He continues by pandering to his base and failing to recognize the civil rights of all Texans.
If you haven’t heard, Austin recently voted to cut their over-inflated police budget. This came after months of criticism regarding excessive use of force when responding to protests and recent killings of unarmed Michael Ramos. Austin then plans to reallocate that money in ways which would help the community more and help solve the racial injustice within the police department.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]The reason that they are doing that is because of Austin’s long history of racial injustice through policing.
And in the yes-man fashion we have all seen Abbott take when licking Trump’s boots. He’s come up with a way he can please his orange master and his far right wing base at once. His plan is to punish Austin and would be followers by forever taking away their annexation powers, and any areas and any residents that have ever been annexed by that city in the past will have the power to vote to disannex themselves from the city.
Texas Democrats are calling it a political stunt.
It may be a political stunt. Just look at this tweet from Greg Abbott back in 2012 when he was complaining about how much money Austin’s police budget was costing taxpayers.
One year Austin police are costing taxpayers too much, but this year Austin is to be punished for cutting the budget. Just what type of conservative are you, Gov?
Budgeting aside, Governor Greg Abbott has a long history of supporting racial injustice, of helping police militarization, and failing to protect both the constitutional and civil rights of American citizens.
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Maybe it is all of the Police Union endorsements he gets. Maybe it’s the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s raked in from private prisons over the years. Or maybe, it’s that he doesn’t care about racial injustice, systematic racism, and the brutality that Black and brown bodies have had to endure for decades in Texas.
Abbott’s #BackTheBlue position
Dallas’ 2016 attack and killing on police officers was terrible. Everyone was shocked and horrified about what happened. Everyone, including Black Lives Matter (the organization) condemned the senseless murders.
In 2016, Abbott already held a pro-police position. However, that incident caused Abbott and many other Texas Republicans to take a hard right turn in police militarization. They continue to look the other way when it came to police brutality.
Before that terrible incident in Dallas, Abbott was pushing for more guns in Texas. Since 2014, we’ve got more guns in Texas. We got open carry. Now we can bring guns in schools and courthouses. Using ol’ Abbott’s logic, shouldn’t we already be safer?
The truth is, our crime related to guns hasn’t changed much. But we sure do have a lot of cowboys with pistols that think they are macho men. We also have dozens of white militias that have been harassing peaceful protesters all over the state, who in many occasions have been protesting police brutality.
The irony.
This is what happens when we elect a shitbag of a human being who only cares about certain sectors of the population, but mostly cares about how much money he can rake in.
Even though 20% of people shot in Texas by police are unarmed, law enforcement rarely faces accountability. Nearly 64% of the murders by police in Texas, the victim has been Black or Hispanic. And if you’re Black in Texas, you are 2.2x more likely to be killed in a police encounter than your white counterparts. That is racial injustice.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]On multiple occasions, Abbott has proposed laws which would limit bail for for “criminals who repeatedly assault law enforcement officers.”
However, Abbott has never proposed a bill that would jail police officers if they used their badge to murder someone.
In fact, the opposite.
When Abbott signed the Sandra Bland Act. It was weakened and stripped of much of the language that addressed police brutality and racial profiling.
Before George Floyd, Sandra Bland was the only incident he ever spoke up about.
Greg Abbott has never condemned or even addressed the murders Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Michael Brown, or any other murder of a black man, woman, teenager, or child at the hands of police officers.
In fact, he’s never addressed the fact that the lives of Black people matter.
Again, the opposite.
Of course, he was touting “Police Lives Matter,” before the entire “Blue Lives Matter” trend even started. Maybe he’s a trend setter.
Or maybe he simply doesn’t care about Black lives.
On Greg Abbott’s twitter account, you can find dozens of tweets, aside from the 2016 attack, morning and praying for the loss or attack on an officer. Yet, you won’t find on twitter or else where a time where Abbott ever called for an investigation, gave condolences, or condemned murders of unarmed black and brown people by the hands of law enforcement.
That silence is deafening.
Police Militarization in Texas under Greg Abbott.
In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991, Congress authorized the transfer of excess Department of Defense personal property to federal and state agencies for use in counter-drug activities. Department of Defense property includes military grade weapons, tanks, Kevlar body armor, and helicopters.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]The increase of production of military gear during the War on Terror, which began in 2001, led to a surplus, which flooded police stations with military-grade weapons, armor, and vehicles.
From sending them money for more heavy equipment to actually sending them equipment, Greg Abbott has done nearly everything he can to turn our peace officers into soldiers.
All across Texas, heavily armed SWAT teams are raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night, often just to search for marijuana. Continuously, people are shot and killed. Texas police have been treating our communities like they’re war zones and the citizens of those communities as if they were enemies.
Greg Abbott has got to go.
This is a time where we need to bring an end to racial injustice in America and especially in Texas. If Greg Abbott cannot be on board with progress, we have to vote him out. Unfortunately we still have two years left of having to deal with him. But when we go blue in November, we’ll have legislators on our side that have the majority and can fight his tyranny.
For the love of God, please vote. Vote in this next election and vote in every election after that.
Still Blue in Texas 