THE TEXAS A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES Reports from Sierra Blanca Labor's Day: SEIU Blitzes Houston Air Force "Pajama Police" Defeated Plus: Ivins on Freedom & Volleyball Eighner on Godly Republicans Tyer on Sex Pistols in Houston Wst:tz -A0:4S THIS ISSUE FEATURES Dole Takes Control by Louis Dubose Cheerleaders, Christians, and CEOs Aplenty in San Diego. Guess Who's Throwing the Party? We All Live in Sierra Blanca by Karen Olsson and Carrie Evans 10 Sierra Blancans and supporters from across the state and across the border bear witness against the nuclear dump. Is anybody listening? Blitzing Houston with the SEIU by Ann Walton Sieber 14 This Labor Day, there's a new wind blowing across the South, VOLUME 88, NO. 17 and these union blitzers brought it to Texas. A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the Air Force Major Defeats "the Pajama Police" by Robert Bryce 17 truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are ded- icated to the whole truth, to human values above all in- The Air Force asked Major Debra Meeks to abandon her career and disappear. terests, to the rights of human-kind as the foundation of democracy: we will take orders from none but our own Instead, she beat them in their own court. conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. DEPARTMENTS BOOKS AND THE CULTURE Writers are responsible for their own work, but not Texas Summer & Sunflowers 23 for anything they have not themselves written, and in Dialogue 2 publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we Poetry by Robert Trammell agree with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Editorial 4 When is Race not Race? Missing the Bus 24 SINCE 1954 by Lars Eighner Molly Ivins 18 27 Founding Editor: Ronnie Dugger Freedom is a Volleyball Infomercial Lying is Good for Us! Publisher: Geoff Rips Book Review by Ben Terrall Managing Publisher: Rebecca Melancon Norman Solomon 20 Smoking Gun 28 Editor: Louis Dubose Made-for-TV Convention Associate Editor: Michael King Book Review by James W. Kunetka Production: Harrison Saunders Political Intelligence 32 Reloaded Pistols in Houston 30 - Copy Editor: Mimi Bardagjy Music Review by Brad Tyer Poetry Editor: Naomi Shihab Nye Cover photo by Alan Pogue Circulation Manager: Amanda Toering AFTERWORD Editorial Interns: Katy Adams, Carrie Evans, Karen Doctors R U! 31 Olsson By Karen Olsson Contributing Writers: Bill Adler, Barbara Belejack, Betty Brink, Brett Campbell, Jo Clifton, Carol Country- man, Lars Eighner, James Galbraith, Dagoberto Gilb, James Harrington, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Paul DIALOGUE Jennings, Steven Kellman, Torn McClellan, Bryce Milligan, Debbie Nathan, Brad Tyer, James McCarty Yeager. FEED READING out of balance, create havoc with their words, Contributing Photographers: Vic Hinterlang, Alan My dog didn't know she had been missing generating what an old Zapatista friend of Pogue. mine used to call "creative disorder." Contributing Artists: Michael Alexander, Eric Avery, real food (as opposed to the pellets of veg- Tom Ballenger, Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth etable dust vets insist we feed her) until she Davis' article is a brilliant beginning. Epstein, Valerie Fowler, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, More, please. Ben Sargent, Gail Woods. tasted meat. I didn't know how much I Editorial Advisory Board: David Anderson, Austin; missed the real thing in the Observer (or Jim Simons Elroy Bode, El Paso; Chandler Davidson, Houston; elsewhere) until I read Rod Davis' piece Austin Dave Denison, Arlington, Mass.; Bob Eckhardt, Austin; Sissy Farenthold, Houston; John Kenneth Galbraith, ("The Fate of the Texas Writer," July 26). Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; Thank God, somebody noticed and spoke Texas isn't the only place where writing has George Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Austin; Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., up about the sorry state of the printed word. been a colonial enterprise. Even here in San Antonio; Willie Morris, Jackson, Miss.; Kaye Texas writers and writers all over the "mighty" California (now at 32 million Northcott, Fort Worth; James Presley, Texarkana; Susan Reid, Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; country are an endangered species. It is population, sixth largest economy in the Fred Schmidt, Fredericksburg. largely a function or dysfunction of eco- world, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc.), Development Consultant: Frances Barton nomics, the kind of system we have. I' writers must still answer to the Northeast- Business Manager: Cliff Olofson, 1931-1995 ern (mainly New York) publishing estab- SUBSCRIPTIONS: One year $32. two years $59, three years $84. Full-time have almost given up reading as I have students $18 per year. Back issues $3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University Micro- given up expecting reform from the politi- lishment. The same is true in most elec- films Intl., 3(X) N. Zed, Road. Ann Arbor, MI 48106. cal process or integrity from politicians. tronic media where one must bow to the INDEXES: The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index ro Periodicals; Texas Index and, for the years 1954 through 1981.The Writers have nothing to sell, a fatal flaw corporate "Big Three"—NBC, ABC and Texas Observer Index. THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-45 I 9/USPS 541300), entire contents in capitalist culture. The truth is not a com- CBS, firmly headquartered in New York copyrighted, (0 1996, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval between issues in January and July (25 issues per year) by the Texas Democ- modity. Writers are not good managers, not City, for most TV/radio reporting jobs racy Foundation. 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. Telephone: (512) 477-0746. E-mail: txobserverOige.apc.org . good followers, not team players. In short, (whenever there are any). In the U.S., you World Wide Web Downllome page: http://www.hyperweb.eurnitxobserver Periodicals postage paid at Attain, Texas. exactly the kind of troublemakers (I call either live in the Northeast—the center of POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. them anarchists) who want to throw it all power (corporate and political), or you live 2 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER AUGUST 30, 1996 DIALOGUE in one of its colonies. It is Wall Street's Gallego, voted for this turkey, and you GETTING TECHNICAL , -,ambition to make sure the new Global won't find Hudspeth's name among the I'm all for cheap shots, but at least make --- -----/Economy revolves around New York City, eleven counties with resolutions against them well-informed cheap shots. Your July and therefore, Wall Street. "Everybody the dump; the home-county elected offi- 26 "Political Intelligence" item ("Starr 1 Wants to Rule the World" went the song by cials have had a taste of the money, and Fading?") on Kenneth Starr's contribution Tears for Fears, especially, it seems, if apparently they like it. to the Texas Tech Law Review really you're a New Yorker. As for the rest of us In the coming months, one state agency, missed the boat. here in The Colonies, we're expected to the TNRCC, will hear the plea of another First, Texas Tech is a good law school. suffer in silence. We need many more Rod state agency, the Texas Low-Level Ra- Observer readers should note that the dean, Davises (and Rodney 0 and Joe Cooleys)! dioactive Waste Disposal Authority, to es- W. Frank Newton, is one of the country's Chris Ellis tablish a dump favored by the Governor of most effective advocates for legal-services San Bernardino, CA that state in a poor, minority community in funding, pro bono legal work and other an active earthquake zone. The TNRCC progressive measures. Tech doesn't need After just returning from my local public li- has on this issue received over 500 re- Starr for some grab for national recogni- brary where I read the July 26 issue of the quests for hearings, including requests tion; it already has it. Observer from cover to cover, I realize just from the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Second, Starr's essay is part of a "Faith how little real news and impassioned con- Coahuila and the cities of Juarez and and the Law" issue put out by the Texas scientious writing I've been getting through Acufia, the Mexican Foreign Ministry, the Tech Law Review. The editors asked schol- the mainstream media. As one of many for- city of El Paso, and the counties of Culber- ars and practitioners from across the mer journalists who gave up in disgust, I son and, I am proud to say, Presidio. Poli- county to write on the topic and then they particularly identified with the lead feature tics, not science, will determine the put it all together in a 516-page review. A on the fate of Texas writing and writers. TNRCC's decision, so the only strategy lot of it's good reading. Starr's essay, how- Sign me up!...Thanking you for keeping likely to prevent this proposed injustice is ever, is hands down the weakest of the truth alive, to make approval of the dumpsite as ex- bunch—just a couple pages' worth of Jim Bush posed, as international, and as politically vague ramblings about being humble Waxahachie expensive as possible. Mexico's reported (something I don't think he's ever been linkage of cleaning up Carbon I and H with accused of). So criticize it on that basis, if COVERING SIERRA: GRACIAS our scrapping the plan to build the Sierra you will, but don't pick on Tech because We in Far West Texas owe a debt of grati- Blanca dump might make a noise that they asked him to contribute.