SATURDAY | MAY 25, 2013
Home » Entries posted by Michael Seifert | Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network
Two Americans, Art and Making Things Better
I was sitting at the bar in el Hueso del Fraile, a coffee shop in downtown Brownsville in Texas. Laura, the owner, was working with a younger friend of hers putting together sandwiches. My friend from the ACLU was going to show a film (“Two Americans“) later that evening, and the two women were [...] 
I am too old for this, I told myself, as the alarm chimed brightly at 3:25 a.m. I crawled out of bed, pulled on my yellow “Equal Voice” t-shirt, and my gray and green tennis shoes (the ones that make me look like I run faster than my speediest thoughts), and headed out the door. [...]
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As the sun blazed its afternoon blasts of heat down onto a desolate stretch of a west Hidalgo county road, close to fifty Rio Grande Valley residents gathered for a press conference and a prayer vigil. We were standing in the middle of nowhere, at the corner of FM 2221 and Mile 7 road, north [...]
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BROWNSVILLE, Texas- “Eleven year old inhabitant (Paloma Noyola Martínez) of Matamoros garbage dump wins nation’s Mathematics prize.” A friend shared that news item with me via Facebook. As Matamoros is the border “sister city” of Brownsville, I happened to be familiar with that particular garbage dump (there are several in the area).It would take a [...]
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Three weeks ago, the Marguerite Casey Foundation invited 400 people from across the country to travel to Los Angeles. The Foundation had created a space for sharing and collaborating on a national platform for all of those families who have been typically ignored by the political powers that be. For three days, Americans who think [...]
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The month of May is coming to a close, and so too, the school year. J.J. Maldonado is ending his middle school career with a flourish of good grades. This is not unexpected, as he is a good student. The other day, J.J.’s mother was showing off her son’s many awards. Tucked in amongst the [...]
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By ten o’clock in the morning Tuesday, May 1st, 350 people had quietly filed into the McAllen Convention Center. Some had small American flags, others had stickers that proclaimed “Mi Voto es Mi Voz” (my vote is my voice), and some had two or three toddlers in tow. They had come to participate in the [...]
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Compañero. The word means “companion,” and is from the Latin, meaning “the one I share bread with.” A compañero, then, is someone with whom you share the bread of life—be it the bread of the day’s hopes and dreams, struggles and disappointments, or blessings and bounding happiness, which, experienced alone, remain incomplete. Sharing this with [...]
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On a chilly Saturday morning in the late south Texas spring, a couple of hundred members of La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) gathered in their union meeting hall. A group of old timers were churning out conjunto music, with the accordion player getting peoples’ feet tapping; this despite a woeful bass player who kept [...]
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Sara is one of my favorite people. She is probably the favorite person of everyone who has ever known her, being one of those people from whom sparks of life pop off like a Fourth of July sparkler. She has what the social pages might call “an infectious enthusiasm.” She also has a laugh that [...]
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