Why Protest in Pflugerville?

By Lucas Myers, a PfADC member and Indivisible 1431 volunteer focused on building community, civic participation, and local action in Pflugerville. He was a primary organizer (and DJ/Emcee) of No Kings Day 3 in Pflugerville.

When people imagine a national protest, they picture streets teeming with people in Washington, D.C., or a massive march in Austin flanked by Texas DPS and the National Guard. They do not picture Pflugerville.

They should.

Because the wrongs we are living through are not happening somewhere far away. They are here in our neighborhoods, our schools, our churches, our grocery store lines, and our homes. They fall on families struggling to afford basic needs, on hard-working immigrants told they do not belong, on communities of color asked to carry more fear than anyone should have to bear, and on ordinary people exhausted by watching cruelty, division, and corruption parade around as leadership.

Here in Pflugerville, that struggle is personal. When those in power could not win our voices, they tried to erase them. Our city was gerrymandered into a congressional district with Midland and Odessa to dilute the strength of our diverse and growing community. That was not an accident. It was a choice made to leave us feeling small, powerless, and easy to ignore.

So when we protest here, in Pflugerville, we are doing more than waving signs. We are righting wrongs.

We are telling our neighbors "you do not have to stay home, absorbing the latest outrage or defeat. You do not have to hurl your frustration into the void online or whisper your values for fear of reprisals. We are not powerless. We are not alone."

"Together, we are writing a different story about who we are: that ordinary people, standing shoulder to shoulder, can still shape what happens next. We are not here simply to endure bad decisions handed down by distant people in power. We are here to challenge them, to demand accountability from our elected representatives, to defend our community, and to build the kind of steady, determined civic life that wins elections."

That is the power of protesting here at home. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. For each other.

And there is something deeply hopeful about that. A local protest is an act of love: love for democracy, love for truth, and love for the people in this community who deserve to feel safe, seen, and wanted. When that love becomes visible, it is powerful and contagious. It helps people find motivation: speak up, attend a meeting, make a call, block-walk, vote in every election, and bring a friend along.

Protest is joyful, too. It looks like grandparents in lawn chairs passing out buttons, parents with kids holding handmade signs, and people who arrived alone finding themselves shoulder to shoulder with strangers. It sounds like music and laughter: the faintly remembered lyrics of an old protest song sung together while shrugging off the occasional rude gesture from a passing motorist. It feels like hope, resolve, and that sudden, powerful realization that strangers can become neighbors, neighbors can become a community, and community can become a movement.

That is why we protest in Pflugerville.

Because when those in power are wrong, showing up is how we begin to make it right and how we remind one another that we still can.

The Pflugerville NO KINGS DAY 3 Protest was 100% organized by volunteers: working parents, grandparents, and community members from 5-81; ordinary people. Please contact us at Indivisible1431.org if you’d like to help us make a difference.