All Politics & Media - Critics Picks

Best Statement Pieces for When You’re Marching for Free Speech

Read Receipts

Artist and Austin native Chantal Strasburger marries a sense of humor with righteous rage in her meme-inspired embroidered merch line, Read Receipts. Royally pissed about politics? She’s definitely threaded something relevant onto a ball cap or tee. From iconic images – Bernie in mittens, bless – to succinct slogans (“Control Guns, Not Girls”) and MAGA clapbacks (“Are We Great Yet?”), Strasburger uses the age-old tools of needle and thread to speak to the moment we’re in. Preach.

readreceipts.co.uk

Best Old-Fashioned Music Explorer

Your Internet Radio Dial

While the radio was disappearing from grocery store speakers and alarm clocks, internet radio was supercharging airwaves to reach across the globe and nurturing antennaless DIY outfits. Bouncing between separate tabs and tough-to-load sites to check out online streams, though, doesn’t exactly have the same dial-turning ease of yore. David Fruchter, aka former KOOP radio host Slappy Pinchbottom, must’ve felt the same way before he created Your Internet Radio Dial. Thanks to his retrofitted website, curious ears can stream stations from next door or across the world, turning digital knobs to switch between them with ease.

yourinternetradiodial.net

Keenest Eye on the Austin Immigration Beat

Emiliano Tahui Gómez

It’s been a difficult year. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has ramped up under the Trump administration, terrorizing and separating families across Texas and the nation. Gov. Greg Abbott is demanding greater law enforcement collaboration with ICE and threatens to withhold state funding if cities don’t. Through it all, we’re grateful for journalists like Emiliano Tahui Gómez, the Statesman’s Latino Communities reporter, who keep us informed and tell real, human stories that are only possible by meeting the community where they are.

statesman.com/author/emiliano-tahui-gomez

Best Sense of Place

UT’s The GreenLink Team

The Urban Land Institute is the world’s top network of land-use professionals. So it was a big deal when an interdisciplinary team of University of Texas architecture and business school students won the grand prize in ULI’s annual Gerald D. Hines Student Competition, beating out finalists from Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. This year’s challenge was a redesign of Austin strip mall Hancock Center (located just a block from Chronicle HQ). That might seem like a home-field advantage for UT’s kids, but considering that the winning team – Anushka Deshpande, Sushmita Gautam, Josh Hu, Meng-Shin Lin, and Michael Alada – hail from India, Nepal, China, Taiwan, and Minneapolis, respectively, it feels more like proof that diversity is a strength.

americas.uli.org/2026-uli-hines-student-competition-finalist-the-greenlink-the-university-of-texas-at-austin

Most Dogged Public Servant

Lloyd Doggett

In his five decades of representing Central Texas, is there anywhere the indefatigable Lloyd Doggett hasn’t made an impact? Land, air, and sea, the retiring congressman and native Austinite has fought for environmental protections and clean energy, pushed for FAA reforms, and prioritized water sustainability research. He’s been a tireless advocate for affordable healthcare and fair prescription drug pricing, abortion rights, education, and DACA. Oh, and he’s an absolute legend for being part of 1979’s quorum-busting “Killer Bees” and for vigorously opposing the 2003 Iraq war. In short: a man of integrity, a champion of progressive values, and a true public servant.

doggett.house.gov

Best University Watchdogs

Austin Students for a Democratic Society and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas

It’s no secret that the University of Texas has continued to allow the polarizing ideology of the Republican Party to seep into the walls of the institution. But student organizers with the Austin chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), who have a front row seat to the right-wing tilt, aren’t afraid to hold UT leadership accountable. In May, SEAT organized a string of mock funerals for UT, UNT, Texas Tech, and academic freedom on those campuses, complete with a horse-drawn carriage toting books and ashes. Austin SDS was quick to march against the consolidation of ethnic studies departments and under-the-table compacts with the Trump administration, and consistently defends the rights of student protesters. Both student orgs aren’t afraid to head to the Capitol with their demands, and demonstrate anew why free speech is essential on our university campuses.

instagram.com/austin.sds

studentsengaged.org

Best Print Revival

The Rag

In 1966, students at the University of Texas saw censorship and suppression unfolding around them and decided to take a stab at preserving free speech through an underground magazine they dubbed The Rag. While original “ragsters” have kept the ethos active in blog and radio format, now-alumni Kira Small and Ava Hosseini, alarmed by similar politics on campus and beyond, picked up the print torch last fall, publishing the first physical edition in more than 50 years. Their approach to paper-to-peer communication has a similar urgency. “No, Social Media Is Not the New ‘Public Square,’” Small wrote in an essay in the debut revival issue. The colorful zine, complete with cartoons, essays, and other commentary, draws on the humor and candor of the publication’s legacy for a contemporary crowd.

substack.com/@txragmag

Best Big Chair

Violet Crown City Church

At the corner of Morrow and Woodrow, on the lawn of the midcentury church that’s currently the home of Violet Crown Church, there’s a chair. Not just any chair. A gigantic Adirondack chair that’s become a billboard for messages to the community: some funny, some touching, some celebratory, and some highlighting strength through unity. Pastor Jay Cooper crafted the oversized seat out of scrap wood and now it slows more traffic at the junction than a stop sign. Even Santa’s been known to drop by. So sit a spell and reflect on the power of a single chair to signal that everybody deserves a seat at the table.

violetcrown.church