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'This is a national issue’: How Austin's affluent suburbs are thinking about the protests

"We have been listening and learning," reads a message on the Cedar Park Police Department's Facebook page.
It would be easy for Cedar Park Mayor Corbin Van Arsdale, whose community is more than 80% white, to look at the unrest happening in larger metro areas like Austin and decide it's not his problem.
The large protests and, in some cases, violent rioting during the past week over police brutality, touched off by the killing of George Floyd by four white Minneapolis officers, have been largely confined to diverse metropolitan population centers.
Austin, where some demonstrators were hospitalized after weekend clashes with police, is no exception.
But Van Arsdale and other city officials and police chiefs in Austin's overwhelmingly white and affluent suburbs see signs that the Black Lives Matter movement and its attendant demands for change are reaching into these communities—most of which have never before had to openly grapple with the issue of police brutality.
In Georgetown on Wednesday, Police Chief Wayne Nero greeted a crowd of about 200 mostly white residents carrying signs in front of the courthouse supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
In Lakeway, more than 90% of residents are white, while nearly 30% of the police officers are people of color. Local residents staged a peaceful demonstration outside the police department on Saturday and another one in the city on Tuesday night, said city spokesperson Jarrod Wise.
In Leander, residents are asking police how they can protect citizens from racial violence, opening conversations about the department's policies on body cameras, complaints and racial profiling, said Assistant Police Chief Billy Fletcher.
Police in Bee Cave are helping a group of teens from Lake Travis High School stage a Black Lives Matter rally in front of City Hall on June 13.
"We have been listening and learning," reads a message on the Cedar Park Police Department's Facebook page.
Bee Cave Police Chief Gary Miller said while he disagrees with violence, he believes most protesters are trying to peacefully find a way to express their anger, and rightfully so.
"I don't know any officer who believes the actions by any of the four officers in Minneapolis [are] anything other than criminal," he said.
Asked if the suburbs have a responsibility to engage in the conversation about race and police, Van Arsdale and Fletcher had the same answer: "Absolutely."
"Dr. King said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' This includes our suburbs," said Van Arsdale, a white former Republican Texas state lawmaker. "We need to speak clearly and with one voice: This is not 1862. This is not 1962. We don't want any of that part of that America again."
Suburban police say they are prepared for outside agitators disrupting their mostly quiet communities.
Miller, for example, has extra officers near the Galleria in the evenings to protect against potential looters.
West Lake Hills Police Chief Scott Gerdes said his department hadn't gotten any specific threats, but he has put extra officers on call.
"I certainly can't predict where these things may go," Gerdes said Tuesday, as chatter about suburban protests ramped up on social media.
The violence didn't come. Instead, there is conversation—with the potential for action.
Leander business owner Gus Gordon on Monday organized a meeting between local police and black business and civic leaders, which he saw as a good "first step" toward sowing support and empathy in a community that may not fully understand the recent anger on the streets. He's planning a more public and social community event later in the month, he said.
"For a lot of people in these majority white or affluent communities, this is not an issue that directly affects them, so it can be overlooked and seem exaggerated," said Gordon, who is black, and who owns Cappelliera's Barber Salon. "This is a national issue. Even if it doesn't directly touch Leander, Georgetown, Cedar Park, we should still have the support of people that are for justice—for all people."- Organizers cancel Sunday protest in Austin - austonia ›
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Popular
As summer temperatures continue to increase, so does Austin's "Party Island"—a hundreds-strong army of kayakers and paddle boarders who gather each weekend in the middle of Lady Bird Lake.
Born from the pandemic, the swarm of paddleboarding partiers has continued to grow each summer and can be seen from the nearby Lamar Boulevard Bridge. And while "Party Island" certainly lives up to one half of its name, it's not actually an island at all: instead, it's located at a shallow sandbar near Lou Neff Point.
With beers, burgers from portable grills and even DJ turntables in hand, more friends and strangers continue to beat the heat in new ways at the distinct Austin hangout.
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- Photo story: Austin's 'Party Island' on Lady Bird Lake - austonia ›
(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.