Texas Rep. Nicole Collier Won’t Be The Last Political Prisoner

We are living under a fascist regime, and more Americans will become political prisoners for dissenting from fascist rule.

Representative Nicole Collier sleeping on the floor of the House chamber in the Texas state Capitol. Image from Twitter.

I wonder what Rep. Nicole Collier thought about last night as she slept on the floor of the Texas state Capitol for the second night in a row. Undoubtedly, she thought about ancestors down her paternal and maternal line who were not free to move as they pleased in the United States of America — whether because of enslavement, the slave patrol, Jim Crow laws, or any other tactic employed by this country to keep Black people anything but free. I’m sure this is why she refused to be followed around by police officers like she was some type of common criminal all because she exercised her rights as an American citizen and politician. Maybe she wondered how we got to this point as a nation? Or perhaps she remembered how far she might have thought we’d come as a country when she earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree or was sworn into the Texas House of Representatives knowing she was her ancestors’ wildest dream.

Now, in less than a decade, the country has devolved to the point where a Black woman, who is a lawmaker for the state of Texas, was locked in a building because she refused to be followed around by police…