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Sorry for the very long paragraph, which makes for hard reading. That is what the orange fool does. I just don’t want to spend time correcting it. It is the same as the video.
That is me, about 40 years ago.
Hello this is Manuel Barrera my nickname is Meme however it’s spelled M E M E which um became Meme it translated damn white people steal everything even our nicknames. Still, anyhow, that’s my preferred nickname, but uh when I worked for a council member as chief of staff back in the 90s, Rock that uh gave me the nickname of Manny, and so more often than that now I use Manny, and since then, a well-known boxer, Manny Pacquiao has uh made a debut. Certainly, Manny is now a well-known name. So, Meme is my preferred. Manny is fine. My name is Manuel Barrera. In the background after Coco, I decided, why not? I had all these little statues of some of the virgins, you know, this Virgin of Guadalupe. Uh, two up on the top of that cross. Uh, one on the right-hand side, the blue and white. I believe that’s the one in Europe. But I forgot what she’s called, the one on the left, maybe South America. Right behind me, there’s small statue of Jesus and right in front of it is Michelangelo’s I forgot what it’s called, but it’s supposed to be Mary holding her son Jesus. I have photographs of my grandparents, my parents, uncles, and aunts who have passed away. One sister who has passed away, a brother, and long. That brother-in-law was married to my sister for over 50 years, and he became a part of the family. He was just like a brother. So I don’t know if uh it does any good, but it does me some good. I feel good about it. But uh what I want to talk about is uh we need to thank the black community. You know, sometimes I listen to some of these young people. I’m a recent immigrant, and I made it. I went to Harvard. I went to Princeton. I went to Yale. Well, you know, the only reason you were able to do all those things in all likelihood is because of all the suffering, all the fighting and all the work that the black community did working towards civil rights, because let me tell you, we’re mostly what people call Mexican-Americans, because that’s what basically used to be here. Now, they’re from South America and Central America. Uh, but Mexican-Americans here, Puerto Ricans up toward New York, and maybe Florida, but uh, we were second-class citizens. We were not treated the same. We didn’t have the opportunities that young people had. Uh, you know, my brother, my younger brother, went to. He was Valedictorian. You know, they came and they recruited him. I have a cousin who was also Valedictorian. They gave him a $100 scholarship and said, there you go. So a lot of things changed, and we have to thank the black community. I know that a lot of my brothers and sisters, Rasa, you know, the Latinos, they have this animosity toward black people, and it may go both ways. But the reason for that is that they pit us against each other. They make us fight for the same things. And when I say they, I’m talking about the people who control the United States and not all white people. I mean, there’s some great white people. Probably the majority of them are great. But they want to make sure that we stay toward the bottom. And the blacks also have an advantage that we don’t have when they were segregated. When they had to fight all that racism, they developed because they were a much larger group. They developed their own universities, their own college, and then, you know, they basically, if you were black, you went to a black doctor, you went to a black dentist. Uh, most of the ones who had had college were teachers, but often they taught in predominantly black schools. And so that’s the way it was. When I started teaching here at HSD in 1974. Every school I went to was at Furr. I was the only person with a Spanish last name. Then I went to Hartman. I was the only person with the last name, at least when I got there. And then I went to Jones High School, and I was the only person with a Spanish last name, at least at the beginning. I think that when I left around 1989 or 1990, there may have been two other people with a Spanish last name. One was a Vanguard teacher, and the other was just a nurse. Uh, but there weren’t too many of us. Bilingual education, thank God for bilingual education, because if it were not bilingual education, there wouldn’t be so many Spanish-speaking teachers or teachers whose Spanish is less known in HSID. Because it seems that HSID didn’t think we could teach math, history, or English. You know, we just weren’t qualified I guess in their opinion. So, thank the black community, and we have to learn to work with them. Because if we don’t, then we’re all going to lose out. If people like Trump, the orange man, get to do what they want to do. They’re going to take us back to the way it was in the 50s. When they say make America great again, they’re talking about the 50s. You know, in the 50s, we were segregated. I’m from Corpus Christie, a little town about 20-something miles from where I live, Driscoll. You know, there was a documentary made about that school district. They would keep all Spanish-speaking students in the first grade for three years. Just you know, and those are the type of things that they would do to us. And so if we don’t work together, and I’m talking about the minorities, I’m talking about the blacks and the Hispanics, you know, then we’re all lost. We will all lose. You know, women’s rights, that came after the civil rights, gay rights, that came after. You know, and people think we did it. We did it because somebody fought for it. Somebody paved the way to make it a little bit easier for you. So, you know, keep that in mind when you vote. Don’t vote to you know, I I would prefer to vote for Hispanics. Uh and often if I don’t know anything about any of the candidates, I will. Uh but if I have time to research them, but you know when you have hundreds of candidates, it’s it’s it’s kind of hard, like next year the primaries, well actually, the general election but the primaries, all those judges, it’s all it’s very difficult to look up and research every single one of them and you can’t trust the chronicle. The Chronicle is a racist, biased newspaper in my opinion, and has been for years, and it will continue to do so. Uh, you know, it has destroyed the reputation primarily of Hispanics. You know, they viciously attacked Yolanda Navarro Flores, Abel Davila, and Diane Olmos at HCC, and they did that without any proof. They just took the administration’s word. You know, they didn’t do research. Uh, and that’s something I can not forgive. I can never forgive them. I used to call them, and I still do. I often refer to the Chronicle as as the whore. Because they’re depending on how much advertising they get and how much you pay, I think that determines how they’re going to make their decisions. Come on. Mattres Max struck out on his first pitch but hit a home run by giving Mary Lou Redden $50,000. You know, I’m glad he gave Mary Lou Redden $50,000. But why does he have to brag about it? You know, when I give, I don’t tell people. I don’t brag about it. Why does he have to brag? He’s doing it because he wants publicity. He’s doing it because he gets free advertising out of it. You know, he wants people to think, oh, what a great guy he is. Look, he does all these things for the community. I was reading a comment today in the Houston Chronicle, and the guy goes, you know, when he was delivering some furniture to a person who had floated during Harvey, he told the truck to wait until the cameras got there. Now, really? So, again, I read that. I I didn’t see it, so uh, may be true, may not be true, but I wouldn’t put it past them. And I certainly came for giving the way he acted, uh, when he lost that election, while Miller lost to a line of Dalgoles. Come on, sword loosers. Whiny sword losers at that for that pattern. Uh, but again, we need to work with the black community. We need to move forward together because they will use us to put them down. And let me tell you when I was in I went to Oklahoma State University. One of my friends is from Oklahoma. We, you know, think about him, but he was my friend. During the 60s, when all the civil rights riots were occurring in Vietnam, but anyhow, he asked me, if there is a civil war between the whites and the blacks, who will you join, who will you join? I said the blacks. And he goes, why? So, it’s very simple. When you get through with the blacks, we’re next.