A TOUGH FIGHT AHEAD

Being one of a few Democrats in a House full of Republicans

By RACHEL STONE

State Rep. Rafael Anchia takes on his seventh session as a member of the Texas Legislature, which convenes this month.

Anchia, a Democrat whose district includes Oak Cliff, is up against a majority of traditional and Tea Party Republicans. Their top priorities include legislation that would affect immigrants, transgender people and women.

Anchia sat down with us about a week after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.

How are you feeling?

Since [Election Day] I’ve been really, really bummed. I know people who didn’t get out of bed for two or three days after the election. They’re so dejected.

The lege opens in January. How are you feeling about that?

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick feels really emboldened by a Trump presidency. And he’s pushing a lot of things that are not pressing to the state but instead are causing a division that we saw in the Trump campaign. He wants to force people to go into the bathroom of the gender that’s on their birth certificate. It is incredibly cynical because it seeks to prey upon and demonize transgender Texans who are among the most vulnerable in our society. The language of the [so-called “bathroom bill”] equates trans Texans to pedophiles and suggests that the lieutenant governor is trying to protect women from trans males who may seek to attack them in the bathroom. The irony is that sexual assault is already illegal. The penal code already provides for a reasonable expectation of privacy in bathrooms. All those things are already illegal. But he’s seizing on the lack of familiarity. Facts don’t matter. We already have laws on the books that protect women in bathrooms, yet we demonize these people.

Let’s talk about immigration, since that hits home for our neighborhood. The governor is already talking about sanctuary cities and the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Because immigration issues poll very highly, those are going to be very high on their list of priorities. You may remember that former Gov. Rick Perry called maybe two special sessions on sanctuary cities, and he never got it passed. We have flourishing immigrant populations that make our cities succeed. But the lieutenant governor equates allowing local police to make decisions prioritizing importance with not turning in bad guys. It’s ultimately going to make cities less safe because [requiring police to arrest undocumented immigrants] will take the police focus off of emergencies.

What else? On immigration, that is. The repeal of in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. These are young people we’ve invested in through public education, who have come here as young children, played by the all the rules, gone to college, and now we want to tell them they’re not welcome.