![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/civis_ad2.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI always hear that young people don\u2019t vote and what I saw before the city council is why we don\u2019t vote.<\/p>\n
I am disheartened by what my elected officials did reminding me that they only care about the people that fund their elections.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t be voting until people that care about us and not their donors and who view the people as voices that matter run for office.<\/p>\n
People will criticize me for not voting, calling me part of the problem but what I witnessed at city council proves that my one vote doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
After the meeting I took what I learned in my recent school assignment and used it as my voice to what I saw last Tuesday at our city council.<\/p>\n
Maria Garcia used AI tools to create The El Paso Meta Song, June 10, 2026. Special to the El Paso Herald Post.<\/p>\n
Lyrics: The El Paso Meta Song<\/p>\n
The sun came up on El Paso,<\/p>\n
The Franklin Mountains standing tall,<\/p>\n
Folks walked into that chamber<\/p>\n
Thinking they\u2019d be heard at all.<\/p>\n
They brought their fears and questions,<\/p>\n
About the future coming fast,<\/p>\n
But when the votes were counted,<\/p>\n
Some felt they\u2019d been left in the past.<\/p>\n
Who did you vote for when you raised your hand?<\/p>\n
The people in the neighborhoods or another big plan?<\/p>\n
We asked for guardrails, we asked for a say,<\/p>\n
But our questions hit a wall that day.<\/p>\n
Cynthia Trejo Boyer, Alejandra Chavez,<\/p>\n
Art Fierro standing with the rest,<\/p>\n
Deanna Rocha Maldonado, Ivan Ni\u00f1o too,<\/p>\n
Now the people are putting that vote to the test.<\/p>\n
Some saw jobs and opportunity,<\/p>\n
Some saw risks that needed review,<\/p>\n
Some said, \u201cOpen up discussions,<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see what safeguards we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The desert knows the value<\/p>\n
Of every drop and every watt,<\/p>\n
And the people kept on asking,<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat protections have we got?\u201d<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t trying to stop tomorrow,<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t trying to turn away,<\/p>\n
We just wanted our leaders<\/p>\n
To hear what we had to say.<\/p>\n
And the story isn\u2019t over,<\/p>\n
The ink is barely dry,<\/p>\n
A city\u2019s more than contracts,<\/p>\n
A city\u2019s more than contracts,<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the people living by them.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: The editorial was submitted to us in the form of a song. The song was created using artificial intelligence (AI) by the author. We asked the author to provide us with a short essay about the thoughts behind her song. As a digital medium, El Paso Herald Post encourages multimedia submissions.<\/p>\n
About Maria Garcia
Maria Garcia lives in the eastside and is currently pursuing a degree in computer programming. She told us that she was motivated to create the song after watching the debate on the META datacenter. Maria Garcia asked us to let readers know that she wants people to freely use her song.<\/p>\n
Like Us and Follow Us On Our Social Media!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guest EditorialBy Maria Garcia EL PASO, Tx., June 12, 2026: As a 23-year-old student, I watched the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[20160,20161,20163,27640,138,140,139,20166,5403,1631],"class_list":["post-333550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-alejandra-chavez","tag-art-fierro","tag-cynthia-boyer-trejo","tag-deanna-maldonado-rocha","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-ivan-nino","tag-meta","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}