With issues like poverty increasing high school dropout rates and unemployment surfacing in the 18th Congressional District in Houston, Councilman Jarvis Johnson is ready to take the reigns and bid for the congressional seat currently held by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Lee, however, has accused him of being nothing more than an “opportunist” since he is in his final term on the council. “Politics is truly about timing and opportunity,” says Johnson. “I’m not running cause I’m in my last term. I’m running because the voters, the citizens of the 18th Congressional District need a voice.”
One of Johnson’s political priorities is education. He says he recognized while working as a community activist that in order for the school systems to improve, the conditions in which students lived had to change. “I wanted to start changing the dynamic of the neighborhoods that would … in turn help the schools,” he says.
Johnson adds that he is fully opposed to the performance tax, which his opponent Lee supports. “It’s the wrong time to try to tax any industry, let alone especially during a recession and now government want to go to small businesses and tax them to simply play music …? I don‘t understand that,” he says.
–adrienne donnell
