BLM Houston Is Handling Its Harvey Business

One of the things that pissed me off was seeing that fake news story from a right wing website that falsely tried to claim that BLM was blocking a military rescue convoy with supplies headed to Houston.

It was a blatant lie that was easily debunked.  What it did do was motivate me to write this post telling the real story about what BLM Houston is doing in the wake of the passage of Harvey to help the people of Houston and southeast Texas affected by the storm.

It was needed and necessary for me to do especially in light of the fact that I know several members of BLM Houston's leadership including its founder Ashton Woods and Kandice Webber.  I also met in Denver during Creating Change 2015 the founders of BLM national in Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Khan-Cullors.

I have witnessed firsthand what the peeps at BLM Houston have been doing for our Houston community before and since Harvey moved out of the area

For starters, BLM Houston member Brandon Mack is collecting school supplies for people who need them once the area schools restart.  Some of the local school districts had already started classes for the 2017-18 school year when Harvey struck while HISD was scheduled to start classes on August 28.

What is needed are pencils, white copy paper, spiral notebooks, notebook paper, post-it notes, clear backpacks, and binders.  Those school supply donations will be accepted through the end of September. 

BLM Houston is helping coordinate the clean up of people's flooded homes in northeast Houston, and has another Day of Action cleanup event scheduled for September 9.

BLM Houston has also been shopping for and accepting donations of supplies to distribute to people in need.

They are helping first responders and military personnel in town to help Houston recover from the floods.

In short, BLM Houston has been handling its Harvey business, and have been front and center in the efforts to help our people recover from this historic storm.

But you aren't hearing that from local or national media, or the right wing websites invested in spreading hatred of and disinformation about BLM.

If you are interested in helping BLM this weekend, their Houston Day of Action cleanup event they have scheduled will run from 10 AM-7 PM, and the gathering address will be the Fiesta at 9419 Mesa Rd in northeast Houston.
 
BLM Houston will provide the masks, cleaning supplies, gloves, goggles and tools for this event.  All they need is for you to show up to volunteer for it in jeans and closed toe shoes.

Thanks BLM Houston for doing your part at the grassroots level to help our community recover from Harvey.
 

What's The Texas Trans Community Doing In Harvey's Wake?

Plenty!

It's also ironic in the wake of a legislative session in which the Republican controlled Texas government tried to push fear and hatred of transgender people in the regular session and spent $800,000 of our tax money during the Special Oppression Session to mess with Texas trans people for their own political gain.

But when Harvey hit the upper Texas coast, it has been the Texas trans community who has also stepped up to not only organize efforts to help our own people, but people outside of it.

Hannah Simpson has been in Austin helping to coordinate Red Cross efforts there.   She has been reading stories to the kids there.  She's built a database to help with client management in the shelter, is working to help coordinate the volunteer scheduling and routing at the Austin command center and just doing what she can to help the place run smoother.

And nobody cares that she's using the women's bathroom when she has to pee.  It's past time to stop wasting valuable Texas legislative time aiming discrimination efforts at us.

Political rant moment over, back to the post.

Meanwhile here in Houston my fab sis Nikki Araguz Loyd and her husband Will went out during the deluge on their jet skis in their northeast area part of the city to help people caught in the floodwaters during Harvey.   They  ended up rescuing this 82 year old woman during one of their jet ski rescue runs.

Ana Andrea Molina and the Organizacion Latina de Trans in Texas (OLTT) despite losing a computer to a roof leak (since generously replaced) caused by the storm at Casa Ana Andrea, is standing by with up to six beds to shelter trans people made homeless by Harvey.

They are also pitching in to help where they can to help our trans community and other quicly recover from the storm.

One of my homegirls who is a pilot and operations director for a charter airline, has made flights along with her charter airline's pilots chock full of medical supplies to bring back here to Houston.   One of those medical supply flights was to Hobby Airport, which was closed at the time and she was told by the tower to 'land at her own risk'.  She landed the plane safely along with the supplies.

Other trans Houstonians and trans Texans are in unsung ways helping clean storm damage at other people's homes, volunteering at local shelters, coordinating aid and relief efforts, raising money and simply doing their part as fellow Houstonians and Texans do to pitch in and help people recover from this storm.

And that's before I even mention the countless trans folks around the country who are doing things in their area to help their Texas trans, bi and SGL fam in their hour of need.

Harvey is giving us the golden opportunity to prove that trans Texans are an undeniable part of the fabric of the Texas community.

We are eagerly rolling up our sleeves and seizing this opportunity to do so by handling our business and helping our fellow Texans.

Houston Floods, I'm Okay And Dry!

As many of you TransGriot readers are aware of, the Houston area got hit with 8-12 inches of rain in a six hour period from 9 PM Monday night to early Tuesday morning from an intense line of storms that brewed up on Memorial Day and extended from San Antonio to the Texas-Oklahoma border.

While the northern end of that line quickly blew through the Dallas-Ft Worth area, the southern end took its sweet time passing though our metro area which has had more than our fair share of rain over the last several weeks.

It didn't help that much of the rain hitting central Texas flows through Houston and its network of bayous on its way to emptying out into Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

The southwest side got the bulk of the rain, with 11.5 inches falling on that side of town.  I live on the northwest side, and while we got 8 to 9.5 inches, we were spared the flooding that whacked Meyerland and other affected parts of Southwest Houston.

There were 200 folks stuck at Toyota Center downtown after the Warriors-Rockets playoff game until early Tuesday morning because they couldn't get back home our out of the downtown area.


It got bad around 1 AM when Buffalo, White Oak, Keegan's and Brays Bayous went over their banks and caused major flooding on I-45 where it crosses White Oak Bayou at the junction with I-10 near downtown, and TX 288 flooded as usual between where it splits south of downtown from US 59 and 610 South and crosses Brays Bayou near the Med Center..

The Buffalo Bayou flooding also affected Memorial Dr. and Allen Parkway, which are major routes into downtown Houston from the west side of town.

There was also street flooding in various parts of town since Houston streets are designed to hold it, then feed it to the drains that lead to the bayous.  We had many of the underpasses hit with so much water it overwhelmed the pumps that keep them dry.

We also had a lightning caused fire at an apartment complex in the area near NRG Stadium that left 16 people homeless.

Sadly, we have had 5 deaths from the flooding, mainly drivers who realized too late the water they were driving in during the late night-early AM hours was rising too fast and quickly became too deep for them to act quickly.  They are also at this writing still searching for two senior citizens who were swept away down Brays Bayou after a boat that was rescuing them Tuesday capsized.

Houston caught a little break because the sun was out most of the day yesterday, and gave the swollen and affected bayous a chance to send that excess water to Galveston Bay.  

As of yet, haven't heard if any of our community peeps or allies being negatively affected, but know that if I do, I'll pass that information on to you as I receive it.

However, we are expecting more heavy rain later this week, so we'll be casting a nervous eye to the skies over the next few days and paying more attention than usual to the weather forecasts..