“Texas Is Not a Red State. It Is an Underorganized State.”
Austin City Council member Greg Casar has passed dozens of pieces of progressive legislation in the last 7 years, from paid sick leave law to renters’ protections. Now he says he wants to take federal action on working-class issues by running for Congress.
Greg Casar is a Democratic Socialists of America member and Austin City Council member who is running to represent Texas’s Thirty-Fifth Congressional District. (Greg Casar for Congress)
Texas Republicans are committed to minority-rule reactionary politics. They recently legislated to suppress the vote, created penalties for cities that reduce police budgets, protected marauding oil and gas interests after a catastrophic grid failure, and enacted the most draconian abortion ban in the country.
But even in the belly of the beast, organizer-turned-city-councilmember Greg Casar has managed to advance a progressive agenda. Since 2014, Casar has served on the Austin City Council, where he has coordinated city-level pushbacks against Republicans’ state-level class warfare and Democrats’ shortcomings and evasions. With creative organizing and a clear focus on popular working-class issues, Casar has demonstrated that even in Texas the Left has legs.
Casar is now setting his sights on Congress. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), he’s hoping to become Texas’s addition to the Squad, representing the urban and exurban Thirty-Fifth District. Alex Birnel spoke to Greg Casar for Jacobin.
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