Dateline Houston

Occupy Houston was evicted from Tranquility Park Monday as dusk fell, ending a four-month protest that members called the U.S.’s longest-running occupation without violence.

Mayor Annise Parker issued a media release announcing the closure Monday afternoon, citing impending spring festivals in the park and saying the area would have to be cleaned and resodded. The notice gave protesters about two hours to leave the park, although it may have had the opposite effect. The day had been rainy, and the Houston Chronicle notes that the park was mostly empty until word spread of the closing, prompting a small number of protesters to come and be escorted from the grounds by police. There were no arrests.

“I support their right to free speech and I’m sympathetic to their call for reform of the financial system,” Mayor Parker said in the release, “but they can’t simply continue to occupy a space indefinitely.”

The indefinite-ness of the occupation has always been its strength and weakness. Kevin Laude, a 33-year-old software developer and Occupy Houston member I spoke to in January, was enthusiastic about it. “You can have a march, and that’s a single thing. You can do that for a couple of hours and then you’re done,” he said. “But an occupation never ends, in theory. I think that’s a really powerful statement, way more effective than a single protest.”

But he acknowledged that sustained activism was particularly challenging for a group that prides itself on functioning without a hierarchy. “Enthusiasm dies down after a while,” he said. “People get better ideas. People are people. Especially in leaderless movements, that’s the bad that you get with the good.”

Though the eviction may provide closure, Occupy Houston’s presence in the park had been dwindling. The group had hundreds of attendees in October, but their numbers were hard-hit by the cold and the holidays. They were already not allowed to erect tents, although some members were sleeping in bags and under tarps, and their once-robust food station had dwindled through theft and low resources to a folding table with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Moreover, members had gotten involved with diverse projects that suited their interests, rather than operating as a whole.

In this way, the occupation lives on. “Occupy Houston will survive and continue,” Joe Roche, a member, told the Chronicle. “Members are splitting off to focus on their specialties, and they are still here, even if the weather chased a lot of them off.”

Laude also saw change impending for the group, but predicted its continuance. “Good will come of it,” he said, “just maybe not the good that you predict.”

The pro-life movement has a baffling relationship with the concept of being “informed.”

Yesterday, US District Judge Sam Sparks ruled that, because of an appellate court’s earlier decision, he was unable to block Texas’s new sonogram law from taking effect. That 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, he said, “has effectively eviscerated the protections of the First Amendment in the abortion context.”

He’s referring to provisions in the law that require abortion doctors to perform a sonogram 24 hours in advance, play the fetal heartbeat aloud, show the sonogram to the patient and describe the fetus’s features, including limb length and the development of any internal organs. Doctors must do this even if they feel it is inappropriate or medically unnecessary, or if the patient asks them not to. The only exception granted is for patients who sign a form stating they are the victim of rape or incest and that they intend to pursue legal action, unless they believe doing so would put them in physical danger. Clinics must keep these intimate affidavits on file for years.

Sounds like a horrifying invasion of privacy, right?

Nope, say pro-life groups. It’s just informed consent. This is about empowering women, they say. What could be wrong with making sure women really, really understand what they’re about to do?

Last fall, Judge Sparks granted a temporary injunction against the law after pro-choice groups sued, claiming it violated doctors’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to deliver politically motivated speech. But Judge Edith Jones, of the 5th Circuit wrote that it and other so- called “informed consent” laws are fine “if they require truthful, nonmisleading, and relevant disclosures.”

Then, couldn’t it be considered “truthful, nonmisleading and relevant” to let women approaching a “crisis pregnancy center” know what such centers do and do not provide?

Nope, say pro-life groups. That’s unconstitutional.

The City of Austin is locked in a legal wrangle with pro-life groups who are suing over an ordinance requiring “crisis pregnancy centers,” which do not provide abortions or contraceptives or refer patients to places that do, to have a bilingual notice at their entrance stating just that.

Last week, the Austin City Council unanimously decided to repeal the current ordinance, which is being sued, and pass one that requires only that the notice state that there is no licensed medical professional on site. Pro-life groups are still suing.

“We are saddened that the City of Austin has approved yet a second unlawful ordinance that violates our client’s First Amendment rights to free speech and exercise of their religious beliefs,” said Jonathan Saenz, an attorney and director of legislative affairs for Liberty Institute in Austin, in a press release.

Resistance to accurate labeling of crisis pregnancy centers helps prove that the sonogram law wasn’t about providing women with “relevant, nonmisleading” information.

Judge Sparks knows what it was about. In yesterday’s ruling he states, “There can be little doubt that (the law) is an attempt by the Texas Legislature to discourage women from exercising their constitutional rights by making it more difficult for caring and competent physicians to perform abortions.”

At 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 27, Sebastian Prevot failed to stop. Well, he stopped at the stop sign three blocks from his house, but he was past the white line. For this, a Houston police patrol car tried to pull him over. Prevot proceeded to his home and there, again, he stopped. He says he got out of the car with his hands up. He wasn’t drunk. He didn’t speed. He just didn’t stop soon enough.

His wife, Annika Lewis, awoke to screaming. When she went outside, she found at least 10 cop cars converged in front of her house, some twenty officers on her lawn, and her husband, Prevot, screaming as he was punched and kicked, and beaten with a baton.

Lewis is 4-foot-11 and weighs 103 pounds. She knew she couldn’t stop the violence against her husband—but she could record it. She says she grabbed her phone and started filming, and that’s when a cop grabbed her hand and twisted it behind her. Another grabbed her hair and forced her to the ground. She says they picked her up, punched her in the face, and put her in the back of a police car. Meanwhile, her phone was confiscated and its memory card removed before it was placed back in her home.

Prevot, who crossed the white line before coming to a stop, was charged with a felony of evading arrest. He had to be treated at Ben Taub hospital for injuries including a torn ear that required stitches.

Prevot and Lewis are black. Lewis says all of the officers present were white.

Let me first say this: It is far too easy to judge the police. They do a necessary, dangerous, and difficult service. They are human; they get scared. Few of us outside the military will ever deal with the particular kind of uncertainty and anxiety that must go with day after day, shift after shift, year upon year of literally looking for trouble. Their good works go unnoticed every day, taken for granted as part of the job.

But cases like this make it hard to keep the faith.

It’s impossible for me to understand 20 cops against one man, even if he was fighting back. Even if he had been armed, which he wasn’t.

And they were. If they were all civilians, what happened Friday morning would be an angry white mob assaulting a black victim. But because the 20 men had guns and batons issued them by the state, it’s not?

HPD has dealt with police brutality and video before. Last year, a 15-year-old burglary suspect, Chad Holley, ran from police. But he was clipped by a police car, fell to the ground, and lay face down with his arms folded in the position of surrender. We know this because video of it exists, video that a court order suppressed but a community activist leaked to the local news, causing outrage. In it, police swarm Holley, kicking, stomping, and punching his head, his hands, his legs and sides. It is almost unwatchable. With half a dozen cops all over the unresisting high school sophomore’s body, another runs up to them at full speed and dives in to help beat him. Twelve officers were disciplined, fired, or charged in the case. All appealed, and two of the three fired officers won their appeal and are back on the job.

What would have happened if there had been no tape?

Earlier the same night as Prevot’s assault, community leaders had held a town hall meeting encouraging citizens to record and report police misconduct. Representatives from HPD and the FBI attended, assuring citizens of the legality of recording police work. Activist Deric Muhammad helped organize the town hall, prompted, he said, by “calls I was receiving about police misconduct, brutality, disrespect, and an all-around abuse of authority, particularly by a Caucasian crew on the night shift of Northeast Houston.”

After Prevot’s arrest, a family member of Lewis’s contacted Muhammad, who organized a press conference with the couple on Jan. 29. After continued media attention, HPD Chief Charles McClelland met Jan. 31 with Muhammad and Prevot’s attorney, Robert Collier. All called the meeting productive, and Tuesday night, Chief McClelland issued a statement saying that HPD encourages citizens to report police misconduct. He added, “I expect the men and women of HPD to respect the rights of the public to photograph, film or record police actions.”

But will they? Muhammad says, “The fact that they would go to the extreme of physically assaulting somebody as small as Annika Lewis says that the camera is very powerful.” And that’s why he says, despite the risks, citizens should still pull out their phones when they see injustice. “They’ve gotta know somebody’s watching.”

This morning, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation announced it will not cut breast-screening funds for Planned Parenthood after all.

This is what democracy looks like.

Earlier this week, the Komen foundation encountered major backlash for its decision to stop funding breast health screenings at Planned Parenthood. The foundation claimed the defunding was a result of improved grant-making procedures that prohibited funding of any organization under investigation, which Planned Parenthood is. The investigation is by Congressman Cliff Stearns, R-Florida, into whether Planned Parenthood used state funds for abortion, which is forbidden by law. It bears noting that the Komen funds were also not funding abortions but were specifically for breast health screenings, Pap smears to detect cervical cancer, and similar procedures.

The reaction was immediate. Angry messages about Komen’s decision erupted on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the Komen website’s internal message board. A media rep for Planned Parenthood told the feminist blog Jezebel that the day after Komen’s announcement, Planned Parenthood received donations from more than 9,000 individual donors. In a normal 24- hour period, it gets 100 donors. On Thursday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $250,000 to help restore the lost funding. Two dozen Democratic U.S. senators prepared a letter asking the Komen foundation to reconsider. This morning, in the article “Outcry is Fierce to Cut in Funds By Cancer Group,” The New York Times labeled the public reaction as “showing the power of social media to harness protest.”

On Thursday, Komen chief executive Nancy Brinker held a press conference to reiterate that the decision wasn’t political, as did the statement the foundation released today. “We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood,” the statement read. “They were not.”

Except that Komen board member John D. Raffaelli told the Times on Wednesday that (I’m quoting the Times here) “Komen made the changes to its grant-making process specifically to end its relationship with Planned Parenthood.”

Komen’s statement from this morning begins, “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” But they’re probably not sorry they tried to defund Planned Parenthood. They’re probably sorry they got caught.

For years, the Komen foundation has worked so successfully to brand its cause that you can hardly buy a bag of Sun Chips without contributing to breast cancer research. Supporting breast cancer research was the kind of non-partisan, feel-good cause everybody could get behind, and the Komen foundation was by far its biggest name. But now, Komen has done its reputation and fundraising profound damage. While some pro-lifers may have known of and been mad about Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood, now that fact is widely known and neither side of the debate is likely happy—pro-choicers because Komen tried to defund and pro-lifers because it didn’t go through with it.

The grant money in question was $700,000, a fraction of the $93 million Komen distributes every year. With a brand damaged and hampered fund-raising, what other organizations will suffer because Komen played politics?

Due process and decency had a big win last week when an Austin judge ruled that defendants needing a forensic bed at a state mental hospital couldn’t be made to wait in jail for more than three weeks.

Forensic beds are the spaces at state mental hospitals set aside for defendants needing psychiatric treatment to get well enough to stand trial, a process called competency restoration. For the past five years, such defendants—three fourths of whom are nonviolent offenders—have waited in jail for an average of six months, both untreated and untried.

The lawsuit, filed in 2007 by Disability Rights Texas against the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), which operates the mental hospitals, alleged that putting mentally ill defendants on a forensic bed waiting list for unreasonable periods of time violated the defendants’ due process rights. State District Judge Orlinda Naranjo agreed, and set 21 days as the maximum period a defendant deemed incompetent to stand trial could be made to wait for a forensic bed. A defendant is considered incompetent if he or she is incapable of understanding the charges against him and assisting in his own defense.

The long wait for competency restoration is an issue that everyone involved knows is a problem, but no one seems fully capable of fixing. People have tried. As the ruling notes, in 2005, DSHS more than doubled the number of dedicated forensic beds. In 2007 and 2011, the agency successfully lobbied the Legislature to allow for shorter commitment terms and more outpatient treatment for nonviolent offenders. The 82nd Legislature also allocated funds for a new 20-bed competency restoration facility in Harris County and passed a bill to count time a defendant serves in or awaiting competency restoration toward his sentence.

Last August, in a miniature version of the present ruling, Austin county Court-at-Law Judge Nancy Hohengarten grew frustrated with the long waits and ordered the Austin State Hospital to accept five defendants immediately, citing due process concerns.

But those beds have to be taken from someone else. “Emergency room patients next on the list to get a bed will now have to wait longer or find psychiatric services elsewhere,” said Christine Mann, of DSHS, told the Austin American-Statesman at the time.

The long waiting lists exist for a reason. Texas has about 2,400 beds at its nine state mental hospitals, less than a third of which are designated for forensic commitments. And the turnover of those beds is slow; competency restoration takes an average of 35 days, according to DSHS; civil commitments—people committed from the general community for emergency care— usually take only seven to ten days.

Judge Naranjo’s ruling did not specify how DSHS would go about complying with the order, and the state has not said yet whether it plans to appeal.

Judge Naranjo notes in her ruling that the forensic bed problem is “due to funding decisions and policy decisions” but says, “these economic decisions made by the State do not outweigh the Incompetent Detainees’ liberty interest.”

And that’s it in a nutshell. Texas ranks dead last among the states in per capita funding for mental health, and the forensic bed crisis is but one place where the state’s economic decisions hurt real people.

When Houston Mayor Annise Parker joined over 80 other mayors in a press conference supporting marriage equality on Friday, she spoke the language of the people.

“We believe it’s not just the right thing to do, but it is the pro-active thing to do to support the economic health and vitality of all of our citizens and all of our cities,” Parker said.

In other words: being gay-friendly brings home the bacon.

Parker, Houston’s first openly gay mayor, was one of several mayors who spoke at the press conference in Washington, D.C., announcing a bipartisan drive for marriage equality supported by more than 80 mayors within the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

A statement by “Mayors for the Freedom to Marry” echoes the sentiment. “We stand for the freedom to marry because it enhances the economic competitiveness of our communities, improves the lives of families that call our cities home, and is simply the right thing to do.” In that order, they might have added.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In tough economic times, every little bit helps, and these savvy mayors recognize that LGBT tourism dollars are worth courting. The signed statement also points out that gay-friendliness can influence whether businesses bring jobs to a city.

“Cities that celebrate and cultivate diversity are the places where creativity and ideas thrive. They are the places where today’s entrepreneurs are most likely to choose to build the businesses of tomorrow. Allowing same-sex couples the right to marry enhances our ability to build this kind of environment, which is good for all of us.”

“Houstonians are very realistic and pragmatic when it comes to a lot of issues,” says Noel Freeman, president of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus. “They see what really matters: business. The economy. Getting things done. Being a world-class city. And we don’t let a lot of this silly stuff get in the way.”

On Saturday afternoon, I sat in the Union Station lobby of Minute Maid Park in Houston and listened to two men with acoustic guitars play a cover of “I Come From the Land Down Under” for a gray-haired audience of twelve, one of whom wore a red tee-shirt emblazoned with, “OBAMA IS A RACIST BIGOT AND TERRORIST SYMPATHIZER.”

Welcome to the Saddle Up Texas Straw Poll.

If it sounds weird, that’s because it was. For three days, some 700 Houston-area tea partiers did their version of partying, which means selling each other bumper stickers and struggling to bolster what they seemed to know was a dying relevance. The two highlights were the straw poll itself, for which one had to have a state-issued ID and register with the SUTSP but didn’t actually have to be registered to vote, and a speech by Herman Cain, who’s not actually running for president.

You wouldn’t know it to hear him talk, though. He’s still riding around in a blue bus with his face on it, touting the Cain’s Solutions Revolution, which includes 9-9-9 and a balanced budget amendment and, in his words, “Sound money—we have too much inflation and it is helping to fund terrorism.”

The audience of about 350, which had been cheering at appropriate pauses, was silent after that one. Cain didn’t elaborate.

He did take the mic from the podium and stride around perspiring, looking sea-worthy in a blue- collared shirt, white v-neck sweater and double-breasted navy blazer with brass buttons. And he told them what they wanted to hear.

“Don’t listen to the mainstream media that says we’re not a factor. We’re not just a factor, we’re a force!”

Cheers.

Attendees had each paid $75 to be thusly encouraged. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they gathered in small rooms to hear sessions on the 10th Amendment, how to follow a bill through the Texas Legislature online, and other lessons in activist literacy. Simultaneously, speakers took to the small stage in the Union Square Lobby, one after the other, from talk radio luminaries to state lawmakers to Ted Cruz and several other U.S. Senate hopefuls leaning so far to the right as to be horizontal.

And then there was the vote. Attendees seemed to know that they weren’t voting in any legal way, but to think that the SUTSP results would influence presidential candidates’ campaign decisions. “I’m excited that candidates might stay in the race long enough for Texas to have a voice in the election,” said Sue Stringer of the Alvin Tea Party.

“Romney is being forced on us,” said Muriel Owens, who helped organize the straw poll. “We need a voice. We haven’t been given one by the GOP so we’re going to make our own.”

Muriel, a semi-retired chiropractor who supports Ron Paul, had an inch-high corona of dyed red hair and a grandmotherly countenance. We sat together listening to the guitarists and waiting for the straw poll results. Cain had just departed, taking with him most of the audience and practically all of the media. Cain closed by affirming his and the tea party’s disempowerment, to cheers. “We the people are coming!” he roared. “We want our power back and we are going to get it!”

Standing ovation.

Muriel was small and kindly, and I wanted to like her. I wanted her to tell me what all the fuss was about, why she and so many people that I would otherwise let dog-sit for me had organized this weird, expensive, symbolic event.

“Why hold this Straw Poll?” I asked. “What do you want?”

“I want the government out of my daily life,” she said.

“But what would that look like,” I said, “day to day?”

“Well,” she began slowly, “I would abolish the EPA. When they start telling us what kind of light bulbs to buy, that is an abomination.”

I thought her language a little extreme, but confessed to liking the incandescent.

“And they’re not teaching the exceptionalism of the United States. They are not teaching our children to understand how truly fortunate we are to live here. They’re trying to make it so that everyone’s the same, but that just brings everyone down. At my grandson’s T-ball tournament, at the end, everyone got a trophy, even the losers!”

“But,” I began, “the government didn’t give the losing team a trophy…”

“No…” she conceded. We sat with our hands in our laps.

At this point, I was still with her. I didn’t have to agree, but I could see where the feelings came from.

Then she continued. “Well, but they want us all in a one-world corporation. UN Agenda 21 promotes certain practices that will put us into a one-world corporation. That’s why they want us to have electric cars and live in cities, so they can control…”

And with that, the weird returned.

Half an hour later, the guitarists were permitted to leave the stage and organizers took over. The crowd was spare. In a raffle of twelve items, only three winners were still in attendance. After dozens of thank-yous, they finally announced the results. Ron Paul had won. Muriel cheered.