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When utility workers couldn’t stop the destruction on Thursday, June 5, they pulled out their phones and started recording.
Homeowner Jessica Zavala posted it on Facebook, hoping someone knew the man who cursed obscenities while pulling down the pride flags and decorations she and her daughters had used to decorate the stone wall on their property along Farmers Branch Lane in support of their friends and loved ones who identify as LGBTQ.
Friends urged her to file a report with the Farmers Branch Police Department, which she did, postponing a date to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in favor of a different type of learning experience. “I’d never done that," Zavala said. "I didn’t know what to do."
Zavala said she’s been putting up a pride display each June for the seven years she’s lived at her home, and while her flags have been occasionally pulled down in the past – which prompted her to zip tie them flat to the bricks of the wall and to install a security camera in the tree above the wall this year – she never expected the level of malice that her camera and the utility workers captured on video. “I’ve never had this bad of an experience,” she said.
Zavala said that even before she had become friends with members in the LGBTQ community, she considered herself an ally and was active in the community.
Though raised in a very conservative family, she said she refuses to shelter her children, Ava, 10, and Zoe, 7, though she’s not always sure where to draw the line with parenting. “When I had them, I wanted them to be open minded and open hearted and love everyone no matter who they are,” she said.
She does not like that her children are exposed to hatred, but she said she looks at it as a learning experience and reminds herself and her children, “It’s not even our reality,” Zavala said, as other people face much worse expressions of hate and even violence. “If I sheltered them, they’d never know. They’d think it’s all rainbows and butterflies, but that’s not the real world.”
Zavala said she puts up the display annually because “I want people to know they are loved. This is safe space. My family is a safe place.”
She said she even feels compassion for the offender. She tries to teach her children that people aren’t bad at heart. “They are just making bad decisions,” she said.
However, she feels like there is a heightened sense of violence and that people think they can do whatever they want, so she would like the person who did this to be brought to justice.
“He messed up our property. He should pay for it if we can find him,” she said.
Ileana Garza-Rojas, a Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School Board Trustee who has lived in Farmers Branch since 2009 and married to her wife Rox Garza for 14 years, described the situation as tough. She said she can tell when LGBTQ allies, such as Zavala, hurt over these types of transgressions, but that as part of the LGBTQ community, she and others have prepared “for anything, if that makes any sense.”
Friends with Zavala for more than 10 years, Garza-Rojas said Zavala was distraught when she called about the flags being torn down. “I think people who are allies feel more frustrated at times,” Garza-Rojas said.
While life in Farmers Branch generally feels safe, especially now that her family has found its own community in the city, Garza-Rojas said she sometimes does feel fear. “It’s not gotten worse. It just brought to light that hate hasn’t gone away.”
Garza-Rojas said that even though Pride Month is a single month, it helps her and others know that they aren’t alone and are seen. Flags and other symbols signal that there is a safe space for them and may be the only sign of support some people receive. “During Pride Month, it’s a feeling of compassion and love and strength,” she said. “It allows me to be proud of who I am. Some people love us for who we are, and we don’t have to be so scared to be who we are all the time. When there’s been such a world full of hate, it feels good to have allies in your corner."
In addition to the instance of vandalism, Garza-Rojas said that recent conversations by the Farmers Branch City Council about the city’s calendar and public comments that have focused on Pride Month has been discouraging. “It can be scary when things get a little heated,” she said.
Many people who have spoken against Pride Month before the council have cited the Bible, with one speaker from Fort Worth throwing a Bible while he spoke before the council.
“In true ‘love thy neighbor,’ that’s not loving your neighbor. It’s picking who you love and respect,” Garza-Rojas said when asked about it. She asked if the speakers are as conditional with their love toward others with life circumstances they don’t agree with. “We only love a person partially until they don’t fit into their mold, and it’s really not loving your neighbor.”
One of Zavala’s acquaintances from Carrollton visited her renewed display in support. Chris Lopez, a former justice of the peace for Denton County, said he found it disturbing that someone would destroy a display of unity.
“I was pretty angry about someone tearing it down, but I’m glad she put it back up,” Lopez said.
Lopez said he flies a 3-foot-by-5-foot pride flag year-round to signal that his home is a safe space.
He said it’s “very shocking that you can see someone’s hatred through a video like that,” but that isn’t the essence of either Farmers Branch or Carrollton, which stand together as a community and help each other out when needed. “Let’s not let this stain or tarnish our community,” he said.
The Farmers Branch Police Department confirmed that an initial criminal mischief report was taken and forwarded to the Criminal Investigations Division for assignment.
