HS

I’ve gotten to be a part of a number of local campaigns that have really impacted my political thinking and impacted our community here. Paid sick days comes to mind. The demand was that every worker within the city limits of Austin has the right to earn paid sick time. That’s something that I got to be part of with an incredible coalition of folks working from the grassroots on up here in Austin, and then we got to help with in Dallas and San Antonio.

Which is just now bearing fruit, because Texas is at war with workers. Austin has been sued over their paid sick policy, which we won and we got in place, but we haven’t felt the effects of yet. San Antonio, too, is going through the struggle. But in Dallas now we have thousands and thousands of workers accruing this right. So paid sick time was a huge for me, learning how to talk to people at their doors and in their workplaces and seeing the power of the intersection of those two things in people’s lives.

In addition to paid sick days, we have worked on issues like the police contract negotiations to hold the Austin police department accountable to increased levels of transparency — to not just write a blank check and say, if we give you more money that we think you will be more transparent; actually, it works the other way around. You have to do it better first. You have to prove that you can create safer policing policies here in this city or you don’t get anything.

That was a hard line to walk, but it’s been fascinating to see how that idea has spread. I don’t want to take credit for that, but I got to be a part of that [campaign], and that was really powerful for me and really influential on how I see the justice system.

I also worked here locally, speaking of the justice system, to decriminalize homelessness in Austin. This is a more recent campaign, and highly intersectional for me. We had until July 11 ordinances that kept people from being able to sit, lie down, camp, or solicit help in the form of money in public. We went to the city and made the case for this being totally unconstitutional and totally inhumane. And we got those policies changed.

The backlash has been fascinating. Our [Republican] governor, Greg Abbott, has weighed in against that. Trump has hinted at throwing his weight around against this issue, and our city council has really gotten a lot of pushback. But again, that’s creating these spaces where we can wade into the waters of people’s fears and really talk to them about what decriminalization of folks who are really experiencing the highest level of suffering in our society means for them as housed individuals. Does this threaten your existence, or is this more of a perceived threat?

On the national level, we’ve worked on a Medicare for All campaign. We targeted the district just south of me, Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s district, to encourage representative Doggett to sign onto to H.R. 1384. Which was a very long campaign. It took us about a year and a half, and we learned a whole lot about what power actually looks like in that context.

We eventually got Doggett to sign on to endorse H.R. 1384. We are still pushing him to do more than endorse — to actually go out and promote this to his community. Because we know that electeds putting their name on something does not make it so. It’s the demand of the people that creates real change. So I consider that an ongoing campaign, even though we officially got it signed off.