Hello All,
To everyone who has contacted me, I hear you. I am listening. I am also excited and I’m optimistic. I am grateful and appreciative that so many people are standing together, here and everywhere, for equity, for justice, for comprehensive structural change. This conversation, this movement, this paradigm shift, is so much more, so much bigger, than re-imagining police departments. Police reform is part of it, but there is more.
Before I became a council member, I was a 3rd grade teacher in HISD schools. I taught in neighborhoods that were desperately poor, and I taught in neighborhoods that were affluent. The glaring disparity in how the city supported neighborhoods around some schools, but not neighborhoods around other schools, is what drove me to seek this council seat.
There are many pressing, urgent, and immediate needs to be met, but it is also critical to take a long view and look at important investments we can make in our city, that will reap significant long-term benefits.
That being said, there is no better return on investment than investing in the health, welfare and well-being of the city’s children. Overcoming the barriers of growing up in impoverished neighborhoods, facing racism and discrimination, a lack of resources, a lack of opportunity, a lack of support, all that has consequences.
It is prudent and wise to galvanize city support and city services,
especially those that help children living in poverty. George Floyd was once one of these children.
There is a long history of brutality and despicable treatment of Blacks and other marginalized people across our nation. There have been other outrageous murders before . . . followed by public outcry, and marches, and pledges to do better. And still, . . . here we are.
The murder of George Floyd is different, because it feels like we have finally reached a long-overdue turning point. I hope so. There is a path forward to a better day tomorrow. Success will depend on maintaining a commitment to ending racism. And success will depend on investing in communities.
Today, with all the people who have stood together and have been so engaged and vocal, the commitment for fundamental change is here. Today, the political will to make meaningful change is here. There is no “silver bullet”, no simple quick and easy fix, for HOW that meaningful change will happen.
The Executive Order that Mayor Sylvester Turner is issuing, immediately implements the best thinking we have so far on improving policing. The Task Force on Police Reform that he is assembling, will vet the items in the executive order, as well as make recommendations on how to make it better.
Racism runs deep and it pops up everywhere. Changing deeply held values, changing a racist culture that has been institutionalized is not an easy thing to do.
To my constituents, thank you. I hear you. I’m listening. There is a way forward to making tomorrow a better day than today.
