Building a Texas That Works for All of Us

I was raised in a blue-collar household, I worked alongside union flight crews, and now I’m raising my kids in a union family. I know what it means when workers actually have a voice at the table — fair wages, safer conditions, and dignity on the job. But too many corporations are squeezing workers dry while dodging taxes. Billionaires keep getting richer, families keep getting poorer, and politicians let it happen. It doesn’t have to be this way. When workers win, all of us win.

Family farmers are the backbone of East Texas, but they’re being squeezed by giant corporations and short-sighted policies. Tariffs are driving farmers toward bankruptcy, and then the same government that caused the problem tries to patch it with bailouts instead of fixing the system. Meanwhile, agribusiness giants keep cashing in while small farmers struggle to stay afloat.

A better-funded community starts with fair wages and food security — and that means standing with workers and family farmers, not selling them out. Instead of wasting billions on corporate loopholes and endless wars, we should invest in unions, fair pricing, fair trade, and real protections for the people who keep our communities alive.

Human rights are about more than survival — they’re about freedom, safety, and the ability to live without fear. That means protecting women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ Texans, immigrants, and the unhoused from policies that treat them as less than human.

It means defending due process, ending mass surveillance and detention, and making sure no one is disappeared or punished without a fair hearing. And it means holding our own government accountable when our tax dollars are used to fund war crimes and genocides abroad.

That’s why I refuse to take money from AIPAC or groups that profit from war. If we can spend billions destroying lives overseas, we can choose to invest those resources in housing, health care, education, and safer communities here at home.

True freedom means equal rights, equal protections, and equal voices. For everyone.

Veterans shouldn’t have to fight another battle just to get the care and stability they earned. But from the very start, our country has broken that promise. The GI Bill built the American middle class after World War II — but it was written and implemented in ways that excluded Black veterans and other marginalized groups from housing, education, and opportunity. That unequal history still echoes today.

Too many veterans are slipping through the cracks — struggling with underfunded VA care, cuts to staff, and rising homelessness. That can never be accepted as “normal.” Supporting veterans means fully funding VA health care, expanding mental health services, guaranteeing housing, and creating pathways to good union jobs and training programs so every veteran can transition back into civilian life with dignity.

Our obligation to veterans doesn’t end when their service does. It’s ongoing — and it should be met with the same commitment and urgency they gave to this country.

I know what it means to face high-risk pregnancies and loss. And I’ve seen how this broken system treats women: mothers left to bleed in parking lots because doctors are too afraid to act, women arrested for miscarriages as if grief were a crime, and women kept alive on machines against their families’ wishes because “personhood” laws give a pregnancy more rights than the patient herself.

Reproductive rights are human rights. That means access to abortion, birth control, maternal care, and emergency care without fear. It also means real support for families: affordable childcare, health care, parental leave, and housing. When families are supported, abortion rates go down — not through cruelty, but because parents can raise children in safety and stability.

We can’t keep rewriting education every time it clashes with a political or religious agenda. Kids deserve real history and real science so they can understand what came before, see the roots of today’s problems, and actually be prepared to solve them. Ignoring the past doesn’t erase systemic issues — it just guarantees they repeat.

For many children — especially those who are unhoused, in foster care, or new to this country — schools are more than classrooms. They’re meals, safety, and stability. They’re often the only chance those kids have to get a fair shot.

And strong schools help everyone. An educated population means safer neighborhoods, stronger economies, and less crime. Investing in kids isn’t about left or right — it’s about building communities where all of us benefit from the next generation being ready to lead.

America’s immigration system should be about dignity and opportunity, not fear and punishment. But right now, billions are being poured into ICE and detention centers while families already wait years for hearings, people go missing, and asylum seekers are treated like criminals.

We don’t need more raids and cruelty. We need more judges to clear backlogs, safer asylum processes, better background checks, and real legal pathways. That not only restores humanity to the system — it strengthens our economy, adds cultural richness, and brings the kind of diversity you can’t manufacture.

ICE’s abuses don’t just harm immigrants — they harm Native communities too. Agents have arrested Indigenous people in their own communities, assuming they must be Mexican, Latin American, or South American. It’s the same erasure and violence Native people have already endured through boarding schools, forced removals, and the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and children. To continue those indignities today under the name of immigration enforcement is a betrayal of our history and our values.

Immigration done right makes us stronger, safer, and more united. It’s time to replace fear with fairness, and cruelty with dignity.