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What started with concerned neighbors bringing water to senior citizens has now become a multi-day fiasco involving a state representative, FEMA and Travis County Emergency Operations.
A Pflugerville senior living center, Cambridge Villas at 15711 Dessau Road, is still without running water after a burst sprinkler system flooded every apartment unit with inches of water on Saturday.
Before the pipes broke, residents had reportedly been without water for several days.
On Thursday night, Pflugerville neighbors Jack Morgan and Lindsey Ballard learned via a resident's Facebook post requesting help that Cambridge Villas facilities had no running water. Thinking they would just need to drop off some goods at the community center, the two teamed up with other volunteers and loaded up a Jeep with cases of water on Friday morning.
What they found made them stay for the rest of the day, rally neighborhoods and eventually get banned from the property for a year.
All units had been without wellness checks for six days. Both the power and water had been out for much of the week, making toilets resemble "outhouses" and insulin doses spoil. Most residents hadn't eaten a warm meal in several days, and ice on sidewalks made it difficult for even volunteers to get around.
"It was like a ghost town," Morgan said.
As Morgan and Ballard checked on different units, they realized they weren't going to be done helping anytime soon. The group soon received help from neighbors, businesses and churches, many without running water themselves, to deliver residents potable water and their first warm meals in days.
Ballard said that the feeling was bittersweet as she witnessed an entire community band together to assist those in need.
"It was incredible and heartwarming, especially after we had been through our own personal crises, for everybody to rally together even before our needs were met," Ballard said. "That's the kind of world I want to live in, so I was very excited to be a part of that."
As entire neighborhoods began bringing supplies in, some volunteers came into contact with management. What started as a cordial conversation ended in both Morgan and Ballard being escorted off the property for trespassing by police.
While both volunteers were unable to touch the property again, Ballard began getting the ball rolling, calling her friend, State Rep. Celia Israel, who helped restore power to the community on Friday night.
Both volunteers and residents breathed a sigh of relief Saturday night as running water was also brought back to the apartments. The feeling was short-lived, however, as the entire sprinkler system burst later into the night, flooding nearly every unit in the complex. Volunteers began redirecting their focus and bringing Shop-Vacs to try and help with flooding into Monday. Residents continue to have no running water.
While water is not restored, the contributions of hundreds of neighbors, FEMA, a visit from Pflugerville Mayor Victor Gonzales and Travis County Emergency Operations have made a dire situation as livable as possible.
Ballard said that emotions ran high as residents expressed their gratitude for their Pflugerville neighbors.
"They couldn't believe that people were there that cared about them that didn't know them," Ballard said. "The reaction was always, 'You're here to check on me?' They were overwhelmed with gratitude."
As Ballard spoke with Austonia, she said she was on her way to another Austin-area senior center that was in need of food and water on Monday afternoon. While she doesn't know why senior populations have been left behind in the wake of the storm, she believes that the complex was underserved due to glaring oversight by management.
"These are the most vulnerable people we have in our community, that don't have access and don't have resources," Ballard said. "They have told me that they are terrified of management, so they don't want to complain too much. I can see how things could go neglected because management knows they aren't going to complain about it."
Ballard also said that the winter storm crisis revealed some key holes in city and county infrastructure with regards to emergency policies and assisting the areas' most vulnerable communities.
"This isn't something that is going to go away," Ballard said. "There are multiple senior facilities that went longer without power and water than neighborhoods. It's concerning, and I don't know why it happened, but I feel like they should have been a priority."
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(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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