Atatiana Jefferson | Aaron Dean
In what’s becoming an familiar and sickening scenario, Fort Worth resident Atatiana Jefferson was murdered in her own home by police officer Aaron Dean, who was supposed to be doing a welfare check. Summoned by a neighbor—who knew Ms. Jefferson’s mother had been having health problems and saw her door open late at night—the responding officers didn’t identify as police. Instead, they parked around the corner from the house, didn’t knock or announce their presence, walked through a gate and into the backyard, and then Dean pointed his flashlight into Ms. Jefferson’s window. As a result, Ms. Jefferson thought there was an intruder trying to get into her house while she played video games with her 8-year-old nephew, took her legally-owned and registered handgun from her purse in case she had to defend herself. Still not identifying as police, the officers started screaming “Put your hands up. Show me your hands!" while they shot Ms. Jefferson through the window. The shooting was immediately condemned by the interim police chief and the Fort Worth mayor, who have both stated that Jefferson had every right to possess a weapon inside her home. Aaron Dean resigned (before he could be fired) and has been charged with murder. (WFAA)
If you’re a woman, a person of color, or a member of the LGBTQI community, you’ll want to avoid downtown Dallas this Thursday. The Orange Occupant will be at the American Airlines Center on October 17th for a hate rally with his followers. Although Dallas consistency votes blue in national elections, there are still plenty of bigots, misogynists, and people ignorant enough to be duped by the GOP Cult to give him the chanting, sycophant audience he craves. For those of us trying to get away from at the stench, Beto O’Rourke will be holding a counter rally in nearby Grand Prairie to confront the Mango Mussolini’s "dangerous hatred and division." (El Paso Times)
Slytherin chooses a new Head Boy
At long last, the full recording of a conversation between Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) and Michael Quinn Sullivan, CEO of the hardline conservative group Empower Texans has been released. Besides what we already knew—that Bonnen offered Sullivan press credentials for his group in exchange for politically targeting sitting House members—new information emerged too. The conversation included their contempt for local leaders (especially women) and plans to punish the cities (which usually vote blue) by taking away major revenue streams local governments use to finance everything from public transit agencies, major sporting venues, corporate relocations, and some emergency response services. Author Justin Miller summarized it perfectly when he called it confirmation of the “cynicism, vindictiveness, and ugliness at the heart of the Republican politics.” (The Texas Observer)
Waiting for decent healthcare
Texas is the most uninsured state in the U.S., and it comes as no surprised that crushing medical debt is affecting people of color more than any other group. A report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities showed how “neighborhoods of color are disproportionately affected by medical debt with 29% saddled by it compared with 23% of consumers in white neighborhoods.” Many factors contribute to these debt inequities, including income inequality, different unemployment rates, and disparities in health insurance coverage. As a result, people of color are more likely to delay treatment, resulting in worsening health problems. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
Texas is one of only nine states where citizens don’t have to pay personal income taxes. Many politicians on both sides of the aisle see this as a contributing factor to the “low-tax, pro-growth approach that has fueled the state’s robust economic expansion” while others see it as a major hindrance to providing public services. In November, Texans will be asked to vote on Prop 4, a constitutional amendment prohibiting the imposition of an individual income tax. While the sponsors of the bill say it’s necessary to keep Texas’ economy strong, opponents say it’s unnecessary because the Texas Constitution already requires majority voter approval to create an individual income tax. (KXAN)
Mini-Rant – The Second Amendment: For Whites Only
Meeting of Micro-Penis Anonymous
When I was a child, my father had two rifles, a shotgun, and a .38 handgun in the house but, since becoming an adult, I’ve never had a gun or kept one in my home. But if I did decide to own a gun, white privilege would make it much less complicated for me than for a person of color. As the 2016 murder of Philando Castile or the recent murder of Atatiana Jefferson shows, people of color are in much more danger when they try to assert their Second Amendment rights.
Republicans revel in using the “big, scary Black man” trope to terrify their racist cult members. Add guns into the mix and you have an all-purpose horror story that can be used to smear Black Democrats like Stacey Abrams in Georgia. In fact, a 2018 poll by Survey Sampling International/ResearchNow showed that attitudes about gun rights change significantly depending on the race of the gun owners being discussed. As Michael Moore illustrated in Bowling for Columbine, denying gun rights has been a racial issue for years and there’s a strong correlation between the KKK and the NRA.
When Atatiana Jefferson was murdered in her home last week by policeman Aaron Dean, she had taken her legally-owned and registered handgun from her purse to defend herself and her 8-year-old nephew from what she assumed were people trying to break into her home. Although defending herself with a gun isn’t illegal in Texas, you can be sure that Dean’s defense team (he’s already been charged with murder) will use the fact that a person of color had a gun as justification for the shooting.
The truth is that the so-called defense of the Second Amendment has always been a tool of white supremacy and will continue to be so until we can pass major gun reform legislation in this country. For example, in the aftermath of the Civil War, Southern states passed a series of laws known as Black Codes that defied the Second Amendment by restricting former slaves’ right to bear arms. Mississippi banned Black residents from owning guns or Bowie knives. Alabama prohibited Black residents from owning or carrying any “deadly weapon.” Florida required Black residents to have approval from a judge before acquiring guns. Reconstruction did little to prevent laws like this from created repeatedly throughout the South and Jim Crow encouraged them. Later, the NRA helped write gun laws that left the ability to obtain a gun license to the discretion of local police. Those laws were used to deny a permit to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., after his house was firebombed in 1956.
In one of the most blatant examples of racist gun laws, the “Panther Bill” passed in California in 1967 banned open carry as a direct response to the Black Panthers signature tactic of openly carrying and displaying weapons to protect themselves and other Black leaders after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Medger Evers. It was eagerly approved by the NRA (yes, you read that right—the NRA approved open carry restriction) and signed by Ronald Reagan (what a surprised). Although many states, including Texas, have new open carry laws, there has never been a case (that I could find) of Black citizens being allowed to wave guns around in public the way the white gun nuts do.
Any serious discussion of gun reform needs to include this issue. In an article in The Nation about repealing and replacing the Second Amendment author Elie Mystal said:
“It was only in the 1970s that the National Rifle Association basically invented the new constitutional theory that the Second Amendment conferred a personal right to own military grade weapons for ‘self-defense.’ It was only in the 1980s that the Republican Party figured out that harping on this new interpretation of the Second Amendment was a good way to keep rural white people voting for Republicans and against their own economic interests.”
The timing would suggest that this new constitutional theory went hand-in hand with Nixon’s racist “Southern Strategy” that continues to plague us today. Acknowledgement of the racist origins and application of gun laws is necessary for true reform to take place and, like so many racial issues, it’s past time we dealt with it.
