After failing to collect enough signatures to recall Mayor Barbra Pinner, Levelland residents met Tuesday night to talk about next steps.
Manuel Mendez Jr. addressed the crowd of 23 in L.G. Griffin park on Tuesday evening. “I know a lot of you are disappointed,” he said following an opening prayer. He was a major driving force behind the movement. He filed a complaint last week with Lubbock’s NAACP. Milton Lee, the president of the organization, met with citizens of Levelland to answer questions.
The petition was issued on July 2 in response to a racist Facebook post that the mayor shared to her personal page back in June. The post claimed to be written by dying black man. It uses the N-word over 20 times and even uses the term “untrained monkey.” The fact-checking site Snopes.com can’t validate the post’s origins. Pinner apologized for her actions but says she will not voluntarily resign.
The group had 30 days to collect 642 signatures from residents of Levelland who are registered to vote. Over the past four weeks Mendez and others organized protests and stationed themselves all around town in an attempt to get enough names on paper.
Joyce Johnson has lived in Levelland for 40 years. She attended a protest two weeks ago outside of the Hockley County Courthouse. “I just feel like she broke ethical laws,” she said. “Being in an office as high as she is, once you lose respect of people, they can’t trust you.” She became emotional as she spoke. “I’m talking passionate because it’s very passionate to me. As a person of color, I know how it feels to be put down, degraded and people look at you like you are nobody,” she said.
Even still, Johnson said she had forgiven the Mayor. But she still found her actions unethical and grounds for removal from office.
On Monday night three of the members leading the campaign met in the parking lot of city hall. Mendez handed off the last few pages filled with signatures. They filed the petition 30 minutes before the deadline and by Tuesday morning the city announced they failed to meet the criteria. They received 468 signatures—73 percent of what they needed.
“We feel like it’s not a disappointment,” Johnson said. “We got people registered to vote so that’s a win.”
Johnson attended the meeting with the NAACP on Tuesday night. Even with the defeat, her tone hadn’t changed since the previous protest. “We don’t have any malice against the mayor. We want to work with her, we want her to work with us.”
That’s exactly what Milton Lee, of Lubbock’s NAACP, wants to help them do.
“It’s not so much about what the mayor has said,” Lee said, “It’s about what good can come.” He thinks that from this event, the people can come together and make Levelland a better place.
Lee and Mendez floated the idea of forming a committee to communicate better with the city and urged attendees to consider getting involved in local politics. Over 13 thousand people live in Levelland. Hispanics make up over half of that, and about five percent is Black.
At the start of the meeting, Mendez handed out small packets of information. Three pages detailing the various boards and their members. Partially to highlight a lack of representation, but mostly to show them an opportunity.
According to Mendez, of the 11 boards listed on the packets, only one board member is Black and a few are Hispanic. As he concluded his remarks to the crowd, he urged them to consider joining boards to increase representation in Levelland.
“Some people look at this as a negative,” Lee said, “And in a way it may be but there’s also always a good side to a bad side and I see a good side that can happen here where people can together.”
We did reach out to Mayor Pinner, but she declined our request for an interview.
