(Ed.'s Note: We received this missive and thought that – despite the mild vulgarity – merited our readers' attention. We apologize in advance if anyone takes offense, but agree with the writer that what's good for the white goose is good for the black gander.)
Special to El Rrun-Rrun
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Some of my friends and I were watching the televised meeting of the City of Brownsville last Tuesday and were transfixed when an action item was brought up by commissioner Jessica Tetreau and Ben Neece to remove a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Committee for displaying Neo-Nazi symbols in a posting on his Facebook page.
The people in question were members of the Youth Advisory Council, a group of high school students who have been attending the City of Brownsville Commission meetings to learn more about what is going on in their city and what they can do to improve in Brownsville.
They were identified as Christopher Gracia, Kevin Barajas, Jose A. Escobedo, Marily Caldera and Ernesto Gamez IIII.
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When Tetreau and Neece got wind of the social media posts with Neo-Confederate and Neo-Nazi leanings of the Youth Advisory members, they wanted them off the board. Before that, Tetreau took the youth to task on her Facebook page.
Special to El Rrun-Rrun
Some of my friends and I were watching the televised meeting of the City of Brownsville last Tuesday and were transfixed when an action item was brought up by commissioner Jessica Tetreau and Ben Neece to remove a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Committee for displaying Neo-Nazi symbols in a posting on his Facebook page.The people in question were members of the Youth Advisory Council, a group of high school students who have been attending the City of Brownsville Commission meetings to learn more about what is going on in their city and what they can do to improve in Brownsville.
They were identified as Christopher Gracia, Kevin Barajas, Jose A. Escobedo, Marily Caldera and Ernesto Gamez IIII.
Apparently, some of them, Barajas, Gracia and Escobedo included, have been dabbling in Neo-Nazi nationalist websites and posted messages sympathetic to those viewpoints.The graphic of Gracia before a Nazi eagle standing in front of a confederate flag is one (see graphic).
A Facebook poster said that the city leaders did not do their homework because "this guys makes regular public presentations of himself surrounded by alt-right, far-right, and proto-fascist words and symbols..."
Likewise, Escobedo, who regularly comments before the commission, also had posts sympathetic to Gracia and Kevin Barajas' viewpoints. In one, he urges the government to "Build That Wall," a viewpoint that seems to fly in the face against the city commission's resolution opposing it.
When Tetreau and Neece got wind of the social media posts with Neo-Confederate and Neo-Nazi leanings of the Youth Advisory members, they wanted them off the board. Before that, Tetreau took the youth to task on her Facebook page. "I demand the resignation of any advisory board member that does not respect the victims of the Holocaust," she posted.
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While no one sympathizes with the Neo-Nazi views, Tetreau's talking down to him for his intolerant views and displaying images seeming to praise Nazi ideology and racial intolerance, we could not but notice that sitting next to her was city commissioner Cesar de Leon, who recently was recorded using the "N" word – albeit in a private conversation and not posted on the worldwide web.
De Leon, having apologized for the despicable language he used in the private conversation, did not comment on the item during the meeting.
(In fact, De Leon's grandmother who was also sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Nazis, survived, and eventually emigrated to Monterrey, Mexico. De Leon has said before that he remembers the identification number camp guards tattooed on her arm.)
Commissioner Ricardo Longoria – who had been Escobedo's teacher – told him to take the feedback as a learning experience and to remember that as a member of a city board he should consider his public postings because in a very real sense he represented the city commission which appointed him to the youth board.
Neece also told Escobedo and the rest of the teens that they should learn from their mistakes and to comport themselves in the future in a way that will not shed an unfavorable light on the city.
We ask the commissioners, and Tetrreau in particular, aside from the private/public differences in the speech, weren't her colleague's use of the "N" word just as despicable as the indiscretions using Nazi symbolism by the members of the advisory board? They were content to allow him to apologize and learn from his mistakes, and he seems to have learned his lesson from the public rebuke.
In the end, Tetreau, Neece and the rest of the commission decided that the youth had been properly chastised and admonished them to be more discrete in the way they comported themselves. But the way Tetreau lit into these youth makes us wonder why she wasn't as vociferous against de Leon. For using this double standard, our circle of friends is nominating her for "Mamona of the Year."
While no one sympathizes with the Neo-Nazi views, Tetreau's talking down to him for his intolerant views and displaying images seeming to praise Nazi ideology and racial intolerance, we could not but notice that sitting next to her was city commissioner Cesar de Leon, who recently was recorded using the "N" word – albeit in a private conversation and not posted on the worldwide web.De Leon, having apologized for the despicable language he used in the private conversation, did not comment on the item during the meeting.
(In fact, De Leon's grandmother who was also sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Nazis, survived, and eventually emigrated to Monterrey, Mexico. De Leon has said before that he remembers the identification number camp guards tattooed on her arm.)
Commissioner Ricardo Longoria – who had been Escobedo's teacher – told him to take the feedback as a learning experience and to remember that as a member of a city board he should consider his public postings because in a very real sense he represented the city commission which appointed him to the youth board.
Neece also told Escobedo and the rest of the teens that they should learn from their mistakes and to comport themselves in the future in a way that will not shed an unfavorable light on the city.
We ask the commissioners, and Tetrreau in particular, aside from the private/public differences in the speech, weren't her colleague's use of the "N" word just as despicable as the indiscretions using Nazi symbolism by the members of the advisory board? They were content to allow him to apologize and learn from his mistakes, and he seems to have learned his lesson from the public rebuke.
In the end, Tetreau, Neece and the rest of the commission decided that the youth had been properly chastised and admonished them to be more discrete in the way they comported themselves. But the way Tetreau lit into these youth makes us wonder why she wasn't as vociferous against de Leon. For using this double standard, our circle of friends is nominating her for "Mamona of the Year."