Texas is well-known as a Republican-red state, but it has another, largely forgotten red history of the radical shade. Long before it became a rightwing political stronghold, it was defined by cowboys on strike, farmers organizing against the railroads, and one of the largest Socialist party chapters in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Texas, the history of our radical politics and labor and working class tradition has been purposefully hidden,\u201d author David Griscom said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to go back and correct the record and see that there was an effort to try to make Texans forget the radical roots in the kind of more recent past.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the project of Griscom\u2019s first book, The Myth of Red Texas. The cowboys idolized<\/a> by conservatives<\/a>, for instance, fought for public land access during the fence-cutting wars of the 1880s. At that time, wealthy northerners and Europeans were entering the state. Their arrival coincided with the invention of barbed wire, which cowboys called \u201cthe devil\u2019s rope\u201d, explains Griscom, who co-hosts two leftist podcasts, Left Reckoning and The Jacobin Show, and is based in Austin.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople almost immediately saw barbed wire for what it was, which was a tool of dispossession,\u201d said Griscom. \u201cIt almost immediately got used across the state by the wealthy big landowners who wanted to enclose more and more land and access to water in streams, but that ran up against an older tradition of the west as an open range.\u201d<\/p>\n As fences blocked access to grazing land, water and roads, groups of cowboys began cutting them down, organizing themselves into clandestine vigilante organizations with names like the Blue Devils and the Knights of the Knippers.<\/p>\n Ordinary Texans largely supported the cowboy fence-cutters, but the backlash was swift. Rich ranchers complained to government officials, who sent the Texas rangers \u2013 a state-sanctioned police force \u2013 to crack down on them. In 1884, the governor called a special session of the state legislature, which declared fence-cutting to be felony punishable by up to five years in prison, while making it a misdemeanor to fence land that did not belong to you.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really shows the unequal way that the state and the legal system were developing in Texas and what that was a response to,\u201d said Griscom. \u201cBut notably, while these large landowners were trying to enclose more and more land as private property, they were still using the public grasslands to raise their cattle. They were very happy to use the public lands while trying to restrict people\u2019s access.\u201d<\/p>\n During the same period, cowboys also fought for labor rights as ranchers began hiring them to work on their newly privatized land \u2013 and paying them low wages. A group of those cowboys banded together and went on strike in 1883.<\/p>\n Many Texas history books, Griscom said, assert that the new labor activists spent all their time getting drunk at the saloon, spending their entire strike fund. But according to the US commissioner of labor\u2019s official report on the strike, the author said, the cowboys actually won their demands.<\/p>\n Despite crackdowns from the government and wealthy capitalists, Texans kept organizing for their rights, including by forming the third-largest socialist party in the nation by the early 1900s.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever you see people advocating for labor politics or democratic socialist politics in Texas, you\u2019ll often be told, that\u2019s good for California or New York, said Griscom. \u201cBut the fact of the matter is that Texas has maybe an even stronger socialist and democratic socialist tradition than some of these other places that we see as the hotbeds for these kind of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n That history, said Griscom, cuts against the pervasive idea that Texas will only become more progressive as Californians and New Yorkers move in. Some of these same narratives have resurfaced during this year\u2019s midterm election season.<\/p>\n \u201cBut most of the data that we have right now actually shows those people are more Republican than the average Texan,\u201d he said. \u201cJust think about some of the famous examples, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk.\u201d<\/p>\n As the book notes, polls show<\/a> that in the 2018 Senate race, more native born Texans voted for Democratic candidate Beto O\u2019Rourke than incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, who won the election.<\/p>\n Amid the midterms, there have been some efforts to reclaim the state\u2019s left-populist history, Griscom said. James Talarico, the Democratic Texas state representative and former public school teacher who is now also the Democratic nominee for US Senate, has been telling voters that billionaires are waging \u201cclass warfare\u201d<\/a> against ordinary people \u2013 something Griscom has praised<\/a>.<\/p>\n Griscom has, however criticized<\/a> some of Talarico\u2019s recent moves to cozy up to billionaires like business magnate Mark Cuban, with whom he teamed up on recent policy proposals<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cHe needs to avoid the siren song of moving to the right economically,\u201d Griscom said. \u201cThe way to build that mass appeal, and win a populist coalition, is not by tacking right or pushing technocratic policies no matter what the consultants tell you. Nor is sorting billionaires into good or bad billionaires. The history of populism, and the success of Talarico in the primary is clear, if you want to win Texas you need to mobilize working people with a clear vision of the way politics can improve their life.\u201d<\/p>\n The author believes a true return to left populism in Texas will require the buildout of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America. Though they\u2019ll never have the capital of wealthy far-right political financiers in the state like oilman Tim Dunn<\/a>, he hopes these organizations can make up for their lack of money with \u201cpeople power\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the history of the Texas populous movement, that was their great advantage,\u201d said Griscom. \u201cThey had a rootedness in working-class communities in the state of Texas. That\u2019s what it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n