Valdez-Cox: Small victories will give Valley residents hope
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| A participant in the Equal Voices for America's Families town hall meeting in San Juan holds up a poster of key issues. |
SAN JUAN, January 21 - The state director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero says she is proud that San Juan, which is so closely identified with Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers movement, was selected for the launch of the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign.
On Saturday, Juanita Valdez-Cox hosted a town hall meeting inside a large tent on the LUPE grounds that drew 400 Upper Rio Grande Valley residents. It was the first of 40 town hall meetings being staged across the country this year as the Equal Voice campaign develops a national platform to promote the interests of working families.
The tent had heaters to keep the participants warm on a bitterly cold Saturday morning. The host said the atmosphere inside the tent could only be described as electric.
“Having everybody under the same tent not only created warmth, it created unity,” Valdez-Cox said. “Our people are suffering because we do not have fair wages, because we do not have health insurance, or adequate education. It came across so strongly.”
With 37 million people living in poverty in the U.S., the time for action is long overdue, Valdez-Cox told the Guardian, after the town hall meeting ended.
“People are tired of talk no action. They feel they need to be organized. I saw in their faces that this is the way it is but this is not the way it is going to remain,” she said.
The next step for the Valley coordinators of the Equal Voice campaign is to tabulate the issues raised on Saturday and to prepare for the next town hall meetings, at the STC campuses in McAllen, Weslaco, and Rio Grande City.
“Judging by the sheets that were pinned to the tent wall, I would say that wages, employment, immigration, and education are the top priorities, followed by health and housing,” Valdez-Cox said.
Asked if the participants, many of whom are engaging in civic affairs for the first-time, would be deflated if the presidential candidates ignore the Equal Voice platform, Valdez-Cox said no.
“This is just the beginning. No one said it was easy, or short,” she said. “We may not get the whole prize but along the way, if we chip away, we are winning. As long as we have those small victories we have hope.”
Valdez-Cox said she has a lot of hope for the campaign. “We saw it today. It was so cold, they could have stayed home. We had over 100 children here. That says something about the commitment they have made.”
Valdez-Cox said that commitment was also on show as the families left the five-hour event.
“People were saying as they left, ‘I want to go to Birmingham, Alabama. You have my name and my phone number, don’t you? I want to be part of it’,” Valdez-Cox said.
Birmingham is the location for a massive regional gathering of the Equal Voice campaign on Sept. 6. About 1,200 Valley families are expected to attend.
“These families want to see this through to the end,” Valdez-Cox said.
Write Steve Taylor and Joey Gomez
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