Big Bend is one of the biggest and most remote National Parks, so I write about it as a proxy for all of our National Parks, which are under attack from Republicans, as usual. Republicans are always trying to sell off parts of the parks (or any other public lands) to their developer friends, so they can drill or dig or build gated communities, instead of leaving them open for the public.
Let’s start with this video from Gina Hinojosa. It’s a deep cut — 12 minutes long — that covers her visit to Big Bend. She talks to locals in depth about the threats to Big Bend, and how the billions of dollars that will be spent there are evident even if construction hasn’t started yet.
For those of you who prefer to read rather than watch a video, Scott sent in this Texas Monthly piece about the ways that residents around Big Bend are fighting back:
For several days this summer, the rumor in the tiny West Texas hamlet of Sanderson, a 643-person community 125 miles east of Big Bend National Park, was that contractors had descended upon the area to begin constructing a border wall. Nobody knew who they were or what they looked like, but almost everyone in town was on the lookout for the alleged interlopers. That included the manager at the Desert Air Motel, who noticed that four men had booked separate reservations for the same dates at the quaint, retro-style lodge, which beckons travelers along U.S. 90 with a vintage sign promising “Refrigerated Air.”
Like undercover cops trying to appear nonchalant at a high school keg party, the men didn’t remain inconspicuous for long. They drove white pickup trucks, wore heavy construction boots, and seemed to make a show of holding up the “No Big Bend Wall” flyers stacked on the motel’s front desk and snickering about them, according to employees. During check-in, when the front desk clerk politely asked the men if they were helping build a border wall, the crew denied any involvement before eventually admitting that they had been contracted to build a four-to-six-foot-high vehicle-barrier system along the Rio Grande in Terrell County. The motel’s affable owner, Sara Ryza, later confirmed that the crew included the CEO of Fisher Sand & Gravel, a North Dakota construction company that has won multiple high-profile federal and private contracts to build barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The manager canceled the men’s reservations and asked them to leave the premises. More than a month later, Ryza has no regrets about that decision. (Fisher Sand & Gravel did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.)
Is anyone surprised that Doug Burgum, the former Governor of North Dakota, is Secretary of the Interior, and a North Dakota firm is building the wall in Big Bend?
There are other anecdotes in the piece about local businesses denying services to the workers who are going to build the wall, but in the end, they’ll all live in man camps in RVs where the water is trucked in, sewer trucked out, and generators will provide electricity.
Hinojosa’s video makes a powerful point — Greg Abbott is fine with bulldozers in Big Bend, and she isn’t.
Moving on to the Texas races in general, I watched Talarico’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel on YouTube the other day, and he’s a real political talent. Here’s my question for both Talarico and Hinojosa: didn’t they know that their opponents would drop ugly, anti-trans ads around this time of the year? If there’s anything more predictable than that, it’s probably the sunrise, death and taxes. There’s a bit of arrogance in the Democratic Party about who we think is “on our side because Republicans are so much worse,” like trans people, or even black folks. Our candidates need to take Joe’s advice to call out the trans panic as a distraction and pivot, rather than throwing them, or any other constituency, under the bus in order to cater to a set of voters who probably won’t vote for Democrats anyway.
