Roddy Stinson, who writes on city and state issues for the San Antonio Express-News had an excellent column Sunday about how the Alinsky/IAF network in Texas is meeting in Austin to "educate" taxpayers about how we need a big tax increase to fund public education in our state. Here is what Stinson has to say about the local San Antonio affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF):

"There was a time when Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) and Metro Alliance educated the public about one issue or another, but that's no longer true. Years ago, the leaders of the quasi-religious organizations stopped educating and started propagandizing and browbeating to get their own tax-and-spend way……it would be refreshing — and considerably more honorable — if the COPS/Metro Alliance crowd would end the pretense of being purveyors of knowledge and wisdom and simply proclaim, ‘Our way or hell to pay!’"

You can bet that the IAF network will be doing all that they can to pressure the legislators in the upcoming special session into supporting an open-ended, higher tax solution to our flawed Robin Hood system of funding public education.

To read the entire Stinson column, link here.

Last week I visited the Vietnamese community in the "Versailles Village" area of flood-devastated eastern New Orleans. The Versailles community is nearly thirteen miles from downtown New Orleans and stands in the wreckage of thousands of moldy abandoned houses that were once home to the thriving black "New Orleans East" community. Yet in the midst of this despairing landscape, Versailles Village unfolds like a beautiful flower. Nearly 1,000 people have returned to Versailles and restored hundreds of homes. At the entrance of the subdivision, twenty-four businesses have sprung back to life, including restaurants, grocery stores and even a dentist office. Children are back in public and private schools and work is easy to find--employers from around the city come to Versailles to recruit desperately needed service workers.

So how did this rebirth happen while adjacent black neighborhoods continue to stagnate in eerie silence?

A good part of the success of Versailles owes to the Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church. Before Katrina, the church was the center of religious and social life for the 4000 Vietnamese who lived in approximately 950 homes located within one mile of the church. Rev. Nguyen The Vien, pastor for Mary Queen church, estimates that in addition to the 1,000 people now living in Versailles, another 1,000 former residents have returned to the New Orleans area and are awaiting repairs to their homes.

During the evacuation, the church served as a vehicle for the community to collectively make decisions about when and how they would return and rebuild. Church leaders kept the Diaspora Vietnamese community linked together, with Rev. Vien constantly visiting refugee sites and fellow priests dispatched to Houston and Dallas to work full-time with the displaced communities

From the first days of evacuation, the community began planning to return and rebuild Versailles Village. The decision to return together was key in helping overcome homeowner fears that they might lose their investment if they rebuilt in a neighborhood that later failed to revive. They community was convinced that if they quickly rebuilt and occupied their homes, the city government and utility companies would have to provide services. The plan worked.

By the first week of October, Rev. Vien had returned to New Orleans with 300 parishioners. They temporarily stayed in Vietnamese community centers in the area until they could set up tents and housing in the Mary Queen of Vietnam church building. Working together, they set about gutting and restoring their homes. Vien negotiated with Entergy, the local electrical utility company, to provide power to the subdivision, even though Versailles was miles from any other inhabited residential neighborhood. To justify the cost of the connection work and the diversion of scarce electrical power, Entergy told Vien that they wanted some guarantee that the community was returning. Within one week, Vien delivered 500 signed requests for electrical hookups. By November, Versailles had electrical power and water lines.

The Vietnamese community managed this rebirth despite the uncertainties about future flooding and the possibility that FEMA may require homeowners to elevate their homes at great cost in order to qualify for flood insurance. None of this seems to trouble the people of Versailles. They have refused to wait for government agencies to tell them if and when they can return to their homes. Given that most experts now agree that the flooding was a result of mistakes made by the government--the Army Corp of Engineers in particular--the Vietnamese community’s doubts about salvation by government are understandable. It takes an enormous leap of faith to expect the people who caused our problems to solve our problems.

What can be learned from the Versailles miracle? The Vietnamese community had several unique qualities that aided its successful return, some of which can be adapted to other communities. Foremost, it possessed a group-oriented culture that emphasized community needs over individual rights and interests; each individual in the community was duty-bound to help everyone in their community make it home. From the outset, community members understood that the individual’s survival depended on the community’s survival.

The catholic church provided a communication network for the community to make collective decisions and act in concert, even while dispersed around the country. No other community in New Orleans had the benefit of this kind of communication network. It proved crucial in bringing the community back at the same time and in sufficient numbers to force the government to provide services.

Perhaps the most important key to their success is that the Vietnamese community refused to place its salvation into the hands of the government. They simply came home.

I asked one Vietnamese resident if he feared that the community might flood again and all his hard work would be for naught. He shrugged. "Look," he said. "We fled Vietnam. We fled New Orleans. Now we’re back. We’re here to stay." Was he concerned that the city might ultimately bulldoze the community? He just laughed. "How they going to bulldoze a house with people in it?" he asked.

He had a point.

Mayor Laura Miller, upset over the lack of commitment from Texas or OU, has gone on a public relations campaign to force the state’s most powerful school to commit to play in the Cotton Bowl. The mayor brazenly tied renovations of the Cotton Bowl to a commitment from Texas and OU to continue playing their annual Red River Shootout at the Cotton Bowl. Let’s not forget that city leaders have been promising Texas and OU for years that the city was going to improve the deteriorating historical icon. Both schools have been lured back year after year after the city has made minimal improvements to the Cotton Bowl. Finally, this mayor is in no position to threaten or bully the national champion Longhorns into doing anything.

Mayor Miller earned her stripes for what not to do in sports negotiations when she blew the opportunity to bring the Dallas Cowboys back to Dallas and into their original home, the Cotton Bowl. Texas’ athletic director mentioned in a Dallas Morning News article that the city’s inability to stop the Cowboys from moving to Arlington and building a new stadium is of concern to Texas.

Miller, in a rare moment of accountability, has taken full responsibility for turning the Cowboys away citing the deal was too expensive for her. But the city charter does not call for the mayor to have that much control over a project like the Cotton Bowl/Cowboy project. Yet the city council sat back and allowed a mayor, inexperienced in these matters, to destroy a deal that would have been great for Dallas. I wonder if the same thing is happening again with the Texas/OU-Cotton Bowl negotiations. If it is, saner minds had better step up to the plate and get a handle on this deal.

I am often asked why the African-American community is so upset with Laura Miller. Here is one of the many reasons. Even though the fate of the Cotton Bowl has been mishandled by several administrations at City Hall, this mayor and only this mayor had the opportunity to lead the revitalization South of the Trinity by successfully landing the Cowboys at the Cotton Bowl. Those of us South of the Trinity realize that if the Cotton Bowl is allowed to fail then the Fair Park is not far behind. If that happens, the entire area surrounding this historic site will go into disrepair. The future of the southern sector, not just a football game, is at stake for residents South of the Trinity.

I do not know of any political player South of the Trinity who is not willing to work with Mayor Miller to save the Cotton Bowl. Despite the public aura presented by some in the white media, Mayor Miller is not willing to work with African-Americans who disagree with her on some issues but who are supportive of any initiative that makes the Cotton Bowl viable. The fact is there are several major universities who would benefit from playing at least one game annually at the Cotton Bowl mainly because the Dallas metroplex is one of the major football recruiting hotbeds in the country. Dallas city leaders must lead by quickly deciding how much is needed for the Cotton Bowl and putting the issue on the upcoming bond package. Interested university football programs must see as soon as possible that Dallas is indeed serious. The time for talking this issue to death is over. That is how we see it South of the Trinity.

I’m writing in response to your recent editorial “ Holiday ’s time has passed: Confederate Heroes Day contradicts values” calling for an end to the recognition of Confederate Heroes Day, January 19^th.

As Texas Land Commissioner and a descendant of Confederate veterans, I feel compelled to defend state recognition of this day and seek to calm those panic-stricken by the word “Confederate.” If you think Confederate Heroes Day, or the Confederacy itself, is exclusively about slavery, then read on.

January 19^th is the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and was recognized as a state holiday by the Texas Legislature in 1931. In 1973, the day was officially designated Confederate Heroes Day, to recognize all the Texans who served their state while a part of the Confederacy.

While your editorial admits this day recognizes the sacrifice of Confederate ancestors such as my great-grandfather James Monroe Cole, it echoes a commonly held myth that the Confederacy was solely about slavery and therefore any remembrance of the Confederacy is racist.

In our sound bite, bumper sticker society it is convenient to draw black and white lines or espouse perceptions of history that are simply not supported by the facts. Consider the following: President Abraham Lincoln, often perceived as the Great Emancipator, placed little importance on ending slavery. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union ,” Lincoln said, “and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it.” On more than one occasion, even after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln took the position that he would allow slavery to continue in the Southern states if they rejoined the Union .

Yet, the man Confederate Heroes Day honors, Robert E. Lee, opposed slavery. He never owned slaves himself, and before the war had freed slaves passed on to his family through his father-in-law’s will. “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” Lee wrote while stationed in Texas in 1856. “We see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers.”

Yet his Union counterpart, U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant, was a slave owner. Even during the war now seen as a war of emancipation, Grant’s wife continued to own slaves and brought her personal slave on visits to see her husband on the front lines.

As mentioned in your editorial, Texas hero Sam Houston vehemently opposed Texas leaving the Union . But you failed to mention Houston supported slavery. As did Alamo heroes William Barrett Travis and Jim Bowie.

Slavery was an integral part of America , both North and South, for a century before the Confederacy even existed.

If we arbitrarily choose to stop remembering Confederate Heroes Day because of the connection to slavery, then we must also cease recognition of the Fourth of July. America was born on that date as a nation that supported slavery. Slavery existed under the American flag for almost 100 years, but existed only four years under the Confederate flag.

Following the argument made by your editorial, we should not honor the black Buffalo Soldiers of the American West. Sure, they sacrificed for their country, but wasn’t their mission to subjugate and destroy an entire race: the Plains Indians? Nonsense. As Texans, we are right to honor the Buffalo Soldiers for their fortitude and courage. The same goes for Confederate soldiers.

The facts are clear. The Confederacy was about more than slavery. Confederate Texans starved, suffered and died for issues other than slavery. It is that which we honor and should continue to honor with Confederate Heroes Day.

JERRY PATTERSON is the 27^th Texas Land Commissioner and a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans.