I’ve had Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together email sitting in my inbox for several weeks; too busy prepping for house guests to do an in-depth read of it. This week I finally got the opportunity.
Our History
Attorney and advocate James “Jim” C. Harrington founded the Texas Civil Rights Project on September 23, 1990, having been inspired by and involved with the United Farm Workers’ movement in the Rio Grande Valley. He directed TCRP for twenty-five years, fighting for the rights of Texans with disabilities, immigrants, workers in need of fair labor conditions, and more.
Since 2016, Mimi Marziani has been president of the organization. Ms. Marziani is considered an expert on voting rights. She has lead the group through strategic exercises which has led them to focus their efforts on three areas:
- Voting Rights
- Racial and Economic Justice
- Criminal Justice Reform
We can thank TCRP for exposing this racist administration’s family separation policy.
TCRP has also boosted our impact, with myriad key accomplishments in recent years. For instance, in May 2018, TCRP broke the news to the nation that the federal government had begun systematically separating immigrant families from their children by the thousands. The announcement and the group’s work to reunite separated families lifted TCRP into the national spotlight, establishing it as a premier organization on issues of immigration. TCRP additionally won landmark cases in voting rights and criminal justice reform, enforcing the law mandating that Texas state agencies offer to register voters using their services, and forcing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to offer air conditioning to geriatric inmates in a prison unit.
In reviewing their website, it’s clear that the Texas Civil Rights Project is doing important work. Texas has a population of ~ 29 million people, and is the 2nd most populous state in the nation, behind California. Republicans are working hard in Texas to advance their agenda, which is by its nature, is discriminatory, and cruel.
We will remain committed to representing those persons and groups that have been historically targeted in Texas, and are still today — including immigrants, people of color, the poor, persons with disabilities, persons accused of crimes, and others. We will use the law as a sword and shield against abuse, discrimination, disenfranchisement and other injustices, demanding accountability from those in power. We are uniquely homegrown and rooted in Texas. That means we are not tethered to any national bureaucracy and entirely focused on advancing equality and justice in our own backyards.
One of their strategic goals has been to solidify their development activities to stabilize and increase revenue. Their partnership with Onward Together likely came from that goal. Hillary Clinton is a Democratic Party loyalist, she knows that Texas is part of the future of the party, and of course, values civil rights work.
As young law students, both Hillary and Bill Clinton spent significant time in Texas during the 1972 presidential campaign, working on behalf of Sen. George McGovern.
This was the first time 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election, adding to Rodham’s challenge in registering South Texas voters. She also concentrated on Hispanic voters. Franklin Garcia, who died in 1984, was her guide in the region.
"Hispanics in South Texas were, understandably, wary of a blond girl from Chicago who didn’t speak a word of Spanish," Clinton wrote in Living History. "[Garcia] took me to places I never could have gone along and vouched for me to Mexican Americans who worried I might be from the immigration service or some other government agency."
www.texastribune.org/...
The article writes that Texas has always been an important place for the Clintons since their time there with the McGovern campaign. They made lifelong friends, and both of them have long time donors from Texas.
Including Texas Civil Rights Project to the Onward Together partnerships is a smart move by Hillary Clinton, and makes complete sense based on her lifelong support for civil and human rights, and support for the Democratic Party.