El Paso Memorial - Slap in the Face

The memorial held last night fell flat, felt hallow, and was missing a lot.

Most of all, it didn't really feel very El Paso to me.

And as if Trump coming to El Paso wasn't enough of a slap in the face to El Pasoans, the people Mayor Dee Margo invited on stage were an even bigger insult to this community.

Let me preface this by saying that I know a lot of people worked really hard to put on the memorial, hundreds volunteered, and some very talented people were involved. I thought the video tribute was great, the guys in uniform all did a great job, the bag pipes, national anthem, and cellist were amazing.

Can't control the weather and the mariachi's did their best to carry on despite what was going on with the weather. I'll get back to that later because it was the most El Paso part of the event I think...

Also, great display of the stars representing the El Paso victims and the circles representing Dayton victims.

But the program seemed anything but El Paso. Almost no one that spoke was actually from El Paso - other that Rick Cabrera who kept giving the most white-bread pronunciations of Spanish names, and Mayor Margo.

Everyone else was from outside El Paso. The governor gave a speech that I thought touched all the bases he meant to - and I was surprised he mentioned racism - but of course no talk about real solutions.

There were three Mexican speakers from various offices in the Mexican government and all three were really great orators. They did so much better than the English-only speakers and they low-key trolled Donald Trump and a lot of Republicans by quoting Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.

Which made watching Lt. Governor Dan Patrick's face while they spoke the highlight of my evening. Mayor Margo's speech was meh.

None of the officers that responded spoke. None of the survivors or families of the victims. No connection to the victims other than the reading of their names.

That bothered me.

They were the reason for the event to begin with. We can hear from elected leaders any day of the week. But sitting there listening to them, there was no call for action. They invoked God a lot, but they never asked God for wisdom in finding a solution to all of this.

And you know who else was annoyed, a lady in the crowd who used a lull in the ceremony to take her 20 seconds to vent about the lack of solutions and the crowd in the section clapped.

Okay, I clapped too.

Sin Vergüenza

But more than anything, I was outraged by the fact that at a memorial meant to help our community heal from a vicious act of racial terrorism had two people who have targeted Latino communities - the architect of a raid in Mississippi the day Trump came to El Paso, and an immigration official that said they can see an MS13 gang member in the eyes of children seeking asylum.

Think I'm making that up? Well, then read here. People like that, in official positions that dehumanize brown people, are part of the problem.

That is who you put on stage at a memorial for El Pasoans trying to come together after being attacked for being brown? That is an absolute insult to our community.

Maybe that is why the crowd cheered so strongly for the Mexican officials and their comments on the Declaration of Independence.

I really wish there was family members on stage. Or survivors. Or Walmart employees.

Words from people that aren't even from El Paso telling us what El Paso strong means wasn't the way to get the healing started in our community.

But again, as El Pasoans we endured. When they started reading the names of the victims, without any prompting, the crows slowly started turning on the lights on their cell phones. Eventually the stadium was full of small lights that couldn't be blown out by El Paso's hard winds.

The weather started making itself felt toward the end, but what's an outdoor event in El Paso without a few of the seasons showing up within an hour or two? And what would it be without a little wind?

But that wind got real bad at the end. They stopped announcing what was happening next and so half the crowd was making their way up the stairs to leave the stadium before the mariachis went on stage to sing, Amor Eterno.

The weather made it impossible and the mics cut out.

Some ladies in my section kept singing, to try to finish the song.

And that ladies and gentlemen, was the most El Paso part of the event.