We were just about done setting up for our workshop at the San Benito Cultural Heritage Museum when Hector Ruiz, president of the South Texas Equality Project (STEP), walked in. STEP is a coalition of diverse groups that celebrate and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the Rio Grande Valley. 

“Friend!” I rushed over to him. “Qué gusto verte.”

“Girl,” he playfully replied as he leaned in closer for a hug. “This is one of five queer events I’m going to today. Let’s pray I can make it!” 

From the museum, we were equidistant from two key political events that had occurred that week: Forty miles to the East, an explosion after yet another failed SpaceX test in Boca Chica, and 40 miles to the West, Senator Bernie Sanders packed a McAllen event center as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. 

In the Valley, we are no strangers to being the backdrop of political power wars. From Elon Musk’s land-grab to Donald Trump and Greg Abbott’s power-grab, border residents are constantly cornered with restrictive narratives that capture the imagination of Americans across the nation. With frames meant to reduce our stories and humanity, we’re often made out to be these powerless one-dimensional caricatures that don’t know any better and can’t advocate for ourselves. 

But as we celebrate Pride Month, I am struck by the contrast of what I know to be true about this region and what the popular narratives may be—behind the curtain of these filters imposed by outsiders, the Valley boasts an abundance of creative, powerful, and joyful communities, one of them being the LGBTQ+ community. 

Starting in Brownsville, a short drive from Musk’s SpaceX, you can find a thriving network of queer business, advocacy, culture, and nightlife. Take Shop JZD, a queer-owned Latina lifestyle brand headquartered in downtown Brownsville that in April revealed a prestigious collaboration with Brooks, the iconic running shoes brand. Down the street from their store, you can find Bar-B, an LGBTQ+ bar that hosted a Pride flag-raising event on the first day of Pride Month with the support of the city commission’s LGBTQ Task Force established in 2019. And, if you’re lucky, you might run into Emmy award-winning star Lushious Massacr during one of her famous

“dragvestigations” where she masterfully blends pop culture and timely political perspectives. 

That’s not to say that the area doesn’t also actively engage in direct advocacy. Earlier this year, a group of trans leaders pushed Democratic Congressman Vicente Gonzalez to meet with us and address his transphobic rants after Trump’s re-election. After gathering more than 300 petition signatures condemning his remarks, we confronted the congressman in a virtual meeting where he listened to his constituents’ personal stories and the impact his remarks have on the lives of trans individuals. 

Then we head East to the San Benito and Harlingen area. Raised in San Benito, Jade Perez was just crowned Miss Gay USofA 2025 in one of the most important and respected drag pageants in the United States. In Harlingen, creative queer-owned businesses like ENTRE Film Center and Cactus Valley Art provide spaces for artistic expression, community building, and workshops. And a few minutes down the highway in La Feria, you will find Mount Calvary Christian Church, a trans and queer-led church, a rare beacon of hope for faith and spirituality for our South Texas community. 

In San Juan, La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) is hosting its second annual Pride celebrations. LUPE, founded by labor rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, is a legacy organization from the farmworker and Chicano civil rights movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Earlier this month, the group hosted a panel in Spanish with local trans leaders to discuss identity and advocacy. With an audience composed of mainly older working-class immigrants, it made for a unique space that challenged LUPE’s members to have critical conversations and build solidarity across differences. 

The truth is, we could go city by city in the Valley sharing its historic and present significance to the LGBTQ+ community. Even in the westernmost rural part of the region, in Starr County, the Roma High School Inclusion Club, formerly known as the Roma High School Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), is actively organizing. To add to its cultural impact, the Roma GSA founder, Frank Garcia, eventually went on to compete in the primetime show The Voice. 

Many might find themselves surprised at the abundance and depth of the LGBTQ+ community in the Rio Grande Valley, and this just scratches the surface. There’s a long list of craft groups, book clubs, running clubs, and so many other initiatives that have made for an event-filled Pride Month. Projects like Pansy Pachanga have served to provide important historical context to the long-standing presence of queer and trans people on the border, and organizations like the South Texas Equality Project, GenTex,

and Under the Umbrella guide us to fight for the present and envision a more inclusive future for the politically contested region. 

While we might not be the biggest in terms of population compared to other Texas metro areas, it is an undeniable fact that the LGBTQ+ community of the Rio Grande Valley is a shining example of grit, resistance, and joy—especially as we see the rise of aggressive anti-democratic practices from the state and federal government. 

With billionaires and power-hungry politicians in every corner of our region trying to gain at our expense, we dare to exist beyond the headlines and define ourselves for ourselves—one drag show, one support group, and one protest at a time. 

The post The Rio Grande Valley as Heart of LGBTQ+ Resistance and Joy appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On April 5 at 4 p.m., Reality Winner was hustling: She’d just learned she was needed to find additional last-minute female competitors for a Crossfit competition in Corpus Christi—a hassle for the 33-year-old who was already busy with other duties that day, including cleaning out dog kennels as one of the many requirements for her veterinary technology program at Texas A&M-Kingsville. 

Winner told the organizers that her two-person team would compete against anyone, even men, in contests designed to test people’s limitations, including lifting gigantic barbells and running and swimming races. In the end, her team tied for second place.

Crossfit has become a way for Winner to blow off steam after returning to Kingsville, where she launched an eclectic but quiet new life after first earning international publicity—and then becoming a convicted felon—for leaking classified information about attacks on U.S. elections. In 2018, Winner, a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran and a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to five years and three months, America’s longest prison sentence ever for the crime of leaking a secret document to journalists. 

In 2017, Winner was working for the NSA when she spotted a classified document that revealed that there had been a coordinated attempt by Russians to hack a voting software company in the 2016 elections. The document showed that hackers used the information they obtained to conduct spear-phishing attacks against more than 100 election officials nationwide.

Winner anonymously mailed that information to The Intercept, but the leak was quickly traced to her. During her trial, prosecutors attempted to prove that Winner was a dangerous rogue at risk of being recruited by foreign adversaries if ever released on bail. They questioned everything from her gun collection to her diary entries.

When Winner was released early in June 2021, she chose to return to Kingsville—the town that she’d once hoped to leave forever. Winner grew up there with interests in both shooting guns and practicing yoga. Early in life, she became fascinated with Arabic and international relations, which made her an attractive Air Force recruit and earned her medals for her military service after she used those skills to help identify enemy targets. Later, they landed her a job at the NSA. 

Since her release from prison, Winner has been featured in two movies, including Winner, a black comedy directed by Susanna Fogel, which premiered in 2024 at the Sundance Film Festival. She recently wrote a memoir, I Am Not Your Enemy—which she has learned was cleared for publication by the NSA without redactions. It will be published in September. 

TO: I read your column in The Wrap, “Democracy is a Verb.” When you look at what the Trump administration has done so far, what do you want people to glean from that phrase?

Democracy is a verb, and a part of that verb was the election of 2024. And what I can say is that so many people [voted] against their self interest and in favor of white supremacy directly when they voted for Trump. I do believe that he won the election—he got those votes, but democracy is a verb regardless of who you voted for. 

And it sure as fuck doesn’t look like Trump is our President right now. It does feel like we are being ruled by a foreign oligarch. I was not ready for an Elon Musk presidency, and I think that it should be common ground between the left and right, because even Republican constituents are uncomfortable and veterans are angry, and I just don’t know what it’s going to take to get all of us out in the streets together. You didn’t have people on social security being called the parasite class [before Trump]. It’s really gone off the rails. … I don’t know what more it’s going to take to get our Republican brothers and sisters to understand that this isn’t even what they wanted.

Now that you’re going to school and working, do you see yourself avoiding politics? Or do you want to get more involved?

When I was a 25-year-old veteran who was working a federal contract, the act [of whistleblowing] was inherently political. It was a felony, and I’m not a politician. I don’t lie to myself about what I can offer to the rest of the country as far as my ideas or what we should do moving forward. However, part of my decision to go to school for veterinary technology and to stay as a coach in my community is about small local politics and getting involved in the things that I directly see that impact me.

Trump did pardon a lot of people who were involved in the January 6 insurrection. Where do you think that places our society’s relative value of their experiences versus your experiences? Because I know that people pushed for you to be pardoned. 

I stand a snowball’s chance in hell of a pardon. And this last push, I can tell you that nobody was less involved than I was. I had shut down because I want to rebuild my life as a convicted felon, because I want to show how difficult it is. I’m starting Veterinary Technology school, but I’m not eligible for [licensure in] this career. 

Do you feel like there is a sense of urgency now that there is a second Trump administration? Is there room for more whistleblowing and more truth telling?

People are absolutely terrified because there is no safety net. If you do something dumb, like what I did, nobody’s going to help you out. And you know what—[if I was working] for the government right now, and I was given one of those letters of, “You’re going to get fired or you can resign,” I would have walked out with some documents that day.

I don’t understand why people are so beaten down to the point where, if they believe in this democracy, they’re not willing to risk it all. They didn’t kill me. They didn’t kill Chelsea Manning. And even the person who is most in danger, Edward Snowden, survives in Russia. They haven’t killed us. So I don’t understand why there is no sense of urgency. Why aren’t we seeing these whistleblowers?

I live in a red state. Everybody knows I live in Texas. I love Texas. I’m constantly emailing Senator John Cornyn. I’m getting responses, but what can I do? I wasn’t allowed to vote in 2024, I was still on probation. I don’t have millions of dollars to run for Congress. That’s another part of that system where you have to have a certain amount of generational wealth to even run for anything in this country. 

What’s it been like to see your life portrayed in movies? Do you feel it creates a distortion of who you are as a person?

It gives me hope for my own personal future. One of the things about my criminal case and the proceedings that were happening in the courtroom was that the prosecution was allowed to widely mischaracterize me and make off-the-wall statements about who I was as a person, and when my own attorneys would try to counter those arguments, they were interrupted by the judge.

And so when these movies are being made and these producers are coming to my home and meeting my family and meeting me, their whole thing is, how do we get as close to you as the production of a feature film can allow? How do we get as much of this narrative into 90 minutes as possible? For me, it gave me hope that people in this country can see that and not just the horribly inaccurate headlines that the prosecution put out about me in 2017, and it gives me a path forward.

Even people who don’t agree with what I did can empathize with the fact that nobody should just be steamrolled by the Department of Justice like this.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Reality Winner Rebuilds in Kingsville appeared first on The Texas Observer.