Pervez Agwan: A Progressive Voice For Texas' Future
Why Lone Star Left is endorsing Pervez Agwan for Texas' Congressional District 07.
This week, Texas saw record temperatures throughout the state, reaching 110° in many places. In Kingsville, the heat index reached 125°. Texas is hot. It’s always been hot, but we’re seeing longer and more frequent heat waves due to climate change. Extreme weather is on the rise in Texas. Aside from the heat, droughts, wildfires, flooding, and hurricanes will worsen severely unless the state gets off of fossil fuels and eliminates greenhouse gas pollution by 2050.
Two weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up on the shores of Texas, and our grid continued to tip-toe toward a total failure.
Humanity cannot afford to keep politicians in office who won’t take the climate crisis seriously. Moreso, we should not elect people who cater to the whims of the fossil fuel industry.
This is why Lone Star Left is endorsing Pervez Agwan for Texas’ Congressional District 07.
When Pervez Agwan graduated from A&M with a degree in engineering when he was 21 years old, he went to work for a fracking company. He told me in a recent conversation that he was disgusted by what he saw as fracking pumps poisonous chemicals into our earth. He decided that the oil business wasn’t for him. So, he headed up to MIT and earned a master’s in climate and energy economics. Since then, he has been at the forefront of the climate change battle, working as a renewable energy developer and a climate change activist in Houston.
Pervez acknowledges that Houston is home to some of the world’s largest oil and gas corporations. He said, “The oil industry will squeeze every last dollar they can while watching the world burn. If humanity and Houston are to progress. We must work to address the climate crisis immediately.”
Yesterday, the heat index was 117° in Austin, and this morning we woke up to the news of more deaths in the Texas panhandle due to another June tornado. We are in a full-blown climate emergency. All anyone has to do is look around to see its impacts.
As I spoke to Pervez, I asked him about his ideas to address this. “We aren’t moving fast enough,” he told me. While President Biden has set a goal of getting us to net zero emissions by 2050, Pervez thinks we can do it much quicker.
“We need a new vision for America. We need national renewable standards. We need a clean energy-based economy.”
I asked him how that would work, seeing that Houston is home to so many oil-industry jobs. He quickly set the record straight, “I am in no way an anti-oil worker. I’m just anti-oil money.” High-paying clean energy jobs can easily replace oil jobs, and he’d like to pass legislation for job transitioning programs.
Our conversation moved to money in politics.
Pervez Agwan has vowed not to take any money from corporate PACs or special interests.
Aside from the environment, getting money out of politics is one of Pervez’s number one issues. He believes Congress should immediately end Citizens United and pass comprehensive campaign financing reform.
I strongly agree with him on this, and he put it in perspective when he spoke about how many problems in America are because politicians are bought and paid for. The oil industry, the gun lobby, and insurance companies control our lives by dumping millions of dollars into our elections each year.
Pervez has been wholly funded at a grassroots level and has already managed to raise $250,000. He recently opened an office in the district, and his campaign workers are fired up about his election and working around the clock.
Check him out:
Pervez is the type of progressive candidate Texans love. Seeing him join our other Texas progressives in Congress, Jasmine Crockett and Greg Casar would be fantastic.
We also have to address the elephant in the room.
Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher’s long ties to big oil.
Did you hear about the latest culture war crisis on the other side of the aisle? Apparently, Biden declared war on stoves. Not really, but that’s how the GOP framed it. And because of the GOP’s imaginary war, Congress passed the “Save Our Gas Stoves Act.”
The debate on the bill was ridiculous, and the social media posts were absurd. The bill essentially limits energy conservation standards for kitchen ranges or ovens. It was pro-fossil fuel foolishness. But with Congress having a Republican majority, it passed. And Lizzie Fletcher crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans to save ovens from an imaginary oven monster.
If you’ve been following Lizzie Fletcher’s career, this vote probably doesn’t surprise you. Fletcher has a long history of taking oil money and voting with Republicans on anti-environmental legislation.
Do you remember when Democrats voted to end oil and gas price gouging? Fletcher was one of the four Democrats who voted against it.
In 2019 she voted against prohibiting oil and gas leasing in the Atlantic or Pacific Outer Continental Shelf. She voted against banning oil and gas leasing, development, production, and transportation in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
In 2021, she voted against a bill requiring an issuer of securities annually to disclose their ESG metrics to shareholders.
Not to mention the mountains of cash Fletcher pulls in from big oil every election cycle.
We are in a climate crisis. It’s bad enough we have to deal with climate-denial Republicans, but we shouldn’t also be dealing with Democrats who partake with them in swimming in the sludge-covered money. It is for this reason that we cannot support Lizzie Fletcher.
Pervez Agwan’s clean energy platform is a breath of fresh air.
While the climate crisis is one of humanity's most significant issues today, Pervez’s platform addresses progressive issues that most people want to see. When I spoke with him, he told me about how his dad had lost his job and health insurance. Within months, he died at 56 from a heart attack when he couldn’t afford his needed medicine for diabetes and heart disease.
Pervez’s story about his dad is all too common in the Lone Star State. Hundreds of people die in Texas every single year without access to healthcare.
Congressional District 07, TX07, is home to some of the poorest neighborhoods in Texas, with some of the highest uninsured rates. Pervez believes America should have Universal Healthcare, and if elected, he would add to the growing list of Congressional members trying to make that happen.
In our conversation, Pervez told me that he’d had these ideals for a long time, but the turning point for him was Uvalde. That’s when he looked to his wife and said he needed to run to make a difference.
“I never imagined running for office,” he said. “But after Uvalde, my moral conscience told me I had to.”
His platform also addresses gun violence, universal background checks, and a prohibition on assault rifles are some of his top priorities. And he quickly reminded me about how much influence the gun lobby has and how badly we need to get money out of politics.
“For too long, Democrats have been bringing knives to a gunfight. We need Democrats in Congress who are going to stand up to Republicans, who are going to fight back against them.”
Pervez Agwan is the type of candidate we need to tackle the issues America faces today.
It’s time for America to move away from Conservatism and from the Democrats who enable it. It’s time for progress, and Pervez Agwan is a self-described unapologetic progressive with bold ideas which will pave the way for a better future for all of us.
You can learn more about Pervez from his website or follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.