My back regularly goes into spasms. My knees hurt 24/7. Pain is my constant companion but I will not give in to it nor will I give in to the authoritarian ideas of our president in silence, I am tough and feisty and far more determined and energetic than most people my age. I love the United States of America but I’m willing to admit that it has number of warts that need to be noticed and removed. I was born and grew up in Texas and was taught to raise hell when things are not fair and right now they are really not fair. I don’t know if anything that I think or say in public will make a hill of beans difference but I know for sure that if I and others say nothing we are going to get rolled over by people who care not a bit about those of us who are not in the upper echelons of income and power. 

I am one of the little people but I believe that I have accomplished more to help move our nation and my state forward than most of the elected officials. For the bulk of my adult life I have taught one child after another how to unravel the mysteries of mathematics and how to feel good about themselves.I have mentored teachers who became even better at doing the task of educating our youth than I have ever been. I have contributed greatly to the United States and Texas all for a rather meager income compared to the amount of time, energy and love I have put into my determination to enrich as many people’s lives as possible. 

I say these things not to brag but because I have grown weary of feeling beset upon by power hungry people in my state and on the federal level. I have lived a life of honoring the law, paying my taxes without complaining or attempting to get out of giving my fair share. I have tried to be as good a citizen and person as possible and yet at this moment the governor and attorney general of my state of Texas are doing everything they can think of to make my votes more and more meaningless with their audacious attempts to redraw the voting district lines to insure that at least five more Republicans will be elected for Congress. 

Only recently I was thrilled to finally have a representative in the United States Congress who genuinely listens to me. When I communicate with him I always receive a thoughtful response. He explains his thinking and mostly votes the way I myself would have done. This is how Congresspersons are supposed to be. The game should not be rigged so that even though I live in a city that is majority Democrat, most of our representatives will become Republicans just by changing the lines of the districts on a map. 

It feels as though I am in a game in which the rules change constantly to favor the other team. I have to run fifty yards to reach the goal post but the other guys have the governor moving the goal posts closer to where they are when it is their turn to seek a point. Their goal is moving closer and closer for them while men is moving farther and farther away. 

Texas is called a red state because years of Republicans at the state level have created districting maps that virtually guarantee that their people will win.I suspect that some Democrats have become so discouraged that they have just given up and no longer even bother to vote even though if they all did they might make upon our state government might look very different . The cities are demonized at the state level because they are filled with Democrats. The Republicans rarely mention that those cities also provide the bulk of funding for the state. God forbid that the people there would get a fair shot at having their voices heard.

I listened to a discussion about this on the radio and a person commented that the present apportionment of Texas Republicans and Democrats in Congress corresponds to the same ratio of those who voted for Trump or Harris in the 2024 election. In other words the present districts don’t need to be redrawn to provide Texas with five more representatives in Congress. Nonetheless a spokesperson for the Republican party argued that because some other states have more gerrymandered districts Texas must do the same to keep a national balance. I almost drove off of the road listening to his illogical drivel.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my state. It is big and beautiful and filled with good people. I can drive north, south, east or west and encounter a multitude of ecosystems that are stunning. There are green forests and sandy deserts, plains and mountains. Fifty miles from where I live there are beaches hugging the Gulf of Mexico. A couple hundred miles to the west the rolling hills are dotted with rivers that are sometimes lazy and other times perilous. Texas has whatever environment anyone may be looking for with a population that is friendly and diverse. Sadly our Republican governor and state representatives don’t value the idea of working together with Democrats to insure that our our state does not adopt a one size fits all attitude. We need to come together with the realization that each of us deserves to be heard, not bullied into accepting the will of one way of thinking. 

My roots run deeply into the Texas soil. I have spent my life loving this place and its people but in the past few years I have watched the majority of lawmakers in our capital city of Austin making laws that leave me and many members of my family out of consideration. In some instances they even hurt us. I get the icky feeling that the Texas Republicans want to silence my voice or at the very least simply ignore it. I sense that they are marching in unison toward a Texas that will no longer be as free as it once was all while doing everything possible to accept the will of Donald Trump.

I am clinging to hope that somehow, some way we will end this type of governing, but I feeling more and more discouraged. I  am approaching the last years of my seventies. I want to enjoy however much time I have left on this earth. This should be a restful time for me but instead I feel rattled by the chaos imposed by a Republican governor who is demanding that he have his way, a way that counts me out. In spite of how fragile and weary I am feeling I will continue to raise my voice to give notice that I am still here and that I and every single Texan deserve to be acknowledged. We are not just a red state. We are a grand state representing many colors, many thoughts, many philosophies, many divergent views. We are not just drones willing to curtsey on command. We want representation for all the people.