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Carroll G. Robinson

Troubled Texas Electoral System: We Oppose all Voter-Suppression Bills

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The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats is opposed to all bills, in the Texas Legislature, that interfere with, restrict or suppress the rights of Texans to vote. What The Coalition supports is safer and expanded access to early voting as well as increased access to vote by mail and online voter registration.

In Texas, we need to make voting safer and easier for all Texans, especially for our senior citizens, the disabled and Texans with other health challenges.

Texas has the biggest Black population in our nation and investments by Democratic donors in Texas Black voter registration, outreach, education, and turnout need to be significantly increased starting right now.

If you want to help beat Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott, then please donate to the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats’ Texas Black Democrats PAC right now.

Instead of dismantling and prohibiting the innovative election ideas that were implemented to respond to the pandemic, the Legislature should be institutionalizing and building on them to make sure our state is fully prepared for the next pandemic or other emergency situations. This should not only be done with our election system, it should also be done for the digital education infrastructure we have built to respond to the pandemic and for the modernization of our electric grid.

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We and our elected officials must take the hard lessons we have learned, over the past months and build on them. Denying the need for improvement is not going to fix things or stop the next crisis from happening. We must build on the lessons we have learned together to strengthen our democracy, our communities and the state.

Republicans were once the party of advancement; the Party of Lincoln, Emancipation and a reconstructed America. Today however, Republicans are not even the party of a square deal as advocated and advanced by Teddy Roosevelt.

Republicans once supported The Voting Rights Act but are now advocates and champions of extreme partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression laws as well as the purveyors of fake news about voter fraud in pursuit of partisan political gains.

Republicans once fought to expand access to citizenship and the right to vote. Today, they are now opposed to those same two goals and are even advocates for eliminating birth right citizenship.

Democrats must continue working to move Texas and America forward to prevent our nation from being dragged backwards into a past where racial disenfranchisement and voter suppression were the law of the land.

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The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats will not be moved and we will not be dragged backwards.

Progress is not an ideology; it is a commitment to a destination-an effort, a path, in pursuit of a more perfect America to address racial, social and economic injustice and inequality. This is the path The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats is committed to pursuing. We are moving forward and upward and will oppose all efforts to nullify our voices and our votes.

Voter suppression is simultaneously an expression of both privilege and hate. Republicans don’t have to like us but Black voters and Black Texans must be respected and our right to live, vote, succeed and prosper must be protected.

For too long Black America and Black Texans have lived in the shadow of and have had to endure, the legacy of Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson.

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All Americans and Texans have a God given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and in a representative democracy that also includes an unencumbered right to vote. Since God gave it to us, Republicans in the Texas legislature can’t take it away. Freedom and Liberty, in Texas, are not the property of Republicans to give or take away.

No one is a patriot whose goals and desires are suppressing the votes of Black, Hispanic, Asian, senior citizens, disabled and low-income Texans and Americans in order to distort our democracy for partisan political gains so that they can win elections by excluding voters.

Democracy does not work best by shrinking the voter pool. Democracy works best by expanding access, listening to others and building consensus on common ground that is inclusive of those who have historically been ignored, excluded and left behind.

What Texas Republicans are planning to do this legislative session, in Austin, should and must be opposed by all reasonable and rational Texans.

If Republicans don’t stop their foolish push to disenfranchise Texans, not only must we raise our voices against what they are doing in Austin, we must also oppose their gerrymandering (to come) in court and depose them at the ballot box. If you don’t remember, reread our nation’s Declaration of Independence. This is a Declaration of Independence from Republican oppression, in Texas. It’s time for change and a new direction in our state. God Bless you and God Bless Texas.

You can help make a difference in Texas right now. Donate today to The Texas Black Democrats PAC. Donate here >>>

Thank you and God Bless Houston. For constructive dialogue, you may contact me directly >>>

Hon. Carroll G. Robinson, Esq.
State Chairman, Texas Coalition of Black Democrats

Hon. Robinson is the former Chairman, City of Houston Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee; Former Vice Chairman, Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council (H-GAC TPC) and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University.

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Carroll G. Robinson

Right-leaning Texas Supreme Court might be empowering Governor Abbott’s excesses

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What is happening in Texas right now is much more than a simple partisan political battle. Texas Democrats are at ground zero in the fight for the future of not just our state, but also our nation. 

Texas Republicans are not only at the forefront of their party’s national efforts to suppress the vote in support of the “Big Lie” but to also help lay the groundwork to undermine the 2024 presidential election and to help eliminate telling the truth about American history and its present day impacts.

Not only are Texas Republicans doing all they can to corrupt our political process, they have also spent years warping the Texas judiciary.

We now have Republican state judges in Texas saying that it is constitutional for the Governor to defund the other two branches of state government. Essentially, the Republican Texas Supreme Court has now said that the Texas Governor is a king.

What is going to happen to the rule of law in Texas when the Governor decides that he disagrees with the Texas judiciary and it is no longer needed and he defunds it? This is the door that Republican judges on the Texas Supreme Court have just kicked wide open in their obsessive commitment to partisan judicial making in support of the partisan political agenda of Texas and national Republicans.

We need a better Texas Supreme Court.

We need a better Texas Supreme Court.

You can help make a difference in Texas right now. Donate today to The Texas Black Democrats PAC. Donate here >>>

Thank you and God Bless Houston. For constructive dialogue, you may contact me directly >>>

Hon. Carroll G. Robinson, Esq.
State Chairman, Texas Coalition of Black Democrats

Hon. Robinson is the former Chairman, City of Houston Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee; Former Vice Chairman, Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council (H-GAC TPC) and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University.

Texas Guardian News
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Carroll G. Robinson

We Need A Harris County Public Safety Summit

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In the next few months Harris County Commissioners Court will be appointing a new sheriff once current Sheriff Ed Gonzales is confirmed by the United States Senate to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Hopefully, we make history in Harris County and get the first Black Sheriff in county history. Regardless of who Commissioners end up selecting, I want to encourage them to have the new sheriff convene a countywide Public Safety Summit with all law enforcement agencies across the county-Sheriff’s office, Constables, city police departments, Metro’s police department and the police department of all school districts, colleges, universities and community college systems, Texas Rangers, U.S. Marshall and FBI-to discuss and implement a comprehensive coordinated strategy to help reduce crime all across the county including in every city in Harris County.

Crime and criminals know no boundaries and all law enforcement agencies across our county are being funded by local taxpayers. Artificial boundaries should not stop Harris County law enforcement agencies (and certified Texas Peace Officers) from working together in a much more unified manner to better protect all Harris County residents no matter which city they live in or where in unincorporated Harris County they live.

We are not going to reduce crime in Houston or Harris County unless all of law enforcement works together. No one city or the county or school district or college can do it all alone.

Harris County law enforcement agencies must expand on the Homeland Security Fusion Center model to help increase crime prevention, arrests and clearance rates. This effort must also include shared access to security cameras and in the coming years a joint law enforcement command center similar to TranStar and consideration of a countywide or regional public safety district.

We have to try new ideas to fight crime in our community and better coordination and greater use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) powered technology must be a part of the conversation. Harris County, local law enforcement leadership and our state legislative and congressional delegations must all help lead and contribute to this effort.

Right now, what taxpayers want, need and deserve is results, not people we are paying telling us what is not their responsibility.

We deserve a new Sheriff who will build on what has been done right, but who will also be unafraid to offer leadership in new ways.

To the County Commissioners and Judge Hidalgo: please pick someone for Sheriff who will be able to do more than just operate the county jail.

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BY THE WAY: It may be hot outside right now, but remember the Texas electric grid failed us in the cold. It will get cold again, in Texas. Even worse, we have already been warned by Republican Governor Greg Abbott that the electricity grid may also fail us all during the heat of these summer months. Why isn’t Governor Abbott standing up for Texans to oppose increases in our electric bills? #WeDidn’tBreakTheGrid…The PUC and ERCOT did. Now ERCOT wants us to believe that Texas needs a 60 Point Plan to #FixTheGrid. That’s Crazy. The Texas Coalition of Black Democrats has a One Point Plan to Fix The Grid: FIRE Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton. #BeatAPP. That’s the plan to #FixTheGridandFixTexas.

You can help make a difference in Texas right now. Donate today to The Texas Black Democrats PAC. Donate here >>>

Thank you and God Bless Houston. For constructive dialogue, you may contact me directly >>>

Hon. Carroll G. Robinson, Esq.
State Chairman, Texas Coalition of Black Democrats

Hon. Robinson is the former Chairman, City of Houston Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee; Former Vice Chairman, Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council (H-GAC TPC) and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University.

Texas Guardian News
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Carroll G. Robinson

GOP voter-suppression disgrace —Why I am not going to Austin today

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I am not going to Austin today, Saturday, June 10, 2021, to testify against the State Senate voter suppression bill because it won’t make a difference to Republicans. I also don’t believe that Democratic state lawmakers should have returned for the Special Session to allow Republicans to even have the opportunity to pass all the bad bills that Governor Abbott has recommended be passed.

For me, there is no acceptable middle ground on the bills that Republicans want to pass. My only goals are to kill those bills, elect a Democratic majority in the legislature and elect Democrats to statewide offices. To achieve these goals in 2022, Democrats in the legislature must once again leave. They must not let Governor Abbott hold them hostage because he vetoed legislative funding. Abbott did it and they need to let him pay the political price for doing it. Democratic donors and labor unions can (and must) help take care of the state employees that may have to go on unemployment during this fight for the future of our state.

Republicans are not only going to pass legislation to suppress our right to vote, they are also going to pass bills to whitewash the teaching of history in our state, make health care options for women harder to obtain, discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community and take Texas taxpayers’ money to build a wall at the border rather than use that money to fix the grid and improve health care and broadband access in rural communities.

It is not too late for Democrats, in the Legislature, to once again bust the quorum and leave.

The job of the Texas Legislature is to protect Texans and our tax dollars; It is not to discriminate against Black, Hispanic, low income, women, LGBTQ+ and younger Texans but that is exactly what Republicans are planning to do during this Special Session. Enough is enough. Democrats have to start fighting back as hard and as tough as Republicans are doing and the Texas Democratic Party needs to lead that fight.

It is not too late for Democrats, in the Legislature, to once again bust the quorum and leave. Nothing good is going to happen for the people they represent during this Special Session and they represent more than just the people who live in their district. After State House Democrats walked out to kill the voter suppression bill at the end of the Regular Session, they now represent all Texans and Americans fighting to protect and save our democracy. 

For Texas Democratic state lawmakers, doing their job-at this moment in history-for those they represent in Texas (and all across our nation) demands that they, once again, bust the quorum and leave the Texas Capital.

Texas Democratic State lawmakers can save our nation; they can draw a line in the sand here, in Texas, against voter suppression, hate and discrimination.

You can help make a difference in Texas right now. Donate today to The Texas Black Democrats PAC. Donate here >>>

Thank you and God Bless Houston. For constructive dialogue, you may contact me directly >>>

Hon. Carroll G. Robinson, Esq.
State Chairman, Texas Coalition of Black Democrats

Hon. Robinson is the former Chairman, City of Houston Transportation, Technology and Infrastructure Committee; Former Vice Chairman, Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council (H-GAC TPC) and Associate Professor of Public Administration, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University.

Texas Guardian News
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