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.
The Austin Signal is a production of
K U T News, hosted by Jerry
Quijano.
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 Kehonnell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right.
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.
Yeah.
That are great treasures for all of
us.
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.
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.
Right.
And it's not. It is a journalistic
interpretation of the interview.
Mm-hmm.
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.
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.
Well, you know, I was a student here
at U T and I graduated
from U T in nineteen seventy six.
Mm-hmm.
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.
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.
My name is Anna Quijano.
Wait, do it again.
Hi, my name is Anna Quijano and
we're at the thirty seventh street
light show.
And how how do you know me?
I am Jerry's mom.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I can't see.
I think we have an idea.
Oh, he's pole dancing.
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.
I gotta document some of this on my
phone.
Even though I'm doing a story on it.
Yeah, for my for my Instagram.
Hello.
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.
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.
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.
He says the lights on thirty seventh
street embody the idea that
Austinites are just a little
different.
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.
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?
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, 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 Gabrera
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.