COVID-19 Update – June 2020

We’ve had party members and interested parties contact us regularly regarding COVID-19 and what this means for party activities for LPBexar. We’re now 4 months into the pandemic, so now seems like a good time to provide an update as well as some context for our decision making.

San Antonio, and Texas more broadly, has unfortunately seen a surge in cases of COVID-19, resulting in the reopening of Texas being “paused” and several businesses, services, etc. choosing to resume restrictions voluntarily in the hopes of slowing the spread. This has put an unexpected and unfortunate damper on things for Texas.

What this means for LPBexar is that we will be hosting online events, and not in-person events, for the foreseeable future, despite our hopes that we would be able to resume in-person events in July. We will be revisiting this question during our operations meeting at the end of every month to determine if we can go back to our usual in-person meeting schedule, as we have been during the pandemic thus far.

Since I know this decision will be disappointing to many, and disagreed with by some, I wanted to provide some context for it. I first want to make it clear that those of us running the show here at LPBexar are equally frustrated and disappointed by the COVID-19 situation. We depend on our in-person meetings and events to find new volunteers and new donors, engage in activism, and just generally maintain the social cohesion of the party and the libertarian movement in Bexar County more broadly. The last 4 months have been difficult for us, and these certainly have been trying times for me to begin my tenure as Chair.

That being said, there are two major considerations that have to go into making this kind of decision. The first and most straight forward is whether there will be venues in which we can hold in-person meetings or events. With capacity restrictions in place more or less across the board, it’s simply not feasible for us to reach out to a restaurant, bar, or other venue and arrange to have a meeting where we don’t know how many participants there will be. At this time, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to actually arrange a proper meeting in a proper venue.

The second major consideration is the safety of our members. Even if we were able to secure a venue, we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Many of our members are elderly, and some have medical conditions that make them vulnerable, and moving to in-person meetings and events at this time puts them in a position of either having to put themselves at risk or not participate at all.

I realize that we have a wide range of opinions on COVID-19 within our membership, including those who believe fears of the virus are overblown and have found the various restrictions and measures over the last few months frustrating. If you find yourself in this camp, I would ask you to put yourselves in the shoes of those who do not share your point of view, and consider the fact that party leadership has to make decisions for the benefit of the entire membership, including those members that don’t agree with your point of view. I have my own views, of course, but party leadership’s job is to make decisions for the party as a whole, rather than to simply push down our own views on the party more broadly.

We will of course make every effort to keep our membership informed as situations developed, and I personally look forward to when we can resume in-person meetings. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out by emailing shawn@lpbexar.org.

Yours in Liberty,
Shawn Huckabay
Chair, Libertarian Party of Bexar County

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COVID-19

For reasons that are completely understandable, we’ve been contacted by several parties asking for a statement regarding COVID-19 and the various government programs and restrictions that have been put in place in the name of public safety. While it would not be feasible for us to address every specific detail, I do feel it is incumbent on us to offer a general statement on how the party sees the situation.

I want to first note the reality of the threat that faces the people of Texas, the United States of America, and the world more generally. While there are conflicting accounts of just how deadly and pervasive COVID-19 is, and no doubt the picture will become a lot more clear in the coming months as more data is gathered and analyzed, COVID-19 does represent a threat to public health that is significantly greater than a typical flu season; the death toll thus far alone confirms this. It is not “just the flu”, even if it’s not exactly an airborne Ebola virus either; there is room for some nuance here.

What is not clear is that the right approach is to completely disregard individual rights in the name of public safety. It is fair to say that our governments have failed us in providing consistent and reliable information about the pandemic while, simultaneously, taking an incredibly blunt approach to solving the problem. More often than not, decisions are being made to create the perception that the powers that be are “doing something” about the problem, rather than being made based on reliable data and demonstrated efficacy of the approach being taken.

The result has been a tremendous amount of economic hardship that will itself, ultimately, cost lives. As any libertarian economist will tell you, one of the greatest economic biases is our tendency to focus on large obvious singular events (the seen) while ignoring widely distributed, but individually small, effects (the unseen). This bias means that the general public often asks for policies that, on the whole, make everyone worse off but in ways that are not easily seen.

We can see a virus sweeping through the country easily; we won’t easily see every suicide or mental health episode, every parent struggling to afford food for their kids after losing their job, every person dead from a medical episode due to being unable to afford medication or due to budget cuts in local infrastructure that prevent emergency vehicles from reaching them in a timely manner. The severe damage done to the economy by the various lockdown measures will have vast and far reaching negative consequences, and it’s very likely that, in the end, these measures will not have been “worth it” even from the standpoint of saving human life.

For those of us who value liberty, one of the most disheartening aspects of this has been seeing the wave of friends, family members, coworkers, and other acquaintances begging for the boot of the state to press on their neck even harder, and the ferocity with which they will attack anyone who questions the narrative that, perhaps, liberty has some value worth saving even in the midst of a pandemic. These have been hard times, and times aren’t easy for us even under ordinary circumstances.

As your local branch of the Libertarian Party, know that we retain our commitment to defending individual liberty in the face of tyranny, whether it be local tyranny, state tyranny, or federal tyranny. While we do recognize the threat that COVID-19 poses, we do not recognize sweeping restrictions on human liberty as a valid or viable solution to the problem.

While I am confident that most of our membership sees things roughly the same way I do, the above statement should be taken as a statement from me as an individual, from my office of Chair of the Libertarian Party of Bexar County. Our membership is diverse and not a monolith, and naturally, no statement I could make will 100% represent every registered member of our party.

Yours in Liberty,
Shawn Huckabay
Chair, Libertarian Party of Bexar County

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Electronic Meeting To Select National Delegates Announced

The LPTexas Executive Committee has scheduled an electronic meeting to select delegates for the National Convention. The meeting will be held at 5/12 Tuesday @ 8PM CST, and will be held via WebEx. This meeting will be open to the public, and aspiring delegates are encouraged to participate.

WebEx Information:
lptexas.webex.com/lptexas/onstage/g.php?MTID=ed79023efc200e2795fc759177c3a6cc7
Event number: 661 078 037
Event password: 2020Delegates
US Toll +1-415-655-0045
Access code: 661 078 037

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Latest Convention News

Hey there Bexar County Libertarians! We just wanted to provide a general update regarding the state and national conventions to keep y’all up to speed:

State Convention
This has been rescheduled to July 31 – August 02. You’ll want to make appropriate adjustments to your travel plans if you plan to attend. For more information, please visit the official convention website:

Libertarian State Convention

National Convention
The national committee has officially voted to delay the convention; the convention will no longer be occurring in May. A new date has not been set but the convention will be held before July 15th.

The official website has not yet been updated with this information, but I would still recommend bookmarking it if you plan to attend, since more information should be posted on it soon:

Libertarian National Convention

Latest Convention News Read More »

SLEC Meeting Regarding National Delegation

SLEC has announced the below meeting. Anyone interested in being a delegate to the National Convention should attend this meeting, if possible, as well as fill out the National Delegate interest form.

By LNC rule, The Libertarian Party of Texas is required to select at least one delegate at least 30 days prior to our national nominating convention, which is scheduled for May 22nd. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak and current social distancing measures, LPTexas was forced to postpone our state convention which was previously scheduled for April 18.

However, because our national convention is still scheduled for May 22nd, we must submit at least one delegate by April 22nd. Our LPTexas rules state that SLEC (State Libertarian Executive Committee) can select our delegates to our national convention, but that such a vote must be held at an open meeting. SLEC will choose the remainder of our delegates at a later time, which may be at an in person event or online.

Please join us on WebEx on Thursday Night, April 16th at 8:00pm Central to view the meeting.

Details:
Event address for attendees: https://lptexas.webex.com/lptexas/onstage/g.php?MTID=e27dd9fffddbfdca1c7b830ab490997fe

Event number: 669 217 266
Event password: SLEC2020

Thursday, April 16, 2020 8:00 pm, Central Daylight Time (Chicago, GMT-05:00)

Please logon in advance to ensure your video connection works properly.

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