Civil Rights and Wrongs for September 21, 2021

Once again, it’s time for the KOOP Fall Membership Drive!  Yours truly will celebrate by going LIVE in the studio for the first time since March 17, 2020.  The station is still only allowing KOOP volunteers in the studio, so we will be doing a “Best Of” episode that includes recorded excerpts from:

• Jeffrey Littlejohn, Professor of History at Sam Houston State.  Jeff heads up the Lynching in Texas project, and was our guest on February 23rd.  Jeff and his students collaborate with local officials and nationally with the Equal Justice Initiative to ensure that Texas history is not whitewashed.
• Michael Barajas, Staff Writer for the Texas Observer, and Maggie Luna, Policy Fellow at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.  On June 22nd we discussed the deplorable conditions inside Texas prisons, and frustrated efforts at the Texas Legislature to effect change.
• Beth Schwartzapfel, Staff Writer at the Marshall Project.  We learned about “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine that makes it very difficult to sue police officers for misconduct.  Excerpts are from the July 6th show, which was motivated by an article that Beth co-authored in the Austin American-Statesman.
• Stephen Vladeck, Faculty in the UT Law School.  Steve joined us for our annual Supreme Court wrap-up on July 13th.  We heard about changes in the make-up of the Court with an eye toward future cases.  

And Austin Sanders, Staff Writer at the Austin Chronicle, provides his perspective on the current state of affairs in the City of Austin.