Steve Pearce: “I often criticize the media for the things that I think are inattentive and improper. Tonight, I would like to rise to…”

“I often criticize the media for the things that I think are inattentive and improper. Tonight, I would like to rise to give tribute to the media where I think good has been done. A long-time friend, Rebecca Allen, an editor from the Orange County Register, forwarded to me eight articles in a series they printed in mid-June. The articles, written by the brave and courageous Yvette Cabrera and Minerva Canto, four articles apiece, detailed the difficulties that face young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. My district butts up to the very corner of Juarez, and I have watched the problems of hundreds of deaths of young women, but until reading a series of articles, it was not personal. The first in the series of articles talked about she never came home. Concentrating on Erendira Ponce, 17, all that she dreamed of was a life beyond her poor neighborhood. At 17 she ended up as one of hundreds of women killed in Juarez, Mexico, skull crushed, raped and just thrown down into the dirt.”