
The “gentlemen’s agreement” is not just a myth or metaphor. It began with real agreements.
But the communities of color were not parties to the “gentlemen’s agreement”. The “gentlemen’s agreement” was a consensus arrived at among the white business community in the early 1970s that they would not fund any white candidates for Places 5 or 6, in order to set aside those seats for Hispanic and African-American candidates, respectively.
It was for racist purposes.
The specific motivation was to let the “Blacks and Mexicans” have one seat each in order for the City to be able to defend the voting rights lawsuits that everybody knew were coming, and thus preserve the at-large system. It was not for the purpose of ceding representation to the communities of color, it was for the purpose of maintaining the at-large system. That was what the business interests wanted because they believed maintaining the requirement for candidates to campaign city-wide would maintain the need for business money to run campaigns and thus keep promoting the elections of candidates friendly to the business interests.
The result was that one Hispanic and one African-American were able to get elected in each Council election as long as they were the choices of the majority of white anglo voters and the white business community.
This is where the alliances between conservative white business interests and certain elements of the communities of color started to bloom. The white anglo grassroots voters did not contribute campaign dollars to the Hispanic and African-American candidates like they did to the anglo candidates. So Hispanic and African-American candidates learned to look to the business interests to finance their campaigns, and the business interests were pleased at the opportunities to purchase City Council candidates who turned into compliant City
Council Members.
At the same time, ironically, the anglo-dominated grassroots progressive movement was successful in winning the majority of Council seats in several elections in the 1970s and 1980s, and really changed the political climate of Austin overall in a gradual sea change. It was the progressive takeover of Austin-Travis County politics. City Council politics through the series of elections won by the progressive grassroots in the 70s and 80s did in large part forge the rise of liberal Democratic predominance in Travis County, which by the early 1990s became pretty much politically institutionalized.
On behalf of the NAACP I filed a long-anticipated voting rights lawsuit against the City in 1984. MALDEF came into the case a few weeks later, represented by lawyer Jose Garza of San Antonio. The case was hotly litigated back and forth between the trial and appellate courts for the next 5 years. There were also at least two charter referendums during that period of time asking the voters to approve a change to single-member Council districts. The referendums failed because they could not draw the favorable margins out of the white liberal precincts that those precincts gave to the Austin Progressive Coalition slates. Many white progressive voters were fooled by the illusion of equal access to the political process created by the two minority-held Council seats - just as the business moguls who manipulated the “gentlemen’s agreement” into being foresaw. After two trials and two appeals we ultimately lost the lawsuit for the precise reason that the business interests intended - the courts held that since one Hispanic and one African-American were consistently getting elected to the Council, thus occupying 2 out of 7 or 28% of the Council, the communities of color therefore had equal access to the political process so there was no Voting Rights Act violation.
Jose Garza and I argued vigorously that channeling minority political access into two designated Council seats in elections whose outcomes were controlled by the majority white community rather than by the minority communities themselves was NOT equal access to the political process as the Voting Rights Act guaranteed. A few years earlier we would have won the day with that argument. But the federal district court in Austin was now occupied by a new Reagan-appointed Republican judge, James Nowlin, who was not sympathetic to our plea that the Voting Rights Act guaranteed the communities of color self-determination rather than paternalism.
The trial evidence demonstrated overwhelmingly that the candidates who got elected in those two seats were chosen by the white business community, not by the communities of color that they supposedly represented. Former City Council Members who were “beneficiaries” of the “gentlemen’s agreement” testified on behalf of the plaintiffs. Former City Councilman Jimmy Snell, the second African-American to serve on the Austin City Council and later - and at the time of the trial - the first African-American County Commissioner in Travis County history, now deceased, was particularly courageous on the witness stand. He described how the white business interests told him when he ran for the Council that they had made sure there would be no white candidates against him in Place 6, but that he had to tow the line. In a dramatic courtroom moment, Snell described Carole McClellan (she of later more names) as Mayor, warning him when on the Council that he had to vote the way she wanted him to vote on behalf of the interests of the white business community or they would make sure his political funding dried up.
Ed Wendler, now deceased, courageously stepped forward and volunteered to the NAACP to take the witness stand. He put his law practice in jeopardy by describing in detail conversations in which he participated in the 1970s about making sure there would be no credible white candidates for two places on the Council in order to defeat the expected voting rights lawsuits over at-large elections and assure that the “minorities” who got elected would be “safe”. Wendler named names and risked the loss of business clients and friendships in the cause of justice, equality, and truth. He was a real warrior for justice that day in the courtroom.
Meanwhile over the years a few of the “minority” candidates, like Gus Garcia, rejected the business paradigm for Hispanic and African-American candidates and stuck to their progressive political-economic-social roots when they won their elections. Sadly, most did not.
The racist roots of the present Austin system go back much further than the 1970s. Before the charter change of 1953, the City Council was elected on a single plurality ballot that provided a crude form of proportional representation. All candidates ran together on one ballot. The City Council had 5 seats at that time. The top 5 vote-getters were the winners of the election. People did not run in designated places, there was no requirement of a 50%+1 majority, and there were no runoffs. The top five vote-getters by pure plurality were the newly elected Council.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, all across the South there were African-Americans returning to civilian life from service in World War 2. Having fought for their country they were not too excited about returning to Jim Crow segregation. They began to assert themselves. For example in Austin in about 1948, a young African-American veteran by the name of Volma Overton refused to move to the back of a city bus.
Most of the municipal election systems at that time were not majority-place elections. They were plurality election systems. Under the single-ballot plurality systems African-American communities in the South, newly empowered by so many among their communities returning from the war with a new sense of self-esteem, began to experience a political renaissance. African-American citizens were starting to step forward and enter into local elections and assert voting strength and Austin was part of it.
In 1951 the Austin NAACP president, Arthur B. DeWitty, ran a vigorous race for the City Council. He finished sixth, just a few votes out of winning a seat on the Council. Most of the white community went into shock over a Black man coming so close to getting elected to the City Council. The Council proposed a charter revision - to discard the one-ballot plurality election system and institute designated places with a requirement that it took a 50%+1 majority to win, thus necessitating runoffs if no candidate won a majority the first time. This happened across the South for the purpose of thwarting the newly rising Black political consciousness. The point of a designated place-majority system is that Black candidates could never win because at best they would get isolated head-to-head against white candidates in runoffs. This is the origin of the designated-place majority election system in the South. Notice that in most of the North and the Midwest, municipal elections are won by plurality, no majority vote requirement, no runoffs. The charter election was held about a year after the 1951 elections. The day before the charter election day, the front page of the Austin Statesman ran a special editorial column urging citizens to pass the charter change because the proposed new system was needed to prevent minority groups from being able to win elections to the City Council. The charter change passed. Arthur DeWitty didn’t run for the City Council again. The nascent rising Black political consciousness came to a halt. No Black ran for the Austin City Council again until 1967 or 1969.
This history is documented in contemporary newspaper articles of the time and records of white civic leaders’ openly expressed intentions and motivations. It was partly on the basis of this historical evidence that the federal courts ordered Travis County to be divided into single-member state legislative districts beginning with the 1974 primary elections. Previously the 4 state representatives from Travis County represented the whole county in a multi-member district and were all elected county-wide. A young Gonzalo Barrientos got elected to the legislature in 1974 from a new single-member southeast Travis County district. Wilhelmina Delco got elected from a new northeast Travis County single-member district.
The Austin City Council at-large, majority-place system is thus historically rooted in overt, willful racism. It should be sent to the dustbin of history for that reason alone, and should have been sent there 20 years ago. But there are many other good, progressive reasons to go single-member. Having lived in San Antonio for 9 years in a pure single-member system, I can attest that it does indeed facilitate less expensive campaigning, fewer media driven campaigns, and more grassroots candidates and Council members. Certainly it does not bring Utopia. The business interests and lobbyists are still able to buy candidates and Council seats, but to a somewhat lesser extent. Today a majority of the San Antonio City Council are grassroots women. The city staff tries to bamboozle them just like in Austin, lobbyists try to stick to them like velcro just like in Austin, but the election campaigns are highly grassroots, except for the citywide election for Mayor; there are bona fide grassroots progressive social justice activists on the Council; and the Council members clearly endeavor to be responsive to the concerns of neighborhood and community groups in their districts. It is commonsense that such results would arise, and they do in a lot of the district elections, though clearly not all and not all the time.
David Van Os
2008


Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. The subject is water fluoridation and today I thought we’d lighten up with a short fun quiz—just a few questions to think about. Each of these questions is valid for at least one of you, though I won’t be providing any answers. Well, maybe one answer. Here we go:
Q.1 Which one of you suffers from a fluoride-related health condition?
Q.2 Which of you has a spouse who suffers from a fluoride-related health condition?
Q.3 Which of you has family with fluorosis-stained teeth due to a natural fluoride source?
Q.4 Which of you told me privately in your office in mid-2009 that you realized the original impetus for water fluoridation rose from a need to dispose of post-WWII industrial waste?
Q.5 Which of you says you don’t need to be educated?
Q.6 Which of you has conceded in print that you know fluoridated water is bad for kids?
Q.7 Which of you has an aide who won’t drink fluoridated water?
Q8. Which of you has close ties to the nation’s largest non-fluoridated city?
And a Bonus Question:
Which of you is self-depicted singing in the shower in a You Tube video watched by thousands?
Oops…I gave it away. Well, that’s not a fluoride question anyway—except that it illustrates a good way to take in fluoride without drinking it.
It also moves me to wonder out loud just what it cost to make the slickly-produced 2 minute 15 second video it comes from. Since it didn’t involve hiring a tanker truck, it was probably comfortably under $186,000. But whatever the cost, Fluoride Free Austin doesn’t have that kind of advertising money to spare. That’s why we’re slow to undertake a petition drive. On a level playing field, we would win. But unfortunately the field is far from level, and funding makes all the difference.
That concludes today’s quiz. I’ll post the questions—minus answers—on the Fluoride Follies blog for our readers to ponder. And they might also ponder why a Council which by now has so much negative information about water fluoridation, is so adamant about keeping it anyway. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. Earlier this month I attended a public forum called “My Health, My Voice” at Reagan High School. It was sponsored by the Austin-Travis County Public Health & Human Services Department and is the first of a series of eight such events to be held—one each month— in various Travis County Title 1 school districts. There were free medical screenings, information tables sponsored by the likes of WIC and Any Baby Can, and presentations. Power points covering issues like diet, exercise, obesity, medical conditions and, of course, the usual self-congratulatory reports on PHHS’s multi-million dollar CDC anti-smoking grants consumed well over an hour.
Of that time, perhaps five minutes were devoted to dental health. We learned that a private charitable organization—the St. David’s Foundation—provides for the dental needs of economically disadvantaged elementary school children in the region through a program which brings mobile dentist offices to their schools. This seemed like one realistic way to address the explosion of oral disease every major national, state, foundation, and dental association report since 2000 has warned is occurring among our nation’s low income children. It certainly makes more sense than wasting the $385k to $1million—depending on who you believe—the city annually pays for useless water fluoridation. I turned to the St. David’s Foundation website, and here’s what I learned. During 2010, volunteer dental personnel operating out of the well-equipped vans:
1. Served 4,700 low-income children ages approximately 5-11 with procedures ranging from routine cleaning and filling to root canals, extractions and urgent care.
2. Taught 28,000 children and their parents how to brush and floss properly.
3. Rendered $4.2 million in free dental services in Central Texas.
From what I can tell, the city pays little out of its own budget toward this exemplary program. Granted it does “partner” with the school districts involved, which are already receiving federal funds, and under that bureaucratic buzzword “partner” lies a murky maze of fiscal relationships with which I can’t claim familiarity. So if anyone on the dais has a figure on how much the city actually pays toward direct dental care for Austin’s neediest children I’d welcome it. Does any one of you?

The numbers Rae Just gave you of children served by the St. David's dental van program represent only those of elementary school age, approximately 5 to 11. What about younger children? Tooth decay is a big problem among toddlers, even babies, today. What about those who are older than 11 or living outside of the districts served? Not all these youngsters reside in Austin, so there is overlap. But the upshot is that there's a great dental need out there which the city of Austin's water fluoridation is doing nothing to mitigate.
The last 40 minutes of the Forum were devoted to facilitated small-group discussions. It was better than most such staged Delphi palavers. There were nop parlor games, just a few relatively straightforward questions to toss around. Such as "What would a healthy Austin look like to you?" Fair enough.
Our facilitator, who was none less than the PHHS communications director, seemed startled that fluoride could be on anybody's radar, but she asked for some further information. We sent it to her along with a question about which other school districts would host future forums. She never got back with us. However, the next two events--which will take place in Del Valle and Manor--are now posted on the Public Health and Human Services website.
Last month's forum at Reagan High School was held in our own neighborhood, so we felt right at home. And even though there seemed to be as many PHHS personnel as actual neighborhood participants on hand, it was still a worthwhile occasion. We didn't get near the health screenings to see what they were screening for, but there were plenty of vans around. It was also a chance to educate people about fluoride, both during the discussion sessions and informal milling-around time. Several of the WIC mothers hadn't seen the posted non-warnings about dental fluorosis, so we were able to let them know.
We encourage everyone to attend one or more forums and share their information about fluoride. The next one takes place TONIGHT, March 22, 6-8 p.m. at the Del Valle ISD Opportunity Center, 5301 Ross Road B in Del Valle.
For more information, go to www.austintexas.gov/healthforum or call 512-972-5888.

Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. Last month, newspapers headlined Argentine president Cristina Fernandez, who’d been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was scheduled for surgery to remove the diseased gland. Days later she had the operation and—oops—it wasn’t cancer after all. She did have a real thyroid ailment, however, and now she has no thyroid and will have to take replacement hormones the rest of her life. While parts of Argentina have enough natural fluoride to make whole populations sick, Buenos Aires, the capital city isn’t among them. The water there is artificially fluoridated. Sometimes the elite get caught in their own trap.
It’s probably no coincidence that shortly thereafter, Fluoride Action Network director Dr. Paul Connett received an inquiry from South America, and put out a call for someone to translate it. Here’s what the writer had to say:
SALUDOS PAUL , MUY BUENOS DIAS , ME GUSTARIA SABER SI EL GRUPO DE FLUORIDE ALERT HAY EN PERU O EN CHILE , PAISES DONDE YO RADICO POR EL MOMENTO, SI NO LO HAY , ME GUSTARIA SABER TAMBIEN DE COMO HACER QUE EL GRUPO SE PUEDA EXTENDER EN ESTOS PAICES, POR QUE EL PROBLEMA DE LA CONTAMINACION DEL AGUA ATRAVES DEL FLUOR , ESTA EN MUCHOS PAICES Y EN ESPECIAL PERU Y CHILE , DONDE NO HAY NADIE QUE LE HAGA FRENTEANTE ESTE TREMENDO ACTO CRUEL QUE ESTAMOS SUFRIENDO TODOS NOSOTROS , ESPERANDO SU RESPUESTA ME DESPIDO MUY CORDIALMENTE –BENDICIONES—MARIO OSORIO
And in English:
GREETINGS, PAUL, AND MANY GOOD DAYS TO YOU. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF THE GROUP FLUORIDE ALERT EXISTS IN PERU OR CHILE, COUNTRIES WHERE I AM SETTLING FOR THE MOMENT. IF IT DOES NOT, I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KNOW HOW THE GROUP COULD BE EXTENDED TO THOSE COUNTRIES BECAUSE OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTAMINATION OF THE WATERS BY FLUORIDE IN MANY COUNTRIES BUT ESPECIALLY PERU AND CHILE, WHERE THERE HAS BEEN NOBODY TO OPPOSE THIS TREMENDOUSLY CRUEL ACT WHICH ALL OF US ARE SUFFERING. AWAITING YOUR REPLY, I SEND MY BEST WISHES.
In Chile, most municipal water supplies are artificially fluoridated. In Peru, they fluoridate milk and salt. Notice he uses the word “cruel”—same in both languages. It’s this same cruel act—which you all support—that we are here to end.
