Wilbo and a New Friend Go Knocking Doors in the Nogalitos Barrio for Tio Bernie The Saturday Before Grande Martes

March 1, 2020 at 8:48 AM

First Unitarian Universalist

San Antonio, Texas

I'm early for church by forty minutes, so I'm sitting in the warm chamber that serves as the sanctuary. I liked Saint Mark's Episcopal, but I thought I would look into the Unitarian Universalists today. I found the congregation active in protecting immigrants who are crossing from Mexico. 

At a meeting at Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice, I encountered several members of the church helping to plan actions to support refugees from Mexico, including decriminalizing the act of crossing the border. I have kept tabs on the movement to help refugees and undocumented people, including a new law allowing immigrants to drive in New York. 

Recently, the Trump Administration sanctioned the State of New York by making it harder for citizens of the state to get passes around security checkpoints at airports. I write these ideas as facts because I cannot get on the internet to check them. This church doesn't have a wireless signal.

Reported to Bernie HQ to go out to canvass, and I was paired with Morgan, who drove the car. I was surprised that I could download a canvass software called Minivan and punch in a number to download a turf. It was so easy. I could go back and pick up the houses that we overlooked because the houses were so hard to reach. It must have been a neighborhood with high turnover because only one street had more than one house upon it.

We were sent to a barrio along Nogalitos Road where orange trees grew in the yards of the wooden houses. I plucked kumquats of a neglected tree and popped the sour small fruits into my mouth, no need to peel. A few lots had newer houses under construction, the old house torn out and replaced. We had to cross San Pedro Creek a few times, a waterway that flowed through a concrete channel over a bed of algae. A bicycle path continued along the creek, so the city has named it a greenway. The last time I worked in Texas at Seven-Eleven, I always felt anxiety when I saw rivers that didn't look like rivers, lakes that didn't look like Michigan lakes.

Morgan and I got to know one another. She was born in Italy and came to this country, finding employment in publishing. She has found landing jobs in the industry difficult because of what might be age discrimination. So she has turned to gig employment and self-employment to keep a roof over her head and a car on the road. She had an appointment to tutor a child in China, so we had to wrap up our canvassing after three hours in the field.

We had a good time in the barrio. We found a hole in the wall bar and grill and we ducked inside to freshen up, so to speak. I handed out literature for Tio Bernie to all the people enjoying a feed of free tacos and spanish rice. Only two people, a couple sitting at a table, refused literature. I got a few slaps on my back. "I have a Bernie bumper sticker on my truck. Do you have another"? I wish we had brought a bunch because I could have stickered all the cars in the lot.

We didn't talk face to face with the person we were assigned to visit at the last stop, but her father came out. "Habla Espanol", he asked me. "Si, hablo Espanol, pero mi vocabulario es muy pequeno". "Habla Spanglish, amigo"? "Hablo Spanglish muy excellente". He had a cold cerveza in his hand and I wish he had offered me one because I was thirsty. Morgan could have dropped me off right there if Papa was sharing his cervezas. Maybe if I had asked, “Cerveza, por favor”?

Morgan giggled because we were two men having a nice time, neither quite understanding exactly what the other was saying. He agreed to bring "todos al barrio" to the garden library nearby on Grande Martes.

It was on her way, so Morgan dropped me off at the Starbucks nearby Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. She drove and blew off stress. She made only fifteen thousand last year, had no safety net, and couldn't get an interview for a straight job. She couldn't afford even the subsidized Obama care plans and so had no coverage. She felt like she could take no risks. She hoped that Medicare for All could help her get the care she needed when she needed it. She even had started a photography business, but just couldn't ask the prices she needed to make the bills easier to pay.

If anyone could use a little Esperanza, it was Morgan.

She was upset with me when we parted because despite campaigning for Bernie for the last week, I was more into Pete or Mike. "How can you campaign for Bernie and not totally believe in him"? "Because campaigning for Bernie is the same as campaigning for the nominee". She wasn't buying it. She gave me her card. She hoped to keep in touch and make a spiff for referring me to her Chinese tutorial program. I texted her last night. She has yet to make an answer. 

I got all choked up singing this Shaker hymn in church today, Simple Gifts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCD3Z7sCyFI

'Tis the gift to be simple

'Tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be

And when we find ourselves in the place just right

It will be in the valley of love and delight

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed

To turn, turn, will be our delight

'Til by turning, turning, we come round right