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.
I know people are gonna bash me for referencing him, but in his new book, Buchanan shows figures that Asians, while they are less likely to get arrested than whites, are something like four times more likely to join gangs.
Hispanics and blacks, on the other hand, are much more likely to join gangs and get arrested.
"Hispanics and blacks, on the other hand, are much more likely to join gangs and get arrested."
If this is a new form of IQ testing, it looks like the Asians win that one too.
"
I think they got their hustle on, and we need to get ours."
Well said, Kinkster.
kinky would get my vote then if he is like George W
Katrina evacuees factor into 20% of victims or perps in the murders since fall of 2005. I believe that there has been a greater than 20% increase.
I agree that it is a contributing factor but it is neither the primary nor sole factor.
Mayor White is crying for Federal tax funds to pay for police (while he'd rather give money to fat cat real estate developers). He also got 10 FBI agents to work a gang task force (because of MS13 operating in the city).
Again, illegal immigrants get a pass but their gang activity does not.
Mayor White is a contributing factor to rising crime rates (and is the primary reason that the evacuees are here in town). He sailed that generous move to a sucessful re-election for a final term without any credible opposition from the Republicans or other Democrats.
Yep, and I'm one of 'em. Fed up with career politicians and the desertion of conservative ideals. No more B.S., I want action!
He's got my vote.
EVERBODY starts out untested. Its keeping the failures that mystifies me!
LOL, gee who could have ever saw this coming?
You are right. The last I herd, he dose not have a job. He is the laughing stock of Houston.
He lost exactly zero votes from this idiot crowd.
Make him pay my ass.
Wait til Qanell hears the lyrics to some of Kinky's songs. He will be even more offended.
bookmk ping-a-ling
I remember when the Kinkster fired up a crowd of feminists with his song, "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed". He barely made if off the stage alive.
Not quite. Friedman is his real name. "Kinky" is a nickname he picked up in college because of his Jewish 'fro.
I hear you, sarge. Maybe there IS a time when "the devil you don't know is better than the devil you know."
What the heck is a quanell x, anyway?
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