Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Audio, Austin, Journalism, Occupy Wall Street, and Video
Last weekend, I talked with photojournalist Zach Roberts of VisuNews about my recent essay on why we need to stop protesting at empty buildings and become more strategic about our activism.
We also talked about our work as journalists, and our involvement with past movements like Occupy Wall Street.
Posted in Austin, Creative Commons, and Journalism
The reelection of Donald Trump is a crisis decades in the making that presents activists with challenges the likes of which we’ve likely never seen in our lifetimes. If we are to rise to the occasion, we must engage our skills with caution and creativity in order to help each other survive until whatever comes next.
Trump’s destruction of vital services has occurred at a dizzying pace and our government is now controlled by an unelected tech billionaire. Frightened and angry people are starting to take to the streets. Unfortunately, I see many of them relying on outdated, unsustainable strategies that already lost their effectiveness before Donald Trump reclaimed the presidency.
One question I’m not alone in asking: Why do we keep marching on empty buildings?
Posted in Journalism, and The Texas Observer
A national project tracking anti-LGBTQ+ hate found dozens of homophobic and transphobic incidents in Texas during 2024, ranging from physical assaults to stolen Pride flags, though the most common type of incident were protests by right-wing extremists, often outside of drag events. The database, compiled by the Anti-LGBTQ+ Extremism Reporting Tracker (ALERT) Desk, a project of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, also recorded a wave of dozens of bomb threats, including several in Texas.
In all, the ALERT Desk logged 918 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents nationwide last year, of which 61 took place in our state. Only New York, with 61, and California, with 125, had as many or more hate incidents.
Nationally, that averages out to about 2.5 incidents per day in 2024. Almost half of the incidents (48 percent) targeted transgender, nonbinary, or other gender-nonconforming people. The ALERT Desk compiles incidents from mainstream and independent media, as well as through direct reports, social media, and monitoring of extremists’ online communications. The Texas Observer was granted access to a full list of incidents reported in Texas.
Posted in Austin, Deceleration, and Journalism
For the past 40 years, ADAPT of Texas has advocated for the world to be more accessible, so that more disabled people can live in their communities, rather than in institutions. The progress this community has made in that timespan, which includes the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is remarkable. At 78 years old, community organizer Bob Kafka has been there to witness those changes. Like many in the rabble-rousing organization, he’s not afraid to throw his body, and his wheelchair, in the way of the machinery of injustice; he was present at key moments of nonviolent direct action like the Capitol Crawl and the subsequent occupation of the Capitol rotunda which forced Congress to pass the ADA.
Today, the disability rights community is looking at the incoming administration with trepidation, preparing to fight attempts to dismantle their hardfought gains. In a state where the governor is himself disabled yet often seems actively hostile to their cause, ADAPT organizers are prepared to ramp up pressure on Texas lawmakers to improve the state’s treatment of disabled people and their caregivers.
Posted in Austin, Journalism, Life, The Advocate, The Barbed Wire, and The Texas Observer
What a ride this year was—the highs were very high and the lows were very low. But at the same time, I can look back at 2024 and feel proud.
Probably my proudest moment this year wasn’t something I wrote, but that someone else wrote about me. In September, the Columbia Journalism Review profiled my work and career. Journalist Lucy Schiller spent days getting to know me and shadowing me while I reported, and photographer Montinique Monroe made me feel incredibly comfortable and look incredibly cute. I couldn’t be happier with how this turned out, and I’m honored that they thought me worth profiling.
Murder, assault, bomb threats, and verbal threats were some of the worst anti-LGBTQ+ hate incidents occurring in the greater Austin area over the last three years, according to data that the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD documented as the basis for a recent report on such incidents nationwide. Austin Free Press used GLAAD’s Texas data to analyze incidents in the Austin area.
Even as violent crime falls nationwide, threats against the LGBTQ+ community are on the rise nationally, in Texas, and in Austin. In explaining that contradiction, experts say anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is helping to drive those trends.
“We’re seeing this really massive rise in anti-LGBTQ incidents all across the U.S.,” said Sarah Moore, GLAAD’s senior manager of news and research. Moore’s research shows that between Pride Month in June of 2023 and that same time this year incidents increased by 112% nationwide. In Texas, the increase was 44% during that period.
