David Griscom is the author of The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South and the host of The Jacobin Show.
A union machinist just won a Texas State Senate seat Trump carried by 17 points. He was outspent four to one. How did he do it? By tossing out the Democrats’ playbook and running a grassroots economic populist campaign with a strong pro-labor message.
In 1880s Texas, farmers and factory workers discovered they had the same enemy: corporate capitalists. Their alliance birthed American populism and offers lessons for today’s working class divided by false urban-rural antagonisms.
The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was founded on the principle of interracial organizing. It challenged the Southern landowning class and the Jim Crow white supremacist order, leaving a proud legacy for both the labor movement and the civil rights movement.
The newly passed HB 2127 is yet another attempt by the GOP-controlled state legislature to impose minority rule over the state of Texas. It’s the working class that will pay the price — and the working class that must organize to fight back.
Joe Biden promised to run the most pro-union administration in US history. But it offered no support to Alabama coal miners who were on strike for nearly two years.
Texas governor Greg Abbott has forever changed the state’s politics. To undo the damage he has caused, we can’t rely on top-down initiatives. We need a working-class alternative.
Cattle barons carved up Texas with barbed wire in the late 19th century, separating poor farmers and landless cowboys from vital resources for their struggling cattle herds. So the cowboys formed fence-cutting gangs to preserve the open range.
The climate movement must be rooted in the labor movement. Otherwise we get individualistic solutions that throw workers under the bus and only grant reliable, green energy to those who can afford to pay for it.