Greetings, Lowdowners — Deanna here!

Friday we told you what was coming: Hightower on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, introducing Clayton Tucker, the Lampasas rancher carrying the populist torch into this year’s fight for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Well, it happened. And it’s everything we hoped it would be!

Listen to that crowd roar as Hightower names the “six Bs” — bosses, bankers, billionaires, big shots, b******s, and bullshitters. That clip has been tearing up social media all weekend! Here’s the full five-minute speech: the introduction, the history, and Jim handing the mic to Clayton with the kind of send-off that doesn’t happen unless you’ve been in the fight together for a long, long time.

This is the kind of thing you get every week as a Lowdown subscriber: not just the clip everyone’s sharing, but the full context behind it. Consider upgrading today if you can!

PS—I think my personal favorite moment is watching the ASL interpreter figure out how to translate “greedheads and boneheads.” Chef’s kiss!

Transcript

Announcer: Let’s welcome our former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Jim Hightower.

Hidey ho! As one former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, who came out of a progressive campaign with Ann Richards and Jim Mattox and Garry Mauro, a unity ticket. Now to the next era of victories by progressive forces, led by Clayton Tucker, James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, right on down the line, a lineup of winners.

It just makes me happier than a flea at a dog show to be standing up here, looking out at all you Democratic Party champions of economic fairness, you corporate greedwhackers, you Republican butt-kickers, as we rally to take Texas back from the GOP, from the GOP autocrats and plutocrats, so our team of grassroots Democrats can move Texas forward. We don’t want to go back. We want to go forward and forward with all the people of our state, not just the rich elites.

And this November fight is a landmark populist battle, putting pitting the greedheads and boneheads who are the powers that be against the powers that ought to be, the ordinary work of day people of our state, the workers, the farmers, the teachers, the consumers. The everyday Texans who do the everyday work that makes Texas work.

Now you might say, well, Hightower, what do you by the powers that be? Well here’s what I mean. I call ‘em the six Bs. They are the bosses, the bankers, the billionaires, the big shots, b******s and bullshitters.

They’ve been running roughshod over us. They’re thinking they’re the top dog and we’re just a bunch of fire hydrants out here in the countryside. That’s why Clayton Tucker is so important. So important to this election, so important to the Democratic ticket, so important to Texas, a true son of Texas populism, a rancher raising goats out in Lampasas County. The very place where populism began, by the way, it was born in Lampasas County in the 1870s. He’s a rancher, been a kindergarten teacher. That’ll help him when he deals with the legislature.

He’s a grassroots organizer, battling the data center billionaires. He even puts it right on his campaign button here. “Stop AI data centers.” Clayton Tucker. He battles the monopolists and the extremists. I’m gonna tell you that Clayton Tucker is gonna drive the Republican leaders crazy. Of course, that’s a pretty short drive for some of them.

Most important, as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Clayton will make us proud again, as so few office holders these days do. He comes out of West Texas. West Texas ranchers and the old cowboys out in West Texas used to have a saying. They said, “speak the truth, but ride a fast horse.”

Clayton is going to speak the truth to the powers that be. And they’re going to call him, just as they’re calling Talarico and Gina Hinojosa and our whole Democratic lineup, they’re going to call them agitators. Agitators. What the hell is wrong with being an agitator? Agitation is what built America.

So I’m here to ask you to join me in welcoming the People’s Agitator, Clayton Tucker, from Lampasas, Texas.

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here!

Last week we gave you the pesticide hearing story — Willie Nelson, Barbara Jordan, and a fight Hightower and his team won by building a movement before he ever needed the movie stars. This week, we’re going back further. All the way back to where the whole populist tradition in this country actually started.

Here’s Hightower telling it: in the 1870s, four farmers in Lampasas, Texas, were getting squeezed out of existence. Railroads gouging them on getting crops to market. Bankers gouging them on their mortgages. So they did the only thing they could — they sat down around a kitchen table and started talking about it.

That conversation didn’t stay in Lampasas. It spread to neighboring counties, then across Texas, then into 43 states. It elected U.S. senators and members of Congress. It built cooperative banks and grain storage so farmers didn’t have to sell at the bottom of the market just to survive. Historians call it the Populist Movement. Hightower calls it people figuring out they had to organize or get run over.

We’re telling you this story right now for a reason. Tonight, Hightower’s on the main stage at the Texas Democratic Convention, introducing a candidate he’s worked with for years: Clayton Tucker, who’s running for the same office Hightower once held — Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Clayton’s from Lampasas.

No one planned that. Texas just keeps producing people who grow up with that kitchen table in their blood and decide to do something about the Powers That Be. Clayton’s campaign is built around the same basic fight those four farmers were having: rural Texans getting run over by power they have no say in. Corporate data centers draining water and electricity from small towns that never got a say. Federal regulators sitting on tools Texas ranchers need right now to fight the New World Screwworm, leaving the state to fight it understaffed and underequipped while the threat spreads. Different villains, same basic math — somebody with more power than you, making decisions about your land and your livelihood from somewhere else.

Almost a hundred and fifty years on, same county, new fights, same fight.

This is the kind of connection-the-dots storytelling our paid subscribers get from us regularly — the history that explains the present, not just the outrage of the week. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is a good week for it.

Thanks for being in the fight with us, as always!

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sometimes, little things can be a big deal. For example, in considering ways to help protect Mother Earth from global environmental rampages by us humans, look out your window.

In many cities and most suburbs, chances are you’re looking at a lawn – a grass-carpeted yard that looks almost the same as the one next door, the one next to it, etc. Some see a lush expanse of green grass as the ultimate in landscaping beauty, and some even consider a well-manicured lawn to be a measure of one’s moral character.

Beauty and piety aside, though, the spread and intensification of “lawn culture” has become an environmental extravagance that is already unsustainable in whole sections of our country, and it adds up to a steadily-increasing burden on Earth’s essential resources. Grass itself is natural, but keeping it alive across thousands of square miles is not, for it requires a deluge of chemicals and endless rivers of water applied again and again, yard after yard, trying to keep these plots green. And – O, the irony! – their “green” includes eliminating bees, butterflies… and, well, nature. One statistic tells the tale: Americans use more than 10 times more poison per acre than all of America’s farmers use on their crops.

Just glance around you, and you’ll see the grass lawn imperative at work throughout your community – it surrounds local schools, “greens-up” corporate complexes, spreads across college campuses, forms miles of golf courses, etc.

This is not a diatribe against grassy plots, which can be natural joys. But let’s get real, get creative, and get in touch with the full balance and beauty of nature. You can promote ground cover sanity right where you live with native plants, xeriscaping, organic methods, rain gardens, and “re-wilding” your yard with things like prairie grass. For help, go to Rewild.org/Rewild-Your-Life.

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.