This weekend marks one year since thousands of protesters flooded the streets in downtown Austin and demanded a series of law-and-order reforms and budget changes, some of which they ended up getting.
While the local demonstrations mirrored racial justice protests in other cities after the death of George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, local participants also had Austin-specific reasons to be there, as they pointed to concerns they'd been voicing for years about the Austin Police Department.
Bubbling with anger and viewing the moment as a vehicle for transformation, they persuaded the City Council to change the Police Department's budget by cutting $21 million outright and setting aside an additional $129 million to be vetted for potential cuts down the road. Since then, $45 million of that larger amount has been cut by moving various departments and functions out of police control.