who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, was the first to draft and circulate articles of impeachment last month. He formally introduced the measure, HR 438, on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.... Read More
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SAN ANTONIO — When Texas leaders approved a tough new immigration enforcement law known as SB4, they did so in a state that has had a long, continuing and sometimes unacknowledged struggle for equity by the state’s residents of Mexican descent.
That struggle has existed since before Texas became a state and has ranged from mob violence and massacres — some perpetrated by the Texas Rangers — to voting and employment discrimination and school and housing segregation. More recently, courts have declared the state’s voter ID law and redistricting maps discriminatory.......Read More
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Harris County will not sue the State of Texas over SB4, the new state law that will allow members of law enforcement agencies to ask the public about immigration status and the Commissioners Court meeting got heated when the matter was discussed on Tuesday.
Immigration activists and elected officials urged the Commissioners to join the lawsuit against SB4.
Texas State Senator Sylvia Garcia was among those who voiced their concerns and told the Court, “[T]his bill cannot be implemented without racial profiling and that’s what it will lead to.”...Read More
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A federal district court in San Antonio will begin a weeklong hearing Monday on Texas' lengthy legal battle over electoral maps that could affect future elections in the state.
A three-judge panel will begin the second leg of a two-part trial on whether the electoral maps drawn by the Legislature illegally discriminated against minorities.......Read More
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