beaumont’s dysfunctional schools | A remembrance of mobs past in Gainesville

november | 2014 Joining the Hunt The Changing Culture of Killing for Food. by Andrea Grimes IN THIS ISSUE ON THE COVER: Austin hunter Elaine Holton. photo by Matt Rainwaters

Left: Beaumont’s West Brook High School Bruins wait to take the field on homecoming night. Photo BY Patrick Michels

10Hitting Bottom Is Beaumont ISD the most dysfunctional school district in Texas? by Patrick Michels

Dreg City Culture How Nordheim thus far missed The Thrall of the Wild the South Texas oil boom. by Andrea Grimes Observer 22 by Alex Hannaford 28 ONLINE Observer editors REGULARS 07 Big Beat 36 Direct Quote 43 State of THE Media and reporters 01 Dialogue Access Denied on The Descriptive Art of Ebola Trolling will be producing 02 Political the Border Celia Hughes by Andrea Grimes news and Intelligence by Cindy Casares as told to Jen Reel analysis of the 06 state of Texas 44 Forrest for the Trees Nov. 4 election— 08 Tyrant’s Foe 32 Film 38 Postcards Greg Abbott and the who lost, who 09 Editorial Ornette in Focus Remembering a Mob in Criminalization of won, and what 09 Ben Sargent’s by Josh Rosenblatt Gainesville Voter Registration loon Star State by Abby Rapoport by Forrest Wilder it means for 34 The Book Report Texas’ future— Selling Texas to 42 poem 45 Eye on Texas throughout the World American Abundance, by Drew Anthony Smith November. Keep by Brad Tyer or First Trip to H-E-B up with our Grocery Store coverage at by José Antonio texasobserver.org Rodríguez A Journal of Free Voices since 1954

OBSERVER Volume 106, No. 11 dialogue Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger If you can’t say something constructive… Editor Dave Mann

Managing Editor Brad Tyer Thirteen-plus years of a Rick Perry-led government has set back education in Associate editor Forrest Wilder Texas at least 20 years (“State of Texas: Low Pay and Greater Expectations Have Multimedia Editor Jen Reel

Web Editor Jonathan McNamara Texas Teachers Singing the Blues,” Oct. 1, texasobserver.org). Testing is out of PoliticS WRITER Christopher Hooks control and throwing blame has become a favorite pastime of legislators as well staff writers Melissa del Bosque, Emily DePrang, as educators. It is time to stop finding fault and start doing something about it! Patrick Michels Publisher Emily Williams Tish Wilson CONTROLLEr Krissi Trumeter p o s t e d at texasobserver . o r g

Membership Manager Jacqueline Galvan the Legislature, the oil companies and Trans Art Direction EmDash Fighting the Canada to create even more pollution. People Poetry Editor Naomi Shihab Nye have had to move away because the air and water Staff cartoonist Ben Sargent God Fight pollution is so bad and families are constantly

COPY Editor David Duhr As a sixth-generation Texan, I am ashamed that getting sick. But they keep voting for the same people in our state elected a man who clearly has people, time after time. Contributing Writers Stephanie Palmer Lou Dubose, Saul Elbein, not made any effort to understand the Constitu- Alex Hannaford, Carolyn tion (“New Senator Charles Perry: We’re Living in p o s t e d at texasobserver . o r g Jones, Steven G. Kellman, Holocaust II,” Oct. 1, texasobserver.org). Even here Robert Leleux, James in Texas, not everyone is a Christian, and some of McWilliams, Bill Minutaglio, Innocent from Priscila Mosqueda, us do understand the reasons behind our founders’ Robyn Ross, Ellen Sweets decision to create a secular government. I may con- the Start Contributing Photographers tinue to be in the minority here for a long time yet, Alan Pogue, Matt Wright-Steel but I will fight these theocrats all the way to the end. My mother knew Mr. Graf back in the day (“Re-Tri- Keith Babberney al of Ed Graf’s Flawed Arson Case Begins in Waco,” interns Beth Bond, Cody Alder, Krystal p o s t e d at texasobserver . o r g Oct. 6, texasobserver.com). She has contended that Carr, Asher Elbein he is innocent the whole time. At the time of his Texas Democracy conviction, McLennan County was represented by Foundation Board Mishandling Texans a suspect district attorney who employed an equal- Carlton Carl, Bob Frump, Lori and J.B. Collins, thank you so much for shar- ly suspect investigator. See some recent writings Melissa Jones, Susan Longley, Vince LoVoi, Jim Marston, ing your unbelievably sad story, and for your cour- on the “Lake Waco Murders.” Very much Michael Mary Nell Mathis, Ronald age and fighting spirit (“Crossing the Line,” Sep- Morton stuff. Rapoport, Peter Ravella, tember issue). And Saul Elbein, my appreciation Michael Glass Katie Smith, Greg Wooldridge, Ronnie Dugger (emeritus) for such a thorough article, particularly in allow- p o s t e d at fa c e b o o k . c o m / texasobserver ing the words and actions of specific TransCanada Our mission We will serve no group or party employees and representatives to stand as a testa- but will hew hard to the truth ment to who they are. In a state like Texas, where a as we find it and the right as handshake is considered binding and keeping one’s we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human word is a reflection of integrity, I too was amazed at values above all interests, to the (in)actions of TransCanada and their minions. the rights of humankind as the They say they did exhaustive engineering studies foundation of democracy. We will take orders from none but on this pipeline and its route across the Lone Star our own conscience, and never State, but TransCanada (“just a word,” as Mr. Wal- will we overlook or misrepresent drop stated) sure didn’t do its homework on Texans. the truth to serve the interests Julia Trigg Crawford of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. p o s t e d at texasobserver . o r g Sound Off contact us 307 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas Texas has always pushed less regulation. Texas [email protected] 78701, (512) 477-0746 may be very big, but that just allows the governor, or comment on facebook.com/texasobserver and texasobserver.org

November 2014 the te xas observer | 1 Political Intelligence

The Teen Beat Out Standing in Their Field

They came from Dallas, College Station and Can- Word of the backroads bacchanal spread around ton, even from surrounding states, as many as 5,000, the rural county west of Tyler and briefly became some as young as 13, to party in a Van Zandt County statewide news. Local authorities, the Texas Alcoholic pasture on a Saturday night in June. Word spread on Beverage Commission and the state comptroller WATCH video of Dan social media. “Heading to Gods [sic] country with 2 investigated. Van Zandt County veterinarian Dwayne Cummins’ address at txlo.com/cummins bins full of Jell-O shots,” one reveler wrote on Insta- Collins, chairman of the Edom TEA Party, was unwill- gram. They handed over $5 at the gate, drank Crown ing to cede this dusty ground to the basest instincts of and Bacardi, smoked pot and spice and had sex in the youth and announced plans to respond in kind with The Ben Wheeler God & open field. Used condoms and party cups littered the his own “Ben Wheeler God & Country Pasture Party.” Country Pasture Party earth. Once authorities arrived, it took hours to clear This, he announced, would look nothing like that made for a sober Saturday night in Van Zandt County. the crowd, care for the wounded (fistfights, flying “drunken drug fest” back in June. photo by patrick michels beer bottles) and respond to reported gunfire. On a pleasant Saturday evening in early September,

2 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org Political Intelligence beneath a tower of clouds lit by a stunning sunset, a went bad, he had made his stand. For tonight, at least, TRIVIATEXAS Which unlikely crowd of about 250 descended on another Van Zandt the field was his. —Patrick Michels County field to, in effect, take back the pasture. plaintiff did Greg The night began with a scene equal parts Norman Abbott—the Texas Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade: a trio of Boy Scouts Profiles in Profiteering attorney general slowly raising the Stars and Stripes while, across the and favorite to shimmering pond behind them, three crosses kept A Faceless Problem become Texas’ watch atop a replica Calvary Hill. There’s nothing nice about jail. The food stinks. next governor— Collins appeared onstage in a straw cowboy hat Distractions are few. People are in a bad mood. once oppose in and a denim shirt with short sleeves, one of which The best you can hope for is to get out quickly with a 2005 case was colored like a Texas flag. The events of last minimum hassle. One of the few things you have before the U.S. summer, on a field just 3 miles away, had been “a to look forward to is a visit from a friend or a loved Supreme Court? manifestation of the problems we’re facing in our one—a brief face-to-face connection to remind society today,” he said. Tonight would be a chance you that the world is waiting on the other side of a. A homeless man to show young people that you don’t need drinks or the glass. But some Texas jails are eliminating in- b. A prairie dog drugs to have a good time in the pasture. person visitation and requiring instead the use c. Ted Cruz In the field I later caught up with Collins, who said of a video visitation system sold by Dallas-based he hoped to spin something positive out of the mess Securus Technologies. Critics say it’s an outrageous d. A deceased in June. “I’m not so prudish to say I didn’t sit on the profiteering scheme that has no policy rationale and voter back of a tailgate and drink a six-pack when I was a could actually deteriorate security at jails. e. Tony the Tiger kid,” Collins said, but what happened down the road Securus markets its video system as a cost-saver just didn’t compare. Others I spoke to agreed that the for jails and a convenience for family members who other party had crossed a clear line. Kids were par- live far from their incarcerated loved ones. But the tying differently today, they said. Most agreed social structure of the deals suggests there are powerful media was a factor, as was the large contingent of financial incentives for jails to curb or eliminate “out-of-towners” drawn by rap artists on the bill. face-to-face visitation. Securus charges callers as A light rain began to fall. Folks clustered under much as a dollar a minute to use its video services, camp shelters and tents. It was time to get specific and jails get a 20 to 25 percent cut. For big-city jails, about what dangers the June party portended, and that could mean millions in extra money. that job fell to Dan Cummins. “We believe Securus sees Texas county jails as a Cummins, a pastor at Bridlewood Church in Bullard, really ripe market for them,” said Kymberlie Quong has hosted prayer services in the U.S. Capitol for Charles, an organizer with the prison reform group years. Though they couldn’t pray away the rain— Grassroots Leadership. Securus, she pointed out, is a a prior speaker had tried—Cummins spoke with major provider of phone services for jails and prisons, conviction that this country is not a lost cause for con- but the FCC is cracking down on what it considers servative Christians. “In spite of what you hear from exorbitant rates. Video visitation could offer a source the lamestream media,” Cummins said, “I’m here to tell of revenue at a time of sagging profits for the industry. you that God ain’t through with America yet.” In Dallas, activists and some local leaders, In the fiery speech, Cummins dwelled for a while especially County Judge Clay Jenkins, helped kill on minority issues. “Sixty-five percent of deaths in a contract with Securus that included a provision the black community are from abortion!” he yelled, stipulating that the jail had to eliminate all in-person then explained why: “You can’t shake down a poor visits. “It is very important that we do not profit

black baby, dead or alive.” The wind carried his on the backs of inmates in the jail,” Dallas County constitutional. vote that the monument was was monument the that vote

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their life around,” he told me. Collins wondered if any but it stipulates that for the first two years the county lost had who attorney

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November 2014 the te xas observer | 3 ancillary service—something prisoners’ rights advo- talk oF Texas cates are fine with as long as the rates are reasonable and the service is reliable. But in May 2013, Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton quietly eliminated Run for the Hills! Edition in-person visitation. Defense attorneys and inmates sued in April, claiming that the jail and Securus were unlawfully recording privileged conversations between inmates and attorneys and leaking them to prosecu- “While ISIS tors. On top of that, Quong Charles says, the lack of Read more about private prisons and family human interaction is worsening conditions. detention at txlo.com/prof “What we found is that everything they said terrorists threaten would happen in terms of improving conditions has actually gotten worse,” she said. “I think people are frustrated. They’re not getting to see anybody.” Advocates have identified at least 10 jails that have to cross our gone to a video-only system. —Forrest Wilder border and kill Dept. of Injustice Beyond Wronged At the height of the refugee crisis on the border Americans…” this summer, The GEO Group Inc., a private prison —Opening line of Republican Dan Patrick’s first television corporation, was one of the first to receive a U.S. ad in his campaign for Texas lieutenant governor. government contract to house more than 530 Central American women and children in South Texas. This was despite the Florida-based corporation’s troubled “I know that at least 10 history of cost-cutting, abuse and neglect. In Texas, GEO Group has been named in lawsuits ISIS fighters have been alleging sexual assaults at its youth detention facilities, and abuse and a lack of medical care spurred caught coming across a series of riots at its Reeves County detention the border in Texas.” facility. Now there are new allegations. —California Republican Congressman Duncan D. Recently, several Central American women held Hunter on Fox News, Oct. 7. at GEO Group’s Karnes County detention facility reported that guards had sexually abused them and that GEO Group has done nothing to stop it. The allegations were made public in a Sept. 30 formal “Groups like the Islamic State complaint from the Mexican American Legal Defense collaborate with drug cartels and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the University of Texas School of Law, calling for Department of in Mexico. … They could infil- Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to investi- trate our defenseless border gate the facility immediately. According to the letter, facility employees have offered to help with the wom- and attack us right here in en’s pending immigration cases in exchange for sexual places like Arkansas.” favors; kissed, fondled or groped female detainees in front of children; and removed female detainees from —Arkansas Congressman Tom Cotton, a candidate for their cells late at night to engage in sex acts. U.S. Senate, at a recent town hall meeting. Attorney David Hinojosa, southwest regional counsel for MALDEF, said the Department of Homeland Security has assigned investigators to “The suggestion that the case. In a written statement, GEO Group said it individuals who have ties to “strongly refutes the allegations. The Karnes County Residential Center provides a safe, clean and fam- ISIL have been apprehended ily friendly environment for mothers and children at the Southwest border is awaiting required processing by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.” categorically false, and not The women in detention have a very different view of the facility, says Hinojosa. Kids 13 and older have supported by any credible been placed in separate cells away from their mothers intelligence or the facts on without any reason. “There were reports that after the women had made complaints of abuse inside the the ground.” facility, at least a couple of the perpetrators of the —Department of Homeland Security spokesperson abuse were still roaming the halls with access to the Marsha Catron to Huffington Post, Oct. 8. cells where the women and children are detained,” Hinojosa says.

4 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org Most of the women in the facility have applied “You can get a full return on capital in a year. ... People for political asylum, and many have passed their are willing to accept a higher degree of risk on the credible-fear tests, which, Hinojosa says, should regulatory front if they’re going to be able to have such allow them to qualify for a bond to be released expectations on capital and such very high returns.” so that they can report to immigration court at a Houston is also home to the Baker Institute at later date. But the U.S. government is not allowing Rice University, which has extensively researched the Central American women and children to be marijuana policy, and to several pro-pot organiza- released on bond. “The worry is that the longer they tions including Republicans Against Marijuana stay in detention, the higher the chances of abuse,” Prohibition. And in October, the Harris County Hinojosa says. “The U.S. government needs to see District Attorney’s office started a new program of that it’s a bad idea to lock up families who have offering first-time nonviolent offenders caught with already fled horrific events in their own countries, small amounts of weed a choice between community only to arrive here and be subjected to this—[it’s] service and an eight-hour class, rather than jail. If the astounding. It’s a disgrace and highly unfortunate.” program is completed, the charge will be scrubbed. —Melissa del Bosque Those steps toward legalization, tiny though they may seem, had Houston’s investors, well, buzzing. —Emily DePrang The Green Stuff High Rollers If you’re going to host a conference at which entrepreneurs pitch marijuana-based products and services, you should definitely make sure your pro- jection equipment is working. Otherwise, the young man describing his fast-acting, long-lasting, zero- calorie cannabis drink will lose legitimacy with every frustrated shake of the slide clicker. That would be true of any conference, but it’s especially pertinent at an event where everyone is acutely aware of the need not to seem stoned. Fortunately, the Marijuana Investment Conference, held at the swank West Houston Westin Hotel in early October, had legitimacy to spare. About 20 present- ers took 10 minutes each to describe their businesses to investors who’d paid $1,000 to attend. Ideas were divided into “touching the plant” and “not touching the plant,” with most business plans involving sig- nificant distance from the ganja itself. One young man (young men were abundant) introduced MassRoots, his “social network for the cannabis community” that already has 170,000 users, emphasizing its poten- Exceptional organic & cooperative coffee roasted to order in Austin. tial for harvesting profitable data. (It’s not paranoia if they’re really spying on you.) Another pitched an app that would let smokers order weed with the press of a button. Still others offered products meant for growers—greenhouse kits, lighting, fertilizer—or con- sulting services, promising to use insider knowledge of the industry to vet other investment opportunities as they arise. Obviously, these products are meant to be sold where marijuana is legal, but investors were urged to anticipate the eventual opening of market after market, state by state, at which point getting a financial foothold will be much harder. The conference was originally scheduled for September but was postponed when its founder, Stuart Maudlin, a Houston entrepreneur who became interested in medical marijuana after being diagnosed with throat cancer, took a turn for the worse. Maudlin died before he could see his dream take place, and his protégé, Gold Darr Hood, a senior analyst at Codexx Capital, took over. Hood says Houston might seem like a strange fit for the conference, at least compared with liberal Austin, but it’s not. Investors here are used to the oil and biomedical industries, which are high-risk and take years to realize a return. But the legal marijuana industry is growing so fast, she says, november 2014 State of texaS: Birds on the Run By Brad tyer In early September, the National Audubon Society released a first-ever report examining the intertwined future of climate change and birds. Based on Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Breeding Bird Surveys and widely accepted climate change scenarios, Audubon researchers predicted changes in the “climatic suitability” of extant habitats for 588 species of North American birds. The upshot? America’s birds face a dramatically changing landscape, with the current range of many species either expanding, contracting or relocating entirely. Of the 588 North American species considered, Audubon defined 314 as “at risk” from global warming if trends proceed at their current pace. Some Texas birds, like the endangered black-capped vireo, will see their climatic range disappear in Texas and reappear in coastal California, with uncertain impact on the species’ survival. Others, like the endangered golden- cheeked warbler endemic to Central Texas’ Edwards Plateau, face almost certain extinction by the end of the century as their climatic sweet spot in Texas all but disappears. Grackles, on the other hand, appear to be doing just fine.

endangered threatened Number of North Number of North American bird species American bird species projected to lose projected to lose more than 50% more than 50% of their current 126 of their current 188 range by 2050 range by 2080

texas bird forecast

United StateS of america United StateS of america Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte b USA 2022023717 b USA 2022023963 EarEd GrEbE //////////////////////// mErlin ////////////////////////////// percentage of current percentage of current summer range lost by 2080 summer range lost by 2080 100% 97%

percentage of current percentage of current winter range lost by 2080 winter range lost by 2080 22% 65% Andrew reding/Flickr creative commons Flickr creative commons

United StateS of america United StateS of america Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte b USA 2022023214 b USA 2022023573 amErican WhitE PElican ///////////// Wild turkEy //////////////////////// percentage of current percentage of current summer range lost by 2080 summer range lost by 2080 91% 48%

percentage of current percentage of current winter range lost by 2080 winter range lost by 2080 52% 87% Manjith Kainickara/Flickr creative commons Flickr creative commons

6Source: | the Audubon te xas Birds observer and climate c hange report, 2014 wwwIllu.teStrxAtasobserverIon By Joanna Wojtkowiak.org State of texaS: Birds on the Run By Brad tyer In early September, the National Audubon Society released a first-ever report examining the intertwined future of climate change and birds. Based on Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Breeding Bird Surveys and widely accepted climate change scenarios, Audubon researchers predicted changes in the “climatic suitability” of extant habitats for 588 species of North American birds. The upshot? America’s birds face a dramatically changing landscape, with the current range of many species either expanding, contracting or relocating entirely. Of the 588 North American species considered, Audubon defined 314 as “at risk” from global cindycasares warming if trends proceed at their current pace. Some Texas birds, like the endangered black-capped vireo, will see their climatic range disappear in Texas and reappear in coastal California, with uncertain impact on the species’ survival. Others, like the endangered golden- big beat cheeked warbler endemic to Central Texas’ Edwards Plateau, face almost certain extinction by the end of the century as their climatic sweet spot in Texas all but disappears. Grackles, on the other hand, appear to be doing just fine. The Anti-Abortion Law’s Impact on the Border endangered threatened here are no abortion clinics left on the southern border of Number of North Number of North Texas, or at least there weren’t as of this writing. The Texas- American bird species American bird species Mexico border spans 1,254 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to projected to lose projected to lose El Paso and is home to 2.7 million Texans, more than 10 per- more than 50% more than 50% cent of the state’s population. It’s the fastest-growing and of their current 126 of their current 188 most impoverished region in the state, according to the 2010 range by 2050 range by 2080 Census. But thanks to Texas’ strict new anti-abortion bill, the Texas border now has no abortion clinics. The new law requires abortion clinics to staff doctors with hospital admit- ting rights and function as ambulatory surgical centers. Most clinics couldn’t meet those standards. Before the law took effect, Texas had 40 clinics. After the texas bird forecast T final provisions took effect in October, just eight remained. None of themis located south or west of San Antonio.

United StateS of america United StateS of america As the Observer went to press, the U.S. Supreme Republican legislators passed the restrictions under Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte Court overruled the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the guise of improving safety for women. That’s ironic b USA 2022023717 b USA 2022023963 The border and blocked the implementation of the law while given that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, EarEd GrEbE //////////////////////// mErlin ////////////////////////////// region has it’s being argued in the courts. As of this writing, it “Abortion is one of the safest surgical procedures for remained unclear if any clinics on the border would women in the United States.” Abortion carries a risk of percentage of current percentage of current the state’s re-open, even temporarily. death one-tenth of that associated with childbirth, the summer range lost by 2080 summer range lost by 2080 The anti-abortion law violates all Texans’ con- institute reports, and fewer than 0.5 percent of abor- highest stitutional rights, limiting access to a legal medical tion patients experience a complication. 100% 97% procedure. But the border area has been hit espe- The greater irony is that the law, if implemented, rates of teen cially hard. The region is 88 percent Hispanic and will likely make women less safe. Women who can’t percentage of current percentage of current suffers from a dearth of financial resources. A long make the long journey to one of the few remaining winter range lost by 2080 winter range lost by 2080 pregnancy. history of educational and economic marginaliza- clinics, or who can’t get an appointment in the time tion means the border has some of the lowest rates allotted for legal abortions, might now be forced to 22% 65% of educational attainment in the nation. And border obtain an abortion from an unregulated facility or Andrew reding/Flickr creative commons Flickr creative commons residents are much more likely to be poor and lack doctor, or go to Mexico. This is especially true for health insurance. The state’s Office of Border Health Texas border residents, who are more likely to be poor reports that the poverty rate in the Texas border and uninsured—and more likely to become pregnant region is nearly twice as high as the rest of the state, as teenagers—than their counterparts across the state. United StateS of america United StateS of america and so is the unemployment rate. Texas famously The law would undermine the federal government’s Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte Type/Type/Tipo Code/Code/Codigo Passport No./No du Passport/No. de Passporte b USA 2022023214 b USA 2022023573 leads the country in the percentage of people with- Healthy Border 2010 initiative that sought to improve out health insurance, at 26 percent. The border is people’s access to health care. The border is a known amErican WhitE PElican ///////////// Wild turkEy //////////////////////// even worse; a whopping 40 percent of adult Texans Health Professional Shortage Area, defined as having living on the border lack medical coverage. fewer than one primary care physician per 3,000 resi- percentage of current percentage of current Most important for a discussion about abortion dents. Even without the abortion law, the border had a summer range lost by 2080 summer range lost by 2080 access, the border region also has the state’s highest shortage of physicians. 91% 48% rates of teen pregnancy. It doesn’t seem, however, that the Texas Legislature The abortion law could create another economic got the memo. Between gutting women’s reproductive barrier to safe, affordable health care—a geographical care and cutting public education funding, it seems as percentage of current percentage of current one. For women on the border who want an abortion, if Texas’ leaders are deliberately dooming the border winter range lost by 2080 winter range lost by 2080 the shortest drive would be two and a half hours. to decades of economic strife. Which, of course, we’ll 52% 87% From Brownsville, the Rio Grande Valley’s largest all pay for. Here’s hoping Texas’ leaders stop willfully Manjith Kainickara/Flickr creative commons Flickr creative commons city, the nearest abortion clinic would be in San neglecting the border. If they don’t, eventually we’ll all Antonio, a four-hour drive. feel the sting from that mistreatment.

Source: Audubon Birds and climate change report, 2014 IlluStrAtIon By Joanna Wojtkowiak November 2014 the te xas observer | 7 Tyrant’sFOE Out of the Shadows, Spreading Light

hen I met Josh Gravens, he was 25 years old, unemployed and living with his older sister in Dallas. He’d most recently worked at a stand that sold Christmas trees and firewood, but his paychecks often bounced, and since then he’d applied for hundreds of jobs. That was March of 2012, when Gravens and his wife and four chil- dren were getting by one day at a time. ¶ Life is tough for any young family, but Gravens’ life

was harder than many because, at the time, he was anything? … Am I prepared? I don’t have a bachelor’s Wa registered sex offender. I interviewed him for the degree. I had been working manual labor jobs.” Josh Gravens Observer story “Life on the List” (June 2012), a look at What convinced him to try was the 2010 film fights criminal Texas’ practice of including children on its public sex Conviction, the mostly true story of a high school justice policies that offender registry. When Gravens was 12, he twice had dropout who became a lawyer to help overturn her hurt children. sexual contact with his younger sister. Alarmed, his brother’s murder conviction. “The message I took mother called a therapist, who was required by law to from it was, nobody else in my circumstance has the report Gravens to police. He spent the next three and a privilege to put their life on hold so they can wait for half years in the Texas Youth Commission—the state’s change,” he says. “Nobody else can afford that. If I jail system for kids. If he’d committed any other kind could begin to create real change, the amount of lives of wrong, Gravens’ juvenile record would have been that would be adversely affected by not beginning that “If I could begin sealed when he turned 18, but because he was listed on conversation—it was like, ‘Josh, you gotta do this.’” the registry, his offense followed him into adulthood, And he did. Gravens got the Soros Justice to create real costing him jobs, homes and his college career. Fellowship for a project to educate lawmakers about Yet when I met him, Gravens was beyond upbeat. the effects of placing children on the registry. But as change, the He was downright perky. After spending half his life he learned more, he says, “What I found was, what’s hiding, he’d decided to tell his story in the Observer even worse is the treatment that we’re putting kids amount of lives because the possibility that it might help other peo- in,” which he says is “copied and pasted from the ple outweighed his desire for secrecy. Gravens has 1980s adult sex offender treatment.” He’s spoken to that would always wanted to serve others but feared his his- judges, churches and conferences about the psycho- tory would limit his potential. “‘Life on the List’ was logical damage done to children by both the registry be adversely the beginning of my advocacy,” he says. “The Texas and the outdated treatment model. He also led a Observer article went national, and [among] advo- successful campaign to prevent Dallas County from affected by not cates who were working on this, I became known all eliminating in-person visitation at its jails. across the country as the guy who was a [registered] Now he’s the chair of Texas CURE, a human rights beginning that kid who’s now speaking out.” Gravens also used the group focused on organizing formerly incarcerated article to find his judge from years before and suc- people and their families. “We are the voice of the conversation— cessfully petition to have his registration made people, of the one in four Americans that has a con- private, so only law enforcement can see it. viction. We’re a large demographic, but we’re also the it was like, Then Gravens met Nicole Pittman of Human least politically active,” Gravens says. “I came out of Rights Watch. She’d been researching children on the system with an understanding of how it worked ‘Josh, you gotta the sex offender list for years and was impressed and an ambition that they were not going to take me with Gravens’ buoyant intelligence and hunger for down. And at the end of the day, it’s really about how do this.’” service. Pittman suggested Gravens develop a proj- you wake up in the morning. Do I wake up sad and bit- ect and apply to the program she was currently in: ter because of my life? Or do I wake up in the morning the prestigious Soros Justice Fellowship. knowing that, no matter what anyone calls me, I have “I was like, ‘I don’t know what the heck that is,’” the willpower and the ability to make real change?” Gravens recalls. “I mean, what’s a project? What is —Emily DePrang

8 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org editorial The More Things Change …

hange is afoot at The Texas run the design firm EmDash, are leaving theObserver Observer. In the next few months, next month. They’re the folks behind the beautiful cov- For 60 years, the makeup of our staff and our ers and feature spreads you’ve seen every month for the magazine will look a little different. past five years. It’s probably an understatement to say the Observer The first change you’ll notice is a that Kate and Erin redesigned the Observer. They took a new lineup of columnists. Andrea publication that looked like an outdated newsletter and has produced Grimes took over our State of the turned it into this slick, modern magazine. Their talent Media column over the summer, and this issue marks and dedication will be greatly missed. great Cthe final Big Beat column by Cindy Casares. For the Finally, I’m sad to say that I’ll be leaving the past three years, Cindy has chronicled how Texas’ lead- Observer next month as well. Our December issue—a journalism. ers consistently neglect the emerging Latino majority, special issue celebrating the Observer’s 60th anniver- especially in the border region. She’s written about a sary—will be my last. After 12 years at the magazine, The names side of Texas not often seen in the statewide media. including the past three and a half as editor, I’ll be We’re lucky to have Cindy in the Observer community, moving up the street to take a job with Texas Monthly. and faces may and she will still write regularly for our website, texas- I want to thank all of you who have read and sup- observer.org. Starting in January, we will debut a new ported this magazine and especially the many of change, but columnist in the front section of the magazine. you who have shared your stories with us during my This issue also marks the final time that Tyrant’s Foe, tenure. I will greatly miss working with the brilliant the mission in which we profile Texans working to improve their Observer staff, and I’m very proud of the magazine state, will appear as a standalone, one-page feature. we produced together. It’s truly been an honor to edit remains Beginning with our January issue, we will fold Tyrant’s this storied publication. Foe back into the Political Intelligence section—where For 60 years, the Observer has produced great the same. it resided prior to 2011—and replace it with a one-page journalism. The names and faces may change, but collection of lively dispatches from around the state. the mission remains the same: to publish the impor- We’re also saying goodbye to a few staffers. Our skilled tant stories in Texas that you can’t find anywhere art directors, Kate Collins and Erin Mayes, who together else. That’s never going to change. —Dave Mann

loon star state Ben Sargent

November 2014 the te xas observer | 9 Race to THE BOTTOM How Beaumont’s racial divisions created the most Race to THE BOTTOM dysfunctional school district in Texas. photos and text By Patrick Michels When Carrol Thomas arrived in 1996, Beaumont was struggling and divided. The Spindletop oilfield, which had made the city illusions. Texas is growing, but neither Beaumont nor rich, had dried up decades earlier. The oil crash its schools are getting much bigger. Carrol Thomas of the 1980s stalled business at Beaumont’s port spent 16 years as the city’s school superintendent—an and prompted mass layoffs at its refineries. By the almost unheard-of tenure for urban school leaders— mid-1990s, years of white flight to exurbs along the and the multimillion-dollar surplus estimated when interstate or north into the Piney Woods had shrunk he left the district in 2012 has evaporated. Gone, too, Beaumont’s population to its lowest levels in 40 are a $389 million bond package, much of it spent on years. The civil rights movement, which seemed to projects that ran over budget, and millions in hurricane take hold in Beaumont long after it did in the rest of recovery funds. In their place, auditors discovered a $40 the South, had an uneasy effect on the schools, with million budget shortfall, and federal investigators have students riding dutifully each morning on buses found millions in embezzled public funds. The state has from one segregated neighborhood to another, an returned, this time to take over the district to save it from imperfect but hard-fought alternative to segregation. financial collapse. To remain solvent, Beaumont ISD Racial unease on the school board—largely about has cut treasured school services like buses from after- whether to continue busing—led to such dysfunction school sports, tutoring and dozens of jobs. that two state monitors were dispatched from Austin Another casualty of the recent scandals is the to oversee the district. And then Carrol Thomas trust Thomas built between the white and black came to town promising to rescue the schools. communities. For a time, he really did bring the city By 1995 the black community had gained a large together—Beaumont ISD was a model Texas school share of the city’s population and a slim majority on district with a visionary school leader. It’s hard to the school board. After more than a century on the know how much to blame him now, or whether the sidelines, African-American Beaumonters finally district was simply destined for another fight. But had a meaningful say in how their schools were run. Thomas’ legacy, far from the bridge-building he Thomas was the man they picked to be Beaumont’s promised, is a level of animosity that old-timers say is first black superintendent. He was a young school- the worst they’ve seen. By the time the state stepped turnaround artist who’d just saved Houston’s North in last spring, Beaumont had reclaimed its reputation Forest ISD from school board infighting and finan- as Texas’ most dysfunctional school system. cial questions that prompted a federal investigation. As a sign of trust in the district’s new leader, the state A few minutes’ drive west of Beaumont on recalled its monitors from Beaumont a few months Interstate 10 stands a great monument to the Thomas before Thomas took office. era. It is, depending on whom you ask, either a fitting After just a few years, city leaders agreed that tribute to the man who led the schools for so long or Thomas had delivered on his promise. The district was a galling reminder of his excess. At night, the Carrol upgrading run-down schools in black neighborhoods, A. “Butch” Thomas Educational Support Center is and had ended crosstown busing in a fashion that a bright island in the darkness of an old rice field, a appeased both white and black community groups. $45 million complex opened in 2011, $15 million over With his firm but personable manner, Thomas built budget, with the old superintendent’s name easy to cooperation in a city that seemed doomed to wallow in spot from the highway, lit up against the sky. (Rumor distrust. As one white trustee told The Dallas Morning among Thomas’ critics is that the building’s plans News early in Thomas’ tenure, “He enabled us to step were reconfigured, at some expense, to ensure prime back and see what was important.” Test scores rose, the visibility for the name.) “Educational Support Center” district gained a sunny reputation and, perhaps most is a bit of a euphemism; it’s a stadium, and this is home- incredibly, the city itself seemed to be reversing its slow coming night for West Brook High School. decline. “What he has done to improve the Beaumont On the football field, the players receive their school district has probably been the single biggest applause like royalty, strolling along the 50-yard change for economic redevelopment,” the president of line, waving to the crowd as their names appear Beaumont’s chamber of commerce told the Morning on a monstrous, million-dollar scoreboard. The Previous Page: Beaumont’s News. “There’s a lot of movement back into the city.” homecoming honorees are a racially diverse group, new high school football and Little of that goodwill remains today. The district’s like the crowd itself. An outsider looking for some swimming complex, completed over budget in 2011, honors growth, test performance and financial stability once so sign of the racial antipathy the district has become the district’s longtime leader. celebrated now appear to have been, to varying degrees, known for would find no clear division between black

12 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org and white in the crowd. The game ticket features the already done so, and only after a decade of legal school’s logo: a grizzly pawing at the West Brook coat wrangling in federal court, federal Judge Robert “It was kind of an of arms that includes an image of two hands shaking. Parker ordered South Park to draft a desegregation These West Brook Bruins, now racing onto the field plan in 1981. At the time, the school board had one open secret that through the legs of a giant inflatable bear, are the black trustee out of seven, a Lamar University math keepers of a tradition that began 30 years ago with a professor named Richard L. Price. Taylor had been long-overdue effort to desegregate. Price remembers the majority response was simple: Beaumont’s schools were split back then between “The board did not want to comply.” He’s sitting in hired by South two districts: the original Beaumont Independent his brick ranch home’s big sunken living room on School District and the smaller South Park ISD in the Beaumont’s west side. He leans back in his recliner, Park to fight city’s south and west sides. South Park, the whiter dis- laughing as he remembers how hard the other trustees trict, remained segregated into the early 1980s thanks fought the change. Price was raised in the old Pear desegregation.” in part to its strong-willed superintendent, O.C. “Mike” Orchard community on the east side, where the South Taylor. “It was kind of an open secret that Taylor had Park district’s first black school was built around the been hired by South Park to fight desegregation,” says turn of the 20th century. Price’s father was a Baptist John Kanelis, who was the editorial page editor for The pastor and principal of Hebert, the Pear Orchard’s new Beaumont Enterprise in the 1980s. high school, in the 1950s. (The late state Rep. Al Price The U.S. Supreme Court had ended official school was Price’s older brother.) South Park’s administration segregation in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education rul- took little interest in the black schools. Black school ing, but the local response in South Park was a weak principals didn’t follow the white administrators’ “freedom of choice” policy: Black children could attend career path to the district office, and though South Park a white school if they wanted, but the district wouldn’t was flush with property tax wealth from the chemical encourage them or help them get there. Into the 1980s, plants outside of town, the black schools saw little of it. Forest Park High School remained almost entirely Price learned when he was young about the social white, while Hebert High School was all black. In 1983, calculus that went into getting money for the black Ed Moore, a TV repairman who would later become the schools. He’d just returned from the Army and his first black Jefferson County commissioner, explained father was taking him around town. They stopped the approach to Texas Monthly: “The South Park board near a part of the Pear Orchard known as “Tripe City,” Superintendent Carrol Thomas addresses has waged a calculated campaign to ridicule the federal where the air stunk of the Zummo Sausage slaugh- the public during a government and fool the people of this district. I give terhouses nearby, and Price’s father said they’d build school board meeting in January 2011. them credit, they’ve been good at it.” the new black high school there. It seemed like a ter- photo by Valentino Decades after other U.S. school districts had rible idea to Price, but it was on Fannett Road, the Mauricio/The Enterprise

November 2014 the te xas observer | 13 Dr. Richard L. Price, the main way out of town before the interstate was built. that created countless new conflicts. Two schools last black school trustee in South Park ISD, was often Price’s father explained: “White people are going to meant two principals, two basketball coaches, two outvoted on questions of support that school because they’ve got to pass by football coaches—and room at West Brook for only school desegregation. there going to the beach. And surely they want to one of each. Many didn’t see the arrangement last- be able to say, ‘We can make it to Crystal Beach and ing long. Federal Judge Joe Fisher put it plainly in Galveston Beach, we ought to be able to do some- Texas Monthly’s 1983 story on West Brook: “There’s thing decent for these black people.’” no authority that says you’ve got to have more mix- Price earned a doctorate in mathematics and a ing. Black people like to live with black people. White master’s in divinity, then returned to Beaumont in people like to live with white people.” the ’70s to teach at Lamar. He saw little had changed Despite the circumstances, and despite losing four in the schools since his childhood. Black school games that first season, West Brook tore through the administrators still weren’t getting promoted and playoffs to claim the state 5A championship at the the schools for black students remained segregated, Astrodome—the city’s first win at the state’s high- underfunded and under-supplied. est level of high school football in 50 years. Fans and Price won a seat on the school board and began news reporters alike basked in the moment. “We’re gathering hard evidence of the inequity. “My back- here because we were all brought together,” one fan ground is mathematics, and I had to have access to said. “If ever a single athletic event was played for a the books. I just sat down and studied the books,” high and poignant purpose,” the Enterprise’s Mark he says. White board members, in private, defended Lisheron wrote, “West Brook’s win over L.D. Bell of their decisions to steer more money to white schools, Hurst 21-10 was it.” Price says, and he became an outspoken critic. “I told But the goodwill from the championship didn’t last, the board, ‘I am a teacher and I will at least teach my Kanelis says: “It ended on Saturday morning when the people what you are saying behind closed doors.’” He game was over.” Even as Beaumont celebrated the state lasted just one term. title the West Brook union had given the city, the South Judge Parker created a plan to break the stand- Park board was still fighting desegregation in court. off: Both Hebert and Forest Park would close, and The year after the championship, Price was voted out South Park would create a new school in their place of office and the board was once again all white. The to open in 1982. Ninth and 10th grades would be at Enterprise editorialized in 1983 that South Park’s the old Hebert building, the upper two grades at trustees were “still seeking relief from the ‘burdens’ of Forest Park. The name, per a vote by the students, desegregation—burdens that have relieved more than would be West Brook. It was a bold, elegant solution a third of the district’s residents of the historical reality

14 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org of willful discrimination. If South Park blacks are not west side and flight to outlying towns. After years inclined to help the district tamper with the court during which each side accused the other of holding order, it is because the schools their children attend its interests hostage, the black community agreed in today are so much better than before 1981.” principle to neighborhood schools—essentially the South Park’s board also opposed another idea that same plan South Park had used to dodge desegrega- was soon proposed—reviving a plan South Park had tion for years—in exchange for better funding for spent decades fighting—to unite the city’s school sys- schools in black neighborhoods. To lead the schools tems. South Park lived high on property taxes from into a new era of cooperation, the new board settled petrochemical plants outside town; it was so flush that on the charming young leader of Houston’s North it had built a new campus for Forest Park High School Forest ISD, Carrol Thomas. in 1962, then built another six years later. Beaumont ISD was bigger, majority black, and struggled to raise At first, Thomas didn’t want the job. According to money off a tax base drawn mostly from one shopping Nolan Estes, one of the state monitors from Austin, who mall and Beaumont’s dying downtown. Price says the also helped lead the superintendent search, Thomas schools would have died without South Park’s largesse, was happy in North Forest, proud of what he’d accom- but some black community leaders were wary of hand- plished there. “There had been a lot of negative press ing control of their schools to an all-white board. coming out of Beaumont, so he didn’t want to jump out South Park voters rejected the merger in 1983. So of the frying pan and into the fire,” Estes says. Beaumont ISD voters simply dissolved their district, Thomas had played defensive end at Texas A&I leaving South Park to take over the schools. University in Kingsville—part of the A&M system The first election for the unified school board was a today—and began his shocker: Black candidates won a four-to-three major- school career as a foot- ity, in part because six white candidates ran to fill two ball coach and teacher “There were elements in the white at-large seats, splitting the vote. The black majority in Lubbock. His lead- lasted only one term, but it stunned those who still ership style relied community that thought the earth believed integration was a passing fad. Kanelis says heavily on the language the reaction was intense. “There were elements in of winning, of making had just spun off its axis … that the the white community that thought the earth had just no excuses, and his con- spun off its axis,” he recalls. “There was discussion fidence quickly helped African-American community was on the street that the African-American community settle the rancor within was going to take over the school district, and they’re Beaumont’s school com- going to take over the school district gonna wreck everything.” munity. He appeased The new school board made the most of its brief white activists by imple- and they’re gonna wreck everything.” tenure, appending the names of local black commu- menting the shift away nity leaders to schools that had been named for Alamo from school busing, but also promoted black adminis- heroes such as Crockett and Bowie. Superintendent trators to top posts in the district and spread contracts Taylor returned the favor by closing an elemen- to black-owned businesses. The share of black teach- tary school and converting it into his new district ers in the district jumped 10 percent during his tenure. headquarters. “The thought was that he wanted the He created a small police force within the school administration office in a better neighborhood,” district, staffed mostly with black officers, as a com- Kanelis says, “to stick it in the ear of the black com- munity-oriented alternative to Beaumont’s mostly munity.” Through the rest of the ’80s and into the ’90s, white city cops. Thomas’ salary was $150,000, with a Beaumont’s school board was majority white. built-in raise of 3.9 percent for each year he received Rev. Oveal Walker, pastor at Mount Calvary a good job review. Baptist Church, says that back then, as now, the work To make sure Beaumonters heard about the good for the black community was about self-defense. news, Thomas hired a special assistant named Jessie “Beaumont is a racial town. I’m not saying racist, but Haynes, a former newspaper reporter who became racial,” he says. “That’s been my experience over the Thomas’ district spokesperson and a close adviser. past 30 years: that everybody has got to look out for Thomas toured the country to deliver talks on school their own race.” leadership. He was named president of the National The court order on desegregation expired in the Alliance of Black School Educators. He met President early ’90s, and new (mostly white) community groups Obama; the photograph was widely reproduced formed to urge an end to crosstown busing; Walker around the district. The Texas Association of School says it was simply resegregation by another name. To Administrators named Thomas superintendent of the keep from getting steamrolled by the board’s white year and named Beaumont’s trustees the school board majority, the three black trustees split vote after vote of the year. Banners appeared on Beaumont schools along racial lines. “We just fought and fought, our proclaiming it among the nation’s “Top 10 school dis- board members just kept forcing 4-3 votes until the tricts” according to Business Review USA—a claim of superintendent requested that the TEA send some dubious significance, the weekly Beaumont Examiner people down here,” Walker says. Two monitors from newspaper later reported, because it came from an the Texas Education Agency spent three years with online magazine hardly anyone had heard of. And when the district leaders, urging them to continue busing. Thomas’ successor at North Forest was fired for poor The 1994 election swung the school board to a money management a year after Thomas left, and the black majority for the first time in a decade. This state took over the district, Thomas easily brushed time it was no fluke, but rather the result of the off complaints that he’d been responsible. Instead, white population’s consolidation on Beaumont’s Thomas was named a finalist for the superintendent’s

November 2014 the te xas observer | 15 job in Dallas. The school board in Beaumont offered oil boom. The building had recently passed a struc- him a $100,000 bonus and a pay raise if he’d agree tural inspection, and preservationists opposed its to stay; whatever magic Thomas was working, they destruction. Getz sued to stop the teardown but lost. wanted it to stay in Beaumont. Demolition commenced on Good Friday 2010 with an Thomas drew on all this goodwill in 2007 to pass a excavator tearing into the old school, an image that $389 million bond issue, one far more ambitious than graced the front page of the Enterprise the next day he or the district had ever tackled. The money would under the headline, “Trust Demolished.” cover new schools, repairs and a new stadium, all in “The historic facade of the school, the beautiful one package that would cost Beaumonters an extra architectural elements of it, that’s what they went $100 or so in property taxes on a $100,000 house. The after first,” Getz remembers. “And then they let it sit bond drew fresh attention from folks who hadn’t been there for weeks without anything else. Like the old watching the district before—new critics who worried Romans used to do, you put the head on the spike, Thomas had accumulated too much unchecked power you put it on the bridge as a warning: ‘This is what and too much wealth to spread around. happens to you if you mess with the Roman Empire.’ That’s exactly what they did there. Oh my god. How Mike Getz is, in many ways, the face of the do you start a civil war?” Carrol Thomas opposition. Late on a Thursday after- I return to Getz’s office the next morning to meet noon in September, he greets me at the door of his law Donna Forgas, a retired accountant who’s run three practice in a quaint 52-year-old home a few blocks from times, unsuccessfully, for the Beaumont school Martin Luther King Boulevard. His bearing seems board and has committed herself to finding fraud and stern at first and it’s easy to picture him the way I first waste in the recent school budget. saw him, in school board meeting videos and news Forgas says the district’s financial records show photos, flipping his lid like Mike Ditka on the sidelines misspent federal money—just half of a grant for after a blown call. But homeless students went to the proper programs, she he smiles broadly as he says—and generally irresponsible practices, including “From ’96 on, whites have been talks about the schools keeping all the district’s funds in one bank account. today. Now that the state That, she says, probably helps explain why the district running to try to reclaim one of has taken over, he says, can no longer account for $70 million from the bond he’s “thrilled, exhila- that had been earmarked for inflation. When the pro- those districts. But by the grace rated, elated. I can’t give posed $29 million stadium was finally finished for $45 you enough adjectives million, with a million-dollar scoreboard that wasn’t and mercy of God as I see it, to describe the euphoria in the original budget, it would have been easy to make that I feel.” up the difference with the inflation funds. they were never able to.” Warm light fills the The contractors chosen to do the work, Forgas entry room through the says, reflect a system that privileged support for black big windows. A couple of years ago, during the height businesses over smart spending, and Getz agrees: of tensions around the school district, someone He represented companies that sued the district threw a chunk of concrete through one of these panes. claiming they lost out on construction contracts But the scorched-earth struggle he’s waged with the even though they bid lower than minority-owned district, for which he’s been called a Klansman and businesses. Getz says some contractors were hired a “red-eyed devil,” also launched his political career. simply because they were black, with nothing to do Getz now has a seat on the Beaumont City Council, but “stand around with clipboards.” and in his front yard is a big red sign for his wife These are arguments that have been aired in Allison Nathan Getz’s first political campaign, run- Beaumont for years. At a 2010 board meeting days ning as a Republican for tax assessor-collector. after the South Park demolition, Thomas pledged Getz says he never expected to get so political. But that the construction spending was legitimate. as a lawyer, he felt like he could make a difference for “There’s no judge, no court that can tell you what the a school district he saw making bad decisions. In the truth and the facts are,” Thomas said. “I do believe beginning all he wanted was a smaller, simpler bond the majority of the community realizes what the issue. In op-ed columns, Getz warned that the big truth and the facts are.” Getz railed against Thomas bond was simply irresponsible, but in the pressure from the microphone that night, calling him an “ego- cooker of live board meetings his language was more maniacal despot.” Then the school board voted to put charged. The bond wouldn’t do anything to boost Thomas’ name on the new stadium. the performance of Beaumont’s schools, he warned, Getz says he was stuck; he didn’t see a way to hold but it would certainly “make 100 black men rich.” the district accountable. “I became aware that as long So much money arriving at once, Getz feared, would as there were seven single-member districts, that become a slush fund for allies of Thomas and the nothing was going to change. Because people don’t go board. “Through that bond issue,” Getz says today, vote,” Getz says. “Most people live their life, all they “black citizens who never would have had the oppor- want to do is raise their family, put food on the table tunity for the kind of wealth that they ended up with and have a roof over their heads. They just don’t get became wealthy.” involved in school board politics.” He says the board The district’s plans also included a project that was stacked with people who enjoyed the power and some saw as a punishment for the white community: prestige, and knew just how to keep it: “You can focus replacing the old South Park school, a three-story on just the very few people who vote for you, and make brick behemoth built in 1922 to accommodate the chil- sure that they’re fat and happy, and you’re gonna be in dren of roughnecks who flooded in during Beaumont’s office for life. And that’s what was happening.”

16 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org So Getz decided to change the equation. Since an election, and other than the 1984 election, Walker Mike Getz, a longtime critic of Carrol Thomas’ order from Judge Parker in the mid-’80s, shortly says Jefferson County hasn’t had a black majority on administration, is thrilled after the school districts’ merger, Beaumont’s school any elected body with at-large seats. by the state takeover. board had been comprised of seven members from Getz believes Walker’s logic is a smokescreen, seven individual districts. Instead, Getz proposed one used often to defend Thomas’ administration. returning to the old plan from decades before, with “If anybody that was black tried to stand up to cor- five districts and two citywide trustees elected at ruption and nepotism, they were ostracized and large. Getz says his plan wasn’t about race or ideology, retaliated against. If you were white and tried to just about cleaning up the schools, but the likely result say something, you were painted as a racist,” Getz would be a shift back to a white board majority. Voters says. “And that’s almost as bad as being called a child approved Getz’s plan, but a group of Beaumont’s molester, being called a racist, in the eyes of many in black ministers and community leaders sued, and the the white community.” U.S. Justice Department scuttled the plan, saying it To Getz, suspicions about racism or a “right-wing violated the Voting Rights Act. Some media reports plot” play off of outdated fears that a white adminis- likened the power struggle over Beaumont’s schools tration today would neglect students of other races to plots for weakening minority voters’ influence such the way schools did in the past. as Texas Republicans’ statewide redistricting plans “I know there’s going to be some in Beaumont, and the state’s voter ID law. MSNBC branded the especially in the African-American community, that Beaumont effort a “right-wing plot.” Before any judge will say, ‘Well, that wasn’t such a good time for us.’ could decide, though, the U.S. Supreme Court issued You know, ‘We didn’t have the proper facilities, we its Shelby County v. Holder decision in June 2013, were given short shrift, we did not have everything removing much of the Justice Department’s influence that the white kids had.’ And they’re right. And that over voting rights cases like these. was wrong,” Getz says. “Looking back through the Rev. Walker says the black community doesn’t prism of history, I can say, of course that’s wrong. But have much recourse left to defend its majority. “From we’re not living in the past. And those people that ’96 on, whites have been running to try to reclaim have their feet stuck in the past can’t move forward. one of those districts. But by the grace and mercy of What I see is in the black community, there is a rela- God as I see it, they were never able to,” he says. That tively small group of older, bitter individuals that just figures to change after the next board election, which can’t turn loose of the wrongs they suffered when could come as soon as May 2015. At-large elections they were younger. … You’ve got to look forward and favor candidates with money to spend on a citywide you can’t have a policy of retribution, which is kind

November 2014 the te xas observer | 17 of what the school district became most known for.” Even some For Beaumont NAACP director Paul Jones, there is no prism of history dividing the past from now. “It’s of Thomas’ not the old racist process where you’ve got a water fountain here for whites and here for blacks. No, it’s defenders are never going to go back to that. It’s more sophisticated now,” Jones says. hopeful that Walker agrees there is a cycle to Beaumont’s race relations and no reason to think now is any different. … the state “We had our wars and we came together, and then we takeover could had our wars again.” In January 2012, just after the school board bring some approved yet another 4 percent pay raise for its longtime superintendent, Thomas made the sur- measure prise announcement that he would retire that fall. By then, he had long been the state’s highest-paid of unity to superintendent, despite running a district of just 20,000 students; 16 years of annual salary bumps Beaumont had driven his pay to nearly $350,000 a year. The district bid Thomas farewell with a retirement at last. “extravaganza” in August at Ozen, the Pear Orchard high school renovated with the bond money Thomas oversaw. He sat onstage in a plush blue chair, grand- children on his lap, as friends and co-workers shared memories. A Motown revue performance included a tribute to Thomas’ leadership. Outside, Getz and other detractors got into a shouting match with Thomas supporters; the conversation was wide- ranging and, though later accounts varied wildly, not strictly limited to the finer points of school manage- ment, but also included James Byrd Jr.—victim of the notorious 1998 hate crime in nearby Jasper—and Adolf Hitler. By then, the scrutiny on Thomas’ administration had grown intense, and reporters and lawyers found that the trouble went well beyond over-budget sta- diums with expensive scoreboards. Scandals piled up for Thomas’ successor, his longtime lieutenant Timothy Chargois, and the timing of Thomas’ exit began to look prescient. The Enterprise, local TV, and enthusiastic muckrakers like the Examiner and SETInvestigates.com feasted on the district’s down- fall one scoop at a time. The news reports were filled with fascinating, often against asking Walker to pay restitution. “Every week embarassing details. Jessie Haynes, the district’s it was something new with Beaumont ISD,” Getz says, spokeswoman, had given Beaumont’s high school “and of course it drove sales. It almost became a blood- graduates copies of her own book of advice to college sport to bash the district.” students, full of frank admonitions against sexual In November 2013, the FBI carried out a series of assault, alcohol abuse and devil worship. “You had coordinated raids at the homes and workplaces of better at least think about your future cellmates,” the the district’s purchasing officer, Devin McCraney, book reads. “They’ll be raping your booty when they and its comptroller, Sharika Allison, who eventually hear you are in for rape.” The district’s transporta- pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $4 million. tion director was pulled over in a district-owned From 2010 to 2013, the two had simply transferred pickup truck—“drunker’n Cooter Brown … shithouse money from the district to a fake company they’d cre- drunk, slamming curbs, [and] going into overshift,” ated. The FBI is reportedly not finished investigating according to the deputy who pulled him over—but was the district, and Getz, like many in town, is confident driven home by a district police officer.The Examiner that the full scope of the corruption hasn’t yet come to revealed that Assistant Superintendent Patricia light. “Walker, McCraney, Allison—this is just the tip,” Lambert’s son received more than $350,000 for ques- he says. “They’re gonna find people, I believe, in the tionable printing services that had once simply been highest echelons of the former administration.” The outsourced to Kinko’s. And Calvin Walker, a black Jefferson County district attorney and federal pros- electrical contractor who’d replaced the white-owned ecutors have formed a joint task force to clean house electric company the district had used for years, was in the district. Their most recent collar was West indicted for overbilling the district $1.5 million. After Brook football booster club president Bo Kelley, who a mistrial in Walker’s case, the school board voted is white, and who pleaded guilty in October to paying

18 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org personal bills with money meant for the football team. had emptied. That moment might have become The district’s former finance director, Devin McCraney, Players in the school district drama draw different legend enough on its own but for an incident later surrounded by local reporters, conclusions about what all this wrongdoing says about that night. While the district’s lawyer held a press enters Beaumont’s federal Beaumont ISD. Critics like Getz have suggested an conference inside the district office, Haynes stood courthouse for his sentencing. institutional rot—a culture of permissiveness that began in a doorway to keep Getz, the school trustee Mike under Thomas. The district’s defenders insist these Neil and SETInvestigates.com reporter Jerry Jordan were unrelated problems strung together by the white from getting in the room. Video of the incident community in an illegal play to regain control of the shows Neil jostling the door open as Haynes presses city’s schools. But the intense media scrutiny, the web of to keep it shut, a quick altercation caught on video score-settling litigation and the looming threat of state that took on a strange life of its own on the Internet. takeover did strange things to the people involved. Following the incident, Haynes took months of paid Getz was arrested at one school board meeting, “assault leave”—a designation usually reserved for pulled screaming from the room by the district teachers who’ve been attacked by students—until police chief, for violating school board policy by she filed a workers’ compensation claim instead, naming employees during his statement. In August which was ultimately dropped. But shortly after the of last year, as Getz spoke to a crowd inside the incident, Haynes was arrested and then convicted district headquarters, Jessie Haynes approached of “blocking a doorway,” prompting a “Justice for and proclaimed the group unsafe for such a small Jessie” movement among her defenders. hallway. She asked a school police officer to disperse Incidents like that one, as well as the rancor within the crowd, but the officer demurred. When someone the school board and all the serious questions about told her to “shush,” Haynes began an a cappella the school district’s troubled finances, combined to rendition of “We Shall Overcome” until the hall make a state takeover seem increasingly inevitable.

November 2014 the te xas observer | 19 In the district office, a Earlier this year, as the state’s investigation into that’s exactly what it’s about,” Bush says. “It’s the fact reminder that, for now, the district is being run without the district grew, so did the crowds of antagonists that you don’t control this board that upsets you.” an elected school board. who showed up at school board meetings. When he To replace the board, and save the school budget appeared at meetings, Education Commissioner from its gaping deficit, the state appointed a seven- Michael Williams was greeted by a mostly white crowd member board made up of community leaders from in bow ties, Williams’ signature fashion accessory, and around Beaumont—businessmen mostly—that will placards proclaiming their support for the T.E.A.— serve for up to two years before handing control as in Texas Education Agency—Party. That gleeful back to elected trustees. This new board has four crowd of interlopers from white-flight destinations white members, three black. Williams chose Vernon such as Lumberton and Vidor, and their barely veiled Butler, who spent the last two years managing the tea-party references, did little to convince black state’s previous school takeover in El Paso, to serve community leaders that this was all about fiscal policy. as superintendent. Butler says his first job is to make The state announced its takeover in April, though up a budget shortfall of about $40 million, but the Commissioner Williams cited only McCraney and greater challenge is in the school community: “Unity, Allison’s embezzlement and Calvin Walker’s over- collaboration and trust,” Butler says. billing in his letter to Chargois, who resigned in June. Outside the city, the story of Beaumont’s The school board trustees, despite fighting to keep troubled schools is probably best known by anti- control, were all removed by TEA. Zenobia Bush, spending activists who point to the budget excess who rejoined the board in 2011 after two other stints and embezzlement as evidence that public schools dating back to the ’80s, says she was surprised. The already get far too much, that big school systems state’s audit hadn’t found any criminal activity on too easily invite bloat and greed. But to recover from the board’s part, and as she saw it, their job wasn’t to this scandal, the district will have to draw on the comb the district’s books for signs of embezzlement. great strength of public schools: that everyone has a “The other thing [Williams] told us was that he felt stake in them, and that when the schools are great, we had lost the trust of the community. And so, if everyone shares the pride. Even some of Thomas’ that’s the case, then allow us to rebuild that trust,” defenders are hopeful that, by handing control of the Bush says. But as she sees it, Williams was hearing district to people who have never had a stake in it, the from only one sliver of the community—presumably state takeover could bring some measure of unity to Getz and the “T.E.A. Party” cheerleaders who wanted Beaumont at last. Like the formation of West Brook the board ousted. “Every time they tell me it’s not High School 30 years earlier, this takeover could be about a race thing, I tell them they’re lying. Because the new beginning Beaumont’s schools need.

20 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org On a wet September morning in downtown “Booker T. Washington said, in some things we can Beaumont, a handful of local TV reporters and news be as separate as the five fingers, but there’s certain photographers are fanned out in front of the federal situations that you want to play on a keyboard, you court building, waiting for a glimpse at two casualties want to have blacks and whites working together to of the federal investigation, the former finance officers create your tune. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re McCraney and Allison, who will appear for their sen- gonna find ourselves more divisive because of what’s tencing today. Minutes apart, they cross Willow Street coming out,” he says. “People have told me, ‘Richard, flanked by lawyers and family, and as they breeze up they did it to us when they were in control.’ And my the courthouse steps, the reporters pepper them with response: Don’t do to them in the manner that they the usual greetings: “What do you want to say to the did to us. We must be better.” kids you stole money from?” “Any remorse?” “You In the entryway to the district headquarters, look emotional. Are you upset today?” there are signs of change and reminders of the old They make separate, but similar, appearances in days. Seven empty frames hang below the words front of federal Judge Ron Clark. Allison wound up “Beaumont ISD Board of Trustees.” Above them on with a smaller cut of the money and kept a lower the wall are three state awards for fiscal responsibil- profile, mostly spending the money on her children’s ity during the Carrol Thomas era. health care and to pay back a series of payday loans In the boardroom, Vernon Butler sits silently (though she also loaned her boyfriend $50,000 for beside the managers as they hear budget reports a new Escalade). But McCraney, who had been the and approve contracts. The votes are all 7-0. The district’s top financial officer, spent years “living room is packed, the crowd mostly black, and most like a rock star,” as one U.S. attorney put it, buying a people are there to support the school district new Ford F-150 and GMC Yukon, building onto his police department, which the district may cut. house and taking lavish vacations. For mastermind- Butler has said replacing the officers with city ing the embezzlement scheme, McCraney receives a police on contract would save the district money. longer prison sentence, and basically the only legal Parents, officers and even the district police chief wrangling is over removing an extra penalty the law take turns at the microphone to defend the depart- provides for having carried out a “sophisticated” ment. Its officers work full time in the schools, scam. His lawyer argues that the district’s safeguards they say, and understand students better than city were so lax that no sophistication was required. police, who often don’t even live in Beaumont. “We Judge Clark doesn’t buy it. And looking out from don’t want another Mike Brown, we don’t want to his bench at McCraney—a big man in a dark-gray suit be another Trayvon,” one speaker said, pleading and red patterned tie who is, indeed, looking emo- on behalf of the district police. “If you don’t want tional—Clark recalls that, years earlier, “I had the another Ferguson in Beaumont, don’t do it!” (The opportunity to be a guest at many African-American next day, Forgas tells me that was clearly a threat.) churches, and I was always struck by how many men Still, there’s a sense of inevitability in the crowd. weren’t there.” McCraney, first in his family to attend “That’s what they do. The fix was in,” a man mutters college, earning a good living at the school district, behind me. will spend the next five years and eight months in But later that night, the board holds off on dissolv- prison and many years after that paying 10 percent of ing the department, opting only to fire the district’s his paycheck back to the state in restitution. “Given police chief. The “good cause” for his termina- your history and background,” Clark says, “this case tion went unspecified, but the effect is immediate: is particularly sad.” another reminder of the Thomas years is gone. Sitting in Price’s living room the next day, I ask him if the school district’s implosion wasn’t doubly dam- aging, because it came under Beaumont’s first HschoolAS A administration with such deep roots in the black com- munity—could it just validate the old fears some white Beaumonters expressed about what could happen to the schools under a black administration? T-Shirts Price agrees, except for the presumption that cor- ruption was a new development. “Before Thomas $15-$17.50 got there, I hate to put it this way, but it was mostly a white environment,” he says. “So maybe they had THE TEXAS ways of covering up, massaging over. It wasn’t until you mixed these two races—I’m gonna check on OBSERVER you, you’re gonna double-check on me.” That’s what it takes, Price says, to keep everybody honest in an HAS A arrangement like this. That suggests a perverse sort of upside to such deep-seated suspicion: When nobody trusts one another, it’s harder for anyone to cheat. But even if Beaumont is more aware, more NEW! involved today in how the schools are spending money, that misses the point of a unified public school district: to build trust and understanding STORE CHECK OUT OUR NEW DESIGNS! between different sides of the community. On that count, Price isn’t encouraged. Available on T-shirts, Koozies, and Tote Bags at www.texasobserver.org/store november 2014 22 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org Pit Stop Nordheim inherits the waste, and few of the profits, from the South Texas oil boom.

By Alex Hannaford // Photos by Jen Reel

November 2014 the te xas observer | 23 If you’re in Nordheim on a thursday morning, chances are you’re heading to Elo Pfeifer’s place on Broadway. That’s the day Pfeifer smokes the sausages that some say are the best for miles around. They sell out fast. Unless you’ve ordered them beforehand, you’re probably out of luck. Pfeifer has been cooking barbecue and selling goods from his non-air-conditioned general store since he sold the bar across the road in the early 1970s. Broadway Grocery has now become something of an institution in this tiny South Texas outpost of about 300 residents, an hour southeast of San Antonio. Aside from Pfeifer’s store, and the bar that has stood on the corner of Broadway and First Avenue since 1933 and a school that teaches through 12th grade, there isn’t much to Nordheim except for shuttered-up storefronts and a population in decline. But it shouldn’t be this way—and perhaps won’t be this way for much longer. Nordheim is surrounded by oil. A few years ago, DeWitt County, situated over the Eagle Ford Shale, exploded with one of the biggest oil booms in the country. As the Observer noted in 2011, nearby Cuero went from quiet ranching town to oil boomtown in just a few years. Cuero attracts about $250,000 a year in sales taxes from local businesses and makes $30,000 a month selling its water to oil companies for use in the fracking extraction process. Nordheim has, at least so far, missed out on the boom. Though oil companies have leased land in town, which earns residents tiny payments each month— they haven’t drilled wells in Nordheim, which means it has seen few petrodollars compared to surrounding towns while still enduring the side effects of nearby fracking. The town’s roads have been decimated by fracking trucks, residents fear their air and water are polluted and now the specter of a proposed waste pit for the fracking industry—to be built half a mile from the school—has angered many residents. At City Hall, just across the road from Pfeifer’s store, Nordheim’s mayor, Kathy Payne, sits behind a large wooden meeting table flanked by U.S. and Texas flags. As a small-town mayor, she’s tied into nearly everything strapped to us and get 5 cents for 100 pounds of cot- that happens in Nordheim. “People call me if the bank ton. It was hard work. We’d start early in the morning, doesn’t open on time, if the grocery store doesn’t open. get a lunch break, then we’d be back out again till dark. If there are any problems, they’ll call here,” she says. On School would usually start in September, but it had the desk in front of her, Payne has a rolled-up blueprint to be delayed ’cause all of us had to go to work on the of the town, sketched by city planners in the 1920s. She farm. There were three cotton gins. All closed.” unfurls it and points to City Hall, then moves her finger Payne says Nordheim’s decline began in the 1950s across the paper. “It looks like they were planning on when kids started going away to college. “I was born the town expanding; were planning on it really grow- in 1936 and graduated in 1955 from Nordheim High ing,” she says. “There was a lot of farming back then.” School, but out of 15 people in my class, just one per- But Nordheim didn’t grow. In fact, it’s almost son stayed,” she says. “Most of the boys went into the impossible now to picture it as a town that once service. A lot of girls went to San Antonio to business boasted 27 stores, five beer joints, five gas stations and school or college.” She got married a year after she a population double what it is today. “Back in the ’20s, graduated and, with her husband, a petroleum engi- a lot of kids stayed on at the farm after graduating,” neer, moved first to Corpus Christi, then to Robstown, Previous Page: Hohn Payne says. Cotton and corn were the biggest indus- Texas City, Houston, Chicago and Denver. Fifty years Road, near the proposed site for the controversial tries, and she remembers the backbreaking work in later, she returned home. “In 1984 my husband passed fracking waste pits. the fields: “All the kids would do it. We’d have a bag away. I was working as a high school coach in Denver,

24 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org and I later decided to move back to Nordheim,” she pull from the same aquifer. But if the town does run Longtime residents Larry and Herlinda Baucum in says. She’s been back a decade, and has served seven out of water, at least she can say she never sold any of their home-goods store in years as mayor. Despite the changes, she says, the it. But that decision also deprived the town of revenue. downtown Nordheim. town still has a strong community spirit. But that “It’s hard to see those other towns getting rich, spirit won’t fix the roads or boost a town that remains like Cuero and Kenedy,” Payne says. She knows the stagnant while so many of its neighbors get rich. roads in Nordheim need repairing. City Hall, too, has seen better days. And she knows she needs to attract Last time I visited Nordheim, in fall 2013, I more businesses to town. The answer, she believes, learned that the roads had been torn up by oilfield could arrive if oil companies soon begin fracking trucks barreling through town day and night. Back near Nordheim. Payne also hopes there’s oil under then, Payne told me Cabeza Road was so bad that the town. If there is, “whatever money we get will go she’d had to shell out for caliche to fill in the holes (she straight to our streets. City Hall is not the prettiest couldn’t afford asphalt). Then the town’s residents place, but I’ll fix the streets before I fix this. complained about all the dust the caliche was caus- “This fracking boom has been very good for us,” she ing. Payne felt helpless. The county eventually had to says, “but it would be better if it would come under my pay for resurfacing. Payne also refused to sell any of town. Then I would get some money. Because then I Nordheim’s water to fracking companies. She says she could fix my streets.” can’t preserve the water supply because other entities But, as always in the shale boom areas, the potential

November 2014 the te xas observer | 25 Sparky’s on Broadway Street is one of two remaining taverns in Nordheim.

for profit comes with a cost. The engineering firm traffic could pose to their animals. “If they build it, I do Pyote Reclamation Systems has proposed a disposal not want to live here,” she says. well for fracking waste in town that has enraged some Larry Baucum, a retired school maintenance man- Nordheim residents. The Texas Railroad Commission gager who co-owns the local mercantile re-sale shop initially denied the proposal last year due to pollution and is a volunteer firefighter, says the fracking boom concerns and protests by residents. The current appli- has been good for Nordheim. “It was a sleepy little cation means fracking waste will evaporate from open, town, really good to retire in, most of our students that “un-capped” pits, and allow 1,000 gallons per acre per graduated from here would leave and just come back to day to leak from the collection pit, and 100 gallons per visit their parents,” he says. “You only had farming or acre per day to leak from the trenches. ranching. That’s it. Until the oil fields came.” Interestingly, since I last visited, Mayor Payne has But, he adds, “My own personal opinion, if become more receptive to the oil companies—a move those pits go in, this town will be dead in five years. that has alarmed some of her former champions. “I Destroyed, and a ghost town. You can live with the don’t think [the disposal well] should be that close to smell if you get all that money, but you can’t if you get the city,” she tells me, “But if it’s put in right … controlled sick all the time.” right … I’m neutral. You’ve got to listen to both sides.” Opposite the proposed disposal well site is a gate Payne shows me a map of where the disposal site that opens onto sprawling fields; attached to the gate would be located, on Hohn Road, a quiet country lane is a black-and-white sign of a skull and crossbones on the outskirts of town. It’ll be 25 feet deep, with a and the words “Don’t Dump on Nordheim.” Scrawled 4-foot berm around the site. There will be five wells, in handwriting next to it: “Proverbs 13:1—Heareth his and she says each will have to be tested once a month. Father’s instruction.” A similar sign a few feet farther “Landowners are worried,” she says, “but the lining down the fence reads: “A Christian would not impose of the pits are as thick as tires. Thirty years from now, this on his brothers and sisters.” when they’re full, it’ll look like a field.” Kevin Styra—who was born 8 miles up the road Payne says they’re drilling so many wells nearby, from here and who now runs the farm that has “where do you expect them to put the waste?” And been in his family for 118 years—put the signs up therein lies the rub. The Nordheim residents opposed and wrote those messages to the oil companies, to fracking because of environmental concerns think and to the landowner who leased them the land for their mayor has turned against them. The mayor, the disposal wells. As a kid, Styra would bale hay meanwhile, thinks the disposal well could be good for and help his uncle run cattle on the family’s land. her town’s sagging economy. Today he’s been out tilling the fields with the help Margie Hull and her husband Patrick live across the of his 10-year-old daughter, Emagen, while keep- road from the proposed disposal pit. They’ve lived in ing a close eye on the number of trucks heading the same house for 30 years and run a real estate busi- down the gravel road opposite his gate. ness. They also take in stray dogs, and Margie tells me Back in his air-conditioned farmhouse, which he she worries about the chemicals blowing toward the built five years back, Styra sits at the dinner table house. She’s concerned about the smell, the health wearing a blue shirt and jeans. “Few will prosper, implications for her and Pat, and the danger the truck and many will suffer,” he says. “I’ve lost my respect

26 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org “It’s hard to see those other towns getting rich, like Cuero and Kenedy.”

Nordheim Mayor Kathy Payne in her office. for the mayor. She took such a strong stance [against rumbling down Hohn Road before disappearing along fracking waste] at the beginning. If she has a point a dirt track that leads to the site of the proposed waste of view, she should make that clear. I don’t see how disposal pit. It’s the only thing that breaks the silence you can be against something then for something of of a late-summer afternoon. this caliber.” Pilsner worries the waste pits will spell the end of Styra worries about runoff water from the pits—“I clean water, air and soil, and that it will suck the soul don’t believe a 4-foot berm will stop that water”— from his piece of paradise. “I talked myself blue in the and about contamination, not just of his drinking face to persuade my wife to move out and join me here water, but of his cattle too. “And flooding, it rained because I love the country,” Pilsner says, shaking his for an hour, and it looked like a small river under my head. “One thing I promised her was clean air and a culvert there,” he says. He’s also concerned about nice breeze. Now I’m worried about the air and the the fumes and about potential spills: “I don’t want water, and we have to have that to survive. You might to up sticks and go. We just built this house, and I say my mom and dad and grandparents will turn over spent a lot of my hard-earned money, saving yes- in their graves if they saw what was going on. ... And terday to live tomorrow with the blessings from the while [other towns] reap all the benefits there, we’re good Lord above.” getting all the garbage.” Styra isn’t anti-oil. In addition to running his farm, Alex Hannaford is a contributing writer. Jen Reel con- he works shifts on an offshore drilling rig. He just tributed additional reporting. doesn’t think the disposal well should be so close to people’s homes—or the nearby school. As for the scripture he wrote on the signs opposite the proposed disposal well site? “It’s a message to them and anyone else who sees it,” he says. “That everything has a moral Consistently rated one of and a story to it. You reap what you sow.” Just up the road from the waste site, Marvin Pilsner Austin’s top pizza shops: dangles his legs off the back of his flatbed, sipping cherry soda under the shade of a Chinese Pistache tree, trying Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle, ThrillistATX, to escape the heat. He’s called Nordheim home for each The Austinot, culturemap Austin, and Eater Austin. of his 79 years. There are only a handful of houses out here off Hohn Road; it’s mostly fields. Pilsner likes to call his plot of several hundred acres “the suburbs.” 1401 B ROSEWOOD AVE. 78702 He married a girl from Cuero—the 1956 Gobbler M E N U Queen (Cuero holds an annual Turkeyfest)—and worked as a mechanic at a little shop on his property until 1984, when he moved the business into town. He 5312 AIRPORT BLVD. STE G 78751 still found time to raise cattle, but by 2005 he’d quit farming and leased out some of the land. He’ll never leave, but now he’s worried: More trucks have been www.eastsidepies.com 467 8900 1809-1 W. ANDERSON LN. 78757 november 2014 culture

Not Your Daddy’s Deer Lease by Andrea Grimes

esse Griffiths is in the grocery store—the “Are you Jesse?” she asks. He says he is. co-op grocer, Wheatsville, in Austin—when “I have a fig tree,” she says. he gets recognized among the Dr. Bronner’s He knows where this is going. She’s going to ask soap and sustainable tofu and free-range about squirrels. paper towels. Recognizing Griffiths is pretty “You killed a squirrel,” he ventures. “Because he was easy to do—he’s a big young white guy with a eating all your figs.” beard, and lots of folks know him from Dai He’s right. Due, a farmers market stand turned full-service restau- Griffiths gets a lot of this kind of thing now that FROM LEFT: Jesse Griffiths Jrant and butcher shop on Austin’s east side. he’s published a cookbook—though that doesn’t hunting doves; Snipe taken near Eagle Lake. But this lady who spots him isn’t really a customer, begin, really, to fully describe Afield: A Chef’s Guide photoS by jody horton per se. to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish, which

28 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org 32 FILM 42 POEM 34 THE BOOK 43 state of the REPORT me dia 36 DIRECT QUOTE 44 f orrest for 38 POSTCARDS the Trees culture 45 Eye on Texas is more a guidebook, or even a kind of map, for folks shells, it turns out, to Carroll’s extreme relief—she looking to move beyond the meat counter into hunt- thinks about her mom’s shotgun: “She could fill a meat “They’re 25 to ing, butchering and preparing their own wild game. locker with that thing.” And this lady, well, she killed a squirrel in her yard Carroll distinguishes between shooters and 35, they like and she opened up Afield and there it was: how to get a hunters. “Shooters care about killing more than squirrel from tree to plate. anything else,” she says. “They’re not concerned music, food, Afield is a $40 brick of a book, beautifully shot by with ethical practices.” Austin photographer Jody Horton. Even if you never Carroll is a thoughtful shot, aiming but not firing art. They’re pick up a shotgun, Afield is a hell of a thing to have if she doesn’t think she can give a bird a good death. on your bookshelf next to The Joy Of Cooking and We’re not having much luck this particular Sunday socially Modernist Cuisine. evening. It’s like the doves are taking her decoys as Griffiths says more and more people do seem to warning rather than welcome sign. Carroll, a self- minded, be picking up shotguns and rifles, and they’re not described introvert, says she enjoys the opportunity necessarily beer-swilling Bubbas who hole up in to convene with nature even if she comes home whatever $1,300 camouflaged blinds and draw game into range empty-handed. with deer corn. These are people taking a step beyond “Things eat other things,” Carroll says. “That’s the that might CSA delivery and backyard chicken coops, following economy of the natural world.” the path of locally sourced eating to the next level. mean. They’re That path originates at a convergence of a lot of Jesse Griffiths calls them “hippies that obnoxious gastronomical buzzwords floating around hunt,” and thinks of them as “the best of both worlds.” interested in menus and recipe blogs these days (locavore, sustain- If he can teach somebody how to kill a wild hog, he able, seasonal) and a Michael Pollan-esque, Fast Food says, “they’re in turn going to go and be more cogni- hunting, and Nation-inspired distrust of large-scale factory farm- zant of their food choices in the grocery stores.” ing and ranching. For all the hipness of “seasonal” eating and the maybe they “That’s a demographic,” says Griffiths. “They’re like, in the grand scheme of human endeavor, the real 25 to 35, they like music, food, art. They’re socially trend has been toward not eating seasonally, not buy- weren’t five minded, whatever that might mean. They’re interested ing locally sourced meats and vegetables. It’s only in in hunting, and maybe they weren’t five years ago, but the last 70 years or so that refrigeration and highway years ago, but they are now.” trucking has enabled us to eat tomatoes in January. Or Jill Carroll is a novelist and former professor of make, Griffiths pointed out, “authentic” gumbo with they are now.” the philosophy of religion at Rice University who the necessary trinity of bell peppers, celery and onion. lives in a Houston suburb—gated and all, she admits “If you’re going to tell me the only way to make somewhat sheepishly—with her partner, Nishta, and authentic gumbo is to put the trinity in there, I think their toddler son, Shiva, “Shiv” for short. you’re full of shit,” Griffiths says. “Because the trinity Carroll grew up hunting in Louisiana, not for sport is never in season together.” but for sustenance. When she left her family’s land— Griffiths, a chef and butcher, started hunting only her people started out as sharecroppers—for Oral about four years ago, and he concedes that the project Roberts University and later Houston, she drifted represented by Afield is a work in progress. It’s about away not only from the hunting lifestyle she’d known learning and sharing knowledge, he says, and build- as a child, but from her family’s evangelical faith. “I ing a new kind of community of progressive-minded had other priorities,” she says. people who work together to do a little bit better for But now Carroll has returned to hunting to help their environment. provide for her family in a way that she sees as distinc- Case in point: Late this summer, Jill Carroll tive from the “shooters” she’s seen wandering public took her dad out to Blue Heron Farm, just north of land wearing bandoliers “like Rambo.” Houston, to teach Lisa and Christian Seger how to Of course, a great many of Texas’ hunters do hunt process their first goat. Carroll’s dad told them he’d primarily for meat—as do Carroll and the guys she gotten “soft” in his old age, so he’d asked the Segers shares her lease with. to kill the goat beforehand. Carroll hunts in Wallis, just east of Houston, where Keep in mind that the Segers are mostly vegetar- we’re waiting for opening weekend’s last doves to give ians, pasture farmers who’ve spent the last seven us a shot at dinner. She remembers her parents build- years or so making artisanal cheeses after moving to ing little charcoal fires to keep her warm during winter the country from central Houston. Christian Seger hunting trips to Arkansas. Once she got a little older, is an audio producer who’s toured with the Butthole she’d trail behind her mom, picking up the squirrels Surfers and Miranda Lambert. Their barn cat is her mother shot and tucking them in a game bag. named Motorhead. When Carroll’s two shotguns both misfire—bad The Segers teeter on the edge of Griffith’s

November 2014 the te xas observer | 29 hippie-hunter demographic, growing their own But hunting isn’t cheap—Carroll’s 1,100-acre food and keeping pigs on their organic spread in lease costs about $5,000 per hunting season, which Waller, but stopping short of hunting. she splits with nine other hunters—and Carroll says They slaughtered that goat, though. things can quickly take a turn for the bourgeois if “It was crazypants,” Lisa Seger tells me, wide-eyed, you’re not careful. when I stop by Blue Heron to meet her herd—a pack “One big concern that I hear is that this is basically of Nubians with names like Lucinda and Bishop Don for middle-class to upper-middle-class white people,” Magic Juan. They’re almost cat-like in the way they’ll she says. “It’s clear that it does take a little bit more nudge up to visitors for ear scratches. Seger says she money to hunt, but fishing does not.” had been worried that taking the animal’s life would Jesse Griffiths told me he came to hunting via send her into some sort of emotional spiral. a lifelong obsession with fishing. Same goes for But it didn’t, and she proudly opens a freezer Jordan Inge, a Dallas-based photographer, wood- worker and art handler I meet through my oldest buddy, Trenton Read. Inge pulls up on his scooter to the Dallas bar where the three of us are set to talk wild game over craft beers, and he admits that money is a big barrier for him when it comes to doing anything more than fishing. “I don’t really have access to hunting,” Inge says, though he loves to do it when he gets the chance. Inge grew up on South Padre Island, fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and eating the venison his grandfather brought home because they were too broke to eat any- thing else. Which is why he prefers bird hunting and fishing to deer hunting: “I don’t want a freezer full of meat that reminds me of my poor childhood.” Read is the kind of guy who revels mostly in the sport and the gear. He messes around with cross- bows handed down by his dad and has been shooting squirrels in his yard with a pellet gun, amassing a freezer-full for stew later this fall. Neither Inge nor Read have the resources to hunt trophy bucks—a whitetail shoulder mount starts around $500—and both guys prefer the taste of doe, the population of which benefits from culling anyway. So Read and Inge harvest doe when they have the opportunity, and they get as much as they can out of every animal. Jill Carroll says that one of the reasons she stopped hunting for so many years in college and after was that she just plain couldn’t afford to do it. Public land is scarce in Texas, and as a woman, she wasn’t wild about the prospect of setting out into the backcounty alone. Now she can afford her own lease, and supplements the gardening and foraging she does at home in the suburbs with wild-caught game. “It’s real easy to get self-righteous,” she says. “It’s so easily a bourgeois thing.” But Carroll and Inge and Read and Griffiths and others like them are happy to forge a new kind of Texas hunter identity, one that builds on the lessons of their childhoods and incorporates a more con- scious sensibility. TOP: Squirrels and tally crammed full of goat meat destined for the crock- “We’re taking it away from Ted Nugent,” Griffiths says. sheet on opening day of squirrel season near pot—though she admits that she doesn’t know much Out on Jill Carroll’s lease, the philosopher-writer Center. BOTTOM: Cleaning about cooking meat. echoes that sentiment with shotgun in hand: “My squirrels. OPPOSITE: Frying squirrels. Jill Carroll, on the other hand, specializes in find- point is to hunt and to kill what I shoot and to eat what photos by jody horton ing ways to prepare the meat she brings home to I shoot,” she says. Nishta—who writes a popular Houston food blog— But on this evening, we’re having no luck. The sun is and Shiv. She smokes duck and she makes jerky, but setting and we’re going home empty-handed. Carroll her voice gets dreamy when she thinks about prepar- is disappointed, but not unduly so: ing the first doves of the season. “That’s why they call it hunting and not grocery “It is amazing to take that first bite,” she says. “They shopping.” were flying at 4 p.m., and at 7 p.m. they’re on my grill, Andrea Grimes is an Austin-based journalist, repro- and I haven’t had any doves in six or eight months.” ductive rights activist and cat enthusiast.

30 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org November 2014 the te xas observer | 31 FILM The Master Tapes by Josh Rosenblatt

wenty years ago, when I was a young by example, given the actors who came after him musician with artistic ambitions, their “freedom.” Something similar could be said of Ornette Coleman was the closest Ornette Coleman. The “harmolodic” innovations thing I had to a god. Miles Davis, John he developed in the 1950s liberated jazz from a half- Coltrane and Eric Dolphy were the century of harmonic tradition, introducing pure, other faces on my teenage Mount spontaneous expression to an already improvisatory Rushmore, but in my heart the Fort art form. To my mind this makes him a particularly Worth-born Coleman was a step above and beyond American kind of genius, like Brando or Groucho Tthose giants. Where they provided immense earthly Marx: a revolutionary artist for whom the disman- pleasure, Coleman’s effect was metaphysical and tling of established norms and the subversion of mysterious. Something about his music seemed to long-cherished traditions is a birthright. A prophet push the limits of possibility. He made me believe in of freedom. something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Documentary filmmaker Shirley Clarke was Scene from Ornette: A decade ago, as part of a tribute to Marlon Brando a great lover of freedom. A child of the Great Made in America. photo Courtesy in Time magazine, Jack Nicholson said that the Depression, Clarke rebelled against convention Milestone films star of On the Waterfront and The Godfather had, throughout her life, studying dance with legendary

32 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org avant-garde choreographer Martha Graham in the early 1940s then, 10 years later, as a mother in Eisenhower’s America, taking up filmmaking to become a force in the then-burgeoning world of American independent film. Her movies tackled DONATE controversial and creative topics, from drug abuse to poetry, from dance to life as a gay African- American cabaret singer, and she brought a daring your visual aesthetic to her work. Looking back, it seems inevitable that she would find her way to Ornette Coleman, a fellow American avant-gardist (they met through mutual friend Yoko Ono) and freedom-seeker. In the late 1960s she started to filming Coleman for what would eventually become THE TEXAS OBSERVER 1984’s Ornette: Made in America, a restored version RIDE of which is being released for the first time on DVD on Nov. 11 by Milestone Films. Your vehicle donation is tax- Made in America is actually two films blended To learn more please go to into one. The first comes from footage Clarke shot deductible and supports some texasobserver.org of Coleman in the ’60s, when he was integrating his of the sharpest reporting in the or call 10-year-old son, Denardo, into his band. The second strangest state in the union! TOLL FREE 855.500.RIDE is made up of interviews and performances from the early 1980s, when his hometown of Fort Worth feted Coleman by hosting him for a series of jazz and sym- phonic concerts. It was a triumphant return for Coleman, who had left the city decades earlier after a childhood marked by poverty and racial discrimination. The visual differences between the two elements are striking. In the ’60s Clarke was shooting on film, which meant beautiful footage but constricted and cumbersome shoots. By the ’80s, she was starting to experiment with the then-nascent medium of video. And though it’s easy to dislike the video portions of Made in America for their early-’80s MTV-style feel, shooting on video afforded Clarke an approximation of the freedom that Coleman had been enjoying for decades, and the ability to create a visual language to parallel the musical one that Coleman had devel- oped. Video, Clarke said, “allows the filmmaker to stay in the creative process longer.” Aesthetic reservations notwithstanding, video gave Clarke the opportunity to keep up with Coleman, her muse, whose music has always been about immediacy and spontaneous expression. Clarke enacted her own artistic decisions in the edit- ing room, cutting the film to the sound of Coleman’s music. “The film looks like how Ornette sounds and has the same basic thinking,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. Made in America may look like how Ornette Coleman sounds, but its thinking, like Coleman’s, is anything but basic. One might call it incompre- hensible. I’d be lying if I said I understand what Clarke is trying to communicate when she uses jump-cut visual collages, or juxtaposes footage of Coleman’s interviews and live performances with random shapes, neon lights, floating cut-outs and architectural forms. And while Coleman communi- cates with clarity and ease through his music, I can barely make heads or tails of his rambling theories about creativity, composition and sex. But then, it’s always been that way. Coleman’s harmonic philoso- phies never interested me. It was only his music that mattered, and the freedom it celebrated. Josh Rosenblatt writes about film from New York.

November 2014 the te xas observer | 33 the book report The View from Here by Brad Tyer

t is a current rule of the publishing business that nonfiction book titles must contain implied colons, as per Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America. The colon is merely implied on the book’s cover because colons are ugly, and because a cover can convey a hierarchy of phrases graphically. But on a typographical line like this one you need the colon, because LONE STAR NATION HOW TEXAS WILL TRANSFORM AMERICA, while decipherable, is inelegant. ¶ You also need the colon to separate your title from your story; everything after the colon tells the story. A book’s cover, in contemporary publishing, must reveal the entire story, because how can book buyers know whether they will like a book enough to Ibuy it if they first have to read it to find out what it’s even about? (Even fiction, with its exponentially more obscure unanswered. Parker’s book is not an investigation titles, is moving toward the colon. You can at least let of an accomplished event or an exercise in reverse readers know up front that you’re selling : a novel.) engineering. It can’t be. It posits a speculative There is currently a rash of these colon books result—Texas’ transformation of America—and about Texas. Publishers seem to think that readers purports to track its accomplishment in real time. the world over spend long hours compiling lists of This is an impossible task—i.e., clairvoyant journa- questions about Texas, all of which begin with the lism. But let’s cut “how” some slack and get to the word “how.” root. Will Texas transform the nation? Well, sure. Books explaining Texas to the rest of America Seems likely. It’s a big, rich, growing state with a lot are a longstanding tradition, but the current glut of electoral votes. seems to have started in 2012 with Gail Collins’ As Point being: Most of these books aren’t asking Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the genuine questions, and they don’t offer genuine American Agenda, which, aside from pioneering an answers. They could and perhaps should all be sub- awkward conjunction of ellipsis and colon, made titled: “Lemme Tell Ya the Real Story About Texas.” Lone Star Nation: a solid case that Texas and Texans wield a lot of And because Texas is thought to present such a How Texas Will national political power. mythic face to the world, the market for myth sub- Transform America Then, in 2013, came Texas Monthly staffer Erica verters is evergreen. It’s just a matter of how many By Richard Parker Grieder’s Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America ways you can rephrase the question. You think Texas Pegasus Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas (forgoing doesn’t matter quite as much as Texas thinks it does? 352 pages; $27.95 the standard “how” for “what”), which convincingly Gail Collins is here to correct you. You think Texas explicated what that part after the colon said. is pretty crappy at educating kids, tolerating women Just in the past month, the Observer has reviewed and electing credible representation? Allow Erica Wayne Thorburn’s Red State: An Insider’s Story of Grieder to show you how much ass we actually kick. How the GOP Came to Dominate Texas Politics, and Are you under the impression that Texas is going to Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most just sit idly by and leave America unmolested by its Powerful Bible-Belt State, by Robert Wuthnow. This transformative mojo? Richard Parker is prepared to summer we didn’t review Lone Star America: How tell you a thing or two. Texas Can Save Our Country, by Mark Davis, with a Lone Star Nation’s primary counter-mythical foreword by Sean Hannity. insights are three: 1) in order to retain its global And now comes Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will economic competitiveness, the state will have to Transform America by Richard Parker, a respected figure a way to provide top-flight education to the national journalist who calls Wimberley home. fast-growing population of poorer-than-middle- The story that comes after Parker’s implied colon class Mexican-Americans that is quickly becoming shares with these other titles both its implication of a the state’s primary human resource—a task at which question (How will Texas transform America?) and its Texas currently fails spectacularly; 2) deregulatory begging of one (Will, in fact, Texas transform America?). Republicans may be (but probably aren’t) Let’s note right now that “how” goes effectively responsible for any economic miracle, per se, but the

34 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org cronyistic do-nothing monopoly party is a drag on especially if Perry runs for president again, non-Tex- the state that will eventually sink under its own dead ans will again cast about for Texans to explain Texas. weight—i.e., yes, Virginia, Texas will turn purple, if Parker knows the state as well as anybody writing not blue, and probably well before the decade is out; here, and better than most, and so one can earnestly and 3) all due respect to Rick Perry, I can’t remember hope that Lone Star Nation earns him a place on the the third thing. podium, or at the lectern, or in the studio, or wher- Kidding. It’s climate change, which Parker con- ever. But there’s not much point in recommending flates with drought and posits quite rightly asa this book to Texans. If you’re interested in this sort of potential game-changer if Texas doesn’t address it, thing, you’ve already read the news. which Texas doesn’t. And here you may be wondering, if you place much weight on post-colon subtitles: Wait a minute, how is Texas doing what now again? The most concisely Parker comes to explicating his thesis is on page 224: “Texas remained largely the same for thousands of years of human history. But right now, in front of our very eyes, it is changing. It is changing, too, the very nature of America itself. And it will continue doing so while being paradoxically more like America, too—and yet, particular and distinct.” This is an inefficient way of saying hardly anything at all, and it would be unfair to quote it if its impreci- sion weren’t representative. Lone Star Nation has the feel of a book that was written in not much more time than it took to type it. And in trying to squeeze a theme out of a hastily assembled collection of data points and anecdotes, Parker never seems to find a quite comfortable or consistent voice. One minute he sounds like a perfectly professional reporter, checking out the Texas Tribune Festival or chatting with an edi- tor at Texas Monthly. The next he’s expounding on J. Frank Dobie and playing Hill Country naturalist. And the next he’s going all apoca-dystopic on your ass. For most of the book, though, Parker rehashes 2013 and 2014 headlines, from Wendy Davis’ fili- buster to Rick Perry’s Enterprise Fund to the flood that washed out the creek near Parker’s place in Wimberley. The rush of contemporary news tilts the book toward current events and muddies the predic- tive waters. Lone Star Nation finally isn’t so much a description of a future influence as it is a prescrip- tion, a choose-your-own-adventure morality tale, the lesson of which, aimed at policymakers, I guess, is basically this: Governmental Texas must embrace change or suffer dire consequences. As myth-busting insight goes, this is relatively thin soup, and the book’s producers clearly sensed it, having appended to the manuscript 15 pages of “References and Works Consulted” (mostly newspa- pers and magazines, including two full pages citing articles written by Richard Parker), 13 pages listing “Famous Texans: The Texas 300,” and four pages of “Texas In Quotes,” in case you care to see what Kelly Clarkson thinks. Richard Parker is a veteran journalist with bylines in all the better publications. Lone Star Nation is his first book and a pretty obvious play for a perch in the national punditry. If Davis becomes governor, and november 2014 36 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org direct quote Brett Parker diving for golf balls at The Lakes at Castle HillsGiving golf course in Lewisville. Voice as told to and photographed by Jen Reel

ince 1999, 63-year-old Celia Hughes has served as executive director of VSA Texas, a statewide program ded- icated to making the arts accessible to people with disabilities. She is also a cofounder of the Audio Description Coalition and trains people in the art of audio description—descriptions of action, characters, costumes, scenery and other visual information inserted into natural pauses in Sthe dialogue or narration of film, theater, opera and jazz con- certs for the benefit of blind attendees.

“I started working with people with camera producing and directing and disabilities when I was 11 in my Girl making that kind of magic happen. Scout troop. We were asked to help a “At one point I ended up being asked to boy with cerebral palsy, and at that time work with kids with dyslexia at a school ‘patterning’ was the new thing. The in Queens. I was helping them find out idea was [that] if you could put the child who they were as young people, helping through the motions of crawling, you them learn how to express themselves could reprogram the brain and give that through film and television, and giving child some increased abilities. So the them a skill. You don’t have to know how child had to be on the floor for hours at to read to be a camera operator. a time with you moving the arms and the “I met and married a guy from legs in a crawling pattern. Argentina who really wanted to live in “When I went to college, I had origi- Texas. And then I was the random victim nally thought I was going to go into of a violent assault while walking to work physical therapy, but as the fates have one morning and I almost died. So with it they didn’t have a physical therapy that, my husband was like, ‘We’re leaving program. They had a speech therapy now,’ and I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving until program, so my focus was language I get my strength back,’ because it had acquisition, and of course all my free really robbed me of my will. So when time was spent in the theater and music I was able to feel my strength coming programs. When I got out of school I back, I said, ‘OK, we’ll go.’ That’s how I worked as a speech therapist for a few ended up in Austin in 1985. years. One day I was at this party and, it “I’ve done audio description in a seems ridiculous, but I couldn’t make theater where people would come up small talk. I couldn’t talk to the people to me and say, ‘What does it matter? who were my own age because I had They’re blind!’ But people who are spent so much time working with kids blind deserve to have high quality. My with cognitive and intellectual disabil- job is not to tell them what they’re sup- ities, and that was my life. I had lived posed to think. They’re blind, they’re in really small towns, and I thought, ‘Is not stupid. They can make their own this what I really want? That my whole judgments. A person who’s blind can life is just revolving around this?’ So come to a concert. Sure, they can hear I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ I moved the music, but that’s it. Maybe they’re to New York City and devoted the jostled around a little bit, but they next 10 years to the arts. It was really don’t know about the massive speak- important for me to explore my artistic ers, and all the lights and all of that, and vision and see where I could fit in. it’s part of the experience. It’s bringing “I learned pretty early on that I wasn’t something that I love very much to going to be in front of the camera or somebody else.” on the stage, but I could be behind the Interview has been edited and condensed.

November 2014 the te xas observer | 37 Gainesville postcards

How Do You Memorialize a Mob? by Abby Rapoport

n the gray, rainy morning of Oct. Indian tribes that frequently attacked the area. 1, 1862, about 70 men were roused Within a little over a week, 40 men had been hanged from their homes in Gainesville and another two shot trying to escape the rope. The and corralled inside a vacant Great Hanging of Gainesville entered history as the store, under arrest on suspicion largest act of mob violence in American history. of treason. Within 13 days, Memories of the event almost immediately began approximately 80 more men had to fade. Families of the men who’d been hanged moved been captured. The town’s citizen’s court, made up of away or stopped talking about it. Newcomers flooded Two years after the incident, Oprominent community leaders, immediately found the town, which grew from 250 residents during the news of the Great Hanging made its way east. This seven men guilty by majority vote and promptly Civil War to more than 12,000 by the turn of the cen- depiction, from the Feb. 20, 1864, issue of Frank hanged them from an old tree. As tensions mounted, tury. While two men—one a member of the jury and Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly a mob grew angrier outside the store, worried that the other with full access to court records—wrote Newspaper, is apocryphal— the victims were actually the remaining men were not just seditious but accounts of the hanging in the 1870s and 1880s, neither hanged one or two at a time. bandits, John Brown supporters, or friendly to the account was publicly available until the 1960s. Court

38 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org records of the trial were lost by the 1920s. Around the stagecoaches and mail, arrived. Immigrants began 100th anniversary of the Civil War, in 1964, the Texas flooding the area (and the state). By 1860, two-thirds Historical Commission erected a pink granite marker of Texans had been born in another state. In North conveying an account sympathetic to the mob, based Texas, near Gainesville, most immigrants came from on what is now known to be incomplete information. “Upper South” states including Tennessee, Missouri Over time the marker has become largely illegible. and Kentucky and “Deep South” states including Gainesville, meanwhile, has chugged along as a Mississippi and Georgia. Only about 11 percent of the charming small Texas town. In 2012 Rand McNally area’s households owned slaves, according to Richard named Gainesville the “Most Patriotic Small Town McCaslin, chair of the history department at the in America.” Each year the town invites some 30 University of North Texas and author of 1994’s Tainted Medal of Honor recipients on an expense-paid trip to Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862, Gainesville, allowing the town to call itself the nation’s the first comprehensive study of the incident. only Medal of Honor Host City. There’s a historical Despite the boom, Gainesville was still close to the marker to honor the pioneers who first brought cattle frontier during the Civil War, and fear for safety and “These are to the area and established the town, and the old State security ran high. As McCaslin explains in Tainted Theater movie house still stands on East California Breeze, raids by nearby Comanche and Kiowa were good people. Street, though it no longer shows movies. Leonard frequent, and there was enormous fear of Kansas’ Park features baseball diamonds, a pool with water radical abolitionists, particularly John Brown, who They want slides and a small zoo that grew out of a volunteer infamously went on to attack Harpers Ferry, Virginia, community circus. A Confederate memorial greets in 1859. While there was widespread disagreement their town to visitors at the entrance. Downtown, the Cooke County on the question of secession, most town leaders were Courthouse boasts memorials to Confederate soldiers slaveholders and residents generally had little regard look good. and to veterans of World War II. for the anti-slavery movement. Those living in the On Oct. 18 this year, 152 years after the Great area often relied on vigilantism to keep the peace and You want to Hanging, a new memorial was dedicated just a few feet force out troublemakers and dissidents. Mob hangings from where the original incident took place: two gray became increasingly common as talk of war continued. live in a town granite slabs, each 5 feet high and 6 feet wide. One slab A Northern Methodist Episcopal elder was lynched offers a new account of the Great Hanging. The other based on a forged pro-abolition letter in 1860, and a you’re proud shows the names of the 42 men who died. Unveiling day series of fires around the state over the summer had only began with a luncheon at North Central Texas College ratcheted up anxieties, as many blamed abolitionists. of. That’s not and included a performance by actors playing the men When Texas held a vote on the Ordinance of involved in the hanging. Finally, at 3 p.m., everyone Secession in 1861, Cooke County, along with several a bad thing. arrived at the new memorial for the dedication. nearby counties, voted against leaving the Union, As imposing as the memorial looks, it’s impossible though Gainesville’s slaveholding elite were divided. Where does to miss the shabbiness of the park’s surroundings. The James Bourland, a former state senator, was a pro- tree where 40 men met their deaths has long since been ponent of secession, while the more conservative the Great cut down or burned down (accounts differ). The par- William C. Young, a former U.S. marshal and the larg- cel borders an auto repair shop, and when facing the est slaveholder in the county, opposed it. (Together, Hanging fit memorial, you also face the shop’s aluminum sheds Bourland and Young owned close to a quarter of the with “Eddie Dulock Paint and Body Shop” painted slaves in Cooke County.) into that? The in red. The few trees fail to block the sight of traffic Once the state voted to secede, however, most traversing one of Gainesville’s pretty new yellow-and- citizens fell in line. Young and Bourland both took town killed brick-red bridges. There’s no designated parking, no up military posts. Young carefully kept his recruits— fence, and just the memorial to distinguish the park mostly North Texas farmers who were ambivalent 42 people. from a vacant lot. about the Confederate cause—focused on preventing Among the crowd were descendants of eight men Indian raids. It’s kind of a who died in Gainesville’s Great Hanging, as well as But when the Conscription Act was passed in 1862, descendants of the earliest advocates for memorial- anger began to swell among the farmers of Cooke clunker.” izing them. To them, this park marks the end of a long County. The Confederate army’s fortunes had begun struggle and, if not closure exactly, at least a promise to decline and troops were desperately needed. The act finally kept. authorized the drafting of white men age 18 to 35. There were new taxes and the threat of impressment. Young’s Gainesville hadn’t been around long when troops, which had been fighting Native Americans close Nathaniel Clark, one of the Civil War came to Texas. The area had initially to home, were sent east to join other Confederate cam- the men killed in the Great Hanging, is buried been a pit stop for travelers on their way to California, paigns. Many simply went home instead. in Gainesville’s Clark and by 1850 it boasted a smattering of homes, a dry McCaslin describes the situation as “a pressure cooker.” Cemetery. His tombstone notes that he was goods store and a saloon. In 1858, the Butterfield “You’re scared of Indians, you’re scared of aboli- “murdered by a mob.” Overland Mail, a semi-weekly service for passenger tionists, you’ve been attacked by Indians, you’ve had a photo by Colleen Carri

November 2014 the te xas observer | 39 big set of fires that summer that you’re convinced was She and her husband are most famous for spear- Colleen Clark John Brown and his buddies,” he says. “And suddenly heading Gainesville’s Medal of Honor program. It’s someone says we’ve got a problem here amongst us.” the only program of its kind in the country, and it Carri was 15, The formation of a Peace Party came at the same generates enormous town pride. Businesses adver- time that 30 men allegedly signed a petition against the tise the program in windows and on walls. “We’re playing the Conscription Act. Bourland, a hotheaded leader, got very patriotic and we’re a very proud community. We word from a man who’d been approached by two broth- take care of our own and we take care of our nation’s domino game ers named Ephraim and Henry Chiles about efforts to heroes,” Pettigrew says. attack militia arsenals. Bourland sent a spy to join the The Medal of Honor program helped Gainesville Texas 42 in her effort and learn more, and the two brothers opened up get nominated—and then win—Rand McNally’s about plans to mount an armed insurrection. 2012 competition for “Most Patriotic Small Town grandparents’ Bourland organized mass arrests on Oct. 1, target- in America,” a designation the town’s mayor, Jim ing not only the men implicated by the spy, but others Goldsworthy, loves to mention. old farmhouse who’d failed to respond to a call for Confederate troops Around the time the town won the Rand McNally to muster. While a few got away—two, notably, carry- award, the Morton Museum of Cooke County leased a with cousins, ing mattresses on their backs, ostensibly to protect billboard to advertise a 150th anniversary: “October’s them from bullets—the rest prepared to stand trial. Reign of Terror, Commemorating the Great Hanging when Neighboring counties sent similarly suspected men of 1862.” Within days, the city’s mayor pro tem, Ray to Confederate courts, but Gainesville’s leadership, Nichols, had voiced his disapproval. “Gainesville was someone headed by Young, decided to form a citizen’s court. A voted most patriotic city in America this year, and majority of the jury was composed of slaveholders, and we are very excited about it and our Medal of Honor mentioned the citizen’s court required only a majority to convict. Host City program. I think those are important. That Outside, the mob was ready to hang all the prisoners. other thing? I don’t think that’s important to any- that his After hearing evidence, the jury initially convicted body,” Nichols told the Austin American-Statesman seven men who were hanged over the course of the next at the time. great-great- week. To placate two of its members, the jury decided Though no explicit demands were made, the it would henceforth require a two-thirds majority to Cooke County Heritage Society pulled its sponsor- grandfather convict, and acquitted the rest of the group. But out- ship of the anniversary event, according to former side, tension was rising. Two leaders—one of whom Heritage Society President Steve Gordon, for fear had been McCaslin thinks was likely Bourland—demanded 20 that city officials’ anger might mean funding cuts to more prisoners. A member of the jury handed over the the town’s history museum. Gordon, an Oklahoma hanged by list, from which 14 names were chosen. They, too, were native and engineer who retired to Gainesville, was hanged over the next two days. livid. “This story’s got to come up,” he says. “A lot of a mob. The rest of the prisoners were to be confined for the these people’s [families] weren’t even here in 1862. week, with the jury hoping the mob might calm down Why are they so upset?” in the meantime. A few days later, however, William “These are good people,” McCaslin says. “They C. Young was killed while investigating a murder. The want their town to look good. You want to live in a culprits were likely deserters, but the mob worried town you’re proud of. That’s not a bad thing. Where they might be abolitionists. When the jury recon- does the Great Hanging fit into that? The town killed vened the following week, several members didn’t 42 people. It’s kind of a clunker.” show up. The missing men were replaced with hard- Goldsworthy and Pettigrew both say that while line Confederates. With no new evidence considered, history is important, mass mob murder is not what 19 more men were hanged, one and two at a time. Two they want their town to be known for. Neither sees others were shot and killed trying to escape. the Great Hanging as a tourism opportunity. “We’re “I think where the story goes terribly wrong is the not running from our history, but I would rather decision not to turn them over to the legal courts,” Gainesville be portrayed in the light of the Medal McCaslin says. of Honor city and most patriotic city, which are the “There’s a national message to what happened accolades it deserves today in modern-day times,” here,” he says. “People need to know what the Civil Goldsworthy says. “The commercialization of a War was really like. It wasn’t Gone with the Wind. We horrific wartime event is not one that I would want were just as ugly to each other as other countries that Gainesville to build tourism on.” get pulled apart in civil wars. It’s part of us, it’s part of In fact there’s little around town to inform anyone who we are, and we need to think about that and make of the Great Hanging. The town’s tourism brochures damn sure it doesn’t happen again.” don’t mention the incident (though it does get a para- graph in the “History” section of the town’s website). Lynette Pettigrew is a fourth-generation If the history hasn’t been buried, exactly, it certainly Gainesville resident. Her family arrived in the 1880s isn’t shared broadly. and has been here ever since. “I just love this com- Leon Russell was in his mid-70s before he even heard munity,” she says. “I’m the sort of person that likes about it. Russell grew up in Woodbine, an even smaller to go to the store and run into people I know. I like town close to Gainesville, and now lives in Keller, closer for people to honk and wave as they go by. ... If you to Dallas. Russell first heard about the hangings from don’t want people to know your business, then you a Civil War buff friend in New York. “I felt like it had shouldn’t live in a small town.” always been this really terrible injustice that the town Pettigrew is the executive director of the town’s had turned its back on. Forty-two widows and about Chamber of Commerce, and spends her days trying 300 children,” he says. “I had wished that I could do to support local business and increase tourism. something, at least letting it be known.”

40 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org The new Great Hanging memorial in Gainesville comprises two granite slabs—one engraved with an account of the 1862 incident, the other with the names of the 42 victims. photo by Pamela Henderson

In 2007, Russell and his family bought wooden Ireland. “Ask the Irish if they’ll ever forget who burned stakes at Home Depot and set to creating 42 white the Rock of Cashel. They’ll never rebuild that. The wind crosses, one for each man killed. The City Council moans and you think, ‘This is a haunted place.’ gave Russell permission to place the crosses in the “Grief fades,” he says. “Memory abides.” park where the Great Hanging occurred. Working with the Heritage Society’s Steve Gordon and descen- Colleen Clark Carri still remembers when she dants of victims, Russell held a ceremony where all first heard about the Great Hanging. She was 15, play- 42 names were read and a bell was rung. ing the domino game Texas 42 in her grandparents’ It was the first public commemoration of the old farmhouse with cousins when someone men- Great Hanging in modern times, and has been an tioned that his great-great-grandfather had been annual occurrence since. “You could not have found hanged by a mob. three people in Gainesville who’d heard of [the Great “I was like, ‘What are y’all talking about? We’ve Hanging] before we did that,” Russell says. never talked about that,’” Carri says. “People were The push to commemorate the Great Hanging always like, ‘Pappy still gets upset so let’s not talk more permanently has been ongoing for more than about this right now.’” two decades. In 1993, the estate of Georgia Davis Bass Nathaniel Clark settled in Cooke County with his gifted the city the land where the Great Hanging had wife and sons around 1857. He came from Missouri, taken place. The city’s beloved mayor, Margaret Parx where support for secession was tepid at best, and Hays, whose great-grandfather Wiley Jones had been never owned slaves. His eldest child, James Lemuel on the citizen’s court jury, planned to raise hundreds Clark, was 19 at the start of the war, and Clark hoped of thousands of dollars for a memorial, but passed to keep him out of it. But aside from his opposition away before the ambition could come to fruition. The to secession, there’s nothing in the historical record effort stalled after her death, and at one point the city to suggest that Clark was seditious. Nonetheless, he used the park to store construction supplies. was one of the 14 men handed over to the mob.“It’s But after the 2012 billboard debacle, more informa- the way Nathaniel did not have a trial that has always tion about the city’s obligations regarding the land came been a burr under my saddle,” Carri says. to light. When Gordon and others presented plans for Unlike many families of the hanged men, Clark’s the new memorial featuring a history-based account of family stayed in Cooke County. Nathaniel’s portrait what happened, with all funds raised privately, the City hangs in Carri’s home, which is on Clark Road, near Council approved the effort unanimously. the family cemetery where her great-great-grandfa- Now, Gordon and other memorial advocates are ther is buried. According to his tombstone, his last looking toward next steps. Gordon imagines planting words were, “Prepare yourself to live and die. I hope crape myrtles around the park, and money for a park- to meet you all in a future world. God bless you all.” ing lot. But for now, he says, “You don’t know what a More is known about the Clark family than any other thrill it is to get those 42 names down there.” involved in the Great Hanging. James Lemuel Clark McCaslin says with or without the memorial, memo- wrote his recollections, and his grandson L.D. Clark— ries of the Great Hanging would never fully disappear. Carri’s uncle—edited them. L.D., an English professor He compares the incident to the massacre at Glen Coe at the University of Arizona, also wrote a novel and a in Scotland, or the massacre at the Rock of Cashel in screenplay about Nathaniel Clark. Carri can recite from

November 2014 the te xas observer | 41 memory parts of the letter that James Lemuel wrote to “My marker says ‘On Hallowed Ground,’” Carri says. his mother when he got word of his father’s death. “It “Because I feel that’s what this is. It’s almost like a begins, ‘Dearest mother, oh the horrors of my heart, no cemetery to me.” tongue can tell upon learning of my father’s death.’ It’s Abby Rapoport is a freelance journalist based in Austin. poetry. It’s just pure poetry,” she says. Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Carri and her husband retired to Gainesville in 2008. Texas Tribune, The New Republic and elsewhere. In 2009 she moved L.D. to town to be closer. They both became outspoken advocates for a new memorial. In 2012, when the Cooke County Heritage Society withdrew its sponsorship of the 150th anniversary American event, it was the Clark family that came to the rescue, holding their family reunion at the same time and Abundance, or sponsoring a luncheon in remembrance of the Great Hanging. “I told the family at the family reunion, ‘All First Trip to H-E-B right, the last thing I’m going to ever beg you for is to attend this memorial,’” Carri says. “After this I’m just Grocery Store going to show up at the Clark reunions and bring a baked pie and sit my little bottom down.” by José Antonio L.D. and Carri were sitting side by side in the audi- ence when the City Council voted unanimously Rodríguez to approve the memorial on Dec. 3, 2013. Weeks later, L.D., who was 91 years old, fell, and his health Carnation milk can sits declined quickly. He died in March. on the shelf in the store: “I’m just grateful he was with me on Dec. 3 at the the reddest flower copying itself City Council, and he knew it was going to happen,” over and over — so many perfect bouquets Carri says, tearing up. “But oh my. Not to have him at the same edge and no counter here in October.” between them and me. Carri misses her more distant ancestors almost as much as she misses her uncle. “They both had such I fear they may go bad — spoil — amazing roles,” she says of James Lemuel and Nathaniel. because surely nobody could, “They were amazing men and they were patriots as far as no matter how hungry, empty this landscape I’m concerned.” where magic repeats itself over every tile. Supporters purchased paving stones for a path leading to the memorial, many with inscriptions. Having been allowed to hold every bag and box, every sum, in my hands and place them in a wheeled cart, without anyone to say no, STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION. to demand payment, I ask Mom if we get to just walk out, The Texas Observer (541-300), 307 W. 7th St., Austin, TX 78701, is published monthly, (12 issues annually) for a subscription price of $35.00. Publisher, The take it all home. But no, Texas Democracy Foundation; Editor, Dave Mann; Managing Editor, Brad Tyer. there is the young woman in uniform. Owner: The Texas Democracy Foundation, 307 W. 7th St., Austin, TX 78701. And her steady hands pass every item 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation: Average Data and for Issue Date 9/1/14. through a clear window by the register (a) Total Number of Copies: avg. 5,423, actual 4,626. (b) Paid and/or Requested with a red eye that beeps. And on the other side, Circulation: (b1) Paid or Requested Mail Subscriptions Outside-County: avg. 4,130, actual 4,072; (b2) Paid or Requested Mail Subscriptions In-County: avg. every item drops tilts and rolls, 475, actual 0; (b3) Other Non-USPS Paid Distribution: avg. 508, actual 346; revealing the mark ­— a block of lines like (b4) Other Classes Mailed Through USPS: avg. 0, actual 0. (c) Total Paid and/ prison bars or Requested Circulation: avg. 5,113, actual 4,418. (d) Free Distribution by Mail: and numbers with hard corners — (d1) Outside-County: avg. 0, actual 0; (d2) In-County: avg. 0, actual 0; (d3) Other the code by which to pass the scanner Classes Mailed Through the USPS: avg. 0, actual 0. (d4) Outside the Mail: avg. 311, like a bridge. actual 200. (e) Total Free Distribution: avg. 311, actual 200. (f) Total Distribution: José Antonio Rodríguez’s books include The Shallow avg. 5,424, actual 4,618. (g) Copies Not Distributed: avg. 38, actual 0. (h) Total: End of Sleep and Backlit Hour. His work has appeared avg. 5,462, actual 4,618. (j) Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation: avg. 94%, in The New Republic, Poetry, RHINO, Huizache and actual 96%. Signed Emily Williams, Publisher, 10/10/14. elsewhere. He lives in McAllen and teaches writing and literature at the University of Texas-Pan American.

The Texas Observer (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted © 2014, is published monthly (12 issues per year) by the Texas Democracy Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation, 307 W. 7th St., Austin TX, 78701. Telephone (512)477-0746, fax (512)474-1175, toll free (800)939-6620. Email observer@­texasobserver.org. Periodicals Postage paid in Austin, TX, and at additional mailing offices.POSTMASTER Send address changes to: The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th St., Austin TX 78701. Subscriptions: 1 yr $35, 2 yr $60, 3 yr $85. Students $20. Foreign, add $13 to ­ domestic price. Back issues $5. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N Zeeb Rd, Ann Arbor MI 48106. Indexes The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals; Texas Index; and, for the years 1954 through 1981, The Texas Observer Index. Investigative reporting is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Institute. Books & the Culture is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. 42 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org andreaGrimes STATE OF THE MEDIA The Curious Case of the Ebola Troll s a silly Photoshop prank the equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater? ¶ The Frisco Police Department seemed to think so when offi- cers took a high school jokester into custody in early October. ¶ The student’s crime? Trolling his fellow Friscoans for their gullibility, play- ing on their willingness to believe hyperbolic news reports generated by a 24-hour news cycle ravenous for speculation about Ebola’s recent arrival in nearby Dallas. ¶ Punctuating an Oct. 1 tweet with just the right amount of bawling emoji, the student—whose name has not been released—posted a pretty good imitation of a Fox News screenshot broad- casting the sort of Ebola story that readers might fear to find splashed across the IDallas-Fort Worth affiliate’s website: “6 New Cases of Ebola Discovered Within Dallas Fort Worth Area, Specifically Frisco ISD.” Even a cursory perusal of the student’s Twitter The Dallas Morning News showed how CareFlite There are timeline would lead a thinking person to conclude crews disinfect their helicopters. Television news that he was goofing, but that didn’t stop the image broadcast a seemingly perpetual reel of hazmat- real lies be- from spreading, and in what appears to have been a suited cleaners filing in and out of the Dallas matter of hours the affluent exurb was all afroth. apartment where patient Thomas Eric Duncan—who ing spread by Parents kept their kids home from school. The district succumbed to the disease Oct. 8—stayed before his issued a soothing email: “… there is currently no reason hospital admission. A WFAA-TV phone interview people with far to believe that the situation [in Dallas] presents a health with Duncan’s wife used a spooky silhouette as a concern to Frisco ISD students or staff members.” stand-in for the interviewee. more influence Police took the teenager into custody for making a But this Frisco kid is thrown in the clink for pulling “false alarm or report.” Law enforcement authorities off a pretty solid Photoshop job? Even as the perpe- than a sub- tell me he was later transferred to the Collin County trators of far more insidious Ebola-related fictions Juvenile Detention Center, and that as of mid-Octo- remain free to engage in racist right-wing agitation urban Texas ber the case was “still under investigation.” over what they claim is a very real possibility of the Juvenile incarceration. Over a fake news story disease infiltrating the Texas-Mexico border? high schooler. attributed to an “AP Medical Scriber.” Two days after the Frisco teen was taken into custody, Give the kid credit—imitating the local Fox affiliate Fox News Latino printed the headline “Border Patrol on There is real was a brilliant move. Average Joes and Janes will find alert after 71 people from hard-hit Ebola countries ille- the “source” just reputable enough to not immediately gally enter U.S. this year,” building on Rand Paul-fueled fearmonger- dismiss the “news” as a hoax, and “Obola”-fearing Fox fears of a “whole ship full” of American soldiers return- loyalists will treat it as the word of God Hisownself. ing from Africa teeming with the virus. A week after ing, and it’s In the tweet accompanying the photo, the student the Frisco Fox hoax, Breitbart Texas didn’t hesitate to perfectly captured the fear and confusion that’s run imply that the National Institute of Health’s infectious given mor- beneath the surface of news reports since the Ebola disease czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was either stupid or a diagnosis of a Liberian man in Dallas was announced liar when he called the Ebola-infiltration claims of Paul bidly gleeful Sept. 30. and others “far-fetched.” “… [O]ut of everywhere in the USA [Ebola] is at my These are real lies being spread by people with far credibility by EXACT HIGH SCHOOL.” This followed an earlier more influence than a suburban Texas high schooler. panic-belying chastisement that “Y’all know its [sic] This is real fearmongering, and it’s given morbidly people who not an airborne disease? You’d have to share body gleeful credibility by people who get paid by the byline. fluids to get it.” I don’t mean to suggest that we should imprison get paid by That nugget—that Ebola is actually pretty difficult to journalists, hucksters or hypesters. Freedom of contract and spread—has been notably missing from speech and all that. But no more should the police be the byline. a great deal of the mainstream coverage so far, despite jailing a kid who used a computer to create a mirror the fact that it’s arguably the most important infor- that reflects our terrified faces right back at us. mation for reporters to relay to a jumpy public clearly Apparently it’s only OK to scare the shit out of peo- ready to believe, and overreact to, just about anything. ple if that’s your main line of business.

November 2014 the te xas observer | 43 forrestwilder Forrest for the trees Greg Abbott and the Right to Vote

f all the ways politicians can abuse their power, none is as serious as messing with voting rights. Corruption is troubling and can become endemic if left unchecked. Lying, especially under oath, weakens the bonds of trust in a democracy. Cronyism violates basic rules of fairness and leads to inefficiency in core government services. But tampering with the franchise is an offense against democracy itself. That’s why Greg Abbott’s success- ful efforts to shut down a voter registration campaign

in Harris County are so troubling. Although the saga storing information collected from individuals in the Ostarted unfolding four years ago, it only fully came course of registering them to vote. In October 2011, “The problem to light in August, when The Dallas Morning News the investigation fizzled when the Harris County DA was … nobody reported details of the criminal investigation and rejected the AG’s case for lack of evidence. Two years raid. I recently spoke with Fred Lewis, the man who later, the AG’s office destroyed Texans Together’s said, ‘This is headed up the voter registration drive and who is computers and records, using a statute that deals with now accusing Abbott of a serious abuse of power. The contraband. Lewis said he was never even notified. ridiculous, effect, he said, has been to “criminalize” voter regis- Though no charges were ever filed, Houston Votes’ tration in order to “rally up the base.” database of new voters, its financial records, including this is overkill, To briefly recap: In the run-up to the 2010 election, a donor list, and Lewis’ personal files were destroyed. the tea party poll-watching group King Street Patriots Lewis, a veteran campaign finance attorney in Texas this is abuse, began complaining about a voter-fraud conspiracy in who founded Texans Together in 2006, said he didn’t Houston, linking ACORN, the New Black Panther Party even know the AG’s investigation had ended until he this is a bad and a new voter registration drive by Houston Votes, an was contacted this past August by The Dallas Morning offshoot of Lewis’ community organizing group Texans News—two years after the case had collapsed. precedent, this Together. In more innocent times, registering people to Though the case stalled, the armed raid and criminal vote was seen as a dull but laudatory civic activity. But investigation had an impact: Houston Votes lost its paid is not what we King Street Patriots saw a conspiracy, a threat. And, organizers, saw its funding crippled and its voter-reg- more importantly, so did Leo Vasquez, the Republican istration efforts dwindle. Houston Votes had been on want to do in a elected official in Harris County who oversaw the voter track to register 70,000 new voters in 2010, Lewis says. rolls. At a very unusual press conference in August 2010, Because of the raid, it registered only about 25,000. democracy.’” Vasquez announced—alongside representatives from Instead of bringing disenfranchised people into the the King Street Patriots—that Houston Votes was behind system, the group was lawyering up. an “organized and systematic attack” on the integrity of Lewis, who worked as a lawyer at the attorney gen- the voter rolls. Vasquez complained that many of the eral’s office from 1989 to 1995, said he has warned voter applications submitted by Houston Votes were colleagues to not even think about trying paid voter duplicates or for people who had already registered—an registration in Harris County. “They’ve criminalized almost universal feature of paid registration drives that voter registration in my view,” Lewis said. rarely results in voter fraud. In any case, it turned out Abbott has defended the investigation but also said that Vasquez’s claim of 5,000 bogus applications was he “didn’t know about it at the time it was going on.” fancifully high. Nonetheless, Vasquez referred the case Lewis said the episode suggests that either people at to the Texas attorney general’s office for an investigation. the top of the AG’s office wanted to shut down a voter Three months later, armed law enforcement officers registration drive or that the people running the inves- dispatched by the AG’s office raided the Houston tigation were zealots operating without supervision. Votes office in Houston, and, two weeks later, hit Fred “The problem was nobody was a professional, nobody Lewis’ office at the Baptist Christian Life Commission was supervised, nobody said, ‘This is ridiculous, this headquarters in Austin, seizing computers and records. is overkill, this is abuse, this is a bad precedent, this is The raids were overseen by a 27-year-old investigator not what we want to do in a democracy.’” who developed a novel legal theory that Houston Texas has the lowest voter turnout in the nation. Is Votes had possibly committed felony identity theft by it any wonder why?

44 | the te xas observer www.texasobserver.org eye on texas Drew Anthony Smith UNICYCLE FOOTBALL Now in its 10th season, the Unicycle Football League has a dedicated follow- ing. Teams such as the Unicychos, Ill Eagles and Rolling Blackouts—sup- ported by the league’s version of a cheerleading squad, the Unibrawds—meet for two games every Sunday in San Marcos from August through April. A joust replaces the tradi- tional coin toss to determine which team kicks off and receives at the beginning of each game. After that the game is played much like American football, except on unicycles. Games are often high-scoring affairs, and the season ends with the league’s two best teams competing head-to-head in the Stuporbowl. These images were shot with a Polaroid Land Camera on black and white instant print film and then digitally scanned.

See more of Austin pho- tographer Drew Anthony Smith’s work at www.texa- sobserver.org/eyeontexas. CALL FOR ENTRIES: Seeking Texas-based documentary photography that captures the strangest state. Please send inquiries to eyeontexas@texasob- server.org.

November 2014 the te xas observer | 45 Learn more about adding The Texas Observer to your will or trust by contacting Publisher Emily Williams at 512.477.0746 or by email at [email protected]

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