It was already dark when Mason Whiteside finished his workday at a Deep Ellum brewery. By the time he was done cleaning and closing up, it was nearing midnight, but there was another job to do.
Whiteside, 25, called a Waymo to take him to Oak Lawn, where he’d lugged a backpack full of chalk and spray paint: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
“Does anyone want to color with me?” Whiteside asked as people walked by.
No one stopped. He didn’t need them to.
Over the course of three and a half hours, Whiteside alone repainted more than a dozen crosswalks, what he considered a vibrant act of defiance less than 24 hours after the city began stripping the roads of their color. Dallas is among several Texas cities complying with a state directive to remove “political ideologies” from public roadways.
“I wasn’t hurting anybody,” Whiteside, who is queer, told The Dallas Morning News Tuesday. “I didn’t damage anything. I literally just put back the same things that had been there.”
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Shortly before 3:30 a.m., Whiteside was painting near the intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Knight Street, when two police officers walked over.
Whiteside recalled a series of exchanges that went like this:
“Hey, buddy, what are you doing?” one of the officers asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Whiteside replied.
He was then asked if he realized that what he was doing was a crime.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No,” both officers said.
So Whiteside told them he was leaving, that it was his right, but said the officers wouldn’t let him go.
“You just told me I’m not under arrest,” Whiteside said.
“Well, you are now.”
Mason Whiteside of Carrollton shows his artwork that he painted on an Oak Lawn crosswalk following the removal of rainbow crosswalks, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Police officials told The News in an email that Whiteside was detained for unrelated, outstanding warrants. According to Whiteside, he was only informed of a speeding ticket and failure to appear in court out of Farmers Branch, an incident from more than three years ago.
Whiteside was taken Tuesday to a Dallas County jail, then to the City Marshal’s office, and finally to Farmers Branch, he said, where he paid $972 to be released. He left at 10:35 a.m.
Mason Whiteside of Carrollton poses for a photo in front of the Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Tuesday afternoon, Whiteside tried to distract himself. He worked in his garden, tending to his peonies.
It was a feeble effort.
He thought about why he moved to Dallas in the first place. It was 2023 and he’d had enough of Amarillo, his “small-minded” hometown, he said. He wanted to start over, to grow up, to find some bigger dreams.
“This isn’t the Dallas that I came to love,” Whiteside said. “And how much longer until it’s not just crosswalks? Until they take our spaces — our actual spaces? There are a series of dominoes that could fall.”
He’s disappointed. Angry. Scared, even. But he’s not discouraged.
“Every single time they try to take it away,” he said, “I’m going to put it right back.”