WWYD- The Trans Bathroom Episode

Finally found the YouTube video of the ABC What Would You Do show that featured Jazz Jennings and people in the situation of a transphobe dissing a trans woman for going to a fracking restaurant bathroom.

FYI for you transphobes.  Trans people have to poop and pee as well.   But then again you're more concerned with aiming oppression and disrespect at trans people than minding your own damned business and letting trans people go through their day without hearing your unsolicited comments.

It's one that we increasingly run to no thanks to the conservafools and evilgelicals stirring up anti trans hate, and even led to on August 13 a trans woman in the Philippines getting arrested for using the potty in a shopping mall in Quezon City.

If you're looking for predators and pervs, start in in your right wing evilgelical churches and Republican Party meetings. 

Here's the Friday episode of the WWYD show if you missed it.

Bill King's Shady Mayoral Campaign Mailers

Back in 2015 Bill King narrowly lost in a December runoff to current mayor Sylvester Turner in large part because ethnically diverse Houston, and especially the Black and Latinx parts of it ain't feeling Republicans right now. 

Our city hasn't elected a Republican to sit in our mayor's chair in over 40 years, so in this run, looks like King is deploying deception and racism in his attempt to knock Turner out the mayors chair at The Horseshoe.

He has already been called out for his dog whistle racist signs that are still up in many parts of town that say 'Clean Up City Hall', as if to imply there is rampant corruption going on with the Black mayor in charge.

Since our Houston municipal elections are theoretically nonpartisan, to imply that his Republican behind has bipartisan support, a mailer has appeared targeting the predominately suburban white Kingwood area in Northeast Houston  that lists some Democratic precinct chairs and makes the claim they support him.

Only problem is that many of those Democratic precinct chairs listed in the mailers DON'T support King, and were majorly pissed to find out their names appeared in his campaign literature without their knowledge.   Those Democratic precinct chairs want their names removed from King's campaign literature ASAP.

King apologized on August 7,  then three days later sent out another mailer targeting the predominately white Clear Lake area in suburban southeast Houston replicating the same tactic.

This statement appeared on the Harris County Democratic Party's website expressing support for their party precinct chairs outraged at the unauthorized use of their names or that they implicitly supported the King campaign.   

The Harris County Democratic Party has been made aware that Bill King, Candidate for Houston Mayor, recently mailed a political advertisement that identified as supporters, among others, Democratic Precinct Chairs. 

Our Precinct Chairs have unequivocally stated that at no time did they express support for Mr. King’s campaign or otherwise give their consent to be listed as supporters of his campaign. 

“We take the concerns of our Precinct Chairs very seriously, we always have their backs,” said Lillie Schechter, HCDP Party Chair 

We stand behind these chairs in asking that all candidates conduct their campaigns with the utmost integrity and obtain consent before listing any HCDP Precinct Chair as a supporter. 

Why am I not surprised that King would do what Republicans always do when they run for office?   Lie and do whatever shady crap they have to do to win.

Arrest Made In Tracy Single Williams Case

The Houston Police Department (HPD) has announced it has made an arrest in the Tracy Single Williams case. 

The waste of DNA who did it was dating her.

25 year old Joshua Dominic Bourgeois was arrested on Friday and has been charged with the murder of the 22 year old Williams.   She was living in an apartment on Houston's west side at the time of her murder and was in a dating relationship with Bourgeois. .   

Her body was found in a gas station parking lot along the 11700 block of  I-10 in west Houston just west of Beltway 8 around 3;30 AM back on July 30, and her death was ruled by the Harris County coroner as a homicide.   Williams body according to HPD spokespersons had severe lacerations in addition to a puncture wound.

Bourgeois is currently cooling his heels in the Harris County Jail without bond, and it is unknown as of this writing if he has a defense attorney.

And yes, you can bet that the Houston area trans community and our allies will be closely watching this case to ensure that justice is served for Tracy and her family.

Edward Thomas Defense Attorneys Attacking Muhlaysia Booker's Femininity

Damn, we Black trans women can't get any respect in life or in death.

The news out of Dallas is that Edward Thomas, the waste of DNA who violently put his hands on the late Muhlaysia Booker back in April, will be going to trial in October for that assault in the 195th District Court of Texas.

Thomas was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.   Even though Booker was murdered back in May, that video of the April 12 assault is still around on The Net along with all the witnesses to that violent attack on her.

So what do you do when you're faced with mounting evidence that your client attacked a trans woman?  Go for a cynical variation of the 'trans panic' defense and attempt to strip the trans woman of her femininity.

 The transphobic defense attorney in this case are objecting to the fact that prosecutors are asking Judge Hector Garza (D) to rule that the indictment can use Muhlaysia's name even though she hadn't changed it legally or on any identification documents.

The defense attorneys are using her dead name and disrespectfully referring to Muhlaysia as a man

"Pierre Booker is legally a male by gender. To name him 'Muhlaysia' Booker could have the jury wrongfully conclude that Pierre is female...This is prejudicial against our client ,who is male."

The defense attorneys are trying a variation of the trans panic defense to strip Muhlaysia of her femininity.  They hope they can stir up transphobia in the jury pool and get potential jurors to not see Booker as the woman she is.

It also feeds this dangerous for us and patently false meme that trans women are just 'men in dresses'.

The Edwards defense attorneys also fear that if Booker is seen as the woman she is, it won't go well for their client.   Society usually takes a less charitable view of any man who puts his hands on a woman, and the defense attorneys know that.

It is a despicable legal tactic by the defense attorneys.  Here's hoping that Judge Garza sees the same thing I see and rules in favor of Dallas County prosecutors when the defense motion has a hearing next week.

If he doesn't, I predict that Judge Garza is suddenly going to find himself being primary challenged in March 2020

UH College of Medicine Building Plans Unveiled

The city of Houston has had since 1945 the world class Texas Medical Center that has grown to a 2.1 square mile complex of densely packed medical building and hospitals that do cutting edge cancer and other medical research.

The first college of medicine to be started in the state of Texas in nearly 50 years became closer to becoming a reality after a bill establishing the new UH College of Medicine passed both houses in the 2019 session and was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The UH College of Medicine will start classes in the fall of 2020 with the goal of 50% of its graduates engaged in primary care.   An anonymous $3 million donation that was announced in July 2018 will cover tuition for the entire inaugural class of 30 students.   Another donation from the John O'Quinn Foundation will cover a third of the second class, with enrollment expected to grow to 480 students over the next 8 years. 

It still has some major steps to pass before classes can start.  UH was recently granted permission in a unanimous vote of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) for the new Doctor of Medicine degree.   In December it will submit its application to the federal accrediting body for medical programs called the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME)

The university is finalizing a partnership with HCA Houston Healthcare, the largest hospital company in the nation, to bring a total of 389 new resident positions to the College of Medicine over its first six years.

Those new doctors will be needed and necessary.  Texas ranks an abysmal 47 out of 50 states in primary care physicians to population ratio, and the new medical school will be a major step towards rectifying that

Hopefully the new medical school will also take some time to teach their students about the medical needs of transgender patients, since we do have a large population of trans folks in the Houston metro area.    UH already has degree programs in nursing, pharmacy, optometry and social work, and the new medical school will be complementary to all those existing programs

“They clearly recognize the need for more primary care physicians in underserved urban and rural communities, and the University of Houston remains laser-focused on creating a new kind of medical school with an innovative curriculum to address the shortage," said founding College of Medicine dean Dr. Stephen Spann said in a statement

The school's four story 150,000 square foot building will be located on a 48 acre wooded plot of land just south of the main UH campus across from MacGregor Park along Martin Luther King Blvd the university purchased in 2008. 

Construction is slated to start in the spring of 2020 and be completed in 2022.

ABC's WWYD Trans Bathroom Show This Friday

We fought a knockdown drag out battle over the 2017 regular and special oppression session to kill SB 6, which specifically targeted trans people for bathroom dehumanization. 

Now in an episode ripped straight (pun intended) from the headlines, John Quinones and ABC's What Would You Do hidden camera are back to test the reactions of people who are confronted with the situation of a trans feminine person withing to use a public restroom.

And yes, our fave Harvard college bound student makes a cameo appearance in this one. 

Here's the link to the trailer video

This show broadcasts this Friday, August 23  at  9 PM EDT, 8 PM CDT on you local ABC station 

Welcome To Texas, Liberals!

“You’re welcome in Texas as long as you never forget why you fled a liberal state,” he declared on Twitter. “Texans expect less government, lower taxes & more freedom. Newcomers must keep it that way.”-Gov Greg Abbott, Twitter

Seems like Gov Abbott and his conservafools are a little upset that Texas after 20 plus years of Republican misrule, the Lone Star State  is starting to turn  purple on its way to becoming blue.

Gov Abbott also has it wrong (as usual).   Texas has always been a progressive state, not a conservative one, and GOP control of it is only a recent phenomenon aided by gerrymandering and voter suppression laws.

It's a political flip that has been long predicted to happen since 2009, when the population of non-white Texans began to outnumber white Texans.

The blue tsunami and the movement of mass quantities of liberals to Texas also has them scared they are about to lose control of the state because it is critical to their efforts to elect a GOP POTUS and be relevant in national politics.

Ted Cruz narrowly won reelection over Beto O' Rourke in the closest US Senate race in the Lone Star State since 1978.   Texas Republicans also lost 12 Texas House seats to put the Texas Democrats within nine seats of flipping the chamber for the first time since 2002.

And in a development that really has them 'scurred', Tarrant County (Ft Worth), went blue for the first time since the 1970's.

The leftward political shift has also been sped up by the racist Trump misadministration and its 'hate on everybody but conservative white males' policies.  Texas Republicans have also contributed to the blue tsunami buildup with their anti-immigration policies,  incessant attacks on abortion, their racist rhetoric and failure to expand Medicare.    The Texas GOP has also pissed voters off by pushing socially conservative bills that don't have the support of the vast majority of the growing Texas population or our Texas business community.

The conservafools are also distressed about the fact that over 1000 people a day move to the Lone Star State, which solidifies our hold on the number two spot of most populous US states.   The Texas population is also not only majority-minority, it is also getting more ethnically diverse, especially in the suburbs.

By 2022, Latinx people will pass whites to become the largest ethnic group in the state, and the increasing anti-Latinx rhetoric is convincing many of them to vote Democratic

Houston, the largest city in Texas, is projected to move up to become the number three most populous city in the nation behind New York and Los Angeles once the 2020 Census is completed.

Houston and Harris County also account for in any statewide race 25% of the vote total, and Harris County flipped blue in the 2018 midterms.  San Antonio, the second largest city in Texas, is currently the seventh largest in the nation, and Dallas, the third largest in Texas with the ATX nipping at its heels, is number nine in population.   Austin and Fort Worth are 11th and 13th on that national population size list with El Paso at number 21

While some of that growth has been from conservatives leaving deep blue California, it has been offset by many liberal Californians and other people from across the country moving to Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio because of jobs in our growing tech sector, corporate headquarters moves to the Lone Star State and a lower cost of living.

That growth in the big four Texas population cities of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin and their suburbs has seen those cities get bluer.   That blue wave is also starting to extend to the formerly Republican suburban bastion counties like Fort Bend near Houston, Williamson near Austin (and where Dell Computers has its headquarters) and Collin near Dallas, where the city of Plano landed Toyota's North American headquarters.

It's just a matter of time before the number of people in Texas cities outnumbers the entire combined population in Texas' rural areas that remain Republican for now.

So Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans can whine all they want, but the flip of Texas to Democratic control is underway.   That bullet train has already left the station. 

BTW, speaking of bullet trains, we're about to start building a bullet train line between Houston and Dallas.

The Texas Republicans may not want you here, but as a fourth generation native Texan, I not only welcome you liberals to the Lone Star State, but I am along with other Texas native and Texas liberal progressive residents eagerly looking forward to working with you to make Texas better by turning it back to its progressive roots.

400 Years of Africans In America

Today is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of captive Africans at Old Point Comfort in what would later become Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA.

They were part of an original group of 60 Africans captured in in the kingdom of Ndongo in present day Angola.   With the Transatlantic Slave Trade well underway in the Caribbean and Latin America, the captured Africans were placed on a Spanish ship named the San Juan Bautista to transport them on an unwanted boat ride to Mexico.

The San Juan Bautista was attacked by two pirate ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer, who forced the Spanish ship to surrender its cargo of captive Africans.   Those ships got split up during a storm, and the White Lion ended up at Old Point Comfort.

I also need to emphatically point out these early Africans weren't slaves.   Slavery was not legal in Virginia at that time and wouldn't become so until 1661, so those 20 plus Africans from Angola were traded for food and supplies and treated as indentured servants. 

At the time of the Africans arrival, the colony at Old Point Comfort was failing.   The colonists were resorting to cannibalism to survive, and now you had these Africans who arrived just in time with farming and artisan skills that were spread out amongst the nearby Virginia area homes and plantations

Those African farmers also had the skills to cultivate rice, sugar and cotton, crops that were perfect for this climate, but didn't have the seven year contracts like the white indentured servants from England.  That meant the Africans were at the mercy of their plantation owners

Many of those Africans worked 15-20 years before they were granted their freedom.   Once that freedom occurred, the freed Africans started their own homesteads, married other white and Native Americans, purchased the freedom of other family members, owned land, and enjoyed their freedom during that 40 year period before slavery stained what would later become the United States for the next 200 plus years



One of the other things that happened with those first African arrivals was the first African descended child born in North America.   Isabella and Antony were part of that group of 20 Africans that ended up living at Capt William Tucker's home, the commander of Point Comfort

His home was in present day Hampton. and Antony and Isabella eventually got married and had a son named William Tucker. The Tucker family was documented in the 1625 Virginia census, and William was baptized on January 4, 1624.  William is considered to be the first documented African descended child born in English North America.

The occasion of the arrival of Africans in America will be marked by a series of events in Hampton during the August 23-25 weekend. 

In light of the fact we have ignorant MAGAts shouting 'go back to Africa' to us, this 400th anniversary celebration of the arrival of Africans in America is a timely one.

It drives home the point that we have not only been here in North America for 400 years and predate the founding of the United States, but despite all the ongoing challenges of being Black in this country, we have managed to persevere, and thrive.

UH and TSU Are Back To Being Harris County Polling Locations

When I was a student at UH, the 1980 presidential election was happening during my freshman year.  While I eventually cast my ballot in my home precinct at Crestmont Park, I was still happy to know that we had a polling location set up in the UC for students to vote at. 

The same was the case at Texas Southern, which is one of the largest HBCU campuses in the nation and just a few blocks west of the UH campus.

When the Republicans got control of ethnically diverse Harris County, knowing that it provides at this point 25% of the vote total in a statewide election, the polling places on the UH and TSU campuses were removed.

At the same time, Texas Republicans when they passed their voter suppression laws in 2011, made sure that student ID's from a Texas college or university were no longer valid identification in order to make it harder for college students to vote.

Elections have consequences, and one of the happy consequences of the 2018 Blue tsunami that flipped Harris County back to dark blue Democratic Party control was the election of Dr. Diane Trautman to replace the odious GOP hack Stan Stanart as our Harris County Clerk. 

The county clerk, for you non-Texans, is the Chief Elections Administrator.  She's the person that establishes the procedures and policies that determine how elections are run in the largest county in Texas by population, where we vote and even the times we're able to do so subject to state and federal election law and approval of Harris County Commissioner's Court.



In addition to the welcome policy of being able to vote at any polling location in Harris County, polling locations were reestablished on the University of Houston and Texas Southern University campuses.

"It's important for young people to be involved in the elections process", said Dr Trautman. "These additional voting locations will make it easier for students, faculty and staff, as well as the surrounding communities to vote " 

That's significant, because UH has over 40,000 students and 7000 faculty and staff, while TSU has over 9000 enrolled students.   They deserve a say in who will govern them while they are matriculating on the UH and TSU campuses at the local, state and national level.

This will be effective for the upcoming November 5 municipal elections.


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Happy 20th Anniversary Trans Pride Flag!

Today is the 20th anniversary of the day that Monica Helms, while she was living in Arizona, created the original trans pride flag that now rests in the Smithsonian.

The flag is made up of five stripes.  Two baby blue, which represents the masculine and the traditional color of baby boys.   Two pink stripes represent the feminine as the traditional color of baby girls, and the white center stripe that represents gender non conforming and  folks who are transitioning.   

It is also designed so that no matter which way it is flown, it is always correct.   That symbolizes according to Helms, how we're always trying to find completeness in our lives.

On this same August 19 day in 2015, Helms donated the original trans pride flag to the Smithsonian where it was displayed at the last White House Pride Reception in June 2016.

That Helms Trans Pride flag first flew publicly at a pride parade in Phoenix, AZ in 2000 and since then has become over these last 20 years the widely accepted flag representing the international trans community .

That has been demonstrated by the creation of ginormous trans pride flags by groups in Mexico City and Palm Springs, CA which held the previous record for the largest trans pride flag ever created, and now the current record holders in Los Angeles 

That flag, created for the LA Resist pride march in June 2017 is 25 feet 6 inches by 160 feet  (7.8 meters by 48.7 meters).

Happy Trans Pride Flag day!     Thanks Sea Monica for being inspired to create it. 

Reading Is Fundamental- Elektra Reads A Transphobe

As you TransGriot readers know, I am a huge fan of the FX show POSE.   With five major trans characters, it has been showing what we deal with in our trans community lives  through Blanca, Elektra, the now deceased Candy and Angel. 

In last week's episode Elektra took her trans daughters on her working vacation to the beach, and ended up giving a master class in reading when  a transphobic Becky made the mistake of stepping to her and her children.

Enjoy

Never Demetria

The late Maya Angelou once said that when somebody shows you who they are the first time, believe them.   One of the candidates in the 2019 Houston mayoral race has a long ugly history of showing us exactly who she is as an unrepentant transphobe and a homophobe.

That would be Demetria Smith.     And Moni has receipts.

Yep, the same Demetria Smith who has run for since 2013 a District D city council seat, Texas governor in 2018 and now twice for mayor in 2015 and this year.

The same Demetria Smith who is anti-HERO and still futilely trying to gaslight you into believing she isn't.

The same Demetria Smith that threw a hissy fit at a January 2018 Houston GLBT caucus meeting when her time ran out to speak at that meeting, then took to her social media in the wake of that public meltdown to falsely claim "the GLBT's are trying to silence me."

The same Demetria Smith that can't spell her own name right on her own campaign material.

She is the same Demetria Smith whose $3,750 filing fee check for the governor's race bounced, leading the Texas Secretary of State to declare her ineligible to run for the governor's office. 

It's not like she would have gotten any support had she been able to stay on the ballot in that Blue tsunami wave election year.   She got less than 1% of the vote the last time she ran for mayor in 2015, and is well on her way thanks to her unrepentant homophobia and transphobia to failing spectacularly again.

Oh yeah, almost forgot.  Don't you still owe the state of Texas $22,000 in delinquent filing fees?

The last few days have found Smith on social media once again letting her anti-gay and anti-trans flags fly.  She has attacked At Large 5 city council candidate Ashton P. Woods, Kandice Webber, Eric Edward Schell, Nick Arvizu-Hutchinson  and an increasingly lengthy list of other peeps in the Houston TBLGQ community tired of her bull feces and calling her on it.

It's reading time    But let me hydrate first.

(Moni cracks knuckles)

I am personally tired of your ignorant mentally constipated transphobic behind pushing the bathroom predator myth as your weak as well water excuse to hate on HERO.   And yes Demetria, you ARE a transphobe and homophobe who is unfit to hold any public elective office in Houston, Harris County or the state of Texas.

You don't like people calling you out about being a homophobe and transphobe?   Then stop saying homophobic and transphobic crap.   It's that breathtakingly simple.

But tragically, you can't help yourself, and I'm not expecting that miracle to happen.

News flash for you Miss Thang.   It ain't the trans folks you need to worry about.  It's Baptist preachers, deacons, Catholic priests, Republican politicians and creepy uncles.

It's also pissing me off you're flapping those loud and wrong gums about 'predators' when we have predators who have declared open season on Black trans women.   Where's your concern about that? 
Don't their lives mater?

These are dangerous times in America, and we need intelligent leaders at all levels of government who stand up for everyone, not just heterosexuals.   If my rights as a trans Houstonian aren't secure, nobody's are.

HERO 2.0 without public accommodations language or coverage for trans people is a non starter.

Your beliefs as you call them are not grounded in anything but sheer ignorance, and as an award winning blogger and journalist, my job is to speak truth to power, call crap out and stamp out ignorance inside and outside my community.

You are batting .1000 when it comes to spreading that ignorance. 

And let me get something straight with your reprehensible behind..  Gaybaiting is not a good look on you sweetheart.  Neither is willful ignorance or transphobia, and it's time for a makeover and a trip to the library.

It's also quite obvious that you desperately need education about LGBTQ issues but are unwilling to learn.   You also keep doubling and tripling down on your homophobia and transphobia and posting it on social media for the world to peruse as if that is something to be proud of. 

That's why you continue to fail whenever you run for office.   This 2019 election cycle will be another one in which you fail to learn from past mistakes, and you will get less than 1% of the vote in this upcoming election.

You have made it quite clear since 2013 that you are NOT that person we need at City Hall, and it's why I and an increasing majority of Houstonians are on Team #NeverDemetria