LULAC Criticized for Mentoring Latino Students

Sometimes you can’t win for losing.

It turns out that LULAC, trying to do a good thing in Farmers Branch, yes that Farmers Branch, in north Texas, is being criticized  by the Mayor of that town for being who and what it is. LULAC partnered with R.L. Turner High School for a drop-out prevention program. The $20,000 grant program is to run for two years. So far so good, right? What could be better?

Maybe, according to Farmers Branch Mayor Tim O’Hare, it would be better if it was not LULAC.  According to the Dallas Morning News, O’Hare has a problem with the oldest Latino Civil Rights group in the country: “No political organization should be invited into the public school system to mentor schoolchildren, let alone one that is divisive and far left-leaning in their political view,” he said.

The principal of the school has no problem with LULAC; even the superintendent of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD is OK with it.  Again the DMN: “I’m hearing from students who tell me things like, ‘It really helps me to see that someone like me made something of themselves,’ ” said R.L. Turner Principal Georgeanne Warnock. “That’s a direct quote.”

So, que le pasa al Mayor O’Neal?  Want to venture a guess?

LULAC was very aggressive in its opposition to the now infamous Farmers Branch anti-immigrant ordinances of years past. “Even in Arizona we don’t get that kind of reaction,” (LULAC Executive Director Brent) Wilkes told the Dallas Morning News. “The mayor thinks this is some kind of payback to LULAC for disagreeing on its ordinances.”