On August 31, 2011, the San Angelo, Texas Standard Times (SAST) published our inaugural Pathways to Progress article. Since that article, the newspaper has published a monthly article for more than eight years. This web site is a collection of those articles
 

The articles deal with problems that residents of San Angelo and surrounding communities experience. Sadly, many consider these as stubborn and unsolvable problems rooted in the irresponsible behavior of various subcultures that many code-term as lower class, under-class, disadvantaged, criminal, gang-like, or just plain un-American.
 

Of course, there are individuals who behave irresponsibly and sometimes they suffer from serious problems like illness, unemployment, inadequate housing, or hunger as a result. However, there are also individuals behaving irresponsibly who suffer little or nothing of the problems supposedly connected to that behavior.
 

Likewise, there are responsibly behaving persons beset by these problems. Accordingly, the idea that some “subculture” promotes enough irresponsible behavior to account for serious and prevalent social problems in a community is a bankrupt and sure way to fail at making progress.
 

We believe, that in some small way, the Pathways to Progress series has helped support individuals and organizations working to find new, effective ways of solving the challenges social problems pose to the development of San Angelo and surrounding communities.  We also believe that vigorous public discussion of community problems is a key path to progress.