Last Tuesday evening I attended the San Angelo Chapter of the NAACP Celebrating Women dinner in support of the L.A. Raibon Scholarship Fund. There I had the privilege of listening to Opal Lee speak. She is the 95 years young lady from Fort Worth who led the drive to make Juneteenth a National Holiday. I also bought a copy of her children's book for my niece.
She was an inspiration.
While she wasn't talking about politics, or rural Democrats, she said several things that I found very applicable to our endeavor to change the Texas Democratic Party and its relationship to rural Texas. The thing I took most to heart was her encouragement to not give up and to pursue with determination whatever you begin--even if you have to make yourself a committee of one.
"If you see projects that need to be done--do 'em." Opal said. "Don't let any anybody turn you around!"
Don't let anybody turn you around.
That made me think of my own involvement in starting The 134 PAC and taking on such a gargantuan project as trying to make the Democratic Party relevant in rural Texas again. Sometimes it does feel like only a committee of very few see the need I do. But that doesn't mean that what we are doing does not need to be done. Quite often the unpopularity of what you are doing only proves how much it needs doing. There will always be those who stand in our way, who want us to go away and be silent, who insult and criticize and do everything they can to turn us around. Yet our challenge is to persevere with determination. The old saying about no one in the wrong can stand up to someone in the right who keeps on coming is so true.
Her words remind me of the words of the hymn, "Though none go with me, I still will follow." That is the journey we have started with The 134 PAC. We won't let anybody turn us around.
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