22 Sides
22 Sides is a podcast that will let you get to know some fascinating people and keep up with many things that are happening in and around the Houston area.
22 Sides
Dr. Maria Gonzalez's Journey Through Academia and Activism
Dr. Maria Gonzalez takes us on a captivating journey from her childhood in El Paso to becoming a pioneering academic and political activist in Houston. Growing up in a traditional Mexican-American family with undiagnosed dyslexia, she couldn't read until age nine and was relegated to "slow classes." Yet this early struggle with educational inequality shaped her future path toward revolutionary change.
Her story unfolds with delightful details— as she navigated academia, Gonzalez made a bold decision that altered her trajectory: rather than studying canonized white male authors, she created an entirely new field focusing on Mexican-American literature, particularly by women writers.
Moving to Houston in 1991, Gonzalez arrived at a pivotal political moment. When anti-choice activists threatened to close women's health clinics during the 1992 Republican Convention, she joined a coalition of 4,000-5,000 volunteers who successfully protected these essential services. This experience cemented her commitment to progressive politics and community organization.
Throughout our conversation, Gonzalez offers profound insights on political engagement, voter participation, and the long struggle for equality. She discusses the gradual "socialization" of LGBTQ+ acceptance versus the need for permanent legal protections, advocating for constitutional amendments at both state and federal levels. Her practical wisdom on grassroots organizing—from block walking to engaging reluctant voters—provides valuable guidance for anyone interested in political action.
Gonzalez reminds us that "politics is not a spectator sport" and emphasizes the importance of planning for decades, not just the next election cycle. Her life embodies the transformative potential of education and activism, demonstrating how personal experience can fuel academic innovation and create meaningful social change.
We hope you will listen often.
For more information, visit our website 22sides.com
Wait a minute. Who said this one was on me?
Maria:Me Go for it.
Alexis:Oh, okay, see, that's the problem when you know this person's in charge. Hi, I'm Alexis Melvin. I'm here with Robin.
Maria:And I'm Maria Gonzalez.
Alexis:Oh, that's not the way I was told to say your name, maria.
Maria:Gonzalez.
Alexis:No, not even that way. I was told to say your name, reverend Doctor all the titles lead with the titles. Maria. Oh gosh, I forget your middle Christina.
Alexis:Reverend Dr Maria Carmen Gonzalez okay, there we go now we got the real name, because a long time ago Mr West told me I had to use your entire name oh yes, mr nathaniel, where I forget his middle name, west jr yeah, I was trying to remember, but but at any rate, now there's a character oh yes that's an understatement we have a lot of people in our community and we're glad to have you here today, maria.
Maria:There's plenty of dancing we can do in the conversation, anywhere from books you've put out to political seats you hold to your first marriage that you officiated my first marriage that I officiated.
Maria:That's right.
Alexis:So what did you think about officiating a marriage?
Maria:I found it a little disconcerting, a little daunting. I never thought I would ever be officiating a wedding. I mean in terms of the philosophical, political persuasion. One of the wonderful things that I thought about being a lesbian when I, when I first came out, was I never had to worry about getting married.
Maria:Was that a concern You're? You're like, uh, I just want to sidestep that.
Maria:I have a challenge with commitment issues.
Maria:Well, I didn't know we were putting her in the hot seat. Oh, I did. Oh, okay, this was one of my three topics that I was planning.
Alexis:You were like, let's, we just got there first. I was going to make it third, but whatever.
Maria:That's fair. Okay, we can go.
Maria:Okay, we can talk about commitment issues, that is. You know, everyone is different. Absolutely. And one of the things that I was always fascinated by as a child was I didn't understand the society I was born into.
Maria:And how old are you at this point, at that point Four, uh-huh, yeah, I mean I'll start with this story. My parents, being traditional Catholic Latinos in El Paso, texas, pierced my ears within weeks of birth. Oh, yeah, for sure. And, as I explained to my students, why do you think is that that is such an obvious practice within the latino community? And I asked a lot of my students who are latino do you know why this happens? And most of them are tradition.
Maria:Yeah, and, as I point out, it is, in fact, the dramatic preoccupation with gender identity. Okay, when you look at a baby, you cannot tell its gender, and the phobia within a binary invested society that's patriarchal and sexist and racist, and all that is to reinforce, as quickly as possible, the rules that will be guiding that society, yeah, the rules that will be guiding that society, and Latinas especially are very worried about. Look, if you don't start treating them like a boy or a girl as early as possible, something awful might happen. Mm-hmm, they'll grow up to be me, wow, wow. And so the story my parents. I asked my parents when I was much older did you guys pierce my ears? And they said yes, we did. And I said they're not pierced, and they said they were.
Maria:You were like that's what happened.
Maria:I knew that was what caused it what caused it and they, they my mother explained to me that when I was a baby months old, they put in the studs and consistently a stud would be missing oh, you pulled them out.
Maria:I, how could I?
Maria:I was months old yeah, yeah, but even then I was invested.
Maria:So they just gave up because I kept losing one, wow, wow.
Maria:I was already resistant to the enforced identity I was expected to mimic.
Maria:How grown are you now for the listeners?
Maria:I'm now 66 years old. So 66 years ago, end of May, I was born into a very traditional Catholic Mexican-American family that in many ways was somewhat idealistic. My parents loved each other, they loved their children. I was the second of four children, three brothers and myself, and they raised us to reproduce their world, which had kept them safe, created community. Our best friends and their best friends were their brothers and sisters and hence my cousins became the children I grew up with. So we were fairly much a close family. In fact, very common to Latino families is we were very clannish. It was sort of hard to break in into the community, somewhat distrustful. It was a way that in many ways the working class community protects itself. It creates its own clan, protects its. It's in the individuals in it. Any challenges, you could always count on each other, distrustful of outsiders.
Maria:but once in you were in wow, and how do you feel comfortable now in your identity in any sort of ways that you want to share?
Maria:that history gave me a foundation, a security, a space, um, especially because as a child I had really obvious learning disabilities. I wasn't able to read until I was nine. I could barely talk, I stuttered, and I was dealing with two languages. That's hard. So you stuttered in both languages and originally born into the Spanish language, and just trying to learn until I went to school. Spanish was a struggle. Once I got into school, english became the next struggle, but either language it was like a wall. I could not communicate and I felt like I knew what was going on, just couldn't communicate back and forth.
Maria:They immediately put me in what was euphemistically known in those days, the slow classes. I was a slow child. My parents were worried that I was going to be someone they would need to take care of all their lives and did everything they could to protect me from a society that at that point in time didn't understand dyslexia, which is what I had, or fully the linguistic limitations. The good thing was, head Start got invented, thank you, lyndon Johnson and I had access to early education and they immediately put me in speech therapy, which I had at least a couple of years, and it was that one-on-one education that began the process of unraveling things for me.
Maria:I knew what was going on. I knew I was even in first grade, that I was being tracked for those students who have learning disabilities in those classes with learning disabilities. I just couldn't break through and say, yeah, okay, but I understand what's going on. And finally it was sort of strange. It was like a switch went off and I actually was able to read. It took me a lot longer to be able to write.
Maria:And for those that don't know your resume, you have never left academia.
Maria:No, I never did, but like in the best way, right?
Maria:So somewhere along the line a switch came on and you were like I'm a lifer.
Maria:That's right. The switch came on. I said I'm staying in this world.
Alexis:I keep thinking about where.
Maria:I should just sleep here. Yeah, where this all occurred.
Alexis:And you know my view would be. You did all of this while living in a Texas frontier town.
Maria:El Paso Texas.
Alexis:El Paso Exactly, which basically is a frontier town anywhere you look at, and that's a big one.
Maria:It's out there in the middle of nowhere. If any of you remember the original Star Wars, luke Skywalker is on that desert planet and he's looking up into the universe where everything is happening. That was me, I felt like I was on when I saw that I knew exactly what he felt like. Like my people in the desert. Yeah, I was in the desert cutting the world. The whole world was happening a thousand miles away in Los Angeles, because that's where we got our cable TV. It was from.
Maria:LA in the 60s and 70s and everything was happening out there Got to go west, and that's what I assumed I'd be doing I'd be going off to school out west. Where did you go to school?
Alexis:San Antonio well, east, sort of west-ish but more east.
Maria:I desperately, you know in junior it was like down I-10 fifth grade, sixth grade, I'm finally coming into my own intellectually.
Maria:I'm reading, I'm writing. They're moving me into the academic track, which means students that might go to college, and in those days they tracked students into who's going to be going to college and who's not and they'd have these sections, class sections. Different teachers got different students and by middle school it was very clear that I was heading the academic track and I told my parents you know, I want to grow up. Well, actually, initially I told my dad I want to be a pirate. Yeah, and he asked me why do you want to be a pirate? And I said because I want to rape and plunder.
Maria:Wow, and then he asked me he's like this for my daughter? Yeah, I have three boys.
Maria:And he asked me do you know?
Maria:what that is. I said no, but it sounds like a lot of fun.
Alexis:That's a good parent question like how much do you know about this? First, before we get into it, before I start explaining he just shook his head and walked away but he went to talk to your mom. Should we let them watch?
Maria:television. They, they patrolled, they policed television in my household and you could, in those days you had one little black and white. Yeah, you could control that and and you know, it was el paso it was always blue sky, so they just threw us out. So the television. You know, we were lucky if we got to watch Bozo in the afternoon, or Dark Shadows was a big fight because it came on at the same time as Bozo.
Alexis:Okay, oh, Dark Shadows had to be the winner there, but not necessarily.
Maria:And my parents decided that the youngest had the right to the television, so we had to watch Bozo and miss out on Dark.
Maria:Saddles. Whoa whoa Got to build some alliances.
Maria:Ah, that's scary, but no, it really was in middle school that I discovered I was going to do the academic track of some sort and decided okay, I'm going to be a lawyer. I said I'm going to go to law school junior high.
Alexis:So let's say we went from pirate to lawyer.
Maria:Yeah, pirate to lawyer, they're about the same.
Alexis:Yeah, close, a lot of similarities there.
Maria:And then, once again, my father asked me so why do you want to be a lawyer? And I said so I could become a Texas politician, Mm-hmm.
Alexis:Oh, now we're definitely going the pirate route.
Maria:I'll tell you the look on my father's face was I want to become a serial killer or something. Wow, the way he looked at me.
Alexis:It's about the same.
Maria:I mean, it was pretty frightening. Wow, what did your dad do? He walked away again. No, no, no, no, no, I mean for working. What did he do? Oh, my father was in construction. Oh, okay, he put down a tile.
Maria:Okay, he spent 40 years of his life on his knees. That's a lot, and that was something when, any time and he never had to do this with me when my brothers were in junior or were in high school and say I don't want to go to school anymore, he'd say okay, you're coming with me for the day. Yeah, and that would just take one ride, and that was that. Wow, and they were okay. I guess I'm finishing high school.
Maria:Because he basically told them you don't finish high school. This is the work you're going to be doing, hey hey, yeah yeah, you don't want to be doing that.
Maria:I think that's very different than what people do today. They say you know the world is so big once you finish high school. There's so much you know. College, college, college, college, college. That'll get you anything you know. But show them what it is to be working labor, some jobs. If you don't have degrees, if you don't have a GED Like that's hard you don't finish that's hard.
Alexis:Yeah, the other thing is, some people might decide they prefer that.
Maria:Sure, yeah Well, and in fact you can tell there are certain individuals, that's what they love doing.
Alexis:Exactly, and we need people to do that.
Maria:I'll tell you gifted plumbers and carpenters. They save us and I'd rather have them around especially during hurricane season.
Maria:Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So no, I mean, so you're going towards law.
Maria:I was going towards law and I told my parents I wanted to go study law. They said, okay, great. So of course it's like junior year and I'm applying to schools and they're going. University of Texas at El Paso is a fine school, which it is I'm out of El Paso.
Maria:I'm trying to get out. I'm trying to get out, so I'm sending out. I am trying to get into Stanford. That's where I want to go. My parents said no. They basically told me you're going to spend, you have to go to UTEP, and afterwards you can go anywhere you want, but you have to go to UTEP. So of course I go to UTEP. I graduate Friday evening in June and that Monday, first day at UTEP taking college courses, and never stopped being in college after that 1978.
Maria:What was the moment where you did decide you wanted to stay there? In school. In university Because you're a professor.
Maria:Yeah, it was a couple of years later. What happened was I spent my first full year at UTEP and my brother had heard about a social work school in San Antonio called Our Lady of the Lake. I said great. And I told him, check it out. And he checked it out, got excited about it because he was interested in this stuff. So the recruiters come and we introduce them to our parents and say hey, our lady leg it's in San Antonio and if Hector goes, I can go with him.
Maria:Right, mom and pop. Basically, yep, I was able to escape El Paso and go off to school, but I had to take my brother with me.
Maria:Our Lady of the Lake alright.
Maria:Historically it was a women's college. It's part of the Catholic Consortium of Colleges in San Antonio, which includes St Mary's and, incarnate Word, st Philip's. I believe Our Lady Lake was perfect for both my brother and I, nice, and it's, for the same reason, female to male ratio.
Maria:Six to reason Female to male ratio. You're like a big grin on your face, yeah.
Maria:Six to one Female six, Male one, and we were both happy I was going to say your brother was quite happy, you were quite happy.
Alexis:I get it.
Maria:I was very happy. Good, it was quite an experience. The thing was it was a school of 1,800 at it's now 3000. It was a school where you know we lived in the dorms and, honest, if anybody is in san antonio, stop by and take a look at our lady lake. It's the only gothic castle in the state of Texas.
Maria:Interesting.
Maria:And when I first saw it I was amazed. I said, because it's castles. I said all that's missing are the gargoyles. And then I was introduced to the nuns. Congregation of divine providence.
Maria:You were telling an interesting story recently, this weekend, how you went from being a student basically overseen by the nuns and then somehow you were overseeing the nuns. How did this?
Maria:work out Well at Our. Lady Lake. One of the ways I was able to put myself to get both my BA and MA there was. I ran the dorms, oh, okay.
Maria:At the MA level I became a hall director. Basically I ran one of the dorms and that dorm in the summer would empty out Providence Hall and the nuns would move in for the summer because they'd come in for the summer for seminars and community and they would also bring in what are known as affiliates, women who are interested in possibly becoming a nun. And these women, these nuns. Congregation of Divine Providence had one of their schools in El Paso, in fact a block from my house. My parents would say if we did not behave in public school we would be pulled out and sent to the Catholic school, which meant we always behaved. No way were we going to go to Catholic school. Yeah, we could avoid it, but we were sent to St Pius to do our indoctrination in Catholicism, catholic dogma, catechism, and it was a congregation of Divine Providence who ran it, affiliated with Our Lady Lake, which was their university.
Maria:And these women terrorized me. I mean the story of Catholicism is pretty scary and you know you're punished for all kinds of things and sin, introduction to sin, and how horrible it is. I'm like, wow, I just found the whole thing very confusing, very frightening. Found the whole thing very confusing, very frightening, and I wasn't exactly sure why my parents insisted we had to do this right other than we want you to be good catholics and believe in god. Well, I never did believe in god. I always questioned that. My mother was always. She explained to me once I was more upset about you not believing in God than you being a lesbian, but of course she was still upset about me there was a first step and then the second step.
Maria:Yeah, she kept thinking that you know, the thing about me being a lesbian is she could end up in purgatory, or I would end up in purgatory and she could pray me out, which was somehow the way the Catholic Church had been explained to her. And the thing about someone who did not believe in God is that you can't pray them out of purgatory.
Maria:She sounded like she cared.
Maria:So the congregation in Divine Providence were the individuals who trained me, indoctrinated me into Catholicism. I found it fascinating, intellectually Christianity. I found it fascinating, intellectually Christianity. I found that fascinating and did my studies.
Maria:Our Lady of the Lake I don't know if it still has that curriculum, but it had a traditional curriculum of two years of theology, two years of philosophy as part of its general requirements. So of course, I studied theology and philosophy and I was actually one of the few students who got serious enough and actually paid enough attention that I was actually asking the nuns who taught these courses for more information, developing my interest in really philosophy, which is the way I ended up looking at theology. It was a fairly narrow definition of, of philosophy, which and and both of them have the same thing, it's all the same thing. It's all about philosophy is the simple question who am I? Subjectivity, who we are and how we understand ourselves.
Maria:And you know, I got an excellent grounding in an introduction to both theology and philosophy, ended up doing a little more work in philosophy so that when I went off to Ohio State to get the PhD I wasn't as lost because the field had started to study something known as theory, which is basically the theoretical underpinnings of Western thought, and with my classical training in theology and philosophy, I understood where the current theoretical directions were responding to. And so when we were doing the French Feminist or the psychoanalysis or deconstruction Marxism, all these isms, I'd already understood the foundations that they were pushing against. And so I was in shock by it, as some of my colleagues at Ohio State, shocked by it, as some of my colleagues at Ohio State. But it really was Our Lady of the Lake that got me interested in the academy. It was an exciting intellectual space where the nuns themselves had PhDs in whatever field they were teaching, and I had never contemplated such a thing. They were teaching and I had never contemplated such a thing I had assumed I'd go on to study law.
Maria:In fact I kept that as the expectation. I became an English major, a minor in political science at UTEP. Kept it when I transferred to Arleda Lake At UTEP. Kept it when I transferred to Our Lady Lake. But as I got to know these nuns on a personal basis because I was running their dorm, they were living in my dorm. I talked to them about their own educational background and it was sort of fun that a few of the nuns that had terrorized me as a child were still in these dorms and now I was handing them a key to their room laying down the rules for them I was going to say maybe handing them a key if they behave right.
Maria:Well, I tell earlier for you.
Alexis:I remember how.
Maria:I'll tell you, running a dorm is an interesting experience and a lot of my skills organizational skills came from such a thing. It was responding to crisis. It was checking to make sure that everybody was okay. There was always some crazy thing happening. There was always some crazy thing happening, and one of the things about El Paso is that it naturally has lithium in the water. It is one of the few cities with the highest percentage of naturally occurring lithium.
Maria:What are the results of that? For those of us that don't know, they're chilled.
Maria:People in El Paso are totally chilled, mentally chilled, yeah, wow.
Alexis:It may not fix what's bothering you, but you don't care. Yeah, you're just chilled about it. Yeah, wow, people go to Bimini to bathe in the springs on Bimini because they're high lithium. High lithium, yeah, and it makes them feel good.
Maria:Wow, everyone's kind of A-OK, ok. So I had no idea what mental health crisis is really about until San Antoniotonio. Both my brother and I were rather surprised we were very chilled out.
Maria:Yeah, we were chilled. Wow, that's more than a culture shock of going to college.
Maria:That's like, yeah, that's, that's wow yeah, it really is, because because for the both of us, my brother ended up getting a master's in social work, so that discovery for us was really quite awakening and we were now in a place where individuals did have mental challenges that were obvious, as opposed to suddenly chilled about it.
Alexis:I can see it all now. The big thing is okay. The prescription is you need to go spend two months in El Paso and don't drink bottled water.
Maria:And don't drink bottled water. Make sure you get the well water. It just occurs the well water comes out. You get the well water in the winter. But yeah, our Lady of the Lake and San Antonio was finally the big city. The real stuff was happening there and the thing about the school was that it was right on the bus line that had a direct shot to downtown and the Riverwalk. Nice In the party area.
Maria:Okay, party in San Antonio.
Maria:Yeah, partying in San Antonio was so much fun. The thing about El Paso is I could not visit the one gay bar I knew of because I might see a relative or a family friend and they would think on me. So I was closeted in El Paso and I was partially closeted in San Antonio. I was on scholarship, sure. Sure. You know I'm going to come out.
Maria:Yeah, cause if you came out, you could lose your scholarship. You could lose a scholarship.
Maria:Yeah, Um, but the bottoms is still there in San Antonio, One of the oldest bars. It's still there, Wow, Uh. I remember hanging out there dancing with friends I made like any closeted lesbian. My lesbian friends were. I met them at the bar bar and I was very careful of those who were also heading to the bar. And we're at our lady lake. We were all real careful about that because you know you couldn't be seeing right and out lesbian. Just it just wasn't done did not mean that you weren't kissing girls in the dorm, uh-huh uh-huh, okay, okay, including the future nuns, the affiliates okay, well, they weren't nuns yet.
Maria:I mean, it's okay, right, they're not nuns yet at all they're not committed.
Alexis:They're just checking it out, so you can get it and and you know, and if they don't experience things, how can they really decide that?
Maria:things. How can they really decide? That's right, how can they really decide? Heck, I used to play strip poker with the affiliates. There you go, come on, we'd have beer. There'd be nothing. I mean, there'd be nothing on television. Yeah, nothing to do. You'd just lock the door to the lounge and you'd start playing.
Alexis:The real question is were you good at it?
Maria:Did I lose on purpose?
Alexis:That was the question Sometimes.
Maria:It depended on who I was playing with Were they losing on purpose Maybe Maybe they could have been yeah. There are some really bad poker players in that dorm. Maybe Could have been. Yeah, yeah, there are some really bad poker players in that dorm, maybe Among those affiliates. But yeah, it was at Our Lady of the Lake that I decided. I kept telling my parents that I would go to law school and decided I'd get the master's at Our Lady of the Lake.
Maria:What did Ohio hold for you?
Maria:Fund, Funds, funds, guaranteed funds. I had applied to UT, all these other schools and UT had offered me zip in financial support. Ohio State guaranteed five years of financial support plus priority summer support, which meant they were paying for the education. Wow, that's amazing. Oh yeah, I mean, that's a deal To get a PhD. You want them to pay you. Now, admittedly, they exploit I mean you become a teaching assistant, they pay you.
Maria:And at this point you're teaching what English?
Maria:So it's in English. So I end up at Ohio State because they recruited. The thing about Ohio State back in the 80s and lots of schools in the Midwest still today In fact I sense that it's out to the Midwest, to the Big Ten schools is they want more diversity. But it's pretty white and it's sort of black and white and so they come into places like Texas and New Mexico, arizona, to recruit. They also come down into the South to recruit African-American community to find out if they can basically just poach for diversity.
Maria:This was in the 80s, Everybody was trying to diversify their student body. I'm a proud product of affirmative action. Thank you, Lyndon Johnson. Thank you Supreme Court, Thank you anybody, Thank you Great Society. I am a proud product of the Great Society. Head start, Affirmative action. Head Start, Affirmative Action. The 1972 Title IX I think it's Title.
Maria:IX yeah, equal access for males and females to education, because pre-1972, and thank you, richard Nixon Title IX was about dismantling quotas and restrictions to law school, engineering, med school, which they were allowed to do no matter what your scores were. If you were female, they could keep you out of those programs. That changed in 1972. Anyway.
Alexis:I'll just comment Robin's texting.
Maria:So she's gone for practical purposes. I'm listening.
Alexis:Yeah, okay. So you say Anyway.
Maria:But Ohio State was looking for diversity. I was a top student at a small school. I was a top student at this small school in English, and Ohio State had one of the largest English departments and they were ready to fund me and guarantee my education. And I said, okay, I'm out of here. At that point I finally had to explain to my parents that I was not going to get a legal degree. I had told them that I would get one after I got my master's in English, but at that point.
Alexis:You didn't say how far after no.
Maria:Come on, I mean, at this point were they relieved or were they like, well, we kind of figured that out. They didn't understand.
Maria:First of all, they didn't know what I was off to go do. What is a PhD in English Right, and that is a good question. Fair. You know what?
Alexis:I mean. And the real question is what do you do other? Than teach Record human thought.
Maria:Disseminate human thought.
Alexis:Explain human thought to others. No, that doesn't work.
Maria:I don't think they're explainable. My, my, my parents never quite understood exactly what I did. Oh, they did understand the teaching part, that I was teaching, that I was going to be teaching in colleges and that they got well, they went from maybe having to oversee your care because school wasn't going so well to you overseeing students care.
Maria:That's got to be something to. Oh, they were, you know really understand yeah I think you're probably underselling it, but you know you're. You're pretty accomplished. Did they ever get to see the book that you were in or the book?
Maria:that you wrote. Yeah, they did. Um. So far my first book. I'm working on the second. I have an edited collection and some other publications, but the first book, which was an extension and expansion of my dissertation, is called Contemporary Mexican-American Women Writers Toward a F identity and, like most individuals trained in a specialized field, I was set up to be a certain kind of scholar, but by happenstance, in the historical moment, I got to be the kind of scholar that really gave me a much broader world. I was basically trained to go teach American literature and teach traditional New England white male writers Blah, blah blah.
Maria:I was trained to be. At what point were you like? No, it was pretty late in my training. Okay, I'll tell you.
Alexis:Was there any other kind of training at that point in time?
Maria:It wasn't.
Alexis:I know it was the 80s.
Maria:It was pretty narrow and they had worked very hard. I did some specialized work in Mark Twain at the MA level and ended up specializing in Henry James. I mean, who could be whiter and more privileged and more cisgendered? He was queer, but that we're not and I was going to do a dissertation on that. I'd gone through the coursework and was all set. I just couldn't write it. And when I couldn't write it and sort of it was explained to me by my future dissertation director you're an activist and you're interested in this and it was the works of, at that point in time, recently published chicano writers I said yeah, you're right, this is what I want to do.
Maria:I ended up losing the original dissertation committee because they didn't want to work with me. Yeah, you were doing something different. I was doing something radically different and in fact my dissertation in English at Ohio State was the first one to be not on a canonized author and not on a black author. It was the first one to finally break out of that. And now Ohio State has a really strong Latin literary specialization there.
Maria:What does it feel like to be someone who's one of the firsts? It's freeing, okay, because some people might guess what it's like, but since you've actually done it, it's a good thing to highlight.
Maria:It's a good thing to highlight. The thing about more traditional fields is that you're already responding to eminent scholars, many of them still living, many of them already at the institutions you're at or dealing with. And so your contribution is going to be a footnote. But when you're creating a whole new field, you get to invent it. You get to decide what the parameters were. And that was a fun part is I got to decide which authors we were going to look at and why we would look at them.
Maria:I mean, that's pretty powerful.
Maria:And that's the deal. And that's the deal. One of the reasons there are a lot of reasons why I ended up in Houston, at the University of Houston. The fundamental one was because Houston already was doing the kind of work I wanted to be doing.
Maria:In the Latin community or in a certain community In everything Okay, because I mean, there's a lot of history in that. Here too, that was being documented at the time.
Maria:Yeah, I was in Columbus, ohio, getting offers from University of Hartford, cal State, haywood it's a different name now Arizona State, which was really interesting. Arizona State and, yeah, and University of Houston, and those were the four that had really narrowed me down and really were trying to get me to go there.
Maria:So what year was this Like? What was the draw? 91. 91, okay.
Maria:January of 91. Okay, and, and Hartford worked the hardest and offered the most, but two feet of snow and ice. I'd already done my seven years. We did say you were from Ohio. You did the Ohio State thing I already did.
Maria:Ohio.
Maria:You didn't need to find out.
Alexis:It's like I keep telling people you know, I was at Purdue for several years. I don't need to find snow again. Ever again, Ever again.
Maria:That's right, and six months of gray clouds, that's hard. Oh my God. I never understood cabin fever until I was in it. Yeah, my first winter. I just had no idea and there was just no way.
Maria:Okay, so you're coming here in 91. It's U of H, it's Houston.
Maria:It's a big city. That was the other thing.
Maria:Yeah, bigger, right Giant city Okay. Yeah, way bigger, okay yeah.
Maria:Hartford no, yeah, I needed a large city.
Maria:All right, with the way you're growing at this point, are you still in the closet?
Maria:you're not no, I'm totally like, I was totally out here this whole closet has been glass all the time.
Maria:I'm just gonna work the window, okay, yeah, yeah, I know you're ready to roll lady the lake.
Maria:Okay, by by the end there everybody sort of knew yeah they know, I know in fact I'll tell you a story.
Maria:When I was my first year in 79, 80, in san antonio, I, I joined some friends at the, the bottoms the bar bar, and when we were coming out we got jumped, okay, and I, you know, we, the three of us, just sort of scattered. I started to run and I, I tripped and fell and I went and the guy had followed me and I covered my face, I got kicked in the side and then either a car or something happened that he ran off okay, he, he got spooked yeah.
Maria:Yeah, anyway, I was able to get up, and more than anything else, I just wanted to protect my glasses. Sure.
Maria:But I had a really ugly bruise on my right side and I was just relieved that I could wear long sleeves because I had torn up my elbows and my knees and this ugly bruise. But I could not tell anybody when I got back to the dorm what had happened. Yeah, and because I was afraid of losing the scholarship, I was afraid of coming out. So I just took a lot of aspirin, I think, and just kind of holed up for that weekend. But I was pretty tender for a couple of weeks.
Alexis:Quick pause for a non-comment. My air conditioning people are on their way, so when they get here I'll sort of take care of that. Okay, Because cooling in Houston is a big priority.
Maria:That's important, that is the priority, especially in the summer. Yes, so mine was. There were certain individuals I was out to at Our Lady Lake and others I was not. But by the time I was finishing up, everyone sort of knew. Yeah, it was one of those open secret things. Yeah, at Ohio State I entered immediately, got involved with as much of the lesbian community as I could. Yeah, I want to say why I ended up in Houston, because that's part of the political.
Maria:Thing.
Maria:I think that's where we were.
Alexis:How to phrase it. That's also the big question people have. Why Houston? Why?
Maria:Houston, we'll start it from there. Okay, ready.
Alexis:He's going to be back and forth, but that's okay, I'm ready.
Maria:We can cut that out. We'll come back to that.
Maria:No Houston.
Alexis:So this is the question of why did you end up in Houston? So far, we've done Ohio State, we've done San Antonio El Paso.
Maria:Okay, a chunk of it is the opportunities were out here and the options I had were places that weren't as large or as vibrant. But here's the other thing In terms of my own career, I knew when I was being interviewed by the dean who knew the authors I was working with In fact, one of the authors was a visiting prof in the theater department. I mean, I wasn't talking to people who were strangers to the field and that made me comfortable and the department committed to the complexity of the field I wanted to invent. Basically, we already had some Mexican-American literature literature, but I really wanted to expand it out and I wanted to include the queerness of it, and they were open to that. That's wonderful. So they wanted to hire a good feminist, but more than anything else, they wanted to hire the specialist in mexican american literature in houston in 91 91. And that's because 91, the thing about Houston which is really interesting is that it's always reinventing itself. It's always a new city. It's not. It's not. It's not what it was 10 years ago.
Alexis:The good news and bad news is it's always reinventing itself.
Maria:It's always reinventing itself and it's a large city and it is just open to everyone Because it needs everyone, and the campus is that way and the city is that way and that's the kind of space I wanted. I would have loved to end up, you know more, as a nostalgic concept of a prof at a small college in a small town, but I could not have fit in such a space.
Maria:I don't think so I mean Chip's image I kind of get, but no, so I get here in 91, and it's a really interesting historical moment for Houston, like everyone. It's August, it's 100 degrees and I had just I land and I had just heard. Well, I'll tell you the story of my father. When I made the decision in January of 91 that I was coming to Houston, I called my father up. I said I called my parents up and I said I've accepted the offer from the University of Houston. My father goes well, look, first you have to worry about the crime there, because we were in the midst of a major crime wave, and second, you have to worry about the police there. I said, dad, it's going to be fine, I'm not going to be hanging out in those scary places. It's a big city. And he was just worried because of course in El Paso they get all these scary articles about Houston, oh my gosh. And so of course his hair is on fire.
Alexis:And no one publishes the good ones. Yeah, I mean, who wants good stuff?
Maria:We want the crime stories. No, it's murder and mayhem in Houston all the time and everywhere.
Alexis:We seem to have generated quite a few books and movies about that.
Maria:Yeah, no kidding. Maybe that's how we keep people out, Like we don't want them to know Blood and money we don't want them to know it's not a bad place to be Hank that famous blood and money.
Maria:That is a classic. I was being taught that in college at UTEP. Oh my gosh, Murder and mayhem in Houston.
Alexis:I was going to say where we're sitting right now is less than a half a mile from where that happened.
Maria:That's true. It's right up the street Right up the street there In 91, I get here in August. Crime wave is occurring. Paul Broussard was murdered, like a month before. But Houston is an amazing city. 1992, here's the other important thing 1992, the Republican Convention is going to occur in Houston.
Maria:Wow, at this point, were you committed to politics at all?
Maria:I got here and one of the first groups I got involved with was called the Women's Group and it meets at the Unitarian Church. It's Iris Sizemore's Women's Group, I think it still does and it still meets. You know, almost 40 years later it's been meeting like forever. And it was a good way just to meet the community. Lesbians were gathering on Sundays and they would bring in speakers. Okay, well, some of the speakers included individuals who were preparing for the fact that it had been announced that they were going to close down the women's clinics in Houston for the convention. So the anti-choice people were going to come and close the place down, and so the community had to organize and gear up to protect the clinics. Okay, so thousands of us there was.
Maria:Like maybe I forget the last count, I forget the last count, but they said between 4,000 and 5,000 volunteers help organize and protect the clinics during that convention. I hear people say that they were around Planned Parenthood in 92. Is that what you're talking about? That's what I'm talking about, okay, because if you talk to abortion activists, abortion activists they're like, well, I've been around since 92, like that's the year 92, but they never explain what 92 was really a watershed moment. I volunteered in 92. Well, it's 2020, 25, where have you been? But what's 92? What's 92 1992? Okay's 92?
Maria:1992. Okay, they tried to close down the Houston clinics and were unable. I mean, it was an army of us Between 4,000 and 5,000 volunteers were kept and there was lots of clinics and we all got training and it was diverse groups that would meet. And it was diverse groups that would meet. It was from ACT, up and Queer Nation to the Jewish Women's Choice Group.
Maria:Uh-huh, okay, it gives me goosebumps, yeah.
Maria:Yeah, women in, you know, in flannels.
Maria:Yeah, yeah yeah, and women in pearls and heels and gray-haired Jewish women. It really was all the choice, and we basically gathered our arms together and kept our clinics open, which included attacks on the clinics. So it was a big organizing moment for Planned Parenthood, for all the choice. And in most cities the progressive left is usually defined either by choice or the unions, but in Houston it's a little different. Okay, how so? It's a little different. Okay, how so? It's a gay community that organizes the progressive left and that goes back to the caucus. But the way I was introduced to the caucus was in 92, was they were as part of this coalition of choice of all these different organizations, and so I was the faculty advisor to the NOW chapter at the University of Houston.
Maria:So of course they were involved. And for those that don't know what NOW stands for, National Organization for Women.
Alexis:Of women, or I always forget, sure, forget, sure, sure.
Maria:I think it's for I think you're right. For women, uh, basically it's national women's organization and uh had its student chapter yeah, and there was a city chapter.
Maria:The Transgender Foundation of Houston walked with NOW and the Pride Parade together, so that unity has held for a while, yeah, in fact.
Alexis:They had the neatest t-shirts, by the way. Yeah, they were much neater than ours.
Maria:The trans community was part of this whole event too, in 1992.
Maria:It's important to say that. It's important to keep saying that because you can look at certain points of every group's activist history and often leave out the other groups that were there, and so it's just important to say that. And there's a lot of people who obviously hear about some of the quote-unquote gay cities new york, los angeles but you know, the flyover states like houston gets eliminated from a lot of documentaries and and things like that. So it's good to call in this, uh, this history. And here we are in texas in 2025 and we don't have abortion access we don't have abortion access.
Maria:We don't have abortion access, and that was 1992, was part of that whole history where they wanted to dismantle it. Yeah, In those days we actually had access, Right right, we had clinics all over the city women's clinics, some specific clinics which performed later trimester. They were truly the targeted ones.
Maria:Sure sure.
Alexis:And some were just like health spaces. You know, std conversations, mammograms, that's the big thing. I think an awful lot of people in general and by that I mean not our community and not people who are directly involved but they presume that all they do is abortions. Well, no, no.
Maria:They do women's health.
Alexis:Yeah, I was going to say abortions is a small part of what they do.
Maria:And that includes trans health.
Alexis:Yes.
Maria:Absolutely. And they help with hormone support, they help with therapy support, they help with community planning. Yeah, absolutely.
Maria:And in 1992, all hands were on deck because everyone's in my opinion health was being threatened. They were threatening clinics that did health care for Houstonians, so thousands of volunteers to keep. I forget how many clinics we had open and we had to be trained. We had to get there early because the opposition would show up and protest and so we were going to be on the opposite side. This was during the Republican convention. 92 was also that historic moment when Pat Buchanan gave the speech that Molly Ivins described as saying it was better in the original German. Described as saying it was better in the original German. That was the cultural ugly divide speech that Pat Buchanan gave.
Alexis:Isn't it interesting that we're doing it again.
Maria:Yeah, we're doing it again. History repeats itself.
Alexis:Well, and we didn't learn.
Maria:That's the problem. Well, it's different now. I mean we do well, it's different now.
Maria:I mean, we do the the thing about lots of these things maria and alexis in 92 versus 2025. That's what we're talking about. Like what? What would you say? The differences are now like between the, you know, the two times history is not a line.
Maria:Okay, it's not even a line at all. I mean it's broken, it's. You know it's different. And the thing I tell people is I want it to be different. And it is different this time in terms of we were still building in 1992 the kinds of opportunities everybody needed.
Maria:I mean, let's face it, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was about really beginning the dismantling of the apartheid nation. We were being a Mexican in El Paso wasn't too bad, but we knew there were certain stories you didn't walk into. So you know you're talking about racism, millenniums, old Sexism, millenniums, old Patriarchy, racism. Millenniums, old sexism, millenniums, old patriarchy, millenniums, old, I mean the. The world was built for certain individuals to be at the center and the rest of us were on the sides. Yep, what is happening now, and we didn't quite understand in 92, was that we are now building a world where that is slowly unraveling, and the 20th century was really a watershed century for unraveling or at least exposing and declaring it and identifying it Racism, the Eurocentrism, sexism. Now do we have something better? Do we have a better answer? You know, the thing I tell people is what is feminism? Feminism is the critique of patriarchy and the offering of an alternative. What's the alternative? That's where we get into big fights. That's the problem, bingo.
Alexis:Yeah, and you know one of the things there's an article that I've written that I'm deciding whether I'm going to send it out smart, or do it ourself, or something that sort of came to me while I was watching the things at this weekend's events, and that is that I can sit there and listen to everybody talk about all the things they've done and I can very easily say, with all of that work, all of those things, all of those wonderful accomplishments which aren't accomplishments because they didn't accomplish anything we've done nothing.
Alexis:We're still just the same spot, but we aren't. No, we're not, because the difference is that all of that has done nothing permanent as far as laws go, but what it has done is socialize our various communities and socialize the fact that we're fine, to the point where we can now actually do some of those other things. And instead of looking at it as a it should be done by now, which it should, in my opinion, but reality is reality Instead of doing that, I think what we need to do is take a look at saying, okay, we're at a point where we aren't going to get the blowback that we've had before. I mean, we will get some, but it won't be the same, because we have socialized it to a great degree. I mean, the fact is that right now, if someone who is an out lesbian decides to run for county judge in Harris County, nobody's going to use that as the major point.
Maria:Correct, and that wasn't there.
Alexis:That was not there before, but it is now. If somebody decides to run for a state senate position, that's an out lesbian nobody cares. I mean, yes, they care about the person, but all of the discussion is about qualifications, which is what it should be, and so you know that's what that has accomplished.
Alexis:That's the movement and that's the kill, and so the problem is, I think we're very close to being done with that To a certain extent. Maybe you know the level of pushback that we get. We're always going to get some, but I don't think a lot matters. You know, if a gay male to be quite blunt, make sure it's good there decides that they want to run for a judge position, well, there's a whole lot of them.
Maria:Well, or it's like me that's trying to encourage Jack and Alexis to run for council seat C in the city.
Alexis:District C and C, and I look at it a different way. If I'm going to run, I want to run for governor. Okay, maria's laughing at me. The person who has screwed up my life more than anybody else. That's true. Might as well, take the shot and do. I think I'll win? Probably not, because I'm not going to be able to raise that much money. But you know what I'll get? To have my say.
Maria:That's true and that's what I hear. You know Ray Hill said, and Anise Parker and Phyllis Frye when they talk.
Alexis:And that would be their fault, by the way, because they're exactly the ones that said that.
Maria:If you run, they say it's not a, it's not about if you win or lose, it's about getting the mic. It's about being able to share your story. It's about being able to actually take the shot against the person who's going to mouth off against you in your community anyway. And this weekend we went to a symposium that was addressing the history of Town Hall 1 in Houston and a lot of us were Town Meeting 1.
Alexis:Town Meeting 1. Sorry, town Meeting 1. They kept saying Town Hall, okay, town Meeting 1.
Maria:It's Town Meeting. One sorry, they kept saying town hall, okay, town meeting, it's town meeting. And when was it 1978? And so you know it's. There's a lot of value of looking at history. But one of the things that kept coming up in the symposium was we're gonna all have different memories of it, different archives and facts from it, because our, our history was differently dispersed then. You know they had to be more closeted then. They couldn't put out photos then. Or maybe they did put out photos or maybe they destroyed photos.
Maria:Well, they destroyed the photos.
Maria:You know so back to trust, distrust. A historical moment where you would be fired, if school teachers were fired because they were lesbians in 87, right, and then you get to sorry 78, and then you get to 92, where everyone's locking arms for women's reproductive centers and health centers and the Republican Party coming, and then now we're readdressing things. Where we have had a gay mayor in Houston, we have had a trans man run in Texas for a seat and his whole platform was not about being trans.
Alexis:We've had several trans women run.
Maria:Yeah, we've had several trans women run.
Alexis:But the other thing about it is, you know, we talk about that being destroyed. Not all of it, it's different, but we have to be very careful, like with our archives, the transgender archives. We have to be very careful because a lot of these people are still not out.
Maria:That's true.
Alexis:And so you know.
Maria:And what you're saying, alexis. The thing that did come about is the socialization.
Alexis:Yes, but the socialization has occurred. I mean, we just don't hear about people being refused an apartment because they are gay or lesbian or trans anymore.
Maria:That's true.
Alexis:I mean it used to happen constantly.
Maria:It did. It happened to me in Columbus, ohio. The girlfriend and I were trying to get a place and I get a phone call from the girlfriend because she went to go look at the place and she's crying. I go, what's wrong? She said we were looking at getting an apartment together one bedroom with a couple of grad students and the guy had the audacity to ask is someone else going to be here? And she said yeah, and he goes, it's one bedroom and she goes yeah, well, it's my girlfriend. I mean, she actually said that and he basically said no, you can't have this and there was no recourse and it was one of the few in our price range and near the campus and what we needed.
Alexis:And you know, I think you know one of the things that's neat about Houston is Houston's been less that way than a lot of other places. That's right. There's several reasons, you know. Number one you know we have oil industry as one of our big industries, and medical is the other one, from the oil industry standpoint they don't really care what you are, they just want to get that oil out of the ground as long as you make the money, you make the money, you're a good person.
Alexis:You don't make the money, you need to go find a job elsewhere, and it really has nothing to do with you know your gender or anything else, and you know. It's funny because people are surprised that the oil industry has a fairly large population of females. Well, guess what? They know how to find oil.
Alexis:That's why they're there, and if they weren't, they didn't know they wouldn't be there. Well, the medical industry has this oath that they take to service anybody. Now a lot of them blow it off, but a lot of them take it very seriously, which also says you know you can't really look at anything else, and so that makes an awful lot of Houston open to diversity.
Maria:And a city that's also a major port, a major entrance to the whole wide world. I mean, and Houston is just a major place where the whole world lands.
Alexis:Yeah.
Maria:And it's complicated though, because I would say that we have places that we all know where we can go. I wouldn't say there's a lot of places that we can't go, but there are still racist actors there are still fire at will places.
Maria:There is not a safety ordinance. They got fumbled by a lot of the same old rhetoric lies, not for the fact that we didn't have a gay mayor, not for the fact that we didn't have a diverse city council. In fact, I think a lot of the city council thought it would pass at the ballot. So it's it's. It's weird because we do have the socialization of. Well, I think we're past a lot of the hate myths and barriers and yet sometimes they still do pop up.
Maria:They pop up 2015. You know that's what? What popped up?
Maria:yeah, and it's the ugly bathroom crap and to alexis's point, is there's not a lot on the books where we can fall back on those things? You know we don't have written policies that are secure.
Alexis:And so you know I mean what I'm making the case for is real simple. One of the problems is we set the goals wrong.
Maria:What should be the goals at this point? What should be the goals?
Alexis:I want a US Constitution Amendment and a Texas Constitution Amendment. Those are the goals. It protects everyone. First, though, we're going to have to all sit down and figure out what we wanted to say. That will take a long time.
Maria:That's, you know, one of the things.
Alexis:This is called planning Symposium.
Maria:We're terrible at that. Yes, you know, avery Bailey, the director of Mantras, pointed out, as someone who grew up in that right-wing world, is the singularity of thought, the singularity of goal, that the other side understands. Their goal is not to let us in. It's pretty straightforward, that's easy. We have endless number of goals and we can't even decide if we even have a goal. I mean it's like just trying to get us to this. I mean it's like trying to get us to decide on what we want for lunch.
Maria:You know, I mean it's a committee effort and Anise Parker was the keynote at the symposium and she pointed out that similar to what Avery was saying is the Republicans have gotten by on a lot of single issues and the rest of us in the LGBTQIA2 spirit plus community, we're very diverse. We're in a lot of different social groups, we're in a lot of different religious groups Like we're across the board and we've never once had a single issue. You know. So it's kind of hard when we have politics are going to be sold on single issues to all come together.
Alexis:I mean, if I invited 10 people who are very politically knowledgeable in our community to a meeting and you know, try to make it diverse and I said, ok, what we want to do is come up with the wording for a constitutional amendment that we would like, first thing they're going to do is they're going to say, well, it has to protect da-da-da-da-da, and that makes no sense. It has to protect everyone.
Maria:Right everyone period.
Alexis:And now it's hard to do that.
Alexis:It is and it should be very simple. And you know, maybe we can't go in and say that a specific group is protected because we can't name all the specific groups, and so you know, it's one of those things that I think what we need to do is start to set some goals and move forward, things that I think what we need to do is start to set some goals and move forward. Because if my hypothesis, which is that the socialization goal, if you will, the socialization part, is done to a certain point, it's as done as we get anything done, then we're just sitting around doing stuff with absolutely no goals, no directions or anything else. And if I look at it, this whole piece of what do we need to do? And you know, in my opinion there's two constitutional amendments, Now there's stuff that goes in between, there where you work your way up to it to socialize the fact that maybe that's what we need. This is like the goal of having a permanent colony on Mars, yeah, and it's just about as complex.
Maria:It's the old moon shot. Only this is.
Alexis:We're going way beyond that. Yeah, I mean, you know the moon shot, we didn't stay. Well, we've done the not stay and get close. You know what I?
Maria:mean Now they're shooting the Mars shot we did exactly.
Alexis:I mean, then we have to have some place permanent on the moon, they say, to get there, etc. I mean we did the uh guy's executive orders to make things much better, which are extremely temporary, but we haven't had a president yet that's willing to say I'll spend some of my political capital to make it a law, even, and so you know, we need to redefine our goals and then start working on them, and it's going to take a while. I mean, at my age I probably won't see it come to fruition.
Maria:I'm not going to see it. I mean, first of all, the constitutional amendment you're talking about is one that would cover everyone. I mean we couldn't get together on the ERA, I know.
Alexis:And in fact you know, I went back and looked at that when I was thinking about this, saying, okay, so how close is it? It is so narrow, it's unbelievable. You know, I mean it's a nice narrow but it's.
Maria:And that was after endless years of arguments, going back and forth and compromise. I mean that's part of the challenge. You start off with either narrow or large and you get everyone tossing in their opinions and you know I mean that's the deal. At a certain point someone pulls rank. The appeal of the strongman's silliness, which frightens me but seems to appeal to a what was it? 51% of the electorate that voted last fall is a little disconcerting to me.
Maria:But one of the big things about it is what do we give them to vote a different direction? I mean, I'm curious now, After Trump. I asked a scholar and expert on Barbara Jordan when she heard that Kamala Harris was going to be the presidential candidate. She basically said I knew it was done. No way would this country elect a black woman, even though much of the socialization has happened well, but wait, wait.
Maria:Why did she say that?
Maria:because she said this, this country was not ready to let go of its sexism or racism. A big chunk of this country is not ready to let go of its racism and sexism.
Maria:Okay, thank you for expanding on that.
Maria:Today might be slightly different. We might be able to get the 51%.
Maria:It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell we're past the 100 days while we're recording this and we're going into the weekend of no Kings, no Kings Day, June 14th.
Alexis:Yeah, what were you going to say, alexis? Here's the big question. You know, let's say you're doing something that you know is going to be difficult. And if people said they didn't think that would be difficult, they're just, you know, I don't know where they are, because everyone knew that to get Kamala Harris elected was going to be difficult.
Maria:Very difficult.
Alexis:Now the first thing you ought to do is figure out whether there are multiple groups that are going to be against you and see if you can maybe change people, change policy, change your platform to bring those people on board, as opposed to have them as outliers or as non-voters. That was never done and in fact, you know. A lot of people don't want to vote for someone from California, and I get it. A lot of people don't want to vote for a black person Okay, we did it once it worked out. Okay, the world didn't come to an end. A lot of people don't want to vote for a woman Well, we haven't done that yet.
Maria:A rare resistance in 2016.
Alexis:Yep.
Maria:Sexism was there.
Alexis:Yep, and so you know.
Maria:And we're also not addressing the people who don't want to vote that legally have access to voting.
Alexis:Well, yeah, but the big thing about it is what are you giving them to vote for? The only thing that, like with that race, the only thing we gave them to vote for was be pro-abortion. Well, a lot of people aren't. They don't care about abortion, they don't think they're ever going to have to care, or they don't care about abortion.
Maria:They don't think they're ever going to have to care or they don't care. Well, you're back to being able to just name one thing on the platform. That's hard In many ways. I mean, the thing that is fascinating is in looking at the individuals who would challenge Trump. Nobody wanted to vote for them. Even their own party didn't want to vote for them.
Alexis:But nobody challenged him For real. I mean, a few people did.
Maria:But no, even the second time around.
Alexis:But see one of the things I think Trump figured out Trump and the MAGA people figured out and that is that for years, the two predominant parties, democrats and Republicans, that for years the two predominant parties, democrats and Republicans, have spent a lot of time in the various states and, I guess, federally, but I think it's all state making sure that it's almost impossible to form another political party, correct? And I mean, they're doing that because they want exclusivity.
Maria:It works in their interest.
Alexis:And they have been very good at that. So it is almost impossible to form another political party. So what MAGA and Trump figured out is the only way to get your political party that you own is to take one over. And that's what they did. And they found that the Republican Party was available for that. The Tea Party had shown that, because everybody sort of jumped on the Tea Party stuff, and so they just sort of rolled into that and took over the party. I think the problem is that an awful lot of people would like to be independent because they really are not comfortable being, you know, an extreme liberal, which is where, if you talk to any of the what I want to say the party hierarchies with the Democrats, they're pretty extreme liberals and on the other hand, they don't feel comfortable being the other side. So it's like where do they go? And you get the sporadic gosh I'm voting independently, I'm not going to declare a party or anything else, but that also doesn't get your person elected.
Maria:At the same time, though, you get someone who says well, I only vote for the candidate, I don't vote for the party.
Alexis:Yeah and most of them don't.
Maria:Yeah, I don't think that's accurate. I think you know, to a certain extent you're right in terms of what is the platform, what are the issues. I mean, the Republicans don't even have a platform these days. They didn't need one, they had Trump.
Alexis:That's their platform.
Maria:That was their platform hate's a cheap high.
Maria:You know it's quick, it's a burst, it'll get solidarity there, especially when you feel like you're on the majority team and you're not going to be on the chopping block. And I even saw people in the lgbt community starting to say some of the same rhetoric. You know, like well, you know, robin, you just sometimes have to worry about your taxes. Like uh, okay, well. And you know, robin, you just sometimes have to worry about your taxes. Like okay, you know. Or you know they were using some of their dog whistles. It's like you know you realize that whole party has a plan.
Maria:Yeah, Against the LGBT community against a lot of things.
Maria:They even labeled it Project 2425.
Alexis:The Project 25.
Maria:You know, but you know.
Alexis:But see, the other thing about it is that the opposition, shall we say and at this point I'm talking about the Democrats aren't willing to say, yeah, we agree with that. We're both on the same side on that one, because there's a lot of the stuff in there that everybody agrees with. I mean, I don't think anybody thinks that reducing the size of the federal government is a bad thing.
Maria:It's how you do it. That's a problem. I think it's a bad thing. I'm one of those who actually want to expand government.
Maria:Well, on a national platform, we had what? 11 people running when Biden got picked by the DNC. I mean, we had Pete Buttigieg, we had Amy Klobuchar, we had people that were known and we had people that were new. We had Amy Klobuchar, we had people that were known and we had people that were new. We had Beto. I mean that was a variety. I was actually interested in Yang and his team because they were going to put money back into society and I would bet that a lot of people would be wanting his money formula now when they need to have money for groceries, when they need to have money for their medical bills, you know.
Maria:But a lot of those ideas that each one of them ran with, they just completely got dropped.
Alexis:Well, but to go back to what Maria was saying, you want to expand government. But do you want to expand government in what way? Do you want to pay all of the top officials way more money?
Maria:No, no no, I mean no In specific. I mean I'm one of those who believes in good government. I believe that at the city level, certain things need to be addressed. At the state level, other things need to be addressed. Federal level, I need certain things addressed. I'm also someone who wants. I want the NEH funded, the National Endowment for the Humanities funded. That's part of the government.
Alexis:Yeah, my problem is that I, you know, having done quite a bit of stuff with the government, I have seen ridiculous waste, and I hate ridiculous waste. I mean, there's some waste that's going to happen just in general, but when you are literally throwing money away, like when the Defense Department comes in and they're funding a program for another three years that they've already decided to kill.
Maria:But they're funding it because that state senator, that senator has power to keep it there. You know what? I guess I'm not that upset about waste. Ultimately, I'm not that upset about waste. Ultimately, what I get upset by is the damage that certain things cause. Yeah, you know I want to do this differently. If, by building a certain plane that you're going to get rid of eventually anyway, is keeping jobs in certain neighborhoods, okay, I'm willing to hand out that kind of government. Yeah, you're willing for it to be welfare. Welfare.
Alexis:I think that's the difference where you and I are, because I'm not quite that far to the liberal end.
Maria:But I'm also willing to say I'm more on the liberal side of center. But If building that plant is destroying the environment, well, maybe we should dismantle that plant. I mean, and yeah, those people are going to lose their jobs and those are the difficult trade-offs.
Alexis:I mean, you know, my whole thing is that I think we should have a certain basic quality of life that we guarantee people. Now, it doesn't mean they'll all get it, it means that they have the ability to get it. And you know by that I'm talking about. If you need health care, you should be able to get health care Agreed and you know, if you need food, you should be able to get food. It doesn't mean you get filet mignon every night, but you get food and it's good food. You know what I mean. You have the ability to go get food.
Alexis:But I also don't want the government to come and say you know, here's your MREs, have fun. I want them to fund something that lets you go eat in a restaurant, because we need that follow through, you know. And so that's where I guess I have problems is when they're doing things that are supposedly targeted, that aren't targeted, and they're doing things that well, to be really blunt, when I look at the net worth of people who run for office and then I look at their net worth four or five years later.
Alexis:Amazing huh worth four or five years later. Amazing huh. I have a huge problem because their net worth is invariably drastically higher and, assuming they spent none of what they're making, it still shouldn't be there.
Maria:Yeah, I think Harry Truman was the last poor man who actually left the White House a poor man.
Alexis:Yes, I think that's accurate, and Harry Truman was a weird person.
Maria:So what is it that Texas can do from this point for some of the angles that you're talking about? Because there's federal level and Texas has an impact on some of those shifts.
Alexis:Well, and you know, the fact is that if Texas shifted parties, it would shock everyone.
Maria:And Texas wasn't always Republican. So I mean now we're looking at a very different Democratic Party. Or you know, I don't know that we'll get an independent party. It's a very different.
Maria:Democratic Party that existed in 1994, which was the last time it won statewide races Right. The Democratic Party of Texas previously included the conservative Democrats, who are now Republicans. I mean, that's the deal. For a long time there, texas was a single party. It wasn't a single party. What it was? Is it identified as one party? But it had within it the ideological divisions. What is it now? The ideological division is now the feel like you're a republican.
Maria:The division has occurred, yeah, because we can talk about voting all day long, like I can get 16 of my friends to flip a city council seat and finally we'll get that one person in. And what difference does it make? But, like statewide, I heard a lot of people with the trump elections and well, texas can't do anything bullshit like a million votes short.
Maria:We're a million votes short. Okay of the people vote, we're still a million. That in in 2024 harris county, a hundred thousand democrats failed to show up in Harris County to vote for the Dem. They had voted 4 years earlier for Biden. They failed to show up last fall. These voters are individuals who rarely vote, but vote in the presidential election. That cost us Harris County some specific races. There weren't a. Okay. That cost us Harris County some specific races there weren't a lot, but it cost us specific races.
Maria:Harris County was a pretty frequented booth and the last Trump Clinton election Harris County was one of the most frequented voting booths. So I mean, that's substantial.
Maria:Yeah, and a hundred thousand Dems who failed to show up meant that 100,000 votes. It should have gone to our county judges, our county officers.
Alexis:Yeah, I'm saying seems like, because I don't know this. It seems like that we, harris County, have no ability to have input, even at the basic level, to the presidential campaign.
Maria:Well, we don't, because we're also in a sea of wrath. I mean slowly.
Alexis:Yeah, but that could be changed.
Maria:Yeah, and it slowly. That's why Texas worked so hard to do and started working early. The thing about the Republicans and I'm sort of impressed by is they do long-term plans.
Maria:Sure, let's give credit where credit's due, and I think that anyone I've ever heard really, in the seats of a lot of these meetings they do say you have to learn what a political calendar is to make a difference.
Maria:Bingo and they look at decades, not even years. They're looking at decades. They started to rewrite the voting laws of this state 25 years ago. They knew that they were not increasing. The Republicans understood that they weren't increasing their voter base like they wanted to, with new voters coming in, 18-year-olds people moving in, so what they wanted to do was to restrict it as best they can. Texas is one of the most restricted voting ballot in the country. We win, we demand uh, voter ids uh, and when we expanded that stuff out harris county expanded it out they completely shut those opportunities down. We're not allowed drive-through boating.
Maria:We're not allowed 24-hour boating. I really love that option.
Maria:They because it worked and Harris County was already too big. And when they created the more recent laws, it's because Harris County is just too big.
Alexis:And they restricted the laws in a way that only harris county is. They only apply to harris county, they don't apply to any other county because they knew we were a big county. Yeah, it's a big yeah, it's only county over a certain size when you're close to pretty much 20 of the vote.
Maria:yeah, I forget the exact number. In fact I've, and growing Sure.
Alexis:Well, and and the scarier thing from their side and I've heard this from some lobbyists that are on their side is that if we actually voted and they're worried that something will happen that sort of energizes the Harris County people if we have to actually voted, we're way more than that as far as a percentage of the vote. So what do you think at this point would energize Harris County people? If we have to actually vote it we're way more than that as far as a percentage of the vote.
Maria:So what do you think at this point would energize Harris County?
Alexis:I have no idea.
Maria:No one knows, that's one of the challenges.
Alexis:And I mean it's not abortion.
Maria:It's not abortion. No, you know, the question is 100,000 voters that I'm desperate to find out why they didn't vote last fall.
Maria:Who's?
Maria:investigating that? That's a good question.
Alexis:Okay, trying to get someone to investigate that, well, and see, I think I mentioned to you that when we were doing some of our more or less playing around to get people to go to the polls, one of the things that we looked at were people who never voted. They've been registered. They go re-register to vote, you know, every two years or however often you have to, but they've never voted, and you know. I started making some phone calls because I was just curious and they're afraid to.
Maria:That's what I found. I'm a millennial, an elder millennial. And a lot of my friends are like I've always been registered to vote because they're a bunch of good doers. They're like nope, filled it out. I've always had it. I always fill out the form, but they don't go well. The problem was is they didn't really understand the process. They didn't want to mess it up. They thought that, based upon the news reports, it was actually pretty, uh, violent and scary you know it's working.
Maria:The republicans got it to work.
Alexis:But one of the things that we noticed was is if they had someone that they knew that they could go with, it just made it easier and that was the key, yeah and that was a practice alexis put in right that that was what we were doing, robin and I were doing that go be people's buddies like, hey, meet me at the coffee shop and we'll go over. And in one case there were some people that I had met at the polls and I mean, I don't tell them how to vote no, because a lot of times I ask them, I'm like no, no, no, no, that's all on you, I stand in line.
Maria:I have some resources. If they want them, we you know West gray location. They might even be able to meet a politician or a judge that's running that sort of thing, and that always excites them.
Maria:It's really great and they can ask some questions and the person is really nice to them and the line goes really fast and most of the time I took probably about like 10 different people, honestly, and and when I say different, I mean they have different walks of life and they all came out and said that's it like, like what, what it was?
Maria:several of them were like can I call my friends that don't vote and tell them like, please do, yeah, it's actually very anticlimactic and I'm glad what they do now is they make videos of the process because they really think it's so hard, like the machines.
Maria:But you know what you're not allowed? Yeah, you're not.
Maria:No, no, no, not in the thing, but I mean I'm talking about, like Harris County, where they talk about what?
Alexis:is the actual process, but I don't think that's it. I think the fact that they have somebody, that they're meeting at the polls to make it okay.
Maria:Yeah, that's right. That's a key component right there.
Alexis:And you know, for instance, there were, there's a group of a family of five plus two friends. There's seven people that showed up that you know I had talked to one of them, and so they showed up and I'm like not terribly scary, because they were. They were literally afraid, and and their reason for being afraid is that they hear all this stuff about if you do this and and you know like some of the uh democratic clubs keep publishing this don't take your cell phone or they can put you in jail, don't take this or they can do this. I mean that's no, we frighten ourselves, that's inappropriate. And they're like look, I've got to pay my family stuff. If I go to jail, I lose my job. I get it. That's a real big problem.
Alexis:But anyway, they were still really worried about it. Well, what if somebody accosts me or somebody does this or this? And we were literally standing there next to Alan Rosen and I'm like, hey, alan come here. And so I said, you know, just tell him he's OK. And so they, you know, told him. So Alan sort of does his, pull his coat back, got a gun and a badge and he says I'll walk you in, I can't go in the polls with you because I'm running, but I will walk you in and I will assure you no one will mess with you.
Alexis:And you know and these people haven't seen police doing that sort of thing before.
Maria:Yeah, and for all intents and purposes it is unnecessary. You're in a line, you walk through a line and then you click a few buttons, and then you click cast the boat like it's similar to being in any other line, like it's more complicated these days to buy an iphone, it's more complicated to order a domino's pizza than it is to do a voting ballot, but. But it gets so in hysteria if you've never done it.
Alexis:It gets really afraid in your you know, you're really afraid in your mind but tanisha is the only person you see on tv or anything.
Maria:Yeah, that says it's easy and that's why I like her videos I like, and that's why it's important she gets it and she's one of the few and if we can amplify it, that's what I'm hoping we can do. In fact, that's the whole plan really to get people to vote. Is that 50, 60 percent of registered voters who are not voting because it's a ridiculous number who are Dems?
Alexis:And you know you've heard me say this before, but that's one of the reasons I'm pushing for forget the voter registration. We've got to get them to the polls. We have plenty of registered voters.
Maria:Well, and that's always been my point, I'm not, I've never. Well, I stopped being a voter registrar decades ago.
Alexis:Yeah.
Maria:Because that's not.
Alexis:And I did too. I mean, I did that a couple times and I'm like this is the wrong thing. Because, I was finding I was having to screen people because I'm not going to register someone that I think is going to vote against what I want. That's the other thing.
Maria:But the thing I wanted to do was identify the voters who initially my project that I worked with Anise Parker and Grant Martin with back in 1999 was, I deemed voters who were compulsive voters, who would vote for an out lesbian in many ways I mean, we began on her mayoral campaign actually earlier, but 1999 was when I got involved and it was to identify the compulsive voter. The compulsive voter is us.
Alexis:I was going to say I vote period.
Maria:Period and no matter what it is, I'll be there. If there's something on the ballot for what it is, I'll be there. I mean, if there's something on the ballot for my neighborhood, I will be there yeah, I mean, since I voted the first time, I missed one election.
Maria:I was stuck in france yeah, I was ill, I'm pretty sure I voted 19 as much as I can, but, in fairness, I have to leave a loophole because, uh, there's. There are spontaneous things that are not during regular voting seasons, like, for instance, if we have a runoff or if we have something that needs to be voted on. I always look for the voting signs around my libraries and places you're a compulsive sort of I absolutely like it can accuse me in and for a long time there.
Maria:We just needed to identify you and know you were on our side well that was my initial plan for me, my mother, I uh, you know she's a white single woman who always thought that and she's a republican, and until maybe as of late, but she always thought women needed to vote for themselves and their body autonomy because they had the right to vote. And as long as you have the right to vote for themselves and their body autonomy because they had the right to vote, and as long as you have the right to vote, you better show up and vote. Like she didn't ever tell me how to vote, but she didn't ever tell me what to believe in.
Maria:But she said no matter what, the minute you get uh legal to vote, you do your, you do your responsibility, you know and something happened and it was, uh, the political car, the lgbt political caucus had a voting card that showed up and I mean, I am a millennial. So I was like, great, here's my cheat sheet, let's go Like I just voted the card, like I was immediately vote the card, and at the time I didn't really have a lot of access to a computer. I still had a flip phone.
Maria:The card was there, I wasn't going to look anyone up you know, I I trusted the caucus card and and in many ways, you know and- I took a picture of it, I sent it to 10 of my friends and a lot of them said no, I would never vote.
Maria:You know, and and and again. It was because they just had fear and didn't understand the process. They now they all vote the card. They're like where's that card again? You know, because god, you know, yeah, and now the ballots are so big and I think jack walensky said we actually Now they all vote the card.
Maria:They're like where's that card again and gone, yeah, and now the ballots are so big and I think Jack Walensky said we actually have one of the biggest ballots. We have the largest ballot in the country.
Maria:You need a starter sheet. You need to narrow it down. There's a few seats coming up that have what? 25 people already running for it.
Alexis:That's nuts to me that's the starter voters, yeah, so sometimes you got to narrow it down. I mean, when we come into the next city election, for instance, I have no idea how big that's going to be, but there'll be a lot.
Maria:There's going to be a lot.
Alexis:And you know, you think about even like the CD18 special election. Right now there's 25 people filed.
Maria:Yep, I mean it's going to. I'll tell you a story In 1999, when I first started on this project with Anise and Grant Martin to identify voters basically, would they vote for our community? And the way we would do this is we would. In those days, you could only vote in your precinct day of.
Maria:Oh yeah, you had to know where you lived and where you're supposed to go, and if you got in the wrong line it had to go to a different. You weren't going to be able to make it.
Maria:And there was no early voting no, no. So what we would do is we'd ask voters after they came out one simple question Do you support gay adoption? And if they said no, we'd say thank you, have a good day. Thank you for voting. If they said yes, then we'd go through our script and then try to identify them, Because that was a quick way to find out if they were supportive of someone like a niece. Gay adoption, Gay adoption 1999. All right, so I'm standing. Why adoption? Because in those days that was pretty controversial.
Maria:Yeah, seriously, because I mean in those days you still didn't have gay marriage, so why gay adoption? That's interesting.
Alexis:Because it was quick and easy Everybody understood that and it also was available in Texas. Yeah yeah, it wasn't easily available in Texas, but it was available Okay.
Maria:So we asked that question. Yeah, so I'm standing outside Lamar High School, it's getting late, it's December, it's a runoff and it's wet and cold and yucky, and this blue-haired old lady drives up in this big cadillac. I love it and you know I actually help her out of the car and and help her get her walker and she she's trying to figure out where to go and I sort of escort her over there and I said I'm gonna ask you a question afterwards. Can I exit, interview you? She goes, sure, so anyway, she gets in, she comes back and I go, can I ask you a question? She said yeah, yeah, except don't get too close. Yeah, I forgot to mention to you I have a cult, okay so she gets in, so I go through.
Maria:I ask gay adoption. She said yes and then um next thing, I know she's actually one of our supporters. Wow, this woman had to and she was driving. She was close to 90. I forget.
Maria:And hey, she made it to vote. Yeah, she did, and I said you know you clearly have a cold.
Maria:It's miserable out here. I it's a runoff, why? And she basically said I remember when women could not vote that was how old she was in 1999. She remembered because we didn't get the vote until 1920. Yep, yeah, so she remembered what it was like not to have the vote. That's a real challenge, though, because a lot of people just take it for granted. And a lot of people who are registered take it for granted that's a new population. We have to figure out how to wrangle in who support us but don't vote.
Maria:There's a lot of people who authentically believe that their vote does not matter. You know, like that has really gotten in with people it doesn't matter, what does it matter. It doesn't matter, what does it matter that was the success of last fall. Yeah, it's not really in with them how far their vote goes.
Alexis:Let's talk about Pasadena School District the other day.
Maria:Yeah, let's talk about it 427 to 427. Yep, okay, what do you make of that Now, what?
Alexis:It happens. It happens, and I mean the closer we get to being similar, if you will, the more it's going to happen.
Maria:I don't even know what 427 to 427 means.
Alexis:It means 427 votes 427 on each side On each side so it's an even tie.
Maria:I see, I'm sorry, we've been talking for a while, yeah.
Alexis:Okay, wow, okay, I'm like is that code for something Okay. And they have two or three ways they can handle it. One of them is flip a coin, literally.
Maria:Whoa Flip a coin, and in fact, that is how it will be decided, because I think that's the law.
Alexis:Well, they actually. It will be decided by quote tossing of lots. There we go, and that's defined as flipping a coin, drawing straws. I mean, there's several ways you do it.
Maria:And that's going to decide the Pasadena school board right.
Alexis:Yeah, and the school board's very even, and one of these people's liberal, one of people's conservative, I mean you know, you know which side I'm pulling for Right, but it's going to be. And I'm like let's cheat no.
Maria:I mean, and that's what I tell people. So I literally live in a district where the city council member lost by 16 votes oh yeah, and I don't know anybody who can't fart out a pizza party and get 16 people at their house, like I mean, you know, I really know people who have plenty of friends for anything that they do, and and in here it was 16 votes short.
Maria:So I always tell people like it definitely does make a difference, and it's heartbreaking when you're on the other side of that. Oh my gosh, every vote counts.
Maria:Yeah, I remember I was shattered for Isabel but every vote counts, yeah, and she counted as many as she could, you know. I mean, you know, but it it, it just, it's interesting because I do live in the near north side and they congratulate themselves for being a large voting community that at one point had a huge voting history, and then I also. That district also, uh, overlaps the Heights community, which also considers themselves a big voting community, but the turnouts have gotten less and less, less and less. I mean, mario and Cynthia barely had enough to break even between the two of them, and there's a clear distinction between those two people. So there, it wasn't a question of, oh, nobody could choose, it was a nobody really showed up and showed out at the numbers it takes to divide it. And so I just think it's good to keep courting the non-voters, like what is it going to take to light them up?
Maria:And that's the million-dollar question.
Alexis:And you know, we have a ridiculous number of elections in Texas. I mean, it seems like any month without an election. They try to find one for.
Maria:Well, you know, and to a certain extent I mean, here's the deal, not to be a conspiracy theorist the Republicans understand that they're not expanding their numbers the way as quickly, as much as they want to, and they understand the complexity of this issue and long term. So they game it in ways that the Dems don't. Dems are about the next election and that's what kills me.
Alexis:Okay, yeah, dems are about the. It seems like not even quite the next election, but they get ready for the next election. I mean the long-term planning for the Democratic Party in Texas. I keep looking at it and saying it's like a one-week time frame or something.
Maria:I keep looking at it and saying it's like a one-leak time frame or something, and part of that is in fact our own fault, because we are such goofballs in terms of you know the joke, I don't belong to an organized party. I'm a Democrat. I mean we can't get our act together.
Alexis:So you know something I've wondered and you know. If I recall correctly, you're part of the Democratic establishment here. Did I phrase that in a way that is accurate?
Maria:Well, look, I am part of the Democratic establishment.
Alexis:There we go. We'll stop there. No, I'm kidding.
Maria:I am the resolutions chair for the Harris County Democratic Party.
Alexis:There we go.
Maria:And I was asked to be chair. I was appointed by Mike Doyle and in many ways it was clear the reason he asked me to be chair of this resolutions committee is because he needed someone he knew who would organize it. Basically, the committee was in some disarray, membership wasn't, the members weren't attending, and so my job was to make sure that the resolutions met and got its job done.
Maria:And resolutions equal out to what? For those that don't know, Like what does that actually support?
Maria:Resolutions are the themes forwarded by the membership, okay, whereas we believe this. Therefore, get this done, okay.
Alexis:One of the Whereas we believe we lose way too many games if Ted Cruz is there. In fact that's one of the resolutions, so therefore, we need a resolution to say he shouldn't be allowed in games. Okay, we need a resolution to say he shouldn't be allowed in games.
Maria:Okay, the Harris County Democratic Party on June 22 is going to vote to ban Ted Cruz from college playoff games because he's a jinx, and if this was a recorded podcast, on a video you would see both of you like grinning from up to the ceiling.
Alexis:So I know it's because you're not ted cruz fans and it also has gotten a lot of press it did get a lot of press and and that's the cool thing, I mean is this a serious resolution? To some degree, yes, to some degree? No, but but the key is it got pressed. They got people thinking about the fact that, oh well, there are Democrats alive.
Maria:And we included in the resolution the fact that we can't get them to address any of our issues, like the fact that the medical center is being decimated, that NASA is being defunded.
Maria:I mean, it has been a longtime question as how do you get Ted Cruz to actually show up for his job?
Alexis:Yeah, and you know, yeah, tell him it's a playoff game, yeah exactly, and the nice thing is that's a sneak it in the back way, the back door.
Maria:And Houston is really interesting because we're talking about how do you get people to show up for politics. But I mean, there are still people that show up for Ted Cruz's dog. Just fine, like they care, they care about. The dog Snowflake, this dog, just fine, like they care, they care about the dog.
Alexis:You know they, yeah, they care, they care about snowflake, and I mean, you know, being left while your owner goes south, I mean, come on it really was.
Maria:One of the saddest images is to see poor snowflake at the door looking so lonely and sad, and and snowflake was being left in a frozen house when the power grid would not turn on because of the lack of work, that they were warned that needed to be repaired.
Maria:and texas had a freeze and ted fled became a saying because he left the state. That's right Him and his family were just fine.
Maria:Cancun Cruz, yeah, ted Cancun Cruz, yeah, and that's the thing I'm trying to do is.
Alexis:So I have a radical thought.
Maria:Yes.
Alexis:You know one thing that, with the exception of the Republicans, almost everybody else and by that I mean the Democrat, the Independents, the Green Party, I mean whatever groups you want to come up with agree on is it would be drastically better if we had more of the registered voters actually voting Great. It would be drastically better if we had more of the registered voters actually voting Agreed. I mean the Republicans, I'm not sure really believe that. In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't believe that.
Maria:Which is why they hold as many elections, not in November.
Alexis:Yes, exactly as possible. So the question I have is has anyone thought about trying to get all of these disparate groups together and say we're going to work on one issue not going to be anything else and that is getting out to vote? Take everybody's ideas doing everything else, and you know, we aren't going to tell them how to vote, we aren't going to in any way influence them because, well, we all disagree on exactly what that should be. But there is something we agree on.
Alexis:Voter attendance, and that is we would like to get out as many of the registered voters as possible, I mean contemplate this.
Maria:Extend it out. Okay, who would do such a thing? Most individuals who are interested in people to vote already have a side they want.
Alexis:Yeah, of course they do.
Maria:And that's you know. Move to that altruistic point of making sure. I mean, look, I was one of the few who drove someone to vote. He couldn't get out of the car. I mean, basically he had to do the curbside voting and I knew he was voting for Trump and I hated the fact that I had to take him. But he didn't have anyone else to take him, so I took him. That was tough for me to do, but I did it because I believe how important the franchise is for everyone.
Maria:Not a lot of people are willing to do that.
Alexis:Well, maybe. I mean, I took people to the polls that at least the father is voting for Trump period. Now it was actually sort of cool to see the wife say nothing and the kids saying no way, no how, and you're like okay, this is interesting. And it's well, no how. And you're like okay, this is interesting. And it says, well, you better.
Maria:And they're like Okay, so your radical idea is people getting all the registered voters out to vote and just attend and vote. That would be the radical idea.
Alexis:Yes, but doing it by saying it's not just the Democrat, because the Democrat just doing it makes it very obvious what it is. I mean, for instance, I would think the caucus might try to do something like that, but they aren't organized well enough.
Maria:But to Maria's point a lot of the groups have their interest in which you vote, and that's what they're promising and putting on their cards and things is the endorsements.
Alexis:This is where stuff like Lynn earlier I mentioned that we need a constitutional amendment. This is where those things get bogged down, because if you're like, well, I'll help get the people out to vote, but I have to tell them to vote for my candidate. Okay, suddenly everything has now fallen apart.
Maria:I mean, part of the real challenge we face is that those of us who are interested in politics already have and these are the individuals who would work hard to get people out to the polls is we've already sort of made the decisions and are actually trying to persuade other people to vote a certain way.
Maria:Okay, and I admit it, sure, sure, but at the same time, you know, trying to create an org and we would have to create an organization, and it used to be the League of Women Voters, okay, who used to do all this, but they don't do this that much anymore because, to a certain extent, part of it was the Republican Party worked very hard to dismantle their access as well, okay, access as well, okay. For example, they used to be able to show up after every new citizen swearing in and register people to vote almost automatically, but they've made it so hard to be a voter register that the League of Women Voters didn't have the capacity to keep up with the rigmarole To continue, yeah, yeah.
Alexis:Okay, and it's not that hard.
Maria:We may not solve it today, but your radical idea is attendance, voting attendance.
Alexis:Well, but no, the radical idea is to say that maybe some groups that are normally opposed to each other on that issue try to coordinate some Ha.
Maria:Okay, I'd like to see people coordinate you know, people coordinate. You know, we can't get the organizations themselves to coordinate with each other, with themselves.
Alexis:And that's the Democrat. Honestly, my opinion, some of the others are pretty well coordinated. They don't have enough people to make it a problem.
Maria:Listen. Anyone who's willing to play with me to help people vote, anyone who's willing to play with me to help people vote, I'm willing to give a listen.
Maria:And so, maria, those that want to play with you. What are you interested in?
Maria:What am I interested?
Maria:in. What are you interested in to get done? To get done in this culture. Before Alexis' radical idea. You said where your interests were.
Maria:Look my radical idea. So if we're ready to play with Maria.
Alexis:what are we doing? Your radical idea go, go go.
Maria:Yeah, my radical idea is pretty much I want everybody Okay. My radical idea is I want everybody to stop saying how hard voting is Okay, Not just Tanisha who says it's easy to vote. I want everybody to change how they say it Okay. And I want everyone to say if you want help voting, give me a call or let's get people there. Give me a call or let's get people there. I had friends in florida in 2000 the gore bush who said they were working with an organization to get voters to the election booth day of and for some reason, this is this was a group in Tampa. They seem to have lost the list of individuals who needed assistance getting to the voting booth.
Robin:Yeah, a lot of sabotagers.
Maria:And that are going to sabotage things. Okay, which is why it really is upon. You know, I appreciate, robin, you saying that I made myself available to anybody who was who had never voted anybody and I would take them. I would, and alexis does that, and it was a clear move. And thank god you guys did it because somehow, by the skin of our teeth, harris county stayed blue and we need to do more of that. The thing I want is to distribute that list of hundred thousand voters who didn't show up last November to individuals, and their responsibility now is to make sure those people feel comfortable enough to go vote.
Alexis:Let's say you've got that list. I could get it. 100,000 people isn't too many in Harris County to be really good. I think if that's something that we would be interested in doing, we should go beyond just saying hey, I'm available if you want to go vote.
Maria:Okay, walk it out.
Alexis:Go on, yeah. So when President Biden was running for president, one of the things I did because Pete Buttigieg had been mentioning the fact that they were campaigning totally different than anybody else, absolutely, and I was curious as to how and I got a description of it. I mean, no big deal, I didn't see the difference what was the description? The description was that they were doing block walking and they were doing this and they were, you know, having events you know, which is sort of standard.
Alexis:Yeah, you know there may be nuanced differences, but it's basically standard. And so when the opportunity came up, I invited them to use my house for their campaign stuff until they got a place. And so I got, they were staying here, yes, they were staying here, and I got very firsthand view of what they were really doing. They were doing it and there were a couple of subtle things and they were very subtle. But one of the big things was that they did a whole lot of in-person campaigning and the way they did it was they had, you know, a generalized list and I mean literally they pulled it from van with no selections except for location and that sort of stuff, and they would go out and they would find some place that had a room that they could use, usually a party room at, you know a condo or something like that, and they would start calling people in that area.
Alexis:And the spiel is very straightforward and it's like I'm so-and-so, I work for Pete Buttigieg, we're having a gathering and we would like you to attend and you know it's by invitation only and it'll be this night, this night, et cetera, and the candidate will appear either on Zoom or, if he's in town, he'll be there. We never know because of the travel schedule and that whole bit. And basically they got a really, really, really high acceptance and the people physically showed up and they would tell them what it was and then they would call them back to remind them just once. And they were clear on that. We'll call you back once to remind you. And they never, ever asked for money.
Alexis:But they got a lot of people wanting to donate instead of go and basically they were running. Better than 90% of the people showed up and they would sort of make their spiel. They would buy a cake every time they had to have cake and you know a few other things, and they'd have some hand their spiel. They would buy a cake every time they had to have cake and you know a few other things, and they'd have some handouts and you heard people talking about it all over the place. I was invited to this private event because it was a private event.
Maria:With cake. With cake, private event with cake. That's important. Yes, cake is very important and in fact they would tell you cake was important. I mean it is. We're in the South. If you're not sharing some sort of food, I'm not really even sure if it happened.
Alexis:And you know, let's say, we took that $100,000 and we set up enough events to invite them to them, and we were talking about voting. You can also talk about some candidates. You can even invite some candidates to be there. That's not a non-doable thing, shall we say.
Maria:Neighborhood parties, one of the things I suggested.
Alexis:Well, okay, so neighborhood parties no, and they were very clear to make sure it wasn't a neighborhood party. Private invite parties.
Maria:Private invite parties. Okay, one of the things where the Harris County Democratic Party is trying right now is trying to make sure every precinct chair, who's responsible for a precinct, makes contact with their voters. Basically, I'm responsible for the Democrats in my precinct. I'm very lucky. I have a very, very small precinct. I'm so relieved because I used to have a very large precinct with 1,000 voters. I've got one much smaller than that. So, yeah, I walk in and I knock on the door and introduce myself. No, I walk it and I knock on the door and introduce myself. And because my precinct was so small, I decided I would do the Republicans as well. So I walk the neighbor?
Alexis:No way not.
Maria:Yeah, and I introduced myself and had a good conversation with my neighbors, and that was the other thing I just wanted to get to know my neighbors Right.
Maria:I mean that's a big deal. A lot of people say to me. I've heard a lot of people after voting say, well, no one came to the door, no one. They see commercials where these politicians go and knock on doors and say, well, I guess I didn't care. But in Houston it's not always easy to get to people's doors. That's one of the biggest challenges, and it's not always easy to meet people at home and, let's be honest, you don't always answer the door for people you don't know when they're at your door anyway.
Alexis:So that's a little complicated. And I was going to say I do and I get very few, you know political knock on my doors which is sort of weird.
Maria:It depends on the neighborhood.
Maria:Yeah.
Maria:There's. You know, when you've got limited time and limited number of volunteers, you start measuring out okay, what's the biggest bang for the buck?
Maria:you can get yeah, and Houston's hot, so walking fitness for politics is a very serious game.
Alexis:Yep.
Maria:The best I've done thousands of block walking. Sure, the best response rate I ever had was a day where it was like 30 degrees on a Saturday morning. Wow, I mean, it was just below freezing. Nobody had left their house. Wow. Yeah that's true, and that's why. I was able to knock on doors actually, and everyone.
Maria:They felt sorry for me because I was out in this weather, okay, and this was when I was doing the voter ID thing, just trying to find out who would vote for a lesbian, and I was up in the Garden Oaks area up north of 610, and it was an easy place to walk because the houses don't have fences, okay, yeah, so you can just walk up to the door and knock and that was the best rate I ever had. I was out there two, three hours I think, and people wanted to pull me in and give me get me warm.
Maria:I said no, no, I'm just and, but it was like I had like 60% response rate Sure when usually you're lucky to get 10, 15%.
Maria:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm just I'm thinking about this like really seriously putting myself in that position, maria, and there are a lot of people coming out of their pandemic bubbles. They're not like used to really talking to people like that, so so if somebody was interested in getting involved, uh, having political conversations is Jen in general being a little courageous with their maybe their person they're meeting at a coffee shop or their next friend group or something, maybe their neighbor that they haven't really talked to? What would be some starter things that they could say? Or what have you found in those interactions that would make it, in a way, like people would actually come back to it? Because in my mind I'm thinking, whoa, that's really hard, and I've been a part of so many political meetings that say, oh, it's all about the conversations you have at the dinner table with the people you know.
Maria:No, no, everyone after the pandemic is no longer talking to their family members about politics, so if we were taking a fresh approach to this, and they found themselves able to have a political conversation what are some tips that you find?
Maria:First off, make sure you identify who you are. Make sure you have identified the other person. Okay. The key is you have to look and be non-threatening as possible. Okay, that's why you know I hate this. I can't find my clipboards.
Maria:the clipboard is a good tool clipboards are one of those like supplies you always buy, that always disappears in fact I've got to go pick up a few yeah I was gonna say we have a handful of them in fact, I'm gonna take one I can see that a clipboard is also a prop.
Maria:It's safe.
Maria:Yeah, you get to hold something.
Maria:That's right, you can hold something.
Maria:That's really important yeah.
Maria:And the other thing is you really do want to make sure you have the right individuals and the first thing you always do is just identify yourself and identify them. I'm Maria Gonzalez. I'm a volunteer with this group. We're walking the neighborhood today. Do you have a moment, are you and I? Usually, after they open the door, I go hi you and I try my best to identify the first thing.
Maria:Yeah, mr Smith, and then identify myself I'm Maria Gonzalez. Yeah, okay, are you yeah?
Maria:And, depending on the script, if I want them to support, like I was out there, I wanted them to. Specifically, it was Harris yeah, I'm for the trees.
Maria:Yeah, uh them to specifically, it was Harris For the trees.
Maria:It was Harris. I said I'm a supporter of Harris for president. For last fall it was. I'm the Democratic precinct chair in your neighborhood. I want to introduce myself, okay, and you want to turn it into a conversation Now?
Maria:I'm pretty good at yeah, you're really good at conversations.
Maria:Pulling people in having a conversation, finding out what they're, but most people want to tell you something.
Maria:Yeah, what did you find that they wanted to say?
Maria:They wanted to give their opinion on the candidates on the issue. They wanted to be heard, and that's all anybody wants. Yeah, and so that's usually the easiest thing.
Alexis:What do you think of Harris? That's also very important. And then they go off.
Maria:Great. They want to be heard.
Alexis:That's very important especially if it's a more local candidate, where you have more to say about what's going on.
Maria:Yeah, you know when I was block walking for Lauren.
Alexis:Simmons.
Maria:I was in the neighborhood next to mine and the neighborhood next to mine I'm wearing well, I don't think I had to identify myself because I'm pretty sure I didn't have a Simmons T-shirt but I said you know, I'm block walking for Simmons. I think she's running for 146. Have you heard of her? And that's always your invite. Are you familiar? I mean, with Harris, it was. What do you think With Simmons it's? Are you familiar with Lauren Simmons? And I'd have the information.
Maria:That's good. So you're giving them a resource and stuff. So if someone wants to get out there and get some of this knowledge and block walk with you, how do they get a hold of you?
Maria:Maria Gonzalez. Some of this knowledge and block walk with you. How do they, how do they get a hold of you? All right, are there any gonzalez? Or I mean maybe county resolutions chair? Okay, I'm a public figure. Okay, uh, gonzalez, with an easy maria. Um, I'm a public figure. Sure, they're welcome to communicate with me. I will be happy to connect them up with diverse organizations. It depends on their interests. One of the things that I was trained in. The person who trained me was Grant Martin, who is actually a genius at this.
Maria:Yeah, he's run many successful campaigns in the city and all over the country. Many successful campaigns in the city and all over the country. He used to live here. He now lives in San Francisco. He was the one who trained me on how to basically organize people to get something done.
Maria:Okay. That's wonderful and fundamentally is, you count on each other. You set up measurable results. You say, okay, today, the number of people I want to make sure you have a conversation with is 10. You give them something specific With a campaign. You're given some literature to hand out, and in Houston, you've got to have diverse options. One lots of places are not accessible, apartments, neighborhoods are blocked off. I mean it's an obstacle.
Maria:It's an obstacle, of course, and the rule is, in order to make even a slight dent, you've got to have had at least three contacts that were memorable, or at least almost a memory. Yeah, and the biggest one is always the conversation, the back and forth. Are you familiar with Lauren Simmons? No, let me tell you a little bit about her.
Alexis:And see, the key from my point of is you started it with a question. You didn't start by telling them. Yeah, you identify who you are and what you're doing, but then you start the conversation with a question.
Maria:And so if somebody wanted to do this, they can contact you. Kind of say a little bit where their passions are.
Maria:You would align them with some support, and that was the thing Grant taught me. You ask, you always ask it. Volunteers are gold. They're the most valuable human being. When I was out trying to recruit volunteers for PVA Progressive Voters in Action that was a project Denise and Grant were running. When I'd be out there trying to recruit people every now and then they'd say okay, how much do you want? And I'd always come back with I want something more valuable than your money. I want your time, and it truly is.
Maria:It's very valuable.
Maria:It's the most valuable thing they can offer you, and that's one of the things I always have to remind every volunteer. It truly is. It's very valuable, it's the most valuable thing they can offer you, and that's one of the things I always have to remind every volunteer. Time is the most valuable thing anybody can offer you Well more valuable than a few bucks, even a lot of bucks.
Alexis:Yeah, and I want to say this to people who are listening If you don't feel valued as a volunteer, some, some, find somewhere else, another place to volunteer, you know because there are places that will treat you well but frequently I think the politicians need to be reminded of that too, because a lot of politicians you know basically treat volunteers like low-end paid staff and it's like I'm sorry, they're gold yeah, these are the most, the most golden people on the planet and let me tell you the caucus has had to learn that sort of the hard way. And they haven't.
Maria:No, it's a challenge. There are. We have volunteers and you can see the difference between the volunteer at West Gray and the paid person.
Maria:What's the difference?
Maria:The volunteer at West Gray is actually handing out the endorsement card. It's actually handing out the candidate's information.
Alexis:And they're answering questions and sometimes they're directing them to the candidate if they happen to be there, if there's a candidate there, and is this volunteer somebody else besides Jack Walensky?
Maria:Yeah, okay, that's a Jack Walensky phenomenon, so I don't know. Are these volunteers in general? No, it's volunteers in general, okay.
Maria:Okay, just checking. In fact, sometimes Jack is a challenging volunteer, yeah, but the paid people are usually just sitting down talking to each other Hanging out and every now and then handing out a card if someone's going past and maybe handing out a card once in a while, right, and that's not going to cut it when you need the numbers. No, it's not, and that's why. But the only way to get a volunteer is if someone is already interested and committed Right, and that's hard.
Alexis:And you have to make it fun for them. And how do you make it fun? I mean, there's thousands of different ways, but you have to some way or other make it fun. I mean, if I go back to Buttigieg's campaign, that's one of the things that they were very careful about is their volunteers, and some of those volunteers were just people who were making available the party rooms. Oh, they got all the weird perks that they could actually give them and they, you know.
Maria:They appreciate it. Let me tell you something. You give someone a piece of cake. They appreciate that.
Maria:Who gets given a piece of cake, hey, hey, I mean people that I'm cakey. It sounds silly, but no one needs another piece of cake, and if there are people around you that are enjoying it, then it's like well, I guess we might as well do this together, you know? I mean, it brings people together and it's a celebratory thing for a reason. At one point, Jack was complaining.
Maria:Where are the donuts? Because I mean historically, every campaign is run on donuts and Chinese food. Sure, sure, all right, and he got a carb load.
Maria:And pizzas.
Maria:And so next thing, you know, he's getting boxes and boxes of donuts.
Maria:Yeah, that's funny.
Maria:But yeah, I mean, you know one of the things. The thing is, politics is not a spectator sport, Politics is we're all already invested in it, Right, I'm trying to remind everybody about that Now. Admittedly, my family's always I'm, I'm, I'm creating endorsement pages for my family in El Paso. Got a cousin who asked me to do an endorsement page for him in California. Wow, I said really Okay, I'll do the research.
Maria:Because he knew I could do the research. You know what to look for and I can find it out.
Maria:That makes sense, or I get a phone call from a friend or a relative that says these are the two candidates. Which one should I vote for? I say okay, let me check.
Maria:I have multiple people every season of an election will message me hey, I know you pay attention to this. I forgot what the website is. I'm supposed to look at it like, or where should you know, where do you go, or what do you suggest, or whatever you know, or what am I missing here? And a lot of times it's about the propositions, because it's like there's some questions about that oh yeah, I mean they're made to be confusing.
Maria:Yeah, oh yeah, and they are written that way.
Alexis:Yep.
Maria:We'll be seeing.
Alexis:I mean, the number of double negatives in propositions are crazy.
Maria:We're going to see propositions and amendments in. November. Yeah.
Alexis:Because the legislature did a job. And you know one thing that I was going to mention a minute ago. If you've done enough of it, it's pretty easy to figure out whether you think a candidate's okay or not.
Maria:Yeah, that's true, once you get an eye for it.
Alexis:You know, there's things that you're reading through and you're just like big red flag.
Maria:They're setting up flags, yeah.
Alexis:And you know, and if the other one doesn't have the red flags, you're probably okay going that way.
Maria:Yeah, and so final thoughts on politics at this point of June 2025, for the both of you, final thoughts.
Maria:Yeah, well, abbott has these bills sitting on his desk and he'll probably sign them that target our most vulnerable trans youth or trans community.
Robin:They're doing away with. They're trying to destroy the university and college system at the point of this really frightening sword that is trying to change our society in such a way that we are left out.
Maria:Yep, that's absolutely true. What I'm asking people is to stay alert. Let me know if they have questions and I'll be knocking on your doors, probably starting late August, telling you this is how you need to vote.
Maria:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a tough time right now. I mean all that we said. We're sitting in a hot seat in a tough state, alexis.
Alexis:final thoughts for you on politics. Well, to begin with, let's say six months ago I'll pick a time, it could be more than that I had decided I was retiring from worrying about politics.
Maria:Ooh, how'd that retirement go? How'd that work out for you? Not well, sometimes we get pulled back in, I mean.
Alexis:I did sort of do that and I backed way away from it and then I decided, you know what? This isn't working for me because there's too much stuff that needs to be done. Now, as health got better, I'm more like, oh, I'm going to be back in the middle of doing stuff. But then I started thinking about well, what can I do? That is different than what other people are doing, because I have a very different point of view of a lot of things. And you know and I happen to think that it's frequently valid, it's just different and I'm like okay, so that's where I'm going to go with a lot of it.
Alexis:I, for some strange reason, seem to be able to maintain friendships, acquaintanceships, whatever you want to call them, with an awful lot of politicians and people who influence politicians, and I have a pretty good call list. I mean, in the last week I've had seven politicians, only five of which are no longer in session. The others weren't in session. Call me to ask for either an endorsement or a question about what I think the strong things we should be looking at and those sorts of things, and I'm sort of like okay, so I guess I'm not really doing the retirement. You're never retiring.
Maria:We're never letting you go, Alexis.
Alexis:And so there's that whole thing, if you will, and recently, when I've sort of looked at it, of saying gosh, we need a constitutional amendment, my first thought was, oh shoot, no, it had a ship. People don't know how to do that.
Alexis:There are ways to do it and to at least make it possible to happen, and the problem is you have to build it up.
Alexis:You know you have to first get some laws and those sorts of things.
Alexis:For instance, one of the big things and I've now talked to three people in the Texas House about this and we'll soon probably talk to at least one person in the Texas Senate I would like that next time we have a session which is what?
Alexis:A year and a half away, I mean, we have them fairly regularly, but not for very long I would like us to have and us being what I consider the more reasonable people in the world a list of a couple hundred bills ready to introduce. Half of them are going to be repealing a whole lot of the shit that they put in this year and the previous years. But we need to have them ready, we need to have vetted them, we need to run them through people who are good at writing bills and we need to make sure that it's not something that's going to have to be reviewed 50 times before they can actually be accepted to be filed. And we need to find the politicians who are willing to file them, and I think we need to do the same thing for US Congress. Now, you know, we know for a fact that if we have some pretty reasonable bills and they're diversity related that we have at least one politician who will file them for us to get started.
Maria:Oh sure, that's Al Green.
Alexis:Yeah, exactly, I wasn't going to mention names, but we do.
Maria:But it's obvious.
Alexis:And then we have a couple others that will support them, because we have a pretty good congressional group right now and then we have CD18 coming up, so I intend to make that an issue slash question for the people who are wanting to run for it.
Maria:That's right. Can you write bills? Do you know how?
Alexis:Or submit them. If we write them for you, will you support them and the whole bit? Well, you know, that's sort of an interesting conversation to have. They don't represent me directly, but you know there's nothing that says they aren't supposed to represent everybody in the state of Texas and the country, and so you know that's sort of where I'm coming from with politics.
Alexis:I'm tired of us just sitting there saying woe is me, we're getting beat up. Well, we are. And you know, the other part of it is which I don't like. You know, trump is a problem in my opinion, but he won the election and people are like well, I think he cheated. No, he didn't cheat. He won the election and you know we need to get over the cheat thing. That's in the past. We blew it. That's what really happened. And you know I say we because I didn't do a whole lot other than you know say well, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala. That's not much, in all honesty, to say that, but that's sort of where I was, and so I think you know that's something we have to look at and again, I have a lot of novel ideas about how we do that.
Maria:So I suspect I'm going to be around, I'm glad you're being called upon, I'm glad individuals who need to. I mean, and that's part of the deal we need to start organizing for the long haul, for the decades, not the next election.
Alexis:And I think that's the big thing. And you know, when someone says, well, that has nothing to do with my election in two years, I'm like it really does, because I'm not interested in helping you if you aren't going to help us.
Maria:In general, it really does. And I'm like and, by the way, I'll tell other people- yeah, I think the thing that the parties have in common is they don't forget. So it really does have a lot to do with people.
Alexis:The Republican Party never forget anything. I think they seem to have this major archive of everything that's gone on.
Maria:And they remind and hold it over their heads.
Alexis:And the Democratic Party, on the other hand, seems to say, okay, let's go dig through the social media and see if we can find this thing that I sort of remember happened.
Maria:Wow, we have a lot to work on, and taking care along the way is one of remember happened. Wow, we have a lot to work on, and taking care along the way is one of the most important things. So if you are doing what you can to make it through the day, then we're cheerleading you on, and if you want to get in contact with us, please reach out. There are ways you could do that through the podcast, and we will list Maria's contact info and Alexis's contact info is out there in many places too many places too many places.
Maria:So thank you for coming in today, maria, and talking with us. We'll definitely have you back, great.
Maria:And this was a terrific conversation, thank you.
Alexis:And we really hope that people might take a look at sending us a note on the podcast, because we have a talk back feature that we'd love to get notes on and, if you'd like to support us, we'd be happy to take a little bit of your money every month to help support everything that's going on.
Maria:Like share.
Alexis:And who knows, there might be perks for doing that in the near future.
Maria:Yeah, so thank you, thank you.
Alexis:Thank you all.
