Histories of Displacement & Colonization: “Capitol” & “Finding Loston”

 

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

Austin is experiencing waves of displacement, organized under the banners of gentrification, anti-homeless sweeps, the suburbanization of poverty, and policing (community or otherwise). Many in this city find themselves fighting where they stand against this onslaught, attempting to construct some form of counterweight or defense against the violence of Austin’s growth. 

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Autonomous Anti-Racists Disrupt UT Town Hall On Campus Climate (February ’17)

Students disrupt the townhall from within the crowd

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal. 

On January 27th, UT will host its town hall on its sexual misconduct policies after months of protests and agitation against the University. This is the first time that the University has hosted a town hall in 3 years, in large part due to what happened the last time the administration tried to use the forum to quell and dispel student anger. This video and the following recap of those events will illustrate why. 

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WorkQuest’s Cruel “Solution” Sweeps Poorest Under The Rug

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

Over the past 6 months, the long standing war on the homeless in Austin has seen some massive escalations. After a coalition of progressive groups got Austin City Council to decriminalize acts like sitting, lying, and camping, a counter-coalition of business interests–associated with groups like Take Back Austin, the Republican Party, and the Downtown Austin Alliance–whipped up a fervor and fought back. This set the stage for our present moment, in which regular sweeps carried out by TXDoT alongside daily harassment from APD further marginalize those who have already been dispossessed and displaced by a city . While we could open this piece with a deeper explanation of the events that led us here, that work has already been done by organizations like Homes Not Handcuffs and Stop the Sweeps Austin. Our interest is not in just recounting this history, but in offering an intervention to inform and motivate action to impede these forces. There are a whole litany of forces at play here, all of which have different vested interests and weak points. While we hope to dive into some of these forces in the future, right now we offer this investigation on one of the primary forces enabling the sweeps of homeless camps: a company named WorkQuest.

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Tracing ICE Infrastructure: Trailboss, Hutto Location

Edit 02/2024: This location appears to be permanently closed

In recent struggles against I.C.E., deportations, and all the state apparatuses that reproduce the violence of borders, there has been a shift from making demands of politicians to directly targeting the contractors, detention centers, and infrastructure that make these operations possible. The wisdom of this strategic maneuver is its recognition of the organization of power in our world–wherein power flows not primarily through the halls of politicians, but in the mundane infrastructure that reproduces this society and its violence. An important portion of this infrastructure, particularly in the context of the deportation machine, is the transportation and logistics infrastructure–that is, the vans, buses, and other means by which the State transports incarcerated migrants. This circulatory system keeps assorted offices, processing centers, and detention facilities connected. Sometimes, this infrastructure is managed directly by the State–whether I.C.E, Border Patrol, or DHS. However, in many places this infrastructure is contracted out to other private companies.

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Steve Adler’s Land Empire: Property Interests of Mayor Adler & Wife Diane Land

Originally published by IndyAustin. While somewhat liberal in content, we republish this for the utility of the information and maps of properties connected to Adler and his wife. We hope it will inspire strategizing and research beyond IndyAustin’s political goals. 

Click image to see full, interactive map

Austin’s First Family made its fortune from Mayor Adler’s real-estate law firm (to which he retains major financial ties) and his wife’s commercial property-management firm: DT Land Group, Inc. Mayor Adler’s personal financial disclosures covering 2017 and early 2018 reveal that he and his wife, Diane Land, had financial interests in at least 71 properties in Travis, Williamson and Hays Counties. Those properties are currently assessed at $319 million. These extensive property interests pose ethical challenges to conducting such city business as deciding where to increase zoning densities or where to spend transportation bonds, to name just a few issues.
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UT Admin Ignored Warnings, Hired Nazis

Austin Autonomedia: Strategic Interventions in the Heart of Texas

A couple days ago, the comrades with the Screwston Antifascist Committee published a report from Central Texas Anti-Racist Action exposing Dustin Ray Hamby as a prominent leader in the Neo-Nazi group Patriot Front. We had previously published an article about Hamby, when he worked at UT as a cook. While he no longer works at UT, we wanted to fill in some details about his time at UT that became clear after this new article. Follow the link above to get the full story about Dustin’s activities, read below for the context for how UT actively ignored his racism. 

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New Information: Austin Fascist Chris Ritchie

Austin Autonomedia: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

New information has surfaced about Christopher Ritchie, a violent white nationalist and member of the Texas Nomads, a group that uses SAR in their title but is unaffiliated with the Sons of the American Revolution. Ritchie traveled to both Charlottesville and Portland for violent, white supremacist gatherings, and collaborates with other fascist groups, including Proud Boys, Texas-based Patriot Front, and Patriot Prayer. Continue reading “New Information: Austin Fascist Chris Ritchie”

Protests Against “Proud Boy” Dustin Casler Continue

Communique republished from Texas Antifascist News

Editor’s Note: In recent weeks, focus has been placed on the AT&T Conference Center Hotel near UT for employing a Proud Boy named Dustin Casler. As we have said in a previous article, The Proud Boys are a fascist, “Western chauvanist” group founded by Gavin McInnes. They’ve frequently been found to have connections and overlap with outright Neo-Nazi groups. One of the defining features of the Proud Boys is a thirst for violence, expressed in things like calls to attack immigrants and attacks on anti-fascists, people of color, queer & trans folks, and others in the streets. After this news initially came out, antifascists began flyering and calling in attempting to get Casler fired. This article follows up on recent events surrounding that campaign and includes instructions on how to call in to pressure the Hotel.

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Proud Boy Employed By Oracle Makes Threats

Austin Autonomedia: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Update 2/12/21: We’ve found that Dreyer’s full name is Trevor Cole Dreyer. We leave the rest of this article as it was initially published.

In the past week, a Proud Boy by the name of Cole Dreyer has exposed himself on social media. In a series of Facebook comments under a pro-choice post, Dreyer progressively escalates from spewing conspiracy theories about after-birth abortions to anti-black racism and rhetoric about “culling” Austin of left of center people, whom he calls “fascist terrorists.”

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UT Works Because We Do: Grad Student Grade-In

Austin Autonomedia: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable. Follow Underpaid at UT on Facebook or Twitter.

On Monday, May 13th, around 50 graduate student workers joined Underpaid at UT in a “grade-in,” occupying the office of Maurie McInnis, Executive Vice President and Provost at UT Austin. The graduate workers held the space from around 10 AM until 1 PM. The grade-in came as a followup to the organization’s May Day rally, where a large group of graduate students, professors, and other allied students & community members delivered a petition to the UT administration and marched around campus in solidarity with the demands.

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