As We Understand our Human Rights

The Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Immigration working group held a second (in six months) convention in the county of Hidalgo. The participants, after a day of studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, derived their own version, which is as follows (with gratitude to John Michael Torres for recording, editing, and

producing this document):

Declaration of Human Rights 

Convention Equal Voice for Human Rights

November 30, 2012

Community Center, Precinct #2
1429 S Tower Rd
Alamo, TX 78516

The power of human rights lies in the simple but profound idea that we all have basic rights solely by virtue of our humanity. Each individual, family and community should live in equality, dignity and freedom, with the power to participate and shape government policies and institutions that affect our lives.

Love is an emotional need that we all have. Love for thy neighbor and mutual aid leads us to the point that we all take responsibility to defend and take care of each other.

The right to have good jobs with fair wages is important because it is necessary to provide healthy food, decent housing and opportunities for the family.

It is very important to have immigration reform. We deserve to have our families united and that is why we reject separation of families. As part of reform, we should have equal access to the services we need for a dignified life, regardless of immigration status. For example, a driver’s license, an education for our children and our parents, health care and public services.

Education is important to develop intellectually, for both youth and adults. A good education opens the doors to opportunities we need to live a dignified life.

To live a dignified life, we have to live in decent housing. We need proper housing with adequate infrastructure to protect us from floods and other natural disasters.

As each and every one of us lives on this planet, the right to live in dignity also means that the environment has to be cared for. It is not fair that some enjoy a healthy natural environment when others lack this.

Health is very important because with good health, we are ready to serve our families and communities. This is why we need comprehensive medical care, of the body and mind.

Our faith guides us in our daily lives. And because we are different people with different beliefs, the right to religion should be protected in our community.

We have the right that our representatives respond to our requests and take actions to ensure our needs are met. Representatives should represent everyone, regardless of socioeconomic level, sex, gender, religion, race, or immigration status.

As an organized community in dialogue with our neighbors and loved ones, we recognize that many of our basic needs are not taken into account.

Therefore, although each and every one of us has dignity, the fact that our needs are not taken into account affects our ability to live a dignified life. We believe that a just society should ensure a decent life for every individual, family and community.

Therefore we declare:
We all have human rights because we are all human beings.
We strive for:
• Fair jobs with just wages,
• An immigration reform that will treat us like human beings,
• An education that recognizes our diverse needs to develop intellectually with access to technology,
• Adequate housing that will protect our families
• Protection to our communities so they can live in peace with space to play and exercise
• Adequate and affordable health care, regardless of immigration status or socioeconomic levels
To achieve this new society, we need to start by making our commitment to work for it. We recognize our rights because we need them. However, we are denied them. That is where our participation comes in, to demand that our human rights are respected. We commit ourselves to work to create a society that respects our rights. We are guided by these principles as we aspire to a better world – universality, equality, protection of public goods, participation, transparency and accountability.
In the same manner, we welcome other members of the community, representatives of our city, county, state, and nation, businessmen and women, leaders of faith, and each person with sincerity, to also take the opportunity to make their commitment to work for human rights.
Approved and ratified on November 30, 2012, by participants of the Equal Voice for Human Rights convention.

Labor of Love

Rio Grande Valley groups supporting workers’ right gathered on Labor Day to lodge accusations of wage theft in the region at a press conference Monday in downtown Brownsville.

The Fuerza Del Valle Workers’ Center, based in Alamo, and Brownsville’s Movimiento Del Valle Por Los Derechos Humanos spoke of laws they plan to push for at the state level during the next legislative session.

“We’re starting a struggle to end the tradition of labor abuse here in the Valley,” Hector Guzman Lopez, Fuerza del Valle coordinator, said.

He said groups all over the state will lobby for new laws under the Build a Better Texas Coalition that include:
>> Strengthened civil and criminal penalties for employers who commit wage theft.
>> Required workers’ compensation coverage for construction employers.
>> Rest breaks for construction workers at government sites.

Kathryn Youker, an attorney with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, also spoke at the press conference. She said workers often don’t know their rights. In areas with large immigrant populations wage theft is common and labor laws in the U.S. were crafted with private enforcement in mind, not public, she explained.

“They rely on the workers stepping forward when their rights are abused to enforce their rights,” she said. “It takes a great deal of courage for workers to come forward and that’s one of the biggest obstacles we have in the Valley — it’s the fear of retaliation by the employer.”

While undocumented immigrants do not have a right to work in the U.S., if they are hired they are entitled to their wages regardless of their immigration status, she said. The federal and Texas minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

“When you don’t pay a worker overtime or you don’t pay them minimum wage, it hurts the economy and it hurts other businesses who comply with the law,” Youker said. “It’s unfair competition. These laws were meant to make an even playing field, not just for workers, but for businesses.”

Organizers said they chose to host the press conference on Monday because of the significance the holiday holds to the labor movement. In 1894, Congress passed an act that made the first Monday in September a national holiday to recognize the social and economic achievements of American workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“Here in Brownsville, in particular, we know there’s lot of businesses that are used to paying whatever they want, as if there’s no minimum wage,” Guzman Lopez said.

He said workers who are victims of wage theft – which includes failure to pay wages, failure to pay the minimum wage for applicable positions or failure to pay overtime – often work in restaurants, construction, on farms or in homes as domestic laborers.

Youker said there is an ongoing case against Buffalo Wings & Rings in Weslaco in which 17 clients allege that they were not properly paid tips and did not receive overtime pay.

“We do have basically a free market of labor prices,” she said of the Valley. “We have a heavy influx of immigrant labor, willing to work for $2 an hour, because they’re exploited. Is that really a model of civilization that we want to follow? Is that something we can say we’re proud of as Americans? I don’t think so.”

Youker acknowledged Texas is often touted as a pro-business state by lawmakers, responding:

“I’m not an economist or a politician. … But I can say, I think treating workers right; the way you treat your workers is going to help the economy. The easiest fix to ending poverty is to pay people a living wage. It’s very simple. That’s the law. … “We don’t want to attract businesses who don’t respect Texas workers.”

For more information about the Fuerza Del Valle Workers’ Center call Guzman Lopez at (956) 787-8171, extension 102. Call the Movimiento Del Valle Por Los Derechos Humanos at 465-6870.

A Sprinkle of Justice

Today we feel a sprinkle of justice.

Students at Pan Am University hear the news

With the announcement by the Obama administration, immigrant youth in the RGV are feeling a refreshing moment of hopefulness. After years of organizing for the DREAM Act, we are finally seeing a change in policy at the highest levels of government concerning our undocumented youth brothers and sisters. This is a recognition of the value that undocumented youth bring to this nation. Youth are hearing from the President himself that their lives are valuable and that they deserve to stay–and that he is willing to take action to make that happen.

It is refreshing as a cool summer shower.

But make no mistake, DREAMers made this happen. DREAMers have been occupying Obama campaign offices for weeks demanding action. Before that, DREAMers engaged in civil disobedience at universities and city centers, held mass DREAM Act graduations, held sit-ins at Border Patrol offices, and organized protests at President Obama and Mitt Romney Campaign events throughout the nation. The President was feeling the pressure and today had to respond.
On the struggle for justice, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.” DREAMers have taught us not to be afraid of thunder and lighting, but shown us the shower that they can bring.

LUPE Community Organizing Coordinator Martha Sanchez says:
“This is a step forward on a longer road toward justice for immigrant and Latino communities. What this shows is that organizing and action–specifically nonviolent civil disobedience–will take us further down the road toward the justice that we so desperately need.”

Today, we feel the sprinkle of justice. And we hope for rain.

(La Union del Pueblo Entero is a RGV Equal Voice Network anchor member)

Leadership

Latina Leaders of Texas Colonias Help Remake Shantytowns Into Empowered Communities 

Sunday, 22 April 2012 08:37 By Mark Karlin, Truthout 

Lupita Sanchez, coordinator for community action services at Proyecto Juan Diego, helps Cameron Park colonia residents become empowered through getting out the vote. (Photo by Mark Karlin.)

When Roads Turned to Mud in the Colonias
Just outside of Brownsville city limits in Cameron Park, Texas, Lupita Sanchez used to park her car a few blocks from her home whenever it rained. The streets of the colonia where she lived were unpaved until 1996. If Sanchez dared to drive all the way to her house, she risked getting stuck in the mud, or, worse still, ending up in a sinkhole and waiting for the road to dry, when her car could finally be towed.
Now Sanchez is coordinator for community action services at Proyecto Juan Diego in Cameron Park, and she works tirelessly to improve conditions in what is becoming an empowered community of about 8,000 people.

Colonias in the United States are unincorporated, low-income communities outside of incorporated cities stretching from Texas to California, but the majority of colonias are in the Lone Star State. The Texas secretary of state estimates the state's colonias number around 2,300, with the highest number, approximately 1,500 colonias with as many as 300,000 inhabitants, in Cameron and Hidalgo counties at the state's southernmost tip. These figures are not exact: there is not one agreed-upon definition for colonias, and some colonia residents are undocumented (although at least one estimate is that at least 80% of colonias residents are US citizens, but these are still speculative numbers).

In "Shrub," Molly Ivins' and Lou Dubose's book about George W. Bush, Ivins described the colonias just north of the Mexican border: If they "were a separate nation, they'd look like a Central American republic." Some colonias still have sand or clay streets, and many individual homes still lack basic necessities, such as sewer and water service, that most people take for granted in the United States.
Through civic engagement, most colonias no longer have mud roads. (Photo is courtesy of Proyecto Azteca.)Colonias Created by Land Speculators Taking Advantage of Weak County Governments
US colonias are poor, Mexican-American and long-neglected by all levels of government, although that is changing somewhat - but not without a fight. Colonias grew because land speculators created the subdivisions in unincorporated county areas. In Texas, counties are relatively weak as governmental entities. As a result, land was deeded out to poor Mexican-Americans and migrants. The plots were repossessed if payments weren't made. This allowed a profiteering developer to turn a small parcel of land over several times without any of the inhabitants accruing equity, and the landowner was not required to go through the foreclosure process.

This changed somewhat in 1995, when the Texas legislature passed legislation requiring land speculators to register deeds with the county, but there are still ways to repossess the land, in the
absence of prompt payments, with legal maneuvering and weak county enforcement.

What's more, until 1994, colonias were most often built without basic electrical, sewage and water services, and many roads were left unpaved. Now, these services are legally mandatory, but the mandates are not always enforced. Furthermore, the state does not allow counties to enact building codes to prevent substandard housing. While the situation for many of the colonia inhabitants has improved, it still remains an uphill struggle to obtain basic residential services and secure, sustainable housing.

Colonias Organize for Positive Change
It would be easy for this to become a story about the woeful conditions of life in the colonias and how the poor were once again pick-pocketed by the wealthy. And that would be true. But I found that while the colonias that I visited late last year face a host of serious challenges, there is an active network of committed social-service and advocacy organizations that are creating meaningful change by helping colonia residents claim their own power. I also began to consider how reinforcing the notion of powerlessness is just another form of keeping power from people who are subjugated.

To Lupita Sanchez, change comes one streetlight at a time. Proyecto Juan Diego coordinated a campaign to end Cameron Park's dark nights. It took commanding respect from political officials through increased voter turnout, cooperation with the utility company, the community's willingness to pay an extra property tax charge, and ongoing pressure. Now, Sanchez points with pride at the arcing lights that line the paved streets, which used to be dirt roads.

Sanchez and her staff also rallied residents to contract for garbage and recycling collection. Because there were no areas for exercise in Cameron Park, Proyecto Juan Diego helped pull together resources to build a park with a community center and walking path.

Achieving basic services is a big accomplishment in the colonias, but these services create something even more powerful in their wake: a sense of community and a sense of ownership of one's life and one's future.

Creating an Equal Voice for Poor and Working Families
Former priest Michael Seifert ministered and agitated in Cameron Park for many years before he left the priesthood and became a colonias network coordinator for the national Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice initiative for poor and working families. In a report on the Equal Voice project, the Marguerite Casey Foundation states that, "the 37 million people - 7.7 million families - who live in poverty are experts on family issues, yet their input has rarely been sought." According to the foundation, one of the major goals for coordinators such as Seifert is to, "elevate the voices of the families into the public debate," motivating those who feel powerless to realize that they have the ability to make positive change.
Former priest Michael Seifert now is the coordinator for the Equal Voice Rio Grande Valley colonias initiative. (Photo by Mark Karlin.) Equal Voice organizations meet regularly and  have formed task forces for the colonias working on health, jobs and economic security, education, housing, immigration and civic engagement. One example of the effectiveness of a strategic approach to empowerment in the colonias was a recent cumbre, or community summit meeting, convened by Equal Voice member La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), headed by United Farm Workers veteran Juanita Valdez-Cox.
Seifert wrote of the February summit:

This gathering of border neighborhood leaders who were union [founded in 1989 by César Chávez] members was being asked to decide the priorities for the next two years of work. It was quite a serious group of people. They were being asked to give up a precious Saturday morning. A free morning for an hourly-wage earner is as rare as a raise.... Hardworking people who, at the end of a week have very little change to count, understand very well the connection of daily bread and justice.... The delegates filed out of the auditorium, heading for their colonias and their homes, for the hard work that is living out a dream.

Juanita Valdez-Cox is the director of LUPE, founded by César Chávez. As a child, she traveled with her parents around the US as seasonal farm workers. (Photo by Mark Karlin.)Working Toward a Dream Does Not Mean Waiting for Perfection
Working toward a dream does not mean sitting back and waiting until living conditions are perfect, according to one of the six guiding principles of ARISE (A Resource in Serving Equality), which has four colonia outreach centers in south Texas. Lourdes Flores, president of the main ARISE support center, emphasizes that the role of the organization is to provide services that help create independence. "We are animators," she says. "We animate people and provide skills to help them become independent."

Many of the key leaders in Equal Voice's south Rio Grande Valley colonias initiative are women, but ARISE is specifically focused on empowering, "women to help other women see that they have talents and gifts that they can use to improve themselves, their families and their communities." Its slogan is, "Changing a community, one woman at a time."
Colonias adults and children lack recreational and exercise opportunities. Lourdes Flores, president of the main ARISE support center, and community organizer Ramona Casas galvanized local colonia residents to secure a 10-acre park. (Photo by Mark Karlin.)
"When a woman learns things, it empowers the whole family," says ARISE community organizer Ramona Casas. "Women are more open to accepting change." That may explain why, at the main support center, next to a new ten-acre park and exercise area, Flores and Casas point out with satisfaction ARISE's development of inexpensive solar heaters, an organic gardening area and diverse educational programming.

By comparison, the slogan of Proyecto Azteca, located not far from the ARISE support center, could easily be, "Improving the colonias one home at a time." With 0 percent interest loans and a requirement of 550 hours of sweat equity, a home can be built with staff assistance for as little as $45,000.

"The need for affordable housing is great," says executive director Ann Cass. "Housing needs to be sustainable, as well, to survive the weather events that we have, including cross winds, hurricanes and wind storms."
Ann Cass, executive director of Proyecto Azteca, with energy efficient wall insulation built into sweat equity sustainable housing. (Photo by Mark Karlin.)With other leaders of the colonias' Equal Voice Network, Cass spends much of her time working to secure a fair share of funding from different levels of government. This includes tedious but necessary tasks such as ensuring an allocation of federal relief funds for Hurricane Dolly, which devastated the area. In this case, the coalition corralled $186 million for damage to the colonias' housing and infrastructure, including $64 million for regional drainage improvement projects.  Hopefully, with continued Equal Voice Network vigilance, this will  lead  to jobs for local residents and contractors.
Developing the power to effect social change locally has ripple effects. Some of the south Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice organizations worked with a statewide coalition to defeat all 85 anti-Mexican immigration and anti-rights bills, including a voter identification law, proposed in the state legislature.

From Unscrupulous Opportunism to Pride and Empowerment
In Mexico City, a colonia is a neighborhood - regardless of income - that can represent a vibrant community. Turning US shantytowns born of the unscrupulous economic opportunism of landowners into communities of pride and empowerment is not an easy task. The obstacles are immense.
But it is being done in the south Rio Grande Valley of Texas, through the tenacious work of leaders, many of them US Latinas, who know that progress can be measured one streetlight at a time.
It is the creation of community itself - of neighbors uniting with a strong unwavering voice - that leads to the improvement of daily living standards and to a shared pride.
This empowerment fulfills the vision of César Chávez: "From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength."
"We are not able to retreat, we will overcome. We are winning, because ours is a revolution of the mind and the heart," said César Chávez. (Photo by Mark Karlin.)
The next installment of Truthout on the Mexican Border will be "Javier Sicilia: A Poet Leads the Mexican Peace Movement."

(reprinted with the permission of the author. Original site:

 http://truth-out.org/news/item/8638-empowering-the-texas-colonias-with-an-equal-voice)

 

The State of Our Valley

President Obama spoke to the national community last night in his State of the Nation address. The Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network welcomes this yearly accounting, as it offers the country a sense of the leadership that our nation's president intends to employ over the coming year.

 The state of the families who live in the Rio Grande Valley illustrate clearly the inequality that has become a part of our nation's social reality. Our families work longer hours for less pay, and pay higher tax rates than any other region in the country. We have, as a region, invested more people in the nation's Armed Forces than anywhere else in the nation, and yet our veterans continue to lack the medical care that they have been promised over and again. We have the highest number of uninsured people in the USA, have no public hospital, and yet are charged some of the highest rates for medical care in America. We are the youngest region in the nation and yet our schools are vastly, and, unfairly, underfunded. We are a culturally-diverse area--an international region--that suffers, in extraordinary ways--from our nation's fears that our borders may not be secure, with a border wall that blights our landscape, policing policies such as secure communities that threaten the necessary trust between residents and their police officers, and young people whose hopes are squandered by political bickering over the Dream Act.

The Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network began work on our National Family Platform that we adopted during the 2008 presidential campaign. Over the past three years, the Network has been committed to increasing the influence of our families upon those elected and appointed public servants who are charged with overseeing the wellbeing of our region.

The Network is delighted with the growth it has seen over this short time, as our constituents now number nearly 30,000 residents of the Rio Grande Valley. Our six working groups have, in different ways, achieved important goals, most important amongst those being the increasing number of colonia and working family members who participate in our projects.

The core member organizations—ARISE (A Resource in Sharing Equality), LUPE (La Union del Pueblo Entero), the Texas Organizing Project, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, the South Texas Adult Resource and Training Center (START Center), Proyecto Azteca, Proyecto Libertad, IDRA (Intercultural Development Research Association), the Brownsville Community Health Center (Mano a Mano) and Proyecto Juan Diego remain committed to this process, and are grateful to the generous and creative support of the Marguerite Casey Foundation in these efforts.

In our State of the Valley report, we offer the following snapshots of our work.

Jobs and Economic Security:  Given that the Rio Grande Valley has the lowest paid workers of any region in the nation and a high incidence of wage theft, this working group established “Fuerza del Valle,” a project designed to educate, empower and unite workers. Fuerza meets twice a week, once in Hidalgo County and once in Cameron County, creating a space in which workers can come with their complaints and questions to find information and, if required, advocacy and legal support. Tens of thousands of dollars have already been recovered for workers whose employers had not paid for their work. A May 1^st rally highlighted the efforts of Fuerza, and now the project has an acting director. South Texas Civil Rights Project is the fiscal sponsor for Fuerza,

Education: Numerous town hall meetings clearly established a nearly universal anguish that both parents and educators suffer over the condition of Valley schools. Roughly half of all ninth graders drop out before graduation. In an effort to grant parents greater access to the schools, a number of independent, state accredited Parent Teacher Associations have been formed in both Hidalgo and Cameron counties. These independent PTA’s have gained unprecedented access for parents to their children’s school administrators. The Network also employed a number of means to educate families on the dangers of HB1, a law that encourages schools to place certain high school students into a tracking system that would leave these young people, upon graduation, without sufficient credits for college admittance.  The dismal educational situation in the Valley has been exacerbated by the cuts to school funding enacted by the 2011 legislative session, budget decisions which reduced funding to Valley school districts in an inequitable and brutal manner, to Valley school districts. In response to this, the Education working group is promoting its “ya basta; our schools deserve the same as the rest of schools in Texas” campaign to the 2012 campaign season.

Health Care: The Network became engaged in the national health care debate, actively educating and involving our membership in the discussion. After the bill was signed into law, the working group held  numerous workshops on the subsequent legislative changes in health care both nationally and state wide.  Sensitive to the looming (and already present) diabetes epidemic in our region, the Network has collaborated with area public health entities on different initiatives, including the promotion of a revision of  SNAP (food assistance program) so as to provide incentives for healthier eating.  The working group is currently educating our constituents on the new managed Medicaid/Medicare programs, and helping with CHIP enrollment. We are closely watching the changes to county policies that affect the way indigent care is managed, and we continue to work to bring community health advocates together in monthly meetings. 

Housing: Hurricane Dolly struck the Valley in 2008, leaving behind a swath of devastation and highlighting the region’s deficient flood control infrastructure.  Those who live in colonia neighborhoods suffered the most from the storm’s flooding. In many cases, even after three months, residents had several feet of flood waters on their property. The working group created a housing coalition which established an alliance of a number of local entities. This coalition, including community development corporations and other organizations, forged relationships with the members of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council and local County governments. The coalition aimed to assure that colonia residents’ needs for adequate drainage and housing be addressed with the hurricane disaster relief monies.  After a series of meetings, the coalition was able to get money for direct drainage infrastructure in their colonias and have had their neighborhoods listed in the needs assessment targeted areas for the relief outreach efforts. We worked with the LRGVDC and County governments on the Fair Housing Assessment Standards for Texas (FHAST), the Analysis of Impediments, and the Needs Assessment. Colonia residents also hosted meetings of the LRGVDC in three colonias in Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy Counties so they could be included in the EDA Regional Planning Grant. Most importantly, an Equal Voice Council of Colonias has begun so that colonia residents can be a recognizable entity when it comes to regional planning. 

Immigration: During the 2011 session of the Texas legislature, eighty-five ant-immigrant bills were introduced into the Texas legislature. The immigration working group organized a coalition of churches, small businesses, community-based organizations, police departments, veterans, cities and small businesses to present a united front against the legislation. The group sent over 400 constituents to Austin and, in conjunction with other organizations, successfully blocked all the anti-immigrant legislation. Dream Act activists were sought out and enlisted in this effort, and support for their particular efforts were offered. The working group has diligently worked to mitigate the effects of “Secure Communities” a federal program designed to force local police departments to do federal immigration enforcement. The group is a member of the Southern Border Communities’ Coalition, participating in a border-wide effort at the documentation of abuses by authorities.  Membership in the Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance’s executive committee has kept our voice and experience at the forefront of state efforts to demand comprehensive immigration reform—and to promote policies that assure the protection of our residents’ human rights. 

Civic Participation: The Equal Voice Network recognizes that civic engagement is the underpinning for all of our efforts. It is only when our families are welcomed at the table of the decision makers that effective changes in policy can be achieved. To that end, we continue to engage and educate our constituents on civic engagement. The Network rallied during the 2010 election season and raised voter participation more than 10% over the 2006 election.  The different member organizations have put in place their plans for engaging citizens in the 2012 campaign, and the working group is organizing a series of efforts to work on voter registration, voter education, and a nonpartisan get out the vote effort. A calendar of events for the spring, summer and fall has been prepared with events that include  educational rallies to inform our constituents about the different roles of elected officials, how a precinct caucus works, and why it is so important for them to vote.

Civic Engagement, 2012

In eleven short months, the nation will choose a president, Texans will decide who will lead the state, and Valley residents will elect those we feel can be held responsible for local political office.

The Equal Voice Network, a coalition of nine community-based organizations with more than 30,000 constituents, has already been preparing an extensive civic engagement project for the Valley. Called “Mi Voto es Mi Voz,” this will be the second such effort by the Equal Voice Network. In 2010 network membership realized a ten per cent increase over 2006 numbers in its ten target precincts.

“In a democracy, all election cycles are important, but for the Equal Voice family, this season merits special attention. The sinful use of anti-immigrant prejudice by politicians, and our government’s preference for military spending over and against the immediate needs of our families clearly tells us that the politicians are not paying attention to the heart and soul of this country. An election gives us an opportunity to speak up, and believe me, we intend to be heard,” said Michael Seifert, the Network Coordinator.

The Equal Voice Network will focus in on twenty-four areas of Hidalgo and Cameron County, with a preference for the Pharr, San Juan, Alamo and Mission areas, as well as neighborhoods in San Benito and Brownsville. The voices of the primarily low-income residents of these precincts are particularly important in the local, state, and national dialogue on jobs, the economy, and immigration.

"Casting a ballot is one of the most important things we do as citizens and as neighbors. It is our way of saying ‘Here we are. We count.’ So the Equal Voice Network and LUPE is going to do its best to make sure that every last one of our members understands that and takes part in the get out the vote effort,” said Daniel Diaz, a community organizer from LUPE who works in the Mercedes area.

As non-profits, the Network members take care to follow the federal law on civic engagement, avoiding partisan politics, while, at the same time, investing large amounts of time and energy in encouraging people not only to vote, but also to become intimately involved in the entire process. The Network sees civic engagement as a way of being faithful to the missions of the different member organizations, be they involved in housing, health care, or education.

“It makes no sense for the START Center (San Benito) to work so hard to prepare our young people for good jobs if our elected leaders are paying no attention whatsoever to this need. A vote is a “shout out” and we are dedicated to getting our youth to shout out loud and long,” said Ron Rogers, START Center Board President.

With Congress in gridlock and the economy inspiring fear, many cynics may dismiss civic engagement as a useless exercise on behalf of unresponsive politicians.  Equal Voice members, on the other hand, have seen first hand the results of successful get out the vote campaigns in the past.

“As a mother and as a member of one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Valley, I have seen what happens when a community votes,” said Lupita Sanchez, from Cameron Park, near Brownsville. “For years we suffered all sorts of humiliation—no roads, no police patrols, no mail delivery. And then we learned how to get out the vote, we got involved, and now Cameron Park is a place I am proud to live in.”

The Equal Voice Network is planning a number of activities and events throughout the year, including candidates’ forums, debates, and voter registration drives.

Members of the Equal Voice Network include: ARISE – A Resource in Service Equality (Alamo); BCHC – Brownsville Community Health Center (Brownsville);  Casa de Proyecto Libertad (Harlingen); La Unión del Pueblo Entero LUPE (San Juan); Proyecto Azteca (San Juan); Proyecto Juan Diego (Cameron Park/Brownsville);  START Center- South Texas Adult Resource and Training Center (San Benito); and the Texas Organizing Project.