NADA – NOTHING
Latino Learning Center – por LULAC Turner helped them when he was mayor, and Sheila Jackson-Lee helped them as a congresswoman. Now they whine that Abbott is hurting them. Why aren’t you asking Whitmire for help? Officers from LULAC endorsed Whitmire. Why not ask Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia for help? The thing about Congresswoman Lee is that she would help even if you were not in her district. In fact, asking Congressman Green for help may work, even when one does not live in his district. Who knows, Congressman Green could wind up representing the 18th. I know that I will be voting for him if he decides to run in that district.
LULAC needs to return to its roots, when it was self-supporting and not reliant on government handouts. When you rely on handouts, the money comes with conditions, such as keeping your mouth shut about the master who feeds you.
LULAC would rather whine about its loss of a voice.
If you want to know what it’s like to be voiceless in a congressional district screaming to be heard, the Latino Learning Center offers one of the clearest and most painful examples.
Former U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee fought for the center, a pillar in the community that has offered vocational training for adults and care for the elderly since 1979. Thanks to the late congresswoman’s work, the center was set to receive a nearly $2 million federal grant to help pay for the repairs to the century-old building on the east edge of downtown where the Second and Third Wards converge.
When Jackson Lee died in July 2024, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner took up the cause as the representative for the 18th Congressional District. Then he died in March, the money did not make it into the federal budget, and the center’s fate is in limbo.
It’s hard to fathom that one of the most historic congressional districts in the nation – shaped by the 1965 Voting Rights Act – could lose two representatives and then be left voiceless for many months. Our silence is not by accident, but a nasty political move to weaken a community’s vote.
“This is precisely why the center was founded, because the people in this area had no one to fight for them,” said the center’s board chairman Mitchell Contreras. “It’s like having political laryngitis. We can’t talk. Who will listen to us now? We don’t have any way of voicing our problems, and this will be like this until we elect a new leader, hopefully one who will listen to us.”
