It's just after 10:30 a.m. inside the cavernous Houston City Council chambers when Council Member Helena Brown, who has held office for only four months, scrunches her small, cherubic features into a scowl and requests the right to speak. The matter before the council involves the construction of a $26-million maintenance facility. Ordinarily, this sort of item would whisk through the city council amid a chorus of yes votes and self-congratulation. But this isn't an ordinary gathering at City Hall, and Helena Brown isn't an ordinary council member.
Photo by Chris Curry
Before Helena Brown got into office, she posted numerous rants commingling Catholic dogmas with conservative doctrine to a private Google Group called "Friends of Freedom." There is an "infiltration of commies in the church who like to teach liberation 'theology,' open borders, and social 'justice' all against what is true Catholic teaching," she wrote January 3, 2011. "It makes me sick!"
Photo by Chris Curry
Houston City Council meetings on Tuesdays begin at 1:30 p.m., but Council Member Helena Brown usually doesn't show up until around 2 p.m., often one of the last people to take her seat in the chambers.
Details
Related Content
More About
"Let us see what this is all about," Brown reads from a prepared statement, voice soft and nasally. "This is a company that wants to take advantage of a $30 billion initiative that our president has approved to rebuild schools and outdated buildings, according to Agenda 21."
"What?" gasps Mayor Annise Parker. She's never heard of Agenda 21, which extreme right-wingers like Glen Beck write on chalkboards amid ravings that link the United Nations, President Barack Obama and a slew of shadowy figures in a global scheme to enact worldwide socialistic control under the banner of "sustainable development." Now, Brown, clad in an austere brown blazer, is taking this worldview and connecting it to Houston.
"This company bluntly talks about their support of UN initiatives," says Brown, who gained office last December from District A following the lowest electoral turnout in recent memory. Since then, she has unleashed a radical and ascetic set of proposals that, often couched in apocalyptic imagery and colorful metaphors, would remake Houston into a libertarian utopia.
She has voted against anything she considers "luxury items" — paying caregivers of the chronically ill, fulfilling city pension obligations and providing emergency medical services, which she says should be privatized. In all, Brown, if given the opportunity to dissent, has voted against roughly 50 percent of city spending proposals.
The Brownian doctrine, perhaps, has been most evident in her staff. With the exception of Charles Prothro, director of special projects, everyone who's ever worked for her has been part-time. No benefits. No vacation. No sick leave. No pension. In the name of austerity, Brown had effectively rescinded every workers' right established over the last 100 years.
This is Brown's first elected office, although she's been politically involved since she was eight, behind the scenes on both local and national campaigns. Her only professional experience appears to have been intermittent receptionist work — which book-ended her real passion as a political and religious activist. As reported in the Catholic News Service, Brown boycotted The Da Vinci Code in 2006, saying it contradicted scripture. "Unfortunately, the release of the film is not simply a local tragedy," she told them.
She launched a private Google Group designed to appeal to the most conservative members among Harris County precinct chairs. She called it "Friends of Freedom," a place where neocons could voice opinions on taxation and government control without fear of public disdain.
Now Brown has commingled maxims found in the Tea Party, the libertarian movement and Catholic zealotry and introduced them to Houston City Council, preaching parsimony and the elimination of almost all taxation. Brown's iconoclasm has galvanized the rest of the council against her and made even its most conservative participants seem moderate by comparison.
Several times since Brown has taken office, Mayor Parker, bristling with the irritation of an overworked parent, has had to quell arguments concerning Brown's would-be policymaking.
But today, Brown, while implying collusion between Houston and the United Nations, will not relent. "This is the United States of America," she informs the audience at City Hall lest there be confusion. "And we don't answer to anyone but the good ol' U.S. of A. We're giving $26 million to non-American initiatives and interest."
Brown's extremism underscores a countrywide and, in fact, a global shift toward fringe politics. There are examples on either end, whether it's the Occupy Wall Street protesters advocating socialism or Tea Party activists mourning the death of freedom. Historically, times of recession give rise to radicals and their ideas, and Helena Brown is Houston's incarnation of that effect.
Certainly Brown isn't the first council member to take on the larger issues, even though Houston City Council is a local body and has little to no sway over the national agenda. But apparently she has done this — whether on impulse or under last-minute direction — without telling her staff ahead of time. Agenda 21 hadn't been discussed in their prep sessions.
"We had no idea who wrote her statements," said Brown's former chief of staff, Leticia Ablaza, who resigned along with the deputy chief of staff and an intern in late-April following a heated office clash between staffers and disillusionment over the councilwoman herself. (Although at least one staff member admires Brown, saying that, if nothing else, she remains committed to her ideals.)
Following a monthlong investigation into Helena Brown involving dozens of interviews and a review of public records and Brown's e-mails, it's become apparent that the councilwoman isn't quite the harmless radical she at first appears to be. She isn't acting alone.
Rather, an outside volunteer "senior adviser" named William Park — a man who popped into her life a few years back — appears to dictate her office, and some say her life. Brown's speeches, laced with demagoguery, aren't extemporaneous. By nearly all accounts, Park plans, if not writes, them.
