I don't know who Lisa Mitchell-Bennett is, and I have never met her in any public forum.
An Internet search turn up that she is a Senior Research Associate and Quality Assurance Coordinator for the University of Texas School of Pubic Health.
She wrote a guest editorial in the Brownsville Herald's Life and Arts Section (Page D6) in Sunday's edition where she laid out her vision of what this city needs to put "hope in the headlines."
This is not the first time we've read pieces from well-meaning, well-intentioned people asking us to unite and a la Rodney King urge us plaintively to "just get along."
Ms. Mitchell-Bennett stated, among other suggestions, for us to look past the "grim" headlines in the media and then rattles off the worn cliches that the Chamber of Commerce, the Brownsville Economic Development Council, Mayor Tony Martinez, etc., United Brownsville, and others, repeat endlessly: A "unique and vibrant" bicultural, bilingual community, family traditions, rich historical assets, semi-tropical climate, well, you get it.
All this has resulted, she says, in a population that has outstripped the resources and infrastructure of the area. But there are many things we can do, she adds. If you're a traffic department planner, design a way to make the city more inviting to pedestrians and bicycles.
If you're a wealthy banker, invest in "green" development."
If you're a restaurant owner, offer a healthy-options menu.
Finally, if you are "simply a humble family living in a blighted neighborhood...plant a community garden" with your neighbors.
If you read the entire article (and I suggest you do), she goes on in this vein for the better part of half a page urging us to live healthy and think wisely because "Tu Salud Si Cuenta!"
Those of us who have lived and worked in this town will notice that there are a few components missing from her recipe for a healthy, wealthy community.
Nowhere in this piece is there a call for the politicians wielding power here to work toward the greater good instead of doing the bidding of the powerful influential interests that have kept a veritable iron grip on the economic and political development of this area for the benefit of their class.
She could have started with calling for the dissolution of the shadow government called United Brownsville which is run by an unelected, unaccountable banker named Fred Rusteberg whose IBC bank empire can make you or break you.
That organization has co-opted and corrupted elected representatives from local entities and appointed boards to the degree that every elected board on almost every governmental entity (except for the Cameron County) is chipping in taxpayer money to fund this hidden hand which is really running the show.
Adn can you complain about it or expect the local daily (the watchdog press) to rail against this taxation without representation? Guess what? Lord of the Manor Rusteberg also owns part of that rag.
She doesn't understand that the powers-that-be aren't interested in uplifting the masses from the drudgery of dead-end jobs. The availability of a large pool of low-wage workers is crucial to lure the kind of industries that they have attracted. Titan Tire, Levi's, Marathon, shipwreckers, etc., are but some of their "successes."
The local BEDC has a rich tradition of luring industries that come to town, eat through their tax abatements and incentives, pick up their wares, and leave town. Was that an AeroMexico flight taking off?
Even the mach-ballyhooed SpaceX satellite launch project is suspect. We are already offering billionaire Elon Musk more than $15 million, pristine Boca Chica Beach and our first-born in exchange for him to choose us in the bidding was between this, the poorest community in the country, and places like Florida, Puerto Rico, and Georgia.
And she might ask our enlightened (and beknighted?) Mayor Tony Martinez to stop helping us. His kind of help is going to drive us into the poorhouse.
Under his leadership the city has already issued $11.3 million in certificates of obligation to speculate in downtown real estate to benefit his buddies, is gearing up to add an additional $10 million in COs this year, and has encumbered the ratepayers of the Public Utilities Board to the tune of $200 million to subsidize the construction of a gas-powered power plant through increases in electric, water, and sewer rates well into the year 2016.
That's the Tenaska project, introduced by Senator Eddie Lucio as Texas Senate bill 795. The bill will not only allow the energy company Tenaska to build a power generating facility in Brownsville, it also give the city commission the ability to approve electric, water and wastewater rates until the year 2016.
Electric rates will go up 36 percent and water rates will go up 20 percent, while wastewater rates will go up 6 percent.
It will also give Tenaska the right to pump 3,265,993 tons per year of carbon monoxide a year into the environment and 2,300,000 gallons a day of cooling tower and waste into the Brownsville Ship Channel.
In or estimation, that's a little more hazardous to your health than a plate of gorditas and carnitas de puerco? Even if you took up the marathon, the stuff these guys are going to put in our environment can hardly do a body good.
Nothing personal Lisa, but encouraging us make healthy choices while corruption oozes from the houses of the mighty as they steal out future seems just a bit irrelevant at about this time.
7 comments:
Your Marxist leanings are showing.
I don't know if "feel-good" is the word I'd use to describe this article...
Perhaps entitled southern "plantation mentality," or "well-meaning ignorance" is more like it.
It's the equivalent of saying to a black community, gee you guys, if you'd only stop wearing those crazy clothes and doing your hair in those weird braids, and band together to start a community garden, you would have less crime and unemployment. Yep.
She does make some good points. For example, while handing out candy this Halloween we noticed 90% of people did a "drive thru trick or treat". They cruise the neighborhood in the car, stop their car in front of our house, send the kids two steps out to get candy, drive off. Most of these kids were extremely fat, likely diabetic or pre-diabetic and the parents weren't even getting their little fatties the exercise of walking door to door to ask for candy before stuffing their faces with sugar. So I agree with her particularly about making the city more bicycle friendly and healthy meal options in restaraunts. Diabetes is a genetic problem in this area and there absolutely should be bicycle and walk paths and every possible encouragement to get people off their asses before they develop type II.
But the problems facing this region are myriad. Systemic corruption in the judiciary and in government is a key factor in our economic stagnation. Consider that indicted DA Villalobos made national headlines and a feature on Anderson Cooper on CNN, so yes, a degree of skepticism toward self appointed government shadow entities is warranted. Diabetes, cancer rates which are in all liklihood due to environmental exposures to farming chemicals and pesticides, to estrogen-mimicking laundry detergents and the toxic refuse of the entire country which trickles down into our drinking water before exiting the gulf, public education failures and influx of drugs and crime from Mexico all contribute to the mess.
Blind faith in Imagine Brownsville or a community garden doesn't come close to addressing the underlying issues.
Excellent analysis, JMON. Print this one up and put a copy on every doorstep.
Brownsville had one shot at the big time during the 1920's when real estate was more expensive than Miami. Palm Blvd. was then a lot like Beverly Hills. Drive by and you can still see some of the houses. Came the depression and all was lost.
Where does is start, sir? You know there are two main factions in Brownsville which run everything. One has power in some areas and the other has power in other areas. You also know that when one gets power, they use it to benefit their compadres or they lose that power. At least one side has to start doing things right (and it's not always the side you support), we're never going to get anywhere. Nationally, we saw this with the Tea Party first then with the Occupy movement. One side was villified by both sides and ridiculed and the other raped women, destroyed private property, and crapped on cop cars in public. I'll let you figure out which was which.
Brownsville was a cleaner, better run and more economically viable community when the gringos ran the show. It has been downhill into a morass of poverty, under education, economic stagnation and corruption since the "Hispanics" took control.
We are not a just a suburb of Matamoros with all that brings.
Article in current Houston Chronicle says Brownsville-Harlingen area has now beat out McAllen to be the poorest city in America.
Well, we are finally No. 1. That plus the corruption on this side of the river and the drug thugs on the other side makes this a very inviting place to live and raise your children.
All the gardens and bike paths won't change this hard fact. It would be nice if you could just blame IBC and a hand full of ricos, but that would ignore the very real problems we have down here.
We have an isolated culture, that is neither the United States or Mexico, where folks are illiterate in two languages, and live in festering ignorance of life outside of the Valley. We are doomed to be neither fish (American) nor fowl (Mexican) and live our lives in grinding poverty when we elect only the corrupt and venal to lead us.
Yea, lets here it for No. 1 !!!!!
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