Threats target election workers

Intimidating words reflect rhetoric from Trump’s campaign

WASHINGTON — In his urgent demand Monday that President Donald Trump condemn his angry supporters who are threatening workers and officials overseeing the 2020 vote, a Georgia elections official focused on an animated image of a hanging noose that had been sent to a young voting-machine technician.

“It’s just wrong,” the official, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, said at a news conference. “I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have over this.”

But the technician in Georgia is not alone. Far from it.

Across the nation, election officials and their staff have been bombarded in recent weeks with emails, telephone calls and letters brimming with menace and threats of violence, the result of their service in a presidential election in which the defeated candidate’s most ardent followers have refused to accept the results.

Amber McReynolds, head of the National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes voting by mail, said she had experienced a spike in online threats since Nov. 3, when Trump ratcheted up false claims that fraudulent mail votes would cost him the election. One serial harasser on Twitter, she said, has been especially venomous.

“He sent me a picture of a noose

From her home in the East End, she would become a national authority on the abuse of immigrants by border agents, was instrumental in fighting the separation of immigrant families and helped support a path to residency for Central Americans who fled war and natural disasters.

“Her extraordinary impact as a humanrights advocate is without equal,” said Anna Núñez, a public affairs professional and social justice advocate who worked with Jiménez in cancer prevention and environmental justice. “She believed everyone was worthy of dignity and respect, regardless of one’s immigration status.”

Jiménez was born Aug. 2, 1950, in Coahuila, Mexico. The oldest of five siblings, she came to Houston with her mother when she was 7, while her father was already in the U.S. working as a machinist.

Just as Jiménez entered the U.S. school system at Franklin Elementary in Magnolia Park, she experienced inequities and racism in what was then a majority white school and wasn’ t permitted to speak Spanish, her only language at the time.

She mentioned several examples of racism that kids such as her suffered at the time in an interview with the University of Houston’s History Project.

“Having come from Mexico, we just weren’t familiar with sandwiches, and I wound up having to bring a sandwich because that’s what everybody brought,” she said, “but if you even tried to bring a taco or a tortilla, people would ridicule you.”

It was when Jiménez attended UH to study political science that she decided to turn her concerns into action in the late ’60s and early ’70s. As a sophomore, Jiménez rose to president of student body leadership in1971, a first for Hispanics and women at the school. She joined the Young Democrats organization but left it for the League of Mexican American Students, which she found more attuned with her identity and interests.

She met and worked during those times with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers as a member of a committee to organize the boycott in Texas. She frequently called herself a Chicana as she became immersed in Mexican American movements against racism and defending immigrant causes.

‘Tireless leader’

Those who knew Jiménez also describe her as a passionate mobilizer, mentoring young people who became local leaders — Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo among them.

“She was a compassionate and tireless leader, fighting for the most vulnerable, especially immigrants,” Hidalgo said in a Facebook post. “She was a mentor to me and one of the first people to support me in running for county judge.”

That drive to organize others and to work together to create change is what many remember about Jiménez.

“We all agreed that one key element that María taught us was about the need to train others in leadership,” Núñez said, adding that her dedication to organize the most vulnerable was remarkable. “Honoring her legacy means continuing to support youth — especially women and immigrants— as community leaders.”

César Espinosa, executive director of FIEL Houston, an immigration advocacy group, said Jiménez was a “pioneer” and a “visionary.”

“Maria is and will always be a beacon of lucha through her teachings,” he said in a Twitter post. “She told many of us that theway to remain eternal was to teach others what was taught to us and so it shall be done. In the last conversation we had in person we talked about how she would come work at @FielHouston after her retirement.”

She recognized that power, and responsibility, to organize in a 1993 interview with the Houston Post.

“Social change is never an individual accomplishment,” Jiménez said. “I organize people to speak for themselves. Instead of saying, ‘I’m the answer, vote for me,’ I say, ‘We — we can do it.’ ”

Bryan Parras, vice president and co-founder of the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services and another of Jiménez’s mentees, likes to remember the activist as “the María de Magnolia.”

“Like the symbol of Houston’s East End, María de Magnolia believed that a cross-pollination of ideas, cultures and strategies led to a stronger, more inclusive movement,” said Parras, also national organizer of the Sierra Club. “She challenged the status quo and encouraged young and old, citizen or immigrant, to stand up and fight back with dignity and pride.”

Some of Jiménez’s views on feminism and challenges facing Latinos were published in the book “Feminist Family Values Forum” with activists Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis and Mililani Trask, based on their speeches at an event on Mother’s Day of 1996.

A final mark on science

Doing things for others was Jiménez’s drive in life, as she told the Chronicle in a recent interview. Even as she was fighting her cancer, she was thinking about how to help others.

Jiménez was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer two years ago and went into remission after treatment.

When the illness came back and spread to her lungs lastyear, she wasn’t optimistic about her life expectancy. Still, she decided to donate her body to science for experimental clinical trials.

“Cancer treatments are not safe or predictable, but for me the important thing is to facilitate the scientific knowledge that can be derived from my treatment,” she said. “If I lose the battle, that experience, what they learn, can contribute to the war (against cancer) being eventually won.”

Doctors recently found the illness had compromised her brain. Family members said she was still in good spirits and were surprised when Monday morning she suddenly went into a coma.

“She always did things for others before she did things for herself. She is respected, loved and will be missed by so many,” her son Carlos Villarreal said in a socialmedia post on Wednesday announcing her death.

“She taught my brother and me to always treat people with respect and dignity,” said his twin sister, Stalina Villarreal.

No funeral is planned. Following her instructions, she will be cremated and her ashes will be scattered on the Texas-Mexico border after the pandemic passes. She is survived by her children.