The Texas Observer Magazine - January/February 2020

In this issue

The Prison Inside Prison
Texas has banished hundreds of prisoners to more than a decade of solitary confinement. Many aren’t sure how—or even if—they will ever get out.
By Michael Barajas

Something in the Air
People in the Panhandle are getting sick from breathing fecal dust created by cattle feedlots—and the state isn’t doing much about it.
By Christopher Collins

Against the Current
Mandaean refugees make San Antonio home.
By Matthew Busch and Robyn Ross

The Interview
Sociologist Jeremy Slack on the horrors that await immigrants deported from the U.S.
Interviewed by Lise Olsen

Barrio Pop
Cande Aguilar’s paintings are a riot of color.
By Michael Agresta

The Book Report
A darkly comic novel indicts the chicken farming industry.
By Michael Schaub

Film
How the San Antonio police are rethinking mental health.
By Rose Cahalan

Poem
“When We Were Children”
By Edward Vidaurre

Eye on Texas
By Monica Lozano

The Texas Observer Magazine Description:

The Texas Observer is an Austin-based nonprofit news organization known for fearless investigative reporting, narrative storytelling and sophisticated cultural criticism about all things Texan. The nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation publishes the Texas Observer bimonthly magazine and texasobserver.org.

Since its founding in 1954, the Observer has covered issues that are often ignored or underreported by other media. We strive to expose injustice and to produce the kind of impact journalism that changes people’s lives for the better. Our thoughtful arts and culture coverage recognizes the diversity and talent of Texas’ creative community.

Our guiding light continues to be our founding mission statement:

We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy. We will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit.

We cover stories crucial to the public interest and provoke dialogue that promotes democratic participation and open government, in pursuit of a Texas where education, justice and material progress are available to all.

Our reporting is fair, accurate, and, as our mission states, it hews hard to the truth as we find it. As a 501(c)(3), we do not endorse candidates or legislation.