Could there be hope for liberal Austin, the “Portland” of Texas? Well, maybe, because a large group of liberals have had enough of the conservative red state, and are leaving, and going home to bluer pastures. Now, don’t get too excited, there are still a lot of progressives there, but it looks like this could be the beginning of the end for the once-progressive blue utopia that sat like a lonely island in a sea of red.
It looks like the abortion issue was the final straw for many of these godless liberals, who just can’t imagine a life without killing unborn babies on a whim, or using birth control, which is 99.9 percent effective and really inexpensive and available literally everywhere.
The Intelligencer reported that as the pandemic raged, Governor Greg Abbott banned municipalities including Austin from implementing COVID measures such as mask mandates. The following year, amid a brutal winter storm, the state’s electric grid failed, killing hundreds and leaving millions freezing in the dark, and it has yet to be fixed. That summer, Abbott codified permitless carry and further restricted voting access. This past February, he ordered investigations into the parents of trans children for child abuse. By June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas was ten months ahead, having already effectively banned abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and topped it with a $10,000 reward for informants.
“It’s like how a frog boils one degree at a time,” Stettin said. “They trigger-banned all abortion and they’re offering a bounty! What more do you need if you are a remotely liberal person to get the fuck out of here?” His destination was Massachusetts. “At least if I’m going to get into an argument with a guy in Boston,” he said, “he’s probably not carrying an AR-15 in his trunk.”
This summer, that anxiety pervaded a stratum of liberal Austin, namely women, LGBTQ+ folks, parents, and people of color who fear a future in Texas and have the means to escape. The overturning of Roe seemed to remove the last obstacle in the state’s march to the far right, which is likely to be cemented in the upcoming election where Beto O’Rourke is way behind Abbott. While the Democratic mayor and the liberal city council institute token measures such as decriminalizing abortion, it’s cold comfort. One 25-year-old woman said she had her tubes tied, fearing the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. One couple may relocate to the Northeast to carry out their pregnancy. Some job candidates are refusing to relocate. At Stettin’s party, his friend Jeff swiped open his phone to a note entitled “New Austin Cities” — a list of places that are what Austin used to be to him before he moved here from New York. It read, “Pittsburgh, Durham, Boise, Columbus, Jackson Hole, Chattanooga. Factors: Climate change, demographics, economy, location, taxes, nature, weather.” He plans to stick it out at least for now. “Global warming in the next ten years,” he said. “That’s gonna be fucking real.”
The alarm was acute among transplants. Bri Jenkins is moving home to Hamden, Connecticut, after six years working with various nonprofits in Austin. “It could be three weeks before I saw another Black person, and that was such a mindfuck for me,” she recalled feeling when she first moved to Austin. After a far-right gunman killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019, she stopped going to parades. “Too many vantage points,” she said. “White men with guns and Army fatigues are protected, but people who are peacefully protesting … are always bombarded by the police,” she said, referring to the police crackdowns during 2020’s George Floyd protests. As a queer woman, she fears for the fate of gay rights, which Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton have expressed could be next. “I just want to be back in a state that isn’t trying to strip away all of my rights at every turn,” she said.
Well, I say good riddance to bad rubbish, and I have a feeling after Beto loses (yet again), even more progressives will pack up their bags and head back to whatever rock they crawled out from in the first place.
This post originally appeared on WayneDupree.com.