TEXAS MAVERICKS TAKE ON THE BIG BOYS
Rips, Geoffrey
Texas Mavericks Take on the Big Boys BY GEOFFREY RIPS For forty years, progressives in Texas suffered a dry spell. Business interests dominated the political climate by painting Big Government...
...Jim Mattox said he would be the "people's lawyer" and would take on the "big boys" if elected state attorney general...
...The resurgence offers a lesson in program, organization, and leadership for activists across the country...
...The idea of decentralized power had taken root in Texas as early as the 1880s, when the Farmers Alliance promoted agricultural and energy cooperatives...
...And Hightower's office, in conjunction with the Farmers Union, drew up legislation for development bonds to finance cooperative processing ventures...
...Today, COPS speaks for 90,000 families, making it the largest community organization in the United States...
...The aberration is not populism...
...If that style hadn't been there," says COPS President Sonia Hernandez, "we wouldn't be where we are today...
...Governor White has, for the most part, pursued policies to encourage business growth in the state (though he displays sensitivity to community organizations and did bring about utility reform...
...COPS and the other groups operate outside the conventional political process...
...Members investigate problems and, in the process, come to see the structures behind those problems...
...In the late 1970s, high interest rates and mounting farm debt fanned smoldering populist fires in the Texas countryside...
...They are not right-wing or left-wing...
...I got into a fight with the big boys," he says, "and the big boys play plenty rough...
...I want some ham for a change...
...It is also backing alternative energy projects and aiding the formation of black farm cooperatives...
...I want the whole hog...
...The Alinsky brand of populism has sparked a sense of collective strength in Hispanic communities initially addressed in the early 1970s by the now defunct Raza Unida Party...
...Individuals who become "experts" in their subjects are tapped as leaders...
...The eyes of the Puerto Ricans in East Brooklyn are upon you," Diane Durango of the United Neighborhoods Organization of Los Angeles told a COPS convention last November...
...In contrast to the Populist rebellion of the Nineteenth Century, the recent groundswell has attracted as much support in cities as in rural areas...
...The new populist appeal stirred so much excitement that almost every other Texas Democrat running in 1982 rushed to echo Hightower...
...Politicians know that many votes—informed, not directed, votes—are at stake...
...And it demonstrated the strength of the populist assertion that Big Business, not Big Government, threatens the well-being of average citizens...
...The lieutenant governor and the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives have appeared at COPS meetings in the past year...
...The accountability sessions are as much a means of educating the membership as they are of flexing muscle...
...Instead, they hold "accountability sessions" where candidates are asked to endorse community-backed proposals and officeholders are called on the carpet for their positions...
...Since his election, Hightower has opened farmers' markets around the state so that small operations do not have to depend on the shipping and marketing services of agribusiness giants...
...Shortly before the 1982 election, for example, Mark White appeared before a COPS convention to promise that he would change the state's education funding formula, which was pinching working-class schools...
...White's aides were drawn from the state's largest corporate law firms...
...Since liberals seemed to offer only more government, the corporate establishment held the rhetorical high ground—and the statehouse...
...Farmers lined up their tractors in demonstrations for price parity...
...The Farmers Union, representing 10,000 family farms in the state, began focusing attention on foreclosures and the increasing corporate domination of agricultural markets...
...But Texans, in fact, aren't at all ideological...
...But populism was not a campaign gimmick, for behind the victorious politicians stood a mature network of urban organizations and a new agrarian reform movement...
...The organization grew on the structure of Catholic parishes and community centers, and expanded its focus from neighborhood issues to city economic development to questions of state policy...
...Hightower's language was rural, raw-boned, and informed, coming from a man who grew up along the Red River in north Texas—old People's Party country...
...Hightower, a former editor of The Texas Observer, shunned traditional liberal rhetoric and acknowledged the fundamental causes of bad times...
...Business interests dominated the political climate by painting Big Government as a threat to the cherished Lone Star values of individualism, self-reliance, and independence...
...But Hightower's fellow populist officials do not seem to have as much skill— or as much interest—in empowering the grass roots...
...But Mattox ran into trouble: A grand jury indicted him on a commercial bribery charge for his role in a $1.7 billion action against Mobil Oil...
...Along with similar groups in Houston, Fort Worth, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley, COPS is changing the shape of Texas politics...
...The most prominent group in the network is San Antonio's COPS, Communities Organized for Public Service, a product of the late Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation...
...The reality is that the power brokers of the city were not willing to listen to people who did not have money...
...the structural problem," he argued, "so that people have jobs and people have some power, so that farms can function and people can make a living without needing food stamps...
...They do not endorse candidates...
...Mattox and White won their bids...
...Even conservative Democrat Mark White began talking like a populist in his gubernatorial race against a Republican incumbent...
...A decade of such community organizing and a half decade of rural unrest turned into a torrent, and in 1982, voters elected the most progressive slate of candidates in Texas history...
...Attorney General Mattox has assembled a corps of trust-busters, consumer advocates, and labor lawyers, and his office has done battle with utilities, nursing home operators, nuclear companies, and oil giants...
...To family farmers and ranchers— traditionally adherents of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party—Hightow-er's message had a familiar ring...
...We've proven that you don't need money...
...You need people...
...Between 1980 and 1982, Hightower worked closely with members of the Farmers Union and the progressive activists of the American Agriculture Movement, who had coordinated "tractorcade" protests in 1979...
...In January 1983, Mattox joined a "people's inauguration" at the state capitol led by Hightower and Ann Richards, newly elected State Treasurer...
...he promised to make the utility companies accountable to ratepayers...
...He led a revival of the populist tradition, stressing "that too few people hold all the money and power against the rest of us...
...The Agriculture Department now helps family farmers market their products in foreign countries...
...Government should serve those who really need the help rather than the powerful interests, even when it means taking on those powerful interests"—which include banks, oil companies, utilities, and agribusiness firms...
...And it shows that local conditions can be changed no matter how foreboding they may appear...
...At the Governor's mansion, White symbolically cut the gate lock, declaring he would "let the people come in...
...Similarly, community groups have seen White through fulfillment of his campaign promise to restructure the Texas Public Utility Commission...
...In just about every Texas community from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, Mexican-Americans make up more than half the population...
...His pledge brought him a significant number of votes a few days later...
...COPS was launched in 1973 in response to drainage problems on the city's predominantly Mexican-American west side...
...People look at John Tower and John Connally and say, 'My God, Texas is a right-wing state,' " Hightower points out...
...Those eyes see political dignity and political power...
...Texas voters shared Hightower's appetite for change...
...Now that White is governor, COPS activists regularly meet with him and his advisers to ensure implementation of the desired funding mechanism...
...In 1983, Hightower was appointed chairman of the Democratic National Committee's agriculture council...
...The election marked the reappearance of populist language in the halls of Texas government...
...It is giving real economic power to people...
...They are mavericks, disgruntled mavericks with that populist orientation...
...But about ten years ago, a fresh force began seeping into state politics: collective activism, a power not felt since the 1930s...
...Notwithstanding the setbacks, Texas populism appears to have secured a permanent spot in the state's political arena...
...And I don't want just the ham...
...Increased electoral participation by Mexican-Americans proved to be the decisive factor in the election of Mark White...
...Though impatience with the system runs high on family farms, much political education and organizing are needed to undo decades of right-wing propaganda (spread most notably by the Farm Bureau Federation...
...And Hightower and Mattox gained, respectively, 91.1 per cent and 90.2 per cent of the Hispanic vote...
...The big boys are making a killing off people like you and me, tossing us pigs' feet and pork rinds," charged Jim High-tower, successful candidate for Agriculture Commissioner...
...It's decentralized economic activity," says Hightower...
...Neighborhoods organized around tenant rights...
...But the political and economic power in those cities generally resides in the Anglo establishment—among the patrones...
...The aberration is that the business establishment got hold of Texas and ran it for forty years...
...We have to address Geoffrey Rips is the Editor of The Texas Observer, "a journal of free voices" based in Austin...
...Land Commissioner Garry Mauro also rode the populist wave that day...
...In the mid-1970s, it gained a reputation for taking a confrontational approach to problems...
...It demonstrates that the weakness of traditional leadership provides an opportunity for progressive challenge...
...There are changes in the wind, however: An alliance is slowly being built among the Farmers Union and Mexican-American farm leaders...
...He organized a series of informational forums exploring national problems and proposing solutions...
...The forums, designed in part to round up support for Democratic candidates, have also served to articulate a progressive rural voice...
...Many of the new populists are Mexican-Americans...
...COPS continues to make decisions in the local parishes and community centers...
...Not all farmers support his initiatives, of course...
...Confrontation has not been renounced: Some 7,000 members of the Rio Grande Valley organization put White on the spot for his failure to push an employee compensation bill covering farmworkers through the legislature...
...And the eyes of all the Hispanics in Los Angeles are upon you...
...It is creating an alternative that's real, that puts money in people's pockets...
Vol. 48 • June 1984 • No. 6
