About the Author
Intro
Jonathan Salinas is a journalist based in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.
His past work has been published in local and regional outlets like the Pan American, RGVision Magazine, the Monitor, Brownsville Herald, Rio Grande Guardian, Neta RGV, now Trucha RGV, the San Antonio Express, among others. He’s worked with organizations and national outlets like LUPE, ACLU, Sierra Club and The Progressive magazine.
He’s also a multi-instrumentalist musician who focuses on traditional folk and Celtic music, playing annual festivals around Texas. He joined Substack in 2021, after 6 years of writing for established news outlets and even helping start and run a few.
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Detailed Bio
Jonathan Lee Salinas is a writer and activist based in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Born in McAllen in 1991, Salinas grew up in Pharr and attended PSJA North High School. He later graduated with an associate degree in psychology from South Texas College and a Bachelor of Science in psychology and philosophy from the University of Texas Pan American, summer of 2015.
While at university Salinas was a Senator-at-Large for the Student Government Association (SGA), a delegate to draft the founding UTRGV SGA Constitution, an officer of the Psychology Club and Atheist Student Organization, and active member of other student groups. While in SGA he led an impeachment campaign against the incumbent student body President and Vice President, which was stalled and derailed by university administrators, wrongly reported on as ‘not enough votes in the senate’ on UTRGV’s Wikipedia. He spoke out against administrative abuses of power while the Valley’s two legacy institutions were being merged in order to create UTRGV, even speaking at a large 2014 protest on campus against the university’s undemocratic mascot decision. He was part of an ad hoc committee that was suppressed after it tried to put the mascot decision to a student vote by interim President, Havidan Rodriguez.
After graduation, Salinas worked on Vicente Gonzalez’s first congressional campaign as a volunteer and advisor. After leaving the campaign, following the Congressman’s successful primary victory, Salinas went on to become a full-time journalist, starting out as a contributor to RGVision Magazine, and becoming a staff writer for the Brownsville Herald in 2016 where he was a crime reporter that fall. Upon Donald Trump’s election, Salinas started indie news outlets with other local writers and activists in early 2017. Later that year, Salinas was hired by La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) as a community organizer for Hidalgo County’s first precinct. He left that role in February 2018 and worked on a music album in conjunction with LUPE and its sister organization, ARISE, for a project called Sonidos del Agua, sponsored by BC (Building Communities) Workshop. It was a conjunto album done in coordination with colonias recently affected by floods, including the collaboration of the Texas Conjunto Hall of Fame and Museum, with the participation of the legendary accordionist, Fruty Villarreal. During this time, Salinas started Unete956.org with other writers and activists, the archive of which can be found here.
During these years, from 2017 to 2018, Salinas was an active volunteer of the No Border Wall coalition. He’d go on to champion the cause and its affiliated organizations as an immigration reporter for Neta (now Trucha) RGV. In 2019, he chaired the No Border Wall coalition and broke with them politically in 2020 over their wholesale decision to become cheerleaders for Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris’ Presidential campaign. During this time, Salinas wrote on the border wall and immigration for the Rio Grande Guardian and The Progressive Magazine, as well as publishing posts on the Sierra Club and ACLU’s websites. Having been a supporter of the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party since 2016, Salinas broke with the Democratic Party’s politics entirely and became a devoted supporter of the Socialist Workers Party whose politics he now champions and advocates for. He is not a member of the SWP but tries to uphold their line of politics in our region.
When not writing about politics, Salinas plays and composes music, at the moment focusing on the canon of traditional Irish music, having grown up as a praise and worship leader as a youth for his childhood church in McAllen, becoming a solo artist during college, to playing keyboard and electric guitar for Stellar Adam and the Officer who was fronted by Grind and Black Honey Coffee mastermind, Sergio Trevino, and led by the great Valley guitarist and composer, Michael Trevino (no relation to Serg), during the summer and fall of 2016. Upcoming essays will deal with music history, theory, and include digital performances. Become a paid subscriber to access all past and upcoming work, as well as comment on posts and take part in the discussion.
Salinas plays annual performances at Irish music festivals across the state. For such updates, follow him on Instagram @JonathanLeeJams.
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