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Texas Enabled the Worst Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Catastrophe in Recent U.S. History
Perla Trevizo, Ren Larson and Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and Mike Hixenbaugh and Suzy Khimm, NBC News May 6, 2021, 9:00 am CST. “Texas enabled the worst carbon monoxide poisoning catastrophe in recent U.S. history” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
‘On Juneteenth’ Refuses Easy Answers About the Importance of People of Color to Texas History
This past summer, celebrating Juneteenth at home in Texas made me feel as though I was at the center of the world. I was used to spending the holiday, which celebrates the announcement of the end of legal slavery in Texas, gathering with my church in Houston, being chastised by my mother to fix her a plate, and dancing in the company of people who’d known me since my christening. I never bothered explaining to folks from college what the holiday was—it was our thing. After the police murder of Houston’s own George Floyd, who grew up in the Third Ward, where my church is, Juneteenth was catapulted into the national consciousness and Texas along with it. I shouldn’t be surprised; this nation rarely celebrates the bounty and abundance of Black life, save for when Black people are thrust into a position of precarity.
In Gainesville, the Past Is Repeating Itself
From the May/June 2021 issue. Justin Thompson initially reached out to the Gainesville Police Department (GPD) early last summer because he didn’t want to break any laws. As protests spread after the police killing of George Floyd, Thompson and other young progressives in the small North Texas city planned their own demonstration aimed at pressuring local officials to take down a pair of Confederate monuments: one perched above a city park and the other outside the Cooke County Courthouse in the town square. After emailing police officials about the protest and meeting with a captain to discuss safety issues and permitting requirements, Thompson followed up with another email to GPD, stressing that he understood the “importance that we follow the law while exercising our rights.”
La Niña Brings Wildfires
From the May/June 2021 issue. Brad Smith is looking at Texas’ wildfire forecast, and what he sees is not encouraging. Smith, the head of a Texas A&M Forest Service division that predicts fires, has one of the best handles on when and where one will strike in Texas. In the spring of 2017, Smith scoured available climate and weather data and determined that there was a good chance of a massive wildfire breaking out in the Texas Panhandle; he alerted firefighting personnel, then booked it from College Station to Amarillo to see if his prediction would come true. Unfortunately, it did. More than 1 million acres were engulfed in flames and seven people died. “It was really tragic,” Smith says.
Robert Bullard Isn’t Done Yet
Southern University professor researched the first environmental justice case, communities of color still face an uphill battle claiming their right to clean air and a healthy neighborhood. Federal environmental justice legislation could change that. By Amal Ahmed. May 3, 2021. From the May/June 2021 issue. In 1979, Robert Bullard and...
The Lege This Week: The Capitol’s Longstanding Toxic Culture
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Editorial: Even ‘Turning Texas Blue’ Won’t Fix Us If We Don’t Face Some Hard Truths
From the May/June 2021 issue. “This is like the Hunger Games!” some version of this exclamation, often peppered with curse words and red-faced anger emojis, was a common refrain in a now-defunct volunteer Slack group I spent a few hours in each week this spring, working alongside tech types trying to #disrupt a broken COVID-19 vaccine-distribution system. The group saw tens of thousands of people come through searching for their shots, monitoring the platform’s auto-updated appointment trackers, and seeking assistance from dozens of volunteer schedulers who navigated public and private systems to find vaccines for people with low computer literacy or unreliable internet access.
‘Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing’ Tours Dark Places That Are Hard to Call Home
When Lauren Hough was 37, she sold her house, all the stuff in it, bought a Winnebago, and left Maryland, heading west with an iPod full of John Denver. Her debut essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, is about finding the strength to pack your bags and give the finger to the places and people who tried their damnedest to diminish you. Driving away isn’t hard but, as Hough can attest, rebuilding your life is—especially when past traumas rise out of memory’s dirt like the undead.
Mayoral Candidate Lily Bao Wants to Make Plano Great Again
Harry LaRosiliere is, to put it frankly, looking forward to no longer being the mayor of Plano. A little over five years ago, LaRosiliere, the North Texas city’s first Black mayor, found himself in the middle of a controversy over its future after the city’s planning and zoning commission unveiled a plan that would allow certain areas to be developed more densely, with mixed uses like residential units, retail, and other businesses.
The Lege This Week: Texas House Passes Budget, Republicans Again Reject Medicaid Expansion
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
‘My Cousin Dies, Like a Deer, On the Side of the Road’
“The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is asking for help from the public in the investigation of a fatal hit-and-run crash that resulted in the death of a pedestrian on FM 160 east of FM 2830. The crash occurred at approximately 11:00 p.m., Sunday June 14.” Bluebonnet News. You...
Liz Lambert’s New Film Offers a Shallow Portrayal of a Changing Austin
Liz Lambert’s new movie is a case study in why property developers shouldn’t make documentaries about gentrification. The Austin-based hotelier’s debut film, released in March, attempts to give viewers a lens into the struggles faced by business people seeking to profit off making this city hip. On that front—and on very few others—it succeeds. The film inadvertently portrays Lambert as insensitive and voyeuristic, as she dehumanizes the film’s subjects. She presents an apolitical version of “Keep Austin Weird,” one that imagines poor, homeless Austinities as “eccentrics” of the past who don’t fit into a gleaming modern city.
Eye on Texas: On the Road
Growing up in the Swiss Alps, America was a distant concept on the television screen. I remember watching the movie Bonnie and Clyde and enjoyed their highway chases and shootouts with the Texas Rangers. Those artistic, and violent, moments left an impression on me, so I moved to the United States. Thirty years later, I became “American in heart” and earned my green card. I’ve spent more than a decade traveling this complex and challenging country, and I realize now that for me, America is a road movie—a story about mobility where the open horizon and never-ending interstate feels as mesmerizing today as it did when I first arrived three decades ago.
A New Crop: Portraits of Houston’s Black Urban Farmers
This story was originally published by Scalawag, a journalism and storytelling organization that disrupts dominant narratives about the South. Texas is home to more Black farmers than any state. The USDA’s Census of Agriculture estimated in 2017 that of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States, roughly 48,000 are Black, and nearly a quarter of them are located in the Lone Star State.
In San Antonio, Police Reformers Square Off with the Cops’ Union
In the heat of last summer’s uprisings over the killing of George Floyd, a small group of San Antonians, with little experience in criminal justice reform, hatched a plan to turn protest into policy. They looked at their city, where police officers fired for misconduct routinely wind up back on the force, where civilian oversight is toothless, and where tortuous contract negotiations five years ago concluded without serious reforms. And they looked at the local police union, notorious for its bare knuckle political attacks on any city leader who crossed them. The problem, the activists decided, was that the union had turned its contract into a shield against officer accountability, and politicians were too afraid to pierce it.
“Election Integrity” or Voter Intimidation?
During a March webinar, Bill Ely pulled up a map of Harris County while presenting the local Republican Party’s ambitious plan for the 2022 midterms: building an “army” of 10,000 conservative election monitors. Ely, a local Tea Party leader who heads the committee within the Harris County GOP dedicated to ballot security, pointed to the northwest Houston suburb where he lives, where “almost seven out of 10 homes are Republican.” Ely stressed to other party leaders on the call the importance of recruiting more election monitors from neighborhoods like his, then he dragged the cursor down to the heart of the city. Pointing to majority Black and brown neighborhoods, Ely said the party needs people with “the confidence and courage to come down in here in these areas where we really need poll workers, because this is where the fraud is occurring.”
The Lege This Week: Instead of Addressing Mass Shootings, Lawmakers Expand Gun Rights
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Texans With Disabilities Were Left to Fend for Themselves During Winter Storm Uri
When the power went out at Ann Foxworth’s home in Austin on February 15, the 71-year old’s phone rang nonstop as friends checked in on her and her husband. Foxworth soon started to worry that the battery on her phone would die, leaving the couple, who are both blind, cut off from vital information, as Winter Storm Uri caused massive power outages across the state.
ERCOT Asked Texans to Conserve Power as Electric Grid Again Struggled to Keep Up with Demand
“ERCOT asked Texans to conserve power as electric grid again struggled to keep up with demand” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The Brief,...
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The Texas Observer is an Austin-based nonprofit news organization known for fearless investigative reporting, narrative storytelling and sophisticated cultural criticism about all things Texan.