RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Storied Texas Civil Rights Attorney David Richards

Texas civil rights lawyer David Richards in the KOOP studios in Austin, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. Photo by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog. Inset below: Richards, right, with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio.
Rag Radio podcast:
Famed Texas civil rights and
labor lawyer David Richards 

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2012

Texas civil rights and labor lawyer David Richards was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, September 14, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin.

Richards, who is the ex-husband of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, has argued extensively before the U.S. and Texas Supreme Courts, including a number of historic landmark cases. According to Texas Monthly magazine, Dave Richards "has earned his place in Texas history" as "a rebel-rousing civil-rights lawyer who fought to make Texas just."

Listen to Thorne Dreyer's Rag Radio interview with David Richards here.


Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. The syndicated show is produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin's cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. It is broadcast live on KOOP and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA.

On the show we cover Dave Richards' illustrious legal career -- as well as some unique Texas history -- as Richards reflects on some of the most memorable figures in Texas liberal politics including Ann Richards; humorist John Henry Faulk (who was blacklisted by Sen. Joe McCarthy); Judge William Wayne Justice ("the judge who brought justice to Texas"); and Texas Observer founder Frankie Randolph. And the late great folk pundit Molly Ivins, with whom Richards rafted the Grand Canyon just weeks before her death from cancer.

Among David Richards' more notable cases were ones that established single member legislative districts in Texas, that declared the Texas obscenity statute unconstitutional, and that overturned the Texas loyalty oath.

In 1972, representing the ACLU before the U.S. Supreme Court, Richards won the right for the underground newspaper, The Rag, to be distributed on the University of Texas campus. He also sued the Dallas Police on behalf of Stoney Burns, editor of the underground tabloid Dallas Notes, who was busted for obscenity; worked to overturn a vagrancy statute that was used to bust hippies; and sued for the right of students to vote in college communities.

David Richards has also been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas Law School; served as an attorney with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; was Executive Assistant Attorney General of Texas; and was General Counsel for the Texas AFL-CIO. Richards is the author of Once Upon a Time in Texas: A Liberal in the Lone Star State.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, September 21, 2012: Singer-Songwriters Bob Cheevers and Noëlle Hampton & Andre Moran.
September 28, 2012: Composer, Musician, Conductor, Writer, and Scholar David Amram.

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The Texas Observer : Molly Ivins, Barack Obama, and Dishing the Null Set

Unveiling the new look: Page one of the January 8, 2010 Texas Observer.

The legendary crusading Texas biweekly The Texas Observer is still in there fighting after all these (56) years -- and they have a cool new look. Observer editor Bob Moser and publisher Carlton Carl will be Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.

Below, see Bob Moser on the Texas tea party movement and Carlton Carl on Molly Ivins and Barack Obama.

Dimwitted populism:
Hanging with the null set

By Bob Moser / February 1, 2010

See 'Barack, Molly, and Me of Little Faith' by Carlton Carl, Below.

[The following commentary by Bob Moser, editor of The Texas Observer, first appeared in the Observer on January 22, 2010.]

It hit me about halfway through the Texas Nullification Rally.

Several hundred tea-party types had gathered at the State Capitol on a sunshiny Saturday to wave U.S. and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, brandish handmade signs with slogans like “Guns and Ammo/Be Ready,” and holler about the evils of health care, President Obama, illegal immigrants and government in general.

I was listening to the keynote speech by John Stacy, a bespectacled, suit-wearing, squeaky-voiced youngster from Dallas who’s organized an anti-health-reform group called Not in Texas. He had just called for cutting off Social Security and Medicare for all Americans born after January 1, 1980 -- why that date? why not? -- and was working himself up to a full-throated finish, screeching, “I don’t care if all 49 other states and every country in the world socializes their medicine, Texas ain’t gonna!”

As I squinted into the bright winter sun, watching the working- and middle-class white folks who’d come from Waco and Waring and Texas City to cheer such sentiments with all their hearts, I suddenly realized: Moser, you are surely the only openly gay, government-loving, socialist health-care-supporting, gun-hating member of the media in America who gets his jollies from hanging out with people who loathe everything you stand for.

It’s a sickness. What can I say? But I simply adore a good tea party, and can’t help wishing its denizens well. Maybe it’s the anti-establishment streak that makes my spirits soar whenever people of any stripe gather together to spit in the face of power. Maybe it’s the fact that when I go to these functions, it’s like attending a family reunion back in North Carolina, where I grew up among folks who were partial to George Wallace because, as my daddy said, “He might be a nut, but he’s a working man’s nut.” (Which was true enough, I guess, if your idea of a working man was limited to the white, segregationist kind.)

But as with family reunions, I always leave these rallies feeling simultaneously envious and bummed out. Envious because my kind of anti-establishment folk -- those on the populist left -- have turned into a tame, passive, MSNBC-watching bunch by comparison. Bummed because I always come away thinking, Why can’t these people make a lick of sense?

To my mind, there’d be nothing better for America -- or for Texas -- than an ongoing, free-for-all debate between those who hold a consistent set of small-government ideals and those of us who believe in the social contract and good government and a more perfect union.

I’d much prefer to slug it out with thoughtful states’ rights libertarians than with the followers of mealy-mouthed corporate flacks like Rick Perry or George W. Bush, who make their political hay by giving lip service to true believers while serving no one but the wealthy. (Partly, I’ll admit, this is because I’m convinced that the left would have a much better chance of winning an open and honest debate.)

But to my constant dismay, there is no set of consistent ideas on the tea-party right -- only a jumble of half-baked notions, conspiratorial hobgoblins and inchoate anxieties stoked to a fever pitch by the specter of an African-American president who is not Clarence Thomas.

Take the Nullification Rally. It was supposed to have a clear, though quixotic, purpose: calling for a special session of the Texas Legislature to vote on nullifying all future laws passed by Congress -- health-care reform, most pressingly -- until they’ve also been approved by Texans. But the messages were all over the map, and they tended to be both dimwitted and self-contradictory.

Exhibit A: Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who started his oration by saluting military veterans (including himself), went on to declare Obama a “fraud” and a “socialist” whose health-care bill will force Texans to “spend $2 billion a year for the next 10 years to give Medicaid to illegal aliens” -- and then piously quoted, with absolutely no sense of irony, from the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”). The crowd ate it up.

Unlike many a liberal, I’m not deeply offended by the people who show up at these rallies wearing T-shirts depicting Obama as Stalin or Hitler. I don’t really give a hoot if somebody yells out, as somebody did at the Nullification shindig, “Kill Obama!” What truly depresses me is that there’s nothing at the bottom of all this fist-waving fury but a mess of nonsense. That, and the fact that the only fist-waving, spit-at-power, publicly protesting folks in contemporary Texas are on the far right.

[Bob Moser became editor of The Texas Observer in October 2008. He edited North Carolina's Independent Weekly, an award-winning alternative paper modeled on the original Texas Observer, was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University and an award-winning senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, reporting on American extremists, particularly the religious right and the anti-immigrant movement.

He has also written for publications including Out and Rolling Stone, where he won the 2006 GLAAD Award for best magazine article, and was a writer and editor at The Nation. His first book, Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority, was published in August 2008.]

Texas Observer publisher Carlton Carl; former Observer editor, the late Molly Ivins; and Barack Obama -- at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Photo by Dave McNeely / The Texas Observer.
Barack, Molly, and me of little faith

By Carlton Carl / November 5, 2008

[This article by Texas Observer publisher Carlton Carl was originally publshed on The Texas Observer website on November 5, 2008.]

“You know,” she said after we met him. “That young man could be President some day.”

“What?” I said. “Are you crazy? Not in our lifetimes.” We both knew what I meant. After all, that young man was black. And she and I had both grown up white and liberal in a segregated Houston with “Colored” restrooms, “Whites Only” water fountains, and lily-white lunch counters.

In the mid-1960s we had both worked on the Houston Chronicle, where there were a grand total of two black faces in the newsroom, and where we had to plead with and cajole our editors to let us do a long story on poverty in the city. There wasn’t much coverage of the black community back then that didn’t involve crime.

She was Molly Ivins, my dear friend of 45 years before she died in 2007, having had an illustrious career as a reporter, editor of The Texas Observer, and widely syndicated columnist.

“That young man” was Barack Obama. The occasion was the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where Obama had given the keynote address.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Molly should have said to me.

We both saw stardom in that young man. But Molly saw more. Molly saw a time when the United States of America could put aside racial division and elect a black person President.

I fear I still saw those “Colored” and “Whites Only” signs, the fire hoses and police dogs, and Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”

Well, it did happen in my lifetime. Sadly, not in Molly’s.

Looking at this picture taken by our old friend Dave McNeely (the veteran reporter who was there with us in those Houston Chronicle days), I thought about that night in Boston a little over four years ago. I thought about Molly’s hopeful words.

How she would have loved last night. How she would have loved to hear: “President-Elect Barack Obama.”

Ken Bunting, another old friend who’s now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly by email this morning, “I’m not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack’s grandma.”

You know, I think he is right.

[Carlton Carl became the CEO and Executive Publisher of The Texas Observer in January, 2008. A native of Houston and longtime resident of Austin who recently returned to Texas after 25 years in Washington, D.C., Carlton is a graduate of Columbia College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has done reporting for the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times, as well as freelance writing for other publications.

He has also served as a Texas gubernatorial press secretary, chief of staff to a Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, and in numerous other political and media consultant positions. Most recently he worked in non-profit advocacy for the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America).]

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The Late Great Molly Ivins : What Would She Think?

Carlton Carl and Elna Christopher hug beside a portrait of Molly Ivins, during a memorial service for the late columnist and political sage, on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007, in Austin. Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez / AP.
After Barack Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, Molly Ivins said, 'You know... that young man could be president some day.'

By Betsy Moon / January 30, 2009

AUSTIN -- The question I have been asked most often during the last two years is, "What would Molly think about this?" Molly Ivins would have loved this election. She would have loved the beautiful sight of "We the People" finally stepping up to become the real deciders. She would have loved the drama, the comedy and the characters.

We miss her regular twice-weekly comments and insights, and want to hear her dissect, slice and dice, and make fun of the events and revelations of the week. No one could do it like she did. She made us feel like we weren't alone. She made us want to be our better selves and stand up and use our power. She would be so proud that we finally woke up and worked to make this happen.

In many of her lectures, she would exhort her audience to believe in their power. She'd say: "I hear people whine: 'I can't do anything. I'm just one person.'" Then she'd lift her head high and quote from the Declaration of Independence in her Barbara Jordon voice and remind them, "as a U.S. citizen, you have more political power than most humans who've ever lived on this earth."

In fact, we know how she would have felt, because she was as prescient about this election before her death two years ago as she was about all the other tragedies of the Bush years. Carlton Carl, CEO/publisher at Molly's beloved Texas Observer, recalls her saying after Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, "You know ... that young man could be president some day."

Before Barack Obama announced his candidacy, Chicago Magazine asked a number of luminaries if they thought he should run. Opinions varied. Molly was succinct and direct, and with her usual wit and certainty said: "Yes, he should run. He's the only Democrat with any Elvis to him."

And, in her column on Jan. 20, 2006, she said: "It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief. If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator ... with the guts to do it." She was speaking about Gene McCarthy then, but it might as well have been Barack Obama.

She'd be so happy that her beloved Constitution (she donated one speech a month to groups working to preserve and maintain the First Amendment) is in safer hands -- that some of the worst things ever done in our name are over. She'd love that Barack Obama began his community organizing knowing that power lies in all of us united, and that he continues to remind us that we are the deciders.

I saw and heard many interviews after Nov. 4 and during inaugural celebrations with people who all said they wished their mother or father or grandmother or friend had been here to witness this history in the making. Tens of thousands of us wished that Molly could have been here to see it.

I choose to believe she and all of them did see it because they live on in our hearts, minds and actions. Molly is honored with awards, lectures and scholarships in her name. Many of her readers formed "Pots & Pans" Brigades, following the advice in her final two columns to take to the streets and demand an end to the Iraq war. She always signed her books and her letters with, "Raise more hell," and you can make her live on by doing just that.

She lives in everyone who took courage in who they are and what they thought when they read her columns and books, and knew they weren't alone and they weren't crazy. She lives on in The Texas Observer and the ACLU, to whom she left a large portion of her estate.

In a letter for the ACLU, she says: "Every time someone down the line is irreverent about authority, I'll have my monument. Every time some kid who was born a nigger, a kike, a wop, a Polack, a gook, a gimp, a fag, or just a plain maverick lifts up her head and dares anyone to stop her, I'll have my monument. Every time they peaceably assemble to petition their government for redress of a grievance, I'll be there. Whenever they worship as they please (or not at all), I'll be there. Whenever they speak up and speak out and raise hell, I'll be there. And every time some blue-bellied, full-blooded nincompoop who holds elected office is called to the floor for deciding to keep us safe by rewriting the Constitution, or by suspending due process and holding a citizen indefinitely without legal representation, I'll be there. Now that is immortality. I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin. I figure freedom and justice beat having my name in marble any day. Besides, if there is another life after this one, think how much we'll get to laugh watching it all."

Ken Bunting, an old friend of Molly's who's now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly on Election Day, "I'm not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack's grandma." You know, I think he is right.

]Betsy Moon was Molly Ivin's former assistant and "Chief of Stuff" from 2001 to 2006. This article was distributed by Creative Writers Syndicate, Inc.]

Source / CommonDreams

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What's missing from this election? Molly Ivins!

Former Texas Observer editor and columinist extraordinaire Molly Ivins at her Austin home in 2001. Photo by Carolyn Mary Bauman / WpN.

"The House passed (by one vote) a bill to eliminate barriers between banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. This sets up financial holding companies that can offer all three types of services simultaneously. The most obvious risk is that a blunder in the insurance or brokerage end of the business could bring down a bank, putting insured deposits at risk. The taxpayers, of course, then wind up with the tab, as we did with the savings-and-loan mess."

Molly Ivins / September 23, 1998
Thanks to Harry Edwards and the Austin Chronicle.

'The late buckaroo populist and freedom fighter would have had a ball with the insanity of this current news cycle.'
By Anne Lamott / October 3, 2008

It breaks a girl's heart to know that Molly Ivins does not get to have a go at the Republican slate this year. I can see that big, rosy, sunflower face watching this all with astonishment and roaring with laughter. Ivins -- the legendary buckaroo populist, journalist, freelance hell-raiser and freedom fighter -- would be pounding her fists on the arms of her easy chair, stomping her feet as if listening to live bluegrass.

She would have had such a ball with Sarah Palin -- the trooper scandal, her love of moose (between buns), the flamboyantly botched television interviews, the bravery of people who hunt wolves for sport, from the air. Even though Molly was a Texan -- who would have been on guard for the sneering tone of liberal criticism toward anyone with a gun or a double-wide -- she still would have obliterated Palin as a faux populist wingnut with a tanning bed instead of a heart. She would have made great hay with the capacity of certain politicians to reinvent themselves in entirely new realities, as newfound populist Brotherman McCain has done, and his desperate, icky laugh of contempt might have raised some worries for her.

She would not have been happy with either McCain or Obama for opting out of public finance: She would mention Phil Gramm at the drop of a hat, McCain's chief financial guru, whom she always called the senator from Enron. I think she would have been intrigued by Obama, for all the game-changing aspects he's brought to the arena, for upending all the assumptions about whether someone could win with such a spooky name. She'd have cheered his speech on race, been amazed by his speech in Berlin. She'd have been pissed at the Democrats for not being as robust as they should have been on civil liberties, even as she reasserted her heartbreaking faith in American democracy, the faith that if we stuck together, we'd figure it out in the end. We'd somehow help the poor.

She would have celebrated the tidal roar of support from younger voters, who have the vision and stamina to fight for someone who would hold the nation's leaders to account, people who would fight to make this a country where it was once again safe to be a small child, or a very old person, which it has not been for approximately 7.6572 years.

She would have known all along that this election was going to be as tight as a tick. She would have had the sense to be afraid but to not let her fear hurt her. She would have done one constructive thing after another: Sent money to swing states, offered her car to volunteers from out of town, let young campaign workers sleep on her couch.

The last time I saw her, she was several weeks away from death, spending most of her time in bed, hanging out with her best friends and her dog. And you know what she was doing, off and on, the weekend I spent with her? She was working on her last column, about the need for Americans to fight like hell to stop Bush's proposed surge in Iraq. All she had at that point was a great ending: "We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

She was also rereading parts of her favorite books when suddenly she wanted to have a dinner party, because I had never met her great friends, "Shrub" co-writer Lou Dubose or populist heavyweight Jim Hightower. This was a major obstacle to happiness for all concerned. She adored those two men, and I was commanded to call them. Unfortunately, Lou, her longtime collaborator, was out of town. So, instead, she told me Lou stories for half an hour.

No one loved her stories more than Molly, especially those about the art and absurdity of politics. This was part of her greatness. She reigned like a queen -- imposing carriage, great sense of style, with a mind and smile that radiated warmth.

In between trying to write her column, she would call out to me. "Associate Party Planner!" she would say. "Front and center! We have a problem!" So I would appear with the clipboard I had been issued, stretch out next to her and her dog, and we'd fiddle with our menu or grapple with the despair and bitterness of having discovered that none of the cloth napkins matched. Lou couldn't come, and two of the good plates chipped. We agreed: It was a nightmare.

Her brother Andy was in town, though, as was her great assistant Betsy Moon, with her boyfriend. Jim Hightower and his wife, DeMarco, could be there.

It was really not an ideal weekend for a party, what with her being close to death, unable to walk much anymore or to stay awake. Also, she had to get chemo that morning. But I ask you -- what are you going to do?

Obviously, have the party. Everything she loved, one more time.

Her niece and nephew came."I don't have any children," she once wrote, "so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin." And she adored these two (although later we conspired to set the table so that they got the two chipped plates).

She was so excited about her party that she insisted I make place cards.

She slept a lot the day of the party. The chemo had knocked her for a loop. But she managed to work on her column a little. I Googled it just a moment ago. Here's what she wrote, "About the only politician out there besides Bush actively calling for a surge is Sen. John McCain. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote: 'The presence of additional coalition forces would allow the Iraqi government to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own -- impose its rule throughout the country. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed.' But with all due respect to the senator from Arizona, that ship has long since sailed. A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country -- we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls. We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented."

She got up from bed a few times to sit with me at the table. We drank tea and ate dried cherries and told each other stories. She was such a performer, with that marvelous Texas Hill Country accent that used to get stronger with every drink. But she and I had both been sober for some time by the end of her life. Her stories were precisely delivered, and her face so in control, as if she had trained with Marcel Marceau. I can see her looking over the tops of her reading glasses -- mugging, mimicking, liberally using old lines even as she pulled new whoppers out of the ether. Sometimes being with her was like watching fireworks on a small scale. Finally, she'd lean forward to deliver the money line, while fluttering her eyelids, then throw herself backward into her chair, roaring up at the ceiling, as if she were laughing at God.

Then she'd lean forward again, hoping that you might have a story, too, and get the log rolling again.

I swear, she might be the only person who can help get me through these last 33 nerve-wracking days. She would not have taken Sarah Palin lying down. She would laugh her ass off, and do something every day to defeat McCain. She would eat with beloved friends, put people together who simply had to know one another, who might together be able to throw a wrench in McCain's Rube Goldberg machine. She makes me want to move around on the floor with her one more time, standing on her shoes like I used to with my father when I was a little girl, and he was teaching me how to waltz.

Source / salon.com

Thanks to Doug Zabel / The Rag Blog

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