Not The People's Choice

I wasn’t raised in a political family. I knew my father voted Republican, and my mother couldn’t care less. Aunts and uncles were Democrats, so I overheard some energetic discussions while visiting them, but not much at home. When I grew old enough to vote I registered Republican. To me it was like being Episcopal, it was handed down. Over time I’ve paid more attention, changed parties, and now wish we didn’t have political parties at all. But I’ve always held the belief it was up to the people to choose their leaders, and up to the leaders to represent the will and the needs of the people, especially those who do not have a voice like the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the disenfranchised.

            I thought this was a shared American value, until one day in Hawaii in the mid-1990’s. I was parked on a grassy hillside in Maui’s Upcountry, about to visit the Lavender Farm. Just as I reached to turn off the engine, a report on the radio caught my attention. They were talking about an organization called ALEC. This stood for American Legislative Exchange Council and had been in operation as a not-for-profit since the 1970’s. I stayed in the car to listen and instead of the scent of lavender that day, I received the stench of corruption.

            ALEC is a group of business leaders, elected representatives and lobbyists with the shared mission to collaborate on writing legislation that benefits conservatives, particularly wealthy business owners. While they claim to be non-partisan, the stated ALEC objectives are to support limited government, low taxes, free markets and federalism—the classically conservative Jeffersonian principles. The most startling element was learning the group convened to write bills which their legislative affiliates would then lobby to pass in congress at both the state and federal level. They also worked aggressively to block bills that did not meet their goals. These are not elected officials the writing bills, these are private citizens writing bills for the legislators.

Elected officials who collaborate with ALEC often receive donations from its business members. While the organization claims to be bipartisan, almost all leadership positions are held by Republicans and the policies promoted are uniformly conservative. For example, ALEC lobbies for reduced gun regulations, weakened labor unions, fewer environmental regulations and tighter voter ID rules. They support school vouchers and oppose tobacco taxes. While this may seem to be normal lobbying for conservative policies, the focus is primarily on business interests and profit. For example, also on the list is a stricter criminal justice system combined with the privatization of prisons—more prisoners, more profit.

While dues are noted at $7,000-25,000, large corporate donors give much more and also pay for ‘scholarships’ for legislators to attend conferences where corporate representatives, legislators and lobbyists convene to develop model bills. For example, a bill giving corporations the right to withhold the identity of certain fluid contents in fracking, sponsored by ExxonMobil. Corporate members also have the voting power to kill any model bills they do not like. The efforts are not limited to the bills written in ALEC convenings, there are lists of bills to approve or oppose sent by ALEC to legislators in all 50 states, along with talking points to take on the road, or use in interviews, town hall meetings or op-ed content. A brochure posted in 2025 boasted that ALEC had promoted more than 1,000 bills.

What I began to understand as I listened to this reporting was that through ALEC wealthy business owners could significantly control members of congress to adopt policies that benefitted them with no focus on policies to benefit ordinary citizens. Since then, I have not learned of a similar organized effort on the Democratic side. While there are organizations that support democratic and progressive policies, like SiX, the State Innovative Exchange, they do not write legislation, nor are they designed specifically to merge elected representatives, corporations and lobbyists to directly influence government policy at both state and national levels.

There is hope. There is currently an effort to remove ALEC’s tax exempt status. These complaints assert the organization is an aggressive powerhouse for legislation that is profit driven and anti-public interest. In short, ALEC is an organization with a powerful lobbying team largely funded by large corporations and fueled by legislators who act in the interests of the corporations who support them, tax free.

A model definition of Pay to Play.

Seem Familiar?

Classroom Walls

After I graduated from college with a degree in Secondary Education, I was hired to be the English teacher at Greenway Middle School. It was a new school, surrounded by tract housing in a suburb outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Most of my students came from working-class families, had parents who worked on farms or at Turf Paradise, the horse racing track nearby. It was an affordable area, and often families moved there because of recent disruptions in their lives, marital or financial. Many of my students were just finding their balance.

It was the 1970’s, a golden age of music, and lyrics to popular music had become mainstream. I decided to teach poetry through popular songs. Soon I heard my students exclaim in amazement, “The Beatles are poets!” Once they appreciated the rhythm and rhyme of modern music, the depth of classical poetry came more easily to them. We began a project to demonstrate their understanding. We collected old magazines and I gave them blank poster boards. They cut images from the magazines to create collage art that represented what they had read and learned and then spoke to their classmates to share this. The finished posters were mounted on the walls and soon our classroom became a student art gallery.

            Today, almost a half century later, Texas governor Greg Abbott wants the Ten Commandments posted on classroom walls. Not student art, the Ten Commandments. Over the years I have worked in many roles in public education, and as soon as I saw an image of Abbott’s wall display, I thought of the schools I have served with students who are Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish, or have no church alliance. I thought of the separation between church and state derived from the first Amendment to our Constitution that welcomes and accepts all these students, regardless of religion, and requires that public funds not be spent to promote religion in our schools. We are there to teach, not preach. And our students are there to grow and learn, not conform.

            Mr. Woodward, my principal at Greenway Middle School, was not like Governor Abbott. When he came to visit my classroom one day, he saw a glorious mix of students gathered in groups around tables. One shy boy worked on his lessons atop the broom closet. Another played the melody of a poem on his clarinet. And all the walls were covered with art that demonstrated the uniqueness, individuality and creativity of these students—and what they had learned.

My principal looked around, raised his arms and declared, “Now this is what education is supposed to look like!”

A Message From the Antarctic

I recently read an article in The New York Times informing readers that Emperor Penguins and Fur Seals have been placed on the endangered species list. The article quoted researchers as saying, “the changes were largely driven by shifts in sea ice levels and food availability linked to global warming.” And for species in the Antarctic region they noted, “this is the first clear evidence of climate change’s influence to pop up in a big way.”

Not for me. My husband, Dan, and I travelled to the Antarctic in 1999, and these photos were taken on that expedition. Each day, after exploring the shores of a continent with no four-legged creatures and no fear of the humans who reached out to greet them, we went back on board the ship to learn more from the science and research experts who travelled with us. We were told that the penguins and the seals were threatened. The penguins nested on the hillsides above the shore and had to travel down each day to hunt for krill, the tiny shrimp they caught to feed their chicks. The scientists reported that climate change was causing greater and earlier ice melt, so the penguins had to climb higher to reach the lasting ice cover that would make their nests stable. (Note on the widest photo the penguins far up the hill on the right side.)

This also meant they had to travel farther back down the hill to the sea to begin their hunt for food. But that wasn’t all, the water was also warming, so the krill were moving further out to sea for cooler water, making the penguin’s hunt for food even longer and farther from home. This broke our hearts, we adored these penguins, their furry chicks, and the seals, and the albatross who nested high on these hills. This was their land, their home. How could humans so far away be making life this much harder for them?

In the Antarctic in 1999, climate change became real to us in a way it had not before. This was how far it reached, this was how destructive it could be. But there were other guests on our ship who chose not to believe any of this was true. They objected to the reporting and asked for a space to gather where the experts could not misinform them with what they believed was ‘junk science’. We were shocked, but on that trip, we accepted both realities. There is truth being told about the dangers to our planet, and there are those who choose not to believe it, evidence be damned. And now here we are, over a quarter of a century later. These penguins and seals may no longer exist at all. Because of us.

Can’t we do better?

What Makes Us Special?

I was fortunate to be raised by parents who were quite different from one another. They viewed the world differently, and they travelled through it differently. My father was a private pilot and often took me along when he ferried the wealthy friends of his employer to the annual Opera Festival in San Antonio. I learned young to be comfortable around the wealthy, even if I was not one of them.

My mother included me in her search for a kinder God, not the one she was brought up to believe in. We went to many different churches, and every congregation was unique. The ideals of faith and worship were not assigned to me, rather I was free to choose—the Mexican Mariachis, the choir at the black Baptist church, the tent revivals, the healing services. Perhaps all of them.

I learned a lot from this unusual journey. Even though I was a White girl who lived in a nice neighborhood and went to a good school, this did not make me special. My race did not make me better than those elegant members of the Black Choir, or the poor children playing out in the field at the tent revival. Being Christian did not make me better than the Jewish family who shared their faith with me as they grieved the death of their young daughter. Not race, nor gender, nor our faith practices make us better.

Only what we do allows us to grow better. We are being fed the worst lie in America today, and it is coming from our leader. We are told that some of us are better than others, and some deserve to take rather than give. That some should not even be treated as human, only because of how or where they were born. We must not succumb to this. We are not born good because we perceive others as born bad. We do not take because we think others exist to give to us. We do not punish or exclude others only because they were born different.

It is the good we do that can make us special. Our courage, our generosity, our compassion. Our determination to see all others as equal, even if different. We take the time to know them, and if they need help, we give it. Only this can make us special.

Interview on Invisible Illness with Carmen Chai of Everyday Health

I was honored to be interviewed for this article, hope you find it helpful.

Invisible Illness: What it Means and 7 Ways to Cope

The Arts Are Everything

I was a lucky kid. I grew up in a world saturated with the arts. When I was six years old, I joined my parents as a season subscriber to the San Antonio Symphony. I began classical ballet lessons at five, and at twelve I was accepted into the San Antonio Civic Ballet Company. I was in the corps de ballet for the Grand Opera Festival that toured through the city every year. In high school, instead of taking electives that could get me into a good college, I took all the arts classes that were offered until there weren’t any left. Finally my teacher said, “Just go to the studio and make stuff.” Which I willingly did.

I was admitted to college, on academic probation, and soon found I liked the academic environment. I began to see the art in learning, in reading and in writing, and in the artistry of many professors. Over 14 years of study I earned four degrees, including two Masters’ and a Ph.D. in Education and Literature. I became a teacher, and later a curriculum specialist, and then moved beyond the academic world to become a stockbroker. During all this time I sustained my passion for the arts, because I knew my launch pad, and my progress, was rooted in the arts.

Over the years I took pottery and sculpture classes and learned to throw on a wheel and make bronze castings. I learned to solder and set gemstones and make jewelry. I took voice lessons and learned I was a soprano. I spent decades deeply engaged with theaters as an actor, choreographer, director, playwright and leader. I was not a master at any of these efforts, but I did my best and persisted and grew.

This long journey embedded in me a conviction that participation in the arts offers great value, whether it is visual or literary or performance. There is creativity, of course, but also collaboration and discipline and structure and organization. Art students learn to focus and keep working until they finish what they started, even if it’s hard. They learn to lead and to be part of a team, and from that learn both humility and respect. Not the least, they gain wisdom that they are unique and special—and so is everyone else.

So I say to parents, if you want to give your children a great gift, as my parents gave to me, encourage them to engage in the arts. And if you want this great American legacy to continue, support the arts in your communities and vote for the politicians who support the arts in our country. Because the arts are everything.

What's the Story

Recently, on my morning walk in the woods, I approached a trash can on the side of the trail. Beside it was an empty garbage bag with books, notebooks and magazines scattered all around it. I stopped to take a closer look and saw that all the titles referred to God, the globe and missionary work, like The Way to God, World Evangelism, The Warm Heart of Africa, Mission Stories, The Voice of Truth International.

As I stared at the scene, my instincts as a storyteller instantly went into high gear and I began to conjure what might be the story behind this mess. Maybe…

·      A young man, planning to become an Evangelical missionary lost his faith. There was a scandal in his church that shattered him.

·      A mother did not share the beliefs of her son and in a moment of rage threw out all the resources he had collected.

·      A spouse could not convince her partner to join her faith and finally gave up. She would rather save her marriage than go on a mission.

·      A young woman, planning a mission to Africa, lost the chance and threw out her books, then changed her mind and came back to get them, then changed her mind again.

The options are endless, and the scene fascinating. When I went back today, all had been cleaned up. Who cleaned up the mess? Was this part of the story? Is there more to the story? Or was it just park maintenance? I wonder…

Mid-Century to Modern

While writing my memoir, From Mid-Century to Modern: One Woman’s Journey from Schoolteacher to Stockbroker, I did a lot of research on the decades when I was growing up. During those years, from the 1950’s to the turn of the century, there were massive legal and social changes for American women, changes we may now take for granted. But with the right to legal abortion being challenged in our country, this is a time to reflect on all we have gained, and what we could lose—If those who wish to see women as lesser gain more control.

To begin, the birth control pill was approved by the FDA in 1965, giving women the freedom to pursue careers, plan families and avoid forced marriage. This was followed by the Vietnam war years when many young men either enlisted or were drafted into service. Women, left on their own, became more self-sufficient and independent during these times and often were unwilling to return to traditional roles when the men came home. Between 1975-1988, in American families with children, it was the wife who filed for divorce in approximately 2/3 of cases.

• In 1968, with the passage of The Fair Housing Act, a woman could buy or rent a home in her own name. Just 13 years later, there were more single women homeowners than men.

•  Until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974, a woman could not have a checking account or credit card. Only joint accounts with males were allowed.

•  Prestigious Ivy League schools like Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977.

•  Until 1978, a woman could be fired from her job for being pregnant.

•  And it wasn’t until 1988 that a woman was legally allowed to start her own business.                                                                                                                      

We’d best pay attention, stay strong and stick together during these times, lest we go backwards.