Welcome to Texarkana— not the city, the newsletter
It's Issue One!
Hey y’all! Welcome to the first edition of Texarkana, the newsletter where Amal and Olivia fill your inboxes with the latest, greatest, and weirdest of the two best states in the country: Texas and Arkansas. We’re known for never being able to shut up about where we’re from, and we thought we might as well make the most out of it. So here we are! Every two weeks, you can expect updates on our reporting, a rundown of stories from our states, and some stray observations from the internet.
Amal Ahmed is currently a reporting fellow at the Texas Observer, and Olivia Paschal is a staff reporter at Facing South.
Texas Takes
If you’ve ever had to experience me trying to make small talk, chances are you’ve heard me talk at length about highways in Texas. (We have so many! We don’t need them all! But also I love speeding down them when they’re empty!) Last week, I dove into the history of highway planning, segregation and urban renewal.
This week marks the two year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey. I wrote about a research team’s attempt to update flawed flood risk maps by doing something different: asking the people who live in a floodplain if the models are true to their reality. The Observer’s Michael Barajas followed the heartbreaking story about a woman who got her home rebuilt this past year— only to find out it might be bought out for flood control soon. And on the note of the Harvey anniversary, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you to the Houston Chronicle’s story on families who are still struggling as federal dollars barely start to trickle in. — Amal
In Austin, renting an apartment within walking distance of the University of Texas’ campus will set you back as far as one year of tuition, Ali Breland writes in Bloomberg Businessweek. The university recently got a lot of positive press after its announcement that all students with a family income below $65,000 will attend tuition-free, but it could do a lot more for its students when it comes to providing affordable housing, considering that its permanent endowment is worth more than $22 billion. (Thank you, oil and gas royalties.)
The Census Bureau launched its first major field operation in the border town of McAllen, reports the Rio Grande Valley’s The Monitor. The operation comes at the heels of the Trump administration’s failed battle to include a citizenship question on the Census. Back in June, the Texas Monthly explained why, even though the question was removed from the Census, it's already wreaked havoc.
The constitutional right to an attorney is hard to come by for some of Texas’s poorest defendants: The state has just 19 public defenders offices and nearly half a million poor plaintiffs a year, creating what one official calls a “mass conveyor belt.” The shortage of public defenders is a national one, but, as Neena Satija writes, the problem in Texas runs deeper: judges control which lawyers get assigned to cases, and how much they get paid— the same elected judges who have a vested interest in moving through their caseloads as fast as possible.
Around Arkansas
At any given moment, approximately 65 percent of my brain is occupied with questions about Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, whose headquarters are a few miles from where I grew up in Northwest Arkansas. Following a white-supremacist shooting at a store in El Paso, and other gun-related incidents at stores in Mississippi and Missouri, I talked to Walmart associates about workplace safety, and how they’re organizing to change the company’s gun policy. (I also went on WBAI 99.5 in New York City to talk about the story and bust some stereotypes about the South.) Then, I spent some time digging into how Southern state governments are preparing for the 2020 census: Only three Southern states are devoting any government resources to getting out the count, leaving community organizations and municipalities struggling to fill in the gaps. — Olivia
Arkansas is the largest rice-producing state in the country, and agriculture is the state’s top industry. But in the wake of intense and devastating spring floods, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports that 1.3 million acres of farmland went unplanted this year, resulting in millions of dollars potentially lost. In a year that’s already been tough for commodity farmers whose export markets are being squeezed by the trade war with China, it’s brought even more precarity to the state’s farming communities.
Donald Trump may have tweeted about trying to buy Greenland, but the real mastermind behind the real estate proposal was none other than Arkansas’ junior senator, Tom Cotton. In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Cotton said he pitched the idea to the Danish ambassador several months ago, and that buying Greenland is “obviously the right decision for the United States, and anyone who can't see that is blinded by Trump derangement.” (Counterpoint: they might just not want the U.S. to colonize even more land that’s not ours). He doubled down on his position in a New York Times opinion column. Cotton is a relative newbie to the Senate, but he’s ambitious: he always seems to be in the mix for open positions in the Trump administration.
Read this one with your Texas queso
Though Austin may be Texas’s most liberal city in Texas, its planning is steeped in the same racist history of most American cities. A 1928 city plan crystalized the city’s segregation by building a “Negro District” on the city’s east side, and to this day, there isn’t an easily accessible route from Austin’s East Side to downtown without crossing the expanse of Interstate Highway 35. Now, the East Side is rapidly gentrifying— but the highway remains, cutting through the city like a scar. Read more in Andrew Busch's piece in Southern Spaces.
Did you even try?
(Idiocy from around the Internet)
As the Amazon burns, plenty of environmentalists have pointed out that reducing meat consumption, beef in particular, could help relieve land grabs that turn forests into cow pastures. Or, if eating less meat is too hard for you, you could always do what the Economist did, and blame the problem on the world’s poorest people. We can and should talk about sustainable growth, but this ain’t it!
Kudos
The Southern-focused magazine Scalawag connected climate justice in the U.S. South to the Global South. This is the kind of solidarity we’re here for.
Not everything is about TXAR
Shocking, we know! Reads from the rest of the world.
A Hindu Temple in Jamaica // Mugdha Mahalanabish, The Juggernaut: Rita and Hera’s grandparents had arrived in British Guiana as Indian indentured laborers. “They were deceived. They were told they were going to have a better life,” Hera told me, reflecting on his ancestors’ unforeseen circumstances.
On Breakups // Hanif Abdurraqib, The Paris Review: Longing for something irrevocably in the past isn’t just limited to romance, of course … I am already mourning the possible vanishing of everything in my life that is not finite.
‘They Do Not Need Louisiana’s Permission’: Pipeline Companies Seize Land Rights With Eminent Domain // Tristan Baurick, Southerly: Eminent domain has long been used by governments to build things that serve the public ... But after the decision, oil companies began justifying it as economic development in the public’s interest.
The Cost of Reading // Ayşegül Savas, Longreads: “It was not easy to convey to him … that the world was her world too … It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character.”
Thanks for reading! We’ll see ya in two weeks. Contact us with any comments, compliments, or suggestions. (We’re not taking complaints at this time.)
Disclaimer: not affiliated with Texarkana, the city.