Dignity and Perseverance
Dear friend,
The first time I met César Chávez was in 1971, the height of the national grape boycott. I was student body president of Pan American University, as well as president of M.e.Ch.a. (Movimiento estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan), and inviting him to speak was not without controversy.
Back then, people would yell at him, “go back to Mexico!”
By the way, he ignored such talk. That was part of his greatness — to focus on the positive and on what could and should be done.
Sunday, March 31st, we celebrate what would have been his 85th birthday. In 1993, I had the honor of seeing him about a month before his death when he spoke at the IBEW union hall in El Paso.
Every year, I reflect on his legacy. While we have made substantial progress, we still face significant challenges.
Last year, at this time, I wrote about Arizona-style legislation that the Texas Legislature was considering. It was one of the governor’s “emergency” items. Thankfully, the so-called “sanctuary cities” bill did not pass last year. It failed because, even in an anti-immigrant climate, enough Texas legislators realized that it would be bad policy to target immigrants. Such policies damage law enforcement’s ability to serve their communities, stifle the economy, and hinder education.
While Chávez is known for his work in the fields — where I worked as a child alongside my parents — he was also a part of the Community Service Organization that held numerous voter registration drives and citizenship classes and led successful legal challenges and legislative campaigns in the 1950s.
Clearly, as last year’s Republican attacks on immigrants proved, we must continue the work of Chávez and other great leaders who cared about fair pay for hard work, for dignity and human rights, and for the most American of rights — the right to vote.
These basic rights of citizenship were not available to people of color, whether brown or black. While we are not bound by history, we must understand and acknowledge our past to move beyond it. From poll taxes to massive deportations — first in the 1930s and then in the 1950s when even American citizens were rounded up and shipped south of the border — we are touched by the echoes of the past.
In our own great state of Texas, while the “sanctuary cities” bill failed, the voter identification law did pass. I opposed the law then and still do because of the clear intent to suppress the minority vote, which the Department of Justice identified in taking action to stop implementation.
As the DOJ stated in a letter to the state, Hispanic registered voters, in particular, are less likely to have photo identification or the ability to acquire photo identification because of obstacles, such as the lack of transportation or financial strain.
DOJ officials noted concerns regarding lack of driver’s license offices available to those living in rural areas of the state. For example, in the four counties added to Senate District 29 (Hudspeth, Culberson, Jeff Davis, and Presidio), there are only two operational driver’s license offices to serve hundreds of square miles; one of which is only open one day a week, the other just four days a week.
We need to move forward with a focus on the real problems facing our state — underfunded public schools, the highest rate of uninsured in the nation, and a crumbling infrastructure system.
Chávez always knew what the struggle was really about. For he said:
“Once social change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid any more.”
Other items of note
• La Fe will celebrate César Chávez from 3-8 p.m. on Saturday (March 31) with music and food in an outdoor street festival setting. Documentary filmmaker Linda Garcia-Merchant, director of “Las Mujeres de La Caucus Chicana,” will be on-site collecting interviews and video testimonials for an upcoming project about Chicano culture, Chicana empowerment, and perspectives on the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.
• The no-bid border security contract the company ALIS received from the state under a questionable “emergency” declaration continues to be scrutinized. Click here for a report by KRGV, the Rio Grande Valley’s ABC affiliate. I wrote about the issue last week.
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Sincerely,
