For the current week’s forum information, please see the announcements. Forums start at 11:45 in the Sanctuary and last for one hour. The public is invited to attend and admission is free. Please go to the Past Forums 2003-2011 page for the schedule of Public Affairs Forums from past years.
| Date | Speaker | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/27/2012 | Margo Frasier | The Role of the Police Monitor: History and Current Challenges | Margo Frasier, Austin Police Monitor, will discuss the creation of the O Police Monitor office and her and her staff’s roles and responsibilities. She will describe her office’s efforts to ensure responsiveness to community concerns in regard to police operations. How her office works with law enforcement, the public, and city officials to help with police oversight and accountability will be highlighted. Ms. Frasier has over 35 years of experience in law enforcement and correction agencies and from 1997 through 2004 served as Sheriff of Travis County, Texas, the only woman to hold this office. She has been recognized for her leadership in implementing community policing and improving the jail system. |
| 5/20/2012 | City Council Woman Sheryl Cole | Austin: Where We Are Now and Future Directions | Sheryl Cole will offer her perspective on where Austin is today and will address issues of cost of living, affordable housing, management of growth, and human services needs. She will also identify concerns of the African American community in Austin. Sheryl Cole is an Austin resident of 25 years and the first African American woman ever elected to the Austin City Council. She holds a B.A. in accounting from University of Texas and is a Certified Public Accountant. She also holds a law degree from University of Texas and worked with a private firm and then the Texas Municipal League. She has served as a Board Member of Leadership Austin, the Austin Area Urban League, and Communities in Schools and has served on the City of Austin Bond Committee. |
| 5/13/2012 | Tom Doyal | Texas and the Gay March Towards Full Citizenship | Tom Doyal will speak about the long march of gay people in Texas towards full and equal citizenship. Tom has been involved, in one capacity or another, in the struggle for fuller civil liberties for lesbians and gay men for over twenty-five years. He was one of five plaintiffs in the unsuccessful state court challenge to the constitutionality of the Texas sodomy law, Morales v. State of Texas, in 1989. The State of Texas has played an important role in this struggle, especially since the US Supreme Court, in a Texas case (Lawrence v. State of Texas) finally declared the Texas sodomy law unconstitutional is June 2003. Tom Doyal is a retired lawyer and an past member of the State Bar of Texas. |
| 5/6/2012 | Robbie Ausley | Faith and Experience make me Pro-Choice | Ms. Ausley is Chairman of Annie's List and Past President of Austin Planned Parenthood. Robbie Ausley believes in being pro-choice, and that options for women should remain open. She works to make that so. Married 48 years, a committed Methodist, she met her future husband when she was 14, at a Methodist church in Lubbock. They had four children in quick succession. Then contraception failed, and she chose abortion. This is a story of her faith and her experience, and what she, and you, can do to help. |
| 4/29/2012 | Ricardo Ainslie Ph.D | Understanding Mexico’s Drug War | Ricardo Ainslie is a psychologist-psychoanalyst who uses books, documentary films, and photographic exhibits to highlight subjects of social and cultural importance. His books and films cover issues of race, violence, and social change, immigration, drug wars and kidnapping. His books include: No Dancin’ in Anson: An American Story of Race and Social Change (1995); Long Dark Road: Bill King and the Murder in Jasper, Texas (2004); and The Savior of Juarez: Mexico at the Time of the Great Drug War (in press). A native of Mexico City, he is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at University of Texas and is becoming an acclaimed documentary film maker. |
| 4/22/2012 | Simone Wicha | Our Blanton is the Heart of Art in Central Texas | Simone Wicha, director of the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, will speak about the museum’s role in the university and Austin communities. She will discuss The Blanton’s collection, university programs, outreach to the broader community, and current exhibition projects, as well as provide a sneak peek of upcoming exhibitions. She also will talk about her vision for the museum’s future as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2013. Her presentation will be accompanied by images as well as include time for questions from the audience. |
| 4/15/2012 | Constable Bruce Elfant | The Constable’s Office within County Government: A Progressive Vision | Bruce Elfant has served as Travis County Constable of Precinct Five since 1993. The primary mission of his office is to execute civil and criminal process in accordance with federal and state laws. They are on the front lines of law enforcement, patrol, security, investigations, and arrests. Constable Elfant, is helping develop innovative programs to divert veterans, non violent offenders, drug abusers, and persons with mental illness from jail to treatment and rehabilitation services. He has earned two Texas Association of Counties “Best Practices Awards” for Exceptional Delivery of Services. He is recognized at the state level and nationally for his progressive vision of the intersection of the criminal justice system with needed human services. |
| 4/8/2012 | NO FORUM -- Easter | ||
| 4/1/2012 | Dr. Bill Martin | Drug abuse is a problem. Prohibition is not the solution | Dr. Martin is the Harry and Hazel Senior Fellow for Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, where he also directs the program in Drug Policy. Few would dispute that illicit drug use and abuse is one of the most prominent and perplexing issues facing our society. In this discussion, Bill Martin will show that current U.S. drug policy ignores or contradicts the best statistical evidence we have regarding drug use and abuse and will discuss plausible alternatives for changing these policies. |
| 3/25/2012 | Bertha Meanss | The Civil Rights Movement in Austin in the 50's, 60's, and 70's: A Retrospective and a Work in Progress | Bertha Meanss is a retired teacher, an owner of Austin Cab, and has been a political activist in Austin over many decades. She was a major force in integrating luncheon counters, swimming pools, and schools in Austin and confronting entrenched racial prejudices in the community. She will discuss the strategies she used to end discriminatory practices and desegregate stores, restaurants, schools, and other public facilities in Austin. She will discuss the changes she as seen in her lifetime and directions for the future. |
| 3/18/2012 | Karen Neeley | US Banks after Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act | Karen Neeley is general counsel for the Independent Bankers Association of Texas. Congress responded to the mortgage meltdown and the big bank crisis with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But how did we get to the flash point, and what changes does this massive law make to financial institutions and their regulation in the United States? And what do the consumer protections mean to us? Karen Neeley is a much honored banking lawyer and is presently a trustee for First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. |
| 3/11/2012 | J. Aggarwal | The Impact of Computer Vision on Our Daily Lives | Dr. Aggarwal is Cullen Trust Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught for over 40 years. His research interests have centered on the artificial intelligence of "seeing" with a camera and a computer. He is known internationally and frequently is invited to speak at international meetings and Universities. Computer Vision research and development has moved it's focus away from inanimate objects to recognizing personal characteristics and to monitoring people and their activities in public places. Additional computer applications include the monitoring activities from unmanned aerial drones, guidance assist devices for the blind, classifying and organizing albums of photographs, recognizing human faces and tattoos and as a diagnostic aid and therapeutic tool to combat childhood autism. |
| 3/4/2012 | Stephen Weinberg | New Directions in Physics | Stephen Weinberg is a UT Professor Physics and a Nobel Prize Laureate. His talk will be about discoveries expected from the Large Hadron Collider at the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, and why these are important to us. |
| 2/26/2012 | Guadalupe Q. Sosa, ACC Board of Trustees | Education | Lupe Sosa emigrated from Mexico to San Antonio at the age of 13. Her mother worked as a domestic to support and educate her four children. Lupe learned English while attending school and helping to care for younger siblings. Marrying early, mothering six children, she began her career with the State of Texas in clerical jobs before earning a college degree and working as an accountant, an auditor, and a manager with the state. As a citizen, she built support for our new South Austin campus of ACC. Now on the ACC board, she supports a Southeast campus, as well. |
| 2/19/2012 | Thorne Webb Dryer and Alice Embree | The Rag Lives! | The History of The Rag, Austin’s Underground Newspaper of the Sixties and Seventies and the Rag Blog of Today. Thorne Webb Dryer (Editor) and Alice Embree (contributing writer) will discuss the role The Rag played in shaping leftist politics in the sixties and seventies. The Rag was widely known for its unique blend of leftist politics and its advancement of free speech, promotion of civil rights, recognition of women’s issues, and opposition to war, all tempered by humor. The Rag was the rallying point of the Austin counterculture and was a launching pad for a number of well known Austin writers, artists, and photographers. Clips from documentaries of Rag years and the student movements of the sixties and seventies in Austin will be shown. |
| 2/12/2012 | NO FORUM -- Valentine's Day! | ||
| 2/5/2012 | Karl Rabago | Electric Transportation and the Clean Energy Utility: Challenges and Opportunities | Karl R. Rábago is vice president for distributed energy services with Austin Energy. At Austin Energy, Karl leads the utility’s energy efficiency, green building, and Austin Climate Protection Program. As one of the nation’s leading clean energy innovators, with experience in virtually every sector of the electric utility industry. He sees an inevitable and desirable melding of the electric service industry with electric personal transportation and mobility solutions. He will lead a discussion of Austin Energy's strategies for accelerating electric transportation and clean energy resource deployment. Issues addressed will include the impact of electric vehicle charging on the grid and how this challenge can be turned into an opportunity to usher in the utility of the future. |
| 1/29/2012 | Gaye Kopas, Stewart Snider, and Joanne Richards | The Role of Money in Politics | The speakers will discuss how money has corrupted the political process and how to organize our citizenry to reclaim our democracy. A documentary, “Priceless,” will be shown. Gaye Kopas and her husband are Co Chairs of Health Care for All Texans. Stewart Snider is President of the League of Women Voters in Austin and a campaign planner for Coffee Party. Joanne Richards is the President of the Board of Coffee Party Austin and a retired U.T. public policy expert. All are dedicated activists who encourage public policy discussion and civic engagement.. |
| 1/22/2012 | Dr. Steven Finkelstein | Searching for the Most Distant Galaxies in the Universe | Dr. Finkelstein is a Hubble Fellow in the Astronomy Department at UT Austin. The recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope has opened a new window on the distant universe. Over the past year we have been able to discover the most distant galaxies ever. Dr. Finkelstein will discuss how we identify these most distant galaxies, and what their nature tells us about how galaxies form and evolve. He will also discuss the HETDEX project, which will use distant galaxies to probe the nature of Dark Energy. Dr. Finkelstein lives in Austin with his wife, Keely, who is also an astronomer at UT, and their young son. |
| 1/15/2012 | Ben Sargent | Politics and the Power of Pictorial Symbolism | Ben Sargent was editorial cartoonist of the Austin American Statesman 1974-2009, and a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1982. He has been distributed nationally by Universal Press Syndicate since 1985! He will discuss cartoons as an ideal and unique medium for conveying opinion and will show some of his work. Born in Amarillo into a newspaper family, he studied journalism at U.T. Austin. He has served as President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He is the author of two books and has won numerous awards for his work. |
| 1/8/2012 | Kathie Tovo | A Vision for Austin | Kathie Tovo is the newest member of the Austin City Council. A longtime neighborhood activist, with a PhD from UT, she served on the city Planning Commissio, and the AISD’s Community Committee on Neighborhoods and Schools before her election to our city council. Married, and the mother of two, she’ll speak about her vision for Austin. |