by Richard Enos

Derrick Broze, an activist and journalist who is running for Mayor in Houston, is going an unorthodox route in his political campaign. He is trying to appeal to an awakening citizenry by calling out both the local government and the local media in Houston as corrupt, biased, and even controlled by organized crime.

Two weeks ago, at the FT Bend Super Neighborhood Forum, held at the Fondren Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Houston, Broze spoke with other mayoral candidates about their platforms and addressed individual concerns of local residents.

Broze spoke on numerous issues relating to his campaign, including the controversial 5G rollout, police surveillance and militarization, as well as drug legalization and other measures.

In one portion of the discussion below, Broze gives an erudite assessment of the subversive way that politics really works in Houston, and by extension virtually all cities in the United States, in terms of how only the candidates that are already invested in criminality, and are willing to continue policies of non-transparency of taxpayer dollars, are then supported both financially and by the media:

"You know, I can understand a politician, an elected official saying look, it’s going to take too much time to tell you, you know, where all the budgets are going, how many contracts we’re signing, but, I mean, think about it: this is your money. It seems like politicians always say well, it’s too hard, it’s too difficult, it’s going to take too long, let us just filter down information, right?

"And also the other thing, as far as transparency, we’re living in a digital age where it is so easy to put this information online, it really, it takes moments to get the information from the budget, the contracts and immediately have a place that Houstonians that want to keep up with this can go and check and keep up with and that includes budgets under $50,000 because as others have pointed out, this is just going to allow a situation that gives government officials a creative way to hide money, and to shuffle it around so that you don’t see the bigger picture. And that’s what they always do.

"And also to Mr. Taylor’s point, you know, at the end of the day I think when we really look at this race, and we look at how the city’s being run and you look at how local media is controlling this race, as well, and giving you a perception there’s only 4 candidates running and you have corrupted officials, at the end of the day we have to recognize that the local government all the way from the bottom to the top and the media from the bottom to the top is run by organized crime."