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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■
Vol. 32 No. 33
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Austin Walmart closes temporarily,
August 15, 2018
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
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Commander d Cato, page 3
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The sanctuary on Madison Street Westside triage center offers rare source of calm amid urban anxiety By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Soft, meditative music was playing inside of the community room at the Westside Community Triage and Wellness Center, 4133 W. Madison St., one hot afternoon earlier this month. The lights were dimmed, the air cool, the room painted in the hushed, yet expansive, tone of a clear blue sky. The only indication that this atmosphere was amid the hustle and bustle of a busy West Garfield Park thoroughfare was the streetscape — visible through a large window running along most of the top quarter portion of the room’s back wall. “Just imagine coming in off of Madison Street and hearing something like this,” said Donald Dew, the CEO of Habilitative Systems during an interview on Aug. 3 inside of the Wellness Center — what many community health experts like Dew say is the first facility of its kind on the West Side. “The first thing people will hear when they come in here is this soft music,” Dew said. “The lights will be subdued. Immediately when they come in here there will be a sense of safety, solitude and sanctuary.” The triage center — the result of a partnership between Habilitative Systems, the Bobby E. Wright Comprehensive Behavioral Health See SANCTUARY on page 6
SHANEL ROMAIN/Contributor
Night ball Young men play basketball after National Night Out in Austin, held Aug. 7.. More photos on page 4.
Book shines light on redlining on West Side Linda Gartz’s ‘Redlining’ is both memoir and social history
By IGOR STUDENKOV Contributing Reporter
Television producer and author Linda Gartz was there when West Garfield Park turned from a majority-white to a majorityblack community. She saw the racial tensions, the white flight and the struggles over school integration. Her family
witnessed the riots that rocked the West Side, accelerating the decline of the area’s commercial corridors. If there is any message she wanted readers to get out of her book, it’s that it didn’t have to be that way. In Redlined, a 2018 memoir which weaves a history of her family with the history of West Garfield Park neighborhood, Gartz
places the lion’s share of the blame on the federal government policy of redlining the neighborhoods with black residents. Not only did it fuel white flight, but it made it harder for black households to buy and maintain their properties, hurt their ability to build wealth and affected business
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com
See REDLINING on page 10