AUSTIN (KXAN) — What looks like an encampment in east Austin’s Rosewood Park is actually a call for anarchy in protest of a recent police shooting.
Police say on Feb. 10, 21-year-old Jordan Walton crashed his Jeep into a home at Rogge Lane and Manor Road, then broke into a neighboring home. Police say Walton fired a gun when officers tried to enter that home. According to the Austin Police Department, one of its officers shot and killed Walton when the department says he used a child hostage as a human shield.
In Rosewood Park, anti-police signs can be seen —and so can tents furnished with beds, small tables and chairs inside, a communal refrigerator and microwave, a large community garden and a generator that sits next to a portable shower and toilet.
On Thursday, the city shared this statement: “We recognize and honor the right to peaceful protest but this group’s campsite is in violation of City ordinances and is preventing the public from using portions of Rosewood Park. The City has worked in consultation with community leaders, Council offices, the City’s Equity Office and multiple Departments to come to a mutually acceptable resolution with the protesters. So far an agreement hasn’t been reached but that work continues.”
“We’re not leaving,” Keith said as Brown agreed. “We’ve let it be known from the beginning.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Natasha Harper-Madison, who represents District 1 where Rosewood Park is located, said Thursday she hopes everyone involved “remains mature, reasonable and safe.”
“Every American is endowed the right to peaceably assemble, but no one has permission to seize public land, especially not parkland that our Black elders fought for and secured during a period of explicit community disinvestment,” she said in a statement. “While I understand the frustrations fueling a small group of activists in Rosewood Park, their tactics are a distraction from the progress achieved by other important collaborations driven by the larger community.”
The group also wants white people who’ve gentrified the area to pay reparations to the Black community there through donations to the 400+1 cause.