After a career that has spanned my entire lifetime and then some, my father Ed Sills is stepping down as Director of Communications for the Texas AFL-CIO. His announcement is a little long for Facebook, but not too long for my blog.
I’ve copied and pasted the text exactly as it appears in his September 24th daily email, so blame him for the Brobdingnagian paragraphs. In all seriousness, though, I’m incredibly proud of all the work he’s done for the labor movement.
It’s so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad
Oh to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons
You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you’re thinking that you’re leaving there too soon
You’re leaving there too soon
—From “Sugar Mountain,” Neil Young’s precocious song about lost youth, written when he was 19. Young sang it many years later accompanied by the likes of Willie Nelson at Farm Aid: https://tinyurl.com/2pa8dsdn
So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
—From “The Circle Game,” Joni Mitchell’s “Hey, you’ve got places to go!” response to “Sugar Mountain.” I’m always with Joni. https://tinyurl.com/4vdbtzjd
Well, I’ll keep on movin’, movin’ on
Things are bound to be improving these days
One of these days
These days I’ll sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them
—The concluding stanza of “These Days,” the pop classic written by Jackson Browne at the age of 16. Maybe we should all be a little bit 16 in our heads. A couple of years ago, an older and wiser Browne performed the number beautifully on “Austin City Limits”: https://tinyurl.com/2p9heeze
1—My Path in Labor Will Soon Change
2—Daily E-Mail Will Resume Friday
1) Okay, I’ve dawdled long enough on musical intros and the looming imaginary head of a long-ago editor is gruffly telling me, “Sills, you buried the lede.”
So here it is. Today, I announced to the Texas AFL-CIO Executive Board my plan to retire around Jan. 1st.
By then, I will have been Communications Director at the Texas AFL-CIO for 31 years, after a 12-year career as a newspaper reporter, most of it as Austin bureau chief of the San Antonio Light. Sadly, I outlived The Light. But happily, I’m confident the Texas labor movement will thrive. I’m so confident, in fact, that given our rise in popularity, the unprecedented union organizing in our state, and the prospect — if we stay on task — of better political fortunes, I’m declaring victory and going home.
I am really, and not in the trite political sense, looking forward to spending more time with my family, especially my spouse and best friend, Enedelia Obregón. As a former reporter herself, Enedelia has always understood the demands of the two-year cycle of legislation and politics in Texas. Now, at long last, we can again take vacations in October, ignore the bloviating at the Legislature, yell “Road trip!” in earnest, watch “General Hospital” together, and treasure the days from a broader perspective.
I have written, by my rough calculation, more than 7.5 million words over the years in this space. In the end, all I have left to say basically amounts to two words: “Thank you.”
The colleagues I have driven crazy at the office will attest that I made a 2024 New Year’s resolution to set a retirement date and have been all over the map on what that date would be. If that is evidence of swimming and conflicted thoughts, I plead guilty. Now, the doubts are gone. President Rick Levy and Secretary-Treasurer Leonard Aguilar could not have been more supportive in giving me space to work this out.
I have the pleasure of working with the best staff. I will be addressing how wonderful they are on a one-on-one basis over the next three months, but for now I must mention how happy I have been in the daily presence of, in alphabetical order, Union Sisters Emily Amps, Fabiola Barreto, Patricia Estrada (long-distance from her unprecedented Rio Grande Valley bureau), Lee Forbes, Ana Gonzalez, Lauren Guild, Amber Jones, Katie Milne, Lorraine Montemayor, Ixtlani Palomo, Emily Speight and Maria Thomas.
With respect to Rick Levy, Leonard Aguilar and Lee Forbes, it has been a long journey. Rick was in the room with the officers and other directors when I interviewed for this position in late 1993. When I was hired, the first thing Rick said to me, in typical half-jest, was “Don’t screw it up.” I don’t think either of us has screwed it up. Under Rick and Leonard’s inspired leadership, we are engaged in far-reaching, historically important work, built on the powerful shoulders of past officers who have been a blessing in our lives. I’m sometimes hard to explain, but no one gets me and what I’ve tried to do better than Rick. On a larger level, Rick has helped me get a lot figured out over the years, and friendships like that come along only a few times in a life.
Leonard, to his great credit, morphed from a hard-working activist in San Antonio into a big-picture change agent with outstanding statewide priorities. As Secretary-Treasurer, he has reinvigorated our advocacy for union apprenticeships and is working incredibly hard to make sure the infrastructure of our organization remains strong. Leonard has a giant heart and will walk through walls for the benefit of working families, even if on occasion we have to point out that the door is just a few feet to the left.
Lee Forbes, my “third sister,” showed up in my life in early 1995 as an employee of a grant program run out of our office to assist laid-off workers, created during the administration of Gov. Ann Richards. Lee’s work caught everyone’s eye and she moved upstairs as an administrative assistant when that program abruptly ended during the Bush governorship. Lee is the one and only Texas AFL-CIO administrative assistant to earn promotion to a Director’s job (thanks, Becky Moeller), and having been trained by Rosa Walker in all phases of our operations, she is the connection to traditions dating to the 1960s. Nothing happens here without Lee’s brilliance on logistics. Lee is my office confidante, my confessor, and my go-to when I’m navigating rough tides.
I would be remiss if I did not thank past officers, every one of whom led this organization with determination and grace while giving me leeway to make this job my own (though, by literary tradition, any and all shortcomings have been mine alone): Joe Gunn, a second father who changed my life and showed me what it means to stand with integrity for what’s right, no matter the consequences; Emmett Sheppard, who taught me how politics really works in Texas and introduced me to the joys of Cajun cooking; Becky Moeller, a pioneer who had my back on more occasions than I can remember and who conducted her business with a level of mission, passion and occasional outrage that I have tried to emulate in pixels; Paul Brown, with whom I still correspond even though his stay with us was brief; John Patrick, quite simply one of the finest human beings I’ve ever had the privilege to know and a model for all union leaders; and Montserrat Garibay, an organizer’s organizer, a wonderful friend, an inspiring leader, and a woman for whom the sky is the limit.
I would be further remiss if I didn’t mention the late Rosa Walker, who would have been in the above list of officers except she arrived on the scene an era too early. In 2024, the Texas AFL-CIO has high-performing departments of politics and legislation, organizing, education, and operations and special projects. For many years starting with her hiring in a brilliant stroke by President Hank Brown in the 1960s, Rosa performed all those functions and more. She earned her spot in the Texas Labor Hall of Fame but also belongs in the Texas Labor Hall of Impossibilities. I miss her greatly.
A few more friends I can’t omit: previous Directors Walter Hinojosa, one of the truly good guys who remains a union leader, and in touch, during his “retirement” in Arkansas; Jeff Rotkoff, the “good trouble”-maker and fierce politico who has now gone — who would have predicted it? — into the publishing business with the online “Barbed Wire”; René Lara, my walking and “What is Life?” discussion partner who now works at the national AFL-CIO; Paula Littles, who among many pieces of powerful work figured out how to set up a website and carry me along online in the years before we thought to hire a digital strategist; my long-time block-walking partner Joe Arabie, self-made country album star who to my horror was about three feet ahead of me when one or two chain links saved him from getting mauled by a pit bull (hey, that means I was a little over three feet from the same fate!), and who, to my amusement as we drove to Houston for a block walk, stopped on a highway shoulder to take a good long look at a dead buck before deciding not to haul it into his truck bed; Vivian Willis, our administrative assistant who alongside Clara Caldwell was an important cog in the Texas labor movement’s civil rights portfolio, not to mention the best cook in the state labor federation; the folks who reliably did our accounting and saw to it that we were paid, including the late Burl Davis, the late Liz Bartlett, and the early Bob Cash, wonderful people all; and the three impressive digital strategists who have moved to positions that afford them a larger field in other organizations: Mark Maldonado, now the Comms person for AFSCME Local 1624; Madison White, now the Comms person for a national Workers’ Compensation outfit; and Emily Markwiese, now a brilliant organizer with OPEIU Local 277 who, I might add, recently scored an organizing win in the historically union-resistant outpost of Abilene. I think I learned more from our digital strategists than they learned from me.
Others belong in this account, I’m sure. I apologize profusely for an aging memory. I draw from a deep well of gratitude and will take another crack at reminiscing on the cast of characters in “These Days” before my retirement.
Life at the Texas AFL-CIO was different when I started in the 1990s. I was too new and naive to realize just how much trouble we were in after a Reagan era that saw our membership decimated by more than one-third. With the rise of Republican control of Texas and other Southern states, we became even more of a legislative piñata than usual. Yet we stood and fought, took no guff from our foes, got our licks in and remained secure in the knowledge that while our movement may stumble in some short runs, we have always progressed in the long run. Stuck for a couple decades in a political stasis, I’m proud to say the state labor federation helped kill more bills at the Legislature than we had any right to, scored a few election upsets even when our statewide electoral foundation had collapsed, and built infrastructure for a better future.
Things began to change dramatically for the better — two steps forward and one back instead of the other way around — following the Bush-era recession and the election of Barack Obama as President. We accelerated our role in organizing, made measurable political gains, and now have a very real prospect of big breakthroughs. As everyone here is painfully aware, even as prospects brighten, it will take years of political success to make up for the long years of a wrong-way pendulum.
Brothers and Sisters, we are on the right track. With the growing success of our movement, the communications needs of the Texas AFL-CIO have changed dramatically. When we were a smaller office, I followed the Rosa Walker model and tried to help out in areas that are not specifically assigned to the Communications Director. I have involved myself heavily in our legislative work, monitoring every single filed bill for labor issues and quickly sounding all appropriate alarms, and, for more than two decades, taking on the extraordinarily painful task of watching every minute of the Texas Senate’s proceedings and reporting the outrages to the United Labor Legislative Committee. I have coordinated the Texas AFL-CIO Scholarship Program, a true pleasure and privilege, while confessing openly that the indispensable day-to-day work of the program fell into the incredibly capable hands of Vivian Willis and, now, Ixtlani Palomo. I have reveled in the most meaningful all-hands-on-deck work we do, including: block-walking, working with eligible immigrants who want to become citizens, running the putting contest at the Texas AFL-CIO Golf Tournament (where I’ll be on the practice green near Hole 1 tomorrow), running off to Labor Day events, doing my part in disaster relief, participating in a variety of AFL-CIO operations, including leafleting a crowd on Sixth Street with Liz Shuler during South by Southwest, engaging in all sorts special programs, and welcoming the never-ending parade of visitors to our headquarters.
I have become an unofficial historian, something woven into my writing, because labor history is special: As much as any movement, we use history, lore — even our music, literature and larger cultural impact — as a model. We actively seek to rhyme the present and future with our great accomplishments of the past, and, as for our mistakes, we do our best to remember history so we are not condemned to repeat it.
Comms can do so much good in so many ways, and get into so much trouble in so many ways. Before my predecessor, Christopher Cook, went on to a noteworthy career as a novelist and short story writer, he impressed on me the imperative of being our own voice. That was the best piece of advice about the job I ever got. A unique, authentic, constant Texas labor voice is the right comms priority for our organization and for the working people of Texas. The Texas AFL-CIO inaugurated daily communications through this email in 1998 — at the time, a cutting-edge idea and medium. The blast gets read and acted upon. We have sent it only to people who want to receive it (“permission marketing”), and unlike the political emails that arrive in your inbox several times a day, my readers knew the daily email would arrive once each business day, on schedule, with unpredictable, often original, content that they could use.
Because a succession of officers was willing to accept the tradeoffs involved in giving me free reign in this newsletter (and, as Joe Gunn warned at the start of this endeavor, enough rope to hang myself), the quirky voice you read here became the center of my work. Daily blogs weren’t the “right” thing to do by any modern measure of p.r. work in 1998, 2024 or points between, but they were my stamp, based on my training in journalism (and law, for that matter). The next Comms Director deserves the same chance to operate where his or her talents and passions lie in the interests of our organization. That means, more likely than not, the end of this long-running format. The ULLCO and Election Sentinels — a slightly more formatted newsletter that updated a very old function of the state labor federation — may also give way to other forms of communication. Whatever comes next, I know our comms will make you proud, because our officers and staff will demand no less.
The salt-of-the-earth readers of this newsletter — even the few who have explained to me that I’m an idiot — have been the best pen pals, offering me excellent advice, appropriate (and occasionally inappropriate) disses, and, above all, feedback that guided not just what I cover, but how I should live the life of a union advocate.
We will post a job description for Director of Communications in the coming days. Between now and the end of the year, I will cull items from a cluttered workspace that looks like no other in our building, inspired more by Ray Bradbury than by modern office culture. (You really can get ideas by staring at the physical manifestations of your memory.) The daily email will proceed until, most likely, Friday, Dec. 20th.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I am leaving a job, but I will never leave our movement — the greatest on the face of the Earth. May the wind always be at our backs as we work together for a better Texas and a better world for working people.
Media Shower 