Fort Worth Weekly Classifieds // July 22-28, 2026

Return to Sender

Southeast

Fort Worth neighborhood Echo Heights continues waiting for a FedEx facility to keep its environmental promises.

BY AMBER CHADWICK

FedEx promises to deliver on time — unless it involves sticking to agreements.

The global carrier has a long history of acting as a bad neighbor in the Southeast Fort Worth neighborhood of Echo Heights. For five years, the global carrier operated its 9.4-acre trucking facility under a permit lapse that went unnoticed by the City of Fort Worth, despite the lot sitting adjacent to a city code-compliance building. Now, halfway through a two-year Conditional Use Permit (CUP), the carrier has failed to fulfill its commitments made to the Echo Heights community.

When residents and environmental advocates exposed the lapse, Fort Worth City Council last month moved to approve the CUP following the recommendation of District 11 Councilmember Jeanette Martinez, who said at the time that she “hoped FedEx was able to live up to their words and commitment to being a better neighbor to the Echo Heights community.”

To secure the permit, FedEx spokesperson and legal counsel Sean Tate vowed to “demonstrate” the carrier’s “commitment to being a better partner moving forward, not with promises but with actions.”

Under the approved terms, FedEx committed to updating truck routing maps, erecting a new screening fence, planting a landscape buffer of more than 300 trees and shrubs, and installing a $30,000 air quality monitor at W.M. Green Elementary to be commissioned by Dr. David Lary’s UT-Dallas lab. Martinez conceded that the five-year lapse should have been caught sooner by both FedEx and the city. Municipal officials blamed the oversight on shifting processes, when permit approvals moved from the Board of Adjustment to the Zoning Commission and City Council.

One year later, FedEx hasn’t fulfilled any of its promises to the Echo Heights community. The facility was supposed to replace its chain-link fences and provide landscaping. Semi-trucks also continue to speed through residential streets, ignoring no-truck signs and destroying roads.

METROPOLIS

Most importantly, W.M. Green Elementary is still without an air monitor.

When pressed by the community, Martinez acknowledged that some of FedEx’s pledges weren’t legally binding. She clarified that FedEx committed to donating the air monitor as a “good-faith effort outside of the CUP approval process” and that “while it was not a condition of the permit, I believe businesses should honor the commitments they make to the community.”

Last month, demonstrators showed up outside FedEx’s Echo Heights facility at 4700 Martin St., demanding accountability for the carrier’s negligence. The rally was led by the Fort Worth Environmental Coalition of Communities (FWECC), with support from the Sierra Club and the Echo Heights Stop 6 Environmental Coalition. Protesters stood in tall weeds, holding picket signs targeting the company’s unfulfilled obligations to the community.

“There’s so many voices … tired of fighting, because it’s getting nowhere,” said Chris Jones, vice president of the Echo Heights Neighborhood Association.

The true cost of this infrastructure is measured in the community’s physical health. Echo Heights is a working-class neighborhood and one of Fort Worth’s most ecologically disadvantaged areas. Dozens of residential properties reside within the immediate emission radius of the FedEx lot, exposing families to heavy diesel exhaust containing more than 40 carcinogens known to cause malignancies and respiratory complications. Rubber tire degradation from these trucks also releases toxic microplastics into the air. Studies from the Health Effects Institute show that unsafe levels of exposure to traffic emissions and tire-wear microplastics regularly permeate areas up to a 1,640-foot radius of trucking corridors, while medical data shows that chronic exposure within 1,000 feet of heavy trucking facilities causes permanent, stunted lung growth in children. Because air pollution travels downwind, this leaves children vulnerable to inhaling particulates during recess and outdoor pickup lines. W.M. Green Elementary sits 1.1 miles away from the FedEx site, which is why the carrier’s promise of donating an air monitor is so important to the Echo Heights community.

Distribution centers choose neighborhoods like Echo Heights because of proximity to highways, cheaper land, and assumed lack of political resistance. Within a 2-mile radius of the FedEx facility, where the population is 91% people of color and 54% low-income, the area, based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indicates that Echo Heights is in the 90th percentile for hazardous waste proximity, with

the adult asthma rates sitting at 12%, surpassing both statewide and national averages. An audit of multiple FedEx facilities in North Texas found that they primarily operate out of minority-majority ZIP codes. However, this pattern isn’t specific to North Texas or to FedEx. It’s indicative of the broader national crisis of systemic inequities that the freight industry continues imposing on our country’s most vulnerable communities.

“We are human,” said Letitia Wilbourn, cochair of FWECC. “Humans can only absorb so much, and right now they are putting too much on us.”

FedEx, said Adam Snyder, FedEx communications strategic advisor for global media, “strives to be a good neighbor in all the communities where we operate. With regard to our facility in Fort Worth, Texas, we fully intend to complete the site updates and quality measurements in the next several months.”

Following recent press inquiries on deadline, confirmation from both Councilmember Martinez and Lary’s independent lab reveals that FedEx has finally released the promised $30,000 payment to the university to begin construction on the air monitor for W.M. Green Elementary. Martinez also said that her office fully intends to “review the concerns raised by residents and ensure any potential CUP violations are investigated and addressed.”

Community advocates remain skeptical until the appropriate actions are taken and results are apparent.

FedEx is already halfway through its two-year CUP. By the time the air monitor is constructed, calibrated, and able to yield significant data, FedEx will be reapplying for permit renewal. Whether this release of funds is a calculated public relations move or a genuine act of good faith is unclear. In the meantime, Echo Heights will continue to wait for FedEx to deliver on the rest of its obligations. l

News Roundup

Black Dems threaten to reject Talarico (smh), while Red Raider chief did not bribe anyone and slain ICE victim put to rest.

BY ANTHONY MARIANI

Dumbest Timeline

When you hear someone is a “political content creator,” how bad do you gag? Is it a full-on almost-barf or just a little “ewww, can’t handle this right now”? For me, reading that some “political content creator” in Houston has threatened Texas Democrats’ best hope for a U.S. Senate seat with sitting out the election brought me to the edge of my toilet, my stomach churning, my lips foaming with spittle. Here you have James Talarico, a decent, honest, hardworking, good man, and his opposition on the right defines “slimy bastard.” And yet. And yet! Many Black Texans claim Sweet Baby James hasn’t kissed their ass hard enough and as a result may sit out the election or even vote for his opponent, Crooked Ken Paxton. *facepalm emoji* If “self-own” were a voting bloc, it would be these warped, misguided backward-brains who somehow believe that crucifying themselves brings the entire Democratic party closer to enlightenment. Shit don’t work that way. Not only is the Dem establishment led by spineless, blood-money-hungry do-nothings, but you’re only hurting yourselves and every other group dying under the oppressive regime of Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott, the rest of the Nazis in Austin, and all the chief Nazis

in D.C. Put your obnoxious, nauseating ego away, grow a pair of balls/ovaries, and do what’s right for the common good — not for your objectively sophomoric “political content.”

“I’m not fixing to let your white moderates win,” said this “political content creator” via The Texas Tribune. “Because in 2028, we need to elect a new motherfucking president, and if you white moderates and you lowly ass fucking candidates like James Talarico keep pulling your shit, we’re going to end up with another fucking Trump.”

What one senator has to do with the election of a president is anyone’s guess, but there goes another unofficial spokesperson for the anti-Democratic, anti-common-sense wing of the Democratic party — eating ourselves is what we do best. And that is how you get “another fucking Trump,” not by voting for someone who isn’t a walking, talking pile of racism, sexism, bigotry, backdoor deals, and grift. Put the phone down. Grow up.

Down, Set, Tut-Tut

As if any more proof was needed that Ken Paxton is not only a terrible politician but a worse human being, he just accepted a huge not-a-bribe from some powerful MAGAt to help a college football team.

And the kid entered the NFL draft anyway. Thanks for beclowning yourself once again in public, Mr. Paxton, this time on my behalf, undoubtedly thought former Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who got busted gambling thousands of dollars on college football games, including his own, and was declared ineligible by the NCAA.

To fight to keep him on the field, Tech Board of Regents Chair Cody Campbell donated $275K to Paxton’s regressive U.S. Senate campaign against Dem wonderboy James Talarico. It’s among the most money Crooked Ken has received from any donor currently and reportedly among the highest that Campbell has ever shelled out to any statewide campaign.

What a coinkydink, then, that Texas Attorney General Paxton — fat donation firmly in greasy hand — went after the Big 12, warning the conference that not allowing the Lubbock institution to dress Sorsby would be “unlawful” and expose the conference to $200 million-plus in damages.

Sorry, but the third-biggest NCAA conference is not going to be pushed around by anyone, including the State of Texas and especially Crooked

“The bottom line,” the Tech chair wrote, “is that Texas Tech did absolutely nothing but act with complete integrity through this entire process.” *snicker* “We broke no rules, no laws, and crossed no ethical lines.” The lies! They burn! “We are proud to represent a university that supports its students the way that we do.” By making the whole literate world hate them? Got it.

R.I.P. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

Hundreds recently gathered on Houston’s East Side for the funeral of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and construction worker shot dead by ICE on July 7. The family said they did not know a vast majority of the attendees.

Ken. The Big 12 promptly sued Paxton, Tech, the Texas Tech University System, Chancellor Brandon Creighton, Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec, and Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt.

“The Big 12 and its member institutions … have no interest in being required to endorse or even appearing to endorse unethical and indeed unlawful conduct that strikes at the heart of athletic integrity,” the conference wrote in its complaint, whose chief argument is that Tech was infringing on the conference’s First Amendment rights to enforce its own rule of law.

Tech chair Campbell told the Star-Telegram that his not-untimely donation to Paxton was in no way underhanded or intended to sway anyone and was born only of support for the AG’s senate campaign. Between this April and June, Crooked Ken has raised three times less than Sweet Baby James, who’s sitting on a cool $30 million. However. The two candidates are statistically tied, with Talarico enjoying only a slight lead in most polls. Back to Blacks against James: Please, don’t vote for unlimited diarrhea (Paxton) when soft, downy comfort (Talarico) is only a punched button away.

Addiction is serious, and we’re glad Sorsby received the treatment he needed. We wish him the best in his pro football career.

Now, for a genuine LOL, Campbell released a statement after Sorsby skedaddled, and it’s full of more b.s. than West Texas ranchland.

“How could we not show up and be here?” said visitor Luke Orlando, who did not know Salgado Araujo personally but lives near where ICE killed him. “It could have been any of us, any of our neighbors.”

Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in January, encounters with ICE and other immigration agents have resulted in at least 10 deaths, including two in Maine and Florida just days after Salgado Araujo’s fatal shooting by ICE. ICE claimed Salgado Araujo attempted to use the vehicle he was driving to ram the agent who discharged his weapon allegedly in self-defense, but many witnesses contradict ICE’s version of events and a statement by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas does not mention any collision between Salgado Araujo’s vehicle and any other vehicle while also never explicitly saying that any officers, including the gunman, feared for their lives.

Salgado Araujo loved soccer and his construction job. At the funeral home, his white hard hat, work gloves, tape measures, and a toolbox sat on a greeting table that also displayed his soccer memorabilia and two of his Team Mexico jerseys. A Houston Eastsider for more than three decades, Salgado Araujo put his three sons through college via his construction business. May justice be served.

This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.

ART

Back to (Obedience) School

The

Weekly has two special issues in the

coming weeks.

BY JENNIFER BOVEE

The Weekly has two special issues coming up. Our annual Creature Comforts Edition hits the stands the last week of July, and our inaugural Back-to-School Issue comes out the first week of August.

Creature Comforts 2026

Our annual animal-oriented issue comes out on Wed, Jul 29. From aardvarks to zebras, we’re covering it all, but our inspiration comes from man’s best friend. As our editor said in last year’s intro, “Loving a dog, or any pet really, allows us to give ourselves 100% to another being. There’s no fear of rejection, no judgment, just pure, unadulterated love, mostly in the form of giving: giving hugs, giving pets, giving kisses, giving play, giving time. Pet-love is the most perfect kind of love because it is unconditional both ways. That our good boys and good girls don’t live as long as we do on average is a cruel cosmic joke. Not enough time with them is

apparently the price we pay for perfection, the price we pay for our too-short time with love perfected.” To reach last year’s articles, start here. You can also pursue the full issue in a flipbook format at https://www.fwweekly.com/ creature-comforts/.

Back to School 2026

From books and supplies to extracurricular activities, The Weekly is taking a crack at new cover-to-cover special issue. Back to School will hit the stands on Wed, Aug 1. On the editorial side, we hope to cover news about FWISD, fall sports at TCU, a new high school team competition, local music schools, and more. As for sales and specials from local businesses, well, that’s where you come in. (Business owners, keep reading.)

Want to Reserve Space?

Our final deadlines are on Tuesdays for our weekly edition, including the special issues listed above, but we like to book space by Fridays. Okay, Mondays if need be. If you’re interested in reserving space, please contact your FWW representative ASAP or click here to get started.

As for Articles and Listings Ideas…

We’d love to hear from you. In addition to the special dates above, each week we highlight one event for each day of the week in Night & Day and feature food and beverage events in Ate Days a Week. Do you have any upcoming events or offers we should be aware of? Please email marketing@fwweekly.com for consideration.

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