Our New Anahuac

Representatives from La Raza Justice Movement, LULAC, The Millions More Movement and SHAPE community center, held a press conference to denounce racism and sexism at The Houston Fire Department.  Their shared goal was to send a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in hopes of opening a federal investigation against charges of racism, sexism and cronyism in the Houston Fire Department.

The author of the letter, Shelby Stewart, spoke on the inability of the Office of Inspector General to conduct an internal investigation. “The firefighters themselves are saying that the OIG isn’t working,” referencing the ten months that this story caught local media attention. Three separate incidents involving nooses have occurred.

Derrick Muhammad of the Millions More Movement put the responsibility squarely on Mayor Bill White. “He is the head of the whole city, and he will be gone in three months. It provides the perfect scenario for this whole problem to be swept under the rug, but we won’t let it,” he added.

For my part I mentioned that this overt racism is part of many, many racist attacks in every department of the city, county and state, and I have heard several earfuls from people who are too intimidated to speak out.

Rose Arenas, Senior Captain, HFD

Most importantly, Senior Captain, Communication Department, HFD, Rose Arenas spoke out about her experience with racism. “It started from day one,” she said. “During training at the academy, I was approached by a captain who told me, ‘we don’t want your kind here, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that you don’t make it.’” Since then she has witnessed a preference in hiring, promotions and overtime call ups for white males, she says. Retaliation was a probabiliy, Arenas added, but she stood firm.

Deloyd Parker of SHAPE community center told her that our coalition would not let that happen!

One of the biggest insults came when the aggrieved firefighters asked for a meeting with Mayor Bill White. Instead, the mayor met with firefighters who believed that there was no problem at all. None of the aggrieved were invited, despite the fact that one of them had requested the meeting, said Arenas.

We might just have some new members of the Bill Gringo campaign.