Texas GP members call for strong anti-racist stance from party leaders

by Green Power Project | Jul 23, 2018 | Anti-Oppression, Popular Movements

By now, many people are familiar with the situation in San Antonio over the weekend preceding July 4th, in which a local activist threw a drink into the face of a young person that was joking out loud about lynching Black people, while in a public establishment.  It was initially assumed that the local activist was a member of the Green Party, which later fact-checking showed was inaccurate.  Since then, there has been a short statement issued by the Green Party of Texas, which some Texas Greens find to be lacking. The sequence of events, plus a way to get involved, are posted here.

The original statement issued by GPTX was:

Our official reply concerning Kino Jimemez: Kino Jiménez has no association with the Green Party of Texas other than an entry in our contact file which was bogus and therefore has been deleted. His actions are 180º opposite of what we stand for.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/txgreens/posts/1990108787675483

Some GPTX members feel that the short statement centers white supremacy by concerning itself only with the actions of the San Antonio activist and also offers one take on the concept of non-violence.  Therefore, a group of Texas Greens decided to write an updated statement, here and offer commentary on the situation.  Here is that first draft:

On July 4th, Kino Ahuitzotl Jiménez removed a MAGA hat from a teen sitting in a Whataburger and then splashed him with an open drink. On July 5th, a Heavy article was published which claimed Jiménez was a Green Party member and quoted the secretary of Harris County Green Party as having expelled him due to his actions. On July 6th, the GPTX steering committee posted a summary of these events, concluding that Jiménez’s behavior was “180º opposite of what we stand for.” Subsequently, Jiménez has not only been verbally assaulted around the nation due to both liberal and conservative media coverage, but was arrested, and lost employment at a bar in San Antonio.

 

After a period of democratic deliberation amongst the rank-and-file of the GPTX, many of us have concluded that the official response was inadequate, and worse, contributes to the very institutionalization of white supremacy against which this party is opposed. On behalf of the GPTX, we apologize for fundamentally mishandling this incident. On the one hand we attempted to resolve the situation by shifting blame to bureaucratic problems, and on the other we actively condemned the anti-racist actions of Jiménez out of a liberal interpretation of ‘non-violence.’

Although the secretary of Harris County Green Party had no authority under our bylaws to speak to the media on behalf of the party as a whole, nor to expel Jiménez, we collectively hold responsibility for inadequately training our officers in their powers and responsibilities. Additionally, we should generally be more prepared to handle and correct such incidences, should they occur.

In terms of the actual actions of Jiménez, both the secretary of Harris County Green Party and the SEC offered a single interpretation of our Ten Key Values, one which not only failed to fit the fact patterns, but also provided tacit cover for white supremacy. Jiménez was responding not only to the MAGA hat, which is itself a white supremacist symbol, but also to the horrifying and racist dialogue of the two teens. In this sense, Jiménez was acting to simultaneously disrupt the ‘safe space’ that enabled the racist banter and to put ice on the teens’ expectations that such ideas are acceptable in our society. In contrast, by denying Jiménez the agency to engage in such low-level disruptions as splashing a drink on racists or grabbing a hate symbol, our leadership has functionally taken the stance that people of color can only protest within boundaries of ‘civility,’ which of course are pre-determined by white society.

While our leadership may have cited the Ten Key Values, they surely stopped at the title of “Non-Violence,” for under the description of that value, our party has previously affirmed that “We recognize the need for self-defense and the defense of others who are in danger.” Further, another key value, Social Justice and Equal Opportunity states that, “We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, any discrimination…”

What better way to protect people of color as a whole and to confront discrimination than to verbally and physically disrupt racism as it happens? To look at it differently, does Jiménez deserve to be jailed and unemployed because he took away a racist symbol and splashed a drink at teens laughing about lynchings? Based on our reading of social justice theory and our own platform, of course not; to conclude otherwise is tacit white supremacy, plain and simple.

Thus, we believe that the Green Party of Texas as a whole owes an apology to Jiménez and all people of color, both within and without the party. Although we had believed ourselves to be an ally in the fight against white supremacy, our actions in this incident have clearly revealed otherwise. We are deeply sorry for having failed here as anti-racist allies.

Nonetheless, an apology is not enough. We will also continue to engage in democratic dialogue with the goal of producing changes in internal policy and officer education, which should hopefully prevent such failures from occurring in the future.

Co-signers:

Aaron Renaud (Dallas County, TX)
Alex Telecky (Collin County, TX)
Cory Bowers (Dallas County, TX)
Remington Alessi (Galveston County, TX)
Adrian Boutoureira (Travis County, TX)
Natalia Schuurman (Travis County, TX)
Travis Christal (Tarrant County, TX)

The draft co-signers explain:

On Sunday (7/15), the GPTX SEC discussed a proposal by several TX Young Greens for the party to publicly apologize for its mishandling of the recent incident concerning Mr. Jiménez. The proposed apology is included below. The TX GP leadership decided to form an ad hoc committee to write up an apology by the night of the 17th, which may or may not reflect the original proposal. This committee was comprised of Shawn Gay, Jeff Justice, Alán Alán Apurim, Kevin McCormick, Alexandra Telecky, and Aaron Renaud, but also received commentary from GPTX co-chairs Joy Davis and Wesson Gaige.

 

The editing process was a struggle, as the liberals on the committee wished to defang and weaken the language of the apology draft, such as by eliminating the voice and rhythm from the writing, down-playing the failures of GPTX leadership by eliminating such language, and reducing space given to the leftist counter-interpretation of the ten key values. For example, both Shawn and Jeff originally wished to eliminate everything after the opening paragraph in order to replace it with the following: “After further discussion with our party membership, we would like to formally retract stating that Jimenez’s actions are 180 degrees opposite of what we stand for. We believe that he should not have been arrested or fired from his job. The reason why is that Jimenez was, in his own way, standing up against what he viewed as racist behavior, which some in society believe is acceptable. We find such behavior completely unacceptable. The MAGA hat has regretfully become a provocative symbol of racist ideals and policies. The Green Party of Texas stands for non-violence and promoting social justice and equal opportunity. It vows to continue and redouble our advocacy for all who have suffered and still suffer the effects of institutionalized white supremacy.” Similarly, Kevin McCormick stated that this apology, “…is shaping up to be worse than the original blunders of the HCGP Secretary and subsequent blunder of the SEC co-chair,” that “‘we’ are not collectively guilty of these actions,” and the letter “looks like emotive babble.”

 

On July 19th, two days past the stated deadline, the ad hoc committee submitted a heavily edited apology to the SEC, with a vote scheduled for July 23nd, or six days past the stated deadline. As of the 23rd, co-chair Wes Gaige claimed that the ad hoc committee was submitting the final copy to the SEC later that day, with revisions occurring on Slack, outside of the original committee deliberation in email which ended on the 19th. In truth, some committee members were engaged in a parallel editing conversation outside of the ad-hoc committee’s email thread, with Jeff Justice making calls for “completely redoing this document.” As a result, non-committee members have essentially rewritten the entire apology from the ground up, with Wesson Gaige pushing to submit that copy to the SEC for a vote, instead of the copy deliberated on in the email thread.

 

The new apology reads: “The Green Party of Texas supports Non-Violence as one of its Ten Key Values. Self defense is the right of all human beings subject to attack. Given the option, walking away from a potentially violent situation is the better response. The incident shown in the mass media, the throwing of a drink and walking away with a hat, may have been the result of aggressive provocation by the people taping Kino Jimenez. We don’t know what was happening prior to his being videotaped. Green Party value of non-violence would promote intervening verbally or by providing a comfortable space to argue without touching another person or throwing objects when confronted with bullying and verbal or physical aggression. We abhor violence. We also abhor racism and discrimination. We also recognize that resistance to injustice may require measures of civil disobedience and verbal and physical manifestation of disapproval. The matter is wisely employing those measures, including what, when, and how. Please note that the Green Party of Texas hasn’t banned Kino Jimenez from anything. He was never a member of the Green Party to begin with. We stand opposed to the trend towards fascism led by the current President and his racist supporters. We stand in support of people oppressed by white supremacy.”

 

Thus the liberals of the party advocated a distortion of our party process by subverting the ad-hoc committee entirely. For example, Shawn Gay claimed on the 22nd that “the SEC will vote later today before posting on FB,” but without clarifying at all that the entire apology had been completely rewritten. When these failures to abide by process were brought up to the GPTX leadership, their only response was “Such was not communicated to the rest of us. We were looking for the draft and nothing happened. In the meantime, Alfred submitted his draft.” Although both co-chairs were cc’d on the email thread and had access to the Google doc containing the official draft, they would rather overlook an apology that runs counter to their liberal ideology and ignore the process entirely.

 

As a result, the following co-signers have created this petition urging the GPTX SEC to adopt the apology as it was originally written (first quote above) and without further bureaucratic delay.

Take Action

The petition below sends an email to the GPTX leadership to appeal for them to make a courageous statement about both the human right to self-defense and the responsibility of all Greens to opposed openly white supremacist and racist speech and actions.