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Sheldon Adelson Bets Big on Texas Casinos
When a big political player comes waltzing into Texas spending big money from out of state, it’s usually a good sign that he wants something from lawmakers. So when Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, spent $4.5 million to help Republicans keep control of the Texas House in 2020, heads turned.
Teens for a Green New Deal
Chanté Davis, a 16-year-old New Orleans native, knows that climate change is urgent and personal. In 2005, she and her family evacuated right before Hurricane Katrina decimated their hometown. They settled in Houston, where, over the past decade, she’s lived through several more storms, made stronger and more dangerous because of the rapid warming of the planet. In 2019, Davis joined the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate action organization. Since then, Davis, an aspiring marine biologist, has helped mobilize teens across the Houston area and the nation. As a lead organizer at Sunrise, she’s coordinated everything from school strikes drawing attention to the United States’ lack of climate policy to phone-banking and canvassing for candidates who promised to support the Green New Deal, a comprehensive climate bill that would guide the country toward a fossil fuel-free future.
‘Being A Prisoner During COVID Is A Death Sentence’
Anthony Graves is perhaps Texas’ most famous death row exoneree. After spending 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, he won release in 2010. Under a 2005 Texas law, Graves also had to fight to be pardoned, or ruled to be “actually innocent,” to receive compensation. Since then, he has become an author, an internationally known human rights advocate, and the founder of a foundation that helps others who have been wrongfully incarcerated.
The Observer’s Best Longform Stories of 2020
This was a year of reckoning. With our health, of course, but also with our obligations to each other. In 2020, a lot of people were forced to fight—for their lives, their homes, their jobs and businesses, for democracy, and for their communities and families. We hope to have captured a piece of this in our coverage. The stories that follow represent the Observer at its best, as we consider our collective history, question our leaders, and elevate the voices of ordinary Texans.
An unprecedented year, in numbers.
Four years ago, a team of Texas scientists developed a vaccine that may have been effective against COVID-19, but without necessary funding for clinical trials in humans, the research stalled. In early 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the globe, Dr. Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine scientist, requested $3 million to start the trials and testified before Congress that the COVID-19 pandemic should prompt a change in how vaccines are funded.
A Weird End for a Weird Year: Our Eight Favorite Strange Texas Stories of 2020
As we near the end of 2020, we can only hope this cursed year has no more curve balls to throw our way. After all, we’ve weathered a global pandemic that has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide; in the United States, we’ve endured a president who refuses to recognize the results of a democratic election, and unrelenting, racist police violence that’s sparked international uprisings and protests. To put it mildly, this has been a weird year. That’s certainly the case in Texas, which was a strange place to begin with.
Loon Star: The Year in Cartoons
What a year, folks. One for the books. To remember everything that’s happened, we’ve put together a compilation of Ben Sargent’s Loon Star State cartoons from 2020. These cartoons are presented in chronological order, beginning in January. —The Editors. The Governor Shows His Concern for the Homeless. Greg Abbott creates...
The Year Newspaper Unions Roared Back to Life in Texas
In mid-February, a coterie of newspaper higher-ups from around the country gathered at the Omni hotel in downtown Fort Worth for an affair ostentatiously called the Key Executives Mega-Conference. During one presentation, a Chicago-based employment attorney, Michael Rybicki, warned of a rising tide of organized labor in the news business.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Justin Phillips didn’t have much of a relationship left with his 5-year-old son by the time he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on drug charges in 2016. “I hadn’t seen him in a long time; I’d been out there selling drugs, so it’s not surprising his mom didn’t want me around,” he says. In prison, Justin became determined to turn his life around and re-establish a connection with his son. He obtained a GED and completed substance abuse, anger management, and gang-disassociation programs. A couple years into his sentence, Justin’s son began regularly visiting him at the Estelle Unit, the East Texas prison where he’s currently incarcerated.
As Companies Build Thousands of Cell Towers, Indigenous Nations are Faced with Difficult Choices
Every day, Bryant Celestine opens his email to find around 80 messages that require immediate responses. Most of those emails come from the Tower Construction Notification System (TCNS) that alerts the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas of a new proposal to build a 5G cell tower on ancestral territories. As the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) for the nation, Celestine is charged with upholding tribal and federal preservation laws created to protect tribal resources, including the repatriation of remains and sacred items, and the protection of culturally or historically important land.
Poet Claudia Delfina Cardona on Her Debut Poetry Chapbook
San Antonio poet Claudia Delfina Cardona can’t help but write about home. In What Remains, Cardona’s new chapbook, the chambers of her heart look like café and bakery Mi Tierra, the music of mariachis or cumbia plays endlessly, and the reader follows her through every park in San Antonio. Set in the colorful, poetic universe of her city, the collection is a study of desire, longing, and loss, seen both through personal heartbreak and gentrification in a changing city.
A New Book Celebrates the Work of Architect John S. Chase
John S. Chase is the Texas architect you wish you knew about—or perhaps should have already heard of. Inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with his own postmodern twists, Chase’s work has left a mark in East Austin, on the Texas Southern University and University of Texas campuses, and in churches all over the state. Now, a new University of Texas Press book, John S. Chase—The Chase Residence, celebrates Chase’s remarkable 60-year career. The book explores how Chase turned his own Houston home into the centerpiece of a larger body of work through a process that was in “equal measure architectural, social, personal, and political.” This new story of the Chase Residence, still home to Chase’s widow, Drucie, demystifies how Chase fashioned a space to fit his family—and simultaneously fixed his place in architectural history.
Why the South Is Organizing Its Own Green New Deal
LAKE CHARLES, LA.—After Hurricane Laura hit in late August, a local chemical plant erupted in flames. The fire, one of 31 post-Laura oil and chemical leaks reported, sent up plumes of smoke and chlorine gas. Louisiana officials told residents (many of whom had lost power or their homes) to shelter in place and turn off their air conditioning in the summer heat to avoid the fumes.
Announcing the Texas Observer’s New Engagement Initiative
Journalism’s great strength is in its ability to hold the powerful to account. For too long, however, that power has been tempered by the fact that communities of color are often simply written out of or represented incorrectly in news coverage. This great sin of omission is something that we are only now beginning to confront.
COVID-19 Response has Been Starkly Different for Indigenous Communities in Texas
On March 23, the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas issued its first stay-at-home order. In April, the tribe would restrict out-of-state travel, and in May, officials shut down nonessential tribal offices and businesses and eventually banished a tribal citizen for 90 days who refused to comply with the health directive. “He could not come onto tribal lands at all,” said Alabama-Coushatta Chairwoman Cecilia Flores. By June, mask-wearing and temperature checks were mandatory.
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