Keeping Austin Criminal: An Insurgent Review of 2020

Austin Autonomedia: Keep Austin Criminal

2020 was a year of insurgent milestones in Austin–an explosion of autonomous initiatives, a proliferation of insurrectionary tactics and revolt, and the weaving together of new connections between fragmented worlds inhabiting this territory.

We’ve decided to forefront some of the highlights of this year, to celebrate the high points of this year and look forward to the next one. This is not a claim to a comprehensive review of the activity of this past year, an attempt at in-depth analysis and critique, nor a claim to what projects/initiatives/actions “mattered” or not–it’s merely a reflection of things that we have found on our radar, find inspiring, and wish to highlight and remember. We encourage any fellow insurgents reading this to put out their own analysis and perspectives about the event of this year, whether through our page, your own platforms, or wheatpasted on the walls of the city.

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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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