Austin Protests!

Austin, Texas. Land of smirking George Bush, the oddball Dot-Com, the Dellionaire, UT's Jester Hall, Lady Bird's green spaces, Town Lake, and the Bats of Congress Avenue bridge.

Austin is like San Francisco and Silicon Valley in miniature, only without all the great seafood and not nearly as much yoga. It's actually the easternmost point of one of my favorite places on earth, the Texas Hill Country, where whitetail deer and gnarled mesquite trees outnumber people.

But it's also home to the most vibrant progressive community in Texas, perhaps in the Southwest. I've lived my entire life in either Houston or Dallas, neither of which has much of a progressive community, though the former is far superior to the latter. Austin is superior to both in this as in many other ways.

The weekend of October 13th saw thousands of citizens and activists in the streets protesting a range of unjust institutions and social practices, from corporate domination and neo-imperialist globalization, to immigrant rights and calls for amnesty for "illegals," which is a crucial issue for Mexican Americans in Texas, to renewed assaults upon the racist and unjust death penalty in Texas.

Monkeyfist.com was present all weekend, documenting and participating in protests, in Encuentro activities, and in organization and coalition building efforts. For far too long Texas activists have been isolated by distance, apathy, and the not inconsiderable right-wing tendencies of the population at large. That's all starting to change, and it couldn't come at a better time.

Why is social protest especially important in a politically retrograde place like Texas? Precisely because we're politically retrograde: if we can build a mass-based social protest movement in Texas around progressive issues and causes, then what's your excuse?

View some of the 300 pictures of Austin protest events.