LGBTQ+ San Antonio residents criticize city’s plan to replace rainbow crosswalks with rainbow sidewalks

On Tuesday, a road crew started the morning covering up one of San Antonio’s most colorful landmarks, leaving seemingly no trace of the city’s rainbow crosswalks by noon. The only remnants of the crosswalk were cylinders extracted from each color of the rainbow, to be saved by the city for historical purposes.

For state and federal transportation officials, scrubbing the intersection at North Main Avenue and Evergreen Street meant removing “political” imagery from San Antonio’s tax-funded streets — an initiative they threatened millions in transportation funding over in cities across Texas.

For local advocates and members of the LGBTQ+ community, paving over the centerpiece of San Antonio’s newly anointed Pride Cultural Heritage District was a physical manifestation of what they feel is an increasingly hostile climate in the state toward gay and transgender people. That animosity has also influenced San Antonio’s proposed alternative to paint rainbows on the sidewalks near the intersection where the crosswalk was.

While the project could potentially make the district even more colorful than before, it has been criticized by some as too quick a solution that overlooks the larger shift in Texas’ treatment of its LGBTQ+ community.

“It does just feel like a band-aid on a gaping wound, and it’s not going to hold everything that’s coming out of it,” said Wyatt Collier, a San Antonio resident and transgender man who protested the removal of the rainbow crosswalk on Tuesday. “There needs to be more action than just paint on the sidewalk for us to feel safe again.”

The sidewalk project has also hit roadblocks, in part because of a lawsuit from the city’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group that helped install the crosswalk, along with objections from two City Council members who echoed Gov. Greg Abbott’s concerns over the rainbow’s alleged politicized messaging.

Political paths

James Poindexter, an executive with Pride San Antonio, has been among the most vocal defenders of the crosswalk and one of the city’s harshest critics as it prepared to remove the landmark. Pride San Antonio helped fund the rainbow crosswalk after the City Council unanimously voted in 2018 for an ordinance to install the art.

A Jan. 5 memo from San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh’s office scheduled work on the new sidewalk art to be completed by Jan. 9. Walsh paused the installation, however, after Poindexter and Pride San Antonio filed a lawsuit last week against the city in a last-ditch effort to block the crosswalk’s removal.

Poindexter said not requiring a City Council vote on the sidewalk installation or removal of the ordinance-protected crosswalk went against due process, and that the group felt the city needed to be pushed to make its stance clearer.

“We wanted them to stand up and defend the ordinance, defend the city’s Home Rule status,” Poindexter said. “[But] we just felt that if the city is not willing to fight at all for the crosswalk, then the least they could do is have a meeting, take a district-by-district council vote and rescind the crosswalk ordinance that was created in 2018 and just do it publicly.”

Also listed as a co-plaintiff on the suit was the San Antonio branch of the Texas Conservative Liberty Forum, a grassroots conservative organization that splintered from the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBTQ+ Republicans. Leaders from both groups told The Texas Tribune they did not communicate with one another on the lawsuit, but went to lawyer Justin Nichols with similar suits that had completely different end goals. A signed declaration from TCLF San Antonio President Joe Garza states the organization’s priority is not having the rainbow sidewalk installed.

“What it was about was, we believe in transparent, representative government, and it needs to go through the process, And that’s the one area where we all agree with Pride [San Antonio],” TCLF Chair Marco Roberts said. “They had different motivations, of course, but the one thing that we all agreed on was, whatever the answer is, it’s got to be done transparently, with a public debate.”

On Jan. 9, a Bexar County district judge ultimately denied a restraining order that would have stopped the removal of the crosswalk. Pride SA subsequently withdrew from the lawsuit but TCLF is proceeding with the case, according to Nichols.

Abbott’s directive to remove the rainbow crosswalks in October came after similar guidance was issued to states in July by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as part of a new road safety initiative. Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to remove roadway art displays that “advance political agendas” and “ideologies,” which critics believed to be directed specifically at rainbow crosswalks.

Most cities complied with the letter immediately, taking steps to remove crosswalk art — rainbow and otherwise — rather than endanger state or federal funding. Other cities like San Antonio and Austin sought exceptions from the removal. San Antonio did not receive an exception because it failed to include a signed and sealed document from a traffic engineer certifying the crosswalk as legally compliant, according to a TxDOT letter sent to the city in November. No exceptions were made in the state, a spokesperson for TxDOT said.

While local advocates including Pride San Antonio urged San Antonio officials to push back against the removal, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones insisted in October that the city must be “effective, not just idealistic” with city funding at risk. San Antonio’s 2026 fiscal year budget included $2.3 million in state and federal transportation grants.

San Antonio District 1 City Council member Sukh Kaur, who helped propose the new sidewalk plan alongside the city’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, said the sidewalk installation is permitted without a council vote because of the area’s cultural heritage district designation.

In cities like Dallas and Houston that also removed rainbow crosswalks in neighborhoods with deep LGBTQ+ history, private local groups have spearheaded new rainbow displays through rainbow steps and flags. Kaur acknowledged the crosswalk art removal was “less than ideal,” but wants residents to be assured that the city itself could express support for community members without running afoul of state funding requirements.

“We want to make sure that our community knows while our asphalt may be regulated by the state, our sidewalks are not, and so the sidewalks are under city purview, and we want them to represent our city’s values,” Kaur said.

A sidewalk’s price tag

While the crosswalk was removed to secure millions in state funds, efforts to install the new sidewalk art have also received pushback for its $170,000 cost to the city. District 9 and 10 councilmembers Misty Spears and Marc Whyte put out a joint statement against the sidewalk plan last week condemning the plan for diverting money that could be put toward “critical infrastructure.”

Whyte said in an interview with the Tribune that he was worried about private groups using public funding to spread a message of any kind.

“I really want to be clear, this is nothing against the LGBTQ community,” Whyte said. “This City Council has shown that it stands in support of the LGBTQ community, but we’ve got to get our priorities straight. Resources are limited, and we shouldn’t be spending public dollars like this.”

Whyte also said he would support a full council meeting on the project.

Work on painting the sidewalk is now scheduled to begin Friday, according to Brian Chasnoff, assistant director of communications for the City of San Antonio.

Residents like Collier who cherished the crosswalk feel that the sidewalk art is a consolation from the city. During the protest Tuesday, those who gathered to mourn the crosswalk — and chastise Abbott for ordering its removal — said the sidewalk art didn’t represent an earnest effort to make LGBTQ+ residents feel supported.

“Now, only because of backlash, did they decide to do a half-hearted replacement with rainbow sidewalks — which I will note, have not started yet and are not guaranteed until they exist,” said Matilda Miller, cofounder of new statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group 6W Project.

Kaur said she is exploring more ways to show residents the city wants to respect the culture the crosswalks represented.

“I completely understand those folks that really wanted us to do more, and I respect that,” Kaur said. “I hope that they’ll see that us taking ownership of the land, an area that we do control like the sidewalks, demonstrates that we aren’t going silently.”