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A new “bathroom bill” approved by Texas legislators has been in effect across the state for just over a week, requiring people to use public restrooms aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth. But there are still questions about how the law will be enforced, and here in Austin, a lot of it depends on which building you happen to be in.
Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, the guiding hand behind the Voces Oral History Project, is stepping down after a quarter-century of documenting the stories of Latinos in Texas and the United States. She reflects on her work.
The 37th Street Lights will be lit tonight. But who started the Austin holiday tradition? ATXplained investigates.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:09] A new bathroom bill approved by Texas legislators has been in effect across the state for just over a week now. The law requires people to use public restrooms aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth, but there are still questions about how the law will be enforced, and here in Austin a lot of it depends on which building you happen to be in. Plus, the guiding hand behind the Volces Oral History Project is stepping down after a quarter century of documenting the story of Latinos in Texas and the US. Come hear her reflections on the work. That’s up next.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:39] The Austin Signal is a production of K U T News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:44] And the thirty-seventh street lights will be lit tonight. It’s an Austin holiday tradition. But how did it come to be? And what does my mom have to do with it all? That’s coming up next. It’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, thank you for tuning in. This is Austin Signal, and you’re listening on community-powered public radio K U T News. It’s Friday, December 12th. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We’re glad to have you here. A new bathroom bill has been in effect in Texas for just over a week now. The law requires people to use public restrooms aligned with their sex assigned at birth. But as KUT’s Katy McAfee reports, how it’s being enforced across Austin depends greatly on what building you happen to be in.
Katy McAfee [00:01:42] Austin City Councilmember Mike Siegel stands with a group of transgender activists on the city hall steps Thursday afternoon to announce something big. Council members just unanimously approved his resolution to look into making city restrooms gender inclusive while complying with the state’s new bathroom bill.
Mike Siegel [00:01:58] I do believe this law will be struck down by the courts is unconstitutional. But until that happens, we want to send a message as a city that we are welcoming to our own residents, to visitors.
Katy McAfee [00:02:11] And to everyone. But Siegel’s plan won’t come easy or cheap. One option is adding a single occupancy restroom to every city facility, a move that could cost more than $14 million. Another option is turning every city restroom into a single occupancy restroom. That option could cost more than $232 million. Speaking to the crowd, Ash Hall with the ACLU of Texas said they were heartened by the steps the city’s taking. But Hall says they’re holding their breath as enforcement continues.
Ash Hall [00:02:42] In the times ahead, we can expect to hear more reports about trans people facing discrimination in restrooms in government owned and operated facilities. Some of those may be in our city, some of them may be beyond.
Katy McAfee [00:02:55] Under the law, individuals will not be held liable for using the wrong restroom. But the Texas Attorney General will fine political subdivisions, like Travis County, the City of Austin, and UT if they violate the law. Fines start at $25,000 for the first offense and can grow up to $125,000. On the UT Austin campus, at least one gender-neutral restroom with multiple stalls has been changed to a women’s restroom, and a new policy is in effect, stating only females, as they are defined in the bill, can enter female spaces, like restrooms, locker rooms, or changing rooms. UT did not directly answer questions about how the new law would be enforced, and neither did Travis County. Officials released a statement saying the county will, quote, follow all state laws and regulations, end quote. Over the weekend, a group of transgender activists tested how the Texas Department of Public Safety would enforce the law at the state capitol. The group used the restroom at first without issue, but activists say after they staged a peaceful protest in the rotunda, several DPS troopers flocked to the scene. They asked to see IDs for select people in the group before they could use the restroom a second time. Ray Vazquez, a transgender woman, says she was singled out by DPS.
Ray Vasquez [00:04:12] Honestly, in my personal opinion, it seemed like they were not given guidance on how to enforce this bill or enforce this new policy that had been put in place.
Katy McAfee [00:04:22] A DPS trooper later cited Vasquez and three other demonstrators with criminal trespass warnings, which bans them from Capitol grounds for a year. But Caleb Armstrong, a trans activist who is at the protest, says the bathroom bill is sure to have effects beyond Capitol walls.
Caleb Armstrong [00:04:38] It makes it so you can’t go to your kids band concert because you you’re not allowed to use the bathroom that aligns with who you are at their school, or you can’t go spend a day at the public park because you’re terrified to go into the restroom.
Katy McAfee [00:04:55] Armstrong says, as long as the bathroom bill is in effect, its nebulous enforcement will push trans people out of public life in Texas. I’m Katy McAfee in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:10] This is Austin Signal. Thank you for tuning in. You may recognize the stories from Volces Oral History Center. Maybe you’ve heard them right here on our airwaves. Based at the University of Texas since its founding in nineteen ninety nine, the center has gathered more than eighteen hundred oral history interviews and over twenty five hundred photographs, helping to document the story of the Latino experience in Texas and the United States and preserving that record for future generations. For a quarter of a century, Voces has been led by its founder, Maggie Rivas Rodriguez, but that is about to change. Next year, Rivas Rodriguez will be stepping down from Voices ahead of her retirement. Texas Standards David Brown spoke with her about the program and what’s next, but first asks her to take us back to the beginning.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:05:57] We we started off wanting to do just audio and a friend of mine named Hector Galan who’s a documentary film producer said, Don’t do audio, do video because if we do a documentary it can be my like my field research.
David Brown [00:06:10] Right.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:06:10] So we started off doing video because of Hector and I fell in love with video and it was so important that we start off at a time when oral history really was not doing a lot of video work, we started off doing video and I’m so glad we did because we still have those video interviews with people, including my parents who were both of this generation.
David Brown [00:06:31] Yeah.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:06:31] That are great treasures for all of us.
David Brown [00:06:34] Yeah, you know, i it’s interesting that you come from the world of journalism initially, and I think that you have an appreciation for something that perhaps some of our listeners might not completely, and that is when you talked when you do these interviews, there’s so much that winds up on the cutting room floor once it’s condensed into a story that’s fit for print, as they say. And and th there are gems, jewels, there’s nuance and texture that if if you if it were just left to an article or an occasional piece or or what have you, it wouldn’t do the full story justice. So a big part of what Voses seems to me contributes is having a much more full and rich story that’s preserved. It’s the preservation aspect of it and that and and having the complete story as well, it seems to me.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:07:25] That’s such a great point, David, because it is one of my frustrations. If y probably in your career you’ve seen you’ve done the same thing where you’ve interviewed somebody and what ends up on the air is just a small small piece of what they said. It is frustrating. But it is true that that the that the real gold is that full interview. And one of my frustrations is that when people look at our website, vocescenter.org, if they look at our website they see the stories that have come out of those interviews, some people think that that is the oral history project.
David Brown [00:08:00] Right.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:08:01] And it’s not. It is a journalistic interpretation of the interview.
David Brown [00:08:04] Mm-hmm.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:08:04] So to look at to see the entire interview, you either have to go to the repository, which is the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American collection on campus, or we are trying to put as many interviews as we can on YouTube. So when you go to YouTube, you can look up by collection like World War II collection and you can see some interviews of people that we interviewed twenty five, twenty-six years ago at the very beginning. And most of these people are no longer with us. But that is that is the the beauty of having that w that it can be those interviews can be interpreted and understood in different ways by different people depending on your on your perspective.
David Brown [00:08:45] Yeah. I w I want to dig a little bit deeper into your early years as a reporter, which obviously shaped a lot of your appreciation for for this narrative approach that Vosis i has has developed. I understand that well before Vosis was initially conceived, you saw a need for more lat Latino representation in the industry at large. You were, I gather, among the committee that founded the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Do I have that right? That is correct. Tell us a little bit about what you were hoping to accomplish there.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:09:18] Well, you know, I was a student here at U T and I graduated from U T in nineteen seventy six.
David Brown [00:09:24] Mm-hmm.
Rivas Rodriguez [00:09:25] And even in the seventies we were looking at the newspapers and the Daily Texas and we a lot of us did work at the Daily Texan, but the the number of stories that we could that we found in the Daily Texan or in the Austin newspaper, San Antonio newspapers, was really, really there were very few that were about the Latino experience. So what we didn’t know was we didn’t realize that the Kerner Commission report had come out and they had looked at the same issues of the the news new media was largely told through the perspective of people that were not part of these quote unquote minority communities. So our stories kept on getting lost. And so we were very aware of that. We were very you know, we as students were very aware of that. And we did a conference here in nineteen seventy-five that brought in people from all over the country to look at some of the issues facing Latinos in in the news media and what it meant to be part of the news media and try to get those stories told in the news media. So that it it really goes back to my college days. Well, flash forward, I ended up going to the Boston Globe and I was working at the Boston Globe from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty two. And at the Boston Globe I was the first Hispanic they ever hired and there were you know, I had a lot of of black friends there and we would meet and we would talk about how can we get more perspective into the newspaper, how can we champion our stories. So we we we tried to to do as much as we could, but it was kind of the the entire thing was because we didn’t have a lot of editors who could say, Well, that’s a great story idea. And we didn’t have enough reporters saying that story needs to be told and and it needs to be placed in a prominent part of the newspaper, not buried. So when I was at the Boston Globe, I got an invitation to be part of committee to plan a conference of Hispanic journalists. And that took place in nineteen eighty-two in San Diego. So we planned this thing for I don’t remember if it was a year or whatever, but that but I was part of that committee. And I made sure at that point to reach out to as many Hispanic journalists in the New England region as I possibly could. And and so that was kind of the beginning of my involvement in what ended up being the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. But in San Diego at that conference in nineteen eighty two, there were something like seven hundred people at this conference. I had never seen so many Hispanic journalists in one place. And we had some of the same problems that sometimes we’d have what we thought was a really important story idea and it would get shot down. Or we had a really important story and it got buried. And and we didn’t have just by being able to talk about these issues and try to come up with solutions that was so important to all of us.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:27] That was a conversation between Voss’s founder Maggie Rivas Rodriguez. She was speaking with the Texas Standards David Brown. You can hear their full interview at Texas Standard.org. And we’re gonna have a link in today’s podcast show notes. That is at KUT.org slash signal. A quick note from the KUT Newsroom happened late yesterday afternoon. Travis County is working to exonerate four young men in the case known as the Yogurt Shop Murders. It’s after Austin police identified the man that they believe was responsible for the 1991 killings of four girls. Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Wellburn were all charged in 1999. APD said in September they believe Robert Eugene Braschers committed the murders. Brashers died in nineteen ninety-nine. We have more from KUT’s government accountability reporter Andrew Weber. That is at KUT.org. And we’re gonna have more Austin Signal coming up in just a moment. You are listening to community powered public radio. This is KUT News 90.5 or on the K U T app and online at K U T.org. This is Austin Signal. Thank you for tuning in. The holiday season is upon us and it is a nostalgic one, taking time to listen back to stories about who we are as a people and why we do the things that we do and partake in the traditions that we do. Traditions of old old Austin particularly, like the 37th Street lights, the installation slinging lights from house to house as cars and people pass through. How did it come to be? Well, somebody asked our ATX Wayne project about it. Let’s take it back to a fresh-eared 2019 Cherokee Honel. I already had plans to head over and see the lights on 37th Street this year. Then someone told me they wanted to come along and check it out. So off we went to explore the street pulsing with color and discover the origins of the lights. Just say like, my name is my name.
Anna Quijano [00:14:47] My name is Anna Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:48] Wait, do it again.
Anna Quijano [00:14:49] Hi, my name is Anna Quijano and we’re at the thirty seventh street light show.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:54] And how how do you know me?
Anna Quijano [00:14:57] I am Jerry’s mom.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:00] She’d just driven up from San Antonio and we’re looking out as the darkest part of the night is beginning to be illuminated with glowing bulbs of electric color. There’s blue, red, green, yellow, and everything in between.
Anna Quijano [00:15:12] The lights are connected between right over the street. I mean over it looks like it could be power lines. But they’re just like roped from across the street from each other. Looks pretty cool.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:24] She was probably thinking the same thing our question asker Liz Artega thought when she used to visit the lights as a kid. Yeah, they look pretty and all, but is this safe?
Liz Artega [00:15:34] You know, I went with my parents one year and my dad was an electrician and he was like, Oh man, this is this is a spider hazard for sure.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:41] Liz grew up in North Austin and visited the lights back in the early nineties. The festivities along the houses of thirty seventh street set a high bar for Liz’s idea of Christmas. She just assumed everyone in central Austin loved Christmas this much, but not in the usual Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, chestnuts roasting on an open fire kind of way.
Liz Artega [00:16:03] It was like what made Austin weird. It was like one of those things. Like, oh yeah, that’s why we call Austin weird. It’s because we have things like this around a town around Christmas, which almost had nothing to do with Christmas.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:13] And so she wanted to know who started this odd Christmas adjacent celebration. Well, one of the people responsible for igniting the tradition is Jamie Lipman. He moved onto 37th Street in the late 1970s. He was stringing up his first set of lights when someone told him to try letting them hang straight down for a change.
Jamie Lipman [00:16:34] Well that’s different. So I went with it. And a sort of a tic tac toe cross piece that I attached the lights to and then pulled it up with a rope. People could get in the middle of the strings and spin around.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:48] Pretty soon the other residents on the street started hanging their own lights, then Jamie and another neighbor decided they wanted their houses to be connected by lights.
Jamie Lipman [00:16:58] Across the road, over someone’s house who had no lights, you know, just in the trees, and we connected and that was sort of the big catalyst for people to oh, I wanna put up lights, I wanna do this. So we ran with it.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:14] Jamie says the 37th Street lights hit their heyday in the late 80s and early 90s, but as the light displays grew, so did concern that the whole thing might be a safety hazard. Then the blackout of 1993 happened. Jamie says he woke up one morning and walked out to find a city worker on a cherry picker removing the lights. So, as a form of protest, the residents on 37th Street banded together and shut down the whole thing. Then they told upset visitors that they’d have to take it up with then Mayor Bruce Todd. So they did.
Jamie Lipman [00:17:47] Two days later they came back and put all the lights back up. And Mayor Todd walked down the street and said, Well, we messed with Christmas, we made a mistake.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:57] The lights burned bright until the mid-2000s when Jamie and some of his fellow neighbors moved out of the area. But thanks to the help of some new people on the block, the past few Christmases on 37th Street have been getting brighter and stranger, and that brings us back to this year. One of the first displays my mom and I bumped into was a science fair put on by stuffed animals.
Anna Quijano [00:18:20] Which stuffing type exhibits the greatest cuddling force? Do stuffed balloon animals withstand the weather better than traditional balloon animals? What should I put in my pouch? Says the kangy. Does proximity to stuffed animals affect plant growth? The charmin bears wear underwear but not clothing. Why can’t we see it?
Jerry Quijano [00:18:40] So not your typical light show so far. Not at all. Not all the houses on the streets are decked out in lights, but a good chunk of them are. People walk along both sidewalks dipping in and out of yards while cars drive down the road moving almost as slowly as the fascinated pedestrians. And the displays, yeah, they’re still a little weird.
Anna Quijano [00:19:06] I can’t see. I think we have an idea. Oh, he’s pole dancing.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:13] We walk down the streets weaving through the people and houses, searching out the perfect spots for my now influencer mom to snap some photos.
Anna Quijano [00:19:21] I gotta document some of this on my phone.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:23] Even though I’m doing a story on it.
Anna Quijano [00:19:25] Yeah, for my for my Instagram. Hello.
Robert Foster [00:19:33] I remember coming here with my family as both a young kid but then a lot also as a teenager. It was one of my favorite spots to go with many of my friends that lived around this neighborhood.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:43] Robert Foster moved to 37th Street in 2015. He started rattling his neighbors to gage their interest, and they decided to bring glory back to 37th Street.
Robert Foster [00:19:53] The first year it was very small, but there was just these two kids that were just having the absolute best time of their life right outside my window during the light. And I just realized at that point that like we we just had to do it. Like we had to bring a little weird and little joy back to Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:07] He says the lights on thirty seventh street embody the idea that Austinites are just a little different.
Robert Foster [00:20:13] We come together. We also come together and we don’t want just to see Santa Claus and like a Christmas tree. We wanna be creative, we wanna be unique, we wanna revel in like the diversity that the city has.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:26] Some people say there isn’t much weird left in Austin anymore. For me, yeah. The lights were weird and they were cool. But what did my mom think? Would you say that that this experience was weird?
Anna Quijano [00:20:43] Some of it was weird. Not a lot of it. A lot of it was just very creative to me. There’s a few weird things, but I’m I wouldn’t call they need to get weirder.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:54] Jerry Quijano, K U T News. That story was reported in December of 2019. That was before our very first AT Explained live show. And our next AT Explained Live Show is in the works, and the show date is set. It is May 21st next year at the Bass Concert Hall, and tickets are now available. You can get yours by going to K U T.org and finding out more. We’re gonna have a link in the podcast show notes. Again, that’s KUT.org slash signal. And don’t forget you can subscribe to the ATXplained podcast as well as Austin Signal so that you never miss a thing that we’re working on, because we are staying busy here at the KUT studios, bringing you everything that’s been going on in Austin. And this week has been a busy one. KUT City Hall reporter Luz Moreno Lozano had the story of the downtown YMCA Town Lake expansion. The idea was brought to council earlier this week. They want to add housing and restaurants and office space to their current space with a little bit of an expansion and a renovation. KUT’s government accountability reporter Andrew Weber also had the story of an Austin Energy employee accused of defrauding the city utility out of more than a million dollars. These stories are at KUT.org in addition to K U T’s healthcare reporter Olivia Almridge covering the flu season. That we are in and going into through February. We have Waymo’s passing AISD school busses. And we’re wrapping up 2025. Our Sister Station K U T X is looking back at the year that was in Austin Music with the artists of the month and their favorite Austin songs of 2025. Again, K U T.org slash signal, or you can subscribe wherever you listen to your shows. Thank you for spending your week with us. We are listener-powered public radio, and we couldn’t do what we do every single day without the help of our team. Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director, and Jimmy Mass is our showrunner. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We will talk to you on Monday. Have a fantastic weekend.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
