through a series of perpetual auctions, with private companies maximizing their profits under the guise of “retail choice.” But under a policy of neoliberalism, there is no choice when one person, or the middleman, holds all the power — literally and figuratively. How can it be the decision of Texas voters to privatize their grid if the majority of citizens are freezing in their cars wondering how this mess even began? The lines of neoliberalism have become blurred over the last few decades. A term that once was a stand-in for policies determined by Margaret Thatcher or Reaganomics has now become a zinger used by Gen Z on Twitter to spotlight the progressive posturing of the Democratic Party. And they’re not wrong to call out Democrats either. As much as the Texas winter storm was exasperated by conservative lawmakers' and regulators’ lack of climate change awareness or their desire to increase profit, our nation’s Democratic Party leaders are just as enthralled by privatization. President Joe Biden has yet to follow through on expanding Medicare — or at least creating some form of public health care program that he promised to do throughout his campaign. It’s no secret that Democratic leaders are fraught with contradictions and neoliberal inclinations — Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have followed a “tough on crime” policy throughout their careers, with Biden’s introduction of the 1994 Crime Bill that fed mass incarceration and the prisonindustrial complex, and Harris’s background as a criminal prosecutor and self-proclaimed “top cop.” “I think a lot of liberals, Democrats, are fine with the corporatization of all of this stuff, you know? They can hem and haw about equality and access, but it allows them to wipe their hands of a difficult problem,” said Dr. Katherine Kidd, an assistant professor in Syracuse University’s English and Textual Studies program. As climate change becomes an increasing threat to the state of, well, everything, the entire nation could be seeing the same blackouts Texas faced on a mass scale if our leaders’ love fest with privatization persists. With policies like the Green New Deal at the forefront of many young voters' minds, how much change can voter mobilization and grassroots
organizing actually accomplish in places like Texas where gerrymandering influences almost every election and private corporations have a stronghold on the future of climate change infrastructure? For Pharr, the way to make that change isn’t by filling in a circle on a ballot but through community-based mutual aid. “It's kind of discouraging sometimes, but personally I felt a huge kind of relief,” she said. “Like, letting go of this national narrative of changing things and just kind of keeping my head down, going into work every day, serving food, getting people registered.” During the snowstorm, Pharr worked with a mutual aid organization in San Antonio to redistribute money, replace people’s groceries, and pay rent, and even raised $700 for bus passes and hotel rooms on her personal Facebook page. If people like Stephen King — the “white educated liberal elite” as they have become known — are donating to local mutual aid services, then by all means make all the jokes you want on Twitter (or don’t...), but we highly doubt that’s the case. As it turns out, being a celebrated author, or educated, or even the president, doesn’t deter you from doing capitalism’s dirty work. In times of climate crises — and this will happen more and more as long as climate change exists — calling out systems of privatization just isn’t enough. It’s time for people to build lasting community-based networks of care and support so that Texans, and the rest of us, won’t be left out in the cold.
