Recently, I spent several hours getting to know community organizers in San Marcos, a college town in Central Texas where there’s a dedicated, and persistent coalition organized around Palestinian Liberation and ending the genocide in Gaza.
According to Scott Cove, one of the founders of Palestine Solidarity SMTX, the group began with a vigil at the historic courthouse in their town square in December of 2023. Like so many of us, they were appalled by “the children being slaughtered and just the carnage taking place.” The earliest members, Cove told me, felt a bit “isolated and alone” in their town, so they came together over this troubling and vital cause. Since then, they’ve held film screenings and marches, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) protests outside targets like Texaco and Chevron, even a kite building workshop.
Along the way, they’ve also gotten deeply involved with local politics, to the point that they elected a city council member — Amanda Rodriguez — in order to force the council to hear their ceasefire resolution.
As activists, there’s an ongoing struggle between how much we should focus on direct action compared to how much we should engage with more conventional, electoral politics. What struck me about this group, from the outside anyway, was their success at grappling with both.
When I spoke last week with Amanda, I found myself inspired by her beliefs about this political moment and the ways our enemies use Texas as a proving ground for all their worst ideas. After my second story came out in Deceleration, I knew I wanted to share more from our conversation.
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Amanda Rodriguez, San Marcos City Council Place 6: I’m from here, everybody seems to always be interested in that part. But I’ve lived in San Marcos all my life. I went to school here, graduated with my social work degree, and I just became super interested, not necessarily in politics alone, but I guess in things that are politically adjacent, because of the murder of Trayvon Martin and everyone else that followed. I ended up securing an internship at the Texas State Capitol in 2020, and literally got a job there that same year, and had been working there until late last year.
As far as local politics is concerned, I’ve also been board president of a local Hispanic Cultural Center here in San Marcos called Centro Cultural, and in doing that, it gave me more of a unique San Marcos-specific perspective on what this country has looked like, past and present, and just put me in touch with so many people locally who, despite living here all my life, I had never known and stories I had never heard.
That put me in so many rooms with people in this city who care very deeply about issues, and I just kept being asked to run and begrudgingly did so. I’ve never wanted to be a politician, and I mean that wholeheartedly, but just seeing the lack of (not to sound cliche) but the lack of true representation on that dais, versus what I know to be people in this city and decisions that were made by those same people who I didn’t feel were actually what was best for the community. All of that combined led me here, and I embraced the opportunity to run.
Kit O’Connell: How did you get involved in opposing the genocide in Gaza?
AR: My interest in Palestinian Liberation started before October 7, 2023. I became interested shortly after I started learning more about Malcolm X, Che Guevara and all those revolutionary figures who had taken trips during their tenure to Palestine.
But then Shireen Abu Akleh was killed [on May 11, 2022], who was a well-known Al Jazeera reporter. She was killed in the Occupied West Bank. It was actually the anniversary of her death yesterday. I’ll never forget watching [Israeli police] beating down her funeral procession. Even in her death, she had no peace, and at that time, nobody knew who the shooter was, and it was always said to by the Israeli government that it was obviously Palestinians, and many knew that to not be true [because] she was so revered, and that was when everything started for me.
Post October 7[, 2023], I knew the punishment was going to be — I don’t think anybody knew to this extent — but I knew it was going to be heavy. I was looking for an opportunity to get engaged locally on this issue, and I got invited to go to a protest that was on the courthouse lawn. I talked to some organizers who I’m now just so deeply close with and just kept organizing with them ever since. It’s by far one of the most diverse groups of people I’ve ever been blessed to organize with, not just in terms of race and ethnicity, but careers, religion, everything, just so many wonderful people locally who came together on an issue. Obviously, with the horrors that we’re seeing persisting, there was this need to continue to keep raising the alarms, even if that was just locally.
KO: One of the things I heard from opponents of the bill, during testimony on the resolution, was that it didn’t represent San Marcos. But it sounds like you’re saying that there’s a real cross section of the San Marcos population that you saw getting involved in this. This was a very broad coalition of different people.
AR: Not only was that being told to everybody who was watching that council meeting, but it was also being told to us behind the scenes. You know, oftentimes people in this city, to dilute the effectiveness of organizing, they’ll always say, well, it’s just a bunch of students who come here temporarily. And that verbiage is used to make the act of organizing seem less serious. I don’t think that even should be an argument made, but in this case, it’s so far from the truth. Yes, there are students or people who were once students, but no, these are residents, and in many cases, residents who have been here for a very long time.
I think that’s the beauty of the fight for Palestinian Liberation. You see how their perspective and experience intersects with so many of our daily lives. So many people can see themselves in their fight that it undoubtedly brings people who may have never even publicly participated in the process out. It’s a very homegrown operation, and I love it because of that.
KO: You’ve been involved in local activism for quite a while, so I’m curious to what degree your involvement in Palestine Solidarity SMTX was what pushed you to finally run for office?
AR: I was a part of the organizers who were coming to meeting after meeting, month after month, pleading with our council people to do something, to raise some sort of alarm, to just even acknowledge the issue. In doing so, that puts you at meetings where there’s other topics of discussion. Oftentimes, many of the organizers, we would come there for one thing and then end up speaking on something that was related or that was needing some voices on it.
I’ll give you a prime example, Malachi Williams [A young Black man fatally shot by a San Marcos police officer in 2024 — Kit]. Many of the organizers came there that day to speak for Palestinians, and left there speaking for both causes.
With the exception of my campaign that started in late August 2024, I was organizing with them routinely. We became very good friends in the midst of all of it, and have leaned on each other very heavily through that community. That experience is a huge reason why, I mean, we wanted another person in that body to be able to see this as an issue, to bring it forward.
KO: How did Palestinian Liberation connect with other issues that were important to San Marcos residents? How did you connect the two on the campaign trail:?
AR: All of it goes back to money, right? You look at the inflated budgets of defense contractors, our military and so forth, compared to social services, the money that gets brought down back to the states and then divvied out, there is such a disparity.
I would actually hit the doors, I walked, I walked day after day, week after week, and talked to people, and you just really come to realize, no matter what side of the highway you’re on, no matter what neighborhood people are struggling. They’re struggling bad. Obviously, each struggle is individual and unique, but at the same time, there’s so many similarities, and you start to see the structural reasons why people are struggling, whether it be for housing, food, education, whatever it may be, it’s tangible.
Number one, our country and people in this country are so opposed to this genocide, right? Poll after poll shows that, but also people in this country are starting to realize the severity of their struggles in a collective way. Our state GDP is larger than most economies in the world. So why are people dealing with such levels of poverty? Why can’t our people afford to buy homes? You just start putting two and two together. Palestinian Liberation has always shown us that everything is interconnected, right? You can’t fund the depravity that we’re seeing and it not have impacts here at home.
KO: Some people argue that ceasefire resolutions like this are a distraction from the “real business” that a city council should be doing. What do you say to that?
AR: I encourage all of the people who say it’s a distraction to reach out to me via email or phone. I’m very receptive. If there’s an issue that they feel needs to be addressed, I always entertain people’s participation, which is why we’re here with a resolution.
This resolution was important for council to bring forward, especially because it was people led. I have not seen such a sustained campaign to council to plead with them to act on something. You know, people talk often about roads and those things. I don’t see participation in that way. I would love to, I really would, but when, when it came to this issue, it was sustained, sustained, pleas. So first and foremost, that’s just honoring our duty as council members of listening to our people here.
I don’t think people who opposed it really took the time to read the resolution, because if they did, they would understand that the timing of this was imperative, considering the blockade. Since March 2 of this year, there’s nothing getting in. Gaza has been, but even more so now continues to be the place where there are almost a million ways to die. So this was intended to be a plea to our officials above us to do something that actually keeps us protected as a country, because it’s in line with international laws. So it’s important for many reasons.
One of the things that I’ve always wanted to see as a council person is for our public to be engaged in the process, to come to a place where they can feel their voices heard and they can build communities. City Hall was that for one of the first times I’ve ever experienced since living here, and I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful way to use city time than to get people engaged among each other and have conversations and questions about, hey, ‘What really are our priorities?” Public engagement was a huge piece of this, and I’m glad we did it.
KO: I know you faced threats over this resolution. What has that experience been like?
AR: When this item was first being brought to discussion, I had to actually turn my phone off because I was getting so many calls every single day. And of course, they don’t leave voicemail, but they wait for you to answer that one call. People were calling me the N word, a terrorist, that they hope I get deported, that they hope I die. It just never stopped. It’s constant on Facebook. So it was exhausting to have to sit through, not necessarily the meeting but through the weeks of dealing with that from certain people in this community. This resolution just genuinely taught me how much racism still exists in this community. How deeply prejudiced people are. Obviously, not even a fraction of what’s being experienced in Gaza at the end of the day, but deeply disappointing.
KO: Then, there were threats from Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican establishment threatening some pretty vital funding like WIC [Women, Infants & Children food aid]. What did it feel to be on the receiving end of that side of things?
AR: You know, I took the threats personal. These are our people that they threatened. I don’t take threats lightly. The whole purpose of that was to put us in a position where if you vote yes for that, it looks like you’re wanting to defund your city, right? If you vote no for that, what does it also look like? It looks like we’re weak.
The State of Texas has long been an experimental project of fascism for this country. Which strategies can they equip themselves with, what strategies are effective in forcing public opinion and forcing local municipalities to do whatever they want? This was another opportunity for them to poke the bear this way and see what’s their reaction. I didn’t expect for my colleagues to vote to defund their city. I wasn’t asking them for that. What I think [Place 3 council member Alyssa Garza] and I were both asking from them was, ‘do you rebuke the tactics that they have now equipped themselves with?’ And I didn’t see enough of that fight and rebuke, if any at all.
The state has now learned that they can threaten bonds, that they can threaten public funding through grants, they can do certain things now to hinder public opinion, to hinder action. And that’s what terrifies me, that’s what pisses me off, is they use us to have that experiment and that some of my colleagues couldn’t rebuke that on behalf of our people.
KO: What’s next for organizers in your community? Do you think they should try to bring a resolution like this to the city council again?
AR: For the record, the resolution can be brought forward again. Honestly, at this point, I’m leaving next steps to the organizers. There’s obviously going to continue to be opportunities for engaging the community.
Governor Abbott may not understand this, but Governor Abbott did more to help uplift the message of the organizers and ultimately, the message of Palestinians by sending that letter than had he not and this resolution just passed. The whole purpose of the resolution was to raise the alarms, to let people know what’s going on. Now, when it comes to the organizers, it’s just about captivating that attention, that moment, and making sure that it doesn’t die down. And if that means bringing it up at a later time, I’ll obviously continue working alongside them. We’ll see what happens next.
I’ve actually got some friends who know people who are actually in Gaza, in the West Bank, and have made sure to put this on their attention that it was something that was being done, it was conversations that were being had. Ultimately, the purpose, too, was that they know we didn’t turn our back here in the belly of the beast.
I’m really proud of everybody. I’m proud to be from this city, and to see so many people come out because their hearts are repulsed, their minds are repulsed by the evilness that we’re seeing. And that gives me a lot of hope for humanity. And I think ultimately, right now, in these times that we’re in, hope is everything. And so I’m just, I’m very proud of everybody.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
