El Paso Steps Up for Christmas

Its a pretty contentious time politically in El Paso right now. Trump is driving us all crazy, the crazies are mad because they got their collective butts kicked in the municipal election by the popular kids, the Republicans lost the only seats they still held in El Paso County, there is an unexpected state legislature seat that suddenly opened up and EPISD is in the middle of a very contentious year.

For those of you that watch Game of Thrones, you will get this reference, Winter is Here.

But as good as we are at fighting with one another many people across political factions in El Paso have come together and sprang into action to help the immigrants that Trump dumped into the streets.

So shout out to several people out there like Dylan Corbett from the Hope Border Institute who is working his tail off, Ruben Garcia of Annunciation House, Bob Moore and Kate Gannon for making sure the world knows this is happening and doing it from the perspective of people who actually know the border, Andra Litton, Steve Zimmerman and a host of other media folks, the Diocese of El Paso, former City Rep Lily Limón and her husband Joe and a host of other church folk that are feeding people, Congressman O'Rourke, Congresswoman-Elect Escobar, and a bunch of people that are just too numerous to mention. I know I've unintentionally left out some folks, for which I apologize.

Seriously wondering where alleged pro-lifers like former congressional candidates Rick Seeberger and Sam Williams are in all of this, but that is a post for another day.

But I'm gonna give a shout-out to someone I don't normally heap a lot of praise on...EPISD Superintendent Juan Cabrera.

State Board of Education Member Georgina Perez lives in Tornillo and is the only other elected official other than Commissioner Vince Perez that has publicly called for El Paso to not participate in Trump's immigration policies by calling for an end to the jail contract that makes El Paso the number 1 incarcerator of undocumented immigrants in the country. So she's been at the front of this battle since it started.

So when all this stuff happened Member Perez got on the phone and asked Cabrera to open up the gyms, give access to gym showers, and wrestling mats in case they can't get cots. School is out right now anyway.

Apparently that is in the works and school gyms are places that can house a lot of people for a short period of time. They also have cafeterias.

That wouldn't have happened if Cabrera didn't give the okay for it. Shoutout to Georgina Perez for pushing the idea and Cabrera deserves credit for doing so. He could've easily just looked the other way. And he's like going to have to deal with some push-back from EPISD Board President Trent Hatch who is a Republican and likely opposed to helping immigrants.