Stop the attacks on Austin’s unhoused people!

Latest

Stop Prop B protest
Photo / Stop the Sweeps Austin

AUSTIN, TX — Last Saturday we marched on Matt Mackowiak’s office, the genocide-supporting Republican strategist behind Prop B and Save Austin Now.

We first rallied at the Texas State Capitol with a small camp tent, and distributed literature against Prop B and the myriad of other repressive unlawful measures that aim to criminalize or otherwise force our street friends and neighbors to put up with displacement, coercion, targeting and abuse by the City of Austin and the State agents. Police showed up briefly at the end, but we continued to take the street and the intersection outside the home of Save Austin Now.

Prop B, the proposal put up in the brightest lights, would not only bring back a city-wide camping ban (currently, camping is mostly just banned near shelters), it would unconstitutionally make several prohibitions:  Establish no rest for anyone (no sit/no lie) in the zones downtown and near the University of Texas campus; ban “panhandling” (free speech) — ‘flying a sign’ [panhandling with a sign] — overnight; potentially close parks to all poor people.

There is a quieter more predictable victory being organized by the genocidists of the Texas Legislature. HB 1925 and SB 987 are both bills working their way through the House and Senate that would deny funding to cities that relax camping bans. All of these laws are steeped in Austin’s racist past of vagrancy laws aimed at people of color. 

The city’s current strategy to clear camps, the HEAL initiative, is just one of these. This program is currently targeting four camps containing a couple hundred people with “housing” that consists of hotels staffed by almost a dozen police officers each, with only 50 rooms currently available. Once people at a camp are “housed”, the camp will be permanently “closed” to keep Austin from seeing the future houselessness created by the City’s hyper-development/hyper-inflated high-rise condos real estate market, poverty wages, and a profit-centered ineffective healthcare system.

 We called out all of these programs and more for their dehumanizing approach to people suffering the economically and socially-determined ills of houselessness. We will not accept the further abuse of our friends and neighbors.

Thanks to allies from the Challenger Street Newspaper, Downtown Camp, ATX Camp Support, Concordia Co-op, Star Power Black Kollective, Little Petal Alliance, and Homes Not Handcuffs.

For a more detailed version of this article, please see People’s Tribune Latest News.

+ Articles by this author

Free to republish but please credit the People's Tribune. Visit us at www.peoplestribune.org, email peoplestribune@gmail.com, or call 773-486-3551.

The People’s Tribune brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: ©2024 peoplestribune.org. Please donate to help us keep bringing you voices of the movement. Click here. We’re all volunteer, no paid staff.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Featured

Students Walk Out Across the Country to Protest Trump’s Election

Read the speech delivered by a student at the student walkout at MSU two days after the Presidential election. Thousands of students nationwide walked out to protest Donald Trump's election and his policies on the same day.

Let’s Join Hands to Resist the Trump Agenda

Thousands of groups and millions of people are beginning to reach out to one another to resist the Trump agenda. Regardless of who we voted for, we the people, have a common interest in seeing to it that all our families are well taken care of, that all children are well educated and have a future, and that we have a society free of climate disaster, racism, bigotry and inequality.

How Democrats Ignoring Gaza Brought Down Their Party

"Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral."

Undocumented Families Are Fighting for Our Future. Will You Join Us?

'As an undocumented mother, I can’t help but worry for my son’s safety first. As an organizer, my worry turns to resolve.'

Fighting for Climate, Students Walk Out Over Trump

"[The student nationwide] walkouts represent a call to action for both parties," said Sunrise Youth Movement, a group that advocates for political action on climate change.

More from the People's Tribune