Dave Built That

This past Saturday at the local Cypress Texas Tea Party meeting, after our speaker, time was opened up for general discussion, as usual. A man stood up and told his story. His name is Dave; I didn’t catch the last name. I hope he doesn’t mind my sharing his story here, but it was the kind of story that was beautifully told and ought to be shared again.

Dave is Hispanic (in America since childhood and possibly all his life; he’s a voting citizen). He grew up poor, the oldest of seven children. He worked through his teenage and college years as a migrant farm worker, along with his family, in Michigan. It was in Detroit that he attended school. The migrant farm worker season ran six weeks into the school year, so every year he started school late and had to catch up. And going to school required getting permission from his father; he proved he wanted the education, and he worked hard. Through college, he had to get his father to let him use the money he earned toward his education, instead of toward the support of the family.

Dave wanted to study architecture, and the local college didn’t have a good architectural program, but he got accepted to Texas A&M, which is how he ended up in Texas. He worked his way through, what he considered part-time, which was 40 hours a week (a lot less than the “full-time” work he was used to).

Out of college he got a job with Fluor Daniel, building chemical plants around the world. It was a good job, and he got a lot of good experience. But he had always dreamed of owning his own business. So twenty-one years ago (I think he’d said this was after a couple of decades working for Fluor, but I’m not sure), he left the security of the income, took the risk of putting everything he had into an architectural engineering company, and over time they have been blessed with success.

Then, a few weeks ago he heard President Obama say, “You didn’t build that.” And that made him mad. What part of all that sacrifice should he not get credit for? That was why he decided to come to our Tea Party meeting, to find out what he can do.

Dave has always been conservative. But he knows plenty of Hispanics who aren’t. He talks with them, but many of them don’t even think about their vote. He says when he asks them whether or not they pay taxes—the ones who don’t, the ones who instead receive handouts from government, they’re a lot more likely to vote Democrat. Some just vote Democrat because that’s what everyone around them does; they don’t even know why.

I’d like an answer to Dave’s question: what can we do? As a small, independent Tea Party group, we do several things. We educate one another, on candidates, on issues, on how government works. We meet with candidates and hear speakers from organizations (Saturday’s was from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which follows legislation related to taxes and budgets, and helps keep people informed). We share articles with each other, with an email group and a Facebook page. During the state legislative session, we follow legislation on issues that are important to people in our group, and we meet with legislators and/or their staff to let them know our opinions—and we thank them when they vote the way we like. We don’t as a group endorse candidates, but individually we do, and we share that information. Many of us have worked for free and fair elections with True the Vote, as poll workers and poll watchers, and verifying voter information.

I don’t know if participating in our group is enough; it’s a start. But with Dave’s connections to the Hispanic community, I’d like to know ways we could spread our message there. We, as conservatives, have a lot more in common with the values of Hispanics than liberals do. We believe in hard work, strong families, personal responsibility, and getting government out of the way—lower taxes, less unnecessary regulation. We are pro-small business. We’re a lot more likely to say, “Yes, go ahead and build that,” than, “You can’t take credit for that; government made that happen.” And when people are in need, we’re a lot more likely to give personally, through a church or local charity, so our giving doesn’t have to filter through government hands. I think if people in the Hispanic community knew us and knew our message, they’d find themselves comfortably welcome.

Are there better ways, maybe untried ways, to share the conservative message with Hispanic voters? I imagine there are, but I don’t yet know what those avenues will be. For now, we depend on Dave and people like him to keep telling their stories. Yes, life might be tough, but it’s not hopeless. If we can just keep government out of the way, we can work hard and build that dream here in America.