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The Last Texan Killed in Afghanistan
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.”. Articles cannot be rewritten,...
Austin Progressive Greg Casar Eyes Run for Congress
The city council member has been at the forefront of Texas cities’ push to advance progressive policy, drawing the ire of state Republicans. Now, Casar is looking to take the fight to Washington with a potential run in the 35th Congressional District. Progressive firebrand and Austin City Council Member Greg...
Grieving in Orange
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.”. Articles cannot be rewritten,...
Oak Cliff Lowriders Bring Dallas Community Together
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.”. Articles cannot be rewritten,...
A Texas Professor’s Guide to Learning Black History
Leonard N. Moore thinks every white person in America should be required to take a Black history class. That’s how Moore, a professor of Black history at the University of Texas, opens his new book, Teaching Black History to White People. In this timely book from the University of Texas Press, Moore guides readers—many of whom Moore, who is Black, presumes will be white—through Black history and his own personal experience in academia. Moore is a popular professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches a course called “Race in the Age of Trump.” He has also addressed racial tensions campuswide in his role as the university’s Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement.
Promoting Equity
A version of this story ran in the September / October 2021 issue. San Antonio has a history of electing young, fresh faces to city council—think Henry Cisneros and Julián Castro. In June, voters picked a 26-year-old math teacher named Jalen McKee-Rodriguez to represent the city’s historically Black East Side, making him not only one of the youngest politicians ever elected in the city, but also San Antonio’s first openly gay city council member.
What’s the Status of Public Integrity Cases in Tarrant County and Across the State?
For our full collaborative investigation “Justice For Some” on the Texas Rangers with KXAN, KTEP, and the Fort Worth Report, go here. For two days in a row, Doreen Geiger joined a handful of others holding signs demanding a forensic audit in front of the Tarrant Regional Water District headquarters. Some cars slowed. Some honked.
In Texas, Corrupt Politicians Face Little Accountability
A version of this story ran in the September / October 2021 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...
Wastewater Threatens Texas Streams
Cities have long dumped their wastewater into streams and rivers. Even treated, the wastewater can pollute waterways and contaminate aquifers. Diane Causey is a 75-year-old antique shop manager in Utopia, a tiny town of 277 people located an hour-and-a-half northwest of San Antonio. Her favorite place in town is a swimming hole on the Sabinal River, accessed on land her family owns. This section of the Sabinal, a little-known Texas river fed by springs, is crystal-clear and chilly even in June. Each summer, Causey’s extended family of more than 100 people converge on the swimming hole for their annual family reunion; kids jump into the water from Cypress-lined banks and cannonball from a rope swing suspended above the river. They hold talent shows and worship services and music jams—Causey herself plays the keyboard but also dabbles in hammer dulcimer and banjo. “It’s always fun. It’s a beautiful place,” she says.
In ‘Missing in Brooks County,’ The Missing Migrant Crisis Haunts South Texas
The documentary in Falfurrias is sinister and spiritual. In the first few minutes of the new documentary Missing in Brooks County, Eddie Canales idles his truck along a long stretch of trees, brush, and barbed wire. A few steps away a plastic barrel marked “Agua” sits under a tattered Red Cross flag where Canales retrieves a few empty water jugs and replaces them with full ones. Here in Brooks County, a rural Texas community located near the U.S.-Mexico border, summertime temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees. A person could easily die of thirst out here, and as Canales drives his truck down the road he halts when he sees buzzards nearby. “Whoa,” he says, watching the birds as they circle. “They’re here.”
On the Coronavirus, Loss, and My Mom’s Tacos
My mom shouted from the kitchen of our family home in Oak Cliff that my huevo con chorizo tacos were ready. It was New Year’s Eve 2020, and I’d been staying at my parents’ house for almost a week so my mom didn’t ring in the new year alone. She’d spent most of the past month and a half by herself. Since November 19, my father had been at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital trying his best to fight the damage COVID-19 had done to his lungs. For the entirety of December, a machine had been breathing for him while tubes lodged down his throat helped feed him and suck bile from his lungs.
‘On the Porch’ Celebrates Terlingua and Its Residents
A version of this story ran in the September / October 2021 issue. W. Chase Peeler, a researcher who studies music cultures, headed to the farthest corner of West Texas in 2013 to find a remote region where music was in full bloom. He drove through Big Bend, stopped in Terlingua Ghost Town, and discovered a community so musically inclined that it’s said “there’s a musician hiding under every rock.” Case in point: The town of roughly 100 people had a fully equipped recording studio 25 years before it had a school, a water utility company, or a decent grocery store. Peeler, a multi-instrumentalist, fell in love. He stayed more than two years, conducting doctoral research in ethnomusicology, trying to suss out what made Terlingua such a musical oasis. The culmination of his work is On the Porch: Life and Music in Terlingua, Texas.
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