Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i The Texas Observer

The Border is Everywhere Melissa del Bosque is one of the best investigative journalists on the planet (“Checkpoint Nation,” October|November issue). Well worth reading every word of this in-depth report. Genie Mitchell FORT DAVIS This heart-stopping story is my biggest fear writ large and why, even with my centuries-deep roots here, I travel inside the United States with my passport, “not because I’m afraid to go to Mexico … I’m afraid of coming back to my own country.” Bernestine Singley TAOS, NEW MEXICO Lyin’ Ted’s Legacy SUPERB ARTICLE THAT ALL TEXAS VOTERS NEED TO READ (“Ted Cruz’s Do-Nothing Record,” October| November issue). Think really hard about what you want a member of Congress to do for the state, the nation and your community. Do you want tangible results (e.g., improved…

DONALD TRUMP THINKS THERE’S AN IMMIGRATION CRISIS AT the U.S.-Mexico border. He has no idea what’s coming. Thousands of Central American migrants arrive at the border each month, fleeing both grinding poverty and unchecked gang violence. Increasingly, they’re also escaping a threat they might never mention to immigration agents: climate change. A narrow strip of land flanked by oceans, Central America is one of the world’s most environmentally vulnerable regions. “It’s an area hit by hurricanes on both sides, rocked by volcanic eruptions, drought, earthquakes, and with accelerating climate change, it’s even more vulnerable,” said María Cristina García, a Cornell University professor of American studies who’s writing a book about climate refugees. Central America hosts both spectacular catastrophes — Hurricane Mitch displaced 3 million people in 1998 — and slow-burn…

IN THE EARLY 1990S, THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE TRIED to build something surprisingly progressive amid the state’s tough-on-crime prison boom: an alternative to prison for low-level felons. Lawmakers reclassified a host of third-degree felony charges, mostly for drug and property crimes, and reduced their maximum sentences from 10 to two years, creating a new category of offense called state jail felonies. Rather than lengthy prison terms, such offenders would serve shorter sentences in state jails built closer to major cities, where they’d ostensibly have access to more treatment and rehab programs. The idea was to relieve pressure on the overcrowded prison system while also breaking the cycle of incarceration for low-level felons. Instead, more than two decades later, people leaving state jail have a greater chance of reoffending than any other…

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“I live in a place that everyone makes fun of. It’s muddy, it’s flat, it’s dangerous, it’s mosquito-ridden, but it’s my place.” PHOTOGRAPHER KEITH CARTER HAS SPENT HIS LIFE REVEALing the magical in the mundane. Born in 1948 in Madison, Wisconsin, Carter moved with his family to Beaumont when he was 3 and, with only occasional interruption, has lived there ever since, documenting the people and places of East Texas in a remarkable body of work that is the subject of the new book Keith Carter: Fifty Years. Carter personally selected the book’s 251 images, which are drawn from the full arc of his career and arranged thematically rather than chronologically, in keeping with his quasi-mystical sense of vocation. “Memory is not linear, and I don’t think the work I’ve…

Robot sex brothels are now banned within Houston city limits. After Canadian company KinkySdollS announced plans to open its first U.S. location in the Bayou City, City Council moved quickly and unanimously to block it. Which of the following is not banned in Texas? a. Selling one’s own eye b. Holding public office if you’re an atheist c. Modifying the weather without notifying a newspaper d. Milking someone else's cow ANSWER: D. Milking someone else’s cow was illegal in Texas (and carried a maximum $10 fine) until 1973.…

TITLE/ORGANIZATION President, Understanding the Threat THE CAUSE Making you very, very afraid of Muslims NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENT Trained members of the National Guard and U.S. Marshals Service last year ALLIES Frank Gaffney, ACT for America, Ector County Republican Women MONEY QUOTE “There’s no version of Islam that doesn’t mandate that non-Muslims convert, submit or be killed.” IN LATE SEPTEMBER, ABOUT 100 Conservatives gathered at the Odessa Country Club to hear from two men: Republican Congressman Mike Conaway, who discussed the 357-page Farm Bill, and ex-FBI agent John Guandolo, who described an omnipresent Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to topple America from within. Heavy stuff for a country club luncheon. Among the crowd were Ector County Sheriff Mike Griffis and two of his deputies. “It was really kind of frightening,” Griffis told the Observer.…

AFTER BETO’S NEAR-VICTORY, A THUMPIN’ in Harris County and surprisingly poor GOP performance in conservative strongholds Tarrant, Williamson and Collin counties, some Republican old heads are trying to make sense of it all. As John Cornyn told the Dallas Morning News a few days after the election, “I don’t know whether this is a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of events or whether this represents something of a new normal.” Perhaps midterm Democratic gains are anomalous, the result of an extraordinary top-of-the-ticket candidate and Republican complacence. But I don’t think so. Recently, something has been stirring in Texas. The GOP political machine seems to finally have slipped a gear. The dynamic that propels it — the tiny hard-right electorate that effectively decides in the GOP primary who will run the state — may…

When Arianna walked into a church basement in Austin to take a free pregnancy test, she thought of it as a lark, a way to kill time during the long, dull days of life as a street kid. About a month before, she had run away from the Austin Oaks mental health facility and was now living with her boyfriend in an alley near the Texas Capitol. The idea of being pregnant was laughable. “It was just laughs and giggles while we were waiting in line,” she said. Afterward, she remembers one of the volunteers, an older woman, pulling her aside and telling her she was pregnant. Arianna, who asked that her last name not be used, said her first reaction was to “freak out.” Caught between denial and panic,…

ON A DREARY DAY IN LATE SEPTEMBER, ANA MARIA GARZA CORtez stood in front of a hotel conference room full of worn-out community health workers in San Antonio, trying to get them revved up about Obamacare. Open enrollment through the Affordable Care Act exchanges runs from November 1 through December 15 in Texas — leaving little time to get the word out. “We are not here for some luxurious job,” Cortez laughed, urging everyone to “be creative” with their budgets, extend their hours into evenings and weekends, find partners in the community and vote. “We are a necessity,” she said. Then she started crying. Enrollment advocates like Cortez, a leader of Enroll SA, a coalition of health care groups that promotes sign-ups through the ACA, can be forgiven for feeling…

THE TERM #FireStanStanart WHO'S USING IT: No one, anymore Ever since the tea party wave of 2010, a mustachioed specter has haunted Harris County elections. With his usedcar-salesman looks, beet-red politics and nonchalance about reporting voting totals, Stan Stanart bedeviled Texas politicos during his nearly eight years as county clerk. On election nights, early-voting totals flooded in from other urban counties: Dallas, Tarrant, Travis. But the website of Texas’ most populous county stared back blankly, refresh buttons be damned. The frustration even led a Houston digital strategist in 2012 to create a hashtag, #FireStanStanart, that became a recurring theme. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board in October, Stanart ventured an answer for his office’s lethargy: “There’s really not too much we can do,” he said. The paper…

ARE YOU PLANNING TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT ON THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET IN 2020? IF not, why not? Everyone else is. Seventeen Republicans ran in 2016, and the nominating process winnowed them down to the least qualified and most deranged. Now, Trump looks pretty beatable, so a bewildering assortment of A, B, C and D-list Democrats are lining up to run, from strong candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand to a Maryland congressman we are told is named “John Delaney” to Mark Cuban, maybe. Texas Democrats should fervently hope that neither Castro nor O’Rourke runs for president, for the simple reason that Texas needs them a lot more than the nation does. A recent Politico roundup of potential candidates included 36 names, ending with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Aim for the moon and…

Color on the lips of a sleeping house. Color on each block’s fingertips. Houston’s dizzy East End district adds an arithmetic of color. Color in the unopened storefront blossom, color along the street’s stalk. A color to the coffee-flavored air. Color in the train’s hiss-clank stop. Follow sidewalk color. Under the overpass color. Aquamarine or bright pink. Chrome art reflecting the skyline’s spark. A tortilleria slaps flour on the table the color of grandma’s kitchen. Church candles the color of a star’s spike. Whitewash on the school doors, the flying spoke of a work truck. Slow pushcart colors of paletas. Parked menu colors of a taqueria. Fast color fruit stand. Urgent clinica neon. Space flight discotech. Color of the bars, the punk-rockers, the artists lofts and auto shops. Guadalupe plaza,…