ustxtxb_obs_2005_03_18_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

www.koop.org oh we’re out there FIFTY YEARS OF FIIITEO BY CHAR MUIRR FOREWORD BY MOLLY \(\\INS you’re going be low expenditures, then of course, you have to pick and choose what it is that you’re going to develop. And so, it’s not just what political leaders do. Our political leaders do what we want them to do at least in general part. We have to look back at ourselves. TO: As you go around the state, what kind of response are you getting to your presentations? SM: Well, it’s changed a lot over the past 25 years that I’ve been talking about this. Twenty-five years ago a lot of people didn’t believe this was going to happen. Virtually no one will say today, “We’re not going to be diverse. We’re not getting older?’ So I think there’s a lot more acceptance. I think the reactions run somewhat to what you’d expect. That is, there’s some who look at it and say, “What should we do to address this?” There are some who say, “I’m going to wall myself off. I’ll find a place where I can live and forget about all this, I don’t want to deal with it.” Those are probably the two most common. And the third set really says, “I see what it is but you can’t do a thing about it. It’s going happen. What do we do?” In other words, they’re not as activated to look for alternatives to do things. They just feel like it’s overwhelming. I’d say those are the most frequent reactions these days. Twenty-five years ago many people said, “You’re just wrong.” Certainly the number of people that are interested in doing something about it has increased over the years. They increasingly see their fate is tied. And one of the things that we try to show in our workand this goes back to the individual versus the group phenomenon is the extent to which all Texans’ fates are tied to the changes that occur and how we handle them. By [20123 or [20124, we’re talking about three out of every four Texas workers being non-Anglo. I like to say, well, if I, as an aging Anglo, forget that the quality of services I’m going to havefire, police, and other servicesdepend on how well primarily the working-age population is doing, I really do so to my own detriment. Our fates are intertwined and related. How well our non-Anglo citizens do in Texas is how well Texas will do. Fifty Years of the Texas Observer Edited by Char Miller Foreword by Molly Ivins “From Molly Ivins to Willie Morris, Jim Hightower to Larry McMurtry, no other against-the-grain publication in America has helped to nurture such a stellar array of writers.” Adam Hochschild For updated event information, go to www.trin ity.ed u/tu p ress TRINITY UNIVERSITY PRESS www.trinity.eduitupress Distributed by Publishers Group West MARCH 18, 2005 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19