[[link removed]]

CAN THE PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS TAKE DEMOCRATS IN A NEW DIRECTION?  
[[link removed]]


 

Christopher D. Cook interview with Representative Greg Casar
February 24, 2025
The Progressive
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ "I believe in fighting for vulnerable people, reproductive rights
and climate action. But we won’t have the numbers in office to
protect the vulnerable if we don’t fix Democrats’ loss of trust
among a lot of working class people." _

Greg Casar Elected as Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Image,

 

_He has been called
[[link removed]] “the
fastest member of Congress” for his running exploits
[[link removed]].
Now, U.S. Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas, is racing
into upper party echelons as the new chair of the
ninety-seven-member Congressional Progressive Caucus
[[link removed]]._

_Casar is the first Progressive caucus chair from a red state,
and is also the first Latinx politician to represent the Austin
area. In a memo
[[link removed]] released
in December, caucus leaders including Casar and Representative Pramila
Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the former caucus chair, urged the
Democratic Party to “create an authentic Democratic brand that
offers a clear alternative and inclusive vision for how we will make
life better for the 90 percent who are struggling in this economy,
[and] take on the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals who
have rigged the system.”_

_Casar, just starting his second term in Congress at age thirty-five,
recently spoke with _The Progressive_ about his vision for changing
the party’s priorities and direction._

Q: I WANT TO START BY ASKING, HOW DO YOU WIN AS A PROGRESSIVE IN
TEXAS?

GREG CASAR: There’s a long progressive history in Texas of
organizing across rural and urban areas, of organizing across race.
There’s an old progressive populist movement in Texas [made up] of
Black, Mexican American, and white farmers that dates back to the
beginning days of the state. And there’s a recent history of Texans
pushing a Texas-born President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was
previously skeptical of civil rights, to pass not just the Civil
Rights Act, but also the Voting Rights Act; to create not only
Medicaid, but also Head Start, all in one term.

In each of those cases, progressives brought working people together
across their differences, even across ideology, to help with the basic
goal of taking on the powerful and making life a little easier for
everyday people. I have that experience as a labor organizer. I
organized immigrants and native-born construction workers on
construction sites where you had fifth-generation Texans in white
majority unions working directly alongside undocumented workers. And
instead of ignoring the differences among those different workers, we
brought people together around one common goal, which was a safer
workplace and winning a raise.

I think the Democratic Party could learn a lot from that. Instead of
splitting our constituencies, we should bring a broader part of the
American public together around beating back corruption and winning
everybody a raise.

Q: HOW CAN IMMIGRATION AND THE BORDER BECOME ISSUES THAT PROGRESSIVES
CAN USE TO BUILD BRIDGES INSTEAD OF DIVIDES?

CASAR: Corporate interests want immigrant workers who are scared they
could be deported if they speak up. They want immigrant workers to be
[afraid to] claim their overtime pay. That brings down pay for
everyone. So when I organize on construction sites, we talk about how
we want union contracts for everybody, and that helps long-standing
union workers, just like it helps exploited immigrant workers.

Our fight for immigration reform and equal rights for immigrants
isn’t just an act of charity for immigrant workers; it’s actually
a cause that helps everybody on a job site. I found that worked for
everybody, regardless of how comfortable they felt culturally with
each other.

If the Democratic Party just tries to act Republican-lite on the
issue, then we don’t present any real vision or alternative to the
Republican vision. And then the Republicans will drag us further and
further to the right, to the point where Democrats are being asked to
vote for things that are completely outside of our value set. When
you’re completely outside of your value set, people know that
you’re being inauthentic, and there’s nothing worse for a
political party than to be seen as inauthentic.

I expect, unfortunately, that Donald Trump will be so cruel and so
horrific on immigration issues that there will be backlash to his
cruelty. We saw that in the first term, but the backlash to Trumpism
isn’t enough. We need to establish a long-standing principle that
will withstand the back-and-forths of Fox News politics, and ground
our immigration politics in something that is good for everybody, even
if you’re not the kid of an immigrant like me or so many others.

Q: DO YOU FEEL THE DEMOCRATS OPENED THE DOOR TO TODAY’S IMMIGRATION
ISSUES?

CASAR: Well, we contributed significantly by continuing our
devastating economy-wide sanctions on countries like Cuba and
Venezuela. The U.S. policies established by Trump [in his first term]
but then continued in many ways by the Biden Administration didn’t
serve to create free and fair elections in places like Venezuela. But
they did contribute to the poverty and desperation there, pushing
people out of their home countries.

Democrats going along with Republican foreign policy and sanctions
policy has made the issue worse, [leading to] a Western Hemisphere
migration surge. When Republicans don’t want to help address the
logistics of that surge and want to politically exploit it, and then
Democrats have helped contribute to the creation of that surge,
you’ve got to start asking yourself, why do we do that?

Q: WHAT IS A PROGRESSIVE VISION OR POLICY ON IMMIGRATION? WHERE WOULD
YOU LIKE TO SEE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY GO ON THIS ISSUE?

CASAR: I think the party should say clearly that immigrant workers
and native-born workers deserve the same rights, and that will raise
wages and improve benefits for everybody. Republicans want there to be
two tiers of people and that hurts everybody. Second, immigration can
be legal, lawful, humane, and orderly, and that’s good for everyone.
And that Republicans are trying to make the immigration system more
disorderly and more broken. That’s what actually creates danger for
people.

Nothing enriches the cartels more than for immigration to be extremely
difficult and dangerous and for the legal system to be almost
impossible to access. That’s what the Republican and Trump platform
is. Nothing helps the cartels more than for states like Texas to hand
out guns, oftentimes without a background check, and for guns and
weapons of war that are impossible to access in Mexico to be easily
accessible on the Texan side of the border. Republican policies on
immigration are bad for our economy. They’re good for the cartels.
They get weapons in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.

Q: LET’S TALK ABOUT ECONOMIC POPULISM. WHAT IS A POPULIST ECONOMIC
AGENDA FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

CASAR: The Democratic Party used to primarily be associated with
fighting for the working class. We started losing that over the last
thirty years, ever since NAFTA [the North American Free Trade
Agreement]. But it’s been in more rapid decline in the past ten
years. I believe deeply in fighting for vulnerable people and for
reproductive rights and climate action. But we won’t have the
numbers in office to protect the vulnerable and health care and the
climate if we don’t fix the fundamental problem of the Democrats’
loss of trust among a lot of working class people, because that’s
our base.

Many working class people perceive us as either technocratic or out of
touch. I think the way to get working people back to the party is for
working people to not just see our policy positions, but to know that
we’re willing to fight for them against the people that are screwing
working people over.

That economic populist and progressive vision has been at the core of
what the Progressive Caucus has been all about. There are populist
economic issues: capping credit card interest rates, cracking down on
junk fees, breaking up corporations that are jacking up prices at the
grocery store. For those issues, we have the vast majority of the
American people with us, and we need a Democratic Party to catch up to
where progressives have been on that for a long time.

I think the Democratic Party needs to put taking on corporations and
raising people’s wages and lowering people’s housing costs first.
I know the consequences of abortion bans. We have one in Texas. Women
are dying, and it’s serious. I know the consequences of the January
6ths of the world. Those are serious issues that we should talk about.
But first on the list, it should always be people’s pocketbook
issues.

The Republicans have said that it’s immigrants that are raising your
rent and driving housing shortages, or that it’s trans people that
are ruining our health care system, and that Democrats are enabling
that. Democrats have to be able to say it’s not an asylum seeker
raising your rent. It’s a Wall Street CEO, just like the ones that
Trump is appointing to his Cabinet.

Q: WHY DO YOU THINK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS NOT BEEN DOING CLEAR
MESSAGING AROUND CORPORATE POWER AND ECONOMIC WEALTH?

CASAR: I trace part of this back to the Clinton era. I was six years
old at the time. I think there were well-meaning people in that era
who believed that the expansion of U.S. corporations around the world
would lower consumer prices and that the working class would tie
itself more deeply to the Democratic Party in response, right? That
would create global stability and lower consumer prices.

Most Democrats in the House voted against NAFTA, but I know there are
well-meaning Democrats who thought that lowering those prices would
resonate with the working class. What they underestimated was how
important solid wages, stability, and good jobs, and standing up for
everyday people’s daily lives is. Voters don’t function on a
spreadsheet, right? You can’t say, “Well, these hundred people are
going to lose their jobs, but these thousand people are going to be
able to get a cheaper toaster, so we’re going to go up a net 900
votes.”

We have to care for the daily lives and experiences of those hundred
working-class constituents. I think that technocratic,
corporate-influenced mentality is failing us, and we’re trying to
figure out how to take the Democratic Party in a new direction.

Q: A MEMO
[[link removed]] JUST CAME
OUT IN WHICH YOU, REPRESENTATIVE JAYAPAL, AND OTHERS TALKED ABOUT
CORPORATE PACS AND REALLY CHANGING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY AND DONORS. DO YOU SEE ANY PROGRESS ON THAT FRONT?

CASAR: Yes, we’re going to be asking the chair candidates of the
DNC [Democratic National Committee] about getting rid of massive
corporate influence inside the Democratic Party. We need to be able to
name names and call out corporate bad actors and not be tied up with
them. We have a real opportunity to decouple the Democratic Party from
many of those corporate influences here in the DNC chair race. And the
Progressive Caucus is going to be asking all of the candidates where
they stand on those principles.

Q: HOW DO YOU SEE THE PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS BUILDING MORE POWER AND
LEVERAGE VIS-À-VIS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

CASAR: This is an area where [former] Chair Jayapal did great work.
We have updated our bylaws to require a lot more caucus unity. We’re
going to be trying to reclaim a majority on this populist economic
agenda. I think we’re going to really leverage Progressive Caucus
votes to make sure that those votes come to the floor.

We’re nearly half the Democratic Caucus now and we’re already
trying to use our numbers to get more progressives onto key committees
that oftentimes have excluded progressives. That’s something that
I’ve made a real priority at the beginning of my time as chair.
That’s what makes differences in our financial system. That’s what
makes differences in our tax system.

Republicans right now often need two-thirds of the House to pass a
bill because they can’t get things out of their own disorganized
rules committee. So they may sometimes need Progressive Caucus
members’ votes to put things into law. The Progressive Caucus has a
huge opportunity with ninety-plus members to actually kill some of
Trump’s priorities. 

_Christopher D. Cook is an author and award-winning journalist based
in San Francisco, where he has lived for thirty years. See his work at
christopherdcook.com and on Twitter._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we
publish on national politics, culture, and events including U.S.
foreign policy; we also focus on issues of particular importance to
the heartland. Two flagship projects of The
Progressive include Public School Shakedown
[[link removed]], which covers efforts
to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* Greg Cesar
[[link removed]]
* Congressional Progressive Caucus
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Party
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]