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Big Shock in Big Bend
Visitors to the Big Bend country in May noticed a conspicuous absence: the Rio Grande, whose great arching pathway gives this region its name. Where cool water used to flow, a dry, cracking riverbed now snakes through some of Texas’ most iconic landscapes. Near Santa Elena Canyon, a river...
How Much Power Do Police Oversight Offices Really Have?
Negotiations between Austin officials and the police were breaking down in part over the city’s attempts to increase police accountability in 2018. The city’s citizen review panel disbanded. Finally, that November, the parties reached an agreement, though tensions remained. A new office was created and staffed by civilians rather than police: The Office of Police Oversight.
Middle Fingers Up In Austin After End of ‘Roe’
More than 1,000 people marched through downtown Austin on Friday, June 25 to express their anger and sadness over the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe V. Wade and the impending, widespread erosion of abortion access as a result. Organized coalitions like Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights and...
How Are Texas Officials Responding to the End of ‘Roe’?
“Austin will, to the best of its ability, do all we can to protect our values and our people.”. After the United States Supreme Court gutted protections for abortion access this morning by reversing Roe v. Wade, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made the state’s position clear: Residents must quash any hope of legal abortion in the state.
More Women Will Die If Texans Don’t Speak Up for Women’s Bodies
A version of this story ran in the July / August 2022 issue. I have never been one to mince words, and I certainly won’t now that the Supreme Court has ended our right to choose. This country hates women; Texas hates women; and Republicans have made it perfectly clear that they don’t care if we die.
Healthcare for Trans Kids Is Not Abuse
Two Mayo Clinic psychologists worry about what will happen to trangender youth if or when their health care is taken away. Transgender kids have become the latest target of the far right’s moral ire. Last year, Arkansas became the first state to make it a felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming care—which can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery—for transgender children. Alabama followed suit in April, and at least 13 states are considering similar bills. While most bills go after doctors, others would penalize parents for seeking care for their children.
How Port Lavacans Resisted the KKK to Provide Education for All
Set in 1867, Flora Beach Burlingame’s Ophelia and the Freedmen’s School is historical fiction for children. The story follows twin sisters Ophelia and Melinda as they begin their education in the tiny Texas town of Lavaca, now known as Port Lavaca. The illiterate ten-year-olds attend a freedmen’s school, one of many created across the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction to provide a free education for former slaves and refugees. The only whites among forty students, the girls can learn without being shamed for their flour sack dresses, bare feet, or lack of schooling.
Here Are 3 Ways You Can Celebrate Juneteenth
With Juneteenth here, the country commemorates the day slaves in Texas learned about their emancipation. There are a variety of ways you can celebrate Juneteenth. Juneteenth was first celebrated here in Texas, in its birthplace of Galveston, in the 1860s. Learning more about the holiday as well as Black culture and history is a perfect way to observe it To start, you can read some books about Juneteenth or Black history. Stories such as “On Juneteenth” by Annette Gordon-Reed or “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson shed light on the history of slavery in America—and its end. Watching documentaries like “A History of Black Achievement in America” are also great ways to celebrate Juneteenth.
A Visit to Galveston, the Birthplace of Juneteenth
The summer calendar has a new national holiday this year. A celebration born and bred in Texas, it is one that not everyone is familiar with given that it was only signed into law last year by President Joe Biden. To understand Juneteenth, one must visit Galveston, its birthplace. It...
The Ayahuasca King’s Last Tour
The ayahuasca king is dead. Peter Gorman didn’t die in the Amazon rainforests he loved and that made him famous among a certain group of folks worldwide, someone worthy of magazine articles and film documentaries. Instead, he died at a hospital just south of Fort Worth in late April....
Journalists Are First Responders, Too
Editor’s note: A longer version of this article appears in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ palabra. Nicole Chavez found herself in disturbingly familiar circumstances when she rushed to cover the murders of 19 students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The shootings by an 18-year-old armed with a military-style rifle triggered traumatic memories of covering the murders of 23 people in her hometown of El Paso almost three years ago.
GOP Win Says More About Filemon Vela than a South Texas ‘Red Wave’
When Congressman Filemon Vela decamped for K Street, he created a predictable opportunity for a Republican upset in the Valley. Mayra Flores made history Tuesday night by winning the special election for the 34th congressional district, a Democratic stronghold that stretches from Brownsville up east of San Antonio. In doing so, Flores became the first Latina to ever represent the Rio Grande Valley in Congress and the first Republican to do so since Reconstruction.
The Pain Belongs To Us
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2022 issue. There’s a scene from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that crosses my mind when I think about the power of collections of stories and materials from victims and survivors of state violence, which we have been building into an “archive of survival” at the Texas After Violence Project since 2007.
Mexico’s Repo Man
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2022 issue. Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story:. This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
Texting for Reproductive Justice
From her kitchen table in McKinney, just north of Dallas, Mohini Lal spends a good portion of her weekends intently pouring over case files and answering Slack messages as her young children pay on the floor beneath her. “It looks like what I think a regular Saturday or Sunday looks...
Teachers Don’t Want Guns in Their Classrooms
In 1997, Joel Myrick, then an assistant principal at a Mississippi high school, used his personal pistol, which he kept in his truck, to stop a 16-year-old school shooter with a rifle. Even Myrick—one of the extremely rare cases of an armed teacher intervening in a school shooting—says that arming teachers is a terrible idea.
The Rising Progressive Majority in South Texas
Since the 2020 presidential election, it seems as if the only South Texas political news story you could find was about the gains Republicans are making with Latinos. The recent May runoff elections prove there is another insurgency against the status quo: the progressive fronterizo movement. In Texas’ 15th Congressional...
An Astonishing ID: Baby of Couple Murdered in 1981 Finally Found
Holly is alive and well, but who killed the Texas couple whose bodies were found dumped in the woods north of Houston?. A Texas baby who mysteriously disappeared way back in 1980 is alive and well—though the mystery of who killed her parents and dumped their bodies in the woods just north of Houston remains an open and active double murder case, the Texas Attorney General’s Office’s new Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit announced. Authorities aren’t saying much about the baby’s adoption, but suspicion still centers on a mysterious band of wandering people the family knew only as “Jesus Freaks,” who were in possession of the couple’s car after they disappeared. It’s the attorney general’s first big case; the unit is holding a press conference later today.
An Easy Fix: Don’t Let 18-Year-Olds Buy Assault Rifles
Federal law requires handgun owners to be at least 21 years old. That's not the case for AR-15s. A clear pattern of deadly school shootings carried out mostly by young men and teens is prodding more states, including Texas, to consider raising the age of legal gun ownership from 18 to 21.
From Pizzagate to Groomergate: Alex Jones Tries to Regain Influence Through Anti-LGBTQ+ Bigotry
Alex Jones remains a toxic influence on American politics and society despite an apparently shrinking audience and dwindling sales at his Infowars online shop, plus mounting losses in a bevy of lawsuits. After decades of spreading anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, Jones now wants to stage a comeback by positioning himself at the front of a new wave of hatred—with the help of powerful friends like Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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