Beto O’Rourke sent out an email to his supporters which included this video of his short address to the Texas Democratic Convention…
O’Rourke memorably connected national mourning over George Floyd’s murder with grief felt by El Pasoans over the recent death of Memo Garcia–“the 23rd person to lose his life due to the mass terror attack at the Walmart in El Paso last August…
He fought for nine months to stay alive but he was fighting against the high impact, high velocity round shot by a weapon of war. A weapon shot by a mass murderer who hunted Memo down solely based on the color of his skin. A mass murderer who was inspired and compelled to do so by Donald Trump, the President of the United States, who openly trafficks in racism…
O’Rourke’s message dovetailed with one laid down by Stacey Abrams in her recent Times op ed spelling out how the Democratic Party must organize the South. Abrams got granular explaining how local organizers should address potential voters–“You talk about what the job does, how it works for people, how people get to choose who does that work for them when they vote.” Beto sweats the details too…
This past Monday more than 2,500 people signed up for our phone bank to reach unregistered voters in Texas and help them register to vote. We made over 210,000 phone calls. If we keep this up, we will help bring hundreds of thousands of new voters into this next election. They are the ones who will elect majorities to their commissioners courts and city councils that will reform local police forces and ensure more equitable investment in their communities. They are the voters who will elect a Democratic majority to the Texas Legislature for the first time in 20 years — a majority that will fight to change decades of racial gerrymandering and work for criminal justice reform.
And they are the ones, if we meet our goals of registering every likely Democrat in this state, who will award our 38 electoral votes to the Democratic nominee for President for the first time since 1976. That will be seismic. And it will guarantee, unlike anything else or any other state, that Donald Trump will not serve another term in office. Joe Biden will be our next President and with the help of every single one of us (supporting him and holding him accountable) he will help to usher in an era of true justice in this country.
This kind of action — doing the hard work that will decide the future of our state and country — gives me hope.
It is the antidote to despair and the key to victory.