McALLEN, February 11 - Rio Grande Valley immigrant rights and community groups are in Washington, D.C., today urging the Obama administration and Congress to back a policy platform that helps the working poor.
The 11-member Valley delegation is in the nation’s capital as part of the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign. They have been joined by about 150 other community activists from 11 other states around the nation.
La Unión del Pueblo Entero community organizer Martha Sanchez is leading the Valley delegation.
“This is us being the voice of the people,” Sanchez told the Guardian, in an interview at McAllen Miller Airport just before jetting off for Washington. “We will call on the nation’s leaders to adopt the family platform we created last year at our town hall meetings and at the Equal Voice national convention in Birmingham, Alabama.”
Other community and immigrant rights groups participating in the event in Washington include ARISE, Proyecto Azteca, Starr County's START, and the Brownsville Community Health Center.
The Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign was a yearlong campaign in 2008 supported by Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation and its grantees to elevate the voices of America’s families in the public debate.
The platform was developed at the grassroots level with 64 town hall meetings in the poorest communities across America. The first town hall meeting took place under a large tent in San Juan, Texas, exactly one year ago. It drew 400 families. Other town hall meetings were held in Edinburg, McAllen, Rio Grande City and Brownsville. Tens of hundreds of families, many from the Valley’s colonias, were represented.
Similar town hall meetings were held among immigrant communities across the country. The issues raised at the town hall meetings were then discussed at three national conventions, in Birmingham, Alabama, Chicago and Los Angeles last September. Over 30,000 families were represented nationally.
Sanchez said the platform adopted by the Equal Voices campaign identifies key issues affecting working families. It asks that legislators address the needs of families comprehensively rather than turning their needs into single issues to be addressed one by one.
Sanchez said the Valley delegation will meet with U.S. Reps. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, as well as with U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and John Cornyn, R-Texas.
“Members of LUPE will bring up the issue of affordable housing in the Valley. Money appropriated for the border fence took away from housing in the region,” Sanchez said.
Luz Vega-Marquis, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, said the families in Washington will give their perspective on what an economic stimulus package that puts families first should look like and put forth their vision for a national family agenda that responds to the essential needs of America’s families.
“Piecemeal solutions have failed families,” Vega-Marquis said. “When 30,000 families from across the country come together and call for the adoption of a national family platform – we as a nation need to listen. On February 11, families will travel across the country not to ask for a bailout but to ask that the nation adopt a national family platform that puts the needs of families first.”
