Innholdsfortegnelse for Special Double Issue i The Texas Observer

The mythos of Pauline Oliveros begins, in many tellings, underground. In the fall of 1988, the Houston-born composer and accordionist crawled with her friend, composer Stuart Dempster, into a 2-million-gallon cistern below a decommissioned U.S. Army base in Washington state. What was so special about this particular cistern? It had a 45-second reverb time, which meant that it took nearly a minute for sound to fade away. Oliveros and Dempster, along with two other musicians, carried their instruments 14 feet down a manhole to play. The result was the project that was, in many ways, the culmination of her life’s work: “Deep Listening.” Oliveros was a pioneer of experimental and electronic music, influencing artists like John Cage and Philip Glass. She died on November 24, 2016, but her legacy—something she…

FLIGHT HOUSTON AND GALVESTON, TEXAS, MARCH 2007 Cathy McBroom felt herself unraveling as she drove back to the brick house she shared with her husband, Rex, and youngest son, Caleb, in the quiet Houston suburb of Clear Lake. It was still early on Friday, March 23, 2007. She hoped to find comfort from Rex, but discovered him already asleep in his work clothes on the chestnut brown leather couch in their living room. For a while, she sat silently beside him. He didn’t stir. She began to cry and to repeat her husband’s name, softly and then in a staccato beat. The longer she sat there, the more her anguish and anger grew. “Wake up!” she finally screamed. Still, he slept on. Rex was often tired on Friday nights. He…

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is heartsick and afraid. He’s scared for his six grandchildren, who may grow up in a country that rejects its greatness in exchange for wokeness and anti-whiteness. Critical race theory and the New York Times’ 1619 Project “not only hurts my heart,” Patrick has said, but also “scares the hell out of me.” In a call this March with Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the 71-year-old politician announced that “critical race theory and 1619 and all that BS is nonsense and will destroy our nation,” vowing to “not let this seep into Texas.” Patrick doesn’t like change. His sense of identity and his political power—along with that of the Texas GOP—are bound up with mainstream mythologies of the United States and Texas. In Patrick’s world, people and…

This election cycle, the first high-profile Democrat to announce a statewide run in Texas is also one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers. Lee Merritt, who this summer announced he would challenge indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022, represents families of people killed by law enforcement in Texas and across the country. In recent years, Merritt, who calls himself “the people’s lawyer,” has represented the families of Botham Jean and George Floyd, who were murdered by police; Marvin Scott III, who was killed in the custody of Collin County Jail this year; and others whose tragedies have prompted international outrage. Merritt spoke with the Observer about running for attorney general, the families he represents, and reimagining public safety in Texas. Why did you decide to run for…

Armando Carrillo had been waiting outside the Nueces County Jail for hours when he heard sirens approaching in the middle of the night on March 5, 2018. He had visited the jail earlier that day to see his youngest son, Danny, 27, who had been incarcerated for three weeks on a probation violation. Danny had sounded increasingly paranoid on the phone leading up to the visit and started crying and cowering when officers escorted him out of his cell. “You could tell he was losing his mind. I’ve never seen him like that,” Armando says. Pacing outside the jail later that night, Armando desperately called attorneys and bail bondsmen to help him get his son out. His stomach dropped when he saw an ambulance pull up to the box-like building…

Veronica Ceci held two jobs after earning her master’s degree in printmaking in 2014. The first was as a master printer at Austin’s Flatbed Press, a role that involves the skilled use of printing presses, tools, materials, and processes to help other artists realize their visions. It’s a high-status position in the art world. The second job, which Ceci took when she realized that printing wouldn’t be enough to pay the bills, was decidedly less exalted: housekeeper at a day spa, doing endless laundry and cleaning treatment rooms, bathrooms, and shared spaces after patrons enjoyed their pricey massages and facials. Both jobs were physically demanding and required attention to detail, but one garnered dramatically more respect. “I was really struck by how much the two positions had in common, but…

In the blistering September day that ended Grape fest, a wine festival in Grapevine outside of Dallas, Mayor William Tate pushed up the brim of his cowboy hat and addressed the crowd gathered for the unveiling of a new public work of art: Peace Circle. “It is important that history be accurate,” Tate said of the 11 bronze statues made to commemorate the brokering of peace in 1843 between 10 Native American leaders and Sam Houston, the president of the Republic of Texas. One of those statues, which was included after the Mount Tabor Indian Community advocated for it, represents the Cherokee leader Devereaux Jarrett Bell. According to Mount Tabor and Grapevine city officials, Bell signed the treaty under the alias “Chicken Trotter.” For the leaders of the Mount Tabor…

I was watching TV one night about four years ago when my friend Latrice bounced into the prison common area. She’d just gotten mail and found out her mom had finally saved enough money to bring her five kids to visit from Houston. She could barely contain her excitement. “I haven’t seen them all together in so long!” she exclaimed. Even though I didn’t have children, I understood the joy of visitation. My parents were also coming the same day, I told her. I hadn’t seen them in several months, as the almost four-hour drive from Kilgore to Gatesville was hard on them. The next week, I walked into the strip room, where officers strip-searched us before visitation, elated to see my parents. Latrice was already there, in the process…

THE VIEWING deck at Port Arthur’s City Hall offers visitors to the industrial city a view of the small downtown and the glimmering waterway. The channel is lined with massive tankers and refineries. John Beard, a former city councilman, can name each and every facility that’s visible on the horizon. Just like a city booster in another town might point out skyscrapers and their architectural features, Beard can tell you what each facility produces and what pollutants are carried in the plumes of gray-brown smoke from their flares. Beard has lived in Port Arthur for most of his life and spent decades working at the local Exxon plant. Now retired, he’s found himself on the other side, fighting off the industrial expansion that fueled Port Arthur’s growth for more than…

Texan David Lee Espinoza was 3 months old when the events that would lead to his death began. In the wake of 9/11, hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers would be pulled into the war on terror, a war started by a Texan that spanned four presidents, cost trillions of taxpayer dollars, and took countless lives across the globe. On August 26, 2021, 20-year-old Espinoza became one of the last service members to be killed in Afghanistan. As the country fell to the Taliban and the United States began its withdrawal, desperate Afghans traveled to the Kabul International Airport to escape. A suicide bomber affiliated with ISIS destroyed the gate Espinoza was charged with guarding. He and 12 other service members were killed, while hundreds of Afghans lost their lives,…

On a cool September morning, Pamela Rivas picks me up in a light beige F-150 driven by her 24-year-old son, Ivan. Country music plays softly on the stereo. We’re in Edinburg, the Texas border city where they now live, but we’re headed west. A 60-year-old nurse, Rivas is taking me to the land where she’s from—a property she’s spent nearly 15 years fighting to save from border wall construction. As we drive Highway 83, the land shifts: Elevation rises; riverbanks steepen; the brush country starts to roll. After nearly an hour, we turn south toward Los Ebanos, the tiny town where Rivas lived until the second grade. We’re flanked by fallow fields when we see our first Border Patrol SUV parked beside the shoulder. Rivas and Ivan grow heated: When…

In 2008, just after college, I spent the summer traveling across Texas in a midnight-blue Corolla with a crooked “Yes We Can!” Obama bumper sticker. I’d been hired by a new organization called the Texas After Violence Project, founded by Walter Long, a veteran capital defense attorney who could no longer stand to watch people destroyed by trials, death sentences, years of appeals, and eventually, executions. His idea was to use oral histories to reveal the widespread traumatic impacts of the death penalty on the loved ones of people sentenced to death, the loved ones of murder victims, defense attorneys, prosecutors, jurors, and corrections officers. Walter wanted to open space for people to share their experiences with the death penalty in their own words, on their own terms. He hoped…