Martinez believes we’re living in a his- toric moment, and that many are feeling its heaviness. But people need to participate in whatever way they can, he says. They can’t just stay home and expect it to all work out. Around 70% of Texans agree that dis- crimination against LGBTQ+ people is wrong, but they need to live out those val- ues. “That means show up,” Martinez says. Referencing a famous ACT UP quote, he adds, “You have to turn anger, fear and grief into action.” Many advocates say Texas has turned back the clock on gay rights. Still, Waybourn is optimistic and thinks today’s kids are “go- ing to see through this.” Children learn hate from their families or friends or churches or schools, he says. They aren’t born with it. Earlier this year, Irving ISD school board trustees declined to renew MacArthur High School teacher Rachel Stonecipher’s con- tract. The North Texan had served as an ad- viser on the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. She came under fire after putting rainbow stickers on her classroom door, indicating a safe space for LGBTQ+ students. Bigotry is spreading in Texas and beyond, Waybourn says, but it’s not acceptable to simply roll over. Asked for his solution to mounting prejudice, Waybourn takes a beat and softly sighs. Then, he offers a succinct reply: “Act up and fight back.” ▼ CRIME DART DRIVER ARRESTED THE DRIVER WAS ARRESTED AT HIS HOME IN WYLIE LAST WEEK. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND T he Garland Police Department says a contract driver for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) sexually as- saulted a young woman who has a mental disability. The driver, 44-year-old Samson Assefa Lemma, was arrested at his home in Wylie last Tuesday night. Garland police officers learned earlier this month that he allegedly had sexually assaulted the 23-year-old woman, whom they didn’t name, Garland PD said in a statement last Wednesday. The alleged assault took place June 6 while Lemma was giving the woman a ride to her job, the statement added. Lemma is con- tracted by DART to drive people who have disabilities. He’s being held in the Garland Detention Center, and no bond has been set. “This is an ongoing investigation and as of current, there are no other known victims,” the statement said. “Detectives believe it is possible that there may be other victims.” DART spokesperson Gordon Shattles told the Observer that DART police had worked with the Garland PD to respond “to a report from a paratransit passenger that she had been assaulted by a paratransit operator.” “The subcontracted operator was imme- diately pulled from service and their vehicle was impounded,” Shattles said by email, adding that the driver worked for Big Star Transit, which is in turn subcontracted by MV Transportation, the contractor for DART’s paratransit services. In 2014, an anonymous plaintiff filed a federal lawsuit accusing another DART sub- contracted driver of allegedly raping their daughter, a passenger with Down syndrome. Speaking to the Observer at the time, the driver denied the allegations, and the court dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice in 2017. According to data from the U.S. Depart- ment of Justice, people with intellectual dis- abilities are seven times more likely to experience sexual violence than those with- out intellectual disabilities, NPR reported in 2018. That makes those with intellectual disabilities one of the groups most vulnera- ble to sexual assault in the country. ▼ POLITICS G GOV. GREG ABBOTT IS BRINGING BACK TALK OF A MIGRANT “CARAVAN” AHEAD OF NOVEMBER’S MIDTERMS. BY SIMONE CARTER ‘CARAVAN’ CRAZE ov. Greg Abbott is at it again, warn- ing of the supposed threat posed by people seeking refuge and asylum at our state’s southern border. An “invasion,” he and other Texas Re- publicans have said. Abbott, who’s up for reelection in No- vember, sounded the alarm in a tweet last Monday. The immigrants are coming, he warned, and he knows just how to stop them: thousands of feet of wire equipped with sharp blades that can inflict severe lacerations. Sometimes, they can even cause death. “Texas is the only state in the history of our country to install mile after mile of con- certina razor wire along the border to deter illegal immigration,” Abbott boasted in the tweet. “We are expanding that effort to pre- pare for the threat of caravans coming through Mexico.” Many Texas Republicans have backed Abbott’s clampdown on the U.S.-Mexico border. Last March, Abbott launched Opera- tion Lone Star, deploying state national guard and Department of Public Safety troops to the border. According to a Dallas Morning News- University of Texas at Tyler poll published in May, more than half of Texans surveyed supported those deployments. (Voters re- mained split on Abbott’s efforts to build the state’s own wall on the border.) He also provided a link to a FOX News piece explaining that the state’s national guard is now using the wire along the Rio Grande. Advocates say the move won’t dis- courage people from trying to cross and fear that it contributes to an uptick in rhetoric that encourages anti-immigrant attacks — attacks like the 2019 El Paso Walmart slaughter that killed 23 people. The suspect, a 21-year-old white man, had explained in his hate-filled manifesto that the mass shooting was “a response to the Hispanic in- vasion of Texas.” Caravans will be coming through Mexico, Abbott claims. Where have we heard that before? That’s right: Former President Don- ald Trump whipped up a frenzy ahead of the 2018 midterms, falsely stating a caravan composed of “criminals and unknown Mid- dle Easterners” was fast approaching the United States. The Atlantic reported at the time that the hysteria led to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting, which killed 11 worshippers. The white nationalist sus- pect blamed Jews for aiding the so-called caravan. In April, the number of people appre- hended on the southern border slumped slightly but remained at a 22-year high. But a caravan isn’t coming, said Efrén C. Olivares, the immigrant justice deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Cen- ter. Abbott, like Trump, is oversimplifying the issue of immigration. We should have a humane and functional asylum and immigration system, Olivares said. But Abbott’s tweet was simply part of his electoral campaign, not part of a serious immigration policy discussion, he added. “It’s rhetoric to pander to his base, to the anti-immigrant supporters of Governor Ab- bott for whom a simplistic message such as concertina wire is appealing, but it’s not se- rious,” Olivares said. “It’s a medieval re- sponse to a 21st-century issue, just like the wall.”In some cases, razor wire has claimed the lives of migrants across the world, in- cluding a Senegalese man who reportedly attempted to scale a fence from Morocco into a Spanish exclave in 2005, according to The Guardian. Using this anti-immigrant language stokes the flames of hatred and works to paint refu- gees and asylum seekers as criminals, Oliva- res said. He added that the kind of rhetoric deployed by Abbott and other politicians is moving white supremacists and anti-immi- grant extremists to action. “It’s literally en- dangering people’s lives as a result,” he said. The term “caravan” implies a planned as- sault on the border and is intended to scare people, said Bill Holston, executive director for the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas. But the border is already a dangerous place, hot and harsh and difficult to cross. Mean-spirited tactics won’t stop people who are seeking refuge in the U.S., he ar- gued. They’ll just wind up getting injured by the wire, or they may traverse ever-more dangerous stretches of the border. In Big Bend National Park, temperatures can sometimes soar up to 117 degrees, Holston noted. People may travel at night and carry water jugs, but they’ll keep trying to escape “lives that are totally untenable.” Transgender people from El Salvador, Guatemalan farmers and others escaping widespread gang violence, prolonged droughts or civil unrest will attempt to reach the U.S. to survive, hoping to provide better lives for their families, he said. The world is seeing unprecedented levels of mi- gration because of political turmoil and cli- mate change. The number of refugees will likely continue to grow. Somehow, U.S. resources are often di- verted to help asylum seekers from places like Ukraine but skip people of color, Holston said. We’ve shuttled planeloads of migrants back to genocide-like conditions, for in- stance, but people will continue to come. Some don’t really have any other choice. “You can have a legitimate debate about how we should deal with refugees at the border,” he said. “But doubling down on cruelty is not going to serve any useful pur- pose other than appealing to the basest ele- ment of American politics.” We bring sophistication with a twist to the metaphysical and holistic markets with products, classes and services. We have locations in Dallas, Carrollton & Frisco. Psychic Hotline Now Available: 888-415-6208 WWW.SOULTOPIA.GURU BEST OF DALLAS AWARD WINNER S Visit us: 900 W Davis St, Dallas • 3414 Midcourt Rd #100, Carrollton 7004 Lebanon Rd, STE 106, Frisco, Texas 75034 7 dallasobserver.com CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER JUNE 23–29, 2022 2020
