Section 44
In January, the Department of State Health Services declared another cancer cluster in Houston’s Fifth Ward, with skyrocketing rates of leukemia and other illnesses in the area. Kashmere Gardens is a recently settled, historically African American neighborhood within Houston’s Greater Fifth Ward. Established as a freedman’s town following the Civil War, Texas Southern University-professor Robert Bullard describes the […]
At Albertsons’ locations in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, union drivers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have been waging labor actions for basic protections. Ever since Albertsons acquired Safeway (which had also bought Randalls) It has become one of the largest and most profitable grocery store chains in the US. But that merger also allowed […]
Reprinted from Rampant Magazine. Written by Snehal Shingavi Two images capture the crisis in Texas perfectly. First, nurses at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center came to work on Thursday to this: “A notice said the water went out. The notice then listed some instructions for using the restroom, such as to not put toilet paper […]
By now, it’s obvious to just about everyone that something serious is taking place in Bessemer, Alabama. In the heart of the Deep South, a majority-Black and women workforce of about 6000 workers at an Amazon facility is marching towards unionization against all odds. After an unsuccessful attempt from Amazon to compel in-person voting during a pandemic, […]
The attacks on homelessness have been heating up in Austin in the midst of the pandemic and a breakdown in services more generally. Part of this debate has between state and municipal powers, as Governor Greg Abbott (R) has repeatedly threatened what is seen as a more tolerant Austin city leadership if the city does not […]
Monica Muñoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. Harvard University Press, 2018. 387 pp. Mucho antes de que existiera el campo de concentración que se ubica hoy en McAllen, Texas, existía uno en Crystal City que albergaba familias japonesas y alemanas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ambos centros han sido establecidos […]
Emma Tenayuca and Homer Brooks wrote “The Mexican Question in the Southwest” in 1938 as an attempt to theorize the experience of Mexican Americans for the Communist Party USA. Tenayuca and Brooks had just concluded a bitter fight in San Antonio against pecan growers, in which they had organized some 12,000 pecan shellers, largely Mexican American […]
The Democrats try again. Everyone has the story by now: Trump cleared in Texas by almost six points, Biden found new strength in the suburbs outside Austin and Houston, particularly in Fort Bend, Williamson and Hays County, but hemorrhaged votes all along the borderlands. Biden marched away with the cities: Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, […]
The presidential race is actually quite tight in Texas, and this is very important. Biden is solidly in the margin of error, sometimes trailing Trump, sometimes ahead. The Texas Democratic Party is doubling down with probably their largest voter registration effort ever. The outrageous and grim possibility of another anti-choice bigot and apologist for fascism on the […]
In an interview for Section 44, Snehal Shingavi spoke with Ken Zarifis, the President of Education Austin (a merged union local of both NEA and AFT), and Luke Amphlett, the Consultation Chair and Executive Committee member of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel. Ken is a long-time activist in Texas and has been […]
