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(Austonia staff)
The Saturday protest began at Austin police headquarters.
Two major protests organized in response to police violence in Austin and around the country shut down I-35 twice and led to looting, fires and injuries this weekend. The Austin Police Department responded in several instances with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.
Thousands of protestors gathered on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to demonstrate over the killings of, primarily, Mike Ramos, who was fatally shot by an Austin Police Department officer on April 24 in Southeast Austin, and George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis Police Department officer last week.
The first protest, held on Saturday, was organized by the Mike Ramos Brigade. Its members have not identified themselves, but in a call to action posted on social media they listed their demands, including the firing of APD Chief Brian Manley and the officers involved in Ramos' death.
Protesters shut down I-35 on Saturday.
(Austonia staff)APD officers, some of whom were outfitted in riot gear, used rubber bullets and pepper spray against protestors. The day ended with reports of fires and looting along Sixth Street. At least fourteen people were arrested over the course of the day, with charges including robbery, assault on a peace officer and obstructing a highway, according to APD.
A protester sets fire to a flag near I-35 Saturday afternoon. (Austonia staff)
In response to the protest in Austin—as well as others in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and other Texas cities—Gov. Greg Abbott activated the National Guard on Saturday and later declared a state of disaster.
As has happened in other U.S. cities that have seen protests turn destructive, some local activists speculated that the Saturday protest was organized or attended by people intending to incite violence.
A second protest, organized in collaboration with the Austin Justice Coalition and other community groups, was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Sunday. Shortly before, AJC Executive Director Chas Moore announced in a Facebook live post that the event was officially canceled.
"We are supposed to be out demonstrating, peacefully protesting the need for safety and for freedom and liberation for black people," Moore said. "And when I look at what's going on in Austin, when I look at the mess that happened last night, I look at white people burning stuff up in the name of Black Lives Matter and there's little to no black lives at these events."
Protestors marched along Cesar Chavez Sunday afternoon in a peaceful demonstration.
(Mary Elizabeth Potts)Nonetheless, hundreds—and then thousands—of protestors showed up in front of the Capitol Sunday, as planned.
The police form a line on Cesar Chavez Sunday afternoon, stopping demonstrators marching from City Hall.
Police then allow protestors to turn north on San Antonio toward Republic Square
From the Capitol, protestors marched to City Hall and back, peacefully, before some continued onto I-35. APD officers used tear gas to force the crowds off the highway and arrested at least five more attendees. The department also reported looting, including at the Capital Plaza Target, on I-35 near Hwy. 290. Late in the day Michael Ramos' mother, Brenda, spoke at a press conference outside her apartment complex.
"Why is Officer [Christopher] Taylor still drawing a paycheck from us, the citizens of Austin?" she asked, pulling down her mask so she could speak. "Why are we paying his salary when he murdered my son over a month ago and he murdered someone else's son over 10 months ago? Why isn't he in jail?"
In a custodial death report filed with Attorney General Ken Paxton's office—as required by state law—APD said the officers involved in Ramos' death were responding to a narcotics call during which Ramos "became non-compliant and verbally confrontational." Taylor, "fearing the male subject intended to use [his car] as a deadly weapon," then shot Ramos with his patrol rifle.
Taylor was one of three officers involved in the fatal shooting of another black man, 46-year-old Mauris Nishanga DeSilva, last July.
On Friday evening—before Austin's planned protests had occurred but after days of unrest in Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta and other cities—Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore announced she had decided to present the Ramos case to a special grand jury. "I reviewed the case today with my Civil Rights Director, and we believe the investigation has progressed to the point that we can properly make the announcement," she said in a statement.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler issued a statement that same evening, in which he said: "I am committed to doing what it takes to make this stop." He also gave a series of interviews Sunday, in which he pointed to the reforms underway at APD, including the decriminalization of smaller crimes and improved oversight.
APD and the Texas Rangers are conducting an internal investigation into Ramos' death, which is being overseen by the city's office of police oversight. Police Monitor Farah Muscadin will review all documents and participate in all interviews, a city spokesperson wrote in an email.
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Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
