WILLIE VELÁSQUEZ
Texas, 1969
In towns like Crystal City, Mexican-Americans
live on one side and everyone else
on the other.
Teachers demand English, but some students
only know Spanish, and others prefer to blend
both or shift back and forth, like the natural flow
of a winding stream on the Rio Grande floodplain.
After kids hear about walkouts
at schools in California, they march out, too,
calling themselves Chicanos now, instead of
using a hyphen.
Those farmworker strikes
spread to our Texas fields, but when violence
enters the picture, people separate
into factions, argumentative groups
that believe this or that, when really
all we need
is unity
at the voting polls.
So that’s my only goal now: voter registration
and making sure our votes count.
Millions of votes.
Millions.