Cosmic Water
Exploring the history, mythology, and future of the sacred land called San Antonio
Cosmic Water
Civil Rights Activism for Farmworkers with Cesar Chavez w/ Rebecca Flores
What happens when one woman decides to take a stand for her community? Join us on a journey through the rich history and activism work of Rebecca Flores. Together, we uncover the trials and triumphs of organizing for civil rights alongside Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta, and delve into the courageous steps they took to organize farm workers. Rebecca shares her personal experiences of organizing grassroots house meetings in South Texas, shining a light on the plight of those battling for civil rights.
As we venture further, Rebecca exposes the grim realities of migrant workers in San Antonio, painting a picture of her family's experience, the grit of those working the fields, and the uphill battle faced by those without formal education. Ever wondered about the impact of agriculture on communities? Rebecca draws from her own encounters with the displacement of indigenous populations in Texas, the struggles of small family farmers, and the role of organizations in addressing community issues.
While our conversation explores many challenges, it also highlights the power of community engagement and the vital role it plays in effecting change. Rebecca's candid discussion on the gentrification of San Antonio and its impact on affordable housing is an eye-opener. We wrap up by delving into the intimidating role of the Texas Rangers in indigenous and migrant worker communities. This episode promises a captivating journey with Rebecca Flores, where we not only learn from the past but also garner the inspiration to shape a better future.
As the cosmos connects the universe, water connects life. At the Cosmic Water Podcast, we're exploring the history, mythology and future of the sacred land known as San Antonio.
Speaker 2:We've had a bit of a sound glitch for the first 3 or 4 minutes of Rebecca speaking, so please bear with us as us newbies figure out all this podcasting stuff. Enjoy. Welcome to the Cosmic Water Podcast. I'm Maureen, I'm Angela, and we are so honored to have Rebecca Flores with us today. I wanted to start off by saying that the other day Angela sent me a clip from this punk rock concert.
Speaker 3:Piñata protest.
Speaker 2:Have you heard of them? No Well, in their song they said Rebecca Flores presente.
Speaker 3:Piñata protest.
Speaker 2:The band. It was part of their concert. They went. Cesar Chavez presente. Open that light up, yes.
Speaker 4:That makes me proud.
Speaker 2:I was like, wow, that's amazing. Last week, when we were at lunch, you were talking about some organizations here in San Antonio and their activism work. I was like, was Cesar Chavez like that? It was really a moment for me where I was like whoa, I'm sitting here asking you about something so historical and that you were part of. I'm just I'm even like feeling it right now Like it really gave me chills. And so I guess, like to start off, if you could just talk about kind of your activism work there with Cesar Chavez and DeLores Huerta and what that meant for you and, I think, specifically for me. I'm thinking about just what I've heard from you how grassroots it was, like real organizing.
Speaker 4:It was totally grassroots Because at that point, of course, when Cesar and DeLores jumped in and said we're going to organize farm workers, farm workers really had never been organized. You know, they had been during the when the Wobblies were out organizing in the 30s and the early 30s and of course that whole Wobbly movement was crushed. But you know, for all that period from the 30s until when Cesar and DeLores and his brother and their families decided they were really going to do something about the things they had always talked about, then they began some serious, serious work and it's funny I was talking to some folks this last week about that whole. Is that, how do you? How does an individual, you think about Cesar and DeLores and their families? Right, they took a leap of faith that they were going to do something and they were going to be successful. So it was a lot of faith that they were going to be successful. When they took it, they left their cushiony jobs because at that time Cesar was the president of a community service organization out of California. It was a statewide organization. They were getting paid pretty good money.
Speaker 4:Very little class guy, you know, was driving his Volvo or whatever, and his family was good and all of that. And they said, and if? He of course, was a farm worker and he knew that farm workers were always excluded from anything and everything. And so he motioned and made an appeal to the board of CSO to spread out and organize farm workers in the fields rather than just people sitting in the urban areas, mexican Americans in the urban areas. And the board said no, we're not going to do that, and so he quit. So he quit, he quit his job and he and his family, helen and all of his eight kids he has eight kids left. They left for Delano and Doris went with him and her family by that time I don't know how many children she had and then Richard and his family. And so he had a core group of people who knew him and respected his ideas and probably went along, you know, of course, went along with his ideas and they struck out.
Speaker 4:And so in 1962, he established the CSO and one of the things that is so very important to understand, the things don't just happen, things fantastic, things just don't happen right. It takes so much groundwork to get there right. So he started organizing, with the help of Fred Ross, who was a criminal organizer, and doing house meetings. And when I started doing house meetings here in South Texas, that was really the key of getting people to understand what a union was and why they were in the fight. And so we had a very simple agenda.
Speaker 4:I don't know what his agenda was, but our agenda was very, very simple. This is what would happen. We had a union hall. We had a hall, and people would walk in because they had problems right, they had problems accessing services that were supposed to be accessible but are difficult to access, and so they would walk in and I would receive them, and so I would help them with whatever the problem was. And then I would say would you care to have a house meeting in your house? And in your house, just invite people who you know, that are farm workers, people who respect you, people who are friends of your family. And they did. By and large everybody would say yes, let's do that.
Speaker 4:And so, since farm workers at that time, because of their poverty, the only housing they could find were in Colonias. And Colonias in South Texas are unincorporated little villages that are outside city limits and don't have any city support, right, they don't have streets, they don't have lights, they don't have sewage, they don't have water, they don't have anything. But farm workers wanted a place. They always wanted a place to come back to, because when you migrate you leave, right, and you got to come back to some place, and at that time there was no public housing in South Texas, and so they had to buy a little piece of land. Whatever the conditions in buying that land were, they had to buy it and they would eke out their monthly payment. These are called deeds of contract, contracts of deed or something like that, where you pay $5 a month and the deal is that if you miss a month, then you start at the first base all over again. You pay for that a lot. You know, time and time and time and time again. It works for poor people, right, but they take a hit, right, because when they don't pay they have to start all over again. But it was their place and anyway.
Speaker 4:So they lived in these colonias and so that was where we went, that was where we'd go, and they knew each other. They would all work for the same crew leaders or trokeros and they knew they worked together and so they had a bond. It might have been a family bond or it could have been friends, you know, but they were workers too, and of course, then the whole family's work it was the husband and wife and the kids all jumped up on those trucks and went off to work. And so that's how we started organizing. We would ask three simple questions and it was three meetings that we took time, developed the issues and stuff, because we didn't assume any issues and so we would ask what are the problems you face in the fields? And they would tell us everything that they and we would carry the same question to different houses and in different colonias, you know, throughout the valley. And from that then we started putting together what the commonality was, what were the most important ones that people talked about, and then we knew those were going to be our priorities. But one of the other things that we made sure of doing was saying then, who's going to take care of these problems. Because I think it's very easy for people to think well, you are Rebecca, you're the one right, you're going to take care of our problems. And we really established the knowledge and the I guess they were invested in this whole thing that we are the union, all of us are the union, and so if there's any problem out there, all of us are going to have to take care of it. And so they agreed to that. And so then I would say, okay, will you sign on to agree to being part of this union? And they would sign on. We had little cards and they would sign on and stuff. And so that's how we developed our membership and that's how we developed our organizations. We started doing this in the spring of 1978. It took us till 1983 to pass our first major legislation, which was workers' compensation, and so what I'm saying is that things don't change immediately.
Speaker 4:Right, there was a lot of activities that we had in between. Every year we'd have a convention. Conventions were important because it showed the workers the power that they had when everybody convened. Right, the first convention that we had in January of 1979, we had 1,000 delegates on the floor of that convention floor, and it was powerful because then workers began to see that they had power Really it's really about, because if you're by yourself against this big grower down there, you don't have it. If you ask for a wage or increase there, they'll say oh, who are you Get out of here. If you don't like working here, leave. And so they began to see that together they created some power, and so we would have annual conventions, we would have marches, we would have strikes in the field, we would have all these things to begin to show workers that being together and showing the world that we had a strength by the numbers is that we in fact were somebody to deal with, because before that I was a farm worker and maybe I'm going too long.
Speaker 2:No, go for it.
Speaker 4:I was a farm worker and we lived in Nathus closer county, just south of San Antonio, and let me tell you, we never thought we could ask for anything. We just went to work and I think because my mom and my dad, they just said, okay, we're here to work, and so they never asked for what are we getting paid for? How long are we gonna work? Do we have anything going for us? And we never had anything going for us. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 4:It was very, very undignified For the work that we did, you know, raising up the agricultural industry on our shoulders, and it was something that we had nothing. We had no benefits, we had absolutely no benefit. There was no field sanitation, which is important, you know, for everybody, not only for the worker but for the consumer, so that you know that. You know if you don't have toilets out there in the fields, you may have contaminated food, but it's also for our health. You know we wouldn't urinate, you know, because we were embarrassed. You know where do we go.
Speaker 4:It just messes up your whole system and, of course, our health, and the heat and the lack of drinking water and the exposure to the elements, and at that time the chemicals weren't used as much, although DDT was in fact used by at that time. But all the other chemicals that we're using now, those are developed, you know, you know in the last what, 50 years, something like that, but in that period it was really. This is a few, but I'm not saying there weren't dangers, but there weren't so many Because we used to. We used to thin and weed. Now there's chemicals to send, you know, to get rid of the weeds, right.
Speaker 4:So, you don't have thinning and weeding crews anymore, as much anymore. So there's all kinds of chemicals that were built, that were put together to take care of some of the worker issues, right, and that way the growers could get rid of the workers, because they never want a worker, they want, you know, things to be done, but they don't want the business of a human being saying, hey, we need some water, hey, we need a toilet. They want to get away from all that. So they had the best next thing, which was a worker who never said anything right, and that was who we were. And so when I started organizing finally, after a long period of time, of course, in 1960, 65, when the great strike started and the great boycott went all across the country, they only began to think well, heck, you mean, you mean, workers could do something in the fields. And so we began to. We began, we as workers, began to open up our eyes.
Speaker 4:By that time, of course, I was not working in the fields anymore. I was. I graduated from high school, I had a job, but, you know, nevertheless I was very interested in what happened to farm workers. And so we began to think what you mean? People can ask for something. Can we ask for a wage? What? And that's the same thing that I found in the Valley when I started organizing when I started in the house meetings in 1978, was that workers had no sense that they could ask for anything.
Speaker 4:The first meeting that I had in one of the colonias there, I asked the question what are your problems in the fields? And one of the workers said hey, rebecca, we don't have any problems. And I thought and I was like floor does it? And the response that response is because people, people thought that that was their view right, this is our life and that we have to do what we can with it. And so then I said but then what about this? What about your wages? Oh yeah, they steal our wages. And what about your social security? Oh yeah, the crew leader pockets the social security. And so it was only when we began to talk about specifics. They knew it all right, but they just thought they had a hunker down and just accept it all. And that pretty much was how everybody was, including my family and I.
Speaker 4:We say well, you know, that's the way life is Drive. You know when we used to migrate? When we migrated, we drive hundreds of miles. And we thought, well, it's part of the job, but it isn't part of the job, right, because it's your car, it's your gas and we were never reimbursed for all that. We just had to appear on work day and get to work, right.
Speaker 4:Have your stuff with you. We used to pick cotton in the Mathis area which is what 100 miles from here and we had to take our cotton sacks and just get in there, just work. The grower, the crew leader I don't know who really dad would deal with that is give us a house to live in. It was off. It was a terrible house. We had a big hole in the ceiling and no water no running water. We had to speak it outside. No kitchen, no, nothing. We just had to sleep there. Isn't that something? We were providing work, we were providing their labor and we were little. That was when I was. That was in 52, so I was nine, going on 10, 52 and 53. I was 10 years old and working hauling cotton.
Speaker 3:It's hard for me not to get a little bit emotional about when to hear you talk about this.
Speaker 3:My father was born in 1954 in Michoacán, mexico, and they eventually ended up in Tijuana, where he crossed over by himself and he's a teenager, maybe 12 or something like that and he started working the fields and followed the work up to Washington, stayed in back and eventually he had connections to Texas, where he moved, and so he was no longer a farm worker here in Texas, he worked in the city, had city jobs. Everybody loved him here because he was from California right before the Cesar Chavez stuff started happening. So they were like, oh, california, and he had the style and stuff like that. But San Antonio treated him really well, but the ideas, though, when it comes to labor, stuck with him, not asking for what he's deserving of and that sort of a thing still to this day. And but yeah, he grew up like that, like be happy with what you have, and they were hard workers. They had a ranch in Mexico and that eventually got taken from them, but yeah, so I feel so honored to hear you talk about these things.
Speaker 3:And then children, children, you know, that's what.
Speaker 2:I was thinking of, but made me wonder if the conditions are still like that right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there is, unless you have a union contract, and those you know. It's very, very hard to get unions contracts because you're fighting the industry, right, and for farm. And when you look at Starbucks, right, you have all these hipsters and they're all college educated and everything going after Starbucks and they're having a hard time, right, because they get fired. If you know whatever for any reason whatsoever, right, you'll get ousted and then you have to deal with that as an individual and these are young folks. But when you look at farm work, many times you have no options because you don't have the education. Generally, by and large, you don't have an education.
Speaker 4:You can say, well, I can leave this field and go get me a job somewhere else, I can be an ITech or techie, because you have no options. So you have to stick it out. You say, well, I, either, you know, bend over and just take it and keep working, or tomorrow I don't have food for my family and that's always been the. That's always a struggle. Is that, do I do this and do I risk so? When Cesar pulled off the union strike, one of the things that he had to do is train people to understand that, that they had to save their money. If we're gonna do this, whatever money you have, you better save it, because you gotta pay your rent, you gotta buy your grocery, that kind of stuff. But then he had to go around the country and ask for support from different unions and the unions across this country, especially the UAW in Detroit, and right now of course they're in a big strike too. They supported the union you know from the very get-go.
Speaker 4:It was Walter Ruther and his brother. I can't remember his name, but they were fantastic. You know, I think they were communists, but generally labor came out of the communist party, but they were always so supportive of the farm workers and they gave Cesar a lot of money to support them when they were in that strike. And so you always have to think of that. As an individual family you have to think about it, and it's always scary. But scarier for those folks who have no options, who can't say well, I'll go on a strike. Let's say, the mother says I'll go on the strike but you, husband, are gonna have to go and find yourself a job somewhere else so you can continue to support me.
Speaker 4:It just doesn't work that way with farm worker families, so that is a big problem with maintaining income inside the family.
Speaker 2:I think I remember reading that about Emma Tenayuka organizing here in San Antonio to the pecan shellers. Is that that was part of it? That's what she was doing was helping everybody take care of each other's child care, getting the funds for rent and stuff all of that. Yeah, I come from a family of union workers. Like my dad was a painter and his dad was a carpenter, my other grandpa's was a mailman union and then my great grandpa was an electrician.
Speaker 2:In the 1920s when they were fighting for unions and so I remember my grandma saying that when she was a kid he had to carry a gun around with him because the cops were after him, because the government was on the big boss's side, but there just seems to be such a difference still that farm workers is still the most intense organizing because they didn't have that.
Speaker 2:They still I don't know there was more privilege. Basically is what it comes down to. That was white people organizing unions, whereas farm workers tend to be indigenous. And I remember driving down from Portland Oregon back here to San Antonio and stopping in all these small towns and making note of that, that every single one of these small towns, which are like farm towns, usually had a brown population or a Hispanic population. I was like those are the farm workers.
Speaker 2:And I remember when I was researching the Irish, when there was a basic genocide attempt against them and what it came from was the English taking all their land and then making them rent in order to farm off of. And it made me think about how indigenous people here knew this land just like the Irish knew their land, knew how to farm it, and that to this day we have indigenous populations still farming the land for us. On the way I grew up and Philly, I didn't realize food actually grew from trees. It was just like we just bought the produce from the grocery store, so that when I actually went to my ex-husband's house and she picked me figs off of its tree. It was the first time I ever had fresh food or even saw food come out of the ground, and so it just all comes together for me. And that there's not appreciation for where our food comes, there's not the recognition that it's like still an indigenous Americans still farming all of our food and we're still not giving them all of the rights necessary.
Speaker 4:I think that you hit upon the comparison between the Irish and the Mexicans here is the same right, because pretty much what happened you know, this is part of Mexico, right, and Mexicans own this place and we worked it and all of that. So when the Anglos came in to settle and to take over this state with Austin Stephen F Austin what they did is really just displaced all the people who were living here for forever before right, displaced them, took their land, and those same folks that used to work those lands were now working on them rather than owning them. So they became workers and not owners of those fields, and so it created the migrant population because then they couldn't live off of that work, right?
Speaker 4:So they had to go and then go to next door to this other growers' land and then go here to kind of eke out a living year round, and so that's pretty much what happens now we were talking about. The whole issue of what you said is that people don't know where things come from, where our food comes from. They used to call, and they probably still do, farm workers' hands, right, Just hands, Like there's not a human being attached to it, just hands, Because that's all they want. It's just a hand, right, Just get there and harvest and don't do anything else. And so when I know because this is how it was in the valley we had thousands of farm workers living there, thousands of farm workers living there, and they would take care of all of that agriculture.
Speaker 4:But they did not have the skill that a farmer has in knowing when to plant. I think many of them do. I'm not gonna say they're all that way. When to plant, what to plant, what to plant next to it, Because that has been erased from our memory, right? It's, when you plant something, what do you plant next to it? So you take care of the bugs, right? So we lost all that knowledge and we've gotta regain it. We've gotta regain it and of course, all we have now are little lots here in the city. But we can regain it. We've got to start learning Once again the whole process of growing our own food and how to use the old ways in making this production work for us, Because we are in fact losing that ability and, frankly, if you go to the grocery store right now, it's pricing us out of good nutrition and all of that money goes into the hands of corporations, big agricultural corporations. They're not.
Speaker 4:Everyone assumes that these are small family farms. They're not. The small family farmer has lost his farm or her farm. We did. We had 40 acres in Atluscosa County. We lost it. We lost it because of conditions or weather conditions. We couldn't hold it anymore and so we lost our farm, and so that's what happened to a lot of farmers. If you go to Atluscosa County now, it used to be pretty much owned by Mexicans. A lot of them my family, my cousins they're pretty much owned by big corporations now.
Speaker 2:I mean Bill Gates owns most of the farmland in the country.
Speaker 4:Oh God, and all you see now is grass. You know they'll have some cows and they'll have some grass to feed them, but they don't have the real crops.
Speaker 3:Right, they have these small farms with actually growing food, and now it's more cows, cows, beef, beef.
Speaker 4:And then the grass to feed them and a huge, huge acreage. But we used to have small farms. My dad had 40 acres and the people across the road had a few acres and we could see, we grew the strawberries, we grew the tomatoes, we grew the watermelon, that kind of stuff, and so we had our family and then my cousins had theirs, and we would go from our family to their family and we would work with them, so we would lend our help to all of our relatives so that they could get their stuff to market too. And that's how we handled it. I don't think there was any money across Palms there, because I don't think so, but I don't know. But that's how we managed. And we managed to live off of that because in the I was born in 43.
Speaker 4:That time there was no public assistance, none at all. So you really had to make sure that you, what you grew, you ate and made a little bit of money to buy your other essentials. But you didn't have that much of an overhead at all. You didn't have the, we didn't have electricity, we didn't have gas. We had a car, a tractor, the water was a pump. So we had basic things that we lived off of. Now, of course, you can't do any of that anymore. None of it. You could try. People who are homeless try, but they can't because they can't get the food anywhere.
Speaker 4:But the water, they have to buy the water, so you really can't anymore.
Speaker 4:And in organizing, is it true y'all really stuck to like, I guess, like paying yourselves a humble wage, I guess I would say yeah, it's true, it is absolute truth, and that was, that was a philosophy Cesar had, and he integrated it into the union that we would. In the beginning, you paid $5 a week, and, and, and, and. You know, I agree that we couldn't live off of $5 a week, but we made do with it and so, and and it was, it was making sure that we had that. We, for example, even to this day, I never buy anything new, I don't buy. I eat simple foods. I don't buy. You know, I really don't buy meat or anything like that.
Speaker 4:So we learned how to eat and live simply rather than extravagantly. And what he said is that is it was really true. He says, if you have money in your pocket, you get a lot of money. Then you're out consuming, you're out to the mall, you're out buying things and stuff like that. I mean, you don't have money, you don't think about doing that, and that is. That is the absolute truth. Ariadis, that is the absolute truth.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I, I follow that. You know I spend money now, of course, you know now I'm 80, so I figure I can spend a little bit. But but during the period that I worked in South Texas it was a steer I did have. I was married at that time and he was working with the ACLU and so he got some income and so we managed that way.
Speaker 4:But I didn't get paid for the work that I did and I worked all the time and I had babies during that time too, and so I had house meetings every night. I hauled my little kids around with me, and of course, that also was a was a good thing to do, not only for my children, but also it was it came out to, to be an example of modeling for the women, the farm workers, to them saying you know what we can, we can all do this. And look at me, I have all these kids and I'm you know, I'm working, I'm doing this and it's a, it's a dignified campaign kind of work that we do because families are involved and and as long as as we maintain that respect, because research is so important and you have to respect the families that you go and visit, then then you begin to establish a foundation of respect and dignity and the union, and then and then say that you merit that respect and dignity from everybody else.
Speaker 3:Do you attend house meetings now with any organization or any group?
Speaker 4:I don't frankly think there's any organization in San Antonio that's doing house meetings.
Speaker 3:I attended some with a group called COPS Metro. I'm no longer with them but that was with the UU church but I can see in practice how you know that creates that covenant or relational connection with people and where you get like boots on the ground kind of conversations about what is, what are the problems, what are the issues.
Speaker 4:And you know the more, the more I think about it is that organizations are so vital for all of us. Right, is, how do you, how do you come to grips with something that's going on in this country? Right, the only way to do that is if you talk it over with people you know and you and you and you and you come to kind of a knowledge about what you know. How is this? Whatever? Whatever it is right. How is this affecting us me individually, with us as a, as a community? Because if you sit around thinking on on your own, you may come, you know off with a totally different perspective. And so I believe in organizations. I, I absolutely do, but I think the conversation starts on one-on-one or in a small group so that you can start batting, batting about ideas. I, I really think that that we need to have organizations that do house meetings, and I think we got. We got to differentiate between a house meeting or organization and organizing, grassroots organizing and events. Events are different.
Speaker 4:I think events are part of of organizing, right, for example, once we had a foundation of folks who are in the union and who believed in the issues and stuff, then we would have events. It would have marches, right, and so these would be the, the, the people who would do that, right. They say, okay, it's time to, it's time to, you know, say something about whatever's going on. They would have marches. And so those groups that just have events for event sake don't do that groundwork and maybe they can from the people who come to the event, right, maybe they can do that kind of follow up, but I don't think that there is some. Frankly, I don't think there's money dedicated to that kind of work, because it is long-term work.
Speaker 3:It is long-term work.
Speaker 4:I don't think there. I don't. I don't. When I look at organizations, their budgets, I don't think they include that in in their their total plans to get to their event.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you have faith in organizations, because mine has like plummeted a lot over the years, over the past few years, and I really appreciate that distinction because I was going to ask that. I was like how do you maintain an organization without all of the problems that seem to inevitably come up of, like the hierarchy of power, and then just maintaining that power without doing all of that groundwork? And that seems to be it. I was wondering didn't you have neighborhood meetings for your neighbors at one point, regarding the gentrification, Well.
Speaker 4:Well, we never got to the neighborhood this, this is during the pandemic and people didn't want to get out. But I did one-on-ones with my, with my neighbors, and we did have like a little gathering once in our neighborhood where we had a large number of folks come out, but it was about gentrification, it was only on that idea. But then the pandemic hit and we just kind of like everybody was afraid of coming out and and so so we didn't continue at any point. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This was actually one of my favorite stories to show how ridiculous gentrification is in the city, but we did like a what was that for for everyone home. There was a project going here in the city of San Antonio where they were trying to figure out solutions to displacement. Really, I think their goal was to just bring community land trust, which is a good idea, but I think that was this organization's intention. But anyway, they organized this event where they brought a bus of people from different cities, a bunch of our city workers, around the South side to see what displacement looks like, and there was an event at Rin Rebecca's neighborhood and wall. Do you want to tell us?
Speaker 4:Well, I may, I may forget some, so please jump in. So this is what happened. So we had this huge, I would say we had about 20 people, right, there's a lot, and in the front yard, there it was. It was at a house that was next to the, the San Pedro Creek, which is being, you know, fixed so that we're being gentrified, anyway.
Speaker 4:So there we were, we had all these people, we had taken all of the postcards that we'd received from people who want to buy our property and we'd hung them in a clothesline and we just it was, it was like it was a long line of postcards that were we stuck up there with, with some clips, and so we were waiting and waiting and waiting, and the bus was late, right, and so finally the bus comes and, you know, stinky diesel diesel bus, parks itself right in front of us, like that, and it never turns off, right, he just kept spinning out this hot air and fumes and all of that stuff, and so we want, we thought that Aero was going to get off and we could talk, right, and they chose not to Nobody, nobody wanted to get off and finally, and that was when Vero Vero was was chair of the.
Speaker 4:I was director of the of the housing here in San Antonio and she wouldn't get off either. And we said but what? What is the? What is the point of all this? Here, we here, we want to talk, and we're ready, and we want to talk, and nobody would get off the bus. And that was the weirdest event that I have ever, ever been part of.
Speaker 2:It was so indicative of what they really think Exactly.
Speaker 4:They were sitting on the bus. They wouldn't get off the bus, right Like nice little show.
Speaker 2:See all these cute people out here. But no, right before, before the bus even came, remember some guy oh that one. Some white guy pulls up in a car and he's like hey, I wasn't there, you guys said hey, can we buy your house?
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, and he was parked over there and he'd been watching us for a while. We said I don't know who that guy is. And so he drives up and he says so we? He says what are y'all doing? I said, well, you know, we're being gentrified and we're having whatever you know. I explained what we were doing there and he says hey, I want to buy your house. He was a gentrifier. Hello, he never, he never got the message. The message wasn't clear. I guess that we were protesting gentrification and he was a gentrifier.
Speaker 3:Oh, and you know, I have to say, you know there are solutions, you know there are solutions and frameworks and that are there. Like my father was able to have his house flipped through the city program called owner-occupied rehab. But because you know, like in his neighborhood you have all these elders who have paid off their mortgages, they've kept their humble jobs, they've, but you know the their wages have remained the same, despite everything else going up over the years. You don't have the kind of money to do your foundation, replace the plumbing, replace the electrical work. A lot of these homes are built in the 20s and teens, right, and so they find their elders now in these houses that are falling apart. So then they give in when they come and ask and make these offers. And so my dad, I would advocate for him go down into the office, the city office, and they say that it's a lottery system and these opportunities because it's a forgivable loan. It's a forgivable loan. They flipped his house. They redid the foundation, the roofing, the electrical, the plumbing.
Speaker 3:This was pre, but right before we had that snowstorm a couple of years ago, we were so lucky that our pipes did not bust open. Like a lot of our neighbors. They didn't go through what we. You know, we had brand new insulation, so, as much as it sucked, we were able to get through it without severe consequences. And so to me, like that's an answer, it just needs it has a tiny little budget where they tell us oh, it's a lottery system, these people are so deserving more of a lottery system we need to secure.
Speaker 3:Stop giving the developers incentives and using money for that and just put all that money into. I mean, that's one way to fight gentrification, I think. And houselessness, and houselessness. You know, in fact, the guy across the street ended up selling his house and his son became houseless after he sold. And it's a developer who lives there now and he can't sell his house because he flipped it so fancy that nobody wants to pay what it's actually worth now, you know, because they don't want to live next door to us, but you know. So, yeah, there's answers. You know there's a solution. We can totally combat this. It's greed, you know it's greed.
Speaker 2:It's government funded. This is what Rebecca and I are presenting at the Health Equity Forum.
Speaker 3:Nice, which I'm registered to attend. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And that's what we were talking about last week is how gentrification is government funded in overinflation of land?
Speaker 4:And developed by the government. We can go back to the decade of the downtown. Remember that one that was 2010, right.
Speaker 3:Right Julian Castro.
Speaker 4:And where his idea was well, we need to revive the downtown area, and without thinking of the collateral damage. Right, same thing with Sarah, the San Antonio River Authority. They did all that creek development without thinking of the collateral damage. And so all this money and it is generally our money- our taxpayer money.
Speaker 4:There's some other money, but it's probably developer money because their interest is there. And so nobody looks at the collateral damage to those kinds of projects and say, well, you know, that's pretty much what happened with the Sino's emission trails. Right Is that they fix the river. It was gorgeous. And then the owners of this mobile home park that was a home for over 100 families in mobile homes sold it and he said you got to get out, I'll give you a period of time to get out. And now they have this humongous, horrible looking, I think, castle there right on the river and just peering over the river. And so they had primo land. And that's what they do. Right Is they hold on, hold on, hold on to the property until it gets, you know, and don't do anything to upkeep, you know right, until it gets. Investor, you know interest, they sell it and make money and then they build their beautiful, their beautiful. I've always said why can't poor people be next to beautiful things? That's what I always say. Why can't I be next to a beautiful river?
Speaker 2:That's how I thought about the San Pedro Creek renovation and living at Soapworks. And you know who owned Soapworks and Town Center before that was Lifshits of Polestar. So, yeah, he let it just go to nothing. And then he sold it to this investor in Houston who you know kind of renovated. He was trying to increase the land value or property value, right, so that he could sell it for more eventually. To now Western urban just bought it and so, yeah, it's like they were just waiting for, they're just waiting for this business district vision that they have of that part of downtown to happen. And meanwhile that was the last 381 naturally affordable working class apartments downtown and everybody just displaced from it.
Speaker 4:And at the same time and even though I know the mayor and the city council hate to have people say this this is considered a low wage town. There was just a statistic, did you see that? And this last week that shows that San Antonio increased the number of poor people in this population increased rather than decreased. And so when they say, oh no, we're not a low wage town, don't say that. But San Antonio likes that definition because they lower in the tourist industry.
Speaker 4:Tourist industry is nothing but cheaply paid wages. It's the restaurant industry, it's a hotel industry and they make boo-koo money. They make so much money with people coming in and renting and yet they don't pay their workers a decent salary. And those workers then can't live nearby. They have to live way out and come in on the buses to work here because there is no affordable apartments in this downtown area. And so then the developer. I have a thing about that, because the developers come in. It was a law passed by a developer at the state level Plummer. Jim Plummer is the attorney for developers. He passed a law that allows property tax exemptions to developers if they include in all the total units a certain amount of what's considered affordable units but they never define affordable and they never define the size of the unit and it's really not affordable for people, for poor families to live in.
Speaker 4:It's just not affordable to them. You have to earn what? Three times your rental. So if your rent is $800, you have to earn three times that a month to be able to. But you know, when you rent a place I guess this is still true you have to pay the monthly rent, then you have to pay two, I think the one before and then the deposit.
Speaker 4:So you have to pay three months of rent. Do people have that amount of money in their pocket? No, they don't. People live paycheck to paycheck anymore. So, and we're not even talking about people who are disabled, who are not able to work, who have issues, or elderly. Let's talk about elderly who are like you said, who are unfixed income maybe, and you know that Social Security and SSI, of which are SSI, goes like to $800, $900 a month. That's if you don't qualify for Social Security. Social Security can go anywhere, right, it can start low and it can go high. But if you've been a low wage worker all your life, you're going to get a low monthly check from Social Security. And so there's just, you cannot get out of your holes. You cannot get out of your holes. And then, of course, medical care, food, everything else. It's just difficult for people who are poor to make it in this country anymore, in this town, probably anywhere in this country anymore Difficult.
Speaker 4:And I hate to sound that way, because certainly there's got to be a light out there, but I don't see one. All the city programs and stuff are so inaccessible.
Speaker 3:They're so inaccessible and a lot of them are just plain performative. So I participated in another city program. I think it was ready to work I could be wrong because there's similar ones, I think but I did a certification. They paid us $15 an hour as students, I think. Maybe it was like six months of school, and then I did my clinicals at Methodist Hospital where I was eventually hired, but I was being paid $12.50 an hour, less than the student. $15 is low already. I hate to be a complainer or whatever, but realistically that still wouldn't have been enough to live off of. It's not a living wage, and so $12 was even. And then made me think what kind of unions do we have going on in the hospitals, because I would hear so much injustice sort of going on there. So yeah, so unfortunately, a lot of these city efforts can be performative too.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:They lay out all the Right, all the amount of money going out in the marketing for it.
Speaker 4:This is all that's available and yet how do you get it? How do you access it? I was at a meeting with the Department of Labor Women's Bureau woman and she invited a number of people and I was a community person. I was the only one community person and Juanita Reina from Forza Unida, she was the other community person, but she had an organization. I came in, you know, bald, I didn't have any organization, and so everybody's talking about how great their group was and what they did and how successful they were, and then, of course, I just threw hot water on her and I thought, but, but, but, but, as you can talk about that all the time, but you really don't reach those folks who are, in fact, needing everything you're pushing. And that's why we continue to be able to reach talent, because you don't reach that population. And they have fantastic data. They have fantastic data.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it just, and so anyway, let me just say this because I think it's also I like your word performative. So when I said you know, talked about people who are, who are ignored and who are not part of the part of their programs, I was the last one to talk before they talk some more and they changed their language.
Speaker 4:But I don't know what that means, right, it's just performative, right? So then they said, yes, and we need to, you know, get out, and we had need to, you know, get into those communities that are. I said it, just just look at the demographic. If all you do is look look at the poor people, poor people live just go there, knock on doors, knock on doors and say you know how, what's going on? Why can't you get in work, ready to work and that was, that was a discussion ready to work at that thing? Why is it? Why is it not up to optimum, like they originally planned, right? Well, there's all kinds of reasons for it.
Speaker 3:And there are a whole bunch of hiccups going through the program and so you fix it, right, you fix it, but how do you fix it?
Speaker 4:Will you find out what the hiccups are? And and until you talk to folks, on the ground yeah, on the ground, then you're never going to find out. And so so I sometimes, you know, sometimes I think, and I'm, you know, I'm not that, what's the word? I'm not that popular, I'm not, you know, when a lot of people want Cool.
Speaker 2:Cool, they said your name in a song at a concert.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's true. That's some clout right there.
Speaker 4:Listen to me In terms of people don't want my, my, my, my, my opinions. I mean they will listen to them because I think they this whole thing about community engagement and and all that. It's like a coin. It's like a coined word.
Speaker 3:now Okay we have to have.
Speaker 4:Rebecca Flores come in and talk and scream at us and that's it. And we'll ignore her, you know, until the next event. And that's that's what I that's why, and that's why I kind of hesitate in participating in a lot of these things, because what am I? A show? Are we shows? Are we, are we shows? Is that what we're used for? And some folks says, well, rebecca, if you don't say it, nobody else is going to say it. And I thought, well, you know what? I don't know, I saw, anyway, I'm up in the air about it, I really am. I think it's some use, use for me saying these things. But if all they can say is, yes, we're going to, we're going to, you know, get the marginalized included and figure that out, but if that's all they do is change our language, then you know what's, what's the point of it all. But this has been the life, this has been my life. Right, I've been screaming about this forever, forever.
Speaker 4:I mean, it's started with farm workers, but but man, it's hard to it's hard to change these systems because people want to cream, they want to get the cream of the crop and they don't want to have any trouble. You know, and those are your good statistics, right, yeah, she's. You know she's got her GED. She comes to work and she doesn't have babies, and you know she gets on the bus easy. What about all those others that don't have it? They don't have the GED, they have a bunch of babies. They can't manage the bus. You know what happened to them and why aren't they included in another way? So, and that's here, that's here in San Antonio.
Speaker 4:I know some of them that can't do it, and yet they need it, and yet they need it. So I don't know what the answer is. But going back to organization and you know there are organizations and there's the 501c3s need to have a different concept of what they could be doing. It's not just. They've got to start thinking outside their money system right, I was given money to do this. Let me just do this. They've got to expand their vision and start really developing organization for those issues that they are dealing with right that they're and develop a good organization, develop a, you know, a community organization. That's the only way we're going to change things. That is the only way we're going to change things if people are able to speak up from their truth, from their experience, and hopefully people will listen to them.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, because it's just like those 501c3s. And this is that's a good point, because I was just thinking about our presentation on Friday and how we came up with the solution of democratic participation, participatory practices, which is like there's like academic research behind this and like that's the best way to present it to the crowd at this Health Equity Forum, but ultimately they just it becomes performative. Now we're just giving them the language and the information so that they can go out and say all of these things. And so I was thinking how one of the things that we can stress a lot is that none of this means anything without action, because that's also part of participatory action, research, and if you're not doing the active part of it and then reflecting on it and then acting again, then it's just performative.
Speaker 2:And then I'm glad that you brought up the 501c3s, all the non-profits, because that's a whole other, whole other issue about how they take up space speaking for people, and really they need to be the ones who are just sort of acting as legisans, of like how do we give more power to these people? But yeah, they're so caught up in. For me it really comes down to what I've witnessed is individual power struggles, where they want to be the ones who get a program approved by the city and they can put that on their grant proposals and then they can put that on their resume for their next job, because they don't even like their job at non-profits, usually, often, often. And so, yeah, these are just some of the solutions I'm brainstorming and also things to say, right, because I feel that way too. I mean, yeah, I'm not popular either.
Speaker 3:Really Whoops. We're the outliers. Here Are you.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm cracking up when me and Rebecca talk together on Friday. I'm like how did this?
Speaker 3:work. How did?
Speaker 2:we come together. How did who approved of this? Glad they did, but then I'm also nervous that they did, because I'm like we are not just like community tokens here to just say, hey, you guys have to also listen to community. It's like actually go and do it Like, what do we have to do? Get our like mean mom hats on.
Speaker 3:Like grandma's right.
Speaker 2:Disciplinary actions to yeah, get them to actually start doing it. It's really frustrating.
Speaker 4:Oh, it is.
Speaker 2:And I don't know, I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4:I don't know the answer it's gotta be ground up is the only answer. And then the issue, then, is how do you get that platform for the ground up? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I feel like history has a lot to do with it in education. Knowing your history might be one part of where action comes from, because then you get so angry when you know the history of how long this has been happening. My mother was displaced from hemisphere. Their house was raised in 68. And beyond my mom and her grandfather, who owned the house we also had I mean, they had houses in King Williams. They owned properties you know, all scattered throughout South Town and downtown, and now nobody owns any of that. Now nobody owns any of that property.
Speaker 4:The Westin Urban owns it. Right, he owns. He's doing the hemisphere hotel or whatever.
Speaker 3:And also when we're talking about developers too. In 68, it was HB Zachary who got that contract, and they have it again. So you know it's the same place, it's the same place, it's the same place and we are all the same families doing all this together. It's throughout the generations it's the same things happening, you know, but this is all of us doing, we're all in this together, and so the more people know the history, I think, hopefully, especially with things like some media and being able to share knowledge, you know, without having to, because they're not teaching this in school. I didn't learn about you in school, you know. I didn't learn about Emma Teneyuka at school, you know so, and that leads me to a different, if it's okay, question I just wanted to get I guess you're quick I if you have any knowledge of the Texas Rangers? Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Because that's been my. That was an eye-opening thing for me. And there's talk about, like our monuments and what statues should stay and are we erasing history and that sort of thing. So you know, the Confederate statue downtown they got, they got rid of, that was on Travis Park, but we still have Confederate statues.
Speaker 3:Frost Colonel Thomas Frost, was a Confederate soldier and he still. That still remains there and the legacy of Frost is still continues and the narration, the narrative about him, you know, it's still sort of like a hero in that sort of thing. When I read everything that they put out about him, when I read his history it's, I don't see that, I don't. You know he started his business from a monopoly of wool and so when I look up the definition for monopoly, it's not a good thing, it's not an honorable thing. So I guess I just wanted to ask you what your knowledge is about the Texas Rangers. Also, in some indigenous groups, you know, you'll see them acknowledging. You know indigenous people that were Texas Rangers themselves. But to me it's like, does that make it any better, like you know?
Speaker 4:so yeah, well, the Rangers were set up before the Republic, which was 1836. So they were, and they were supposed to, you know, control on Indians that were living here, because the Indians were attacking the colonists.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's how frost started.
Speaker 4:It wasn't.
Speaker 3:It was before the Rangers, but he already had his little.
Speaker 4:And then they continued and there was a lot of Mexicans who were Rangers also after the, after 1836, because that was that was part of, you know, controlling and and the solidifying the Republic. And then, of course, then we know all the stuff written, because it's not, it's not in books, right, people have had to scrounge around in newspaper, old newspapers to find, and then what oral history has been, has been passed from family to family, you know from generation to generation, and how it's been collected, and there are not. There aren't awesome books. You know about fa written by families who know the history of their relatives being shot and killed by Rangers, just because, right, and really a lot of it was to scare them, scare them off their property, and that was really what the whole thing was is scare you off your property and my, I have. I have never had my personal experience with the Rangers. Okay, I have, I have with a DPS. I've been throwing in jail a few times, but that's another story.
Speaker 4:But with the Rangers was the. The most recent one was was in the 1966 farm worker strike in Star County, and that was a strike that was. That was huge, with people who were harvesting melons in the summer of 1966. And so so they had been organizing the, the workers there in Star County, and then they called June the 1st would be the first day of the strike, when everybody would not work, and it was successful. But also on June the 1st the Rangers were there. So the growers had called in the Rangers. But the Rangers are paid by us, right, they were, their taxpayers supported, and yet they were on the Rangers side, right they were. They were there, you know, toting their guns, protecting the growers and protecting their, their produce, right, so that the produce could get to market.
Speaker 4:And so in the process, they wanted to bash and destroy the union, the unionizing effort, and they did it by hitting people, by throwing people in jail. They would throw people the first day. They, they, they, they arrested. Eugene Nelson, who was the organizer, came out of California. They arrested him for trespass, for some you know cock-a-manie reason, and they threw him in jail. And so that's a message, right, that is the message that everybody learns. Oh, look, they threw our leader in jail. And so, and they, they did that, they did that systematically and they went after every leader and they threw him in jail. There was what I would say 70 people thrown in jail from from that organizing effort, and they would stay in jail one day a week or whatever. They would stay in jail they would be arrested for for praying on the Cow County Courthouse steps, praying, praying. They would get arrested for saying a cuss word. It was just like for for any for any little reason. And then, of course, for picketing. They had a picket line in front of the of the shed and they were arrested for that. And so this went on for the course of the melon. The melon season is short because it's the melons grow and then they're, then they're gone, so it's not longer than four weeks, five weeks, and so they did that for the duration of that, and so so, anyway, that ended that year with a, with a march that started in in Rio de Janeiro City and came up to Austin. So that was, that was the end of that strike.
Speaker 4:Then it continued the next year, but the the history of the Rangers was that after that happened, there was some, there was some attorneys who took this, who filed a lawsuit in the federal courts against the Rangers. It was Medrano, pancho Medrano, who was a UAW member who had been beat up by the Rangers, versus Captain Ali A-L-L-E-E. He was a captain that was over the Rangers there, and so this lawsuit went to federal court, to the federal system, all the way to the US Supreme Court and and this, the strikes happened in 60 to 66. In 1972, this is, you know, six years later the US Supreme Court came down and said that the Rangers were used against unconstitutionally, because we have in the Constitution we have a right to assemble, and that's part of you know that we had a right to assemble and and so they they. One of the things that they said is that from here on out, the Rangers can never be used to to destroy a unionizing effort, and so from that, from that period on, the Rangers haven't been used for that.
Speaker 4:Before that, before that and I probably Emmat-Ten Yuka came up against them, but I remember reading for Yucca Pala, which also was organizing in South Texas in the 30s and the 40s, and Yucca Pala was was was not an AFL-CIO, it was another union, and they started organizing the cotton pickers in in Harlingen and and they had, you know, committees and they had an office. And then the Rangers see cotton also is seasonal, right, and so people leave, right, they migrate and stuff, and so, anyway, so they, the Rangers, came in and busted up that Union and Yucca power then left, and and so that's what happens, right Is that? Is that when you do those kind, when they do those kinds of things, people get scared and you kind of have to get up and leave. In this instance, though, the workers didn't get scared, but the Union effort was it was dead. Right, it was just too much for those workers. It was, it was too much, but the Union stayed there.
Speaker 4:So, from it from 1966 to now, the United Farmers have been in the Valley. So that's what 60 years, 60 years, something like that, 60 years, and so it's transitioned. I got there in 1975, became director of Union from 70 to 2005, and In the process, though, if you know what's happened in this country, nafta hit in the 90s, and so, from one day to the next, all the the growers went to Mexico, and free trade for the free, and so we lost a lot of the row crops and a lot of the, a lot of the workers didn't have work anymore and and so a lot of the workers that were members of the Union, who were the bulk of what, what we're there for right, weren't there anymore.
Speaker 4:And so we had a change and transition into this group called Lupe, la Union del pueblo entero, which is a community organization dedicated to community development rather than Farm worker, you know, farm worker issues, and so it's different, but it's still organizing workers, people In colonias, and so that's how we manage. We have had to transition ourselves right to best, as things have changed. Um, and you know, as you know, things change all the time. But what I did notice a little bit ago, I was down there and it's very interesting. So I hit us some fields, I hit up on some fields and stuff and I I found a field that was that was growing, you know, that curly cabbage, the curly leaf cabbage. Is it Chinese cabbage? Well, anyway, it's a different kind of cabbage that I don't eat, right, and Leaks.
Speaker 4:I hit on two fields that curly cabbage and leaks, neither of which I eat. So I'm thinking that these, you know, central markets type grocery stores are now wanting these kind of Esoteric food that they sell for a hundred dollars. I mean this. This man was working. See if I can remember that man never quit working. He would pull the leaks out of the soil, peel him back, cut off the greens, cut off the the, the strings here Entire. He would tie three, three together and he would throw it on the ground.
Speaker 4:He just never. He'd never quit, never quit, and he got, let's see, he got just us. So I can't remember the the figures anymore, but it was like, I believe, 12 bundles of three for Some minimal amount. I'm not gonna say it because I'm I may. I may be wrong, but I went and looked at the grocery store there in the valley. I just went to the grocery store I said let me see what those leaks are selling for. And there was two leaks tied together for something like three dollars and 25 cents. And so he wonder he wouldn't earning that for? For the.
Speaker 4:Bunch that he had tied up In the valley. So so there's no transportation. You know what I'm saying is they said, well, we have to pay transportation and blah, blah, blah, there's no transportation costs there. And yet they were. They were charging all that amount, which is what they were charging here in San Antonio, the same amount to the customers, and so I Think the product that they're growing in the valley is different. I think it's more. You know, fancy, that's what I think. I don't know, that's true, but that's what I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking earlier when you were talking about just like how land is changing all over Texas and becoming more like cows ranches, I guess how. One of my like visions for the future of Texas, specifically because we have so much land, is to be able to grow all of our own Food as well as like create, you know, the industries for like metal and development right, instead of getting all of these materials from China that like break down after a couple years after development. How to create like our own micro economy in Texas, which just seems like it would make sense. When I lived in Oregon, I could go to the farmers market and get so much food Picked that morning, and I'm like I live in Texas where there's farmland everywhere around me. Why aren't we having access to any of that and how do we create that access Instead of H eb having a good age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, actually I was thinking too. I remember hearing this story from this guy who, um Whenever his family had a supermarket here in San Antonio. You know talking about monopolies, h eb monopolizing grocery stores. And in like the 60s maybe, h eb Jacked up the prices of produce down in the valley so that they could make it cheaper here in San Antonio, and then all of the other grocery stores ran out of business because everyone was going to where it was cheaper, at H eb. And that's how H eb Monopolized store in town.
Speaker 4:It is the only story that's, everybody talks about it and they own a lot of really prime property too. Do they?
Speaker 3:the river downtown, the river the arsenal.
Speaker 2:Campus yeah, not to say about them, but I Feel like I didn't even touch on, like everything I wanted to talk about with you because we got to make these longer. Yeah, if you would come back for a part two sometime, that would be what happens at this, at this equity, health equity.
Speaker 4:We have something to say about that.
Speaker 2:We'll give a report back. Yeah, yeah, what happens? Yeah, well, let me just quickly say that too, because that was so like I forgot. One time I can't went to a mental health forum thing, not to speak, just to participate as a community engagement meeting, and and mental health is my field and so they went through the whole presentation. They're this is what we're doing. This is what we're doing. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Any questions? All Non-profits. Every single question was from a non-profit, asking about their request for proposal. How much money can they get? Like all all those types of questions.
Speaker 2:And so, finally, I like raise my hand and say that I'm like you know, everyone here is just asking about the logistics of business, logistics. Where are we getting questions of from people who actually have mental health Issues? And you know that, getting people on the ground, that's where we're going to know how to most effectively and efficiently distribute these funds. It was ARPA funds and my point being the afterward, so many people came up to me and we're like nonprofit people, thank you so much. We really need those types of questions being asked and I'm like yeah, you're welcome by my head. I'm like why aren't you asking them then? And really it comes down to survival, right, like we have the autonomy to be able to, I guess, and these people Don't they'll lose their jobs or lose their contract with the city or whatever, but it really, it really just is like that, where we just get Thanks and given lots of gratitude for speaking up for the people, but, like, where's the action from any of you, any of these bureaucratic levels?
Speaker 4:Yep, yep. And you know we have so many people in those, in those good positions when you know people, people have moved, you know, you know All the Chicanos have been educated, become educated, and they've moved into those positions of influence, if not power, at least you know they're sitting on, and and so what do you give up to get there? You?
Speaker 4:know what do you have to give up to get there? And and when can those folks see that maybe they're, they're okay and that they can start doing something, that that that really makes changes? I don't know, because I just like, just, I see it all the time. Yeah, these fantastic folks, you know they move their PhDs or whatever and then they're kind of like, just you know they move into the system.
Speaker 4:That's a good money more problems and then you become in that consumer, and then yeah, and then they get consumed with whatever they have to do to keep there right, stay there.
Speaker 2:I imagine it takes a lot of you get up to that certain point and you, just you, have to sacrifice your soul yeah literally to make hard decisions and then and then and ease and easier ones, because there's so many.
Speaker 4:There's so many decisions to make, right. Yeah, well these are easy. Let me do these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no otherwise I mean yeah, otherwise you're sacrificing, I guess, your popularity. Yeah your reputation, your position. Well, thank you, rebecca, thank you.
Speaker 4:You're welcome I.
Speaker 2:Didn't talk about everything I want to talk about with you.
Speaker 4:It's too much to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, will you come back again, Okay we'll do yes, thank you. You're welcome.