21 minute read
News
HWith the midterms approaching in the wake of Texas implementing its unpopular near-total ban on abortion, the state’s health department said it will miss its Sept. 1 deadline to release new data on maternal mortality. The Texas Department of State Health Services said the new data will now have to wait until after both the election and the next meeting of the state legislature. Texas hasn’t provided an update on pregnancy-related deaths in nine years.
HCity council last week approved a $3.4 billion budget for the City of San Antonio’s 2023 fi scal year, commi ing to major investments in local infrastructure and additional property tax relief. The city also is giving its civilian employees a 5% raise, while increasing its starting hourly wage to $17.50. Also included was a controversial rebate to CPS Energy customers which some on council argue should have funded climate-change readiness.
Advertisement
HGov. Greg Abbo ’s re-election campaign launched a deceptive TV ad claiming that Democratic rival Beto O’Rourke supports defunding the police. The spot edits together separate statements O’Rourke made during the summer of 2020 to make it seem he favors slashing police budgets. Instead, O’Rourke said he supports activists’ eff orts to reallocate “line items that have overmilitarized our police” on programs that prevent crime.
San Antonio’s second-largest school district has chosen a former U.S. Secret Service agent to head up its security operation. U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Paul Duran will start work as North East ISD’s senior director of safety and security on Oct. 3 after departing the San Antonio secret service fi eld offi ce. Duran was once charged with protecting presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. — Abe Asher
YOU SAID IT!
— Lisa Belcastro
Martha’s Vineyard shelter organizer to the Texas Tribune after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent migrants from San Antonio to the Massachusetts resort town
Instagram / @govabbott
ASSCLOWN ALERT
Racing to the bottom with Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis
Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Anyone questioning whether Gov. Greg Abbo is chasing the 2024 Republican nomination need look no further than his despicable actions last week to see he’s all in.
After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — currently a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nod — grabbed headlines last Wednesday by cruelly stranding 50 asylum seekers picked up in San Antonio in Martha’s Vineyard, Abbo refused to be outdone.
The following day, Abbo dumped two busloads of migrants at Vice President Kamala Harris’ offi cial residence. Subsequently, Abbo ’s offi ce sent a statement to the Current saying he’d had discussions with DeSantis about his program of expelling asylum seekers prior to the Florida governor’s Martha’s Vineyard stunt.
And, not to be further upstaged, Abbo signed onto a le er by DeSantis and 20 other GOP governors urging President Joe Biden to scrap his plan to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for Americans.
As justifi cation, the governors claimed the plan would force hourly workers to “pay off the master’s and doctorate degrees of high salaried lawyers, doctors, and professors.” Never mind that people earning $125,000 or more annually are exempt or that those eligible to cancel more than $10,000 are required to be recipients of grants for low-income students.
Clearly, neither compassion nor truth are much of a consideration in Abbo ’s race to the bo om with DeSantis. Clearly, these two sewer dwellers understand that in the post-Trump Republican Party, such characteristics are political liabilities. — Sanford Nowlin
news
A former San Antonio police offi cer has been indicted for felony child abuse. Adam Franklin-Alonso, 29, was indicted on three felony counts of injury to a child in February and fi red by SAPD in June. According to TV station KSAT, Franklin-Alonso, who’s accused of pointing a gun at a child during a game of hide-and-seek, is at least the seventh current or former SAPD offi cer to face criminal charges so far this year.
Gov. Greg Abbo continues to lead Democrat Beto O’Rourke by a narrow margin in the race for governor. A new poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found Abbo ahead of the former El Paso congressman by fi ve percentage points. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and A orney General Ken Paxton both lead their respective Democratic challengers by similar margins. State inspection reports obtained by the Texas Tribune reveal that children in at least two Texas youth prison lockups were repeatedly trapped in their cells this summer and forced to urinate in bo les and defecate on the fl oor. Gov. Greg Abbo has shown li le urgency in addressing the problems plaguing the state’s youth prison system, which come as the Texas Juvenile Justice Department faces a staffi ng crisis and a number of children have been placed on suicide watch. — Abe Asher
Find more news coverage every day at sacurrent.com
September is Hunger Action Month, a month where people all over the nation mobilize and take action in the fight against hunger.
Because of the ongoing Covid pandemic and inflation on the rise, the San Antonio Food Bank has grown to serve 100,000 individuals each week across Southwest Texas.
GIVE HOPE by donating Food, Time, Money, and Voice to create opportunities for individuals and families in our community to GET HOPE.
Learn all the ways you can take action this month by visiting safoodbank.org/ham
Scan this code with your smart phone
Noise Annoys
Time’s ticking down for bars, restaurants and venues to weigh in on San Antonio’s proposed rewrite of its noise ordinance
BY SANFORD NOWLIN
What if you proposed a noise ordinance and no one showed up?
That’s the dilemma facing San Antonio bar, restaurant and venue operators as time ticks down on their chance to comment on the city’s pending overhaul of its rules for live music and other amplifi ed sounds.
A task force that’s spent more than a year weighing an update to those guidelines last month received its fi nal report from a consultant hired to study how to stave off confl icts between neighbors and businesses over sound levels.
However, some involved in the process worry the businesses most aff ected by the pending changes haven’t been involved enough as the group readies to hand its fi nal recommendations to city council.
“We’ve lost members from the business community as the process dragged on,” said task force member David Uhler, president of German American social club Beethoven Männerchor. “It’s sort of dwindled during the last few months. Without question, we need more people from the business community to a end, because this will aff ect them directly.”
Uhler began taking part in the meetings out of concern that new noise restrictions might stop his King William beer garden from presenting live music, something it’s done since the 1920s.
Enter the ‘Noise Whisperer’
As part of its proposed revamp, the city hired sound consultant Don Pi s, known as the “Noise Whisperer” for his success in tackling Austin’s confl ict between residents and its booming club and nightlife scene.
With input from the commi ee, Pi s spent months reviewing San Antonio’s noise issues and shared his fi nal recommendations on Aug. 24.
The report doesn’t suggest heavy handed solutions such lowering the city’s allowable decibel levels. It also identifi es outdoor amplifi ed sound — not music being played inside clubs and other venues — as the source of most complaints.
Even so, the report suggests changes that will shake things up for bar and restaurant operators. Chief among them, businesses with outdoor speakers will be required to obtain a city permit and face potential loss of that permit for repeated rule violations.
The recommendations don’t establish a price for the permit, which would be used to cover the cost of the city’s new enforcement and mediation eff orts.
Additionally, Pi s calls for se ing hours — determined by proximity to neighbors — during which businesses can play amplifi ed sounds outdoors.
Further, the consultant advises that San Antonio hire a professional sound engineer and full-time personnel to help mediate between neighbors and businesses when noise levels become a fl ashpoint. That would move enforcement away from the San Antonio Police Department, which has said it doesn’t have the time or resources to handle the work.
Instagram / @rumble_sa
Council action soon
With Pi s’ fi nal report now in hand, City of San Antonio Development Services Department Director Michael Shannon said he’d like the task force to present fi nal recommendations to a city council committee in November.
If that happens, the full council could vote on the new rules by the end of this year or early next year.
Shannon said he’s heard from some businesses that the task force meetings are diffi cult to a end because they happen in the early evenings, when many are opening for business or dealing with the dinner rush.
As a result, the group plans to hold at least two more meetings in early October — one during the day and another during the evening. A larger community session also is in the works, he added.
“I think it’s critical to have [businesses’] input right now,” he said. “We want to make sure that we’re giving them a chance to have input and doing it in away that they have time to a end.”
Some venue operators have complained that the task force is too heavily weighted with residents, adding that its outcome was already predetermined.
Blayne Tucker, who owns North St. Mary’s bar The Mix, resigned from the group last fall, complaining in an email about its lack of geographic diversity and unwillingness to compromise.
But Shannon maintains that the task force was always an a empt to fi nd a middle ground that both businesses and residents can live with.
“If it was all predetermined, it wouldn’t have taken us a year to get to the end result,” he said.
Just the same, Uhler said he wants restaurant, bar and club owners to show up and make sure their voices are heard.
After all, they’ll have limited recourse once the proposal is in front of city council with staff ’s recommendations.
“I think there’s a sense that this is going to go forward no ma er what,” he said.
MThe majority of San Antonio’s noise complaints stem from outdoor amplifi ed sound, according to a consultant’s report.
DWI + DIVORCE
Soyars & Morgan Law, P.C. is a San Antonio award winning trial team committed to designing a personalized defense strategy that’s right for you. If you need an aggressive, litigation strategy right from the start, then let us fight for you. We have successfully represented clients facing various life changing situations throughout the San Antonio & surrounding Central Texas area. We are not afraid to fight for your freedom, your kids, your job or your reputation! We also understand that some clients have more specific goals in mind that do not necessarily include trial. At Soyars & Morgan Law, we recognize that your personal goals play a big part in how we approach a case & so we provide flexible pricing options so you can decide what approach is best for you. DwiDivorce.com | 924 McCullough Ave CALL NOW! 210.390.0000
Banned in the USA
As Banned Books Week celebrates its 40th anniversary, it’s time to unequivocally condemn censorship
BY MICKEY HUFF
Editor’s Note: Even though the Current’s latest issue publishes in the middle of Banned Books Week, Sept. 18-24, recent eff orts by Texas lawmakers to restrict students’ access to books and to limit what educators can say in the classroom made it vital for us to share this commentary.
In her best-selling novel Speak, young adult author Laurie Halse Anderson wrote, “Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” Since the American Library Association (ALA) and Association of American Publishers helped launch Banned Books Week 40 years ago, that dysfunctional family of censorship has unfortunately grown larger and more vociferous. Across the United States, this past year has brought a staggering increase in book challenges, bans and other a acks on the right to read and academic freedom.
Most eff orts to curtail access to books involves younger readers at schools and public libraries. There are recurrent themes to such challenges that result in the muting of voices from outside the so-called “mainstream” of American society. According to the ALA’s Offi ce for Intellectual Freedom, the top 10 most challenged books in recent years are by or about marginalized peoples, including BIPOC and LQBTQ+ authors and characters; these books typically address complex, challenging issues such as sexuality, abuse and violence; or they simply use profanity.
Some of the books reference traumatic realities in people’s lives, others question the societal status quo on issues from police violence to heteronormativity or identity politics. Regardless, all are important works of literature, including many artistic and broadly appealing comics that have something to teach us, especially in educational se ings. However, increasingly, parents and local community members around the country disagree.
In spring 2022, PEN America published fi ndings from its fi rst ever Index of School Book Bans, a comprehensive count of more than 1,500 instances of individual books banned by some 86 school districts in 26 states, between July 2021 and March 2022, impacting more than two million students. The ALA’s Offi ce for Intellectual Freedom reported fi elding 729 book challenges in 2021 alone, targeting nearly 1,600 titles at schools and universities. Both organizations clearly state that the number of reports received are only a fraction of the challenges and potential bans that occur, many of which result in books being removed from shelves, in breach of existing policies, without fanfare or public knowledge, and often under a cloud of fear among librarians, faculty and staff .
This rise in censorship comes at a time when the United States is in the throes of a larger moral panic epitomized by a corrosive “cancel culture” that spans the political spectrum from right to left. Although educators and concerned citizens have sounded the alarm, cancel culture has also galvanized students to fi ght back on the front lines, in classrooms and at school board meetings. Cameron Samuels did just that in their suburban Houston school district this past year as a high school senior, with great success. Starting as a lone voice decrying parental challenges to books at their school, Samuels gradually built a coalition of students, engaging the school board and broader community, and creating a “FReadom Week” initiative that distributed more than 700 banned titles. The campaign Samuels led kept many challenged books on the shelves at the school’s library, garnered national a ention and led to Samuels being recognized this year as BBW’s fi rst ever Youth Honorary Chair.
But challenges to books are not the only issue facing students and our schools. There has also been an increase in legislative eff orts to curtail curriculum, controlling what can and cannot be taught, in at least 36 states. Another PEN America study, America’s Censored Classrooms, measured a 250% increase over the past year in what the study refers to as Educational Gag Orders, state legislative eff orts to restrict “teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education.” They include not only the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law and Stop WOKE Act in Florida (which several other states are mimicking), but also legislative a acks on critical race theory (despite it seldom being taught in K-12 classrooms) and requirements to enforce the teaching of more “patriotic” (read: acritical) assessments of American history, whatever that may be. All of the bills were launched by Republicans in their respective states, with only one Democratic sponsor among them. While many in the GOP denounce cancel culture on the left, they seem to be perfectly fi ne controlling what can be read, discussed and taught in the nation’s schools.
Moving forward, one thing is clear: although the country is divided on many topics and issues, cancelling views or perspectives with which one disagrees is not the solution. Open dialogue, discourse and debate hold the answers to our current conundrum. Opposing censorship and supporting academic freedom must be bipartisan issues. It is one thing to prohibit one’s own child from reading a specifi c book, shortsighted and ineff ectual as that prohibition may be; it is another thing altogether to extend that forbidding desire to the public at large, depriving others of hearing the many wondrous and diverse voices that comprise our society. Children should not be taught to fear ideas diff erent than their own, and adults should not let ignorance guide their civic engagement.
For its 40th anniversary, the Banned Books Week Coalition’s theme is “Books Unite Us: Censorship Divides Us.” Indeed, as we survey today’s contentious political climate, we would all do well to pick up, read and share a banned book or two. Doing so, we might discover amazing things about each other — not to mention ourselves. We can learn how to “agree to disagree,” while honoring the higher ideals of an open society, free expression and the right to read.
Censorship anywhere is a threat to “FReadom” everywhere. Celebrate Banned Books Week Sept. 18-24, but stay vigilant and keep reading and sharing banned books every week throughout the year.
Wikipedia Commons / Charles Hackey
Mickey Huff is director of Project Censored, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, and a professor of history and journalism. He is co-author of the critical thinking textbook Let’s Agree to Disagree, as well as the forthcoming The Media and Me, and is co-editor of Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2022. Project Censored is a longtime member of the Banned Books Week Coalition.
BAD TAKES
Mad about high prices? Blame immigration hardliners like Trump and Abbott.
BY KEVIN SANCHEZ
Editor’s Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
So, I suggest that we look to the stream of poison that is being injected into our national life through that lower type of foreigners. I would build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven, against admission of a single one.” — Gov. Cliff ord Walker of Georgia at the Second Imperial Convocation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1924
Another nine dead bodies were fi shed out of the Rio Grande earlier this month. According to the United Nations, more than 4,000 migrants have died at the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014 — most from drowning or dehydration. And that’s not counting the 53 migrants trapped to death in the back of a boiling tractor-trailer in San Antonio this June.
To listen to Texas Gov. Greg Abbo , the explanation for the carnage is obvious: President Joe Biden’s “open border” policies. But when you block those seeking asylum from so much as approaching designated ports of entry, where are they supposed to turn?
“Venezuelans were by far the most common nationality encountered by Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio sector in July, followed by Cubans,” the Associated Press reported. Republicans talk an awfully good game about opposing socialism, but when the opportunity to accept refugees from autocratic states including Venezuela and Cuba arises, Abbo ’s more than happy to send them right back to the repressive regimes from which they’ve escaped.
And the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Abbo continues to defend keeping Title 42 in place, a Trump-era emergency measure authorizing rapid deportations to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Yet he’s also acted as if the pandemic was all but over, precipitously lifting public health ordinances in the summer of 2020.
With 90,000 Texans now dead from COVID, Abbo has failed miserably at protecting us from the disease. Instead, he appears to believe the migrants themselves are the plague.
“We’re being overrun,” Abbo exclaimed to the Conservative Political Action Conference back in August — a line he’s tweeted incessantly and parroted on every right-wing media outlet he frequents. Unscrupulous invasion rhetoric aside, the continental United States comprises more than 3 million square miles, and according to LendingTree, there are more than 11 million vacant homes in America. We have plenty of room.
What we don’t have is labor. Before the pandemic, half of agricultural workers and a quarter of construction workers were undocumented immigrants, according to some estimates. One big culprit in rising price infl ation is the fact that — thanks to former President Trump’s zero-tolerance policies such as teargassing migrant children and separating them from their parents — we’re down nearly 2 million foreign-born workers from where we would have been if post-2010 trends had persisted.
“Lack of progress in expanding legal channels has pushed yet more migrants to view unchecked border crossings and asylum claims as their best route into America,” The Economist explained this year.
The GOP’s shameless demagoguery and willful obstruction of comprehensive immigration reform, not “open borders,” are why migrants are dying in droves — and why we as a country have fallen abysmally short of the values we claim to hold dear.
The late Anthony Bourdain summed up immigrants’ economic contribution in practical terms.
“As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy — the restaurant business as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers,” the chef and author wrote. “Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are ‘stealing American jobs.’ But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position — or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, provably, simply won’t do.”
Immigrants bus your tables, harvest your crops, mow your lawns, deliver your pizzas and babysit your kids. They are not mostly “rapists” or “bringing drugs,” contrary to what certain fascist blowhards would have you believe.
Yet half of white Republicans admit to feeling triggered when they hear a foreign language spoken in public, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. Last month, the Express-News reported that San Antonio’s migrant resource center, opened to help asylum seekers with service referrals and transportation connections, has drawn unfounded “fear and suspicion.”
With such a reliable wellspring of anti-immigrant anxiety and animosity, we can’t be surprised when Republicans perennially reach for the nativism card to win close elections.
But even if you don’t give a fl ying Ted Cruz about basic human decency, there’s more to consider.
“Contrary to our most fearful and xenophobic instincts, undocumented workers from countries like Mexico on balance are a net gain for Social Security, creating an estimated $7 billion net surplus per year to the system,” business columnist Michael Taylor wrote in the Express-News earlier this month. “What has made America great is ambitious, hardworking people going to extraordinary lengths to get here then contributing disproportionately to the nation’s economic might.”
At the very least, granting citizenship to those brought to this country as kids would allow them to grow up to be engineers and doctors and make us all proud. Defying the odds, many have already done just that.
It’s not those fl eeing violence or looking for work who are holding you back, it’s the richest 1% stoking division and lining their pockets with wealth that should go to working people’s wages — native-born and foreign-born alike.
Sanford Nowlin
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
SAN ANTONIO’S SCARIEST
HAUNTED HOUSE IS BACK AT A NEW, LARGER, MORE TERRIFYING LOCATION! OPENS THIS FRIDAY THRU NOVEMBER 7TH THURSDAY-SUNDAY
NEW LARGER MAZE | HAUNTED HALLWAYS | CREEPY CORRIDORS | WICKED SURPRISES HAUNTED OAKS IS A HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE WHERE ONLY THE TRULY FEARLESS WILL SURVIVE!
HAUNTED OAKS IS OPEN FOR AGES 12 AND UP, BUT GUESTS WITH A LOW FEAR THRESHOLD AND MEDICAL CONDITIONS MAY WANT TO SIT THIS ONE OUT. HAUNTED OAKS AT ROLLING OAKS MALL IS A HAUNTED ATTRACTION IN SAN ANTONIO, TX FEATURING A 10,000SQFT HAUNTED HOUSE MAZE LOCATED INSIDE ROLLING OAKS MALL : 6909 N LOOP 1604 E. SAN ANTONIO, TX 78247
1/2 OFF HORRIFIC PIX WITH HAUNTED OAKS TICKET PURCHASE! TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT HAUNTEDOAKS.ORG
