2/10 Greenwatch TV (public access)
2/11 Health Care for All Texas - Houston Chapter
2/12 Roy Zimmerman Fundraiser for KPFT News Dept.

Mon, Wed, Fri at 8pm, and Sun at 7pm: Food Not Bombs near Herman Square @ Smith and McKinney
Every Friday @ 7:30pm: Houston Indymedia Radio 90.1fm KPFT

By Hector A. Chavana, Jr. - OurNewAnahuac The Coalition In Defense Of the Community hosted a well-received event at Iglesisa Hispana Nueva Vida on Telephone Road. Tarsha Jackson made an emphatic opening call for black-brown unity and reminded us that in addition to a moral call for unity, our communities have several interests in common. Both of our communities have been victimized by a strong, strong profit motive surrounding the prison business. Pacho Arguelles co-opened with her, and did an excellent job in facilitating discussion.

Maria Jimenez shared a great review of the history of immigration reform, reminding the crowd that even though major immigration reform was signed into law during the Reagan administration, it only occured as a result of the people’s efforts.

The participants were right on point, with some people wondering why they should continue to support Obama, and Democrats in general, if the issue of immigration reform continued to be pushed to the side. Henry Cooper even warned politicians that if they didn’t watch it, they could expect many more Massachusetts, referring to the loss of a senatorial seat in what was taken for granted as a Democratic stronghold. [read full article] www.ournewanahuac.net

Update from the hearing: Texas Speakers included members of the Sierra Club, American Lung Association, Health Professionals for Clean Air, Youth impacted by asthma, and community activists fighting new coal plants in Texas. [photos] [audio]

from the open publishing newswire: Texas has the opportunity to be a leader, instead of a polluter and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is leading the way by proposing new ozone standards for the state that would make sure we have clean air to breathe. Right now the EPA is accepting public comments, and we need you at this hearing to show public support!

The Coal and Oil industries are going to come out with a vengeance. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Governor Perry have threatened to sue the EPA over this proposed ruling on ozone standards. We know Texans deserve standards that protect our families. For too long TCEQ has been issuing illegal air permits which got us into this air quality mess in the first place. There are TWELVE NEW coal plants proposed in Texas, and we already have 17 coal plants up and running (some of the dirtiest in the country). We deserve better. [read full article]

Related: EPA wants stricter smog pollution rules to protect public health

from the open publishing newswire: Flying below the radar during Houston’s low-key mayoral race was an undercurrent of anger toward immigrants. Right now the loudest voices are winning, and they are not voices of understanding or mercy, but of anger and division.

Leading the charge in linking immigrants as a scourge on Houston is Gary Blankinship (pictured), president of the Houston Police Officers Union. Following the shooting of Houston police officer Rick Salter in March 2009, Blankinship openly criticized Chief Hurtt and then Mayor Bill White for defending the City of Houston “sanctuary city” policy, a policy that does not allow officers to question the citizenship status of any person (General Order No. 500-5).

Blankinship’s sentiments reflect the general outrage that began prior to Officer Salter’s shooting. In September 2006 Houston police officer Rodney Johnson was shot to death by an undocumented immigrant the officer had just arrested following a routine traffic stop. Both shootings of law enforcement officers triggered intense criticism by Blankinship, which he expressed in an op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle and American Police Beat.

With a strong Mayor-Council form of government, Mayor Parker’s choice of Houston’s new police chief will set the tone for the Houston’s immigrant policy. If Mayor Parker and the new police chief were to listen to HPD Union President Gary Blankinship, immigrants would not be the only one living in fear, but whole Latino community. [read full article]

from the open publishing newswire: Sister Mawiyah was in Haiti when the earthquake hit on January 12. She has been doing missionary work there for the last 23 years and made it her home for the last five years. The name of her organization is Haitian American Ministries. Bro. Kofi had been notifying us that she was missing during the earthquake and was not responding. But around 2:00am on the morning of January 14, he received a text message from her that confirmed she was alive in the midst of thousands being found dead.

"Inside the cyber cafe, everything was fine. But once we stepped outside, it was chaos," said Sis. Mawiyah. "Concrete buildings had fallen. There was rubble all over. Where can you run in the middle of an earthquake? So everyone ended up standing in the middle of the street. And even as I'm sitting here talking to you, it seems so surreal. When it first happened I was in shock like everyone else. But the tremors continued. Even until the day I left on Saturday, tremors were still occurring," she said in a slurred tone. She described an unforgettable image of a woman running down a mountain covered in blood and dust and yelling that her home had collapsed and her baby girl was still trapped. "That was within five minutes of the earthquake," said Sis. Mawiyah. [Full article with photos]

Coverage from indymedia.us: Independent Reporting and Mutual Aid Initiatives in Haiti Continue; Supporters in US Hold Vigil | Fresh Stuff from Mediahacker: No help forthcoming for Haitian journalists determined to keep broadcasting | Plane full of medicine turned away while health workers strain to treat patients in Port-Au-Prince | Tell CNN to stop hyping fears of violence in Haiti.

from the open publishing newswire:Planed Parenthood moving to a new bigger facility got churches across the country to ship thousands of folks here to Houston on Martin Luther King day to protest abortion and womens access to safe and affordable health services.

Pro-Choice and feminist groups were able to mobilize a small number of folks (honestly, at around 30 this is bigger than many Houston protests) but it was dwarfed by the thousands of carpetbaggers who came to protest Planned Parenthood.

The fact that abortion is currently legal seems to create a lack of urgency for folks to stand up and support safe and legal abortion services. It seems clear from Monday that there is a large well organized movement to deny women the right to safe and legal abortion. Beyond abortion, Planned Parenthood primarily provides womens health services like pap smears and contraception primarily to young and low income women. The regional CEO of Planned Parenthood published a list of 10 reasons why Houston needs Planned Parenthood, which discusses the abysmal lack of health care for poor people in Houston and Texas and our astronomically high teen pregnancy rate. [Full Article with Photos]
Related: On January 23rd, thousands of pro-life activists and governor Rick Perry descended on the Austin capital to declare Texas a "pro-life state." This is footage from the counter-protest. [view article]

from the open publishing newswire: Brandon Neely is one of the founders of Houston Iraq Veterans against the War and was spoken out at length about his experiences in the Army in Iraq, and as a military police officer at Camp X Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba. Brandon participated in the Winter Soldier Gathering in Austin, and has spoken with the UC Davis based Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and on the Rachel Maddow Show.

This most recent story about Brandon by the BBC is amazing in that it shows the capacity and courage of individuals to make amends and stand up for justice. Brandon takes the really brave step of reaching out to folks detained in Guantanamo with the goal of apologizing for the mistreatment they experienced being detained by the US military, and the role that he played in it.

It is also quite brave of Shafiq and Ruhal to be willing to meet with Brandon and speak about their experience on television as well to accept his apology. Shafiq and Ruhal both appreciate Brandon's apology, and his sharing his experiences about Guantanamo, because it corroborates the story they have been telling, which was meet with skepticism by a public, where large sectors of the population buy into the mainstream media narrative that everyone detained at Guantanamo was a terrorist, and for that matter, that most muslims are terrorists. While Shafiq and Ruhal really appreciate Brandon's apology, they put the blame where it belongs saying "I dont hold you responsible" and "its the government that needs to apologize" [read full article]

Watch the Show - Tales from Guantanamo: Part one - the guard's story | Part two - the reunion

1/17 Update: Rainforest Action Network activists held banners with the slogan "Energy Shouldn't Costs Lives", along the finish line of the Houston Chevron Marathon while runners wearing red T-shirts bearing the message "I'm Running for Emergildo Criollo, Ask Chervon Why", participated in the Houston Chevron Marathon's 5K race. RAN is asking Chevron to clean up it's toxic practices in Ecuador [article with photos]

from the open publishing newswire: A team that is running for human rights in Ecuador at this Sunday's Chevron Houston Marathon was just kicked out of the marathon's Expo by Chevron Marathon Managing Director Steven Karpas. The runners had paid for a table to distribute "I'm Running for Human Rights" stickers and information about Chevron's refusal to clean up over 18 billion tons of toxic oil sludge they are responsible for in the Ecuadorean rainforest.

Managing Director Steven Karpas told the Rainforest Action Network team, "higher ups at Chevron are freaking out" and threatened to arrest the peaceful runners. Police then ejected the runners from the city-owned and operated building for exercising their right to free speech.

"We are outraged that Chevron would deny marathon participants the right to run for what they believe, in our case, human rights in Ecuador," said Rainforest Action Network runner Maria Ramos. "It is sad that the Chevron Houston Marathon - which raises awareness and money for many important causes - would deny the rights of participants to appease a corporate sponsor that is clearly ashamed of its human rights record." [Read Full Artice]

Background: We can Change Chevron - I’m Running for Emergildo | www.changechevron.org

On January 12th, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. The earthquake was centered ten miles southwest of Haiti's capital Port-Au-Prince and was the largest earthquake to strike the Caribbean nation in more than two centuries. Buildings have collapsed and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN he believed more than 100,000 people have died. Among the buildings that collapsed were the Presidential Palace, the UN headquarters and at least one hospital in the capital.

from the open publishing newswire: I read a Tweet from my long-time friend Lump, who called upon us to meet him at the Multi-Ethnic Center in the southwest area at 8:00pm to drop off donations tonight. I got excited! We all met over there and walls were aligned with donations all over the place. Instead of just dropping off, we ended up staying there to volunteer for nearly two hours. According to organizers at the center, there is a great need for medical supplies as well as financial donations. The donations will be shipped via FedEx planes directly to Haiti. If you would like to volunteer at the center, it is located at 9819 Bissonnet and will be open from 7am-10pm every day this week.[full story with photos]

Ansel Herz is an Austin based indymedia reporter, and blogger with Mediahacker.org. He has been in Haiti since September as a independent journalist. He is doing fine, and trying to cover the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. He has appeared on CNN and Democracy Now! Ansel has posted (graphic) video from Port Au Prince in the moments after the earthquake.

The NGO-industrial complex and religious charities are spamming and phonebanking like crazy. Groups on the left are saying the immediate task for progressives and revolutionaries for the next couple of days is to try and capture some of this flood of resources for the grassroots organizations of the Haitian people.

Support: Haiti Action Relief Fund | Partners in Health | Pastors for Peace | Grassroots International
More Coverage: Indybay: Largest Earthquake in 200 Years Devastates Haiti | Bill Quigley: Ten Things the US Can and Should Do for Haiti | True/Slant: US debt policies left Haiti vulnerable to catastrophe | TransAfrica Forum: Temporary Protected Status for Haitians | Naomi Klein: Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again | Miami Autonomy and Solidarity: Call for Solidarity and Funds for the Working People of Haiti!

While Houston Indymedia looks backs on the struggles of social movements in 2009, Free Press Houston likes to keep things in perspective by keeping track of and calling out the Worst of Houston:

from the open publishing newswire: That dreaded time has come to call out the worst of the worst. While 2009 was a great year in many respects it was also a turdfest. But you have to call em’ like you see em’. The first step in solving a problem is identifying it and that's what we are here to do. Problem is, we all live in a glass house yet we must throw these stones. So we have taken the time to be introspective and call ourselves out just a little this year. Read up and enjoy. [Read the full article]

Including: Worst Thing to Happen to the Gay-berhood, Worst Gentrification, Worst Professor, Worst Neighbors, Worst Tabouli, Worst Portent for Montrose Residents, Worst Timing for a Major Political Announcement, Worst of Houston Anarchists, Worst Deliverer of Change as Promised by a Harris County Elected Official

freepresshouston.com

Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ban, Texas has continued to send mentally retarded criminals to death row. Will a Mexican immigrant's case correct this injustice?
In 2002, six years after Daniel Plata landed on Death Row, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Atkins v. Virginia that “executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual.” Even though mentally disabled people can understand the difference between right and wrong, the court reasoned that they are less able to control impulsive behavior or learn from mistakes. The court supported its decision by pointing to bans on executing the mentally retarded in 17 states and in federal cases as “evolving standards of decency.”

Like most of the states that had already passed bans, the justices used a clinical definition to establish the level of mental retardation that would exempt Daryl Atkins, the Virginia defendant, from death: below-average intellectual abilities defined by an IQ score of 70 or below and “deficits in adaptive behavior” such as practical and social skills. Both of these limitations, the court ruled, had to be present before the age of 18.

But the court left it up to the states to choose their own definitions of mental retardation. Since 2002, eight more states have passed laws that use the clinical definition cited in Atkins. Texas is not one of them. With bipartisan support, the Texas Legislature passed a law in 2001 mandating a life sentence for mentally retarded people convicted of capital crimes. But Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the measure, agreeing with critics that it was a “backdoor attempt to ban the death penalty.” Bans on executing the mentally retarded have been floated in every legislative session since but have never again come up for a vote. [article on newswire] [full article with video on the Texas Observer Website] Renee Feltz (HIMC Alum!) spoke about this story on Democracy Now! on January 12th

Below is a chronological listing of the news features created by the Houston Indymedia editors in 2009. We use articles and content published to the HIMC newswire by DIY journalists and community activists to construct features for our central column. The more than 80 features we made this year are based on the hundreds of articles, photos, video and audio pieces uploaded to the newswire by volunteer reporters and activists covering the protests and social movements that organized and struggles this year in Houston. Thanks for reading, thanks for struggling, thanks for publishing! View the round up of 2009

Year in review features from previous years: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Features going back to 2002

2009 marked the 10 year anniversary of the indymedia experiment. The first indymedia website was created in November of 1999 to cover the protests of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Many took this time to look back: Ten Years Later: Still No to the WTO! | N30 + 10 years - Remembering and celebrating "The day the political landscape changed forever"

from the open publishing newswire: In Houston, Annise Parker became the Mayor of the nations 4th largest city. The openly gay Parker took her oath today in front of a thousand supporters – her long-time partner held the bible upon which she swore. Outside, a handful of protestors from the Westboro Baptist Church held hate filled signs and were met by about 40 counter protestors who held a dance party in celebration – Chuck Jackson was among them.

“Most of us there know that the Westboro Baptist Church’s message of hate is ridiculous and it’s pointless, but we didn’t want the mainstream media to show up and film them without a visible critique of their presence. Our music and our dancing was a kind of joyful expression of inclusion designed to counter their dourness and hostility.”

Voters in Texas have outlawed gay marriage and a Houston city referendum on granting benefits to same-sex partners of city employees failed [article and link to audio]. Counter protesters responded to calls for a Big Happy Dance Party and pumped up the jams till the Westboro Baptists went back to Kansas. [see photos from the protest]

from the open publishing newswire: More than 1,300 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were killed during 22 days of Israeli shelling from sea, air and land. Palestinians in Gaza had nowhere to flee from Israel's onslaught as the border has been closed.

On December 27, 2008, Israel began its bombardment on Gaza and then on January 3, 2009 began its ground offensive. The bloody operation in Gaza came after the expiration of a six-month-long ceasefire between Israel and resistance groups in Gaza, including Hamas. However, Israel failed to ease the embargo on the Gaza Strip that continues to cripple economic life further creating a humanitarian crisis, and was one of Israel's obligations under the ceasefire. Although Israel unilaterally withdrew its illegal settler population from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it remained the occupying power as it controlled the borders, sea and airspace, as well as the population registry.

A December 2009 report prepared by Oxfam International, Amnesty International UK, United Civilians for Peace, Christian Aid, and a dozen other international NGOs found that even one year later, Due to the Israeli embargo which blocks goods and equipment from entering Gaza, Gaza residents are being prevented from rebuilding the extensive damage to their shattered society. Many feel that the world community and Arab world have done little to stop Israel, despite the pledged aid for the re-building of Gaza. Here in Houston hundreds gathered to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of the Israeli attack on Gaza. [full article with audio]

Houston Indymedia has changed the wording of our Mission Statement, which sits on the about page and serves along with the Action Guidelines as the document new participants sign. The wording of the new statement is:

"The Houston Independent Media Center is an all volunteer collective committed to using media production and distribution as tools for promoting social and economic justice. We seek to provide alternatives to for-profit media not only in our coverage, but also within our collective by implementing consensus based non-hierarchical work-group models of decision making. While focusing on local social movements, we will explore connections to global systems. We believe that by reporting on dissent, by critiquing corporate, government and military domination, and by promoting art, culture and critical thinking through participatory events, we can contribute to the development of an equitable and sustainable society."

Some of the significant changes since the previous Mission Statement from early 2001 includes that we are all volunteers, that we are focusing on social movements, that we reporting on dissent, and that our events are intended to be participatory.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer with us at Houston Indymedia, please send an email to: houston at indymedia dot org