💌 Open this for a love letter

🚂 What Light-Rail Could Displace

Dozens of businesses and at least two single-family homes sit in the path of Austin’s light-rail project, and could be demolished, a KUT investigation found. [KUT]

❗ Restaurant Accused of Firing Employees Who Planned to Protest

Eight employees at Hat Creek Burger Company were fired last week after saying they planned to participate in a national “Day Without Immigrants” protest. An assistant general manager who did not skip work was still fired, he said. [The Austin Chronicle]

⛹🏽‍♀️ Basketball, TxLege, and the Austin Marathon

It’s been a marathon of a week in Austin, and we’re not just saying that because thousands of runners will take on 26.2 miles Sunday. Austin is officially in the running for a WNBA team, and the Texas Senate has been making moves on bail reform and school vouchers. We get into all of it. [City Cast Austin 🎧]

🎸 Luck Reunion Lineup Is Out

The lineup for this year’s Luck Reunion music festival includes Willie Nelson & Family, Charley Crockett, Aly & AJ, Taj Mahal, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Julien Baker & TORRES, among others. [KXAN]

I remember vividly the first time white people showed up in my grandparents' East Austin neighborhood.

We were all at the house for Sunday dinner, and a few of my younger boy cousins came running inside talking about a white woman who was, “laying on the ground,” next door. A few adults and older cousins ran outside thinking she’d gotten hurt. Turns out, she was sunbathing, just laying out on a towel on her concrete driveway. Everyone hurried back inside laughing and teasing my cousins, but we talked about that woman for the rest of the day.

Who was she? Where did she come from? Did she know what neighborhood she was in? She definitely didn’t look like the handful of other white people sprinkled throughout the neighborhood. She was much younger. More polished. Then, the stories started. My uncle spoke of a young white couple that moved in on his street a few months before. My aunt told us about an older white man building a house on her street where one of our favorite abandoned lots used to be. The adults sat around sharing these rumors and tales as if they were talking about ghosts and demons haunting us at night. There were hushed tones and gasps of disbelief.

I remember my Grandmaw saying, “Chiiiiile, we better enjoy this neighborhood while we can cause white folks change everything.”

And they did.

For me, gentrification didn’t start as greedy developers buying up all the property on my grandparent’s street and building shitty houses. It started with one white woman sunbathing in the driveway of her new cute little bungalow style house next door to 2002.