In the rose colored view of the good old days, the view that most of us prefer, the government was not the answer to every problem in life. Neighbors helped neighbors, families took care of their own, churches helped widows and orphans, and entire communities came together to help each other during and after major calamities.
Of course, this being the rose colored view, it really didn’t work that way all of the time, for all of the population. And thus, people started relying upon government taking money from some and giving it to others. And the more that we as a whole relied upon government, the more government took. Which is where we stand today, with the government a huge, sprawling leviathan of an entity, reaching into areas that the founders of this country could never have imagined.
Fortunately, some groups are working hard to regain some of that early spirit and, presumably, retake some of the ground we have ceded to government. These people are generally called conservatives and are generally represented in politics by the Republican Party. Please do keep that “generally” term in mind. Unquestionably, some in the Republican Party forgot those values through the years and contributed to both the growth of the government and the loss of compassion amongst the populace, said loss being one of the reasons people learned to depend upon the government.
One of the groups seeking to regain some of this ground is the Latino Republican National Coalition, specifically the Texas chapter headed up by Artemio ‘Temo’ Muniz. Temo, as he is affectionately known, has a burning desire and passion to unite the Hispanic community with the Republican Party. He also has a burning desire and passion to help his neighbors, to give them the tools and knowledge necessary to lift themselves out of poverty and to not fall into the culture of dependency upon the government. Today I witnessed one of the fruits of his labors.
Temo teamed up with Team Revitalize to “fix up” the home of Alice Gayle in Northeast Houston. Team Revitalize is headed up by Rudy Gonzalez, another man with a passion to help his community. This isn’t the first project that Temo and Rudy have teamed up on, here are a couple of excellent videos on projects from April and June earlier this year.
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Great video work there. And great community service.
Today’s project was headed up by Eric Potier, who enlisted the help of Tiffany Burks of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, Joe Dotson and Michael Torres. Eric and Tiffany explained their project to the management at the Home Depot in the 16000 of the Eastex Freeway and Home Depot donated all of the paint and materials needed to replace rotted boards and repaint the entire exterior of the home and plant a garden in the back yard. Thank you Home Depot!
Temo estimated the turnout of volunteers to be around 50. They were able to finish all of the work necessary except replacing several windows. Eric will continue to seek a donor for the windows and when he is able to secure them, he will bring a team back to replace the damaged ones. I thought that was a great testament to Eric’s work – followup. So often, we move from project to project and forget about the ones we leave behind.
Although many politicians were invited, only one attended. Armando Walle, Democratic State Representative from District 140. Thank you, Rep. Walle!. Ms. Burks told me that Rep. Walle has been a big booster of the Boys and Girls Club, donating gifts to be used as prizes for the kids.
I wish I would have arrived earlier and gotten group shots and pictures before and after but I’m sure that this team will produce another outstanding video to showcase their work.
All I can say is, great job team!
