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Serving
Seguin and Guadalupe County since 1888
Olmos captivates crowd with speech
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By Elaine Hernandez Soto
Gazette-Enterprise
Published
September 20, 2001
SEGUIN — After serving 20 days in a Puerto Rican federal penitentiary on civil disobedience charges, he made his way from Spain to Boston for a guest appearance and was scheduled to be on American Airlines flight No. 11 Tuesday, Sept. 11, but instead went home a day early.
Actor and activist Edward James Olmos described his brush with death to a captivated audience during the 13th Annual Awards Banquet of the Seguin Guadalupe County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Wednesday night.
“This has been the most extraordinary week of my life,” he said, telling the audience it was his honor to end up in Seguin.
He explained that exhausted from his ordeal in Puerto Rico and his work in Boston, he had opted to go home earlier than planned. At home Tuesday morning his son woke him to tell him the news of the plane crashes into the World Trade Center and then the Pentagon.
And when he discovered that it was Flight 11 that crashed into the building, he said, “I immediately contorted in my bed heaving sobs that I never had felt before and to this day don’t think I will ever again.”
Olmos said it was a message to him that his work was not yet done. He spoke of going to comfort worshippers in an Islamic center and of telling his skeptical son to prepare for the worst — he told him of suits to protect against biological weapons — not to protect himself, but to prepare him to go out and be able to help others. He warned the audience that if they thought the impending war would be fought in Afghanistan, they were in for a “rude awakening.”
Olmos described his tour of the Alternative School of the Seguin Independent School District, calling the facility, newly housed at the Burges Campus, “breathtaking,” but expressed his concerns with the high number of Latino students in relation to Caucasian, a situation he said he comes upon all too often. Olmos said it is the lack of self-esteem, self-respect and self-worth that leads a child to harm’s way. His answer to raising scores and lowering crime rates was school uniforms.
Taken over by emotion, he said with uniforms children can learn to become part of a whole community and spoke of the poor child who avoided school because he did not own the “right” shoes. He said uniforms create an environment where children “rich and poor go to school to learn. The poor child does not have a chance in this country.”
He spoke of children learning to hate.
“It is hate that brought down the twin towers,” he said. “It is hate that is raining on us and bringing us to war … it hurts all of us, but it hurts the children the most … violence gets more violence.”
Olmos said he did not know what would happen but “we have to prepare to help each other — if we become selfish we become less than what we are — and that is what they want.”
Olmos spoke of racism, saying there is no real racism because there is no one indigenous race.
“There is only one race — the human race … everything else is culture,” he said.
Urging the audience to “teach all our children how beautiful they are,” he concluded by saying there were two kinds of selfishness: the foolish kind and the wise kind. The foolish man works, comes home, checks on his family and his home and retires for the night, but the wise selfish man works, comes home, checks on his family and his home and before retiring, opens his door and checks on his neighbor.
“Make sure your neighbor is OK, and then go to bed,” he said.
Following Olmos’ speech, which earned a standing ovation, the chamber presented various awards.
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Seguin Gazette-Enterprise Inc. All rights reserved.
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