Whether saving lives during the freeze or saving the city from Save Austin Now, firefighters' union president Bob Nicks just helped.
Bob Nicks' phone lit up with call after call as he drove over icy roads into Austin. Some were from his colleagues at the Austin Fire Department, where Nicks is a battalion chief and the president of the firefighters' union. The rest were from people trapped in their homes, freezing.
This frustration was gnawing at Nicks at 6:30am when KXAN reporter Sally Hernandez asked him what Austinites could do to help the firefighters. Nicks ignored the question."I've heard some officials have said, 'Stay at home, even if you've lost power,'" he replied instead."And I would say what you need to do is find a friend who has heat. And find somebody with a truck who can get you there. And if you can't, call firefighters. We'll help you.
All parties to that consent decree, including the union, agreed that Austin's process was not designed to discriminate but nonetheless had a disparate impact. Nicks stresses that his members were fine with having a more diverse and inclusive department, but they didn't trust the city to devise tests that would pick good firefighters.
Downed stop sign at Jamestown and Payton Gin in North Austin after the snow storm in Austin on Feb. 15, 2021 While Nicks dispatched volunteer firefighters across the city, the union hall itself became a safe haven for people without shelter. At the time, Collective Campaigns, a political consulting business, rented half of the building; the group has worked on campaigns for AFA and for candidates such as former Council Member Greg Casar and District Attorney José Garza. Its own staffers formed the nucleus of a labor union representing Austin's many political campaign organizers.
Police and EMS were rescuing the unsheltered as well."We had our medics going to all the different homeless camps, bringing them to the warming facilities," said Selena Xie, Nicks' counterpart as president of the Austin Travis County Emergency Medical Services Association. Medics also saved the lives of many who rely on electrical equipment – such as those on dialysis or supplemental oxygen – and others who had been unable to refill prescription medications.
The invention, dubbed"Bob Buckets," was essentially a portable water spigot, hooked to a fire hydrant, which could bring fresh water right to the doorsteps of the people in need. Nicks couldn't get the city of Austin to help construct the buckets – in fact he found the city to be more a hindrance than a help throughout the crisis – so members of ANW built them alongside the battalion chief into the wee hours of Feb. 21.
Petricek speculates that Greg Casar or José Garza, DSA progressives who were endorsed by AFA, changed Nicks' mind."That's kind of a classic sort of attack from Save Austin Now," Nicks said."The notion is that there's paymasters out there and you're yielding down to them, bowing down to these paymasters, and doing their bidding. It's just malarkey."
For the remaining month of the campaign, Nicks was on Twitter almost every day pushing the anti-Prop A case. The measure's supporters responded that there was plenty of money in the city's budget; that the police force was so depleted that officers no longer responded to calls; and even that the AFA election had been rigged. Some personally attacked Nicks, calling him a socialist, communist, liar, imbecile, degenerate, and tyrant.
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