Last June 17, when organized anti-Trump protesters showed up outside a Donald Trump rally in Dallas, Breitbart, the conservative online news service, described some of the protesters with the headline: “Dallas Anti-Trump Protesters Are Entitled, Vile and Stupid.” Well, at least Micah Johnson, the shooter who killed five Dallas cops three…
Dallas Park and Recreation Board meetings have always been like high tea – tinkly tee-hee and not much done. But Thursday’s was a barroom punch-out. Angered that they were not allowed to fully discuss a proposal to give Fair Park to a private entity, five board members got up and…
You know what? That new housing policy the Dallas City Council is working on, Julian Castro’s bright shiny political future, Mayor Mike Rawlings’ next move, the rep that this city has earned in recent days for dealing with demons of the past — now might be too early to lay down any big…
Listen, the debate about Fair Park – turning our 277-acre albatross two miles east of downtown over to a private entity — probably started out with good enough intentions. But now, not so much. Now it’s about nothing so much as shielding the board of directors of the State Fair…
About this time of year, one of my summer rituals has been to pack up a bottle of water, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a can of bug spray and hike to the Trinity River bottoms to do my annual piece on “Stupid Dallas Fake Kayak Rapids Still There, Still Stupid.”…
This week of compelling events in the real world here in Dallas has kept me away from a world I confess I sometimes prefer, the one depicted on a Bravo TV reality show called Southern Charm, set in Charleston, South Carolina. I feel guilty about it, but all week long…
When grief and profound mistrust swirl together in a threatening cloud above our heads as they have this past week, we should be forgiven the occasional lapse into fear and even despair. But even one moment of fear and despair may mask a more important reality: There are specific pragmatic…
You know the song, right, “You’ve Been Talkin’ ’Bout Me, Baby.” Well, I’ve been talkin’ ’bout you, baby. All over town. Thought I should tell you what I’ve been saying. When there’s a week like this with big national news going on in the city, I get calls from out-of-town reporters…
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people gather in front of City Hall to light candles, offer prayers and listen to testimonials to the five Dallas police officers murdered by a gunman last Thursday after a Black Lives Matter march in downtown Dallas. The crowd is about 80 percent white. Everyone is here to express…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown has been talking a lot over the last few days about community policing, a combination of strategies designed to build trust between the police and the people whose lives they patrol. What he doesn’t say in public is something that I know he knows. I…
The wail is the same. It doesn’t matter which side the wail comes from. Wail of loss. Wail of pain. It’s all the same wail. We don’t have cell phone video of the moments in Dallas when wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers, dear…
Sherie Williams, 46, was visiting from her home in Minneapolis when she learned that her sister, Shetamia Taylor, 38, of Garland, had been shot in the leg during Thursday night’s ambush massacre of police in downtown Dallas. Williams says Taylor and her three sons had been just about to return…
Here’s a simple idea, a plain idea, not my own idea but a good one, I think. It might help allay some fears and misgivings associated with turning over city-owned Fair Park to a private and opaque organization. Make it not opaque. This 277-acre albatross, a park that isn’t even…
Apparently now everybody on the Dallas city council has seen a copy of the email a lawyer sent to a recruiter explaining why he doesn’t want the job of Dallas city attorney – too much trouble, too much controversy – so now some members are calling for soul-searching on the…
Huge news just happened at the Dallas Independent School District. It’s a story that solves the riddle of school reform and ought to end the debate about former Superintendent Mike Miles, at least among people with any intellectual honesty. But it’s about to slide by us virtually unnoticed. First, a…
The real story is always better. Last week Michael Lindenberger of The Dallas Morning News wrote the official version of a political battle that took place almost a half century ago between the city of Dallas and a group of black homeowners around Fair Park in South Dallas. The true version…
Probably all I’ll ever have to tell you about myself is that recently, while reading a City Hall PowerPoint presentation on a proposed new housing policy, I laughed out loud. You already know never to invite me to dinner, right? Can’t help myself. Look. I have written about Curtis Lockey…
Wow. The dog thing is deep. And I knew that. Before I wrote a single word about the May 2 fatal dog mauling of Antoinette Brown, I already knew that our feelings about dogs – about pets in general – run deep in our hearts, because I know my own…
Every once in a while something sticks in my heart or my craw. This one was heart. Last week, writing about a city-funded program to build houses in central oak Cliff, I quoted Raymond Crawford, who lives in one of the target neighborhoods, as saying, “Everyone knows the city really…
Only two months after a recent mass eviction of homeless people from a downtown encampment, Dallas officials already are preparing for a second mass evacuation of the new camp that the homeless people moved to when they got kicked out of the first one. This confirms a prediction I made the first…
Carolyn King Arnold is the city council representative from District 4 in central Oak Cliff. She and I have three things in common. We’re both skeptical of anything North Dallas likes. So we’re against deck parks. And we’re both dead wrong. I learned this one the hard way. Beginning in…
Oh no you don’t, City Hall. Don’t think for a minute that the May 2 dog mauling and death of Antoinette Brown is somehow going to die down or fade away and then you’ll be cool. This woman, this citizen, this human being was ripped apart by dogs while neighbors,…
