Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our July/August 2025 Issue

Partial remarks given at the MOLLY Prize Gala on May Suddenly it s become a bit of a sad time for the Texas Observer locality Later in the campaign you ll hear about Carlton Carl our former publisher and longtime board member who passed away in March Then the day before we learned that the Observer s founding editor a legend of Texas journalism Ronnie Dugger had died at age peacefully and surrounded by family I had planned to talk about the Lege here tonight but that just doesn t feel right now It s not that I knew Ronnie terribly well I believe I met him five times total but he left an impression Back sometime before COVID when he was still driving I recall him coming to use the office to bang out an op-ed about the threat of nuclear war for I don t recall what news site He would have been maybe years old A conversation with Congressman Greg Casar left at the MOLLYs Jordan Vonderhaar Last year I reconnected with him at his little old house that backs up to Shoal Creek The dementia was pretty advanced the things he noted just didn t quite tie together or he d swap in wrong words without realizing it But I ll never forget what he was trying to communicate I was there with other former Observer staffers and he was trying to recruit us to a cause Trump was a fundamental threat to democracy he got the point across and we needed to put our heads together and do something to stop him The U S China and Russia were all making a mess of world affairs and similarly we needed to come up with a few actionable ideas And crucially the next time we met we needed to bring more people into the project I think for a few people who d known him for decades it would have been sad that he couldn t quite articulate his ideas anymore But for me it was inspiring This was a man who purely never stopped waking up reading The New York Times being troubled by the injustices he saw and feeling called to do his part to address them As his daughter Celia recounted me after a visit that was his essence Well so it goes Whether in journalism or electoral politics or more radical activism whatever your project to improve the world eventually our forebears leave us And it s up to us to look around accept that sadly preponderance of the evils they fought to end are still the evils we fight the present day and take our shot at doing as well or better than they did in the time we re given In a way I now think the reason for this little gathering tonight is to celebrate the miraculous fact that neither Molly Ivins nor Carlton nor Ronnie lived to see the Observer die a fact that in no small part can be attributed to their own actions GB Note To be the first to get all the stories in our bimonthly issues become a Texas Observer member here The post Editor s Letter Introducing Our July August Issue appeared first on The Texas Observer