At The Nation, Jae Jones writes—Prairie View University has a long history of political engagement, but for the first time several students ran for local office and won two open seats:
Prairie View A&M students haven’t forgotten Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old alumna of their [Texas] school who was found hanged in a Prairie View jail cell after state police arrested her in a minor traffic stop. Neither have they forgotten when a local officer Tasered Jonathan Miller, the youngest member of Prairie View’s City Council and alumni of their school, for “suspicious activity.”
That was 2015. By 2016, Donald Trump—who ran on a campaign that promised to give more power to the police—was president.
President Obama’s farewell address included a call to those listening to “grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself,” encouraging students to be the change they’d like to see. Three Prairie View A&M students took the former president’s advice, running for the two open seats in Prairie View City Council.
On May 6, both seats were filled by Prairie View students, one of whom is the youngest city council member in the state of Texas.
The results, according to Frank Jackson, former mayor of Prairie View and now Assistant Vice Chancellor for State Relations–Texas A&M System, show the power of young voices in the community. “If the students ever became truly organized, they could hold every political office in the city and key political offices in the county,” Jackson said. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“If your house is on fire, you don't comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don't sit idly back and think, ‘Oh well, that is the way of nature.’ You get going, immediately. And you don't spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don't, you won't have a place to live.”
~Bill Nye, Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World, 2015
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Failure at Gitmo:
Placed at the end of an article on Donald Rumsfeld's foreign policy iniatives, this time bomb and it is nothing less, says that our strategy of holding prisoners at Guantanamo has failed miserably. Rumsfeld's plan, which would bre ruled illegal in Australia and Britian to start with, is the clearest sign that our policy is a failure. The vast majority of our Cuban Gulag's prisoners clearly belong held as official POW's and not terrorists or some other ginned up definition.
Therefore, we have violated international law to hold POW's who could have been held in the US, under the eye of the Red Cross. What is even worse is that if they are released to their home countries, there is little chance of a successful prosecution there.
The US policy has treated Al Qaeda as a fixed paramilitary structure, like the PLO, where there are clear lines of command. AQ is nothing of the sort. Osama has the people he personally controls and a group of people he funds like a grant board. If he likes a plan. the venture capitalist of terror then ships some money their way. He doesn't seek to run every operation.
So holding children and legitimate combatants in a gulag under the broiling Cuban sun is not only a policy we can no longer sustain, it is a tremendous waste of time and effort.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin on Trump’s abdication of U.S. world leadership, and who’ll pay for it politically at home.
Armando on Trump’s power to stop Comey’s testimony. Grifters target families at the heart of Trump’s immigration rhetoric. 1%ers move the debt ceiling up.
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