R,

Mil gracias!

Our future is the "Medical Center of the Americas", a unfied health campus dedicated to innovative, hemispheric excellence in Hispanic health education, research and service. Let us keep our eyes on the prize.

If we 'win the prize' we change our region, we invest in our future, we lead in a sector of value, not low wages. Most importantly, our people's hopes and dreams are forever changed for brighter tomorrow!

Imagine a future when a talented young 9th grade biology student at Tech Monterrey or Jefferson's Silva Magnet will have a chance to live and prosper here. She will not have to move when she graduates from high school because her talent dictates that she must pursue excellence elsewhere.

For too long, our community's "business leaders" have fled from the power of that prospect. For her sake, we must act decisively to change the course of our history.

If we fail, if more of our citizens do not demand the MCA, if we do not seize the moment and invest in a vibrant Hispanic future, we will slip once again into the steady decline and self dealing that have characterized our community for at least a generation.

More young people have left El Paso than any other large city except Gary, Indiana. If we do not reach for this prize now, more of our best and brightest will vote with their feet to another town where talent, drive and opportunity are honored with a great graduate school or a good job not a ticket out of town.

Others now see the prize; UA and ASU just announced a joint medical campus in Phoenix. Austin now wants a medical school. But here, where we have done more to advance the a medical campus than any city in the last 20 years, we shall see what the people will do.

If at this critical juncture, we allow the 'nursing school' to decide what a whole Medical Center might become, if we now divide our campus into half a dozen small satellites, we will plant fatal division at the heart of our vison and be less, far less than the sum of the whole. And we will win at least one race: the race to the bottom as America's poorest big city.

Our once a generation opportunity will slip away to others with better business leadership, disciplined plans, leveraged resources, and most of all, more aggressive Hispanic visionaries who will risk of themselves to make a difference.

If we want to succeed, our people can not sit and watch; emails are not enough; private conversations and complaints will not make change. For grievances far less harmful than those that have damaged the future of our people and community for many years, people around the world have had the courage to act.

Will we?

Will you?

People who care about El Paso, who believe in 'us' must take a share in our future and act publically, decisively and now!

Tu Senador