Posted on 09/09/2006 10:12:24 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
Seething at what they consider racist slurs against African-Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina, activists here Friday took verbal aim at gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman and west Houston residents who last week urged city officials to send evacuees back home.
"The nerve of the white man to talk about shipping anyone anywhere," Houston activist Quanell X told a small group of reporters and the public Friday at a Texas Southern University news conference. "This is disgraceful."
His comments came as local and New Orleans activists gathered in Houston to craft a response to the comments, which they said smeared the estimated 100,000-plus former Louisianians now in the city.
Earlier this week, Friedman, a musician, novelist and magazine columnist who is challenging Republican incumbent Rick Perry in a four-way contest for the governor's seat, told reporters, "The musicians mostly have moved back to New Orleans now. The crackheads and the thugs have decided to stay here. They want to stay here. I think they got their hustle on, and we need to get ours."
Friedman later acknowledged many of the evacuees in Houston are good people. He also admitted his own former cocaine use. "I have empathy for these people," he said of drug users. "I know how they think."
Speakers urged New Orleanians who are registered to vote in Texas to vote against Friedman.
On Aug. 30, as many as 1,700 west Houston residents packed a meeting with Mayor Bill White and Police Chief Harold Hurtt to voice concerns about evacuee crime.
During that session, some urged officials to stop government benefits to evacuees and send them to New Orleans.
"This is a black-and-white thing," said Parnell Herbert of the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond.
Herbert, who had asked Quanell X and others to the Friday strategy session, said his organization, which has about eight offices nationwide, is a "multiracial, undoing racism organization" that battles "institutional racism."
Herbert suggested west Houston residents who protested evacuee crime simply felt uncomfortable with blacks in their neighborhoods.
Jeannie Bollinger, president and CEO of the West Houston Chamber of Commerce, later responded in an interview that most residents in west Houston neighborhoods relish diversity.
But, she said, crime recently has increased.
"I'm not sure who's responsible for that," she said. "But we're seeing prostitutes on the street and panhandlers, and we didn't have that before. Policemen have told some to lock their doors, and that hurts business."
Bollinger, who attended the Aug. 30 meeting, said some residents were merely expressing frustration that their concerns had not been heard. The chamber president said she found some comments "appalling."
Herbert, who is relocating to Houston, charged that some crimes attributed to evacuees are sensationalized.
"It used to be five words: The black man did it," he said. "Now it's: The New Orleanian did it."
He cited a televised case of an apartment "trashed" by Katrina evacuees.
Upon investigating, he said, he learned that the occupants had been drug addicts, some of them evacuees and some of them Houstonians.
"It was a crack house," he said. "When they were evicted, they left it torn up. I visited with a neighbor, a New Orleans evacuee, and her apartment was as nice and well-kept as any."
The morning news conference was held in tandem with a daylong Katrina Survivors Reunion, which featured a variety of spoken-word and musical entertainment.
Quanell X, occasionally interrupted by expressions of support from his audience, told those gathered for the press briefing that gang members and other criminals from Houston partially were responsible for crime problems in New Orleans.
He noted that it was inevitable that criminals would have joined the more than 250,000 New Orleanians who initially fled to Houston after the storm.
Evacuees, Quanell X said, are U.S. citizens with the right to reside wherever they choose.
"This is a black-and-white thing," said Parnell Herbert of the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond........Imagine a white guy saying this.
This is NOT a black vs. white thang!
It is a criminal vs. law-abiding citizen thang.
Get over it, race-baiters!
"Herbert suggested west Houston residents who protested evacuee crime simply felt uncomfortable with blacks in their neighborhoods." .........now THATS funny, I don't care who you are!
Thank God for the Kinkster, fighting Political Correctness and the Wussification of America.
"Herbert suggested west Houston residents who protested evacuee crime simply felt uncomfortable with blacks in their neighborhoods."
It couldnt be the crime related to the refugees...no sir.
Kinky is a liberal too.
A member of the MMM denounces Kinky Friedman for saying something politically incorrect.
Seething at what they consider racist slurs against African-Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina, activists here Friday took verbal aim at gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman and west Houston residents who last week urged city officials to send evacuees back home."The nerve of the white man to talk about shipping anyone anywhere," Houston activist Quanell X told a small group of reporters and the public Friday at a Texas Southern University news conference. "This is disgraceful."
Diversity. A formerly little-used word that has taken on a signifance way beyond its meaning.
"Kinky is a liberal too."
It depends on the subject. If you are talking about government spending or border security, the same statement could be made about George Bush.
The nerve of a muslim minister to lash out at the Jewish candidate. 2 can plan this game.
He's the son of Quanell IX.
"Diversity" is not about ethnic background or religion or political ideology. It is about skin color and sexual preference only. Conservativism is being outlawed as thoughtcrime.
There are folks on FR who would vote for an "independent" who is right on one or two issues over a "RINO" who is right on 90% of issues but wrong on one or two issues.
Gotta like the notion of one man with a made up name criticizing another with a made up name.
When that RINO (who was Dem in the Reagan years) "promises" his support time and time again on those one or two issues that he keeps betraying conservatives on, he has shown himself to be unworthy of trust. Support is another matter.
"Houston activist Quanell X"
I would bet huge amounts of money that Mr. X man doesn't have a real job.
These people are sickening, if they want to help someone, do it with their own money. Don't steal it from the taxpayers.
If I lived in Texas I'd vote for Kinky as many times as I could.
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