Another Reason to be a Proud Texan: Senator Florence Shapiro One Step Closer on Genocide Bill

by Michelle . · 2009-04-27 18:16:00 UTC
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A bit of time and attention are overdue to my home state --- and my former boss, from my days spent running around the Pink Dome (which, as every staffer knows, makes you extra-Texan):

Senate Bill 482, establishing the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, passed the Texas House of Representatives this evening, after being voted out of the Senate earlier this month. The bill is co-sponsored by Senator Florence Shapiro, whose parents are Holocaust survivors. (Shapiro also co-sponsored, and spent a significant amount of energy lobbying for, Sudan divestment legislation, which passed in 2007.)

Shapiro, along with her co-sponsor Senator Rodney Ellis, told the Dallas Morning News that the "bill is designed to provide the learning tools so that the atrocities from Auschwitz to Darfur might not be repeated."

"This is a very personal bill for me. I get pretty emotional when I talk about issues like this," Shapiro said.
"You don't need death camps or gas chambers. Mass killings with the idea of wiping out a people can be carried out with machetes."

The bill that passed the House today, however, was more than a little watered down:

"The House rewrote the Senate-passed measure, though, so that it no longer would create a new Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. Instead the House version, which probably will win final approval tomorrow and be sent back to the Senate, would require the existing Texas Historical Commission to run programs in schools and communities to educate the public about the Holocaust."

But it's not over yet: The bill now heads to conference committee, where representatives of both chambers will try to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions before sending it to vote again, and from there it goes on to the governor's desk.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to be on the other side of Shapiro at the negotiating table. I suppose that it would be easy to let this one go, but I hope that Flo puts her foot down and gets everything that she came for. The people of Texas, and the memory of far too many victims of genocides past and present, only stand to gain from it.

Michelle . has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns.
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