Community watchdog organization Our Laredo marks its second anniversary with a meet-and-greet on Saturday, July 22, at Holding Institute. The event, which begins at 5:30 p.m., is open to the public.
Our Laredo members are a staple at Laredo City Council meetings, showing up regularly to ask pointed questions and offer public commentary.
More often than not the questions come with a challenging sting or a bite about the status quo, and more often than not the interaction is not a warm and fuzzy exchange, nor is the Council’s reception to Our Laredo always cordial.
The organization, which was founded in 2015 by activists Lakshmana (Vish) Viswanath and Armando and Luis Cisneros, publishes its findings, activities, and points of view on Facebook, a site that has over 8,000 likes and that is avidly followed when there is a major news event at City Hall — such as the City Secretary keeping Council member George Altgelt’s name off the ballot last year and this Spring’s FBI raids.
“There’s a lot of eye-rolling about our appearance at Council meetings. One Council member who still serves and one who was recently un-elected would routinely get up as we approached the podium, sometimes leaving the Chamber altogether,” Viswanath said, adding, “disrespectful, but very telling because even as small as we are, we have played a significant role in recent elections.”
He continued, “Little by little, we have clipped the winged hands of corruption by asking for accountability and transparency. We feel that as a result of our presence and because we have offered solutions that there have been policy changes, such as taking the time length for citizen comments from the discretion of the mayor and making it a policy that also carries over to the committee meetings on which Council appointed members sit.”
He said that Our Laredo chipped away at the existence of the former Gang of Five voting block that regularly hijacked the outcome of the Council’s agenda. “It looks like there’s an ongoing struggle now between two Council members to capture the allegiance of some of the newer members of the Council,” he said. “We are careful observers, and people bring us information. We work for positive changes in how the City and other governmental agencies work for us, the tax-paying, voting public.”
Of the FBI focus to unearth the true nature of the relationship of some in City government with Dannenbaum Engineering, Viswanath said, “Those raids should have been a catalyst for change. We have a new City manager, but the bureaucracy is still the same. I’m not talking about the good employees who do their work day after day. I’m talking about the status quo department heads.”
According to the activist, “We care very much for this City. The last City manager called us naysayers, though we are not. We are in this for debate and dialogue that will throw cronyism and favoritism out of City Hall and that will bring consistency and equal opportunities for those who want to do business with the City of Laredo.”
Viswanath said Laredoans are hungry for news and that they are looking for a voice to speak up for them when they see inequity and injustice in the workings of government.
“Many of them will not speak up, however, for fear of retaliation or hurting family members,” he added.
He said Our Laredo is having growing pains and that he looks forward to having more members. “There’s a perception we need to correct. We are a stand-alone entity whose members may have different party affiliations, but we are one voice for better government. Our work has nothing to do with Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, or independents.”
Viswanath came to Laredo in 1995 as a TAMIU administrator and has made Laredo his home.
The native of the tropical state of Kerala on the Malabar Coast of India entered the U.S. on a visa and followed a 15-year path to American citizenship.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics at Kerala University in India and a Masters in meteorology from the School of Mining and Technology in Rapid City, South Dakota. He also earned a Masters in computer science at Iowa State University. He has taught at Iowa State and Penn State Harrisburg. He worked in technology at SUNY, the State University of New York.
Viswanath called himself “a technocrat.” He was employed at TAMIU from 1995 to 2005. “This is where I learned that being good at what you do has less value than who you know and perhaps than who you displeased,” he said, adding that losing his job had cost him his family.
His two sons, Avinash, 28, and Abiram, 26, are graduates of Alexander High School — Avinash completing a medical residency in New York and Abiram employed in Austin by a manufacturer of sporting goods clothing.
That loss, he said — coupled with what he had learned from his father, an outspoken bureaucrat in the office of the Inspector General in the leftover vestiges of British colonialism — gave him a voice to speak up for injustice and inequity.
Viswanath is the owner of two postal and shipping centers in Laredo.
He suggested, “City Council would be very happy if I go away.”
Alas, Viswanath is not going anywhere.
