We will be judged. There will be an accounting; there will be a reckoning sooner or later. It will either come from ourselves and our own conscience, or it will come from our kids when they ask that inconvenient question: 'What were you doing when they turned those kids back from the border?'
We can either be governed by fear - fear of immigrants, fear of Muslims, call the press the enemy of the people, tear kids away from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border - or we can be governed by our ambitions and our aspirations and our desire to make the most out of all of us. And that's America at its best.
The world wants to know - is the future a democratic one or an autocratic one? And I want to make sure that the United States leads on that, clearly that it's democratic.
Politics has become very corporate. There's a whole farm system for the teams. There's decisions made at the top. There's a lot of literal corporate involvement, PAC money involved in selecting and backing candidates.
There was something punk rock about Bobby Kennedy not going where the pollsters said or where consultants said. He was unmoored from what was safe or easy.
We toured the U.S. and Canada for two years, which was a lot of fun. It was very much a do-it-yourself, punk-rock ethic of booking your own shows, sometimes sleeping on the floor of the club you had played or meeting folks that would take you in, or sleeping on the side of the road or at rest stops in the car.
I have to convince other Democrats and Republicans that it's wise to invest in the U.S.-Mexico border, not just for security, but also for mobility and trade, and that's why we should open up the border.
Not one of the 9/11 terrorists entered through Mexico - and yet Mexicans bore the brunt of this country's immigration response to the terror attacks.
We in El Paso and Juarez are literally one community. There's no separation; there's no DMZ; there's no buffer.
That's the primary mission of ours: to protect the border, enhance the border, and capitalize on what the border has to offer. It's the source of jobs, source of positive immigration stories.
I don't know how old I was when I first started going to shows, maybe 14 or 15, but very quickly, I discovered Dischord Records in D.C. and loved all the music on that catalog. I was a big Rites of Spring fan, Minor Threat, of course.
I remember ordering records out of the Dischord catalog in the '80s, and there would be a handwritten note.
There is no excuse for making disrespectful and demeaning comments about women.
In terms of immigration, we're seeing a lot of Democrats and Republicans use the really elastic term, 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform,' and they don't totally understand what that means. For us in El Paso, it's part of a larger discussion about the nature of the border.
Part of the job for me and others from El Paso who live along the border is to dispel the myths about how supposedly dangerous the border is.
El Paso in many ways is the Ellis Island for Mexico and much of Latin America.
Juarez had become a failed city. The mayor of Juarez lived in El Paso. Not only did he not live in his own city, he didn't live in his own country. You had all these kids out of school who didn't want to work because they saw their mothers toiling in jobs for hardly any cash.
I was born in '72, and my dad was county judge of El Paso from '82 to '86. He was just as independent as he could be, and had an amazing joy in life and in being with people, which, from my perspective as a kid, was that he was always going to do the right thing, and damn the consequences - political or otherwise.
The border is safe; it's secure. El Paso is the safest city in America. Let's own that. Let's be proud of that. And then, I think, good policy can follow from that, better outcomes included.
I don't know that my colleagues in Congress really care about what happens here in El Paso and in Juarez. They care what happens in their home district.
