Nothing more justifies trimming back public comments at Fort Worth City Council meetings quite like one gentleman’s rant last month.
He devoted the last part of this remarks to haranguing Mayor Mattie Parker for mispronouncing a Pan-Asian surname and patting himself on the back for living out his Jesuit upbringing in social justice by — haranguing the mayor for mispronouncing a Pan-Asian surname.
I’m one of them rum Romanists, too, and I must have missed the part about social justice as a vanity project. I don’t recall Christ’s edict to perform works of mercy so you can paste it all over social media as a way of pronouncing, “How great I am.”
Loving self over neighbor, in fact, was the last thing Christ had in mind, as I recall it. It’s true, no one will mistake me for a theologian, though the decree of he who is without sin shall hurl the first stone like a Nolan Ryan fastball in the backside is all too familiar.
Well, this all came to mind because of the council decision in recent months to reduce the length of public comments and the uproar from the activists over this “anti-democratic” reform from council members and, clearly, a mayor with tyrannical ambition.
The whole episode brought back my first lesson in representative democracy. People are elected to represent the masses. “So, if you have something to bitch about, you go bitch to ’em,” my fifth-grade teacher instructed. “And really let ’em have it. The ship has sailed on being friendly as a way of making friends.”
In the 21st century, there are any number of ways to get in touch with your city councilman or even your state or federal representative. A phone call or email probably serve as the best ways. You can send off a hurried missive full of invective. You don’t even have to wait for the next council meeting. Just let it loose. Hit Send.
None of that, however, will get you a video on the social channels and praise from the social sycophants and wanna-be politicos.
So, this charged debate one evening reached a fevered pitch when Ms. Patrice Jones, a noted rabble-rouser, said the council should reconsider its wayward, harebrained policy because they can’t get enough attention.
“If you guys make it harder for us to talk to y’all in spaces like this, then we’re just going to have to come to spaces where you are and make it uncomfortable,” Jones said.
It was at this point casket-gate was born. It endures forever.
“Patrice, I still have your casket,” the mayor responded, as if to say that the activists were already infringing on comfortable spaces.
Activists, you’ll recall, dumped a casket in the mayor’s front yard during the trial of a Fort Worth police officer who was later convicted of murdering Atatiana Jefferson in 2020. The casket had the name “Atatiana” painted on it.
Parker says she was merely referring to the fact that the casket remains with the Fort Worth Police Department as evidence.
The comment, Ms. Jones and her ride-or-die inner circle, all presumably forged in activist ire, of course, said the remark represented a threat. That could have “energized” the mayor’s base to “cause harm to me,” says Jones.
Now, as an aside, that begs the question of who that could possibly be considering Parker is surrounded — from the left and the right — by cranks.
But anyway, Ms. Jones denies she made the drop. Police said there is no evidence Ms. Jones was the driver or occupant of that hearse, even though she acknowledges she wrote a social media post looking for a casket to borrow a week before one just happened to appear in the mayor’s front yard.
It’s the same police whom the activists want to see neutered. It was Parker’s no vote on a proposed police oversight board in 2022 — considered a slight to minority communities — that has had the left fielders worked into a froth.
However, consider: Parker has been a friend to minority communities in her two-plus terms, centering much of her work on uplifting the historically underserved through economic and workforce development initiatives. She was a strong supporter of major urban renewal projects, including the Stop Six and Evans and Rosedale revitalizations.
Her maternal and infant health initiative specifically targeted ZIP codes with the worst outcomes, predominantly a minority population. Before and since she was elected in 2021, she has insisted on education and career pathways to help underrepresented children escape cycles of poverty be a priority.
Through an initiative called “Good Natured,” she has worked to ensure all residents, especially in historically forgotten areas, had access to quality parks and green space.
You got to really want that job of mayor.
If the activists really wanted to punish her, they’d insist she return for another term in 2027.