Essays/Commentaries

Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones 

....when laws are not being followed in their spirit and intent, our system assumes that we, the people, and our elected leaders will have the courage to exercise the checks and balances that make our democracy strong.

We Are A Nation of Laws

The War against Latino and Black Youths

by Arturo Madrid

“Keep them down on the farm and keep them dumb.” That was yesterday.  Today it’s “We need their labor. We want them docile and ignorant.”

Texas War on Latino & Black Youths

LOOKING “MEXICAN” IN THE ICE AGE
By Alfred Montoya and David Spener

Today, teams of heavily-armed, well-funded, and masked ICE units are carrying out raids as part of the biggest mass-deportation operation in the U.S. since the 1950s.  ICE agents are invading people’s homes and snatching people off the street who look to them like they might be “illegals,” terrorizing immigrant communities around the country, including here in Texas. Although reliable figures are hard to come by, the vast majority of people being detained by ICE today are Latinxs. 

Looking "Mexican" (full text)

                                Why Latinos? 
                                                                by Arturo Madrid

          Latin@s are a prime target of the Trump Administration’s assault on sectors of the U.S. population.  In his first term of office Trump focused his wrath on undocumented immigrants, whom he deemed criminal.  His pronouncements essentially conflated all Latinos as being immigrants of Mexican origin and criminals.  Antagonism to Latino immigrants has been particularly marked Trump’s second administration. ICE and the Border Patrol are now authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court to detain any Latin@ suspected of being undocumented based on their speech, dress and physical appearance.   What explains this assault on Latin@s, which is being carried out with the support of state and local law enforcement agencies and National Guard troops?

"Why Latinos?" (full text)

          

            Who Gets to Define American Identity?
 by Gerald E. Poyo

For decades, many right-wing writers and politicians have claimed this land as their own.  They resented and acted against the various civil rights movements dedicated to ensuring Native American, Black, Latino, and other communities of color received equal rights in the United States.  In recent years, national, state, and local leaders have not only fully embraced the hard right-wing, but legitimized as reasonable an unconscionable white racist Christian nationalist ideology that condemns multiculturalism as somehow un-American when the very essence of United States history is rooted in cultural diversity.

Who Defines American Identity (full text)

The Chaos has to Stop
by Gilberto M. Hinojosa

ICE is breaking up families and tearing up the lives and work of people who have been in this country for years.  At times, ICE is deporting children from the only country and culture they have ever known.  Even for economic reasons, all this chaos makes no sense.

Chaos has to stop (full text)

San Antonio ExpressNews

Ten million Texans displaced by proposed redistricting plan

by

Al Kauffman

The proposed  redistricting plan before the Texas Legislature will move 10,000,000 Texans out of their congressional districts only to satisfy Republican needs for more districts. The plan violates every rule of fair redistricting that state leaders have touted as they have defended discriminatory redistricting plans for the last 25 years. The plan is a cynical attempt to exploit the majority Republicans hold in the Texas legislature and complete control in the Texas leadership. The plan is an effort to offset the increasing strength of Latino and African American have in population and voting roles by using every technique inS the gerrymanders’ bag of tricks.

Cracking and packing disfavored groups of voters and pairing disfavored office holders are classic methods of reducing the voting strength of those groups gerrymanderers wish to disenfranchise. The plan for redistricting Texas’s 38 congressional districts uses these old techniques and new techniques using data on every home in Texas. And to add insult to injury, President Trump plans to exclude non-citizens from the census which will lead to significant losses in Latino and Democratic representation.

An example I use in my voting rights class explains this. Assume there are 12 persons in a group, 8 R’s and 4 D’s; and that you want to divide them into 4 groups of 3 persons each. One would expect that D’s, one-third of the total, would be a majority in one or two of the four districts. But if R’s were in charge, they could draw 4 districts of 2R’s and 1D each and D’s would have no districts. This is called cracking-the R’s have cracked the D population into 4 districts with one D in each. But if D’s were in charge, they could draw 2 districts of 3R’s each and two districts of 2D’s and 1R each. So D’s would be a majority in 2 of the 4 districts. D’s have packed the R’s into 2 districts and minimized their voting power.

Now suppose that only citizens of voting age are counted in the districting scheme. Due to the younger age and other factors in the Latino population, this would significantly reduce the proportion of persons counted in redistricting. So our 12 person group will now be 11- 8 R’s and 3D’s making it much easier for R’s to crack the minimal D population.

The proposed Republican plan for redistricting Texas cracks the Latino and African American and Democratic populations in some areas and packs them in other areas. And then it pairs two highly regarded Democratic congress members into one district near Austin and cracks historic African American districts in Houston and Dallas and weakens Latino districts in South Texas.

In fact, almost all the growth in Texas population over the last decades has been Latino, and the vanishing white Anglo group has resorted to a slew of techniques to maintain control. Since 2020, Texas has added 2,000,000 people of color and 90,000 whites.

The 10,000,000 Texans who are being moved out of their districts did not ask for this redistricting. They are inconvenienced and treated as pawns in a national partisan battle. We Texans can do better.

 

Saturday Morning Covfefe: 5 Things with Olivia

Brewing truth with a double shot of “you can’t make this up

Olivia de Troye. commentary

Surviving the ICEage: Commentaries to Awaken by Gerald E. Poyo

6/20/25- Headline: “Texas Legislature and Governor Approve Creation of Five Additional GOP Congressional Seats at Trump’s Behest.”   The State of Texas is leading the way making a realty of Trump’s authoritarian vision for the United States.  What does this mean?  This is the political side of an already advanced militarization of federal policy sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States.  In using National Guard and the US military to enforce domestic policy under the pretext of national emergencies, Trump has created a mechanism for imposing his arbitrary and repressive rule.  But to maintain this path, Trump must hold Congress in 2026. Polls are showing that free and fair elections will not result in returning a Republican majority to the House of Representatives, and perhaps even in the Senate.  Not willing to abide such a loss, Trump convinced Texas to pack the House with five more Republican seats.  Without the integrity to defend democratic tradition or process, Texas Republicans happily collaborated with Trump’s authoritarian pretenses which if successful will consolidate after 2026.  Other Republican states are likely to follow the Texas lead with a goal of effectively establishing United States as a ONE-PARTY STATE, similar to Russia.  American democracy is under assault in many ways and for many reasons that we will address in coming commentaries.

Surviving the ICEage: Commentaries to Awaken by Gerald E. Poyo

6/22/25. Headline: Trump Again Betrays Latino Communities — This Time Ripping Away Support for Hispanic Serving Institutions.  In the 1990s, the federal government began providing financial resources for underfunded colleges and universities where most Latinos have historically attended. In central Texas this included St. Mary’s University, Our Lady of the Lake University, University of the Incarnate Word and even public institutions like University of Texas at San Antonio.  Hispanic Serving Institutions like these have provided excellent higher education possibilities and opportunities especially for Mexican Americans, but their resources are now being cut.  After many years of considerable progress, reduced funding for these Hispanic-serving institutions and cutbacks in federal loan programs for students are now threatening Latino access to higher education which has always been relatively low in comparison to other groups in the United States. This not only threatens Hispanic economic possibilities and mobility but is another example of Trump’s assault on American democracy, which requires an educated population to survive.  Latinos, take heed!

 Surviving the ICEage: Commentaries to Awaken by Gerald E. Poyo

8/26/25.  Headline: “The VISIBLE ACT is a proposed legislation aimed at enhancing visibility and accountability.”  Senators Alex Padilla (CA) and Cory Booker (NJ) are proposing legislation to prohibit federal, state, and local immigration enforcement officers from covering their faces during their interactions with the public. In addition, agents’ name, badge, and agency must be fully displayed.  Designed to protect the public from abuse, reduce intimidation, and build public trust for law enforcement, the proposed legislation also responds to growing evidence that criminals are impersonating immigration officials.  No other law enforcement officials in the nation carry out their duties with facemasks and the government’s argument that they are merely protecting their agents is questionable.  Why not issue face masks to local police, national guard, and the Marines, for that matter?  There is likely a more ominous reason.  Perhaps these agents are not what or who they seem.  Masks and secrecy give rise to all kinds of suspicions in this time of fearmongering and authoritarianism.  Keep alert!