Jim Hightower speaks to Our Revolution’s Organize To Win 2020 Summit on February 3, 2020 in Houston, TX.

HOUSTON, TX — Our Revolution, the grassroots political group founded by Bernie Sanders, held an Organize to Win 2020 Summit here yesterday, drawing hundreds of progressive activists from around the state.

Local groups — including Our Revolution Texas, Our Revolution Harris County, Our Revolution Texas Gulf Coast Region, Our Revolution Tarrant County, Our Revolution Collin County, Our Revolution Travis County, and others — came together to form a statewide network representing over 40,000 progressive Texas supporters.

“We have a long history of progressive power here in the Lone Star state,” said Jim Hightower, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and Our Revolution national board member. “For generations, Texans have been fighting for a people’s government. We’re here today to continue that fight, and we’re already off to a good start.”

Our Revolution Texas’ grassroots groups located throughout the state — including in often-ignored rural communities — have won policy victories that include a hearing on the single-payer Healthy Texas Act (HB 4127) in the Texas House and the drafting of a Green New Deal for Texas Act.

ORTX also celebrated wins at the ballot box: in 2018, over half of Our Revolution’s 60-plus locally endorsed candidates were elected to office.

Building on these successes, Our Revolution announced a new round of national endorsements:

Nationally Endorsed Candidates

Mike Siegel — Congressional District 10

Jon Rosenthal — State Representative House District 135

Clayton Tucker — State Senate District 24

Scott Feuless — Brazoria Drainage District 4, Place 2

The summit featured a diverse roster of speakers that included special guest Sheila Jackson Lee, U.S. Representative for Texas’s 18th congressional district and vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Addressing the crowd, Rep. Lee said, “Now is your time. As Martin Luther King said, come walk with me. We’re gonna march for the people, for the powerless, for the passionate. And that is who we have to embrace as we begin our work. There are chains in America that have to be broken.”

Dr. Stephen Chao, a local family physician who supports Medicare For All, described a patient’s ordeal when she couldn’t afford the colonoscopy she needed. “Because she’d become ill and couldn’t work, she’d lost her insurance. She had to wait nine months to become eligible for a program that subsidized the test. Nine months to get a proper diagnosis, and unfortunately, it was colon cancer. This should not happen — not to our fellow Texans, not to our fellow human beings.”

Justice Meagan Hassan, who sits on the bench at the Texas 14th District Court of Appeals, stressed the importance of voting for judges all the way down the ballot who are dedicated to criminal justice reform. “Judges affect our lives in very real ways. From eviction programs to probable cause hearings to meaningful review of cases, who sits on the benches in Texas — even at the lowest levels of office — matters every day.”

Madeline Canfield, a Houston-area high school student and climate activist, was in seventh grade when she witnessed her first 500-year flood. “The next 500-year flood came in just a matter of months. Then Hurricane Harvey. We are not normal kids studying in classrooms anymore. The climate crisis is fast-forwarding and uprooting our lives. They call us Gen Z, but we are GenGND, the Generation of the Green New Deal.”

Hunter Evans, a resident of Clarksville (pop. 3,500), spoke about how rural communities have been left behind. “There are millions of people like me who live in small towns and understand what it feels like to be written off by the political establishment. Our small towns in Texas lack high-paying jobs, medical care, infrastructure, access to healthy food. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Our Revolution, which has 600 local groups nationwide, has been hosting Organize to Win 2020 summits in cities from coast to coast as part of an unprecedented campaign to mobilize voters, advance progressive issues, and elect progressive champions at all levels of government.