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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...
Inside the Studio at KNON, Dallas’ Indigenous Radio Station
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,...
Border Patrol Ignored Migrants’ Pleas for Medical Help
This story was produced in collaboration with Public Health Watch. The names of migrants in this story have been changed to protect their identities. After walking for hours alone under an August sun, Cynthia reached the United States exhausted and dehydrated. Five months pregnant and showing, the 21-year-old Honduran had been traveling for over a month, riding in trailers and trekking by foot. U.S. Border Patrol agents were waiting for her once she crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. She said she told the agents her stomach was hurting and she needed water, but they ignored her pleas to see a doctor or give her something to drink. After asking how many months pregnant she was and taking her photo and fingerprints, the agents drove her back into Mexico, she said.
Grieving in Orange
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The Woman Who Beat the Government’s Border Wall
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.
‘Trigger Warning: Time’
A version of this story ran in the September / October 2021 issue. Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? The Texas Observer is known for its fiercely independent, uncompromising work— which we are pleased to provide to the public at no charge in this space. We rely on the generosity of our readers who believe that this work is important. You can chip in for as little as 99 cents a month. If you support this mission, we need your help.
How Public Corruption Investigations Can Fail
A former Texas Ranger provides rare insights into the mostly secret system set up to investigate complaints about public officials. For our full collaborative investigation “Justice For Some” on the Texas Rangers with KXAN, KTEP, and the Fort Worth Report, go here. Chris Callaway served as a Texas Ranger from...
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.
‘Home Cooking’ Concerns Revealed in Corruption Prosecutions Outside Texas Capital
For our full collaborative investigation “Justice For Some” on the Texas Rangers with KXAN, and the Fort Worth Report, go here. Massive floods tore through Central Texas on Memorial Day weekend in 2015. Rivers spilled over their banks and ripped waterfront homes from their foundations. Towns were inundated. While tragic...
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...
Forgetful City
A version of this story ran in the September / October 2021 issue. The Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery is empty on a sweltering weekday in June, the gated park tucked between Lemmon Avenue and Calvary Street contained by the three-lane frontage road that edges the moat of the North Central Expressway. The sound of traffic dominates the space—a dull, uneasy roar, the sound of an industrial fan, an airplane landing.
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.
‘You See People With Mushrooms Growing Out of Their Carpets’: Tenants With Mold in Their Homes Have Little Recourse
In August last year, shortly after Jack Delaplane and his two roommates moved into The Reserve at San Antonio, an apartment complex a couple blocks from the University of Texas San Antonio campus, their air conditioning stopped working. After the complex sent a repairperson to their unit, it worked briefly—and then broke again. Delaplane decided to check and see what was going on in the utility closet himself. That’s when he found the mold.
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