ustxtxb_obs_1989_05_19_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

. Vil 41.4141T or _. . JO _..,.. r;} ,i t:i :4 -: i r THE TEXAS 10 server A JOURNAL OF We will serve no ,t;roup or party the truth as we find it and the are dedicated to the whole above all interests, to the rights foundation of democracy; none but our own conscience, look or misrepresent the truth the powelfid or alter to the ignoble Writers are responsible fin for anything they have not themselves publishing them we do not agree vvith them becauSe this SINCE …mu ‘—–… —–.–r i l_111 1:-7’-,-,n , FREE VOICES but will hew hard to right as we see it. We truth. to human values of humankind as the we will take orders from and never will we over to serve the interests of in the human spirit. their own work, but not written, and in necessarily imply that we is a journal of free voices. 1954 Publisher: Ronnie Dugger Editor: Dave Denison Associate Editor: Louis Dubose Calendar: Elisa Lyles Washington Correspondents: Mary Anne Reilly. Richard Ryan Contributing Writers: Bill Adler. Betty Brink. Warren Burnett. Jo Clifton. John Henry Faulk. Terry FitzPatrick. Gregg Franzwa. Bill Helmer. James Harrington. Amy Johnson. Michael King. Mary Lenz. Dana Loy. Tom McClellan. Greg Moses. Rick Piltz. Gary Pomerantz. John .. Schwartz, Michael Ventura. Lawrence Walsh Editorial Advisory Board: Frances Barton. Austin: Elroy Bode. Kerrville: Chandler Davidson. Houston: Bob Eckhardt, Washington. D.C.: Sissy Farenthold. Houston: Ruperto Garcia. Austin: John Kenneth Galbraith. Cambridge, Mass.: Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham. N.C.: George Hendrick. Urbana. Ill.: Molly Ivins. Austin: Larry L. King. Washington. D.C.: Maury Maverick. Jr.. San Antonio: Willie Morris. Oxford, Miss.: Kaye Northcott. Austin: James Presley. Texarkana: Susan Reid. Austin: Geoffrey Fred Schmidt. Fredericksburg: Robert Sherrill. Tallahassee. Fla. Layout and Design: Layne Jackson Typesetter: Becky Willard Contributing Photographers: Bill Albrecht. Vic Hinterlang, Alan Pogue. Contributing Artists: Eric Avery. Tom Ballenger. Richard Bartholomew. Jeff Danziger. Beth Epstein. Dan Hubig. Pat Johnson. Kevin Kreneck. Carlos Lowry. Ben Sargent. Dan Thihodeau. Gail Woods. Managing Publisher: Cliff Olofson Subscription Manager: Stefan Wanstrom Special Projects Director: Bill Simmons Development Consultant: Frances Barton SUBSCRIPTIONS: One sear S27. two sears 548. three ;.ears 569. Full. time students 515 per year. Back issues 53 prepaid. Airmail. foreign. group. and hulk rates on request: Microfilm editions akailuble from Unnersit subscriber who finds the price a burden should sa so at renewal time: no one need forgo reading the Observer simply because of the cost. ,: 1989, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval Texas Observer Publishing Co., 307 West 7th Street. Austin. paid at Austin. Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER. P.O. Box 49019. Austin. Texas 78765 LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER Austin FOR 35 YEARS now, the subscribers to the Observer have composed a community of hope and faith, hope that the kinder and loving sides of human nature can be more fully embodied in social policy, faith that political effort, direct action, and strength in the form of patience will cause real change in this direction. From time to time we at the paper’s offices seek to summon members of the Observer community to a family meeting. As you read this, we invite you to come and be with your fellow Texas progressives Tuesday evening, May 23 in Austin, for our first Texas Observer benefit dinner, during which U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough honors us by letting us honor him. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts has agreed to fly in to be our featured speaker on this occasion. We have just been informed from his office in Washington that he will speak, in Yarborough’s honor, on “The Challenge of the 1990’s.” After the Dukakis defeat, Senator Kennedy offered some of the most candid and salient criticisms of what has been happening to the Democratic Party. In keeping with Senator Yarborough’s wish that the May 23 celebration focus not on the past, but on the future, Kennedy will face us forward. During this event we will inaugurate a new Observer tradition. Mrs. R.D. Randolph, the first publisher of the Observer, was also the great progressive Democratic National Committeewoman from Texas from 1956 to 1960. Those of us whose adult memories run that far back know that she was one of the toughest leaders liberal Texas Democrats have ever had, a no-nonsense worker and champion for the humanist hope and faith that animate all of us in this movement. We asked Fred Schmidt, the gifted sculptor and writer who lives and works in Fredericksburg, to sculpt and have cast a work of art and to let us call it the Frankie Randolph Social Justice Award. We will present this award to Senator Yarborough Tuesday night, the 23rd. So this will be an event for the older liberals and for those like Senator Yarborough, who styles himself “a loyal progressive Democrat.” But there will be plenty going on for the new generation, too. The emcee will be former Observer editor Molly Ivins, than whom there is no livelier. And music will be provided \(quietly during the dinner, and for dancing after the end Dames. Senator Yarborough, who is 85, is actively practicing law, in Austin. During his thirteen years as the U.S. Senator from Texas between 1957 and 1970, more than any other single Texan of the last hundred years Yarborough paved the way toward a future worth living. He is excited about this event and has helped us prepare for it in many ways. During the past few weeks I have had the great pleasure of many hours of discussion with Ralph and his partner and peer, Opal. They are the same high-minded, strong-minded, crusading couple they have always been, except now they seem to know even more than they used to. Senator Yarborough had quadruple-bypass openheart surgery in 1987, and about a month ago he had corrective surgery for another problem that was bothering him, but the Yarboroughs are getting around very well, thank you. I cannot tell you how it moves me that they are doing this with us. It is our intention that this dinner will be an occasion for the reuniting and reviving of the great Texas progressive coalition that elected Yarborough and other progressives in the fifties and sixties. It is time the historical moment to start again, or, as Frankie Randolph would say, to organize. I deeply believe the time has finally come to rev up again the movement we had in Texas in the fifties and sixties to form anew the solid, hard-working populist coalition that has been called for by Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower so that, as Yarborough would say, we can “beat the hell out of those reactionaries.” As I write we sense a rising interest in this event on the 23rd. Senator Kennedy only let us know on April 7 that he could come, so since then we have been working day and night planning the event and getting out the word. As news has spread, there may have occurred something like a collective decision that it is time for a regathering of the Texas clan, an Old Home Week, but time for a New Start. Federal judges Woodrow Seals and his wife Daisy and Wayne Justice and his wife Sue are flying in. So are Bob Eckhardt, from Washington, and banker Walter Hall of Dickinson, a fighter for Yarborough’s elections and a great rarity, a banker Democrat who owns three small and solvent banks. We expect, too, a good showing of Continued on page 20 An Invitation: Yarborough and Kennedy 2 MAY 19, 1989