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Heard enough stories? Let’s get to work! As Rebecca writes this week:
While the subsequent fallout of this decision unfolds, it is important for us to remember that our work remains the same—to work together to get out the vote and educate our members about civic engagement.
Sad Camp News
Meanwhile, back at the Pink Building, there were two days of deeply painful legislative hearings about the circumstances that resulted in 27 young campers drowning in the July 4 floods in 2025. Becca covered the hearings for us, relying on her experience investigating the aftermath of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast to keep a stiff upper lip.
Becca writes:
As we all grieve the losses that occurred in the floods—and the peace we once felt in this beautiful part of the state—it is important to remember that two things can be true.
The operators of Camp Mystic are good and loving people who care about their campers. And it also is true that the camp had deeply inadequate plans that failed to keep campers safe in the flash flood.
In the same way, legislators are well-intentioned people who care about the future of the state. And it is also true that they have missed repeated opportunities to acknowledge and prepare for the increasing risk of impactful weather due to climate change.
We can recognize that Camp Mystic’s leadership are fellow human beings who risked their own personal safety in an attempt to avert disaster. And we can feel angry that their complacency in flood evacuation planning led to the unthinkable.
The problem is not one of good intentions. In both emergency planning and policymaking, we recognize that good intentions are not enough.
Weirdly Hopeful News
It’s clear that climate change was a factor in the July 4 floods, which makes it fitting that this week we also got genuinely encouraging reports from Santa Marta, Colombia, where representatives of at least 50 countries (but not the US) gathered for the first global conference on phasing out fossil fuels. Becca wrote about that, too.
And in other hope-full news, Dylan writes about faith communities literally remaking weapons into garden tools, as well as a thought-provoking look at promising public health framing to reduce gun violence. (It’s great to have even a tiny bit of hope related to gun violence prevention this week: On the heels of yet another attempted mass shooting, the Administration announced what our colleagues at Texas Gun Sense called the largest rollback of gun safety policy in decades.)
Hopeful does not mean sanguine, confident, or optimistic.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said it this way:
Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope.
Thanks for helping to keep Texas weirdly hopeful!
Love, |
