Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i The Texas Observer

Give Bowie a Break This story is so one-sided it is really sad (“The Doctor is Out,” April issue). It failed to mention that Bowie Memorial Hospital was paying $50,000 to $75,000 a month to Community Hospital Corporation, which the community could see was a huge waste of money. The majority of the people felt that if we had a hospital that was managed properly, it could make it on its own. Some people in Bowie liked the hospital but the majority of the people went elsewhere because of its bad reputation. People didn’t want to support a business they would not use. After seeing an open records request, over half the town felt that if another business came in, it would do fine, if managed properly. We have another…

ARMED AND DANGEROUS “We cannot stand by while all these different Anti American, Arab radical Islamists team up with Nation of Islam/Black Panthers and White anti American Anarchist groups, joining together in the goal of destroying our Country and killing innocent people to gain Dominance through fear!” — Facebook post announcing a protest of a South Dallas Nation of Islam mosque by the Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR), a ragtag anti-Muslim group. “There may even be some innocent people who go to that mosque and we’re intimidating them and I apologize for that.” — An unnamed, masked BAIR organizer, Breitbart, April “This is an armed defense maneuver, making sure that our communities are safe and secure from any insurgents coming in.” — Krystal Muhammad of the New Black Panther…

MARVIN WAS THE FIRST OF MY CLIENTS to be killed by the state of Texas. Shortly after I joined Marvin’s legal defense team, my colleague Kate took me to meet him on Texas’ death row. We sat in the visitation booth, separated from Marvin by a pane of glass. He spoke to us through a crackly telephone, elbows on the metal table in front of him. He wore a white uniform. Kate and I talked with Marvin about football. She loved the Broncos and he loved the Texans. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of sports, and listened to them every day on his prison radio. Beyond sports, I did not know how to speak with him. He answered my questions with one-word answers. He had no interest in his legal…

MY MOTHER HAS GIFTED ME MANY THINGS IN LIFE — UNRULY hair and lots of it, an affinity for shiny accessories, an appreciation for all things feline — but I am most grateful for the work she did to instill in me an appreciation for good music. Specifically, for the oeuvre of Bruce Springsteen. ¶ Mom went to see Bruce in Dallas last month, texting me videos and photos from the show. I always regret not going to a concert with her, but I regret it a little more this time, in light of the fact that Springsteen, protesting North Carolina’s new anti-LGBT “religious liberty” law, canceled a tour stop in Greensboro. ¶ He called the North Carolina law an “attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country…

READING SALVADORAN JOURNALIST ÓSCAR MARTíNEZ’S NONFIC- tion portrait of violence in Central America, it seems fantastically lucky for all of us that he’s still alive. In the years that he reported A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America, Martínez traveled to the most treacherous towns and provinces in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, spending days, sometimes weeks, interviewing both victims and aggressors in a conflict nearly as deadly as the civil wars that tore through the region in the 1980s. The reporting is an act of courage; the book is a plea for comprehension of the terror that drives people from Central America to the United States. ¶ Martínez’s preface and the introduction, written by New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, trace the roots of the…

IS TEXAS VIOLATING FEDERAL VOTING LAW? Texas is failing to update voter registrations through the online driver’s license program, according to a lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project. In doing so, the organization argues, the Texas Department of Public Safety is systematically violating the National Voter Registration Act. ONLINE VOTER REGISTRATION SAVES MONEY Texas is one of 19 states that does not allow online voter registration and instead requires voters to submit paper applications in person. A Travis County study found that online registration would save a lot of money. 10,000 Number of paper voter registration applications received in Travis County by the February 1, 2016 voter registration deadline 500 Hours of staff time used to process the Travis County applications $100,000 Amount of money Travis County would…

THE ARMS RACE IS ESCALATING AGAIN. Despite historically low crime rates and an improving national economy, more and more Texans are arming themselves. Applications for gun licenses have surged in the last few months, bringing the total number of Texans with handgun permits to just under 1 million. In 1996, just 1 in 168 Texans had a concealed handgun license, according to the Dallas Morning News. In 2015, about 1 in 30 did. And not just any piece will do any more. We want more firepower; we want it to be “tactical”; and we want to flash it. (Thanks to the open carry law that went into effect on January 1, you can now wear your gun, as the Townes Van Zandt lyric goes, outside your pants for all the…

The law enforcement official was a highly unlikely candidate for a session with local Democrats. Edwards County — Rocksprings is the county seat — is solidly Republican, and Elliott is militantly conservative. There were cars everywhere — on the street, blocking the road, even parked in Gallegos’ yard, about 30 people in all. “They were the sheriff’s staff — some in plain clothes, some in uniform,” Gallegos recalls. “There were dispatchers, jailers, friends, supporters — anyone, it seemed, that Sheriff Elliott could gather up.” Ten minutes after the start of the meeting, all four of the executive committee members in Gallegos’ house were gabbing about the posse amassed outside. Then there was a loud knock at the door — Sheriff Elliott. “She came to the door in uniform and was…

THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED ENTRE GUADALUPE Y MALINCHE: TEJANAS IN LITERATURE AND ART IS A COLLECTION OF work by women who identify as Tejana. Many of the writers and artists are veterans of the Chicana movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when, as co-editor Inés Hernández-Ávila writes, “there was an incredible cultural and artistic energy that swept through the state, emerging from the land and the people themselves yet intensified from the four directions by other movements for social justice in the Americas and, indeed, the world.” This excerpt is about memories that carry culture and identity from one generation to the next. IN SOUTH TEXAS, AUGUST IS THE HOTTEST MONTH of the year, when the heat and humidity can kill a person if one is not adequately prepared for them.…

Another baseball season is underway, and both the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros could be among the league’s best this year — and that hasn’t often been the case. In the 44 years since they arrived, the Rangers have excelled at one thing: convincing people to eat ridiculous food at their games. Arlington Stadium introduced ballpark nachos, and their improbably liquid cheese sauce, to the world in 1976. Since then, which of the following has not been served at a Rangers game? a. 2-foot-long deep-fried brownie b. Cotton candy-topped hot dog c. Mac & cheese, bacon and Froot Loops-topped hot dog d. Bacon cotton candy e. “Wicked Pig” sandwich with six kinds of pork…

Miller’s Red River quest illustrates a particular truth about Texas’ elected class of 2014: These are very mediocre people. TEXAS HAS HAD ITS FAIR SHARE OF SCANDALS, AND THOUGH MANY HAVE been bigger and meaner than Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s Shotghazi, I can’t think of one I’ve enjoyed more. ¶ If you’re unfamiliar with Miller, it’s worth getting acquainted. His campaign treasurer in 2014 was Ted Nugent. Before Miller took the top ag job in Texas, he raised Christmas trees and got in trouble for abusing his horses. He tells bawdy jokes and wears a big hat. ¶ Asked last year at a policy conference what keeps him up at night, he first answered “bad Mexican food” before giving his serious answer: “Will we be a Muslim country?” During his…

Q: What was it like growing up with Ann Richards as your mother? I didn’t know any different, right? That’s the thing. I grew up in Dallas, and I thought we were like other families, but other families bowled and we did politics. We spent evenings and weekends sorting precinct lists for whatever campaign my parents were working on. It was a great life, and I think it really changed the way we all thought about what we were supposed to spend our time doing. Very early on, my parents were involved in the farmworkers’ movement and at that point farmworkers were fighting for basic working conditions and even a minimum wage, and that was a big campaign. I remember going to the grocery store as a young person with…

Each one, a trail in the forest of drugged limbs as their heads question everything their mothers told them. Witness a dance in the flood as feet make way back to boyness again. Against my back, a place to eat while bent on knees, I call them their true name, finally. We listen to what our bodies say to each other—not of loneliness, but of a real & wild rite. Or maybe I’d choose just one, turn my goddess face toward him like the sun & back to me, a swimming rope in summer, he’d swing toward the one place I forgot once knew the depths of him as one knows how to answer the first sound of water. Why choose only one, being a man & lonely after walking…