Chalk up another court win for the Save Our Springs Alliance. The 3rd Court of
Appeals last week kicked the group’s lawsuit against Austin Community College
back to the courtroom of District Judge Pete Lowry, who previously threw out
the case for lack of standing. In the appeal, S.O.S. attorneys Philip Durst and
Pam Baron argued that the lower court erred in dismissing the suit. They
alleged that ACC trustees violated the Texas Open Meetings Act by not properly
posting their intent to vote on buying the controversial Shadowridge tract —
the proposed site of a new Southwest Austin campus, located near the Barton
Creek watershed. The battle doesn’t stop here. ACC Board Chair Carol Nasworthy
says now it’s ACC’s turn to appeal — this time to the state Supreme Court…
Energy activist Paul Robbins unveils his larger-than-life Austin
Environmental Directory at a noon press conference Friday, Oct. 4, at the
Austin History Center. This year’s edition packs in 50% more info, including an
assiduous study of local grocery stores and their positions on buying organic
products and supporting area farmers. Pick up free copies of the directory at
Clean Water Action, 815 Brazos, #704 (474-0605), and Texas Citizen Action, 1714
Fortview Rd., #101 (444-8588)…
Texas Legislators are being asked to swear on a stack of covenants that they
won’t let utilities strong-arm them into sticking it to consumers. Texas
Citizen Action launched its “Covenant with Constituents” campaign this week, in
which residents and small business consumers will ask their state reps to
pledge the following: Electric bills won’t go up as a result of competition;
voters won’t have to pay for utility companies’ bad management decisions, and
power companies will be forced to decrease pollution. Copies of the covenants
go to Gov. George Bush…
Whether you’re an armchair sympathizer or an out-there activist, you’ll want
to head over to St. Austin’s Catholic Church, 2026 Guadalupe, tonight
(Thursday) to hear Guatemala’s renowned labor leader Rodolfo Robles speak at
7pm. Donations will be accepted to support grassroots organizations in
Guatemala. Call 474-5677 for more information…
Virginia Woolf taught women the importance of having a room of one’s own; now
a group of female physicians are putting that principle to the test with a
one-stop women’s hospital. The founders broke ground Sept. 27 on Renaissance
Women’s Center, 3003 Bee Caves Rd. “The center will be for women of all ages,
not just for women having babies,” says CEO Lauren Scott… —
A.S.
Champagne flowed Monday evening at the grand opening of the Cornerstone Gay
& Lesbian Center, 1117 Red River. Funded entirely by private individual
donations, the center is one of only five in Texas and 83 in the nation.
Hundreds of well-wishers joined Councilmember Jackie Goodman, State Rep. Dawnna
Dukes (D-Austin), and County Sheriff candidate Margo Frasier in celebrating the
center, which leases office and meeting space to a diverse group of
gay-friendly businesses and non-profit organizations. Also in-house are the
Metropolitan Community Church offices and Out Youth Austin. — K.V.
Torch Song Triangle
Hold the obituaries — at least for now. The Texas Triangle, the state’slargest gay and lesbian newspaper, announced last Thursday, Sept. 27, that it
would cease publication with its Oct. 10 issue, citing skyrocketing printing
costs. But now, editor/publisher Kay Longcope says an outpouring of community
support might grant the four-year-old paper a reprieve.
“Since we announced this, there has been a large response from people in
Austin and Houston who do not want to see the demise of the Triangle,”
Longcope said. “At this point we’re open to any option to stay open.” She said
phone calls and e-mail have been pouring into Triangle headquarters
almost nonstop, and there’s been talk of a benefit to help the paper pay its
bills. “The Triangle has given the [gay/lesbian] community a strong,
articulate, professional voice that it never had before, and they don’t want to
see that voice silenced,” she said.
The weekly newspaper made national headlines earlier this year when it came
under fire from conservative radio talk-show host Wyatt Roberts of the American
Family Association. Roberts, upset about some cartoons in the paper that he
said promoted incest and pedophilia, took to reading the names of Triangle
advertisers over the airwaves on his KIXL show, urging listeners to boycott
them. Roberts’ efforts backfired when he was dismissed from KIXL in April.
Moreover, several advertisers actually increased their business with the paper,
Longcope said.
“What his campaign against us did was give us the greatest unplanned marketing
and visibility we could ever have. Because of the nature of his campaign,
people would walk into the office from off the street and say, `I don’t like
what this guy’s doing. I want to buy an ad.’ “
Still, Roberts and the AFA sent out a press release Friday taking credit for
the Triangle‘s presumed demise. The press release, headlined “Texas’
largest gay newspaper to close down after AFA boycott of advertisers,” is
totally untrue, Longcope says. “The only thing that’s driven us to this
decision is the fact that our printing bill went up 33% in January. It’s
strictly the bottom line. If we get help with dealing with that, the
Triangle will continue to publish.”
The paper isn’t out of the woods yet. Longcope estimates the Triangle owes around $30,000, and their accounts receivable come to about half that. She
is quick to add, though, that the community’s strong show of support has
brightened her outlook considerably.
“We felt very clear in our own mind last week that the paper would have to
shut down,” she said. “Now, with all the phone calls and the sense of urgency
in those voices saying `You’ve got to keep the paper open,’ we would like to do
exactly that.” — C.G.
Cap Met Keeps Tax
In a move that will likely keep local anti-tax sentiment alive and kicking,Capital Metro’s board of directors voted Monday, Sept. 30, to keep a full
one-cent share of its sales tax and nixed a proposal to earmark 1/4
cent of the tax for long-range projects, such as light rail. Board members
Bobbie Barker and Susan Handy lost their bid to set aside the 1/4
cent from the rest of the $118 million budget, with board member Harry Jones
and chairman Michael Von Ohlen arguing that the action would crimp financial
planning.
At that point, Barker teamed up with Paul Drummond and Jill Fuller in voting
against keeping the tax increase, which the board approved last year and for
which it has had to fend off criticism ever since. Handy, on the other hand,
argued that the transit agency’s financial needs are too great for a tax
rollback, and voted with Jones, Von Ohlen and Stacy Dukes-Rhone to keep the
full cent. Handy warned that Capital Metro is the only organization that can
slow Austin’s evolution into complete automobile dependency. Dukes-Rhone
agreed, adding that extra money is needed to match federal transit funds for
light rail. “If we rescind this tax today the feds will laugh at us if we ask
them for funds for rail in the future,” she said. Von Ohlen, though, said that
the full tax is needed to get the bus system running properly, and that light
rail is contingent on public approval in a referendum. — N.E.
HRC’s Gatsby Gala
The evening of Sept. 28 in Central Austin was a veritable Who’s Who in who’scourting the lesbian and gay vote. The local chapter of the Human Rights
Campaign (HRC) hosted an $135-a-ticket affair on the grounds of the elegant
Perry Mansion, where some 500 politicians and regular folk, dressed in their
smartest outfits, schmoozed over martinis and caviar amid brilliant roses and
candlelight. Former Gov. Ann Richards took the stage and urged the crowd to
“get busy and do what is politically right.” In other words, she said, “We’re
going to stop whining and we’re going to get to work…”
Richards presented HRC awards to Tana Christie for her volunteer work for
AIDS; First Texas Honda for refusing to pull advertising from the Texas
Triangle (despite the threat of a boycott by the relentless rightist Wyatt
Roberts); and Billy Ramsey, a former Richards’ aide, who was honored
posthumously for his political and community contributions. — A.S.
Rights Head to Visit
For three years, she was held in Indonesian prisons without ever being chargedwith a crime. In fact, the only transgression Carmel Budiardjo ever committed
against the dictatorial regime of Indonesian President Suharto was to freely
speak her mind. For that, Budiardjo became one of thousands of political
prisoners that Suharto’s corrupt regime rounded up and imprisoned in the years
after Suharto’s bloody overthrow of the Sukarno regime.
Now the world’s leading proponent of human rights in Indonesia, Budiardjo
continues her criticism of Suharto and Indonesia from her home in London, where
she runs TAPOL, a London-based organization which exposes the ongoing human
rights problems in Indonesia. TAPOL has reported extensively on the genocide in
East Timor, where some 200,000 people have been murdered by Suharto’s regime
since 1975, and in West Papua, New Guinea, now called Irian Jaya, which was
forcibly annexed by Indonesia in 1963. Budiardjo’s book, West Papua: The
Obliteration of a People, written with Liem Soei Liong, may be the best
single source of information on Suharto’s brutal military campaign against the
Melanesians who have inhabited the region for centuries.
Her latest book, Surviving Indonesia’s Gulag: A Western Woman Tells Her
Story, details her life spent in Indonesian prisons from 1968 to 1971. “The
commonest form of torture was the electric shock, first applied on the thumbs,
then on other parts of the body, including the genitals,” Budiardjo writes.
“Another favourite was beating the victim with the long spiked tail of the
mammoth pari (stingray) fish… Torture went on all day and night. There was a
term for the shrieks of the torture victims — the lagu wajib, or
`obligatory song’.”
Budiardjo will be in town this weekend to promote her book and discuss human
rights in Indonesia. On Saturday, she can be heard on KOOP, 91.7 FM, from
3:30-4pm. Then there will be a gathering at Ruta Maya Coffee House, Fourth
& Lavaca, 6-8pm. At 2pm Sunday, Budiardjo will sign copies of her new book
at Book People. And at 7pm Sunday, Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy will
screen at the UT Undergraduate Library, room FAC 21. Budiardjo will present a
lecture at 8:30pm following the film. Admission to the film and talk is $4; $2
for students. For more info, call 339-8265 or email: etantex@igc.apc.org.
— R.B.
Keeping the Faith
The Texas Faith Network and the Texas Freedom Network sound like organizationswith radically different philosophies, but instead they are mainstream sister
groups that joined in a call to all Texans last week to fight against the
religious right.
The non-partisan jubilee at University Baptist Church Sept. 27-28 drew 300
participants. At a press conference preceding the two-day meet, the Texas Faith
Network, made up of religious leaders, tried to set an example for other
of-the-cloth folks by asking them to halt the distribution of Christian
Coalition voters’ guides in churches. Keynote speaker Dr. James Dunn, executive
director of the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee, lashed out at
the coalition’s agenda — “a rightness that is often in error, but never in
doubt” — and denounced conservative measures aimed at merging various aspects
of church and state.
Dolly Madison McKenna, a Harris County Republican and founder of the
non-partisan group Liberty Tree, lamented the inroads the religious right has
made into the political process. Though only about 2.5% of the population votes
for religious right candidates, McKenna said, these voters constitute a much
larger percentage of people who actually affect the political process. What
sets them apart from the majority of voters is that they go to precinct
meetings, vote in primaries, and vote in the open elections. “The political
process,” McKenna added, “is not a spectator sport.”
At least it shouldn’t be, echoed Dr. Rosie Sorrells, a State Board of
Education member who expressed her concerns about the religious right’s
presence on the board. Sorrells said at least five of the 15-member panel are
identified with the extreme right. Additionally, seven board seats are being
contested this election year and religious right candidates are threatening to
fill the posts. In Austin, Charlie Weaver, a Republican candidate favored by
the Christian Coalition, is vying for a seat held by incumbent Will Davis, a
Democrat. — M.P.
This article appears in October 4 • 1996 and October 4 • 1996 (Cover).