The Rio Grande Valley…Waiting for it’s two cents worth…Only the beginning?

The Rio Grande Valley, South Texas. The southernmost border between the United States and Mexico. A collection of small towns and booming urban areas connected by a main roadway that is Expressway 83 which runs east to west along miles and miles of palm trees. An area that is estimated to have close to one million people calling this corner of the world their home. Of that population, 86% are of Hispanic ethnicity.

But despite these statistics, the recent immigration debate on Capitol Hill has done nothing more than cause a ripple in the every day lives of it’s citizens. This is in sharp contrast to the more than five hundred thousand protestors that marched last weekend across the country in cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and Milwaukee. Los Angeles bearing the brunt of the protests at an estimated five hundred thousand people, according to various news sources, and bloggers across the web.

One could argue that places like Los Angeles, and Houston are so highly populated and ethnically diverse that an ethnic group’s call to action takes little more than a comment by a television anchor, or radio disc jockey. After all, if there ever was a hotbed for marches and protests, Los Angeles would be at the very core of such public displays, i.e. Cesar Chavez, 1968 walkouts, etc. But what drives these citizens to take action? What at the very center of their beings compels them to not sit back and take whatever the government has in mind to feed them at any given moment? To hold true to the time honored quote by this country’s forefathers, “Don’t tread on me!”?

This same attitude, this same ideal is being questioned by more than a few people in the Rio Grande Valley. After all, for most of us that got into the business of political blogging, the lack of active citizens in the area is both disheartening and worrisome. Word on the street from John Q. citizen seems to always be, “It doesn’t affect us personally, why bother?” or the ever popular, “the government is going to do what it wants, what can we do about it?”.

It’s this same type of attitude that I have stated before on RGV Politics, that gets the wrong people elected in the first place, and secondly, allows the government to pass questionable laws and policies that will affect us for generations to come. But words like these seem to fall on deaf ears for the most part. Or at the very least there is the general conception that Valley political bloggers, and those that share our views and need for a more pro-active community is nothing more than a case of preaching to the choir.

Things may be changing. According to a report out of the local South Texas newspaper, The Monitor, students from McAllen High School staged a walk-out to protest the illegal immigration debate. Students marched from the high school down Bicentennial Blvd. to the Mexican Consulate in downtown McAllen, about a two mile stretch. Outcry’s by students, according to the report, included, “We are not criminals, we are dreamers”. Should we leave it then to the younger generation of children that will bear the burden of whatever laws Congress decides to pass regarding illegal immigration and border security? Some may say that student walk-outs are wrong, children need to be in class, which is true, I’ll concur that there are better days to stage a protest. Instead of normal weekend activities, they should stage there protests on Saturday afternoons, or Sunday mornings. After all, becoming a more pro-active community should not involve unruly conduct or lawlessness. But I will say, that if these young adults are willing to become more organized in their protests, it would be irresponsible of us as a community not to encourage such activity. Wouldn’t it?

This may be the first step in changing the attitudes that are prevolent in the Rio Grande Valley political and social atmosphere. After all, for too long, the Rio Grande Valley has been built as somewhat of a political and social pergatory. On one end of the spectrum, an unflinching idealism that the government will do what it wants and it’s citizens should have no say. On the other end, there are the beginnings revolving around an undercurrent of political rumbling and frustration that believes that we can no longer sit idly by, and do nothing about it.

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