We should be very encouraged, by the way, by the emerging youth vote as you can read about in today's Austin American-Statesman piece titled, "Youth Vote a Surprise Factor in Runoffs: Voters under 40 made up about 37% of the Travis County Electorate," here in Austin.
It's a rather funny article about how what played in the July 14th primary election was a radical departure from the past as follows:
In primary runoffs, Austin’s voters are usually “very old, very white, very establishment,” said Mark Littlefield, a local pollster, lobbyist and consultant for Democrats. In primary runoffs “the joke we make is we all know who those 30,000 voters are — the same 70-year-old men and women that always are going to vote,” Littlefield said.
Not this time.This is truly excellent news! Young people are voting at unprecedented levels. I trust that this is happening throughout Texas and the nation given the recent wave of activism. Still, we can't say it enough. Let's all vote in November and get this governor, this president, and this party out of office.
Do read Cristina's powerful piece below.
-Angela Valenzuela
THURSDAY, JUL 2, 2020, 12:45 PM
To the Texas GOP, “Freedom of Choice” During a Pandemic Means the Freedom to Die for Profit
In Texas, we now have the dubious distinction of having joined the six other states with over 100,000 COVID-19 cases. In Texas, like in many other GOP controlled states, our Governor and Lt. Governor took their cues on how to respond to COVID-19, not from health experts but from the political whims of Donald Trump, who proved to have a questionable grasp on how the disease worked when he suggested injecting disinfectant and using UV light to cure patients of COVID-19.
Today in Texas, thousands of new cases are being reported daily. Hospitals in Houston and across the state are at near capacity. Adult COVID-19 patients are being transferred to Texas children’s hospitals to meet the exploding healthcare crisis in Harris County, the state’s most populous region. On June 26, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was forced to backpedal on his promise that Texas was going to remain “wide open for business.” And he shut-down bars and reduced seating at restaurants, just five weeks after he allowed them to reopen.
I am lucky. I’m able to keep working from home, but both of my parents have lost their regular income and are struggling to get by in the new COVID-19 reality. Before COVID-19 my parents lived below the poverty line. My 62 year-old diabetic mom, who doesn’t have more than a ninth grade education, worked as a Spanish language interpreter at a hospital. When COVID-19 began spreading, she quit her job. For her going to work literally became a life or death choice. My dad ran a small fair trade business selling jewelry from Mexico, last year he personally made $18,000. Now, both my parents get their food from local pantries and food banks.
Yet, my life did change dramatically post COVID-19, because two weeks before Texas shut down on March 19, I was crisscrossing the state running as a progressive in the Democratic primary for the Senate, talking to voters about the economic pain they were already living before COVID-19 (in a 12-way race I missed making it into the run off by 1.5%)
As an organizer and progressive, I have spent nearly two decades trying to disrupt the Right’s narrative and grip on power. Today, I see the cracks in GOP philosophy turning into disastrous fault lines.
Texas Republican leaders are struggling to deal with the reality of an opponent that their statewide power can’t seem to beat into submission. Unable to hide from the hard facts about how quickly the disease is spreading, Gov. Abbott acknowledged in a leaked recording, “Whenever you have a reopening… it actually leads to an increased spread."
