By ten o’clock in the morning this past Tuesday, May 1st,
350 people had quietly filed into the McAllen Convention Center. Some had small
American flags, others had stickers that proclaimed “Mi Voto es Mi Voz” (my
vote is my voice’), and some had two or three toddlers in tow.
They had come to participate in the Rio Grande Valley Equal
Voice Network’s candidates’ forum, “un foro educativo”, an “educational forum”
meant to help the candidates understand the issues that were most important to
us.
A couple of dozen candidates soon took their seats, looking
confident and attentive. The lone woman candidate, someone who had changed
party affiliation just two weeks ago, sat on the edge of her seat, smiling
brightly and waving her hand at the crowd. She had been a local TV news
personage and looked ready to go live.
The questions, I felt, were good ones. They had been created
from several groups that work on the issues that dramatically affect the lives
of our families: immigration, housing, health care, jobs, and education.
A young woman was in
charge of asking the first question. She began with a preamble—the issue was so
outrageous as to require some explanation. She noted that undocumented citizens
could not obtain a Texas driver’s license, and that this was a huge problem—for
everyone. “There is no public transportation here, so you really do have to
drive a car to go to work or to school. But if a person can’t get a driver’s
license, how do the rest of us know if they can even see (reminding us that a
driver’s test requires a vision screen)? How do we know if they have studied
the rules of the road? And if you are a responsible person and want to purchase
car insurance, if you don’t have a
license it becomes so very expensive." She continued for a bit more and
then she looked up at the candidates and said, “So what is your plan to change
that law?” And remained at the podium,
looking them in the eye as one by one they answered the question.
The morning was long but people stayed attentive. The
questions went to the heart of the matter—our community simply wanted to be
treated fairly, and we are not. We pay higher taxes than anyone else in the
state, and yet our schools are horribly underfunded. We want our children to
grow up as healthy and happy as anyone else’s, but health insurance is out of
reach when they do get sick (half of Hidalgo County’s residents have no health
insurance), and, if our children want to exercise and stay healthy—well, the
schools lock down the playgrounds after hours, there are few parks, and no
sidewalks. Our hardworking family members who do find work are paid half of
what someone doing the very same job gets in Austin.
The questions were about justice, simple justice. What I
found troubling is that most of the candidates could not correctly pronounce
the word “injusticia,” while some of the others didn’t bother using the
term—they seemed to think everything was hunky-dory in our neck of the woods.
In the evening, a second event was held, this one in
Brownsville. There was less of a crowd, but it was a school night and there
weren’t as many candidates on the slate. All the same, 75 more folks filed into
their seats and listened as the candidates fielded the questions.
I found myself sitting next to an eighteen year old whom I
have known since she was three years old. She was to graduate in a couple of
weeks and was thrilled. “I want to become a registered nurse, although I would
really like to do research and discover medicines that people need.” I asked
her what she thought about the forum and she beamed, “I love to listen to this,
but I get so mad when they don’t answer the question.”
A question that was not asked that night (because we didn't
yet know to ask it) was the candidates’ opinions on a decision by the University
of Texas and Texas A&M systems to raise tuition rates. The universities
seemingly felt pushed into a fiscal corner when Governor Perry refused to allow
any state programs to access the “rainy day” fund—a pool of money that has now
reached $ 9 billion. Perry supporters
claim that the fund is for emergencies (in the past the fund has been regularly
tapped to meet budget needs—such as education)—and that educational shortfalls
do not qualify as an emergency.
This decision may well leave my young friend’s dreams
withering in the blazing sun of Texas politics. Her family cannot afford the
tuition at the local university as it is, and were counting on student loans
and grants—but these have been cut as well.
At the end of the evening, I gave her a hug and wished her
well.
I went out into the warm evening, practicing, over again,
the word “injusticia.”
I had no trouble with the pronunciation--nor the concept.
