Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i The Texas Observer

Remember Their Names Can you imagine fleeing such violence, poverty or crime that you would risk traveling across a desert with only a small backpack (“Introducing ‘I Have a Name/Yo Tengo Nombre,’” December 8, texasobserver.org)? These were real men, women and children. Every person should have a hearing, whether they are seeking a better job, fleeing violence, or seeking political asylum. Our immigration system needs real, bipartisan solutions. Kim Moss-Allen ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO Bathroom BS THIS WILL ALSO HAVE A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON DIS- abled citizens (“Patrick, Kolkhorst Unveil ‘Deeply Divisive’ Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill,” January 5, texasobserver.org). My friend, who lives in Austin, has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and recently commented that his wife and daughters are his caregivers and they have to take him into the women’s restroom when…

#FAKENEWS “Regardless whether the Texas Tribuneor other members of the mainstream media likes it, we will continue to post things we find newsworthy, interesting, thought-provoking, funny, or controversial and let our followers decide whether its [sic] news, satire, or something else. As they say over at Fox News. We report. You decide!” —Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller on Facebook, December 3, responding to a Texas Tribune story analyzing his social media use. “In an age where you can get information in an instant, rather than slam ‘fake news sites,’ how about encouraging folks to do their own due diligence and fact check what they’re being told?” —An article on former U.S. Representative Allen West’s website, November 16. “The liberals want to distract us with charges of ‘fake news,’ but we…

WHITE SETTLEMENT // A months-long battle between a city council member and a cat ended in the feline’s favor. In June, the White Settlement City Council voted 2-1 to remove Browser, the local public library’s resident cat, after Council Member Elzie Clements spoke up. “City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals,” Clements said at the time. Browser’s fans protested, citing “his pest control abilities, his ability to draw children to the library and the fact that he is loved by the people of the city,” as the Grizzly Detail reported, and he was reinstated. But in December, at Clements’ final meeting as a council member, he put Browser’s removal on the agenda again — but this time, the council voted to let the cat stay. “My view…

THE RESISTANCE AGAINST DONALD TRUMP and everything he represents should have its headquarters in Texas. We are the largest state in America governed by a Trump-aligned regime. Trump’s government will have the support of the state Capitol as our leaders act to dismantle public education, destroy our social safety net and tear apart families. There are many of us in Texas who will likely be their first targets. Our state is home to more refugees and undocumented immigrants than almost anywhere else in the nation. It’s for this very reason that Texans must take center stage in the Trump resistance. During the civil rights movement, many Northerners made great sacrifices and played critical roles in defeating Jim Crow. But the true battle was fought and won in the South, where…

If progressives today are to triumph over Trumpism, they are going to have to build truly united and lasting grassroots organizations and not merely encourage disparate groups to show up at the voting booth. ON JANUARY 31, 1938, SOME 10,000 PECAN PLANT WORKERS walked off their jobs in San Antonio. The strikers — primarily Mexican-American women — were fed up with toiling in the city’s stuffy, tuberculosis-inducing pecan-shelling plants, shredding their fingers for 6 cents a pound. Activist Emma Tenayuca, nicknamed “La Pasionaria” for her fiery personality, spearheaded the strike. In an era when the voices of Mexican Americans and women were routinely silenced, Tenayuca was an unlikely leader. She was only 21 at the time, but was already well-versed in civil resistance; her first arrest came at 16, when…

In a sense, the slogan of a “big, beautiful wall” was just that — a symbol, a xenophobic crowd-pleaser, the political equivalent of “Freebird.” IN JUNE 2015, THE TRAVELING CIRCUS THAT WAS the Trump campaign came to Laredo for a little political pachanga. That was about 6,492 news cycles ago, but perhaps you’ll recall Trump’s theatrics. Just a month earlier, he’d referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” while promising to have Mexico pay for a border wall from sea to shining sea. By coming to Laredo, Trump said he was putting himself in “great danger” — as if he were in Sinaloa banging on El Chapo’s front door rather than visiting one of the safest cities in the United States. He traveled the streets of Laredo with dozens of motorcycle…

away climate change, a new nuclear brinkmanship, a dangerously destabilized world order. Trump seems not only constitutionally incapable of rising to complex global challenges, but also hell-bent on reviving old crises and creating new ones. The line between alarm and paralysis is thin. At home, the nation faces an unraveling of the social fabric and the rise and mainstreaming of a racist movement almost unthinkable just a few years ago. Congressional Republicans are eager to get to work jackhammering the remaining cornerstones of the Great Society and the New Deal. In Texas, we’re going on three decades of near-total one-party rule, with no end in sight. The public sphere has shrunk and become increasingly the domain of shortsighted ideologues who play to the worst instincts of their base. Lieutenant Governor…

We owe, each of us and all of us, as much time and effort as we can practically give to advance our deepest values and convictions. THE PRESIDENCY OF DONALD TRUMP IS AN emergency for the United States. Now is the time for each ethics-seeking American citizen to fight for democracy in a nonviolent revolution. With the nation now ruled by Trump and Texas run by the likes of Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, what do we do next? This moment is not about Trump — we’ve had too much of that. Now it is about us, free people in a still-free state and a still-free country. It’s long past time in Texas for straight talk, starting with the blunt facts about the…

But let me just ask the good folks in Matt Krause’s district one question: Of all your concerns, where do you rank My neighbors’ ability to extricate themselves from an unsustainable, unwanted or otherwise untenable marriage? EVERY OTHER YEAR, TEXAS LAWMAKERS HOOF IT DOWN TO THE STATE Capitol to spend 140 days either getting right what they got wrong the last time or, more likely, making things a hell of a lot worse. ¶ There’s already a lot of rank tomfoolery this session as our leaders gear up to whine about solutions in search of problems and ignore problems in dire need of solutions. Hey, maybe those dead and dying foster kids will bootstrap their own selves out of state care this year! In the meantime, Fort Worth Republican state…

In November, the United States Geological Survey announced that a West Texas oilfield known as the Wolfcamp shale is the biggest ever discovered in the United States, containing approximately 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But oil is not a modern discovery. Native Americans in Texas are said to have used it for hundreds of years, with records showing that they told European explorers it had medicinal qualities. When the Spanish explorers of Hernando de Soto’s expedition, led by Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, found oil floating on the water along the Texas coast in 1543, what did they use it for? a. To trade with the Karankawa b. To caulk their boats c. To waterproof their beards d. Chapstick…

By creating a circuit where politicians such as Ted Cruz and Dan Patrick could speak directly to conservative activists, tea party groups changed the future of the state simply by existing. MANY PROGRESSIVES REMEMBER THE TEA PARTY REVOLUTION OF 2009-2010 as an extended exercise in unreason. That’s not wrong. But it was also, quite possibly, the most successful political organizing movement in the last half-century of American politics. The tea party transformed the GOP from a broken and battered political party to a ruthlessly effective organ in the body politic — all in the space of about 18 months. As Democrats plot a path out of the wilderness, it’s important to consider how the right did it. ¶ In those years, the tea party was full of scorn for Barack…

One hopes that real American greatness, the kind we celebrate in the usual tales of the mythic Old West where true hearts always prevail, will arrive just in time. But that’s not how the world works. IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE MORAL CIR- cumstances that Americans face in the dawning Trump era, you could do worse than The Ox-Bow Incident, a novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. The book was published in 1940 and a film version starring Henry Fonda was released in 1943. It’s no coincidence that these were the years of the fight against fascism. The story, set in 1885, is this: A pair of cowboys, Gil Carter (played by Henry Fonda in the movie) and Art Croft (played by Harry Morgan), ride into the town of…

JUST EAST OF THE ROAD THAT MARKS THE boundary between Travis and Bastrop counties, the Austin Community College-Elgin building rises from the Blackland Prairie. Behind it, a 30-acre field set to become the school’s sustainable farm stretches toward the blocky two-story houses of a subdivision. Signs at campus entrances remind visitors they’re not in the city anymore: Poisonous snakes and insects inhabit the area. Alert: Bee hives on campus for academic purposes. In late November, dozens of leaders in the Central Texas sustainable food movement braved those hazards and packed into a conference room in the building for a celebration of Elgin’s burgeoning local food scene. The occasion was a visit from native Texan Lillian Salerno, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) deputy undersecretary for rural development. She’d come from Washington,…