Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Austin, Journalism, and Video
The song performed before yesterday’s march at Austin City Hall was a lovely moment of international solidarity with the people of Palestine. I hope they could hear us.
This video represents me experimenting with CapCut to create more short videos in the style of TikTok posts or Instagram reels. As you can see, I’m still learning, but I’m also trying to get better at sharing my imperfect projects and works-in-progress more often too.
Posted in Austin, Journalism, LGBTQIA, and The Advocate
The ever-evolving membership of the Little Gay Book Club in Austin, Texas, gathers several times a month to read together, to celebrate their love of literature, and of course to debate the latest selections. They’re one of a small, but growing number of LGBTQ+ book clubs springing up across the United States—from Philadelphia to Richmond, Virginia, among others—that meet regularly to share books and dish about their lives.
I first met Lex Loro, the genderqueer manager of the Little Gay Book Club, in the sumptuous roof garden on top of Austin Public Library’s main headquarters during a book fair. We spoke under the shade of solar panels as Loro took a break from slinging books on behalf of their employer and the book club’s sponsor, the Little Gay Shop. Lex was dressed in a casual-yet-fab Barbie-pink-themed outfit, complete with dangly earrings declaring her pronouns: ‘They’ down one ear, and ‘She’ down the other. In addition to managing the shop’s book club and other literacy programs, they’re also the director of community health at the San Antonio Pride Center.
“Book clubs create an opportunity for queer people in particular, or just any minoritized people, to access stories about our realities that are similar to us and access stories about people in our community that are different from us,” Loro told me.
Posted in Austin, and Journalism
In the spring of 2023, Kit O’Connell broke a story for the Texas Observer about the dress code at the Texas Department of Agriculture. The rules stated that, at the TDA office, “pants and Western attire are allowable” for women. Skirts higher than four inches from the knee were not, nor was clothing that encouraged “excessive cleavage.” Men should not wear Crocs or slides, nor tuck their pants into boots. Also, the policy noted, “employees are expected to comply with this dress code in a manner consistent with their biological gender.” If they did not—and refused requests from their supervisors to “change into conforming attire”—they could eventually be fired.
The story got picked up quickly by NPR, NBC News, The Guardian, and beyond. O’Connell’s framing—that this was “anti-LGBTQ+ oppression”—was echoed by those larger outlets, with context on a cascade of recent anti-trans legislation in the state. The TDA didn’t respond to the Observer’s request for comment, but as attention mounted, Sid Miller, the department’s commissioner, provided an interview to Austin’s local Spectrum News channel. “When a man comes dressed in drag, or vice versa, it’s very disruptive. It’s not professional,” he said. “My people need to look and act professional.”
Time slid on. As of this summer, the dress code remained. No major national or international outlets had followed up. O’Connell checked in. “For over a year,” they wrote for the Observer, “employees of the Texas Department of Agriculture have been subject to a dress code that is transphobic and potentially illegal.” In researching the second story, O’Connell combed through internal TDA emails obtained by a nonprofit called American Oversight, which procures government records. The emails about the dress code, O’Connell wrote, showed that “senior agency staff were aware TDA was wading into legally dubious waters and that a number of employees objected to its implementation and felt personally discriminated against.” O’Connell pulled a quote from an employee who noted that “within the past six months, several trans, queer, and/or gender-nonconforming staff have been hired by the TDA. This timing could lead one to conclude that this policy is a direct result of trans visibility in the workplace.”
When the municipal government of Frisco, Texas, made its only Pride declaration in June of 2022, the event made headlines for a different reason than that historic first: it drew out the Proud Boys.
The extremist right-wing group has made opposition to LGBTQ+ expression – especially drag and Pride – a cornerstone of its violent movement. In Frisco, the Proud Boys harassed a key organizer and followed him and other supporters to a celebration at a restaurant after the proclamation.
Justin Culpepper, 36, one-half of the married couple who founded the nonprofit Pride Frisco, said the extremist group threatened to assault him. “I went into the restaurant, and the people who worked at the restaurant protected me,” he recalled.
Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Texas Observer
Most people survive the Coronavirus with their kidneys intact. But not 34-year-old Austin resident Vanessa Ramos.
An experienced community organizer with nonprofits like the Sierra Club, Ramos was healthy and active before she got infected. Then she caught the COVID-19 virus in December 2021, and symptoms lingered through the new year despite her efforts to focus on healing and recovery.
“I was trying to prioritize my physical health because I couldn’t lift things; I couldn’t open things,” Ramos recalled. “I didn’t understand why I was getting weaker.”
Posted in Austin, Journalism, and SXSW
On Monday, a group of protesters at a conference in Texas challenged the mayor of Atlanta over the city’s ongoing plans to build a massive training center for police and other law enforcement agencies, eventually forcing Andre Dickens to leave the event entirely.
The direct action took place at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual conference, film, and music festival in Austin, Texas, at a ballroom of the downtown Hilton hotel (one of several sites where the conference occurs). The panel discussion was intended to be about conflict between city and state governments. Instead the audience received a very different lesson in civic engagement, as the Austin chapter of the Weelaunee Defense Society, an activist group devoted to the national “Stop Cop City” movement, would soon dramatically change the agenda.
