Part of: Cynthia Valadez oral history (5 objects)
Cynthia Valadez oral history - Cynthia Valadez oral history
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- Q: Resuming again. All right. A: So, again, those strategies of divide
- and conquer, or not be forcing us to look at the small picture, the internal, petty -- pettiness,
- you know, of politics, as opposed to looking at the big picture, and working together to effect
- change, say, “Okay, yes, it’s okay for you to be a Democrat, but we’re still going to work together
- to make this change happen.” This is all the stuff that’s happening as we go through -- as we fight
- for single-member districts. Okay, remember I also became a LULAC-er. Originally, as a Raza Unida
- member, looking at LULAC, we historically viewed it as being kind of a vendido organization.
- It was -- we looked at it as being very assimilationist,
- as pushing for you to become more acculturated,
- as opposed to respecting your identity, your cultural roots.
- And as I grew up and matured, (laughter) you realize, you know what?
- That organization because it spoke to the people that were the founding fathers,
- the people who created that organization. They came back as veterans, and they were accepted.
- They were never accepted by society here. They were never given their rights. And so they
- created this organization where they said they wanted to be -- they were an organization of -- a
- league of United Latin American citizens. And the organization has changed, because they’ve matured.
- They’ve become much more sophisticated, and much more aligned to exactly what we were thinking,
- as we thought we were making change, and being kind-- you know, revolutionaries in our vision.
- Every generation has that. (laughs) Everybody thinks that, oh, they’re doing something wonderful
- and unique. And they may be, for that time period, but the issue of single-member districts
- for the School Board, single-member districts for the City -- the City went through six elections,
- and never had single-member districts until most recently, until 2010.
- Imagine. These were issues that we were fighting for back in the ’70s, okay.
- Now, the School District’s change as to how it conducted itself happened back then,
- okay? Much sooner than the City Council did. But that happened as a result of a lawsuit,
- okay? And LULAC was one of the plaintiffs in that particular lawsuit, with the NAACP,
- because they’re both the oldest civil rights organizations for -- in each community, LULAC
- in the Latino community, in the Chicano community; and NAACP in the African American/black community.
- But those issues remain the same. Now, you have --
- you still have the inequities as being issues that we want to address
- in our communities, on campus, off campus, in the city, in the county,
- in the school district, but they’re -- the goals of achieving equity have yet to be realized.
- Now, we’ve learned we have to look at where the money is;
- what are the policies in place for spending that money;
- who’s getting, who’s the beneficiary of those dollars and those programs that are developed
- by all those systems that we have called out for being institutionally racist, okay? We were doing
- that in the ’60s and the ’70s. We’re still doing that today. It’s systemic racism. It’s inherent in
- the system, because we were, in the United States, built upon a foundation of haves and have-nots,
- okay? You have the people with power who want to hold on to it, and you have the people who
- are excluded from having that little piece of pie, that little piece of the pie, that little
- piece of power, those who were historically marginalized and excluded from that process
- as still wanting to have a piece. So that has never changed. That really hasn’t changed.
- We’re having more and more conversations about it, but in reality the change has not been effected.
- If you were to look at UT right now -- let’s say UT is a system -- or the City of Austin
- as a system, as a ta-- as a governmental jurisdiction, or the County as a governmental
- jurisdiction, or the School District as a governmental jurisdiction,
- we still have segregated schools in our public school system.
- And we fought for desegregation. We fought for single-member districts.
- And yet, within single-member districts we still have neighborhood schools that are only reflective
- of the people who live within that campus, in that neighborhood. And it’s not that they are there
- because they live there. They need to have a place to go. What happens is that in your -- what’s
- viewed as your poorer school districts -- and I mean precincts within the same district -- if
- you have a West Austin, like here in Austin, you have West Austin, which Casis Elementary School;
- you have Austin High School; you have Anderson High School; these places where the children of
- the wealthy and the powerful go to school. They still got the majority, and get the majority of
- resources and dollars expended to them. Their kids are still benefiting from those programs
- and those opportunities. The people who live in the poorer neighborhoods,
- they are still excluded from accessing the same educational opportunities
- in the city. The same thing has to do with economic opportunities and resources, and
- planning, you know, on programs that are developed by the City. We still have problems with that.
- This UT system, you look at your tenured professors, you look at the demographic of
- the state of Texas, you look at the student demographics, it’s still not reflective
- of what it should be in the state. And we still have a problem with getting brown
- tenured professors, or black tenured professors, or women, females. They’ll accept a white woman
- before they’ll ever accept a brown or a black, in my opinion. And so
- that, again -- as many fights and battles as we have been a part of, and continue to be a part of,
- those things still haven’t changed. And so it still is requiring that students on campus,
- just like residents in the city, or in the county, or participants -- residents of the state,
- they still have to maintain some level of community activity in order to effect change.
- And as time has passed, we’ve become a little bit more complacent, I think, as a population.
- And, you know, just struggling, after having struggled for generation and generation and
- generation, so many hundreds of years, you know, we’re becoming more
- part of the establishment. You know, we’re graduating from college. You know, we’re
- graduating -- we’re getting jobs. We’re buying houses. You know, we’re having a -- experiencing
- our little piece of the pie. But in total, things have really not changed, okay? We’re still,
- what, 20 percent of the people -- of the college graduates are Latino, maybe? Okay.
- And that may -- I think that going to college, maybe, but I think that actually graduating from
- college we may down -- be down to eight or 10 percent of the college graduation,
- college graduates in the brown, in the Latino community. And I’m looking at Texas. And so if
- you look at Texas, we’re -- and look at the people who are -- the students who
- are -- make it -- the student population and the school districts for the state of Texas,
- we’re still -- I think we’re pretty much a majority of the student population,
- and yet we’re not going to college. We’re not graduating from college. We’re not
- benefiting from those jobs, from those economic opportunities, from
- owning a piece of the pie, of the economic pie. We still are not there. And so we need to continue to
- fight for that. We need to continue to urge people on campus -- which is -- that’s where
- the -- that’s where it comes from. You know, our high school students and our college students,
- those are the ones that are going to make the difference for us as we enter the twilight of our
- years. Okay, you all are making a difference. You all are the ones that are going to be determining
- for us what our quality of life is going to be for the next 10, 20 years, whether you know it or not.
- The problem is that we’ve screwed things up, (laughter) you know,
- to such an extent that it’s going to be very difficult
- for y’all to make real change in light of the current political environment.
- We just elected -- this United States just elected in November, you know, I would say -- I would dare
- to say the worst person in the world that could be considered President of the United
- States. And whereas we previously would laud the people who held that position or that title,
- as president, you know, would be looked upon as being the most powerful person in the world,
- I think that’s the -- that -- we can now look at that person as being the biggest idiot
- in the world. (laughter) And, you know, you have never seen such divisive, such divisive words,
- such demeaning, hateful words coming from a man, or a person, to hold that highest position in
- the world. You’ve never seen someone say such ugly things, to put people of color, Mexicans,
- you know, Muslims, you know, women, you know, in such a degrading light, okay?
- You all have your work cut out for you, but you can’t sit back and just worry about
- “I need to graduate, I need to get in graduate school, I need to get a good job.”
- It’s got to be a little bit more than that, because I think we’ve lost about 40 to 50 years of
- gains that have been made in the civil rights arena.
- We’ve lost them. We’re going backwards. And so it’s important that as you look to people who are
- active on campus back in the day, in the ’60s and ’70s, you know, you have to understand that we’re
- in much more of crisis -- we’re in much more crisis now than we were back then. I truly believe
- that nothing is going to change. Things are only going to get worse unless you all
- become as active and as organized as you can possibly become.
- You can’t -- we can’t do it alone. We’re dying by the wayside, you know? (laughter) I’ve got
- so many friends that have -- were so instrumental in effecting change
- in the ’60s and ’70s. I’m going to their funerals all the time, all over Texas, in San Antonio,
- and the Valley, and Dallas, and Houston, El Paso. And, you know, all these great people who inspired
- small changes in their communities, that became significant, great changes for their communities,
- they’re dying. And we don’t see a lot of young people standing up and carrying that torch,
- and that’s what we need. We need for you all to stand up and carry that torch,
- because we’re losing the battle, okay, and we can’t afford to lose the war. Okay. We can’t.
- We got rid of redlining in East Austin when they were fighting the war on property.
- But what do we have now? We have gentrification. We have displacement.
- So the people who are actually living here have been kicked out of their homes, because they can’t
- afford to live here in Austin. They can’t. So they have to go to some small bedroom community
- where there are very few resources available to them, especially if they are at the -- like I
- said, the lower rung of the socioeconomic level. If they’re poor, or even if they’re working class,
- they have less and less dollars to spend on providing for their families, and
- fewer and fewer opportunities to improve their condition and their quality of life. So
- what happens to our community as these things continue the way that they’re going?
- This community goes back to what it was before, what we had. You know, we did have redlining.
- We had gentrification. What we had -- Q: And what exactly was redlining,
- exactly? Like, what -- can -- A: Redlining is -- it was a banking term,
- okay? So they would pay -- they would physically put a map on the wall, and if you lived in a poor
- neighborhood that was viewed as black or brown, for all intents and purposes, they’d put a line
- on the map, and we’re not going to spend one dollar, we’re not going to give any loans to
- anybody that -- maybe a homeowner, or wanting to open a business, or continue a business, or need
- help -- anybody that comes and asks us that lives within this boundaries, within these red lines,
- they’re not going to get it. They’re not going to get our help. They’re not going
- to access our money. They may have -- and those may be people who have bank accounts
- with money, their own money, in those banks, when their own sa-- in their checking accounts
- and savings accounts, but they can’t even access their own money. And the banks wouldn’t
- give them the opportunity to improve upon, you know, or use that money to improve, you know,
- their house, you know, or their business, or whatever. So that was the red line, okay? So
- here in East Austin, it was redlined because the banking institutions,
- which were owned and controlled by white, moneyed, powerful people, chose not to
- invest anything in those poverty communities, in those neighborhoods where people of color lived.
- So now, even though they’ve done away with redlining, you know -- that’s the
- Fair Housing Act, okay, fair banking laws -- even though redlining has disappeared,
- we now have displacement and gentrification.
- Not only are you -- (laughs) you don’t -- you may have -- like, your house, you may own your house;
- you may have owned your house for 30 or 40 years, paid off the mortgage a long time ago,
- but if it’s falling apart and you need to have it fixed, and you’re not having access to the money,
- or somebody’s coming in that didn’t live here before and they say, “Oh, man,
- you’re only two minutes away from downtown, so I want” -- your property becomes much more valuable.
- Then you can’t pay the taxes as they increase, because you may be on retirement,
- so you have a fixed income. You can’t pay the increased taxes. What are you going to do? If
- you can’t pay the increased taxes, you’ve got to find money from somewhere. Somebody comes in,
- swoops down, has money, say, “Okay, we’re going to give you X amount of dollars, more
- than you’ve ever seen in your life,” and you take that money and you leave, they get your property.
- They tear down your house, because who cared about the house, the improvement, anyway?
- What’s important and what was valuable was the land, because of the proximity to downtown.
- And you’re out in the streets, okay? You’re in the streets because you can’t afford to buy in Austin.
- You can’t even afford to buy in Travis County. You’ve got to go somewhere else.
- And then that means you have to start over. You have to have a car.
- It takes you longer to get to your job, if you had a job. And it’s not worth
- what it was that you had when you lived in your little old house here in East Austin, okay? So the
- economic situation has gotten worse. The political situation, it may look as if it’s getting better,
- because we may be electing more people of color, but we may be electing more people of color
- who are not able to stand up for what they think is right, okay? Because they’re in -- they’re
- forced to look at people who helped them get into office, like going back -- almost going back to
- the patron system that I was talking about. Q: And what was the patron
- system you -- (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) A: The patron system, okay --
- (laughter) patron system, okay. Let’s -- Q: I’m a little bit familiar with it, but, like,
- can you specify a bit more for somebody who doesn’t know? Because I am a bit familiar with it.
- A: Here in Texas you had -- here in Austin, here in Austin you had the gentlemen’s agreement,
- gentlemen’s agreement, that was put in place by Ed Wendler, which said basically
- you’re going to have -- of all the councilmembers, you’ll have only one person that’s selected to the
- black -- to be the black candidate, and one person to be the brown candidate. Okay? That was the
- original gentlemen’s agreement, and it was a gentlemen’s agreement for
- who would make decisions for the City, who would determine how dollars were spent,
- what programs were developed and put in place. Very powerful. Very powerful. Where is development
- going to occur? Okay, that means where are jobs going to happen, where are people going to be able
- to buy taxes, you know? Who’s going to get the water taps to be able to grow the subdivisions?
- Those are all things that are done by the City Council, okay? But if you only have one black
- and you have one brown in the entire community, or if you look at -- even more than that, look at
- the history of people who get elected to public office, and the City Council, and you find out
- historically 98 percent of all the people ever elected to City Council lived in one ZIP code,
- 78703, okay, 78703, what does that mean to someone who lives in 78702, or 78741, or 78744, or 26,
- all these East Austin or Southeast or Northeast -- 5658 -- ZIP codes? They’ve never had a person
- in the City Council, on the City Council, who represented them. They never had someone
- who would stand up for them, who would want to make changes based on what was important to their
- people and their residents, their constituencies. Well, that came bef-- that was also before City
- Council had implemented single-member districts. That’s why I’m saying it wasn’t until 2010
- that Austin finally implemented a single-member district system, okay? It wasn’t until 2010.
- And so -- I’m sorry. I apologize, but -- so this city council -- you know,
- you have the election. It takes time to get it in place. So you have
- the first City Council. We’re now going to have second set of elections
- for the first Council that has been elected under single-member districts, okay -- and it wasn’t
- 2020; I think it was, like, 2015. And so two years later, we’re in ’17, we’re getting ready for new
- elections. This is only the second time that we’ve had elections in a single-member district
- system of government for the City of Austin, where each district will have -- the people
- who live in that district will have the opportunity to vote for their representative
- to the City Council, okay? So for us here in this area, it’s Pi Renteria, so we know Renteria.
- So he’s going to be up for election, and whenever he’s up that means only the people that live in
- this district can vote for whoever they want. Either they can reelect him, or they can vote for
- someone else who’s going to be a candidate. That person goes to City Hall and acts based on what
- the constituency wants, what his residents need. That only happens if you have a strong person who
- has integrity and is not beholding to someone holding the money to tell him, you know, to let
- them do what is right, as opposed to doing what I want you to do, because I’m going to -- otherwise,
- you’re not going to get any money from me. So the patron would be the person holding the money.
- Generations ago, that patron would decide who the brown candidate was going to be,
- or who the black candidate was going to be. It wasn’t the brown population,
- the brown community coming -- meeting within itself and determining for itself who its
- candidate is going to be. It was the powerful, white, monied interests who said, “No, the brown
- candidate is going to be our -- this candidate. We’re going to pick them up by the bootstraps
- and you’re going to like it. Otherwise, you’re not going to get any money.” Okay? That’s the patron,
- telling you what you can and cannot do. You don’t have the ability to determine for yourself who you
- want. No self-determination. No self-control. You have no control over the situation, the process.
- These people have the money. These people have the power. You don’t. So when you’re talking
- about a patron, this is a patron telling somebody what to do. In the early days,
- they would put the brown candidate there. They would put the black candidate there. And that
- person needed to make sure that if they wanted to get reelected they better keep their people --
- they better have tight reins or control over the people who were going to come to vote,
- over the voters. Because if they did -- didn’t do what the moneyed interests wanted,
- then they weren’t going to get very far. Okay? And they were not going to get reelected.
- So thank God we have single-member districts, because we can now elect for ourselves, determine
- for ourselves who our candidates are going to be and what they’re going to be able to do.
- Right Ana?. Take a break. Q: All right.