Bus Ride to Common Ground
By Marsha Griffin, MD & Gene Novogrodsk

It wasn’t just a bus ride that began in the pre-dawn paste that is the air of the Rio Grande Valley in July. Delegates from the RGV’s democratic parties headed to Austin at 4:30 a.m.. on Friday, June 6, riding a bus destined for the Texas Democratic Convention. Edgy was the crowd, as we loaded delegates along the way from Brownsville, stopping for more passengers in Harlingen, Raymondville and Kingsville. Clinton and Obama delegates filled the aisles, each camp passionately believing that they had the best and most unique candidate.

At times, the tension could be felt. Some Clinton campers believed the race was not over. Obama had secured enough votes to earn the nomination, yet Hillary hadn’t endorsed him. To them, the race was still on.

Obama supporters muttered, Give it up, for God’s sake.

KNOWING THE SYSTEM

By San Antonio, the tension was easing.

Maybe it was sharing a smelly bathroom, or dozing off together in close quarters, but folks began swapping stories and food. We discovered that we share passions and values, histories — and more importantly — place. We all call the Valley home.

Who were we? Some were delegates to the convention, elected in the crazy “Texas Two Step.” Others were alternates, hoping to become delegates if someone didn’t show. As delegates, we were part of a three-tier convention system whose ultimate goal is to send 42 Texas delegates to the National Democratic Convention in August.

Some 25 people on this Greyhound bus from The Valley were on our way to meet more than 7,000 other delegates from counties throughout the state, all on the same mission.

KNOWING THE SYSTEM

Non-delegates were on the bus, too. There were friends, spouses, and children of delegates. Two young men skipped their high school graduation to join us. Grandparents proudly brought their grandson. There were African-Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians … physicians, nurses, teachers, former commissioners and politicians.

There were journalists, government workers, migrant farm workers, and migrant farm worker activists. There were affluent folk and those of modest means.

But you’d need their campaign signs to know their candidate.

On the road to Austin and back home, we learned our common bonds, and we felt each other’s humanity.

GETTING THERE

At the convention, we found African Americans with dreadlocks and long flowing dresses, old folk with walkers, blind people with their seeing eye dogs, guys of all races and ages in very official looking suits, young women in designer outfits. And T-shirts! Everywhere T-shirts proclaiming candidates and causes. Young and old in hats with flashing flags, earrings with donkeys that light up like Vegas. Buttons and more buttons. How many buttons can you get on one body? People celebrating being Texan, American, together, in this, the most diverse state in The Union.

Hope enveloped the hall.

KNOWING THE SYSTEM

It was not Barack Obama, though he was, and is, the catalyst for that hope. Instead, it was the faces from the blackest of black to the whitest of white and every shade of human skin in between. The accents from Houston’s inner city black slang, West Texas’ white twang. East Texas’ drawl. Tex-Mex and at least 50 variations of English and Spanish.

This was hope.

One of our main tasks as delegates was to elect delegates to the National Convention. We also sent members to convention committees. Some delegates wanted positions on committees, like the Platform Committee, Rules Committee and Resolutions Committee ,,, where Texas Democrats get the chance to decide what they want on the national platform.

Emotional speeches were made.

Cheers lifted from each candidate’s camp, as their members stood to tell why they deserved to be considered as committee members. There were heated arguments over delegates and resolutions and ways to conduct proceedings. It seemed that old-style politics might prevail. But coming from the Valley, we knew how to fight and stand our ground, to serve as a voice for what we thought mattered to the people of Deep South Texas. True, South Texas has a long and complicated political history. But what we learned was that there were fundamental issues on which we could agree, and we did.

SPEAKING THEIR MINDS

One of the most amazing resolutions in Senatorial District 27 was for the right to a civil union for all citizens, gay and straight. The vote was almost unanimous. The folks from the Valley voted to grant all citizens, same sex or otherwise, the right to a civil union. Amazing! District 27 passed a resolution for single-payer, universal health care for every citizen in these United States. Downright astonishing! Whether or not these resolutions become part of the Democratic National Platform remains to be seen.

THE MOMENTS OF CHANGE

Some of us delegates had carried anger for years. Anger against the policies of the United States since the Cold War. Anger for civil rights injustices perpetrated by the government … anger for the lack of women’s rights, children’s rights, farmworker rights, gay rights, senior rights. What was happening to us?

We were not naïve. Some of us delegates stood in the crowd when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Some of us returned for the 20th anniversary of that speech in 1983. Many worked and fought in the fields for social equality.

We’ve seen starving children, neglected babies, displaced families … seen fear and despair in the eyes of adults and youth.

Why did this gathering, this moment in history, bring us to tears?

Because cynicism had invaded our hearts and souls.

After so many years of government existing for itself, and not championing the needs of the people, we’d come to a mantra … that nothing was ever going to really change, despite ours or anyone else’s efforts.

The idea that the United States could change rose within us. The rainbow of faces and languages that marked the Austin Convention Center that day became symbolic, and grew, nudging us along to believe in this abstraction called hope.

PARKING LOT

On the bus trip home, friendships grew as we heard more of each other’s stories of dignity, hardship and grace, Stories of lost children, lost fathers, lost limbs, lost wars, hungry refugees, children of refugees, days in the fields, and courtroom victories won after years of devotion to causes.

The bus stopped,

No one wanted to leave.

» Back to main