00:00What is it about hometowns and the American consciousness?
00:05Stories of people coming to grips with hidden truths about the town they grew up in.
00:11Well, this is one of those stories.
00:17I want to be a change agent. I want to document the history.
00:23Coming home now, I want to understand it better.
00:26Hey Rick, what are you doing in town, brother?
00:30I often marvel at the heart of Texas, and this is what it looks like.
00:38When I was a kid here in Huntsville, there were like 11 prisons, now there's 100 and something.
00:42What's going on?
00:43It's about money. It's industry.
00:45It seemed like the prison just had this gravitational inevitability to it.
00:49Texas is about to kill an innocent man.
00:51What I saw as an unfolding tragedy created a kind of panic in me.
00:56Growing up in Houston, oil has always been synonymous with what it means to be a true Texan.
01:04We have all of this money flowing into the area.
01:06How has the black community been impacted living in the energy capital of the world?
01:11There's been so many chemical fires.
01:13It has not brought prosperity for all.
01:15Killing communities.
01:16The industry changes everything.
01:22Growing up in El Paso, I felt like I lived between two worlds.
01:26But now, they're trying to stop a natural flow of this place.
01:30You close the border, it really strangles our ability to live with one another.
01:36Both of our countries have really failed to put people at the center.
01:40It's hard to be a Texan right now.
01:43The more we talk about Texas, the more complicated it seems.
01:47But there are things that are great.
01:50That's one reason people come here.
01:52You cannot write out our story.
01:55We exist.
01:57We are here.
02:10We are here.
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