Feedback: October 3, 2025

Entirely Unjust

Dear Editor,
    Given the recent article “As Doggett Exits Race, Casar Announces Plan to Run in CD 37, News, Aug. 29” I feel a follow-up of the impact the recent gerrymandering is essential to allow readers to fully comprehend the urgency of this situation. The redistricting in Austin has effectively diminished the votes of Black and Hispanic communities and has also lumped the majority of Democrats into District 37 in Austin. Placing Democrats in a singular district may be beneficial within the congressional district itself, but on a state and national level limits the weight of these votes. What’s more is that District 35 has been enlarged to cut into democratic areas of San Antonio and Austin and then stretches into the southeast to incorporate a majority of severely Republican counties also silencing the votes of Democrats.
    As someone who has grown up in Texas and spent years in the Austin area, the current state of politics within Texas is disheartening as citizens’ votes are actively reshaped to better match the political agendas of politicians rather than to properly reflect the values of the citizens that are supposed to be represented. With midterm elections approaching quickly, it is important for Austin residents to know what is happening now more than ever, especially those being affected by the changes in District 35. What is happening in Texas is entirely unjust and the full extent of the situation should be known.

Sincerely,
Purvi Weerasinghe

Questions on Prop Q

Dear Editor,

Your coverage of Proposition Q (“Higher Taxes Are on the Ballot,” News, Sept. 26) covers in depth the worthy projects that the city is touting, especially the coordinated approaches to address homelessness in the city.

My problem with this article is plainly stated in the subtitle: “City Leaders Explain What They’ll Get Us.” There was nothing about opposition to the TRE, other than the brief mention of affordability raised by Council Member Marc Duchen.

Council is asking us to raise our taxes to fund projects that the vast majority of us support (homelessness initiatives, EMS, parks, pools, family violence prevention). But Council is NOT letting voters decide on big-ticket expenditures that dwarf the $110 million that will be raised by Proposition Q. The projects touted to be funded by the TRE could easily be paid for with current tax revenue if any of the big-ticket items was reconsidered.

Trust the voters to decide whether to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for Cap and Stitch, and whether to spend multiple BILLIONS of dollars for a new Convention Center (which should have been done before demolishing the old one).

And most importantly, ask voters if we should spend TENS of BILLIONS of dollars to build the Project Connect rail. Voters in 2020 approved an attractive rail system at a cost of $5.8 billion. The city is now saying that they can only deliver a much reduced (and practically useless) rail system at a current cost projection of $8.2 billion. At this rate, the completed system voters approved in 2020 will likely cost as much as $15 billion to $20 billion. City Council should present the facts to voters and trust us to decide if the rail proposal still makes sense compared to other transportation options that have become available.

Steve Gerson

Romanticized Resistance

Dear Editor,

 Brant Bingamon, in his September 26, 2025, article about Austinite Greg Stoker [“Austinite Travels to Gaza With Humanitarian Flotilla“], romanticizes the adventures of an Instagram influencer boating into Gaza to deliver aid. To depict this flotilla as heroic resistance is misguided and failing to explain the security environment that produces Israel’s response is incomplete. What I read is not an example of serious activism or responsible journalism, but unfortunately another missed opportunity to examine Hamas’ role in this conflict.
   
   The blockade that Greg is sailing into isn’t some arbitrary cruelty created out of thin air. It has been in place since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and is a defensive response by Israel to thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians by a group with explicitly genocidal intent. Any sovereign country would respond harshly to a terrorist organization on its border that exists to murder its citizens.
   
   But Bingamon and Stoker have not mentioned Hamas once in a piece about the war in Gaza.
   
   It would be important for the author to note that World Central Kitchen workers weren’t “murdered” because they were not intentionally targeted. The WCK workers were unintentionally killed in a catastrophe the IDF recognizes and regrets. The framing of this incident in your article is inaccurate and fails to provide important context.
   
   Greg is right about one thing, however: The Israeli military is going to respond. That’s because Greg, who considers the October 7 massacre a justifiable military operation, and his activist friends are engaged in moral theater designed for Western audiences. Embattled countries don’t have time for Instagram influencers inside their enforcement zones.
   
   The people like Greg aboard these flotillas could much more meaningfully serve immiserated Gazans by calling for the obvious demands that are inexplicably and ubiquitously absent from Palestinian activism: holding Hamas responsible for the horrors and aftermath of October 7, demanding the release of all Israeli hostages, and encouraging a Palestinian population to free itself from the death cult that governs them.

Name Withheld

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