In response to student protests, the CUNY board of trustees, which has plead poverty in union negotiations for the past year+, is introducing a resolution to authorize a new $4 million contract with a security firm that advertises its ties to the Israeli surveillance state

I spoke w/ Reyna, a pro-Palestine UH organizer, who said there were 2 arrests on campus this morning.

The group's demands include divestment of ~$7 million in companies such as Boeing, Raytheon, & Lockheed Martin—& this protest was in leadup to a May 15 Board of Regents meeting

shame on UH

Houston is the gold standard 'Housing First' city, but last summer ~500 tenants—many on homeless vouchers—were served eviction papers. In response, they organized

On housing—full stop—vs. Housing First, where logistics blurs w/ rigid policing, in Jacobin bit.ly/3y77oDF

All eyes on Houston

Wanted to highlight this while Houstonians reckon with who Whitmire will be for the next four years—he's gone to great lengths to differentiate himself from Mayor Turner, but not on housing. Why do you think that is?

Reminder that Sylvester Turner reached a deal with HUD under Trump to not build affordable housing on Fountainview or in “the arrow”:
houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/…

Very important article by Sam Russek demystifying Houston’s “housing 25000 homeless people” mythology, the puff piece the NY Times wrote for Mayor Turner, the exploitative non-profits and landlords behind it, and what happened to some tenants who fought back.

Houston is the gold standard 'Housing First' city, but last summer ~500 tenants—many on homeless vouchers—were served eviction papers. In response, they organized

On housing—full stop—vs. Housing First, where logistics blurs w/ rigid policing, in Jacobin bit.ly/3y77oDF

'We played in McAllen once and it was only after we left that I realised they had the highest number of cop abuse cases in the nation. And there I am singing Hate the Police. What a fuckin’ idiot!’”

I would love to read an oral history of this show

theguardian.com/music/article/…

An article about protests in Houston without a SINGLE mention of the police or that large protest routes are often pre-approved by the city: de facto parades

Also circles around the question of pro-Palestinian protests, but not one of their organizers is interviewed 🙃

I am also at GWU. There are dozens of Jews in the encampment just hanging out, singing songs and being not hated. Unless those Jews aren’t Jews to you it is a hard case to make that the people in the encampment hate Jews 🙄

Biden just equated “trespassing” (i.e. students camping out on their own campus) with “violent protests”—essentially giving the go-ahead to cops to do whatever they want to disperse protesters. Incredibly dangerous

I went to Grants Pass, Oregon, a town of 40,000 people that’s about to re-write homelessness policy for the entire United States. I found a perfect encapsulation of our national crisis.
newrepublic.com/article/181036…

I’ve filmed a bit of the historic week-long Popular Universities at UH (SJP Houston 🇵🇸) and Rice (@rice_sjp) for Shift Press’s Instagram. I want to state for the record, these are the front webpages of the Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, and Houston Landing today.

DPS announces their presence is criminal trespass and anyone who doesn’t leave will be arrested. This is on the main lawn on Texas’ flagship public university