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Tag: Austin

Deceleration: ‘Viva Viva Tortuguita!’ Atlanta Mayor Chased Out of SXSW Conference

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and SXSW

On Monday, a group of protesters at a conference in Texas challenged  the mayor of Atlanta over the city’s ongoing plans to build a massive  training center for police and other law enforcement agencies,  eventually forcing Andre Dickens to leave the event entirely.

The direct action took place at South by Southwest (SXSW),  an annual conference, film, and music festival in Austin, Texas, at a  ballroom of the downtown Hilton hotel (one of several sites where the  conference occurs). The panel discussion was intended to be about conflict between city and state governments. Instead the audience received a very different lesson in civic engagement, as the Austin chapter of the Weelaunee Defense Society, an activist group devoted to the national “Stop Cop City” movement, would soon dramatically change the agenda.

A Tour of Texas Bookshops

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and The Texas Observer

Big-city traffic and a resolution on New Year’s Eve of 2020 led Pflugerville resident Kelsey Black to become a bookseller.

An avid reader, she disliked the hour round trip required to get from  her suburb of 65,000 to downtown Austin to browse a bookstore. “OK,”  she told herself, “I think it’s just going to be easier for me to …  start my own bookstore.”

Turned out, it wasn’t easy at all, “but it’s OK because I have now found my calling,” Black said. The Book Burrow began as a pop-up and online business and finally, on August 6, opened  as a brick-and-mortar store. She said the 200-square-foot space has  become a haven for those who don’t feel like they fit in elsewhere,  drawn by the store’s motto: “Embrace your weird.” For her, the phrase  means cultivating love for whatever makes you unique: “Embrace your  gender identity; embrace your sexual identity; embrace your racial  background; embrace your spiritual path.”

Austin Chronicle: Low-Income Austin Renters Negotiate For Better Deal

Posted in Austin, Austin Chronicle, and Journalism

Low-income residents of a North Austin apartment complex are putting pressure on a developer intent on demolishing their homes, and they’re having some success in getting concessions. The Old Homestead, located on Clayton Lane near the intersection with Cameron Road, is set to be rezoned for vertical mixed use – meaning developers JCI Residential, an affiliate of the Journeyman Group, will be allowed more height and building size in exchange for affordable units. While the new property will have more units than the current 16-unit complex, residents say they’ll struggle to find apartments as affordable – or with a community so closely knit – amid Austin’s surging rental prices.

Austin Chronicle: Trans Kids Under Attack In Texas

Posted in Austin Chronicle, Journalism, and LGBTQIA

Despite a temporary halt to politically motivated child abuse investigations of families with trans kids, parents and advocates say they continue to live in fear as anti-trans moral panic sweeps through the Lone Star State’s GOP base voters and their leaders.

The ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal have won four successive rulings in their challenge to Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate normal gender affirming health care as child abuse. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked the Texas Supreme Court to overrule a lower court’s injunction and allow Child Protective Services investigations to continue immediately. Shelly Skeen, a senior attorney from Lambda Legal representing the plaintiffs, told the Chronicle that she expects a favorable ruling, because both the law and medical experts are on Lambda Legal’s side.

… Texas continues to look for other ways to put pressure on trans kids, their parents, and their health care providers. In late March, Paxton’s office filed new investigative demands in a civil case against two pharmaceutical companies, Endo Phar­ma­ceuticals and AbbVie Inc., which provide puberty-blocker drugs. Although approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of children who enter puberty early, they’re also prescribed (with the backing of experts like the American Medical Association) as a way to delay puberty in transgender kids who are too young to receive other forms of medical treatment such as hormones.

Update: St. Johns Camp Moved Into Temporary Housing

Posted in Austin, Austin Chronicle, and Journalism

On March 25, city personnel moved 31 people living in a controversial encampment at St. Johns and I-35 into transitional housing at the North­bridge and South­bridge shelters, as part of the city’s HEAL (Homeless Encamp­ment Assistance Link) initiative, adopted in the wake of last year’s local and state reinstatement of a ban on public camping.

For months, the encampment in and around St. John Neighborhood Park had generated concern among neighbors. On March 6, police shot and killed 28-year-old Miguel Ruiz Rivera, who lived periodically at  the camp, after he had apparently been spotted firing a gun near one of  the tents. At the same time, an outpouring of generosity from locals seeking to help unhoused neighbors inspired multiple fundraising campaigns and sustained volunteer efforts to feed, assist and,  ultimately, house the campers before the city stepped in.

Austin Chronicle: ACLU, Lambda Legal Back In Court Over Anti-Trans Directive

Posted in Austin Chronicle, Journalism, and LGBTQIA

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal are back in court over Gov. Greg Abbott’s “abuse” directive, after the state threatened to ignore a ruling that temporarily protected families with transgender children from unneccessary investigations by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

On March 17, the two civil rights nonprofits asked the Texas 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to issue an emergency order that would force the state to obey the lower court’s ruling. Previously, Judge Amy Clark Meachum blocked Abbott’s directive until at least July when the lawsuit is due to continue; meanwhile, Attor­ney General Ken Paxton claims the state can completely disregard Meachum’s ruling while awaiting the results of an appeal. Shelly Skeen, a senior attorney from Lambda Legal representing the plaintiffs, told the Chronicle that the appeals court could rule on both their emergency restraining order and the state’s appeal any day now, or call for more hearings. Ultimately, she expects the courts to side with well-established medical science when it comes to gender affirming care. “CPS should not be investigating families that are simply trying to provide medically necessary care … and to give their trans kids the best possible life,” said Skeen.