Interview with Susana Almanza

So, today is March 7, 2025. My name is Dr. Megan Poole, and I'm interviewing Susana Almanza. We're at PODER's community office in East Austin. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.

I would like to start by looking at these maps here in Austin and just ask you to reflect on if I said, "Tell me about yourself, your relation to East Austin, and how you've seen things change and grow over time." What would you say?

Well, there's been a tremendous change in East Austin. Growing up, me and my brothers used to, during the summer, explore all the creeks in Austin. And I tell people, in those days, the water was pretty pristine. It was pretty clean. You could swim in the water. And some of the creeks had water. Some of the creeks today don't have water, or certain sections there's no water. So it was really different from today from growing up.

I grew up where the streets were not paved, there wasn't a lot of lighting. That was kind of a positive thing, because at least I got to look at the stars and the moon and the heavens. That was a beautiful part of not having a lot of lighting.

And the other thing is. . . my brothers, we always went [and did] what they now call “community mapping.” So, we mapped out where all the palm trees were and peach trees were, persimmon trees, all the fruit trees around the area. And we knew, like the seasons, when we would have peaches and plums, and we had a mulberry tree also. So, there was a lot of fruit around us, a lot of fruit that was available. Those kind of things.

And there wasn't the highway like [we know] I-35 [today]. We had to cross I-35 every day to go to Palm School. Palm School was on the west side of the highway, and so we had to walk to Palm School and cross the highway every day. But in those days, there wasn't that much traffic, and there wasn't the overhead. The overhead of the highway that's been expanded. And so, we pretty much took what used to be the highway—what they would call West Avenue. It was like the major street that was like the original highway until they built the highway. So, we would cross West Avenue and just walk all the way on the access. And Palm School was on the corner of East First and I-35, but now it's Cesar Chavez, so First Street has been renamed.

So in those days that we're walking, we walked everywhere, and busing was busing was not available as we were growing up, and so it was nothing to walk 10, 15, or 20 miles. That was just part of life back then. My parents never owned a vehicle, so we walked everywhere. We took public transportation when we needed to. Sometimes my dad would have the company truck, and so, you know, he would take us to the drive-in and stuff like that: take us just for the ride, just for riding the truck.

But, yeah, it was a very much different setting. It was all about community. I mean, I grew up in a family of 10, so if we just gathered two families [together], it seemed like there was a league happening, you know?

So, we always had... the church had a big field where we played baseball and kickball, and the other friends joined us. And so, it almost seemed like there was a tournament happening. But it wasn't, because in that time, families was a real big thing, and having a lot of children was very common back then. It was very common for everybody to have, you know, 8, 10, 14 kids. So, that's... I've seen the whole different [time], not just in the environment and landscape, but how families have changed.

You know, we had chickens. We had a chicken coop. We had a garden that we had. And there were people who cooked, like breads and stuff. And it was a lot of bartering common. I remember the guy coming through the neighborhood saying, "Pan, pan [Spanish for bread]. Come get pan. Who wants bread?" His family made fresh bread, and so they go door to door to door, selling the bread and exchanging for eggs. Like we had eggs from our chickens, and stuff like that. So, it was a very different environment. It was very different.

It was more family oriented. I grew up in a very unique [area], because where I lived on 10th Street, everyone behind me was Latino, Mexican American, and you are fixing to cross the street, and it was the beginning of the African American community. Well, people say that was the end of the African American community, because it started up and MLK and came down to 10th Street. But the people lived there said that was the beginning and it went that way. So that was the story.

But I grew up, you know, with the African American community, and so I got to see a lot of things growing up.

One of the unique things was there was a lot of discrimination and segregation. Our school was like 99% Mexican American, but the teachers were like 99% white. Yeah, so we didn't have. . . we only had one teacher, Mrs. Reyes, which I think was the third or fourth grade teacher, and she was the only Mexican American teacher in the whole school. Everyone else was white in the school, and that's kind of what I was accustomed to seeing when I even went to University Junior High, it was the same thing, but the students were different.

So, in Palm School was basically the poor and working poor. When I got to University Junior High I was going to school with a bunch. . . we were the minority, and the whites were more middle to upper class. You could see the real difference in the clothes they wore. Everything about them was different from us.

Not only that, the education was different. Our A's were probably C+ going from them. And so there was a real difference in the education system, also.

And I knew that because when I ended up going to Austin High, we were... a group of us that lived on this side that had to go to Austin High. The majority of our friends from Martin went to [Albert Sidney] Johnston High School, which was really hard for us to be separated from youth, people we had known since elementary school, right? And then having to be separated and going to Austin High.

But a group of us were all honor students, so when we got to Austin High we said, "What's going on?" We were really behind, and we were like, struggling. And so we had a discussion what was going on, and we realized that even though we were honor students, our A's were like, C pluses, and that we hadn't gotten the same quality of education as the people in West Austin. And so, we had to really buckle down to really study harder just to catch up to our peers. So that's when we realized that the education system in East Austin wasn't equivalent to the education system in West Austin.

What would you say, based on your memories from growing up in the Guadalupe neighborhood, what was the most important thing about where you lived? What made that neighborhood so unique?

Yeah, I think that what made it unique is that there were families. There were so many kids. To me, it was like I had so many friends, you know?

My childhood was just. . . I tell people I had the best childhood, you know? There was something always going on. We were always playing games. We were always exploring. We were always going places together. And so, I just go, like, climbing trees, you know? We were just. . . there was just so many things that we were always doing.

And we live just a half a block from the state cemetery and that was the most exciting, because we would go in there late when it was starting to get dark. And they had all the different. . . I don't know, the heroes? Or whoever they were, and they had one, that is, he was inside a big coffin, right? But made with cement in it. He was in like in a cage. And they would say, "If you stare hard enough at him, he'd come up like this!" And then we'd hear noises, and we’d start running like they're following us, there's ghosts.

And so the cemetery was like our playground, too. In the evening, it was our playground, and the cemetery had persimmon trees there, and that was the other thing. And so, but we would play in those big areas of the state cemetery. And it didn't have any burials in it. It was still very vacant. So, we played.

And they had the best grass there, very well kept at that state cemetery. So that was a place that we really had fun in the evening pretending like there were ghosts and stuff there, and these people would come alive and come out of the graves. And then there was an area where we played kick ball, freeze tag, all these different games.

So, I always remember my childhood as a very happy one, always having fun and doing things.

What do you think are the most significant challenges for that area now?

Oh, yeah, the displacement. The displacement and the gentrification is the biggest challenge now. Because when we started PODER, we said we would address the most hazardous industries in our communities because it was impacting the health of the most vulnerable population, the children and the elderly.

So, the board said, "Okay, we're going to go after those industries that are really causing harm, health harm, to our community."

And that's what we began to do. We began to, you know, close down the six most hazardous transnational, billion-dollar corporations, which were the Tank Farms, the fuel storage facilities. Then we went to BFI—Brown and Ferris Industry—the second most biggest waste management system in the United States. And then we went... during that time we're also trying to relocate and close down the Holly Power Plant that had electric magnetic fields. It had noise pollution...It had everything you could think of that was really harming the community.

So, as we began to clean up the community, and then we made history in 2001 because we re-zoned over 600 properties that were zoned industrial or commercial, and this included homes that were zoned industrial, and they were residential.

But this [zoning] is what had allowed all this hazardous industry to be next door to residential, next door to a school, is because in the ‘50s, they had zoned our community “industrial.” And that was on purpose so that industry would all come on this side of town.

And so our thing was like, “We're going to get rid of all this hazardous industry.” Because we also had a lot of cancers in the community. People were sick, children were sick, the elderly were sick, and so we said, "Now we've got to close down all these hazardous industries."

After we started cleaning up the community and cleaned up everything in the late 1990s, the city decided it was going to go into neighborhood planning, and it divided the city into 54 neighborhood planning areas. And the first area that they came to. . . the [first] neighborhood they divided, which they renamed Cesar Chavez neighborhood, had the boundaries [I-]35 to the east, Town Lake to the south, Chicon through the east, and then Seventh Street through the north. So that was one big neighborhood.

And so, then when they came in, they said, for the first time, they brought in a new zoning that never existed in our community, which was CSMU: Commercial Services Mixed Use. So, if you come down Cesar Chavez, as you do, you see all these houses, and now they're all like little businesses, quaint businesses. People lived there. Our communities lived there.

So, we fought that plan, but we didn't have any attorneys to help us at that time. We fought that plan, and we went to City Council. We said, "Look, if you zone all of these people Commercial Service Mixed Use, one is they're not going to qualify for federal funding.” Because you have to be zoned single-family, so they can't get housing rehab or anything. The whole banking institution had just come in for home equity loans. We're not going to qualify for that because we're zoned commercial and not single family. I said, "And then the property taxes are going to go up because you're no longer residential now you're commercial." I said, "All of these things are going to hurt and displace our communities."

Of course, they weren't having it because they had their own plan. Their whole plan was to displace us.

Where now Austin has grown, and West [Austin] wasn't going to take [it] (laughs) . . . a lot of these things they wanted to do [to us], and they had lawyers and architects, everything you name it was there.

And so, we're the most vulnerable population. So, they came in, they introduced this zoning, and ours was the first neighborhood, and for the blacks, it was the. . . . what's it called? I'm thinking it's.... starts with a C... but so the blacks were being [displaced] at the same time. They picked one of the black’s neighborhoods that was next to UT and I-35 too, and they were going to be the first ones to undergo these plans.

So, they come in with the pretense of, "Oh, what would you like to see in your neighborhood? A pharmacy, a store? A grocery store, a clothing store? All of these things. What would you like to have your neighborhood look like?" And everybody's dedicating [time], putting this time in this whole plan for over a year or so.

And then you get to the to the City Council, and then it says, "The only thing that's legally binding is a zoning." So, everything else that you had been dreaming of and them making you think that they were going to do all this for your neighborhood, and put money [in your neighborhood], they were not accountable for any of that.

The only thing that was real was going to be this zoning. And that wasn't costing them a damn thing. It was just redoing, you know, the zoning on it.

And then, I think it was only four years after that whole zoning came in. . .(cross talk)

When was that? (cross talk)

Not... I was 19... let's see when the Cesar Chavez plan? It had to be in the in the early 90s, when it came in. It could have been 2000.

But four years after that, Liz Mueller, Professor Liz Mueller from UT, she comes in with her class, and she does a whole study of the Cesar Chavez plan area to see how it's impacted. And in four years, she saw that the land value had increased over 400% and the taxes had increased over 200%

And little by little, the people began to be displaced. Because when they used to just pay a few hundred [dollars] for their property taxes, now they were having to pay thousands. So, the values [increased], and these were just working-class poor people that owned property.

And then I'll tell you that at that time, we had 67% home ownership. We had the most, the highest ownership per capita in the whole city. Because we were forced to move over here and we built our homes with [only] $2,000 and stuff.

And we made the place, you know, the beauty that it was. And then they came in and that was the way that they used to take the land. And so, we said it was a land grab that was going on. And so we, we fought it.

The next plan was the Holly neighborhood plan, which was from, you know, Chicon on all the way to Pleasant Valley here. Same thing, the river and Seventh Street. Same thing happening. They instituted all these new zoning categories. And, you know, it was like a domino effect that was happening.

By the time we got to the Govalle-Johnston plan, we were more organized, you know? And we put out the best fight. And that's where a lot of the industrial zoning was at too.

And so, we were able to. . . and plus we had two fresh University of Texas graduates who were working in the planning department, and so they understood what was going on in the community, and they really worked with us. And they were really slapped around by their employers, by the city, you know? But they held their ground for us, and we were able to rezone over 600 properties that would be more compatible.

So, all this thing was happening, kind of cleaning up the neighborhood, rezoning, getting rid of the industrial, and then. . .

Well, I remember when the plan was to get rid of the most hazardous thing, this guy from UT came to me. He says, “Susana, you know that if y'all began to get rid of all these industrial and hazardous facilities, you know what's going to happen?" And I said, "What?" He says, "Gentrification is going to come in." He says, "Gentrification is going to come in after y'all clean up the community." And I can't remember his name, and maybe he had seen it in another city or state. He was a University of Texas student.

So I came back and I told the board, I say, "Look, I just want to let y'all know that I was told that as we continue to clean up, the next thing that's going to happen is gentrification. So what do y'all want to do?" And they said, "Well, we'll fight that battle when we get to it! (laughs) Let's keep on cleaning up the neighborhood."

And sure enough, the battle came. And it's been the most difficult challenge in our whole life, in my life, because at least when you're fighting industry, is one corporation, it's one entity, and you can organize against that entity. But [with] gentrification, there's so many entities.

The city is the main driver of those entities, whether it's the Real Estate Council, Austin Chamber of Commerce, you know? All of these people that play a role in development, and it's a Council, the City Council, that makes it possible by instituting these new zonings and so forth. So yeah, gentrification has been the most challenging.

And so, when UT did the Uprooted Report just a few years ago to see which neighborhoods they could help and where the city should put all their funding in to help, they said, "Forget about Cesar Chavez neighborhood. It's gone. There's nobody. There's just a few people left. It's gone. It's totally gentrified."

Then East Town Lake, "Forget it. It's gone. It's truly gentrified. The Govalle-Johnston neighborhood, 60/40, you still could do some things there, but it's going. It's going. But if you really want to save anybody, you should look at Montopolis, because that still has like a 90% people of color, and you got a 33% poverty rate there. So, you really should be working in that. If you're going to save anybody or put any funding to help sustain that community, you should look at Monopolis."

Because, well, that was the last one. But that was where you have the most vulnerable population now, you have the most poverty, less educated people, and so forth. Met all the things for gentrification.

But the city pays [for] all these good studies and task forces and committees and commissions, and they come up with some of the best recommendations, but they don't follow them. And they pat themselves on the back: "Hey, we did this study to look at gentrification, blah, blah, blah." But they'll go to other towns, and they're not recognizing that they put this together and all that, but they don't implement it.

And you can just see. . . the most recent [issue] was this whole Project Connect fiasco.

The way they got a lot of the community to buy-in was in that whole bond initiative, which was a huge one, $7,350,000,000 was going to be put in their anti-displacement fund. It's called Project Connect Anti-Displacement fund. $350 million.

It has done nothing but displace people. So, it looked at if you lived along the hubs of where Project Connect was within a one mile radius, you qualify for this funding, you know? And of course, people, the developers, right away, everybody's kind of licking their lips, all right. And anyway, they're supposed to be giving it to these grassroots organizations and nonprofits.

And the first year, they gave up to these groups. And they gave it to groups who weren't really active and organizing. And some of these groups were service groups, not actually on the ground, like Goodwill. And I'm not saying that they're bad, they shouldn't [get funds]. But there was lot of organizations that were on the ground, and they didn't get the money at all.

And so we've been fighting them because as they've come in to use the Project Connect Anti-Displacement [Fund], the thing was that they were building the housing at 60% Median Family Income, and most of them 80%. We said, "Wait a minute, because this community lives at 30% MFI. (laughs) And some at 40%." If you're building at 60% and 80%, it's displacement.

So, you should stop calling it “anti-displacement” and call it “displacement funding,” because this is what you're doing." And we challenged them.

I served on the Project Connect Advisory Committee, and I brought forward from about eight organizations addressing this whole funding and how they were allocating funds and how they were causing displacement, and that they shouldn't be using the general guidelines of HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] standards that they adopted because this was not federal money. This was our tax money.

And so, they could go at 30% and 40%, you know? They were choosing, again, to gentrify our community, and we're saying, "Hey, it's not federal money. Why are you using those particular guidelines when you can be using at 30% or looking at where the community is. What is a median family income in that particular community? Build housing at that level."

But the people, they really don't have. . . they talk a good talk, and that's about it. They don't implement it.

And it's like fighting a system that's so corrupt. To me, it's a corrupt system that sleeps with developers, and it's all about money. It's all about money.

And they go like, "Well. . ." They look at us: "Well, your community doesn't vote anyway, so you're not the constituents." That kind of thing, you know?

That's the other thing that they looked at a long time. When they analyze who's voting and how many votes, East Austin had always had the lowest amount of turnout. Of course, it's increasing. We work to increase the voting turnout, but that's how they look at things, you know?

Do you agree with the Uprooted Project? Do you think the Cesar Chavez neighborhood is gone?

I know it's gone. Yeah. (cross talk)

So if we're thinking about [what] you mentioned. . . my question is, what is gone? You mentioned schools. I think you mentioned a church. But what other areas of your neighborhood? What spots do you remember vividly that you would want to say, "I hope when we remember this neighborhood before it was gentrified, these are the landmarks and traditions and things we remember." (cross talk)

Yeah, all those neighborhoods. I mean, all of them have their uniqueness and should be remembered because of everyone there. I mean, what gets hit the most is the whole family and culture. The whole culture identity.

Because when you start to displace families, like, if my children or my grandchildren can't even live near us, when we had the support system where, you know, grandma was down the street and around the corner. You knew everybody, and then if you were doing something wrong, they'd come and tell your parents that they knew when you were stepping out of line.

You had, you had people watching out for everybody, you know? So, you lose that, that sense of community, and that sense of culture that existed.

I see now like the churches have had to buy property just for parking, and the reason is because everybody has to drive in. People still feel those religious institutions are the sacred grounds, so they've had to move out, but they still want to come back to the church that they've grown up in.

And so, I've seen it. You know, you can [drive] and see all the housing they knock down for parking. When people used to just walk to church, and now people are driving in because they no longer live here.

All the little mom-and-pop stores are gone, you know? Now we have, I don't know, some are national chains, and some of these little yuppie kind of places that have opened up. They don't really serve our community, and the prices are so high you can't take a family in there, because you probably come up with $100 bill or something. You just can't afford it.

So that's that sense of the business and the assets that were left to the next generation. People could not sustain themselves if they didn't own those little sites, you know? They pretty much got left or they got taxed out. And so that sense that you could go buy fresh tortillas, you know, fresh masa [Spanish for dough], all of that stuff. The corner grocery store, when you knew everybody who was in there, where they had the meat market, everything, all of those things are gone. They're all gone from the community.

The access to be able to go just visit different people that are no longer there. They're also all gone.

Our schools, because of the gentrification, they've closed down five schools because, well, there's no kids. They have displaced families, and so now they're going, "Well, well, that school can't be open. It's under-enrolled. We don't have enough students.” Well, why?

The first thing they did when they started seeing [this underenrollment happen], they started bringing kids from the other side of the river over to the schools here in East Austin [to increase] the population. But then it was like, “They can't sustain it.” Because even the families there were being displaced. And so, it was like, "Okay, we're going to have to close down these schools, because we just don't have the children."

So, bring me back to your childhood. I want to know what role you think the outdoors, and the environment, the local environment here, the creek beds. . . Sylvia was talking about the springs. What role did all that play in your childhood?

Oh, being in the water, being in nature, having trees around you, flowers, and plants. I mean, just being able to be in the creek.

That's the saddest part to me, in Boggy Creek, because they cemented for miles. But I remember being in Boggy Creek, and there were sand at the bottom of my feet, and being able to walk in that water and just feeling the sand is a very special, unique feeling when your feet, bare feet, not any shoes, nothing, (laughs) just bare feet, walking in the creek, barefoot, with the sand beneath you and your toes just sinking in, and you're walking in the water.

And just hearing the water is so surreal. It's a very peaceful, it's a very peaceful feeling to be in the water and to see the little tadpoles in there, you know? In the water and so forth. To see the ripples, when you can throw a little rock and see the ripples of the water.

All of those things are like something that everybody. . . that's what I feel like the kids today are missing. They're not able to. . . now their waters are so contaminated.

I mean, even the pets are dying from swimming in the water. I feel like that's such an injustice, because being able to walk in the real natural creeks and streams, that's a real blessing.

And they're not experiencing [that]. You don't see people in the creeks anymore, you know? You either have fences around them because they're dangerous, you have signs that say, "Don't. No swimming, no fishing." It's the waters are contaminated, you know?

And so, to me, Boggy Creek was very special, to be able to just go in there, and you could follow Boggy Creek. So you could go. . . (laughs) you could walk, you know, from Govalle, all the way, you know, down Seventh Street, follow the creek, and it keeps on going. And so, just to follow all the creeks and see how far they go, and the interconnections of the creek and Boggy Creek ended up dumping into the Colorado River.

And so being able to be in those creeks and in the rivers is something that everyone should be able to experience, and now it's just people on top of the river. They're canoeing or paddling or stuff, but they're not in the water. That's two different things.

So you remember sand when you would walk in the creek bed. What do you remember about the banks? (cross talk)

The banks were grassy. They were grassy landscapes. Just like, everything has a shore, right? But it's usually. . . it's got grass and leaves, and it's got little trees, and it's got trees along the embankment too. It has trees along the embankment as you're walking through it.

And what is it like today? Are the trees there? Is there any grass? (cross talk)

No. Well, certain parts of it. They're further away because there was so much flooding that took place at Boggy Creek, and so the Core engineers came and rocked it all.

So, it's like sections. It's just rocks, I guess to control the erosion and any kind of future flooding. And, yeah, there's not. . . if you follow it today, the trees are pretty far back from where Boggy Creek was at.

You remember them being much closer? (cross talk)

Yes, yes, the trees were a lot more closer. There's certain sections of it where you can still see, there's still a lot of vegetation, you know? But it has just a trickle of water going through. Just a trickle of water.

Do you remember what kind of trees they were?

That I don't remember: what kind of trees they were. I don't. (cross talk)

You remember them as large, though, like, with a lot of shade? (cross talk)

Yeah, yeah, and not too far. . . because what Boggy Creek was next to were pecan groves. There were pecan groves in. . . and I know that because at the corner of Boggy and Jain, I mean Bolm Road and Jain Lane, which Boggy Creek is only like half a block from, that's where you would sell pecans.

There were pecan trees all over in that area. For some reason, I don't know [why], but it was a pecan grove area, pecans grew. And I guess because you were near water, you know?

There's a lot of water. There's . . . seriously, there's Oak Springs going through there, Boggy Creek, and so you had a lot of pecan trees.

There's a whole grove of pecan trees on Tillery that we fought because they wanted to cut them down to do housing. And so, we're able to do those.

We fought also when the Austin Community College came in right there in Gregoryville, it was going through Boggy Creek, and they wanted to... we got them to do a pervious street covering for parking and not just cement. And then they wanted to cut down like about, I don't know, some, I know we ended up saving 18 trees and Boggy Creek goes through there.

They had it designated not as a creek, but just as, I don't know, just a ravine or just a ditch. No, they had it as a drainage ditch! That's how they had it. And we said, "No, it's Boggy Creek. Boggy Creek. Oak Springs comes down. Boggy Creek is flowing through there, and it takes a turn." But because they had done so much building over it, over the waterways and didn't really pay attention.

You said you remember the water as pristine. There were tadpoles in it. (cross talk)

Yeah.

Tell me specifically what you remember about the water, maybe its temperature. Did you see frogs? Any fish? How did y'all interact with what was in the water?

Yeah, I think most of it was the little tadpoles, the little frogs in their beginning.

The water was pretty clear. It was pretty clear.

And it was. . . I don't think it was real cold, because we never said, "Oh, this water is real cold!" (laughs) And not like at Barton Springs, you can tell it's very cold there! No, it was, it was pretty moderate. It wasn't like it was warm or anything. It was, to me, just the right temperature to be in, not cold and not hot, just a moderate temperature where it felt good. Because in the heat, you don't want to have like real hot water. And it wasn't like that. It was very refreshing. It's very refreshing the water.

Do you remember any fish?

I don't remember any fish there. I think I remember the fish in Waller Creek, little fishes, little fishes. But I don't remember the fishes in Boggy Creek.

What about, what wildlife do you remember seeing?

Not around Boggy, not around the Boggy Creek area. No, it was just like dogs and stuff like that. Because at that time, dogs were not on leashes, the dogs were free to roam and stuff.

But, yeah, I never remember seeing any wildlife there, like rabbits or foxes or any deer. That's more at the Colorado River. That's where you see that.

Do you remember who introduced you to these sites? Who do you remember experiencing this environment with?

My brothers. (laughs) It was my brothers! And who taught them where all the creeks were, I don't know!

Because what happened was I had two sisters, and then during the summer, my brothers had a lot more liberty than the girls did. But my brothers every summer were like these little explorers, right? And so, I would say I wanted to go, and I'd have to really, really wean myself, because I'd have to say, "If you don't let me go, I'm going to tell Dad." I'd keep an eye on everything they did wrong. And I said, "I'm going to tell Dad, you did this and this and this". And they go, "Okay! But you better keep up. We're not gonna slow down for you." (laughs)

And so I'd keep up with them. And they were the ones that would take me. "We're gonna go to this creek, this Boggy Creek, and we're gonna go to Shoal Creek, and we're gonna go to Barton Creek." I don't know how they found all these bodies [of water], Waller Creek, but they we would go to the creeks and just have fun out there, you know?

Swimming, you know, water fights and things like that, picking up the tadpoles. Sometimes we’d get little jars to put them in and stuff like that. And so, we would just have a fun day, you know, in the creek, and the next day we're going to another creek.

And what was pleasant was it was a walking journey, because, you know, everything was walking along the way to get to all these different creeks. But it was my brothers that always knew where all the creeks were at.

Do you remember any birds or fireflies, mosquitoes, any sort of insects or birds?

You know, I don't remember, like, being bit by the mosquitoes or anything like that.

I'm sure that there were birds, but I think because we were so engaged in the water and playing in it, that sometimes the water takes your whole attention. It takes your whole attention, and everything else is. . . you don't really pay attention or see it, because you're just engaged with the water.

What role do you think the water or the creek or this area in general played in who you became as a person? What role does nature hold for you? Spiritually, philosophically?

Yeah, to me, nature, you know, we always say nature kind and human kind are interwoven, interlocked, and you can't separate it. And I'm very blessed to be very in tune with nature and to be in nature. My mother was a healer, and so she always taught us to respect nature.

I remember my mom had this big spider web on the side of the house. It was huge, and she said not to harm the spider. But we were allowed to feed the spider, so we'd have those big red ants and throw one there. We'd watch this. We've been entertained watching the spider come all the way down, roll up the end, and the ant fighting and stuff, trying to get away, and then taking it back.

And then when we’d get a cut, the first thing my mother would do was she'd go up to the spiderweb, get part of the web, and put it on our cuts, and the cuts would stop [bleeding].

And so, we then understood why our mom was growing this big spiderweb, because there's really the band aid, which later I find out the band aid is made like this spider web, right? That it has this certain protein in the web itself. And so, she would use that, you know, all the natural things and teas and stuff like that.

And so only if somebody had a real serious cut or broken bone that she couldn't [treat], then, of course, we'd end up in the hospital. Because that day, at that time, we didn't have doctors, or we didn't have any private doctors or physicians. My mom had to take care of her [kids].

And not just the physical, but the spiritual part. She did spiritual cleansing and stuff. If we were having, like, bad dreams or stuff like that, then she knew that it was time to do a spiritual cleansing on us and stuff. And so she would do, like the prayer she had, depending on what it was, she had separate certain ceremonies that she would do.

And I think that that's sort of like the psychological part, like if she's the psychiatrist. Because just knowing you're being taken care of and that somebody's praying over you and asking you to repeat certain things and rubbing your body and cleansing you, you know itself is like, "Wow, I feel so much better. (laughs) I feel so much better." And you're having, like, that personal time somebody really caring for you.

So she was, like, the healing force in our families, whether it was she felt like maybe we were depressed or something was going on with us, or if it was physical, [drinking] certain teas to help us clean out our stomach or whatever.

So, you know, I find myself really in tune with nature, because when I was very little, I remember my mom . . . I must've been four or five, and she was getting ready to plant out in the garden. And so she told me to come out, and she says, "We're gonna work in the garden." And she says, "You gotta massage Mother Earth." She told me, "You gotta massage her." And it's like digging with your hands and making plants, “and then we're gonna plant these seeds, and then she's gonna give us food." And at that time, I thought, "Is my mom just trying to get me to work, or is this real?" (laughs)

But then, when I saw everything growing—tomatoes and chilis and lettuce and cucumbers—I thought, "Oh, my mom is so smart. She was right. Mother Earth will give to us if we work with her, right?" And so, I've always had my hands in the dirt, in the soil. So that's really being close to nature.

And because my parents would let us sleep up on the rooftop. That was a natural thing to go up on the roof. I mean, how many parents let you go up on the roof and lay out there? Just look at the stars? (laughs)

And because we didn't have air, central heat or air, nothing like that, my dad put in the screen on the porch, and we'd sleep outside. We were in the urban city, and we're sleeping outside because it was cooler, there was air going [around].

And so I felt like we were always really in tune with nature all the time. We were always in tune with nature because we were there looking at the stars, the shooting stars, the moon. I mean, it was like the heavens are very beautiful, and we didn't have a whole lot of lighting. Like it's hard now. If there's too much light and you really can't see.

But because East Austin didn't have all the lighting that it did, it was very clear that you could see the stars and everything at night. And so, to me, I grew up really in tune with the nature and with the earth and what are healing plants, or even the insects, the role that they play, like the band aid and stuff like that. And so, I mean, those are things that are very natural and close to nature.

When you would massage Mother Earth, what do you remember about the soil? (cross talk)

Oh yeah, the soil was like. . . and it seemed like, because my dad would prepare it, right? And it felt like, you know, when it rains and you smell if the rain hits the dirt, in the soil, it has a certain smell to it, very unique.

And that's the way it was because the area where the garden had just been prepared, you know, my dad had already prepared most of it. He had made the rows and stuff, and I think he'd even watered it a little bit so that it would be easier to work it. And then we'd get into [it]. My mother would be out there planting the seeds and stuff.

The smell is like when rain is first coming and it hits them and it hits the natural dirt and stuff. It has a very hidden smell to it.

Did anyone in your family pick up where your mother left off? Did anyone become a healer? Did anyone practice?

I still do a lot of things. (laughs). I do all the different teas, the throat tea, the respiratory teas.

Yeah, my kids always go, "Everything's a tea!" (laughs)

And then breathing, "Ok, breathe!" You know, breathing was a very big thing too, that I learned, like, “You gotta breathe through everything, right?” And then my kids do the same thing. They go like, "Oh yeah, we gotta breathe through it." And even when I had the accident, "Mom, breathe, Mom, remember, you always tell us to breathe, now take [a breath]. You're okay. Breathe in and breathe out." (laughs)

So they remember everything. And then I have to look at them and say, okay, let me slow down here. (laughs)

And those things I still do. I still do all the different teas and stuff. And sometimes they'll go like, "Okay..." I said, "What do you think all these things are made of?"

That's why through our organization, we always take the youth out to the Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park, and Marika, who's a healer next door, she goes and tells them about all the different trees and the plants and their medicinal purposes, right? Because she's seen it's not just about . . . this is your natural pharmacy. This is the pharmacy. You're in the pharmacy right now, you know?

And so I think that that's the thing that I tried to. . . from learning from my mom, it’s like, “Okay, there's all these different little plants and stuff that are now made into teas, and they're good for what? One is for your throat, depending on, if it’s respiratory depending. One is to help you sleep, you know? And one is to calm your stomach.”

And so there's all these natural things that you can do before you go into things. They are semi-natural, but they've been. . . chemicals have also been put into them also now. But yeah, I tried to, you know, carry those [things on].

And I would do like, cleansing with my kids too. When they were having a difficult time and stuff like that. And sometimes I'll go like, okay, you know, they're more like going to somebody else to do the cleansing. Or they say, "Who else is doing the cleansing?" you know? And I'll introduce them to other people, like Marika and some of the other people that do cleansing and healing.

You said you spent a lot of time outside, sleeping outside even. Growing up, do you remember rainfall patterns or climate patterns that seem different today?

Oh yeah, back then we had seasons. We knew exactly, like, I would tell them, "Okay, my mother had this whole thing about the winter.” Because, basically, winter ended in February. But she would say, "Febrero, Febrero, loco. Marzo, poco loco." So, she said, "February is crazy, and March can be a little bitty crazy.” You're almost over it. You're almost over the time.

And so back then, you knew the seasons. You knew when it was, you know, summer, spring, fall, and then winter. Now you cannot.

I mean, I was so worried because when this freeze that came a couple of weeks ago, my trees already started blooming. And there was green, they were blooming, and I looked at them, I said, "Oh, no, a freeze is coming."

The trees are so confused. The plants are confused. You get the water, you get all this hot going, and then, boom, a winter freeze comes in and stunts their growth. It doesn't kill it, it stunts them. And so definitely, there's no seasons anymore. There's no more.

I mean, you might have maybe one week of winter where you really [get cold]. . . I mean, we rarely freeze, okay? We rarely have any freeze in Austin nowadays. And so, the winter is very, very mild.

And then it's basically, you know, summer all year round, almost. So, there's really, there's no really seasons. There's not a season.

When I was growing up, you knew, "Okay, this is a time to trim the trees, trim the plants. It's time to prepare the soil." You know, it's all these different seasons that you got to get ready for. And you know that they were coming, and you knew, like the weather, where we're going more to the season where there's a lot of rain.

Because it used to be like April was where there's rain season, April and May. And then that was a time that, you know, everything was going to be [blooming], you're going to get a lot of rain and stuff. And in between that, you might [get rain], but those were the months where you would get the most rain and stuff.

And you can't tell them these days, the climate change, climate destruction, has messed up the whole seasons now, and so it's very different.

And you said, you remember that there used to be more water in Waller and Boggy?

Yes, yes. (cross talk)

Year-round? (cross talk)

Year-round! Year-round, there was water in those creeks. There was water in those creeks. Year-round. I went to Palm School, Waller Creek was right [there]. (laughs) There was, like, just feet from us, there was running water. There was running water when I was little.

And somewhere along the way, the water stopped running, and it got lower and lower. I'm not sure at that time what was going on. You know, what was happening? And it could be that the climate was changing, and we weren't getting enough rainfall. I'm not really sure, or did they dam it up somewhere at the beginning, where was that? You know, did they change the course of the water? You know, what was going on for the different creeks?

You mentioned Boggy Creek flooding. What do you remember about. . . I gather that there was a major flood, but then, tell me what you remember about that. Were there smaller floods that were more regular or not necessarily?

Yeah, I don't know that could have been more, you know, floods that built up to the last flood, because at that time, I wasn't like right next to where it was. It was more like hearing it from other friends and people who live right next to it that the flooding was occurring and that they were experiencing that.

And then I remember going. . . when they were beginning now to rock wall the sides of it with all the rocks and everything. And then later came the cement of the creek.

And because I remember talking to some of the people that lived there. One of the people that we used to, Geneva, our chairperson, [Geneva’s Last Name] lives like a couple of blocks from Boggy Creek.

So, you know, with people like that telling us, "Hey, the flooding has just gotten so bad and so scary." So, I'm thinking that it wasn't just, it just didn't occur one time. I think that the flooding was continuous, and then it got to the point where the people probably said, "Enough is enough."

Do you remember that last big flood being a driver of displacement in that moment, or not necessarily?

No, not necessarily, no. I don't think the flood was a big displacement, because there's still some of the houses that are there. There's some new ones now, but there's still a few of them that have been there for a while.

What was the first . . . so, you talk about the water being pristine.

Yeah.

What are some of your first memories of realizing that the water quality was changing? And what have you noticed about water quality changes over time?

Yeah, I think one of the things, and not being able to get in Boggy Creek, was that we knew that the water. . . you couldn't even see the water.

I don't know how the water just stopped at that particular point. What was going on? Because there was very little water in the creek then, because after it got cemented, it seemed like, "Well, what happened to the water? What? What? Where did it go?"

And even when the water came. . . . let's say it was a big rain, and I remember going down there, and yeah, there was water. There was like, maybe a foot or two of water, but it was moving. It was going, I guess, because also, too, it was in cement. It was almost like if it was a runoff. That's the way it seemed like: it was runoff water. It was just flowing through.

You could see the movement of the water, and it just went on and on and on. Because even when I went to the Seventh Street bridge, there on [Lion Street] and Seventh Street, Boggy Creek goes through there, it's moving, it's still moving. And I know it's because everything's been rocked, you know, there's no soil, there's no grass, there's no vegetation to slow it down. There's nothing to take it in.

Now, tell me about PODER and tell me . . . you all are storied for your activism and your action, specifically around environmental concerns. What actions have you all taken around water, water quality, watersheds, or what actions have you taken in general that you feel have really made a difference in terms of our local environment?

Yeah, I think one of the things was preserving the Oak Springs. That was a really big one, because they wanted to build a development over the springs, a Dollar Store. I mean, it was a whole thing of what they wanted to build. And so we're like, "Wait a minute, there's natural springs out there."

And so we began to organize and fight and educate them that this was a natural springs, and that the natural springs went across the street, went under what they had built on top of the springs from the library, but then there was a ravine behind it where the water seeped right back out.

And so Oak Springs, that was a big fight. We brought a lot of people. We had to include. . . what we had to do was [realize] it wasn't just going to be the water fight that was going to save us. We had to look at what were the plants here? So, we had the Prairie Association come in, and they did a whole analysis of all the plants and stuff that was there. And then we had the Bird Association come in, and they did a whole analysis of all the different birds that rested there and during certain seasons. And so that helped build the argument that there was a natural springs. You had plants, certain unique plants that only were there, that grew there, and then you had birds that were their resting place that came to certain seasons, or lived throughout the seasons.

And so, it was all of these things. Because the trees could prove that there were old, grandmother and grandfather trees. They're huge, some of the hugest trees you could see, right?

And so all of these things really help in getting the city to purchase a property and keep it as a green space. And there's always a fight, because if we didn't put it under Park . . . because Park then wants to develop it like as a park and all that, and we're like, “No, we needed to stay as a natural spring.” And so we had it put under the Watershed Department, because then it would stay as natural, the way it was, without any development on it, with the springs and the trees and the plants and so forth in it. That was one of the big [fights].

The next one was the Roy Guerrero Colorado River Park. So, in like 1999, [19]98, the city began to purchase that land. It was as big as Zilker. People don't realize [size], it’s like 368 acres.

And again, because it was in our community, in Montopolis, they wanted to make it a theme park. And they had carved these big visions with like, Six Flags or something, and we fought it because we said, "Now there you have red tailed fox. You have rabbits and you have deer. You have animals." I mean it was a wildlife area, and it had animals, but it also was adjacent to the Colorado River. But we also saw that erosion was taking place along the river, and so we fought to keep it at its most natural, natural state.

And we said, "Okay, if there's going to be some development, let's control how much development," because it had originally also passed as a bond for the baseball field for the youth club, a Montopolis baseball fields would go there, because there really wasn't [anything there].

It was a small little area, and they had really fought to get, like, a youth complex for baseball in the community, so that would go in there. We knew that would be a small section, and then eventually, you know, they did like a little park there. And then now there's a soccer field that's been part of it, but it was really saving it and kind of restoring it.

Because what we started was the Festival de Las Plantas. And that's 2005, from 2003 we started the Festival de Las Plantas, Festival of the Plants. And that's where we brought people who came in, who knew about plants and the healing process. So we had all these different healers come in. We had people who did acupuncture.

We also did music, but we also did our traditional ceremonies of Danza Azteca, Danza concertos, and then we planted over 66 trees. And so, what we did was we got families to come and dedicate that tree that they were planting, and they put little plaques on there who they were dedicating that tree for. And they found it could be somebody that passed on so. So that it would become more of a ceremonial [thing], but also because they would then come and take care of that tree, and bring a bucket of water and [care for] the trees and stuff.

And so, we retrieved the whole area around the baseball field, around there was a tennis court that would've been there for a long time, and stuff. And, you know, we then started taking parents there to... so that they could see. We did tours through early in the morning so they could see the deer and all the rabbits. We'd ask them to be real quiet as early in the morning we come.

But we did it because we knew that we were always going to be having fights, somebody was going to want to develop and tear down. And so we wanted as many people to feel how good it is to be in nature.

And if you go through that trail, you go in there, you actually forget you're in the urban core until maybe a plane flies over, and then you go, "Oh, okay, this is where I'm at."

But it's just so surreal in there. It's just, you know, just being in there is just a beautiful thing, you know? And so we said, "We've got to take as many people in there and give them tours and talk about the plants and stuff," so that whenever somebody wants to come and destroy all these [things], people say, "Oh, no, we've got to keep it as natural as possible," and so forth.

But what came with that is that we got the city to start working on a channelization because of the erosion. So, the city spent, you know, millions of dollars to fix a lot of the erosion that was happening along the Colorado River. And then when we did the trail system, we said, "No, we don't want the trail too close to the edge. Let's move it back, because then it's going to be impacting and making more erosion. So, let's move the trail back so that we don't add to the erosion problems on there."

So yeah, the city. . . they built the bridge from the baseball field over.

Of course, the flood came in because the channelization wasn't fixed as good (laughs) and, because they built all upstream, that's what had happened. They built all the apartments upstream. And when they came, it came with the force, and all the money they had put into that bridge. . . it washed away. And so now they're spending, again, (laughs) millions of dollars to redo the whole bridge, but they're doing it now, I guess better, but so that it won't ever be washed away. Not sure how that'll work.

But there's a lot of work going around there, around the Colorado River.

And that was, to us, a big, a big victory in making sure . . . just in working in the Colorado River. In 2022, Mayor Kathie Tovo was working on a lot of resolutions about protecting the natural resources and stuff, but she hadn't included East Austin.

So I wrote to her, and I called her office, and I told her, “No, you need to protect the Colorado River from the Longhorn Dam to the city limits.” And so, she put it in the resolution that passed that now we need to insist and make sure we're preserving and protecting the Colorado River.

From then, we started working with the Watershed Department to come up with an ordinance, because we know the development is now heading over here, and everybody's seeing the river as the amenity, right?

And so we're saying, “We got to protect the river.” Because the Colorado River, from the Longhorn Dam to that has been designated as one of the most pristine sections of the Colorado River by the state. It has the most pristine waters because there hasn't been all that development along it and so forth. And so, we got the Watershed Department to come up with an ordinance about extending the feet where you could build from the river, and it's in the process now, but it's also getting pushback from developers.

It passed the Planning Commission. It got postponed several times because of the developers, but it finally got passed, and it was supposed to go to City Council yesterday, and it got postponed again because there is fighting [from] developers who feel like they want to develop up to the river.

And they don't care [if] the houses fall in or whatever (laughs). Because they're not going to live there. But to me, I just found that really crazy, because it's like: this is not only protecting the river, but protecting humanity. You don't want to build so close to the end of the other river where the erosion is.

So that's been a real big thing is in protecting the Colorado River and getting that ordinance passed, looking at the future of all the development we see is coming.

Now, there are people in their communities who identify problems. Not everyone moves to establish an organization like PODER. So, walk me through what brought you. . . what convictions brought you to establish PODER? What made you so sure that this would work?

Yeah, so back in the late ‘80s, ‘88, ‘89, or ‘90, we began to work with other, or other people that we knew in other states, right? And what happened was that the high-tech industry in California, New Mexico, and Arizona, and up in Boston, Massachusetts, the high tech at that time was seen as a corporation that wasn't mobile because it was big, it took a lot of compartments, and so forth.

But what happened was, all of a sudden, they were going to be moving, because in California, they had had a toxic footprint. They had contaminated the land and the water, and so now they were moving. And so, people got together and said, "Hey, we need to address what's happening in this high-tech industry."

And so, we got contacted here in Austin. We weren't PODER yet, but a lot of us had been active in our high school, in the community, and the Brown Berets. A lot of people had gone on to different universities and come back home, Sylvia, Gilbert, a lot of people. And we were all back into Austin, right?

And so, they had said, "Well, we need to, we need to work on this high tech." Sematech was at the main target then, and Sematech was the one that the University of Texas donated the land, rented it for $1 (laughs). So Sematech was the brainchild of bringing all these high-tech industries, IBM, advanced motor...The best chemist, the developer, the designer at that time was the chip, the microchip.

At that time, they were working on how to do it; they were building the smart chip. The smart chip was to go into bombs so they could control it. They could control where to designate the bombs all through the chip process, right? So we're entering in the chips at that time, the CDs, all of these chips are coming in.

And so we get together, and we're working with these people, and they say, "Well, we want to start a campaign on the high-tech facilities and what they're doing. And Austin would be a good place, because Sematech is bringing all these different high tech companies and all these different states together, and they're working to build a . . . " They were, at that time, in a fight with the Japanese, and so who was going to build the [material?], and the Department of Defense was giving monies to Sematech. And so that was our door, our opening.

So we got with the people and what happened at that time, I wasn't working at that particular time, and so they said, "Well, we need somebody to get out and do a survey in the community, who works [there], who's working at Sematech and from the Montopolis community," because it was in our community. And so, I did it. They came and asked me if I do it, so I went.

And as I talked to people during the survey, everybody knew... the people that had worked there, they were just construction workers. It was temporary. They weren't going to be the workers, because it turned out you had to have all these degrees, and you have to be chemists. Or, you know, there were certain categories to work in high tech, and it wasn't like that high tech had an assembly line. No, these were people developing the microchips and stuff. So, it was very intellectual, right?

But everybody knew this one lady—it turns out, she was a secretary. But other than that, they had come in and given them all these tax abatement, billions of dollars in tax abatement, and they've come in [saying] that they were going to create jobs, jobs, jobs for the community. And we were a poverty community. So, this is how they sold everything coming in. But in reality, our community wasn't there. We didn't get the jobs.

So, we finally got in. Well, we actually went to Congress and testified before the Science and Technology Committee about Sematech and their chemicals and trying to earmark money. And they ended up earmarking, I don't know if it was $3 million or a million dollars. I can't remember; it was a lot of money. They earmarked that Sematech was going to have to come [up] with alternatives to a lot of the chemicals they were using.

So that opened the door for us. So, people represented from California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Boston came down, and we met with Sematech.

We began the first process with the chairman and the board members about, you know, how to steer away from a lot of the chemicals that they were using and so forth, and their whole purification of the water. Because they had a lot of heavy metals and stuff that our water treatment plant wasn't built to treat a lot of the stuff. So, they had to build their own water treatment plant on site to do the first purification before they could discharge into the water system that Austin had.

And, I mean, it was a big fight. It was a good meeting. It was a good beginning.

What they ended up coming with was that they did a study on recycling water, using it through their air, through their water system, not for drinking, but like, for their conditioning and the cooling and stuff. And then IBM came up with the thing about all they needed to do was use soap and water to clean the boards. They really didn't need to use all those hazardous chemicals they were using. (laughs)

But it was that meeting. So we had this meeting with all these people coming in from all the states, right? And then all of a sudden, everybody was going back to their respective state and stuff.

And we went like, "Well, what are we going to do? It's right here in our backyard, you know? What are we going to do about this?" And so, basically, we said, "Well, let's form an organization. Let's form an organization to start addressing, you know, the whole high-tech [industry].”

People think we started around the Tank Farm because we got the most, you know, coverage, and that was a big issue. But we really started with the high tech.

And so, we got together and we said, "Well, what would we name the organization?" So, we tell everybody, "Go back and think about what names [to use]," and people came.

But when Sylvia Desmond and Frank Campos said, "Well, the name we're looking at is PODER," everybody said, "That's it! That's the one, that's the name. That's it."

You know, it's like everything everybody else had thought of and put out there. . . when they said, "PODER," everybody liked it. That's it. We don't need to think of anything else. It was like, well, there was power. It was empowerment. It was ability to make change.

And then it was looking at, "Well, what does that acronym stand for?"

And so, after that, there was another friend of ours, Maria, that used to do consulting. She says, "Let's get together and we'll get a place and put together a strategic plan and put your mission down, your mission of what you're going to do as an organization."

And so we went out to Alma de Mujer and had a retreat, and she walked us through the whole thing. You know, we had the whole discussion.

As a matter of fact, here's the first thing that came. So, when we decided it would be “People Organizing in Defense of Earth and her Resources,” some of the men said, "No." It was like, "It should be People Organizing in Defense of Earth and its Resources." That was the first thing, the discussion between "its" and "her."

And, of course, the women were saying, "No, it's Mother Earth, and she gives birth, and it's a real life and everything. And it's not an it. It is a her. A her." And so, you know, it was then it finally became, People Organizing in Defense of Earth and her Resources. And then it was putting together a mission.

And then, from then, we had a lot of work to do. It was the high tech, and then the Tank Farm in ’91. From May was all working on a high tech and then December became the Tank Farm of that same year.

You've done this for over 30 years. What do you think is the greatest lesson you've learned from organizing to save Mother Earth?

I think the lesson is always intergenerational. Working intergenerationally with families. Always including families and making sure that we stay as a family nucleus, and that's kind of how we see each other.

Because we noticed that in this particular society, when people get older, they're cast away. The elders are cast away. But in our Indigenous society it’s: "No, the elders are the wisdom holders." They have a collective memory. That collective memory could be thousands of years old, right? Because it's passed on and passed on. And the new generation has its wisdom and its knowledge and its skills, right? And so, we have to work together because we learn things from them, and they learn things from us.

For us, that's the beauty of: how do we keep that family nucleus? Whether we're blood-related or not, we don't look at it. We're all a family. You know? We're all. . . people come in as a family. It's a family. And I think that’s a thing that keeps us going is that we have to have respect and love and compassion, you know?

And I think that a lot of times people talk about PODER. . . . but one of the things [is] that when we founded PODER, because we were mostly women and we had children, right? We said we don't want to follow the way the typical organizations [run]. Our holidays are going to be the school holidays. So, you know, all the school holidays we were off. We closed down. We still, to this day, close down during spring break, close down because we said, "No, we need to be with our children and families."

And then we say, "Everybody needs to know all the issues.” That might not be your specialty, but you don't know when you might have to jump in and take that issue, right? And I said, "So that way, if you need to have breakfast with your kids, or there's a lunch day, or there's a PTA meeting, someone's sick—it don't have to be your brother and sister, mother and father. “If it's your cousin, you can’t take off.” No, if it's a family member or extended family, we need to be compassionate about it. And so that was the kind of thing that we built PODER like.

And then bring in the neighborhood associations. So, we didn't bring in lawyers and CPAs, we went to the neighborhood associations and said, "Can your chair or President sit on our board of directors?" And that’s what made us real powerful, because everybody from those neighborhoods would bring in what were the issues and concerns, and then we worked on it together as a real big community.

And so, to me, that was building. . . it's sort of like the village, and the elders being the ones who are advising and consulting, and then the younger generation there. And so, it was bringing in all those different people.

And if there was a neighborhood association, we helped form a lot of neighborhood associations, because if you're not registered with the city as a neighborhood association, you don't get the notices [and] you don't know what's coming your way. And so, you need to be registered as a neighborhood association, and you need to form, and that's the way to get to know your neighbors a lot better and inform them of what's going on, what's coming.

Do you think the young Susana, with her toes in the sand, in Boggy Creek, would be surprised that you ended up doing all the things you did?

Kind of no, because I always give my parents acknowledgement and things. Because when I was little, I grasped the English language really quick. And so, at five years old, I was already interpreting for my parents because they were both Spanish speakers. And so, I don't know if they did it on purpose or they realized it, but they were giving me voice.

As I was growing up, I was always speaking to adults or to authority. To me that was my preparation: "Don't be afraid to speak to adults or people in authority," right? And so to me, I always see [that] they're the ones that are giving me voice.

And because of where we lived, and because of everything that I witnessed and saw firsthand, whether it was people discriminating because you spoke a separate language, a second language, or because of our income, and then seeing my black friends, because the color of their skin, the way they spoke, or their hair, all of these things, like really seeing them, and then also being real into the nature part and everything.

I felt like my parents kind of set me on this path of justice very young, and looking at all the things that were wrong. And so, when I see all the injustices as I'm growing up through all these years, I go like, "Yeah, no, I can't." I feel like I can't let the next generation go through a lot of the indignities and stuff that I felt or went through. That's not the type of society, or that's not the way humanity should be. And so how do we make this right?

And I think all of those things, all of those lessons, everything being really in tune, you know, with nature, and everything that I learned throughout my life kept me on that path of justice, and so it's kind of it put me there. I haven't gotten off. (laughs)

And it's my enjoyment. It's like people find enjoyment and they find happiness in all of these things, even though there's so many challenges that come your way. There's heartbreaks that come through your way, there's sacrifices that come through your way, but would I change it? No.

What do you think is the greatest lesson you've learned about yourself over the course of your activism?

I think it's the ability to stay strong. You know, I tell people, I will do lectures and stuff, and I tell people, "How many of you have taken off your shoes and gone and walk outside?" I said "That’s the most healing thing you can do. Take off your shoes, take off your sandals, take off your sneakers, and just go walk in the grass. Let your feet fill the dirt. That is the most healing process that you can do."

And I say, "And when I look and I see all the students out there on the grass reading and they seem very happy [when they are] little like that, because they're so close to Mother Earth, they're down on Earth." And so, to me, it's like... that feeling of being close to nature, feeling the sun, knowing the energies that we have within ourselves.

And I tell people: I'll counsel myself. I go to the mirror, and I'll talk. I'm not afraid to talk to myself. And sometimes I come up with the best ideas! (laughs) I tell them, "Oh, why didn't I think of that earlier?" And I said, "I'm not afraid to do that." I say, "Because you have to. Sometimes it's not just in there. You gotta let it out. And you gotta talk these things over, you know? And sometimes you want to talk them over with yourself, and it's okay to talk those things over, and it's okay to take off your shoes and be out there. And if it's a warm rain, go ahead and get [out in] the warm rain.” (laughs)

Cool rain, no warm rain, it feels really good. It's like that time we hadn't had rain for 100 days, I don't know when, and then when it finally started raining. It's like, "Oh, thank you." Just going out there and feeling the rain. It's just those things. . . it's enjoy just the natural things that are free because everything now comes with a price. But if you can enjoy going out into even your yard or the park or whatever. . .

What do you make of how local, state, federal government has addressed environmental and water issues specifically?

Yeah, and that's been. . . I think we started taking a step and looking at water quality and how we have to take care of our living waters. And then as we began to see what's happening to the amount of water, drinking water we have, it goes back and forth.

It goes like if you [have] got people in federal areas and policies who are really concerned with water and understand that their water is circular, and if you contaminate it downstream, it’s going to get to somebody that's upstream from them, right? And so it all depends on who's in power and who really cares about the environment.

We now have an administration that's going to erase everything that we've done for the past decade or so in trying to protect the environment, the air, and the water. It's going to be devastating for Mother Earth, what's about to happen, because, you know, it's all about business. It's all about industry, and it's about doing away with any kind of controls about what we're going to dump into our waters and what we're going to expose in the air.

And so, I see that climate destruction is now in full force. And all the policies that people have worked on—getting EPA to look at the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act—all of these acts are under siege, and it's very unfortunate what we're about to go through, and what you know the natural resources are about to go through, because we're interwoven.

So my dad's going to feel it, but we're going to feel it the most, too. You know, because Mother Earth, I tell people, "Mother Earth is not in jeopardy, it's us. She's cleansed herself before. She's cleansed herself several times, and so she will, [she] has to, [she] will get cleansed again, and maybe some of us will survive or not. We might just start all over for redevelopment." (laughs)

But we're in a very critical, critical, critical stage right now. Critical.

And I try not to dwell on it, but I know that just because of the new policies, and the Trump administration, is... doesn't... they're climate deniers. They're climate deniers. There's no… they'll tell you they're climate deniers. And so, when you deny what's really happening, and you're not taking care of the water and the air, and all of this is devastation. It's devastation that's happening.

What would be your ideal future for us?

Yeah, I think our ideal future is… I see it a lot in this modern generation now, the young generation, they're multi-ethnic, multi-culture. You know, they understand it. They get it more, and they understand what's happening to our climate and our seasons. They understand the whole thing about racism and hate and stuff, and so I think that they're on a good trajectory.

It's just unfortunate that they're not the ones in power right now, we still have the old guard there that just won't let go. If we had the young people that are now that are so focused on "how do we recycle? How do we reuse? How do we treat each other?" If all of them were in power, I think we'd have a whole different society, because the other society is still about racism, ageism, all the -isms that you could think of. Those are the people who are in power right now.

And so, my thing would be for an open society where we're all accepting one another, and that we don't look at others just because they speak a different language or they have different cultures and stuff. It's embracing them, you know?

And it's only here in the United States. I'm going to other countries, and people speak, oh my God, so many languages and stuff. And I go, “Why is it so different here that we're not accepting and embracing of other languages and other cultures?”

What do you think has to happen for that future to come to pass?

Yeah, I think that that old guard, needs to, we have to wait till they either die. . .(laughs) or get kicked out for sexual harassment or something . . . (laughs) pornography. . . Those people that are most religious, that are in Congress, usually what gets them is that the whole issue of pornography, and stuff like that, you know? So, I think that once that particular era, group of people, are gone, then it would be different.

My last thing was going to be. . . is there anything you feel like I didn't ask that I should have, or anything else you would want to share?

About the water?

Or about environment. (laughs)

Well, you know, I think that one of the big changes that came was the whole environmental justice movement. Because up until the ‘90s, the environment was only being [seen] by mainstream environments, or environmentalists, the environment was only [seen as] nature. It was the spotted owls, the whales, all of this stuff. It was only about nature.

But when the environmental justice movement came about, the whole meaning, or the definition of the environment, changed. The environment is where you live, work, play, and pray, all of that was the environment. And to me, that was a real educational… mind opening up of a lot of people was their narrow definition of the environment, and how people of color stepped forward and said, "No, the environment is not just about nature. It's about humans, too." Because again, like, let's say it's interwoven, interlocking, you really can't separate us.

And so, I think that was a real big accomplishment of the environmental justice movement was to redefine it and then coming up with the principles, the 17 principles of environmental justice.

And the environmental justice movement… a lot of people don't realize, but it was the environmental justice movement that got the government to say, "We need to have a seat at the table. Corporations and states are here, but we're not. And you need to pay our flight and our hotel, and our meals so that we can have an equal standing with these corporations and these state governments about the policies that you're making." That was the environmental justice movement.

The environmental justice movement was the one that got President Clinton to sign the executive order on environmental justice, and in April of last year, got President Biden to sign the rewrite of the executive order of environmental justice movement. It was the one that got the environmental justice offices in all the different states in the early ‘90s to the point that environmental justice was being taught in the university.

And so, the environmental justice movement, whether people recognize it or not, brought a lot of tensions and changed a lot of things. It brought the Justice 40 funding that made it available for a lot of states and people that were being harmed by polluting industries.

All of this stuff was one that the environmental justice movement was the one that advocated against a lot of the NAFTA free trade agreements and stuff. And so, environmental justice has left a lot of changes, and made a lot of changes, and it's still there, and we have the biggest fight ever during this administration. (laughs)

But I think that. . . . and the environmental justice movement brought, like I said, multi-culture, multi-ethnic. It bought the Indigenous Environmental Network together. It bought the APEN, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. It brought in SOC, Southern Organizing Committee, together. And so, you know, it had the first National People of Color Summit in Washington, DC, in 1991/92, and so it was really bringing everybody together and say, "We're not alone."

Because people thought they were the only ones undergoing all this, but it wasn't. But that movement and that first National People of Color Summit brought us all together to start working on all these different policies and resources and doing toxic tours and highlighting what was really happening in all of these communities and challenging the pollution that was happening from all these corporations—that was the environmental justice movement.