Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i The Texas Observer

Republicans like to say they believe in limited government and oppose wasteful spending. But as Senior Writer Justin Miller’s cover story argues, Governor Greg Abbott’s $20 billion border wall puts the lie to this myth. It is not the job of states to enforce immigration law, and there’s no invasion—asylum-seekers are not an invading force. Extending the wall will not stop illegal immigration, either; most of those in the country without authorization came here legally, with visas, and overstayed them. Elsewhere in this issue, contributor Rob D’Amico kicks off our series on domestic violence with an installment examining murders in smaller counties that go unresolved or unprosecuted. In culture, Editor-at-Large Gayle Reaves profiles Houston’s multitalented poet laureate emeritus, Deborah Mouton. Continuing our coverage of women’s healthcare, midwife and former hospital…

This year, Governor Greg Abbott made “school choice,” or vouchers, one of his top legislative priorities. He counted on riding the wave of “parent rights” crusades into the national political arena. But Texans didn’t buy it. Since 1995, the Coalition for Public Schools in Texas has assembled a broad spectrum of religious, child advocacy, and education organizations, now with 50 groups representing some 4 million Texans. Its member organizations range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Texas Baptist Christian Rights Commission. For 28 years, the coalition has beaten repeated efforts to privatize public schools through a voucher system. This year’s regular legislative session was no different. Abbott and the state Senate made multiple attempts to implant vouchers—after the House voted not to use public dollars for private schools—including…

Forty miles south of Ciudad Juárez, protected from the glaring desert sun by a blanket tied to a ladder, a mother nurses her nine-month-old son as the sun rises on their fifth day aboard the train known as la bestia—the beast. The mom has stuffed cotton balls in her ears for protection from the thunderous sound of the wheels along the track, but the baby won’t tolerate the cotton balls and may suffer permanent hearing damage. Around them cluster a father and four more children—a whole family on the run from poverty and societal dysfunction in Venezuela. A few cars back, another family, this one from Colombia, steadies themselves atop bundles of rebar. Half-inch metal wires are twisted to bind the rods, forming a line of sharp spikes all around the…

It’s a Thursday in mid-May, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Houston’s multitalented poet laureate emeritus, is busy. She’s getting ready for an event the following night, a collaboration involving herself, jazz drummer and composer Kendrick Scott, and the Harlem String Quartet. They’re honoring the Sugar Land 95, African-Americans who died as convict laborers and whose remains were found in 2018 during excavation for a construction project in Sugar Land, just west of Houston. After that, she’s off to New York for rehearsals of a new opera, She Who Dared, about the women, including Rosa Parks, who helped desegregate the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system. Mouton wrote the libretto and Dallas composer Jasmine Barnes did the music. The rehearsals culminated in a public workshop on May 31 at the American Lyric Theater in…

On an early June morning, in front of a backdrop of Republican Party of Texas logos at the state party headquarters in downtown Austin, the famously enigmatic Houston trial lawyer Tony Buzbee addressed a room full of TV cameras and reporters about his newest client: the freshly impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton. One could be forgiven for dismissing the prior three weeks as a prolonged fever dream. The Texas House had voted to impeach a statewide officer for the first time since Governor James “Pa” Ferguson over a century earlier, delivering the sort of political and legal wallop that Paxton had been shrewdly ducking at the ballot box and from courts, prosecutors, judges, and the FBI for the past eight-plus years. Now Buzbee—with a Trumpian tan and a neon-pink tie—was…

Friends of Sophia Sullivan say she was enjoying a rebirth of sorts, cherishing her time working as a teacher in the far West Texas town of Marfa and beginning an active social life. They watched the energetic 31-year-old make new friends and inspire high school kids in her role as an early college coordinator. Still, Sophi—as everyone close to her called her—always seemed to be looking over her shoulder at the past, which meant figuring out what to do about her failing marriage. Sophi told friends that her husband, Danny Sullivan, was controlling and manipulative. He demanded access to her cellphone and questioned her whereabouts, her friends say, and became jealous of anyone spending time with her and their 7-year-old son. They all shared a modest home in Fort Davis,…

On the south banks of the Llano River, the Castell General Store hosts its bimonthly “Drinking with Jesus” church service. Even with dogged Sunday morning rain, around 70 people recently gathered in the back room, singing “Count Your Blessings” while sipping bloody marys and mimosas. Repurposed from an old gas station, the Hill Country store’s interior is lined with exposed brick and corrugated metal. Tables are made from slabs of wood bolstered by wooden beer barrels. An eclectic mix of decorative figures—Darth Vader, Snoop Dog drinking Corona, a mounted deer head with beer bottles for antlers—stare as the churchgoers sing. The offerings are as varied as the decor: burgers and tacos, fishing and camping gear, groceries, and a sermon on the parable of the prodigal son. After the laid-back service, owners…

A seed slowly fractures the soil as it ascendsWe are descended on the ground before an angel appearsWith no trumpets or ember shouting from the ground he whispersFreedom was the only thing we understood for it was once engraved in our bones We are descended on ground as the angel appearsWith his lips he sings the emancipationFreedom was the only thing we understood as it became engraved on our bonesWith his voice he broke the shackles of our descendant With his lips he sings the emancipationAnd we dropped our hoe and weaved basketsWith his voice he broke the shackles of our descendantAnd we start to rise to the kingdoms of heaven We dropped our hoe and weaved basketsWith the trumpets and embers screaming, he whispersAnd we start to rise to…

The United States has the worst maternal mortality rates of any wealthy country, by a lot, and the rates are increasing. The rate of Black mothers dying is more than twice as high as that for white women. Texas’ rate is about the 12th worst among American states. Americans have heard this before, but they don’t seem to understand or know what they can do about it. Perhaps when we realize that in the United States 20 new mothers die every year for every one Dutch mother, for instance, we can begin to grasp the scale of the problem. And for every Dutch mother who dies, 50 Black American mothers die. Researchers have found that the majority of these deaths are preventable. That means that in this country every year,…

To the Texas Observer Community, I’m writing to you as chair of the Texas Democracy Foundation, the nonprofit publisher of the Texas Observer, to update you on our status. I am happy to report that, today, the Observer is in a far better position than it was when the organization faced the prospect of layoffs in March. Between the extraordinary success of the staff-led GoFundMe campaign and the continued generosity of longtime donors, the Observer’s immediate financial position has stabilized. The Observer still faces serious challenges, as do other excellent publications navigating the constantly changing waters of nonprofit journalism. Ensuring the Observer’s long-term well-being is the Texas Democracy Foundation’s sole mission–and at the heart of every action we take. Right now, TDF’s focus is on the Observer’s financial stability. We…

The following is an excerpt from Forgotten Girls: A Memoir about Friendship and Lost Promise in America. The fortunes of rural towns like Clinton, Arkansas collapsed during my young adulthood, from 2000 to 2010. The period was marked by recessions—the dot-com bust, the economic slump after 9/11, and the Great Recession. But those disasters laid bare a longer-running problem, a contraction of good jobs and an expansion of low-paying ones in the service sector at places like Walmart, which began in Arkansas. On the East Coast, I entered job markets that were vibrant and growing, however fitfully, but in my hometown and places like it, the manual labor jobs once fueled by the building and infrastructure booms started to disappear. Blue-collar families in 2018 were essentially making the same amount of…