Articles tagged: grassroots leadership
New Contract Could Give Austin One of the Most Transparent Police Departments in the Country
Activists are claiming victory after a drawn-out fight over police accountability, and encouraging other cities to follow suit.
After 18 months of tense negotiations over a police union contract, the Austin City Council and the city’s police union have agreed to reforms that anti-polic...Read More
‘Recipe for Disaster’: New Family Detention Center Could Open in South Texas
The proposed facility — a shuttered nursing home in San Diego, Texas — would be run by a British private prison company with a history of alleged abuses in Australia and England.
Trump’s desire to jail thousands of immigrant families for months at a time has rekindled an economic romance between a tiny South Texas county and a British ...Read More
Asylum-Seeker’s Release Shows Activists Can Win Under Trump’s ICE
But it ain’t easy.
It took more than four months, a bombardment of letters and calls and protests, an FBI investigation, a federal lawsuit and the intervention of at least 46 memb...Read More
Guatemalan Mom, Son Win Surprise Victory for Sanctuary Movement
The pair took sanctuary in an Austin church eight months ago, hoping to avoid deportation back into danger at home.
Immigrant experts say pressure from an Austin church and others in the sanctuary movement may have prompted an unusual form of relief for a Guatemalan pair....Read More
Judge Halts Child Care License for Dilley Detention Center
Citing the potential for abuse at the center, a Travis County judge prevented Texas’ child welfare agency from licensing the facility for child care.
Texas' efforts to license the second of two immigrant family detention centers in the state as a child care facility are on hold until a September trial....Read More
An End to Family Detention? Immigration Groups are Wary
A top ICE official told D.C. lawmakers ICE will end detention of women and children, but Texas immigrant rights groups are skeptical without more details....Read More
New Technologies Connect Prisoners to the Outside World
'Returning citizens' develop apps and initiatives to reduce recidivism.
'Returning citizens' have developed apps for inmates and families, but other new tech may be more about corporate bottom lines than reducing recidivism....Read More
Child Careless
Texas doesn't want to take migrant children out of prison-like detention centers, so it found a way to classify the facilities as child care outfits.
If the state doesn't create the licenses for immigrant detention centers, it won't be able to hold migrant children and moms in prison-like conditions....Read More