Tag Archives: Dallas
The Texas GOP’s War of Municipal Aggression
With their approval of a bill to “protect” Confederate monuments from liberal city halls, Senate Republicans exposed the raw racial dynamics of the party’s preemption crusade.
For more than a century, a pillar of granite and marble has loomed 60 feet high in downtown Dallas, topped with a statue of a Confederate soldier. Statues of f...Read More
The Big Blue Obstacle to Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform
In the era of right-on-crime-backed efforts to curb mass incarceration, police unions have increasingly become a voice in the wilderness.
Jack Michael Ule’s death inside the Bexar County jail on April 18 struck a nerve. Arrested two weeks earlier for criminal trespass, a Class B misdemeanor, Ule...Read More
Dallas County DA John Creuzot Calls New Reforms ‘A Step Forward in Ending Mass Incarceration’
The policies announced Thursday range from refusing to prosecute certain drug cases to reforming probation and changing how the office handles crimes related to poverty and homelessness.
Last year, Dallas was ground zero in the national movement to elect prosecutors willing to help shrink the bloated carceral state. The race for Dallas County DA...Read More
At Home in the World
Houston artist Prince Varughese Thomas blurs boundaries of politics, medium and identity.
At Home in the World Houston artist Prince Varughese Thomas blurs boundaries of politics, medium and identity. – by Michael Agresta April 8, 2019 As a you...Read More
New Chicken Farms are Ruining Roads and Fowling the Air in Upshur County
As industrial chicken farming expands to East Texas, local residents say they’ve been bombarded with the waste of hundreds of thousands of birds, an “overpowering” stench and heavy truck traffic.
It took a decade for Ronnie Blundell to find the perfect plot of land where he could build his dream home in rural Upshur County, a community of 40,000 about 14...Read More
Civil Rights Activists Push Lawmakers to Confront Texas’ Dark History of Convict Leasing
Convict leasing, which historians have called “slavery by another name,” was used to build the Capitol and earn profits for the state and private companies for decades.
The Texas Capitol is a source of pride for those who walk its ornate hallways each day. But the building’s thick stone walls hold a dirty secret lawmakers and...Read More
Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, who died at 91 last week, liked pausing by roadsides everywhere in Texas to examine plants, pocket seeds and smell the air.
You might not have guessed it. W.S. Merwin, widely beloved, cosmopolitan, world-renowned poet, translator and lifelong pacifist, who died last week at 91 in his...Read More
New Documentary Reveals the Deadly Cost of Texas’ Anti-Worker Agenda
As the Legislature ponders yet another crackdown on labor, Building the American Dream explores the stakes of labor policy in the country’s largest red state.
Roendy Granillo, 25, was installing hardwood flooring in a house near Dallas when the heat started getting to him. It was July 2015, and the temperature had hit...Read More
Botham Jean’s Death Could Lead to an Overhaul of Police Oversight in Dallas
The outrageous shooting of a man in his own apartment has triggered calls to reform Dallas’ toothless, decades-old system of police oversight.
In the 1970s, the Dallas Police Department was pressured to diversify after a white cop killed a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy in a game of Russian Roulette....Read More