Texas Impact's Weekly Witness

This week we are excited to introduce Texas Impact's legislative agenda with our Executive Director, Bee Moorhead. Listeners will remember a few weeks ago we had three board members join the program at the conclusion of the three day board retreat to talk about their experience with the process creating the agenda. In the weeks that followed, all of the wordsmithing and voting took place to ensure...

This week we are talking weather and climate from an interesting perspective as we welcome two former colleagues of our very own Dr. Becca Edwards. With us are Dr. Ian Giammanco who serves as Director of Standards and Data Analytics and Lead Research Meteorologist at the Institute for Building and Home Safety and Dr. Tanya  Brown-Giammanco who serves as Director of Disaster and Failure Studies at...

This week we are recording from Trinity Church of Austin following a three day Texas Impact Board Retreat. The Texas Impact Board of Directors represent a wide range of judicatories and faith traditions from across Texas. Every two years they come together to create a consensus set of legislative priorities to guide the organizations' work throughout the biennium.  Scott talks to three of our boar...

This week we are having a timely conversation on voting and voting systems with Daniel Griffith, Senior Director of Policy with Secure Democracy USA. As the name implies, Secure Democracy USA works to protect voting rights and oppose efforts to suppress votes.  It's important work, but the most important work right now is to reassure voters that their vote matters and that your vote will count. Th...

We are especially excited for this week's episode as we welcome John Hill to the program. John is days away from completing his service as the Interim General Secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, an agency charged with leading the denomination's social witness around the world.  It is a perfect time for this conversation as we move into a critical election season...

Last weekend the Texas Impact team had a chance to hang out with a hundred Texans of faith representing congregations from across North Texas, and y'all the vibes were real. People were excited to hear from faith leaders talking about what they are doing to engage people this election season. They heard from non-profits and voting officials giving tips, tools and resources to help engage their com...

This week we are joined by Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of the BJC, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, leading the organization as it upholds the historic Baptist principle of religious liberty: defending the free exercise of religion and protecting against its establishment by government. We are excited to talk about Amanda's work with Christians Against Christian Nationalism...

This week we are excited to launch our fourth season of Weekly Witness and who better to kick things off than Texas Impact's esteemed Executive Director, Bee Moorhead. We thought this would be a timely conversation as we move out of the usually slower summer months and into a consequential fall election season which will lead into the 89th Texas Legislative session in January.  Texans of faith are...

This week we are once again joined by Texas Impact Policy Advocate, Heather Malkawi, who was recently invited to attend the 6th Pan African Conference, otherwise known as Sankofa 2024. This conference is hosted about every five years by the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Heather shares highlights from her trip and about how these theologians are processing, leading and acting.    T...

This week is the final episode of our series introducing Texas Impact's new staff members as we welcome Grace Bonilla to the program. Grace was formerly an intern with Texas Impact and was recently hired as our newest Public Witness Mobilizer. Grace is working on a number of projects. Among them, she is helping staff Texas Impact's Public School Defenders team. I hope you enjoy the conversation wi...

This week we are joined by Texas Impact Policy Advocate Bobby Watson for a conversation about his travels this summer related to his work with Texas Impact's Ending Gun Violence team.   In light of recent events, faith leaders have offered reflections condemning political violence and calling on us for peaceful conversations about important issues. Scott reads a statement issued by Texas United Me...

The Texas Impact staff recently met in Austin and welcomed several new staff to new positions, so we thought we would use part of this summer break to introduce you to our new team members.  We continue the series this week with Heather Malkawi. Heather is not new to Texas Impact though, if you have been to an event in the last few years, you have probably met Heather. You have an even higher like...

The Texas Impact staff recently met in Austin and welcomed several new staff to new positions, we thought we would use part of this summer break to introduce you to our new team members. We continue that series today with a conversation with Rebecca McIlwain, Project Manager of Houston Faith Votes.  For over a decade, Rebecca served in parish ministry in the Ft. Worth and San Angelo Dioceses, focu...

Texas Impact staff recently met in Austin and welcomed several new staff and new people to new positions, so we thought we would use part of this summer break to introduce you to our new team members. And, we are starting that series today with a conversation with Kaitlin Dunn, our new Houston Faith Community Mobilizer working with the Houston Faith Votes team. I know you will be excited to hear f...

This week marks the beginning of Gun Violence Awareness Month and many of us will still remember where we were when we received the news about the tragic school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde just two years ago. Joining us this week is Texas Impact's Policy Advocate, Bobby Watson, to discuss his work with our gun violence prevention issue team and their visibility project, Vidas Robadas, an...

We talk weather this week with Dr. Becca Edwards, Texas Impact's Climate Action Fellow. Originally because we wanted to talk about Hurricane Season, which begins this weekend and runs through November, bu t seems like most of Texas has already endured at least one climate disaster in the last month.  North Texas has had floods, tornadoes and wind events. Houston had a wind event that knocked out m...

The runoff elections are next Tuesday, May 28th, and interim hearings are underway to help shape public policy recommendations going into the next legislative session. What does it all mean? Here with us to discuss is friend of the program and Texas Impact's outside legislative counsel, Beaman Floyd. Spoiler Alert: he is going to remind us about the importance of these elections and how your vote...

This week we are excited to welcome Diana Forester, Director of Health Policy with Texans Care for Children. This is an important conversation this week because legislative leaders recently released their interim charges for the biennium, and it provides some opportunities to speak to the unacceptable state of health coverage in the state of Texas. Diana joins us to talk about that, the interim ch...

Texas Impact is proud to be a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's ELCA Advocacy family as a State Public Policy Office for Texas. Joining us this week is Christine Moffett,  ELCA Program Director for Environment and Energy Policy, to discuss the Farm Bill. She will talk about whether Congress can pass anything during an election year, what's in the bill and why it matters.  Find o...

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in Texas colleges came under fire in the last legislative session. The passage of SB17 has been controversial with many students and faculty over the elimination of these programs. This week we are joined by Dr. Karma Chávez, the Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Chair of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at...

This week we are joined by Emily Bourgeois, Community Organizer of RAC-Texas, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism—one of Texas Impact's member institutions. We always enjoy working with Emily across a range of policy issues, including public education and religious freedom.  Over the last month, we have had several episodes about the holy seasons many of our traditions have been observin...

This week we are joined by Texas Impact's Climate Action Fellow, Becca Edwards, to help prepare for Earth Day on April 22. Becca has been meeting with many congregations talking about climate change, liberation theology, how communities of faith can engage in climate issues during this election season and so much more. So we thought we would bring those conversations to you as you think about what...

This week we say goodbye to maybe our closest friend of the show, who has been on the program more than any other guest. Texas Impact announced last week that Advocacy Director Joshua Houston would be leaving soon to take a new position with Caritas of Austin. So we thought we needed to say goodbye (for now) with one last episode reminiscing on some of his proudest, and most hilarious, moments in...

Many Christians just finished Holy Week, Passover is coming and we are in the midst of Ramadan. All of those seasons can and should inspire people of faith to love our neighbor and have some intersection with advocating on behalf of our neighbors and communities at large. This week, we have a friend of the program Usama Malik, Program Coordinator for Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Te...

This week, we follow up on the conversation from two weeks ago in advance of the Texas Medical Board meeting. More than 2,000 Texans of faith signed Texas Impact's petition calling for a rulemaking process to define the abortion exception in Texas state law relating to the life and health of the mother. We spoke about Steve and Amy Bresnen, two Austin attorneys and lobbyists from the aptly named B...