What a strange summer it was. No one remembers it fondly, and no one will ever forget it. All but essential public life and business was shut down. The COVID vaccine was months away. And in Austin protests over George Floyd’s death stretched from late May through summer. The tensions that developed between Austin police and protestors turned into tensions between the department and the community as a whole, and remain unresolved three years on.
Downtown, the bars and restaurants along Austin’s Sixth Street entertainment district were shuttered - literally - but the boarded-up windows and entryways provided a canvas for some great mural artwork. Much of the art expressed solidarity with the protestors that would gather on the street at night, while simultaneously protecting storefronts from them.
I can’t remember if I was aware of the murals when I set out to explore downtown on a midweek afternoon in August, but was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I don’t think I shared these photos at the time, and had largely forgotten about them until recently while sifting through my archives. I remember that it didn’t feel right to widely post photos of the bright, colorful artwork without also addressing the serious and darker context in which it existed, something I didn’t feel qualified or up to doing.
With nearly three years having passed, and the impact of the death and protests more well-formed and crystallized in people’s experience, I feel I can now share these images as a tiny slice of an experience we all shared to a greater or lesser degree.
You can read about some of the darker parts of the protest story in Austin in this Wikipedia article.
