SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Richard Montez enjoys telling his story of finding himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t come out until much later. I was I think 32 when I came out, so I\u2019m bit of a late bloomer,\u201d Montez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montez said he\u2019s proud of his LGBTQ+ community but also doesn\u2019t forget his Chicano roots. He grew up in one of the most impoverished ZIP codes in Texas, the 78207. It\u2019s a community where a lot of activism was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth communities, as you know, historically have had their challenges, so now I find myself doing work on the West Side defending my gente (people) and doing work here in the Pride district,\u201d Montez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montez was vocal about the removal of San Antonio\u2019s pride crosswalk, which was mostly privately funded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you let him have the crosswalk, he will come for your cultural district,\u201d Montez said in 2025 meeting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Late last year, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to enforce the removal of any political ideologies from public roadways. Any city that didn\u2019t comply would lose state and federal transportation funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
San Antonio, Dallas and Houston removed their pride crosswalks. New ideas followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only is it beautiful, it\u2019s emotional,\u201d Lily Teran said.<\/p>\n
Teran said she found her community when she moved to San Antonio. She\u2019s glad the city found a solution to the removal: a rainbow sidewalk going for two blocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo organize something like this is for us to let them know we are not going anywhere, we are not going to be hiding,\u201d Teran said, walking along the pride sidewalk. \u201cThere\u2019s no way we are going to be in a closet, if you will.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montez said that is what separates San Antonio from other Texas cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe City of San Antonio is doubling down. We are standing together, and they are standing with us,\u201d Montez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
San Antonio isn\u2019t alone in finding a workaround. The City of El Paso is replacing its crosswalk with pride cylinders wrapped around streetlights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The governor said the goal of the removals is to enhance public safety in cities across the Lone Star State. San Antonio\u2019s gay strip is following those guidelines while still expressing who they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you see three blocks of sidewalks in a pride cultural district in Texas, adorned with rainbows up and down, so we found a workaround,\u201d Montez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Richard Montez enjoys telling his story of finding himself.\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t come out until much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3564,3565,1570,6294,66,223,82,84,83,6293,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-358121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-app-community","tag-community-news","tag-ctv","tag-jose-arredondo","tag-local","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-san-antonio-what-you-need-to-know","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}