As Gov. Greg Abbott prepared to give his State of the State address Thursday at a magnet factory off Interstate 35 on the way out of San Marcos, a group of Texas State students and activists held a potluck in a public park downtown.
This was the State of the People, an anti-Abbott protest organized by Mano Amiga, the group behind justice advocacy projects that have grabbed statewide attention, including San Marcos’ successful weed decriminalization measure last fall. Leaders from local and national organizations including the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Texas Civil Rights Project, Latino Justice, Hays County Jail Advocates and San Marcos Abortion Advocates, among others, spoke about the myriad ways Abbott doesn’t represent their values.
Unlike the governor, the crowd of around 70 people invited reporters to watch.
TCRP’s Roberto Lopez kicked off his speech with a nod to organizing history: the United Farm Workers’ clap, a chant of “Si se puede!”
“The people who look like the faces we have behind us, we make this community work and this place thrive,” Lopez said. “It is certainly not the man who’s giving the State of the State tonight.”
Carolina Canizales of San Antonio’s Immigrant Legal Resource Center accused Abbott, who made “border security” a key part of his reelection campaign, of using asylum seekers as political cover.
“Governor Abbott is not the Texas that we deserve, especially when he has used immigrants as the scapegoat for all of his failures,” she said.
Many speakers were critical of Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s border defense scheme that has already cost taxpayers more than $4 billion.
“[He’s] criminalizing Texas residents at the expense of Texas tax dollars,” said Priscilla Lugo from Latino Justice Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Even local efforts to protect undocumented people are preempted by laws like 2017’s SB 4, which forces local law enforcement to act as immigration agents, Canizales of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center said.
“A lot of people don’t realize that San Antonio has around 200,000 households that live with undocumented parents,” said Canizales, a DACA recipient herself. “That’s a family that can be separated under the laws that he has literally forced our local governments to enforce.”
The event ended with sandwiches, cupcakes and Bad Bunny on the speakers. After Abbott’s speech, in which he outlined priorities including $4.6 billion more for Operation Lone Star, banning municipalities from enacting COVID restrictions and further cracking limiting affordable bonds, Mano Amiga reacted in an Instagram post.
“The hate and bigotry Abbott spewed against our Black and Brown neighbors in his address tonight is despicable, unsurprising, and exactly why our community felt called to band together for the state of the PEOPLE. WE KEEP US SAFE,” the group posted.
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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.