Keep Austin Weird Group Launches Petition to Rename Robert E. Lee Road in Honor of Robert Plant

Gil Kaufman
·2 min read

The march to remove monuments to Confederate generals and warriors in the wake of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has taken an expectedly weird turn in Austin, Texas. In the city that prides itself on being odd, a group calling itself Keep Austin Weird, Not Racist has launched a petition drive to rename Robert E. Lee Road in honor of one of the city's former residents: ex-Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant.

"Austin, Texas. Hippie kingdom. Liberal oasis. Snowflake land. Call us whatever," a narrator says over smooth samba music in a one-minute video proposal. "Here we're weird, we're gay, we're feminist. We're black, we're Latino… our boobs do not need a bra and our streets? Well, actually our streets might need some help. Why is this still here?" the narrator asks over an image of the Lee Road sign with red spray paint obscuring the name of the Confederate general.

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"This isn't us. We're no Robert E. Lee. If anything, we're more like Robert Plant, right? The dude actually lived here. Aren't we the 'Live Music Capital of the World,' after all? Then why not Robert Plant Road?"

The push to rename the road began two weeks ago when City Council member Ann Kitchen said she'd lead up an effort to rename the road in South Austin grew in the wake of the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, who was killed when an a purported Nazi sympathizer allegedly drive his car into an counter-protest at high speed, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Plant lived in Austin for two years starting around 2012, where he reportedly shared a house with singer Patty Griffin.

"Seeing the hatred and the violence, it should shake us all to our core,” Kitchen said during a City Council meeting the week after the Virginia violence. "I think it’s incumbent on all of us in responsibility for the entire country to stand up and say, ‘This is not who we are, and this is not who we are in Austin, this is not who we are in Texas, this is not who we are in the nation.’”

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