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

In the last presidential election Donald Trump ran a faux populist campaign that fooled just enough people in the right states to win. Just six months into his term we can already see that he is not who he claimed to be. He claimed to have a healthcare plan that would cover more people at lower cost when in fact he had no plan at all.

The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t provide routine healthcare to all its citizens. In the last week or so the real populist group Our Revolution, a Bernie Sanders campaign spinoff, announced its Summer for Progress project which includes providing good healthcare to all Americans. The group is supporting HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act filed by long time supporter John Conyers.

Our Revolution knows that there is more to be done than just insuring that the sick get the treatment they need. It is unacceptable that a person should work a full time job and still live in poverty so Our Revolution is promoting the Raise the Wage Act, HR 15, which would raise the minimum wage. Remember as it stands now our tax dollars subsidize the profits of some of America’s most profitable companies, think Walmart, by providing benefits like food stamps and housing assistance to their employees whom they pay poverty wages.

Back in the 1960’s a high school education would enable a worker to get a job that would lead them to a middle class life but that hasn’t been possible in decades yet attaining a college education is impossible for too many Americans due to the high costs. I can still remember television ads for the United Negro College Fund which used the tag line “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. That idea is as true today as it ever was and applies to even more people. Keep in mind that one of reasons that companies use when applying to bring in foreign workers is that there aren’t enough Americans with the necessary skills here in the U.S. If we educated our citizens we might find that wasn’t the case so Our Revolution is promoting the College for All Act, HR 1880 which would pay the tuition and fees for any American who attends a two year or four year college.

Today many Texans think they’re registering to vote when they get a drivers license or update it but even though they mark the box the Department of Public Safety doesn’t always forward the information to the Secretary of State so the person remains unregistered and when they show up at the polls they’re unable to vote. A federal lawsuit was filed last year over this but that’s not enough, it’s time we require every state to automatically register voters who pass through their drivers license offices so Our Revolution is promoting the Automatic Voter Registration Act, HR 2840 which would do just that.

While these issues and more are important right now we have an even larger, worldwide problem looming over us and that’s global climate change. It is now a certainty that the next 50 years will see more frequent crop failures due to longer, deeper droughts. We’ll see more frequent, more intense hurricanes. In order to minimize the damage we have to stop wrecking the environment soon so Our Revolution is supporting congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in developing a Climate Change bill.

Join us 10am Saturday at Hemisfair Park in support of Medicare for All.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 28, 2017

John Courage Wins SA City Council

San Antonio experienced a change in direction Saturday night when the election results were posted. Ron Nirenberg’s mayoral win over Ivy Taylor and John Courage’s win over a traditional conservative, Marco Barros, in the most conservative council district in the city go a long way toward effecting that change. The election cycle knocked out several incumbents and replaced them with more progressive leaders.

John Courage is a military veteran, a public school teacher with nearly 30 years of service and a longtime progressive activist who has worked for decades to bring accountability to local and state government. Courage was a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders and won the endorsement of Our Revolution, the political organization formed by Sanders and activists connected by his presidential bid.

Our Revolution San Antonio (ORSA)—a local group of volunteers—endorsed Courage and recommended him to the national Our Revolution organization, which accepted our local recommendation and posted it on the national website. ORSA endorsed Courage after he and other council candidates made presentations to ORSA about their platforms and requested endorsement. The local organization pitched in to help contact prospective voters for months and that effort paid off.

I'll bet the folks in District 9 found it refreshing to hear John say, “There’s no such thing as a liberal streetlight or a conservative pothole.” What Barros seemed to overlook when he declared that he would win District 9 handily because we are a “very conservative” district is this: listening to the voters and learning what their issues are is more important the wearing a label such as “conservative” or “liberal”.

Unlike Barros and much of the local media Our Revolution San Antonio was not shocked by the results of the runoff.  Only those not on the ground knocking on doors were surprised.  ORSA endorsed Courage, not because he claimed to be liberal or conservative, but because he and his team put together a transparent, service-oriented campaign that focused on communicating with and serving voters. 

ORSA’s mission is to engage citizens to participate in local governance as activists as well as to recruit and support progressive candidates to fill positions as party precinct chairs, city and county commissions, school boards, city council and county commissioners court.  Progressives want progress, to get things done in a democratic environment where we all are respected as stakeholders who are entitled to accessible government, an opinion and a vote.

John Courage and others like him are the beginning of a new day in representative government.  Keep in mind that Courage will take votes that affect all of San Antonio, not just District 9, and he will help shape a new City Council that hopefully will move toward a better, more representative government.  We encourage other citizens who share these progressive values to get engaged with Our Revolution or other organizations that have been awakened by the deterioration of our government, to start making a difference where you live.

Our Revolution San Antonio is the regional umbrella for people in the city and all the surrounding counties who believe in the principals that Bernie Sanders ran on during the 2016 primary. We support universal healthcare, tuition free public universities and a $15 minimum wage among other principals. If you believe in similar principals we invite you to contact us through our Facebook page Our Revolution: San Antonio Area.