It’s been my honor to know a few real heroes — people who’ve selflessly dared to fight greed and oppression to advance the common good. Diane Wilson, for example.
For 40 years, this fiery fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast has battled tenaciously for the rights and very survival of the area’s hardscrabble fishing families. She and her grassroots allies have taken on Formosa Plastics, a $250 billion global corporate beast that has routinely dumped its chemical waste around Matagorda Bay, poisoning life and livelihoods.
But in 2019, in a lawsuit based on massive evidence collected by Wilson and her armada of volunteer kayakers, she won a stunning court victory, forcing the contaminator to pay $50 million for its malfeasance.
Wilson’s fight was not just for her, and she did not get a penny from the Formosa settlement. But she won something richer than money — “It felt like justice,” she said of the court’s judgment.
Importantly, the court didn’t award the $50 million to some regulatory agency, but to a public trust administered by — guess who? — Wilson’s allies! So she has been working tenaciously ever since to make sure the money directly benefits the poor families Formosa ran over. Especially promising is the trust’s major grant to create the people’s own Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative. It will provide dock space, supply contracts, processing ability, local jobs — and the power for local people to forge their own future.
Why fight against overpowering odds for 40 years? Because of her strong principles ... and sheer stubbornness. “It’s my home,” Wilson says of the bay and its working-class community, “and I completely refuse to give it to that company to ruin.”
A lot of working-class voters who live outside of blue voting areas are asking: Where the hell is the Democratic Party?
Sad to say, the “Party of the People” is mired in Washington, controlled by a cadre of high-dollar consultants, corporate lobbyists, big donors and meek political leaders who’ve decided that “red” and rural American voters are lost causes. But grassroots progressives who live in those areas say: Bovine excrement! After all, you damn sure can’t win if you don’t bother to show up.
So, party inertia aside, progressive advocates for working-class values, policies and people must become the ground-level organizers to build a “little-d” democratic majority. Not by writing position papers but by “going there” in person, online or otherwise. Let’s tap grassroots savvy to find ways to reach and move millions of people (just a few at a time) who’re now not being reached or motivated.
Who will do this? Maybe you! Or someone you know: People (young or old) with talent/skills/ideas that are now not being fully used should consider this chance to make a difference. George Goehl, one of our nation’s best organizers of community organizers, recently issued an open call for creative dedicated people to do new working-class organizing all across our country.
Don’t know how? It basically involves learning to listen to local people. Goehl, with his team of seasoned organizers, will train and provide essential support for people whose organizing ideas are accepted. Happily, project positions come with a full-time salary, benefits and a start-up budget. The whole idea is to try new things, invest in what works ... and win!
Want to throw your hat and ideas into the mix? No charge to apply. You can fill out an application at georgegoehl.substack.com.
One thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he’s absolutely clear on his furious opposition to immigrants taking American jobs.
Except, of course, when the corporate honchos profiting from cheap immigrant labor are billionaire funders of Trump’s campaigns — or, hello, when Trump himself is doing the hiring!
A work permit program called H-1B actually allows corporate giants to import foreigners to take U.S. jobs. Trump loudly denounced this in his first term, but that was pre-Elon. When gabillionaire Elon Musk became Donald’s campaign sugar daddy last year, he turned out to be a mass abuser of the H-1B loophole — apparently even firing workers in his Tesla corporation and replacing them with cheaper foreign imports.
Yet, far from scolding his new best buddy, Trump did a full-body flip-flop. Now hailing H-1B as “a great program,” he admits that he, too, has long used it, even when he was denouncing it as a shameful rip-off of American workers.
Trump’s use of the foreign hire scheme is even chintzier than Musk’s for he uses a companion H-2 loophole to import hundreds of low-paid foreigners to take jobs as cooks, waiters, housekeepers and farmworkers in his luxury resorts and hotels — including at Mar-a-Lago.
Amazing. These are lordly billionaires reducing themselves to sleaze by exploiting a corporate scheme to shortchange American and foreign workers alike. Moreover, whether trying to import engineers or waiters, the law requires these uber-rich applicants to lie. They must swear that there are no American citizens available who can do these jobs.
This is Jim Hightower saying ... Welcome to Don and Elon’s phantasmagoric wonderland, where nothing is a lie if they say it’s true.
The sorry state of corporate journalism sagged to an even lower low last month when the Washington Post banned publication of a piece by its own Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes.
Why cancel her drawing? Because it lampooned Jeff Bezos, the multibillionaire boss of Amazon — who also happens to own the Post. The cartoon depicts Bezos and other media titans (even Mickey Mouse) groveling at the feet of Donald Trump and offering sacks of cash. She was mocking Bezos and the others for recently sucking up to The Don by giving a million dollars each in celebration of his election.
Top Post executives not only abandoned the paper’s journalistic integrity by censoring its prized cartoonist, but they then tried to cover up their suppression by calling it a technicality. “We had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon,” weaseled a top manager, claiming he cut Telnaes’ drawing merely to avoid “repetition.”
But hello, read any paper, watch Fox News, listen to talk radio — and you’ll see that mass media relies on repetition. Moreover, cartoonists don’t merely repeat a story. They add journalistic impact by literally drawing a picture of it!
Telnaes resigned on principle over this affront. Imagine Billionaire Bezos acting on any principle (besides advancing his financial principal). Yet, solely because he’s rich, he can compel a paper once renown for political courage to conform to the current plutocratic order. That’s how journalism dies. Democracy, too.
This is Jim Hightower saying ... Yet, genuine journalism and democracy itself remain resilient, specifically because scrappy champions like Ann Telnaes — armed with integrity and a sharp pen — don’t quit. She’s still cartooning. Find her at anntelnaes.substack.com.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2025
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