Activists push anti-displacement earmark on eve of city budget talks

9/10/2018

As budget week kicked off Monday at Austin City Hall, a group of activists called for the City Council to fund their plan to fight off gentrification in the eastern part of the city. Read more here.

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Sara

9/13/2018 09:58:59 am

Making of a Segregated City (Austin, Texas)

The claims that Austin is one of the safest and most inclusive cities is a lie. Let me explain:

My name is Sara Black (formerly known as Barbara Terrell). I am the daughter of military veteran. I am citizen zero in Austin just as Fred Watson is for Ferguson, Missouri. It is not about me. It is about that it still happened to me eventhough I did everything right.

When I was four, I wanted to be an FBI agent. My dream evolved as I sat next to my father as he watched the FBI TV series starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. I lived most of my life to reach this goal. I worked hard in school, went to college and was promoted many times in my career.

A Father’s Dream
My father, David Terrell, was an airman in the United States Air Force (USAF). My early years were spent on integrated military bases where children and adults of all races lived, worked and played together in harmony. Then, my father received orders to report to Bergstrom Air Force Base (now ABIA-Austin Bergstrom International Airport) . We lived on the integrated base for a while. I had friends of all races. We lived side by side. Then, he found a house in the general Austin population.

My father was the original dreamer. My father’s position in the service allowed him to fully support a family of eleven-nine children and two adults during his estimated 30 year military career. This took us to upper middle class neighborhoods. It gave us better quality of life than he had growing up poor in the south. His dream during his lifetime. After he died, all his hard work and wishes for me would be negated when I was denied equal protection and my other civil rights as Austin/Travis County became a segregated sanctuary city/county by force and at the expense of the blacks and other undesirables in this area.

One day my siblings and I were doing yard work in our south Austin neighborhood. A white man approached and said we could do his yard after we finished. We explained that it was our yard. Years later, my father, mother my younger sister and I moved to an even better neighborhood in Southwest Austin. I was stopped by local police as I learned to drive. Someone had called the police to report a suspicious person in the neighborhood. It was me. I explained to the officer that I lived there
and he left. It was a quick positive police encounter. One of the last good ones before the fifteen years of unpleasant ones to come. Not all officers are bad. It is not all officers, but this plan is from the Austin Police Department.

First Trickle
I remember the first trickle. Every year Austin had a summer event called Aqua Fest down by Town Lake (now called Lady Bird Lake). My beautiful sister invited a male friend to join us. The three of us went to enjoy it. My sister and I both wore shorts because it was another hot Texas Summer. We had a great time and walked to my car. I noticed a police car parked across the street from the parking lot. As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot, the officer turned on his lights and pulled us over. The officer asked me to get out to the car. He wanted to know why we sat in the car so long before we left. I told him we were talking. Talking about what, he asked. He checked my license and sent us on our way. We realized that the officer was insinuating that my sister and I were prostitutes. The officer could not think of any reason two young black women would be with a white man in Austin, Texas unless it was for this warped stereotypical reason. He could not fathom that we could be friends with someone outside our race. My sister became very upset and declared that Austin was “racist” and did not want to live here. I thought it was just one officer and did not put much weight to the incident. I barely saw my favorite sister anymore because she moved to another state. To this day, I regret my decision to remain in Austin.

Pattern and Practice Chart
In 2003, I called the police to report vandalism at my address in Southwest Austin ( APD David Sector). An ID showing a young white male was left at the scene. Unknown to me, the police made it seem as if I committed the crime against myself. This protected the real perpetrator’s record from getting a black mark allowing him to pursue his happiness uninterrupted. On the reverse, this action punished me for calling the police. This began a cycle that repeated itself over and over for the past 15 years with few exceptions. This does not include the police stopping and targeting me for bogus reasons. I noticed a pattern. So, I made a chart in 2009 that shows this pattern and practice repeated in the incidents from 2003 to 2009 and predicting those afterwards. Also, crimes against me are often underreported, not properly categorized and not investigated and sometimes invisible to make sure Austin continues to seem like a safe city.

APD Burn Baby Burn Scandal
In 2005, there was a

Activists push anti-displacement earmark on eve of city budget talks

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