The Texas Observer

By Ryland Barton

Much has been made of the rumored cuts of César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall from Texas public school curriculum, but Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting seemed to suggest that these two historical figures would be retained in Texas classrooms. The six SBOE experts, appointed to conduct a regular review of social studies material, presented their revisions on the 222nd anniversary of the Constitution’s ratification. It was fitting that on this day, the conversation strayed away from historical figures to the separation of church and state, or in this case, the so-called experts’ view that the two are inextricably intertwined.

In his review of the Texas Education Knowledge and Skills curriculum, SBOE-appointed expert Reverend Peter Marshall argues that high school classrooms should explain that critical documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are products of Christian values.  Marshall, who operates Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, stressed his “Bible-based worldview” in which the Constitutional values of universal human equality are derived from God. His philosophy is expanded in his review of the TEKS, emphasizing: “Religion in America produced the first written civil documents of governance.” Marshall is one of two Christian advocates who were appointed as experts by the SBOE to review social studies course content.

The other is David Barton, former vice president of the Texas Republican Party. Barton did not expand on his previous comments that Cesar Chavez “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others,” but instead gave an in-depth review of minority historical figures that would be appropriate to review in the TEKS curriculum. Barton appears to have taken a step back from his written review of the TEKS, in which he also suggested the removal of Anne Hutchinson, Carl Sagan, and Colin Powell from the historical figures list. Barton also advocated for the inclusion of religion in the program, counseling that students be taught “inalienable rights as being those rights given by God.”

It’s encouraging to see the First Amendment tested on this Constitution Day. Though our founding documents use the words “creator” and “under God,” it’s not clear we shouldn’t necessarily fasten the Constitution’s attitude of human equality to Christian origins, just as modern society doesn’t follow 18th century morality. Yes, these critical documents influence the way we think about government today, but most people consider their influences as historical information to weigh and consider instead of treating them as roadmaps and relics. For example, our founding fathers wrote in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  The author of the First Amendment was almost certainly thinking about their ancestors’ flight from England in which they were dissatisfied with the Church and were not permitted to practice their Puritan faith. Though Puritan states like the Massachusetts Bay Colony were established under this sentiment of “free exercise,” the intention of the First Amendment was obviously not to establish and protect Puritanism. The free exercise of faith ensures that all of America’s modern-day “pilgrims” may live in a country free of imposed religion.

As the economic crisis unfolds arts and cultural institutions are slashing expenses and struggling to remain alive. The story is no different in Mexico, though theater groups in Mexico City have come up with a novel way to survive. In the past year a movement has started where small theater groups perform in people’s apartments or homes. The amount of money saved by not having to rent a theater is making a huge difference for theater groups trying to make it through lean times, says Mariana Garcia Franco, director of the theater group “C”.

On a recent evening I was invited to see Garcia’s group perform in a friend’s apartment. Each person attending was asked to pay $80 pesos (about $6 bucks). There were two actresses: Alicia Martin and Maricela Penalosa who performed an hour-long untitled play.

There were 17 people in the audience and we all crammed into my friend’s apartment to watch the show. The play was very abstract and also visceral and athletic at times. Both of the characters were battling some type of mental anguish and at times it made me feel uncomfortable to be so close. The actresses were so good they embodied their two characters completely. They also did not appear to be nervous at all. (No small feat when you are performing in someone’s living room surrounded by your audience.) At some points the two characters would seem to be addressing us and they would sit amongst the audience. They were firmly locked inside the play though and it was a little like being a fly on the wall in a lunatic asylum. This might sound jarring or awful but it actually was a really good theater experience.

Garcia, the theater group’s director, says they are booked just about every week performing in someone’s home. “Usually someone from the audience will ask us to come to their home and perform,” she says. “And it spreads by word of mouth.” There are also several other theater groups in Mexico City performing on a weekly basis including a group called Teatro Instantaneo where the actors write the play as they go along with the help of the audience.

It’s heartening to see that theater groups in Mexico City are thriving instead of letting the economic crisis close them down.

A sign created by Mexico’s Secretary of Health on how to avoid the spread of influenza.

Just four months ago the streets of Mexico City were nearly desolate — no small feat in a city of 23 million. Schools, restaurants and other public areas were shuttered. The country was in a near panic over the spread of swine flu  (H1N1). It’s incredible what a difference four months can make. Upon arrival at the Mexico City airport I was asked to fill out a form detailing whether I had a fever or cough. Luckily, I had neither and turned my form into an extremely bored looking airport employee upon entering customs.

The only trace of the pandemic at the airport were signs created by the government advising people to wash their hands and not greet others with a kiss on the cheek as is custom in Mexico.  As I headed toward Mexico City’s massive and impressive zocalo– a huge plaza at the center of the city — I would see an occasional person wearing a disposable surgical mask. Millions of these masks  were given out during the height of the H1N1 scare. Inexplicably, I saw one man wearing the mask around his neck as if it were some kind of magic good-health talisman.

As I headed into Sanborns — a huge department store, I saw a European family wearing the disposable surgical masks and snapping photos. It was unsettling to see them walking around in masks, but after weeks of alarming news stories about the flu in Mexico it was understandable.    Of course,  in public health school I learned that these masks do little to prevent the influenza virus from infecting you — the virus is small enough to pass through the porous holes in the mask.  (I think the Mexican government was smart in passing out the masks, however, in order to quell some of the panic around the H1N1 virus.)

While the flu has disappeared from the minds of most Mexicans, there are still cases being confirmed by the government’s Secretary of Health. In the agency’s most current update — July 17th — there were 98 new cases — down from the peak of 391 in early May. To date there have been 14,861 cases confirmed and 138 deaths.  The United States has the highest number of confirmed flu cases at 40,617 and 263 deaths (24 of the deaths occurred in Texas.)

While public health officials monitor the H1N1 situation, Mexicans have more pressing concerns on their minds including escalating narco violence and the resurgence of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which ruled the country for 70 years. In the recent mid-term elections in early July, the PRI won a majority in Congress. Many Mexicans I’ve spoken with are despondent about the PRI’s resurgence. They blame the PRI for many of the country’s current economic and social problems.

A sign of this discord is growing in Tepoztlan, just south of Mexico City, where my husband’s family lives. In early July a candidate for the PRI, Gabino Rios Cedillo, won the mayor’s race after 9 years of the more liberal PRD serving in the mayor’s office. In Tepoztlan, political activists are working to join all of the losing parties together to overthrow the PRI candidate. Last Sunday cars with loud speakers circulated in the city enjoining residents to prevent Rios from taking office. There have been all kinds of accusations surrounding his win — including that he paid for the votes. Residents are hoping the political fracas doesn’t develop into something more bloody.

There is definitely an uneasy feeling these days in Mexico — no one can predict what will happen and there are so many challenges facing the country. Mexicans have lost what little hope they gained in their political system in 2000 when the PRI was toppled.

In a recent Observer story we reported that Texas has the highest number of construction deaths in the nation — 142 people died in 2007, according to Dept. of Labor statistics. As our story went to press three workers plunged to their deaths in Austin from a high-rise condo. Apparently, Texas’ appalling safety record finally caught the ear of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

She announced yesterday in San Antonio that her agency will send additional Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors to construction work sites in Texas. Solis stated in the press announcement that the new construction safety initiative would start sometime in July. Elizabeth Todd, a spokesperson for OSHA, said they didn’t have a figure for the number of inspectors to be added or a specific date yet on when the initiative might begin next month.

Solis emphasized in the announcement that inspectors would be empowered to launch immediate investigations. “Beginning in July, OSHA will increase the number of inspectors in Texas for a concentrated effort to prevent injuries and fatalities at construction sites. When these inspectors observe unsafe scaffolds, fall risks, trenches or other hazards, they are empowered to launch an immediate investigation,” Solis said. “As I have said since my first day on the job — the U.S. Department of Labor is back in the enforcement business.”

The nonprofit Workers Defense Project in Austin which recently released a study on construction worker safety said Solis’ announcement was an important first step. Cristina Tzintzun, director of the nonprofit, said to be truly effective the inspections would need to be unannounced. Currently, many inspections are often announced in advance.

Another question is whether OSHA will increase its fines for worker safety so that they actually force a contractor or developer to change their work practices. The average work safety violation ranges between $750 to $4,000. As we pointed out in the Observer story, when construction worker Omar Puerto died in 2006, his employer was fined a pittance — just $4,950.

About 30 people observed World Refugee Day Saturday by staging a protest outside the T. Don Hutto immigrant detention facility in Taylor. The T. Don Hutto facility has been one of America’s uglier answers to our broken immigration system. A re-purposed jail, the facility was converted under the Bush Administration into a detention center for families awaiting their day in immigration court.

In the past, children were treated like prisoners in lockdown and threatened with separation from their families by the detention guards if they made too much noise. It took a lawsuit by the ACLU in 2007 to improve things inside the facility. Not to say that it still isn’t a prison — just a prison with children’s paintings on the walls and shower curtains in the bathrooms. To learn more about the detention facility check out the documentary “The Least of These” online.

It was about 95 degrees in the shade. Protesters gathered across the street from the facility with signs. A stage was set up where music was played and organizers gave speeches from a diverse group including Border Ambassadors, Amnesty International and LULAC.

Antonio Diaz from San Antonio has been going to the protests for two years.  Diaz said he doesn’t want to see his government locking up children in prison. Today there was no sight of any of the families in the yard surrounding the facility which is ringed with a chain-link fence. It used to be topped with razor wire but that was removed after the ACLU settlement. Diaz said the detainees were not allowed to come out while the protesters were there.

“When we are here protesting they put the families in lockdown,” he says. “They tell them they are not safe outside with us here.”

Jose Orta, a chapter leader for LULAC in Taylor has been protesting against the detention facility since it opened in 2006. His goal is to see the immigration facility closed, although he thinks the facility will be converted back into a regular prison. “It’s no place for a 6-month old baby to be living,” he said. “I’d love to see it close down but it’s been here a long time before the CCA took it over.”

The facility is operated by the private Corrections Corporation of America and funded by our tax dollars. One of only two facilities in the nation — the other is in Pennsylvania — that holds children in detention. Let’s hope the Obama Administration finally reforms our broken immigration system so that the first thing a child sees in this country isn’t a jail cell.

The sight of a 145 pairs of work boots lined up in front of Austin City Hall today was an indelible reminder that Texas is the deadliest state in the nation for construction workers.

Construction workers, politicians, priests and worker advocates met in front of city hall this morning to highlight a new study by the Austin nonprofit Workers Defense Project. The study “Building Austin, Building Injustice: Working Conditions in Austin’s Construction Industry” focuses on workers in Austin, one of the more vibrant housing markets still left in the nation.

Besides being subjected to dangerous work conditions in many cases, one-in-five workers did not get paid, according to the study. Antonio Melo, a construction worker at the event said he and several other workers still hadn’t been paid $20,000 after building condos in East Austin. “I had to sell my truck,” he said. “This is a robbery. We still haven’t been paid but they are selling these condos and making a lot of money.”

The three workers who died last week in Austin were remembered in a prayer given by Rev. John Korcsmar a priest from Dolores Catholic Church in East Austin. The men who fell to their deaths from a collapsed scaffolding on an Austin high-rise condo were identified as 30-year-old Wilson Joel Irias Cerritos from Honduras, 27-year-old Raudel Ramirez Camacho from Mexico and 28-year-old Jesus Angel Lopez Perez from Honduras. Korcsmar blessed the dozens of workers at the event.

“It’s wrong to build such a beautiful place on the broken bones…dead bodies of those that built it,” he told the crowd.

It will take at least 6 months before the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration comes back with its findings on the accident. For the death we recently chronicled in “Dying to Build” in this issue of the Observer, the company was fined $4,950 for the death of a worker — a pitifully small sum for a man’s life.

The mass layoffs at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in the wake of Hurricane Ike are under investigation by the American Association of University Professors. The organization formed in 1914 is going to investigate accusations by tenured professors that the layoffs could have been prevented.

About 2,500 employees were dismissed including tenured professors. Some of these professors viewed the layoffs as a way for UTMB to conveniently rid itself of tenured staff.

According to a story in the Galveston Daily News yesterday, the AAUP plans to visit Galveston and Austin this summer and will be meeting with the UT Board of Regents.

“We don’t launch an investigation lightly,” said Eric Combest, associate secretary in the Department of Academic Freedom and Tenure of the 94-year-old organization based in Washington, D.C.

“What happened at UTMB raises very significant concerns about academic freedom and questions the committee will try to answer, not only for the people involved, but more widely, the academic community.”

UTMB officials say they had no choice in the layoffs since they were losing millions due to the hurricane.

If the association determines faculty members were laid off for reasons other than the medical institution’s financial losses, UTMB could face censure.

The censure would not result in any legal proceedings. In 2007 three universities in New Orleans were censured by AAUP in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.