San Antonio residents face a city- and county-wide election on Saturday. Brownsville residents are also facing their own decisions at the voting booth, including who fills three seats on the Port of Brownsville commission.
A team of allied candidates are running to fill all three, calling their platform “Port For All,” a nod to their climate and labor focused movement that started from local organizing against liquified natural gas plants coming to the Port of Brownsville.
Patrick Everitt is an investigator with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Josette Cruz is a Brownsville organizer. Andres Rios is a former finance executive. They said they will return the port commission to the people.
“Having 3/5 of the commissioners being held accountable by the community members and not just the interests of the businesspeople — it's very unique and very rare,” Everitt said.
Most of the current port commissioners have served on the board for several years and advocate for many businesses that do business within the Port of Brownsville, including Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG, two liquefied natural gas projects being constructed along the Port’s channel.
The Port For All candidates signed a campaign pledge to not take money from businesses that work inside the Port of Brownsville.
The Port For All candidates said they’ve spoken with shrimpers, port workers and residents who live nearby through canvassing. Some didn’t know that the construction along Highway 48 was for the Rio Grande LNG plant or how the project was approved and by whom.
They said that community members told them that they feel left out of the port’s decisions but want to engage.
“Because of the build up of polluting infrastructure like LNG, it generated resistance in the community that was just neglected for the past ten years,” Everitt said.
That resistance to LNG projects has been apparent for years throughout the Laguna Madre community and the greater Brownsville area. Community members that are trying to prevent the area from the same gas plant buildout seen along the Texas and Louisiana coasts have organized the resistance.
But the pushback and frustration toward the Port of Brownsville existed before LNG, too. Everitt said he’s spoken with people who work in the port who said they were not impacted by the growth that port leadership said is happening. This includes shrimpers, who have been struggling for years to survive.
“Because even though the port helped [shrimpers] come and establish, and they're the heart of the port, [port leadership are] willing and able to allow that heart of the port to atrophy and die away, to allow this other potential wealth to come in,” Everitt said.
Cruz attributes that community disengagement to current Port commissioners and their preferential treatment to businesses.
“They're not paying attention because you're also not engaging them,” she said. “They're not paying attention because you're not reaching out to them. They're not paying attention because you're listening to the companies and you're not listening to your gente.”
Cruz is a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, whose sacred lands are along the Port of Brownsville ship channel and wants to advocate for the tribe's access. Hundreds of acres of that land have already been cleared for the incoming Rio Grande LNG plant, with several hundred more expected once Texas LNG begins its buildout.
Should any of them be elected, the Port for All candidates will have to work alongside commissioners that support the LNG projects. But the position, should one of the candidates be elected, could provide a voice for the community on a platform that otherwise hasn’t been available.
Cruz said it also provides an opportunity to speak with port leadership directly about how LNG plants could impact the land and the people around them.
“If we can go out there and educate our community, what's to say that we can't educate those who are on the commission?” she said.
Regardless if the Port For All candidates are elected, the community engagement and organizing will continue beyond this particular election.
“I believe that we made waves and because of all of this momentum that we've had building up, I do believe that we can surely turn the tides with or without electoral politics,” Cruz said.
Voting for the port seats and other elections across the state concludes on Saturday, May 4, at 7 p.m.
