"I Remember"

Year after year, I’ve fended off the question, “How can you live in Texas?”

Because I remember.

I remember voting for Dolph Briscoe the first year I could vote.

I remember Mark White standing up for Texas teachers.

I remember Ann Richards delivering diversity, ethics and equal funding. 

For the last thirty years,  Texas Republicans have raped.

They raped my rights to speak freely as an atheist. 

They raped my rights to select which books I can teach.

They raped my rights to clean air and water.

They raped my rights to love freely.

They raped my rights to well-being.

They raped my rights to have choices.

Yet under all of their oppression, I’ve held onto optimism because I remember my first years as a voter. I remember developing my own classroom curriculum without Big Brother spying. I remember believing in the power of governing where we protected the weakest.

Because I remember, I vote even when it seemed hopeless. 

Because I remember, I speak my truth whenever possible.

Because I remember, I write to record this new beginning of possibilities.

Welcome Senator James Talarico.

Welcome Governor Gina Hinojosa.

You now carry the hopes and dreams of all of us who remembered. 

Copyright 2026 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Nightmare Smash-up”

            Last night, I found myself trapped on I10 in a van driven by the principal from Abbot Elementary. The quirky faculty sitting all around me, we protested in unison against the cars that ensnared the vehicle and prevented forward movement. Frustration fomented and fumed because there was nowhere to go, no exit ahead. My brain dragged out my personal experience of Hurricane Rita’s 2005 nightmare where we spent more than twenty-four hours in stopped traffic watching our gas gauges dipping lower with our anxiety shooting higher.

            Slapping the alarm clock to silence this morning, I woke up puzzled by this peculiar dream. Then I remembered the real nightmare created in Texas by our malicious Governor Abbott as he viciously ties public school spending into his pet private school voucher program. Texas public school districts face millions of dollars in deficits even when the State has the largest surplus of funds in state history. Abbott insists that school districts caused their own problems with mismanagement of funds.

            Before I went to sleep last night, I read the struggles of Judson ISD board members as they face a $32 million dollar deficit, and no way to continue with pay incentives they implemented in the 2023-2024 budget without bleeding more red. Districts also have to fulfill House Bill 3, Texas’s response to the Uvalde slaughter, to force districts to implement new guards and security standards with inadequate funding from the State.

            Internalizing the no win scenarios from the most recent news facing Texas public schools put me back onto I10 blocked into the far left lane. Now that I’m awake, I recall the panic I felt when I got out of my car to chat with my brother and son trapped in traffic directly behind me. My mother, already overdue for her medications, went into a Huntington’s disease tirade as we discussed our options. With nothing to lose, I knocked on the windows of the cars immediately in front and behind us in the next lane, begging for help from the drivers to squeeze their vehicles forward, or back, just enough for us to maneuver into the lane. Once our two car caravan settled into the middle lane, I repeated my plea with the next set of drivers, who edged just enough for us to move over and ahead again. We snaked ourselves to an exit in this way—one car at a time cooperating—until we steered of the stalled interstate and onto an access road.

            This solution to forward movement may be the only choice for Texas public schools. One person at a time: one parent, one faculty, one district needs to pressure by voting against a governor that implements slash-and-burn policies.

      Vote.

      VOTE.

      VOTE!

  

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman