Letter Sent November 6, 2002 to SDEC & State Party Leadership
By Stan - Date: 2002-11-06 20:14:02

The letter below was sent on Nov. 6, as authorized by the Steering Committee at our Austin meeting, to all SDEC Members and Statewide Party Leadership, introducing our organization and our plans to refocus the efforts of the Party and our candidates.

AN URGENT MESSAGE FROM THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST CAUCUS

Dear Fellow Democratic Activist:

The Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party wishes to introduce ourselves to you. We were formed at a groundswell Caucus at the State Convention in El Paso in June. We have organized into 6 regional groups around Texas with active Steering Committees, meeting regularly. We held a large Statewide meeting in Austin in conjunction with the SDEC meeting in September and will be reconvening again in Austin in November. Our goal is to return our Party and it’s leadership at all levels to the progressive and populist values on which this Party was founded and which have propelled us to electoral success in the past. Immediately below you will read our Working Principles, adopted at our organizing meeting. If you identify with most of these, we want to hear from you to see how we can work together to implement them.

Working Principles

The Progressive/Populist Caucus stands for reclaiming the Democratic Party of Texas' historic purpose of empowering grassroots Democrats to achieve a more just society, returning our party and state government to the people first, by curtailing the influence of corporations and powerful moneyed interests in diluting the power of the people, advancing basic human rights through election and electoral reform, expanding grassroots, low income and minority participation in our party and government, universal healthcare for Texans, a moratorium of the death penalty and incarceration of petty drug users, universal early childhood and higher education and job training, reforms to enable workers a living wage and right to organize workplaces without unfair coercion and manipulation by employers, clean air and water and fair trade for Texans without loss of democracy or local sovereignty.

"Texas belongs to the people, not the corporations."
James Stephen Hogg, l896

Please visit our Web site at: www.Texaspopulists.com. Call me, Interim Statewide Chair at 713-666-8444 or write me at: 2338 Dryden Rd., Houston, TX 77030. Provide your email address if you wish to hear from us by emailing us at Let us know you are with us and our efforts to reclaim our Party and principles which differentiate us from Republicans and will return young people to our Party from the Greens because we represent grassroot people’s values.

Stan Merriman Interim Statewide Chair