Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i The Texas Observer

Poison Planes CHRISTOPHER COLLINS DID A GREAT DISSERVICE TO THE aerial applicators of Texas by portraying them as lawless pilots “indiscriminately spraying chemicals” across Texas farm country in an article that was not only sensationalized but titled for maximum effect as “Death From Above.” Far from being reckless, ag pilots are highly trained professionals committed to doing their job in a safe, efficient and responsible manner. In truth, Texas Observer’s April cover story was long on allegations, unsubstantiated complaints and inflammatory prose and short on evidence. In Texas’ cotton country, crop dusters are ubiquitous for good reason — cotton would be impossible to produce on a mass scale without aerial support throughout the growing season. Ag pilots are aware of how visible they are and mindful that it makes them…

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP HAS MADE NO SECRET OF his dislike for NAFTA, which he’s often pilloried as the “worst deal ever” and a “total disaster.” Many Mexican factory workers would probably agree with Trump on one point: The North American Free Trade Agreement is a bad deal. “We hope he’ll renegotiate it,” said Julia Quiñonez, coordinator of the Border Committee of Women Workers in Piedras Negras, Mexico, during a binational forum on border issues at the University of Texas at Austin in April. “When they first signed NAFTA it was promised that it would benefit workers and Mexico would enter the First World, but it was a total lie. What we saw instead was a huge increase in the cost of living, and stagnant wages.” At the forum, Quiñonez…

DUMAS // A runaway teenager was found safe after she hopped a coal train and rode it more than 300 miles. Adalie Rivera, 13, disappeared while on a family vacation in Colorado Springs, and was found by a farmer in Dumas four days later. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that Rivera, who was covered in coal dust, told police she got off the train “because she ran out of Skittles.” COLLEGE STATION // Nothing hits the spot quite like a late-night burger run, but you’ve got to time it right. Robert Lee Mahoney, 20, was arrested for driving under the influence after he fell asleep in a Whataburger drive-thru lane. KBTX reports that a Whataburger employee called police at 4:40 a.m. to report a customer asleep at the wheel. Mahoney eventually…

It is amazing to look back at how this movement has sustained and expanded in the face of single-party rule by religious zealots. IN white bonnets and bright-red robes, they sit silently in protest as lawmakers usher in yet another bill that will make it harder for Texans to access abortion. Single-file, they shuffle through the halls of the Capitol, eyes on their feet. Their feigned deference is as powerful as it is unnerving. ¶ They are the Texas Handmaids, a grassroots group of reproductive justice activists who have seized a terrifying political moment and created a defiant act of pop-cultural resistance, emulating the women of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian classic about extremist right-wing government and forced birth. And they are but one iteration of a radical…

AT SOME POINT IT’S NO LONGER A COIN- cidence. Over the last five years, federal courts have repeatedly ruled that the Texas Legislature intentionally discriminated against racial minorities. That’s a high bar. Courts are often reticent to impute motives to lawmakers, but the racial animus is evidently impossible to ignore. In all, there have been six separate rulings since 2012, all involving either Texas’ harsh voter ID law or GOP-led redistricting, in which judges found that lawmakers purposefully discriminated. In April, a federal judge found, for the second time, that the 2011 voter ID law doesn’t make sense unless race is factored in. The law was rushed through the process; it has no rational policy basis; and it just happened to be passed (coincidence!) as Texas became a minority-majority state.…

FROM THE LOOKS OF THEM, IT’S hard to imagine that the smooth pimpleback, the Texas fawnsfoot or the Texas fatmucket could threaten the Texas economy. Found at the bottom of rivers, these inconspicuous bivalves measure only a few inches in length, at most. Despite their fanciful Harry Potteresque names, they lack the charisma of other rare species. The spotted owl, the bald eagle or even the golden-cheeked warbler, they are not. Still, the prospect of listing up to six freshwater mussel species found in Texas as endangered has become a preoccupation of the Texas comptroller, the state office better known for collecting taxes and maintaining a registry of unclaimed property. To researchers and conservationists, freshwater mussels are the late-night custodial crew of rivers: They play a quiet but critical role…

“When I tell people that this is my hobby that I love to do, they’re like, what? But that just makes it more fun. It’s all mine.” “¡OTRA VEZ!” SHOUTS JIMMY Ayala. “Do it again.” In the fading light, eight teenage girls on horseback gallop toward each other head-on. At the last possible moment, just when a collision seems inevitable, they turn ever so slightly, and the knot of horses and riders untangles into a seamless line. Each horse passes so close by its neighbor that their tails nearly touch. Then the riders disperse into a wide circle around the perimeter of the lienzo (arena), slowing to a trot. Ayala breathes a sigh of relief or frustration — it’s hard to tell which. “Not good enough,” he says. “Otra vez,…

“Over 50 years ago, I myself was a migrant farmworker, and I lived in chicken coops and cattle barns and other so-called housing. It is unacceptable and unconscionable that the state of Texas is still providing that type of housing.” —Senator José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, at an announcement for a bill he co-authored to improve farmworker housing, on March 6. “I’m an immigrant. My parents are immigrants. I represent a district filled with immigrants. Some are here as refugees, some are here as citizens, some are here without papers. But they are all my people.” —State Representative Gene Wu, D-Houston, fighting back tears during debate for Senate Bill 4, the anti-“sanctuary cities” bill, on April 26. “I’ve been called a ‘spic,’ a ‘wetback,’ a ‘dirty Mexican.’ So when I hear…

For the last 15 years, Texas Democrats have been accusing Republicans of overreach. This time, they might be right. NOVEMBER 8, 2016 SHOULD HAVE BEEN A NIGHT OF UNMITIGATED joy for the Harris County Republican Party, the largest local GOP organization in Texas. After all, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, hometown hero, had rushed to back Trump as soon as Ted Cruz’s body hit the floor. ¶ But when Patrick took the stage late in the night to address the crowd, he felt obligated to acknowledge the elephant in the room: The Republican Party had been crushed in Houston. In 2012, Obama and Romney had tied in Harris County; in 2016, Clinton beat Trump by more than 12 percentage points. The Democratic wave washed out every Republican running for a countywide…

With the stroke of a pen, the state’s head bean-counter was put in charge of the dunes sagebrush lizard, the lesser prairie chicken and the Western chicken turtle. LISTED Austin blind salamander STATUS Endangered Phantom springsnail STATUS Endangered NOT LISTED Dunes sagebrush lizard STATUS Not listed Sprague’s pipit STATUS Not listed PROPOSED FOR LISTING Texas hornshell STATUS Proposed endangered Louisiana pine snake STATUS Proposed threatened UNDER REVIEW Monarch butterfly STATUS Under review Spot-tailed earless lizard STATUS Under review THE U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE is in charge of reviewing the prevalence of species and deciding whether they need protection. Once a species is petitioned for listing, the agency gathers biological information about its abundance, habitat and threats to its survival. That information is used to decide whether a species is…

Like the Tejanos of South Texas, the Mohawks have remained rooted — along the St. Lawrence River, in their case — even as a latter-day international border crossed them. THERE’S AN ALMOST THROWAWAY BIT OF SCENE-SETTING LATE IN All the Agents and Saints, just a few pages from the book’s end, that explains a lot about its writer. A friend of a friend is throwing a pool party, Stephanie Elizondo Griest is told, and she’s welcome to tag along. ¶ “It will be interesting,” she’s promised. ¶ “Everything is interesting to me,” Elizondo Griest tells herself, and her readers, passingly, so she forgets the curious remark until she finds herself chatting awkwardly around a hot grill with a drug-dealing Mohawk Indian. Everything is interesting to me. In another context, from…

Salt flats, you might think. Or the middle of the ocean. But no place on Earth boasts as much sky as Lubbock, TX. Flat as the wake of a bad joke. The perfect plane for those who try to somehow shun the things of this world while still living in it, those whose gaze is ever heavenward. That sky: couldn’t get any bigger were it on a mountaintop. That sky: the Bible Belter’s birthright, his fate. The sky killed Buddy Holly. And sorry, Mac, but you were shooting for the wrong stars in it. (Hollywood. Yeesh.) Lubbock lies evenly with the straight lines on itself. Take University north or south, or Eighty-second east or west to get out of town, and you’ll find nothing on the surface to steal your…