A Saturday with Other Angry Texans

I spent last Saturday in San Antonio in the company of a few hundred angry people from all over Texas. We were there because we believe our state and federal governments have long been run for the benefit of the wealthy and the privileged and yet we remain hopeful that we can change that. We gathered together to in the belief that if we organize ourselves and devote our energy to our common cause we can create a better world for everyone.

Our group is Our Revolution Texas and at our state convention there were delegates and activists from the eleven regional organizations. One of the main priorities was to create a declaration of principles to guide our actions as we work for a better future. Among those principles is opposition to the rise of oligarchy in modern society. We recognized that the deregulatory agenda of the American right has led to the most shocking and intolerable inequalities of wealth and income in the history of the modern world.

We agreed to demand from our elected officials that the current embrace of greed and economic inequality be replaced with a more just society in which resources, wealth, and the fruits of human labor and inventiveness are more justly shared by all persons as a human right.

Our Revolution members believe that our nation and our state must adopt living wage legislation setting the floor at $15 per hour and indexing it for inflation. Those skilled workers already at or near that rate are underpaid and should have the right to organize and join strong labor unions in order to collectively negotiate conditions of employment including fair pay, sick leave and the like.

It is our position that medical care is a human right without regard for ability to pay that society as a whole must provide legislatively through a universal health care program such as Medicare for All.

While progress has been made over the last century we agreed that there is much to be done in order to remove the social and economic barriers women face in achieving equal rights. Our society’s tragic history of male supremacy must be overturned and perpetrators like Steve Wynn, the disgraced former Chair of the Republican National Committee who resigned earlier this week, must be cast out.

Sadly, it isn’t just male supremacy that we suffer from, white supremacy has also created social, political and economic barriers to equal rights. It is utterly intolerable that 150 years after the end of slavery our society still treats people of color as second class citizens. We affirm that Black Lives Matter.

We believe that no human being is illegal and that immigrants are entitled to equal protection under the law. We call for the speedy passage of enactment of laws to provide a path to citizenship for those previously covered under DACA and an end to the inhumane detention practices which break up families.

We recognize that our beautiful earth and life-protecting environment is being pillaged to benefit those whose rampaging greed is insatiable. We insist that our elected officials devote immediate attention to reversing the tragically accelerating process of climate change for which unnatural human interference in the environment is the primary cause.

The members of Our Revolution Texas stand committed to the hard and laborious long-term work of organizing a powerful mass political movement for the accomplishment of all aspects of this vision.

Published in the Seguin Gazette, February 2, 2018