Get out and vote; our future depends on it

“Make a plan to vote.” That has been the mantra for an election year defined by overlapping crises — the COVID-19 pandemic, a reckoning over racial justice and a battle over voter suppression.

They’ll all affect the election profoundly. That’s why I plan to vote early. Today, in fact, the first day of early voting. I can’t wait any longer.

My plan was in play early. One of the first appeals I received came in the mail with a New York postmark. The postcard featured an image of three hands in the air — one black, one brown, one white. They held a blue bubble with the word “VOTE!”

The message on the other side looked handwritten but was probably mass-produced. It purported to be from a volunteer named Maria from the Reclaim Our Vote campaign. “Avoid long lines,” she wrote. “Please tell 5 friends.”

It listed a phone number that led to a recording about early voting dates and the two voting sites closest to me: the Bexar County elections office at 1103 South Frio St. and a new polling place at Our Lady of the Lake University.

That’s big news for a university celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. It marks the first time OLLU has served as a polling place. You can cast your ballot in the grand Sueltenfuss Library.

OLLU is a historic site for Latino voting rights. Like St. Mary’s University, it’s where many Mexican Americans were trained to become educators, social workers and nonprofit leaders and where Mexican American political activism was fostered.

When the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings across the country in 1968 to investigate civil rights abuses against Mexican Americans, OLLU was among the places where it took testimony. The commission heard from more than 70 witnesses over six days in San Antonio.

Longtime activist Rosie Castro reflected on that history Monday. She is the mother of former Mayor Julián Castro, who served as secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration, and U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro.

Rosie Castro is an OLLU graduate. She arrived on campus in 1965 intending to become a teacher, but she got an education in politics, too.

It began when she helped to establish a Young Democrats club. The university required that a Young Republicans club be formed alongside it. The Democrats, including Castro, helped recruit a requisite number of Republicans.

Castro was just 18, in an era when 18-year-olds weren’t allowed to vote. It didn’t deter her. “I met all the Democrats in town,” she said. Young Democrats on campus aligned themselves with then-state Sen. Joe Bernal; attorney Pete Torres, then a member of City Council; and Bexar County Commissioner Albert Peña.

“Most of us worked on their campaigns,” she said.

“When (Vice President) Hubert Humphrey came to town,” she said, Young Democrats staffed the event.

During a Nixon administration White House conference on food and nutrition, Castro and the legendary voting rights advocate Willie Velasquez attended with Bernal’s help, she said.

Bernal asked Castro to testify before the Texas Senate on a proposal to lower the nation’s voting age from 21 to 18. (The idea became law in 1971 when the 26th Amendment was ratified.)

Castro became county chair of the Young Democrats and was elected to statewide office, serving as the organization’s vice president of women.

In 1971, she was one of the first Mexican American women to run for City Council under the banner of the Committee for Barrio Betterment, a precursor of Raza Unida, a short-lived but influential third party in Texas.

Castro later chaired Bexar County’s Raza Unida Party.

That kind of voter activism is a part of OLLU’s legacy.

Leda Barnett, a professor of political science and chair of the department, has seen a lot of activism on campus this year. That’s why it “means the world to us” that OLLU was chosen as a polling site, she said.

Barnett called it perfect timing, given the anniversary of the university’s founding by the Congregation of Divine Providence.

“CDP’s heritage has been about equity and access,” Barnett said. “That’s why they founded the university — to educate low-income women.”

MOVE Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Texas Organizing Project have worked with OLLU to get students motivated and registered. Voter registrars were trained on campus.

Barnett hopes all the preparation prompts students “to vote like your life depends on it,” she said. “Because it literally does. We’ve said that in past elections, but I don’t think there has been an election in our lifetimes when we’ve seen so many crises happening at one time.”

“Students know,” she said. “Their whole futures are on the line.”

Their enthusiasm and commitment to social justice gives her hope.

Me, too.

Starting last year, Bexar County has done voters a great favor. They can cast ballots at any polling place in the county during the early voting period and on Election Day.

Early voting ends Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 3.

Inauguration Day is Jan. 20.