Bill Holston

Feds Allot $9 Million for Unaccompanied Kids' Attorney Fees, But How Far Can That Money Go?

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced an initiative to allot $9 million to help unaccompanied Central American kids pay for attorney fees. The money will be given to several cities with a high population of these kids, including Dallas, over the next two years. It's a powerful statement in ... More >>

Rocket Dockets for Kids in Immigration Courts Raise Doubts About Fairness

Last week, we told you about 13-year-old Gaby, who was given an order of deportation from immigration Judge Michael Baird. Gaby is from Honduras, and will be sent back this fall after having been in the United States for less than a year. Her court appearances will have taken place in the course of ... More >>

Dallas' Immigration Court Is Pushing Through Juvenile Migrant Cases Faster Than Ever

Ixar, a slight, gangling teenager, nervously fidgeted in his chair as Judge Michael Baird stared him down. Babies' cries could be heard echoing through the halls, but it did not break the formal tension within the courtroom. Ixar's eyes flashed between the translator and Baird. He had come a long ... More >>

Why Immigration Judges Say Cornyn and Cueller's Solution to the Surge Won't Work

Republican Senator John Cornyn and Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar this week were heralded, by the Morning News among others, for their proposal to hire scores of new immigration judges to begin ruling on child migrant cases within a week or so of their arrival, as a show of force to the Centra ... More >>

Dallas Preps for Incoming Immigrant Kids, But Will Obama's Promise of Federal Funds Be Enough?

For a major bureaucratic initiative, County Judge Clay Jenkins' plan to house around 2,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in Dallas County is falling into place very quickly. Just this past Saturday, Jenkins announced at the Texas Democratic convention his plan to shelter these kids in Dallas by t ... More >>

Central American Kids Are Pouring into Texas, and Dallas, Even Faster Than Expected

As the Division Director of Immigration and Legal Services for Catholic Charities of Dallas, Vanna Slaughter has long received email updates whenever young migrants arrive alone in the Dallas area. For some time, she says, she's received around 250 of these cases in a given month -- already a large ... More >>

A Gay Salvadorian Refugee Gets a New Life in Dallas With Help from a Human Rights Group

It's not easy being gay in El Salvador, which, in addition to being the second most violent place on earth, is not particularly hospitable to LGBT citizens. A 2010 report presented to the United Nations by several human rights groups described a number of grisly murders. In one case, the bodies of t ... More >>

Preservationists Want to Stop the City from Building the Texas Horse Park Over Historic Spring

Tucked at the bottom of a hill off Highway 175 in southern Dallas there's a spring. That it hasn't been paved over is remarkable. That you can still cup your hand and drink from it without getting dysentery or guzzling a toxic chemical stew is little short of miraculous. This is the middle of the ci ... More >>

Friend of Unfair Park Bill Holston to Take the Reins at the Human Rights Initiative

​There's no need to introduce Bill Holston -- attorney, KERA contributor, nature-trekker -- to longtime Friends of Unfair Park; he's one of the good ones, and has been for a long, long while. But Bill's about to disappear from these virtual pages, at least for a little while; he writes, "I promis ... More >>

From the Comments: DISD Trustee Flores Chimes in on Teach for America's Success

​Below, Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores hopped in the comments to underscore something he said during yesterday's discussion concerning Teach for America. Said the trustee yesterday, TFA corps members in the district "outperform two-thirds of all our teachers in math and sc ... More >>

Above the Trinity River, Playing and Talking and Eating and Sitting on a Bridge Meant for Cars

​First there was a Better Block; then, a Better Boulevard; then, just yesterday, a Better Bridge. Of all the efforts to temporarily transform a piece of the city into something other than what it is, yesterday's brief installation atop the Cedar Crest Bridge, which connects Oak Cliff to South Dall ... More >>

Ride the Lightning to the Calatrava Bridge

Photo by Justin Terveen​No doubt you got a nasty wake-up call in the wee small hours of the morning from the storms that rumbled through; chances are there'll be some kind of a repeat this evening. But Brother Bill Holston wanted to make sure we noted that the great Justin Terveen was out and abou ... More >>

How Banksy Forced Hal Samples to Finish Doc About Homeless Man Living Outside L.A.

Tachowa Covington and his former home in a still from Hal Samples's in-progress Something From Nothing. The whole trailer's after the jump.​Over the years photographer Hal Samples has shown me bits and pieces of his in-progress documentary about Tachowa Covington, who turned an abandoned water tan ... More >>

Watch: Deep Ellum Comes Together, Remembers Adam Carter

Danny FulgencioAdam Carter was 27.​If there's a good thing that's come out of the recent spate of local musician deaths -- and, yes, this is a stretch, practically inherently -- it's the positivity that's come out of Deep Ellum and the music community as a whole, as these groups have joined togeth ... More >>

Anne Rice Comes Home. To Richardson.

In 1958, per the novelist's biography, her family moved from New Orleans to Richardson, where she attended high school. After which she attended Texas Woman's University in Denton, before moving to San Francisco and then international renown as the author of, among other things, Interview With the V ... More >>

Allen Vaught Wants to Plant Grassroots Movement That'll Save DISD's Teachers

Allen Vaught in the Green Zone​Brother Bill Holston directed our attention yesterday to the Facebook page of former state Rep. and movie star Allen Vaught, who writes of "organizing a grassroots program focusing on the legislature and DISD to not gut our schools." I called Vaught at his office at ... More >>

Dallas Area Rapid Transit's Towing Buses and Trying to "Unstick" Light Rail

Daniel Rodrigue​Dallas Area Rapid Transit has suspended most of its light-rail service due to ice and wind. There is this update, though: "We are operating 4 trains on the Trinity Railway Express this morning instead of the usual 6. We are trying to operate trains out of Union and T&P about ev ... More >>

Harvey Lacey Wants to Rebuild the (Third) World One Bale of Recycled Plastic at a Time

From a video you'll find after the jump, Harvey Lacey and the building blocks of his building blocks​For the last few weeks, Brother Bill Holston's been on me to write about longtime Friend of Unfair Park Harvey Lacey's save-the-world project -- which, till Tuesday morning, wasn't completely clear ... More >>

If You Were Waiting for the Casa Linda Theater to Show Movies Again, It Ain't Happening

​I've yet to step foot into the Natural Grocers that recently opened in a smallish section of the old Preston Forest Whole Foods, but my wife has and says it's "a cross between Sprouts and Roy's." As in: There's very little produce, all the meats are frozen, and there are plenty o' vitamins amongs ... More >>

Scenes from the Veterans Day Parade

Photos by Danny Fulgencio​Our own Danny Fulgencio was downtown this afternoon for the Veterans Day parade. He sends back these images, with more to come in a slide show shortly. In the meantime, may I also recommend this touching tribute by good friend of the show Bill Holston that appeared in thi ... More >>

Unfair Park Guest Column: Dallas Attorney On Why, and How, You Should Judge the Judges

​The Friends of Unfair Park are no doubt familiar with the fine work of Bill Holston, noted human-rights attorney, KERA-FM commentator, occasional Morning News op-ed'er and Unfair Park commenter. (He's also joining Angela Hunt, Rawlins Gilliland and Shibboleth at the Dallas Rally for Sanity at Lee ... More >>

An Observer Photographer Discovers a "Wasteland" of Trash Along White Rock Creek

Photos by Dylan Hollingsworth​Observer contributor Dylan Hollingsworth was out at White Rock Creek yesterday shooting his nieces Autumn Hollingsworth and Chassidy Levassuer when he came across this -- "a wasteland of debris," as he put it when we spoke this afternoon. This is the spot: Goforth Roa ... More >>

A Map of Downtown's Treasures (With Audio)

​For those who missed it: Yesterday, in the comments of the Downtown Dallas 360 update, Brother Bill Holston wondered if there was a "walking tour" brochure for those interested in touring downtown architecture. A little later in the day, Business Council for the Arts's CEO Katherine Wagner chimed ... More >>

Oh, OK. You Say You Want a Guide to Downtown's Buildings? Well, Then.

This guide to downtown may be a little out of date, but it's certainly the right price.​OK, so by now we're all clear on one thing: The Business Council for the Arts' downloadable downtown tour was always intended to be focused on one thing and one thing only: public art. That, says Greg Brown, pr ... More >>

News & Notes: Immigration Reform, César Chávez, Garland Road & Gay Jesus

​Some news and notes on this light-commenting Thursday:Domingo Garcia's got himself a whole new immigration-reform MegaMarch to promote -- this one, a May 1 parade that'll start at the Santuario de Guadalupe on Ross Ave. and end at Dallas City Hall. Says Garcia on the Web site, "Our immigrant comm ... More >>

Wherein One Friend of Unfair Park Engages in a Little Local Hero Worship

Erica FelicellaBill Holston​When last we linked to one of Brother Bill Holston's KERA-FM essays, he was giving gratitude for the things he takes for granted in the days before Thanksgiving. This morning, the attorney and good Friend of Unfair Park is honoring his heroes, among them two familiar na ... More >>

H to the Drizin, or: "Why Is Our Menorah So Tiny and the Christmas Tree So Big?"

For reasons still not entirely clear to me, Bill Holston was scouring the Web for instructions on how to tie tefillin when he came across the video below, in which Zvi Drizin of The Intown Chabad on Routh Street wanders the West Village for 40 days and 40 nights (no, that's not right) in search of t ... More >>

Wherein One Friend of Unfair Park Lists All the Things for Which He's Thankful

Bill Holston​Attorney William O. Holston Jr.'s a good Friend of Unfair Park and a very good guy who does considerable pro bono work representing political and religious asylum applicants to this country, much of it through the Human Rights Initiative. I bring it up this morning because Brother Bil ... More >>

Damn Good Joes | Mule-Headed

The Trinity River, 1908

Henry ClogensonA Friend of Unfair Park this morning was browsing the Library of Congress's archives and came across this Henry Clogenson photo of the Trinity River in 1908 -- "the flood of record," as Schutze describes it. So happens Jim has been making open records demands from the U.S. Army Corps ... More >>

Schutze Shirts: A Contest in the Making

Schutze is on an East Texas retreat with Dallas administrative judge C. Victor Lander this week, so he won't mind me posting this T-shirt suggested by Friend of Unfair Park "ericthegardener." It all started in the comments section of yesterday's item about the May 5 Trinity Parkway Public Hearing at ... More >>

Memorial Services Set For Tomorrow For Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball

Bill Holston, good Friend of Unfair Park, asks us this morning to make mention of tomorrow's memorial service for the Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball, whose battle with cancer was documented in The Dallas Morning News only a few days before her death on Tuesday. In both pieces, the 50-year-old Baskin-Ball ... More >>

Where There's a Will, There's a Way to Scare Your Old Man Half to Death

Well, now I feel stupid, because this sounds like I’m bragging about my kid, which really would be stupid at this point. I only wrote the item yesterday saying he was going to run with the bulls at Pamplona because I couldn’t make myself stop worrying about it. Anyway, he did it, and he’s O.K. ... More >>

Black Dallas' Powerbroker | Toadies Mayhem | Diamonds Forever | Immigration Woes | The Bearded One

Bridge to Nowhere | Play It Again, Sam

Re: Dallas is Anti-Pro Bono

Seems our posts about pro bono attorneyin' in Dallas have some Friends of Unfair Park worked up. A medicine-practicing Friend of Unfair Park would like to answer attorney Bill Holston's question, which was, "What other profession makes an organized effort to provide free services to the poor?" In sh ... More >>

Re: Dallas is Anti-Pro Bono

Bill Holston, a law-practicing Friend of Unfair Park, has this to say regarding The American Lawyer's pro bono survey indicating Dallas lawyers need to play some serious catch-up: "The Dallas Bar donates millions of dollars of free legal services to the poor each year. I and many others are member ... More >>

Out, Damned Blob! |Kindly Caron| Voice of the Heathen| Illegal, Illegal, Illegal

Re: Radio Silence

Local attorney Bill Holston sends this missive regarding the May 1 "Day Without a Mexican" protest: "I sat next to a Mexican-American businessman on a flight yesterday. He employs about 150 people, and they'll be closed on May 1. I think this could be a really big deal. I hope it sends a big messa ... More >>