From Staff Reports

Members of the North Texas LGBTQ+ community and their allies showed up in force on Saturday afternoon, Oct. 18, to gather at the Legacy of Love Monument for a rally protesting Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive that Texas city — including Dallas — must remove or paint over any non-standard crosswalks or risk losing federal funds.

That puts Oak Lawn’s rainbow crosswalks down the length of Cedar Springs Road in danger of being removed. The crosswalks — when they were originally installed in 2020 and when the old ones were removed and replaced with more durable materials less than six months ago — were paid for through private donations and the efforts of the Cedar Springs Merchants Association.

The One City Many Colors, held around the monument at the intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Oak Lawn Avenue, featured a variety of local community leaders, including Dallas City Councilman Paul Ridley, whose district includes the Cedar Springs Strip, openly gay state Rep. Venton Jones, the Rev. Neil Thomas of Cathedral of Hope, CSMA representative Lee Daugherty and others.

Steve Atkinson explained this week that he and former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller were expecting such an order from Abbott, and were already discussing how to respond and calling together a group of community leaders to act on the issue by the time the directive was announced. That group included Cece Cox with Resource Center, Tony Vedda with the North Texas LGBT Chamber of Commerce, Daugherty and Ridley along with Dallas City Councilmember Chad West.

“We have also engaged an attorney who is working with us pro-bono on the issue” Atkinson said. “One thing that also came from this group’s work, with the help of the attorney is that we are working to get the city to request an exemption so that our crosswalks won’t be removed.”

Rainbow crosswalks in Houston were removed earlier this week. San Antonio city officials have requested an exemption based on the fact that numerous studies have shown that, in contrast to Abbott’s claims that non-standard crosswalks are a public safety hazard, such crosswalks have actually been shown to improve safety.

Photos by Chad Mantooth

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