The Women of Texas's Secret Resistance

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rural Texas has a reputation as solid Republican territory, but hidden within those large swathes of red are small, individual flecks of blue. In this episode, we bring you the story of a group of progressive, Texan women who are organizing — in secret — out of fear of retaliation from their neighbors. The United States of Anxiety is supported in part by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Additional support for WNYC’s election coverage is provided by Emerson Collective, The New York Community Trust, and New York Public Radio Trustee Dr. Mary White. Special thanks to Professor Shannon McGregor in the Department of Communication at The University of Utah and to Caroline Covington for her reporting in Burnet, Texas. Additional thanks to Emily Van Duyn, whose full study "Hidden Democracy: Political Dissent in Rural America" is available in the Journal of Communication, a publication of the International Communication Association.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is B.J. Oh poo. A couple days ago we caught up with B.J. Henry in a small campaign office in Burnet, Texas, population about 6,000 people.
0:15.4	Hello, is this Minnie?
0:18.0	This is BJ with the Beto campaign.
0:20.6	He's running for Senate against Ted Cruz.
0:23.0	In case you somehow haven't heard, there's this Senate race in Texas.
0:28.0	A Democrat named Beto O'Rourke is incredibly challenging Ted Cruz.
0:33.4	Is this okay?
0:35.4	She hung up?
0:36.4	I mean I got so many voters yesterday.
0:40.3	BJ is one of Beto's volunteers working the phones to get out the votes.
0:45.1	She takes note on a yellow pad of paper of every hang-up, every cruise voter, and of course every
0:50.6	Beto supporter, as she makes call after call after call.
0:55.0	Are you a registered voter?
0:57.0	Well, you know what, hon, I'm sorry to bother you, but you really ought to register to vote.
1:02.0	It's very important. And sorry to bother you but you really ought to register to vote. It's very important and
1:03.7	sorry to bother you. Bye-bye. Voter turnout is usually, historically, very low in
1:09.1	Texas. Less than 35% of eligible Texans voted in the last midterm elections.
1:15.4	And if Beto is even going to have a chance, he needs a huge Democratic turnout.
1:21.2	And that means he needs people like B.J. who is doing the kinds of stuff
1:25.1	she has never ever done before. Last Saturday I had seven volunteers to Blockwalk
1:32.3	in the town of Bertram, which is a teeny tiny
1:35.3	tiny place and we split up and we each had 25 names. So I go up to this house and it was absolutely a shack. I was scared. It looked a little uncomfortable.
	...

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