Progressive Pervez Agwan Is Running For Congress
When Lizzie Fletcher narrowly beat Republican John Culberson in 2018, TX-07 was a swing district with a D+1 partisan lean. Redrawn by Republicans in the state legislature, it has a partisan lean of D+24, a Democratic dumping ground to make TX-22 and TX-38 perfectly safe for whatever degree of MAGA lunatic the GOP puts up, currently Troy Nehls and Wesley Hunt. Under the new boundaries, Biden beat Trump 64.2% to 34.5%. In 2012, Romney has beaten Obama 60% to 39% and in 2016, Hillary had bested Trump 48-47%. Now it’s one of Texas’ most diverse districts, stretching from Montrose west and southwest into Fort Bend County.
Fletcher is no longer an optimal-- or even reasonable-- fit for the district: way too conservative. She joined the corporately owned and operated New Dems when she got to Congress and has earned herself an overall ProgressivePunch score of “D.” She’s either going to have to evolve herself fast or wind up primaried out of a job. Right now MIT graduate and renewable energy developer Pervez Agwan is actively campaigning for the job— and actively campaigning against her.
One look at his policy platform and you immediately see the future of the Democratic Party, from universal Medicare for All and the Green New Deal to serious campaign finance and ethics reform. How does this sound to you? “Dark money, corporate dollars, big industry lobbyists, Super-PACs, & billionaire spending need to go. Dishonest politicians taking millions to get elected is blatant corruption. Our officials should represent us, not corporations, or industry lobbyists… We need a new vision for America. A bloated military budget, broken foreign policy, U.S. aid to apartheid states, and failures in domestic safety policy (guns, criminal justice, etc.) all have systemic roots. Be the revolution.”
Right now he’s on the ground working to block Houston freeway expansion and to change the way Houston elects the City Council.
I haven’t spoken with him yet. But I was inspired by his launch video to check him out. This comes right from his website:
The systems in place in this country are inherently designed to deliver profits to large mega-corporations that have their hands in everything, from healthcare, to energy, food, education, and our politics. Medical bankruptcies are the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country. Meanwhile, your elected officials (including the TX-07 incumbent!) take campaign contributions from these same insurance giants that annually post millions of dollars in profits by denying care and coverage to our fellow Americans.
Houston is home to some of the largest oil and gas corporations on earth. I actually started my career off as a young 22-year old in the oil and gas industry, but now I openly face the facts. If humanity, and Houston are to progress, we must work to immediately address the climate crisis and protect our citizens in this city from such a cyclical industry. My career transitioning from oil and gas engineer to renewable energy developer is proof of the possibility of an energy transition, but we need to make this transition happen on a much faster scale. We can no longer allow the same corporations that are polluting our planet, and then profiting off the sale of their petroleum products, to also play a role in our politics, or our city’s future. This campaign’s policies are premised on a new vision for America, one where your zip code doesn’t determine your future, a vision where the color of your skin doesn’t dictate your life’s outcomes, and one where we avoid a climate catastrophe by ensuring our economy and commerce don’t plunder the finite resources of our one and only planet. I’ve spent the last few years of my life at the forefront of climate and energy issues. I’ve worked on and helped build some of the country’s largest wind and solar projects, and have personally taught climate/energy economics and policy. Houston needs bold, innovative leadership to steer it through the climate crisis, and free our economy from the shackles of oil and gas corporations.
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