This Texas City Is Shedding Its Buddy Holly Crosswalk As Collateral Injury In The Tradition Struggle

There is a actually baffling pattern proper now in purple states, the place state and native governments are cracking down on crosswalks. It began over in Floridathe place the state’s scorched-earth strategy to queer erasure demanded the elimination of a Delight crosswalk that served as a memorial to victims of the Pulse nightclub capturing again in 2016. Lubbock, the hometown of Buddy Holly, is caught up within the combine — authorities have demanded that the city’s glasses-shaped crosswalks be painted over with squared-off white traces, based on native outlet WFAA.

The crosswalks, which span a single intersection of Lubbock, had been painted in 2020 to memorialize Holly based on a New York Occasions piece on their elimination. Native regulators do not truly appear to need the glasses gone, however they’re following a request from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — a doc that requested “intersections and crosswalks … be saved free from distractions. This contains political messages of any nature, paintings, or the rest that detracts from the core mission of driver and pedestrian security.”

The letter from Duffy is not a regulation, however merely a request from a authorities official to fairly please cease doing artwork on the roads. It is meant to erase Delight crosswalks and Black Lives Matter murals, and Governor Greg Abbott has directed native officers to implement it. He issued a press release threatening the Texas Division of Transportation’s funding if it did not take away highway artwork, saying “Texans anticipate their taxpayer {dollars} for use correctly, not advance political agendas on Texas roadways.” His assertion focuses solely on the political, however the federal letter mentions “artwork” as effectively — locals do not get to select and select the way it’s enforced.

The Buddy Holly glasses are headline-grabbing as a result of they’re such an odd factor to take away, however they’re merely caught up in a broad web — a web made deliberately broad in order to obfuscate its goals. The enjoyable glasses-shaped crosswalks are going away, however the actual concern is why they are going away and what else goes with them.