The effort comes in the wake of a deadly riot in Charlottesville, Virginia that saw white supremacist groups protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee violently clash with counter protesters. In the days following, the street signs for Robert E. Lee Road in Austin were defaced, and a petition was created to rename the road. As of Tuesday afternoon, that petition has garnered over 12,000 signatures.
District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen said she would bring forward an application to rename Robert E. Lee Road after the deadly riots that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend.[/caption]District 4 Council Member Greg Casar publicly called for the renaming of Robert E. Lee Road and Jeff Davis Avenue immediately following the events in Charlottesville. On Tuesday, District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen announced she would be putting together an application to rename Robert E. Lee Road, which runs through her district.
“Seeing the hatred and the violence, it should shake us all to our core and I think it’s incumbent on all of us and the responsibility of the entire country to stand up and say, 'This is not who we are,'” Kitchen said. “But there is so much more we need to do as a city. Renaming a road is an important, critical symbol, but we can’t just change the name of a road and say we’ve fixed the problems in our community with regard to hatred and violence and racism.”
Robert E. Lee Road is the road that leads to Barton Springs, one of Austin’s most iconic areas. Kitchen said she plans to file the application by Thursday, but that it is only the first step in a long process that she expects to last a few months. The process, according to Kitchen, involves understanding public safety issues that come with renaming a road, as well as an in-depth and participatory conversation on what the road should be renamed.
City Council members unanimously supported the effort on Tuesday. District 7 Council Member Leslie Pool said she wanted to initiate the process of renaming Jeff Davis Avenue, which stretches between West Koenig Lane and Burnet Road.
“I believe that ours is a community where there is no place for hate,” Mayor Steve Adler said.
Adler said he had been in communication with Charlottesville Mayor Michael Singer as the events unfolded over the weekend. He urged the city and his colleagues to learn from the situation in Virginia.
Casar, who spent four years in Charlottesville as a student at the University of Virginia, said the weekend’s events “hit very close to home.” He opposed the assertion that it would be an “erasure of history”.
“I believe that it’s important to address this symbol and right history, and do our best to communicate truth,” Casar said. “I think that we should sign on to [Kitchen’s] application and also consider in this budget session what it would take to get that done effectively in the next fiscal year.”
