A Heartening Visit to Texas

(PDiddie's note: The author of the following, Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government & international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego State University. A former writer-editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, he currently is co-editor of the progressive website The Crisis Papers.I was privileged to hear him speak as well as W.R. Pitt, whom he references below, when they visited my hometown last month.)

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down.

(from "For What It's Worth," by Stephen Stills, 1966)

HOUSTON - Those lines from the '60s anthem, as popularized by the band Buffalo Springfield, have been running around my brain ever since I got to Texas on this speaking tour. Something indeed is happening here in this country, and this city is a good example.

I came here to give an address to ROADwomen (River Oaks Area Democratic Women), the organization of Democratic activists that provides a moral compass for many progressive voters in the Lone Star State. The day before, William Rivers Pitt, that sterling writer/editor from Truthout (and author of The Greatest Sedition is Silence, recently released, and The War on Iraq, with Scott Ritter), was in town speaking at another event. The day before that, Dennis Kucinich was in Houston, running from meeting to meeting to stir up support for his progressive campaign.

Pitt, Kucinich - two of my heroes in the struggle - and me, representing The Crisis Papers, all in the same Texas city at the same time. (The New York Times' Paul Krugman, perhaps America's most important columnist, is due shortly.) Something's going on here, and though it's still not clear what, the haze is lifting more and more each day.

Texas isn't exactly Democrat country. It's easy being liberal or progressive in San Francisco, where I live. Not in Texas, except maybe in Austin and parts of Houston. This is Bush country (one flies into George Bush Intercontinental Airport), and Democrats are the despised, humiliated enemy in most of the state.

No wonder Tom Delay and Karl Rove are trying to crush them, destroy even their limited effectiveness. Looks bad to have Democrats standing up to the Bush machine in the family's home state. So the Republican plan to railroad an illegal pro-GOP redistricting plan through the Texas legislature is moving ahead, even though the Democrats carried on a daring campaign to stop the move, by twice fleeing the state in order to deny the GOP a quorum to pass it. (Once the Republicans stop fighting amongst themselves, the issue will move back into the courts to settle the legality of the Republican takeover.)

The Democrats I met here on my brief stay are quite aware of the forces they're up against. They realize things have changed much since the heady days when Democrat Ann Richards - she of the brilliant fresh mouth - was governor. The Democrats now definitely are in the minority, and are treated roughly by their Republican opponents.

But the glorious thing is that the Dems, including those I ran into, are still kicking and fighting - with fellow Texans Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower as wonderful role models - even though it's often a losing battle. They're battling on issues ranging from the Iraq war to school textbooks (denuded of references to geologic evolution: "millions of years ago" becomes "many years ago"), from redistricting proposals to pollution-control. I stand in admiration and awe for their courage and tenacity.

I got to meet such ROAD activists as Dalia Stokes and Charlcye Sells - and fellow troublemakers Charlotte Coffelt, Muffie Moroney, Bobbie Bayless, James Sells, Stan Merriman, and a host of others - and they are bright, determined beacons of light in the dark Republican wilderness that is contemporary Texas politics.

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Will Pitt and I bumped into each other in the lobby of KPFT, the admirable Pacifica radio station in Houston. The two of us had communicated via e-mail for a long time, and finally got to put faces to names. Pitt was being interviewed prior to his talk that evening at an activists' gathering at a local restaurant; I was being interviewed in another studio by Pokey Anderson, a political-savvy woman with a wealth of information at her fingertips.

That evening, I got to see Pitt in action. The place was packed with mainly young-activist types. Pitt, dressed in black, swigged beers and smoked cigarettes onstage as he lit into the Bush Administration for its many crimes and misdemeanors. His approach was a cross between tough political discourse, prosecutorial anger, and stand-up comedy. This guy was GOOD! And he dealt felicitously with the shouted-out comments from the boisterous crowd.

At one point, he asked the audience how many were aware of PNAC, the Project for the New American Century. Nearly every hand in the place was raised. I was overjoyed to see that these Houstonians were hip to this too-little-known dirty secret in the Republican Party, and how they reacted quickly to Pitt's generalized comments about the organization of extreme neoconservatives. But I also was wondering how my speech would be received the following evening, since PNAC was the main topic I was talking about and I didn't want to bore folks with information with which they already were familiar.

But I had no need to worry. Though a good many in the packed ROADwomen audience had heard of the neo-conservative movement and PNAC, many had not - and, besides, I was filling in a lot of the blanks by quoting directly from PNAC documents. (To read the full speech, click here.) The audience seemed to be truly interested in the heavy material I was laying on them - as well as in the final, more hopeful part of my talk, about the things we all could do to ensure Bush's defeat in 2004 - and the Q&A session that followed was filled with intelligent queries and commentary. I left heartened by the possibility that even in Texas, Bush was vulnerable. (At dinner later, I was told about the Republican couple at a recent precinct polling place who announced out of the blue as they were exiting that they had voted for the GOP presidential candidate for the past 21 years but would not be voting for Bush in 2004.)

Which reminded me of the recent letter from a Kansas reader to The Crisis Papers, and to recent letters to the editor of the Idaho Statesman. These are two conservative states, but the anger toward and suspicion of Bush are palpable and, one can hope, indicative of his vulnerability in those states as well.

Here's the Kansas letter:




And here are excerpts from a sampling of Idaho Statesman letters-to-the-editor from September 11, 2003:










In sum, all across the country, people are speaking their minds, and what they have to say, more and more, does not offer support for the extremist policies of Bush&Co.

It's time to take our country back in 2004.

That means educating ourselves and then taking action. Everybody look what's going down, and then organize, Organize, ORGANIZE!