Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the week of September twenty eighth, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the people's news. Another execution
in Texas. Striking workers continue their battle with a downtown hotel.
The same old target for the Republican Party gets trotted
(00:23):
out again. Trans people get the blame again. Terror County
judge has a temper tantrum. Another legend lost as film
star and philanthropist Robert Redford dies. All that and more
on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This is the
people's News, and the people's News starts now. The strike
(00:52):
of Houston Hotel workers continues at the Hilton America's hotel
in downtown Houston. More workers are joining the fight for
higher weight and respect, with the lowest paid workers earning
an hourly wage of only sixteen dollars an hour. Convention
center workers will be calling for a living wage of
at least twenty three dollars an hour as the cost
of living in Houston remains on the rise. Fellow union
(01:16):
members joined the striking workers this week at a protest
at Houston City Hall to bring to focus the ongoing
strike and the lack of a contract being brought to
the table. The City of Houston owns the hotel, but
contracts out the operating of the hotel to a secondary company.
Unite twenty three, the organization that represents the striking workers,
(01:39):
say that they're not being taken very seriously even though
the hotel is looking to make billions on the upcoming
FIFA World Cup coming to Houston. We talked to Francesca Cabalo,
Texas Chapter president of Unite here Local twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, we're still out here. This is day twenty three
of the strike. We announced last Friday that we're extending
the strike for three more weeks until October twelfth. So
the workers are still hanging in there, still holding strong,
you know, to fight for what they deserve.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
What is uh, what's what's management saying right now? Uh?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, we know, I mean the Hilton is definitely feeling pressure.
I know there's conversations happening this week. Don't have any
real update right at the moment, but you know, we're
planning to go to city Hall tomorrow, you know, to
continue the pressure on the city and on Houston first.
Who are the owners of the hotel? So you know,
(02:38):
we still were sticking to our plans and continue to
to uh you know, mount the pressure so that Hilton,
you know, comes to the table with a real offer.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is the branding name Hilton, are they is the company
itself Hilton seeing anything?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Uh, there hasn't been any meaningful movement in bar gonnaing
as of yet as far as the wages to go.
So as of right now, you know, things still stand
the same, you know, which is why you know, we
are planning to go to city Hall tomorrow, you know,
so it's sort of announced like any upbates we might have,
(03:18):
like like you mentioned, know this this conversation is happening,
but you know, we have not you know, been able
to sort of get what those specific updates are at
the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
The city said they we're gonna do there, We're gonna
especially the mayor said he was going to try to
put more pressure on the company to settle just just
wage dispute. Has that done anything?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well? The mayor did postpone his State of the City
address which was supposed to be happening this week, So
that's kind of like, you know, that speaks louder than
than words, right, so incited the the Negoshta ongoing negotiations here,
so we definitely see that as a form of pressure
from the city to the company.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Has it been I know, I know you say that
the workers are strong. How long can they come?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I mean as long as it takes. Right now, this
latest extension is until October twelfth, you know, worker, of course,
it's a sacrifice. You know, we are you know, we're tired,
but you know, the you know, the workers have the
drive to keep going because, I mean, the way things
are going here in Houston, the way the economy is going,
(04:32):
workers cannot afford to, you know, just accept whatever men
you offer that the company has put on the table
thus far. So you know, despite being tired and frustrated,
workers are still holding strong and because they know that
this is the right thing to do, and they know
that this is what it takes to win you know,
the life changing wages and proposals that we are fighting for.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And then I'll just add that, you know, the workers
have been struggling much longer, you know, than this strike
you know, has has gone on. So it's a much
you know, it's a sacrifice, but you know the gain
and the long run is gonna be much greater. And
you don't have a great outcome on them where can.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Of course, you guys are still taking donations and you
give it that ways of donating time and listen.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, definitely, we have a strike fund, We have a
go fund meme that's on our like social media pages,
and we've received a lot of support from the community
and like other unions, which has been amazing. But you know,
with this, with this extension, you know, it wasn't something
that was planned ahead of time. So like any donation
really counts, and it's going straight to the workers so
(05:42):
that they can you know, take care of what they
need financially, but also stay focused on the fight, you know,
and and stay on the picket line. So any donations
and contribution is a big help to us.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Can you have you seen any signs of a company
failing to meet their obligations as far as the work
that needs to be done, well.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean just the fact that these groups have been
like postponing and you know, canceling their events obviously that
that definitely hurts the pocketbook of the company and these companies,
I mean these groups you know saying straight up it's
because they're not going to cross the picket line. Or
they don't want to deal with the labor dispute, you know.
So obviously the company is feeling financially hurt by that.
(06:29):
And we know we have workers out here on strike
that have been working for the hotel for twenty years,
you know, so they can try and bring in you know,
temporary employees things like that, but it's never going to
be the same quality, right as the workers that have
put you know, so many years of their life into
the into the company. So of course, of course it's
not the same.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I'm just gonna say, and again, you're getting support from
a lot of the local unions and national unions. Great, yes,
and how's that? How has that been a bit of
fit to the worker as far as the emotionally, No,
it's been great.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I mean we've had so many union members from other
unions and other leadership from other unions come out to
the picket line to come out and give talks to
the workers and just sit and get to know the workers,
and that that's a boost. This is a morale boost
for sure for the workers. This is the first hotel
strike in Texas history, so it's something historic and the
(07:26):
community and other union leaderships and memberships have been coming
out and so the workers definitely feel supported and appreciated. So,
you know, with this extension, we you know, we welcome
that and we hope to see more because it's not
easy what the workers are doing, but any boost of
morale like that, it's really important to the workers to
(07:48):
know that they have the support to keep going.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And it didn't support the community also, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
so many community groups have come through to the picket line, donated.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Money, food, their time. You know, it's been amazing to see,
you know, he's been come together in that way and
the workers, like I said, the workers really appreciated and
to note that they're not alone in this.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
That was Francesca Caballo, Texas Chapter president of Unite here
Local twenty three. They are extending their strike until October twelfth,
and we will continue to follow it on the people's News.
They have a GoFundMe at Unite twenty three. Texas executed
its fifth person this year as thirty five year old
Blaine Milam was executed by the State of Texas Thursday night.
(08:34):
He was convicted of the murder of Amora Carson in
his trailer in East Texas along with his girlfriend, Jessica Carson,
Blaine Milam's girlfriend at the time, claimed that the thirteen
month old daughter of the girlfriend was possessed by the devil.
There was evidence that mylem was innocent, but a stay
of execution was denied by the US Supreme Court. Gloria
(08:57):
Rubik of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement talked about
the execution.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Thursday, the twenty fifth of September, Texas executed an msent man.
His name was Blaine Milem. He was put to death
in hunts Hill. There was a large group of us
they're protesting, and he was very good friends with some
(09:27):
of the activists, including Danny who is the host of
the prison show on KPFT. In fact, Danny witnessed the execution,
and so did another activist who is the daughter in
law of Robert Robertson, who's the next person's scheduled to
be executed. And Robertson's daughter in law, Jennifer, visited him
(09:55):
for his last visits, as did Danny, and then after
the execution, they actually got to go to the church
where they take the body and they got to hug
him and tell him goodbye, and Jennifer posted that, you know,
(10:18):
for fifteen years he hadn't had a human touch except
the guard staking him down or something, and then now
that he's dead, they let us hug him and so on.
She said, it just doesn't make any sense. But his
case was interesting because it involved the horrible murder of
(10:40):
a little girl who was the child of the woman
he was living with. And the mother is the person
that actually killed her. And the mother apparently has some
serious mental illnesses and decided that her little girl was
possessed by the devil. He needed an exorcism, and in
(11:05):
the one of the last appeals that was filed on
his behalf with the Supreme Court, they actually named her
mental illness and it has like eight or ten syllables.
I'd never heard of it, but she really killed that
little girl. Robert was in the house and had nothing
(11:27):
to do. Actually, I'm not even sure if he was
in the house when it happened, but they lived together.
So the DA said, well, we found his his blain's
violence DNA all over the house. Well, duh, he lived there,
so how can you use that against anybody? That doesn't
(11:49):
make sense. And the child had been bitten, and they
said it matched Blaine's teeth. Well, that science is very
outdated and no longer allowed in criminal trials. People have
been what was his name, Ray Crone was exonerated after
(12:11):
ten years. He was convicted on mark evidence. He wound
up getting a nice paycheck. I can't remember what to
stay he was in but because they wrongfully convicted him
some evidence, so there was really no evidence pointing to
blame's guilt or him having anything to do with it. Actually,
(12:33):
in facts, he I think he has a relatively low IQ.
He only finished fourth grade, which may or may not
say anything. But he was a little naive because when
he realized that this baby had been murdered, he told
(12:56):
the woman, we'll call the police. Well, the police came,
they rested both of them, and he told the police
the sense of like something a child would say. He
told the police, well, would I get in trouble if
I just said I did it so that she could
go home? And the police looked at him like, what
(13:16):
are you talking about? But so to me, that really
shows his at least how not easy he was, and
also that he was in it because he won't know
if he'd get in trouble if he said he did it,
(13:36):
so that was a very sad case. All the details
about this case really didn't come out until I guess
the last maybe three or four months of his life,
when they started filing his attorneys started filling a lot
of appeals and explaining what had happened and explaining that, yeah,
(13:58):
his DNA was in the house he lived there, so
that's nothing. And by mark science has been totally discredited.
It's no longer a science. So I know that when
Danny the prison shill Post visit him that last morning
before he was executed, they keep him at death Throw
(14:21):
till noon and then they drive him from Livingston, which
is where death Row's housed, to Huntsville, but they get
to have visits up until noon. And he told her,
he said, you know, I'm just glad that the truth
has finally come out, that people know what's happened. He said,
that really makes me feel better because for a long
(14:44):
time people just thought I was a monster, and I'm not.
So Danny said that was really the only good thing.
That he was happy that the truth had come out,
but he knew that they were going to kill him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And this latest execution is what does that make for
this year?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Five, which isn't a lot. And I want to make
one point. You know, there's been quite a number of
executions this year in the United States, and people are saying,
oh my god, we're gonna everything's gonna keep going and
we're not near the end, and blah blah blah. That
is not true, because well, Florida has killed out of
(15:30):
ten or fifteen people this year and they still got
some more, I believe. But the facts are that the
defficulty is going away. Texas executed five people this year.
Back in nineteen ninety eight, I think there were ninety
nine executions in the country. In ninety nine, there was
(15:55):
one almost every week in Texas. There's fifty three weeks
in a year, and I think we had forty some
odd executions that year, which was just talk about the
machinery of death questioning. But the reason I say that
(16:18):
the death penalty is going away is executions are down.
They've gone down every year for the last decade. Public
support is down, and particularly when you give people the
alternative of life without parole, which I don't really like.
It's less than half the people in the country even
(16:38):
support the death penalty anymore. And juries are not sentencing
people to death anymore. You know, for years and years
and years, Texas had four hundred, four hundred and fifty
people on death row, and as soon as somebody was executed,
Houston or Dallas or San Antonio or for Worth would
(17:00):
send somebody to death row, and those beds kept getting
filled as people were being executed. That's not happening anymore.
Juries are not sentencing people to death very often. Texas
death row is down to one hundred and sixty I
(17:20):
think one hundred and sixty two men and there's seven women.
And like I say, so many years there was four
hundred and fifty. So juries aren't sentencing. Public support is
down and the numbers are down. It's going away. It's
just still taking victims along its way, but it's going
(17:44):
to disappoint. What do you say, why do you say
that given a life centix you're against giving people a
life citizen. Now I'm against anybody getting life without parole. Okay,
because most crimes, and obviously everybody on death rows innocent,
(18:04):
even though for every eight people executed, one is found innocent,
but most are guilty. Most haed lousey lawyers when they
went on trial. Most did not have money to hire investigators,
and what do you call it? People that can give
(18:27):
reasons why they shouldn't get death but life without parole.
There is really no point in somebody who's nineteen twenty
or twenty one or whatever doing something really awful going
to prison and staying until they're sixty or seventy years old.
(18:48):
We have people in wheelchairs in death row. We have
people who have to use a walker just to go
out for a visit. People are staying on death row
longer because attorneys are fighting and fighting and using every
appeal they can think of. So death row is becoming
(19:13):
a home for a lot of senior citizens. If somebody does,
you know, ten twenty years, they've become a changed person.
They're not the same stupid kid that got high and
went and went crazy and killed somebody. And a lot
(19:34):
of countries that do have the death penalty limited to
twenty years as the sentence. So I think that the
right wing in Texas, we didn't Texas didn't have life
(19:56):
without parole until two thousand and five.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Before that, if somebody was found innocent or there was
questions and they got commuted to life, they could get
out before their whole life was gone. Instead of some
of these men and women are not able to see
their kids grow up or their grandkids grow up. And
(20:25):
people like Rodney Reid has great grandkids. So no, I
hate life without parole. It just totally negates the truth
that people can redeem themselves, they can change, and they
can turn over.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
A new leaf. All right, before I go, you on
a Sara Secret passing? Before you go, what, oh would
you thus on a Sata Secruz passing?
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And what are you asking about Asaba her passing?
Speaker 5 (21:02):
You thought, Oh, I Well, to me, she's a hero.
She her passing is very sad. But she She was
a member of the Black Camping Party and then later
the Black Liberation Army. Her comrades freed her from prison.
(21:27):
They went in with gunn and held guards hostage and
kidnapped her from the prison. She has asked. She was
underground here for a couple of years, and then she
surfaced in Cuba. Cuba gave her political asylum and I
was so fortunate to spend a week in with her
in Cuba.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
She was she remained.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
The revolutionary, She remained committed to her principles that she
had had all her life, and and it's very sad
that she's gone. That she had gotten older, and you know,
things happen when you get to be seventy five, eighty
eighty five years old. I think she was close to eighty.
(22:15):
But yeah, her memory and her spirit and her revolutionary
love will live on.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
All right.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
And I want to tell you about a couple of
things coming up, if that's okay. Yeah, we got message
from the attorney for Robert Robertson, whose execution is actually
in I don't know, like three weeks, less than October sixteenth,
less than three weeks. But his attorney has asked all
(22:48):
his supporters to meet her at the state Capitol at
one o'clock next Saturday, October fourth. There's going to be
a press conference and then a rally, and there will
be some some of the Texas exanna rees joining the attorney,
(23:08):
not exoneries from death row, but people who did a
lot of time in prison and then were exonerated. They've
come out very strongly in support of him, and then
his attorneys have announced that he's not even they're not
even going to file for clemency for Robert, because when
(23:29):
you file for clemency. It's basically like, well, I'm sorry,
I've I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm not going
to do it again. He didn't do anything. In Robert
Robertson's case, there was no crime.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
That was Gloria Rubik of the Texas Death Penalty abolition movement.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
This is Steve Gallington, producer and host of the People's News.
The People's News is people powered news. We are free
to report the unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the
status quo of corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised
as real news. Shiny new one hour episodes of The
People's News drop each Sunday on The People's News Podcast.
(24:14):
Thanks for listening. The recent spikes in gun violence with
the killing of Charlie Kirk and the shooting in Minnesota,
Republicans have brought out their go to move when things
don't seem to be going their way, scapegoating the trans community.
If the news is not going your way, Republicans love
(24:36):
to find a disadvantaged group and attack them, and the
trans community, particularly black and brown trans people and young people,
have been the targets for many years. We talked with
Kathy Renna with the National LGBTQ Task Force about attacks
from the White House on down from Republicans blaming the
(24:59):
lgbt Q community for the right wing attacking their own I.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Think the more accurate way to say it is that
they're really trying to blame the trans community. There's a
tremendous amount of scapegoating that's happening lead you know, with
a sea of lies and misinformation, and I think one
of the biggest challenges is that the media is really
picking up these very preliminary, unfounded and then proven to
(25:28):
be inaccurate statements about any kind of engagement or involvement
of transgender individuals, any messaging that's you know, anti anti Trump,
that is coming from LGBTQ people and particularly trans people,
and you know, using phrases like transgender ideology, which is
(25:49):
really at the end of the day, feels like just
an attempt to erase the existence of trans people. You're
not even talking about people who are part of our
community as people, as human beings, and it's I think
it's really escalated to the point where we really need
to be increasingly concerned about it.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And one thing that that's missing from all this. I know,
we just had a couple of deaths right now, but
one thing that's missing the the deaths of assaults on
trans people across the country. We had two in Texas
on in the Houston area. It's gone, that's gone. That's
nobody's been nobody's been charged with the killing here in Houston.
(26:30):
But that seems to be a non issue right now.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
Well, I think that we understand that the media has
not done a good job forever, such a long time
of really covering the issue of anti LGBTQ violence, particularly
the epidemic of violence against trans sally trans women of color. Uh,
and it's only gotten it's only gotten worse given the
(26:54):
political climate we're living in. UH, that that these incidents
happen and that they are invisibilized. I mean they're not
They're not not only not responded to appropriately, often by
law enforcement, but even in local communities that are trying
to amplify these stories, that are trying to help the
public understand what our community is truly facing, is near
(27:15):
impossible with the lack of response from media. And so
even when communities organize, and they are organizing, it's it's
just it's it's beyond tragic that we're not seeing any
attention paid to the reality of trans people's lives, not
what is being perpetrated by white nationalists and anti LGBTQ
(27:37):
organizations and frankly a lot of our elected officials, which
is that you know, trans people are somehow the cause
of some of the violence and divisiveness we're seeing. It's
it's utterly ridiculous, but at the end of the day,
it's also extremely harmful.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
How are you the community going to fight against this,
because it's only going to get stronger when we look
at what the what was talked about at the ceremony
for the Charlie Kirk ceremony and a turning point and
they talking about putting turning point in classrooms now and
what they're teaching. How hard is that going to be
(28:13):
for your people that you work with in your organizations
to try to change people gratitudes. We're not We're not.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
We've never stopped doing it. We're only going to continue
to do it, and we need to do it even
more and we need the support more than ever of
everyone in our community, including of course our allies. I mean,
the challenge is that we face are multifold right. There's
the challenge of the attacks coming from the right. There's
a uh uh, the challenge of this see literally sea
(28:42):
of misinformation and lies and propaganda that's being put out there.
And we're also seeing what is extremely disappointing, which is
that so many folks who have stood with us, whether
that's corporations, whether that's selected officials, whether that's folks within
our even within our own community, who are not stepping
up to fill in these gaps of support that we're facing,
(29:04):
whether it's financial or whether it's you know it, boots
on the ground and folks in the streets and folks
calling their elected officials, and folks holding the media accountable.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
And none of us have.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
Stopped, not only not stopped doing the work. We're doing
more than ever, and unfortunately we're having to do it
with less resources. So you know what my message to
anybody who will listen is that if you are not
engaged as much as you possibly can be in this fight,
then you're going to look back one day and regret
that because if we don't do all we can now,
we're going to be in just an increasingly authoritarian environment
(29:38):
politically and socially, and culturally.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, I'd like to add to that, we've gone from
that type of houseile investment. But what do you say
the President of the United States President actually is just pushing,
pushing even more, even harder on issues of elsbachs you
as being the enemy, as being using and using that
(30:04):
with Christian organizations, also as being I mean.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
None of this is surprising, and frankly, none of it's new.
I mean, the pendulum swings back and forth. The fact
that we were making the projects that we were making
in the Obama years and the Biden years naturally has
led to backlash and we're seeing that in full force.
And so you know, at the end of the day,
like I said, this is going to take all of us.
And I think, you know, part of what we need
(30:29):
to do is fight like hell, and the other part
of what we do is to live our lives and
not let this destroy our spirits. We've been through very
difficult times before. You know, I talked to young people
about this all the time. If they didn't weren't born yet,
or didn't live through the AIDS pandemic in the eighties
and nineties, they don't realize that we dealt with a
(30:50):
government that also was more than happy to see us
die in large numbers. And it took our own community
coming together to really fight that and to fight for healthcare,
to fight for research, to fight for access to medications,
and to fight literally for the lives with our you know,
gay and queer brothers and sisters and other people who
(31:10):
were affected by HIV. You know, we had to fight
for the ability to serve in the military. We've had
to fight for marriage equality. We've had to fight for
every bit of the rights that we enjoy, and we've
seen backflighting. So we need to redouble our efforts. It's
pretty it's pretty clear just from the arc of history
that we know, we know that we will, we know
(31:31):
what we have to do, we understand the assignment, and
we've gotten through very challenging times before. I think the
difference here is that you're now dealing with essentially the
dismantling of institutions that were safety nets for us. We're
seeing our federal government fail in ways that are extraordinarily harmful,
whether it's a president who's talking about time and all
(31:52):
causing autism or saying vaccines don't work and taking away
money from PEP far and hundreds of thousands of people
they're dying because they don't have access to AIDS medication.
I mean, this is this is so much bigger even
than the escapegoating of parts of our community. I mean,
the White House is doing everything they can to create
chaos and fear. And that's what that's the first thing
(32:15):
we need to overcome is to understand in context that
we don't need to live in fear, that we actually
have still the means to fight back. And that's whether
that's by you know, while we still have it, engaging
in your free speech to speak out and and working
and supporting organizations and getting out in the streets and
and you know, and doing and voting and doing all
(32:36):
the things that we know, uh work in a free democracy.
The challenge is that our free democracy is very much
under threat, which should only make us more more engaged,
more inspired, more energized to really be part of the
part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Or we're sitting on the sidelines, old like and tell
(32:57):
us about some of the things that's going on. Nationalists
that you that you know, we have a game of
this coming up, and what else is going on?
Speaker 7 (33:05):
So you know.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
I mean, I think that the other really important thing
to do with all of this, right it sounds very overwhelming,
is we also have to again, like I said, live
our lives and not allow anyone, including the highest office
in the land, to take away our joy. So, you know,
while we are always in the process of you know,
working to raise resources and funds to do the work,
(33:28):
we also try and create spaces where we can also
be in community and experience queer joy. And so you know,
we do that in many ways of the task Force.
We do have coming up on October eleventh, which is
natural coming out today, our annual gala, which this year
is the BU Ball. It's going to amplify ballroom culture
and amplify the voices and lives and talents of particularly
(33:51):
black and brown trans siblings of ours, and celebrate them
in the community. We're also honoring individ Jewels who have
contributed greatly in South Florida, who are working to raise
money for organizations who are doing great advocacy. We're thrilled
that this year we're honoring David Jobin, who is a
(34:14):
philanthropic leader but also a cultural leader in the LGBT community,
not just even in South Florida, but nationally working with
choruses around the country from San Francisco to to South
Florida and Miami. Dominique Jackson from Poe's many folks know
her from her iconic role as as Oh my god,
(34:36):
totally blank you on her character's name, Electra Sorry, her
role as as Electra on on Poe. She's actually a
very good personal friend. She's going to be hosting and
is going to be bringing her again extraordinary voice, powerful
voice as a black trans woman who has done work
on the ground in the community for decades and is
(34:56):
also an incredibly talented, beautiful per who promotes kindness and
queer joy in everything she does. And we again, as
folks probably best know the Task Force. We have our
annual Creating Change Gathering, which is a convening of literally
thousands up to three thousand or so LGBTQ and allied
(35:18):
advocates who come together for political conversation, for leadership training,
for skills building. I mean, we've called it in the past,
we've called it a conference. It's really much more than that,
because it's it's a community convening and gathering that gives
us an opportunity to take stock and what we're dealing
with and work together and make connections and learn from
(35:40):
each other. But it's also an opportunity to again experience
queer joy. Parts of the conference include things like a
house fall and a cabaret evening events. You know, we
film screenings in addition to course, you know, more than
one hundred workshops and caucuses. It really is a way
to start off the year. As we approach the second
year of the stration in Washington, d C. This year
(36:02):
we're doing the gathering. We haven't been in DC for
more than a few years, and so I think people
are very excited to come together for creating change. But
also I'm sure there will be things happening in the streets,
whether it's a lobbying or whether it's protesting, that we'll
address what's happening in our nation's capital.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
All right and tell people how we get in touch
with your organization.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
Sure, you can find us very easily on social media.
It's the National LGBTQ task Force on Facebook, on LinkedIn,
We're on Instagram at the task Force. That's our main site.
You can then find all of the accounts for for example,
the Gala and Creating Change and you can get in
touch with us very easily online. We love hearing from folks.
(36:50):
We need volunteers for all of these events, so you know,
this is not simply about folks who you know are
able to buy a ticket right and support us financially.
We are very focused on what we like to call
radical welcome. So if you want to come to the
conference then it might be difficult for you financially, you
can volunteer and have your registration wave. You can volunteer
(37:10):
at the gala, and you can get engaged with us
in that way as well. We also do actually a
ton of virtual planning and training. We have our organizing
calls every month for activists. We have a boot camp
that we just had hundreds of people applied for that
we're going to be starting to do on a monthly basis.
So we're you know, we're as engaged as we possibly
(37:33):
can be, and we really honestly need and embrace and
welcome the support of anyone out there LGBTQ or allies
that are willing to be in the fight with us.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
That was Kathy Renna with the National LGBTQ Task Force.
You can find out more about her work at the
Task Force Action Fund all put together dot org. Republican
Tarren County Judge Tom O'Hare, using the convicted felon and
Governor Abbott's playbook, went after two Democratic Commissioner's Court Democrats,
(38:07):
Elisa Simmons and Roderick Miles. They were absent, which temporarily
denied him the fourth fifth quorum needed to amend the
county budget in a way that he knew they opposed.
He went on to cut their staff and any funds
that were already approved going into the areas of the
county that they support. We talked to Matt Angle with
(38:28):
the Lone Star Project before he went on to talk
about what happened in Terrant County. Richard asked him about
the situation in Dallas where a shooting occurred at the
Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office targeting immigrants. One
immigrant was dead and two others were seriously injured, and
the shooter died of a self inflicted gunshot. Here's Matt Angle, Well.
Speaker 7 (38:52):
I think we've got an extraordinary circumstance and that you've
got Republican office holders who are exploiting what was clearly
a horrible event. It was a horrible event when there
was political violence of any type. And it is a
tragedy in Dallas that you had two individuals badly wounded
(39:17):
and two who died, one of them an immigrant, and
that that's being exploited at every level by the Republicans
to make it a political issue and to create division
in a country that's already divided. Greg Abbott was shameful
as the governor of our state to use that as
(39:39):
a chance to attack Democrats and attack the left, when
there is no reason to think that any rhetoric led
to that other than the divisive rhetoric that we know
starts at the White House. And then I will tell
you it was also particularly galling to see Dallas Mayor
(40:01):
Eric Johnson way in. Eric Johnson got re elected as
Dallas mayor when he was a Democrat. He only switched
parties after getting reelected because Dallas is an overwhelmingly democratic city.
Kamala Harris got over sixty five percent of the vote,
Joden got over seventy percent. Eric Johnson's never once been
(40:24):
willing to put his name on the bout as a
Republican because he knows he would overwhelmingly be rejected. It
was an act of cowardice. And again, Eric's not looking
to really be anything other than a mascot for Republicans
because he'll never really be accepted as one. And it's
shameful that Dallas has now such a weak mayor and
(40:47):
then again such a governor that's not really willing to
provide leadership. But we've seen that over and over again
with Greg Abbott in times of crisis, he's at his
absolute worst. Whether it's a school shooting, whether it's a
terrible winter storm, whether it is a hurricane on our coast,
(41:07):
Abbot fails to rise to the occasion every single time.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
What do we know about the as far as as
how we're trying to tie.
Speaker 7 (41:17):
Us into the Democrats, Well, we don't know very much
about the incident because the shooter committed suicide. We do
know that there was shellcasings that were found that had
the word anti Ice on it, and so, you know,
it's reasonable to think that he was upset or at
(41:39):
least focused on the activities of Ice, But there's no
reason to believe that the rhetoric from Democrats or anybody
else spurred his actions. And then the truth of the
matter is that Democrats rhetoric is tame compared to Republicans.
For goodness sake, Donald Trump has called Democratic leaders and
(42:03):
called the press generally enemies of the state.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Uh. He's all but.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
Set our society on fire with rhetoric in order to
build a movement, and so any effort to somehow claim
that what Democrats are saying is causing acts of violence,
it's just not true. And what we know, of course, too,
(42:31):
is the study after study over the last twenty years
has shown that anti government actions are much more likely
to come from the far right way from anybody from
the list.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
And talking about let's talk about you. You were talking
about local politics for state politics, and we had a
we had a representative that has gotten a little bit
of trouble, and we want to talk about that a
little bit.
Speaker 7 (42:58):
Well, he's talking about Terren count And if you're talking
about the county judge in Tarrant County, I mean, we've
got a maga uh county judge in Tarrant County named
Tim O'Hare who really is trying to create a microcosm
of the of the destructive and divisive atmosphere that's in
Washington now. I mean, Parent County is a purple county
(43:22):
in which Democrats sometimes win top of ballot races, Republicans
barely win down ballot races. It's highly competitive, uh going
into this next election. And uh, the Tarrent County judge
over the past years has generally been kind of a
mainstream person, whether they were Republican or otherwise. Tim O'Hare
(43:43):
is a very different type. He's very destructive and uh
a divisive person.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (43:50):
He rammed through a racist redrawing of the County Commissioner's court.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (43:57):
That's uh, that map is in uh in being challenged
with under the Voting Rights Act now. And then of
course he regularly attacks the two Democratic members of the
commission who are also represent the two minority districts. And
so his whole method of operation is to create dissension
(44:18):
and division. H and again, because that's the style of politics,
that's the style of a governance that has really resulted
from Donald Trump being in the White House against Yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Goober key Vornco's these guys.
Speaker 7 (44:36):
Well, it's important to remember that is particularly in Tarrant County,
that the Democrats are continuing to do better, and they're
doing it without any resources. I mean Frankly, the Lone
Star Project has been the only organization out that that's
not exclusive to Tarrant County that's really invested in u
(45:00):
uh Arrant County politics. And I'm hopeful that you'll have
the state Party and others put some resources into Tarrant County.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (45:09):
I mean, I'm proud that the Lone Star Project we've
been in uh a key part of winning some key
commissions races and some others. I think that Tim O'Hare
can be defeated in the next election. UH, but it's
gonna have to take uh it being a state priority,
not just something that local Democrats are trying.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
To do in their own And this week in the
state politics, we have uh a run another another intended
run against Senator Cruz.
Speaker 7 (45:44):
I'm sorry you broke up a little bit there.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I'll talk about called it out. Was running for uh.
Speaker 7 (45:50):
Yeah, Colin Alridge running again for the for the US Senate,
this time in the seat that John Cornan holds. I
don't expect that John Cornyn will be the nomination. In fact,
I think Cornyn is pretty pathetically tried to abandon everything
he's ever really done as a moderate Republican in the
past and pretend to be maga that. I don't think
(46:10):
that's going to work. I think that the Republicans would
rather nominate a corrupt Ken Paxton than a cowardly John Cornyn,
and I think that gives Democrats and atlaw opportunity to
win a statewide seat. And Colin is running again. Colin
ran a much better race in twenty twenty four than
(46:32):
he's given credit for. He ran three and a half,
almost four points ahead of the presidential ticket. No senate
candidate in Texas has done that, going back to Lloyd Benson,
but he didn't win, and there was some disappointment about that.
And now you also have James Tallerica running and James
is a new and a fresh face and there's some
excitement around him. So I think that'll be a very
competitive primary. I think whichever one of them is the nominee,
(46:55):
we have a chance to beat a corrupt Ken Paxton
in the fall.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, Cornan is running a lot. I have a lot
of money into these people put out on the air
right now.
Speaker 7 (47:08):
Oh yeah, the Republicans in Washington, they know that Ken
Paxton is a really dangerous nominee for them. The problem
is that They've created a monster within their own primary
that mainstream Republicans, even the notion of mainstream Republican is nostalgia.
(47:28):
Now they don't exist. It's all Trump now. There is
no Texas Republican Party anymore. It's all the national Trump Party.
I mean, it seems that counterintuitive to a lot of
people in Texas because it's been so long since Democrats
have held state light office. But the truth of the
matter is the only real Texas focused party in Texas
(47:50):
now is the Democratic Party. The Republican Party are totally
national in their scope, and they're totally submissive and doting
upon Donald Trump. I mean, the Republican congressman from Fort
Benn County said it most insultingly to their own party,
but also accurately when he says, if Donald Trump says
(48:14):
jump three feet into the air, we jumped three feet.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Through he says a lot bet that.
Speaker 7 (48:20):
And the truth of the matter is that he was
just being honest.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Matt tells people how to get attention to you and
your newsletter.
Speaker 7 (48:28):
Well, Lone Star Project is pretty easy to reach if
you'll just go to Lone Star project dot net and
sign up for our newsletters or feel free to just
email me directly at matt Angle at Lone Star Project
dot net.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
That was Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project. You
can read his newsletter at the Lone Star Project dot net.
Award winning legendary actor Robert Redford passed away last week.
He was not just an actor, but a philanthropist who
started the Sundance Film Festival to showcase young filmmakers around
the world. He also spoke up on social issues like
(49:05):
the treatment of Native people in the United States. Keith
Hoak is an associate professor at the Jack J. Valente
School of Communication at the University of Houston. We spoke
to him about the life of Robert Redford, but first
we talked about the controversy around the suppression of First
Amendment rights through pressure from the FCC chairman and the
(49:29):
convoluted path of Jimmy Kimmel being suspended and then restored
by ABC and its owner's Disney.
Speaker 8 (49:37):
With the whole Jimmy Kimmel situation, there's a lot of
people who are outraged and saying it's a First Amendment
freedom of speech issue, But then you have to look
at ABC is a licensed broadcaster and there's certain rules
that licensed stations have to abide by and part of
(49:59):
that is being in They have to be in the
service of the community. And it all goes back to
the early days of radio. When radio was first around
in nineteen twenty one, it was unlicensed. Anybody could have
a radio station, and the government actually stayed out of
any kind of licensing until the radio industry said, hey,
we need some help because people would once advertisement came
(50:22):
in the game, and you would say, hey, I'm advertising
your product at five pm today, somebody else could put
up a rival station and just you're broadcasting at a
certain power, and they make a more powerful broadcasting station
and they knock you right off the air. So the
government came in and started licensing stations, and part of
(50:43):
that they had to kick some people off the air
and made judgment calls about what content wasn't good for
whatever communities were being served, because some people had radio
stations that were just selling snake oil medicine, and so
that's where the laws came in that broadcasters has to
abide by. That's why you don't get profanity on broadcast
(51:04):
television because it's part of the servicing the community. And
back in the eighties when NYPD Blue was on certain stations,
there was an episode that showed David Cruso's backside, naked backside,
and certain stations said, we're preempting this, We're not going
to air that because our community doesn't want to see that,
(51:26):
and that's perfectly within the rights of the broadcaster to
preempt things. And the end of the day, it's all
about making money and if something isn't going to be
making money and then rocks the boat, yeah, that's why
he was off the air. And it puts ABC in
a really difficult situation because we are in such a
(51:48):
politically divided country. Everybody on one side of the aisle
might be seeing what they did one way and while
the other side is seeing it completely different. But in
the base spaces, what happened seems to be you know,
you have an employer, and if they want to take
you off the air, they can take you off the
air just like they can put you right back on.
(52:11):
So there's a lot of outrage, but I don't know
that it's I don't know, people like to be outraged
really easily. Right now, there seems to just be anger
in the air and they're grabbing it and feeding off
of it. But you know, if you say something that
your boss doesn't like, you still have a boss and
(52:34):
you have a contract. And so I'm curious to see
what happens when his contract is up, which is relatively soon,
whether or not it's renewed or they just say move on.
But it's he still can say as an individual, he
can say and do whatever he wants to say and do.
(52:54):
But you know, ABC can say that's that reflects poorly
on us. So you're being fired. People are being fired
all over the place now for statements they're making online.
But it's not saying you can't make them, just you
got to be aware that when you make them, you know,
we're in a world that people are going to be
You're not going to make everybody happy. It's just not
going to happen.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Just a quick narrative on the death of Robert Ridford
when he went to actors and the film industry in general.
Speaker 8 (53:21):
Well, he's one of I'm Robert Redford is one of
the last you know, Hollywood stars. He's one of the
people that you don't think of him as a soliberty.
He was a movie star and you always knew that
he was going to give it as all when he
was in a project, no matter what the project was,
he was always going to he was always going to perform,
he was going to be there. He's coming out of that.
(53:45):
His breakout is in the in the late sixties early
seventies with the new Hollywood, where there was a lot
more freedom for younger actors to really make a name
for themselves, and he was kind of an iconoclast in
the early days and didn't necessarily follow He could have
(54:07):
very easily been a pretty boy because he was, you
know's I remember him being the first person I knew
as a young kid. I'm like, why is my mom
watching this movie? Why did my mom really want to
watch The Electric Horsemen? And then I realized mom has
a crush on Robert Rudford. He was a handsome man,
(54:28):
but he also took roles that were challenging, roles that
defied that being defined by simply you know, he's the
handsome actor. He could have easily fallen into a pretty
boy trap, and he actively didn't do that. And with
his on screen persona and also his involvement in different
(54:51):
political endeavors outside where he his environmentalism, his Native American
rights issues. He took a couple a lot of causes
that seem to be very near and dear to him.
It didn't it wasn't performative for him. There's a lot
of a lot of virtue signaling that can go on
where people just jump on something because it's the popular
(55:12):
thing to say that you're four. But he really was
committed to his causes, and if you agree with those
causes or not, you still have to admire his commitment
and dedication.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
And he's also, you know, one of the founderies of
the Sundance Film Festival.
Speaker 8 (55:30):
That's that's the other thing from a non political standpoint
and from a filmmaker myself, Sundance was his foundation of
the Sundance, well, the film festival, but there's the Sundance Institute.
There's a lot of support for the film industry and
(55:50):
the independent film industry. If it weren't for what he
did and setting up Sundance, you wouldn't have Tarantino, you
wouldn't have Richard link Letter, you wouldn't have a lot
of major filmmakers, wouldn't have had that initial avenue and
an initial way to be discovered and grow in all
of the film festival industry, and it's a huge industry now.
(56:13):
Film festivals wouldn't be what it is if it weren't
for his commitment to sundance and he's a commitment to
bringing exposure, to bringing the opportunity for outside voices to
be heard.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
That was Keith Hope, Associate Professor at the Jack JA.
Valente School of Communication at the University of Houston. That's
it for The People's News this week. But before we go,
we also want to mention the passing of Asada Shakur.
Many people know her as mother of film star and
rapper Tupac Shakur, but she was a freedom fighter, a
(56:51):
Black Panther Party member and was chased by the FBI
and the government. Escaped to Cuba and lived the remainder
of her life in Cuba. We will have a story
on her life and death next week. The People's News
is a production of Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah and
is protected by copyright laws. All the information broadcast on
(57:13):
air and online, as well as published in both print
and or online, including articles, audio clips, illustrations, graphics, photographs,
and videos, are protected by these copyright and other state
and federal intellectual property laws. Therefore, you may not use
our content in any prohibited way, including reproducing, publishing, transmitting, selling, rewriting, broadcasting,
(57:34):
or posting on the Internet without the expressed written permission
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as well as all website or email distribution. To obtain
permission to use copyrighted material, email Steve Gallington at Steve
atgallington dot com. Thank you.
It's the week of September twenty eighth, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the people's news. Another execution
in Texas. Striking workers continue their battle with a downtown hotel.
The same old target for the Republican Party gets trotted
(00:23):
out again. Trans people get the blame again. Terror County
judge has a temper tantrum. Another legend lost as film
star and philanthropist Robert Redford dies. All that and more
on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This is the
people's News, and the people's News starts now. The strike
(00:52):
of Houston Hotel workers continues at the Hilton America's hotel
in downtown Houston. More workers are joining the fight for
higher weight and respect, with the lowest paid workers earning
an hourly wage of only sixteen dollars an hour. Convention
center workers will be calling for a living wage of
at least twenty three dollars an hour as the cost
of living in Houston remains on the rise. Fellow union
(01:16):
members joined the striking workers this week at a protest
at Houston City Hall to bring to focus the ongoing
strike and the lack of a contract being brought to
the table. The City of Houston owns the hotel, but
contracts out the operating of the hotel to a secondary company.
Unite twenty three, the organization that represents the striking workers,
(01:39):
say that they're not being taken very seriously even though
the hotel is looking to make billions on the upcoming
FIFA World Cup coming to Houston. We talked to Francesca Cabalo,
Texas Chapter president of Unite here Local twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, we're still out here. This is day twenty three
of the strike. We announced last Friday that we're extending
the strike for three more weeks until October twelfth. So
the workers are still hanging in there, still holding strong,
you know, to fight for what they deserve.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
What is uh, what's what's management saying right now? Uh?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, we know, I mean the Hilton is definitely feeling pressure.
I know there's conversations happening this week. Don't have any
real update right at the moment, but you know, we're
planning to go to city Hall tomorrow, you know, to
continue the pressure on the city and on Houston first.
Who are the owners of the hotel? So you know,
(02:38):
we still were sticking to our plans and continue to
to uh you know, mount the pressure so that Hilton,
you know, comes to the table with a real offer.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is the branding name Hilton, are they is the company
itself Hilton seeing anything?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Uh, there hasn't been any meaningful movement in bar gonnaing
as of yet as far as the wages to go.
So as of right now, you know, things still stand
the same, you know, which is why you know, we
are planning to go to city Hall tomorrow, you know,
so it's sort of announced like any upbates we might have,
(03:18):
like like you mentioned, know this this conversation is happening,
but you know, we have not you know, been able
to sort of get what those specific updates are at
the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
The city said they we're gonna do there, We're gonna
especially the mayor said he was going to try to
put more pressure on the company to settle just just
wage dispute. Has that done anything?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well? The mayor did postpone his State of the City
address which was supposed to be happening this week, So
that's kind of like, you know, that speaks louder than
than words, right, so incited the the Negoshta ongoing negotiations here,
so we definitely see that as a form of pressure
from the city to the company.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Has it been I know, I know you say that
the workers are strong. How long can they come?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I mean as long as it takes. Right now, this
latest extension is until October twelfth, you know, worker, of course,
it's a sacrifice. You know, we are you know, we're tired,
but you know, the you know, the workers have the
drive to keep going because, I mean, the way things
are going here in Houston, the way the economy is going,
(04:32):
workers cannot afford to, you know, just accept whatever men
you offer that the company has put on the table
thus far. So you know, despite being tired and frustrated,
workers are still holding strong and because they know that
this is the right thing to do, and they know
that this is what it takes to win you know,
the life changing wages and proposals that we are fighting for.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
And then I'll just add that, you know, the workers
have been struggling much longer, you know, than this strike
you know, has has gone on. So it's a much
you know, it's a sacrifice, but you know the gain
and the long run is gonna be much greater. And
you don't have a great outcome on them where can.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Of course, you guys are still taking donations and you
give it that ways of donating time and listen.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, definitely, we have a strike fund, We have a
go fund meme that's on our like social media pages,
and we've received a lot of support from the community
and like other unions, which has been amazing. But you know,
with this, with this extension, you know, it wasn't something
that was planned ahead of time. So like any donation
really counts, and it's going straight to the workers so
(05:42):
that they can you know, take care of what they
need financially, but also stay focused on the fight, you know,
and and stay on the picket line. So any donations
and contribution is a big help to us.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Can you have you seen any signs of a company
failing to meet their obligations as far as the work
that needs to be done, well.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean just the fact that these groups have been
like postponing and you know, canceling their events obviously that
that definitely hurts the pocketbook of the company and these companies,
I mean these groups you know saying straight up it's
because they're not going to cross the picket line. Or
they don't want to deal with the labor dispute, you know.
So obviously the company is feeling financially hurt by that.
(06:29):
And we know we have workers out here on strike
that have been working for the hotel for twenty years,
you know, so they can try and bring in you know,
temporary employees things like that, but it's never going to
be the same quality, right as the workers that have
put you know, so many years of their life into
the into the company. So of course, of course it's
not the same.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I'm just gonna say, and again, you're getting support from
a lot of the local unions and national unions. Great, yes,
and how's that? How has that been a bit of
fit to the worker as far as the emotionally, No,
it's been great.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I mean we've had so many union members from other
unions and other leadership from other unions come out to
the picket line to come out and give talks to
the workers and just sit and get to know the workers,
and that that's a boost. This is a morale boost
for sure for the workers. This is the first hotel
strike in Texas history, so it's something historic and the
(07:26):
community and other union leaderships and memberships have been coming
out and so the workers definitely feel supported and appreciated. So,
you know, with this extension, we you know, we welcome
that and we hope to see more because it's not
easy what the workers are doing, but any boost of
morale like that, it's really important to the workers to
(07:48):
know that they have the support to keep going.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And it didn't support the community also, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
so many community groups have come through to the picket line, donated.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Money, food, their time. You know, it's been amazing to see,
you know, he's been come together in that way and
the workers, like I said, the workers really appreciated and
to note that they're not alone in this.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
That was Francesca Caballo, Texas Chapter president of Unite here
Local twenty three. They are extending their strike until October twelfth,
and we will continue to follow it on the people's News.
They have a GoFundMe at Unite twenty three. Texas executed
its fifth person this year as thirty five year old
Blaine Milam was executed by the State of Texas Thursday night.
(08:34):
He was convicted of the murder of Amora Carson in
his trailer in East Texas along with his girlfriend, Jessica Carson,
Blaine Milam's girlfriend at the time, claimed that the thirteen
month old daughter of the girlfriend was possessed by the devil.
There was evidence that mylem was innocent, but a stay
of execution was denied by the US Supreme Court. Gloria
(08:57):
Rubik of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement talked about
the execution.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Thursday, the twenty fifth of September, Texas executed an msent man.
His name was Blaine Milem. He was put to death
in hunts Hill. There was a large group of us
they're protesting, and he was very good friends with some
(09:27):
of the activists, including Danny who is the host of
the prison show on KPFT. In fact, Danny witnessed the execution,
and so did another activist who is the daughter in
law of Robert Robertson, who's the next person's scheduled to
be executed. And Robertson's daughter in law, Jennifer, visited him
(09:55):
for his last visits, as did Danny, and then after
the execution, they actually got to go to the church
where they take the body and they got to hug
him and tell him goodbye, and Jennifer posted that, you know,
(10:18):
for fifteen years he hadn't had a human touch except
the guard staking him down or something, and then now
that he's dead, they let us hug him and so on.
She said, it just doesn't make any sense. But his
case was interesting because it involved the horrible murder of
(10:40):
a little girl who was the child of the woman
he was living with. And the mother is the person
that actually killed her. And the mother apparently has some
serious mental illnesses and decided that her little girl was
possessed by the devil. He needed an exorcism, and in
(11:05):
the one of the last appeals that was filed on
his behalf with the Supreme Court, they actually named her
mental illness and it has like eight or ten syllables.
I'd never heard of it, but she really killed that
little girl. Robert was in the house and had nothing
(11:27):
to do. Actually, I'm not even sure if he was
in the house when it happened, but they lived together.
So the DA said, well, we found his his blain's
violence DNA all over the house. Well, duh, he lived there,
so how can you use that against anybody? That doesn't
(11:49):
make sense. And the child had been bitten, and they
said it matched Blaine's teeth. Well, that science is very
outdated and no longer allowed in criminal trials. People have
been what was his name, Ray Crone was exonerated after
(12:11):
ten years. He was convicted on mark evidence. He wound
up getting a nice paycheck. I can't remember what to
stay he was in but because they wrongfully convicted him
some evidence, so there was really no evidence pointing to
blame's guilt or him having anything to do with it. Actually,
(12:33):
in facts, he I think he has a relatively low IQ.
He only finished fourth grade, which may or may not
say anything. But he was a little naive because when
he realized that this baby had been murdered, he told
(12:56):
the woman, we'll call the police. Well, the police came,
they rested both of them, and he told the police
the sense of like something a child would say. He
told the police, well, would I get in trouble if
I just said I did it so that she could
go home? And the police looked at him like, what
(13:16):
are you talking about? But so to me, that really
shows his at least how not easy he was, and
also that he was in it because he won't know
if he'd get in trouble if he said he did it,
(13:36):
so that was a very sad case. All the details
about this case really didn't come out until I guess
the last maybe three or four months of his life,
when they started filing his attorneys started filling a lot
of appeals and explaining what had happened and explaining that, yeah,
(13:58):
his DNA was in the house he lived there, so
that's nothing. And by mark science has been totally discredited.
It's no longer a science. So I know that when
Danny the prison shill Post visit him that last morning
before he was executed, they keep him at death Throw
(14:21):
till noon and then they drive him from Livingston, which
is where death Row's housed, to Huntsville, but they get
to have visits up until noon. And he told her,
he said, you know, I'm just glad that the truth
has finally come out, that people know what's happened. He said,
that really makes me feel better because for a long
(14:44):
time people just thought I was a monster, and I'm not.
So Danny said that was really the only good thing.
That he was happy that the truth had come out,
but he knew that they were going to kill him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And this latest execution is what does that make for
this year?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Five, which isn't a lot. And I want to make
one point. You know, there's been quite a number of
executions this year in the United States, and people are saying,
oh my god, we're gonna everything's gonna keep going and
we're not near the end, and blah blah blah. That
is not true, because well, Florida has killed out of
(15:30):
ten or fifteen people this year and they still got
some more, I believe. But the facts are that the
defficulty is going away. Texas executed five people this year.
Back in nineteen ninety eight, I think there were ninety
nine executions in the country. In ninety nine, there was
(15:55):
one almost every week in Texas. There's fifty three weeks
in a year, and I think we had forty some
odd executions that year, which was just talk about the
machinery of death questioning. But the reason I say that
(16:18):
the death penalty is going away is executions are down.
They've gone down every year for the last decade. Public
support is down, and particularly when you give people the
alternative of life without parole, which I don't really like.
It's less than half the people in the country even
(16:38):
support the death penalty anymore. And juries are not sentencing
people to death anymore. You know, for years and years
and years, Texas had four hundred, four hundred and fifty
people on death row, and as soon as somebody was executed,
Houston or Dallas or San Antonio or for Worth would
(17:00):
send somebody to death row, and those beds kept getting
filled as people were being executed. That's not happening anymore.
Juries are not sentencing people to death very often. Texas
death row is down to one hundred and sixty I
(17:20):
think one hundred and sixty two men and there's seven women.
And like I say, so many years there was four
hundred and fifty. So juries aren't sentencing. Public support is
down and the numbers are down. It's going away. It's
just still taking victims along its way, but it's going
(17:44):
to disappoint. What do you say, why do you say
that given a life centix you're against giving people a
life citizen. Now I'm against anybody getting life without parole. Okay,
because most crimes, and obviously everybody on death rows innocent,
(18:04):
even though for every eight people executed, one is found innocent,
but most are guilty. Most haed lousey lawyers when they
went on trial. Most did not have money to hire investigators,
and what do you call it? People that can give
(18:27):
reasons why they shouldn't get death but life without parole.
There is really no point in somebody who's nineteen twenty
or twenty one or whatever doing something really awful going
to prison and staying until they're sixty or seventy years old.
(18:48):
We have people in wheelchairs in death row. We have
people who have to use a walker just to go
out for a visit. People are staying on death row
longer because attorneys are fighting and fighting and using every
appeal they can think of. So death row is becoming
(19:13):
a home for a lot of senior citizens. If somebody does,
you know, ten twenty years, they've become a changed person.
They're not the same stupid kid that got high and
went and went crazy and killed somebody. And a lot
(19:34):
of countries that do have the death penalty limited to
twenty years as the sentence. So I think that the
right wing in Texas, we didn't Texas didn't have life
(19:56):
without parole until two thousand and five.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Before that, if somebody was found innocent or there was
questions and they got commuted to life, they could get
out before their whole life was gone. Instead of some
of these men and women are not able to see
their kids grow up or their grandkids grow up. And
(20:25):
people like Rodney Reid has great grandkids. So no, I
hate life without parole. It just totally negates the truth
that people can redeem themselves, they can change, and they
can turn over.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
A new leaf. All right, before I go, you on
a Sara Secret passing? Before you go, what, oh would
you thus on a Sata Secruz passing?
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And what are you asking about Asaba her passing?
Speaker 5 (21:02):
You thought, Oh, I Well, to me, she's a hero.
She her passing is very sad. But she She was
a member of the Black Camping Party and then later
the Black Liberation Army. Her comrades freed her from prison.
(21:27):
They went in with gunn and held guards hostage and
kidnapped her from the prison. She has asked. She was
underground here for a couple of years, and then she
surfaced in Cuba. Cuba gave her political asylum and I
was so fortunate to spend a week in with her
in Cuba.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
She was she remained.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
The revolutionary, She remained committed to her principles that she
had had all her life, and and it's very sad
that she's gone. That she had gotten older, and you know,
things happen when you get to be seventy five, eighty
eighty five years old. I think she was close to eighty.
(22:15):
But yeah, her memory and her spirit and her revolutionary
love will live on.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
All right.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
And I want to tell you about a couple of
things coming up, if that's okay. Yeah, we got message
from the attorney for Robert Robertson, whose execution is actually
in I don't know, like three weeks, less than October sixteenth,
less than three weeks. But his attorney has asked all
(22:48):
his supporters to meet her at the state Capitol at
one o'clock next Saturday, October fourth. There's going to be
a press conference and then a rally, and there will
be some some of the Texas exanna rees joining the attorney,
(23:08):
not exoneries from death row, but people who did a
lot of time in prison and then were exonerated. They've
come out very strongly in support of him, and then
his attorneys have announced that he's not even they're not
even going to file for clemency for Robert, because when
(23:29):
you file for clemency. It's basically like, well, I'm sorry,
I've I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm not going
to do it again. He didn't do anything. In Robert
Robertson's case, there was no crime.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
That was Gloria Rubik of the Texas Death Penalty abolition movement.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
This is Steve Gallington, producer and host of the People's News.
The People's News is people powered news. We are free
to report the unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the
status quo of corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised
as real news. Shiny new one hour episodes of The
People's News drop each Sunday on The People's News Podcast.
(24:14):
Thanks for listening. The recent spikes in gun violence with
the killing of Charlie Kirk and the shooting in Minnesota,
Republicans have brought out their go to move when things
don't seem to be going their way, scapegoating the trans community.
If the news is not going your way, Republicans love
(24:36):
to find a disadvantaged group and attack them, and the
trans community, particularly black and brown trans people and young people,
have been the targets for many years. We talked with
Kathy Renna with the National LGBTQ Task Force about attacks
from the White House on down from Republicans blaming the
(24:59):
lgbt Q community for the right wing attacking their own I.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Think the more accurate way to say it is that
they're really trying to blame the trans community. There's a
tremendous amount of scapegoating that's happening lead you know, with
a sea of lies and misinformation, and I think one
of the biggest challenges is that the media is really
picking up these very preliminary, unfounded and then proven to
(25:28):
be inaccurate statements about any kind of engagement or involvement
of transgender individuals, any messaging that's you know, anti anti Trump,
that is coming from LGBTQ people and particularly trans people,
and you know, using phrases like transgender ideology, which is
(25:49):
really at the end of the day, feels like just
an attempt to erase the existence of trans people. You're
not even talking about people who are part of our
community as people, as human beings, and it's I think
it's really escalated to the point where we really need
to be increasingly concerned about it.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And one thing that that's missing from all this. I know,
we just had a couple of deaths right now, but
one thing that's missing the the deaths of assaults on
trans people across the country. We had two in Texas
on in the Houston area. It's gone, that's gone. That's
nobody's been nobody's been charged with the killing here in Houston.
(26:30):
But that seems to be a non issue right now.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
Well, I think that we understand that the media has
not done a good job forever, such a long time
of really covering the issue of anti LGBTQ violence, particularly
the epidemic of violence against trans sally trans women of color. Uh,
and it's only gotten it's only gotten worse given the
(26:54):
political climate we're living in. UH, that that these incidents
happen and that they are invisibilized. I mean they're not
They're not not only not responded to appropriately, often by
law enforcement, but even in local communities that are trying
to amplify these stories, that are trying to help the
public understand what our community is truly facing, is near
(27:15):
impossible with the lack of response from media. And so
even when communities organize, and they are organizing, it's it's
just it's it's beyond tragic that we're not seeing any
attention paid to the reality of trans people's lives, not
what is being perpetrated by white nationalists and anti LGBTQ
(27:37):
organizations and frankly a lot of our elected officials, which
is that you know, trans people are somehow the cause
of some of the violence and divisiveness we're seeing. It's
it's utterly ridiculous, but at the end of the day,
it's also extremely harmful.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
How are you the community going to fight against this,
because it's only going to get stronger when we look
at what the what was talked about at the ceremony
for the Charlie Kirk ceremony and a turning point and
they talking about putting turning point in classrooms now and
what they're teaching. How hard is that going to be
(28:13):
for your people that you work with in your organizations
to try to change people gratitudes. We're not We're not.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
We've never stopped doing it. We're only going to continue
to do it, and we need to do it even
more and we need the support more than ever of
everyone in our community, including of course our allies. I mean,
the challenge is that we face are multifold right. There's
the challenge of the attacks coming from the right. There's
a uh uh, the challenge of this see literally sea
(28:42):
of misinformation and lies and propaganda that's being put out there.
And we're also seeing what is extremely disappointing, which is
that so many folks who have stood with us, whether
that's corporations, whether that's selected officials, whether that's folks within
our even within our own community, who are not stepping
up to fill in these gaps of support that we're facing,
(29:04):
whether it's financial or whether it's you know it, boots
on the ground and folks in the streets and folks
calling their elected officials, and folks holding the media accountable.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
And none of us have.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
Stopped, not only not stopped doing the work. We're doing
more than ever, and unfortunately we're having to do it
with less resources. So you know what my message to
anybody who will listen is that if you are not
engaged as much as you possibly can be in this fight,
then you're going to look back one day and regret
that because if we don't do all we can now,
we're going to be in just an increasingly authoritarian environment
(29:38):
politically and socially, and culturally.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, I'd like to add to that, we've gone from
that type of houseile investment. But what do you say
the President of the United States President actually is just pushing,
pushing even more, even harder on issues of elsbachs you
as being the enemy, as being using and using that
(30:04):
with Christian organizations, also as being I mean.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
None of this is surprising, and frankly, none of it's new.
I mean, the pendulum swings back and forth. The fact
that we were making the projects that we were making
in the Obama years and the Biden years naturally has
led to backlash and we're seeing that in full force.
And so you know, at the end of the day,
like I said, this is going to take all of us.
And I think, you know, part of what we need
(30:29):
to do is fight like hell, and the other part
of what we do is to live our lives and
not let this destroy our spirits. We've been through very
difficult times before. You know, I talked to young people
about this all the time. If they didn't weren't born yet,
or didn't live through the AIDS pandemic in the eighties
and nineties, they don't realize that we dealt with a
(30:50):
government that also was more than happy to see us
die in large numbers. And it took our own community
coming together to really fight that and to fight for healthcare,
to fight for research, to fight for access to medications,
and to fight literally for the lives with our you know,
gay and queer brothers and sisters and other people who
(31:10):
were affected by HIV. You know, we had to fight
for the ability to serve in the military. We've had
to fight for marriage equality. We've had to fight for
every bit of the rights that we enjoy, and we've
seen backflighting. So we need to redouble our efforts. It's
pretty it's pretty clear just from the arc of history
that we know, we know that we will, we know
(31:31):
what we have to do, we understand the assignment, and
we've gotten through very challenging times before. I think the
difference here is that you're now dealing with essentially the
dismantling of institutions that were safety nets for us. We're
seeing our federal government fail in ways that are extraordinarily harmful,
whether it's a president who's talking about time and all
(31:52):
causing autism or saying vaccines don't work and taking away
money from PEP far and hundreds of thousands of people
they're dying because they don't have access to AIDS medication.
I mean, this is this is so much bigger even
than the escapegoating of parts of our community. I mean,
the White House is doing everything they can to create
chaos and fear. And that's what that's the first thing
(32:15):
we need to overcome is to understand in context that
we don't need to live in fear, that we actually
have still the means to fight back. And that's whether
that's by you know, while we still have it, engaging
in your free speech to speak out and and working
and supporting organizations and getting out in the streets and
and you know, and doing and voting and doing all
(32:36):
the things that we know, uh work in a free democracy.
The challenge is that our free democracy is very much
under threat, which should only make us more more engaged,
more inspired, more energized to really be part of the
part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Or we're sitting on the sidelines, old like and tell
(32:57):
us about some of the things that's going on. Nationalists
that you that you know, we have a game of
this coming up, and what else is going on?
Speaker 7 (33:05):
So you know.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
I mean, I think that the other really important thing
to do with all of this, right it sounds very overwhelming,
is we also have to again, like I said, live
our lives and not allow anyone, including the highest office
in the land, to take away our joy. So, you know,
while we are always in the process of you know,
working to raise resources and funds to do the work,
(33:28):
we also try and create spaces where we can also
be in community and experience queer joy. And so you know,
we do that in many ways of the task Force.
We do have coming up on October eleventh, which is
natural coming out today, our annual gala, which this year
is the BU Ball. It's going to amplify ballroom culture
and amplify the voices and lives and talents of particularly
(33:51):
black and brown trans siblings of ours, and celebrate them
in the community. We're also honoring individ Jewels who have
contributed greatly in South Florida, who are working to raise
money for organizations who are doing great advocacy. We're thrilled
that this year we're honoring David Jobin, who is a
(34:14):
philanthropic leader but also a cultural leader in the LGBT community,
not just even in South Florida, but nationally working with
choruses around the country from San Francisco to to South
Florida and Miami. Dominique Jackson from Poe's many folks know
her from her iconic role as as Oh my god,
(34:36):
totally blank you on her character's name, Electra Sorry, her
role as as Electra on on Poe. She's actually a
very good personal friend. She's going to be hosting and
is going to be bringing her again extraordinary voice, powerful
voice as a black trans woman who has done work
on the ground in the community for decades and is
(34:56):
also an incredibly talented, beautiful per who promotes kindness and
queer joy in everything she does. And we again, as
folks probably best know the Task Force. We have our
annual Creating Change Gathering, which is a convening of literally
thousands up to three thousand or so LGBTQ and allied
(35:18):
advocates who come together for political conversation, for leadership training,
for skills building. I mean, we've called it in the past,
we've called it a conference. It's really much more than that,
because it's it's a community convening and gathering that gives
us an opportunity to take stock and what we're dealing
with and work together and make connections and learn from
(35:40):
each other. But it's also an opportunity to again experience
queer joy. Parts of the conference include things like a
house fall and a cabaret evening events. You know, we
film screenings in addition to course, you know, more than
one hundred workshops and caucuses. It really is a way
to start off the year. As we approach the second
year of the stration in Washington, d C. This year
(36:02):
we're doing the gathering. We haven't been in DC for
more than a few years, and so I think people
are very excited to come together for creating change. But
also I'm sure there will be things happening in the streets,
whether it's a lobbying or whether it's protesting, that we'll
address what's happening in our nation's capital.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
All right and tell people how we get in touch
with your organization.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
Sure, you can find us very easily on social media.
It's the National LGBTQ task Force on Facebook, on LinkedIn,
We're on Instagram at the task Force. That's our main site.
You can then find all of the accounts for for example,
the Gala and Creating Change and you can get in
touch with us very easily online. We love hearing from folks.
(36:50):
We need volunteers for all of these events, so you know,
this is not simply about folks who you know are
able to buy a ticket right and support us financially.
We are very focused on what we like to call
radical welcome. So if you want to come to the
conference then it might be difficult for you financially, you
can volunteer and have your registration wave. You can volunteer
(37:10):
at the gala, and you can get engaged with us
in that way as well. We also do actually a
ton of virtual planning and training. We have our organizing
calls every month for activists. We have a boot camp
that we just had hundreds of people applied for that
we're going to be starting to do on a monthly basis.
So we're you know, we're as engaged as we possibly
(37:33):
can be, and we really honestly need and embrace and
welcome the support of anyone out there LGBTQ or allies
that are willing to be in the fight with us.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
That was Kathy Renna with the National LGBTQ Task Force.
You can find out more about her work at the
Task Force Action Fund all put together dot org. Republican
Tarren County Judge Tom O'Hare, using the convicted felon and
Governor Abbott's playbook, went after two Democratic Commissioner's Court Democrats,
(38:07):
Elisa Simmons and Roderick Miles. They were absent, which temporarily
denied him the fourth fifth quorum needed to amend the
county budget in a way that he knew they opposed.
He went on to cut their staff and any funds
that were already approved going into the areas of the
county that they support. We talked to Matt Angle with
(38:28):
the Lone Star Project before he went on to talk
about what happened in Terrant County. Richard asked him about
the situation in Dallas where a shooting occurred at the
Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office targeting immigrants. One
immigrant was dead and two others were seriously injured, and
the shooter died of a self inflicted gunshot. Here's Matt Angle, Well.
Speaker 7 (38:52):
I think we've got an extraordinary circumstance and that you've
got Republican office holders who are exploiting what was clearly
a horrible event. It was a horrible event when there
was political violence of any type. And it is a
tragedy in Dallas that you had two individuals badly wounded
(39:17):
and two who died, one of them an immigrant, and
that that's being exploited at every level by the Republicans
to make it a political issue and to create division
in a country that's already divided. Greg Abbott was shameful
as the governor of our state to use that as
(39:39):
a chance to attack Democrats and attack the left, when
there is no reason to think that any rhetoric led
to that other than the divisive rhetoric that we know
starts at the White House. And then I will tell
you it was also particularly galling to see Dallas Mayor
(40:01):
Eric Johnson way in. Eric Johnson got re elected as
Dallas mayor when he was a Democrat. He only switched
parties after getting reelected because Dallas is an overwhelmingly democratic city.
Kamala Harris got over sixty five percent of the vote,
Joden got over seventy percent. Eric Johnson's never once been
(40:24):
willing to put his name on the bout as a
Republican because he knows he would overwhelmingly be rejected. It
was an act of cowardice. And again, Eric's not looking
to really be anything other than a mascot for Republicans
because he'll never really be accepted as one. And it's
shameful that Dallas has now such a weak mayor and
(40:47):
then again such a governor that's not really willing to
provide leadership. But we've seen that over and over again
with Greg Abbott in times of crisis, he's at his
absolute worst. Whether it's a school shooting, whether it's a
terrible winter storm, whether it is a hurricane on our coast,
(41:07):
Abbot fails to rise to the occasion every single time.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
What do we know about the as far as as
how we're trying to tie.
Speaker 7 (41:17):
Us into the Democrats, Well, we don't know very much
about the incident because the shooter committed suicide. We do
know that there was shellcasings that were found that had
the word anti Ice on it, and so, you know,
it's reasonable to think that he was upset or at
(41:39):
least focused on the activities of Ice, But there's no
reason to believe that the rhetoric from Democrats or anybody
else spurred his actions. And then the truth of the
matter is that Democrats rhetoric is tame compared to Republicans.
For goodness sake, Donald Trump has called Democratic leaders and
(42:03):
called the press generally enemies of the state.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Uh. He's all but.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
Set our society on fire with rhetoric in order to
build a movement, and so any effort to somehow claim
that what Democrats are saying is causing acts of violence,
it's just not true. And what we know, of course, too,
(42:31):
is the study after study over the last twenty years
has shown that anti government actions are much more likely
to come from the far right way from anybody from
the list.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
And talking about let's talk about you. You were talking
about local politics for state politics, and we had a
we had a representative that has gotten a little bit
of trouble, and we want to talk about that a
little bit.
Speaker 7 (42:58):
Well, he's talking about Terren count And if you're talking
about the county judge in Tarrant County, I mean, we've
got a maga uh county judge in Tarrant County named
Tim O'Hare who really is trying to create a microcosm
of the of the destructive and divisive atmosphere that's in
Washington now. I mean, Parent County is a purple county
(43:22):
in which Democrats sometimes win top of ballot races, Republicans
barely win down ballot races. It's highly competitive, uh going
into this next election. And uh, the Tarrent County judge
over the past years has generally been kind of a
mainstream person, whether they were Republican or otherwise. Tim O'Hare
(43:43):
is a very different type. He's very destructive and uh
a divisive person.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (43:50):
He rammed through a racist redrawing of the County Commissioner's court.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (43:57):
That's uh, that map is in uh in being challenged
with under the Voting Rights Act now. And then of
course he regularly attacks the two Democratic members of the
commission who are also represent the two minority districts. And
so his whole method of operation is to create dissension
(44:18):
and division. H and again, because that's the style of politics,
that's the style of a governance that has really resulted
from Donald Trump being in the White House against Yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Goober key Vornco's these guys.
Speaker 7 (44:36):
Well, it's important to remember that is particularly in Tarrant County,
that the Democrats are continuing to do better, and they're
doing it without any resources. I mean Frankly, the Lone
Star Project has been the only organization out that that's
not exclusive to Tarrant County that's really invested in u
(45:00):
uh Arrant County politics. And I'm hopeful that you'll have
the state Party and others put some resources into Tarrant County.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (45:09):
I mean, I'm proud that the Lone Star Project we've
been in uh a key part of winning some key
commissions races and some others. I think that Tim O'Hare
can be defeated in the next election. UH, but it's
gonna have to take uh it being a state priority,
not just something that local Democrats are trying.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
To do in their own And this week in the
state politics, we have uh a run another another intended
run against Senator Cruz.
Speaker 7 (45:44):
I'm sorry you broke up a little bit there.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I'll talk about called it out. Was running for uh.
Speaker 7 (45:50):
Yeah, Colin Alridge running again for the for the US Senate,
this time in the seat that John Cornan holds. I
don't expect that John Cornyn will be the nomination. In fact,
I think Cornyn is pretty pathetically tried to abandon everything
he's ever really done as a moderate Republican in the
past and pretend to be maga that. I don't think
(46:10):
that's going to work. I think that the Republicans would
rather nominate a corrupt Ken Paxton than a cowardly John Cornyn,
and I think that gives Democrats and atlaw opportunity to
win a statewide seat. And Colin is running again. Colin
ran a much better race in twenty twenty four than
(46:32):
he's given credit for. He ran three and a half,
almost four points ahead of the presidential ticket. No senate
candidate in Texas has done that, going back to Lloyd Benson,
but he didn't win, and there was some disappointment about that.
And now you also have James Tallerica running and James
is a new and a fresh face and there's some
excitement around him. So I think that'll be a very
competitive primary. I think whichever one of them is the nominee,
(46:55):
we have a chance to beat a corrupt Ken Paxton
in the fall.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, Cornan is running a lot. I have a lot
of money into these people put out on the air
right now.
Speaker 7 (47:08):
Oh yeah, the Republicans in Washington, they know that Ken
Paxton is a really dangerous nominee for them. The problem
is that They've created a monster within their own primary
that mainstream Republicans, even the notion of mainstream Republican is nostalgia.
(47:28):
Now they don't exist. It's all Trump now. There is
no Texas Republican Party anymore. It's all the national Trump Party.
I mean, it seems that counterintuitive to a lot of
people in Texas because it's been so long since Democrats
have held state light office. But the truth of the
matter is the only real Texas focused party in Texas
(47:50):
now is the Democratic Party. The Republican Party are totally
national in their scope, and they're totally submissive and doting
upon Donald Trump. I mean, the Republican congressman from Fort
Benn County said it most insultingly to their own party,
but also accurately when he says, if Donald Trump says
(48:14):
jump three feet into the air, we jumped three feet.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Through he says a lot bet that.
Speaker 7 (48:20):
And the truth of the matter is that he was
just being honest.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Matt tells people how to get attention to you and
your newsletter.
Speaker 7 (48:28):
Well, Lone Star Project is pretty easy to reach if
you'll just go to Lone Star project dot net and
sign up for our newsletters or feel free to just
email me directly at matt Angle at Lone Star Project
dot net.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
That was Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project. You
can read his newsletter at the Lone Star Project dot net.
Award winning legendary actor Robert Redford passed away last week.
He was not just an actor, but a philanthropist who
started the Sundance Film Festival to showcase young filmmakers around
the world. He also spoke up on social issues like
(49:05):
the treatment of Native people in the United States. Keith
Hoak is an associate professor at the Jack J. Valente
School of Communication at the University of Houston. We spoke
to him about the life of Robert Redford, but first
we talked about the controversy around the suppression of First
Amendment rights through pressure from the FCC chairman and the
(49:29):
convoluted path of Jimmy Kimmel being suspended and then restored
by ABC and its owner's Disney.
Speaker 8 (49:37):
With the whole Jimmy Kimmel situation, there's a lot of
people who are outraged and saying it's a First Amendment
freedom of speech issue, But then you have to look
at ABC is a licensed broadcaster and there's certain rules
that licensed stations have to abide by and part of
(49:59):
that is being in They have to be in the
service of the community. And it all goes back to
the early days of radio. When radio was first around
in nineteen twenty one, it was unlicensed. Anybody could have
a radio station, and the government actually stayed out of
any kind of licensing until the radio industry said, hey,
we need some help because people would once advertisement came
(50:22):
in the game, and you would say, hey, I'm advertising
your product at five pm today, somebody else could put
up a rival station and just you're broadcasting at a
certain power, and they make a more powerful broadcasting station
and they knock you right off the air. So the
government came in and started licensing stations, and part of
(50:43):
that they had to kick some people off the air
and made judgment calls about what content wasn't good for
whatever communities were being served, because some people had radio
stations that were just selling snake oil medicine, and so
that's where the laws came in that broadcasters has to
abide by. That's why you don't get profanity on broadcast
(51:04):
television because it's part of the servicing the community. And
back in the eighties when NYPD Blue was on certain stations,
there was an episode that showed David Cruso's backside, naked backside,
and certain stations said, we're preempting this, We're not going
to air that because our community doesn't want to see that,
(51:26):
and that's perfectly within the rights of the broadcaster to
preempt things. And the end of the day, it's all
about making money and if something isn't going to be
making money and then rocks the boat, yeah, that's why
he was off the air. And it puts ABC in
a really difficult situation because we are in such a
(51:48):
politically divided country. Everybody on one side of the aisle
might be seeing what they did one way and while
the other side is seeing it completely different. But in
the base spaces, what happened seems to be you know,
you have an employer, and if they want to take
you off the air, they can take you off the
air just like they can put you right back on.
(52:11):
So there's a lot of outrage, but I don't know
that it's I don't know, people like to be outraged
really easily. Right now, there seems to just be anger
in the air and they're grabbing it and feeding off
of it. But you know, if you say something that
your boss doesn't like, you still have a boss and
(52:34):
you have a contract. And so I'm curious to see
what happens when his contract is up, which is relatively soon,
whether or not it's renewed or they just say move on.
But it's he still can say as an individual, he
can say and do whatever he wants to say and do.
(52:54):
But you know, ABC can say that's that reflects poorly
on us. So you're being fired. People are being fired
all over the place now for statements they're making online.
But it's not saying you can't make them, just you
got to be aware that when you make them, you know,
we're in a world that people are going to be
You're not going to make everybody happy. It's just not
going to happen.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Just a quick narrative on the death of Robert Ridford
when he went to actors and the film industry in general.
Speaker 8 (53:21):
Well, he's one of I'm Robert Redford is one of
the last you know, Hollywood stars. He's one of the
people that you don't think of him as a soliberty.
He was a movie star and you always knew that
he was going to give it as all when he
was in a project, no matter what the project was,
he was always going to he was always going to perform,
he was going to be there. He's coming out of that.
(53:45):
His breakout is in the in the late sixties early
seventies with the new Hollywood, where there was a lot
more freedom for younger actors to really make a name
for themselves, and he was kind of an iconoclast in
the early days and didn't necessarily follow He could have
(54:07):
very easily been a pretty boy because he was, you
know's I remember him being the first person I knew
as a young kid. I'm like, why is my mom
watching this movie? Why did my mom really want to
watch The Electric Horsemen? And then I realized mom has
a crush on Robert Rudford. He was a handsome man,
(54:28):
but he also took roles that were challenging, roles that
defied that being defined by simply you know, he's the
handsome actor. He could have easily fallen into a pretty
boy trap, and he actively didn't do that. And with
his on screen persona and also his involvement in different
(54:51):
political endeavors outside where he his environmentalism, his Native American
rights issues. He took a couple a lot of causes
that seem to be very near and dear to him.
It didn't it wasn't performative for him. There's a lot
of a lot of virtue signaling that can go on
where people just jump on something because it's the popular
(55:12):
thing to say that you're four. But he really was
committed to his causes, and if you agree with those
causes or not, you still have to admire his commitment
and dedication.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
And he's also, you know, one of the founderies of
the Sundance Film Festival.
Speaker 8 (55:30):
That's that's the other thing from a non political standpoint
and from a filmmaker myself, Sundance was his foundation of
the Sundance, well, the film festival, but there's the Sundance Institute.
There's a lot of support for the film industry and
(55:50):
the independent film industry. If it weren't for what he
did and setting up Sundance, you wouldn't have Tarantino, you
wouldn't have Richard link Letter, you wouldn't have a lot
of major filmmakers, wouldn't have had that initial avenue and
an initial way to be discovered and grow in all
of the film festival industry, and it's a huge industry now.
(56:13):
Film festivals wouldn't be what it is if it weren't
for his commitment to sundance and he's a commitment to
bringing exposure, to bringing the opportunity for outside voices to
be heard.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
That was Keith Hope, Associate Professor at the Jack JA.
Valente School of Communication at the University of Houston. That's
it for The People's News this week. But before we go,
we also want to mention the passing of Asada Shakur.
Many people know her as mother of film star and
rapper Tupac Shakur, but she was a freedom fighter, a
(56:51):
Black Panther Party member and was chased by the FBI
and the government. Escaped to Cuba and lived the remainder
of her life in Cuba. We will have a story
on her life and death next week. The People's News
is a production of Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah and
is protected by copyright laws. All the information broadcast on
(57:13):
air and online, as well as published in both print
and or online, including articles, audio clips, illustrations, graphics, photographs,
and videos, are protected by these copyright and other state
and federal intellectual property laws. Therefore, you may not use
our content in any prohibited way, including reproducing, publishing, transmitting, selling, rewriting, broadcasting,
(57:34):
or posting on the Internet without the expressed written permission
of the People's News. Prohibited use also includes publication of
our material in printed or electronic brochures, newsletters, or flyers,
as well as all website or email distribution. To obtain
permission to use copyrighted material, email Steve Gallington at Steve
atgallington dot com. Thank you.
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