Ray Adauto

Executive Vice President El Paso Association of Builders

As we get ready for the 79th installation of new leadership and the board we are reminded that we are entering our eightieth anniversary in 2026. Eighty years is a big deal, no matter whether its years are alive, or the age of your car, or the age o your organization. For the association it marks how many years ago we were born. 1946 had just begun to welcome war veterans and wartime workers back into civilian life and jobs, with families needing housing. El Paso and surrounding communities had played a key role in the war effort, and those workers were ready to buy a house. So celebrating our anniversary of our eightieth birthday will be a big deal if for no other reason

than being relevant for all these years. Our members are why we continue to be a voice of housing and business in El Paso. The federal government shutdown is having an impact and none of it good. We are a divided and fractionalized country right now, worse than during civil rights or Vietnam war years. Having the shutdown now jeopardizes a very razor thin calm, but I fear there is a short fuse that media and the internet are participating in that changes the playing field. I believe in your citizenship rights and the rules of laws. Some intelligent people are suddenly stupid. Case in point is how New Yorkers seem destined to select a communist for mayor. I suppose that his talks of free

this and that sound appealing to those who have little or nothing, but I also think that if he’ s elected the warnings from the past will come true. The United States is a mishmash of cultures because we assimilated into being American, today legal, and undocumented immigrants want to be in America without being American. That’ s not how this Republic works. Yet even elected officials seem to not recall those principles we built this country on. The silence, I fear, will erupt one day. It will not be pretty. We can take that first step to curtail this fear by demanding our government return to work, pay the workers and help those in need. It’ s time for you to demand that.