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Tyler, Texas, is a town of 105,000 out on the eastern edge of the state. It’s quiet, conservative, and, according to Drew Steele, who works in auto detailing, a town of “quiet racists,” with little tolerance for anything or anyone that deviates from the norm. His high school was named for Robert E. Lee. There’s a brand-new building in town intended to commemorate plantation life. There’s a long history of lynching. But on Monday night, Steele joined hundreds of others for the third night of protests in the city.

The protests in Tyler, he explained, are about so many things: institutional racism, but also unlivable wages, and just growing frustration and desire for change.

Steele thinks it’s essential for these protests to happen in places like Tyler — and for other people to know about it. “Small towns tend to be old-fashioned,” he said. “And racism is an old-fashioned way of controlling others.” But others need to know that there’s another path forward, and that it’s okay to be different, in any number of ways. “That’s why it’s so important that so many people showed up,” he said. “We won’t be shoved under the rug.”

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