By Amanda Hart Photo courtesy of Tony Diaz Tony Diaz is a Houston poet, novelist, activist, leader, professor, visionary and all around badass. He has been an active Houston community member for many years now. Diaz recently set out on a new adventure, Librotraficante, in which he travels the country organizing and creating banned book libraries. In Arizona, where ashes of institutional racism are still smoldering, Tony and his fellow book smugglers took a creative and visionary approach to breaking down those walls and replacing them with hope – hope for a better tomorrow for us and, more importantly, our ... Read More »

By Alex Wukman Imagine this scenario, if you can: it’s 10:30 at night and you’re walking to a store for whatever reason. A cop pulls up and flashes his lights. Like a good boy or girl you stop and 5-0 rolls on up and demands your name. Now, since you weren’t doing anything but minding your own business you don’t particularly feel the need to tell the po-po who you are; so you give the cop some variation of “get lost.”  Next thing you know you are arrested, charged with a Class C misdemeanor for failing to identify yourself and then, because of ... Read More »

By Alex Wukman There are days when the universe makes sense; news stories explode across the internet and everything is right with the world. Then there are days when it seems that someone, somewhere, just decided to throw darts at a wall and make a story out of whatever they hit. Today is one of those days, and this is one of those stories. None of the following is made up: Steven Seagal (a recognized reincarnation of 17th Century Buddha Chungdrag Dorje who was sued for allegedly keeping sex slaves, who blames the FBI for his acting  career going to shit and ... Read More »

By Alex Wukman I wish I could say we were making this up, I really do. I wish that this was an unfunny joke we thought up one night after a few too many Lone Stars, but its not. State Representative Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) who made her name in the Free Press for her vow to introduce a copycat to Arizona’s “Papers, please” law has decided to double down on the crazy. A bill she proposed on March 2, Texas Indepedence Day, would make the penalty for knowingly hiring an undocumented immigrant a State Jail Felony. The proposed for hiring ... Read More »

By “Alan Smithee” It’s been a month since Arizona passed their infamous anti-immigrant bill and almost as soon as it was passed rightwing copycats decided to jump on the band wagon. Two Texas State Representatives, Debbie Riddel (R-Tomball) and Leo Berman (R-Tyler), have each vowed to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s. Riddel and Berman have been telling everyone who will listen, including KPFT’s Partisan Gridlock, that the bill they want to introduce will be exactly the same bill, except of course there won’t be any racial profiling. Berman told Austin TV station KVUE that “It will be the same bill except that we ... Read More »