In this issue: "How we Got Here": Texas has undermined its public health system for decades. Here, COVID-19 found the perfect place to spread; "Tenant Blacklisting": Even unlawful eviction filings can stay on a tenant's record and make it harder to find future housing; "A Grave Injustice": Thirty years ago, Congress passed a law requiring Native American bones be returned to tribes. Few have been returned; "Quilts of Color": Carrying on the legacy of Black quiltmakers in Texas.

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. The nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation publishes the Texas Observer bimonthly magazine and texasobserver.org. Since its founding in 1954, the Observer has covered issues that are often ignored or underreported by other media. We strive to expose injustice and to produce the kind of impact journalism that changes people’s lives for the better. Our thoughtful arts and culture coverage recognizes the diversity and talent of Texas’ creative community. 

In this issue: "Lege in the Time of Coronavirus": Texas state lawmakers return to work for the first time since the pandemic started; "This Killing Machine": The rise, fall, and lingering trauma of of the death penalty in Texas; "The Graveyard Shift": COVID-19 is colliding with a federal and state labor safety regime that's suffered years of neglect; "Undetected": Homicide cases are going unsolved, leaving serial killers free to murder again.

"UNDERWATER WASTELAND" Climate change threatens Superfund sites in Texas and across the country; "NO PLACE TO BE" How Austin bucked the decades long trend of criminalizing homelessness; "PANDEMIC PORTRAITS" Stories of ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

NEGLECTED IN CARE Inadequate staffing in Texas nursing homes endangers residents, leading to injuries and deaths. INFECTION CONTROL Nursing home residents were already at risk. Then COVID-19 hit. BACK TO THE WALL A border wall is headed for Laredo—unless opponents can run out the clock. FROM BOOM TO BLOODBATH The Permian Basin’s shale revolution is over and renewable energy is surging. What does that mean for Texas’ future? CLOSED FOR BUSINESS How COVID-19 threatens Texas’ restaurant industry.


"The Disappeared": Genetic genealogy is helping crack cold cases and identify nameless victims. The process is effective—and controversial; "The Traveling Midwife": In far West Texas, some lifeline for incarcerated women have to travel hours to give birth, endangering themselves and their babies. Could midwives help fill in the gap?; "Locked Out": Visitation is a critical lifeline for incarcerated people, yet some families say they have been banned from seeing loved ones over petty or unproven claims of misconduct; "Texotics": Exotic animals are big business in Texas.

Building Trust: By separating ownership of a house from the land beneath it, you can ensure the home remains affordable--permanently; Mi Barrio No Se Vende: A debate over plans to demolish San Antonio's oldest and largest public housing project is about more than just housing; Spinning Their Wheels: As Dallas booms, low-income residents are making do without adequate public transit; Underwater: Hit hard by flood after flood, people living in Rio Grande Valley colonias struggle to rebuild.

The Prison Inside Prison
Texas has banished hundreds of prisoners to more than a decade of solitary confinement. Many aren’t sure how—or even if—they will ever get out. 
By Michael Barajas

Something in the Air
People in the Panhandle are getting sick from breathing fecal dust created by cattle feedlots—and the state isn’t doing much about it.
By Christopher Collins

Against the Current
Mandaean refugees make San Antonio home.
By Matthew Busch and Robyn Ross

The Interview
Sociologist Jeremy Slack on the horrors that await immigrants deported from the U.S.
Interviewed by Lise Olsen

Barrio Pop
Cande Aguilar’s paintings are a riot of color.
By Michael Agresta

The Book Report
A darkly comic novel indicts the chicken farming industry.
By Michael Schaub

Film
How the San Antonio police are rethinking mental health.
By Rose Cahalan

Poem
“When We Were Children”
By Edward Vidaurre

Eye on Texas
By Monica Lozano

"The Doctor is Out: In rural Texas hospitals are closing. Doctors are leaving. Towns are dying. Why won't the Legislature act?"

"They Persisted: Women are half as likely as men to run again after losing an election. Can 'political persistence' help explain the gender gap in elected office?"; "Who is John Cornyn Serving? The senior senator from Texas has mastered the art of political subservience, making him very powerful— and perhaps vulnerable."; "Bridge to Nowhere: Near Brownsville, a trio of proposed liquefied natural gas plants endangers a fragile ecosystem and puts Texans’ health at risk."

"Where the Bodies are Buried," by Michael Barajas: Unearthing the legacy of an East Texas massacre; "Forgotten in the Fields," by Dana Ullman: Forced farmworker labor hides in plain sight across Texas; "The Butterfly Effect," by Lindsay Stafford Mader: Native Milkweed can save monarchs--if you know how to grow it; Culture: San Antonio artist Jose Villalobos reinvents symbols of macho norteno culture, by Michael Agresta

*The Flood Next Time: Donald Trump plans to build his border wall in the Rio Grande floodplain. What could go wrong? Well, everything; *Warning Signs: Rural East Texas has some of the highest suicide rates in the state. But the safety net for people who need help is being stretched thin, and some Texans are falling through; *Washington Crossing the Rio Grande: Performing patriotism in Laredo while Trump's wall looms; *Uncaged Art: Hope and humanity shine through the art made by immigrant kids in a West Texas tent camp.

"Dammed to Fail: Why small dams across Texas are ticking time bombs"; "Life and Limb: Inside the Rio Grande Valley's amputation crisis": "Home Economics: Immigrants are reviving the Panhandle town of Dalhart, where voters overwhelmingly supported Trump; more.

"Parks in Peril: Texas' underfunded, overcrowded state parks system struggles to keep up"; "Pregnant in Foster Care: How Texas is failing foster kids and contributing to an alarming teen pregnancy rate"; "Keith Carter's photographs find the surreal side of East Texas."

Stand by your man: How a Collin County cabal derailed Ken Paxton's prosecution; The border is everywhere: Immigration authorities are extending their reach deep into the interior, putting civil liberties in jeopardy for millions of people; Chuco style: Meet the zoot-suite-wearing El Pasoans keeping pachuco culture alive.

*Hurricane Harvey One-Year Later; *Rapper Bun B on Port Arthur; Port Arthur was still suffering the effects of past hurricanes when Harvey hit. Now a deeply flawed recovery process may be leaving the poorest residents behind. *A River Divided; The Rio Grande is one of the most endangered rivers in the world. As the region’s population booms, can South Texas weather a hotter, drier future?

Veronica Escobar on border politics and how to engage Latino voters; The human cost of Texas’ decade-long border security surge; A day at the gay rodeo; In Dallas, the Museum of Street Culture finds its place.

The April 2018 issue of the Texas Observer includes: *Access Denied: The erosion of Texas’ open records law has left the public in the dark. *Indoctrinated: An Austin hospital requires the burial of all fetal remains. For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse. *Red Dawn: The Democratic Socialists of America has grown bigly since Trump’s election. Will it have staying power in Texas?

Corporate polluters get off easy; Cambodian refugees run into far-right activists; the recipe for creating a new, for-profit lockup: a state agency imploding under mismanagement, a private prison contractor on the rebound and a desperate town

Water use and fracking in west Texas, Zika in the Rio Grande Valley, adult day care, after Harvey in Richmond, more.

Beto O'Rourke takes on Ted Cruz, Excited Delirium as an explanation for in-custody deaths, the drying of the San Saba River

The rise and fall of Texas' first liberty city; did a federal conservation program contribute to fires in the Texas panhandle?; Inside a rookie FBI
agent’s quest to take down a brutal drug cartel’s American horse-racing empire

In the Rio Grande Valley, communities are gearing up to fight a border wall for the second time; Why is the Texas comptroller’s of ce in the business of endangered species research?; Women are taking the reins in the macho world of charreria.

In Texas’ cotton country, people are under siege by crop dusters; the state gave Patricia Ellis’ husband control over her life over family concerns; at a Galveston clinic, medical students struggle to help the neediest patients.

Misadventures in driving for a ride-hailing company;  How did a felon with a fake name get a controversial project fast-tracked in Port Aransas?

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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. The nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation publishes the Texas Observer bimonthly magazine and texasobserver.org.

Since its founding in 1954, the Observer has covered issues that are often ignored or underreported by other media. We strive to expose injustice and to produce the kind of impact journalism that changes people’s lives for the better. Our thoughtful arts and culture coverage recognizes the diversity and talent of Texas’ creative community.

Our guiding light continues to be our founding mission statement:

We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy. We will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit.

We cover stories crucial to the public interest and provoke dialogue that promotes democratic participation and open government, in pursuit of a Texas where education, justice and material progress are available to all.

Our reporting is fair, accurate, and, as our mission states, it hews hard to the truth as we find it. As a 501(c)(3), we do not endorse candidates or legislation.

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The Texas Observer - November/December 2020

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