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We Texans are used to hearing our state caricatured by Northerners as a desert full of swaggering cowboys, big oil and corrupt conservative politicians. But recently, there's been a new addition to the list of tropes: the elusive Latino vote.

Ever since the 2020 election, pundits have had a field day talking up the supposed erosion of Latino support for Democrats. Don't be misled. While it's true that there was some shift in the Latino vote towards Republicans, those of us who live and labor in Texas are experiencing a groundswell of new, young, liberal engagement, promising a different trajectory is already underway.

As a veteran community and political organizer in the state, the Texas I know is racially diverse, increasingly urban, and getting both younger and more progressive. And to anyone who really wants to change American politics and secure democratic voting practices, a fair economy, racial justice, and climate remediation, I say: Texas is your place.

Nowhere are the demographic trends more favorable. You might know that 40 percent of Texans are Latino. But did you know Texas is also home to the largest population of Black Americans in the country? Almost 13 percent of Texans are African American. Add a growing percentage of Asians, and a healthy smattering of other groups, and you have a microcosm of the growing diversity across the country.

Our age demographics make the prospects for a progressive Texas look even brighter: An eye-popping 43 percent of Texans are under 30, and Latinos comprise 50 percent of those under 18. Furthermore, studies indicate that this base of new and prospective voters veers decidedly progressive. A 2018 report by Jolt Initiative, the civic engagement organization which I led, found that the top priorities for Latino youth in Texas are healthcare for all, immigration reform, and racial equity. In the 2020 election, young people turned out in record numbers--and voted overwhelmingly for President Biden.

The 2020 drift of Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley toward Donald Trump was more an indication of desperation than values. In a part of the state where the pandemic tripled unemployment, the Republican message was, "We will get you back to work, and reopen your schools," while the Democratic message was, "Stay at home, wear a mask."

If you're that mom or dad who just lost your job and are about to get evicted, who do you vote for?

Pundits should beware of overgeneralizing from these trying times and the Democrats' poor messaging. The real Texas is far more nuanced than the current spate of news-spinning suggests, and it's fertile ground for progressives, provided we foster the conditions for change.

That includes moving from a two-dimensional Republicans vs. Democrats model to a multidimensional electoral universe that includes the entire eligible voting-age population. Because the sad truth is, one third of eligible voters rarely or never vote. And statistics indicate that those who don't vote are people of color, the young and the poor.

We need fair laws that allow people to actually exercise their voting rights through equal access and fairly drawn districts. According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, it was harder to cast a ballot in Texas than in any other state across the country in 2020. Texas's regulations have especially disadvantaged urban areas, home to the largest communities of color, and which trend Democratic.

Now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican majority advanced new legislation to codify suppression under the false pretense of "election integrity." Reminiscent of the barriers to voting that swept through the Jim Crow South, they are so blatantly racist and anti-democratic that even major corporations have stepped in to object. These laws, and the likely fiesta of gerrymandered new districts we can expect to follow the Census, are an insult to democracy.

We need to give our communities a compelling reason to vote for a progressive vision. Less than a year before 2020, Bernie Sanders was the favorite Democratic candidate for Latino voters, both in South Texas and in the urban areas. Better outcomes lie ahead for Democrats if we pay real attention, invest early, speak to the real needs and dreams of voters of color, and fight for every vote to count, and be counted.

It's well worth the investment. Texas isn't just the vestige of Confederate America that Northerners imagine. In its scale, geography, diversity, and demography is the vision of our best America, the one we've been talking about since our inception, with equality and opportunity for all.

And the road to that America runs deep through the heart of Texas.

Antonio Arellano is a Senior Political Strategist and former Interim Executive Director of Jolt, a progressive civic engagement organization focused on building the political power and influence of young Latinos in Texas. Twitter: @AntonioArellano.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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Stop Saying Latinos Are Turning Republican. The Progressive Future Runs Through Texas | Opinion - Newsweek

Dear Editor:

How do our governmental representatives learn to stop worrying and love apartheid? There is a discouragingly long list of progressive sell-outs who have talked about human rights for Palestinians before they ran for office, only to forget about the suffering of 5 million once elected.

I am not talking about Trump, who learned to love Israel when Sheldon Adelson showered him with a hundred million dollars. No, I am talking about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spoke openly about Israel's racist oppression, only to clam up when the Israel lobby cash started flowing. And what about our brave local House member, Antonio Delgado, who won't let the word Palestine slip from his lips? His price? $31,723 last year from the lobby (according to OpenSecrets.org).

Or the new senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, who described the government of Israel as "shooting down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brother like birds of prey" before he was elected. Now he is off to the bank with this year's payment of $444,659 from the Israel lobby, having taken back all his rash words for the generous donations.

Israel's influence on our government is as strong as that of Big Pharma, Big Banks or Big Oil. It is a system drowning in cash and corruption. No matter whom we elect, they end up selling their souls for the money.

When it comes to supporting the racist, Jewish supremacist regime in the Middle East, they become PEP: Progressive Except for Palestine.

The Israel lobby is poisoning our democracy.

Fred Nagel

Rhinebeck, N.Y.

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Letter: Progressives in Congress sell out to Israel lobby - The Daily Freeman

Castigating moderate Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinManchin, Biden huddle amid talk of breaking up T package Biden to go one-on-one with Manchin There will be no new immigration law under Biden, unless he changes course MORE (D-W.V.) on his infrastructure stance is now a liberal litmus test. Education advocates are rightly outraged at the decrepit condition of public-school infrastructure. But instead of criticizing him, they might want to learn a hard truth from the senator, who knows how to use his one vote to protect his constituents. The case for public-school infrastructure is clear, but what is not is whether any progressive legislators are willing to fight like Joe.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision on infrastructure. The justices found that, unlikeairports, border walls, bridges, interstate highways, main thoroughfares, railroads, tunnels, etc., public school infrastructure iscoveredby the equal rights protections in the 14thamendment to the Constitution.

The famed 1954Brown v Board of Educationof Topekadecision,and theBrown IIfollow-up ruling a year later, involved appeals from several cases, not merely the titled action. One forgotten case came from President BidenJoe BidenCaitlyn Jenner says election was not 'stolen,' calls Biden 'our president' Manchin, Biden huddle amid talk of breaking up T package Overnight Energy: 5 takeaways from the Colonial Pipeline attack | Colonial aims to 'substantially' restore pipeline operations by end of week | Three questions about Biden's conservation goals MOREs home state. The plaintiffs were Black public-school students. Delawares high court had ruled that equal educational rights could beviolateddue to the decrepit condition of school facilities. The Supreme Court agreed.Brown IIspecifically said decrepit public-school facilitiescould alone denythe right to equal educational opportunitiesirrespectiveof any other educational spending.

Regrettably, the infrastructure aspect ofBrown IIhas faded from contemporary discussion. Forty years later, President Clinton famously told Congress, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally falling down. A generation later, the age and decrepit dysfunction of the average school facility is worse.

Education is the great equalizer, declared Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But in 1956, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and a Democratic Congress were only interested in passing the Federal Highway Act promising 41,000 miles of interstate highways. The federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost.

Today, there are upwards of 41,000 aging school facilities needing full or nearly complete renovation. As the 2020 Democratic Platform suggests, crumbling facilities are disproportionately found in minority urban neighborhoods and white rural counties.

Congressional infrastructure advocates are promising to modernize 20,000 miles of highways, repair the worst 10,000 smaller bridges" and subsidize 500,000 EV stations, among other specified numerical targets. They reference $100 billion to upgrade and build new public schools but pointedly avoid any claim to fully renovate a specific number of decrepit school facilities. Why?

Approximately 20 million school children attend the most decrepit, dysfunctional school facilities. Dividing this number into the $100 billion comes out to$5,000per-child for infrastructure, assuming no money goes to schools serving the other 30 million.

There are roughly 10,000 West Virginia coal miners, and 33,000 nationwide.Democrats are targeting $38 billion to the coal sector to achieve a more eco-friendly infrastructure grid. That equates to$1.1 million per coal miner.

The sacrifices of coal miners fueled our industrial revolution. They volunteered to save democracy from the Nazi threat. Most of the $38 billion will, of course, not go to them. But Joe Manchin is at least playing hard ball to help his 10,000 constituents get job training and a transition to non-coal economy employment.

Take Richmond, Virginia. Modernizing an elementary school costs $20 million, $40 million for a middle school. A recently built high school cost over $100 million. In a recent column, columnist Nicholas Kristoff writes that it took only $530,000 in current dollars to provide his hometown with a needed high school during the Great Depression. That wouldn't be enough to renovate the gym in most schools today.

After decades of broken school infrastructure promises, Manchin-style 2021 hardball may be required, not New Deal nostalgia. Imagine what Manchin could do if he had 20 million coal miners as leverage?

The West Virginia case highlights a most enduring political truth: It is not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but rather the size of the fight in the dog.

Paul Goldman, former chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, is a Richmond, Virginia attorney. Mark J.Rozellis dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and co-author (with Clyde Wilcox) ofFederalism: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford University Press, 2019).

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It's Joe Manchin vs the progressives on infrastructure | TheHill - The Hill

Pushing back on the right-wing narrative about the reason for real or perceived labor shortages in some markets nationwide, progressives on Friday told corporations that if they want to hire more people, they'll need to start paying better wages.

Soon after the Labor Department released its April jobs report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerceblamed last month's weak employment growth on the existence of a $300 weekly supplemental jobless benefit and began urging lawmakers to eliminate the federally enhanced unemployment payments that were extended through early September when congressional Democrats passed President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan.

"We do not have a shortage of willing workers in this country. We have a shortage of employers who are willing to pay workers enough to live."Morris Pearl, Patriotic Millionaires

"No. We don't need to end [the additional] $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the grumbles of the nation's largest business lobbying group. "We need to end starvation wages in America."

"If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers there's a simple solution," Sanders added. "Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits."

According to the Chamber's analysis, the extra $300 unemployment insurance (UI) benefit results in roughly one in four recipients taking home more pay than they earned working.

In response to that claim, Sanders' staff director Warren Gunnels said: "If one in four recipients are making more off unemployment than they did working, that's not an indictment of $300 a week in UI benefits. It's an indictment of corporations paying starvation wages."

"Raise your wages and benefits or flip your own damn burgers and sweep your own damn floors," Gunnels added.

Other progressives like former labor secretary Robert Reich and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also chimed in.

This is not complicated. If you cant afford to pay your employees a living wage, you do not have a viable business model.

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Fun fact: the US Chamber of Commerce is a secretive business lobby that supported a $3M effort to primary me out of office last year bc I stand up to Wall Street. (They lost ) Wal-mart was outed as a secret client.

If UI > wages, the solution is to actually pay a living wage. https://t.co/04C2pCEZsY

"We do not have a shortage of willing workers in this country,"Morris Pearl of the Patriotic Millionairessaidin a Friday afternoon statement responding to the Chamber. "We have a shortage of employers who are willing to pay workers enough to live."

"Claiming that today's disappointing jobs report is a result of expanded unemployment insurance is nothing more than a cruel tactic to pressure the administration into helping companies that they represent to continue to underpay and exploit their workforce," Pearl continued."Our leaders are supposed to be helping to increase wages for low paid workers, not helping employers to keep wages down."

"Instead of blaming struggling workers," Pearl continued, "large corporations that do not pay their employees a liveable wage... should take this moment to self-reflect.Maybejust maybepaying their workers more than starvation wages would incentivize workers to reenter the workforce."

Writing for Jacobin earlier this week, Sandy Barnard noted that another overlooked factor is the increased morbidity rates among food and agricultural workers, which increased more than any other occupation during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to arecentstudyfrom the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco.

"Living, breathing people... have decided they do not want to risk their lives for $7.25 per hour and no health benefits," Barnard wrote.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) responded to the Chamber's call for an end to enhanced unemployment benefits by arguing that "the interests of big business are at war with the interests of the working class."

"They will spend millions of dollars to take $300 a [week] away from you and your family, to force you to work for them for pennies," she added. "Their greed has no bounds."

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Pay a Living Wage or 'Flip Your Own Damn Burgers': Progressives Blast Right-Wing Narrative on Jobs - Common Dreams

The Biden administration is on a massive spending spree. Connecticut progressives want to follow suit. Last week, Biden released a trial balloon proposing how to pay for his spree. Unsurprisingly, the idea is massive tax increases for corporations and upper-income individuals, including a near doubling of the top capital gains tax rate from 23.8% to 43.8%.

Connecticuts progressives have proposed more than a billion dollars of new spending, primarily on vague social justice goals (building wealth in underserved communities and reducing income inequality), all to be funded by new taxes imposed exclusively upon upper-income taxpayers, including a capital gains tax surcharge.

A largely unaccountable new off-budget vehicle, the Connecticut Equitable Investment Fund, is to carry out the new spending and collect the new taxes, which, therefore, are to be exempt from budget restraints meant to prevent unaffordable spending.

The new federal taxes will render new state taxes unnecessary and counterproductive unnecessary, because capital gains tax increases always cause high-income taxpayers to take every possible gain before the higher rates take effect. This results in a one-time surge in federal revenue and in state revenue in any state which taxes capital gains, whether as part of regular taxable income, as in Connecticut now, or with a separate tax. Connecticut will get much of the money progressives want without imposing additional taxes they seek.

New Connecticut taxes on the wealthy would be counterproductive. The federal tax hikes will concentrate the minds of high-income individuals who will focus on ways to reduce their taxes, with a move to a lower-tax state an obvious option.

Connecticut Democrats have imposed a relentless parade of annual tax increases that have cumulated into a significant tax bite. Already, the state has suffered significant net outmigration of higher income citizens and major businesses, primarily to distant states with lower taxes and more business-friendly environments.

Gov. Ned Lamont understands this and has said he would veto proposed new spending and taxes. However, his hands arent clean. He has resurrected his moribund highway toll proposal in the form of a new truck mileage tax and has agreed to new taxes on marijuana and online gambling. These initiatives are largely regressive. Progressives are likely to demand progressive taxation in return.

All of this taxation ignores the states fundamental fiscal problem: overgenerous and unsustainable state employee compensation, which is consuming more of the budget and squeezing out state services.

The massive influx of federal assistance wont solve this problem. Even the latest round has been spent already: $1.8 billion of the $2.6 billion is merely financing the existing budget, replacing, dollar for dollar, a previously planned draw-down from the Budget Reserve Fund. Another $250 million will go to COVID testing. Only $75 million will remain available in three years.

Progressive Democrats have recognized this and have created the off-budget Equitable Fund (CEIF). Going off-budget exempts CEIF from various budget restraints, or caps in particular, the volatility cap. The caps serve to divert money away from state services and send it, first, to the Budget Reserve Fund, and then into the state employee and teacher pension funds.

This fiscal year $427 million was deposited into the pension funds. Next year $410 million will be deposited.

The budget caps were adopted to achieve fiscal stability in a bipartisan effort in 2017. However, they have done nothing to limit state employee compensation. Perversely, the caps have done the opposite, channeling funds into the woefully underfunded pension fund, thereby, relieving pressure to scale back compensation.

The progressive authors of the CEIF are right to try to interrupt this diversion of money. However, a better solution would be to maintain the caps but direct the money from the BRF to broader purposes for example, transportation, which would eliminate the need for Lamonts new truck mileage tax. Massively overgenerous state employee compensation should simply be reduced to national average levels for both active and retired state employees.

One can understand the frustration of progressives who see budget caps diverting funds to supposed allies, state employees, who are making out like bandits while their constituents see service cutbacks.

It is time to address unfair state employee compensation. To ignore it and, instead, to raise taxes and spending will backfire as taxpayers leave the state, tax receipts ultimately decline, and service cuts become unavoidable.

Red Jahncke is a freelance columnist based in Connecticut.

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Red Jahncke: State's progressives should jump off the Biden bandwagon - Journal Inquirer